Crunch Time. That time at the end of all game projects when the rush to complete it reaches the point where the company attempts to burn out every individual on it to try and ensure meeting an insane deadline.

It was a Thursday, seven at night and I’d just finished my third night in a row of nasty pizza with my team. Rather than at home with my wife as I wanted to be.

My own personal bug list was empty. I was scanning my team members for bugs that I could take on to get this game over with. The excitement and passion for the project has now been replaced with a mind numbing grind to the end and a hate for the pain it was causing to our personal lives.

This is going to be my last go around, I’ve accepted a CTO position in Texas at a game technology company. They built some of the tools we used and did it on a nine to five working day schedule. I’d promised my wife this would be the last time and this job was why. I’d not told her about it, it was to be a surprise. We’d be moving to her home town, we’d be near her parents and she’d said she wanted that. So I figured it would be a big win for me and I expected a legendary celebration when I told her.

Windows alerted me that a Slack message had arrived. This gave me a moment of relief from scanning the unending list of bugs my teammates seemed to have.

Tabbing from the Firefox window to the Slack window, I saw I had a direct message from the Slack Bot and that it contained nothing but a bit.ly link. I stared at it for a minute, trying to decide if this could be malicious, take over my computer, attempt. Ultimately, I decided it wasn’t and clicked on it. Figuring it would likely be another preview of the game sent by management to pump us up for longer nights in a grand push to get to the finish line.

My browser came to the fore and a new tab opened but before I could see the URL I was distracted by the sound of a coffee mug shattering followed by the deep guteral tones of a Scottish programmer swearing at his misfortune. If I were to guess he had just lost his beloved IT Crowd mug. One that proudly asked if you’d tried turning it off and on again. The mug was massive and these days he was only functional after drinking a whole mug of coffee from it.

Looking back at my screen, I found I was on Chaterbate and I was watching a couple engaging in some full throttle sexual activity. I pondered who would send such a link and how bad a bollocking from IT and then Management I would get for watching this site at work when the video went from blurry to crystal clear high definition video.

With that change, so changed my life. A tattoo on the arm of the woman did it. A woman who had her face buried in the bed, her arse in the air and some slightly overweight douche with a big dick fucking it like piston on a locomotive.

It was not just any tattoo mind you. It was a replica of the carving I’d put in a bannister at University ten years earlier. The carving had been a heart with an arrow going through it and my wife’s initials as they had been then and mine. So, as you can see it wasn’t just any tattoo. This was unique.

She lifted her head up for a moment and confirmed it was her for me. Both from the glimpse of her face and the sound of her voice as screamed at him to go fast, hard and deeper. The fucking bitch.

I had Facebook messenger open on another tab. I switched to that tab and then posted the bit.ly link to the friends and family chat group we had set up. Moving on, I launched Discord and then posted the link to our World Of Warcraft Guild server’s general chat. Next, I opened my wife’s Google mail on a fresh tab and sent an email to all of the people in her address book giving them the bit.ly link. That’ll teach her to use the same password for everything. Not happy with that, I then logged on to her Facebook account and posted the link on her wall, inviting all to see her working hard at her new career. Finally, just to be certain it was seen by all, I created a Messenger group containing all her work colleagues and friends and posted the link there too.

By now, the Friends and Family chat had some comments in it. The first was asking why I’d send them a porn link, followed quickly by an apology and asking what I was going to do now.

The Discord channel had our guild members asking why I sent this or just commenting on how hot it was. I told them who she was, using her or rather I gave her Discord nickname which was also her in-game name. They knew from that this was my wife. The first comment after that asked if it was me with her. I replied no.

The first comment on her Facebook wall post read, “Oh fuck! That’s John Jones, her boss.” One reply offered an amusing and interesting snippet, “So that’s how the bitch got MY promotion.”

My phone rang then or rather vibrated as the company frowned upon the use of phones during “work hours.”

“TAKE IT DOWN,” came the plea as soon as I answered. It was my wife’s father and funnily enough, the owner of the accounting firm my wife worked at. It had been why I was sure she would be okay with relocating back to her home town and why the promotion comment amused me. He would have been delighted to facilitate her relocating back to the head office, the office he worked from.