The Tales of Calamity: Part V
Calamity walked for hours through the city carrying the tools of her vengeance. Her arms and legs grew tired yet she ignored the aches and trodded along with the purest determination. Pain and weariness served as only the tiniest of obstacles now and pain was something she had grown well accustomed to.
Whenever she was questioned as to why she was carrying rope and a can of gasoline she would reply that her car had run out of gas and the muffler had been dragging. Most people accepted this answer and went about their business.
At sunset she came to her destination; an average sized two story house with beige plastic siding made to look like wood. In the front was a little garden that was tended to meticulously. The grass was bright green and nicely trimmed. Nothing seemed to have changed in the years that had passed. Even the cross on the door of the mailbox had remained.
Calamity strolled leisurely up the walkway to the door with a smile on her face. She rang the doorbell and waited patiently with her left arm cocked back slightly, gripping the gas can tight as she waited for the ring to be answered.
The door opened wide and a woman peered out. She was a thin, middle-aged woman with rosy cheeks and shoulder length blonde hair.
The woman stared at Calamity and raised an eyebrow and asked, "May I help you, Miss?"
Calamity grinned widely, "Hi Mom. Help me? Since when has that ever been your expertise?"
The woman's eyes went wide for a moment and Calamity swung the gas can, striking her mother in the head with all her strength. Her mother fell backwards and there was a clattering from inside as Calamity stepped over her mother who lay unconscious on the floor and shut the door behind her.
Suddenly her father appeared in the doorway leading from the dining room. He stormed towards Calamity, shouting with his mouth still full of food. Calamity backed away slightly as he rushed to examine her mother. As he knelt down beside her Calamity kicked him hard in the back of the head. His jaw dropped and his eyes glazed over, the food spilling from his mouth and he toppled over to the floor lifelessly.
Her mother awoke first, finding herself tied to a dining room chair in the living room with her husband behind her. She wriggled and tried to cry out, her voice came out as a muffle through the duct tape secured to her face. On the floor before them were several family pictures, their frames smashed and the glass shattered.
Calamity was nowhere in sight but rustling and banging sounds could be heard from upstairs as she tore through their bedroom.
Her mother twisted and squirmed, trying desperately to escape from the ropes that bound her to the chair but her efforts were fruitless and soon Calamity came walking down the stairs with her arms full of pictures.
She looked to her mother and said, "Oh, you're awake. I was beginning to worry I'd accidentally killed you. I know better though, your head is too hard to be smashed by plastic."
Calamity set the pictures down beside her and began picking them up one by one. The first was a wedding photo of her mother and father.
"Oh look . . . you two on your wedding day. How sweet," she murmured sardonically.
She dropped the picture to the ground and stomped on it, shattering the glass into countless tiny shards, adding to the pile of already destroyed photographs and frames.
She took up another photograph of her father and uncles. Her father stood in the middle with his arms around the shoulders of his two brothers, all three of the smiled. They were obviously having quite the time.
She looked at it closely, then looked up at her mother, "You know . . . I've yet to find a single picture with me in it and I must've smashed at least eight so far. I mean there has to be one of me, right? I'm your only daughter after all."
She dropped the frame to the floor and smashed it to pieces beneath her boot as she snatched up another picture.
"Nope," she said as she glanced at it and dropped it with the others. "I'm not in this one either."
As she reached the last photograph her father awoke and she smiled, "Glad you decided to join us, daddy dearest. I was just talking to mom about how I'm not in a single fucking picture in this house."
Calamity hurled the last picture between the both of them, shattering it against the living room wall behind them. Her father began struggling to break free, shouting through the tape over his mouth. Calamity wrapped her fingers around the handle of the small coal shovel beside the fireplace. She pulled it from the stand and swung it towards him, striking him across the face.
"Huzzah! I smite thee demon! I cast thee back into the fires of Hell!" She cried out.
Blood began to trickle from his brow and she smirked, "Sound familiar?"
Calamity began to slowly pace back and forth, rhythmically kicking the shovel with the toe of her boot as she would turn around and begin pacing in the opposite direction.
