Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Carlo Carra In a small town in the midwest there were two sisters. They were both unmarried, both young and beautiful. They lived together in the same house their entire lives.
There was a lot of gossip and conjecture about the two sisters. Their good looks kept most of it from being harmful to them. The nastiest comments about two women in their late twenties still living together, still sleeping in the same room, came from the corner gas station. There young men who'd hung out there in their teens still went because there was usually no place else to go.
They talked about the sisters and their jet black hair, their purple blue eyes and their slender but promising bodies with a carnality that they'd never experienced.
On a day in June the sisters' mother died. Their was a large funeral. It was well attended. In a small town like this everyone knew at least everyone else's name.
Besides it was a clear sunny day, not yet warm enough to be oppressive. It was a good day to wear a suit and tie.
Many of the young men in town came for an excuse to take some time off of work and to catch a glimpse of the two sisters dressed all in black.
At the funeral the elder sister, the one generally considered to be the more classical beauty of the two, saw a man all dressed in black. He was a stranger she had never seen before. He came across the cemetery and touched their mother's coffin, stood for a moment in quiet contemplation pretending to listen to the preacher and then turned and walked away.
The elder sister fell in love with him. Completely, totally and madly in love with him. In those brief moments she felt a surge of wild emotion she had never felt before. She had never felt love for a man. This deep and full love overwhelmed her to the point where she hoped her near swoon was seen only as grief by the crowd.
She wanted to run after the stranger but small town decorum and rules said you don't leave your mother's graveside to chase after strangers.
That evening the elder sister told her younger sister about the stranger. She did not tell her of the intense emotion and longing she still felt for him. The younger sister agreed she had seen the man but had nothing further to say about him.
She didn't think he was handsome, or interesting or even that his behavior was odd. To the younger woman the stranger was just one of those things that happened like a storm or a bird hatching from an egg. They were a part of the life that was always around you. It existed but it did not touch you or hold much interest.
That night they went to bed. The elder sister's mind was swirling, her yearning was deep and pure. She loved the stranger in black and fell asleep dreaming of him.
In the middle of the night she awoke. She got out of the bed and went to the kitchen. She selected her largest carving knife. The one their dead father used on Thanksgiving and Christmas for carving the turkey. She went upstairs and straddled her sister. The younger woman did not wake up, not even when the knife went into her chest.
The first blow killed her but the elder sister kept striking and hacking intent that her sister be for once truly and completely dead. Do you know why the elder sister killed her?

Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" and Unknown "Because in her grief over her mother she thought the younger sister would come between her and the stranger?"
That's a boring answer. Most normal people would answer something like that.
But a murderer knows that life and death are much simpler things than that. She killed her sister because she knew that to see the stranger again there would have to be another funeral.

That's what I thought about while I was working today.
I didn't make much money but I didn't have to do much either. The money seemed even bigger to them than it did to me. So it was fair. And now I have a reference, a satisfied customer or some such. The hardest part was the walking. I have to fix my bike this weekend.
The job came from the craigslist ad. I like fast responses.
The cat is doing well. She wants to be unconfined which is good but she'll have to stay in the dog kennel for longer than she wants.
My finger still bothers me but its healing.