The Vindictive Stranger Ch. 03

Marvin Gunderson didn't really get his daughter's interest in this creepy new guy, Jonathan Nelson. For one thing, the man refused to actually set foot in his house and seemed to feed a certain contempt in Nora for her own father which he found unsettling and downright insulting at times. Right now, a couple of weeks after meeting the young jerk, Gunderson felt sickening bile at even the thought of such a guy touching his daughter.

It wasn't just that the man was black (or really biracial, from what he guessed), but that he seemed to have a smoldering resentment inside him that somehow seemed directed at Gunderson for whatever reason. Marvin got the impression that the guy was almost fucking Nora to spite him. Almost, that is, because Nora was admittedly sexy enough for a man to want for her own sake.

Pouring himself another gin and tonic, trying not to think about the argument that he had with his ex-wife that morning (why did she insist on still giving him guilt trips after their divorce), Gunderson didn't notice Jonathan's presence until he heard a cough covering the word "douchebag."

Looking up, sure enough, Gunderson nearly dropped his highball and he certainly spat out some of the drink. Jonathan looked even more menacing than usual and he was physically very intimidating for the much less buff abortionist. The hostility was palpable and the air became very chilling indeed. Gunderson became more nervous by the second, especially once Nelson started walking toward him.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Marvin demanded, but he didn't sound very convincing.

"I am confronting my killer at last. You slew me! You took my life! I will not rest until you have paid!" Jonathan informed him, his voice now quite harsh with his rage.

"I never harmed you, despite you touching my daughter! What are you talking about?" Gunderson expressed puzzlement, surely he could never have slain this man.

"Liar! Murderer! You took my innocent life from my mother's womb and you ripped me apart with your tools of bloody death! You didn't just kill me! You tore me apart while I was in the womb, ripped me to shreds, and discarded me like trash! Now you must pay!" Jonathan declared, his eyes glowing red now with hate.

"What do you mean, sir? Were you a fetus? Did I perform an abortion on your mother?" Gunderson began belatedly to realize that this was the ghoulish presence of an undead fetus now in the body of a fully grown man...one hell of a shock for him.

"Do not call her a mother! She is no mother to me! No mother of mine would betray me to pain, death, and mayhem! She has no maternal instincts! She is no mother of mine! She will pay, just as you will pay, for your temerity in slaughtering me and my kind for profit!" Jonathan sneered, his fangs now on display.

"But, she had a right to choose what to do with her body! She had a constitutional right to choose an abortion if she pleased. It was her body, her choice!" Marvin whined the same tired, trite old mantra uttered by his friends in the abortion lobby for decades.

"Liar! I was a living, breathing child, a person, alive and conscious, snatched and ripped from my safe home in her womb with her consent to a death most horrible at your hands, you vicious cunt! Now you, too, will suffer! Me fucking your daughter is but the beginning of what you must endure at my hands!" Nelson then produced a knife, seemingly from thin air, and slashed Marvin across the face, leaving a superficial, yet frightfully bloody cut there.

"Look, surely we can make some kind of deal here! I didn't realize it, any of it. I thought that you weren't fully aware of things, weren't truly alive yet, that you weren't people just yet. That was all. Now that I know better, I can make amends to you. Please, tell me how I can make this up to you, can make it right with you!" Marvin pissed himself and fell to his knees in horror, begging for mercy.

"You can die!" Jonathan screamed at him, cutting his arm this time.

Marvin begged and screamed for clemency, for any kind of mercy from Jonathan, but Mr. Nelson kept slashing wildly at him, cutting him every time just a little more. Marvin grew weaker by the second, unable to fight back, but at the last second Jonathan stopped striking him. Marvin relaxed and Jonathan used that split second to shove the knife into his belly. Dr. Gunderson fell over bleeding and Jonathan leaned over him, grinning.

"You murderous villain, now know what it is, before you perish, to scream for mercy and pity in vain, as I did, to die painfully and horribly, too," Nelson then cut his throat to finish the job.

Before Nora could find her father dead, Jonathan vanished, of course. Marvin never had a chance. Several hours later, she came home to a house that reeked of dried blood and stale bodily fluids. Sickened by the smell, she ran to check on her father and found him, butchered like a pig.

Two days later...

Nora and Jonathan sat in a café just a block away from her house. Her house, indeed, as she had inherited everything from her father, not that she cared. She missed her old man, as much as he was a lousy dad, he was still her father. She was still his daughter...and now they would never be reconciled...never. It was too late. Far too late.

"Have they planned the funeral yet?" Jonathan asked with some empathy for Nora, whom he liked, in spite of her paternity.

"You mean, have I? No one else could be bothered. Not that it matters. I miss the old bastard, but he was still a real pain in the ass to most people, including Mom. Plus, I don't want the attention from the anti-abortion crowd. I don't know what I really feel about abortion, but this was about my father. I want him to rest in peace at last. Anyway, a simple service, Pastor Rand from Melancthon Lutheran Church, and a few close friends, that's all. Friends of his, not of mine. Same with the pastor. He's a creep, but he was Dad's pastor, so that was that. The things I do for a father who treated me like shit," Nora snorted.

"In pace requiem, right?" Jonathan observed.

"Something like that. Thanks for being there for me, Jon. I don't know what I would do without you. Probably go nuts, eh?" Nora wiped away some fresh tears.

"Any leads on the killer?" Jonathan probed as he sipped his mocha latte.

"Not really, but I can guess. Some fundie wacko who thinks that Dad is now roasting in Hell for his life's work. It had all the marks of a crime of passion, and those guys, right or wrong, have plenty of that, along with zeal," Nora scoffed as she drank another espresso.

"Deeply sorry. Anything else on your mind, babe?" Jonathan belated realized that he loved this girl that he had once used to annoy her father...he loved the daughter of his own murderer...how warped!

"Jon, this is a horrible time to tell this, but this might be my last chance to drink real coffee in the near future," Nora led into what she had to say.

"Why is that, honey?" he wondered.

"Because I'm pregnant, dear. Jon, it's yours," Nora spoke with some hesitation.

Jonathan's only answer was to grab Nora and kiss her hard on the lips.

"Sweetheart, that's the best thing I've heard! Care to celebrate, if it doesn't sound too twisted?" he grinned.

"Too twisted? No, just twisted enough for me. Much as I loved Dad, I have someone else to love now," Nora Frenched Jonathan without any shame.

"So do I, honey. So do I," he smiled as his glowing red eyes briefly flashed and then went back to normal...yeah, if this was love, it wasn't so bad after all. There was still plenty of time for revenge.