Just another Short Story

It was the hottest December of the last years, and there she was, the prettiest woman of the whole village; with her green, attractive eyes and her long blonde hair, shiny as a star. She was not just a good-looking face; she was really smart and gracious.
While she was still going to school, she gave guitar lessons at home. Her boyfriend was one of her students. He was a foreigner and a very kind person, three years older than her. He loved her a lot, and she couldn´t stop thinking of finishing the school to live with him, she thought it was true love what she felt.
It was ten o´clock; she was waiting for him at her house for the daily guitar lesson. He arrived in an old Chevy car. While he was knocking at the door, Peter, a close neighbor, waved hello to him but he ignored Peter and went straight into the house. Peter didn´t like this boy very much, but he appreciated his girlfriend so he was polite with him.
After an hour and a half, the boy left the house. He went to his car, opened it and put some type of package inside the chest. Peter saw him and offered to help him carrying whatever he needed, but Peter got no answer. The boy turned the car on and went away fast.
The next day, Peter did not see the pretty girl. Perhaps she slept over, or had been out… But he did see his boyfriend, as always, at five o’clock at the door. This time he was carrying a spade, and after some minutes waiting at the house entrance, he went to the back garden and started digging a hole. Peter, who was looking at him very carefully, shouted at him: ‘It´s not a good idea to plant a tree with such a hot day!’ He listened and thought: ‘What a stupid old man… Why is he always looking at me?’ The boy didn’t open his mouth and continued doing his stuff. A shiver went down Peter’s spine.
The girl’s mother started to get impatient. Her little daughter didn´t answer her calls, she was arriving at the village that night after a business trip, she needed to see her pretty daughter.
Peter couldn’t see when the boyfriend went away. He was watching TV.
The mother arrived and, as she didn’t see her young princess, she called the police crying and shouting. The once beautiful house became a horror scenario. Policemen who went from here to there, the loud sounds of the ambulance siren, shouts, cries, lots of curious people everywhere, and behind all that the inconsolably cry of a widow mother.
Time passed slowly: first days, then weeks, months and finally, a year passed. The neighborhood was calm; many people forgot about the ‘episode’, some could never do it.
Some visitors still hear about the beauty of the blond shiny girl, the grace of this green eyed young woman when she danced or played the guitar in local festivals.
Peter just listens, he doesn’t talk. Once in a while, he hears about the foreigner who has been deprived of his liberty and whose mouth is bound to eternal silence. Behind the grills of prison, he spends hours and hours playing his guitar, but he has never said a word about the girl.
For some people, peace has returned to the village, for others, not yet, because the doubts about the murder are still out there.


Pen name: Frank Wolf
Category C