The first time she killed him was on a Sunday from across a sea of discarded ads and comics that weren’t funny. Well, Dilbert was good. She killed him quietly that day, stuffing the Menards ad into his mouth while he snored in the chair. He never knew. The next time she hexed him with a heart attack while he shoveled snow and left him in the soft drifts to be buried naturally. They were happy for several weeks after that but then she killed him with an elaborate electrical flaw in the television remote while he watched “Survivor”—and didn’t. There was an unfortunate incident once with his steak knife, which he held poised over his meal as if it would leave the table if not under constant threat and then with the hunting rifle, or was it a shotgun? She never got those straight, but he handled them with such loving tenderness that it really was a major disloyalty for one to turn on him. He was by all accounts an exceptional husband so the obituaries were rich with adjectives and terribly expensive, since they sold by the line. On the occasion of their Golden wedding anniversary they were featured in those chummy events pages of the metro section, she feeding him a piece of wedding cake, an exact replica of the original, and smiling. It was poisoned.
© 2005 by Beadrin Youngdahl.