Chapter 1

"A deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car." That was the image that stuck in my mind like the red clay of Alabama sticks to a clean car.

Actually, Alabama clay is what started it all, now that I think of it...

We were short-handed at the office, and I had been working double shifts and then some, managing both the regional office and doing almost all of the fieldwork for a nation-wide insurance agency. One of the suspicious claims I had to investigate was way the Hell out in the Northeast corner of Alabama near the headwaters of the Cache River. That doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the story, other than the fact that it had been raining steadily up in those hills for about a week. The mud on what passed as roads into the area was thick and sticky.

Of course, it worked out that I had to take my personal car. The only functioning company car had been totaled by a herd of stampeding chickens (the honest to God's truth, I swear. But then, Headquarters didn't believe me, either... ) earlier in the week, another reason I was short handed. Worse, I could only get up there on my one day off for the entire month. Then, when I did get there and finally located the "client," the claim really was bogus, to top it all off. The guy, you guessed it, named Bubba, that had filed the claim couldn't have kept his facts straight if he had a ruler to help him. Not that he would have known what all the little numbers down the side of it were for...

Although I was not born and raised in Alabama or the south, for that matter, I did know enough about the region to know that if you left that sticky clay on your car, it would soon become a permanent part of the vehicle. So as soon as I got home, I immediately washed and waxed my 'baby, ' paying particular attention to the undercarriage and wheel wells, a dirty job even without the clay that was caked into every nook and cranny. My baby, my jewel, was a mint condition classic Jaguar. Low and sleek, a car with character. A car with a real hood ornament, not some wimpy plastic stick-on.

Perhaps now you can understand why it was so easy for me to be in a really piss-poor mood that day. Besides, as much as I love my car, washing and waxing it is not something I particularly like to do. When I spend that much time rubbing anything, I prefer it to be a certain part of my own body. Or better yet, someone else's who is also rubbing mine.

To further set the stage, when I had arrived back home from this worthless and pointless jaunt into the boondocks, I found that my wife of 25 years had left a cryptic note on the table for me to find upon my return. In it she informed me that Momma needed her, and she didn't know when she would be back. 'Momma' lived four states away in the Texas panhandle. She was the single most demanding person I had ever known in my life and was only woman I knew who made my wife seem pleasant by comparison. Oh yeah, there was not a scrap of food left in the house, either. She thought Momma might need something, so she had taken everything with her, right down to the salt shakers and the plastic dish soap we kept in the mud room. She must have needed a fucking moving van to get all that shit to Momma's house.

I never realized how much noise my wife made around the house until the silence slammed into me that evening. I was getting out of the shower, had slipped into a favorite pair of torn old boxers and an even older T-shirt, and was sitting on the edge of the bed. I had my Dockers shorts in one hand and my belt in the other, but I was so weary, I just couldn't bring myself to finish dressing. I was tired of the rat race at work, tired of the traffic, tired of the responsibilities that come with the middle-class lifestyle. A mortgage, car payments, insurance. When you think about it, all you do is work to buy things. Then you worry yourself to death that someone will take them from you. When do you ever really get a chance to enjoy them, anyway? I sure as Hell didn't know. I was still waiting for that golden time, and had been for a long time. I let the silence wash over me, comforting me in its solid embrace.

It took me a while before I realized there was something wrong. The silence wasn't silent. I was almost too tired to care, but there was a nagging alarm going off in the back of my head. I tried to listen carefully, but the sound was too faint to pin down, and besides, I was really tired. I collapsed back onto the bed and was almost asleep.

Then I heard it. Psst-psst... psst-psst. Water-sounds. They came and went, and it took me a while to identify them and then even longer to realize the potential danger they represented. There shouldn't have been any water-sounds in the house with just me there. God help me if a pipe broke. I was hoping for a stuck toilet, but it didn't sound like that was it.

I was rousted out of my near-catatonic state by the possibility of having to explain any spurious water stains to my in-house inquisitor. I think she actually considered her precious wallpaper and other whatnots more valuable than national treasures. God help me if anything should happen to one of those fucking knick-knacks. A fast, but thorough search of the house revealed nothing, much to my relief.

