Revenge11 min read
I Got a Second Life — I Watched Them Starve
ButterPicks16 views
I woke up and thought I had escaped a nightmare.
"Emily? You okay?" Colin Thompson's voice came from the bed, casual, like the question always was about laundry, not survival.
I couldn't move my arms. The memory of a world turned to a feeding ground crawled through my skin — last time, teeth and hunger had taken everything. Last time I had been left in a stairwell while they closed the door and walked away. The taste of iron and rot filled my mouth in memory and made me retch.
"I—" I forced my voice to work. "I had a bad dream."
"Bad dreams?" Colin reached for me and I pushed his hand away.
He put on a smile that had cost me my savings. "I'll be gone all day. Want anything? I'll bring it back tonight."
The phone on the nightstand glowed. 2064-06-24, 9:44 AM. The same time, the same words. I inhaled and froze. It wasn't a nightmare. I hadn't woken from a nightmare — I had woken into the day before the end.
"Colin, did you remember? The contractor will be here at ten."
"Yeah. You remember to bring the money?" His hand brushed my shoulder like ownership.
My blood turned cold. The house, the money, the contract — it all came back. He had taken my life savings, sixty thousand I'd been forced to hand over for "decoration," for "move-in readiness." A brother-in-name who ran a fake company, Damien Graf, had laundered it clean. And worse: Colin had a second life with Angelina Cunningham.
"Colin," I breathed. I had died last time because I was soft, because I trusted. This time the word revenge tasted like oxygen.
He left, whistling.
I packed the things Colin had left in the house — a drone he’d bought for himself, a few clothes he'd forgotten. I stuffed the drone into my suitcase and walked out with my heart light with a single plan: opposite building. I would live in the apartment that faced his. I would buy everything. I would never, ever be the one left in the stairwell again.
On the bulletin board by security I found the ad. Sandra Drake showed up within an hour. "Call me Yao," she said, offering a grin and a spare key as if she’d always been ready.
"I need to warn you," I said to her, because I could not stop myself. "Get food. Lock your doors. Tomorrow might be bad."
She looked at me with a quick, kind sympathy. "Everything I have is yours too when you need, Emily."
"Thank you." I signed, I paid, and I promised myself something else: I would spend the sixty thousand that had been stolen. I'd spend it on myself on purpose.
I changed the locks, upgraded the windows with one-way film and bulletproof glass, and set up two layers of door security. I hired the workers myself and gave them enough to act like angels. I bought solar panels and two freezers. Then I went to the big warehouse supermarket with a corporate swagger I faked until it burned real.
"One pallet of canned goods, two pallets of rice, as many protein cans as you can give me," I told the stockman.
"That's a lot, miss."
"Do you want money?" I asked, and I handed him the card.
I filled the apartment until I could barely stand. I bought batteries and medicines and a high-powered telescope and a very good drone. I bought a cheap bug detector and a listening set from a black market stall at the renovation market — Damien's number was a phone call away.
When he called, I lied.
"Ms. Meier? I'm at your door."
"Oh, I can't. Bank trouble. Can we do it tomorrow? I'll cover extra for your time."
He agreed, and I smiled thin and cold.
That night when I came back to Colin's house to retrieve the few of my things he’d left, I listened. Angelina cried like a choosy kitten when I walked in with a bag. "Emily, I'm so glad you're home."
"Are you?" I asked, and Angelina's smile was a blade. Colin's look as he watched her was worse — smug relief that he had two lives and a wallet for both. He could put me in a stairwell and keep the other one warm.
"He's mine," Angelina whispered when I wasn't looking. "Don't get in the way."
I slept across the street under a lock I had paid for, with a pile of food like a small island. I set my telescope on their balcony like a new pet. I set my drone on a watch path. I listened to their whispers with a patchwork of parts I had bought because I wanted to know everything this time.
"She took our money," Angelina said at midnight.
"Shut up," Colin hissed. "Don't yell. We'll be done before you know it."
"He's lying," she said. "He told me he paid every cent. He promised."
"Angelina, quiet," Colin said. "If she tries anything—"
"If she tries anything I'll—"
They laughed like vultures and I put a hand on the drone and touched it with a quiet reverence. "Not this time."
The first outbreak came sharp and quick. When the first of them ran and bit the guitarist old man in the garden, the yard became a blood painter's canvas. Damien's seat on the bench was taken by something that ran and ripped. Screams shrieked. People tried to move. The virus took muscle and turned it into hunger.
I had sent one small message anonymously to Angelina's boyfriend months ago — "You need to know." That night I forwarded their videos to everyone I could find: the idiot who loved Angelina, the men who trusted Colin. The truth landed like stones.
"Where are you? Where's my girl?" Evan Camacho burst into the door like a storm, and then the scene came: he was not a hero. He was muscle. He dragged Colin onto the floor and began to beat him until glass broke.
"Stay away!" Angelina screamed.
"Who are you? What the hell did you do?" Evan shouted.
