MicroHorror

His wife liked to say he’d be lost without her.

She said it often: when a tax form confused him, at a church gathering as he fumbled to remember a name, when he missed a turn, those times she’d hand him his lost glasses.

Anniversary after anniversary, it was her standing joke. He’d give her a little kiss and a gift. And she’d say, “You’d be lost without me, dear,” patting his hand.

Day after day he heard it, year after year. It rambled like an echo inside his skull, between his ears, until he realized he hated the sound of her voice and those five demeaning little words: “You’d be lost without me.”

So, one night he killed her, drove her body far away, deep into a national forest. He carried her corpse some distance from the road, dug a hole, and buried her.

Eight months later hikers found what was left of his bones not far from the shallow grave.

Authorities concluded he got lost without her.