Revenge

Revenge

He slipped the blade slowly out of the woman’s body as it fell backwards, blood dripping from the knife as it was extracted.

I stared up at the man with horror, hatred, and agony as my wife’s lifeless body hit the ground, a pool of blood seeping out from under her clothes. The initial shock left, and I was filled with only hatred for the man standing before me, still holding the bloody knife in his hand.

I knew why he was doing this to me. I knew why he was killing all the people I loved to torture me. It was revenge.

~ :: ~

Twenty-Five Years Earlier

I rushed up the apartment stairs three at a time, not caring about protocol or my own safety. My gun was in my hand, but not carefully scanning the stairs like it was supposed to be. Instead I focused only on getting up to the third floor as quickly as possible.

I rounded a corner quickly, propelling myself along by pushing off of the railing. I swiftly jumped to the left to avoid colliding with another tenant.

“Get out of the building!” I shouted as I continued my run upward.

Finally I reached the door to the third floor, and again I ignored any protocol that had been drilled into my brain a million times. I flung the door open quickly and rushed into the hallway, sprinting straight for apartment #39 at the end of the hall.

I reached it in a matter of seconds, tried the handle, and when finding it was locked, stepped back. I took a second to take a large breath of air before kicking the door open with all the strength I could muster. The lock broke and the door flew open.

I rushed in, gun drawn, and yelling at the man in the room, the body of a woman below him with multiple stab wounds. “Get on the ground!” He didn’t budge.

“LAPD, drop your weapon!” I shouted, my gun pointed directly at his head. The man calmly stood up to his full height, slowly raising his arms, his knife still in his left hand. “Put it down!” I shouted again, and he slowly obliged, tossing it in my direction while getting down on his knees. I told him to turn around and I cuffed both of his hands behind his back.

“I got you, you son of a bitch,” I whispered in his ear as I kicked him to the ground. I rushed to the bed, immediately checking the pulse. She was alive. I pulled out my phone and dialed a number on speed dial. “I need an ambulance, now!”

I heard my fellow officers in the hallway running toward the room, and I kept my gun trained on the killer who simply looked up at me with a face that I knew all too well. He wanted revenge.

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