A Beginner's Guide to Avenging Yourself
originally published in Hollow VI
[content warning: mentions of child sexual abuse]
First, you need a motive.
This is the easy part. Just think about your uncle’s fingers up your dragonfly romper when you were four years old—the summer your mother died—and although you might shiver and cringe, the rage will burn up slow from your stomach. Remember all the holidays you suffered across the table from him, the way he looked at you, the way your fingers itched to close around his throat. You have always wanted his last living vision to be the coldness of your eyes.
Choose your memory wisely. Too strong—he washed his hands after touching you, like you might have gotten him dirty—and it will overpower you. Too weak—the leering smile after he kissed your cheek on Christmas—and you will pause with the vial in your hand, suddenly struck by how he always kissed your grandmother’s cheek the same way. Remember: you are the victim.
Focus all of your energy on how that word makes you feel, victim. It labels you weak. It forces you into a lockbox of helplessness, leaves you white and exposed. Remember that he is the one who made you this way.
You want to make him the helpless one? Good.
Next, you will need accomplices. Two is sufficient, but a peripheral third is not a bad idea. Be sure to select people you are absolutely sure will not betray you. Siblings are a wise choice. Visit your sister. Keep a straight face while you tell her that you’ll need her to make a blood pact with you. Do not let her, high and bleary-eyed, get as far as drawing a knife across her palm. She will do anything for you; this you know. Twenty-three years of relying on you instead of your father has indebted her to you. You are her fixed point.
While your sister is washing up in the bathroom, you pick through the cabinet over her sink, making sure there is nothing stronger than weed in the spice jars. Your sister is the only one who believed you when you told your father, ten years later, what your uncle did to you. She nods slowly, mouth set in a loose line, when you tell her what you are going to do.
You know something about your sister that nobody else knows: Your uncle touched her, too.
Get your girlfriend in on it. You have been with her for years; you trust her. She is the only person beside your sister and your father who knows what you have been through. She held you when you whispered in the dark, I want to kill him, cursing your voice for breaking. You didn’t want to cry, not with this kind of anger coursing through you. You know you are stronger than that. She cocks her head when you tell her now, six years later, that you want to make good on that whisper.
Let me help you, she says. I know how to cover for you if you get caught.
You know how to cover for yourself, but you accept her help as if it weren’t what you were after. She is a defense lawyer, and you have listened to her rattle off the elements necessary for a first-degree murder conviction: intent, deliberation, premeditation, malice aforethought. You have questioned her coolly, endlessly about how she circumvents these accusations in court and gathered her answers like a bouquet in your arms.
The third accomplice works best as an ally, Vivian from your office or Teresa next door, someone to corroborate your story that you’re visiting your sister for the weekend. She does not need to know the whole story. She only needs to know that you will be out of town to avoid your abusive ex-boyfriend when he passes through on his business trip. It is vital that you choose a woman for this role. There is no sisterhood stronger than that of women protecting each other.
Your father never protected you. He chose his brother every time it was his word against yours.
Your girls, they choose you.
Once you have secured your accomplices, you will need patience and a plan. You’ll want to leap into action. This is justifiable. Your uncle was quick to ruin your life; you’ll want to end his just as quickly.
But you can’t dive in too hastily. Your plan requires surveillance. Only after you have kept a close, careful eye on your target can you strike. Assign this to your sister; her night shift job doesn’t require her until late. All you need to know is your uncle’s schedule, and then you can devise the best way to do this. You’ve considered several options. You want to be able to look him in the eyes, but that places you in a dangerous situation. You are torn; you want to appear before him like a vision of the sublime in his final seconds, but you realize how unrealistic this is. The more deeply you ingrain yourself in the situation, the more incrimination you risk, the more opportunities for evidence. You abandon the image of yourself standing in his doorway, surrounded by flames, your cold eyes burning through the smoke. You will burn too if you do this.
Your uncle lives an hour north of you and half an hour north of your sister, who keeps vigil for a month, documenting patterns, habits, routines. She reports that your uncle lives alone, arrives home at six-thirty every weeknight, microwaves his dinner, and makes himself tea with the kettle on the stove.
What kind of stove? you ask.
She shrugs. Gas? The kind with flames.
That night, lying in bed beside your girlfriend, you plan a road trip to New Hampshire to buy fireworks. A quick Google search and some skimming will give you all the information you need—which ones have the highest concentration of black powder, how to extract it from the explosives.
Romantic, your girlfriend says.
