A Nice 140 Degrees

“They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but I prefer mine at a nice 140 degrees. You see, this is the perfect temperature to drink a nice cup of coffee.” She spoke in a cold, detached manner. She spoke as if she had said this thousands of times before and would speak this line a thousand more. 

“I’m sorry. Could you explain what you mean by that?” Sat across from her was a young man, well he was young compared to the woman. Unbeknownst to her today was this young man’s birthday. He turns 34 today. 

“You seem like a smart young man. I’m sure you’ll manage.” he scribbles something down in his notebook and she continues. “So you must be the new police investigator?”

“Private investigator.”

“You know what I meant, dearie.” She smiled and twirled her hair between two fingers, a conscious act. He made note of that. Seeing that this elicited no response from the young man she groaned and lay dramatically back into her chair. “You are no fun, all the others at least seemed interested in me.”

“Ma’am I am not here to try and find a date. I am doing my job. The men before me have all been fired due to unprofessional behavior.” 

She sighs and lays sideways in her chair, draping one leg over the other with her bright red heels glimmering in the light. She lets her hair flow over the other end of the chair and sighs dramatically. 

“Everything okay ma’am?” He reluctantly says that caring for her well-being is such a hassle. 

“No, dearie, no it’s not.” She sighs again and lets an arm fall, her strap slips off exposing a bare shoulder. She smirks while slowly bringing an arm to fix it, staring into the man’s eyes the whole time. “It’s so hot in here. I fear I need to lose some of these layers. I’m sure you’d love to help”

“Ma’am stay focused, I am here to question you about the deaths of John Thompson and Richard Bark.” He sits up in the chair, allowing his eyes to drift to her once again exposed shoulder as the strap falls, then looks back at her face as she rolls her eyes. He refused to lose focus, despite how alluring her charm seems to be. He is so close to catching her, he just knows it.

“Oh, that.” 

“Yes, that.”

She lets out an exasperated groan and sits up. “Honestly I know nothing.”

“You don’t seem too upset.”

“Oh right, I s’pose you just expect me to be balling over my two ex-husbands.”

“Two is a lot of husbands to be both exes and dead.”

He flips through the notebook he’s been writing into a collection of Polaroid pictures. He holds one up. It’s a body. The skin is peeling off his skin, melting like the base of a candle and his soul is the wick. One of his eyeballs has completely melted away and the other has sunken in so far it would take a spoon to scoop out its liquidized form. The cartilage in his nose is missing revealing only more melted skin and the bone of his skull. The whole picture looks like someone poured a bucket of blood over it, with such a deep crimson pouring out of the remnants of his pores it is almost unintelligible that this picture is of something that once was human. They had to call in Richard Bark’s father to identify the body. The poor man passed out at the sight of the body. They didn’t have it in them at that point to try to get him to identify the body. They decided just to send samples of his DNA to the lab instead of calling anyone else in and having the same issues. Three days later the results confirmed everyone’s suspicions. This melted mess of a body once belonged to Richard Bark.

The young man stares at the woman as she takes in the sight of the picture. He stares ready to write down any reaction she might have. But she merely has a look of indifference, the man’s surprise must’ve shown on his face because the woman smirked.

“That’s a gruesome Halloween decoration.”

“Ma’am this is real.”

“Like hell it is” she scoffs out a chuckle. The man just stared at her. “Neither of my ex-husbands would ever be seen like this gooey mess.” 

“Hm,” he nods. 

The next picture he holds out is worse in the most surprising ways. This one’s face isn’t mangled. This one you can see his face so clearly that they didn’t even have to call in any family members to identify the body. John Thompson was a well-known social figure in the media due to his running in the election of the town’s mayor. He was under the spotlight after a recent scandal at the voters’ office. He was called in to have a trial on Tuesday but died before he could ever testify. He was speculated to be taking and giving bribes, and orchestrating a riot that caused significant property damage to the home of his political opponent, Cadence Frances. In the picture, Thompson’s face was contorted into a face of pure agony, like he saw his whole family being torn apart by wild dogs while the pups gnawed on his legs. His once-white collared shirt was stained from the bottom up as if it were a syringe taking in the dark crimson color that was oozing out of where once his legs would be attached to his torso. The appearance of this was truly traumatizing, merely because most bodies this gory are just that, bodies. This one you could see his face. This one was clearly human. This one made everyone feel the need to vomit. Even the cold detached woman in front of the young investigator paled at the sight. He had assumed she’d have no reaction to this and thus he studied her expression. Her mouth was slightly open and she brought a hand to her mouth as if covering a yawn. Her eyes blinked more rapidly and she let the hair fall into her face. His eyes widened. This was a rehearsed act! If it were natural her movements wouldn’t be so precise. He could only find one video of her previous interrogation but it had gone exactly like this! He frantically scribbled the similarities into his notepad while she kept the act up.

