This week’s Flash Fiction prompt was to write about revenge. Everyone’s definition of revenge is a little different, and some of us aren’t quite as vengeful as others. It’s one thing to write about revenge, it’s quite another to feel vengeful in daily life. For this week’s Ephemera, we asked the Confabulators if there was anyone they’d like to take revenge on, and if they could get away with it, would they do it.
Not really. I still harbor some bitterness toward people I knew in high school, but I think it has more to do with a lack of closure than anything else. I have no way of knowing how they turned out, and they have no way of knowing how I turned out. (Though I still sort of hate the guy who once told me, “A million people want to be published; what makes you any better than them?” Eff you very much, buddy. Stop popping up in my head whenever I drink.)
I already wreak revenge on scammers, spammers, telemarketers, and those who continue to request that I play games on Facebook. Scammers get reported to the state attorney general. Spammers’ messages go to spam hell, and then the spammers get blocked for life on sites that I mod. Telemarketers cannot get through my call blocking machine. Occasionally they get reported to the FCC and the state attorney general, too. And … send me a Facebook game request, and that gets blocked, plus I beg for more requests so that I can block them, too, and maybe even the person sending them. (Get too political on my newsfeed, and I can make you disappear from it …) Yep – mess with an old retired guy like me who has time on his hands, and I’ll make you regret it … slowly …
I like the concept of revenge but I think it requires me to be something I’m not naturally: hateful. My tendency is to stabilize rather than upset. Also, I’m patient. If I’m somehow Done Wrong, I know the Universe will somehow balance everything out. I know it sounds naively philosophical, but it works for me. I don’t see myself going out of my way to inflict hurt on someone else. That takes an awful lot of energy.
I have a particular form of vengeance specifically designed for writers. If you do something to piss me off, I will take revenge upon you in one of my stories. I will do horrible things to you and point out all of your most unflattering traits, all the while thinly veiling your identity. Don’t cross me, or it might end up published one day.
I try not to hold grudges. I am a very calm person. Laid-back to a fault. That being said, I am very capable of revenge, and there are definitely people I would take revenge on, whether they are hypothetical or real, I will not say. If they do hypothetically exist, I don’t want them to know until the moment is right, and I don’t want damning evidence against me.
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