Sticky Fingers: Box Set Collection 2: 36 More Deliciously Twisted Short Stories (Sticky Fingers: The Complete Box Set Collection)

by JT Lawrence

  "We need to know what was in the parcel," says Khaya, on the second call to the courier company. "I understand that," he says. "The warrant is on the way."

  “Murder investigation,” prompts Susman.

  “It’s evidence in a murder investigation,” says Khaya.

  “The press,” she hisses.

  “The press will be interested in the fact that your company was not willing to co-operate when a woman was missing.”

  De Villiers gives him a thumbs-up. Half an hour later, the sergeant is beaming. “Turns out the courier company doesn’t like attention from the police,” says Khaya, rubbing his ear.

  “What does that mean?”

  “They were raided by the drug squad a couple of years ago, found in possession of H.”

  “Heroin?”

  "Affirmative. The company were cleared of all charges. They didn't know they were smuggling class A narcotics. But since then they've been passing their cargo through an X-ray machine, which takes photos of each item."

  “Lucky for us,” says Susman. “So, what was in the parcel that Amada sent Felicia?”

  “Ready for this?” Khaya asks, and they all stare at him. He holds up his phone to show them the email attachment. It looks like a homemade coffin.

  Devil stops. “Carlos Amada sent his ex-wife a freaking coffin?”

  “That’s messed up,” says Khaya. Blom is speechless; his enlarged vocabulary has deserted him.

  "Amada sends Felicia Heddon a coffin, and she goes missing the next day," says Robin. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

  “Surely not,” says De Villiers, standing up and looking for his car keys.

  “The neighbours heard that fight on Halloween,” murmurs Blom. “I have them on record. The woman there said she heard Felicia say she was going to kill herself. Carlos yelled back to go ahead. Now we know he sent a coffin as a follow-up.”

  Khaya looks spooked. "When we checked out Heddon's house, there was a freshly planted bed in the back garden."

  Susman frowns. “Amada said she couldn’t keep a weed alive.”

  They stare at each other while the realisation sinks in.

  “Blom,” says De Villiers. “Send a team to Heddon’s address. Tell them to bring shovels.”

  Susman’s already walking to the car. “Let’s go.” They rush out of the station, and the wind slams the door behind them.

  De Villiers and Susman arrive first, and they run around the side of the house. He kicks the side gate open that leads to the back garden, which is a field of yellowing grass interrupted only by a small patch of newly planted irises. Susman grabs a spade from the garage, and De Villiers takes it from her and slices into the soft earth with it. She looks for something else to dig with and settles for a rusted trowel. She gets on her knees and moves the soil as fast as she can, counting the days and hours in her head. How long had Felicia been buried? How long does it take someone to die when they are six feet under? Her knees go numb, and her muscles burn as she digs and digs. Soon the team arrives and takes over, letting De Villiers and Susman rest on the dying grass, muddy and out of breath. They don't look at each other; they watch as the men tunnel down and down till there's a thud and a shout, and more digging. They pry the lid off the coffin. Susman stays where she is, not wanting to peer inside the mess that was Felicia Heddon's mind.

  “Not breathing,” says one of the men. “No pulse.”

  De Villiers nods and gets a faraway look in his eyes. “Coffins don’t bury themselves.”

  Felicia Heddon's nails are bloody and splintered; she had tried to escape. An empty bottle of vodka lies by her side.

  "There is no sign of a struggle," the forensic assistant says. "Apart from her fingers, her body looks untouched."

  Susman’s mind whirrs. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You know what else doesn’t make sense?” says De Villiers. “We can’t arrest Amada, because he has a rock-solid alibi. He was in Durban with his kids when Felicia was buried.”

  Susman’s eyes glitter. “Steenkamp.”

  They blue-light to his place of work, and he doesn't resist arrest. He simply puts his hands up and says he's sorry. While they're interrogating him back at the station, Khaya knocks on the door.

  “Positive match for DNA,” he says, indicating Steenkamp. “Inside one of the gardening gloves.”

  “Why did you do it?” asks Robin. “Did she pay you?”

