The basement where they kept the apple cider was dead quiet. Marissa, Mr. Howard’s lawfully wedded wife of about forty years knew immediately that something was dead wrong. Whenever Mr. Howard retired into the basement to check on his investments, there was always some Elvis playing in the background, and either his husband was singing along to the seventies hits or he was just humming quietly.

But Marissa didn’t want to jump into conclusions. And so she continued walking by as slowly as humanly possible, making sure that she wasn’t disrupting her husband if at all he was busy working on something.

The apple ciders looked fine and from the look of things, Mr. Howard and finally finished his investigation. Marissa let out a sigh, thinking that she was probably overthinking and that was the main reason she suspected something had happened to her husband. But when she made a turn and started heading back, her foot hit on something that made her come to a screeching halt and looked down.

There he was, Mr. Howard, dead and his body had rolled under one of the stands, explaining why she had missed it in the first place. Marissa was in shock, not knowing what to do next. And that said, the only thing that she could do was scream as loud as her old lungs could right before falling next to her husband, trying to shake him awake.


But there was no use. Mr. Howard was a goner.