Damn You

This one will almost certainly find its way into Pink & October over the course of the five(!) “seasons” of stories I have planned for my “paranormal bounty hunters” (although the world and lore has grown rather significantly from my late-teens when I first came up with the characters.

Basically it posits a world where curses are real, and explores that a little. And yes, like most of my short stories in this form it *could* be longer, but that is not the point of them. They exist to allow me to get ideas down quickly.

So here is Damn You.

“I’ll kill you.”
How many of us, in childhood uttered those words against some perceived playground nemesis?
As if the saying of it would make it so.
Well, as it turns out, it does.
Everyone is born with the ability to issue one curse in the course of their lives.
But very very few realise or ever learn of this.
Most are used up long before adulthood.
Responses to taunts or bullying in the playground after being pushed over or made to feel small.
Our one comeback, our sole agency, to spit words of hate and fury at our aggressor.
And we mean it.
We genuinely mean it with all our being in that one second.
Yet in shouting a response we exhaust our one precious curse.
Futilely wasting it on a meaningless bully.
When its power is limited to that of a child.
The longer a person holds back on cursing someone, the stronger its effects will be.
Patience rewards potency.
So, for boys at least, lacking even a modicum of self-control they throw away their ability to inflict true misery on another individual.
Merely in favour of saving face.
For ‘respect’.
That is not to say that the words of vengeance do not take hold when shouted after a scuffle.
You will indeed be responsible for that person’s ultimate end.
But it will be after they have lived a long, and likely happy life.
You may find employment at the cigarette manufacturer of the brand smoked by your target.
Or at the corporate headquarters of a large alcohol company.
Perhaps you work in sales, or accounting, or even in the warehouse.
Wherever you are placed, you help the company shift its product.
From warehouse, to shop and into their lungs, or livers.
Or maybe you work at software house.
Developing user-interfaces, or back-end systems.
And despite your best efforts, tiny bugs always remain in your code.
Minor inconveniences that add just that tiny bit more to your cursee’s blood pressure.
Just enough, along with the rest of modern life to nudge him towards that stroke.
In some small way you will have had your revenge, without even being aware of it.
You’ve not been fully responsible for their passing, but you certainly contributed to it.
Maybe by one-tenth of one-percent.
Girls however are built differently.
Educated from an early age to show restraint.
Drilled in de-escalation.
To hold back.
To watch what they say, and who they say it to.
After a lifetime of restraint.
Of internalising every slight.
Every instance of misogyny.
Every micro-aggression.
The power these women wield can be formidable.
Not for nothing does the archetype exist of the old woman who is able to wreak terrible vengeance on someone.
Women who have retained their power for decades.
Self-control.
Discipline.
And patience.
The strength of what they can wield increases.
Given fuel from every put-down or instance of abuse.
Every time the system fails them.
Individually and collectively.
Each gains more power.
Until when they choose to, for reasons as varied as the individual they curse, the effect will be devastating.
Some even possess sufficient potential to inflict the curse on an individual’s descendants.
The so called “family curse”.
So, you ask, if there is this potential army of women able to utterly lay waste to an individual, or their bloodline, why do they not?
Setting aside numbers, for there are truly few who make it to elder status with their curse still intact.
But some do.
However, long ago, the rich and powerful also learnt of our ability to curse each other.
And, being of few morals driven only by self-preservation they realised that countermeasures were necessary.
Centuries of research were undertaken.
Entire monastic orders created to determine means and methods of deflecting or avoiding the wrath of a wronged women.
Similarly, such orders to constrain female power were ordained.
Sisterhoods cloistered and contained.
Controlled.
The results speak for themselves.
How is it that the very worst of us seem to accede to positions of power unchallenged?
When all it would take is one old woman to strike them down.
How is it they still live, and thrive while billions wither?
The solution the elite of old discovered was a simple as it is brutal.
Sacrifices.
Human shields.
A firewall of flesh and bone between themselves and the energy directed toward them.
Battalions of victims selected sometimes at random, more usually by lineage to soak up the curse as it is uttered.
It was discovered soon after the foundation of the brotherhoods that individuals whose ancestors once bore a curse seemed more susceptible to attract another.
So entire family lines were monitored and managed.
Minor curses inflicted on them every few generations, to ensure this hereditary was passed down.
An unknowing, unwitting resource of the rich to allow them to retain their positions.
They believe themselves untouchable.
Sufficiently insulated by the number of praetorian guards the have identified in the general public.
And the belief that their enemies would never knowingly sacrifice thousands of their own to topple them.
But they are wrong.
In one lifetime we can train and prepare sufficient of us to penetrate their defences.
Eighty years and we can upend the system that has protected them for centuries.
Three generations of warrior women is all it will take.
Shock troops to provide the ultimate shock.
They may be many, but we are legion.