  Steenkamp shakes his head. "She didn't have to. I was in love with her." His expression is one of surprise, as if it's the first time he's realised it. "Felicia was in so much pain. Her previous suicide attempts didn't work. I tried to talk her out of it, I swear. But she was desperate. She begged me."

  “You buried her alive,” says Susman.

  “It’s what she wanted. No one was supposed to find her.”

  “She tried to scratch her way out.”

  “That wasn’t part of the plan. She promised me she was ready. She had tried so many times before. She was sure the coffin was the answer. She’d be out of pain, and Amada would be punished.”

  “It was murder,” says De Villiers, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

  “It was mercy,” says Steenkamp, his mouth turning down at the edges. He leans forward, resting his head on his arms, and begins to sob.

  3

  The Ice Slipper

  Written by the (fictional) MillenniarellaBot AI after being fed classic fairytales and feminist literature.

  (Inspired by “The Christmas on Christmas” by Keaton Patti, who purportedly fed his bot thousands of Hallmark Christmas screenplays and then instructed him to write his own.)

  Once upon a time, there was a girl named Cinder. She was as poor as a church mouse in a kingdom of atheists. Her mother was a pile of plague-stained bones, and her grieving father married a woman with a wire coat hanger for a heart, with which she would regularly beat Cinder. Her name was Lady Tremaine, and she was intensely jealous of her new daughter. Cinder's life was made more sour by the fact that she had two inherited sisters who treated her as if she were vermin virus lice pox.

  “Don’t wear that!” Anastasia would shout, emeralds flashing.

  “Don’t touch that!” Drizella would bellow, gold glittering.

  “Don’t eat that!” Lady Tremaine would yell, and smack Cinder’s cheek with an ivory palm.

  Cinder sewed her dresses from rags and owned no shoes. She looked like a feral pigeon amongst the strutting bejewelled peacocks. Her father looked at her sadly but blessed her with neither affection nor trinkets, for fear of the coat hanger heart.

  When Cinder was a child, her mother used to say: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  Then her mother died.

  Point taken, Cinder had thought.

  It was her life lesson always until she met her awful new sisters. Then she realised that horrible things happening to you do not, in fact, strengthen you. They fracture your soul until it sounds like ice cracking. They bend your mind and body downwards; a young hazel branch ready to snap.

  When Anastasia put a rat in Cinder's bed to frighten her, Cinder stroked the creature and fed her the stale bread she had saved in her breakfast pocket. When Drizella put a rotten pumpkin in her chest of drawers, Cinder scooped out the maggoty churn and baked the shell in the sun. It turned into an elegant bowl, beautiful enough to rival the finest fall porcelain. When Lady Tremaine scraped Cinder's pale skin with a silver fork, leaving tine trails of blood along her legs, Cinder rubbed ash into the wounds to make them permanent lines. They were tattoos of her suffering; scars that mirrored how she felt on the inside.

  One day the peacocks exploded in excitement when a gold carrier dove delivered an envelope. They opened it, and copper glitter snowed all around them; a glamorous blizzard.

  “A ball!” shrieked Anastasia, her hair reaching for the ceiling, as if she had swallowed a power surge.

  “A feast!” yelled Drizella, her tummy-jelly wobbling with an impromptu jig. />
  “A prince!” hissed coat-hanger-hearted Lady Tremaine, venomous desire blazing in her eyes.

  Their cruel mother swept away the shrilling sisters to visit the most expensive dressmaker in town. They came back giggling and bustling with ribbons and feathers and gems. They instructed the cook to prepare only bone broth for breakfast, lunch and dinner to ensure the peacocks would fit into their new ballgowns. When Cinder expressed no interest in losing weight, they banished her from the table. She nicked some bread for herself and her pet rat, who she had named Suffragette, and who slept on her chest every night, protecting her from silver-tongued night terrors.

  A white dove visited her dreams that night.

  “You must go to the ball,” cooed the bird. “It is the only way to smash the patriarchy.”

  “I have no desire to marry a prince,” said Cinder.

  “That is why you are perfect for the position,” cooed the dream dove. “You must do it. It is the only way you will escape this prison you call home.”

  The next day, Cinder found an old ballgown of her late mother's and tried it on. The mirror was kind to her. She decided she'd go to the ball, and spent days sewing butterfly wings, dew diamonds, and blossom petals onto the dress.

