Justice would come in a small package. Louis placed the small box on the porch with care. He'd written no address or name, just sealed the brown paper with tape.
She would know what it was. Or at least she'd think she did.
He admired the great care he'd taken along each edge, appreciating the knowledge that Sasha would struggle to unwrap the package without a knife. He imagined her, alone in her kitchen, trying to wrestle with the paper.
Each crease had been made with a perfection Louis didn't always possess. He almost wished he'd able to watch her open it, see the look on her face when she saw what he'd done.
It served her right, he thought.
Louis began his drive back to the home where he'd grown up. He didn't need to put a return address on the package. She knew where to find him, but he knew that she wouldn't come looking for him.
He'd spent six years of his life with her, and a single trespass had been their undoing. It didn't matter that it had been his trespass. That he'd sought comfort elsewhere. He was the one who felt the stinging betrayal.
The thrill of having won propelled Louis home, where he spent the rest of the evening thinking about Sasha opening the package. He ate dinner imagining the look of terror on her face when she realized the box's contents.
She'd done more than ask for the remains of the pet they'd once shared. She'd told everybody that he took the urn. She begged family members and friends to harass him. She'd filed paperwork suing for her damn dead cat. She'd tried to humiliate him.
Well, she was going to get those remains.
His entire life, Louis had admittedly been weak. Once, at six, he punched a boy in the face. His father had patted him on the back. But Louis didn't like it. It wasn't that he felt guilty. He didn't. He didn't feel it was enough. A punch to the face? The pain was over quickly. The bruises and bloody noses would fade. In a decade, the boy wouldn't remember the slight discomfort.
Louis wanted something to last.
His mother had coddled him. She held him to her breast after every outburst. She'd take him to the hospital, always concerned something was wrong with him. When there wasn't, she would appear with long lists of symptoms that materialized only at home. By the time Louis met Sasha, he was on medication for four disorders he didn't have and on no medication for the ones he did.
A phone call later almost stripped Louis from his glee. When he saw who it was, he perked up.
"You are the worst kind of human being. Scum."
Louis said nothing. He hung up and blocked Sasha's number.
This wasn't the first time. A few times he tore up clothing, took a snip from a bra or a shirt. Sometimes he shredded an important document. Once, he leaked the news of a surprise birthday party.
Any small slight would lead Louis to seethe, to plot. He would give her a smile and pour too much chili powder in the dish she'd made for dinner. He would give her a back massage and then steal her pain medicine. He would take her out for a nice dinner and then break the laptop she used for work.
It took just a few months for Louis to realize Sasha paid no mind to his small moments of justice. She didn't get angry, barely ever reacted. The drama he'd hoped for never came. It only pissed him off more and more. He needed a reaction.
Mixing Edgar's ashes with peanut butter had been the only way.
About the Creator
Ashley
Ashley has a B.S. in Psychology and an M.A. in Literature.
The Silence Between the Clues ⭐
The Room That Remembered Everything The room was empty when Elias first stepped inside it — at least, that’s what his eyes told him. No furniture. No windows. Just four pale walls and a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, flickering as if it struggled to stay awake. The air smelled faintly of dust and something older… like paper left unread for decades. Elias had rented the apartment because it was cheap. Too cheap for a city that never forgave hesitation. The landlord avoided eye contact and spoke quickly, as though the walls themselves were listening. “It’s quiet,” the man said. “That’s all most people want.” On the first night, Elias slept poorly. Not because of noise — but because of silence. The kind that pressed against his ears until his own thoughts sounded foreign. At exactly 3:17 a.m., he woke up. The light was on. He was certain he had turned it off. As he sat up, he noticed something else. A faint mark on the wall opposite his bed. It hadn’t been there before — or maybe it had, and he simply hadn’t noticed. It looked like a handprint. Not painted. Not dirty. Pressed. Elias laughed softly, blaming exhaustion. The mind played tricks when it was tired. He turned off the light and went back to sleep. The next morning, the handprint was gone. But something else had appeared. Words. Scratched into the wall as if written by a fingernail: “You forgot.” Elias stared at the message for a long time. He tried to remember what it could mean. Missed bills? A call he didn’t return? A promise he never kept? Nothing came. He covered the words with a poster and left for work. That night, the dreams began. He stood in the same room, but it was no longer empty. It was crowded with people — faces blurred, voices overlapping. Someone was crying. Someone was shouting his name. “Elias!” He woke up gasping. The poster had fallen. The words on the wall had changed. “You were there.” His hands trembled. He told himself there was a rational explanation. Stress. Sleepwalking. A prank. Yet deep down, something stirred — a memory struggling to surface. Over the following days, the room grew more active. New messages appeared. Faint sounds echoed at night — footsteps that stopped outside his door, whispers that dissolved when he listened closely. One evening, he found a final message written larger than the rest: “Look.” Below it, the wall was scratched raw, revealing something beneath the paint. A mirror. Elias froze. He didn’t remember a mirror being there. His reflection stared back at him — pale, hollow-eyed, unfamiliar. Then the reflection smiled. Behind him, in the mirror, the room was no longer empty. A woman stood there. Her face was bruised. Her eyes were calm in a way that terrified him. “I told you not to leave,” she said softly. Elias turned around. The room was empty. When he faced the mirror again, the woman was closer. “You said you’d come back,” she whispered. “You never did.” The memory crashed into him like a breaking dam. The argument. The door slammed. The rain. Her voice calling after him. The stairs. The fall. The silence. Elias staggered back, choking on the truth he had buried. “I didn’t mean to,” he whispered. The walls began to fill with words — hundreds of them — overlapping, bleeding into one another. REMEMBER. STAY. DON’T LEAVE. The bulb flickered violently. The woman in the mirror reached out, placing her hand against the glass. Where she touched it, a handprint appeared on the wall beside Elias — the same one he had seen on the first night. “This room remembers,” she said. “So you don’t have to forget anymore.” The light went out. When the landlord unlocked the apartment weeks later, he found it empty. No tenant. No belongings. Only a single handprint on the wall. Pressed. But in the quiet room, on the wall beside the mirror, a fresh handprint remained — pressed firmly into the paint.
By Inayat khana day ago in Fiction
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