Wow! It’s mostly a matter of luck and intuition, but this week’s Centus prompt suggested its story to me almost instantly. I’m serious: I knew within seconds of reading it what my tale would be. The actual writing, however, was a bit difficult; I actually generated four different drafts of the same notion, with each of the first three making me think, “Come on, I can make this punchier. It’s gotta hit harder.” I think that Version 4.0 is the most successful of my lot. So, here it is, with the prompt in bold.
(No science fiction this week for me, by the way. Although it could be; it wouldn’t take much to make this into an SF tale. Just a word or two, really, reaffirming my contention that the difference between SF stories and other stories is merely one of window dressing.)
“Guilty.”
The word hung there, like a knife. THE knife.
“But I didn’t do it!” sobbed Tommy Wayne Jones, over and over, as two policemen dragged him out of the courtroom for holding until sentencing. He tried, but really: DNA and fingerprints all over the knife and crime scene? Poor Tommy. He’d never been accused of being intelligent.
Neither had Sandra Allen, the victim’s wife. But she’d never been accused of framing a drug-addicted vagrant for the murder she’d committed, either, which is why she went home to spend her bastard husband’s insurance money while some other poor schlub went away for life.
Sandra wasn’t stupid. Nosiree, Bob.
Sandra seems pretty cold. I may have to look back into her doings at some future point….
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