It was a clear and sunny summer morn the day we took Sport to the vets, a day that will remain with me until death. Sport, my chocolate-lab and buddy since birth.

He died later that day—poisoned, a poison that inhibited his breathing, the Vet said. I cried, Dad and Mon and my older sister Karen also cried, and the height of my sorrow must have reached the Angles, and I'm sure their eyes were wet as they looked down upon my family and me.

When you're eleven childhood is slowly giving away to teenage years, and you've already learned that some people are not—nice. No, the bully, the girl who hates you for no reason, the teacher that frowns when you approach her desk, a kid who was you friend last year now has a different personality— yes, many things are just starting to hit home in ways that only a person leaving childhood begins to see.

I knew who killed Sport and so did my family. It was old Mr. Whalhaim.

He constantly complained about Sport. Oh yeah, if Sport barked he called the police and said that that dog of ours kept him awake. Sport never barked at night except occasionally at a strange noise.

"You aren't-a-getting another dog, are ya?" Mr. Whalhaim said one day. His beady eyes and carrot nose looked up at Dad as they stood in the back alley.

"How do you know anything's wrong with Sport," My Dad said.

"Duhhhh—I don't— hear him barking anymore," Mr. Whalhaim said.

"If I ever catch you—near my family—I'll fucking kill you—understand!"

"Is that a threat?" Mr. Whalhaim said. "I outa sue you!" Dad started walking back into our yard, then turned and said, "Just remember my words!"

Whalhaim's scowl held a smirk—and his beady-little eyes told all as he chuckled softly while he shuffled himself back to his walkway.

"Stay away from him," Dad said, "and don't play out in the alley anymore — if I could just get some evidence."

The image of sport taking spasms that day never left me. And as I grew older the image became clearer with more detail… as time passed. I planned Whalhain's murder each day afterwards. And enjoyed it!

I joined the army and served in Afghanistan after graduating from high school, and when I returned home the only thing that bubbled out of my mind was the day Sport was murdered! Nothing else bothered me. Many plans for Mr. Whalhain's murder were now archived in my mind.

I bought a new Ford F-150 pickup, and was out in the garage looking it over, adjusting mirrors, reading the owner's manual and passing my time by being alone.

We had a severe-winter-storm warning for that evening. It hadn't started yet, but one could tell something was in the air. Plus, the streetlights were out and some of the homes down the street had no lights.

I glanced outside and noticed a light-snow starting to fall. But the thing that grabbed my attention was beady-eyed Mr. Whalhaim. He had his garage door open and was going to back out his car. Probably going to get some groceries before the snow started getting heavy.

I shut off the lights in our garage and watched him. Sweat formed on my forehead, my heart started pounding and everything became black before my eyes, except the snow. I could sense Sport and saw him as clear as a mirrored reflection of myself on a bright and sunny day. Hair on the back of my neck, I could feel now, and my lips started to quiver.

All these years I thought and planned on Sport's revenge, yet it was just plain serendipity that sealed Whalhaim's fate.

I can't remember going over to his garage, but I do remember getting in and closing the overhead door.

He wasn't in his car yet, and the garage door banging closed startled him.

I bent low behind the car and backed around to the rear passenger side. He suspected little.

He came back to open the overhead door again. He must have thought that a gust of wind closed it.

I backed-up some more, then as he rounded the car I reached up and pulled the light string. All went dark in the garage.

He swore and started to bend over to pull up the door. That's when I raced to the back of the car and got him in a strangle hold. His frail body was no match for my military-trained muscles. He finally passed out but I didn't kill him.

I started his car; then I got out and looked through the garage door windows.

The snow and wind were really picking up now, as I waited in his garage. The exhaust fumes started choking me, so I figured he would never make it out alive. But still I held his breath with my hand again until he squirmed, then took my hand away. He was breathing on his own yet, but I knew that the carbon monoxide from his car would do him in!

I took a chance and pulled the light cord. The light came on. I didn't want anyone to think something was funny about this.

I looked out, nobody around, so I slipped out the side-door, reset the bolt so that it would lock when closed, and scurried across the alley and back home. With the snow now very heavy and the wind blowing it almost sideways, I was sure that nobody had seen me!

Two days later I read about Mr. Whalhaim in the paper. It was ruled an accident. And I love how they say he ripped off his tie and buttons from his shirt, for the detectives surmised that he was struggling for his breath but he was too weak to make it out of the garage! He just gagged and gagged and gagged—until death!

