A Surprise Visit to a Black Widow

I wake to the vicious ring of my telephone. Richard Sweeney, my employer, is on the other line. “Hello?”

         “Manson? Sweeney. Look, there was an incident at the office this morning. There won’t be any need for you to come in today or tomorrow.”

         “You’re sure, sir?”

         “Yeah. Just take an early weekend. We’ll see you on Monday.”

         “Alright. Thanks for calling.” He gave no clue that he had already hung up, just like every other time. What am I going to do with two days off? Well, there’s a book that I really want to finish. Although, I should get some work done. There is a woman, Jennifer Hastings, I’ve been watching for a while, a black widow, and she would fit the bill.

         Making up my mind, I return to my library, which acts as a sort of bedroom. I say, “sort of” because there’s no bed. My restful hours of slumber take place in my old oak chair placed in the center of the library. Once in the library, I find my files lying within the locked drawer of my nightstand.

         Within the thick manila folders reside multiple photos of a young woman with long, curled red hair. Even in the photos it’s obvious what kind of woman she is. Dangling on a man so old that he obviously doesn’t remember his own name, let alone hers. She’s wearing a black dress that’s small enough to shock anyone that sees her. She’s really not leaving much to the imagination in mind or body.

         From the information I’ve gathered, through many different channels, she’s been married seven times. All of those marriages ending in her husband’s sudden death. She’s what they call a black widow, a woman that marries men and kills them for the money they leave her. Though she’s not the most monstrous creature I’ve dealt with, she disgusts me with such ferocity. A woman using her body like that… It sickens me.

         With this disgust running through my brain, I sprint out of the room, down the hall, out the front door, across the driveway, and finally come to a stop in front of the large garage door. I wait impatiently for it to climb up out of my way. Finally, after what feels like an hour, I jog through the open door and rip the tarp from my secret car. The shining black hearse, a beacon of beauty straight from the fifties, almost glows in the dark garage, absorbing the darkness and making it its own. The door opens with a hushed squeak and a less hushed lump as I take my seat. The engine starts right away and roars with the intensity that only vintage cars have as I hit the gas and tear through the streets to find my little black widow.

         I quickly find her in the same spot where all the pictures were taken. I assume it’s a sort of hangout for normal people. The hearse fits neatly into one of the few open parking spots, my home for the next few hours. Though I love the payoff, it seems like the worst part of my chosen field is the waiting. I’m not a very patient man, but I do everything I can to wait quietly for a time for me to send this widow back into her hole in the wall.

         Hours go by and I’m still waiting. I see her sitting with the same group of friends for five hours. Sleeping in definitely helped me today. Had I not only awoken at noon, waiting till the sun went down would have been torture. Everything comes back into focus and I sit up in my seat as I hear her calling goodbye to all of her friends. I wonder if they know what she is. No matter, that kind of thought can wait. It’s finally time for me to strike.

         I climb out of my hearse and approach her as she’s walking by. “Pardon me, ma’am, but can I ask you a question?”

         “I’m in kind of a hurry.” She says as I stick a sedative into her neck.

         “Don’t worry. This won’t take long.” She collapses into my arms and I quietly carry her back to my car. This is where the hearse’s abilities come in. I open the back door and lay her down where the casket would go. No fuss, no muss. Having transported her from the near empty plaza to the back of my hearse, I’m now able to take my time on my way back to the driver-side door. This helps me look less suspicious. If anyone sees me, I’m just a regular guy walking back to his hearse after a nice day of relaxing in the plaza alone. Totally normal.

         The drive from the plaza to my secret warehouse is a fairly long one, but the sedative works through the whole trip. Since the warehouse is out in the middle of nowhere I have  no doubts that transporting her from the hearse to the building won’t show to be difficult. Once at the warehouse in the nasty side of town, the kind of place where gangsters take people to end them quietly, I park my death mobile near the large sliding door. This is where the warehouse’s usefulness is almost used up. I can’t stand that the door makes such noise with its scraping, scratching, and echoing. Of course, since all of this is one big metal building every sound that’s made makes quite a loud echo in return. No matter. It’s not as though anyone is close enough to hear any of this. The police are paid too well to come here, the gangsters quit coming here after they heard my work one night, and just about every other citizen in the immediate area is too intelligent to come to a place like this. We’re completely alone.

         Transporting the woman from the hearse to the building is as simple as expected. I simply hold her like a man carrying his wife over the threshold and lug her into the last building she’ll ever see. As I step in with Ms. Hastings I reflect on the good times I’ve had in this building. A slightly red smudge on the concrete floor where I drained an old man dry, a large dent in one of the walls where my sledge hammer missed its intended target, and a little trophy that will be left in celebration of my current job, a large chain dangling from a pulley system towards the ceiling.

