Revenge in Red

A cough raked out of my throat before the pain I felt enveloped my senses. I blinked but darkness stared back at me. I raised my hand to touch something, but the cold feel of plastic reached out as well. I turned my head, feeling around, but it was all plastic. That's when a sense of dread crawled up my spine. No. I was in a fucking body bag.

I clawed at it, ignoring the pain in my broken body as my breath caught in my throat because of my claustrophobia.

"Help! Help me, please! I'm alive, damn it!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, unsure if anyone would even hear my cries.

My breathing sped up and my vision swam. I was going to die here. I was going to die. I was already giving up when I heard the bag rustle from the outside and the zipper open, allowing light to flood in. I rushed out, sitting up to leave the darkness behind, my breathing still ragged.

A hand rested on my back, rubbing small circles.

"Breathe. You're okay, just breathe, Melanie."

At the sound of my name, I turned around abruptly, coming face to face with a beautiful woman. Sharp cheekbones, intelligent eyes, short brown hair styled with precision. I blinked, not knowing who she was, so I pulled away once my breathing normalized. I got out of the body bag and took a step back, not sure if she was the one who put me in it, but all I knew was that I wanted to get away, despite the ache in my legs.

She put out her arms to calm me and spoke like I was a wounded animal.

"Calm down. You can't stand for long. I need to get you to a hospital or…" She took a step forward, but I took one back, my eyes scanning for a weapon to fend her off. She paused and frowned.

"My name is Enid Hargrave." She told me, but I just cocked my head and eyed her. I didn't know that name.

She rolled her eyes and scoffed, though there was something almost amused in her expression.

"The billionaire philanthropist. The main face on Forbes list for the past three years now. The woman whose husband left her for his twenty-three-year-old assistant after seventeen years of marriage." Her voice caught on the last part, something raw and bitter flashing across her face before she smoothed it away.

"I have no idea who you are," I interrupted with a small scowl. I didn’t know this woman and what she said might just be a ploy to get me to trust her. For God’s sake I woke up in a body bag in her house.

Enid sighed and ran her hand through her short brown hair. She gestured to a chair beside her.

"I won't hurt you. Just take a seat before you collapse." She offered, but I wasn't in a trusting mood.

"And why should I trust you?" I retorted.

"Wouldn't you like to know how you're still alive? How you've been dead for six hours and somehow your heart started beating again in my laboratory?"

My lips tightened. She laid the bait and I was interested, to say the least. With tentative steps, I moved forward and took a seat, my legs collapsing beneath me. I groaned, my adrenaline crashing down and the pain settling back in. Every breath felt like knives in my ribs.

"Stay still." Enid instructed before she rushed off and came back a minute later with a tray of drugs, syringes, and some instruments. She laid it down beside us and turned to me.

"Be calm, please. I just want to check your vitals a bit before knowing what to do. This is for…"

"I'm a nurse. I know what they are," I finished for her, my head splitting from a headache. "Fuck," I mumbled, placing a hand on my head.

"You need morphine. You've gone six hours without any pain medicine after your fall. Hell, I'm shocked that you're still alive. Your chart said you had at least three broken ribs, internal bleeding, a fractured wrist…"

"How am I still alive?" I asked, my eyes closing as I felt my body failing me. The pain was too much. Like last time, my world went black.

•••••

The beeping was what woke me up. I strained against the needle in my hand and opened my eyes to white ceilings. My headache had subsided and I felt numb. No doubt thanks to morphine.

"Ah, you're finally awake. To be honest, I didn't think you'd make it through the night. Remember me?" Enid said as she came into view, dark circles under her eyes suggesting she hadn't slept.

"Are you a doctor?" I asked, my voice hoarse.

"I have a doctorate in biomedical sciences and emergency medicine training, but I don't practice clinically. I teach for the fun of it," she gave me a clipped reply as she took a seat beside my bed. "Now, to how you're still alive. I guess I'll start from the beginning."

She leaned back, studying me carefully. "You were found dead at the foot of your apartment building at 11:47 PM. Your husband was the one who found you and called the paramedics. They pronounced you dead at the scene. No pulse, no respiration, pupils fixed and dilated. You'd been dead for approximately forty-five minutes when they loaded you into the ambulance."

