A Palette of Vengeance

Short Story | Psychological Thriller

Hello and welcome to the Fiction Section of Notes from the Town Hermit. I write literary and slipstream fiction and fantasy focusing on themes of identity and what it means to be human through a lyrical and poetic writing style. Subscribe for free to enjoy more stories.

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They are late.

From the corner, I watch her perfectly manicured nails tap upon the glass-top table in a quick, sporadic rhythm until I am almost frantic. I’ve been refilling her wineglass as she has sat waiting at the large, round table in our private room for the past half an hour. A storm gathers in her arched brows with each passing minute.

The dim lantern light flickers, casting shifting shadows on her angled face, making her look almost gargoyle-like. Lines etched by time deepen with each flicker, as if struggling to hold onto a human façade.

It does nothing to calm the rapid beating of my heart. She takes another big sip of wine, her hand steady despite the growing storm in her eyes.

I know they will not come. Their bodies now serve only as food for fish in the Thames. The water there needed no further pollution, but better such villains dirty the river rather than the world.

She waves me over with a flick of her wrist, her impatience palpable.

So, it begins.

“What can I do for you, madam?” I curse the slight tremble in my voice and hope she doesn’t read the anxiety there.

What awaits at the road’s end? Would different steps have yielded a different outcome? Or has fate always determined that I end up in this very room with her? It’s too late for that train of thought now. Fate or not, I have come too far to falter now.

I step back again, taking care to hide in the shadow of one of those gaudy, contorted statues the owner thinks gives this restaurant an air of sophistication. Not looking at its faceless shape only deepens the weight it spreads over me; I struggle to lift my shoulders and straighten my spine.

She appears too preoccupied with her own worries to pay any attention to mine. She runs a hand through her dark hair and swishes the bit of wine left. “This is the Amontillado, right?”

“Yes, madam. 1984.” A special bottle for a special night.

She drains her glass. “Inform me the moment Sir Wilde and his secretary arrive.”

Ah yes, the fish food.

I stare at her and wipe my face of expression, feigning ignorance. She smacks her lips before speaking, the sound sharper with impatience.

“Tsk. The art curator, Oliver Wilde? Even someone of your lowly rank must have heard of him. The youngest curator to be awarded the Order of Merit? Really, I am surprised at you.”

“Ah…” Can she see the beads of sweat forming on my brow? Mother in heaven, save me.

“Why are you the sole server for this room? I have been a patron here these five years, always in this very room, and always there are no less than three servers. You do know who I am, do you not?”

Her lip-smacking cuts through the air, grating against the ticking of the oversized clock, driving me mad. I wish the room was closer to the restaurant hub. I would welcome the indistinct chatter and clatter of dishes.

I swallow, too obviously, I think with some dismay. “Yes, Madam Emyra. Forgive me. My fellow servers fell ill suddenly. It’s only me tonight.” My voice steadies. My heavenly mother hears my prayers. “But I am skilled and attentive. You won’t notice any lapse in quality.”

She looks at me for the first time, her sharp eyes darting back and forth across my face. “You are well spoken for one of your station.” A hint of grudging admiration tinges her voice.

“My mother grew up near Kensington and attended university before we fell on hard times. She still raised me to be well-learned.”

“Hmm.”

I lick my lips; their surface makes me think of sand. “She taught me some art, as a matter of fact, for that is what she studied.” My mother, buried for many years now. Her taste for higher things never abated, our descent into poverty notwithstanding. Even at her deathbed, as I knelt beside her, she exhaled, “Remember. Remember, you were born for greater things.”

But I wasn’t. I was born for nothing more than this.

“Oh? Yet you do not know the name of Sir Oliver Wilde. Perhaps her studies were insufficient, or you both suffer from the limited intelligence so commonplace in your kind,” she says. I struggle to understand her as her speech begins to run together, like so many cascading waves as they crash upon the shore. Her head nods. The wine is at last taking effect.

The shadows have lengthened even as we spoke, and the gargoyle features I earlier imagined on her seem now to etch themselves onto her face. Each time she lifts the glass to her lips, the glow through the liquid sets different shades of light across the ceiling, casting me back to Mother's studio, the stained-glass lamp she saved up for months to buy, the way the colors danced across her canvases as we stayed up late painting together, before that conniving thief extinguished her light. A fire brims to the surface until I am blinded by it.

No. I have waited too long to ruin it with haste now.

