Episode 1: Meet Edna
Edna stepped into the elevator, smiling at the man already inside it.
He looked at her and moved closer to the wall, trying to make no further eye contact. She could almost see him judging her for smelling like an old person. Just you wait, she thought. Soon old person is all you will smell because you will be old.
She chuckled to herself, and her chuckle seemed to weird the man out even more as he hurriedly left the elevator on the fifth floor. Edna smiled at him and waited for the doors to close. She placed her hand on the elevator’s handrail. When she traveled too fast vertically, she tended to get dizzy. Not something that happened when she was younger. She could zip to the top of a tree in an instant. Now a three floor rise in an elevator was enough to knock her on her feet.
As the elevator began to rise, she gripped the handrail a little tighter. For this ride, she was going all the way to the top. The penthouse suite of one of the nicest buildings in Seattle.
The elevator dinged, and she walked out, dragging behind her magenta rolling suitcase with a golf club sticking out of it.
She’d written down the room number on her arm. The markings were a little smudged but still legible.
Room 1102. The door was easy to find, nearly a direct shot from the elevator. One of the many perks of living in a penthouse apartment, which also included reinforced doors and limited building surveillance of the entrances.
Confirming that she was the only one in the hallway, Edna let go of her bag and bent over at the waist touching her toes. She leaned to the left and right, making sure to adequately stretch out her hamstrings. She pulled her right arm behind her head and pulled down slightly. She could feel the muscles groaning from the motion.
Next, she did 35 jumping jacks. She could have stopped at 20, but she really wanted to get the blood flowing.
Satisfied that she was as limber as her body could be at this point, she took a deep breath to gather her courage. Lifting up her hand, she knocked confidently on the door and waited. There was no sound from inside. Perhaps he wasn’t home. She’d worried about this but had watched his movement for days. He was always in at this hour.
She knocked again and waited. If he wasn’t home, she would have to go to plan B, but it would require a lot more work and discard her days of surveillance.
She knocked once more and finally she heard movement from inside of the room. Edna took her stance. Her face contorted into the kindest, elderly face possible while the rest of her body remained ready to spring into action.
Someone grumbled inside, and Edna called out.
“Hello. Jeremy, are you in there? I’ve forgotten my key.”
Jeremy was her favorite grandson. Not simply because he was her only grandson, but because they were the type of pair that got along really well. He visited her every week without fail, and not many other people in the assisted living community could boast that kind of loyalty, not even Hendrick who had enough grandkids to have a different one visit him each week of the year if they wanted.
“Jeremy? Open up. It’s chilly out here.”
Her voice sounded even more frail than she intended. Edna hated that she was not nearly as strong as she used to be, even her voice was betraying her age, but she didn’t have time to worry about it now. She needed to focus.
“Wrong room lady. No Jeremy here.”
Edna’s pulse quickened. Undeterred by his comments, she called out again.
“Jeremy, Jeremy, is that you? Let me in. I have to tinkle.”
She heard a groan from inside the room.
“Look lady, you got the wrong…”
Edna cut him off, putting as much fake anger into her voice as possible.
“Now Jeremy. You open up this door this instant or else young man.”
She heard the chain wiggle, and the door opened. She was face to face with a shirtless man, muscular chest covered in thorn tattoos, face covered in a three-day old beard.
Before he could say another word, she put three bullets through his head with a silencer, the man falling backward with a look of shock permanently etched on his face.
With no one to hold it open, the door slowly swung closed, hardly making a sound as the latch locked automatically. Edna turned on her heels and walked back to the elevator. She calmly pressed the down button.
When the elevator doors opened, she stepped in and pressed the button for the lobby, gripping the handrail to combat the motion sickness.
If she hurried, she would just make it to the start of bingo night at the Y.
