IT HAD TO BE DONE

We'd been married for going on thirty years. Nothing unusual: standard fare, ups and downs, ins and outs (ha ha)... no kids, that was always an issue... but that's neither here nor there. But the day came in '87 when something not quite right happened. We had gone away on a jungle safari to Brazil. She'd always wanted to go, I was never a big fan of sweltering heat and huge bugs... but there ya go. Anyway, we went. It turned out to be a lot more fun than I'd imagined, despite the drenching mugginess and the mosquitoes the size of small birds... all in all, we had a lovely time. Well, after a week we returned home none the worse for wear... until about three days later. My wife had come down with something. Something neither I nor any doctor we'd seen could rightly identify. She'd lost about fifty pounds, turned sallow and pallid, lost most of her hair, and developed warts all over her skin from head to toe. Her flesh would split and run, not so much blood but awful, horribly-smelling rivulets of sour puss and ichor. She'd weep uncontrollably all the time, never with tears or emotion, just souless sobbing full of agony and despair. Her friends would come, but they'd leave hurriedly disgusted and shaking their heads in awe. Eventually, the life itself seemed to drain from her person and all she could do was lie around, motionless and shallow. I had done everything I could do not to give up hope. I tried every medicine I could come upon from as many Internet stores as I could fine selling remedies made from everything under the sun. But nothing ever worked... heck, nothing even made a small effect on her. Then, summer of '90, another drastic change took hold of her. From out of the blue, with no warning, she bolted from the bed she'd remained useless in for three years and began to attack me. Fortunately, I was a hair quicker and managed to get her, thanks to my old, empty, shotgun mantle decoration, into the basement. She toppled down the stairs and there she stayed. Well, until yesterday. June 4th, '92, I burned our house to the ground with her trapped inside. I don't know what made her that way, but she was no longer my wife, my Muriel. Maybe now we can both be in piece.