My stomach turned. Forty-five minutes.

"They didn't perform an autopsy because it seemed like an obvious suicide. Your husband told them you'd been depressed, that you'd threatened to jump before because of you not being able to have children." Enid's eyes narrowed. "The report says you jumped. But I'm guessing that's not what happened, is it?”

I grimaced when the memories came flooding back. Davon, his lovers, the beating, being thrown over the railing like trash.

"I didn't jump. I was thrown over," I corrected her, my eyes roaming the white linen covering my bandaged legs.

"What?" Enid sat forward, her expression shifting from clinical interest to something harder.

"My husband murdered me," I said, finally looking at her.

For a moment, she said nothing. Then her jaw tightened. "That son of a bitch."

"We need to call the police then," she said, reaching for her phone, but I grabbed her arm, stopping her.

"No. No police, please."

She looked at me incredulously. "Don't you want your husband to pay for what he did?"

"I do, but on my terms," I replied, letting go of her arm. "I want him to pay for everything he's done to me, but I want him to suffer before he gets arrested for hurting me."

"That's going to be difficult considering your situation," Enid pointed out, settling back into her seat. "You're legally dead, Melanie. Do you understand what that means?"

I stared at her. "What?"

"You have a death certificate. Your body, well, you, were released to my research program. As far as the state of New York is concerned, Melanie Monroe died last night from suicide. Your bank accounts will be frozen and transferred to your next of kin. Your husband, I'm assuming?"

The full weight of it hit me. I didn't exist anymore. Everything I'd worked for, saved, built, it was all Davon's now. The bastard.

"He gets everything," I whispered.

"Unless you come forward. But if you do that, you lose the element of surprise. He'll know you're alive, and if he tried to kill you once…”

"He'll try again," I finished. My hands clenched into fists despite the pain. "I need time. I need to heal, and then I need to make him pay."

Enid watched me carefully, something calculating in her expression.

"That's not going to be easy. You'd need money, a new identity, resources. You'd need someone willing to help you stay dead."

I looked at her, hope and desperation warring in my chest.

"Will you help me?"

She was quiet for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft but edged with steel.

"My ex-husband cleaned out our joint accounts before he left. Took eighteen million dollars that I'd earned and transferred it to the Caymans before I could stop him. By the time my lawyers caught up with him, he'd married his little girlfriend and the money was long gone." Her eyes met mine. "The law did nothing. He got away with it because he knew how to work the system. Men like that always do."

She stood up and walked to the window, her back to me. "I swore I'd never let another woman go through what I did. Never let another man get away with destroying someone just because he could." She turned back to me. "But I have conditions."

"Anything," I said.

"First, you let me study what happened to you. The Lazarus effect… the spontaneous return of circulation after resuscitation efforts have stopped, after the person is clinically dead,…is incredibly rare. You were dead for six hours before you woke up in that body bag. That shouldn't be possible. I need to understand why it happened."

I nodded.

"What else?"

"Second, we do this carefully. Methodically. You can't just walk back into his life and expect revenge to fall into your lap. You'll need to become someone else entirely. New name, new face if necessary, new identity. That takes time and money."

"How much time?"

"Years, probably. Can you be patient?"

I thought about Davon sleeping in our bed, spending my money, living his life while I was supposed to be rotting in the ground. Could I wait years?

But then I thought about how much sweeter it would be when I finally brought him to his knees. When he realized the woman he murdered had come back to destroy him.

"I can be patient," I said, a small smile tugging at my lips.

Enid studied me for another moment, then nodded.

"Then we have a deal. You become my research subject, and I'll give you the resources you need for your revenge."

She extended her hand. I took it, ignoring the pain in my fractured wrist.

"Thank you for this," I said.

"Don't thank me yet," Enid replied. "Try to get some rest. I'll get you some food, and then we'll start planning."

She walked out of the room, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

I had died. I had been thrown away like garbage. But I'd come back.

And now I had time, resources, and nothing left to lose.

Davon had no idea what was coming for him. Karma was a bitch, but he would find out that I was a bigger one.