I glance at the clock. Nearly an hour since she sat down. Thirty-four minutes since she started on the Amontillado. She has already finished more than half the bottle, as I refill for her once more. I think to myself it is perhaps time to replace the candles, yet my feet cling now to the floor, and I cannot lift them. All I hear is the ticking of the clock, the smacking of her lips, the pounding in my ears.

“She may have been able to educate me on more recent art news, had she not passed a few years ago,” I say, the words stumbling over each other almost incoherently.

“Hmm.”

“Yes, she did her studies at The Royal College of Art,” I continue; my nervousness elevates to excitement, like erratic lines in a burgeoning artist’s hand that tauten into bold strokes as his skill and confidence grow. “Where you teach, Madame Emyra, if I am not mistaken.”

I am not.

Her eyes fix then upon my face with a hint of dawning realization.

Powerless. As my mother was in those last days, untouched paintbrushes gathering dust, crumbled rejection letters piled in the corner as she sobbed.

“Ah, you see now.” I step toward her bit by bit until I am close enough for the lantern to illuminate the features of my face, so like my mother’s—a face I hope she has not been able to forget. My heart pounds in my ears as I step closer, the knife heavy in my sweat-slicked palm. I imagine my mother's spirit beside me, urging me on, as I give voice to the words that have burned inside me for so long. “My mother, your student. You remember. Sibyl Durbeyfield. ‘A bright young student who showed great promise,’ you said to her, before you stole her work, and upon it built your success while using your position to silence her.”

Madame Emyra’s mouth moves—at first no sound issues, then with an effort, she croaks, “That girl.” She licks her cracked lips with a swelling tongue. “Wanted shortcuts. Lying wench,” she forces out before she falls silent once more.

Indeed, she can say nothing now; she has taken too much wine: wine I had laced with a paralytic poison sealing her body and mouth. Eyes flit to the door. A twitch of her mouth. But no, she would listen to me now. She would learn what it was to be voiceless. I ignore her last words, and smile.

“No one will come. You ask for complete privacy when you dine here. In the room far from the hearing of others. You do not know how long I have watched you from the shadows. Madame.” I draw out the knife hidden in the folds of my skirts. Her eyes widen. “I have awaited this day for many years. Because of your thievery, my mother lost her chance to share her gift, and got thrown from the school when she tried to speak, leaving us deep in debt, leaving her to pine away the rest of her life for what could have been. This blade has already savored the sweet flesh of your Sir Oliver, who aided your triumph in the art world. Together you shall meet a greater judge than I, but I will at least be the one to send you to Him.” My heart leaps as I finger the knife, and step closer and closer until I am looking down at her. I want my face to be the last thing she sees.

“Mother, may you rest in peace now,” I whisper, as I lift the knife above my head.

“Who was the server in this room?” The officer asks as he takes down notes of the scene. But for the pooled blood at her feet, the famous artist and professor might be taking a rest, still seated at the table. “The ones you have for private rooms are regular workers, aren’t they?”

“No, she was a replacement sent at the last minute. We know nothing about her. She said only that her name was Sibyl.”

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The Story Behind the Story

Palette of Vengeance is not a tale I would normally set out to write. I don’t write or even read psychological thriller or suspense, and I don’t usually have this much dialogue in my short stories. I wrote it for the NYC Midnight 2022 short story contest, in which contestants are to write a story in an assigned genre under a time constraint.

Flummoxed, I Googled “How to write suspense,” and “What makes a story suspenseful,” and wailed about my limited writing skills. What emerged from all that was this strange, little tale of revenge. While I didn’t make it past the first round of the competition, being forced out of my comfort zone was still an enriching experience.

On re-reading it for consideration to be posted here, I revised the dialogue and tightened the prose, but otherwise left it more or less the way it was.

I did add the barest hint of doubt on the narrator’s story by having Madame Emyra say, “Wanted shortcuts. Lying wench,” about the mother. One aspect I enjoy playing with when using first-person point of view is the unreliable narrator. I wanted to throw in a dash of ambiguity about the server’s story, which can lead to questions about the morality of her actions and motivations.

There’s also some irony in the statement, “Wanted shortcuts.” I wanted that questioned, considering Madame Emrya’s position of wealth and privilege.

The themes I played with here were: class and power imbalances, the reversal of roles, justice and morality, fate and choice, the extremes grief can drive a person to.