The day I lost my belief was the same day Mrs. Garrick asked me to help kill her husband.
That's the first sentence of this story. If it doesn't make you want to read the second, my word, why are you reading fiction at all?
The narrator is an Irish clergyman, five years a widower. Mrs. Garrick's husband was brutally maimed in a terrorist attack. Our protagonist tries to comfort her and one thing leads to another.
But it isn't the request that he help murder Mr. Garrick that causes the clergyman to lose his faith. It is his conclusion that "There is no sin because there is no God. There is no God because there is only us and our impulses..."
In that case there is nothing to keep him from killing the invalid and living happily ever after with the widow. What could possibly go wrong?
A tight and surprising little tale.
