Chapter One "Coming Home"

You see it all started last Friday when our bosses had thrown us one of those few bones that the Corporate Demi-Gods in their infinite charity bestow once in a while upon their lowly minions. They had decided to be magnanimous and let us off two hours early for the upcoming Christmas Holidays.

While she drove us home, home being a house I had inherited from my grandmother and was sharing with Kelly, her low-life boyfriend Billy and my now ex-girlfriend Sherry, Kelly gave me the "Good News".

"Oh, I almost forgot to tell you Jim", that's me by the way, "Billy proposed to me last night and I have decided to accept." "I am going to tell him when we get home and make it my own special Christmas present to him."

Great, this was going to be some vacation! Last week Sherry informed me, quite un-expectantly, that things were not working out between us; and now, not only was I going to be helping her move her stuff into the spare bedroom, but Billy was going to be gloating over his conquest of Kelly until they were married.

I had decided not to kick Sherry out but instead took pity on her as she was a college student with just a part time fast food job.

Oh, did I mention that I really dislike Billy? I had always had a feeling that he was sleeping around on her and I think he suspected it. But that's O.K., because the feeling is mutual and nigher of us make any attempt to hide it.

Thinking of the joy I was looking forward to over Christmas Vacation, I considered whether it was less painful to jump out of the car and into the path of the oncoming bus in the other lane or just call in a bomb threat to the local Post Office so I could spend some quality time at Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo Bay was, after all, away from home and all the "Holiday Joy". I decided that the way my luck was going, all I would probably be likely to do is break a leg, send up my insurance rates and incur a lot of co pays.

It occurred to me that perhaps I should have used that pirated copy of Rosetta Stone I downloaded from the torrent networks to learn Farsi instead of Japanese if I were going to try and pass myself off as a terrorist so I could use Guantanamo Bay as my vacation spot. I decided, somewhat hesitatingly, to stay in the car.

I was wondering if we still had any rat poison in the house and whether I should use it on Billy or myself, when we pulled in the garage. I noticed that Billy's Harley was already parked there and this seemed a bit odd, but I discounted it as, after all, we had gotten off early from work ourselves hadn't we?

Kelly, upon seeing his bike, said to me all bubblely and gleefully... "Cool, He must have gotten off early too." "This is going to be a great vacation!"

"Hum, maybe I could learn enough Farsi to..." I thought and began to reconsider my options once again.

Kelly unlocked the door to the kitchen and walked into the house with me trailing not far behind her.

The first thing we both noticed were the unmistakably loud sounds coming from the living room of a man and a woman having very vocal if not passionate sex.

As Kelly and I walked into the living room, I braced myself for what I was sure was going to be a most ugly scene only to find that the erotic symphony was emanating from the stereo attached to my large screen TV. It was obvious now that someone was playing a DVD that surely was in violation of every prudish state's pornography law; this I knew for sure as I had seen it many times before.

Kelly looked at me with a somewhat embarrassed expression on her face as she picked up my multimedia system remote and said, "Billy must have been watching one of his porn DVD's." Then she pressed the power button turning everything off.

We both stood there in shock; for, as we had expected all the sounds of carnal delights to cease they did not! Emanating from the direction of Kelly and Billy's bedroom over what sounded like Dueling Banjos from the soundtrack of the movie Deliverance was the sound of bedsprings, bodies slapping together and the unmistakable voice of Billy saying "Baby make the pig noise for me again; it really turns me on!"

It was followed by a somewhat familiar female voice saying "Weeee, Snort, Snort, Snort, pound my ass farmer boy!"

I didn't know whether to laugh aloud or grab Kelly and my laptop and drive as fast as I could to the nearest Starbucks just so I could use their wireless hot-spot to search eBay for a Buy-It-Now price for a couple of chastity belts us. Instead, I just stood there and turned to look over at Kelly only to find her already headed down the hall to their bedroom.

I followed her, all the while wishing I had not helped her buy the 9mm Beretta I knew she was caring for protection. She threw open the door just as I caught up to her and there was a scene that I can only describe as coming right from one of those 70's porn novels having such titles as "The Farmers Daughter" and "Cousin's Barnyard Fun".

Upon the bed on all fours, complete with pigtails, cut-off denim shorts around one ankle and wearing a pink and white Polka dot halter-top was my not so loving ex-girlfriend Sherry. Behind her, wearing a pair of denim overalls with flap down in the front, a dirty white tee shirt and a straw hat, was Kelly's soon to be ex-boyfriend Billy with his dick buried hilt deep in Sherry's ass. Yee-haw!

Well, to make a long story short: for the next several minutes there was a lot of screaming and yelling from Kelly with words like "Bitch", "Whore" and "Slut" being tossed in about every sentence.

I decided that to avoid a cat fight, and Billy's homicide, both Sherry and Billy would stay at a hotel and pick up their things from the lawn the next day.

Kelly, once they had left tossed both Sherry and Billy's things on the lawn; then, still pissed and crying decided to sleep in the spare bedroom. She told me it was too painful to sleep in her old room that night.

I, on the other hand, chose to dwell on the more pleasant thoughts provided in the knowledge that the weather report indicated there was a 99% chance of rain both that night and all the next day. While not happy that Kelly had been hurt; things were looking up for her now that "Farm Boy Billy" was finally proven to be the jerk that he really was. I was sure Kelly would be better off without him. I had no illusions that I would ever hook up with Kelly, but I hoped that perhaps I could find a way to save the holidays for her.

