ANOTHER SLICE OF PIE By Vallon Jackson

Back by popular demand (at least one person asked), the further adventures of our feckless Wile .E. Coyote killer...

Another Slice of Pie

My wife, Roxy, died in a head on collision with a speeding train.
Actually, she probably died a couple hours earlier when I smacked her round the head with an iron bar because she didn’t come round during the time I parked her car on the level crossing and waited for the train to arrive.
Then she was dead and so were about two dozen others on the train when it derailed and went to pieces all along the line. Sadly, I missed killing my work mate, Robert, who should’ve been on that damn train. He out-foxed me, but he wasn’t going to get away so lightly next time.
I’m not a bad man by nature, but it was Robert and Roxy’s affair that tipped me over the edge and turned me into this killer. Turns out they’d been having an affair behind my back for years. I heard the whispering after Roxy’s funeral, the little nods and winks from the congregation when Robert stood next to me at her grave and laid his arm over my shoulder. The facetious, smug son of a bitch said he was sorry for my loss. He’d lost too, but his were crocodile tears.
He wasn’t bothered by her passing; he had his fingers in lots of little pies.
Latest little sweet pastry he’s been knocking off is Chantelle down at the hairdressers on the high street. He even has an appointment booked in: regular as clockwork. 2 pm every other Thursday.
Today’s Thursday and it’s 13.55.
He left the office earlier than normal. I gave him a few minutes so that he wouldn’t spot me following him, then I made my way into town and stood on the steep incline opposite Chantelle’s salon, ‘Hair of Superiority’. I couldn’t see inside but I didn’t really have to. The Closed for Lunch sign had gone up but there was movement behind the smoked glass window. Him and Chantelle getting jiggy with it.
I didn’t plan to kill him today but I was offered an opportunity I couldn’t ignore.
The huge UPS van was left idling on the hill while the driver ducked out and headed off with a bundle under his arm. Them guys are in and out so fast that they never bother locking the door.
I leaned in, pulled my sleeve over my hand, and then disengaged the hand brake.
I watched distractedly as the van began a ponderous roll backwards. Then it picked up speed and it was a rolling battering ram. I stepped back into a doorway even as a brown streak shot past in pursuit, the driver shouting out in dismay.
He didn’t get to the truck in time. It crashed right through the front of Chantelle’s and didn’t stop until it rammed right through to the back wall. There’d only been a couple of brief shrieks but they’d curtailed the moment the truck had come to a halt.
Down on the high street the driver was holding his head in his hands. Ohmigodohmigodohmigod...
Poor bugger, I could almost feel sorry for him. He was going to catch all the shit for this. But I couldn’t help smiling as well.
Other people were descending on the scene.
Some braver souls went inside the wrecked shop, but came out almost as quickly, faces ashen. One of them was sick on the pavement. I walked down and stood beside the vomiting man.
What happened? I asked him as I patted his back.
They’re dead. Flattened. God help ‘em. Then he was sick again.
I muttered consoling sounds, to him. Then turned away.
Just as Robert came out of Charmaine’s Salon, 'Superior Hair', three stores along.