Retribution: Head in Cloud

"No, no please. please no.. you don't need to do this. Take what is in my purse no.."

She had never been so scared in her life, she had never known such fear nor, such excruciating pain as he brutalized her in the most horrible of ways. It lasted for hours, tied, beaten, raped until finally, the knife came out and she saw the sharpened blade glint in the dim lights of the basement to which she had been dragged.

He didn't kill her straight away, he took his time. Slice after slice followed by scream after scream and the more she begged for her life, the more he smiled. Until finally, as she looked at strips of herself detached from her body, she begged for death.

He awoke with a scream... tears streaming down his face as he looked about him. Looking for the flesh cut from his body...

She, like everyone had been fitted with a chip that reported the sights, sounds and most importantly, the emotions and the physical senses and held them securely in the cloud until necessary.

It was times like these that they were accessible. Violent crime, murder.

The police were disgusted by what had been recorded but, they identified him through what they found and hunted him down. He had stalked her for months and with the conclusive evidence they had, they were able to access his feed and see every moment he watched her, whether in reality, or in his imagination.

He had been sentenced to life in prison but with the retribution justice system, the victim gets to be part of the punishment process. She had chosen that in the advent of premeditated murder, the punishment would be to experience the event again as the victim.

The system was set up so that the perpetrator would experience it fully, feel that it was them in the position of victim. Every sight, sound, smell and slicing of the knife would be experienced. He would know exactly what it was he had done and he would feel every moment of the fear and agony she had held.

But it did not end there.

The reactions of the immediate family would be felt too, experiencing the shock, horror and trauma of seeing what no parent should see, no child should know. The incredible feeling of loss and the continued experiences months after the event as small details brought back a flood of grief once again.

By the end, he held multiple layers of memory that was not his, pains he had not experienced and a sense of loss of something he cared nothing for except to satisfy his own cruel intentions. He was shattered, broken and conflicted by what he had done and what that had caused others he knew nothing of earlier.

Her death became his, their grief his, their misery his.

A year passed by and the family gathered. He, the killer of the one they had loved stood in from of them. And as he apologized for his crimes and asked for their forgiveness, the cloud sent a signal, and his shame became theirs.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]