The Rot of Treachery
What unanswered betrayal does to the soul of the perpetrator
After I was sexually assaulted by the maintenance man of my apartment, I had to go through a humiliating experience: detailing to my bosses what had happened to me.
I’d been assaulted before, but I’d always had the luxury of keeping my personal trauma to myself.
This time, I didn’t have that capability. As I was drugged for weeks, I had to explain my absence and my inability to finish the semester.
Soon…I saw how I began to haunt one of my bosses…
This is how I began to understand that he was cursed and what he was cursed with.
This, along with how I navigated my own personal betrayal, taught me what treachery does to a human soul.
It validated what I’d always believed: the best revenge is no revenge.
When you let them learn, you let them burn.
In AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, the sadistic, gleeful vampire Lestat instructs his progeny, Louis, to not seek revenge against a grave injustice he experienced. He says, “Do not let yourself be consumed with getting revenge for who did this. Do not give them the satisfaction of the hunt. Let treachery eat away at them from within.”
When I first met my boss, my trauma responses rang red alert. I repeatedly remarked in my journal that he seemed as nice as could be, but I felt afraid of him for no good reason.
I didn’t have any innate fear of male superiors, and I didn’t know why he agitated me.
It was just a feeling…