Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 | Page 14

As I entered the tavern I immediately recognised one of the men. I sat next to him and offered him a drink,
Of course, he replied yes. After he finished the drink and had a chat with me, I made my move and
punched him in the face. My men held him up by the arms as I continued to strike him in the guts. Most
murderers try to be discreet about killing, but not me. I wanted my revenge and my pain to be heard and
felt through my victims. I lowered the hood on my robe and showed him my face. After that I left him
swaying gently in the wind like an apple does from a fruit tree. He was hung on a flagpole, that stood out on
the pier, The flag turned red with blood. I now had some revenge. But I needed more.
I went back in the tavern with my men to gather information. One of the drunken men, with one leg and
one arm, told me about what happened to the other man. Five years before that, the two men split up. The
other man became very successful but feared capture and death by the Chinese emperor. So he plead with
the emperor to have mercy and promised to serve him. He then joined the Ming voyages as captain of one
of the ships.
We got back on the ship, and set sail searching the seven seas for the Ming ships. The man in the tavern had
sailed with them, so he told us the direction they were headed in for a meeting in India. Eventually we
found them, and raised our flag which we had recently changed to the Chinese flag, and we boarded the
fleet’s ships asking for jobs. And as the captains saw that I already had captain experience, the made me
assistant captain of one of their enormous ships. In my short time on those ships I would learn the last one
died from a disease that seemed to never leave.
One night, I set off to meet the other captains to see if my information was correct, that the second man was
part of the fleet. It was. There was no time to waste. I found the second man soon enough and quickly and
quietly sliced his throat, then once again had my men hang him from a flagpole.
After that I got back on my ship and stirred my way away from the fleet and made my way back to my
town, I was still not pleased. Every time I looked at the sky all I saw was the blood of my parents, dripping
onto the wooden floor. I wanted more. What about the villagers who had just watched my parents be
killed. They let me be taken into piracy. I wanted them all to know pain like I did. So much that I lost all
my humanity.
I destroyed the village and the people who had watched me being taken. I ran through the town with my
men while we slaughtered everyone in the town and burned the village.
Soon enough almost three hundred soldiers poured into the village and captured my men. Many of them
just surrendered straight away. I don’t blame them, just the sight of those soldiers in gleaming uniforms with
swords and all the determination in the world, would make any man horrified. The soldiers shouted that
they would kill my men until I surrendered.
I ran from them and found myself hiding in a house full of flames, alone. It’s there that I realized all the
destruction I had caused. I listened to the pleas of my men. I cried for all the people lost because of me, then
I walked out of the house to the soldiers and put my swords down.
They only kept me alive. I was an example of what people like me deserved.
Each day I wait to be hanged. I do deserve it. I went mad with revenge, and even after I got it I still wasn’t
pleased. So each day I wait and wait till the people I got my revenge on get their revenge too. It will never
end. That’s how revenge is, it never ends.
“That’s it. That’s all of my story. You can see what has become of me since,” Xie Zuan says.
“I just had a debt to pay, you monster,” says Ju Ban.
He shakes the bars of our prison cell and yells for help. As he screams, I do too, but I don’t scream for help,
I scream for them to hang me.