Hush Yael

I was scared, to be honest. What if this didn’t work out the way I wanted to? There was a chance that the bullets would miss and everything would be ruined. But I had already touched down to Earth; there was no going back now.

I stood in front of the back entrance to the prison, camouflaged by the shadows of the trees. From Heaven, I had pinpointed the location of my target’s whereabouts and was soon on the move. I memorized it in my head. Fifth floor, second hallway, third cell on the left.

“There you are,” the words were spoken through gritted teeth when I spotted him. “It’s time you learned what it feels like to have everything you love taken away from you.”

But what I thought to myself was, how? How do I catch him off guard enough to get under his skin and shoot him?

“Be patient. You need to frighten him.”

The voice of the Devil reached my ears, but unlike last time, he was strictly communicating telepathically. He wasn’t around for me to see him.

“The more fearful he is, the easier it will be to trap him. Make him remember that night, Yael. The night that sealed his fate and landed him here.”

It seemed almost rebellious, ritualistic. Like something out of the Necronomicon that I’d have to pull out of my sleeve. But would it be successful?

“You’d be surprised how hard it is for some people to forget the past.”

I placed his words in the back of my mind for the moment, proceeding to slip effortlessly between the bars- only with the Devil’s help- and gazed at him. His cell was nothing special; a bed, toilet, sink, and mirror, surrounded by concrete walls and a steel floor and ceiling. Soon, he must have sensed that someone was staring him down, and his eyes opened.

“Time to awake, oh sleeper,” I whispered.

Immediately, he shot up from the mattress and ran…more so stumbled, to the wall on the left side of the cell. “Wh-who are you?”

I tilted my head to one side and stared at him with my dull green eyes. “You mean you don’t recognize me?” My whisper had traces of a hiss. “Surely you’d remember my face from somewhere.”

The man in front of me frantically shook his head. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Let me tell you a story,” I started, “It starts on the twenty-second day, of the fourth month, in 1979. You came, you saw, and like a coward, you conquered a family asleep in their home.” I took a few steps forward. “I had to watch you pull the trigger in my father’s back. You put his face to the waves, where he took his last breath. Then you took my sister’s life with the butt of that gun, four years from where her life had begun.” Another few steps towards him. “And there was also a mother and another daughter, hiding from you. In trying to save our lives, the mother had accidentally smothered the girl. All because of what you did.”

Around both of us, the inside of the cell began to turn into something like a winding hallway, surrounded by a thick, grey fog. More than likely, the Devil’s doing. “You- no, it can’t be!” he stammered. “You were part of that family!”

“Indeed I was,” I replied, revealing the gun and pointing it. “And now, you’re going to pay. Pay with your life for what you’ve done!”

He scrambled to his feet and took off down one of the many narrow hallways, but I was right on his tail. “Get back here, you coward! I’ll make you wish you never killed my family!”

His heavy breathing was able to reach my ears through every part of this other world. It was as though my senses were heightened, and I could hear and be attune to everything. When I spoke again, it wasn’t with my mouth, but with my mind.

“I’ll make you beg for your life!” He rounded a corner. “You made me watch as my family died!” He reached a dead end and turned around. “You’ll never know what it’s like!” He ran through another hallway to my left. “I’ll cut you slow until your soul takes flight!”

The fog soon made it impossible for him to run anywhere else. He was right in my line of sight. I cornered him against the wall and clicked the switch on the hammer.

“End him slow, Yael.” The Devil spoke in my head. “Make him feel the pain that you felt. Make him feel every ounce of it. Make him feel it all."

“This is for my mom,” I started, shooting him in the kneecap. He couldn’t run anymore. I watched him fall, clutching his leg. I stepped forward and pressed the gun against his body, firing a bullet through his shoulder. “That was for my dad,” His screams reached my ears as he stumbled backwards, leaving his face wide open. With another click, I pointed the barrel to his forehead, right between his eyes. “And this is for my sister.” The steel bullet slammed through his head, and he finally fell, lifeless, to the floor.

Around me, the other-worldly dimension faded, and once more, I was in the cell. I stared at myself in the mirror and shuddered. I was now officially labeled a killer in the eyes of God. But revenge normally comes with a bittersweet price.

I slowly twirled the gun in my hands. “Please tell me there’s one last bullet in here,” I prayed, before turning the weapon on myself, and pulling the trigger through my heart. I felt the steel slice through my chest before I closed my eyes, and everything around me was gone.