This is not romance, you reply. This is revenge.
She squints at you. She says, Let me go instead.
You let her go. You text her to remind her to use cash, to buy class 1.4s if she can. Those are the ones with black powder in them, you say. They’re more powerful than your run-of-the-mill roman candles and pissbaby bottle rockets.
You are terrifying, she replies. I love you.
You are in your pajamas, making coffee and examining the burners on your own gas stove, but still you draw yourself up and square your shoulders. You are terrifying.
Invite your sister over to help you and your girlfriend remove the powder from the fireworks and funnel it into vials. Activities like these breed trust, and trust is important in this kind of operation. The stronger the foundation you build among yourself and your accomplices, the less chance there is that they’ll betray you. Send the flash powder vials home with your sister.
A week before you plan to strike, clear a couple personal days with your supervisor. Tell her that you’re taking a long weekend. Two days before, catch Teresa from down the hall and make small talk. Mention that you’ll be out of town for a couple of days, and maybe she could get your mail if it isn’t too much trouble. When she asks if you’re doing anything fun, murmur about an ex coming into town on business. Make eye contact. Tell her that you’d rather not be in the city when your ex is here. Not when he knows you’re still living in the same place, you know?
Watch the recognition dawn in her dark eyes. She will nod quickly, assure you that of course she’ll grab your mail, just slip the key under her door before you leave. She will touch your shoulder as you part ways, lower her voice and tell you that she’s always down the hall if you need anything. Smile and thank her. You will need her sympathy later if you need an alibi.
Pack some clothes. Slip the mailbox key under Teresa’s door. Take the train to your sister’s house. Pay for your return ticket and your girlfriend’s in cash. Use your credit card to purchase round-trip airline tickets in the other direction. Cross your fingers that the transit police dogs cannot smell any flash powder residue that might still be lingering on your person.
Settle in upstate. Your sister’s apartment is small, and the energy among you makes it feel hot, pressurized. Toss and turn against your girlfriend on the futon in the kitchen-slash-living room. Taste the excitement on your tongue, blue and acrid like a static shock. Dream of yourself in that doorway, bathed in smoke, untouched by flames.
The day of, drive to your uncle’s house with your sister. Make sure you have the vials of black powder, at least two pairs of thick latex gloves, and a small funnel. Park three streets away and walk over. Enter his house through the back door. Your sister knows the security code by now; it’s your grandmother’s birthday, 3-9-27. Don your gloves before you touch anything, including the alarm pad.
You are curiously calm. The house does not smell the way you remember him. There are current issues of Golf Digest on his coffee table; back issues of Maxim in his bathroom. The back of your mouth is thick with disgust. You tuck a copy of each in your bag to burn in effigy later.
Your sister takes the tops off all four burners. She says that your uncle uses only the front two for his kettle, but there is no room in this plan for deviation. You funnel the flash powder down into the burner. It feels oddly cathartic, like you are finally setting down the baggage he strapped to you twenty-two years ago.
As you replace the tops of the burners, the bright shatter of ceramic jangles through your ribs. Police, you think. Sick day. Doctor’s appointment. Schedule change.
You turn, a shudder walking three cold fingers across your shoulders. Your sister stands taut and defiant, Artemis presiding over a city of shards.
It wasn’t his favorite, she says. But I had to break one. You know?
You know.
In a strange way, you don’t want to leave. You want to watch. But it’s only three o’clock, and your uncle won’t be home for another three and a half hours, and it’s dangerous for you to be here any longer than you have to. Dump the ceramic shards and the contaminated latex gloves into a bag, and put on a fresh pair of gloves before you seal it. Toss the bag in a neighbor’s trash can when you collect the car from three streets over.
In the car, smack your sister upside the head when she takes out a joint. Are you fucking kidding? Is that how you want to go?
At six o’clock, drive your sister’s car to the diner two streets away from your uncle’s house. Sit with your girlfriend and your sister and listen for the explosion. They will squeeze your hands when you feel it in your chest, rocking you.
You feel different. You can’t place it on the ride home, can’t place it when you fall into dreamless sleep. It isn’t until you read the article in the newspaper the next morning – one dead in a freak explosion; police have not yet identified the body – that you can put a name to it. Something inside you has realigned. You have felt crooked for so long that feeling ironed flat will take some getting used to.
Drink your coffee. Take a breath. Turn the page. Set the stolen magazines on fire in your sister’s bathroom sink. Watch yourself in the mirror, bathed in smoke, untouched by flames.
