Chapter 21 Mrs. Smith
Mrs. Smith
Mrs. Smith ushered the housecleaners into the foyer. She gave the team of women in starched aprons and sturdy shoes the once-over.
They looked strong and hungry, which meant they’d be good workers.
“All the rooms on this floor require attention, but I’d like you to start in the bedroom,” she said. “When that’s clean, the
items in my car need to be arranged in the wardrobe. New furniture is being delivered at noon, and I’d like the rooms prepared
ahead of its arrival. There’ll be a hundred-dollar bonus for each of you if you can complete your work to my satisfaction
by the end of the morning.”
The cleaners gave her a bovine stare until finally, a woman with streaks of white in her black hair stepped forward and said,
“We’ll do our best.”
Mrs. Smith left them to their work and entered the kitchen.
The dust-coated room was noticeably antiquated.
The room had no appliances. No built-in cabinets.
An antique icebox stood on one wall, flanked by a cast-iron stove and a crockery cupboard.
A swaybacked butcher block on legs and a large porcelain sink occupied the opposite wall.
An oak table sat in the center of the room.
The Yellow Pages was splayed open on its scarred surface next to a letter bearing the town seal.
The letter, signed by some pencil pusher named Cliff, directed her to expunge certain plant species from her property. The
missive threatened steep fines or possible legal action if she failed to comply within thirty days.
She balled up the thin sheet of paper and tossed it on the floor. Soon, she would be gone, and men like Cliff would have far
bigger concerns than plants.
Turning her attention back to the phone book, Mrs. Smith ran a pointy nail down the list of hair salons. An ad for Premier
Salon caught her eye because it used the words exclusive and elegant, which was code for pretentious and expensive.
She dialed the number.
When a chipper young woman answered the phone, Mrs. Smith asked to speak with the owner.
“He’s with a client right now. May I take a message?”
“It’s a personal matter, and it’s rather urgent.”
After a brief hesitation, the young woman said, “Please hold.”
Thirty seconds later, a brusque male voice came on the line. “This is Peter Jacques. Who’s calling?”
“A future client willing to pay ten times your going rate. I am making my debut in society after a very long hiatus, and I
require a true master to style my hair and apply my makeup. I also require discretion.”
Having read dozens of magazines a week for years, Mrs. Smith knew that humans were enamored with fame. If this self-important
coiffeur was like the rest of the herd, he’d trip over himself for the chance to assist a celebrity.
Peter Jacques lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “May I have Madame’s name?”
Mrs. Smith thought of all the names she’d been called over the millennia. There’d been a hundred, in an equal number of tongues.
“You may call me Mrs. Smith.”
By the end of the call, the man was eating out of her hand. He agreed to come to her house next Saturday to prep her for the
yacht club cocktail party. He would style her hair while his assistants took care of her nails and makeup.
Until then, only the cleaners, the deliverymen, and Don Pulaski would be permitted inside her home. Don’s access would be
limited to the furnished areas on the ground floor, but Mrs. Smith knew he wouldn’t wander too far from her bedroom. If all
went well, the room would be as seductive and beguiling as her human body.
To accomplish her vision, she’d ordered a California king poster bed with a canopy. The thick pilasters had a serpentine shape.
Silk curtains hung from the canopy. The headboard was gently curved, like a woman’s back.
In addition to the grandiose bed, she purchased a changing screen with a cherry blossom design and a red velvet chaise. Cosmopolitan had taught her that men liked to watch themselves having sex, so she’d had a floor mirror with an ornate frame positioned
across from the bed. To enhance the hedonistic atmosphere, she’d purchased a series of nudes to hang above a French-style
vanity. Her final touch was to scatter soft rugs over the floor and scent the air with Chanel perfume.
Mrs. Smith wanted to lure men into this room and use them until they had nothing left to give. It would likely take several
men to trigger her reproductive system, especially if her encounters mimicked the fast, frenzied coupling she’d had with Don.
This hairy, blustering dimwit of a human had been easy to persuade. He’d come running when she called, entering the garage
where her new Porsche sat like a black beetle in the dark.
When Mrs. Smith turned on the light and revealed herself, he’d been rendered utterly speechless. But he didn’t need to talk. She could sense lust in his slack jaw and glowing eyes.
