Betwixt her cabinet and her favorite wall, she sat. Eyes scanning a thickly-paged magazine, every single word crawling into her brain and producing sentence upon sentence. It was late at night, no sound penetrated her window's glassy covering, save the chirp of the crickets and the scurry of mice in her walls. Perhaps, if life was always like this, Vendetta would finally be at peace.
She was thirsty.
Her whitish ankle-socks slipped onto her feet, steps clandestine as ever for the late night. She didn't wish to disturb Grudge, or be harassed by her parents for a curfew she generally ignored. (Just because they were tiny didn't mean they couldn't be annoying.)
The reeking miasma emitting from her kitchen/fiend laboratory was heavy, the noxious emissions almost visible in greenish puffs. Rotten food, clams, and the micturations of her various fiends dotted the crusted wallpaper. The odious image of Charlotte's home on the horizon peered through a window, her pulling the tattered curtains shut to hide the thought.
It was too late for grape juice. She only drank that during the day, and with dinner occasionally. She flicked on the sink in her kitchen, a scintilla of dirt being blown to the bottom of her sink. Though water flowed, it wasn't clean, but she pretended the fish feces was good for her health. At the very least it wasn't dangerous, or not yet, anyway. Of all of her plastic cups, she chose the red one, and filled it with the filthy fluid.
A cake sat on her table, covered in an unreadable icing text. She shoved her hand into it and grabbed some, cramming it into her mouth. What was the occasion, she wondered? She didn't even know who got it. Her hand and face were quickly washed, as clean as they could get with her water supplies.
She scratched her arm, scurf falling to the floor like snowflakes. The sound of an abnormal, whistling squeal made her drag her jagged nails across the limb until it bled. It sounded inhuman. What on earth did make that noise?
Her eyes went wide, and she almost dropped the blood red glass. Hamsters.
She threw the cup into the sink, bilge-water splattering across the counter. The pit-pat of her little feet crossed the house at speeds unlike any other. The animalistic crying continued, getting louder and louder, the anguish becoming clear in the voice. She had walked out of her door and around the back of her house, peeking her eyes around the back.
They were, in fact, killing her hamster.
That was an understatement, really. Her people -- her own people, mind you -- were holding down the creature. One person, face blurred in the nighttime dark, pulled away split flesh in Grudge's middle, shoving their hands into his most greasy and intimate body parts. The sight of intestine rising from his fuzzy body made her flesh crawl, ears, nose and legs twitching.
Azure latex gloves protected rows of hands that prodded at her henchman's innards, splitting viscera from viscera and dropping it on her overgrown lawn. Though she felt ill, her eyes refused to move from the sight, as Grudge's motion came to a slow and steady halt. A harsh and malicious cachinnation sprawled from the people, kicking the large rodent's limp and gutless body, like an empty potato sack or clothes left on a bed. Her entire body was trembling. She couldn't move, or perhaps, she didn't want to.
For the first time, Vendetta was scared. Horrified. Appalled. Worried for her own short life. As endless and harsh coprolalia fell from each mouth, they scorned her very name. They wanted to kill her. They wanted to torture her and kill her for her well-renowned wrongdoing. She had it coming, but that didn't make the thought any less painful.
A set of wide, blue eyes met hers as she peered around the corner, a pudgy finger pointing at her like a gun to the forehead.
"There she is."
The darkened faces spread with epicaricacy, and from the shapes alone she could tell that her people were grinning ear to ear. It was a mere millisecond, a hemidemisemiquaver of a moment, that was all the time it took her to turn heel and run for her dear life. It was even less time that it took for the sweaty, bloodied hands to grab her by the shoulders and pull her back, throwing her on her own pet's eviscerated corpse.
A hoarse and ragged cry for help escaped her, hubris melted down to a mere puddle, she was only concerned with surviving. They were adults, and rather strong ones at that. The only one she recognized in the lacking light was Charlotte's grandmother, who most certainly was some sort of pro wrestler in her day.
