A Prom Queen’s Revenge

Kody Boye

            She’d been set up at that after-prom party and now, Kathy Swanson was fully aware of the mistake that had lured her into one of the most embarrassing and humiliating moments of her life. 

            She and her so-called “boyfriend” had gone to this party that a few of their friends  threw.  It was at the grandest, most luxurious mansion in town, and only the coolest, most popular teenagers had been invited.  Kathy and her “boyfriend,” Kevin, had been voted King and Queen of the Prom, and they’d gone to the party to celebrate.

            The red carpet had been rolled out for them. . . .

            But it had been no special occasion.  No special event would have started out so well, and ended so badly.

            Somehow her “friends” had put together a video of Kathy and a guy making out.  Obviously via computer, they had done this.  The video was bad, really bad.  It was actually pornographic.

            They had made her look like a slut, making out with another guy when she already had a boyfriend.

            Kevin had been so furious that, in front of everybody there, he had ripped off her dress, forced her to the floor and raped her!

            They had laughed, and they had done nothing to help her.  There was no help to be had for Kathy that night, no help at all.

            And when she had run out of that big house, screaming bloody murder at the top of her lungs, and down to the police station, the police had done very little.  She’d told them she’d just been raped by her boyfriend. After they’d taken swabs from her vagina, trying to procure sperm, they said she was lying.

            Lying . . .

They said she was lying about being raped!  The whole town was out to get her, the whole entire town. 

When she’d told her parents, they hadn’t believed her either.  They hadn’t even liked the idea of her “going to some party with a boy.” They instantly grounded her.

              No one had believed Kathy.  She had tried several times to go back to the police, and to convince her parents.  She even went to several doctors, trying to prove her case.  For three days she hadn’t showered, trying to save the traces of sperm that might still be in her vagina.

            It was only after the first week that she’d been laughed at by everyone she told, that she realized no one would ever believe her.  No one would believe Kathy Swanson—who’d been voted “Most Popular” in the High School yearbook four years in a row— head of the cheerleading squad, the prettiest girl in school, and the girlfriend of Kevin Sparks—the most popular guy in school—had been raped.

            As she sat in the park, under a large oak tree, she wept for the fears and trials she was now going through.  She’d been assigned to go to the school counselor every day till she “got over this.”

And “this” had happened two weeks ago.

            She decided she would skip school till she knew what to do.

            Her parents were no big help in this matter, none at all.  They’d grounded her from her cell phone, her laptop, going to the mall; from everything she enjoyed.  They had suggested she be counseled for this “new problem” that had suddenly come up in her life.  And the counselor was as big a help as her parents.

            Kevin had since broken up with Kathy and was now dating some other girl.  Well . . . That was the rumor, anyway.  If it was another plan to humiliate Kathy, it was working!

            “A slut, most likely,” she muttered to herself as she wiped her tears on her pink blouse.  It would be stained from all her crying, but right now, she didn’t care.  She didn’t care about anything in the world.  “I hate you, Kevin!”

            She did hate him.  Before, when they’d had little fights, she’d told her friends she hated Kevin.  But the two of them had always made up.  In the end, they’d always made up.

            The diamond ring he’d given to her as a “promise,” (of engagement) and she’d kept it.  She still wasn’t sure if he was the sole source of the problem they were having right now, but she still blamed him.

            The ring would stay on her finger till she could figure this all out, or till it became official the two of them had broken up. She was still unsure why this had actually happened.

            Maybe he raped me because he was angry . . . I tried to tell him it wasn’t me in that video . . . But the girl had looked so much like me.

            Whoever the computer genius was, who had put Kathy’s face on another girl, or  had found a look-alike, Kathy didn’t know.  She just wanted to forget this whole thing!

            No, she didn’t.

            She wanted revenge.

            Days she spent in the park, and nights in the cemetery near the old gas station.  Now that the new cemetery had been built, nobody ever went into this old one.  It was just too . . . abnormal to go there.