"'Stairway to Murder' looks like another best seller Mr. Cornwell, but I see that the New York Reviewer crapped on it like they did your previous novels," the guy at the magazine stand remarked. "People put a lot of stock in those things."

"Yeah, I know. How much for a copy?" I said wanting to get away from there with as little embarrassment as possible.

"For you, no charge! But I got to tell you Arthur, trust me, you really don't want to read what HE said about you this month."

He was right. I wanted to read the latest bad review from this piss ant critic about as much as I'd wanted to give myself an enema with an oversized garden hose.

"Damn it to hell! That son of a… What right does he have to lambaste my runaway best seller?" I said to myself. "Sales will probably go into the toilet!"

I shook my head, "I would kill that miserably pipsqueak if I could only figure out how to do it without getting caught," I thought to myself ironically being an author of murder mysteries. His latest review would likely tie a lead balloon to my current sales and send me earlier than expected back to my keyboard, if my publisher didn't decide to drop me altogether.

"Maybe I could arrange a traffic accident and push him into…hmm", I pondered to myself considering the possibilities.

I looked up in time to notice that I was standing in front of the Farnsworth Publishing building, a fourteen story, marble monstrosity, which put out the New York Reviewer, a miserable entertainment rag better used for packing material or lining animal cages.

I think it's about time I had a meeting with their chief critic, a Mr. Samuel J. Pettifogger.

"Maybe I could drop something heavy on him from the top floor of a building," I thought to myself. "But how would I get him on the street and get away without being noticed?"

I took the elevator to the fourteenth floor and waited for him in the hall outside his office where remodeling was underway. The outside building widow had been removed, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the building. Plastic sheets were temporarily duct taped over the opening.

As I waited, I continued with my mind fighting. "Hmm, If could figure out a way to electrocute him when he reached for his…no…I don't know what I'm thinking. I've got nothing!"

Just then, the door opened and a beady-eyed little squirt walked out, wearing a bowtie as one might expect and dark rimmed glasses as if he stepped out of a forties B movie.

"Hello Mr. Pettifogger, my name is…"

"Yes, yes," he said with impatient disgust while reading something as he walked into the hall. "I know who you are. You're here about my review?"

"How did you…?" he cut me off again.

"It's taken you this long to get up the nerve to meet me face to face?"

As I stood there, trying to find words through the rage that was building inside me, I decided to put my best face on and be diplomatic. Then later, I could sue the hell out of the little bastard, if he said or did anything amiss.

"I don't have all damn day, what do you want?" he stated with insistence.

"I just wanted to know what you have against me," stating my purpose as succinctly as possible.

"You inexperienced hack! It's nothing personal, I just call it the way I see it and the way I see it is, your writing is nothing more than tiresome dribble," he responded sporting a slight smirk.

"I see, you enjoy taking writers a part, because you have no real talent yourself. Your mama taught you gooood," I said, getting off a cutting remark. "You may not realize, I have a degree in writing from…"

"Your tech isn't the problem," he said interrupting me with growing impatience. "Your plot development is!

"My plots have always been highly developed and well thought through," I said defending my work.

"They're too developed, that's your problem!" he said grimacing. "You're a victim of your own perceived genius. It's the same tedious, over elaborate planning with all of your stories. They're excruciatingly painful to read and never plausible," he stated desiring to cut the author down.

"Okay, how would you do it?" I asked getting angrier by the minute.

"I'm in a hurry, so try to follow me Einstein.

Most murders are done on impulse, pure and simple with very little planning. Someone gets mad and then they get even and that's pretty much it! Any of this getting through…the simpler the murder, the more believable it is!"

"Really, you mean like this!" I laughed as I shoved him with significant force.

As planned, he slid on the putty behind where I had positioned him, lost his balance and fell backwards into the plastic sheeting and through the hole where the window had once been. I watched him as he plummeted downward, hitting one of the flagpoles jutting out from the side of the building, before landing on a parking meter by the sidewalk, causing him to burst open like a ripe watermelon.

God only knows if there was still time left on the meter.

"Not bad for an over elaborate planner," I muttered to myself as I headed toward the elevators.

As I contemplated what had just happened, I realized that he was right. You get mad and THEN you get even. It took a little nothing like Mr. Pettifogger to help me understand something so basic to the human experience.

I pondered quietly to myself, "Thank God for critics!"

The middle-age man looked at the autumn trees with disgust. The leaves, the dead leaves that still clung to the branches – those were what made him sick to his stomach. The last rays of the Sun were filtering through the membranes of the leaves and Spenser could just make out their empty veins – veins that were once filled with chlorophyll, once filled with life.