© 2018 Hannah Lamarre
First, you need a motive.
This is the easy part. Just think about your uncle’s fingers up your dragonfly romper when you were four years old—the summer your mother died—and although you might shiver and cringe, the rage will burn up slow from your stomach. Remember all the holidays you suffered across the table from him, the way he looked at you, the way your fingers itched to close around his throat. You have always wanted his last living vision to be the coldness of your eyes.
Choose your memory wisely. Too strong—he washed his hands after touching you, like you might have gotten him dirty—and it will overpower you. Too weak—the leering smile after he kissed your cheek on Christmas—and you will pause with the vial in your hand, suddenly struck by how he always kissed your grandmother’s cheek the same way. Remember: you are the victim.
Focus all of your energy on how that word makes you feel, victim. It labels you weak. It forces you into a lockbox of helplessness, leaves you white and exposed. Remember that he is the one who made you this way.
You want to make him the helpless one? Good.
Next, you will need accomplices. Two is sufficient, but a peripheral third is not a bad idea. Be sure to select people you are absolutely sure will not betray you. Siblings are a wise choice. Visit your sister. Keep a straight face while you tell her that you’ll need her to make a blood pact with you. Do not let her, high and bleary-eyed, get as far as drawing a knife across her palm. She will do anything for you; this you know. Twenty-three years of relying on you instead of your father has indebted her to you. You are her fixed point.
While your sister is washing up in the bathroom, you pick through the cabinet over her sink, making sure there is nothing stronger than weed in the spice jars. Your sister is the only one who believed you when you told your father, ten years later, what your uncle did to you. She nods slowly, mouth set in a loose line, when you tell her what you are going to do.
You know something about your sister that nobody else knows: Your uncle touched her, too.
Get your girlfriend in on it. You have been with her for years; you trust her. She is the only person beside your sister and your father who knows what you have been through. She held you when you whispered in the dark, I want to kill him, cursing your voice for breaking. You didn’t want to cry, not with this kind of anger coursing through you. You know you are stronger than that. She cocks her head when you tell her now, six years later, that you want to make good on that whisper.
Let me help you, she says. I know how to cover for you if you get caught.
You know how to cover for yourself, but you accept her help as if it weren’t what you were after. She is a defense lawyer, and you have listened to her rattle off the elements necessary for a first-degree murder conviction: intent, deliberation, premeditation, malice aforethought. You have questioned her coolly, endlessly about how she circumvents these accusations in court and gathered her answers like a bouquet in your arms.
The third accomplice works best as an ally, Vivian from your office or Teresa next door, someone to corroborate your story that you’re visiting your sister for the weekend. She does not need to know the whole story. She only needs to know that you will be out of town to avoid your abusive ex-boyfriend when he passes through on his business trip. It is vital that you choose a woman for this role. There is no sisterhood stronger than that of women protecting each other.
Your father never protected you. He chose his brother every time it was his word against yours.
Your girls, they choose you.
Once you have secured your accomplices, you will need patience and a plan. You’ll want to leap into action. This is justifiable. Your uncle was quick to ruin your life; you’ll want to end his just as quickly.
But you can’t dive in too hastily. Your plan requires surveillance. Only after you have kept a close, careful eye on your target can you strike. Assign this to your sister; her night shift job doesn’t require her until late. All you need to know is your uncle’s schedule, and then you can devise the best way to do this. You’ve considered several options. You want to be able to look him in the eyes, but that places you in a dangerous situation. You are torn; you want to appear before him like a vision of the sublime in his final seconds, but you realize how unrealistic this is. The more deeply you ingrain yourself in the situation, the more incrimination you risk, the more opportunities for evidence. You abandon the image of yourself standing in his doorway, surrounded by flames, your cold eyes burning through the smoke. You will burn too if you do this.
Your uncle lives an hour north of you and half an hour north of your sister, who keeps vigil for a month, documenting patterns, habits, routines. She reports that your uncle lives alone, arrives home at six-thirty every weeknight, microwaves his dinner, and makes himself tea with the kettle on the stove.
What kind of stove? you ask.
She shrugs. Gas? The kind with flames.
That night, lying in bed beside your girlfriend, you plan a road trip to New Hampshire to buy fireworks. A quick Google search and some skimming will give you all the information you need—which ones have the highest concentration of black powder, how to extract it from the explosives.
Romantic, your girlfriend says.
This is not romance, you reply. This is revenge.