"You know, telling me I had a demon when I was little when I was just playing with my imaginary friends is totally not cool," she said. "Church is a fucking snoozefest. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, then they just go on and on about something or other for a sermon. It's really unbearable or maybe that's just the DEMON in me talking. God's not in a building anyway. Wanna know where God is? In me. In you. In this house. In the trees outside. Fucking everywhere. Wanna know where the devil is, huh, huh? In the fucking Church you two go to every fucking Sunday. The Devil's in the fucking money stuffed pockets of preachers. THAT is where you'll find Satan."
Calamity lit up a cigarette and took a long drag. She gazed at the burning end for a moment, she looked to her parents and slowly exhaled the smoke.
"You know what else isn't cool? Sending your daughter away to a fucking boarding school so you don't have to deal with her. Yeah, that's pretty lame, just so you know," she stopped pacing for a moment and rested the shovel on her shoulder as she narrowed her eyes. "Now what do you two have to say for yourselves?"
They yelled in unison through their duck tape gags and Calamity cried out, "One at a time!"
She stepped over to her mother and removed the tape from her mouth and immediately her mother began to shout.
"Jane, you little demon whore, untie me this-" She started before Calamity covered her mouth once again.
Calamity furiously slammed the bottom of the small coal shovel head over her mother's head, reached back and stuck again several times as her mother screamed through the tape.
She ceased her assault and seemed to calm down slightly.
"Well that was very informative, while I appreciate your opinion greatly I still believe you are a worthless, hateful, hypocritical cunt and I'm greatly saddened by the fact that I was somehow by some great misfortune given into your custody," Calamity said in her most polite tone.
She swung the shovel again, striking her mother directly in the face with a loud banging sound. Her nose broke beneath the impact and the head of the shovel snapped from the shaft and dropped into her lap as the blood trickled from her nostrils.
Calamity threw the handle and shaft of the broken shovel to the floor and asked, "Father, do you have anything to add?"
She tore the tape from her father's mouth and received similar threats and once again covered his mouth.
"Blah, blah, blah, untie me. Fuck you two are so whiny. It's not like it hurts or anything. Well . . . the shovel upside the head probably did but you both totally deserved it. I mean, if I didn't hit you, you might turn out to be a rebellious devil-worshippers. You know, doing drugs and raping white women and having premarital sex," she said as she walked towards the front door.
She grabbed the handle of the gas can and returned to her parents. She unscrewed the lid and began to douse them with generous amounts of gasoline as they screamed through the tape over their mouths.
"Honestly, I hate you two for what you've done to me. You know, the whole beating me and shipping me away thing. So I'm not going to regret this one bit," she said as the gasoline splashed on them. "Actually I'm going to enjoy it a whole fucking lot. Hey, maybe I have a demon after all; or maybe I'm just fucked up because the two of you fucked me up. Who knows."
She began to wander about the living room, splashing gasoline all about.
"But that's not the only reason I came here," she continued. "I know I'm not your real daughter. That's pretty fucking obvious. I don't look anything like either of you or anyone else in the family. So I know I must be adopted. Even though neither of you ever gave me the fucking courtesy of telling me this. But then courtesy isn't your thing I suppose."
Calamity poured out the last bit of gasoline and hurled the empty can at the back of her mother's head, it struck with an echoing thud and her head jerked forward.
Calamity giggled and stood behind the two of them, resting her right hand on her father's shoulder and her left hand on her mother's shoulder.
"I wanna know who my real parents are," she said quietly. "Their names, where they live, you know, important things so that I could track them down and meet them. I mean they obviously didn't want me but neither did you two and at least I share genes with them. Plus it'd just be nice to finally see the people who brought me into this world, you know? I'm gonna remove the tape and I want you to tell me what I want to know. If I hear anything else, any insults, any name calling, any sort of nastiness or any tone I don't like, something bad could happen."
She casually walked around in front of them and pulled the coal poker from the stand beside the fireplace. She held it back, ready to swing as she tore the tape sharply from her mother's mouth, expecting her to resume shouting.
Her mother only glared with eyes full of anger and hatred.
"Nothing?" Calamity asked curiously. "Not a name? No phone numbers?"
"They're dead," she growled through clenched teeth.
Calamity's arm dropped somewhat and her grip on the handle of the poker loosened slightly. She hadn't expected such news.
"What?" She asked, sure that she had misheard.
"Your birth parents are dead. Dead and burning in Hell like you will!" Her mother shrieked.
Calamity reached back and swung the poker, striking her mother in the jaw. The sound at impact was a loud crack as the bone shattered beneath the cast-iron head of the poker. Her mother cried out and Calamity tore a wide strip from her mother's lime green blouse and shoved it in her mouth to muffle her groans.
