Flash Fiction Story Idea #2

680 words

SHE decided to have her husband 'removed', permanently. She came to this final solution last Tuesday during her Women's Christian Book discussion and prayer group meeting at the church. At first she was a little ashamed of having had those thoughts at a church. But a few minutes later she reconciled it because she didn't like their new pastor anyway.
She wasn't going to worry about he how, when , or where. Those would be the problems of somebody else. She was going to contract her husband's removal.
She knew someone....someone who was always being questioned, or being a 'person of interest', sometimes even arrested. Someone who had spent a few weeks in jail. Surely this someone knew someone who for the right price would be willing to remove someone? SHE called someone.
She met this person at a hole-in -the-wall taqueria/cantina. She arrived. The place smelled of sweat, warm cerveza, and urine. She looked around for an empty booth. No luck. She sat a table in a corner and waited. There was a small glob of pale blue slime next to her elbow. She moved to the other side of the table.
One of the patrons walked away from the bar and came toward her. It was the someone she knew. She motioned to the empty chair. Their elbow went into the slime glob. Not a blink. “Well, it's your meeting”.
She nodded and pushed a photo of her husband across the table.
“Isn't this your ---”
She took out a pen and drew an X over his face. Then she smiled at the someone she knew. The person nodded and quickly wrote something on the back of the photo and handed it back to her.
“Call this number. Let it ring four times, then hang up and wait for a phone call”.
“ Wait? How long----”? She looked up from the photo and she was alone.
After leaving the cantina she walked for over an hour. Thinking a million different thoughts at once. Tears would come and go. Fear would creep in, then vanish. She took the subway home. Less chance of being identified, she thought. She thought! She got off at the galleria! She went into a drug store and purchased a cheap pay-as-you-call cell phone! It took her another hour but she finally had it activated.
SHE made the call! Four rings! Hang up! Now wait! For how long?

TWO days Later, on a Tuesday, the cheap phone rang. “Yes”?
A soft, female voice replied, “Bring a recent photo of the contract. Be at the North Parking Lot of the Omni-Dome at 10pm”.
“OK. Wait! How will I know you? How will you know me”?
“Don't worry about me knowing you. What do you think I've been doing for the last two days”? Call ended. Then a text message: 'destroy this phn'. She went to the basement. She took a hammer and pulverized the phone. Then just to be certain, she put the pieces in a bucket, squirted charcoal lighter fluid on them and dropped a match in the bucket. An hour later she would bury the remains in three different places in her cactus garden and cover them with dog turds.

SHE wore a dark blue sweat suit to the meeting. She arrived at 9:55pm. A vintage Mustang pulled beside her. Somehow the car looked vaguely familiar. The passenger door opened, she got in. They drove out of the parking lot. Finally they parked behind a run down building. Lights out, motor idling.
“Contract's photo”!
SHE gave it to the driver: female, short red hair, no make-up, a few pimples, mid-thirties, flat chested. SHE wanted to remember this person.
“Why”?
“Why, what”?
“Why the contract”?
SHE paused. “One to many women in his life”. The driver was staring ahead, thinking....
“Do you have a photo of the other woman”? SHE did.
The driver turned to get the photo. As her face came into the dim light, SHE saw the woman in the photo.