She squints at you. She says, Let me go instead.
You let her go. You text her to remind her to use cash, to buy class 1.4s if she can. Those are the ones with black powder in them, you say. They’re more powerful than your run-of-the-mill roman candles and pissbaby bottle rockets.
You are terrifying, she replies. I love you.
You are in your pajamas, making coffee and examining the burners on your own gas stove, but still you draw yourself up and square your shoulders. You are terrifying.
Invite your sister over to help you and your girlfriend remove the powder from the fireworks and funnel it into vials. Activities like these breed trust, and trust is important in this kind of operation. The stronger the foundation you build among yourself and your accomplices, the less chance there is that they’ll betray you. Send the flash powder vials home with your sister.
A week before you plan to strike, clear a couple personal days with your supervisor. Tell her that you’re taking a long weekend. Two days before, catch Teresa from down the hall and make small talk. Mention that you’ll be out of town for a couple of days, and maybe she could get your mail if it isn’t too much trouble. When she asks if you’re doing anything fun, murmur about an ex coming into town on business. Make eye contact. Tell her that you’d rather not be in the city when your ex is here. Not when he knows you’re still living in the same place, you know?
Watch the recognition dawn in her dark eyes. She will nod quickly, assure you that of course she’ll grab your mail, just slip the key under her door before you leave. She will touch your shoulder as you part ways, lower her voice and tell you that she’s always down the hall if you need anything. Smile and thank her. You will need her sympathy later if you need an alibi.
Pack some clothes. Slip the mailbox key under Teresa’s door. Take the train to your sister’s house. Pay for your return ticket and your girlfriend’s in cash. Use your credit card to purchase round-trip airline tickets in the other direction. Cross your fingers that the transit police dogs cannot smell any flash powder residue that might still be lingering on your person.
Settle in upstate. Your sister’s apartment is small, and the energy among you makes it feel hot, pressurized. Toss and turn against your girlfriend on the futon in the kitchen-slash-living room. Taste the excitement on your tongue, blue and acrid like a static shock. Dream of yourself in that doorway, bathed in smoke, untouched by flames.
The day of, drive to your uncle’s house with your sister. Make sure you have the vials of black powder, at least two pairs of thick latex gloves, and a small funnel. Park three streets away and walk over. Enter his house through the back door. Your sister knows the security code by now; it’s your grandmother’s birthday, 3-9-27. Don your gloves before you touch anything, including the alarm pad.
You are curiously calm. The house does not smell the way you remember him. There are current issues of Golf Digest on his coffee table; back issues of Maxim in his bathroom. The back of your mouth is thick with disgust. You tuck a copy of each in your bag to burn in effigy later.
Your sister takes the tops off all four burners. She says that your uncle uses only the front two for his kettle, but there is no room in this plan for deviation. You funnel the flash powder down into the burner. It feels oddly cathartic, like you are finally setting down the baggage he strapped to you twenty-two years ago.
As you replace the tops of the burners, the bright shatter of ceramic jangles through your ribs. Police, you think. Sick day. Doctor’s appointment. Schedule change.
You turn, a shudder walking three cold fingers across your shoulders. Your sister stands taut and defiant, Artemis presiding over a city of shards.
It wasn’t his favorite, she says. But I had to break one. You know?
You know.
In a strange way, you don’t want to leave. You want to watch. But it’s only three o’clock, and your uncle won’t be home for another three and a half hours, and it’s dangerous for you to be here any longer than you have to. Dump the ceramic shards and the contaminated latex gloves into a bag, and put on a fresh pair of gloves before you seal it. Toss the bag in a neighbor’s trash can when you collect the car from three streets over.
In the car, smack your sister upside the head when she takes out a joint. Are you fucking kidding? Is that how you want to go?
At six o’clock, drive your sister’s car to the diner two streets away from your uncle’s house. Sit with your girlfriend and your sister and listen for the explosion. They will squeeze your hands when you feel it in your chest, rocking you.
You feel different. You can’t place it on the ride home, can’t place it when you fall into dreamless sleep. It isn’t until you read the article in the newspaper the next morning – one dead in a freak explosion; police have not yet identified the body – that you can put a name to it. Something inside you has realigned. You have felt crooked for so long that feeling ironed flat will take some getting used to.
Drink your coffee. Take a breath. Turn the page. Set the stolen magazines on fire in your sister’s bathroom sink. Watch yourself in the mirror, bathed in smoke, untouched by flames.
© 2018 Hannah Lamarre