“Good Lord…” she muttered.

“My apologies Ma’am I should’ve warned you. I thought with the other one you’d be fine with the gore,” he mumbles as he writes, trying to keep up the polite act.

“Heavens, why on earth would you think that?!” She exclaimed just trying to play her victim card up. But he got her. He understood what was happening and now he wasn’t going to let her just get away with this anymore. He wrote for a solid few minutes before the woman spoke up.

“Be a dear and make us some coffee. I’m afraid that picture upset my stomach.”

The young man hesitates then gets up and brews a pot of coffee. It was not good coffee. He merely scooped some instant coffee into the mug and poured the boiling water overtop, then brought it over. She sipped it and her face puckered up. She sets down the mug and pulls a small paper packet out of her coat pocket. It looked vaguely reminiscent of a sugar packet but there was only a number 5 scribbled on it. The sound of her pouring it in reminded the man of when he was little and would play with the gravel in his front yard. Picking it up to let it spill slowly back out of his hand. He’d do this for hours when he waited for his Mother. Gods he missed his mother, the way she smiled, the faint rosemary scent that lingered on her clothes after working with the essential oils. He also was saddened by the fact that this was the first year she wouldn’t be able to make him his special birthday cake. God, he missed her. She had died recently. Everyone told him she had died of natural causes but something within him knew this was deeper. The doctors told him it was an unexpected stroke and there was nothing that could’ve been done to change what had happened. Maybe he would’ve believed them then, but right next to his mother’s urn on the day of the funeral, he found a note. Inside it written in a beautiful cursive script said ‘This is what you get for meddling in things that aren’t your place, Dearie.’ 

The woman snapped her fingers. 

“Huh? Oh so sorry did you ask something?” It happened again, didn’t it? He mentally chided himself for letting his thoughts spiral and looked back at the woman.

“I merely asked if you were feeling okay.” She said with a devilish smirk.

“Yes ma’am,” he said but his voice was now shaky. God, it was five months ago get yourself together. “Just the sound-”

“Brought you back to your childhood? To your Mama perhaps”

“What?” 

The woman grinned. “I fear you have not researched me enough. You see, this is how I function. I draw people out and get them to think they are doing good. What you don’t understand is that everything here is happening on my terms as a detective. I know who you are. You’ve been tracking me for a while, and yes your mother’s death was by my hand.”

The man’s face started to burn. Not in an embarrassed or angry way, but in a literal-

His scream sounded like a macaw trying to imitate a baby’s cry. It was horrific. He could feel the flesh turn into pools of liquid and run down his neck as if it were tears of lava, leaving burnt trails as it went. He realized the woman had thrown her cup of coffee onto his face, whatever was in that packet must be what caused this. She had been searched for weapons but no one expected this to be how she did it. The woman sat there mildly amused. She had had this planned since he had disrupted her plans about half a year ago. You see this was all an elaborate scheme to get revenge. She was supposed to get all the inheritance money after Thompson and Bark died, but since this boy had caught onto her trial they had withheld the money till after the trial. He had been working on his first case as a private investigator and had caught onto something about both murders no one else had; the fact that the only known connection between them was their ex-wife. She did everything to shake him off her back. But nothing shook him. She had even killed his mother and that merely made him double down. This boy must be the type to bury his grief in overworking himself. He must’ve also been paid a whole lot to care this much about a ‘random’ killing such as hers. These six months she had been planning for his death. She had learned everything about him and knew exactly what to do and say to get the reactions she needed out of him. She had waited for five months after killing the young man’s mother just to watch his mental torment. So as the time finally arrived she relished in his screams. Devouring them like a starved dog on meat scraps from the butcher. But she is the butcher here. And this butcher will not have her plans ruined by some overbearing customer!

“Now dearie, do you understand? Revenge is a dish best served cold, but I prefer mine at a nice 140 degrees.” She smirks, “You must’ve thought I meant Fahrenheit. I meant Celsius.” The man’s screams die out and the woman drops the now-empty packet onto his melted remains. The number five showed brightly against his red melted flesh, thus being her fifth victim.