The sounds were still there, however, coming and going with an almost recognizable rhythm. It bugged the shit out of me, not being able to place the pattern. I knew I was tired, but I prided myself on being pretty damn sharp and on being able to figure most things out faster than most other folks. This simple little noise eluded definition and it was not making my foul mood any better.

I went into the kitchen in search of a possible leak in the plumbing in that room. I seriously doubted I would find anything there as this was one of the rooms in the house that was hardly ever used for its intended purpose. My wife only seemed to use those food preparation facilities to celebrate presidential elections and lunar eclipses. I was standing at the window in front of the sink when something caught my eye.

I totally fucking lost it.

Some idiot — my neighbor idiot, specifically — had turned on a fucking lawn sprinkler and aimed it right smack dab at my freshly washed and waxed car.

A little background here might help. We, my neighbor and I, were the only two dupes unfortunate enough to have purchased houses in this particular development before the contactor went bankrupt. Actually, the builder had gambled that the nearby town would grow out in this direction, but, lucky guy that he wasn't, it didn't. So my neighbor and I were the only ones in this secluded cul-de-sac. And I mean secluded. The nearest buildings, other than the odd farmer's outhouse or hunting cabin, were over 6 miles away. It was the middle of fucking No Where.

As part of the developer's bankruptcy, I had been able to quietly pick up all the other lots in the development using a dummy corporation. That little tidbit has nothing to do with the story, either, but, hey, I got a deal on the land, and if I can't brag about it every anonymous chance I get, it would be worth less than it actually is, which is next to nothing.

We had electricity and telephone, but there were no other pubic utilities out this far. That meant we used well water to do everything, like water the lawn and wash the car. The water that came out of the ground around here may not have been toxic, but it was damn close. The shit was so laden with minerals, it could spot a leopard, not to mention what it would do to my freshly waxed car. So when I say I lost it, you can understand why. Right, guys?

I didn't even think about what I was doing. I charged over to my neighbor's front door and started pounding on it with both fists. I know now I must have been a frightful visage — half dressed, bare foot, uncombed hair still plastered down from my shower, my belt in one hand, my pants in the other, red-faced, angry, yelling and pounding on the door. I'm surprised she opened it at all.

I was so mad, I didn't even notice her then. I couldn't even speak coherently. I remember looking past her for her prick of a husband. Somehow she communicated that he wasn't home, so I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out into the middle of their front yard. I was gesticulating wildly, waving my arms like a madman and grunting like an enraged bull elephant. Eventually she understood what had upset me. She calmly walked over to the sprinkler and reversed the setting of the sweep to properly cover their yard. Which promptly soaked me, as I was still standing in the middle of their yard, directly in the path of the spray.

It's funny now, looking back, but then, well, then I did something that changed my life — and hers. I don't remember it as clearly as she does, but if she can laugh about it now, I suppose I can, too. It would be nice to say I had stayed in control of myself, that I was calm and cool, and made a joke out of getting sprayed by the sprinkler. Big deal, right? It's just water...

Wrong. I went berserk. She told me later that I got this strange, maniacal look in my eyes. She admitted she was truly frightened for her safety, as well she should have been. I stood there for several seconds, head-cocked, staring at her with this wild look in my eyes, a bloodlust coursing through me that I had never experienced previous. I wanted some serious revenge, I wanted a serious response. I was deadly serious.

For some unknown and still unexplained reason, she took that moment to giggle. That part I remember, only to me it seemed more like a broad guffaw, a taunt. It was a big mistake on her part. It was the last straw, apparently.

I charged at her faster than my wife with a new credit card. She was totally unprepared for my on-rush, and that's the picture I remember to this day. A deer caught in the headlights of an on-coming vehicle. It knows it's dead, and it just sort of gives up and stands there. Like she did.

I'm not a big man when you compare me to some of the bubbas we have up here in the backwoods, but I hold my own. At just over 6 feet, I towered over her 5'1" stature. The adrenaline was flowing as I grabbed her, sat down on the grass, flung her across my lap, and proceeded to raise my hand. It still held my belt, and it was poised to strike, held up over my head in my clenched fist.

