He is getting more and more fed up with his wife. Every day, it was the same old thing, the same old phrase every time he reprimanded her.
“I can’t help it if I forget.”
That was the same phrase day in and day out whenever he found out that his eggs were sunny-side up when he asked for over-easy, or when his work clothes were not ironed and ready for the next day’s important meeting, or when the laundry was left outside to be drenched by the rain, or when the bed was not made for the past 2 months.
It was always the same.
“Sorry, I forgot.”
Sometimes he wondered how was it that he had ended up marrying her. He admitted that everything on her was easy on the eye. She had hair like silk, eyes like gems and lips like cherry buds. She was an angel in a demon’s body. He had to beat every other suitor off with a stick just to keep her to himself.
And he admitted that when he first knew her, her absent-mindedness was somewhat of a cute side of her that made him drawn to her, someone who needed a man to overcome such a small flaw.
But this was getting out of hand. Not only did her absent-mindedness did not go away, it got worse.
He would almost trip on wet rags that she left behind after cleaning the drawers.
He would realize at the last minute that she did not put his cell phone back into his pouch and had to drive all the way back home to get it.
He would find stale leftovers in the cupboard that she was supposed to throw away last week.
He would even find the flowers in the garden almost dying because she forgot to water them regularly.
And the answer was always the same.
“Sorry, I can’t help it if I forgot.”
Many times in his mind he was tempted to divorce her. But the thought of her sad face if he broke the news was not exactly pretty. She wasn’t one to throw a tantrum, but when she gets sad and cries, it was enough to break his heart.
Besides, divorcing someone over the reason that she was too forgetful was not exactly the best thing to say to a judge. It would probably be a one way ticket to marriage counseling, and he didn’t want that.
Once in a while, murder did cross his mind, but he was a man of peace, and he didn’t hate her that bad to warrant her death.
But the thought of the last incident where she forgot to turn off the gas stove and almost caused an explosion made him shudder as well, dreading the thought of what her forgetfulness would lead to next.
He loved her, but this had gone too far.
Then, after watching his office janitor slipping on his own mopped floor, he had an epiphany. He could try to make his wife slip and fall, and maybe hit her head, if he was lucky. That way, she could suddenly forget about everything and then he could just send her away, and then destroy all evidence that they were ever married. After all, it did happen one time when she hit her head while trying to reach for her shoes and she ended up sitting there for almost half an hour trying to figure out what she was doing there in the first place. Why didn’t he think of that?
He went home as soon as it was time to clock out, feeling very proud of himself.
He knew his wife would be upstairs surfing the net before she made dinner, so he took the opportunity to sneak out a bar of soap from the toilet downstairs and laid it strategically at the top flight of steps where she would be bound to slip on, before heading to the living room to watch TV.
When he heard the sound of tumbling, he knew that his plan had worked. Pretending to be worried, he ran upstairs and made sure that she was breathing before shaking her awake. She slowly opened her eyes, looked at him for a moment, before uttering the words he had been waiting to hear.
“Who are you?”
He was ecstatic. His plan worked flawlessly. In fact, he was so happy that he got up too abruptly and accidentally stepped on the soap that fell along with her. Before he knew it, he was tumbling down the lower flight of steps and felt a crack as his head hit the concrete tiles below.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself lying on the bed with bandages around his head, and a strange, beautiful woman with hair like silk, eyes like gems and lips like cherry buds—an angel in a demon’s body—calling out to him in a name he did not recognize…
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