The Scarlet Pen

October 14, 2021 Short Stories 2 Comments

THE SCARLET PEN

A Short Story by Kenn Crawford

Amos Gerard sat in a drunken haze staring at the dozen 8×10, black-and-white photographs his private investigator had delivered early in the morning when the golden glow of the sunrise promised a beautiful day.

The sun had lied.

The pictures were taken through broken, smoke-stained blinds of a cheap motel’s filthy window. Even though they were photographed through a grimy window, the high-powered zoom lens of the investigator’s camera had managed to clearly capture the faces, and naked bodies, of an unsuspecting couple caught in the throes of passionate lovemaking.

Amos glowered at the assortment of images that featured his wife and a man he did not know in various states of undress, climaxing with her straddling her lover, her head thrown back in ecstasy.

As the sun dipped below the horizon, Amos had given up using a tumbler and drank whiskey straight from the bottle as a myriad of thoughts and feelings, ranging from crushing hurt to unadulterated anger, raced through his mind.

His lips and chin glistened with the whiskey that trickled from his mouth with each drink, his eyes moist with anguish and indignation.

A soft knocking sound interrupted his loathing.

“Special delivery,” he heard a timid voice call out.

Amos stumbled to the front door and flung it open, half expecting the P.I. had returned with more heartbreaking, pornographic pictures of his cheating wife, but was taken aback by a young, goth-looking man standing in his doorway. The young man, dressed entirely in black with a narrow red tie, held out a yellow manila envelope.

“Delivery? From Who?” Amos asked, his drunken slur barely beyond comprehensible.

The young man shrugged his shoulders, “I’m just the messenger.”

Amos snatched the envelope from the young man’s hand and abruptly closed the door, not bothering to leave a tip. He flopped back down on his sofa, ripped the envelope open, and poured the contents onto his coffee table then took another long pull from the whiskey bottle.

He stared at a thin, long red velvet case. It looked like something that would hold a bracelet, but Amos couldn’t remember ordering anything for his wife.

“I knew that lying whore was cheating on me,” Amos said to the empty room. “Why would I buy her anything? She’ll never see a penny of my money, even if I have to spend every last dime hiring the best divorce lawyer in the country.”

He double-checked the envelope – there was no return address; it didn’t even have his address on it, just his name in bold red letters.

As the owner of a struggling business, it was not uncommon to receive unmarked deliveries from one of his employees, but this was the first time it held something other than documents that required his signature. Trying to keep his business afloat often meant spending long hours at the office, away from his wife, but never once in the six years they were married was he ever tempted to cheat on her.

That thought dug deep into his heart and squeezed just a little harder.

“Bitch didn’t even make it to the seven-year itch,” Amos slurred as he carefully lifted the red velvet box.

Had he ordered something for his wife; an apology for being especially busy these last few months, and not quite as attentive as he should have been?

He glanced at the photos splayed across the coffee table and chased that thought away as he took another long pull from the whiskey bottle. His wife had obviously found someone else to fill her immediate needs while he worked long hours to fill their future needs.

Whatever the gift was, Amos knew he would at least feel some semblance of revenge when he showed his wife the gift right before he threw it in the garbage – a symbolic reference to the marriage she so easily threw away in the arms of another man.

He opened the red velvet case expecting to see a diamond bracelet or anklet but stared dumbfoundedly at a scarlet-coloured pen cushioned in plush, black velvet.

Amos scrutinized the pen and the red velvet case; there were no markings to indicate where it came from.

He peered inside the envelope and spotted a gold-coloured card stuck in the crease.

He fished it out and flipped it open to learn who had sent the mysterious pen. It revealed no such information; the gold-coloured card was embossed with thick black letters that read:

Your deepest desires will be answered when you write them with this pen.

Below it in a smaller font were the words:

Like a genie in a bottle, you only get three wishes.
Choose Carefully.

There was nothing written on the back of the card.

“What the hell is this?” Amos asked the empty room. He didn’t expect an answer. None came.

He unceremoniously dropped the card and the pen on the coffee table, his mind thoroughly preoccupied with the photographic evidence of his wife’s infidelity.

Several drinks later, the bottle quickly encroaching on empty, Amos eventually turned his attention back to the mysterious pen.

He picked it up and, not having any paper nearby to write on, thanks to living in a digital world trying to go green and paperless, he grabbed the manilla envelope.

The ink from the pen was jet-black and flowed smoothly as he wrote:

I wish to win the lottery.

Nothing happened.

“Figures,” Amos half laughed as he tossed the scarlet pen on the coffee table then picked up the TV remote to try and distract the thoughts that were crushing his heart.

The local lottery filled the screen and was about to reveal the winning numbers.

Amos smiled in spite of himself. He knew the whole ‘Three Wishes’ thing was utter nonsense, and the lottery appearing on the TV was nothing more than a coincidence, but the thought that he could have his wishes granted simply by writing them down with the mysterious scarlet pen tickled the back of his mind.

“If only it was that easy,” Amos thought as the lottery announcer revealed the winning numbers, but he wasn’t paying attention to the television, his eyes were transfixed on the words he wrote on the manilla envelope – the black ink was now a bright scarlet red.

For some unknown reason, most likely his imagination getting the better of him, Amos suddenly felt compelled to check the lottery ticket he bought earlier in the week and compared it to the winning numbers.

He had won.

One dollar.

“Well, that was a waste of a wish,” Amos slurred as he took another long pull of whiskey. “I guess I should have been more specific.”

