And Then There Were None

The last one in a jar is always the trickiest.

Last Halloween, when she had deposited all the candy into a lockable jar, there was one bubble gum wrapped in a tattoo transfer remaining.
Her hands, like balloons festooned with sponge fingers had no chance of entry into the glass kingdom.
So there it lay, at the bottom of the jar, engorged by the curve of the glass that made it look, in a convex kind of a way, bigger and more petulant than it really was.
Sure, she could have turned the jar upside down, but that would be proving the point, wouldn't it?
Proving the point that no children had arrived at her doorstep to take her candy, scared of the sausage-fingered lady with the scary flaky face.
So she had finished the sweets in one sitting.
Except that last one.

New year's eve, that last solitary bubble gum in its yellow waxed wrapper, still peered transparently out of its jar, atop a shelf in the kitchen.
Reminding her of her fingers like - well, like ten of the dozen finger donuts she had just consumed.

-*-

She took the last out of the jar, and put it into her mouth.
And put the jar beside her on the bedside table.
And lay down to sleep a peaceful sleep, happy at last.

- * -

When they had taken her away, cleared the furniture, and removed the bottle of pills from the bedside table to analyse the contents, the cleaning team had to strip the carpet.
The body fluids had gone through the mattress and soaked into the floorboards. It was an awful stench. Even the boards had to come up.

As the crew left, the last of them noticed a solitary sweet in a jar, sitting atop a shelf in the kitchen.
Shrugging, the last man said, "Ah well, she won't be needing this now," and turned the jar upside-down into his hand, stripped the gum of its wrapper, and popped it into his mouth.
As he chewed down on the sickly sweet gum, he noticed the little insert inside the wrapper: A tattoo transfer.
He smiled, and rubbed it onto the back of his hand, peeling it off carefully so it didn't flake too much.
On the back of his hand was a little red heart.
"A heart," he thought, blowing the gum up into a balloon. "A little bit of love."