If he could, he would have pulled out his lasergun and set the decaying forest on fire, but he had better things to do on his schedule. Important things.

The leaves reminded him of the old man Spenser had seen him in town a few weeks ago. His skin was almost transparent and the veins on his face and neck had popped out when Spenser had asked him for directions. It was as if Old Man Burton was too busy dying to talk to Spenser. It turned out that Old Man Burton was too busy to talk to anybody. He lived all by himself, except for a few animals, on a farm way back in the woods where he felt safe and was sure no one would ever find him.

Spenser wondered if the old man would finally want to talk with him in those seconds just before he took him down. He wondered if he would beg for his life or just fall silent.

In some backwater shore of Spenser's memory, the old man looked like the grandfather who had tried to beat him into submission as a teenager. Perhaps, someday, he would talk with a counselor about what happened with his grandfather, maybe, someday.

Spenser watched from a gully as a light went on in the farmhouse. It was a warm, yellowish glow – probably clicked on by an automatic switch meant to stave off the dangers of the encroaching darkness. He raised his head a little higher and could just make out the dark form of the old man's body pulling itself from room to room. He was already dead, Spenser reasoned – old and dead like the brown leaves in the woods. When he killed him, it would be as if Spenser was shaking a tree, allowing a leaf to finally fall to the ground and rot.

He crept around the side of the farmhouse, past the well that had been boarded up for a century, past the torn couch that someone had left outside years ago. He heard a sniffing in an outbuilding as if something had rolled over in its sleep. Soon all of this, even the animal in the barn, would be his. He would take over the farm and lay low for awhile, maybe a few months even. The city had grown too hot for him since the robberies – too many eyes and ears and whispering mouths. There was no one here in the woods – except Old Man Burton. Spenser slowly opened the screen door. He had expected it to squeak, but it was well oiled. He began to sneak across the floor, step by step by step.

Suddenly the old man was in front of him, standing with an astonished look on his face. He had believed he was safe, he had thought that the world couldn't touch him here, but here was a stranger in his kitchen with hatred on his face. The veins on his skinny little head popped out and Spenser grabbed a knife by the sink, plunging it towards Burton's chest. He felt the resistance of his old skin as the blade tore through it. He reveled in the way the meat of his lungs gave way under the butcher knife. This was personal, this was joyous, and so he stabbed again and again until he could taste Burton's blood in his mouth.

Finally, he put the body inside a blanket and started pulling it towards the door, but something was wrong. The blood tasted funny, metallic. Then it was all wrong, with the scene around him melting away. Two men in uniform appeared and leveled laserguns at his head.

"You got him, Jones?" shouted one.

"Yeah, he's eliminated," said the other as a beam of light tore through the middle of Spenser's skull, leaving a tiny, perfect, cauterized hole. The guards walked over to the body of the dead clone. One kicked the corpse, but it didn't move.

"I'm getting sick of this job," said Jones. "These clones look so human; it's weird to just shoot them. It's the way their eyes look at you. It's as if they're really human, you know."

"It's the only way to know for sure if they'd do it again: download a copy of an inmate's mindstate into a clone, set the scene – and watch to see if the inmate would kill again. It's tried and true."

"You're right, I know you're right. It's just creepy, that's all. And these clones seem to be getting better and better at almost getting away with murder. I figure that someday one of them is bound to escape."

"Don't even think about that. If one of these freaks escaped from us, there would be hell to pay. "

"True. Well, I'll make a report to base."

A man in a white coat answered the phone inside the sterile, white-walled facility. "Got it," said the attendant. "Understood." He took a few steps and approached a psychiatrist. "Parole denied. Spenser failed again."

The doctor made a note on his clipboard and nodded. "We'll keep working with him. He's been here for three years; maybe someday he'll pass the test." He stepped into a meeting room where a group of patients were talking about their day.

One of the patients was an inmate named Spenser who would now be in counseling for at least another eighteen months. Doctor Burton glanced over at the middle-aged man who seemed to be staring at the veins on the shrink's forehead.