"Please, sir, not the belt. Please don't use your belt."

Those were the only words she spoke, and somehow, they penetrated the denseness of my bloodlust. I dropped the belt and proceeded to beat the tar out of her ass. Somewhere between when my hand was over my head and the time it landed solidly on her tight little butt, the old memory cells in my brain kicked back in. Apparently, at least, my brain had figured out that this was one of life's little episodes it wanted to be conscious of for a long time. To be able to replay it and enjoy it over and over.

I remember she struggled as best she could until that first blow landed. Between the surprise and my size I was too much for her, though. I don't know what I intended to do, but I felt as if a dam had burst within me and she was going to get the benefit of every frustration in my life up that point.

I didn't hold back on that first strike. The sound of my hand colliding with her gluteus maximus sounded like a rifle shot. In the amount of time it took for the pain from my hand to reach my brain, the fight was gone from her. She stiffened slightly, I heard an infuriatingly soft "Oooooh!" and then she just relaxed over my lap.

Well, relaxed isn't quite the word. She sort of wedged her ass up in the air, like she was begging for more. I know it's impossible, but that tight little butt of hers was looking at me with an attitude that said, "Go ahead. Give me your best shot." She swears she didn't say anything. But her pert little ass was speaking for her, loud and clear, and it really ticked me off.

I lit into her behind like there were fire-ants on a baby. I hit my target fast, hard, often and everywhere. It must have been around the fifteenth or sixteenth swat that I felt something spray me in the face when my hand connected. At first I thought it was piss, but a quick investigation of my boxers told me it wasn't mine. There was a distinctly musky metallic odor wafting up from her upended bottom. I was not totally unfamiliar with that smell nor its origins, but I was totally unprepared for her to be enjoying this. The little minx had climaxed on my lap.

As I continued to paddle her resilient cheeks with my bare hand, she shifted slightly, managing to massage the outside of my thigh with her tits. With every squirm she made as I walloped her butt, she ground her nipples into the bare skin of my leg and rubbed her upper arm against my cock. Which was, by this point, extremely hard. She continued to cum about every ten or so swats, and her shorts were by now so dripping wet that the spray was flying with each blow. This woman was cumming like a river. And the smell that filled the immediate area of their front lawn was like a fine perfume.

Pausing, I rested my hand on her warmed ass cheeks. When I pressed down a certain way, I could hear her juices make a squishing noise. I felt along the openings in the pantleg of her shorts, running my finger through the rivulets of cum trickling down onto the grass.

I wasn't totally immune to the sexual connotations of the situation, nor was I totally ignorant that this type of thing could happen on those rare occasions. However, I had always thought it was pretty well limited to the realm of the fantasy world, like the outrageous stories I read on the Internet news groups. Having something like this drop into my lap (pun intended) was completely unexpected and I really wasn't sure what to do next. Honest!

You have to understand something at this point. My wife had retired from a professional position at a large bank five years after we were married so she could raise the kids. Problem was, she seemed to forget that in order to have kids, you have to have sex. To fuck and be fucked. Somehow that small detail seems to have escaped her notice. So, it ended up that the only one getting screwed at our house was I.

For years I tried. God knows I tried. Everything. I was loving, I was tender, whatever. Hell, I was young, horny and desperate. I would have done anything to woo her and probably did. But after a while, it became clear that the pearly gates were closed forever. After five years, she was done. My constant craving for sex changed to an occasional urge and then morphed into the quiet bitterness of life that I had known the last 18 or so years.

Yes, you got that right. I hadn't had sex for going on twenty years. I knew my right hand really well and was occasionally visited by my left hand for variety, but other than that, I was celibate.

In the space of one week after her 'retirement' from sexual activity, my wife had changed from the beautiful woman I had married into a younger version, a spitting image of Momma. Well, almost. Momma was still uglier. I swear, the little button nose I had planted so many kisses upon before we were married actually grew longer, hooking out and down. It scared the shit out of me for months after when I woke up in the morning. Her tits — I distinctly remember she had a very nice pair when we married — now applauded when she did aerobics. When she jumped up and down while exercising you could hear them clapping and flapping as she did her workout. Otherwise, they laid flat on her chest, two empty bags thinner than my wallet the day before payday. She had somehow managed to suck the life out of them just as she had our marriage.