         While the woman still sleeps, I drag her across the cold, unforgiving cement and tie the chain around her ankles. I notice she begins to stir which isn’t a problem since she’s already bound. All that’s left to do is pull her higher, so she swings above the floor, her red hair sweeping along my warehouse ground. She really begins to stir now, so I cut the chances of a problem by balling up a handkerchief and stuffing it into her mouth. This time she awakens with muffled screams and sobs.

         “Calm down. It’s not like I’ve even done anything to you yet.” She responds with a muffled scream that would have contained a very rude word had she not been gagged. “Look, you’ve done some bad things in your life. It’s time for you to pay for your crimes.” With this she calms down. She knows that she’s already dead. There’s no escape. “I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but you’re a terrible person. Do you understand?” She nods. “Good. I’m going to kill you soon, but first I’ll be asking you some questions. They’re yes, or no, so you will still have the gag. Just nod and shake your head, okay?” Another nod. I like her. “Question one; do you want to live?” Yet another nod, this one a little frantic. “Well, sadly, that ship has sailed. You’re going to die. Question two; do you know why I’m going to kill you?” Nod. “Well, then you realize that you deserve this, right?” Nod.

         “Okay. One more question. Have you ever been doused with gasoline?” Frantically, she begins to shake and swing back and forth. Her head is shaking this way and that. “I’ll take that as a no.” As I whisper these words I pour a large metallic gallon of gasoline down her entire body, starting at her suspended feet. I hear her sobbing as the gasoline smell hits her nostrils. Well, I used to like her. “Now, now. It won’t be that b- Actually, it will be that bad. Fire hurts a lot more than everything else I’ve used.” The Shadow, the voice that whispers desires to me, begins to surface in my mind. I can’t stop him and don’t want to. He’s much better at this than I am.

         He lets loose a wild grin as he strikes an entire book of matches on the pavement. Hastings screams as he steps closer and closer. Her screams grow louder, though still muffled, as he dangles the box of matches in front of her face. Tears run alongside the gasoline. A single tear combined with gasoline drops down and slaps against the cement floor. As he sees the tears, he laughs with an animalistic edge to it, knowing full well how terrified she was. Before the matches burn up completely, The Shadow drops the box onto the sole of her right foot. The flames ignite instantly.

         The first thing to go is her horrid black dress. It would seem she was fond of it since I recall her wearing it in the photos I have, as well. It catches and almost instantaneously disintegrates. The Shadow, still laughing, approaches the chain and unhooks it, allowing her to fall to the ground. When she hits the ground I hear the dreadful crack of her right arm as she lands on it. She rolls around, an attempt to douse the flames, but this only worsens her injury. The bone jabs through the skin, and I can see it cracking from the heat.

         A sudden flash occurs, taking my attention from her arm, as her hair finally catches fire and instantly singes off completely. Her flame colored hair is replaced by actual flames. My ears completely shut down as her screams grow too loud for them to handle. I focus on her eyes, something I highly recommend trying, and see them popping one followed by the other. First the left eye turns white, the iris totally dying, and then it bulges like a balloon being blown up. It slowly expands until, finally, POP! Suddenly she’s one eye down with the other ready to go at any moment. The Shadow, his job done, returns to the recesses of my mind and allows me to bask in the art I’ve just helped create. As my mind returns, so does my hearing. Her wailing, now fairly raspy, both from the smoke and the amount of time she’s been screaming, is beginning to die down. I can tell from the looks of her face, and torso, that one of her lungs burst. From closer inspection, I can tell that it happened when she broke her arm. The bone stabbed her and jabbed through her right lung.

         My eyes return to her right arm and all I see is a bubbling mass of her once pale skin. Her bone is gone, turned to dust, but the skin on her limb still clings, almost as though it believes she’ll survive. I know the moment she dies because my glasses, reflecting the beautiful oranges and reds of the fire, glisten on one final twitch of her left arm. She’s given up, but her body hasn’t. It fights on with a few more violent twitches until, finally, her body just stops. It’s amazing how simple it was. She just stopped.

         I take a step back to admire the work just done, and I instantly see where my true trophy will lay. A huge burn mark in the shape of her sensuous corpse stains the cement floor of my warehouse. With a solemn nod, I take off my glasses and wipe them with a small cloth I pulled out of my pocket. “Yes. That was a nice way to spend the first day of my vacation. I wonder what I’ll do tomorrow.”