"Father, do you have anything else to add to this?" She asked as she turned her attention to him as he sat bound to the chair, all color drained from his face. "Keep in mind that you will get something similar if you're not good."
He nodded, shaking.
Calamity pulled the tape from his lips and he hesitantly spoke, "Your birth parents . . . they're dead. It was a big story. Your mother . . . she died before you were born. They found her dying from a gunshot and rushed her to the hospital but it was too late. She was dead before they got there. But . . . they found out she was pregnant and cut you out before you died with her. It was a miracle. That's what we thought when we got you. God . . . saved you."
She raised her eyebrow, "So . . . my mom got shot, died on the way to the hospital and they cut me out and put me in an orphanage. And my dad?"
"Your mother shot him. The news said they had some kind of suicide pact," he answered.
Calamity bit down on her bottom lip and returned the coal poker to its stand. For several moments she stood still with her back turned to them as she contemplated her next step in action. Finding them was now an impossibility, no questions she asked would be answered. Gravestones are terrible at holding conversation.
"Jane . . . you're going to kill us, aren't you?" Her father finally asked.
Calamity sighed and nodded as she retrieved the matchbook from her pocket and lifted the flap covering the matches.
"That's the plan," she said as she tore one of the matches from the book. "I mean I can't just let you go and I don't think either of you have suffered anything CLOSE to as much as you've made me suffer."
"Jane, you don't have to do this. I know it's just the devil in you making you do this. We can help you. We can pray for you and have the Pastor take that evil out of you. God knows there's good in you still. There has to be," he plead with her.
Calamity giggled, "Oh no, you're not weaseling out of this one and that possessed by the devil shit isn't gonna work on me. That is fucking bullshit. You know what's wrong with me? I'm fucking crazy. That's what's wrong. I'm crazy and full of hatred because of what you two have done. Oh sure, I could forgive the beatings. In time I might even be able to forgive you for dumping me in that fucking boarding school. But there's so much more than that and you both know it. Not everything can be forgiven. I'm not fucking Jesus."
He sighed, tears filling his eyes, "Jane, please. We're your parents and we love you."
She scoffed, "Oh don't worry, you two are supposed to go to Heaven anyway, remember? I mean you gave money to your church and prayed, therefor all the horrible shit you've done is okay, right? Just 'cause you supposedly feel bad for it, it's okay. You love me? Then why isn't there a fucking single picture with me in it in the whole fucking house?! How fucking dare you lie to me, to my face. You two should be happy, I'm just giving you a taste of what's in store for you both."
Calamity ran the white match-head across the strip on the back of the book and the head erupted in flames. She slowly moved to a wet spot on the carpet she had doused with gasoline.
"You'd better start praying for God to stopped me," she muttered.
The burning match fell from her fingertips and onto the gasoline-soaked spot on the beige carpet underfoot. The carpet ignited almost immediately and Calamity drew a cigarette from the pack in her pocket. She casually lit another match and touched it to the tip of the cigarette that she held between her lips.
She took a few puffs and pulled it from her lips and smiled, "Oops, I guess he's busy right now. Probably helping some fat bitch in a trailer park win the lottery. Give the devil my regards, please. I'm sure I'll meet him soon enough."
Calamity stepped over to her father and pressed the tape over his mouth once again and walked to the front door as the flames quickly began to spread throughout the living room. She stopped at the door with her hand on the knob. Suddenly she turned back and wandered into the living room again.
Sitting on the mantle above the fireplace was a large Bible prominently displayed. The cover seemed to be made of gold and ivory although she had never examined it herself. It was beautiful and obviously quite important.
Calamity snatched the massive book from the shelf and tucked it under her arm and meandered through the living room and vestibule to the door.
As she pulled it open she shouted back to her parents as they gradually became encircled by the flames, "Oh no! I stole the big fancy Bible! The Devil made me do it!"
Smoke rose into the air as she opened the front door and stepped out, shutting it behind her. Calamity began walking back home, occasionally shifting the heavy Bible from her right arm to her left. Back home to decrepit apartment building she declared as her own filled with her new family that cared much more for her than her adopted family ever had.