He crumpled the lottery ticket in his fist and tossed it over his shoulder, not caring where it landed, his eyes drawn to the wish he had written down – he was positive the ink was black when he first wrote it.

Something on the periphery of his senses told him that something had happened, but it was hardly what he wished for.

Or was it?

Amos picked up the gold-coloured card and re-read the last part of it:

Like a genie in a bottle, you only get three wishes.
Choose Carefully.

“Okay,” Amos spoke, almost incoherently, “let’s try this again. Here’s me choosing carefully.”

He picked up the scarlet pen; his sloppy handwriting mirrored his level of intoxication.

I wish I had 10 million dollars.

Once again, the jet-black ink flowed freely from the pen.

Amos stared at his barely legible handwriting, wishing this nonsense actually worked as he lifted the bottle to his mouth for another satisfying drink. His cellphone vibrated in his pocket, startling him, nearly causing him to chip his tooth on the bottle.

“What?” he blurted angrily into the phone.

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Gerard,” a bubbly voice responded. “I’m calling to confirm that the life insurance policy on your wife has been updated.”

“Life insurance?” Amos asked confusedly in his drunken stupor, “I didn’t take out a policy on my wife.”

“Actually sir, it was an oversight on our part,” the bubbly voice of the woman explained. “When you enrolled your business for medical and life insurance, we only had you listed on the policy, but it should have included your wife. We do apologize for the oversight. Effective immediately, your wife is now insured for ten million dollars.”

“Thanks,” Amos said, barely louder than a whisper, his mind racing as he stared at the manilla envelope; the ink of his second wish had also turned from black to scarlet red.

He never heard the bubbly voice thank him for his understanding before hanging up; he was thoroughly preoccupied staring at what he had written on the envelope, then to the last line on the gold-coloured card:

Choose Carefully.

He hadn’t chosen carefully.

He did win the lottery; granted it wasn’t exactly what he had intended, but his wish was granted, he just wasn’t specific enough.

The phone call established that his second wish had also come true – he technically had ten million dollars, he just needed to wait until his wife died before he could collect it.

Through narrowed eyes, Amos glared at the photographic proof of his adulterous wife and her extramarital activities.

“That’s easy enough to fix,” Amos slurred in a malevolent tone as the corners of his mouth curled into a knowing smirk.

He snatched the manila envelope from the coffee table and hastily wrote:

I wish my wife was already dead.

Once again, the black inked flowed smoothly from the pen, only this time it instantly turned scarlet red.

Amos’s knowing and satisfied smile was short-lived, but it wasn’t a soft knock or a timid voice that interrupted his reverie.

His front door crashed opened; splinters of wood were hurled across the room as the door swung uselessly on its hinges. Amos instinctively jumped to his feet at the intrusion as several police officers stormed towards him, guns drawn, yelling at him not to move. Amos stared at them, frozen in fear and wholly confused.

The alcoholic numbness he had successfully accomplished vanished in an instant as one of the police officers forcibly spun him around to cuff him, but it wasn’t the police that sent a cold chill down his spine… it was the images that flashed across his TV screen.

A news anchor was reporting live from some sleazy, no-tell motel. It showed gruesome crime scene footage that someone employed at the motel had most likely leaked to the press for a handsome payoff.

The cellphone video footage showed a woman laying on the bed with a small, black hole in the middle of her forehead; a tiny trail of blood trickled down between her eyes, a look of shock and horror frozen on her face. The back of her head was not nearly as neat and tidy; most of that, accompanied by bone and brain matter, had sprayed across the cheap painting that hung above the bed, then dripped unceremoniously down the wall and onto the grey, dingy pillowcases that had once been a stark white; but that was a dozen years and countless pay-by-the-hour customers ago.

Next to the woman was her dead lover.

As Amos stared at the TV, panic and horror raced through every fibre of his body as the shaky hand that held the cellphone panned the small room and stopped at the bedside table. On it sat a red velvet case with a scarlet pen sitting in plush black velvet.

Next to it, on the back of a yellow manilla envelope, was a single line in scarlet red ink written in his wife’s handwriting:

I wish my husband would spend the rest of his life in prison.

~ The End ~

Books by Kenn Crawford

FICTION

Dead Hunt: Some Things are Better Left Dead

Code 900: A Derrick Stone Crime Story

The Saga of Bayou Billy

CHILDREN’S FICTION

The Misadventures of Mallory Malo: A Ghost Story She’s Dying to Tell You

The Princess Knights

NONFICTION

The Covid Chronicles: Personal Pandemic Stories from Around the World: 2020

How to Write & Publish Non-Fiction: a Self-Publishing Guide for First-Time Writers

10 Things I Learned Shooting Short Films: A Reality Checklist for First-Time Filmmakers

FILM MAKING TOOLS & JOURNALS

The Indie Filmmaker’s Shot List: Create Film and Video Shot Lists

The Indie Filmmaker’s Storyboard Book: Create Storyboards for your Indie Film or Video Shoot

Did I Roll My Eyes Out Loud? A Gratitude Journal for Pissed Off Women

The Five-Minute Gratitude Book: A Journal to Teach Children to Practice Being Grateful

COMING SOON TO AMAZON

1811 – The Sequel to Code 900: A Derrick Stone Crime Series

Hold Onto Your Shorts – a Collection of Thriller and Horror Short Stories by Kenn Crawford

For more information, click this link:

kenncrawford.com/books

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and incidents portrayed are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with those of the author.