For those of you unfamiliar with the series: A Story from 10 Words, please check my about page for details.
This weeks submission gave me these words to work from: 10 words – love, happy, soccer, triumph, motivated, green, Vedder (as in Eddie), endless, run, and beach; (ii) Theme – thriller; (iii) Song – “Let It Be” by the Beatles.
So, without further ado, here is: Lauren’s Story
“You won’t get away with this, you bitch!” the man shouts from his low-backed leather chair. Restrained as he is, his threats are a bit empty.
The woman turns to him, the waves of her tawny hair swishing back over her shoulder as she does, and gives him a wry smile. She saunters toward him, her cranberry sheath cocktail dress hugging her body and the leg slit showing more of her thigh than makes the man comfortable. His pulse quickens as she approaches and the smell of roses and jasmine fill his nose. The long, toned body of the woman in the form fitting dress stirs him in ways he wishes he could suppress, but nature is not within a man’s control.
“My dear Phillips, I will get away with it. I can promise you that,” she says, her steel blue eyes smiling at him.
“Others have tried and failed,” he growls.
“I’m more motivated,” she says slyly.
She sets her handbag down and reaches up behind her neck to unfasten the collar of her dress. She pulls it down and slowly shakes her head at the old man, whose mouth has dropped open. Spittle forms at the corners and he starts licking his lips, eyes wide. She laughs at him and he soon learns why.
“Don’t look so happy. You aren’t going to get a show, you old pervert.” The mockery in her voice brings a sneer to his lips. As she pulls the dress over her chest and slides it down to her ankles he sees that she has a tight fitting body suit on underneath it. She pops open her hand bag and pulls out a small plug. Air decompresses from within the bag and the woman extracts a black lycra body suit.
The woman slides off her high heels and steps into the body suit. While her new outfit will not fend off bullets, it can withstand knives and most other stabbing weapons. She pulls the zipper up her back and slides her hands into a pair of black leather gloves. She produces a set of small knives from the handbag as well and then starts pulling at the bag, twisting it around until it transforms before the man’s eyes. The woman wraps it around her waist, clipping it in front of her and sliding the knives back into a set of small holsters at her hips. The bag has turned into a belt.
“For a man adept at stealing things, you should have seen this coming.” She says. “But then again, you’ve always lacked the proper motivation to steal things first hand. You have little servants that do that for you, don’t you? Well, now you know what it looks like close up.”
The woman leans close to the chair, her wavy hair brushing his face and her sweet smell assaulting him. He shifts his lower half around, trying to fight off nature, but the flush in his cheeks is giving him away.
“This letter,” she says, holding a yellowed piece of paper, vacuum-sealed in plastic, “didn’t belong to you. You stole it from hard working people who came by it honestly.” She places her lean, strong hand on his cheek and then clamps down on his chin. “So I am taking it from you.”
“And that makes you the same as me.”
The woman smiles at him wolfishly, her steely eyes shining.
“Oh, I’m so much better than you, pumpkin.” The smile fades, accentuating the lines of her slender face, and the intensity of her glare makes the man shudder. She draws back, placing the letter into a pouch that she attaches to her abdomen.
“You stole this for the love of money. I’m stealing it back for the love of discovery. You see, I’m going to make sure the people who found this letter in the first place are taken care of. After that, the rest of the find will go to a museum, where it belongs.”
The man laughs, his jowls shaking along with his pot belly.
“Thieves of a different stripe. That is all those museum types are. They’ll sell off small pieces of it to fund their operation, just you wait and see.”
The woman picks up the heels she had worn into the room and twists the stems off. Connecting them together brings a soft beep and she places the connected pieces on the man’s oak desk. She looks around and sighs. It will be a shame to destroy so many wonderful books.
The old man’s eyes shoot wide and he blinks rapidly.
“What is that,” he asks in a whisper.
“A going away present,” she answers, scooping up her dress and stuffing it into a pouch of her belt.
She steps around the desk and feels about underneath it until she finds the button she is looking for. Pressing it a secret drawer ejects and she finds a pair of pistols with the words, Mother Mary, etched into them. She takes out the two guns, along with the extra clips she finds, and winks at the old man.