She was a bit saddened by it all, she had her hopes set on seeing her true parents someday but that was now an impossibility. However her mission had been a complete success. She had her answers and her revenge and a pocket full of money and jewelery she had stolen from the house while both her parents had been unconscious.
Yet part of her went unsatiated. Her birth parents were still mysterious nameless, faceless figures in her mind. There was much more for her to learn of them but she had gained some insight. Her father had mentioned they had been spoken of on the news so naturally there would be records somewhere. It was only a matter of finding them.
Her mother died the day she was born and her father most likely did as well considering their supposed suicide pact.
Calamity heard faint sirens in the distance as firemen worked to extinguish her childhood home that was now engulfed in flames. She smiled to herself and flicked her cigarette onto the front lawn of a nearby house.
Suddenly everything around her went black. The only sound her could hear were the sounds but her boots scraping against the sidewalk with each step.
As her vision began to brighten she saw greens and yellows and bright blue. Blurs of color that gradually began to sharpen and become clear, taking the forms of grass and flowers and the sky above her head. In the distance were those strange but now familiar ruins of black stone that her legs carried her to, seemingly by their own volition.
Standing in the center of the ruins was a small figure dancing about wildly, limbs flailing, hair whipping about, its clothes whipping in the breeze as the person spun around and around. As Calamity drew closer and the figure became clearer she saw that it was a small woman with wavy black hair and porcelain white skin. Her eyes were shut tight and she seemed to be in a trance.
Calamity sat down on a large piece of crumbled black stone and watch the girl with shoulder-length black hair dance. The girl's hips would rock back and forth and her arms would rest atop her head and she would, her skirt billowing outwards as her legs kicked. There was something beautiful about it but at the same time it was disturbing although Calamity couldn't truly understand why.
Then finally the girl dropped lifelessly to the ground as if she had been a puppet and her strings had been snipped. Calamity wandered over to her and the girl looked to her through large, jade eyes.
The girl once again sprang to life, leaping into Calamity's lap and wrapping her legs around her waist.
The girl giggled, "Hi."
Calamity smirked, "Hiya."
The girl carefully smoothed back Calamity's hair and said, "I love you, Lilith."
Calamity's vision went black once again and as sight returned to her she found herself sitting on the old stained mattress that had become her bed in the condemned apartment building with the Bible from her parent's house resting in her lap.
She sighed and muttered to herself, "What the fuck?"
Whenever she was questioned as to why she was carrying rope and a can of gasoline she would reply that her car had run out of gas and the muffler had been dragging. Most people accepted this answer and went about their business.
At sunset she came to her destination; an average sized two story house with beige plastic siding made to look like wood. In the front was a little garden that was tended to meticulously. The grass was bright green and nicely trimmed. Nothing seemed to have changed in the years that had passed. Even the cross on the door of the mailbox had remained.
Calamity strolled leisurely up the walkway to the door with a smile on her face. She rang the doorbell and waited patiently with her left arm cocked back slightly, gripping the gas can tight as she waited for the ring to be answered.
The door opened wide and a woman peered out. She was a thin, middle-aged woman with rosy cheeks and shoulder length blonde hair.
The woman stared at Calamity and raised an eyebrow and asked, "May I help you, Miss?"
Calamity grinned widely, "Hi Mom. Help me? Since when has that ever been your expertise?"
The woman's eyes went wide for a moment and Calamity swung the gas can, striking her mother in the head with all her strength. Her mother fell backwards and there was a clattering from inside as Calamity stepped over her mother who lay unconscious on the floor and shut the door behind her.
Suddenly her father appeared in the doorway leading from the dining room. He stormed towards Calamity, shouting with his mouth still full of food. Calamity backed away slightly as he rushed to examine her mother. As he knelt down beside her Calamity kicked him hard in the back of the head. His jaw dropped and his eyes glazed over, the food spilling from his mouth and he toppled over to the floor lifelessly.
Her mother awoke first, finding herself tied to a dining room chair in the living room with her husband behind her. She wriggled and tried to cry out, her voice came out as a muffle through the duct tape secured to her face. On the floor before them were several family pictures, their frames smashed and the glass shattered.
Calamity was nowhere in sight but rustling and banging sounds could be heard from upstairs as she tore through their bedroom.
Her mother twisted and squirmed, trying desperately to escape from the ropes that bound her to the chair but her efforts were fruitless and soon Calamity came walking down the stairs with her arms full of pictures.
