Harlan Ellison is infamous for his real-life stories of revenge. One of his fictional stories is The Man Who Was Heavily into Revenge:
Synopsis: Fred Tolliver, a 62-year-old retired studio musician, has been well and truly screwed by contractor William Weisel. For a substandard, shoddy, and falling-apart guest bathroom Weisel has charged his client four times the estimated price, charged almost as much as Tolliver receives in a year. Tolliver's pleas for redress are met with vague indifference by Weisel and his sometimes-receptionist wife Belle. Tolliver swears he will get even, swears there will be justice.
And he does. And there is.
Shortly after Tolliver is pushed to the breaking point, bad things (REALLY bad things) start happening to William Weisel. No one will sell him gas for his Rolls because Fred Tolliver wouldn't like that. Belle leaves him and cleans out his bank account. His loans are all called due, his stocks plummet, he even fails his est class. Over the next week Weisel is reduced to a reeking, malnourished, stained and soiled bum who remains alive only by the narrowest thread, and Fred Tolliver is still unable to work or play his cello or do anything but think about how his life was ruined by William Weisel.
Eventually, Weisel succumbs - and the force haunting him needs to find a new focus - and what better focus than Fred Tolliver?



"The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine...

And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote:"... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment."
— Harlan Ellison (The Essential Ellison: A 50 Year Retrospective)