May 28, 2015 admin

Separating Sara

Short Stories

Separating Sara
by Kenneth Sibbett

Marty sat at his desk at home, watching the kids across the street playing some type of game. It looked like “You’re It’, a game he had played as a child. He smiled remembering how terrible he was at it. Someone counted to a 100, while the other kids hid. When you finished counting, you had to find another kid hiding somewhere, run back to home base and shout-out “You’re It! Then you would be the one hiding. It seemed to Marty, no one ever found him. He really didn’t think they looked very hard. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Popular growing up.

It’s funny what you remember on your birthday. Yeah, he was 50 years old today and going through a mid-life crisis. Everyone reads about them, but until you get there, you just don’t know. He had worked hard as an insurance salesman years before opening his own company, which had been very successful. He knew everyone wanted insurance, whether they could afford it or not. No one wants to think of their parents or wife having to take out a loan or sell their very house to bury them. Most people at least bought the minimum package, enough to have a proper burial and if Marty had any regrets, if was not investing his money in a few funeral homes. Goldmines they were.The biggest mark-ups in the world, trading on the pain and ego of the bereaved to sell over-priced caskets. What a racket.

But Marty had been restless lately. He found it harder and harder to get out of bed each morning, do his 15 minutes on the treadmill, take his shower, and sit down for his usual bran muffin and decaf coffee, served to him everyday, at the same time, the same way by his lovely wife Sara. It was like the movie “Groundhog Day” with that funny-man Bill Murry, although he wasn’t funny in this one. Not to Marty anyway. The closer he got to fifty, the more he connected to Murray’s character. Life was passing him by, while he sat in an office going over insurance policies and even reading death notices. He had to get away. He had to break this cycle of boredom and today, he finally did it.

Over the last ten years, he had been squirreling money away from the business. Not a lot at first, but each year he had gotten bolder and bolder and now he had a tidy sum in a bank in Panama, one of only a few places left on earth where you can still stash money illegally and not have to worry about Uncle Sam. With his house paid for, a month ago he had taken out a new mortgage, to the tune of $150.000. Of course, it went directly into his account in Panama. Finally, today was the day. He was making a clean break from Sara and everyone he knew and catching a flight to Panama, where he had already rented a cottage on the beach. He had enough money left over to live out his life, not in luxury mind you, but a peaceful existence, and really, what else could anyone ask for?

The worse part of his plan had been to kill Sara and her lover. He wasn’t the only one having a mid-life crisis, yet he wasn’t the one who cheated. He could have kept up this façade of a marriage until he retired and then he and Sara could have went to Panama together. But one night as he got into bed, he saw a stain on the bed sheets. Sara was a wonderful housekeeper and Marty could see the tail tale signs of a sex stain. After all these months of not making love to Sara, he knew. He hired a private detective and sure enough, she was seeing a friend of his. Not just any friend, but the owner of a rival insurance company. Sara really knew how to turn the knife.

He really needed to get busy. He had only taken a break to eat a light lunch and rest a few minutes. He couldn’t help thinking how wonderful television really was. While it was an idiot box for most people, with morons watching stupid reality shows, it was Dexter who had given him the idea of how to kill these two. He never missed a “Dexter” show on Showtime, and now his garage was covered in plastic. He had already taken a chainsaw to the lover and he was already in the garbage bags. Big black sturdy ones, just like Dexter used.

He had to finish Separating Sara and pack her up in the boat he and Sara and even the lover in many pieces had used on many occasions. He knew a perfect spot to throw them, he had been planning this for over a year now, never letting on to Sara that he knew she was a lying whore. As he got up from his desk, he thought he heard a noise in the kitchen. He walked in and a man was standing there with a gun pointed at him. As his heartbeat went into over-time, the man calmly said, “This is a special birthday present from Sara. She says she hopes it helps you with your mid-life crisis, asshole”. With that, he put a bullet through Marty’s right eye, then walked over and put another one through his brain to make sure. He then opened the kitchen door and started whistling as he went out to his car and left, loving the feeling of a job well-done!