“Lucy?”
A young woman with a flowing brown mane narrowed her emerald eyes at the hero. She gripped a sword in her hand, tainted with fresh blood. The sharp tip sat squarely on the hero’s neck, ready to take his life. The hero was full of confusion and rage. The wrinkles on his face quivered like fragile leaves. How could she have all people turn on him?
“Lucy,” he repeated in a disgusted tone. “I raised you. I trained you. I nurtured you. Is putting me in this position the way a daughter should act?”
To his surprise, she scoffed and the sword bore a little deeper. Her face was stained with dirt, but her expression was clear, full of anger, bitterness, and resentment.
“Listen here, Dempsey,” she seethed, making him recoil on the ground. She has never called him by his name. She was his daughter. The girl that called him Papa. But instead of love and admiration, hate and anger burned in her eyes like a volcano waiting to erupt.
“You adopted me, because you wanted to gain popularity for raising the daughter of a dead woman. But the things you put me through are far beyond people’s imagination. Every single day, I worked and trained and served you to gain your approval. All was for nought! How many times have you beaten me out of love? Do you beat someone you love to the point they cannot stand? Do you torture someone with words to the point they shut themselves to everyone? Do you make your daughter some servant that works day and night? All the while, people envied my life because I was the daughter of a hero.”
Dempsey clenched his jaw, his graying hair seeming to shake. His hands were trying to search for a weapon to fight back. Lucy spotted him and trembled ferociously.
“Coward!” Lucy screamed at him, kicking away the small dagger near Dempsey’s hand. “You’ve always been a scheming villain in the guise of a hero. You saved people only to get something in return! You even fabricated your past to gain sympathy from others.”
“My past is as true as the rising sun,” Dempsey countered. But his heart started to sink.
Lucy spat. “You still lie even if my sword is at your neck.” She retrieved a small scroll from her knapsack. Dempsey did not know what it was, but it was vaguely familiar.
“Your family never died because of plunderers. And you never saved them. You killed them yourself,” Lucy explained coolly. Her grin was near psychopathic when Dempsey’s skin was devoid of blood. “You killed them and created a tragic story of how you were the only survivor. You are a murderer, liar, and deceiver!”
“I have gone through hell!” Dempsey protested. “My actions are reasonable!”
“You’ve made yourself a hero out of your crime,” Lucy said. “You had no right to kill every single person in that household, whether it was your alcoholic father, your absentee mother, or your innocent baby sister.” Dempsey recoiled when Lucy elaborated his relatives, dead because of his own actions.
“Well, now everyone’s going to know.”
Dempsey broke out in a cold sweat. What does that mean?
“I sent a copy of this message to all the corners of the country. They will see the evidence that there were no plunderers on the day your parents died. They will see the evidence of your crime, which you thought you buried so long ago,” Lucy said. With a smile, she enunciated, “You are finished.” Dempsey was near fainting.
“I want to kill you on the spot,” Lucy explained. “But it’s better to see you suffer shame and pain. See how everyone who has loved you, admired you, and supported you will turn against you looking upon you with shame and disgust.”
With a swift move, Lucy sheathed her sword and put her foot on his chest. “I will spare you. I do want to see how this will turn out.” As a final reminder, she punched Dempsey until he was too weak to move. Before she left, she whispered these words to him.
“You’ve failed your family, your country, and your friends. And most of all, you’ve failed me.”
“You are not worthy of becoming anyone’s hero.”
“Goodbye, Dempsey. May your name rot.”
Points: 118
Reviews: 4
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