With no suitable clothes to wear, she’d had to make do with a white cotton shift. Its scooped neck and lace trim looked demure,
but the material was so thin that it was nearly transparent.
Moments before Don’s arrival, Mrs. Smith had held her head under the kitchen tap until her hair was wet. She’d then twisted
the excess water from her hair and let it fall onto her shoulders, where it saturated the front of her shift, revealing the
hard caps of her nipples.
She’d extended her hand to Don and softly whispered his name. He’d moved toward her like a man in a dream.
“I just got out of the shower, so I’m not dressed for a driving lesson.” Slipping past him, she’d run her fingers over the
sloped hood of the car. “Perhaps you could show me a few of my car’s interior features.”
She’d lowered herself into the passenger seat and waited until he stood next to the open door. Then she’d said, “How far back
can this go?”
Don’s glance had roved the length of her body. He drank in her long, sculpted limbs and the graceful curve of her neck. He
stared at her lush, round breasts with their eager nipples, and let out a low, animalistic groan.
“You’re the expert,” she’d said. “Show me how this works.”
Don had watched her caress the leather under her right thigh. Finally, he found his voice and stammered, “I, uh, I don’t think . . .”
But even as his lips tried to form words of protest, his legs had propelled him forward.
“Show me,” she’d whispered, shattering what remained of his resistance.
He’d lunged at her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth. His fingers clamped onto her breasts, squeezing and pinching. He twisted her nipples until she gasped. He bit the tender skin of her neck, oblivious as to whether her cries stemmed from pleasure or pain.
He sucked on her neck while his hand probed under her shift. She’d parted her thighs, inviting him to touch the dark, wet
place between her legs.
“Show me,” she’d whispered.
Groaning, he fumbled with his belt, undid his zipper, and freed his erection.
Pulling her by the arm, he’d yanked her out of the car and took her place in the seat. Then he guided her on top of him, angling
his hips so he could penetrate her.
“That’s it, baby. Take it. Take it all.”
As Mrs. Smith moved up and down, he pulled at her nipples with his front teeth and kneaded the flesh of her backside.
They’d barely gotten into a rhythm before Don had cried, “Ready, baby? Ready? Here it comes!”
Then he’d shuddered, grunted like a rooting pig, and gone limp.
As his erection deflated, Mrs. Smith had felt the liquid warmth of his seed trickle onto her thigh and soak into the fabric
of her shift.
“This is only my first lesson. I hope we have many more,” she’d said as she exited the car. “Before you go, would you do something
for me?”
Still caught in a postcoital haze, Don had nodded.
Mrs. Smith had opened the glove box and removed the instructions for collecting her items from Lord & Taylor as well as an envelope stuffed with cash.
To her utter annoyance, that cow of a saleswoman had telephoned to say that they were unable to deliver her items until tomorrow.
After expressing her displeasure in glacial tones, Mrs. Smith informed her that a member of her staff would collect them by the end of the day.
Handing Don the envelope, she said, “Stop by the men’s department and pick out a suit while you’re there. Wear it to the yacht
club cocktail party next week. I’ll be there.”
This had startled Don out of his stupor. “You will?”
“There’s no need for concern,” she’d soothed. “I don’t have designs on you. All I want is more lessons, and I know how to
be discreet. Think of me as a satisfied customer. Very satisfied.”
Mrs. Smith had met men like Don before. His type couldn’t imagine a woman being left unfulfilled. As long as he’d felt pleasure,
he assumed his partner had as well.
The closest equivalent Mrs. Smith had to a human orgasm was the act of devouring a Pure One. And the heights of that gratification
were beyond anything such an inferior species could understand.
“Take my car to collect my clothes,” she told Don. He blinked at her stupidly, as if struggling to understand her directive.
“That way, you can just leave everything in the Porsche and hurry home afterward with your new suit. No one will be the wiser.
When you’re ready to give me my next lesson, just knock on this door.”
She’d slipped into the house before he could reply. She was tired of looking at him and disappointed by his performance.
She required a more explosive coupling. Three minutes of panting wouldn’t suffice. She and her human mate needed to rut like
animals. They had to scratch and claw, wrestle and snarl. The human male needed to dominate her. To pin her down and hold
her wrists and take her again and again until he was too spent to move.
