Deletion

A middle aged man in a white luxury sedan slowly passes through the gated subdivision. His face stern, hands clenched to the steering wheel, the satellite radio playing softly as he presses the remote for his garage door and slowly eases past the unfamiliar red sports car in his driveway and stops beside his wife's car in the garage. He closes the garage door, and exits his sedan, straightening his suit jacket as he does, and his hard sole shoes clip across the hard floor as he walks to the door of his house.

A man's jacket lay tossed across the back of his sofa, shoes that aren’t his rest just inside the front door next to his wifes sneakers, cologne and cigar sits stagnant in the air, a scent that churns his stomach. He crosses the living room, makes a sweep of his first floor, and finding nothing but dishes for two at the kitchen’s bar he heads upstairs. He almost glides up the stairs, not a sound, smooth enough that no one would notice his presence as he reaches his left hand into the breast of his suit jacket drawing out a 25 caliber handgun with a sound attenuator as he tops the stairs.

The sounds of intimacy from his bedroom confirms his suspicion, hearing his wife's moans confirms her actions to him. He walks up to his door, and silently pushes it open. The sight that greats him is exactly what he expected: his wife naked under a naked stranger. He walks up to the foot of the bed and raises the gun.

“Well imagine finding you here instead of at your office.”

The stranger practically leaps off the bed but he’s not fast enough and with a loud pop he drops to the floor with a hole through his head where his nose used to be.

“Richard! What, what, have you done!”

“What had to be done Elizabeth, what had to be done.”

“You’ll rot in jail for this! You could have just confronted me!”

“Elizabeth, what do I do for a living?”

“I don’t really know, solve problems, delete files, something with computers.”

“Well, you got the solve problems and delete things right, but I delete problem people. When the boss says someone is a problem, then they get deleted. Imagine my shock when he informed me that a rival mob informant was screwing my wife! Now, as much as I hate to say it; good bye Elizabeth, I loved you so much.”

Another loud pop, another body hits the floor, and he pulls out his phone.

“Sir, send the clean up crew, it’s done.”

“No loose ends?”

“No sir, no loose ends. Tell the clean up crew 122510 will get them in the house no matter the door and have them call me when they're done please. I need to pick my kids up before they get on the bus so they don’t walk into this.”

“Sure thing Rich, need some time to pass this off as a divorce to them?”

“Good idea, thanks.”

“You sound tired, ready to retire yet?”

“Getting there, but this was a hard one.”

“Been there, done that twice myself Rich so I get it.”

Richard goes back to his car, and off to get his kids. The clean up crew will be thorough, and by the time he is back home all of Elizabeth’s clothes will be gone, her car and the sports car will be salvaged, and everything will be as if this never happened, and tonight he’ll be online erasing her existence, deleting her footprints, her memory, every record of her ever existing in this world.