Serial Fiction | Dark Fiction | Revenge | Murder | Fiction Series
‘M’ is for Metal Bat Therapy
Part 1 of 3
This is a story about revenge. Before I tell it, you should know I used to be a quiet, joyful, funny person because I could be.
Not because I had to be.
I only turned myself in so I wouldn’t die of thirst and starvation after camping in the Pascagoula watershed for 3 weeks. There was no other way they could put me in the county jail.
Getting locked up was the only saving grace I had left — if I wanted to live in peace.
The investigator laid gruesome pictures on the table in front of me.
“That ain’t nothing I ain’t seen before, Carl. I already told you, I created that mess. Now, I’m in here to clean it up.”
In the pictures, a bloody mush of what used to be a human being laid barely covered in a jeans jacket, and dusted with lye.
That no-good, soulless bastard is the reason I came home and met my baby brother dead on the floor.
5 months ago, I walked into my house from my quiet, little job at the bank. Even though I had been gone all day, my baby brother had only been home for an hour on his own.
We chatted on the phone before I left to come home.
“Janice?” his little twangy voice was the cutest thing in the world to me, “Will you bring me a snack?”
“Anything you want you adorable little thing, you. What are you thinking?”
“Oreos and cranberries!”
“Alright I’ll grab a few things on my way in. I’m making dinner tonight, so you just do your homework and watch some TV until I get there, okay?”
“Thank you, Janice! I love you — you’re my favorite big sister!”
“Awwww, I love you too, little man.”
On my drive home, I stopped to the grocery store and picked up the stuff I wanted to make for dinner. Bradley loved macaroni and cheese. I wanted to make him a special baked one, like papa used to make us before he died 5 years ago.
I grabbed Bradley’s Oreos and cranberries, and sped home. It took me 10 minutes to get there, and swing open the front door of my Victorian family house.
Something about the silence in that house made me sick to my stomach.
I toured Afghanistan, so I got to know the sound of death as intimately as the next soldier. It took me 7 years of therapy to forget that sound, just so I could enjoy silence again. Now, here it was, in my family home.
I let the screen door slam, and rested my paper grocery bags near the door. I smelled blood and vomit in the air.
“Bradley?” I called out for my little brother.
I got no response.
Another person had obviously been there because I saw a beer on my dining table that I didn’t open.
My baby brother didn’t even know I had beer in this house.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone move in my backyard.
Through my French doors that faced where I stood, I could see a tall, white man with stringy hair was trying to get out of my back gate.
He was wearing a dark blue jean jacket, tiptoeing towards my white picket fence. He had blood smeared all over his pants legs.
The garbage must have felt me watching him, because he turned around and gave me a look like shivers had gone down his spine.
He was an ugly creature, face distorted by pock marks and wrinkles. His eyes were hollowed out by gray bags. I could still smell his foul, pissy, unbathed odor in my entertaining room. It was obvious he was strung out on something disgusting.
When I say he slithered over that gate, I mean he looked like a slimy, oily rat scuffling underneath a rusted, derelict car in a junkyard.
I burned that ugly fucker’s face into the back of my mind like a cow brand. But first, I needed to find my brother.
“Bradley!!” I screamed throughout the house like a wounded banshee.
“Where are you, Bradley?!”
That’s when I found him.
My baby brother crumpled next to his little sports car bed.
His perfect locks of straight black hair crusted together with blood.
The way his body was bent into unnatural angles… It was like someone tried to blow him up.
His perfectly blushed brown cheeks were pale, bruised, and blue.
His body was cold, but I didn’t care.
I scooped him up in my arms.
“Bradley, where’d you go?”
Something I once had broke inside of me.
I heard someone screaming from the distance.
Only when I felt my vocal chords burn did I realize the screaming was coming from me.
Sure.
I called the cops.
I did everything they asked me to do. I even sat across from that shaky little man who drew the face of the human waste that did this to Bradley.
Then, I waited 5 long days for them to explain to me what happened to my baby brother.
It was clear they were scared of what I’d do if they told me.
In 5 days, I’d dropped more than a few pounds between not eating and throwing my guts up.
How could I forget how much blood was all over that bedroom? The smell of vomit where Bradley had gotten sick from the pain lingered in my nose.
All I wanted was to give my baby brother some snacks.
Now, I would never watch him happily eating his mac and cheese ever again.
The cops finally sent someone to my house. Lieutenant Bruce Carlyle sat in uniform on the navy-blue couch across from me. Bruce and I grew up together.
“Janice,” he pleaded, trying to get me to see reason, “Promise me you won’t do anything crazy. I mean, the whole town is right there with you.”
“Just tell me, Bruce,” my eyes were dark, and I was practically spitting, “What did that piece of shit do with my brother?”
Lieutenant Carlyle sighed in defeat and disappointment.
“It looks like he beat Bradley to death. We found a bloody metal bat in your neighbor’s yard. Thank God there wasn’t any sexual trauma. But he broke every major bone in Bradley’s body. I’m sorry to say that Bradley died from the internal bleeding… and the pain.”
My ears turned off. All I could hear was ringing. My sight went blurry, and I sank to my knees in front of the lieutenant.
I knew my mouth was open, but I heard this horrifying, crackling cry somewhere off in the distance.
My vision went black.
I woke up to white, fluorescent lights scathing my retinas. I tried to rub my eyes and felt something metal around my left wrist.
Bruce had handcuffed me to the hospital bed in a private room. He knew that wouldn’t hold me. This was a message telling me to be polite.
Lieutenant Carlyle walked in just as my heart plummeted into my stomach.
Bradley, my little ray of sunshine, was really gone.
“Hey there, sleepyhead. Did you get a good nap?”
“Don’t patronize me, Bruce. My brother is dead! Why are you in here and not out there killing the guy who did that to him!”
I was straining against the edges of my sanity, and Bruce knew it. His eyes were weighted down with the tiredness of someone who had reached for joy and found enveloping darkness, instead.
“Look. Janice. I want to kill that waste of air as much as you do. But you need to promise me that you’re not going to do anything crazy when I take these cuffs off, and you get up from this bed.”
“Why do you care about what happens to me?”
“Janice, we grew up across the street from each other. How could I not care?”
“Then you should know by now that there ain’t nothing you can do to stop me, besides finding that disgusting heap of flesh before I do.”
Bruce looked down at his leather shoes and rubbed the bone between his ginger eyebrows.
“Don’t make me put my job on the line for you, Janice. You know I would do anything to make sure you don’t go to prison.”
“Maybe that’s where I belong, Bruce. Prison is too good for that thing that killed Bradley.”
“Anyway,” Bruce threw up his hands, “Do what you’ve gotta do. I’m dumb enough to know I can’t stop you. But give me something — anything — that can help me help you.”
“Got a pen and a card?”
Bruce reached into his uniform pants pocket to pull out a blue Papermate and one of his own cards. On the back, I scribbled a phone number and the name of my old Sergeant.
“When the time comes, call him. Tell him exactly what happened. Say I’ve cracked. He’ll know what to do.”
Bruce searched my face. Judging by his expression — I looked like hell.
“You need to eat something, Janice. Let me get you some lunch.”
“You’re supposed to buy me lunch before you handcuff me, you know.”
Bruce looked shocked at my humor, then chuckled towards the ceiling.
“Can it, Janice. I’ll be back with some Chinese.”
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