“It was until you Scooby-Doo-ed your way into my plan. Now I have to accelerate my timeline and, thanks to you, the next seventeen terrible people on my list get to keep on being assholes,” Hudson complained. “That’s on you.”
“Let’s get back to this accelerated timeline thing. What does that mean, exactly?” Riley asked.
“I didn’t even get to glitter bomb her,” Hudson complained.
“What is it with you people and glitter bombs?” Chelsea demanded.
He rolled his eyes. “The glitter bombs are a two-week warning. The recipient of the bomb has two weeks to clean up their act and start behaving nicely.”
“Nicely according to you, Hudson?” Riley asked loud enough that anyone listening on the phone could hear, hopefully.
Hudson nodded. “I am the official judge, and I monitor each recipient’s behavior after the glitter bomb. All any of them would have had to do is stop being horrible. No more mean comments online. No more cutting people off in traffic. No more stealing coworkers’ lunches out of the fridge. It’s not that hard.”
“Wait a second. How many people have you killed?” The seriousness of the situation finally seemed to be sinking in with Chelsea.
“Three so far. You’d be amazed at how many assholes there are out there,” he said conversationally. “Not one of them changed their behavior in the slightest. In fact, some of them got even worse. But I guess now we’ll never know what you would have done with a warning, Chelsea.”
“It sounds like a lot of planning went into this,” Riley noted.
“I’ve been researching and following these jerks for months,” Hudson explained. “I have a dossier on each one.”
“Maybe you don’t have to accelerate anything,” Riley said hopefully. “Maybe you can consider this visit to Chelsea Strump’s house her two-week notice. And you can sit back and watch to make sure she turns into a nice person.”
“I demand my two week’s notice,” Chelsea insisted.
“That’s not the way it works. And nice try, Ms. Thorn. But I’m not a crazy person.She’sthe crazy person,” Hudson said, pointing the gun menacingly at Chelsea.
“Hudson, maybe you could put the gun down,” Riley suggested.
“Moo?” Daisy the cow poked her head in the front door.
“Get out of here, you flea-ridden roadkill,” Chelsea screeched.
“She can’t even be nice to a cow,” Hudson pointed out.
He had a point. Chelsea really was awful.
“Daisy, don’t step on—” Riley’s warning came too late as the fleshy cow hoof crushed the package on the welcome mat. There was a muffled pop and a poof and glitter exploded everywhere. The cow, not used to stepping on exploding boxes, high-tailed it off the porch.
Riley spit out a mouthful of glitter.
Chelsea was frozen next to her.
“You okay?” Riley asked.
The woman sucked in a breath and started coughing up glitter.
“You…you…motherfucking assholes!”
Riley had never heard Chelsea swear. The woman considered four-letter words to be the language of disgusting poor people with no education.
“You think you can come into my house and—”
Hudson was remarkably glitter-free from the front, but when he bonked Chelsea on the head with the butt of his gun, Riley saw his back was sparklier than a disco ball.
“Ow!” Chelsea howled.
Hudson frowned at the gun. “Huh. They make it look a lot easier on TV.”
