Tuesday, July 13, 2010

'Wu-dunit': Introduction/The Murder

This breezy June night would be Connie Wu’s last. 

Just because she was the mayor of the third largest city in the nation didn’t mean she saw it beneath her to get down on all fours and scrub away at the peach-colored ceramic tiles of her Hyde Park kitchen. It always bothered her that her hoity-toity neighbors would often take advantage of poor families and new immigrants by paying them next-to-nothing to serve as personal maids and Spanish “cleanup ladies.”


“I clean my own house,” the 62-year-old widow of four would boast whenever her children would insist she hire some cleaning ladies of her own. 

“You have enough on your plate as it is Ma,” they’d say. 

Her hair, once a silky, jet-black and- when not in a bun- could touch her waist, was now just a short grayish-blackish bob. Make-up could no longer cover the thickening bags under her eyes and she had gained at least 50 or 60 pounds in the last year or so. 

But there she knelt, in her blue and red floral blouse, green slacks, yellow head scarf and rubber gloves scrubbing away. This night, “The Mayor’s Mansion,” as the neighborhood kids called it, was quiet. The SCRISH SCRISH SCRISH of the scrub brush against the tile was the only sound in the house. Every now and then a BLOOGP followed by a PIT PIT PAT could be heard as Wu dunked the brush into the tin pail of bleach. 

The lonely silence would be terrifying to some, but the mayor was certainly not afraid to be alone in her own home and had no fear of being harmed in it. She would even leave the back door open all night sometimes during the summer.

Even the few enemies she had were not capable of causing her any serious harm- or so she thought. 

For one of them had just managed to slip into the kitchen with her. 

SCRISH SCRISH SCRISH SCRISH- 

BLOOGP… 

Huh? A BLOOGP? But Mrs. Wu had not yet dipped the scrub brush into the bucket behind her. 


Suddenly, a foul and breathtaking odor rushed through the mayor’s tiny nostrils and into her lungs. It was a smell so strong the mayor almost blacked out. 

Still on all fours, Mayor Wu began to choke, clutching at and coughing saliva onto the bleached floor. 

Trying desperately to re-gain composure and figure out what was happening, the mayor slowly began to crawl to see what, or who, was behind her. 

And for once, in a very long time, Connie Wu was frightened out her sound mind. Her eyes popped wide at the sight of her…

killer? 

Mayor Wu tried to say something to her murderer as she grabbed hold of the nearby sink and counter to stand. She quickly slipped back onto her knees. 




The killer, clothed in black, placed a small plastic bottle onto the marble countertop and swiftly stepped closer to the mayor. Then, the killer grabbed the mayor’s bobbed crown of grayish-blackish hair. 

GA-BLOOGP! 

Connie Wu’s murderer frantically exited from where he or she’d come- the back door. And there the mayor’s body lay on the freshly scrubbed kitchen tiles of her Hyde Park home, her head immersed in a tin bucket of bleach and... 

ammonia. 


Chapter1, part I >>

3 comments:

  1. Love it! I can't wait to read more!

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  2. agreed. can't wait for the next chapter! i've been searching for a blog like this for a while now. it should give me something to look forward to at work :)

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