'My Wife the Accountant' by Ian Shine

After completing the books for the marital year, my wife called a house meeting to announce that my rate of depreciation was proving higher than expected for a husband of my age, and the most viable option for the family going forward would be to dispose of me while I still retained any sort of market value.

“Wait another five years and he’ll have become a highly impaired asset: his back will have gone, his stamina got worse, and his brainpower begun the slide towards negligibility. Add in escalating capital expenditure on his upkeep, income entering a permanent trough once he reaches retirement, plus higher insurance costs after that multi-car pile-up, and all the forecasts show he really must go if this family is to have any hope of breaking even.”

I didn’t admit it, but I saw her point. She had the kids’ university fees to think about, her mother’s care costs to pay, a new car to fork out for. So I posed for the photos she and the kids put on eBay and helped them start auctions for my possessions, but they soon grew suspicious of my complicity and locked me in the downstairs bathroom.

When the door re-opened a week later, my wife said she wanted to hug me goodbye before work. Then my sons rushed in and bundled me to the ground.

The next thing I remember is a pair of hands pulling me out of a cardboard box.

“Holy shit,” a man in a postman’s uniform said. He tried to push me back and we got into a fight, but he was thirty years younger and soon started to win.

“Look,” I said. “Back off. You’ve paid for me, I’ll do what you want.”

“What the fuck is going on?” he said. “I thought you were a home-cinema system.”

I looked around the room at piles of other packages, ripped the address off the box I’d come out of and ran for the door. He didn’t follow me, and as I looked for some indication of where I was, people started staring at me and getting out their phones. My clothes were ripped and covered in blood, and not long later I was arrested.

In a panic, I told the police the whole story, and my family are now all in prison. My wife still calls with financial advice. She’s instructed me to sell the house and get something smaller, then spend the difference on a rental property. She’s also told me how to invest the windfall we received after her mother died from shock when I told her what had happened. Our sons won’t be going to university any time soon, I don’t need a car now I’m on my own, and the sale of my possessions provided a well-needed boost to cash flow. The financial results for the next marital year look likely to be good.

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