Got Cha!

By

Garry Engkent

[Prologue: This is a true story—okay, not quite. I changed a few facts and details even though my therapist suggested the whole truth and nothing but the truth as a kind of confessional to ease the stress. “Confession is good for mental health.” I insisted on not giving real names, not in first person. Just Tom, Dick and Harry. To give some distance, perspective. My female therapist sighed. It has been a tough six months for both of us here in the institute.]

On a Wednesday, he killed his three closest friends—violently, mercilessly, deliberately.

Why?

Twenty years ago, he and his buddies played a childish game on an old woman.

“Hey, your shoelace is undone,” he said, pointing down at her shoes.

Automatically, the old lady looked down.

“Made you look!” he laughed, and his pals joined in to humiliate the white-haired woman more.

When this trick was played, many times before with his friends taking turns, the tricked person looked embarrassed at being caught in such a childish game and more often than not cursed them. Then they moved on down the street.

But this old bird stood there, giving all four of them a stern look as if she could see into their young souls. “You shouldn’t fool an old woman, you rascal.”

Of all the days, this was the day he took exception. He didn’t walk away, as usual, and laughed loudly for effect. He pushed the old woman. Except that she was fast in taking his wrist and twisted. As his arm bent, making him off balanced, she tripped him. The thirteen-year-old fell flat on his face.

He heard laughter. From his three friends: Tom, Dick and Harry.

Still lying on the dirty cement sidewalk, he heard the old lady: “Remember, your friends will always be laughing behind your back. My blessing upon you.”

Then she hobbled away. By the time he got up, she was lost in the crowded sidewalk.

He could not get her words out of his head. He suspected his friends of laughing at him—a week later, a month later, a year later… He would feel the anger, the humiliation as if it were happening afresh. “Jackie got beaten by an old lady! Ha, ha, ha!”

Thirty years later, with his now-old friends dead, he thought he could have silence, have peace, have escape. However, their laughter echoed and bounced in his skull.

An old witch’s curse is forever. Oh, Nemesis!