Free HEARTTHROB by Unknown Page A

move neither forward nor backward. It was then the girl again
turned and came toward him. Behind her was something Duane at first
thought was her shadow. It wasn't. It evidenced movement of its own.
Low to the ground it was a thing, which looked like the giant form of
some shell one, might find at the beach. Well, it would have looked
that way were it not for the six, long, thin, red-colored legs, which
moved it forward. "Mother," the girl said by way of
introduction.
    Well, you can imagine just how vigorously Duane Winsome fought
against the strands, which held him. Alas, it was all to no avail.
After he relaxed in a state of exhaustion, he looked up to see the
gal's eyes shining bright before him.
    "As I said, Mother has had her fill of my men friends for the
time being. Fortunately, you will keep..."
    It is in the remembered echoes of
Duane Winsome's shrieking that I consider your invitation to dinner
this evening — the invitation I have tried politely to decline but
which now you have left me little alternative but to accept. I do
accept it, but on one condition. That I am allowed to bring...
someone... with me...
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BLOOD WILL TELL
The story of Albert
Winston
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    You
know, of course, that the majority of murders are crimes. Not of
premeditation but of passion. But did you ever stop to think why?
Think about it now. Think of yourself committing the conscious act of
snuffing out the life of another human being — planning every step.
Making sure that the execution was such that you would not be found
out. And then performing with your own hands the execution itself. A
decidedly grisly affair. One which not very many of us would be
capable of. So it was with Albert Winston, who could not bring
himself to murder his wife, but then went on to do so anyway... with
maddening results...
    Albert and Cora Winston had been married for twenty-three years. It
was a childless marriage, but not because they had planned it that
way. They had in fact neither planned to have children nor planned
not to have them. It was, to Albert Winston, symbolic of their entire
span of years together. Nothing had been planned. Not the tedious
clerical job at which he worked in spite of Cora's substantial
inheritance. Not the huge dark house they lived in and which a goodly
part of that inheritance had financed. Not even the gardens hi which
Cora worked daily but hi such a disorganized way that, while the
various flower plots looked satisfactory in themselves, the overall
effect appeared visually disturbing. It was, in a way, quite...
insane.
    That, at least, was how Albert Winston thought of the garden. Insane.
And that is how he came to think of all aspects of his life with
Cora. Oh, he didn't romanticize about having a woman who was more
beautiful than the plain, bland Cora. No, he didn't do that at all.
He recognized that he himself was as plain and bland as she was,
perhaps even more so. Nonetheless, more and more, he felt the need to
be free of her. She and everything about her, all of it was driving
him insane. Yet, he knew he could not just pick up and leave her.
Albert Winston was not imaginative enough even to dream of where he
might go, what he might do. No, he would not leave his home, his
town, and his job. Therefore, there was only one solution and that
was that Cora must die. Very simple then. Albert would murder her.
    He planned very carefully, very methodically,
but like Albert, very unimaginatively. He would dig a hole in the
garden, lure Cora out there, and kill her with a meat cleaver. Then
use the meat cleaver to chop up her body into little pieces, which
would be buried in the garden. All of it was so simple. Albert
Winston was certain it would work and that he would not be caught.
There was only one problem. When the night came, when the very hour
of the night came that he was to put his careful plan into action, he
couldn't do it. He was outside in the
garden, the spade dug into its first clump of soft