20-Year Vengeance

Not a lot of people can say they spent their sixteenth birthday being buried alive by their supposedly best friend, crush and family friend. A simple “I’m not interested” could have sufficed, but I guess my presence caused her such immense pain they had to team up with the people you trusted the most to plan my demise, which honestly infuriated me. 23 years later and it still put a bad taste in my mouth just thinking about it. I suddenly did a double-take at the realization it’s nearly been two decades since my murder. It seemed like it was just yesterday I heard their hushed voices conversing over my grave three years after I died.

I couldn’t make out everything, but I managed to hear enough of the conversation to piece everything together.

Randy: “You didn’t seriously-”

Daisy: “Yep”.

Brody: “You-you just-”

Daisy: “Quite possibly”.

Brody and Randy: “We’re screwed.”

I wanted so badly to give them the karma they so desperately deserved but a little part of me told me to hold back, that my time would come and I needed to be patient.

They were right about one thing : they were screwed, because although they left me to suffocate and die, little did they know it would take a lot more to get rid of me.

Since the day Randy and Brody tied me up and threw me in what looked like a wooden coffin, I’d been planning my revenge. It started with “harmless” antics like ransacking their houses and their parents grounding them for “throwing a party” without their permission, but as the years passed and we-they got older, I realized those little antics wouldn’t have sufficed my burning desire to make them suffer. It wasn’t until my 20th birthday rolled around, that I started to get serious about plotting my wicked scheme on my former friends.

Thankfully I still had samples of blood I stole from the hospital my parents passed away in a decade after I died. Tragic, but at least they passed peacefully in their sleep. Not a day went by that I didn’t think about them. I had yet to see them in this afterlife or whatever it was called. Last time I checked the afterlife consisted of Heaven and Hell, not a thirty-six year old spirit frozen at the age of sixteen lingering on the earth seeking vengeance on his former friends and psycho crush.

I couldn’t help but revert back to that night. I remember not even making it through the door before I was being tied down and blindfolded. I had no idea what I was in store for me once I opened that door, but being tied up and held hostage seemed more scary than all the other scenarios my mind created- only I wasn’t being held hostage. Once my hands and feet were bound so tight I thought they would fall off from lack of circulation, I felt a couple sets of hands hoist me off the ground, followed by the sound of loud stomping pounding in my ears. I couldn’t tell which was louder, my heart thumping violently in my chest or their footsteps.

The image of my flailing body before getting knocked out was so vivid and clear it gave me chills. How someone could do that to their best friend was beyond me, not to mention my lifelong crush since middle school was the mastermind behind it all and put the cherry on top so to speak. I mean for real, did she have some unknown harbored resentment towards me or something? To the best of my knowledge I hadn’t even said a single word to the girl because I could never grow a pair and make that first step, so it didn’t make sense why she wanted to get rid of me. Still, that didn’t erase the bitter resentment and sheer hatred I had towards her. I just had to wait one week and she would get what was coming to her- they all would.

By the time the sun set I was ready for action. I’d been perfecting this plan for the past twenty years, so it was now finally time to execute it. From What I observed in previous weeks, I discovered Randy was a math teacher at our old highschool(ew), and Brody was the football coach as well as the government teacher there(shocker). I wasn’t the least bit surprised they went back to that dungeon of a school, because they had way too much pride to leave and wanted everyone, even the students to know they were the original alumni of Braxton Blackberry highschool(yes, our school was named after the cellphone. Enough said).

Unlike Randy and Brody, Daisy was a stay-at-home mom to two kids, which actually was surprising. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine she of all people would be a mom, you know because she was a murderer. What was worse, was that she had a boy the same age as I was when I was buried alive over 20 years prior. I couldn’t help but feel bad for him because his mom had probably been putting on a good persona his entire life, not giving him any reason to doubt her deceit. It made me sick, because unlike her, I would never get the chance to be a parent, see my kids grow up, or maybe not even have kids, but travel the world and see where life took me. I would never know because my life was snatched away from me too soon.

It was then I decided she would be my last target, because as they always say, you save the best for last.

Day 1: subject: Randy Hendrix. A little over a month ago, I discovered Randy acquired this weird power or whatever you want to call it to see human bones. Now if I’d found this out when we were in grade school I would have thought it was the weirdest, most coolest thing ever that my best friend was a freak of nature, but now that things were very very different I decided to use it to my advantage. I took a quick field trip to the cemetery where I was properly laid to rest after being found over four months later.

I didn’t receive a headstone until another eight months later, which ironically the three culprits bought. Either they didn’t want people catching onto them and masking themselves as grieving teenagers who lost their dear friend, or actually did feel bad for what they did but didn’t want anyone to know so they paid it forward as a sentiment to my parents. If I didn’t know any better, I would have believed they actually had a heart and felt remorseful for what they did, but given they were still living their best lives and didn’t turn themselves in was proof that wasn’t even remotely the case.

Once I finally found my grave at the very end of the cemetery, I wasted no time digging up my remains. Within less than ten minutes I was staring at my skeleton. I examined it for a few moments, feeling myself getting emotional. It was hard to believe that at one point that was me; that I was alive, living and breathing in the crisp air bright and early every morning before school, or playing videogames with my ex-girlfriend Paisley who ended up becoming my very best friend who I hung out with just as much as Brody and Randy.

I could only imagine what she was up to these days. I felt my heart ache at all I’ve lost at a young age, and for what? A girl who didn’t just not like me back, but had so much animosity towards me, she manipulated my very good friends to take every possible chance I had at life. That was a hard pill to swallow. My mind wandered back to Paisley. I’d be lying if I said she hadn’t crossed my mind a time or two over the years. It even went as far as thinking we would have possibly gotten back together at some point if I hadn’t been obsessed with the psycho girl.

I managed to sneak in her one bedroom apartment the day of our ten-year high school reunion. She was dressed to the nines, with her silky cherry blond hair in a fish braid wearing a vibrant red backless dress that complimented her tanned complexion beautifully, topped with diamond stud earrings and black heels.

She always had a knack for fashion, even said she wanted to be a designer after graduation. I remember her showing me some sketches back in ninth grade, and I had to give credit where it was due; she was amazing. I had no doubt she was designing the hottest clothes that would make her millions because she was that good. I remember her showing me some sketches back in ninth grade, and I had to give credit where it was due; she was amazing. Hard to believe the last time I saw her over ten years ago. What I’d give to reverse the clock, change some things and see her just one last time.