Morning all. I hope you are having a fantastic week. I’ve spent much of the week mired in dealing with insurance paperwork so feeling a bit frustrated. However Soon, hopefully, things will be resolved. For now, there is the morning prompt. Timers set and off we go.
Huh. I think my frustration may have leaked into a revenge story. Could be worse I suppose.
Thursday, August 7th: He felt excitement tremble in his belly.
He felt excitement tremble in his belly. All of the elements were in place. Tomorrow his actions would set them off like dominos, each one falling into a pattern of his design. Tonight, was the calm before the storm. The moment after all the effort of the set up and before the exertion of completion could begin. He planned well and was prepared for any issues he could foresee.
At this point he had to trust it would be enough.
He took a deep breath and sat down in his favorite chair. The chair where he spent long hours working through the tangled knots of circumstance, unraveling the threads that bound everyone together and figuring out the ways to snip them so each could be destroyed individually.
Together they worked against him. They worked as a solid unit. At first, he could see nothing past their wall of unity. Careful and lengthy study showed him the cracks. They may unite to stand firm against all who opposed them, but behind that façade, there was infighting. Petty squabbles brushed under the rug, forgotten by all but the injured party.
Over time he realized those injuries festered. Their unity was all pretense. ‘And only shown when all of them were attacked at the same time.’
That had been his key. If they all had a common enemy then they could unite, their separate squabbles forgotten. But if each one was mired in their own concerns with no common enemy on the horizon, they would each fight their own battles, ignoring the difficulties of the others.
They were nothing if not self absorbed.
Each of them believed that their interests trumped all others.
It was difficult to figure out a way to attack each individually without making it seem as though it was coming from the same source. His plan didn’t involve a direct attack. At first, it would not seem to anyone that there was an attack. There would just be issues that arose, needing to be dealt with.
He had also staggered them. He knew that when Kevin faced difficulties, the others would find it amusing, there would be jokes made. Kevin would accept them, but they would fester and when one of the others faced difficulties, he would seem to be once more on solid ground. With his feet firmly planted he would have no problems exacting revenge for the petty slight.
He studied the personalities of each for a long time, learning not only how they reacted to things in their own situations, but in how they dealt with the others. He smiled. The beauty of the plan would be that they would do half of the work for him, tearing each other down as they dealt with their own petty slights. There were plateaus steady spots for them to rest but it would be a downward trend nonetheless.
He took a deep breath and realized that in this moment he had no task before him. All was set and would be put in motion with the sunrise. There was no planning, no monitoring, no action he could take. He smiled and tried to remember the last time he had nothing before him that had to be done.
‘Before,’ he realized. Before they cost him everything.
Ten til Midnight 