A story

Professor Louis and his assistant Arnie were heading towards computer center for results of last research. In order to get there, they had to walk from one end of the building, where there was their laboratory, to another. When they were passing by the room 504A, Arnie asked:

What’s in there? There are guards at doors; everyday men in dark suits are entering and leaving. And no one wants to tell me what they are doing.

Well, since you have been working here for few months and know you pretty well, I can tell you. About a three month ago there was a murder there. That was the office and lab of Professor Morgenstern who was specializing in virus diseases. He was said to have been researching a new biological weapon for government or military. He had a young assistant, miss Keaton. Some day she took an axe and killed everybody in the lab. Police had a film from a crime scene – there was a hidden video camera - but when she was arrested in her house, she didn’t confess. Police showed her photo to a salesman of a shop with garden stuff near her house and he recognized her. He told she had bought an axe about seven o’clock a.m. that day.

That was very strange, no one would buy an axe in the nearest shop and then kill his friends unless he was crazy or something. Anyway, everybody thought that Judge Orson (I remember his name, because a pig from cartoon “Cat Garfield“ has same name) would decide capital punishment, but he chose life imprisonment. I’m sure she was very relieved to hear that she was going to be put in prison instead of electric chair.

That’s horrible. But what are doing those men there?

Don’t know; maybe they are searching for results of professor’s work, maybe they are destroying proofs or continuing his research. We, common workers shouldn’t ask about that. And do not question me more about this, won’t tell you anything else.

Some days later Arnie was again walking by the room 504A. Suddenly he saw that walls of room started to evaporate in temperature of a million degrees. Then he was annihilated by a heat of bomb explosion in the lab in a fraction of second.

* * *

(three months earlier)

Judge Thomas William Orson was sitting in his chair and drinking whisky from a half-empty bottle, when he heard a loud sound at the back of his house. He rose from seat and went slowly to the kitchen door. He was not afraid, probably because of drank alcohol. In the kitchen was standing tall man, who was wearing dark suit and holding small dressing-case in left hand. He said “That’s money, as I told” and gave him the case. While judge was trying to open locked case, man pulled out a gun with silencer, aimed at his head and shoot. After judge felt down, he got the dressing-case from Orson’s squeezed fingers and silently left the house.

After the man went out, little white kitten with wide opened eyes, the only witness of the murder, strode to judge and started to lick his face.

Marcin Wudarczyk, Warsaw 1998