Augustus was looking at Frt Sev (Central Square) in the middle of Lehthwen town, the Gwi homeworld's capital.From his observation point nobody could notice him as the man was disguised as an humble immigrant alien cleaner used to wash the many glittering windows of one of the hexagonal buildings the Gwi had adorned their translucent urban setting with.Hundreds of skyscrapers made up of some bellite-like, tabular orange crystal structures — the construction companies used here as a rule — developing and aggregating automatically on the building yard within only a few months in order to reach some unbelievable heights by means of a futuristic nanotechnology just similar to wizardry before human eyes.Such a technique was the Gwi species' best kept secret the Earthmen hadn't been able yet to put their hands on, no matter the fabulous contracts the proud aliens had been offered so far…

This species was really proud, too, of its Flying Train System which allowed people to move very fast from the farthest regions to capital downtown within minutes only. Using the aerodynamic wing-in-ground effect, the Flying Trains were able to proceed at 610 miles per hours. Each vehicle, with a length of 579 feet and seating capacity for 790 passengers ( as the bipedal, squirrel-like Gwi were smaller in size than humans like Augustus and occupied less space in comparison), was astoundingly conceived.It was a symbol of the values the Gwi expressed about modern technology, so the Flying Trains were highly appreciated from the population and most photographed from the tourists, whatever country or world they came from.

This was the reason why the young human bomber had chosen it as his best target.From his position Augustus watched everything,waiting for the right moment.

There was a strange competion, started some months ago among them.Many unusual "artists" like him were vying for achieving something to be remembered across the galaxy, to obtain the best "work of art" in a lifetime. The rivalry had begun just by chance, when Augustus had heard of that murder of 1,000 people on board the Nbther-t-rt Space Station in Sector 54467 caused by what had been discovered to be only a machinery—the size of a spacecommmunicator –- activated as soon as a starboat arrived at the designated robo-berth inside the hangar bay.All the crewmembers and everyone else aboard had been killed.

What a brainwave,an impressive fulfilment!

Then, there was another unknown guy, on a mining asteroid facility in the Steel Orbiting Field in Sector 55678— property of the Hl-Hl species— who had entirely destroyed five out of five mines all at once,1,500 dead overall, no surviving worker left on the sites.

Augustus knew he had to do something wider, better and showier and with no lifeform left alive, of course.At least, 2,000 causualties…

That was a weird, elitist art form only a few could really appreciate, besides you have to overcome several difficulties in order to study adequately the place of action, not to be seen from the local authorities and to figure out all the predictable occurrencies which could hamper your end.So, it was hard to have such a thing properly done,that was why such a work of art was so exacting, certainly.

The bomber had chosen the main station of the Flight Trains System which converged exactly in the middle of the capital, in the crowded Frt Sev.His purpose was killing every single passenger aboard arriving at 10:00, leaving no wounded around.And wiping out all the passers- by within the boundaries of the square, too.No one more, no one less.

As soon as the last Flight Train out of three( he was waiting for) arrived on time and people began getting off, the man left aside the fictitious duties he was doing and meddled with the controls to activate the powerful bombs placed at every corner in order to ensure the result expected.

But, when the countdown started and his black, charcoal fire eyes— matching his dark long hair— were already looking forward to taste the event, the man saw something that really hurted him.

An uexpected Sudden Sale, one of those which happened at times in Lehthwen, with some tracked camions coming to downtown to sell their fresh, old- fashioned dairy products from the countryside, creating some "outdoor markets" where people usually crowded at once in search of the best offers.A tradition followed by every good-natured Gwi.

"Damn!" Augustus thought.The passengers were running out of the bombs' range too early, walking to the sudden market at a faster pace than he had supposed when his plan was conceived! This way he knew he would fail…And there was no time left to stop the countdown now!

So he decided to act immediately.It took only a minute to him to get off the structure he was working on, touching the street level by means of the Gwi made side emergency lift.The detector would have soon noticed he had left his workplace, but at that time it would have been of no importance.He had to kill all the people coming out of the Flight Trains at the designated time.Or no one at all!Keeping up his reputation was too important…

As he arrived near the square, he began crying out, attracting the attention and inciting everyone to leave the place because a bomb was going to explode.Immediately many and many had a conniption, spreading in every direction, this way emptying the main station, too.

As the time of the explosion was drawing near, Augustus thought that all that was really funny, as this way he would have looked like a saver, but he was not…

Better to loose everything that reaching a thing done by half- measures, which might be of derision among the other competitors.

After all, isn't Art itself a kind of illness?

The land of gabled homes, in a town of renown, from which Roger Williams had fled, had a history of death, misogamy, burnings and dread. And therein lived little Deborah Dinwitty, a dyslexic ditz. She was not without reason and certainly had wits, but got her forwards backwards, her ups became downs, her brain hurt, then her tongue twisted.

