Gender Genre Competition

The Top Ten Stories

Sicilian Ice-cream

I sit in a hot plastic seat watching the couple dancing. Their sandaled feet glide softly over faded pink and yellow flagstones. Folk music fills the Piazza and the surrounding buildings smile sadly as strings play a mournful melody. 
     The café where I sit faces a paint-flecked old railing that shields pedestrians from a drop down the cliff-side to the Ionian Sea. Tourists wander aimlessly, peering into shop windows beneath the shade of envy green trees. 
     I let the cold spoon I hold deposit slippery, tepid ice-cream on my dry tongue. The sweet, chocolate flavour melts towards the back of my throat to smother the leftover taste of strong coffee. It can’t disguise it for long though. 
     I squint under the blaze of afternoon sun and slide a pair of smeared black sunglasses onto my nose. The banner of blue sky the couple dance before shifts to a grey haze. 
     As the vivid colours dim, the reality of my surrounding world steps back. I find myself imagining the rumble of an avalanche. I picture huge fragments of rock tumbling down the side of Mount Tauro to barricade us in this small town and I wonder; if we were to be trapped in this one moment forever, would it really be so bad? I could sit here, hidden beneath this yellow parasol watching the couple dance on for eternity. I would never have to open my mouth to speak to another soul. Or move from this chair, which seems to be moulding into the shape of my posterior anyway.
     But the landslide doesn’t arrive. The song, the four black suited musicians play, alters. The couple decide they no longer want to dance and move away, holding hands. 
     Ice-cream and condensation trickles slowly down my blue-tinted glass dish and a faded brown ring soaks into the rough surface of the napkin beneath it. There is only a small puddle of ice-cream left when the clock above the archway to my right strikes one. 
     I stand up and rummage around for a tip. A tourist knocks my elbow and apologises. I smile my forgiveness but wrinkle my nose, at the strong waft of coconut sun-tan lotion and sweat, as they walk away. 
     As I straighten, the cold metal of my concealed pistol brushes my skin. It revives me from my nostalgic mood. I am here for a reason and it will not wait any longer. The Hotel San Marco is just two minutes walk from here. I will get there just in time for my lunch meeting with Don Phillipo; though I have already had my fill of Sicilian delicacies.
     I exit the Piazza and follow the downward sloping road towards the hotel. It is the largest and most expensive hotel in Taormina, a haven of luxury and leisure. Most guests do not realise that in a former life it was the fortress of the town and that, in the elegantly furnished suites, there were once prisoners starving or being tortured. Don Phillipo does know this; it is why he likes it.
     ‘A building of grace and charm,’ he said to me just a few months ago, during our last meeting, ‘yet with power built into its walls, contained ferocity that you would barely notice.’
     My footsteps make a sharp snapping sound on the over-polished floor of the hotel foyer. I head directly for the lift and travel to the third floor. My relationship with Don Phillipo has been carefully cultivated, to him I am just one of the many plants in his garden but he has overlooked my species. I am a Venus flytrap and today I will bite. 
     My pulse is pounding mercilessly in my head now. I reach the white panelled door of Room 21 but do not allow myself to pause – I cannot afford to hesitate. I knock twice, firmly.
     I hear muted shuffling on the other side of the wood but no one answers the door. I knock again, harder. The lock clicks round but the door still remains shut. 
     I push it open and enter. The room is in dusky shadow – the curtains are drawn. In front of the window there is a figure sitting in a curved backed armchair. From the shape of the silhouette it appears to be a young woman. I hide my surprise as I shut the door slowly behind me.
     ‘Hello.’ She speaks quietly, her head is bowed and still, she seems to be staring at my shoes.
     ‘Hello. I’m a friend of Alessandro’s.’ I announce as I glance around the lounge area. Now that my eyes have adjusted to the gloom I can see that we are alone. ‘We are meant to be meeting for lunch.’
     ‘Not anymore.’
     ‘Oh?’ I question her calmly whilst trying to work out what is going on.

