Read The Miniature Wife: and Other Stories for Free Online Page B

tiny metal skewer, the tip of which has been shoved firmly into the soft wood of our nightstand. She has set the whole thing on fire, hence the smell.
    This is, unmistakably, an act of war.
    In response, I am starving the bird. I haven’t fed him since I fired Wear. Tonight, before I go to sleep, I will set him free in the house.

     
    This morning I woke to find the bird (dead) on my side of the bed, covered so that he appeared to be taking a nap. Either she guessed my next move or she had been planning this move all along.
    How did she kill him? How did she manage to move him—he’s well over three times her size—and settle him on my pillow? How did she loosen the sheets, and when she did, why did she not do more to me? Questions I cannot answer, though I am not without my own next move. On my way home I will stop by our friend’s house and retrieve our cat.

     
    Not just the cat, now; we also have a number of spiders and cockroaches that I set free to wander through the house. I like to picture my wife as Jason or one of his Argonauts, a sword in hand, fighting large and mystical beasts. Hordes of skeletons. Giant cats.
    I have, furthermore, flooded the bedroom. The bed now sits on stilts. I have waders sitting just outside the bedroom door for when I come home and want to go to bed. The water is about a foot and a half deep. It is an unnecessary precaution. The cat will find my wife eventually if he hasn’t done so already. But one can never be too careful. With a large sheet of plastic spread along the perimeter of the room, I’ve built a miniature pool, a moat of sorts. Now that the room is flooded, I’ve stopped wearing my goggles and headphones. I sleep, some nights, without covers at all. And when I dream, I dream of the cat charging down on my wife. He has no front claws, but he has teeth. He has plenty of teeth.
    I’ve also developed the habit of checking the house for spiderwebs and checking those webs for wife-shaped mummies. I have only found a fly or two. I scour the kitchen and the living room for the remains of my wife, but, again, nothing.
    I’ve found nothing and have heard nothing.

     
    Jason and the Argonauts. It is almost as if, by making the comparison in my head, I have brought this all upon myself. Now I am blind in my left eye, and the cat is drowned, floating next to the bed.
    She loved that cat.
    It all happened while I slept, of course. Though the cat must have been dead before it was drowned. Surely, the sound she would have made while struggling to drown her cat would have woken me.
    I knew that she was still in the room. She must have been. She was somewhere hidden, her boat—how did she learn to make a boat, and where did she find the materials for the hull, the rudder, the oars, the sail?—safely anchored next to the bed. There was a good deal of pain after she stabbed me through, but partly I was acting as I writhed about the bed and tossed around the room, my hand cupped over my eye. While one eye bled, the other searched the room for signs of her.
    I stumbled from the bed to the dresser to the closet, looking for threads, tiny ropes, anything she might have used to cross over the water. Nothing. She must have swum for it in those first moments when I was distracted by the pain. The waves thrown about by my stamping feet might have carried her even faster to the water’s edge.
    Or perhaps she is even cleverer than that.
    Perhaps she is still in her boat or just beneath it, bobbing just under the surface of the water, a small tube feeding her air.
    With a quick swipe of my hand, I smash her ship, slam it under water and into the bedroom floor. Smash at it again and again and again until my hand is sore and bruised.
    When I stop, the pieces of the boat float to the surface, but, sadly, my wife is not among them.

     
    My wife is stronger than I am. I am ready to admit that now.
    You are stronger than me.
    I haven’t slept in three days.
    Can you see the white flag, dear? Am I