B♭
Charlene Joy Ruiz
Disclaimer: I do not own Skittles or Mars, Inc. in any way, shape, or form. Any resemblance to real events and/or persons living or dead, is purely coincidental. No Skittles were harmed in the making of this story.
Chapter 1:
Wishing a pompous bitch dead is one thing, but seeing her corpse spread-eagle in front of you, is another.
~
Just as I thought, my Gab was sitting on our red sofa waiting for me. I knew I was in deep shit when her face resembled the color of our furniture… “Why, hello there! Look who the wind just blew in!” I tried to explain what had happened earlier at the office, but she wouldn’t shut it. My baby Gabrielle—hotheaded as fuck. Let the ranting begin! “I spend the whole damn day in this house! Always in the darkroom, feel like a freaking owl! Work my skinny ass off waiting for you to come home! I don’t even see you no more! And the food’s cold! But you don’t care! You just don’t give a flying fu--…”
“Hey, babe, it’s my time of the month. Not yours.” Three knocks on the door came to my rescue. “Police!”
Gab looked at me with a surprised but tentative curiosity when she saw two policemen standing outside our door. She relaxed her stance as she looked the policemen up and down. "Can I help you?" She asked softly.
"Good evening, ma’am. Ms. Porthos?" one of the policemen asked.
"Oh, I'm Sam's girlfriend."
"We need to speak to him, is he in the house?"
She looked confused for a moment, but upon realizing they really were policemen and not strippers, her temper flared right back up as she looked at me and asked, "What did you do now?!"
“Um, I’m Sam Porthos. Is this about Joie Fern?”
“Excuse me, this is serious. We’ve got a warrant.”
“I—I don’t understand?”
The rest of his words seemed to jumble up in my head. “What the hell’s going on, Sam?” “We’ve got a warrant!” “Please, step aside ma’am.”
Shit. They knew.
***
It had not been long since Joie Fern had inherited her uncle’s opulent fortune, that she decided to invest her first millions in buying the Skittles confectionary in Waco, TX. Hm, what can I say?! The glossy bits of colorful sugar had always been one of Joie’s biggest guilty pleasures. Two decades ago, we would sit on her front porch and pop them in our mouths one by one, until they turned white. Fast-forward into the future, and here I am— her dead body before me, a mouthful of Skittles spewing out of her full, lifeless lips.
Knowing Joie, I knew it had been an accident. Her life had been an eternal pas de deux with gluttony; always putting away more than what she could carry. I looked into her glazed, fake emerald eyes and told her that she had it coming. I leaned down and lowered her eyelids, and walked away examining the remnants of her smoky eyeshadow on my fingertips. “Why did you pig out like that?” My fingers trembled as I dialed 9-1-1-.
Joie’s secretary rushed into the penthouse office and had a screaming fit when she saw her boss on the Skittle-strewn Persian carpet. Her panic-stricken face confronted me in confusion, as if searching for a “How?” or a “Why?”
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” The thought of foul play never crossed my mind.
***
Six hours later, I was at the police station getting my fingers inked. The cops said they had to rule me out as a suspect. Poor Gab. Her tired eyes begged for sleep, but she never left my side. I really do love her. “You better wash those hands good, babe… Don’t want you inking my--…”
“Sam Porthos?” I could not have gotten up faster. “This way, please.”
The detective offered me some coffee, which I gladly accepted. “How long have you known the deceased?”
“We went to elementary school together, so I’d say, about twenty years.”
“How would you describe your relationship with the victim?”
“Tumultuous. We were very close friends all throughout school, and then when we got to college, things changed. She changed. She just… became another person, someone I didn’t want to be associated with. As you already probably know, she had quite a few discrepancies with the law. She just hung out with the wrong people. Funny how we both ended up working for Skittles… We stopped talking for years, and boy, did I get the surprise of my life when I learned she was going to be my boss!”
“Ms. Fern’s secretary informed us that you wished her dead. Will you please elaborate on that?”
“Well, I—you see… Ms. Fern wasn’t an easy person to deal with. She mistreated her employees. She even--.”
“Please, answer this. Did you, or did you not wish Ms. Fern dead?”
“Yes. I did. But, let me tell you something, sir. I wasn’t the only one.”
“So, you do know of anybody who might have wanted to harm Ms. Fern?”
“Oh, plenty. She wasn’t exactly a sweetheart. Many of my coworkers joked around with the idea of poisoning her coffee, and such. But, this is on a whole other level. I’m positive none of them would’ve gone so far as to actually killing her. If you ask me, I think she went on one of those eating sprees.”
“Eating sprees?”
“Yes, she usually gulped stuff down whenever she was feeling uneasy. She just ate the nights away, always thinking of how to make ridiculous fortunes without spending her money. Always cutting down on salaries and benefits and…”
“Porthos. Did you know that we found multiple severe abrasions in Ms. Fern’s esophagus?”
“Come again?”
“She didn’t just choke to death, Porthos. We believe an object was forcibly and repeatedly shoved down her throat, causing major lesions and internal bleeding. The killer apparently thought it amusing to stage a colorful accident. We didn’t find an object on-scene that could have caused this type of damage. We searched your property and found nothing. The murder weapon is missing and the killer is at large. Now, Porthos, would you please stop the jibber-jabber and get down to business? Tell me, who killed Joie Fern?”
I lost my nerve. “Well, at least the bitch went how she liked it. I bet she enjoyed every minute of it. Never spit, always swallow! Serves her right for being such a who--”
“You better get yourself a lawyer, Porthos. You’re under arrest.”
This is just to give you a general idea of what I'm writing. I'd enjoy some feedback. I'll post Chapter 2 soon. Toodles!
Cheers,
Char
1 comment:
hey ,, you seem to have an unlimited interests ,, i mean i had no idea that u r into writing stories but hey.. thats even a good quality about u....:)
anyway,, about the story..:
i really liked it ,, i mostly liked the flow of events u had and the mysterious beginning! ,,
it only seemed a bit short to me but i guess thats because it's a general start...waiting for u to complete it ... :) cheers
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