Alfred stepped into the shower. Cold jets of water struck him forcibly as he turned the power to its maximum setting. Fresh blood splashed the panels of the shower cubicle and ran in rivulets down the glass then swirling round and round on the plastic floor before disappearing into the unknown.

“Why did she make me do it?” His voice was pleading, begging for an answer to a question that no-one could hear, let alone answer.

Alfred forced the bristles of the scrubbing brush under his fingernails so hard that his own blood mingled with that of Maria. “Maria!” He closed his eyes but the scene of his wife, naked, on the bed, taunting him, ridiculing him, would not let him be. “She told me to do it,” he said, still trying to cleanse his hands of his wife’s blood. “I didn’t want to, I told her so, but no! Maria, that self confessed bitch and liar, forced me to do it.”

Trembling with the knowledge of what he had done, Alfred stepped from the shower cubicle, leaving the water running. His reasoning was that the blood, the blood of his wife, would be washed away forever.

Wrapping a towelling robe around him, he nervously returned to the bedroom. Maria was where he left her, he knew she would be. All her talk about being one of the un-dead was just a lie: her way of mentally living in another world. A world where these... things, thrive, living off the flesh of the living. But this was his world, the real world, where fantasy exists only in books and films and in the minds of people.

Alfred eventually plucked up the courage to look into her eyes. There was no fear in them, no sign of pain, just the hint of a smile. This was confirmed when Alfred looked at the rest of Maria’s face. The lips that had earlier spat venom and bile, were now slightly curved up at the corners of the mouth.

“Did you blink? You did! You’re alive, but how?” Alfred grabbed hold of Maria’s right wrist as he fumbled for a pulse: there was none. He rushed to the dressing table and grabbed a vanity mirror. He held it near Maria’s mouth in the forlorn hope that it would mist up and she would awake and forgive him: but there was nothing. How could there be? Alfred had delivered over four dozen stab wounds to the chest and belly.

“Again Alfred, again,” she had cried. And Alfred did her bidding. “You cannot hurt me! More damn you, more!”

The uncertainty with which he had started Maria’s game was replaced with mindless savagery as he thrust the blade deep into her body, again, and again, and again. He soon gave up the idea of finding a fresh piece of flesh to plunder. Suddenly, he realised that he was enjoying it. The feeling of power was exquisite, sexual even. Alfred grabbed Maria by the throat to hold her steady as his insatiable lust continued. Then it was over. He released his grip on Maria and gently pushed her backwards, onto the duvet.

Reality came upon Alfred and he began to panic. “I should call the police! Christ no! I’ll be locked away forever. What do I do, what do I do? There were no screams. Yes, I remember now, she didn’t utter a goddamn word. Nobody heard us: any way, the neighbours hear us rowing all the time.  Nobody saw us, the curtains were closed...” The mists of fear and confusion slowly lifted and Alfred started to think more clearly. “I’ve got to get rid of the body. I’ll tell people she’s left me, no, that’s no good. She’s gone to visit a sick relative. That should do it. Yeah, she’s gone to visit a dying aunt.”

Alfred paced around the bedroom. Myriad thoughts going through his mind. “What’s the time? Eight thirty. I’ve got to do this right,” he said, nervously clicking his fingers. “I’ll pack a suitcase, she wouldn’t leave without clothes.”

There was no thought as to the clothes she would have chosen, he just took some from the hangers and drawers then bundled them along with her toothbrush and make-up bag into the suitcase. The body of Maria, a believer in, and member of, the Cult Of The Living Death, was then carefully wrapped in the duvet that she had died upon. Fortunately, there was direct access from the house to the garage. Alfred lifted the boot-lid and placed the body of his wife inside, then collected the suitcase and likewise, put it in the boot. From a rack of gardening tools, he took a spade and placed it next to Maria.

The car pulled onto the main road but wasn’t handling well. Alfred fought with the steering wheel, it felt wet, sticky. The light from street-lamps gave a reddish glow to a glutinous mess on Alfred’s hands, it was Maria’s blood. He tried to wipe his hands on his shirt, but where he had carried the duvet, that too was blood-soaked.

Up ahead was a petrol station: it was closed. Alfred pulled onto the forecourt, stopped the car and rushed to the boot. Among some tools he found an oily rag with which he cleaned his hands and the steering wheel as best he could before once more setting off.

Thirty five minutes later, and having continually cursed the day he married Maria, Alfred turned onto a narrow track. He knew this track and the area well. He had seduced many a young woman when he was in his prime and the woodland at the end of the track was perfect for the art of seduction. Now, twenty years later, the track was grossly overgrown and the woodland seemed perfect for a burial.

Although there were no houses for miles, Alfred felt it prudent to kill the car’s lights, besides, ‘The light of the moon is more than enough,’ he mused, as he manoeuvred the car between the many heaps of fly-tipped waste. The car lurched from side to side until, much to Alfred’s relief, he arrived at the edge of the wood.

Everything was perfect: brambles had grown over what were once well used dirt-paths, and just getting into the wood was made difficult due to the dense undergrowth surrounding the trees. It seemed that nobody had been here for a long time and in all probability, nobody would even dream of coming here for years to come.

Alfred left Maria in the boot, then, using the spade, he hacked his way forward in search for a suitable spot for the grave. Having been pricked and slashed by a multitude of bramble thorns, Alfred came upon a small clearing about twelve feet across. The trees gave the appearance of this tiny oasis, being a shrine. Moonlight cast eerie shadows across the earth, for this ‘shrine’ was devoid of vegetation.

Alfred cut into the soil with the spade. The earth was soft, however, the roots from the trees crisscrossed and intertwined so as to make the work of digging almost impossible.

“I’ll dig this hole if it’s the last thing I do!” he cursed, sweat drenched and weary. Time and again Alfred thrust the spade at the roots. It was as though he was re-enacting the scene from the bedroom. He attacked the fibrous mass in an uncontrollable frenzy until at last, he had dug some semblance of a hole more than big enough to take a body, and the suitcase.

Carrying Maria from the bedroom to the car was easy, but this? Alfred, exhausted, and with blistered, lacerated, hands, carried his wife to her last resting place. He then callously dropped her into the grave without showing the slightest dignity or remorse. The suitcase soon followed.

“We were all right, you and me,” he said, as he shovelled dirt over her body. “Before you got involved in all that un-dead crap. Well, you and them were wrong and now we’ve both paid the price. For that, I suppose we’ll see each other in hell!”

Alfred rested after patting the ground flat with the back of the spade. “Where’s the carving knife? I don’t remember wrapping it in the duvet with you. The last time I saw it, it was sticking out of your belly.” Alfred thought the remark funny and chuckled to himself before shrugging his shoulders and slowly making his way back to the car.

The sound of a twig cracking caused Alfred to stop and listen: nothing. He moved on a few steps only to hear the same noise. “Look, I know there’s no-one here but me, but I’m going to turn around anyway.”

The sight of Maria, carving knife in hand, standing not three feet from him, brought bile up into the throat of Alfred. He dropped the spade. He wanted so much to run, but his body was unable to do what his mind craved.

“I bet you believe in me now, eh, Alfred?” screamed Maria. She grabbed her husband’s hair, as the carving knife was brought through a wide arc. Alfred’s eyes widened in unimaginable terror at the moment his head was sliced from his body.

With Alfred’s head held firmly against her breast with one hand and dragging his body with the other, Maria returned to her new home.