Fiona couldn’t decide on May or September for the wedding; the months in between would have her sweating straight through her dress. Her fiancé Brian thought May.
“The sooner the better,” he whispered, running a finger down the middle of her as they lay on her bed in the moonlight. She giggled at his touch.
He pictured her body, unzipped.
Fiona knew that her friends and family were concerned about the police investigation – they’d all squirmed at repeatedly seeing Brian in the news, that awful old photo before he’d got his hair cut, but they didn’t know him like she did.
“It’s been a nightmare for him, poor thing! For both of us, really.” Her friends would nod, of course, but none of them wanted to be bridesmaids. I might be on holiday, I don’t want to let you down. The children. Work. This before any talk of dates.
The police continued interviewing Brian. His car had received a parking ticket near the murder scene and his driving that far from home to buy Chinese rang hollow, but they had nothing concrete so their chats remained informal.
“If I was ever going to kill someone,” she told him one night, “I’ve got it all worked out. Establish what days the bins are emptied where that person lives, and then, the night before, ring their bell, beat them to death with a can of beans in their hallway, touching nothing, walk a few hundred yards down the road and drop the murder weapon in a recycling box. It’ll be long gone by the time the body’s found, no evidence, no prints. Nothing to pin on me.”
He searched her face for black humour, found none. He wondered why beans, especially.
“Let’s book the service for next week,” he said.
*
Nick Black’s stories have been accepted by literary magazines including Open Pen, the Lonely Crowd, Spelk, Sick Lit and Litro. They’ve also won various flash contests and been listed for the 2015 and ’16 Bath Flash Fiction Awards, Land Rover/GQ/Salon House Short Story Competition and the Spread the Word Prize. You can find Nick at @fuzzynick
Twisted Sister lit mag 
Nice one Nick. I like how her theory made his mind up on a quick wedding at the end