            Now, as the moon was fully in the sky, lost in its own orb of light, Kathy leaned against a large gravestone.  In the few weeks she’d been staying here, she had come to know Erma, and she treated Erma like she was a real person.  Erma had told her (not actually told her; it was more like Kathy “guessing”) she herself had been the victim of the same type of crime as Kathy.  It seemed like they were twins, separated from birth, yet born forty years apart.

            Normally it would seem morbid for Kathy (or anybody) to talk to a corpse, much less one who’d been eaten by the worms a long time ago.  She, a once-popular teenage girl, was reduced to talking to a gravestone . . .

            How pathetic.

            “At least Erma keeps me company,” Kathy said with a laugh as she hugged her knees, rocking back and forth on the grave, “Not like those guys . . . Who thought I was lying.”

            Maybe nobody believed her because nobody wanted to.  They all gave her weird looks, or fake smiles, then burst into laughter.  It was like she was a standup comic, trying to make a buck off a bad joke.

            She wasn’t trying to be funny, if people had perceived her that way.  This could be their way of getting back at her for being more popular than them!

            Kathy didn’t doubt that, not for a bit.  All of those cheerleaders and drama queens had wanted to get back at her for stealing the guy they all wanted. 

            She shivered as one of the occasional cool, late night breezes came up.  That was the downside to being outside at night: it was cold.

            She shook her head, sighing as she pulled the small blanket she’d found in the park over her.

            That night she would fall asleep with visions of death . . . the death of those who’d humiliated her.

            Kathy Swanson, the girl who’d supposedly been kidnapped (as the news reports said,) was now walking around the local “All-Around-Buy” store. 

            The store clerk wondered why she—a teenage girl, who so closely resembled Kathy Swanson—was walking around a store that sold no cool clothes, makeup or nail accessories.  He quickly discounted that when she looked up at him, with a smile and  wave.  He turned around and went back to work.

            Well, at least that worked, Kathy muttered to herself.  Hope I never have to flirt with an old man again!

            The clerk hadn’t been so old, maybe thirty, but still, between eighteen and thirty was twelve years of time, experience, and other things she’d rather not think about right now.

            Kathy browsed through the aisles like she was a normal, average person.  She’d dyed her hair and wore no makeup to make sure that nobody recognized her.  That clerk had been close, so she’d done the only thing she could do: flirt.

            She was, in essence, what some people called a “dumb blonde;” still, she was far from dumb.  How could a “dumb blonde” so cleverly trick that man?  She laughed to herself as she stopped before an aisle of belts.

            Belts . . . she thought.  They could come in handy.

            She grabbed several belts without realizing what she was doing, but she knew she had to have them.  There was an inner calling for her to pick certain ones.  Men’s belts, they were . . . the nice, thick kind that wouldn’t break very easily.

            As she went down the aisle, she continued to find things that could be useful, but at the same time, not useful at all.  These were common man items: hammers, nails, screwdrivers.

            Then she saw the large knife.  Beautiful was the only word to describe it, with its gleaming, black handle and the shiny, silver-dyed blade.  That was what she wanted.

            But with the slight budget she was on, she’d never be able to afford it.

            She peered around to see if there were cameras.

            There weren’t.

            Very carefully, she slipped the knife into her large pants pocket. She made sure that it was concealed, then walked to the front counter.

            As the clerk rung her up items, Kathy noticed he looked oddly at the amount of belts.  He seemed to study them several times before placing them all in the bag.

            “Here you go, miss,” he said as he handed her the bag. Then he gripped her shoulder.  “Maybe me and you could go somewhere after my shift, huh?”

            “Pervert!” she yelled, as she ran out of the store.

            That was the last the man saw of the girl he suspected was Kathy Swanson.

            It had been orchestrated in the most brilliant manner. The warehouse was the perfect place to kill them, and now, she had just made the call.

            “Come on down to the old warehouse . . . Say what happened to Kathy Swanson, and I’ll drop the money.  Tell anyone you’re here and I’ll personally kill you.  Also . . . Bring all of the friends who helped you that night.”

