CW: This chapter involves the death of a character by suicide.
2019.
“Let him go!” Gracie shouted mid-run, hurtling toward Betsy with every ounce of momentum she gained since leaping out of the car door down below.
Betsy brought her pistol up to aim toward Gracie, but not faster than Gracie could close the distance. Aiming her shoulder into Betsy’s midsection, Gracie speared her backward, off of Kevin. He immediately flung the bucket from his head and began tearing at his mask.
As Betsy’s back slammed against the rooftop gravel, the pistol flew from her hand. But Gracie did not release her target. She rolled with her, controlling their tumble to end up on top and pin Betsy down by her shoulders.
This was where Gracie figured she was supposed to begin pounding an opponent into unconsciousness, but looking down at Betsy, she couldn’t — not to a traumatized middle-aged woman whose left arm had been chopped off by the psychopath who murdered her family.
Instead, Gracie screamed, “Enough!”
It seemed to take Betsy off-guard at least. Struggling to catch her breath, she sputtered, “Who are you? The Wily Wisp? You’re his Wily Wisp, aren’t you?”
“I’m…” Gracie honestly hadn’t established for herself where she fit in this world of masked vigilantes, sidekicks, henchmen, and costumed criminals. “I’m the person who is stopping you from hurting anyone else!”
“Hurting? Do you know what he is?” A grimace crossed Betsy’s face. Was it from being slammed to the ground or the pain of memory? “Do you know what he does, what happens to the people around him?”
Behind her, Gracie heard Kevin retching. She looked back to see he had pulled the skull mask free. “Are you all right?” she called out.
But she shouldn’t have looked away. Betsy grabbed a fistful of gravel that she slapped into the side of Gracie’s face. It stunned her just enough for Betsy to wriggle free and run toward Kevin, grabbing the fallen pistol as she did.
Gracie got back to her feet and followed fast behind, but stopped suddenly when Betsy wrapped her prosthetic arm around Kevin’s neck and pressed the gun to his temple.
“Wait!” said Gracie. “Just hold on! Think about this!”
“No, thank you,” said Betsy. “I’ve been thinking about this plenty. Over twenty years now, I’ve been thinking. Haven’t been able to think about anything else. Not a single thing. Only this. Only him.”
“This isn’t his fault!” Gracie screamed. “He had nothing to do with what happened to you.”
Betsy gave a little laugh as she tightened her grip on Kevin. “You ought to know that doesn’t matter. If he wants to be the Crimson Wraith, he can get what the Crimson Wraith has coming.”
“So, you don’t know who he is? And you don’t even care?” Nausea-stricken and obscured by shadow, millionaire playboy Kevin Snyder might not have been recognizable.
“No one cared about me,” said Betsy. “The Crimson Wraith was with my family for years, coming in to work every day without ever once asking how we felt about it. We never got a chance to say if we wanted the ‘Scarlet Stranger’ working in our restaurant, making us a target.”
“But what do you think happens next? If you kill him, what happens?”
“What happens? Well, that’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?” A trembling, crooked smile worked its way across Betsy’s blue-painted face as she imagined it. “A world with one less Crimson Wraith. Two down, two to go.”
Two to go? Two more Crimson Wraiths? She must have meant Hank and… There had been that one from the nineties too, right? How did Betsy know how many Crimson Wraiths there were?
“And then we’ll be free,” she said. “Then we can start to heal.”
“Oh, bullshit!” shouted Gracie.
Betsy’s smile dropped. Kevin winced as she pushed the pistol harder into his skull. “I don’t like the way you are speaking to me,” she said.
“And I don’t like the way you are holding a gun to my friend’s head!”
“Maybe after I end him, I’ll have to end you. Maybe you should think of that.”
“If you pull that trigger, I will be on top of you faster than you can aim at me. There is no way you are walking away from this. Just think! You already confessed to one murder. Do you really want to add another? Do you really want to deal with that?”
“It doesn’t matter. Healing takes sacrifice. We have to be ready to give our all, whatever it takes.”
“Listen, I get your life was fucked up. And I am seriously sorry about that. Under different circumstances, I might want to give you a hug and be there while you cry it out, but you have taken the ticket to crazytown and become its goddamn mayor if you think that justifies multiple homicide!”
“Don’t say that word.”
“What word? Homicide?”
“Crazy. I don’t like that word. None of this is crazy. It’s not crazy to be hurt. It’s not crazy to want justice. I’m not crazy. He told me I’m not crazy.”
That struck Gracie as odd, so she had to ask. “Who told you that?”
The frown on Betsy’s face showed that she knew she had said too much.
Gracie continued. “Who said this isn’t crazy? Did someone tell you to do this? Did someone say you had to kill Edward Finn?”
“I… I can’t,” said Betsy. “It’s… confidential.”
With what breath she allowed him, Kevin croaked, “Someone… has taken… advantage of you… Let us… help…”
“No, you’re wrong,” said Betsy. “I got help. Good help. The best.”
“This is not what good help looks like,” said Gracie. “This is seriously fucked up. And if someone told you to do it, they are seriously fucked up too.”
“You don’t understand…”
“No,” said Gracie. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. I’m not letting you get away tonight. Period. Ain’t happening. So, how about you put the gun down. Tell us who is manipulating you. We’ll help you. I promise. Real help this time.”
Betsy closed her eyes, “We give our all for love.”
“Love?” asked Gracie.
When Betsy opened her eyes once more, the look in them told Gracie everything that was about to happen next. She ran but couldn’t close the distance faster than Betsy could lift the pistol from Kevin’s temple to place its muzzle under her chin.
Gracie would never be able to forget Betsy’s eyes that night, and the way that she went from looking at her to looking at nothing, as everything she was exited out of a hole in the top of her skull.
Author’s Note: As a person familiar with suicidal ideation, it is my hope that all those reading seek the resources they need to resist self-destructive urges and find alternative paths forward in life.
The Crimson Wraith 