She looked to her mother and said, "Oh, you're awake. I was beginning to worry I'd accidentally killed you. I know better though, your head is too hard to be smashed by plastic."
Calamity set the pictures down beside her and began picking them up one by one. The first was a wedding photo of her mother and father.
"Oh look . . . you two on your wedding day. How sweet," she murmured sardonically.
She dropped the picture to the ground and stomped on it, shattering the glass into countless tiny shards, adding to the pile of already destroyed photographs and frames.
She took up another photograph of her father and uncles. Her father stood in the middle with his arms around the shoulders of his two brothers, all three of the smiled. They were obviously having quite the time.
She looked at it closely, then looked up at her mother, "You know . . . I've yet to find a single picture with me in it and I must've smashed at least eight so far. I mean there has to be one of me, right? I'm your only daughter after all."
She dropped the frame to the floor and smashed it to pieces beneath her boot as she snatched up another picture.
"Nope," she said as she glanced at it and dropped it with the others. "I'm not in this one either."
As she reached the last photograph her father awoke and she smiled, "Glad you decided to join us, daddy dearest. I was just talking to mom about how I'm not in a single fucking picture in this house."
Calamity hurled the last picture between the both of them, shattering it against the living room wall behind them. Her father began struggling to break free, shouting through the tape over his mouth. Calamity wrapped her fingers around the handle of the small coal shovel beside the fireplace. She pulled it from the stand and swung it towards him, striking him across the face.
"Huzzah! I smite thee demon! I cast thee back into the fires of Hell!" She cried out.
Blood began to trickle from his brow and she smirked, "Sound familiar?"
Calamity began to slowly pace back and forth, rhythmically kicking the shovel with the toe of her boot as she would turn around and begin pacing in the opposite direction.
"You know, telling me I had a demon when I was little when I was just playing with my imaginary friends is totally not cool," she said. "Church is a fucking snoozefest. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, then they just go on and on about something or other for a sermon. It's really unbearable or maybe that's just the DEMON in me talking. God's not in a building anyway. Wanna know where God is? In me. In you. In this house. In the trees outside. Fucking everywhere. Wanna know where the devil is, huh, huh? In the fucking Church you two go to every fucking Sunday. The Devil's in the fucking money stuffed pockets of preachers. THAT is where you'll find Satan."
Calamity lit up a cigarette and took a long drag. She gazed at the burning end for a moment, she looked to her parents and slowly exhaled the smoke.
"You know what else isn't cool? Sending your daughter away to a fucking boarding school so you don't have to deal with her. Yeah, that's pretty lame, just so you know," she stopped pacing for a moment and rested the shovel on her shoulder as she narrowed her eyes. "Now what do you two have to say for yourselves?"
They yelled in unison through their duck tape gags and Calamity cried out, "One at a time!"
She stepped over to her mother and removed the tape from her mouth and immediately her mother began to shout.
"Jane, you little demon whore, untie me this-" She started before Calamity covered her mouth once again.
Calamity furiously slammed the bottom of the small coal shovel head over her mother's head, reached back and stuck again several times as her mother screamed through the tape.
She ceased her assault and seemed to calm down slightly.
"Well that was very informative, while I appreciate your opinion greatly I still believe you are a worthless, hateful, hypocritical cunt and I'm greatly saddened by the fact that I was somehow by some great misfortune given into your custody," Calamity said in her most polite tone.
She swung the shovel again, striking her mother directly in the face with a loud banging sound. Her nose broke beneath the impact and the head of the shovel snapped from the shaft and dropped into her lap as the blood trickled from her nostrils.
Calamity threw the handle and shaft of the broken shovel to the floor and asked, "Father, do you have anything to add?"
She tore the tape from her father's mouth and received similar threats and once again covered his mouth.
"Blah, blah, blah, untie me. Fuck you two are so whiny. It's not like it hurts or anything. Well . . . the shovel upside the head probably did but you both totally deserved it. I mean, if I didn't hit you, you might turn out to be a rebellious devil-worshippers. You know, doing drugs and raping white women and having premarital sex," she said as she walked towards the front door.
She grabbed the handle of the gas can and returned to her parents. She unscrewed the lid and began to douse them with generous amounts of gasoline as they screamed through the tape over their mouths.
