Mean-Spirited
by Edmund R. Schubert
As I picked up my pistol one last time, I found my attention wandering away from
the weapon itself and to the withered hand that held it. It looked like a mummy's
hand, collapsing from the inside after too many millennia of desiccation. What a
grotesque hand. My entire body was so close to death, why not finish the job?
Yes, at seventy-eight years old, I could easily come up with plenty of reasons to
kill myself, some of them even logical, valid reasons. Blowing my brains all over
Trish's favorite Monet for pure spite probably wasn't one of the better ones, but it
was good enough.
I had considered blowing my brains out on the Jackson Pollock in the main hall,
but given the nature of Pollock's work, I wasn't sure Trish would even notice. She
neither knew nor cared anything about art; she collected it simply because that's
what obscenely rich people do. However, a spray of blood-red blood over the
renowned Frenchman's white water lilies -- that would not only get her attention,
it would really piss her off. Oh, how it would piss her off.
Dear God, how that made me smile . . .
