Writers of the Purple Prose
(Reluctantly submitted by MM who says you can’t even set-up a story in purple prose with only 350 words!)
"One should always use a wet sounding verb when discussing passion." Iris Peace
"Smiling Tony" Talliano was the first to quit laughing. That was only about an hour before he committed the murder. A murder of cold-blooded horror. A murder which had less than one slow second of premeditation. A murder that was so unnecessary and yet at the same time so right as to confound and confuse every person who eventually came to fully know the completely senseless story.
The shabby bar with its tawdry, tattered seating and the weak attempt at a cheaply executed art deco motif that passed for decorating was reluctantly doing as poorly as it usually did on an average cold-weather Tuesday night. The fluffy snow that could be seen through the grimy unwashed windows to the ground level of the street outside was rapidly turning into sloppy, dirty slush.
Smiling Tony, a cheaply dressed petty hoodlum, was perched on the very edge of a faded, reddish-brown contraption that vaguely resembled a stool. He was carefully nursing the bubble-less pale yellow liquid that had begun the evening as an already weakly conceived and executed beer and had consistently and determinately declined in quality during the ensuing elapsed time period.
Tony had laughingly decided to make the dirty glass of musty froth last until it was time to go back to the shabby room he shared with Fat Ethel, who was what passed for his current barely female companion. He delayed his impending departure from the bar, knowing what would ensue as soon as he walked in the door of the tawdry one-room flat with the leaky roof, that was probably already dribbling it’s juices into a dozen pots and cans scattered about the floor that was made uneven by the accumulation of litter.
While blearily staring at the crusty patterns of accumulated crust from past usages of the glass, his attention was startlingly drawn to the violently flung open door where Big Bob Crannal, the Cranium Crusher, stood. As Tony’s head turned to see the astounding sight something icily cold and frigid slopped into the side of his flabby jowls and like an express train on a rampage shot down under his sleazy, greasy collar to trickle over his protruding breasts and gut.
Bob was howling and pointing at Tony. "I sure got YOU!"
Tony quickly pulled his inlaid nickleplated revolver and shot Bob right between the eyes. "Yeah. And I got you."
For the famous smile of Smiling Tony had suddenly become a grin. It was a fixed and frozen expression. It gave him suddenly the appearance of a death’s-head. Then it became a horrible, vacant leer as Bob’s body fell to the floor, and the slushy snow kept falling.
