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The taste of revenge on your lips can be as sweet as a nectarine. It can also taste like blood. Don't plan on
knowing ahead of time which flavor you'll have in your mouth by the time it's all over; that's left to the fates to
decide for you. Me, when I held Salyer's neck in my hand, felt his cartilage and blood vessels compress, watched
his eyes glaze over, all I could taste was copper.
They found me with the body. Didn't bother running. I knew it wouldn't do any good. They said I threw myself at
the mercy of the court. Still don't know what that means. All I know is the court didn't show me much mercy that
day when they sentenced me to the gallows. I didn't really expect them to. Salyer was one of theirs. And I was not.
They marched me up the stairs to the noose swaying silently in the wind. It scratched at my neck. And when they
threw the lever and the floor let out beneath me I tasted copper again, felt my fingers clench tight around
themselves as my cartilage and blood vessels collided between my fingers watching Salyer's fish eyes bulge
within his skull as the crowd beyond the bottom of the gallows screamed for vengeance spitting blood on each
other as they screamed for my death. I heard their cries quiet, watched their faces dim when out of the crowd
stepped my sister, alive, with an outstretched hand beckoning me to some promised land where judges don't
touch the little girls, where heroes are worshiped, where revenge has no definition and all you taste is nectarines.
Aaron Steinmetz © 2007
knowing ahead of time which flavor you'll have in your mouth by the time it's all over; that's left to the fates to
decide for you. Me, when I held Salyer's neck in my hand, felt his cartilage and blood vessels compress, watched
his eyes glaze over, all I could taste was copper.
They found me with the body. Didn't bother running. I knew it wouldn't do any good. They said I threw myself at
the mercy of the court. Still don't know what that means. All I know is the court didn't show me much mercy that
day when they sentenced me to the gallows. I didn't really expect them to. Salyer was one of theirs. And I was not.
They marched me up the stairs to the noose swaying silently in the wind. It scratched at my neck. And when they
threw the lever and the floor let out beneath me I tasted copper again, felt my fingers clench tight around
themselves as my cartilage and blood vessels collided between my fingers watching Salyer's fish eyes bulge
within his skull as the crowd beyond the bottom of the gallows screamed for vengeance spitting blood on each
other as they screamed for my death. I heard their cries quiet, watched their faces dim when out of the crowd
stepped my sister, alive, with an outstretched hand beckoning me to some promised land where judges don't
touch the little girls, where heroes are worshiped, where revenge has no definition and all you taste is nectarines.
Aaron Steinmetz © 2007
Nectarine Revenge
| This work by Aaron Steinmetz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. |