Sam’s corpse had already begun to emit an odor of a familiar nature. She was much heavier than she appeared, carrying a surplus of weight in her enormous breasts as well as providing a little extra padding upon her posterior. She had an aesthetically-pleasing presence, men constantly fawning over her long auburn hair and her seaweed eyes, not quite green but not quite brown either; they possessed a quality, amber flecks, making them an optical illusion, lending them more dimension and texture which automatically bestowed upon her a mystique, with which no other women in town could complete.
Samara Jensen was the greatest threat to my love, the divine love of my fiancé, Wheeler Aubry. Mr. Aubry had been courting me for over a year when he proposed marriage. And only yesterday, in the wee hours of the morning, did I learn Mr. Aubry was having an affair with my oldest and dearest friend, Samara Jensen. Sam, as I called her, had been my closest friend since we were age five, in kindergarten. Now her twenty-seventh birthday would be her last.
I pulled her by her ankles, at least I tried to pull her, but the feat was far more difficult than I anticipated. I considered myself strong, between Pilates and daily cardio, I took pride in my lean physique and my surprising upper body strength. But she was literally dead weight and I couldn't get a good grip, what with the slippery blood that still continued flowing from her wounds by the bucketful.
Sam wasn't my first. And she certainly wouldn't be my last. There was so much complexity in our romance and I had invested so much time and energy into my relationship with Wheeler and I wasn't willing to just give up on us. He was the wealthiest eligible bachelor in our small southern community, and I wasn't missing the opportunity to be a prized trophy wife to the most successful criminal attorney in West Texas. Not even my best friend was going to stand in the way of getting everything I'd ever dreamed.
It was a bonus that I actually fell in love with Wheeler, but his money was what got my attention, his net worth and his pale gray eyes that captivated me as he held my hand gently in his and leaned forward and kissed my fingers. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Winters," he said as he straightened his posture again. "May I have this dance?"
"But, Mr. Aubry…" I paused and looked around the lounge. "I'm afraid no one else is dancing; wouldn't it look strange if we danced?"
"I care not for what our peers think, Ms. Winters. Why do you?" He said as I blushed. He clutched my hand tighter and drew me closer, pressed up against his body and he whispered into my ear, "I'm in for trouble falling for you." He knew even then that there was something irresistible about me. I came from wealth, though it was quickly drying up, considering the economic disaster in which we now resided.
Wheeler Aubry, though, had increased his wealth since the beginning of the depression, being the only vendor of basic necessities in our small town, Pepper, Texas, just an hour and a half west of Odessa and about two and a half hours south of Roswell, New Mexico. It was once a village of only the elite, but eventually, the rich's hired help began to move in and build tiny box houses on land which Mr. Aubry's business partner sold off in tiny parcels. I still lived in my family home then, though now I had grown into my craft and was soon expecting to have my first novel published.