A Once Felled Warrior

Amelia is sitting at the coffee shop a few doors down from her Chicago apartment. A crappy little apartment, cold, and stone. Only a few pieces of furniture to keep her company, furniture they picked out together, that of course she paid for, but was happy to do so, because she was helping to build their life together. That was at the beginning, when he made her feel loved and put smiles, not bruises on her face.

Now she sat on the wooden chair, feeling its pressure in the areas he pulled and kicked at for the last time, avoiding the second eviction notice waiting for her at her place. She was hoping they would allow her to stay, even though she couldn’t even afford the three dollar cup of tea she had always ordered before. She would love to sip on her favorite warm drink right now. God knows, she could use the comfort, but she knew that even if she had three dollars, it should go towards bread, so she could replace the stale loaf that she had been eating the last two days. A loaf that was almost gone.

She glanced up hearing the ding of the entrance bell at the door. A woman who oozed of elegance, from the latest understated designer bag on her arm, to her perfectly styled hair, to the powerful way she carried herself, swayed in. Amelia hoped this woman would not look her way. In her presence she was even more ashamed of the pathetic, destitute, shell of a person she had become. Just two years earlier, the world at her feet, now at twenty-five, everything stolen and beaten out of her, and just at that moment, being the klutz she was, she knocked over her water. The woman and the barista, she was ordering from, looked over at her.

Amelia immediately lowered and shook her head as a string of apologies poured out of her. Amelia could feel the distinguished woman scanning her even as her head was down. She wondered if it was in pity or disgust. Her eyes lingered on the bruises on Amelia’s face and on the ones that covered her arms that she revealed when she pushed her sleeves up to clean the water.

The barista, finally noticing her, spoke. “Mam, if you are not going to order anything, I am going to have to ask you to leave.” Amelia opened her mouth to speak, but to her shock a commanding, yet soft voice replied in her stead. “The young lady is here to meet me, sorry I’m running late. I will take a lavender chamomile with honey and oat-milk, and what is it you have again?” Amelia was shocked, this was her favorite drink. She shyly replied, “The same.”

The woman sat with Amelia. She pushed a piece of hair away from her green eyes and said with a stern but somehow tender voice, “Tell me, tell me everything.”

Amelia didn’t know if it was the tenderness she had craved, the fact that she was too embarrassed to share all the details with anyone who wasn’t a stranger or just the fact that her heart had been waiting to release this for so long, but once she started speaking about what she endured the last couple years she could not stop. She would have thought the story hard to hear, but the comfort and looks of understanding this unknown woman gave her, made telling her as easy as breathing.

She spoke about meeting the “perfect” Cameron. How he assured her she was the love of his life and how, for the first time, she felt the same way. How it seemed like the exact right thing when he convinced her he should move in, and then even though she was both working as a bartender at night and going to school to get her law degree during the day, that he really needed to stop working to focus on school, but it was for their future. Amelia told her how subtle the abuse first began, a demeaning comment here and there, disguised as a joke, then not disguised as a joke. How at first it was just shoving or tripping her when she yelled back at him for the horrible things he said and then it got more violent. How she found out about the other women, how she pieced together how he would start fights with her so he could leave in a rage and cheat. She told her how she tried to get out time and time again, but he would beg for her back on his knees, cry to her, and swear he would change, and the cycle would start all over again.

Amelia relayed how he would hurt her so bad or make her so sick with anxiety, she would actually pass out causing her to miss class and work, until eventually she lost both. How, since every expense was on her, and he loved his luxuries, she was now up to her ears in debt, and had fallen behind on all her payments. He succeeded to alienate her away from her friends and family as well.

The last time he had beaten her so bad she thought she would die and she finally kicked him out for good. She even changed the locks and got a restraining order. She knew a piece of paper wouldn’t do much good, but hoped since she was no use to him now that he had taken everything from her, he would have no reason to come back. Even the energy she exuded that he had once craved to be around, he had completely sucked her dry of.

Now, she was left broke, broken, and all alone.

The woman stared Amelia for a long time as she wept, then finally spoke, “My poor child. He has hurt you in unimaginable ways Amelia, but you are not broken. You are a tree who he thinks he has chopped down, but was just pruning, pruning to grow into something beautiful and terrible. There is a lion in you, the same one that's within me, you have just yet to find your roar.”

