Decide to make cooking your new hobby. Ask friends for recipe ideas, purchase cookbooks, join an herb growing class at the local library.
Pursue an affair. Preferably one with a co-worker, librarian, or nineteen year old au pair from France.
Start your relationship out innocent enough. A few emails, a ride home on a rainy day that ends with a missing bra. You won’t know exactly how it all happened, but sparks flew and it was out of your hands.
Invite your new love on dates and fun getaways. This can include an evening of sexting, visiting a hotel room while little Jeremy is at karate, or clandestine meet ups in the KFC bathroom. Offer to buy chicken afterwards and discuss the seasonings.
Introduce your spouse to the idea of upping their life insurance policy. Life is so unpredictable, the family history of diabetes. You can do it together! Schedule a meeting to discuss at favorite Mexican restaurant.
Send copious amounts of nude pictures and inappropriate emails to your new lover. Make copies and start a file on your computer labeled “New Life (Spicy).”
Start researching. Using the library computer, type in phrases such as, “how to poison someone,” “fast acting poisons,” “untraceable poisons,” “poisonous plants that are mistaken for cilantro.”
Look up recipes for cilantro.
Discuss murderous plans with your new lover. Also the neighborhood bartender and Rita who cuts your hair.
Purchase supplies at the hardware store. Your list should include: giant sized cooler, hammer, saw, tarp, bleach, new rug, frying pan.
Announce to your boss, neighbors, Rita, and the mailman that you’re building a patio in the backyard this weekend.
Also! Your spouse is leaving for an extended trip to Iceland. They leave on Friday so you’ll probably start digging in the backyard on Friday after they leave. Going to make a special dinner first on Friday in their honor, do you want the recipe? 6-8 ounces of salmon (skin on), 1/2 cup parsley, 1 tablespoon olive oil, 2 tablespoon lime, minced garlic, 3 cups fresh cilantro leaves + extra cilantro for garnish, salt and pepper to taste. Yep, gonna start digging that new patio on Friday, probably around midnight.
Make dinner.
Gather supplies.
Dig hole.
Clean up.
Go on a partying spree. Purchase a red or yellow sports car, wear tank tops, start doing shots of tequila and lime. Splash out on a leather couch to match your new rug in the living room.
Assure everyone that your spouse is fine. You just talked to them yesterday! But they met someone else and may not be coming back. You’re heartbroken. You think they’ve been cheating all along or something. How could they? Give all their clothes to charity.
Take your new lover on a tropical vacation. Lavish them with designer sunglasses and plastic surgery. Drink more lime tequila, quit your job, get a phoenix tattoo on your back.
Google “how to collect life insurance without a body.”
Find shovel. Dig up patio.
Feign horror and shock when your spouse’s body is discovered in a shallow grave next to the library.
Did they come back from Iceland? This is so upsetting. You just talked to them yesterday or maybe two months ago.
Create incoherent story to explain fingerprints, DNA, witness statements, and bag of hemlock in your freezer. Blame your spouse’s nonexistent lover, blame the au pair, blame the library herb class.
Google “how to fake your death and disappear.” Burn off fingerprints with new frying pan.
About the Author
Jennifer Coffeen is a Pushcart Prize nominated author of short stories and flash fiction. Her novel, A Priceless Deception, and novella, A Deal with Lord Devlin, are published with The Wild Rose Press. Jennifer is the Events Director at StoryStudio Chicago and has been a writing instructor with StoryStudio Chicago, Windy City RWA, Allen County Public Library, and the Indiana Humanities Writing Workshop Program. She is currently working on Season 3 of the Creepy History podcast, which she co-hosts with Fraser Coffeen.