Again, since my next story is shorter than I thought it would be, I put it here for free unedited. The paid version will include the edited versions of; Choice and Consequence of Following Orders, A Short Paper on the Human Mirror, and this story, maybe another if it doesn't hit around 80 pages. Enjoy!
Can killing be justified and if so, how?
1) It can’t be justified no matter what.
or
2) It can be if;
A) it’s in self-defense.
B) Who doesn’t deserve a second chance?
Death One
A child runs into a nearby bathroom and locks the door. He looks at his cuts and bruises until a security guard, who is wearing an Annie the Antelope mask, walks into the bathroom.
“What? I thought you liked playing hide and seek? I already found you once, so come out and okay fair…I promise I won’t hurt you this time.”
The guard starts pushing open doors until they find the one the child is in.
“Found you!”
Scared and terrified, the child quickly crawls under the other stalls, but the guard is one step ahead and stabs the child’s leg with the sharp end of a crowbar before he can get to the next stall.
“I never liked kids anyway.”
The psychotic guard kills the child by hitting him in the head with the crowbar, knocking part of his face off, then finishing him off by impaling him with the weapon.
Day One
It’s 1989 now and several people have just gotten off a boat as they are at the grand reopening of Annie’s Amusement park. It stills on a small island outside of Hillside City.
A woman with blond hair, brown eyes, and casual outfit, with a tank top white shirt, jeans, and black boots, walks up to a man and asks, “Hey, aren’t you a little too old to go to an amusement park?”
The man has dark brown hair, blue eyes, and wears a similar casual outfit as the woman, except manlier.
He turns around, gently smiles, and says, “There’s no such thing as too old for amusement parks, but that’s not the reason why I’m here.”
“Me too.”
“Really?”
A teenage boy, who has dark brown hair and brown eyes and similar clothes to the man’s, catches their conversation and enters it by saying, “And me too. You here for the security job too?”
“Yes, I am. I saw it shown in the newspaper and showed up for it. My name’s Phillip. What’s yours?”
“My name’s Melissa. It’s nice to meet you.”
“My name’s Jackson. Same to you.”
“This job is pretty popular right now ain’t it?”
“Yeah, we got free meals, a nice little apartment to stay in, and our nice paycheck on top of that,” Jackson explains.
“Well let’s get in there and get that job. They should have enough job slots for the three of us,” Phillip says, “Have you guys been here before?”
Jackson says, “My mom and I used to come here all the time.”
“Me too. My mom, dad, and I used to come here when it first started out. I also took my kid here, it’s kind of a family tradition,” Melissa says, “What about you Phil?”
“I used to work here a few years ago, but now I’m back.”
“Why’s did you switch jobs to begin with?”
“The animatronics. They…don’t seem right.”
“You afraid of them?” Jackson says as he jumps at Phillip to try to scare him, but it doesn’t work.
“No!”
“Hahaha it’s ok. I think they’re weird too,” Melissa admits.
All three of them are interviewed, then told to wait outside.
Annie, the daughter of the park’s founder, comes out to tell them, “Congratulations! We have enough space to hire all of you!”
Phillip, Melissa, and Jackson are ecstatic to hear this.
Phillip thanks her then says, “That was fast.”
“That’s because we really need guards, especially after the incident that happened a few years ago.”
Jackson curiously asks, “Incident?”
“Yes, there were six or so kids who went missing here and never found, which is why we have given you weapons. Hopefully, you’ll never have to use them. Besides that, you only have to worry about the night which isn’t too bad because we’re on an island. So get to work. Your job starts now.”
Their first day of work goes smoothly as it should since today is only the opening day. After most of the crowd leaves, the three can go on the rides such as the Ferris wheel, roller coaster, and merry go round. Once everyone is gone, they eat dinner and watch the sunset.
While looking back at the stationary animatronics that are on their stage, Phillip says, “You don’t think these animatronics have a night mode, do you?”
Melissa imagines the animatronics walking around at night, shakes the thought off, then answers, “Probably not. Why would they?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t wanna see a friggin robotic animal walking outside my window.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jackson reassures Phillip, “Even if they walk around, it’s not like they’re going to attack us…or are they?!”
“We’ll they better not or I’m taking the boat back home with Melissa without you.”
“What if the boat doesn’t work?”
“I’ll just swim all the way back home, I don’t care.”
Melissa laughs as she gets up.
“I’m going to bed boys.”
“I’m going to. We have a long day ahead of us.”
“Sleep tight, don’t let the bunny bite.”