"Honestly, I hate you two for what you've done to me. You know, the whole beating me and shipping me away thing. So I'm not going to regret this one bit," she said as the gasoline splashed on them. "Actually I'm going to enjoy it a whole fucking lot. Hey, maybe I have a demon after all; or maybe I'm just fucked up because the two of you fucked me up. Who knows."
She began to wander about the living room, splashing gasoline all about.
"But that's not the only reason I came here," she continued. "I know I'm not your real daughter. That's pretty fucking obvious. I don't look anything like either of you or anyone else in the family. So I know I must be adopted. Even though neither of you ever gave me the fucking courtesy of telling me this. But then courtesy isn't your thing I suppose."
Calamity poured out the last bit of gasoline and hurled the empty can at the back of her mother's head, it struck with an echoing thud and her head jerked forward.
Calamity giggled and stood behind the two of them, resting her right hand on her father's shoulder and her left hand on her mother's shoulder.
"I wanna know who my real parents are," she said quietly. "Their names, where they live, you know, important things so that I could track them down and meet them. I mean they obviously didn't want me but neither did you two and at least I share genes with them. Plus it'd just be nice to finally see the people who brought me into this world, you know? I'm gonna remove the tape and I want you to tell me what I want to know. If I hear anything else, any insults, any name calling, any sort of nastiness or any tone I don't like, something bad could happen."
She casually walked around in front of them and pulled the coal poker from the stand beside the fireplace. She held it back, ready to swing as she tore the tape sharply from her mother's mouth, expecting her to resume shouting.
Her mother only glared with eyes full of anger and hatred.
"Nothing?" Calamity asked curiously. "Not a name? No phone numbers?"
"They're dead," she growled through clenched teeth.
Calamity's arm dropped somewhat and her grip on the handle of the poker loosened slightly. She hadn't expected such news.
"What?" She asked, sure that she had misheard.
"Your birth parents are dead. Dead and burning in Hell like you will!" Her mother shrieked.
Calamity reached back and swung the poker, striking her mother in the jaw. The sound at impact was a loud crack as the bone shattered beneath the cast-iron head of the poker. Her mother cried out and Calamity tore a wide strip from her mother's lime green blouse and shoved it in her mouth to muffle her groans.
"Father, do you have anything else to add to this?" She asked as she turned her attention to him as he sat bound to the chair, all color drained from his face. "Keep in mind that you will get something similar if you're not good."
He nodded, shaking.
Calamity pulled the tape from his lips and he hesitantly spoke, "Your birth parents . . . they're dead. It was a big story. Your mother . . . she died before you were born. They found her dying from a gunshot and rushed her to the hospital but it was too late. She was dead before they got there. But . . . they found out she was pregnant and cut you out before you died with her. It was a miracle. That's what we thought when we got you. God . . . saved you."
She raised her eyebrow, "So . . . my mom got shot, died on the way to the hospital and they cut me out and put me in an orphanage. And my dad?"
"Your mother shot him. The news said they had some kind of suicide pact," he answered.
Calamity bit down on her bottom lip and returned the coal poker to its stand. For several moments she stood still with her back turned to them as she contemplated her next step in action. Finding them was now an impossibility, no questions she asked would be answered. Gravestones are terrible at holding conversation.
"Jane . . . you're going to kill us, aren't you?" Her father finally asked.
Calamity sighed and nodded as she retrieved the matchbook from her pocket and lifted the flap covering the matches.
"That's the plan," she said as she tore one of the matches from the book. "I mean I can't just let you go and I don't think either of you have suffered anything CLOSE to as much as you've made me suffer."
"Jane, you don't have to do this. I know it's just the devil in you making you do this. We can help you. We can pray for you and have the Pastor take that evil out of you. God knows there's good in you still. There has to be," he plead with her.
Calamity giggled, "Oh no, you're not weaseling out of this one and that possessed by the devil shit isn't gonna work on me. That is fucking bullshit. You know what's wrong with me? I'm fucking crazy. That's what's wrong. I'm crazy and full of hatred because of what you two have done. Oh sure, I could forgive the beatings. In time I might even be able to forgive you for dumping me in that fucking boarding school. But there's so much more than that and you both know it. Not everything can be forgiven. I'm not fucking Jesus."
He sighed, tears filling his eyes, "Jane, please. We're your parents and we love you."
