100 Ways to Kill a Doctor Halloween Challenge

(my response to Dsnynutz's prompt)

RULES:

1. Sheldon/Penny - They can be platonic, romantic, smutty, Super Heroes/Villains, etc.

2. Leonard/Amy's death MAY occur anytime from the Pilot thru Season 9.

3. The death must be completed in a single chapter, although you are welcome to contribute as many different forms of death as you like as long as they are a chapter each.

4. The story must be no more than 1,500 words long.

5. Deadline is October 31, 2015.

Penny plunked her laundry basket onto the basement floor. Sheldon was already there in the laundry room, sorting his clothing. "Hey, sweetie," she said.

He made a noncommittal sort of grunt, and she looked at him in surprise. "Is something wrong?"

"Is something wrong?" he repeated indignantly. "Of course, something is wrong. My girlfriend is gloating over the fact that she's been published in a major journal while I haven't. She ought to be more supportive of me… and then on top of that, you had the temerity to lecture me about my obligations as a boyfriend. I listened to her, didn't I?"

Penny sighed and dropped the shirt she'd been holding back into her basket. "Okay, Sheldon, what is this really about?"

He looked at the floor. "Ever since my failed monopole experiment in the Arctic and the resulting debacle, my career has taken a nosedive while Leonard's star had risen, metaphorically speaking. Now Amy has been awarded a completely undeserved honor while my brilliance goes unrecognized. It's intolerable."

Penny bit her lip. She hadn't realized that he was still suffering from that awful prank Leonard had pulled. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked.

He looked up with a dangerous gleam in his eyes. "As a matter of fact, I believe there is."

The next evening, Penny stood out in front of a pool supply store. "Tell me again what I'm doing here? I know you're not planning to put in a pool, and I don't get what this has to do with Amy."

Sheldon pushed a list into her hand. "Must we go through this again? I've already told you that I've been blacklisted by every major chemical supplier within a five mile radius. And after I pulled that bazinga on Kripke, they started padlocking the chemistry department's storerooms. But Leonard said my prank was truly brilliant, and he was right. The only error I made was to set up a video to let Kripke know who filled his lab with foam. I won't make that mistake again."

"So that's what we're doing? We're going to fill Amy's lab with foam?"

"Yes, and this time, there will be a few modifications."

"I don't know, Sheldon..." Penny began reluctantly.

"Oh, what possible reason could you find to equivocate? Amy broke your nose by hitting you with a purse loaded with a coffee can full of loose change and then laughed about it."

Penny gritted her teeth. "Yeah, she called me Raccoon for two weeks. You're right. She is so going down." She strode inside and made her purchases, helped by an eager store employee. She emerged wheeling a cart laden with bags of chemicals.

Sheldon did a double take when he saw how much she had bought. "Penny, that is more than twice the amount that I asked you to procure."

She grinned wickedly. "Payback's a bitch."

He tilted his head quizzically for a moment, and then began to smile himself, the expression that Leonard liked to call his "kill Batman" grin. "I see. You are suggesting that the reciprocity be commensurate with the level of the perceived offense. So the question is, how much does Amy annoy me?" He thought for a moment. "I hate her. I wish she were dead. How's that for payback?"

Penny laughed. "Oh yeah, this is gonna be freakin' awesome."

It was a fairly simple matter to set up the rest of the prank. In order to gain access to the lab in which Amy worked, Sheldon took her out to dinner while Penny went to Amy's apartment and swiped her key card. The program Sheldon had written to hack the security cameras worked like clockwork. All Penny had to do was to hide large, heavy-duty plastic bags full of reagents above the ceiling tiles.

Later that evening, Penny heard a triple knocking at her door. She let Sheldon in quickly. "How'd it go?" she asked.

"Perfect. She didn't suspect a thing. She kept saying how pleased she was that I was finally taking the initiative in our relationship. Did you encounter any difficulties?"

"Easy as pie, Moonpie," she grinned. "So what happens next?"

"Tomorrow morning, I will stay in my room and pretend to be ill. Leonard will leave as quickly as he can so he doesn't feel obligated to care for me. If you are capable of rising before 11 AM, you may join me in watching the live feed of my revenge. Mwa ha ha," he added, doing his best evil villain imitation.

"Are you kidding?" Penny asked. "I wouldn't miss this for the world." She was beginning to feel a gleeful anticipation, which almost overwhelmed the pang of guilt she felt knowing Sheldon was completely right about Leonard's behavior.

The next morning, Penny stumbled across the hallway and made a beeline for the coffee maker. She gave a happy sigh as she sipped the fragrant, steaming liquid. Turning around, she shrieked in surprise to find Sheldon standing almost directly behind her. She bit back a curse, then she took in his flannel robe and pajamas.

"Casual day at the office, Moonpie?"

"Don't be ridiculous. If I were dressed, how could I convincingly feign illness?"

Penny shrugged and walked back into Sheldon's room. "What are you doing? You're in my room—" he began.

"You're pretending to be sick, and I'm only half awake. You wouldn't want to sit in the living room, would you?"

Much as he hated to admit it, she was right. "Very well, I will grant you one-time provisional access to my room," he said, following her as she crawled into his bed. He got in next to her and propped his laptop open on his legs. Penny leaned against him as she craned her neck to see. "Ooh, look, here she comes!" she squealed.

Amy extracted a monkey brain from a jar of formalin and reached for her scalpel. That was the moment that gallons of foam exploded from the ceiling and engulfed the lab. Amy screamed, but her cries were quickly cut off. There was a long silence while Penny stared at the screen.

"You never told me what changes you made," she managed weakly.

"I modified the formula so that the foam would harden instantly," he said proudly.

"So Amy is..."

"Dead? I believe so," he answered calmly.

Her face drained of color. "You never told me that was going to happen!"

"Of course not. I suspected you wouldn't go along with it if you knew."

"Sheldon, we're both gonna end up in jail!" Penny cried.

"Not if you follow my second brilliant plan," he said smugly.

He had wanted to frame Howard for the crime, but Penny refused, more for Bernadette's sake than his. Instead, Sheldon was gratified when she chose Leonard to take the fall. They were both ready to wash their hands of him. It was child's play for Sheldon to counterfeit letters and texts detailing Leonard's unrequited love for Amy and his subsequent obsession with her. Leonard had already established both his propensity for cheating and for duplicating other's experiments, so he was an easy mark. Penny used cash Sheldon gave her to purchase a diamond ring at a pawn shop. By the time the police got around to questioning him, he'd had time to create an elaborate backstory and was able to lie convincingly about how he had been about to propose to Amy.

The only one who ever knew the truth about Sheldon's prank was Penny. Since she had demonstrated the ability to stay cool under pressure, he decided she would make a better roommate than Leonard. By the time they became lovers, she even had him convinced it was his idea.