Sunday, June 08, 2014

Revenge (a 400-word suspense short story) by Oren Shafir

At first, I thought it was a cultural thing like, I don't know, a story reading for the public library or something - but when I saw his face, I knew something was wrong.


He was quite the storyteller though. He had on one of those headphone mic things, and there must have been a speaker somewhere; you could hear him all over the platform.  He was talking about this woman, his woman, in a way that made her real. He described her tumbling locks, her delicate neck and the softness of her body, but he said it was the things that you couldn't really describe that made men behave irrationally around her. Her voice. Her scent. The way she looked at you.

By now, everyone on the platform had abandoned what they were doing. Took their earphones out, put down their newspapers and iPads.  He kept looking at his watch, but he never stopped talking in those hypnotic tones. He had the look of a man of power, like a politician or news anchor, with silver hair and intense blue eyes. Yet his eyes were tired.

He said that he knew inside she didn't love him, but he couldn’t help himself. He had to have her followed. He had to see and hear what he already knew. Then it got a little bit graphic. I mean he was telling what he saw on the video, you know, with her lover and all. One woman dragged her child away.

He described her nakedness and vulnerability. How she spread her legs, gave herself to her lover. The animal sounds she made. How she begged him to F her, only he said the word out loud. You could hear the hurt in his voice, and it got worse.They were planning something, the two of them, his wife and that man. They were going to do something to him.

He looked at his watch and began speaking in short, choppy sentences. Something horrible and violent and final. Something about an insurance policy. He didn't want to go to the police, he said. This was better. We were all witnesses. Then he stopped talking, looked at his watch again and jumped right onto the tracks. The train was right on time.


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