“Shut up!”
Night One
The three go to bed and fall asleep. As two shadowy figures watch what they know is going to happen from the lighthouse. Moments later, Phillip and only Phillip is waken up by a noise outside. He gets up and goes into the camera room to see who or what made the noise. He flips through the feeds until he finds one that has Bobbi the Bunny looking directly in it. This Bobbi looks broken with his jaw missing, parts of his fur missing, and black tears running down his face.
“Oh shit!” Phillip says as he falls back.
Phillip quickly picks up the camera tablet again and sees that Bobbi is gone. This causes to frantically flip through the feeds until he sees that Bobbi has entered the building they’re in and is at Jackson’s door. Thinking quickly, Phillip runs to Melissa’s room to grab her gun.
“Melissa, come on! Jackson’s in trouble!” he quickly says as he runs out of the room.
She doesn’t wake up for some reason which leaves Phillip to deal with the threat alone, but once he gets there, he doesn’t find Bobbi there. Not in Jackson’s room and nowhere in the small building they’re in. Confused and still frightened out of his mind, Phillip quickly goes to check the cameras again and once he does, Bobbi jumps out at him. This wakes Phillip out of his dream with a Bobbi the Bunny mascot outfit thrown at him by Jackson. Both Jackson and Melissa laugh at the distraught Phillip.
“Haha. Funny guys,” Phillip says as he throws the outfits at the both of them.
Day Two
After eating breakfast and getting dressed, Jackson takes note of the purple security guard outfit that is framed by the entrance of the building.
He asks Phillip, “What’s this purple outfit for? Is it for the head of security?”
“Nope. It was the old security guard outfit when the park first opened. I guess we’re not wearing that particular color because the park wants to separate it from the past.”
“Well the past is in the past so don’t worry about it. I’m going to get to work,” Melissa says as she’s the first one out the door.
Jackson and Phillip get to work a little bit after Jackson teases him about the animatronics when they look at them. The only reason Phillip amuses Jackson is because he really wonders if last night really happened since it felt so real, but everything is still the same as it was before. While going through the park, Melissa finds different traps set throughout the park. Traps such as electrical traps, bear traps, and traps that trigger sharp objects to be released. She gets rid of them and wonders where they could’ve came from. After eating lunch with Phillip and Jackson, she asks Phillip if he knows about it. They look through the recorded footage and it appears that the traps appeared out of nowhere.
Interview – Phillip
Annie begins the interview by saying, “Tell me about yourself.”
“I’m a hard worker especially when it comes to difficult tasks. I was actually a manager at a car shop,” Phillip responds.
“You aren’t working there anymore?”
“Well…my wife and unborn child died in a car accident not too long ago. I fell into a deep depression and my job fired me because I hadn’t come into work for a while. I’m trying to work out of my depression and into a better life. I know that this is what my wife would want.”
Night Two
It’s currently night time and a noise is made from an unknown source as the two shadowy figures in the lighthouse watch below. Melissa is the only one to wake up and gets out of her bed to investigate it with her pistol and walkie talkie in hand.
“Hello? Jackson! Phil?” Melissa calls out.
She comes across Phillip asleep on a chair in the camera room.
“Phil!” Melissa says as she shakes him.
“AAAAAAH!” he screams as he falls out of the chair.
“Haha, sorry but what are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. I swear I fell asleep in my room. What are you doing here?”
“I heard a noise coming from somewhere.”
They hear the noise again and see Mike the Monkey standing still outside Jackson’s room facing the hallway.
“Maybe it’s Jackson,” Melissa says.
“I don’t know, but be careful.”
“I will.”
Melissa walks to the animatronic monkey who has moved closer to the security room in the time it took her to get to it. It stops in front of her and curiously looks at her.
“Jackson?” she asks, “Is that you in there?”
It nods its head.
She signs in relief before telling Phillip, “It’s ok. It’s only Jacky boy,” through the walkie talkie.
Phillip sighs louder in even greater relief then tells her, “That kid loves scaring the shit out of me. Tell him that-”
“Phil?”
Phillip is mysteriously cut off so Melissa goes to see what happened to him. Once she gets there she sees that he’s been knocked out. Melissa gets closer to check on him but is quickly attacked by Jackie, the twin animatronic to Jack, from the ceiling. Her lower half and half of her body is cut off, which shows its internal systems that look more like human organs. Melissa shoots the animatronic several times to get it to stop going after her, but that doesn’t kill it as it fidgets on the ground to try to move and attack. Jackie’s brother, Jack, lunges out of the darkness and goes after Melissa now. This one in the same condition and his sister with half of him missing. Since Jack is bigger than Melissa, she dodges out of the way of his attacks and shoots him down. Melissa has run out of bullets and reloads her gun, but her reloading is interrupted by Mike the Monkey, who is broken like the other animatronics. He headbutts her, knocking her out.