The woman pulled out her check book, as she did, a black leather bound notebook fell out of her bag. “What is that Amelia asked?” The woman replied with a smirk, “I believe you’ll know soon enough.”

The woman handed Amelia a check for twenty-thousand dollars. Amelia looked in disbelief, “I… I can’t accept this.” The woman grabbed Amelia’s hand with a smile and said, “You need to take it. Consider it an investment. I believe you will be needed very soon.”

Amelia was confused, but her hunger pain and desperation wouldn’t allow her to refuse. She wept and thanked the woman. She turned to reach for her backpack, “Here let me get your phone number so I can call you to repay you when I can, and I never got your na…” When Amelia turned, the woman was gone.

Two months went by, Amelia was able to use the money to pay off some debts and just barely get by, but it was dwindling. Before Cameron, with her good looks and charms, she could walk in anywhere and get a job, but her confidence was so diminished, it was almost impossible. She was given a second chance to get ahead in life and she was almost back where she started. She was pacing her apartment, the doorbell rang. A chill went up her spine, always afraid it was Cameron back to finish what he started.

To her surprise, when she looked out her peep hole, a large, muscular looking man was outside. She opened the door. With a thick Eastern European accent the man said, handing her an envelope, “Amelia Earing, for you, open.”

She opened the envelope and out fell a picture of the mysterious woman from the coffee shop, along with a note.

“Dear Amelia,

This may all sound very strange, but for some reason you trusted me in that coffee shop, and though you could not see it in yourself I saw something fierce in you, a warrior awakened by pain like I once was.

If you are receiving this it means I have passed away on one of errands. An errand of ridding the trash from this world, something I believe in my gut, a gut that has never been wrong before, you will continue to do.

I have no children. To the rest of the world, it seems like I have devoted my life making billions in my tech company, but my real devotion is making sure men never get away with the kinds of things that man did to you. You see Amelia, I want you to take over my vast fortune, my company, and my mission. Killing. Bad. Men.”

Amelia gasped, she shoved the letter back at the man, I … I can’t, you need to leave now.

He spoke, “Finish reading, then I leave.”

She hesitated, looked at the man, swallowed hard but continued… “I know this seems like more than you can bare at the moment, but my man Boris, along with his passion for this mission because of what had happened to his own daughter, has been paid handsomely to teach you everything you need to know: martial arts, covering your tracks using the technology from my company, how to seduce and placate men into a perfect position to strike, and how to detach yourself enough in order to do what needs to be done. He will also teach you enough knowledge about my company in order for you to be the face, and a back dated log of me training you so no one suspects anything, but a mentor Cinderella story.

Before you rush to say no I want you to look at the pictures on the next few pages of this letter. If you decide to say yes, Boris will bring you to one of my estates just outside the city and start your training. He will also give you my little black book, yes the one that you had witnessed fall out of my bag, for I came to that shop to complete one of my errands with just a little slip of something in a man’s coffee who had been abusing his secretary for years, before I saw you and recognized that dimmed but still present spark in your eye. The same one that had been in mine when I decided I would never be a victim again. That book is filled with the names of men like him. Men that hold so much power or manipulate women so terribly that they believe there will never be consequences to their actions. So look at those pictures, know that men everywhere are getting away with these crimes against women over and over again, and decide Amelia. Do you want to be a victim or a liberator?”

Amelia turned the page and was horrified at what she saw, it was Cameron and a small brunette woman being photographed through an apartment window. She recognized that look in his eye and the way he gritted his teeth. A pit appeared in her stomach as she turned the page. In just two months, it had started again with another innocent woman blinded by his initial love bombing and charm. She saw the still of him grabbing her leg and slamming her to the ground. She flipped the pages in horror as she saw his fists come up and slam back down again.

All at once her body went cold. She looked at Boris, fire in her eyes, “I choose liberator.”

He nodded, not only knowing what she meant, but expecting it. He handed her the little black book, and spoke again in his think accent, “I train you with all I know, all Ms. Levy say you need to know. Then our work begins.”