The next story is 'Crawfish' by Ardath F. Mayhar. The title alone feels familiar... but maybe I'm mixing it up with another story? Let's find out...
Yep... one sentence in and I know I've read this one before!
It's a pretty memorable story, given how downright nasty it is, so it's no surprise this one stuck in my head! It's a bold choice to have such an irredeemably unpleasant first-person narrator as well (I don't believe there's any attempt to evoke sympathy in the reader for him).
I also like the way that the story feels like there
might be something supernatural going to happen, but then it resolutely resists this. It's the story of an unpleasant man, and although there's some small justice at the end, there are no ghosts.
In some ways, I feel like that's a more appropriate ending to this brutal little tale. He killed his wife, and she remains dead. She doesn't get to be an all-powerful ghost, because she was a victim of domestic violence that destroyed her. As I say, brutal.
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