The Bitterness of the Victor

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By Sophia Wiseman - Rose

 

 

           Do you know what no one ever tells you?

           They never tell you how bitter victory can become.

           People repeat that tired little blessing: Living well is the best revenge.

           Is it?

           Even when the defeated gather in the dark corners of memory, still whispering your name, still rewriting history until they become the victims and you the villain?

          Most people are quitters. There are always more failures than successes. That is simply mathematics.

They stole from you. They mocked you. They lied about you. They made you the sacrifice that kept their own consciences clean. People excused them because idiocy is mistaken for innocence. Failure is a kind of camouflage. The broken are believed over the whole; the weak are believed over the fortunate.

         Years pass.

         Now they are old.

          The spite remains, but their bodies have betrayed them. Their faces have collapsed into the shapes of their bitterness. They inhabit little kingdoms built from unpaid debts, nicotine-yellow curtains, stale regrets, mouldering photographs and the sweet medicinal odour of slow decay.

           Meanwhile, you live in the house they once insisted you would never own. You wear intoxicating fragrances gathered from world cities they will never visit. Time has favoured you with a beauty that seems almost supernatural, polished by success until it borders on the impossible.

          Yet every morning you wake with your jaw aching from dreams in which they are still laughing.

          You won.

          So why are they still inside your head?

          People imagine trauma fades beneath wealth, beneath love, beneath recognition.

           It doesn’t.

           Luxury muffles pain. It never silences it.

           The child they cornered and the adult they humiliated are both still standing inside you, listening to their laughter echo through every room you build.

           That is the cruellest secret.

           Success does not sever the cord. It gilds it.

          You remain connected to your tormentors by an invisible umbilical of memory, feeding on the poison they left behind decades ago.

          Sooner or later, you must either cut the cord…

          …or follow it back to its source.

          I chose the second.

          I went looking for them.

          One by one.

          Some recognised me immediately. Terror arrived before memory did. Others searched my face politely while I reminded them of the words they had spoken so casually, the little cruelties they had buried beneath comfortable lies.

         Some denied everything.

         Some laughed.

         Some cried.

         A few remembered.

         Those were the hardest.

          Age had softened none of them. It had merely disguised them beneath wrinkles, pharmaceuticals and moth-eaten cardigans that smelled faintly of unwashed old bodies and imitation lavender. The wretchedness still moved behind their eyes like something trapped beneath damp wallpaper.

         One reached for my hand and whispered that women could be so unkind to each other, as though she had merely witnessed it, as though she had never led the chorus.

         Another insisted I had always been “too sensitive.”

         Even then.

         Even with death standing patiently beside me.

         The old vocabulary remained.

         None of them believed the past could return carrying an Hermès handbag and a Lauren Bacall smile.

         None of them expected the scapegoat to come home.

         At first, the newspapers called it a mystery. An impossible sequence of unrelated deaths in an inconsequential town among elderly people with no obvious enemies.

         Neighbours described me as elegant.

         Charitable.

         Cultured.

         The police searched for motive where none could be found, because revenge is only visible if someone remembers the wound.

         My victims had forgotten.

          I never had.

         People ask why someone with everything would throw it all away.

         Love.

         Beauty.

         Money.

         Power.

         A life most people would have killed to possess.

         The answer is painfully simple.

         Because none of those things reached the place where they had left their fingerprints. Success does not heal humiliation. It merely hangs silk curtains over the bruise.

         I did not kill strangers.

         I found the right people.

         Every one of them.

         Older, frailer, slower—but unmistakably the same souls. Time had withered their flesh, but not the architecture of their cruelty. The smirk still surfaced when they believed themselves beyond consequence. The excuses came as effortlessly as breathing. We didn’t do anything wrong. It was just a joke. You were too sensitive. Surely you’ve moved on?

          No.

          I hadn’t.

          And they hadn’t changed. They had merely grown old enough for the world to mistake them for harmless.

          The moment recognition arrived, I watched the certainty drain from their faces. For the first time in their lives, they understood what they had made of another human being. Understood that they were alone with their lies and their victim. Alone with the truth and its razor sharp consequences.

         That moment was worth everything.

         Every sacrifice.

         Every luxury abandoned.

         Every headline.

         Every prison wall that may yet wait for me.

         People speak of revenge as though it is a poison that destroys the one who drinks it.

         Perhaps.

         But some poisons are medicines that cure deeper diseases.

         They made me their scapegoat.

         They built their happiness upon my terror.

          I returned the debt with interest.

         Do I regret it?

         Not for a single heartbeat.

         The only regret I carry is that justice arrived so many decades late.

         I had a beautiful life.

         I traded it for revenge.

         It was a fair exchange.

         Because when I close my eyes now, I no longer hear their laughter.

         Only silence.

         At last.

         And that peaceful silence is worth everything.

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          Sophia Wiseman-Rose (aka Sr. Sophia Rose) is a Paramedic and an Anglican novice Franciscan nun, in the UK.  Both careers have given Sophia a great deal of exposure to the extremes in life and have provided great inspiration for her.  

        She has travelled to many countries, on medical missions and for modelling (many years ago), but has spent most of her life between the USA and the UK. She is currently residing in a rural Franciscan community and will soon be moving to London to be with a community there.  

         In addition, Sophia had a few poems and short stories in editions of Black Petals Horror/Science Fiction Magazine

         The majority of her artwork can be found on her website.

  https://www.artstation.com/sophiaw-r6