J Morris - Selfish Beings

Elizabeth was momentarily struck by the man standing before her. Had she been thirty-five years younger she was sure she could have easily taken him from the two blonde harlots accompanying him. Her brief moment of lust disintegrated when she remembered what the trio wanted to talk about.

‘Please follow me to the drawing room,’ Elizabeth said.

As Kaarl and the twins followed Elizabeth through the house he couldn’t help but notice the similarities it had to its owner. The decor was understated yet elegant; it had an aura of extensive wealth without being overly showy. The stained oak floors were polished to a mirror shine and old movie posters were framed and placed at intervals along the walls to break the monotony of its neutral off-white tone. The smell of fresh cut flowers was another new experience for Kaarl but he managed to refrain from touching them.

Elizabeth had been married to Chester Wilkinson, a famous Hollywood financier during the roaring sixties and most of the hippie-infested seventies. Chester’s wealth had been passed down over generations until finally it had been left to Chester, the last of the Wilkinson legacy. Rather than resting on his ancestors’ accomplishments, he had seen the opportunities in cinema and moved to Hollywood to take advantage of them. In Chester’s career as a film financier he had made very few poor choices and therefore added an enormous amount to the Wilkinson coffers.

He had met and married Elizabeth in 1970. At the time she was an aspiring actress with no real talent beyond being heart-achingly beautiful and knowing an extremely wealthy man when she saw one. In 1978 Chester had disappeared, news which had shocked the close-knit creative community at the time. After an extensive investigation it was assumed, from what little evidence there was, that some of his business dealings had angered the Mafia or another crime syndicate. Nothing concrete could link anyone to his disappearance and there was no body to be found. There was enough of his blood in his car, however, to suggest that Chester was no longer among the living. As per his last will and testament, his entire fortune was bequeathed to his grieving widow Elizabeth, who had orchestrated her husband’s death with the help of her lover Franco Bertelli, a handsome man in the lower ranks of the Mafia.

Elizabeth ushered the trio into the drawing room and followed behind them, pulling the heavy sliding screen doors shut. As soon as they were closed she spun around.

‘What is this?’ she asked. ‘I’m pretty sure all of Franco’s “friends” were at his funeral six years ago. I didn’t see you three there. Whatever it is you think you know about my husband’s death is wrong.’

‘Who said “death”?’ asked Verin. ‘ We said disappearance. If you want to go down that road, though, we know you had Franco whack your husband and we know where the remains are.’

‘Finding what’s left of his body would prove nothing,’ Elizabeth said with a sneer, ‘and the man you claim I asked to kill him won’t be talking to the police any time soon, what with being dead and all.’

‘Franco kept a diary,’ replied Kaarl. ‘Insurance in case someone decided to turn on him. That’s standard practice for a hit man and your little caper is in his one. We know where it is and he gave us enough detail that we can implicate you even without it.’

‘This is a lie,’ Elizabeth hissed. ‘Franco never told another living soul about what happened.’

Kaarl smiled at her and Elizabeth found her mind drifting again to the things she would be doing with and to him if her body was younger and did not creak so much.

‘You are right about one thing, Mrs Wilkinson,’ Kaarl said. ‘True to his promise, Franco never told another living soul about what you asked him to do.’

‘But that’s sort of the problem,’ added Verin, ‘We aren’t exactly living souls.’

A smirk started to form on Elizabeth’s face at that comment but it was quickly replaced by an open-mouthed gape. Behind Kaarl, the twins shifted back into their true forms. They kept the black dresses and breast enhancements, but instead of two beach-blonde bimbos, a pair of green-eyed, black-haired, red-skinned Demonettes stood behind Kaarl, smiling with razor-sharp, perfectly white teeth. Elizabeth fell backwards on to the floor, bruising herself on the solid stained oak. She stared, unable to speak for a few moments until the twins transformed back into their earthly disguises.

‘What…what are you?’ Elizabeth stammered.

‘We are but humble employees of a being you are soon going to meet,’ said Kaarl. ‘You don’t have long left in this world and after you die you are going to be seeing a lot more of our kind where you’re going.’

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