This story is all my sister Kristin's fault. She had left one of her trashy romance novels on the kitchen table. The title was "Beware A Scot's Revenge." It had a funky font, though, and A Scot's was pushed together. I read it as "Beware Ascot's Revenge."
So there you have it. Just for Kristin, I present "Ascot's Revenge."
Ascot’s Revenge
By Kate Rose
© 2011
The drumming finally stopped as the man’s feet gave a final twitched and lay still. The frantic fingers clenched at the slick cloth wrapped around his neck, fingernails ripping as they failed to find purchase. A last gasp escaped from around his swollen tongue and the cloth wound tighter. The hands flopped free to the floor as his soul slipped free.
“Never again …” the voice echoed bodilessly through the room with the hiss of tearing silk. “… never again.”
“Very good, my friend,” Sy said with an evil grin, his upper-class accent clipped and arrogant. “You are not a scarf. No one will ever call you a scarf again.”
The ascot unwound slowly from the corpse’s neck and oozed snake-like to the floor. It hissed against the tile as it coiled toward Sy’s foot.
“Never again …” it hissed. “Not a scarf … not a tie … never again …”
Sy hiked up his Fioravanti suit slacks and leaned down lift the ascot from the floor. He brushed a broken fingernail free from the cloth, then wrapped the ascot back around his neck. It snugged itself through his collar and tied itself a perfect knot just below his Adam’s apple. Sy straightened the ends across his shirt front and fastened it with a platinum pin set with a ruby the size of his thumbnail.
“These rustics don’t understand true fashion,” he sneered as he leaned over to pour fresh tea from the waiting service. He took a sip of tea, pinky pointed to the sky. A few drops of the hot liquid spilled across the ascot, and he dabbed it gently with a monogrammed napkin from the table.
He walked to the body and gave the leg a kick, sloshing a bit more tea over the edge of the cup. “But he was the last … the last of the peasants to call you a scarf, my friend.”
“Noooooo …” came the sinister answer. “One more … onnnnnnnnne mooooorrrrrrrre …”
Sy’s handsome face was confused as he dabbed again at the spilled tea. “I don’t know what you mean, my friend. I don’t remember any …”
His voice choked off with a gasp as the ascot tightened suddenly around his throat. The tea cup crashed to the floor and shattered against the tile, hot liquid splashing on the cuffs of his merino slacks.
“Spilled tea … spilled tea …” the ascot moaned as it wrapped tighter, sending the platinum pin clattering to the floor among the shattered china. “Never again …”
Sy fell to his knees as he struggled for breath, one flailing arm knocking the rest of the tea service to the floor. He wrapped his fingers around the ends of the ascot in an effort to pull it free, but like the previous victim he was unable to get a grip on the slippery silk.
His face turned red then purple as he flailed to the ground, arching his back like a stranded fish. He convulsed one final time, landing face-down across the “rustic” who had died before him. Then he was still.
“Never again …” the voice hissed as the ascot unwound from Sy’s starched collar and slid across the floor. “Never again …”
