Hatchet The Novel Novels & Stories

I swung myself up on the last branch, freezing, before I pulled myself the rest of the way up on it. Scarlett’s journal lay perfectly hidden from the ground between two smaller branches. I carefully picked it up as I settled back against the trunk. I tapped my finger on the cover, debating if I wanted to read it, thus intruding even deeper into her privacy. I knew I shouldn’t, but I needed to know if I was alone in how I felt. I licked my lips as I opened the journal. I spent about an hour scanning the diary, only stopping to thoroughly read the entries where I was mentioned. I slowed when I came to one that was written about two weeks after I left.

I pressed my hand against the bleeding wound and felt my vision starting to blur. "I've done my best…" Clayton was the main antagonist of this novel. He had grown up in a loveless family, which contributed to his twisted personality. After he turned into an adult, he quickly turned into Gladys Dawson's lapdog and would go to great lengths just to please her. After all, she was the main protagonist of the story. At the end of the novel, he lost all four of his limbs trying to save her and was left alone to rot, living through a fate much worse than death itself.

She felt sick, truly sick, realizing she had fallen in love with a butcher. She looked around the room. It was a gallery of horrors. One wall was covered in a magnetic rack that held knives, scalpels, and machetes of all sizes. They were clean and polished, ready for the next victim. On the other side was a desk with a computer. Hailey sat in the chair, her body trembling so hard she could barely breathe.

“I’m offering you a chance at revenge. Not just for me, but for your late father.” My grip on the knife tightened, and the world tilted. The sound of the roaring streets, the cars, the people; it all became muted in my ears. “What did you just say?” I took another step backward, ready to bolt from this strange man, my voice barely above a whisper but laced with the kind of fury that only came from months of bottled-up pain. “What the hell did you just say?” Alexander doesn’t flinch from my fierce words; instead, he leaned even closer. “Benjamin Hawke. Your father. He was murdered, wasn’t he? And I think you know who killed him. His accident was staged, and you know it.”

I wondered why she was seated near the window. She hated them, especially when they were open. That's why she had heavy blinds installed in the house the moment she moved in. I heard her mother had jumped out a window and wound up dead. Who wouldn't commit suicide with a father like hers? A terrifying Italian mob leader who had lived by the sword and ended by it. She had so much trauma. It wasn't shocking she fell in love with my father, or was it safe to say that she likely trauma bonded with him?

Then the burn started. It wasn't like the others. The first eight had come slow … a warmth that built over hours, like a fever finding its peak. This one hit fast and mean, right below her left collarbone, and she had to grip the edge of the folding counter and breathe through her teeth until the room stopped tilting. "Hey. You okay?" The old man in the corner… Mr. Hatch, who came every Tuesday with three garbage bags of laundry and always fell asleep in the plastic chair had one eye open.