I watched through the scope as the three of them tore each other apart. I forwarded the filmed proof to the man who called himself a boyfriend — and soon he was at the door, righteous fury in every muscle. He went to town. He hit and hit. People shouted. Someone filmed.
That was not my punishment. That was cheap justice. I would make sure they'd suffer like I had.
I started small. I used the drone to deliver food to the balcony, then I made them watch it being lifted away. "Eat then," I wrote in a message and sent the delivery. I watched them fight over stale noodles, watching them scrape bowls like animals scraping the last marrow.
"Please, please, this won't end," Angelina sobbed one morning, "Emily, come back. We were wrong. We were wrong."
I adjusted the telescope and watched Colin's face twitch. "I was a fool," he wailed. "Forgive me? I love you."
"Why would I trust you?" I typed and sent the message into the empty line between buildings. My words were a scalpel.
Days passed. They grew thin. They got meaner. Every time I let them see me, they called out, groveling. Every time I did not answer I fed them a single square of bread with a drone and watched them fight for it. The fights were like performances, ugly in a way that filled me with a new, perverse calm.
They made plans. "Let's go to her. Kill her," Colin said one night, voice soft but murderous.
"Now?" Angelina's eyes were small daggers. "We can't leave without food."
"We will take the underground path," said Colin. "We will cut."
I bled a ribbon of my blood onto a rag and tied it to the drone, then I flew it across the garden. The scent first brought the zombies like a compass needle. When the three of them ran for the underground they were met by a tide as hungry as a forest fire.
Colin turned and took the first hit. When the zombies swarmed, I watched their faces contort from anger to something closer to terror.
"Colin!" Angelina screamed. "Colin, run!"
"Don't leave me!" he cried.
Evan fell; Damien fell and was swallowed. I sat and watched through the lens as bodies collapsed into teeth and claws and the earth drank.
It was a lovely thing on some days. But the major punishment had yet to come. I kept a long, patient patience.
When the news finally came that a vaccine had been developed, my stomach went cold. If the world healed and they survived, they'd come for me. They would be free and hungry and would remember me. I could not let them live to bargain.
"Do it now," I told myself. "No mercy."
They tried one last time to get in. Colin and Angelina stood on the stairwell outside my door, their faces cracked with all the lies they had told and the last of their bravado.
"Emily!" Colin pounded. "Please. I found you. I saved you. Open the door."
"Open the door," Angelina sobbed. "I was so stupid. Forgive me."
I opened the door slowly, and they both fell into the light like carrion insects.
"I'll take one of you in," I said, voice soft. "Only one. You choose."
"Me," Colin said instantly, face split with fake mercy. "Me. I will spend my life making it up to you."
Angelina lunged forward. "No! He forced me—"
"He forced you?" I raised the high-voltage baton I kept hidden. "How human of both of you to have such a cast of excuses."
Colin's face changed. The smugness cracked to confusion, then to panic.
"No, listen," he started. "We can talk. Please. We can—"
"You lied," I said. "You used my money and my kindness."
"This is all your fault," he spat, "you should've been smarter."
"Sit down." I flicked the switch. The first touch made his jaw clench. The noise he made had the quality of a breaking animal.
"Emily, please! I'm sorry!" He clawed at me like a man drowning in his own skin.
"Look at you," I said. "Look at your hands."
Angelina wailed, "Emily, please. Don't do this."
"Don't?" I held the baton to his knee. "You left me in a stairwell to die last time, Colin."
He gasped, a wordless sound. He had not expected me to remap events with such calm. My hand, unshaking, pressed the baton against his arm. He convulsed.
People gathered in the hall — neighbors had come from across the block with flashlights and phones. Hank Berger stood at his doorway with his violin like an odd anchor. Sandra watched from her balcony with tears and a clenched jaw. Some were horrified. Some filmed. The phone-lights made the sweat on Colin's forehead shine.
Colin's performance went through layers. First denial.
"This is wrong," he said once. "You're wrong."
Then disbelief.
"You're crazy," he whispered.
Then anger.
"You think you can do this? You think this proves anything?"
Then bargaining, as his breaths came fast.
"Please — I'll give back the money. I'll give it. Please — I'm begging you."
"Damien took it," Angelina sobbed. "He did—"
"Damien is gone," I said. "He fed on people in the garden like the rest."
"Please," Colin begged. His eyes were suddenly the eyes of a child who had discovered his hands were stained.
Outside, a crowd had formed in the corridor and the courtyard below. Voices overlapped.
"She deserves this!" someone shouted.
"Stop! This is a howling madness!" another voice countered.
Phones were up like votive candles. The livestreams started. People recorded every twitch and plea. I felt a terrible, clean power when I saw the tap count rise on a stranger's screen.
"Look at him," an elderly woman murmured. "He was so kind on screens. Look."
"She was harmless," someone else said. "No one should do this."
Colin's face became blank for a moment, like a clock struck by lightning. Then he tried to smile. "Emily, we can fix this. We can fix everything."
"Fix by killing me?" I asked. "Fix by sending me out like trash?"
"No!" he screamed suddenly, the tantrum of a trapped animal. "I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it!"
