Competition by Graham Bruce Fletcher
After he’d retired he’d just sit there, getting paunchier, perpetually entering poetry contests and competitions. If it hadn’t been for his pension, she’d have left him. He’d hoped for a renewed intimacy in their relationship. But she’d disappear into reading books, breaking off only when she could devise some task for him which “needs to be done” as a way of preventing him from entering another competition.
The discovery of the flavourless undetectable toxin in one of her murder stories was an absolute gift. She watched with gleeful anticipation as he licked the envelope flap of his final competition entry.
Somewhere Else Writers Group 