I Write to the Flash Crowd

In Honor of You

     The lightening cracked outside the window. He could see the streaks as they seemingly touched the ground. The thunder rattled the panes. The sound masked his cough. On his night shirt, was the tell-tale red spatter of his pending doom.

“Oh, dear.” Her words were always soft, always sincere. She daubed his head with a moist, warm cloth. “I am so sorry. It will not be long for you, now.”

“Why?” He tried to say more, but the words would not come. He coughed again. Blood sprayed all over her face. She didn’t seem to notice. “Why would you do this to me?”‘

“Why?” She laughed. She took the bloody rag and washed it out in the basin of warm water. “That is such a stupid question. I read the will. You left me with nothing. After all I have done for you, your wife gets everything. I was left with nothing.”

“How does killing me change that?”

“It doesn’t,” she said. She rinsed her rag in water that was tuning more and more crimson by the second. “It doesn’t change anything. Even after you are dead, I will still get nothing.”

“Then….” His lungs were filling up with blood from the poison she had given him. His every breath was a struggle. He reached out for her one last time, putting his arms on her shoulders with all the strength his dying body had left. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It just makes feel better.”

She watched as the last of what he was drifted into the next world. Then, she casually removed his arms from her shoulders and placed the rag into the bowl of bloody water.

Then, she went to take a shower and wash the stain of this horrible man from her body forever.

 

Tim