As an animal caretaker, they were her friends. To them, Debbie's ailment needed no amends. To them she would talk and with and tell stories too. They taught her their languages, few humans knew. Her ailment was not an impediment.

Her boss, the vet, noticed her skills and overruled the manager and kept her on. Still, the mistakes she made were lettered wrong, and at best were usually bass ackwards, mistakes professionals would consider dangerous. But her animal skills were second to none, at times suggesting the correct procedure, without the DVM training.

The vet marveled at her skills and said, "You have a job for life, if you choose to stay." He said scratching his head one day, with a quizzical look upon his face, "I read about someone like you, way in the past. I can't recall at all." He let it pass.

Debbie lived close to her Mom, not that the relations were ever toasty or warm. Statistics claim most people stay a few miles from home. Deborah was no different, and didn't like to roam.

Her peers from school remained in town too. And casual meetings brought on a frown.

All her life she was tattered and torn by the winds of ill speech, and earlier on, no parental care to protect her was borne. Abused all her life, it's a wonder she stayed. Any others would have up and disappeared, run away.

She had plans. Yes Debbie did so. A ditz, maybe yes, maybe so, (but be careful what you say to Deborah Dinwitty). And one day, oh happy day, she started to put them in play. The boy who had raped her, (it was the whole team) he would be the first of her game he was going to pay. He was their captain, he made the thing start, with a, "hold her down, spread her. Let's fuck the little tart."

She never said a thing. Who would believe a girl from the wrong side of town. Would good boys do those things?

He'd be the first to get what was coming. His puppy, Poncho, a cutie, was in for a checkup and brushing. Abusing her gifts and position of trust, "Here you go poncho", she said to the puppy. She mixed up a batch a potion she bought, from the witch named Haza-el that she met one dark rainy night. The witch understood her life and her shame. Her own family's past had been put to the flame, and offered to assist those who were historically were to blame.

"It might take some years to, get to them all dearie. But if you have patience, we'll make sure they fall." Deborah accepted the offer right quick. A kiss and a hug was all Haza-el required. Debbie was light and full of desire.

So back to that puppy so young and so cute. With venom she filled it in a manner astute. The potion was designed especially for his master's DNA, designer cancer. The venom became part of the puppy's saliva. And when he licked his master the potion would enter, which first made him sick, no doctor could figure. And then, he recovered, or so he did figure.

But each time again the dog licked his dear master, another disease or another disaster. The shakes and some blindness, then followed by sexual dysfunction. This was not fun. His wife thought he got a disease from another girl. It mimicked all those things sexual she had read, AIDS cancer and all thing of dread. And so she fled, from her house and out from her bed. He died slowly, alone as parts failed, lungs with mucus filled, hanging on to live, just barely lingering on, as then another infection was sent, like strands of a rope, upon which one dangles from a cliff, eaten by a mouse, one by one.

Deborah followed his history. Since he was a celebrity in her local home town, his fate and his story were carried in papers. She laughed and she thanked the witch for her favors. He died most alone, ugly, and ridden with sores and fever wracked. The dog, it was gassed. It went mad and bit him.

To the others she did slightly the same, while altering potions to fit the pet and assailant's name. Then one-by-one delivered them all to the mortuary as guest. One-by-one they, disfigured from pain, and were all put to rest. Their pets were destroyed, helpless little victims. They were tools to be used, and discarded when spent.

Even though the mystery solution all pointed to Deborah, and as fate would have it, she never got caught, 'Cause, who would have thought Deborah Dinwitty, the dyslexic ditz, ever had the brains to do something like this. She was given a pass.

Witch Haza-el, in her home, in the town from where Roger Williams fled, now smiling instead, and for the first time, was not wearing a frown. She was pleased as can be. It may have taken years, no centuries, but the families of her historical shame, were exactly the same that caused Deborah's pain. They were now suffering, or dead. And she watched in her ball, with great joy of it all, as their blood, so red, ran down the death house's drain.

"Sure the animals, bi and quad, had to go; stupid beasts all", and she said so. "With plans best laid, those tools and that fool, I used them quite well, I used them all so.

"My family and friends avenged!"

Louisa was uncomfortable about the gun. The revolver was buried deep in her bag on the passenger seat next to her. She felt contaminated by its presence but she was going to need it later, to kill Howard.

She pulled in to the farmyard in a cloud of dust that whipped around the car. Louisa opened the door and stepped into the dry summer heat that instantly made her blouse stick to her skin under her jacket. There was no one in sight but the heavy rumble of machinery was loud in the air.

