A Lethal Woman
by K.B. Carle
I am the femme fatale. I linger in doorways, knee bent, back of my hand pressed to my forehead. I cry in camera light. Tears shining, lips quivering, but my mascara never runs. My blush always accentuates my cheeks. I always fall for the detective, even though I ask him to solve the case of my murdered husband. To find my missing jewels. To help me because I am a helpless woman in need of protection. In need of saving. In need of a man. I am a portrait captured in black and white. A woman absent of color despite my pencil skirts and blazers that caress my curves when I walk. The heels that meld to my feet. I learn to run in these heels. How to be kidnapped, how to fight, how to stand perfectly still in these heels with a gun pressed into my temple. I wonder what will it take to be rid of these heels. I run into the arms of the detective in these heels. Kiss his cheek, his lips, allow our foreheads to touch, our noses to rub together because I am … what? In love? I know this isn’t a romance story, just another detective claiming his reward for another case solved. Never mind the bodies. My dead husband. My missing jewels nestled in the detective’s safe. Never mind that I cracked the case, identified the murderer, found all the clues while posing in the light. While sitting across from the detective, blinds scarring my face. That I, the femme fatale, guided the detective to the answer with a well-placed trip, a single tear tracing my jawline, a scream that baited him towards the villain, my kidnapper. I know the detective isn’t ready for the mysterious case of the swollen ego so — I knock. I knock on the glass pane of a door with his name etched in black letters. His name that pulls the camera’s lens in close. No one knows my name, not like they know his. I’ll enter because the detective tells me to. Walk in because that’s what the detective says, that’s when she walked into my life, without moving his mouth. Sit across from him, dab at my tears with a handkerchief I didn’t know I had. Tell him I need your help. Tell him please, help me in a single sigh even though I know how this story ends. I’ve played this part before except, this time, I’ll cross my legs. Let the camera capture the blood on my heel. Frame it in black and white so only I know it’s there.
K.B. Carle lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is the Associate Editor at Fractured Lit. and Editor at FlashBack Fiction. Her stories have appeared in Passages North, Porcupine Literary, Apiary Magazine, Jellyfish Review, The Offing, and have been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize. She can be found online at http://kbcarle.com or on Twitter @kbcarle.
