Quentin Tarantino is a genius in my opinion. If Kill Bill does not properly demonstrate his creative dexterity, I don’t know what does. (Though I am wondering how Django Unchained will turn out; damn right I’m gonna see it!) The allure of Kill Bill, in my opinion, lies in the tale of Beatrix Kiddo, the Bride. That first image of her lying on the ground, panting and bloody, coupled with the polarity of her at the end, still panting and bloody but stronger now, piques the mind of a girl like me. I can only wish to create a character as compelling as the one Uma Thurman brought to life.

Kill Bill entered my life in 2003 when I was a freshman in college and dating a man who was nearly a decade older than I was. He was my first in everything. I was young. I loved him.

So you can guess I was pissed when I found out he was cheating on me. Bastard! oh well.

So I did what any nerd girl writer who has been jilted would do. I wrote a story about it. Fictional but inspired by actual events. Like to hear it? Hear it go!

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Prelude

The pain she felt was like oppression. It tied down her every muscle, every tendon, and it felt like a thousand agonies when she turned and lifted her head to look at her assailant. The smug look in his brown eyes—brown eyes could at one time stare into endlessly and thought were beautiful—burned some of that pain away as adrenaline made its healing track through her veins.

She was down right now, being held down by one of her assailant’s henchmen, but she wasn’t going to stay down. It wasn’t her way.

It had been a strange set of events that had landed her at this moment. One night, she’d stumbled upon the indiscretions this same man standing over her with a gun in his only hand. He had been cheating on her for several months, and when she had tried to show her disapproval in a more physical manner (by kicking his ass), his bodyguards had surfaced to remove her from scene. In the attempt to shake her down, they were accosted by two guys and a curly-haired brunette who kicked their beefy, overpaid and pampered asses. For their good deed, she found herself repaying the deed by becoming a domestic in the infamous Munsey House. Before she had realized what she was doing, she had ended up inadvertently making friends with some of her deceitful ex-boyfriend’s mortal enemies. Not to mention living in the spacious mansion of one.

It was a small world, after all.

But her experiences there were not without their lessons. Karate lessons, to be precise. By day, she picked up after a man she hardly saw in the light of day without incident and his baby sister, who had become her best friend. And by night, she strengthened her body and mind with martial arts. It didn’t take long before the idea of revenge blossomed in her head. (Too bad she hadn’t read the disclaimer about the consequences. Would have helped, wouldn’t it?)

“So you thought that you were going to drop in here like some kind of fucking superhero and beat me didn’t you?” he asked, his voice echoing throughout the high-ceilinged room. Her nostrils flared out of anger, but she didn’t answer. She didn’t feel like dignifying that with an answer—which was enough for him. He cackled and stepped around her. He’s really getting off on this beating me down and shit, she mused. She glared at his pricey leather loafers spotted with blood and tried not to think about whose blood that was. Fucker.

As if he could read her ill thoughts about him, he placed his foot deliberately on her flattened hand. She heard the crush and crackle of her own bones and thought of something else to avenge.

“Leave her alone!” cried the girl tied up in the chair behind him. The reason why she was here. She tried not to look at the blonde because the bruises and cuts on her beautiful face would have angered her past any rational thought. And she had to keep her head in the game as much as she could. “You’ve hurt her enough.”

As if the young blonde with the large blue eyes in bondage were a mere fly skimming across his coveted morning cup of Maxwell House coffee, he flicked a hand at one of his associates. Her indignant cries were soon silenced with duct tape. Anger burned in her belly at the sound of the blonde struggling against the rope and tape. She added that to the list of things he would surely pay for.

Once that little irritation was taken care of, he looked down at her and continued speaking in that same impudent tone.

“I must say, I didn’t think you were capable of even getting in here,” he admitted as he paced around her body. “You were never known for your fighting skills. Always were a scaredy cat.” He tapped his chin pensively with the tip of the gun barrel. “I guess you’ve changed it up a little. But not enough to beat me, baby.”

