Black Widow

Let her kill again, Ursula thought.

Feeling a little more relaxed now, she opened her bag and removed her laptop. She drummed her fingers impatiently whilst waiting for it to power up, then navigated her way through the tortuous branches of an old-fashioned file tree, until she found a folder labelled Coursework. She entered her password, then opened a sub-folder, Research.

Fifty-six icons, photos-in-miniature, peeked out at her. Closing her eyes and letting the mouse move where it would, she double-clicked, opening her eyes slowly to see what she might have unearthed.

It was Maria, a ten-pin bowling ball in hand, pointing at her feet, and laughing. Yes, those shoes were funny. And Maria, delicate thing that she was, seemed to be struggling to lift even the lightest ball.

Click. Maria standing on the steps of the Stadsschouwburg theatre, wearing a gown, looking like the most beautiful gypsy princess who ever lived.

Click. Maria asleep in bed, the duvet resting about her waist, her breasts bared. They were large enough, and perfectly symmetrical, in a way that breasts mostly weren’t. But that was Maria all over – each part of her body seemed to exist in perfect harmony with its neighbours, and itself.

Ursula scowled as she considered how all this might look to a casual observer. To her mother – no, even worse, a man. Hideous men, with their objectification of women and pornography and mindless arousal. Where was the beauty in that?

Click. Two dark bands, and a bright line between, and in the centre of that brightness Maria, showering away the dirt of the filthy world that men had built.

Fuck it, even language itself was a male invention, if Ursula remembered her literary theory. There were no words in the corrupted lexicon of men to describe what she felt for Maria.

Ursula powered down her computer and sat very still on the edge of the bed. She could hear the other women downstairs, their voices a drone, and they might as well have been ghosts.

She took out her phone, opening the picture library. She’d taken a number of shots, during the course of her surveillance.

Mikael had fascinated her, as a virologist might be fascinated by a deadly virus. She’d wanted him destroyed, clearly, but at the same time there was a great satisfaction to be had in hunting him down. So, she’d tracked him all the way to Enge Lombardsteeg.

Something had prevented her from following him downstairs into that strange underground bar. So she’d remained upstairs. She smoked a joint; marijuana was a feminine pleasure, born of the fertile earth.