Retribution; my story of personal vengeance

Retribution; my story of personal vengeance.

My parents weren’t married until I was three. The truth was they wouldn’t have been married at all if I hadn’t come along. I was unplanned; the accident that brought together two people who couldn’t have been less suitable for each other. I was the cause that created a long chain of events; the marks of that chain have been imprinted on all of us, like branded animals we have been marked, and by tragedy and misfortune we have been drawn together. This is my story.

I still remember that wedding, young as I was. I remember the way my mother looked in that long beautiful white dress. I remember the beaming smile on my fathers face. I remember my shoes, like Dorothy’s ruby red slippers in The Wizard of Oz, except mine were white.

There’s a photograph of the wedding party above my grandmother's mantle. My mother’s glowing face, my father looking younger then I can remember without pictures. His face is clean shaven, without the goatee he now wears. His hair is longer, darker, he looks healthier. The man in that picture is not the man I’ve come to know in recent years. The man in that picture is happy, full of youth and love. He’s without the hatred I’ve seen in his eyes; without the guilt.

I can vaguely recall the earliest days of my parents marriage. I remember their first house together. It was an old Victorian in disrepair. Their intention was to fix it up, they didn’t realize the amount of work that would require. I remember my first night sleeping in that house, strangely its dull creaking lulled me to sleep. I woke suddenly to a high-pitched chirping, I don't remember yelling, but I must've. My father ran into my room, and quickly found the bat latched to the back of an old armchair in the room. He left and came back with a tennis racquet; an odd thunking sound reverbreated around my room when he hit the bat, as if it were hollow.

We soon found out that our attic housed a whole colony of bats. My mother still shudderes at the mention of them; their squeaks still haunt her. I, on the other hand, didn't mind them. I soon began to pitty them as they were killed. The tennis racquet claimed the majority of the lives, but a few died in other ways as well. One decided to sleep under a pan in the sink, and my mother turned on the water, drowning it. Another was trapped under an old jar in the garage until it died of starvation.

Looking back now I can see the truth in the statement that the past shapes us into who we become. The harm that came to those bats has become a parallel to the suffering of innocents. I will not stand it any longer.