School Recording – Lunchroom - One Incident
A child has just publicly pranked a bully who has been bullying him for a while. Unfortunately for the child, the bully is incredibly touchy so the bully unknowingly beats the boy to death. Phillip, as a young boy, tries to save his friend while the other children watch in terror. It’s only when the adults intervene does the beating stop. Though the bully is sent to a psychiatric doctor and said to be better, Phillip didn’t think so and held a grudge against him for the rest of their grade school life and until his day of revenge.
Day Three
Melissa jolts up from her bed and frantically looks around her room. It’s morning time now and nothing that happened last night as appeared to carry over, such as the clips of ammo and pistol on the table by Melissa being the same as they were before.
Phillip comes barging in and asks, “Are you okay?!”
“Yeah, yeah…I am,” Melissa says unsure if she really is.
Jackson overhears them and butts into their conversation, saying, “What are you two talking about?”
“The animatronics attacked us last night.”
“Really? Why aren’t the both of you dead then? You two don’t even have any marks on you.”
“I don’t know, but just check on those things for us and see what’s wrong with them,” Phillip says.
“I don’t know.”
“Jacky, please do this for us,” Melissa asks politely.
“Ok. Well I guess it wouldn’t hurt to check.”
“Thank you.”
“Thanks Jacky boy.”
Jackson goes over to the animatronics on their stage and inspects them. When he gets a good look at them, he finds an odd piece of metal that sticks out of every leg and arm of each animatronic. As soon as he fixes it, a wire comes out of the head. He fixes that part, but the arm goes back to having that metal stick out again. This happens for every animatronic so he just gives up and tries to think of something later.
One fateful day
While Phillip, at age eighteen, is driving through a rainy day with his pregnant wife, a car goes in the wrong lane and hits them dead on. His wife dies along with his unborn child. When he goes to see who’s responsible for this, he sees that the bully from his childhood is responsible. He gets angry and beats the man in front of his wife and child. The police eventually intervene and even though Phillip is able to sue the man for the physical damages, he couldn’t get him to pay for the mental damage of the loss of his grade school friend, wife, and unborn child. This was the time Phillip thought of a revenge scheme that would truly punish the man. He would even get back at the friends of the bully who did nothing while his friend was beaten.
Night 3
After a long day of hard work, they do their routine then go to bed. The two shadowy figures take their usual positions at the lighthouse to see what happens tonight. Later in the night, the camera in Jackson’s room flashes its light and wakes him up.
He grunts then says, “Can’t I get any sleep?”
Jackson gets up and goes to the camera room to see what’s going on. When he gets there, he sees Phillip flipping through the camera feeds as he seems to be looking for something.
“What the hell are you doing Phillip?”
“The animatronics are moving tonight and they took Melissa somewhere. I haven’t seen her since she went outside.”
“Dude, you seriously still think those things are alive?”
“Here, look.”
Phillip shows Jackson a camera feed that shows Annie the Antelope looking out at the city.
“Fine, I’ll go check it out.”
“Fix it better than you did last time.’
“Oh ha ha ha.”
Jackson goes out to check on the animatronic. He takes a crowbar and various other tools to fix Annie.
Phillip, through the walkie talkie, says, “Sneak up that thing. It attacks.”
“Oh please. It’s not going to do anything.”
Annie’s head turns a full one eighty once Jackson gets closer to her. It turns into a nightmare form of itself with its jaw and eye broken and its singing mic through its chest.
“Fuck my big mouth!”
Jackson quickly hits the animatronic with a crowbar in the head until it falls down and starts twitching. He fixes and moves parts of Annie around until it stops moving.
“Good job Jackson,” Phillip says over the walkie talkie.
“Yeah. Good job me.”
“I think I know where Melissa is. I think they took her into an animatronic fixing shack near the stage.”
There’s knocking at the doors by Phillip.
“I think I have company Jackson. I’ll have to go silent for a bit.”
“Good luck.”
Once Jackson makes it to the animatronic fixing shack, he finds a hidden basement has been revealed that wasn’t there before. He goes down the steps to find Melissa lying down on the floor, but once he tries to help her, a ghost-like purple man hits him over the head, knocking him out.
