Johnny's Revenge

This is a song of the same name by Crown the Empire converted into a short story.

Johnny's Revenge

How could this really have happened

One second life was looking good

The next I'm on my way down

I thought my story had ended

But if this hell is where I'm trapped

Then I will seek my revenge...

Sweat kept running down my face, no matter how much I implored my body to relax it kept 

refusing. The grip of death still holding onto me in some way; the 'dream' still fresh in my 

"But was it a dream in the end?"

Something kept biting at the back of my mind, that the event that had transpired after I pulled 

the trigger had been much more than a figment of my imagination, as far as I knew from 

childhood, I had no imagination. 

"Suicide? Had that been just as sweet a dream as well?" 

How could it have been, the pressure of my finger on the trigger, the sound, the darkness; 

could it have all really been fake?

I pushed such thoughts from my mind and continued on my journey to make myself sleep. A 

instinctual thought came over me.

"Got to take a piss."

I wandered to the outhouse, but something felt...off, wrong yet familiar; this place was all too 

familiar but also...old, long forgotten, from childhood. I looked down at my feet, my hands, 

this was not the body I had grown accustomed to. No this was the body of a little boy, of me, 

decades ago. This home was my childhood home all the way in Indiana before we made the 

move to California. It came to me:

"Before I lost my father in Wyoming..."

I quickly finished my business and rushed back into the home, hope in my heart and 

happiness guiding me. I bolted through the front door and made for the staircase ducking left 

across the landing as I came to the first room. I reached for the handle but before I had 

touched it began to move. With a click the door unlocked and revealed its contents. 

"Johnny  boy, what are you doin' out of bed at this hour?" 

It was, undoubtly, my father. Just as I remembered, and bullet hole free. His smile warm, his 

hand on my shoulder powerful, yet comforting at the same time. 

"You bess' be gitten to bed son, we make for California in mornin'."

I gave him a warm hug, just as I used to all the eons ago, I knew this time as I embraced my 

long dead father, that I would make it right with this chance that I have been given, to live 

anew, the change the times in life where I had failed myself and those around me the most. 

To make sure that when I died, I did so without the regret of preventable loss and 

unnecessary guilt. 

I lived the rest of my life this way, as a good Christian man, living as a man who would go to 

Paradise in his end days. My days had come to an end, life lived appropriately aligned with 

The Almighty's scripture. Seventy-two of blessed year I lived, I righted all my wrongs, and 

on September 9, 1922, I closed my eyes one final time and left my being in the hands of The 

Almighty. Little did I know that The Almighty had no plans of taking me in. 

Again I fell, faster than before but it was no less painful at the bottom. I was in complete 

darkness, whispers assaulted my ears. I tried to move my arms and my legs but to no avail, 

they were chained into the fleshy ground, then came the voice, loud as a locomotive horn. 

"oh well, look what we have here boys, everybody give a 

warm welcome to Johnny!" 

He seemed to be addressing some sort of crowd that I could not see, but they were laughing, 

no cheering. Each laugh and jeer was a dagger to my very being. The voice continued:

"What do you say we show Johnny a thing or two about 

what it's like to die?!"

The circus music began, then the whips came. Each one lashing away at the very fiber of my 

being, each lash bringing horrible memories to the forefront of my mind, burning into my 

head images of things that I had tried to forget, things that I had righted, things that should no 

longer bother me. Then the knives came, being thrown at me from every direction, some 

simultaneous, some coming one at a time. The pain was unlike anything I had ever felt in life, 

the astral poison coursed through me like acid.  A range of emotions enveloped me, anger, 

sorrow but most of unadulterated fear.

Author's Note

Please be a critic
Just having fun
Part II of III
Also converting from word file changes certain fonts and respective sizes. I can email original file if you'd like

Source: "Johnny's Revenge"- Crown the Empire