Lilly Syndrome

City of Lilly

It was an idyllic July day in Paris, and the streets were clogged with loud tourists and traffic. In front of Notre Dame, a line of tourists extended infinitely into the distance. The situation was the same at the Louvre. Everywhere was choked with foreigners with strange faces and accents heard only on television.

Jane craned her neck to catch a glimpse of Notre Dame as she stood in the queue to enter. It looked very far away. Desperate for someone to talk to, she caught sight of a very western-looking girl standing just behind her.

"We're gonna be here for hours," she stated.

"I know, right?" the girl replied.

"Where do you come from?"

"United States," the girl said.

"You like it?"

"The United States?"

"Yeah."

"Nah," answered the girl after some thought. "Not all it's cracked up to be."

Jane felt like she was doing most of the work in the conversation. After second thoughts, the girl was rather too western. She had long dyed hair - red, but Jane could see it was brown at the roots - and wore distastefully short shorts. She had a cutesy backpack and extravagant eyeliner, and spoke with an irritating disinterest. She reminded Jane of the sort of girls with big dreams and a bucket list who you discover years after high school still working night shifts as a waitress in the local cafe.

Jane turned back to waiting in silence. A couple of seconds later, someone jostled through the queue, trying to reach the other side of the square. Jane looked behind her, and saw the girl had disappeared. She'd probably gotten tired of waiting and bailed. Jane considered doing the same.

*******************

In the small hours of the morning, Jane wrenched her eyes open and stared unfocusedly around the apartment. She had been woken up by an uncomfortable icy sensation on the side of her neck, like cold metal pressing into the flesh. Jane reached up a hand to investigate but before she could make any great movement something hard and heavy slammed into the back of her skull, almost blinding her with pain.

In Jane's last moments of consciousness, her eyes rolled up in a desperate search for the source of the blow. The last thing she ever saw was a pale face nestled in a mane of long red hair, and a pair of cold eyes. Something shiny and large whipped downwards in her side vision and everything stopped.

Jane's attacker straightened up and tossed her hair over her shoulder with a gloved hand. She picked up a small metal syringe from where she had placed it on the bedside table and injected the contents behind Jane's ear. She replaced the syringe in a container in her purse and adjusted her grip on the large saucepan in her right hand. She took the saucepan to the kitchen and washed it carefully, making sure every hair and spot of blood was swept down the drain. She dried it off quickly and replaced it in its cupboard, before strolling out of the door and locking it behind her.

On the other side of the Seine, the woman strolled along the ancient promenade in the tranquil night. She looked up at the stars and breathed in a lungful of crisp night air.

"Sorry, Miss Butler, nothing personal, but someone really wanted you dead," she said in an emotionless voice. Sweeping her long red hair out of her face, she frowned. "This would be so much easier short."

The next day, a modestly dressed girl with short-cropped red hair took an afternoon TGV to Nice, leaving behind nothing but an empty syringe in the sanitary bin in the ladies.