Old Wine

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6. A Fool



She had gone coldly rigid in his arms, unyielding.

Madness added to the pounding in his brain. Tears welled into his eyes.

"I'll show you! I'll kill her! Then I'll have money!" The hands clutching her shoulders shook her drunkenly. "You wait here! I'll go home and kill her now! Then I'll be back!"

"Silly boy!" Her low laughter rang hollowly in his ears. "And just who is it you are going to kill?"

"My wife!" he cried. "My wife! I'll ..."

A sudden sobering thought struck him. He was talking too much. And he wasn't making sense. He shouldn't be telling her this. Anyway, he couldn't get the money tonight even if he did kill his wife.

"And so you are going to kill your wife...."

He blinked the tears from his eyes. His chest was heaving, his heart pounding. He looked at her shimmering form. "Y-yes," he whispered.

Her eyes glinted strangely in the light of the moon. Her handbag glinted as she opened it, and something she took from it glittered coldly in her hand.

"Fool!"

The first shot tore squarely through his heart. And while he stood staring at her, mouth agape, a second shot burned its way through his bewildered brain.