schadenfreude

schadenfreude

/ˈʃɑːd(ə)nˌfrɔɪdə,German ˈʃɑːdənˌfrɔydə/

noun

Pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune.

“Is that what I’m feeling?” she mused aloud.

Her face was slightly damp from the moisture in the air, and her eyes glittered with anticipation.

Sitting alone in the dark with nothing but heavy clouds and her thoughts for company, she decided perhaps it was. She almost laughed, but it wasn’t funny.

She'd always struggled to decipher what she felt during these times, sitting just like this, alone and quiet, waiting in the dark. The sensation was more complex than nervousness, more thrilling than mere excitement and satisfying in a way that she could barely comprehend let alone describe.

She had never been able to put a name to the feeling.

It was entirely 'other'.

In this precise moment, her whole body was alive with it.

Pleasure. That was at least partly true. Though she would hardly describe the reason as ‘another person’s misfortune’. More like ‘another person’s stupidity’.

What was that stupid woman’s name?

She reached into her small bag and withdrew the soft black leather bound notebook. An indulgence. When she first began to earn decent money, she’d splashed out on absurd impulse buys that made absolutely no sense and soon bored her. Over the intervening years, her net worth had grown exponentially but her tastes had become more refined. Now, she favoured items that were well made, necessary, functional and aesthetically pleasing. This particular notebook was absolutely necessary. It was one of the tools of her trade.

Flipping it open, she thumbed through the pages, grateful when a break in the cloud cover revealed enough light to make out the names.

Jessica

Of course her name was Jessica. Basic. Boring. The name of a thousand girls who were blonde and pretty and had boyfriends on the football team and houses with a pool.

This Jessica was pretty as well. And blonde.

So cliché.

A yellow envelope was tucked into the back of the notebook and she shook the glossy images into her hand. Yes, this Jessica was very pretty. The perfect honeytrap.

The face with the golden hair and fake lips stared up from the photographs, and her thoughts strayed to him. The target of the honeytrap. She wondered what his wife looked like.

Was the wife also beautiful? She hoped so.

Actually, yes.

The wife would be beautiful in a classic ‘old Hollywood’ kind of way. She decided the wife would have a classy name like Elizabeth. Elizabeth, with a three carat diamond ring and a wardrobe that oozed restraint and sophistication. Perhaps Elizabeth was an executive - a powerful and intelligent brunette who took no prisoners - with sleek hair that was cut into a five hundred dollar bob.

One thing was unquestionable: Elizabeth-the-wife had money. $20,000 was the cost to merely broker a connection, another $20,000 to submit photographs and details of the request. An additional fee of $140,000 had become due when she accepted the job, with the balance due on completion. Elizabeth-the-wife had paid. In cash.

Even an ignorant and self-absorbed husband would notice that amount of money missing from a joint bank account. Elizabeth-the-wife was either independently rich or had the smarts to keep a secret little safety net of her own. Possibly both.

The moon had retreated behind the clouds and the silent alarm vibrating on her wrist told her it was almost time.

Jessica.

She had known a girl at high school named Jessica. One of the dumb, pretty, cheerful ones. She didn’t keep in touch with anyone from school, or anyone from her home town for that matter. Still, a voyeuristic streak forced her to browse the small town newspaper online more often than she cared to admit.

Every now and then someone she knew or someone her parents had known would appear in the funeral notices. On one memorable occasion, her high school ‘frenemy’ Jessica had been splashed across the front page in a scandal that only a small town newspaper would care about.

SHOCK HORROR! GOOD GIRL GONE BAD!

A stripper, working at the local seedy bar, arrested for offering more than just a lap dance.

The picture on the front page had been a candid one, snapped by one of the regular bar flies who had little regard for the rules of the club. The photo of Jessica was grainy and unflattering. She looked old and pathetic a bit fat.

Oh how the tables have turned she remembered thinking when she'd first seen the news.

Had that been schadenfreude as well? It seemed she experienced it more often than she had realised.

For a moment, it crossed her mind that she was the last person who should feel superior to Jessica-the-stripper-and-prostitute. How was being a prostitute worse than what she did? What she was about to do again?

Shaking her head to clear these problematic thoughts, she reached again into her bag. Cradling the dark object in her hands, she settled back into the shadows.

It was different. What she did and what these Jessicas did was as different as night and day. The Jessicas were unclean, coercive, deceptive and undiscriminating. They lied, they destroyed families and they skulked in the wreckage of other people’s happiness.

I do no such thing. No. Such. Thing.

For one moment, she needed to remind herself of this fact.

She was different.

She was their antithesis.

She restored the balance and undid the carnage that they – and others like them - created.

She cleaned up their mess.

The air was still and the clouds overhead were heavy with impending rain as she lay flat on her stomach and settled into the long grass. She felt the familiar tickle as her long eyelashes brushed against the telescopic glass.

Jessica stepped into her sights. Alone. As expected.

The woman’s stereotypically and unnaturally blonde ‘Jessica’ hair gleamed under the expensive pendant lights that she was not entitled to enjoy. This was not Jessica’s home, but looking at her one would assume she owned the house, the city and the world.

Jessica sashayed across to the sink under the window and turned on the tap. As the water flowed, Jessica stood motionless, directing her gaze out through the window towards the moonlit horizon.

The distance between them was over 1000 yards, but through the scope she and Jessica seemed almost eye to eye.

With stealthy, practised movements, she exhaled slowly and paused when her lungs were empty of breath. She was unnaturally still, her hands poised and steady. Deep within her chest, her heart thrummed with a calm indifference and perhaps, a spark of schadenfreude.

Then, she pulled the trigger.