Chapter Two "Shopping"

The next two days Kelly mopped around the house, crying every time she saw something that reminded her of Billy and by what he had done to her.

I, for the most part, was numb and really didn't want to talk about it with Kelly for fear of setting her into another crying spell. I actually welcomed the call I got from my aunt asking me if I could come over that afternoon and help her with her computer. As I headed off to my aunt's house, I knocked on Kelly's door and told her where I would be and to call me if she needed anything but not to worry about supper, as I would be bringing it home with me.

During the drive I couldn't get the picture of Sherry with her hot ass on Billy's prick. Her voice kept echoing in my mind reminding me, "Things were just not working out between us".

As I tried to suppress the feelings of betrayal and anger that finally started to surface, I laughed aloud when I realized that Billy was indeed a literal pain in the ass. Ouch!

My mind turned to pleasanter thoughts of Sherry and Billy stranded in the middle of the ocean on a cargo ship with nothing to eat but rump roast, corn-on-the-cob, potatoes deep fried in KY jelly with chocolate pudding for desert. Yeah, I know, everybody else says it too ... I need help.

It turned out that my aunt had not quite figured out the need for anti-spy ware and her Internet connection was running like a pregnant turtle with one leg, going nowhere fast. I fixed her problem in no time using some really nice freeware utilities I knew about. Seeing the coffee cup on top of her computer and "rack" on her monitor, I tried to explain to her that perhaps the top of her desktop computer was not the best place to set her coffee cup no matter how convenient it was, and that even though they may sell those neat plastic trays that turn the top of your monitor into a nick-knack shelf, she might not want to put her favorite house-plant on top of it as it might leak and short out the monitor. She frowned at me seeming somewhat unconvinced and as I got a mental picture of her both watering her plant and monitor I asked her how good her home owner's insurance policy was.

On the way home, I stopped at one of those fast food sandwich shops and picked up a veggie combo for Kelly and roast beef for myself.

I walked in just in time to see Kelly standing over the answering machine. She was listening to a message. The voice on the recording belonged to Farm Boy Billy. He was trying, very badly, to tell Kelly how sorry he was and that it was just a one-time thing between Sherry and him. That he had been lucky enough to get a fully furnished apartment with Internet access and would she please call him at his new number.

Kelly did not look convinced as she hit the delete button on the phone. Then she picked up the phone.

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"I am going to tell him he can take his apartment and his apology and shove them up Sherry's ass." she said as she started dialing.

After about thirty seconds she put the phone down having not said a word and just stood there. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"It was Sherry!" she said and burst once again into tears.

I told her that everything would be all right and held her in my arms as she cried.

After she stopped crying, I got her to eat something and asked her if she wanted to watch TV to take her mind off of things.

She agreed. But, when I saw what she picked out to watch I thought it might have been a bad idea after all.

The movie was entitled "The Art Of Revenge" and was a slick little "B" movie about a woman who's husband lets her work while he finishes his college education and starts a potentially lucrative business. He dumps her when she says she wants to stay home and have a baby as they had agreed while he works for a change. While not a bloody revenge movie, it was messy for her victims and well worth watching. It really just doesn't pay to have a resourceful and determined woman mad at you!

At first Kelly cried as she watched the woman in the movie being screwed over by her husband but then as the woman began to take revenge, Kelly became engrossed in the movie.

After the movie was over, she told me she really didn't want to watch TV any more but was going to hit the Internet for a while. She asked me if I didn't mind watching TV by myself? I didn't and told her so.

I was glad to see that she seemed to be trying to take her mind of the unpleasantness of last night.

At about 8:00 she came into the living room and said to me, "Let's get the hell out of here for a while."

"O.K.; Where do you want to go?" I asked.

"With everything that's been going on lately I completely forgot to finish my Christmas shopping, want to hit the mall?" she replied. So off we went to the mall.

On the way, she said to me, "I have been so selfish lately and completely ignored the fact that you must have been hurting after Sherry dumped you." paused a bit and then continued, "I know I never asked and if you don't want to talk about it I will understand; but why did she dump you anyway; if you don't mind my asking?"

"No, I don't mind; it will probably do me some good to talk about it." I said. "All she did was ask me why I couldn't be more like Billy and tell me how you were such a lucky girl." "Now that I think about it, she was really jealous of you." "Last week she asked me to kick you out. "She got really pissed when I refused to." "The next day she told me things were not working out between us."

"You know, Billy used to piss me off all the time by telling me how hot Sherry was and what a cute little ass she had." Kelly said while changing lanes. "Every time I would call him on it he would accuse you of putting ideas into my head." "Do you have any idea how much he really hated you?" she asked.

"Yeah, I kind of figured that out." I responded.

"Then why in the hell did you let him stay?" she said almost angrily.

"Because I didn't want to hurt you; I thought if I kicked him out I would end up losing you as a friend." I answered.

After that, we both sat quietly for a while.

Finally, she broke the silence and changed the subject by saying, "Who is on your Christmas list this year?"

"No one but you now." I replied. Then I added, "But I've already gotten your gift."

We were sitting at a stoplight and she just looked at me for a few seconds deep in thought.

Finally she asked, "What do you want for Christmas?"

I thought of telling her the truth, that what I would really wanted was her. I decided it was not the best time to confess my true feelings for her; so instead, I said "Just once I would like to stop being a doormat and get a little payback." "But I would settle for dinner with you."