The Phonebooth

He smiled, watching her scurry around the plaza like a scared little mouse in the shadow of a house cat. His son had been speaking with him about their divorce. She hadn’t lawyered up, in fact, she wasn’t even planning on doing so. She just wanted the papers signed. They had no kids, no property, and seperate accounts for their money. They could just walk away from each other, and that’s all she wanted, but women like her should be held accountable for what they had done. His son’s wife had been cheating on him for a long time, and for a woman to waltz out of the house, she had to have a bank accounts stashed somewhere else that his son was unaware of.

He couldn’t say that his son and the woman he married were a true married couple in anything other than title, and what did titles matter in that day and age? They meant nothing. He was happy to hear that his son had a passion to take a long term financial vegeance that would echo throughout her life.

His wife had gotten a job, a secretary job for some private investigator, a real slimly character. This understandly drove his son into a deep pool of dark paranoia and madness, he was almost sure that those two were fucking behind his back. In his office, sure, his son talked to the women who worked there, and sure his wife was unaware of this, but as a man he was allowed. She was a woman, she really needed to learn her place.

His son wanted to take the high road, apparently the divorce had turned him not to the bottle, but to the bible. His father whispered into his ear that he could stretch their divorce into a ten year case, that would keep her from getting married to that private investigator.

It was a case where he could easily go on the attack from multiple legal angels, his father was a lawyer, he could shred all financial backings she may have. Years spent in a courthouse, and great financial difficulties that would echo into not only her future.

That would twist the bitch up, he would get to watch her be in as much pain that he went through for as long or prehaps even longer — a lawyer could dream! But he told her that he didn’t want that side of him to win. He wanted to take the high road and come out of this with a potential future with her, even if it was not one based on romance, but just mere friendship.

Daddy dearest was there to remind him that he would lose the battle, but he would win the war. Daddy dearest was there to remind him that all his legal fees would be free. All her legal fees would be drained from her and her family, a group of redneck hillbillies that were all two-star people: cracks in their minds and fading out bodies.

But his son didn’t want that for them. He actually cared for her mother. It seemed the dollar signs that once flashed in his father’s eyes, those tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars were gone like a snap of his fingers. He decided it was time to take matters into his own hands.

It was so cute to watch her scurry around the plaza like a scared little mouse, jumping at every shadow. He knew she knew he was following her, but she couldn’t prove it. He heard her whimper about wanting Sam with her, and he guessed that’s the name of her new boss, the Private Investigator. She whirled into a phonebooth, and fed the silver slot some coins. She dragged the numbers around. She pressed the black plastic to her ear, twiling the silver cable around a gloved finger, his pretty red lips whimpering ‘Pick up Sam, you gotta pick up, Sam!’

He smirked, he had dropped hints he had been following her all night. Allowing her to see his reflection in the puddles that lined the sidewalks, got just close enough to her where she could smell his scent which was like fresh-brewed coffee and pipesmoke, allowing her to hear his voice at the bar, unnerving her just enough that she becamse just sloppy enough, women were always sloppy, especially women like her. Women who kept dark secrets in the very back of their closests.

He burst through the black shadows and slipped into the phonebooth, before her ruby red lips could part and scream, he wrapped the taunt silver cord around her neck. Tighter and tighter, robbing her lungs of that oxygen they so desprately needed. Watching the blood drain from her face, her ruby lips turning blue, the life flickering out of her eyes, it was all so devastingly, inhumanly beautiful.

He watched his reflection behind her reflection, and his son had been right, her skin was as pale as the moon, her eyes were the color of led. Before he allowed her to slump forward upon the cool glass of the phonebooth, he kissed her cheek. Leaving the booth, leaving the corpse of his daughter-in-law as something that should only be observed under the light of a naked hundred-watt bulb.