“Frigid.”

“Daunting.”

Such words have stained the online reviews of the forest in the town of Wrenwick since the year Jacque Enots B’mot became a widower. 

Prior, he could (and regrettably did) go about his daily life taking most of life’s small gifts for granted. Other than having only one organic eye, he had it all: a successful career that was pretty much handed to him on a platinum salver as soon as he entered this twisted world, the sweetest wife imaginable, and everything a sober man could ask for. 

Ah, yes, three years ago this world was but one elephantine office building as far as Jacque E. B. was concerned. He was an intriguingly successful stockbroker on Wall Street; in fact, he almost never missed some multi-million-dollar deal with some over-privileged “gentlemen of wealth” such as himself. Indeed, “over-privileged” is a perfect descriptor for such a fine specimen of someone who attained then negligently relinquished the American dream. The public later decided he cared only for his wife and his own material possessions.

Most true is it that Monsieur B’mot denied anyone beyond his wife any sincere semblance of benevolence, empathy, compassion, or respect. That said, he failed to fully respect her as a person with feelings and needs that can’t always be pacified by monetary means. Bless her blindly devoted heart, she still stuck by him through all twelve years of marriage despite being treated sometimes as a pet and other times as a high-maintenance possession.

Jacque wore a locket with the inscription, “The past can never die. Memories of the past can be tainted by negative associations and become enshrouded by the murky water not restrained by the dam of denial.” 

Despite this insight, he was not inclined to pain for any other deaths than that of his late wife—not even the approaching death of his sanity. Why bother? It is not as if the deceased are capable of mourning. That Loch Ness of a concept may be foggy without a lighthouse lamp, but to all who knew Mr. B’mot before he became a widower, it is crystal-clear.

Before an inquirer might find out about the how, why, and when of Jacque’s wife’s demise, one must understand how a gorgeous, intellectual, sophisticated, mature, vigorous, charismatic, and, generally speaking, idealistic woman such as herself could tolerate the man she called “Jack. E.B.” Granted, the (late) daughter and only child of the (even later) French oil mogul Marquis-Leone la Marchand VIII could have had her pick from a plethora of worthy, more cultivated suitors, each with two organic eyes, yet she sought to scale the uncertain peaks of life unbridled. 

Ingrid-Lunette de la Rouge, her surname a brand imposed by a French power above her father once she came to light, was introduced to Jacque by her father on the night of a networking gala. 

At first, she did not want anything to do with the American man but to please her dear father; reluctantly, she strolled around the parlor with her date. Sensing her hostility, he began to progressively spin a spider web of charm and anoint ear pleasers as they talked of everything under the stars in his attempt to win her hand (and money) in marriage. Her fortress walls of pessimism waned with every passing hour and her judgment dwindled with every sip of “orange juice” decanted by her father. 

Soon enough, Ingrid deemed Jacque to be the most precious and delectable man ever. Astonishingly, before the witching hour, Jacque Enots B’mot and Ingrid-Lunette de la Rouge were betrothed to marry the next morning. 

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That is quite a startling feat, as Ingrid was coached since girlhood to detect superficialities in even the murkiest of souls. Lamentably for her, even she was unable to find the end of her rainbow once viewing his shadow. Rather, she was consumed by the eye of the black hole whose hand she’d taken in marriage those many moons ago.

Jack and Ingrid had a typical American marriage… sans children, pets, and the recurrent lack of money that plague most families. As for children, stone man’s disease of an untreatable variety slowly turned a large portion of her muscles into bone, resulting in much more than the standard, zombie-like gait. 

She also bore the “curse” of being unable to have children due to a car accident when she was early into puberty, specifically thirteen days after she declared with a huff that she would never want children. The impact paralyzed her mother into invalidism, prompting her own Indigenous Canadian parents to reclaim her without her “half-breed” daughter. The front bumper of the opposing car slammed into Ingrid’s door in a way that irreparably stunted the maturation of certain organs. 

Ironically, her elitist upbringing deemed adoption and even fostering so un-acceptable that she denounced them without solicitation and was consequently lambasted by leftist media.

As for pets, Jack E.B. lacked the patience necessary to allow them to live. Such a cutting statement was justified when Ingrid had brought home a koi fish as a pet for him, and he ended up pouring it into the garbage disposal two days later. 

After Ingrid rushed into the kitchen with her hair still up in curlers and shrieked at the sight of the empty fish tank next to the sink and the bloody napkin covering the drain, she managed to inquire, “What have you done?! You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?” Then, assuming it was all an accident, she stated, “If one of our rings fell down the drain, you rushed in after it, you accidentally knocked over that obviously quite durable tank, the fish swam down the sink, and you got worried that I’d… it’s okay. We can buy another ring, a better disposal with a sensor, and then buy a new fish after we pray for the one down the drain. Oh, the poor thing. Please G-”

Jack E.B. cut her off as she began to pray. “It wouldn’t eat its food, so I assumed it was sick and would suffer less through there than if I flushed it down the toilet where perhaps it wouldn’t die right away but would undoubtedly end up dying slowly from poisonous sewage. I only thought for the best,” murmured Jack E.B. to his conflicted wife, and then proceeded to sanitize his ring. 

Mollified, Ingrid merely shrugged her shoulders, responding, “The thought counts. Please, just clean everything up, and we can forget about this whole thing—after we finish praying.” 

That scene is just one of many examples of Ingrid’s unconditional love for Jack; however, as some close ties to the couple speculated, perhaps it was that unrelenting love that caused the pair’s downfall. Many claimed that he grew fatigued of his wife’s constantly smothering him with her affections. 

Others alleged her limp leash led him to become further greedy, thus taking a mile if given but a foot or two. One young whip, a nephew of some distant relation to Ingrid, even swore Jack was having an affair with his secretary. All but the latter of those rumors lasted until yesterday, when all of Wrenwick grew as still as its forest. 

Alas, when it came to seeing clearly even when the rain was not gone, even Jack E.B. himself failed to bring that aptitude to fruition before his own Ragnarök. His day of reckoning was a solemn one. He had visited his late wife’s resting place that morning before he went to spend what would end up being his final day of penance…at work. For most, that day would have been a nightmare, what with getting fired from one of the most lucrative jobs in the world and then entering repose in such a fashion the morning before his forty-fifth 

birthday.

Were Jacque still alive, he would most likely wish that his death had arrived long before he ever met Ingrid. He would literally tear his heart out of his chest if only to spare her from the fate that he had brought upon her. He would do so even at the least mention that she would never have felt the need to shout into his phone, “I’ll just take five more pills for good luck” and actually swallow them. 

Oh, how he would sell his soul to Mephistopheles himself to use even one of the thousands of the missed chances to explicitly tell her he loved her while she was still alive. 

Sprawled like an abandoned marionette, Jacque now lies upon the stone-cold bed of azaleas at the foot of Ingrid-Lunette de la Rouge’s monument. Sterling script wrought in funereal dedication and a duplicate of her hundred-carat wedding gown are suspended in weather-proof red acrylic, having cast rotating shadows upon him as the sun saw fit. 

The present dusk finds the garment free of the petrol that stained the original when she kissed the sea after her single-hull tanker hemorrhaged. 

Stealing the present scene, an ensanguined letter protrudes from his business jacket’s breast pocket.