Vengeance

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Publishers Note:
This is a work of
fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of
the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, places,
or events is coincidental.

Knightsbridge
Books

The bailiffs
were coming to throw her out on the street. She had no money and
nowhere to go. The thought of pushing a shopping cart and sleeping
in doorways terrified her. Judy Mason didn’t know whether to take
an overdose of sleeping pills, or wreak vengeance on those
responsible.

She looked
around at the small but comfortable house she’d called home for 30
years. It had been a wedding gift from her parents. They’d been so
delighted to see their only daughter, who was over thirty at the
time, finally marry. Now she’d lost the house due to her ignorance
of legal matters, and her trusting nature.
Damn!
She should
have stayed single.

Her ex
husband, Matthew Gillingham, had seemed like a good catch at first.
He owned his own accountancy firm, right around the corner from the
library, where Judy worked. Their looks contrasted flatteringly as
well. He was tall and fair, just like a Viking, while she was a
typical Celt, dark-haired with blue eyes.

She sighed. If
only she’d stood firm when Matthew asked her to give up her job and
help him run the business, she wouldn’t be stony broke today. She’d
have a government pension. But he’d been persuasive in those days,
and his argument had made sense. He needed to do a lot of
entertaining and travelling and he wanted her to be a full-time
partner in all of that. If they’d had a family, she would have been
a stay at home mom, but that had never happened. Oh well, we would
all be geniuses if hindsight were 20/20, she decided.

Although the
marriage was happy at first -- or at least
she
thought it
was -- the flaws in Matthew’s character eventually began to show.
He had a weakness for fine dining and high living. This resulted in
him gaining a ton of weight, and racking up debts on the house.
When Judy discovered his infidelity, which always involved women of
colour, it freaked her out. She just couldn’t understand the
attraction.

How could you
form a meaningful relationship with someone who did not speak your
language? How would you communicate? The only thing she could
conclude was that the men who sought out such women were misfits in
their own culture, and viewed the Third World woman as a commodity
for sexual purposes.

The Asian mail
order brides were submissive and extremely accommodating. They had
to be, given the nature of their plight. This shuffling humility,
made those males feel empowered and important. They could do
anything they wanted with these women once they’d bought and paid
for them. Judy wondered how many of them had been murdered? They
were in a strange country, and were totally dependent on this
stranger whom they’d married. He wielded all the power. It was
tailor made for disaster.

But the women
were so desperate to get out of their Third World ghettoes that
selling their bodies and dignity to some rich white dude --
pathetic mixed up sod though he was -- seemed like a great deal.
Even though he might beat, abuse and kill them. He was their
passport to regular meals, a bed, and indoor plumbing. So at the
end of the day, both parties got what they wanted. It was all so
demeaning, tawdry and sad. At that point, Judy had decided to call
it quits.

She expected
Matthew to do the decent thing, since she’d worked for him all
those years, and look after her financially. But he hadn’t. He’d
claimed he couldn’t afford to. Although he could afford to buy
another house, and go on holidays abroad with his latest Asian mail
order bride, a drab and greedy migrant named Fang Po Wong.

When Judy sued
him for maintenance, Juanita Gomez, his disturbingly vicious
lawyer, whose speciality was defending Hispanic gangs, had attacked
on a personal level. She’d suggested that because Judy hadn’t had a
job outside the home, she was nothing but a lazy layabout leeching
off poor Matthew and wasn’t entitled to any support! This evil
varmint, who looked like she’d crawled out of a Brazilian slum, had
also accused her of being a ‘racist,’ because she hadn’t loved and
embraced Matthew’s China bride!

Judy shook her
head and laughed. Gosh, that ‘racist’ crap was getting old already.
It had been hurled around so much. It was such a silly accusation
akin to the McCarthy era’s witch-hunt for ‘communists,’ but on a
much grander scale. Yet it had the power to destroy reputations,
careers and lives. And would do so until decent people summonsed up
enough courage to speak out against it, en masse.

She sat down
by the window and watched the dawn steal over Vancouver. The city
had changed so much that it bore no resemblance to the place she’d
been born and grew up in. Now officially recognised as the most
congested city in North America, it was home to more Asians than
Europeans, and Mandarin had overtaken English as the most spoken
language. She felt like a stranger in her own land.

Judy grimaced.
Of course, the aboriginals would claim it was really
their
land and that her ancestors had stolen it from them. Not so. If you
cannot defend your property you won’t hang onto it for long, and
that’s what happened in North America. Whoever has the superior
firing power wins, and in this case it had been the Europeans.

She shivered,
recalling Juanita’s overly bright and spooky eyes. They reminded
her of demons at the gates to hell. The upshot was that the limp
dick of a judge, a weasely little runt named Shanks -- who Juanita
probably sucked off in chambers -- had ruled in Matthew’s favour.
So much for the impartiality and fairness of the law. Despite her
gloomy mood, on this worst day of her life, Judy laughed
derisively.

