Crabs

Jim’s wife gave him crabs before she left for the last time.  When she came to pick up her things he tried to persuade her to take them too.  She ignored him, took everything else and left them.

The cream the doctor gave him ran its course, did its job.  Jim felt guilty for wiping out the blighters, the only artefact of his dead marriage.  He missed their caress, they had kept him company at night, comforted his loss.

He was lonely for long time after that, until a drunken fumble in an alleyway one night.  The nameless woman left him with a new set of crabs.  He kept them, but knew they could never take the place of his wife’s.