SMILE, YOU’RE DEAD
Joseph M. Faria

"Oh God that felt good," she says.

For a moment I thought I had missed her. She just sat there with this moronic look on her face as if she was still waiting for me to pull the trigger.

I look at the gun, touch the metal, and feel the heat.

"Hey, you," this guy shouts at me.

I look up and see this bald head attached to these hairy shoulders, attached to a pair of long hairy arms. He’s leaning out the window.

"Yeah you," he says. "I know what you look like. I called the police."

I lift the gun and point it at his face.

"Don't shoot, man. Don't shoot," he blabbers, and ducks out of sight.

Red lights and sirens.

I still got the gun aimed at the window when the black and whites pull up.

When they put the hand-cuffs on, I swear the bitch winks at me.

"What's the guff?" I says.

"Murder, pal," the officer says, and grabs my arm.

"But she . . . she's."

"Dead, mister."

"She can't be, she just fucking winked at me," I shout, and try to turn him around. "Can't you see her? The bitch is smiling."

"Right, and I'm the Governor of Rhode Island."

So we go downtown, me in the back seat and the cop in the front. On the way, he keeps jabbering on about his wife who left him when he was a beat cop down in Monterey. Said she was a good looker. "Sea eyes,'" he says. "Drown you with a smile," he says.

All the while I'm looking at his mouth working in the rearview, then he screws his face up to the mirror and looks at me. He's got that sad, droopy dog face working when he says his wife left him for a beach bum.

"So what do you think about that?" he says.

"Fuck you," I says.

"Tough guy, huh. We'll see how tough you are when they give you the chair." Then he laughs, a little too loud.

As we pull up to the station-house he says, "So, who was the girl? Your wife? Your girlfriend?"

"No, my mother."

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” the cop says, and makes the sign of the cross. "Some kind of sicko, huh?" He shoves me up the stairs.

I turn, lift my hands and rattle the handcuffs.

© Joseph M. Faria 2005

Joseph M. Faria (jmmf@msn.com) was born on the island of Sao Miguel, in the Azores. He studied Creative Writing at Roger Williams University. His first book of short stories, "FROM A DISTANCE", was published in the Azores in June 1998 by Nova Grafica, Lda., and a book of poetry, “THE WAY HOME”, was published in October 2003 by Lit Pot Press, CA. His work has been published in numerous venues, print and on-line. Joe is also the Contributing Editor of NEO, a literary print journal published in Europe. He lives in Warren, RI. At this time, Mr. Faria would like to thank AZORES EXPRESS, for their continued support.

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