She would find other men to bed. As many as she could coerce at once, or within a handful of hours. Such a variety would create competition on a cellular level, lighting up her reproductive system like fireworks.
After Don left, Mrs. Smith had shucked off her shift and stepped into her hot tub. The water didn’t refresh this body like
it did her true form, but it was still her element. She’d picked up a random magazine and began flipping through it.
It was last month’s issue of New York Homes and Gardens, which Mrs. Smith had yet to peruse. When she came across the title “Do You Live on the Most Beautiful Street in New York?”
she’d read the contest rules and smirked.
What did humans know of beauty?
The natural world was spilling over with beauty, which they ignored, corrupted, or bastardized. Humans and their hothouse
roses and orchids. Their hybridized corn and wheat. Their grafted trees and artificial turf. Their cemeteries strewn with
plastic flowers.
Pushing aside the frayed curtain, Mrs. Smith had glanced out at her backyard. It had been many years since she’d last seen
the stone face in the center of the garden. Once, she’d taken great pleasure in knowing that her likeness had been surrounded
by toxic plants.
A century ago, her poison garden had been lovingly tended by one of the villagers—a woman who’d been ostracized for having
an illegitimate child. Her family had driven her out of their home, tossing a single suitcase and globs of spit in her wake.
The woman had poured all of her anger and bitterness into the poison garden.
The foxglove, wolfbane, and lupine she planted were as tall as the fence.
She grew thick mounds of jimsonweed, stinging nettle, and water hemlock.
She mixed and manipulated the soil, encouraging colonies of deadly mushrooms. She nourished plants with thorns, plants that oozed sap, and plants with toxic berries.
She sang to the poison ivy, the creeping spurge, and the wart weed.
She planted oriental bittersweet along the property line, watching with delight as it grew and spread, grew and spread.
She lured bees to the garden by singing to them. She watched them pollinate the plants and attract birds. After the birds
gorged on berries, they’d shit in the villager’s fields, sowing poison into the rich, fertile soil.
The village woman was long dead. But the remnants of her legacy were now being unearthed by the neighbor’s children.
Mrs. Smith liked to watch them work.
She had been watching them since they were infants in their mother’s arms, just as she’d been watching the red-haired boy
next door.
Thinking of the redhead made her smile. After all, his party would grant her access to dozens of Pure Ones. In a fortnight,
she would consume the boy’s friends, including the Scott child.
Round and ripe, the girl would pop like a grape in Mrs. Smith’s mouth.
Until then, she and her brother would clear the paths and pull weeds. In doing so, there was a chance they’d dig up artifacts
from Mrs. Smith’s hunts.
They might find teeth. Metal fillings. Watches. Rings. Things that Mrs. Smith had regurgitated. Things that were hard to digest.
These items would intrigue the children. And possibly frighten them. The girl might run to her mother and beg to be released
from her commitment. But Mrs. Smith didn’t think the mother would oblige. Like all humans, the woman was swayed by the promise
of cash.
Mrs. Smith had seen the children working in their own garden.
She’d heard their mother and father speak to them about saving their allowance.
She’d seen the woman’s face when she’d retrieved a pile of bills from the mailbox.
The pinched look she wore when she thought of money.
Mrs. Smith knew that she could sway such a human by offering to pay her children a generous fee in exchange for a little labor.
When the work was done, she would add a gratuity along with a short missive praising the children’s diligence. After this,
the Scott woman would no longer view Mrs. Smith as the strange creature who hid from the world, but as a misunderstood benefactor.
Hoping her children would be hired for another task, she would try to quell any whispers about her neighbor. Mrs. Smith would
gain an ally. And for such a paltry sum.
However, if the girl told the silver-haired woman who drove the yellow car, that might be cause for concern. The mobs who
came after Mrs. Smith had always formed because one human—usually a woman—was too observant.
For years, the silver-haired woman had avoided looking in Mrs. Smith’s direction, but today, they had locked eyes. Mrs. Smith
had seen fear and surprise in the woman’s glacial-blue gaze. But there’d been something else, too.
The woman had recognized Mrs. Smith.
This wouldn’t do at all.
I will have to kill her. If I don’t, she will be the flame that lights the first torch.