2004. Innocent of murder

Well, Officer, I didn’t mean to kill him. He was my husband, after all. I dare say some married couples reach a stage where one or the other want to kill the spouse off. That certainly wasn’t the case with my husband and me.

I know we’ve had our ups and downs, but that doesn’t mean to say I wanted to kill him. Murder couldn’t have been further from my mind. As you must be able to tell from my personality, I hardly know one end of a gun from another. So it’s quite silly to accuse me of murdering my husband. His death was an accident.

Yes I know he was having a torrid affair with that cheap and tasteless woman who volunteers in the Opportunity Shop. You know the one? She wears artificial fur, and tights with leopard markings. And her shoes, when she’s wearing them – goodness me! She certainly undresses for the part. I wish she had been standing next to my husband when he was shot. I just might have fortuitously missed my husband and shot her instead. By accident of course.

No! No! I certainly didn’t mean to kill George. I wanted to fire bullets into his knees and into that area below the belt and above the knees. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to suffer like you wouldn’t believe. Dying was not meant to be an option. Murder never! I wanted the agony to be slow, painful, and permanent.

1530: What a relief!

(The opening sentence for this story was suggested by Alex of Alex Raphael. If you want to join in the fun of suggesting a future opening sentence for these stories, click here for a peek as to what’s what.)

It was the last thing he expected to see when he looked out the window. In fact, a cruel Fate would suggest it was the last thing he saw. Period. But it wasn’t the last thing he saw. Instead, after seeing it, he writhed in agony for a good month before succumbing. Basically, to call a spade a spade, to say it as it is, to shoot from the hip, Buster died of pain. His death certificate stated otherwise, as death certificates sometimes do, but the cause of death was pain, pure and simple.

It had all started out as a normal sort of day. Buster had got up early, while it was still dark, because he had to take Francine to the train station. She was off to see her sister who lived in Thrushton-on-Beau. It was when he came back home that he drew apart the bedroom curtains and looked out the window. Oh God! Who would’ve thought? Buster lay on the laminate bedroom flooring for three days in intense pain before Francine returned wondering why he had not picked her up at the train station. She called an ambulance.

The ambulance people said they’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t just the sight of Buster that was hard to take; it was the sounds he uttered. It sounded like a cross between a screech and a groan, a scream and a gasp. And then in the hospital things became so bad that they had to get Leila, an old nurse who was stone-deaf, to look after him. A visiting surgeon from the Netherlands was tempted to fill a syringe with some stuff to help Buster shuffle off his mortal coil.

Quite frankly, it was a relief when Buster died. It didn’t put just Buster out of his misery; it put everyone else out of misery, especially Francine who had suffered throughout the final month with sterling fortitude.

Of course, what no one realized was that the cause of all this was still lurking outside the bedroom window.

Waiting.