I'm afraid I cannot hide this truth from you any longer; we seem to be missing a pillow-case. Forgive my blunt tone, but I am very near my wits end! I do not wish to alarm you, of course, and we do have other pillow-cases. Surely enough to case our pillows several times over. Though I shudder to think what state we will be in if we are the recipients of a surfeit of pillows from some mysterious benefactor.

Which is silly to think of, I know, and yet, my mind is in a muddle. Just now, I was standing by the window in our guest bedroom, gazing into the rainy afternoon, hand idly playing with the tassels on that lampshade I hate so much. And I thought to myself, what a dreary sad world we live in. That we live in a world where a pillow-case may go missing. And I thought I should finally write to you and explain all. And for some reason, adopt this odd tone, this weird cadence, as if we were living in a bad writer's version of late 19th-century London. Gadzooks, and all that.

Or the 20s. I know not. I'm no historian. Nor am a detective, for I have not found the pillow-case, though I've searched high and low! And I do not exaggerate. I searched above that cabinet we installed, ourselves, into the office. You know, the study. You know, where I spend a large portion of my day, browsing the internet and only very occasionally looking at daguerreotypes of nude women. Mostly I waste my hours tip-tapping stupid stories such as these, time punctuated on occasion by games of a pixelated nature. Yes, that room, that cabinet. Yes, I looked on top of it-- no pillowcase, alas!

Nor do I exaggerate when I say I searched low as well. Our crawl-space, to be precise, entranced through the shimmy hole in the kitchen pantry. And not one of those Wodehousian butler’s pantries, no, ours is but a closet with a light and some shelves. But I did, I pried up the hole cover, crawled down into the dirty depths, and inched my way beneath our very floorboards. After a while, I went back for a flashlight (torch, they call it, in the British vernacular, though we're not British, and this idiotic prose style of mine is barely reminiscent of one) and continued searching. Every square foot of the crawlspace-- not square inch, however, as the pillow-case in question is much larger than inches.

I even descended into that deep spot, you know the one, where the crawl-space goes from a three-foot depth to an eight-foot depth. The part where we joke about burying dead prostitutes if an occasion ever makes such activity necessary. Oh the jokes we've told each other, in this house. Oh, the prostitutes. But now, I fear, our house will be cast o'er with gloom and dismay, unless we find this pillow-case!

I emerged from beneath the house, browsed the internet some more, took a shower, and recommenced my searches. But nothing. Behind the washing machine. Beneath all of the beds. The hampers. Under couches, sofas, divans, settees, lounges, and such like. We have an ungodly amount of furniture, don't we? I found a few loose coins, an idle M&M candy, a double-A battery from when I had to change one of the television remotes in the dark, having fumbled it in my eagerness to change channels so we could watch "Modern Family." But no pillow-case. I am at my wits end. Did I say that already? Whatever shall I do?

I envy you, beloved wife, verily I do, sitting there in your place of employ, surrounded by vials and bottles and pills and other tinctures. I can't even be entirely certain what "tinctures" are, exactly, but I'm fairly certain they have something to do with the medical professions. You sit there, surrounded by extremely educated professionals, you dispense medicines to the sick and the elderly, you save lives, you share store-bought coffee-cake with your peers. While I wallow in self-doubt, self-pity, and self-denial. To think I can be so felled, by missing bits of cloth. I sigh heartfeltly.

We recently had visitors, you'll recall, and I cannot say that a certain thought has not broached my mind, that one of them may have taken the pillow-case. A pillow-case does make for an excellent laundry bag. I do not like to imagine one of our houseguests stuffing soiled underthings into our pillow-case. But truthfully, I don't need to. The missing pillow-case is not the ordinary kind with an opening at one end, a sort of flat bag. No, the missing case is the so-called "sham" variety, the kind that have their openings in the middle of the back! You know, so that the edges can seem uniform and fluffy all around.

It's ironic, isn't it. I mean, there would a modicum of relief in the belief that one of our guests stole the pillow. Consternation at such a foul deed, to be sure, undo anxiety upon meditating on how to ask them each of they are the foul culprit. But there'd at least be, then, a plan for action. But no, it cannot be, simply cannot be, and so we are left to soak in this dastardly calamity. Where did the damned pillow-case go?

I'll go check the laundry room again, and perhaps rifle through the towels folded up in the linen closet, and look in the closet of the guest room that has the bed with the pillow that would take the missing case if it weren't missing. But I don't have much hope for what I'll find. Or what I won't find. And I'm afraid that, truth be told, if I do indeed find nothing, and I don't know if I can keep myself from eating poison. You always said I was too passionate. Now it will be my undoing. I can't live with this kind of chaos. I just can't.

But no matter what happens, please know that I love you, I have always loved you, and you and you alone are the only thing that has kept me alive through these terrible terrible times. If you find this note next to my bloated corpse, please at least know I did the best that I could.

Yours,

Husband.

PS I found the pillow-case. I'm going to take the poison anyway.