Cold Blue Eyes

"Who is this mysterious man?"

The apple was poisoned. He smiled as he gave it to her, and his eyes almost seemed to will the girl to take a bite. She did, and relished the succulent taste of the fruit inside her mouth. Polishing off the entire thing, she laid back on the tiny bench, happily satisfied. He had done it. The old dog greedily set to rubbing his hands together, which also served the purpose of warming the cold and clammy appendages. It was damned cold, and winter weather was even worse high up in the mountains. He looked from side to side, and then covered the girl with a dark green canvas cloth.

He now sat at a rickety table in the center of one of the mountain inns. A man with a fiddle was busily entertaining the travelers for whatever amount of money he could get, and the foreigners remarked upon the fiddler's looks. "So Ugly" they whispered between themselves. The man with his hands figuratively stained a scarlet red held a bottle of sherry wrapped in coiled cotton that was slowly unraveling. His top hat was remarkably shiny compared to the evening stars one could see through the high square windows in the rafters, but for the most part, he was left alone, for his beggar gloves gave off mixed impressions.

Indeed, he was a very queer character. One moment he bawled out loudly at the jokes told by the bartender. Another moment he stirred his soup with a small stirring pipe, hunched over his table and looking rather evil for the times. It was at this moment that a group of policemen and a weeping woman came into the tavern. The murderer immediately recognized her as the sister of his beloved Bella. She whispered into the bartender's ears, and the bartender's fat smiling cheeks puckered up into sour orbs. He whispered, "Murder... Murder..."

At that moment, the fiddler on the stone stage abruptly halted his performance with a loud greech. The foreigner's completely ignored the intrusion, and continued discussing their plans for a coup de'tat over that particular country's leaders. Whether they would succeed in the matter beckons for another story. The sister scanned the room, ultimately eyeing that lovely gentleman she had entertained three nights ago. Or so she had thought him at the time, him with the beggar gloves.

Our gentleman remained absolutely still. His eyes were fixed upon the meaty porridge he had been spooning into his mouth just moments before. The woman hesitated. But he knew that in this land, justice was easy to come by. One need only point to a fellow for some crime, and the justice would make itself felt in the form of vigilante mobs. It was the police that saved the criminals, not executed them. For a moment, his light blue eyes looked up at the girl, just a few years older than her sister. To any casual observer, it might have seemed that he was simply looking at the woman, with no interest in her body or her life. But his eyes almost willed the woman to name him.

The woman stood on her toes to whisper into the ear of one of the policeman, a great burly fellow with a big stick. He nodded, and signaled to the others, and the team of other fellows, with their woman witness, left the mountain inn as quickly as they had come in.

"Would you make that out!" The bartender said, and threw a copper shilling over to the fiddler, as if to say, "Play that fiddle there, you." The fiddler had been deeply affected by these happenings. He started to play slowly and clumsily. The songs were of a sadder nature, which the boy thought might be appropriate to the situation. And soon the foreign guests were all nodding off to sleep.

As for the murderer, he thought to himself, "She didn't name me. Why did she not name me?" He stood up and kicked his chair out of the way. Thanks to his precious Bella, he knew the location of their summer home. It was not occupied at the moment, but near the bottom of the mountain valleys, it provided a perfect escape route. At the last moment before our man walked out of the inn to go on the road, he thought to himself that her eyes perhaps had been a cold steely blue, just as determined and ruthless as his.

"Well, that is easily taken care of, my dear." He talked to himself as he walked through the dark. "I see your challenge, and raise you; raise you one innocent life."

Author's Note

Thank You for all Comments. Also, please note, this is the first draft as they go up.