Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle by Pauline Jones (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

With a twist that caught Fern by surprise, Luci freed herself and sauntered into the room, not stopping until she reached the four poster bed against the far wall. She smoothed the counterpane and tucked the single pillow on the far side of the bed behind her back. With feigned unconcern, she crossed her legs and arms and looked at them.

“So? What do we do now? I thought I knew my lines for this scene, but you’re not at all what I expected. Do you really mean to kill me and why?”

“Course we do!” It wasn’t Fern’s imagination that Donald sounded defensive.

“You don’t look like killers. Is this your first time? Is it just me that you’re trying to kill or do you have, like, a quota or something?”

Fern looked at Donald. He looked as bewildered as she felt. This was not following the usual course. The girl was supposed to plead for her life. Ask the usual questions. Not...not... Fern didn’t know how to describe what Luci was doing. But somehow it all seemed to fit with the difficulty of killing this girl.

“Quota?” Fern shook her head.

“I’m doing it, aren’t I?” Luci gave them a sympathetic look. “My family predisposition is hard to combat. But I will try to play the scene by the prescribed rules. I shouldn’t like to die wrong after all’s said and done.”

“Scene?” Donald shook his head, the gun he held wavering.

“Yeah. The why-are-you-doing-this, you-tell-me-and-I-exclaim-in-shock scene.”

“Shut up!” Donald gripped the gun tighter, wiping a hand down the side of his pant leg. “Why we’re doing it is none of your never mind,” he snarled.

Donald always reacted like that when he doesn’t know something, Fern could have told Luci, but she was too bewildered to do so. And too busy fighting the growing conviction that this was going to go wrong, too. That this time they weren’t going to be able to get away.

Luci smiled. “Is that a silencer on your gun? I’ve never seen one before—oops. I’m doing it again, aren’t I? But then you didn’t quite follow the script either, did you? You’re supposed to say it’s nothing personal, doll, or something like that, but business is business—”

“Oh, it’s personal, doll. ‘Bout as personal as it gets—”

“Really? Would you like to talk about it? You seem to have quite a head of steam built up and it might make you feel better to talk about it. And steady your aim. Why don’t you sit down—”

Her tone of friendly concern almost had Fern moving towards a nearby chair.

“Shut up!” Donald’s voice seemed especially harsh. “I don’t like people what gives me trouble and you gives me more trouble than—” He choked a couple of times in his attempt to find a suitable comparison.

“Calm down and just do it, Donald,” Fern cautioned. Wouldn’t it be just like a man to have a heart attack and leave her to finish the job?

“Let me savor it, Fern!” Donald wiped his beaded forehead with the back of his free hand. “Waited a long time—”

Luci exchanged a worried look with Fern, a look that Fern returned before she realized what she was doing.

“Are you all right? Your color isn’t too good—”

“Shut up,” Donald snarled again.

Luci looked amused. “Or what? You’ll shoot me? I really think I’ll do what I want with my last living moments—

When Fern thought things couldn’t get any weirder a third voice cut Luci off.

“Well, that was gross,” the placid voice said from behind her. “Did you know there’s a body—oh, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

A chilly wind ruffled the edges of the counterpane and the curtains at the window. It lifted the straying ends of Fern’s and Donald’s hair.

“What the hell—”

“This is who has been trying to kill me,” Luci put in helpfully.

“They don’t look like killers, except for the gun,” Gracie said.

“Surprised me, too,” Luci said.

“Shut up!” Donald looked right. Fern looked left. There was no one to be seen.

Fern looked at Donald as the voice continued, “I suppose they’re the ones who put this body up the chimney?”

Fern froze, her breath constricted as apprehension tightened her chest. Who the hell was talking?

“There’s a body up the chimney?” Luci straightened from her pillow and dropped her feet to the floor. “I wonder if its Boudreaux’s lost corpse?”

“Did Boudreaux lose a corpse? It’s not like him to lose something so large.”

Fern looked over her right shoulder, coming nose to nose with Donald doing the same. Continuing their rotation, they turned to face the source of the voice: a female head protruding from the mantle of the fireplace.

She tried to speak, but couldn’t manage more than a strangled cry.

Donald sounded worse than her. And the hand holding the gun shook as he pointed it at the head.

“Anyone we know?” inquired Luci from behind them, as if there were no head poking out of solid wood.

“Just a moment.” The head faded back into the woodwork just as Donald pulled the trigger. The wood where the head had been splintered twice. “Hmmmm, I don’t think so.” The voice was hollow and rather distant for the first half of the sentence, but came closer as the head emerged from wood once more.

Donald fired again, this time taking out a bottle of aspirin sitting on the mantel.

“Goodness. The mouth shaped the words placidly as she turned to examine the scars. “I haven’t been shot at since I died—”

“No!” The word rose to a shriek. He fired again and again, emptying the chamber, continuing to pull the trigger when bullets no longer spat out of the barrel.

With a howl of rage and fear, Donald threw the gun at the head. Then dropped to the floor—in fetal position. The last thing Fern saw before the red mist enclosed her was Luci stepping close and bending to peer up the chimney. “Dang, there is a body in there. What do you want to bet Mickey will blame it on me?”

“Lot of prints all over this room,” the tech told