  When the evening of the ball arrived, Cinder swept downstairs in her beautiful gown. Envy turned them from peacocks to tigers. The three women took one look at Cinder and ripped the dress off her, tearing it to rainbow shreds.

  “You’re a servant,” sneered Lady Tremaine. “Servants don’t go to royal balls.”

  Cinder knew very well the invitation to the royal ball included her, as they had addressed it to all the maidens in the kingdom. “My chores are complete.”

  Anastasia smashed her wineglass on the floor. Drizella poured the cat’s cream over the kitchen table. Lady Tremaine threw a thousand tiny dried lentils into the hearth.

  “Once the house is clean,” she said, “you may join us at the ball.”

  The peacocks sniggered and flounced from their home, toward the tittering golden palace. Cinder got down on her hands and knees and began picking up the lentils. What they left of her mother’s dress became dusted with soot, and Cinder began to weep. The rat heard her crying and scuttled over, whiskers like soft silver needles. Cinder gathered the rodent into her arms and stroked her.

  “Oh, Suffragette,” she cried. “I wish I could go to the ball.”

  Some magic happened then; some alchemical combination of ash and salt and heartache—catalysed by the stroking of her skin on fur—for the dream dove appeared. It was sitting on the shoulder of a woman in white. The woman was lighting an ivory pipe, and the fragrant smoke curled in tendrils around her.

  Cinder, still kneeling on the cold flagstone floor, looked up in awe, and held Suffragette closer.

  “Right, darling,” said the ghost, taking the pipe from her mouth. “Are you ready to smash the patriarchy?”

  The white-robed ghost tidied the house with a flick of her wrist and then got to work on Cinder's appearance. She cleaned all the soot off her skin apart from her eyelids, which she left smoky. She stung Cinder's lips with baby bees and stained her nails with red lily pollen. The ghost whipped the rags and butterfly wings up from the floor, sewing them in mid-air with strands of spider silk. The result was a ball gown that shimmered and sparkled like nothing Cinder had ever seen. Using her beak, the dove piled Cinder's hair on top of her head and pinned it there with more diamonds and blossoms. They added to the outfit a pair of long satin gloves. The ghost flicked her hand at the pumpkin bowl, making it grow into a carriage, and Suffragette became a handsome horse.

  Cinder clambered into the carriage, and it was only then when she realised she was barefoot.

  The apparition moved her fingers in the direction of the water feature in the garden. It harnessed its fountain, making the water swirl around Cinder's delicate feet and freeze in the most beautiful design.

  “Thank you for everything,” said Cinder, sincerity forming a lump of coal in her throat.

  “The magic will wear off at witching hour,” warned the woman. “Make sure to get home before then.”

  The partygoers gasped when Cinder walked onto the dance floor, so exquisite and unusual was her dress. It seemed to have a life of its own. When the prince caught sight of her, he dropped the gloved hand of the maiden he was waltzing with and blinked violently, as if he had a splinter in his eye. He took Cinder's hand, and the couple danced all night, much to the disappointment of the other maidens. Cinder felt so happy and alive that she didn't realise how late it was, and when the palace tower clock struck midnight, she bolted from the ball. The prince, desperate not to lose her, gave chase, but she was faster than him. She left him with nothing but an ice slipper which began to melt in his hand.

  Cinder's lone shoe turned to watery shards as she ran, and the dress fell away in pieces. Her long hair knotted and caught in a bramble bush, tearing it from her scalp. The pumpkin shell smashed to the ground and sliced her bare feet. Suffragette was nowhere to be seen. When the girl arrived home, she was dirty and in pain, and she fell asleep, shivering under the grey cloud sheets in her cold bed, missing Suffragette and wondering how dancing with Prince Charming would help to smash the patriarchy.

  She woke with a start the next morning, wondering if it had all been a dream until she felt the stings and aches in her body.

  “Get up!” yelled Lady Tremaine. “You’re as lazy as a silkworm, but not as pretty. We’re waiting for you to cook our breakfast.”

