A handful of men.

She went home to a loveless relationship held together only by variable interest rate on their joint mortgage. Dinner consisted of leftovers from the fridge that she managed to create something from. They ate in silence while studying the perfect lives of others in short clips on their phones. Their necks were bent, as if for an execution. He suddenly laughed at something, and she looked at him in surprise.

-What was that?

-Oh, nothing really.

-But you laughed.

-Did I? he replied and returned to the screen.

After dinner, they watched a show formatted by an algorithm that had learnt their tastes over the years, making it so predictable that they fell asleep on separate sofas. When she woke up, he had already gone to bed without waking her.

The TV was on and CNN was repeating world news that made her to reconsider her stand on the death penalty. Imagine being able to cleanse the earth of the handful of men who are at the root of all the shit happening on the planet. But she doesn't believe in the death penalty. It might solve some problems, but what would it do to her? What kind of person would they turn her into? But at some point you may have to strike a balance. If you can reduce the suffering of millions of people by getting rid of one, isn't that a good deed?

She brushed her teeth and changed into a nightgown before crawling into bed where her husband was sleeping with his oxygen mask on and still snoring. She studied him and the foggy mask over his nose and mouth. If he didn't work at the Land Survey, could he also have become a powerful despot who oppressed and duped his people, threatened neighbouring countries and executed critics? She hesitated, reminding herself that her thoughts should not be applied to all men. One should not generalise. But at the same time, she could not ignore the fact that it is almost exclusively men who make the world a worse place. A handful of men, but still men. That's a fact.

She suddenly felt lucky that she only shared her life with one really boring man. At the same time, she was glad that she didn't agree to them taking out a life insurance policy on her. They might not love each other anymore, but she wasn't going to give him the slightest reason to want to kill her.

Opportunity makes the thief and all that.