Love, Charles

uno

I pride myself as a clean person. I loath the sight of filth and retched when nasty smells wafted to my nose.

I am the regular Nigerian woman who scrubbed the house, did laundry every Saturday, and performed a thorough wipe-down every last weekend of the year because it is an abomination to enter the new year with a dirty house.

But my whole definition of cleanliness changed when I met him. He was the kind that could see fingerprints on the glass table from miles away.

That would gag if anything other than lemon fresh liquid soap was used to watch his dish.

At first, I was fascinated by it and tried to keep up but failed woefully. And an infantile resentment for him grew in me.

It grew and grew and grew as an outsized fetus conceived from the loins of Lucifer himself until it clawed its way out of my head and fatally shot my husband.

For being too neat.

Too perfect.

A perfect monster.