Vincent

Preface

This novella started out in aggravation. After watching Law Abiding Citizen, I was frustrated with the ending. It felt unsatisfying, so I wanted to write a revenge story that I would put feeling happy with and so I did, many years later. The medium of the story was originally going to be a comic, but that idea was scrapped and I decided to make it a novella. I wrote the first few chapters and let it sit, it wasn’t until Kayleigh, my girlfriend/editor, gave me the confidence to finish it, and so began the constant tapping of keys and a lot of creative thought process. And I'm happy to say that this is the end, a story about a doctor who has his family suddenly taken away from him and him dealing with his aggression and melancholy. He soon realizes that his colleagues have made a profit from his wife and daughter's organs on the black market, and decides to plot his revenge on the ones that desecrated his wife and daughter's bodies for financial gains. I hope that in the end, you enjoy the story and have it leave you satisfied with its conclusion. If not, I hope that it leads you to create art, just as my frustrations had done for me.

Close your eyes

Have no fear

The monster's gone

He's on the run and your daddy's here

-John Lennon

1

I was a family man at one point in my life. The pain and suffering I’ve endured has eclipsed the love and happiness I once had in my heart. Kneeled at the headstones of my wife and daughter, I recount the events that took place that led me to this moment, to me on my knees bleeding out and waiting for my last breath to leave my lips. Whether there’s anything after one dies, all I know is that anything, be it nothing or fire and brimstone, anything is a better place for me than what this earth has to offer. God, what would I give to go back in time and relive my happier days. As I reminisce on the past, thinking of when I first laid eyes on my wife, a beautiful woman with dirty blonde hair and stunning blue eyes that could hypnotize the most savage soul, I long to embrace here in my arms once again. To feel her skin against mine, but those days have long since passed. At the time that I met her, I was a med student in my 4th year of school. Compared to my appearance then, I was the complete opposite of the man I am now. In college, I was stout with slicked back black hair, bright green eyes, and a slightly scruffy five o'clock shadow going, due to the fact that I barely had time to get a decent shave in with my schooling. But with all the stress of school and tests, the only escape I had was a little mom-and-pop ice cream shop I’d visit every Saturday afternoon. At the time, I was driving my first car, a red 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible. I loved my rides to the ice cream shop, mainly because of my desire of half-and-half rocky road and pistachio ice cream, but after a particularly sunny Saturday afternoon I found a new love and desire in that shop. Her name was Tabitha Ross; it was her first day on the job and I think I was more nervous than she was that day, because I could barely form a sentence let alone my order when I first gazed into her eyes. I thought of her day in and day out, thinking about her next to me as I count every freckle that misted her face, holding her close and never wanting to let go. I was gobsmacked by her. After I got over my jitters, I eventually got the courage to genuinely speak with her. We laughed and got along great, she was studying to be a therapist at the time and the ice cream shop gig was just to help out her parents and put some money in her pocket, so our first few conversations were about our classes and student loans. After a few weeks, she became my girlfriend. A year and a half later, she became my wife. At this point in my life, I never knew such happiness until the birth of our daughter, Janice. She got all my wife's physical traits: her dirty blonde hair and blue eyes; she was a near spitting image of her.

The years passed by like minutes, it seemed, and eventually the years were showing on me. My black hair turned a silver color with some black peppered throughout. Worst of all, I was starting to slightly bald, my vanity I suppose. For Tabitha, time stood still. She always said she looked older, but to me she was just as perfect as when I first set my eyes on her. As for Janice, she grew up to be a beautiful woman: shorter hair than her mother, but the eyes were the same, just as stunning. To her mother’s dismay, she kept them hidden behind her Ray Ban eyeglasses. My wife and I would joke with her about her Buddy Holly-style glasses, but she would always discard the comments, saying how the joke dated the two of us. Janice decided she wanted to become a surgeon like myself and work at the same hospital, Magdalene Memorial. I don’t think I could have been any prouder. As a family, we were always happy to spend time together, but out of all we did together, our favorite thing was our drives in my Bel Air on Sundays. Just like my second love, my first love has stood the test of time and was in mint shape and ran just as strong as when I first got it. My daughter always hinted about wanting the car when she graduated med school. We laughed about it, but I did, in fact, plan on giving it to her after college, but always acted as if I wasn’t listening in hopes to surprise her on the day she received it.

We loved our drives and we took them in the afternoon when the sun was getting close to setting. We’d take in the countryside air and bask in the calmness of it all. It felt as if the world paused for a moment just to let our time together linger just a bit more. If only those drives stayed as magical as I remembered them.

The night things changed for me was a brisk one. The wind blew through my wife and daughter's hair, Tabitha holding her hand out of the window, riding it along the wind as we were driving, while Janice was in the back sitting sideways, legs spread out as she enjoyed the sight and sound of the drive. I was living in the moment, my wife and daughter with me, feeling the cool wind through what hair I had left and the sunlight glaring slightly off my half-moon glasses, the same ones that my daughter said made me look like the head of a wizarding school. Tabitha picked them out and said they made me look like a sexy professor. I accepted both observations and liked them for the sole reason that I could see out of them.

As we continued our drive, I started to hear a slight rattle. I turned down the music to help me get a better listen. I should have just pulled over, but I felt like it was unnecessary. I would soon regret that decision. Suddenly, the left front tire fell off the car in mid-turn. Before I could react properly, the axle caught a pothole and lunges us just short of a tree. I was tossed out immediately, and as I hit the ground the car rolled and landed on my right arm and nearly crushed my skull. As I writhe in pain, I watch as if in slow motion, the horror that begins to engulf my family. I looked down at my arm for a second to see how bad it was; my arm was mangled and bloody, fingers twisted and bent, hand and forearm nearly skinned to the elbow. Despite all this, the only thing I could think about was the safety of my family. I look at the wreck before my eyes: Tabitha flew halfway through the windshield and had bits of glass embedded in her skin as she lay in a pool of glass and blood on warped metal, bleeding profusely. I look for Janice and see that she had been thrown out of the car. She was sitting upright on the tree next to the car nearly a foot away. She was lucky she wasn’t crushed by it, but by her present state, she probably doesn’t feel lucky; her limbs bent and contorted, covered in blood. I try to stand, but my legs give out as I fade in and out of consciousness. I see a farmer who saw the whole thing running up to help. He said he called the ambulance and tried to talk to me to keep me awake to no avail; I blacked out in seconds. The last thing I see is Tabitha looking at me, smiling in a way that suggested that everything was going to be ok.

Waking up in the back of the ambulance as it pulls into the hospital, I shoot up like a madman with my only