       ‘He’s dead.’
     ‘Dead?’ I walk quickly towards her chair. I want to see her face clearly now. I want to know what game it is that she’s playing. 
     ‘Yes, dead.’ She looks up now; there is a gleam in her wide, childlike eyes. The silence between us extends like a tennis ball thrown up in the air. We stare at each other as we wait for the ball to come down. She hits it first. ‘You don’t seem very upset to hear that - for a “friend”.’ She over-pronounces the last word as though it is foreign to her tongue.
     ‘I’m in shock.’ As I bat it back to her I fail to keep the hostility from my voice. The girl is unnerving me. Her hands are clenched tightly on the arms of her seat and yet she is not scared. ‘How did he die?’
     ‘I murdered him.’ She says this for effect. Fifteen - Love. A smile pulls at the corner of her mouth. It is a humourless smile and it draws the life from her plump, red lips. ‘I put poison in his coffee. It induced a heart attack. He’s on the bathroom floor.’ She nods at the door to the connecting en-suite.
     ‘Why did you do that?’ I do not need to see his body; I have met enough killers in my life to known that she speaks the truth.
     ‘He was an evil man.’
     I cannot dispute this though the motive for my potential homicide was nowhere near as noble. I was just going to carry out an order. Don Phillipo’s life had been deemed expendable. I know many people you could call evil.
     ‘Why are you telling me this?’ I ask.
     She stands up so quickly that I almost jump. She is much taller than she looked sitting in the chair, but as thin as a piece of dried spaghetti.      

     ‘You are going to help me.’ 
     ‘You don’t sound like you need my help.’ I object.
     ‘You need to call for an ambulance. You need to be the person who tells the police.’
     I frown.
     ‘Why should I? You’ve managed up to now. Tell them yourself.’ This sounds juvenile to my own ears and I am almost embarrassed before this girl, who cannot be more than twenty.
     ‘No one knows that I’m here and that’s the way it is going to stay. The body guards in the next room know that you are due to arrive here for your lunch. Won’t it be suspicious if you don’t turn up?’
     She makes a good point. However, she is not aware that I have a plane ticket to Rome already booked. Today is not panning out how it should have done.
     ‘And if that doesn’t bother me?’ I ask.
     She grabs my hand, squeezes it tightly between her palms as though praying. 
     ‘Then you’ll do it so that my mother will know he had a mistress and she won’t grieve for him. He doesn’t deserve her tears.’
     I realise who she is and recoil but she will not relinquish her grip on my hand.
     ‘You’re Angela.’ I whisper. ‘Alessandro’s daughter.’
     ‘And you’re Maria.’ Her fingernails are digging into my skin but strangely I see no ill-will towards me in her expression. This shames me more than anything else. More than the murder I was going to commit.
     ‘Is that why you killed him? Because you knew about me?’
     ‘If that was why, you would be dead too.’ She shakes her head, simply. ‘What’s infidelity compared to a life-time of murder and greed? He deserved to die.’
     I nod. Without waiting to know whether I was agreeing with her last statement or agreeing to help her, she lets go of my hand and hurries from the room.
     Her plan will not work. Don Phillipo’s bodyguards will never tell his wife that his mistress found him dead. They will obey him even in death. I wait for five minutes, my mind running like a child with a stick against the railings. Then I go into the bathroom. 
     My former lover is lying on the cold ceramic tiles, the extractor fan whirling above his head. He was a fat man; in his bathrobe, his hairy belly presses up against the toilet bowl. I am overwhelmed by disgust at our lives. His years of power and fear, my employer’s cunning plans, my own pathetic part in the charade, it is all insignificant now. I touch his white hair. It is so soft. He was always so proud of its abundance despite his advancing age. 
     I hitch up my skirt and remove the small gun from the strap holding it against my thigh. I turn him over and take a deep breath. Then I shoot him in the head. I stand up and put the cold muzzle of the weapon against my temple. I can see the couple dancing in Piazza again, captured in the wobbling tears that do not fall from my eyes. Through the wall I can hear the heavy footsteps of running feet. I pull the trigger.