Note: Written for the Review Game Forum's August Writing Challenge Contest. The prompt this month was "When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite." Let me know what you think and don't forget to check out the other entries. Vote for your favorite August 8th -14th.

Cat-Mouse, Cat-Mouse

She's rouged and little black dressed to the nines on the day husband number six takes his dirt nap in the finest coffin his millions can rent. "My dear Barry wanted to be cremated," she sniffles around a designer lace hanky and haute couture veil. Husbands Five, Four, and Three all went to the flames before Barry, but Two and One skipped the barbecue in places unknown. She's a fatal disaster waiting to happen with legs and sultry sex-kitten voice to make it all worthwhile.

When she leaves the cemetery, she tosses away the hat and heads for the country club.

.

He plays the tragically gorgeous widower with the subtlety and passion of an Oscar-winning performance. The audience weeps with his facade as he tells stories of dearly departed Wives One, Two, and Three to the dating pool. One fell to cancer, Two to gravity, Three to horrors unknown. The audience and trust fund daughters smile, adore him as he learns to move on from the heartache a week or perhaps two after each funeral. He's tall, dark, and handsome as he looks in the mirror and thanks their life insurance policies for the designer jacket he'll soon be maneuvering onto the shoulders of Prospective Wife Four.

As the country club beckons, he flips a coin for luck but doesn't bother to check heads or tails.

.

He arrives in top-down, wind-blown, sports car style with soft core chick-nip music on the radio. Her head swivels like a hawk to eye him up and he spots her killer thighs from across the parking lot. His audience would no doubt call it love at first sight as each circles in on the delicious new target. Little black dress screams fun girl instead of funeral with the last-minute addition of cherry red stilettos and they move her across the herringbone floor with enough speed to make her prize racehorse jealous.

Introductions are made with calculated mistakes. She stumbles into him and flashes an impeccable smile. He blushes and apologizes with teddybear sweetness; the audience sighs and directs them to the gardens. They walk the manicured paths and speak of One through Three and Six with intent to find the other's weakness. His is a lifestyle, hers is an account balance. They play to the other. In him she finds a higher tax bracket; in her, he finds another decade of wine and dine-ing.

Neither hears the alarm bells over the sweet chaching of lust.

.

He knows from Two and Three that the optimum social courtship before engagement is six months, a lesson she learned from Four and Five. They bide their time with Tiffany's outings and PDA at the ballet. The society page oozes the sweet details of their whirlwind romance as often as they leave her penthouse. He spent two months avoiding the subject while she relentlessly maneuvered him to her bed; he moved in at week ten. Tabloids whisper of wedding bells a week before the six month mark; he goes to find the engagement ring but she pops the question. A short engagement ends in a platinum wedding for the record books.

.

The honeymoon finds them in satin-covered bed with champagne, ocean views, and final machinations. She slips him an upper and downer in a fluted crystal glass and explains the palpitations away as excitement for their upcoming evening romp. He drips tainted chocolate sauce across his six pack and she laps it up. They eye each other for weakness as her teddy hits the floor and million-dollar thighs straddle a boner rock hard for an imminent payout. Wife Four and Husband Seven moan and thrust to the fantasy of impending fortunes, a dance of ego masturbation as the clock ticks onward and the endgame comes.

In the midst of a dizzy orgasm, she plants her palms on his chest and presses hard down. His heart beats a flurry as he builds to his release but she catches him weak; the beat skips and he gasps as he spills into her but the rhythm skips and falters. She presses down as he bucks and her head spins with the rush of poison and promise; Two and Four perished beneath her ministrations and she wept theatrically about their weak hearts. He softens and falls limp, face still wide-mouthed in shock as visions of fortune blackened around the edges. Her vision swims with tears of joy as she glides off him. Sheets of satin buck her off as he couldn't and the floor rises up to meet her face. Eyes stare forward at the poisonous vial tucked hastily behind the chocolate and she expires in naked defeat.

The society pages go wild.