Wednesday, August 24, 2011

3 word monday (only it's Wednesday): Disguise

“Perfect disguise”, Amanda said to her reflection in the cheval mirror. “No-one will recognise you.” The wig made her head look like a coconut and the mouth was a delightful touch. She gnashed her teeth and pulled back her lips, gurning at herself to get a better look. Yellow and crooked: what they call ‘English teeth’ in the US. Then, of course, there was the fat suit.

Amanda knew from bitter, adolescent experience that the best way to stop people from seeing you was to be overweight. She had suffered a long time to learn that lesson. All through her teens she had been the butt of the jokes, left out of invitations and spurned by her peers, just because she had a weight problem. Behind the size she was actually quite attractive but they never knew because they never looked. They deemed her invisible. Talk about the elephant in the room!

But when she reached twenty one she inherited some money and used it to change her image and her identity. Not because she was unhappy with herself, but because she realised by then she would have to play by ‘their’ rules to win their game. And she had won. Her face appeared nightly on TV as a respected anchor-woman on a national news programme. Every one of her old tormentors could see her now. She was relishing her triumph and planned to crown it with a visit to each of them to point out the error of their old ways.

Hence the disguise: the wig, the fake teeth and the fat suit made her look exactly like she did at school. That was the point. She wanted to make sure they knew who was responsible as she murdered them, one by one. It was the perfect disguise for the perfect crime. Only the victims could identify her and they did not live to tell tales. She had even been captured on security cameras a few times and earned herself the nickname of The Fat Slasher but no-one linked the obese image with the svelte news reader. She knew she would never be caught. She just had to remember not to laugh when she reported the latest killing to her eager viewers. 

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Three Word Monday is run by Steve Isaak. Each week he chooses three words and our challenge is to write a 600-word (maximum) story including all three.  This week's words were: coconut, gnash and deem.

7 comments:

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Anne .. that's excellent - loved the story .. now please start writing the series .. sounds a great premise.

Cheers - Hilary

MorningAJ said...

Thanaks Hilary - I'm a short story girl. Even my novels are collections of short stories strung loosely together!

alberta ross said...

nice one - looking foward to seeing more of your short stories - fellow campaigner dropping in to say thanks for visit, sorry I wasn't around to offer tea and cake. Have been noseing around all your sites and realise have found a treasure trove. So glad I looked at my comments while I stopped writing for a bowl of fruit salad.

MorningAJ said...

Welcome Alberta. Good to see you here. Glad you feel comfy. Kick off your shoes and stay as long as you like!

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Anne .. love the idea of stringing things loosely together .. and the novel idea sounds interesting .. loved this story though .. cheers Hilary

Anonymous said...

Hi Anne, I'm in the writers' campaign as well and this story has really made my day. I totally agree what your character thinks about hiding behind the fat (I do it, and not so coincidentally a couple of my characters do it as well) and I liked the twist at the end with the killings.
- andrea

Steve Isaak said...

Love this. Thanks for the dark chuckle. =)