With the last
of her savings blown on legal fees, and Matthew released from any
financial obligation towards her, she had been well and truly
fucked. Shortly thereafter the bank had foreclosed.

Judy checked
her appearance in the hall mirror, and was suddenly overcome by
nostalgia. After all the thousands of times she’d done it over the
years, this would be the last. Tears sprung to her eyes. She
decided that she looked surprisingly good -- smooth skin and even
features -- for someone about to become a bag lady. Her dark hair
was now streaked with grey and she wore it pinned back in a
bun.

She thanked
her love of walking for keeping her slim and fit. It would hold her
in good stead now that she’d be living on the streets, for even if
she managed to find a women’s shelter at night, they booted
everyone out at 7:00 am. What did someone with no home to go to, do
at such an ungodly hour? Go sit in a coffee shop, she supposed,
until they threw you out. But it would be one heck of a long day,
since the shelters didn’t allow anyone back in again, until late in
the evening. Of course, if the weather was good, one could always
while away the hours on a park bench. Ain’t life grand!

Yikes, if her
parents were still alive and could see her now. They’d never
believe that their only daughter, who’d gone to the very best
schools and enjoyed an excellent home environment, could be
suddenly cast down so low, and all because she’d put her trust in
the wrong man.

The sweet call
of a chickadee cut in on Judy’s gloomy thoughts. It echoed
plaintively through the grim grey dawn. She wondered who would feed
the birds once she was either dead or living on the streets? And
what would happen to Molly, the little striped cat she’d adopted
from an animal shelter?

She shivered.
With winter closing in, there couldn’t be a worse time of year to
be without shelter. The sleeping pills, with their promise of
blessed oblivion beckoned.

It wasn’t as
if she were throwing her life away. She’d already lived most of her
3 score years and ten. Soon it would be time to face the grim
reaper anyway. Better sooner than later, if the intervening years
were going to be spent in a state of degrading hardship and
poverty. Now that her home was as good as gone, she really didn’t
see any point in continuing.

Judy emptied
the bottle of sleeping pills into a bowl and ground them down with
a pestle. Then she added enough water to make a paste. They’d be
much easier to get down that way, than swallowing them whole and in
handfuls.

She placed the
bowl with its lethal contents on the bedside table, and slipped
into her favourite outfit, a beige dress with colourful embroidery.
There was no reason why she shouldn’t look respectable when she was
found. Not that it really mattered, of course. When you got right
down to it what did? Humans were nothing but powerless marionettes
being jerked around by the fickle hand of fate. They had no control
over what diseases they got, or whether they’d be murdered, or
perish in an accident. Tomorrow was promised to no one, but still
they made their pathetic little plans for a day they might never
see.

What was the
purpose of it all, and was it really worth all the agony and angst?
Of course, it was the human fabricated world that was the most
vexing, such drama, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Shakespeare, as usual, got it right. The real world -- the natural
one -- was altogether different. There was a kill or be killed
honesty about it that was refreshing.

The noisy roar
of traffic had drowned out the birdsong, while a pale sun poked its
fingers around the window blinds, creating a slatted image on the
far wall.

Judy lay on
top of the covers and prayed for forgiveness. Then she reached for
the bowl...

Goddamnit what
was she doing? Judy had stopped herself from swallowing the toxic
brew in the nick of time. All the righteous fury of her Celtic
ancestors had come galloping to the rescue. End it by all means,
they counselled, but finish off your enemies first.

It was true,
of course. Matthew, Fang and Juanita wanted her dead. She couldn’t
play into their evil hands like this. They’d be drunk on champagne
for a week.

But first
things first. The bailiffs would be here any minute.

With a
tremendous effort of will, Judy heaved herself off the bed. Then
she dressed in comfortable clothes, packed a couple of suitcases,
and enticed Molly into her carry case with a tasty piece of
fish.

She loaded
everything into the old Volvo, and left the home she loved so
dearly without a backward glance. It was easier that way. She
didn’t know what would happen to her furniture and other
belongings, and at that point in time, she didn’t much care. If she
was going to survive she’d have to take it moment by moment. It was
down to a matter of basic survival in a very hostile world.

After she paid
for gas, she had just enough left for a couple of nights at a third
rate motel. She checked in at the Palace.
What a ludicrous name
for such a dump
. Uppermost in her mind, was a recent television
program about how filthy and unhygienic some hotel rooms were. Even
the first class hotels didn’t always clean properly. So a place
like the Palace was likely to be crawling with germs and bacteria.
She didn’t even want to imagine what must have gone on in its
sagging old beds.