  Cinder swung herself out of bed and winced as her feet hit the floor. She limped into her servant rags. Her remaining hair was tangled, and she had eyes a raccoon would be envious of. The mirror was not kind to her. Usually, she would comb her hair; wash her face with a cold flannel, but she felt too hopeless and sad. Little did she know, Prince Charming had followed her trail of bloody footprints, bramble-hair, and a little rat named Suffragette, to find her house. There was a commotion at the door. Bugles and barking. Anastasia ripped a curtain off its rails.

  “The prince!” she shouted. “He’s come to get me!”

  “Poppycock!” yelled Drizella. “He’s here for me!”

  Anastasia ran to answer, but Drizella tackled her to the floor. They crawled towards the door, elbowing and kicking one another, until Lady Tremaine ordered them back, straightened her dress, and allowed the royal party to enter the house. They all bowed as the prince bounced in.

  “Please do excuse my intrusion,” he said, his crown shining in the pink morning light. “But I have reason to believe my future queen lives under this roof.”

  Anastasia screamed in delight, and Drizella, fearing she would faint, grabbed a book to fan herself with. Lady Tremaine’s cruel lips twisted into a smile. “How very wonderful,” she said. “They are indeed special peacocks. Which one are you here for?”

  "I'm not completely sure," said the prince, scratching his chin in an embarrassed way. "I felt blinded last night by the girl's beauty, and I can't seem to remember exactly what she looked like. She was as stunning as a branch of lightning; as sweet as new hay. I'm afraid she dazzled me to distraction."

  An awkward silence settled on them like snow.

  “This is Anastasia,” said coat-hanger heart. “And this is Drizella.” The daughters curtsied and fluttered their eyelashes at the handsome prince.

  "Excellent. We'll start with Anastasia," said the prince and nodded at his footman.

  “Er, you’ll what?” asked the lady of the house, trying to keep the wrinkles from her brow.

  The footman had with him a cold box, which he opened to reveal an ice slipper.

  "May I?" the prince asked Anastasia, and she clutched her chest and nodded. She fell into the chair behind her and kicked off her shoes. The prince kneeled before her, and Lady Tremaine gasped, perhaps thinking of the genuine chance her daughter had of being married into royalty. Anastasia pulled and pushed and huffed and puffed, but no matter how she squirmed, she could not get her f
oot to squeeze into the small frozen slipper. Next up was Drizella, but Lady Tremaine quickly whisked her into the garden and cut off her toes with her pruning shears, bandaging them up with black socks. Drizella's wounded feet fitted into the slipper, and the lady celebrated, but then the blood leaked from the sock and melted the frosty shoe.

  The prince became angry. “I should lock you up in the castle dungeon for trying to deceive me, but I will take pity on you instead. Live in freedom, but may the guilt of your actions keep you in a cage forever.”

  “Your love for the people and your mercy is unrivalled,” said the footman with cartoon hearts in his eyes. He bowed. They all stared at the puddle of toe blood on the floor as it ran together with the ice water. Cinder rushed in to clean it up.

  “And who might you be?” asked the prince, surprised at the visage of a girl with wild hair. When she looked up at him, he instantly recognised her smoky eyes.

  “It’s you,” he said, mouth agape. “It’s you! You’re the one who wore the ice slippers without them melting.”

  “She is clearly a witch,” said the footman. “We should burn her at once.”

  (That is when Cinder understood why she needed to smash the patriarchy.)

  “Codswallop,” said the prince. “This beauty is no sorceress. She will be my queen.”

  The wedding was a grand affair. The castle was a snow globe of glitter, beribboned with bunting the colour of duck eggs. The royal tailor fabricated an exquisite dress to match what Cinder had been wearing the night Prince Charming had met her. The white dove carried the gown's train, holding the gossamer ribbons in her beak. The feast was a delicious montage of flavours served on spinning plates. The only hiccup was when the dove swooped down to pluck the eyes from the uninvited Anastasia and Drizella, who had sneaked in through the back door to poison the wedding food. Without their eyes, they couldn't find the vat of boiling soup, and the poison stayed in their blood-soaked pockets, much to Lady Tremaine's outrage. Prince Charming's parents, the king and queen, welcomed Cinder into the family and gave her gifts of silk, tanzanite, and silver oyster pearls.