Keep Calm and Kill Your Wife by Lucky Stevens

trucks, of course, but all Hart could see were the cops.
    Why did you flee the scene, Mr. Smith? He was back to square one. Why, Mr. Smith? Why? Because something told me to get the hell out of there, officer. He couldn’t say that.
    Hart took a deep breath. Why? Answer the question, Hart. Answer it right now. If it comes out shitty, so what? No one’s here to hear it. You’ll fix it.
    And so he blurted out the first thing that came into his head. “The explosion knocked me down, Officer. Down that hill behind the bathroom. I had tears in my eyes and I couldn’t see where I was going. I knew my wife, Summer, she had to be dead and I didn’t know what to do. No one could survive an explosion like that and I didn’t want to see her burning body.
    “I screamed and then I ran. I wanted to die myself. And that’s when I slipped and I-I banged my head and everything went black. When I woke up I was disoriented and I just ran. I ran as fast I could. I just wanted to get out of there. I was in the middle of the forest and I kept running, hoping I wasn’t getting deeper into nowhere. Finally I found the road and I made it to the cabin. Is she dead? Is she? Oh, my God.”
    Hart had said it out loud and he had said it fast. He was sweating. He wondered if it sounded melodramatic. Maybe most people would have stayed nearby, waited for the fire to die down. Maybe. But had he done anything illegal? No. Was there any way they could pin a thing on him? He didn’t see how.
    Hart felt better. His story made sense. Things are crazy during explosions. People run everywhere. It’s pandemonium. Everyone knows that. He didn’t do anything bad. He just loved his wife so much and was so traumatized, he couldn’t bear to see her charred and mangled remains.
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    So right or wrong, Hart committed to it all. And he headed back in the direction of the cabin.
    Having the basic plot in his mind, he refused to “practice” the story again, wanting it to sound fresh should he be forced to tell it. Instead he decided to focus on other things. For the first time he noticed his complete envelopment in the trees. Together they made for a magnificent quilt of browns and greens. Individually, their detail, their texture, had a certain poignancy that transcended far beyond just one’s sense of sight.
    Hart was surrounded by nature but was also acutely aware of the manmade road that followed him and acted in a peripheral way as his guide. It was his one link to the only world he really knew—civilization.
    This clear mental picture, as well as the joy that bubbled up in him at the prospect of the new life that lay ahead, served as a catalyst in his motivation to move forward. It would not, however, be an easy road. His stomachache was back, having taken a temporary respite during the time the weight of the world had been settling on his shoulders.
    If only I could find a tree around here somewhere where I could finish my business, he joked to himself, holding his stomach. But his stab at humor only staved off the inevitable for a few moments. Far from ideal, Hart sucked it up and redecorated the base of the first pine tree on his left.
    When he was done, he felt surprised that he didn’t feel that much better, concluding that he might be getting hungry. He looked back. Huncke’s was far behind and way out of sight. As a matter of fact, he couldn’t see much of anything other than trees. An endless sea of trees whose only border seemed to be an amorphous road which was seen rather clearly at times and almost “sensed” at others, its visibility highly dependent upon the density of the trees at any given point and the rise and fall of Hart’s chosen pathway.
    When the road seemed to be hiding, Hart would become more aware of the glint of the sun, whose brightness advanced and retreated in waves, depending on the lay of the trees.
    The sun had shifted a fair amount since he had begun his trek, having passed over his head quite awhile