Goddamn. He called her baby. He had some nerve. But that was the kind of smart-ass thing he was famous for. “You forgot,” she said in a deep, husky voice that shocked herself and dimly made her think of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, “we fought before and it didn’t have such a favorable outcome for you.” She mustered up some buried defiance and smugness of her own. “You’re still missing a hand, aren’t you?”

Above her head somewhere, she heard someone snicker in the silence that had fallen. Her lips curved at that sound. She heard his yells for quiet and the sound of a fist making contact on flesh. Rapid footsteps echoed around her then she felt the toe of his shoe in her ribs. She gritted her teeth against the pain as it assaulted her body again. Instead of focusing on the pain, she fixated on the triumph of it. She’d wounded him without lifting a finger and he’d lashed out at her because of it. Sticks and stones her newly toned ass.

“Shut up!” he yelled at her tense, prostrate form. “You shut up before I kick you again.”

“The truth hurts, doesn’t it?” she inquired, listening to his heavy breaths as she rode on her triumph. Prudence told her to stay quiet and bide her time until the others made it there, but her mouth ran on despite itself. Come on cavalry! Anytime now… “I may be down on the ground here about to die but you’ll live on with the knowledge that I amputated you. I made you a cripple with a mere flick of my wrist. I cut off your calculating, cheating, fornicating right hand—and it felt so fucking good.”

“It’s not going to feel good when I kill you, you can be sure of that,” he spat at her. “That motherfucker Mark Munsey is going to regret the day he sent you after me, bitch.”

“Mark has nothing to do with this,” she said firmly. “So putting him into the middle is not going to justify what you’re doing.”

He chuckled sardonically at her statement. “Oh don’t even go there. You’re a tool to him, just as much as the women he plays with on a daily basis.” At that, the blonde tried to refute the claims about her big brother, but they only came out as a string of intelligible, muffled words. A nudge with a semiautomatic had her going quiet. “He used you to get back at me because you are too easily manipulated to think for yourself. You were a tool that fell right into his hands. You mean shit to him.”

Even though she knew intellectually that he only spoke those words to get under her skin, the possibility of the veracity in them burned her. She thought of the seemingly unflappable, sometimes aloof, and shrewd young man in question and found that she didn’t know what he was capable of. And that one fact almost loosened her grip on everything she’d built during the past several months. Hastily, she pushed it aside, knowing that it was best handled later when she got prove it herself. She would make sure that there was a later, somehow.

“Oh look,” he said, tone mocking. “It looks like I’ve shut her up.”

“Say what you want about him,” she found herself saying, “but at least he’s honorable enough not to make me promises he knows he can’t keep. As I recall, that was a bit of a problem with you.”

“Comparing me with that asshole is not going to wound me.”

She couldn’t help it. She had to say it. “Well, there’s that and then the fact that he’s still got both hands.”

In response to that little fleshy barb, he dug the toe of his shoe into her hurt ribs, flashing a feral smile as she tensed in her effort not to show her pain. He tilted his head thoughtfully. “I think we oughta send him a package for his efforts, don’t you think?” His brown orbs gleamed with malice and she could see the intent in them. “Every good deed should have its reward.”

“It’s the golden rule,” she murmured. “And so then you’ll get yours. Be sure of it.”

He shoved her onto her back so that she stared up into his face. The sudden movement had her taking a sharply indrawn breath. A part of her realized at that moment that her own death was imminent, but the rest of her didn’t care. Death did not scare her. The only thing that infuriated now was not Death—it would not be culpable. No—this bastard would be at fault for bringing her to Death.

“No,” he corrected her arrogantly. “You are gonna get yours.” He aimed the gun at her head and the blonde’s muffled screams of protest pierced the air. “You’re gonna die knowing I bested you. Fuck my right hand. I got the last laugh. Good night, bitch.”