The Venomous Villain - The Weekend Freewrite 1/12/2019

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This entry for the lastest edition of @mariannewest's Weekend Freewrite. You open the first post to get the first prompt then freewrite for 5 minutes. You open the second post to get the next prompt and continue the story for 5 more minutes. Then you open the 3rd post and get the final prompt, finishing the story with a final 5 minutes. You never know where the prompts might take you, so it's an excellent way to let you mind just flow with whatever comes to mind. If you'd like to join in, here's the prompt to the first post to get started. link to post

And if are thinking about trying this - STOP right now, don't read my story, or anyone else's, because it will spoil it for you if you see the prompts in advance!

Each prompt is shown in the story in bold italics.

The Venomous Villain

"Every aspect of your stay is designed to ensure that you leave feeling better than when you arrived," she said. He looked around him...and took in the plush lobby and the pampered looking people milling around. It was registration day and there seemed to be about 20 new people checking in. Suddenly he heard a scream coming from the direction of the elevators. There was a knot of people standing in a semi circle looking down at a body in the marble floor. There were gasps and horrified expressions on the faces he could see.

Damn, looks like another dead body to account for. He could see from here that the amount of discoloration of the face and the staring eyes were proof that this indeed was a corpse. There was the sound of running feet and the manager calling 911, yelling into the phone. Some people were backing away, and others were crowding closer to get a look for themselves.

Harry strode over with an air of authority and shooed the people back away from the body. “Don’t be messing up a potential crime scene!”

At least the spider was gone. That had not been the case when he heard the shriek overhead. From the body, what looked like a tarantula had scurried toward the row of potted palm trees between the elevator doors. Several had witnessed it crawling from beneath the body. The last murder had been via a snake bite, and the snake had escaped, but had been witnessed slithering away in the park where the victim had fallen. Before that, it had been the scorpion at the table in the french restaurant in Upper Manhattan. Thus the nickname from the press, “The Venomous Villain,” had drawn state wide attention.

Harry had been sent in undercover to this luxury spa resort because the clues left at the last murder indicated this address was a target. But he was just a little too late judging by the lump of mottled looking human flesh puddled here in the floor. Strange coincidence that the murder had occurred just minutes after his arrival. Was his cover blown already?

The heel fell off his shoe as he had taken it off and thrown it at the giant spider. Apparently the potted palms were not to its liking and it was scuttling toward the fountain splashing away in the foyer. The shoe missed and Harry wasn’t about to to try to grab the damn thing. Sirens were heard arriving and Harry had to decide if he was going to reveal his position as an investigator or continue his role of undercover investigation. The padding he wore beneath his suit was chafing, but he decided to carry on with the disguise. Somewhere in the seas of faces the villain was probably watching his handiwork, perhaps even plotting his next poisoning. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a woman standing off the side with a sly smile and a aura of satisfaction on her face. A thought occurred to him that poison is the often the weapon of choice of the female murderer. That’s where he would start.