The cacophony rose once more, harsh and painful laughter almost seeming to drown her. She was tired, lackadaisical, between the time of night and the excessive struggling she had done. Her efforts were for naught, and she no longer had any wish to move. She just wanted to sleep, incapable of making any fiends whilst being held like this. Her lip lowered and she wanted to say something stupid.
"I give, I give." Her andradite eyes were half lidded, but pupils contracted extremely. The situation was getting to her. "Have your stupid town back, I'll go somewhere else!"
"It's not good enough."
Her mouth fell slightly agape. She was, undoubtedly and definitely going to be killed. It's not good enough, they continued to whisper, like some sort of abnormal hivemind that breathed at the same time. The sounds of clattering metal sent chills down to her sacrum.
"We can't make this one quick, either."
"She deserves to suffer."
Man hands on schadenfreude to man.
The dull voices were replaced with more croaking laughter, her heart almost audibly thumping fast as a hummingbird's wing beats. Her chest fluttered when they unbuttoned her shirt, revealing dry and filthy, but unscarred flesh.
"We should make it so she can't escape."
Hacksaws, knives, axes with pristine blades shuddered through the moonlit skies above, passed from hand to hand to hand and back again. Her skull swam, praying to whoever was ruling this filthy earth to make this all a stupid dream. A stupid dream where she would wake up and rub her eyes and stare out the window at Charlotte's stupid house at 7 AM, Grudge laying on the floor, with all of his viscera where it belonged.
But then she felt a prickle. Then a sting, then a tear, slowly dropping into sincere anguish, her lip curling beneath her teeth. Cleaver prodding deeper into the minimal fat above her knee, sanguine fluid dribbling over into a little puddle across the poorly mowed grass. The dirt sponged the gore collecting in a swamp by her severed leg, like a sickly oasis for the ants.
Something salty fell from her eye. She assumed it was blood, at first, for Vendetta does not cry. Vendetta will not cry. But people pressed her fingers on her tight-skinned cheeks, rubbing in the moisture, despite her attempts to push them away. In the end, she was only a child. Older than she once was, but still sprightly, and very lanky at that.
The girl who once could not be defeated now could not win.
She called out to her parents for the first time in years, reverting back to her home tongue. Polish, one would suppose.
Seeming to vaguely understand her cries, grins broke further into the circle. The leg finally detached from her own body, no longer to be walked upon, used, so much as twitched. The little cage was emptied on her chest, crumbs and old furniture falling over her. The last thing to fall was her mother and father, bludgeoned and gutless. She expected no less, yet somehow it hurt.
Her heart hurt. Her soul hurt. Her gut twinged with the realization that all those she was ever close to were gone. Not moving or breathing, merely shells with a running ghost in the skies.
Mama, Papa, Grudge, all entirely gone.
Someone grabbed onto her parents, limp and very tiny. Another hand, thickly built, pulled her lips away from one another as they were forced into her mouth. The people who birthed her, the people who nurtured her, her property, and now her food. At least three hands fell over her mouth. She almost choked attempting to swallow one of them whole, and was forced to grind her own mother and father down to a meaty, fleshy pulp.
Though there was no mirror, she could see the blood on her teeth. She had no qualms with killing, so why? Why was her heart thumping? Why was her pulse racing? Why was she crying? Why was she crying?!
"Don't touch me, you idiots..." Her voice was hoarse. Someone harshly hit her over the head with the back of the hacksaw. It created a long line in her scalp, hairline spilling further. Skull was barely visible over the lines of meat on the tip top of her cranium.
"Speak again, and I'll slice your brain in half, bitch."
The voice was unrecognizable. For all she knew, Mr. Milk had finally hit puberty 58 years into the game. Deep, gravelly, tearing at her eardrums, the final sound of that sentence crawled through her like a centipede. They called Vendetta a bitch. A cheap dog. A dog who would die. She knew that much about being an adult, despite her shut-in life. Even though she was all alone, she knew what that meant, and it hurt. The way his teeth clashed still rang in her ears.
Vendetta was at their mercy.