A Day for Revenge and Redemption
Phillip took a boat to Annie’s amusement park when it’s abandoned to do something to redeem himself for the actions he has done. The way he took revenge on the bully and his friends was extreme, to say the least. It may be coincidence or fate that one of the bully’s friends found out about what Phillip did and chased him to the island. There she fights him since she doesn’t have enough evidence to put him in jail and despite for thirst for revenge, they fight to a stalemate with both of them knocking each other out.
Day Four
As soon as he wakes up, Jackson runs into Melissa’s room to see if she’s there.
He yells, “Melissa!” as he barges into the room.
Melissa quickly wakes up, realizes where she is then says, “Jackson?”
“Oh thank God you’re ok!”
“You saw what happened last night?”
“Yeah.”
“What about Phil?”
“Oh shit, I almost forgot!”
He now rushes to Phillip’s room with Melissa. Together they barge into his room which wakes him up and makes him fall out of his bed.
“I’m good!” Phillip says on the floor.
Melissa, Jackson, and Phillip share a little laugh as Phillip gets up.
“We should probably go tell Annie about what’s happening since we’ve both experienced it,” Phillip suggests.
“You think she’ll believe us?” Melissa asks.
“I could show her the weird parts of the animatronics,” Jackson proposes.
“But she might ask what you said before and say why don’t we have any marks on us.”
“We’ll have to hope for the best then.”
Phillip knocks at the office door and says, “Annie? We need to talk to you about something important.”
They wait and few seconds and there’s no response. Phillip opens the door anyways and to their surprise, they find a rotting corpse of what appears to be Annie. The three of them are taken aback by this. They find a note by her desk that says the following; “I am so sorry I let my family’s business die so I pay my employees what I have left and take my life with it. Signed, Annie Annabelle.”
“She let her family business die?” Phillip says aloud.
“No she didn’t! There should be people coming in now,” Melissa says.
To their surprise again, they look at the window and see that the island has decayed with everything looking as if what they saw was an illusion and everything they imagined was a dream.
As they go outside and look around, Phillip says, “What the hell? Was everything we saw just a dream?”
“I don’t know. Everything feels…wrong. Like it only feels like it’s been a couple hours rather than a few days.”
Bobbie the Bunny and Annie the Antelope come out of nowhere and bite both Phillip and Melissa on the forehead. They remember everything now and their memories and feelings are tied together. They had just fought moments ago because she figured out that Phillip was the one who killed her child and the children of her friends. She found this out when he saw him walk out of the animatronic repair shack with bloody hands on the day her child went missing. Her child whose name is Jackson.
Melissa wants to beat Phillip to death, but she remembers they saw Jackson so he calls out for him and he appears before them as Peter the Puppet, an older doll animatronic they leave in the back for Halloween. Jackson has a Bobby the Bunny mask on top of his head with the appearance of the old timey style puppet.
“Avenge me mother” the puppet says, “avenge me.”
“Don’t listen to him Melissa!” Phillip says, “I know what’s it’s like to take revenge and I’m telling you it’s not worth it! I came here to bury the bodies of the children I killed to get some form of redemption. Please…forgive me.”
Melissa looks at Phillip’s sincere, upset face then says, “I…forgive you.”
“NO!” the puppet says as it attacks Phillip, but Melissa retrains it by its strings.
Phillip then takes the puppet and buries it under the ground and marks the grave for Jackson. The two then go to the spot where Phillip hid the bodies of the other kids, bury them, and mark their graves. As they look up, they see the shadowy figures in the lighthouse and see that they are themselves or another version of themselves. The figures fade away happy to know that they didn’t have to get involved.
Phillip talks to Melissa after, saying, “I’m sorry. Truly.”
“I understand how you feel,” she says, “I wanted to do something for you when Andrew was getting beat and I wanted to help you when your wife and kid died, but I couldn’t. I should be the one who should be apologizing."
“No, it’s not right. I promise you that I’ll make it up to you and your friends.”
From now on, Phillip makes friends with his past bully whose name is Leonardo and his friends. He does everything that a best friend would do for them and more. But on one morning when he goes to see Melissa at her house, he proposes to the woman whom he widowed and she says yes.
Revenge has multiple stories for just one word. It can tell a tale that infects others, brings people down, and can burn down cities, but love and forgiveness has many more stories to tell. It can tell tales that heals others, brings people together, builds civilizations, and much more. Make sure your life story is one of love, otherwise, it can and will burn down the lives of everyone around you.
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