Hard Bite and Other Short Stories by Anonymous-9 Read Free Book Online

go-getter and believe in the do-it-yourself approach.
    I finally read about Franklin in the Del Mar Tymes-Journal, and decided he was the one. Didn’t know him, didn’t have to. I figured that a man with his business achievements, and home, and family wouldn’t have a personality I couldn’t get along with. I was right on the money.
    Once I had Franklin in the crosshairs, I came up with a plan, nothing fancy, and pushed his wife down the stairs at the Del Mar Auberge & Spa. I mean, how hard could it be to kill a housewife from Del Mar, for God’s sake? I was right, it wasn’t. She was leaving a fund raiser for children of the homeless, wearing an ass-flattening pant suit and no eye makeup, at the Auberge for Gawd’s sake. The fall didn’t kill her, it just laid her out so I could get a good pinch on her carotid artery. Not enough to bruise the skin. People saw, came running, called an ambulance, and the whole time I kept leaning over her like I was helping, keeping that carotid pinched off. She went to hospital and never woke up.
    You shouldn’t waste any time thinking what a shame she must’ve been a good person and didn’t deserve to die. All the time that woman wasted on crochet when she could’ve been fixing herself up and romancing her husband? The husband who paid for the house and everything in it? Right down to the yarn in those god-awful afghans? She was no saint, let me tell you.
    I met Franklin at her funeral. Figured if I hadn’t actually met the man before his wife croaked, I wouldn’t look suspicious. I was just an attractive gal who happened along at the right time for a brand new widower. Wasn’t long before sleepovers with Franklin in that big, empty house of his, and it didn’t take much convincing to get him to sell it—even if the kids did do a whole heap of whining, right up to the time Franklin bought us a snappy new condo with a workout room, quadruple Jacuzzi, and Friday night cocktail mixers with the neighbors. Yeah, it was good times alright.
    It was a total freak accident that Franklin died. I truly wanted him to be my husband forever. We were making love in the afternoon, like always, and the big one struck his ticker. Maybe I overdid it on the daily Viagra in his OJ. But he died happy and we sure had fun while it lasted.
    The last sixty days have been hell in the condo. I needed to get out, do something positive, so I started carrying arsenic with me, just in case I spotted someone special. And sure enough, he’s right over there, about to be unattached. Yessss, she’s raising the glass to her lips...I’ll sip my coffee to make it look like I’m busy, fiddle with the empty Sugar Lo sweetener packet. Shit, it’s not the Sugar Lo. It’s not the...OH FU— †

 
     
    Eating the Deficit
     
     
    Another harried day in Sacramento. The California state budget was short a trillion dollars. Again. The governor projected a weary numbness as his aides hustled him through the capitol building corridors on the way to a press conference. He patted his suit pocket to make sure a copy of his speech was in place. Speeches were getting harder and harder to deliver these days—especially the parts declaring that the economy was looking up. Keeping a straight face wasn’t easy.
    A small waiting room was situated beside the press conference stage, and the governor stopped there to have a last minute hair-comb and nose-powder, before facing the cameras. He sank gratefully into a folding chair and waited for the groomer to arrive.
    A moment later, a smartly dressed lady rushed in. “Governor, it’s urgent,” she hissed. “Cannibalism has broken out. It’s not limited to the consumption of unwanted children anymore.”
    The governor stuck a finger in his ear and waggled it about. “I don’t think I heard you,” he said, as a man wearing a ragged suit rushed by the door, gnawing on a severed arm.
    “ That’s what I’m trying to tell you, sir. It’s an outbreak.”
    The governor poked