The tools went around her other leg, slightly obscured by the rising and falling hill of her lungs. Muscle broke from muscle, bone from bone, each moment more grotesque than the last. The two pale, severed limbs were disposed of, her body sinking further into Grudge's empty cadaver. It was warm and inviting, even though he was dead, his body was still rather fresh.
Her cheek buried deep into his floppy, decaying skin as her arm was pulled away. A wealth of phrases in her native tongue filled the sky, a noise she once relished. She was no longer in control, and it was so, so scary. And in this pile, she almost felt like Grudge had his limp paws around her and held her closely. She muffled her sobs with his flesh.
Fingers pried her arm off of Grudge. Slowly, due to her resistance, until someone drove their foot harshly into her shoulder. It dislocated, and for the first time in months, maybe even years, she screamed for her life. Her arm went limp, for it hurt too much to move the appendage.
"I need my hands!"
"To do what, ruin our lives?"
They pulled the limb out straight, putting pressure on her busted shoulder. They cut slowly. Each split was like a twang in her mind. It felt like an acoustic guitar having all of its strings split one by one. She was the acoustic, and it hurt so much, but she couldn't summon the vigor to even yell at them. She was a goner.
The people covered their gloved hands with her watery gore, covering her in it. They painted her face and forehead, getting the salt into her quivering mouth, writing "PIG" crudely on her stomach. It was such a long, endless process that by the time her arm actually detached, she had lost her voice. All that remained of her tone was harsh, crackling, raspy noises.
"She can't scream." A pair of pinking shears glistened in the moonlight, and a set of silver pliers faced her in the other hand.
Her mouth won't need use."
One person did work on her only remaining limb, now twitching and shaking. The rest crowded around her tear-streaked face, hair a complete nighttime wreck, each lock dipped softly in blood. Her cheeks were sticky with the carnage, as they pulled her mouth open. The shears ran deep down her throat -- Almost as though they were going to impale her stomach. Each blade opened and closed, slivering the door of her larynx.
Of course she became ill. The only response vomiting got her was a smack over the head. The sharp tips drove into the fluttering muscle, then opening and closing. It was torn to shreds until all that remained was a pathetic, bloody hole. On withdrawal, she spat goop everywhere, a deep, sludgy red like blood pudding. Then a foul-smelling spew of watery bile. They tipped her face back for more.
The rest was a blur. She could no longer think properly. She was blinded, had her tongue taken, her teeth ripped so harshly the skin of her gums tore off, and had a razor scraped across her scalp until there were odd patches of blood and bared flesh on her cranium. They stabbed through her eardrums and sliced off her uvula, they chopped off the shell of her ears and left her barely within life's cruel grasp.
Finally, they sewed her up within Grudge's bare cadaver, singing 'Happy Birthday', for it was the day Vendetta finally turned thirteen.
-
"Honey, it's almost time for school!"
"Just a little longer, Gramma!"
Charlotte was in a great mood, as usual. She was prepared for another great school day! Marion and Nicole were so funny now. Everyone was a lot happier after Vendetta moved into her house.
Oh, that's right! She had to get Vendetta some breakfast before heading out. Today was chocolate pudding, always a family favorite.
She grabbed a little portable pudding cup and a spoon, skipping this way and that. Upstairs and into her room, singing her favorite, happy song, Monkies Don't Wear Shoes. A little knock was used to signal her best friend, and she pressed her ear to her closet door. Heavy breathing was audible through the wood. Every morning she was to make sure Vendetta was still alive.
The door threw open, but Vendetta didn't rise to the sound or light. Gramma said she got in a bad accident and was deprived of sight and hearing. Charlotte gently patted her best friend's thin-skinned face, and as she shifted, her gums made sticky, smacking noises. The remaining half of her tongue flapped uselessly.
She took a spoonful of the chocolate glop, pressing it to Vendetta's dried lips and allowing her to softly clean it away with her gums and saliva.
"Isn't it almost your fourteenth, Vendetta? We're gonna get ice cream cake, yippee!"
Even if she could speak, Vendetta would have remained silent.