grimmutterings

When Angel was 6 years old, she was told she was ugly.  She was at school when she learnt this.  A trio of blonde, mean little girls who always seemed to be dressed in varying shades of bright pink sought Angel out in the playground to tell her and watched spitefully for her reaction.

Angel didn’t know what she was supposed to say, and she didn’t cry often. The trio of pink nasties weren’t too sure what to do next either and giggled uncertainly.  Delia Pinter, the pinkest and meanest of the trio, poked her finger at Angel and said, ‘You are too! And you smell!’ With that the trio skipped off to be mean to someone on the swings.

Years later, Angel had grown from the beautiful child she had been into the beautiful woman she now was.  She was tall and slender, a cascade of dark hair framing exquisitely delicate features and she had the most startling eyes.  An Angel indeed.

She had married Simon who she had met and instantly fallen in love with on her first day in prison.  Simon had been totally enchanted by Angel.  There had been that hiccup at the start of their relationship, but Angel had only served a few days of her sentence.  What with looking and behaving like the poster child for the ideal inmate and the Parole Board being mesmerized by her startling eyes, they couldn’t refuse her premature request for parole.

As Angel had testified in court it would never have happened if she hadn’t seen the terribly overweight, sweaty, bright pink, Delia Pinter waddle across the supermarket parking lot, nose deep in a creamy eclair.  Suddenly, that mean little encounter in the school playground rushed back.  It could have been amusing, possibly, for Angel seeing as Delia was far from looking fabulous these days.

It could have been a karma kind of moment for Angel, as it looked like life had given Delia a cartload of hard knocks.  But the mind has a way of holding on to nasty little things sometimes, keeping them warm and alive and festering somewhere.  Just in case.  Angel gave Delia Pinter another hard knock and ran her over with her car.  She reversed as well.

When the beautiful Angel in front of him turned her startling eyes to gaze into his, the Prosecution wilted and forgot his speech.  He blushed instead and the jury agreed.  They had deliberated for an hour over lunch only because the judge had been feeling lightheaded ever since a waft of the delicate scent Angel wore had overwhelmed him.  Angel wore the perfume ‘Dark Obsession’, and it couldn’t really be described as delicate.  It was a dark and sultry perfume, and she wore it to devastating effect.

The jury gave their reluctant but inescapable verdict, and the judge, feeling better after a walk outside, passed sentence of 12 years.  He promptly took 4,288.75 days off for time served even though they hadn’t, and Angel was no sooner in, and she was out again, with a fiancé, Simon.

Angel was widely viewed as yet another beautiful and therefore innocent victim of society’s ridiculous and outdated laws.  ‘Angel’s Law’ was created and immediately passed to ensure things like this didn’t happen again.  Enough with the false accusations and absurd terms of imprisonment!  Enough!

Angel bore no grudges and she and Simon were as much in love as ever.  A few years after their wedding however, ‘Angels Law’ was quietly outlawed as Angel had gone and done it again.  Twice.  The two remaining and unsuspecting members of that mean little schoolyard trio had been hunted down and exterminated under the wheels of Angel’s car. 

Angel stared out the windows of Courtroom 1 the whole time in her second trial and ignored everyone.  The Defense had a hard time coming up with a defense as Angel wouldn’t talk to him.  Even the judge had got annoyed with her.  Angel broke her silence long enough to admit her guilt with a smile that shattered hearts and her startling eyes won over the court, then she turned and stared at the sky and hummed a tune to herself.  And the moment was lost.  Angel wasn’t here anymore; something had gone a bit wrong in Angel’s head.

This time the law was more successful, and Angel, the most beautiful serial murderer in recent times received a death sentence.  Two in fact in case she survived the first one.  It was a good job the law had got its act together and taken Angel off the streets as Angel had been planning a road trip with Simon, and not really the sightseeing kind.  In fact, Simon was still waiting in the suitcase by the front door.