“Keeping these for when you find yourself in times of trouble?” She laughs openly. “I guess that’s right now, but seeing as how they won’t do you any good, I’m going to borrow them. Hope you don’t mind.”
She steps back around the desk and gives him one last look.
“You killed a dozen people to get this letter. I would hand you over to the police to deal with, but we all know what kind of sentence people with your kind of money would serve. So I guess it’s only fitting to show you the same mercy you showed them.”
The old man bares his teeth at her, spitting in her direction and thrashing at his bonds.
“Filthy cunt! You think to kill me? Do you know who I am!”
Striding past him she casts her voice back over her shoulder.
“Who you were, old man. Who you were.”
His shouting voice assaults her as she leaves him in the study and she knows the six guards still need to be dealt with. The man had not wasted his time shouting before because he had told them to leave them in peace. He had foolishly assumed a woman in a cocktail dress that tight could not possibly be concealing a weapon. He had been very wrong.
From the second floor landing she sees the first two and decides it is time to get the party started. Her lithe, athletic body was built for this part of the job. A lifelong soccer addict who spent her days working her body into top form, this part would be a piece of cake. Taking off at a sprint, she runs toward the staircase, raising the pistols as she goes, and she puts a spray of bullets into both men before they can think to raise their weapons.
She reaches the staircase and puts her back to the wall. The third guard comes rushing into the room and she mows him down before mounting the banister and sliding down to the first floor.
Three down. Three to go.
She takes no joy in killing these men, but she does not have the luxury to hesitate. They would murder her without a second thought, so it is kill or be killed. She will take the former, thank you.
Shouts and panic are exploding from the next room and she knows that the last three are trying to organise. She will need to make that a bit more difficult. Bursting into the entry way, all three heads turn toward her in stunned shock. She presses a button at her belt and the study where she left the old man erupts, shaking the house to the foundation and levelling the rear half of the complex.
She brings the pistols up and starts firing, killing one man and winging another. Then the pistols click dry and she realises she does not have the time to reload them. The man she winged is down on the ground so she drops the pistols to the ground and rushes the one still standing. His eyes flare and he starts to fumble with his automatic rifle.
Still green, this one.
He is bringing the rifle to bear, but he raises it too slow. She slaps the barrel down, draws one of the knives from her hip, and drives it into his jugular. She rips the gun from his hand, turns her head to the man nursing his arm and fires a volley of bullets at him as she walks away, Eddie Vedder’s voice floating about in her mind.
You’re still alive, she said
Oh, and do I deserve to be
Is that the question
And if so…if so…who answers…who answers…
The house continues to collapse in series of endless eruptions and she picks up her pace. She gets out the front door just as the fire and destruction begin to flare out of control and a bullet comes flying in from the left. She hits the deck and starts to scan the area when a black BMW M3 comes speeding in, clipping the assailant, and sending the man sailing into the night.
The car pulls up and the passenger door flies open.
“You missed one,” a voice says from the drivers seat.
The woman gets up and steps into the car. As she slides into the seat she leans over and kisses the man driving the car.
“No, love, I didn’t miss him. I was leaving you one.”
She smiles at the man. Rolling his eyes and shaking his head, he turns toward the road and peels out of the driveway as the mansion erupts a second time and the whole building begins to collapse.
“Did you get it then?” he asks.
“I did,” she replies with a smile.
She peels the letter from the pouch on her abdomen and shows it to him.
“The San Miguel, babe. This is going to lead us to it. How does a few months on the beach sound?”
The man in the driver’s seat bites his lower lip and lays into the accelerator, a look of triumph caked on his face.
The prospect of billions of dollars in treasure can do that.
If you would like your own story, please feel free to contact me with 10 words, a theme (it can be a genre, favourite movie or book) and a song and I will write you a story as well! I am open to any and all submissions! They are posted every Sunday.
Next Sunday (14th February) will be Charlotte’s Story. Look forward to it please!
Sticks and Stones 