The woman gasped, her face scrunching in surprised confusion as her breathing slowly deteriorated.
"Exquisite, isn't it?" The voice preceded a slender man dressed comfortably in black slacks and a red turtleneck. He nonchalantly rolled up one sleeve, then the other, all the while ignoring her strangled breaths, before approaching the woman on the bed.
"No no. Please. Don't get up on my account." He lifted a booted foot, placed it gently on her side, then shoved her off the bed. She hit the floor before she could move to brace herself, eliciting a sharp, barking cough from her lungs. The woman attempted to stand and face the strange man and though her limbs were slow to respond, she managed to pull herself up with the help of the nearest chair.
"What do you want?" She rasped. The man was now sitting casually on the bed, one leg folded over the other, and focused on picking some dirt from beneath a nail.
"Don't worry about that, my dear. I shall have what I want in a few minutes time."
A buzzing began in her head, no doubt a result of her shallow breathing. Repeatedly she tried to fix it, but her lungs could not sustain the air and her condition only worsened. Attempting to get away, she stumbled past him and towards the door. Her progress halted when a fit of violent coughing brought her to the ground. Darkness tickled the edge of her vision and the first fingers of real fear began to clutch at her heart. What did he want? Why her? Trembling lips parted to form the beginning of a question, but a weak breath was all that escaped.
He threw an unaffected glance her way, then leaned back on the bed to wait for her to finish.
"Don't look at me like that. You know what you've done."
It was hard to think. Almost too hard for the words to slip through the cracks of her fractured mind and truly register. But his words found their target, and visions of her sins crowded her consciousness until she could maintain it no more.
A few more minutes passed and the man in red remained until silence had saturated the room once again. He stood, stretching his arms above his head, yawned, then wandered over to the body. He checked for any sign of life with efficiency borne of habit, then reached into his pocket to retrieve a slender, black phone.
"Hello. Yeah. Sanders. It's done. Good."
The click of the phone at the end of the call and a tired sigh were all that disturbed the room's atmosphere. The man stared absently at his watch for a moment, glanced at the dead woman once more and left.
