Nobody Cares About Virtues But Money (Libby Hansen Series #2)
Flash fiction
“You know, Scottie,” she said, walking up the stairs with an envelope twisting between forefingers. “Nobody cares about virtues but money. That’s your value, honey. That’s what’s countable, what’s valuable.”
She sat on a high-back couch turned against the bed, where Scott Bennett laid motionless, naked as her, with arms stretched like Jesus on the crucifix, tied to metal pillars by upper bed corners. She paused her speech to give him a chance to react, but nothing except white foam came out of Bennett’s mouth.
“Glory. Respect. Jealousy — you think any of these rises your personality? Of who you are or what you did?”
Again, she paused. From the coffee table by the couch, she took a boning knife, stabbed into a wooden slab beside a lump of melting bacon, and cut the envelope by its edge.
“Look just on all the women you ever banged. Do you think any of them let you huff into her ear because of your charm, or your kink of being fed with pork for gambit?”
She extracted a yellow list off the envelope with her sight darted on Bennett’s widely opened eyes.
“You pig,” she muttered over lips bent down.
She twisted on the couch to lay on her side and faced him, and began to read the letter aloud.
“Mr. Bennett, I hope this letter reaches you well. The thing we talked about lastly, ‘snow tracks’ —those two words he wrote in round brackets — proved as serious as we’d been worried. All threads lead to one person, a woman, described by people I’ve inquired about often differently. Some said white was her skin, some described her brown. Some said her hair shone red, some remembered her blonde. No one knew what is the color of her eyes, but many mentioned her ‘juicy ass’ — in parenthesis. What everyone concurred on was her name, said by everyone with disgust on the tongue — Elizabeth Hansen, best known as Libby.”
She glanced at Bennett with a wide, devilish smile on her face, imagining all those disgusted people saying her name.
“You see, Scottie? Even I’m the famous one, envied. But, did it bring me something? Does it count?”
Libby dropped her sight on the silver ring studded with glowing brilliants she had on a ring finger. She pulled it off and stuck it on the middle finger.
“You bet it counts!” she spat and shot out her middle finger, with a shiny silver ring on, against Bennett’s dead body.
She laughed, cut and ate the bacon, laughed and repeated until she fell asleep.
But she slept just for a moment. Sooner than last sunbeams left Bennett’s bedroom, the doorbell rang. One, two, three, four, five times, and it seemed it would not end.
Libby put on Bennett’s bathrobe, but only for its left pocket, in which she hid a greasy boning knife, and walked for the stairs. If she knew who was outraging the doorbell, she would have taken something sharper with her — something that could cut off heads.
Libby Hansen Series is my summer flash fiction series following the noir stories of Libby Hansen, the fictional character of a woman known by many but none. The closest was Scott Bennett when he said, “She’s born of both angel and devil,” yet he would never think she could be cold to shag and kill him in one night.
Please, let me know in the comments what you think of these stories. I’ll be very grateful for every opinion!