She had a pair of purple Lycra® bicycle shorts she loved to wear around the house. I do not exaggerate when I say that those shorts made her butt look like a giant California prune, complete with wrinkles and the crease down the middle. The loose flabby skin didn't tighten up when she bent over, either. I still shudder when I picture her in those shorts.

Like I said, I did my best for a while to please her, thinking if she were satisfied she would reciprocate. I never found out if that theory was true or not, as, try as I might, I never heard the slightest moan or even flinch from that corpse-like catatonic body that lay beside me in bed at night. Not one indication of satisfaction. I probed and stroked and tickled and prodded with fingers and tongue for months in search of her magic button, but I never did find it. I would lay odds that if she ever had one, Momma had it cut off for her.

In addition, the wonderful odor drifting up from the squirming woman on my lap was nothing like the stench I remembered emanating from my wife. What exuded from her groin was more like swamp gas when the skunks are mating, not to mention the revolting taste. It tasted like she wiped her ass the wrong direction, not that I actually knew what shit tasted like.

I was not surprised to learn later that she did wipe the wrong way. Surprisingly, she never got a vaginal infection that I can recollect. Apparently, all the noxious bacteria in her bowels had declared her cunt a hostile environment and stayed the Hell away. Eventually, I did the same, as well. Of course when I learned later of her poor hygiene, that did help explain the painful burning sensations I had had for the first five years of our wedded bliss and the bouts of projectile vomiting I would experience the day after sticking my tongue into that cesspool...

So, you may well ask, as I often did myself, why the Fuck did I stay with that horrid woman? That's an easy question to answer and in only one word.

Fear.

Total abject fear that came from knowing with certainty the horrible consequences of divorcing or even separating from her.

You see, Momma had three children: Two sons and my wife. Momma had made her fortune early and often by gutting and filleting a series of foolish, rich husbands. Two died paupers, one died mysteriously, and the other three were still in the loony bin. At the state's expense, of course. Momma had cleaned them all out and then dumped them, if they were still alive.

My wife had learned her lessons well; she had just picked the wrong horse. For all practical appearances, I was in no hurry to get rich, dead or go insane. It was just about the only means of revenge I had. Not to mention survival.

Her two brothers were the only men I knew who considered the institution of marriage a legitimate profit center for their businesses. Well, other than the Catholic Church. They were divorce lawyers. Figures, right? More pain and suffering only meant higher fees for them, and Heaven help the other side. They were vicious, cutthroat amoral assholes. But I already told you they were lawyers, didn't I. Sorry to repeat myself.

With those two and Momma backing her, my wife, in her oh-so-delicate manner, informed me on the day after our wedding night that any attempt to divorce her would result in my instantaneous transportation to the state of abject poverty. The same went for philandering and debauchery. Now, while I was in no apparent hurry to get rich, I was in even less of a hurry to be poor. That sucks, big time! Been there, done that, so to speak.

There were too many raucous tales of their vicious courtroom battles that had been re-told in gruesome detail around the table at the annual Christmas dinner for me to doubt the outcome of any proceedings I might undertake against her and them. Those haunting images of eviscerated marriages were just too real to afford me any hope for a way out of this marriage prior to death doing us part. So I took the small revenges I could. I refused promotions at my job and carefully hid my investments in dummy corporations. These were formed mostly out of state or off shore. Like the land I mentioned earlier. Shit, I'm not stupid, just trapped!

You, however, are probably thinking about now that I sure the fuck am too stupid. OK, I'll admit, I was stupid enough to marry the crazy bitch, but she was at least fucking me occasionally at that time and I wasn't thinking with my bigger head. Not only that, you say, but here I am, in a sex-charged situation the likes of which will probably never happen to me again and I'm telling you about how my wife's ass reminds me of California prunes. So why the Hell didn't I just fuck this luscious piece of ass right then and there on the front lawn, huh? I hear what you're thinking.