His voice crumbled into soft, choked sounds. He clawed at the door like a man reaching for help that would not come. Angelina curled into herself, shuddering, and offered him a single, betrayed look: equal parts hatred and fear.
"Please," he begged between gasps. "Please, Emily. Don't let them—"
The crowd's noise constricted as if in unison. A woman near the stairwell started to weep. A young man cursed under his breath. A child in the courtyard asked loudly, "Why is that man screaming?"
"Because," a neighbor said, so plainly I could feel it in my teeth, "he sold a life for money. He sold hers."
The television-style videos on the phones kept the world watching. Fingers typed hot judgments: #Liars #Survivors #Justice. Their comments flickered like lightning across the screens.
"Colin," someone yelled from the courtyard below. "You'll get what you deserve."
He pressed his wrists to his face and sobbed like a boy who had found his cowardice naked.
When the government teams arrived days later with their bio-suits and official calm, they were met by a public packed with cameras and accusations. The officials did what they had to: verify, contain, and remove the hazard. But the crowd insisted on witnesses. They wanted the story told out loud.
One official asked me to step forward. "State your name and relation," she said into a recorder.
"Emily Meier," I said. "He took my money. He left me to die."
Colin, once struck by electricity, now thin and fevered, staggered as the agents moved in. He tried to explain. He tried to plead. He tried to blame others. For nearly an hour he cycled through the sequence: confidence, denial, anger, bargaining, collapse.
"He's dangerous," one agent said to the crowd. "He has turned. We must remove him."
"Don't!" Angelina screamed at the agent, then at the crowd. "No, no, no!"
Her voice cracked into a noise like breaking glass. She fell to her knees, reaching out as if she could stitch him back into human shape.
"He hurt us," a neighbor said, voice steady. "He hurt her. He stole money. He threw her out."
They pushed and pressed and insisted that everyone hear the truth. The agent read the official check and said, "We must euthanize for public safety."
People filmed as the team prepared. Colin's eyes bulged. He grasped at the agent's sleeve — the human performance again, but thinner.
"No! Please! I'm sorry! I can change! I can give it back!" His voice shredded.
"Please," Angelina cried, louder now, her voice a broken prayer. "Emily… forgive me."
"Forgive?" I said, and the world narrowed to a sliver. "Forgiveness is not for men who hand others to death."
The agent's blade came down — quick, official, clinical. Heads turned away. Others could not. The sound fell like finality and also like a bell to mark a different world.
Colin's body was taken. The crowd exhaled as if it had been holding its breath for years. Phones continued to record. Someone shouted, "Shame!" Someone else whispered, "Finally."
Angelina screamed as if claws had been torn from inside her. "No! No! You can't—"
She ran to the corners and was kept back. For her, the punishment was different. The crowd's eyes were knives now — they had seen her hit and seen her lie. They hissed. Neighbors who had once smiled at her now spat words.
"Traitor," a woman said.
"You brought this on yourself."
Angelina's descent into public disgrace was cruel and slow. No physical blood was shed then, only dignity and reputation. People blocked her calls. The man who had loved her left messages he never played. A feed of all the things she had said to others and the gifts she once received were replayed and ridiculed. Her face — once pretty and practiced — became a public scandal. Merchants refused her. People pointed.
She changed. The kindness she had used as a mask dropped like a glove. First she lied. Then she raged. Then she begged for Leslie's forgiveness — for me. "I'm sorry," she said in every available public place. "I didn't know."
No one believed the sound of her voice anymore. The cameras continued to spin and the crowd became jury and punishment. Her pleas diluted into white noise.
I watched all of it: Colin's breakdown and death, Angelina's public shame, Damien's vanishing into the park that night where he was taken by the swarm. I watched neighbors call out the truth and strangers type condemnation by the thousands. The community that had once ignored the small cruelties now saw them laid bare and decided to not forget.
When the vaccine teams finally cleared our sector and the street emptied of screaming and mindless hunger, I walked to Sandra Drake's house and met with her on her balcony.
"You did something," she said simply, giving me a pot of dumplings to share.
"I did what I had to," I said.
"Will you be okay?" she asked.
"No." I laughed softly, then swallowed. "No. But I'm alive."
Months later, people still handed me food. Hank played his violin every evening. The livestream videos that had once turned our tragedy into entertainment became archives people used to teach others what to do and what not to do. I kept my telescope but folded it away. My revenge had been absolute and messy. It was public and ugly and not at all like the neat endings in books. The bad had been punished in ways I had orchestrated and in ways the world had fulfilled on its own.
I saved a small note of the sixty thousand — turned it into a memorial tin where I kept two photographs: one of the stairwell where I had been left, one of the balcony that faced it. When sometimes a neighbor came to tell their story I would listen.
"Do you regret it?" Sandra asked once.
"No," I said slowly. "Regret would be for not doing anything. I don't regret surviving."
I laid the tin on the table and pushed it toward her. "Keep you and your family safe, okay?"
She smiled, and for the first time since everything began, I felt the thin thread of home stitch itself back into my life.
The End
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