She scoffed, "Oh don't worry, you two are supposed to go to Heaven anyway, remember? I mean you gave money to your church and prayed, therefor all the horrible shit you've done is okay, right? Just 'cause you supposedly feel bad for it, it's okay. You love me? Then why isn't there a fucking single picture with me in it in the whole fucking house?! How fucking dare you lie to me, to my face. You two should be happy, I'm just giving you a taste of what's in store for you both."
Calamity ran the white match-head across the strip on the back of the book and the head erupted in flames. She slowly moved to a wet spot on the carpet she had doused with gasoline.
"You'd better start praying for God to stopped me," she muttered.
The burning match fell from her fingertips and onto the gasoline-soaked spot on the beige carpet underfoot. The carpet ignited almost immediately and Calamity drew a cigarette from the pack in her pocket. She casually lit another match and touched it to the tip of the cigarette that she held between her lips.
She took a few puffs and pulled it from her lips and smiled, "Oops, I guess he's busy right now. Probably helping some fat bitch in a trailer park win the lottery. Give the devil my regards, please. I'm sure I'll meet him soon enough."
Calamity stepped over to her father and pressed the tape over his mouth once again and walked to the front door as the flames quickly began to spread throughout the living room. She stopped at the door with her hand on the knob. Suddenly she turned back and wandered into the living room again.
Sitting on the mantle above the fireplace was a large Bible prominently displayed. The cover seemed to be made of gold and ivory although she had never examined it herself. It was beautiful and obviously quite important.
Calamity snatched the massive book from the shelf and tucked it under her arm and meandered through the living room and vestibule to the door.
As she pulled it open she shouted back to her parents as they gradually became encircled by the flames, "Oh no! I stole the big fancy Bible! The Devil made me do it!"
Smoke rose into the air as she opened the front door and stepped out, shutting it behind her. Calamity began walking back home, occasionally shifting the heavy Bible from her right arm to her left. Back home to decrepit apartment building she declared as her own filled with her new family that cared much more for her than her adopted family ever had.
She was a bit saddened by it all, she had her hopes set on seeing her true parents someday but that was now an impossibility. However her mission had been a complete success. She had her answers and her revenge and a pocket full of money and jewelery she had stolen from the house while both her parents had been unconscious.
Yet part of her went unsatiated. Her birth parents were still mysterious nameless, faceless figures in her mind. There was much more for her to learn of them but she had gained some insight. Her father had mentioned they had been spoken of on the news so naturally there would be records somewhere. It was only a matter of finding them.
Her mother died the day she was born and her father most likely did as well considering their supposed suicide pact.
Calamity heard faint sirens in the distance as firemen worked to extinguish her childhood home that was now engulfed in flames. She smiled to herself and flicked her cigarette onto the front lawn of a nearby house.
Suddenly everything around her went black. The only sound her could hear were the sounds but her boots scraping against the sidewalk with each step.
As her vision began to brighten she saw greens and yellows and bright blue. Blurs of color that gradually began to sharpen and become clear, taking the forms of grass and flowers and the sky above her head. In the distance were those strange but now familiar ruins of black stone that her legs carried her to, seemingly by their own volition.
Standing in the center of the ruins was a small figure dancing about wildly, limbs flailing, hair whipping about, its clothes whipping in the breeze as the person spun around and around. As Calamity drew closer and the figure became clearer she saw that it was a small woman with wavy black hair and porcelain white skin. Her eyes were shut tight and she seemed to be in a trance.
Calamity sat down on a large piece of crumbled black stone and watch the girl with shoulder-length black hair dance. The girl's hips would rock back and forth and her arms would rest atop her head and she would, her skirt billowing outwards as her legs kicked. There was something beautiful about it but at the same time it was disturbing although Calamity couldn't truly understand why.
Then finally the girl dropped lifelessly to the ground as if she had been a puppet and her strings had been snipped. Calamity wandered over to her and the girl looked to her through large, jade eyes.
The girl once again sprang to life, leaping into Calamity's lap and wrapping her legs around her waist.
The girl giggled, "Hi."
Calamity smirked, "Hiya."
The girl carefully smoothed back Calamity's hair and said, "I love you, Lilith."
Calamity's vision went black once again and as sight returned to her she found herself sitting on the old stained mattress that had become her bed in the condemned apartment building with the Bible from her parent's house resting in her lap.
She sighed and muttered to herself, "What the fuck?"