The Price of Revenge My story starts out like the typical schlock that Hollywood pumps out every month. A man has everything, and in one dreadful instant, he’s lost it all. Now with nothing left to lose, the man sets out to avenge all that he’s lost and to regain his manhood. This man is stoic, brave, cunning, and intelligent, and through violence, dominance, and faux-heroism, he shows the audience that he’s still worthy of being called a man, no that he is still worthy as a human. But that’s what all these revenge power fantasies miss; no manhood, there is no humanity, nothing of value in the quest for vengeance.

The man in this story was named Luke, and it began eight years ago. I had spent the day taking my family out to the beach; as soon as the sun started setting, we began to pack up. I’ll never forget the auburn rays of light and the shimmering sea. My daughter Natalie was four years old at the time and had just become fascinated by stars, being so young she didn’t quite understand what they were. As we were leaving, she pointed at the water and asked if the little twinkling lights were stars. My wife Lydia and I found her curiosity amusing, A sign that she was going to be a bright child. As I started the car, I placed a gentle hand on the little bump forming in my wife’s stomach. She placed her’s over mine, and I knew at that moment that I was truly content.

It happened in a split second, a single point in time seared into my being for the rest of my life. One moment I was driving down the highway, taking the time to adjust the radio, and the next, my chest is screaming in pain as an immense pressure forces me into my seat. Then the weightlessness of space comes over me, and the last thing I see before it all fades to black is little shards of glass floating across my field of vision. I have the strange thought of how the headlights reflecting off them make them look like little twinkling stars.

I awoke several hours later in a hospital bed; the white rooms and beeping machines instantly made my heart sink. I tried to get up only to see that my left leg was in a cast. My questions about my wife and child were ignored the first few times until a doctor very calmly confirmed my worst fears; there were only two survivors. Me and the culprit, my antagonist, the subject of vengeance, a man named Henry Colston.