The phone -- flash fiction

[The scene opens on an elegant apartment, an intimate table set for two, the candles burned to stubs]

As David stood, flexed his fingers and loosened his bunched muscles he reflected on Christa's taste in cinema. She had always loved noir films. One of her favorites of that ilk was Dial M for Murder.

David smiled at the irony.

He had found the rotary prop phone used in the film snuggled lovingly amongst tissue paper in an estate sale auction. He had planned on surprising her with it tonight as an anniversary gift. Christa loved surprises.

David had sat for hours at her mirrored makeup table watching his reflection lose game after game of solitaire, reaching out now and again to delicately stroke the curved feminine lines of the phone.

At three a.m. Christa finally brought the beautiful body which contained her black cheating heart home. When she smiled sweetly at him while lying through her gleaming white teeth he had snapped.

He knew that she hadn't been at the theatre running her lines with the new director. He'd seen them go into the Hollywood Hilton together. But David saw to it that Christa did get to practice a new scene. A scene filled with heartbreaking lines and a very dramatic exit. A scene that the audience would see coming a mile away.

But Christa had been out during the setup so she couldn't have been expecting strangulation by vintage telephone cord to be her very last stage direction.

[As sirens wail in the background David exits stage left]

This week's fridayflash at MadUtopia