I need your absolute best revenge stories for my own catharsis.

Cafe Society
61

From Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny, speaking about an alien race, the Pei’ans.

“Some of them actually keep vengeance books — long, elaborate lists of those who require a comeuppance — in order to keep track of everyone they intend to punish, complete with progress reports on the status of each vengeance scheme. A piece of vengeance isn’t worth much to a Pei’an unless it’s complicated, carefully planned and put into motion, and occurs with fiendish precision many years after the affront which stimulated it. It was explained to me that the fun of it is really in the planning and the anticipation. The actual death, madness, disfigurement or humiliation which results is quite secondary to this. Marling once confided in me that he had three going which had lasted over a thousand years apiece, and that’s no record. It’s a way of life, really. It comforts one, providing a cheering object of contemplation when all other things are going poorly; it renders a certain satisfaction as the factors line themselves up, one by one — little triumphs, as it were — leading up to the time of fulfillment; and there is an esthetic pleasure to be had — some even say a mystical experience — when the situation occurs and the carefully wrought boom is lowered.”

That’s what you’re looking four,it sounds like.

62

I never actually put this in place, but I spent hours plotting it, and finding the proper venues for it.

I have large feet. Most people, when I say this in person, take a look at my feet and tell me, “No, dude. You have huge feet.” I don’t, really. I wear 13 double extra wide. You can actually find those in many footwear stores. My father wears 16 wides. Those are hard shoes to find.

But simply finding the shoe in that size isn’t enough - it has to fit, and that’s something that even a proper size can’t guarantee. So, for me, shoe shopping is a frustrating experience. And expensive. Since most of the offshore shoe companies don’t do even wide sizes, let alone the EE sizes.

I spent a day in Norfolk shopping for shoes and finally found a pair that fit, and were only winceworthy for price. And then when I brought them back to ship, where I was living at the time, they got stolen within 24 hours of showing up there.

The Navy has a tradition of thieves having problems when they get found. Traditionally, they have problems climbing stairs (ladders) and will trip often going through watertight doors. As cathartic as that would have been to plan, I didn’t trust myself or my temper to keep it within acceptable levels. I was already having problems with depression and my temper then, and I’d already come close to killing someone in a fury before. I didn’t want to do that, and if I’d taken a dogging wrench to the jerk who stole my sneakers I’m not sure I’d have stopped while he was still breathing.

So, I thought about it for a while, while trying to figure out who it was who stole the sneakers. I spent a lot more time in the berthing complex, and after the first week, people just ‘walking through’ stopped. There is this to be said for having a reputation for having an explosive temper: People will give you a wide berth, if you’re giving them the third degree.

I never did ‘find’ the thief. I’m not sure whether I regret that or am grateful.

If I had found him I was planning to take him out for a night on the town. Or as many as proved necessary to get him to relax around me. And get him thoroughly, completely, falling-down shit-faced drunk. And in that state, I was going to talk him into getting a tattoo. That I would also pay for.

I’d get him to agree to let me choose the design. (Part of the reason he had to be falling-down shit-faced drunk for this to work.)

And I found a small-time tattoo artist who would let me bring someone drunk in, to get any tattoo I wanted. Esp. once I described the circumstances. To say that I think it was unlicensed is understating things.

But the idea of how his life would suck once he returned to the ship with the word, “THIEF” tattooed in the middle of his forehead kept me warm for many a night.