An Eye For An Eye - A Short Story Of Dark Fiction

Image from: flickr.com, through Bergen Public Library - No known copyright restrictions

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Don't forget to hit the play button

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It was a chilly night. The full moon was about to rise, the bright silver disc had started to show up far in the horizon. Noah could see it coming out behind the barren hills. He was sitting on the roof and waiting for it. Oh how much it looked like him, with its face spotted and pale. Only Noah's face had a long scar that split it in two. It started just above his right eye, which was badly damaged, went over it diagonally, followed further down to his nose and crossed his left cheek. A great souvenir of that night.

The villagers had gone into his house looking for his father. He was the foreman for a rich landholder, a cruel creature who was only after his profit and never cared about his workers. So, that despicable man had ordered his father to send a team work on a new dam. The place was unsuitable for the project, too dangerous, an accident would happen any time. His father tried to talk his boss out of it, ask him to build the dam someplace else, but he was uncompromising. 

That's the narrowest place I can find, that way I will need less material, therefore less expenses.

He could not understand that the soil was not ideal, too gritty, the dam would collapse sooner or later. As it did, one day the construction site fell apart taking down more than 15 innocent, hard-working men. And his father was there, he saw everything, heard their screams, ran to help them but only managed to dig out some of their souless bodies.

The whole village was mad! Blind by their rage they marched against the ones responsible and decided to give justice the only way they new... an eye for an eye. They had to make them pay for it. First they went to the landlord's house and set it on fire with him and his family inside. Then it was their turn. They got his father and slit his throat in front of him, then his mother and then... he was about to have the same end. He was resisting strongly, pushed the man hollding him and his knife went all the way through his freckled child face. Somewhere between his cries he remembers a voice telling to the man holding the knife:

Let him be, he's just a child. Being an orphan makes quite a punishment for his father's sins.

And he was left there, alone. A ten-year-old with his dead parents on the floor that was now a pool of blood. He swept his tears and hugged them. He stayed there all night, slept in their cold arms. And in the morning he went to the garden, dug two graves and gently put his mother and father in. He covered them and said his prayers. And from that day he never shed another tear. His face was left expressionless, his eyes empty and his heart... this was already cold like the bodies he delivered to the Earth that day.

Noah was left alone, no family were there to take care of him, no aunts or uncles. But his father had left enough money to get him a few years. He grew vegetables in the garden and had some chickens and rabbits. He never went to his village market, he would always walk the 2 miles distance to the next one. And the years passed. And Noah studied all the books in his mother's library, but he was mostly taken by a story in an old book that talked about a young man who whistled on a magic flute, hypnotized all the children of the town and took them away of their houses. 

He had his mother's music box playing every time he read this story until one night he had an epiphany! He should play his music box to lure the villagers' children away from their houses. They took his family back then, it was time to take theirs, an eye for an eye.

So tonight was perfect, the full moon would cast its light upon the village and he would walk through all of it. With his music box in his hands, he would go past every house and hypnotize every sleeping child. In their pyjamas they would get on the street and form a line behind him and then he would take them back to the gorge where the old dam was to be built.

He waited for the moon to rise high up in the sky and got down the roof. Got in the living room, picked his music box, gave a gentle touch to his parents' picture that was on the table next to the box and left the house. He walked to the village, no lights were on, everyone was sleeping. Noah could imagine the innocent sleeping kids that would soon be following him. Right before getting to the first house he opened the box and music started playing. A lullaby his mother would sing along the nights little Noah couldn't sleep. 

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He was walking slowly. There were no children in the first house, he kept walking. In the next one a young girl with beautiful curly hair and a long nightgown was getting out of her blanket and with her eyes half-closed was walking out of her house, leaving the door open she started following Noah. In the next house a young boy, then a set of twins and then more and more and more until he had gone through the whole village and a crowd of more than fifty children were now paired with his music.

They took the road to the old dam site. The moonlight was kindly showing them the way. All you could hear was the enchanting key notes coming out of Noah's box and the slow steps the sleepwaking children were taking behind him, like a marching of soldiers blindly obeying their commander's orders. Just like his father did, an obedience that cost his life.

A smirk of pleasure had now formed on Noah's face. He knew he was getting close. Just a few meters before the gorge he stopped. His "army" stopped too. He spared a moment to look at them. Most of them was just about his age when he lost his family, his life. Revenge tasted so sweet. He could smell the last goodnight kiss these children got from their loving mama and the pat on the head from their papa, it's been years since he got his. 

He walked closer to the edge, it should be more than twenty meters deep down there, sharp rocks and iron bars left from the day of the accident were still there, Noah could see their reflections under the moonlight. He held the box one last time. He held it strongly, gave it a kiss and then tossed it in the gorge. He was watching with satisfaction as his little "soldiers" were following the music of death. Their bodies hitting the ground echoed like angels chanting in his ears. 

He could now go back home and spend the rest of the night on the roof, like he used to do.

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*Original story by @ruth-girl - Steemit, 2018

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