This is a part of something else I'm working on. Unless I'm mistaken, it stands alone as flash fiction.
***
Alabaster had changed from a slow,
sleepy little town into a bustling media freak show. The three-person police
force was tasked to its limit. Every major network and news source was
represented by hungry news hounds looking to scoop each other on story leads to
the killings. They'd dubbed the killer, The Alabaster Assassin. Reporters were
suckers for alliteration.
The sheriff had never been more
disgusted in his life, the local merchants however, had never been happier.
Business was booming. The closest Alabaster had ever come to this kind of
excitement was four or five years back when Gabe Newel axed his mother-in-law.
While murdering relatives isn't exactly novel anywhere in the south, this story
was particularly scandalous because Newel chased the woman for several blocks,
hacking away at her while she screamed, literally, bloody murder.
Roy Holcomb put a stop to the whole grisly
show when he looked out his front window once he heard the screaming. He
grabbed his buck rifle from the gun rack of his pick-up truck, quickly popped
in a couple of shells, and went after Newel. Marie Wells Goodlaw, mother-in-law
to Gabe, died from loss of blood and because some of her insides became
outsides. Gabe Newel died because he lost his head or a good portion of it
anyway. Roy Holcomb was an expert shot.
