TALES FROM THE ODDSIDE: My Love Is Vengeance

TALES FROM THE ODDSIDE

My Love Is Vengeance

by

Al Bruno III

The old saying is “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves” but in the end I only needed one. I have no regrets for my years spent planning and executing my vengeance upon Creighton Tillingshaft Jr.

It should never have come to this and I like to think that if he had just paid for his crimes I would have tried to move on but that man did not take responsibility. There was no denying that my thirteen year old son was dragged beneath Creighton Tillingshaft Jr's car for 180 yards, there was no denying that Creighton Tillingshaft Jr had fled the scene of the accident leaving my boy to die by the side of the road like an animal. The authorities thought he was driving under the influence, but by the time they caught up to him there was no way to prove it.

The trial was a sham, the Tillingshaft fortune saw to that, his team of doctors and psychiatrists spoke of 'dissociative episodes' and addictions. His lawyers questioned my parenting, scolding me for allowing my boy to be out delivering papers at five in the morning. In the end all my son’s killer received was a hefty fine, community service and twelve years probation.

Was that all my boy was worth to them?

It is a painful thing to outlive your offspring; my wife had died in childbirth and the thought that my son would not attend my grave as I attended his mother's left me not entirely sane. I bought a gun and tried to decide if I wanted him dead or if I wanted to die myself. Eventually my perspective changed, I became colder. I let my love for my son twist into a dream of vengeance. I vowed to never rest until I saw my boy's killer on his knees.

Years were spent watching and planning, I came to know his life better than I had known my own. Finally, shortly after his fortieth birthday, I began to move against Creighton Tillingshaft Jr. At first all I did was let him know he was being watched by using the skills I'd spent years honing. His family heard footsteps echo through the house at night, they would investigate to find a door or window open. They started finding newspapers delivered to their front step though they never subscribed and their mansion was behind walls and a gate, Those papers were not new, they were from the year my son died. He began to panic, he hired security guards that never found anything amiss and bought guard dogs that disappeared to be found dead weeks later.

Once the Tillingshafts were good and rattled I backed off, I waited a year, I could afford to. Then they found Creighton Tillingshaft Sr. dead, everyone said it was a simple heart attack but I  was responsible. The old man wasn't even a week in the ground when I struck again, seventeen year old Creighton Tillingshaft III took a tumble down one of the crowded stairways of his college. His injuries left him a paraplegic, months later an opportunistic infection took care of the rest. That blow made my son’s killer turn his back on the sobriety he had embraced twenty-five years ago. That drove his wife away leaving him alone in that big mansion with just his servants but I soon took care of them. For all their professed loyalty to the Tillingshaft family a few well planned accidents and some threats from the shadows was all it took to send them running.

After that I waited again knowing that eventually, despite his near constant drunken stupor my son's killer would realize what I had done. It was a cold February morning when he came to me, he screamed and cursed until he collapsed into a sobbing heap.

Does Hell await me as punishment for what I've done? I don't know, and I don't care.

It was worth it to have the once great Creighton Tillingshaft Jr fall to his knees on my long untended grave.