"Hello?" She called.

No one answered. Louisa headed towards the noise. On the far side of the barn she found the source; a tractor at idle, the side of the engine cover open and a man, naked to the waist, bent over it.

"Hello?" She shouted and got his attention. He reached in the cab and shut it down.

"You the caretaker?" She asked, her voice loud in the silence.

"Yep. I'm Jed." He squinted at her, eyeing her. Jed's face was sun burned, his scalp too under a buzz-cut. "Who're you?"

"Louisa Hollenbeck. I'm from the bank." She got a business card from her bag, flinching as her fingers brushed the gun, and handed the card to him. "They told you I was coming, to do the inventory?"

"Yep." He held the card by it's edges, glancing from the card to her and back. He was young, fit and trim, his muscles well defined. He looked kind of sexy, all grubby and streaked with sweat. Louisa's mind slid from that thought as she remembered the gun, and her fatal appointment planned with Howard for after she finished there at the farm.

"Let's start with the house," she said.

Inside, it was cool but felt musty. The sight of dried blood on the family room wall, sprayed out in a dark fan behind the armchair, caught her by surprise, made her gag.

"Jesus, didn't anyone clean it up?" Louisa said, her hand to her mouth in disgust.

"Sheriff said someone would come by. They ain't come yet."

"And upstairs?"

"It's bad. 'specially the boys' room"

Louisa made it out onto the porch before she vomited.

"It's not my fault," she told herself between convulsions.

Another farm, another foreclosure, she'd done dozens. Times were hard. If she was a little overzealous, a little too keen, so what? The bank was a business not a charity. And Howard, dear, darling Howard, with his taste for a fast buck and a dirty property deal, had made it well worth her while. That is, until the Fuller farm foreclosure.

Jack Fuller, had been a bad farmer, a bad husband, a bad father, just a bad bet in general. When he got the foreclosure papers, that clear, blue Tuesday morning, over a week back, he'd decided it was time to cash-out. Jack took his shotgun, went upstairs and shot his twin nine year old sons in their beds. He shot his wife, Nancy, twice, as she came running down the hall at the sound of her boys' screaming. Then he went downstairs, sat in his favourite chair, and blew his own brains all over the wall.

Now Howard was getting edgy. He'd squeal like a pig if anyone so much as looked funny at him. He'd hang her out to dry to save his own skin if he got the chance. Louisa just had to shut him up first.

"You okay?"

Louisa became aware of legs in dusty boots and dirty jeans on the porch next to her, Jed was standing over her. She looked up at him, he didn't seem to care that she'd thrown-up all over the steps. He didn't seem to care at all.

"Let's do the barn instead," she said.

The barn smelled of dry straw and oil. Machinery loomed in the shadows. Louisa ticked uncertainly at boxes on her clipboard while Jed followed her, a dark hulking mass at her shoulder. They came out the side door, to the tractor that Jed had been working on.

"What's wrong with it?" Louisa asked, checking it against her list.

"Nothin'. Just needed an oil change and service."

"We don't pay you for that."

"I promised my sister I'd do it. Her husband weren't no good at that kind of thing. He weren't no good at all."

"Your sister?" Even as she said it, she knew. She reached into her bag, groping for the gun. Jed's fist hit her in the jaw like a hammer, knocked her down like a sack of wet sand.

Pain brought her back. Pain and the deep, throbbing rumble of the tractor's engine that she felt through the dirt beneath her, as well as heard. She cried aloud and tried to sit up, but dizziness and nausea forced her back down. Her legs were pinned, they were in agony. She raised her head to see them, they were jammed under the blade tips of a plough, their flesh pierced and bleeding. More blades hung above her body as the angle of the plough loomed over her from the back of the tractor. Jed stood by the back of it, his hand on the lever that would hydraulically push the blades into the ground.

"I knew it was you," he said, loud so she could here over the engine noise. "I recognised your name from the foreclosure papers."

"It wasn't my fault," Louisa cried, "It was just business."

"Just business! We ain't nothin' but dollars and cents to you people. "

Jed dropped the lever, the pitch of engine noise increased, the plough lowered. It wasn't fast, it took handful of seconds. Louisa did a lot of screaming. They turned to choked-off gurgles before she died.

He answered his cell-phone on the second ring. "Is it done?" He asked.

"Yep." Jed was as taciturn as ever.

Howard cut the call without saying goodbye and smiled grimly.