Your wife Ava barges into the room where you are reading your paper. She is sarcastic as always, a healthy mix of disdain and disregard. She seems annoyed when you ask her where she is going. Lighting up her cigarette and dragging on it impatiently, she shoves some pieces of paper in your direction.
Your wife Ava barges into the room where you are reading your paper. She is sarcastic as always, a healthy mix of disdain and disregard. She seems annoyed when you ask her where she is going. Lighting up her cigarette and dragging on it impatiently, she shoves some pieces of paper in your direction.
"Sign these."
It is a command as much as it is a request. You try to glance down at them for a quick look, but the scowl on her face stops you. You hate to annoy your much younger wife, and it seems she is in a hurry. You love her so much. If only she would one day realise that what you lack in youth and vitality you make up for in affection and concern for her welfare.
"Did you finish the drink I poured for you?"
You nod eagerly. You had been surprised at the unexpected kindness she had displayed earlier when she had come with a healthy measure of your favorite tipple. You had knocked it back eagerly as you imagined that finally things between you were improving. Despite the way your marriage had begun - you had paid a handsome sum to acquire her - you truly loved your feisty ex-working girl wife.
She carries on talking, and you find you are starting to struggle to focus on her words. Seeing you blinking rapidly as you clear your throat an evil look passes over her face. Her tone changes, now lowered. The room is swimming and you feel like you are in a cotton wool bubble, but surely you hadn't heard her saying that the potion was meant to have these side effects!?!? You try to raise your hand to your throat but you are paralysed. The other hand is also frozen in position as you sit in your chair. In your head you are fighting to move anything, any small part of your body! But nothing seems to be there for the show.
Your wife is smiling indulgently now. She drags on her cigarette as the cold calculated words come out. She tells you she put a shrinking potion in your drink earlier. It also has the helpful side effect that it paralyses you completely. The only thing you can do is watch but you are helpless to call out or reach for even your phone as you sit helpless in front of her. You feel yourself shrinking as she carries on.
Her words cut through you. She never loved you. Hated every minute of being saddled with you! In fact ever since the day she said I do she had been looking for the perfect escape! And she had found it. Years of studying your business and tagging along to meetings had equipped her with all the information she needed to make her plan complete.
She had befriended the VP to your company, and he had a helpless crush on her. She was going to meet him for dinner tonight in fact. Show him the signed document you had given her earlier today. Telling him to leave her - your beloved wife Ava - in charge of everything in case anything happened to you while you were on your lifelong dream to travel around the world. Free of the trappings of modern technology and convenience, you were going to be away for at least a year. But if you did not return then well...
Ava smiled.
As you felt yourself becoming smaller and smaller her final revelation sent shudders down your spine. Or at least you would have shuddered if you could feel anything...
And as she picked your tiny body up you realised that she was right. She was going to get it all! She was going to get everything... and there was nothing anyone could do about it!
