Wilfred tip-toed along the hallway, until marital guilt forced a heel to grumble the floorboards. He shrank from the barks which would inevitably ejaculate out of his wife’s cormorant boudoir.
That woman directed his life, empowered by the gold ring he’d emasculated himself with two relentless decades ago. Wilfred had weathered her ever-accelerating decline into self-inflicted imprisonment, routinely averting his gaze as flab oozed from under bedclothes to gravitate towards the floorboards. Her once-electrifying skin wept through hematic sores.
She ate as he imagined a hippopotamus does; great clumps drooling through gaps in tusk-like molars. Special dietician-selected meals arrived weekly. Wilfred dined nutritionally while his wife inhaled cellphone-ordered take-outs by the van-load. Silver-tongued runners bypassed the front door, delivering directly through her bedroom window. Wilfred knew they tagged her as ‘the blob.’
Cheerful caregivers came and went, grateful to escape after a mere hour of her ferocity. Wilfred publicly excused her behavior as the pain of captivity, whilst consoling himself that hippos flatline before fifty.
Today no shout responded to the creaking floorboard. An alarm sounded. Wilfred rushed to his wife’s side; thank God she was breathing. He couldn’t fathom placing his mouth on sausage-like lips for CPR. Sirens approached. Uniforms rushed in. Firemen removed windows before extricating her on queen-sized sail-cloth.
Wilfred worried where his meals would come from.
At last everyone had been farewelled. Wilfred cautiously stepped back into his blessedly-still foyer. Swinging his arms wide, he hopped, skipped, then gleefully thundered down the hall.
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