I have not written a story in ten years.  I started a novel and I stopped. I got busy with five hundred thousand things. A job. A life. A kitten.  A mystery with eyebrows.

 I was scared. For a lot of reasons, to write a story, but. It's just a game. And because it is just a game, and I mean to return to blogging, at least weekly, I figured, why not share.

 And, damn, fuck me, because I will be anything but taken seriously, it's a mystery.  So. Without further ado:

 The Chiropractor's Wife is Dead

The chiropractor's wife hurt her shoulder on Tuesday morning.

She was a terrible patient. She did not believe in chiropractic medicine. She had blonde hair short enough and long enough to cover all parts of her head a motorcycle helmet would. There was just enough hair that if she stood in a doorway, and the light was behind her, it looked like she had the enormous and misshapen head of a dwarf.

They met because she was a terrible patient. Her doctor gave up on her lower back pain. She tried him after acupuncture and before the little round pills. Those killed it.

On Tuesday night, she asked him to look at it. She showed him how she couldn't twist her right arm to touch her back. It was a strain. Nothing more. She wouldn't put an ice pack on it. She wouldn't add heat. She wanted him to just fix it. It wasn't a subluxation. Just a strain.

The chiropractor was indicted.

He didn't know what to do.

On Thursday morning, she was dead in their bed.

On Wednesday morning, he felt terrible. Impotent. She woke up and her hair was a mess and her shoulder was worse.

She'd tossed all night. She wouldn't take an anti-inflammatory. She took an extra little white one. With wine. Her lips were red from the shiraz and he thought of her liver. He thought of how her silly squat feet looked lost at the end of her long bare legs the first time he saw her in the tub. He thought of how the analgesic alone wouldn't do anything for the swelling in her deltoid. And how the poor muscles would be even worse off in the morning, because the alcohol is so dehydrating. And worse still, because she would sleep, as always, tied in a tight little knot with the bedsheet between her legs like a model in a life drawing class, tipped over.

If he said any of this, she'd curl in a tighter knot, like a pillbug, leaving him and the rest of the bed with only her bony spine and new red swollen shoulder. And it would be three glasses of wine. And she'd invent a new cruel observation of a lack in his life he had always suspected but never noticed. He'd sleep alone and dream of liver toxicity.

On Wednesday morning, she looked worse, and she was worse. And because he thought so much and said nothing, he felt terrible. When she was in the shower, he drove to the Starbucks down at the corner. She went there every morning, after her shower. He didn't know her order, because she went alone.

He looked in the kitchen trash for the cup, but Tuesday had been trash day.

The chiropractor found the trash empty. Her car was clean. None of the detritus of a long commute and all her business travel. He smiled. She knew it bothered him to open the door and find gum wrappers and coffee cups in the passenger seat.

If he couldn't fix her shoulder, he could make her smile. Save them ten minutes to sit across the table and drink coffee, like they did on the first morning she wasn't his patient anymore.

So he went to the coffee shop and he described her and described her and described her, to all the baristas. He described her dressed for work. He described her in her gym clothes. He described her in her work clothes. A barista with long red braids and dirtier fingernails than he'd like remembered his wife and her drink.

He came back with her drink as she was getting out of the shower. Non-fat, no-water, extra-hot chai.

She wrapped herself in a bathrobe, came to the kitchen and drank her drink. She smiled and they talked as her hair began to dry. She would put a heat pack on it, she said. She would go to her morning meeting, and then she'd go to the gym. And then she'd come back, and put a heat pack on it, then ice.

Just the treadmill, the chiropractor suggested. And try not to lean. Spare your shoulder.

She would.

He was pleased. He didn't feel so bald, suddenly, or short-fingered. He helped her dress for her meeting. She couldn't twist her arm to zip the back. He zipped her dress and kissed the back of her neck, and watched her get ready and leave for the day.

He thought of her in that dress all morning in the office. His cheeks were red and burning when he adjusted a fireman.

It was a gorgeous dress. Made her look like some secret golden-haired Hepburn. A black cotton sheath. Scoop neck. Tight pencil skirt. It left her arms bare. She wore flat ivory colored shoes with pointed toes that almost made her feet look regular sized.

He counseled a retired woman that he could not adjust her back so that she wouldn't have allergies, and cancelled the rest of his appointments for the day. He would take care of his wife when she got home.

He raced home, bringing enough rubs and ice packs and gels and pills for an aging rugby team. She opened the front door just as he was coming from the garage.

The black dress was as gorgeous as he remembered it. Her hair was wet from the gym. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were rosy like a stereotype of a woman in love. He felt lush-haired, long-fingered, and tall.

He helped her out of her dress. He applied heat and ice and smelled the shampoo in her hair.

He couldn't sleep that night. Not well. He thought of only her lovely black dress, her poor red shoulder, the smell of shampoo and menthol together as he rubbed the balm into her shoulder.

On Wednesday night, almost Thursday morning, the Chiropractor strangled his wife.

He was indicted.