Based on a true story.
Dr. Miriam Castellanos walked into our law office wearing stilettos that sounded dangerous. I’d been a paralegal at Hutchins & Webb long enough to identify clients by their footfall, but hers announced something new: controlled menace.
She was seventy-something, dressed so perfectly our copier jammed when she passed. Spine straight as a knife blade. Perfume that whispered, I ruin people before breakfast.
“I need to revise my will,” she told Jim Hutchins, senior partner. “My nephew Marcus is out.”
“May I ask why?”
“He borrowed my hedge trimmer and returned it dull.”
Jim blinked twice, slowly, processing whether this constituted legal grounds for disinheritance.
“That’s... yes. Unacceptable.”
Two days later she returned.
“My sister Diane. Out. Birthday card arrived late.”
By week three, our receptionist would whisper, “The air pressure dropped again. She’s in the lobby.”
The crimes mounted.
Goddaughter posted a political opinion? Out.
Book-club friend critiqued her guacamole? Out, with prejudice.
Cousin asked if she’d had work done? Out, blacklisted, hunted for sport.
Neighbor installed wind chimes tuned to B-flat? Out. “A sinister frequency,” she explained.
Someone pronounced Nevada wrong? Gone.
Barista drew a smiley face in her foam? “Condescending,” she said. Removed.
By revision twelve, I told Jim we needed software that auto-updated her will every time someone breathed wrong in her vicinity.
Jim stared at his desk. “We don’t judge. We execute. At $450 an hour.”
“We’re legal assassins?”
“Apparently.”
Then came the Great Meltdown. Three visits in five days.
First: pharmacy discontinued her lipstick shade, Crimson Fury.
Second: grocery clerk called her “young lady.”
Third: UPS driver left a package facing west, which she interpreted as hostile.
Jim cracked.
“Dr. Castellanos, I need you to bring in your psychiatrist, to verify your capacity.”
She smiled the way generals smile before deploying troops. “Excellent. Dr. Patel loves field trips.”
The following Tuesday, she arrived with Dr. Patel, who was tiny, exhausted, and clutching a coffee cup the size of a paint bucket. Her energy said, I have heard enough nonsense to fill libraries.
“My hairdresser,” Dr. Castellanos began, “cut my bangs a quarter inch too short. She’s out.”
Dr. Patel didn’t look up from her coffee. “Competent. Petty, but competent.”
They became regulars. A traveling act: The Petty and The Damaged. Every few days, Dr. Castellanos arrived with fresh casualties.
Waiter served Merlot at room temperature? “Thermal negligence.” Out.
Dental hygienist hummed during a cleaning? “Accusatory manner.” Gone.
Florist suggested roses when she clearly wanted peonies? Deleted from existence.
The office started a betting pool. Cheryl from accounting won fifty dollars when Dr. Castellanos removed her own accountant for using too many exclamation points. Cheryl celebrated by sending an email composed entirely of exclamation points.
Then in March, Dr. Castellanos vanished. Two weeks. No calls. No visits.
The office became peaceful. Disturbingly peaceful.
When she returned, she looked smaller. Still impeccably dressed, still terrifying, but diminished somehow. A Vogue spread titled “Elegance While Dying.”
“I need to add someone back,” she said.
Jim’s pen clattered to the floor. I felt my vision narrow.
“Who?” Jim whispered.
“All of them. Everyone.”
Jim blinked slowly, receiving transmissions from another dimension.
“You’re certain?”
“Yes. I’m dying. Pancreatic cancer. Four months. Maybe six if the universe respects my schedule.”
The room went silent. Even the fluorescent lights seemed to hold their breath.
“I’m so sorry,” Jim said.
She waved this off. “No time for sentiment. Reinstate them all. Equal shares. Even the hedge-trimmer criminal.”
After she left, Dr. Patel remained, standing in our doorway as if deciding whether we deserved an explanation.
“You two look confused.”
Jim nodded mechanically.
“You think she’s crazy.”
“I think she’s... complicated,” Jim managed.
Dr. Patel sighed with the full weight of someone who has been underpaid for witnessing human nature at its worst.
“She spent forty years as a pediatric oncologist,” Dr. Patel said. “Watched families shatter when children got sick. Siblings fought over bedside shifts. Parents blamed each other. Grandparents competed in Olympic-level guilt.”
She drank her coffee. “She told me once that guilt destroys families. Not death. Guilt.”
Jim went very still.
“She wasn’t punishing them,” Dr. Patel continued. “She was conditioning them. Running drills. Teaching them how to apologize before it mattered. She didn’t want a meltdown at her deathbed. She wanted them trained. Disciplined. Ready.”
She set down her cup. “You can torture people into being better relatives. Turns out, it’s revolutionary.”
After Dr. Patel left, I pulled Dr. Castellanos’s file. Forty-two revisions. A carousel of names spinning in and out of favor.
By now, her nephew was probably polishing that hedge trimmer nightly with a jeweler’s cloth.
Her sister was mailing birthday cards six months early, tracking them with GPS.
Her goddaughter had deleted all social media and joined a monastery.
Everyone orbiting her. Everyone terrified. Everyone suddenly, miraculously attentive.
Love through fear. Classic.
Dr. Castellanos died in June. The funeral was standing room only. People elbowed each other for sight lines to the casket, paranoid this was somehow still a test.
Her nephew gave a eulogy about the hedge trimmer. His voice broke. Half the room wept from guilt. The other half wept because they’d once returned something late and never apologized.
Then Jim read the final will. Twenty-three equal shares. No exceptions.
The room erupted. Gasps. One woman fainted so dramatically we assumed it was performance art.
But then Jim read the final line, handwritten in her perfect script:
“If any of you fight about this, I will haunt you.”
I watched their faces. Every single person believed her.
The nephew stood there gripping his printed copy of the will, knuckles white, and I knew he’d already made plans to have that hedge trimmer professionally sharpened quarterly for the rest of his natural life.
Just in case she was watching.
We all knew she was.
Thanks for reading Syncopated Justice! This post is public so feel free to share it.
Man, you sure can write! Thank you.
Ha, ha, copiers jammed as she passed, again, your descriptions always make for delightful reading. Gracias!