Revenge is in the hands of God

by Giuseppe Grassi

The storm bends the poplars in a desert countryside. The night tiers at a farmhouse window, while a glow illuminates the crimson water swirling in a sink. Two dirty hands are clean, and a grotesque physiognomy smiles in the mirror. 

Wiping his hands, that face enters the kitchen, and, after a couple of tries, he makes start the Beatles’ Yesterday from an old turntable. Nearby, a knife is stuck in the table as the bloody smile is on the landlord’s throat sitting by. Although the soup is still steaming, the man prefers to pluck the apple from the lifeless palm of the woman on the floor.

Tilting his head, the man looks that skinny body framed by vegetable she dragged with her last breath. “Still life”, he thinks, and with a bite guts the apple to the core.

Elsewhere in the house, a torn lock and a tiny bed. A little girl lies relieved of the burden of her breath. A teddy bear on her lap and a tear on her eyelashes. And again, the man tilts his head and smiles at the resemblance to her mother laying in the kitchen. But a gust of wind causes a noise that claim him to the window. What he sees… make him happy.

Where the fence touches an old poplar, an indistinct human shape indicates the house. Under the foliage lightning cannot illuminate him, but, despite the late hour, the lights of the nearby farm are still alert. So, the knife is pulled from the kitchen table, and the man walks out the back of the house.

Darkness envelops him. The wind rustles covering his footsteps and smells. Only the rain could betray him, but it doesn't. The man reaches the tree in a moment. The figure still sitting on the fence watching the movements inside the farm. A volley of lightning conjures madness in the murderer’s eyes, and without hesitation the beast punches on its prey, crushing it to the ground.

A stab for every roar the sky sends to earth, without even a groan escaping its victim. But the blade stops in midair as the man discovers a poor scarecrow dragged by the storm, and now riddled by steel. Panting, the man examines the mocking smile on that fetish’s face. And answering to it, he thinks: “straw, flesh… no difference for those who are destiny.” So, tilting his head, the man raises his harm for the last slash just as a silver ax descends on that metal.

The tempest was so unhappy with the last joke that it preferred the murderer to the tree that pretended to cover him. And so, only at the recoil of the thunder that electrocuted face could crashes to the ground, reaffirming the supremacy of the creator over creation.

The wise said it - “Revenge is in the hands of God” - but the most preferred to call them savages.

Story written for the May ’21 “Furious Fiction” Contest by the Australian Writers’ Center.

                                                                                                                                                          (Revisited July ‘22)