            Now, Kathy sat up in the rafters that criss-crossed near the top of the small warehouse.  The building was so small, she only had to swing down to get back on the ground.  She wouldn’t even be hurt.

            As she waited, she became tense.  The gun she held had been procured from a low-class farmer.  It was a standard pistol, the type police officers would have used.  He probably was a retired cop, she thought, but she didn’t dwell on it.

            They were coming.

            She could feel them.

            As the three guys walked in, she stood up on the rafters.  She watched, as from behind them came the fourth.

            Kevin . . .

            If she said that out loud, it would have come out poisonous; so poisonous, it would have sounded liked blasphemy.  Now he would get his, she would make sure of that.

            “So,” Kevin, the presumed leader, said, “Whoever you are…are you really here, or is this just some kind of joke?”

            Kathy shifted her weight on the wooden beam, so the guys looked around.

            “All right, it’s your game,” Kevin said, as he sat on a wooden crate. “Yeah, that was Justin, Tim and Mike who helped me.  They wanted to get back at Kathy because she was being a slut.  She was probably sleeping with that other guy when she kept saying she couldn’t go out with me.  And when she and I went to the prom . . .” Here he trailed off and laughed.

            “They played the fake tape,” he said.  “Oh, she was a great look-alike, that girl!  Yeah, it was my plan.  I found the girl, paid her a lot, both for the movie and her ‘services.’ And when the dance came . . . Oh, I had wanted to fuck Kathy in front of everybody for so long!  I can’t believe she didn’t realize she was the only girl there.  It was perfect, so, so perfect!”

            Kathy couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.  Kevin, her Kevin, had orchestrated this entire thing!  Anger burned in her veins, and that was when she did it.  What would end them for good.

            She dropped her ring.

            As it landed, the band cracked.  When Kevin bent to examine it, he froze.

            “Oh, my God.”

            Three gunshots went off, and his three friends fell.  All shots to the chest, “lucky” ones that killed one guy instantly, but left the other guys moaning and writhing in agony.

            Laughing, Kathy jumped down from the rafters and aimed the gun at Kevin.

            “K-K-K-Kathy . . .” As he picked up the ring’s cracked band, light reflected in his face. He looked terrified. “W-W-Why?”

            “Why?” Waving the gun, she advanced upon Kevin.  “Why did you do this to me, Kevin? If you didn’t want me anymore, why couldn’t you just break up with me?”

            One of her scuffed white shoes touched the pool of spreading crimson and was forever stained.  She only glanced at the blood before looking back at Kevin.

            “Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded.

            “Kathy . . . I love you, hon.” Kevin’s eyes filled with tears.  “Please . . . Just put the gun down, please!” Hands raised, he backed away from her.

            “Get on the bench.”

            “What?”

            “Get on the bench!” she yelled.

            He backed away, almost fell on the bench. He lay down as Kathy waved the gun again.  Then she pulled the belts out of the bag she’d stored beneath the bench.

She began tying him up.

            “What’re you doing?”

            “What you deserve.”

            But as Kathy pulled the knife and drew the tip across his chest, one of Kevin’s wounded friends was watching.  Gasping in pain, he managed to find his cell.  He dialed 911 before losing consciousness.

            When she was finished with Kevin, Kathy left the warehouse, smiling.  Her hands were covered with blood.  She hadn’t killed him: that would’ve been too easy.  She had promised that she would forgive him, as soon as he recovered from his terror.

            Up the driveway, a police car was coming.  When the car finally stopped, the two officers got out, pulling their guns out on Kathy.

            “Freeze! You’re under arrest,” one cop said.

            Kathy could only frown.  She hadn’t planned on this . . . No.  This was another of Kevin’s schemes.

            She wouldn’t let him have his way.

            “I said, you’re under arrest!” the cop said.

            “Only for a broken heart.”

            She placed the gun under her chin and fired.

Kody Boye is a fourteen-year-old author who's been writing ever since he was seven years old. He only recently branched into the horror genre and writes horror fiction in his spare time. His website is at www.freewebs.com/kodyboye, and he freely is open to questions that may be sent to the email that he provides on the website.