Chapter 2

The day came to an end, like it always does, and I was actually looking forward to getting home. While it was nice to be away from Jen, I was flat out exhausted. She worked that night, so I would be home alone with the dogs all evening, and I was looking forward to the downtime. I packed everything up and logged out, then made my way home. I felt myself relaxing all the way home, the tension easing out of my muscles. Jen had called that afternoon, asking why I hadn't called her that morning. That was another of her quirks, if you will. I should call her every single morning and remind her that I love her. It was something that seemed romantic and sweet to do at the outset, but was now totally expected. If I missed a call, I would get one at some point, and she'd be upset. In her mind, I should want to call her every day, as often as possible. The truth, of course, wasn't anywhere near that. I had made the usual excuses and apologies, but I knew I was back in the doghouse. I planned to be asleep by the time she got off work that night, though, and tomorrow I'd be back out the door as early as possible, and hopefully she'd have forgotten about the whole thing by the next time we bumped into each other. All those thoughts went out of my head as I rounded the corner, though.

Jen was home, and she was supposed to have been working that day. Her car was parked in the driveway, though, so there wasn't any doubt. A strange tension crept up my spine at the sight. This could not be good, in any way. As far as I knew, there wasn't anything that she could be upset over, but that didn't mean anything. I could easily have forgotten something or said something at some point that I didn't realize was offensive to her. She could find a reason to be mad if she looked hard enough. In retrospect, it was a strange reaction, but not an uncommon one. That tension was always there those days, any time we were home together. We never talked about it, but it was definitely the elephant in the room. As I pulled up to the curb and parked, I looked through the windows to see what I could see. Nothing was obvious, though. I took a deep breath and got out of my car, heading for the door, trying to steel myself for whatever I might have waiting for me. As it turned out, that was probably a good idea.

As I stepped into the foyer, I heard Jen call to me from the dining room, asking me to come in there. That was somewhat unusual. In our strange bizarre Stepford marriage, she always made it a point to meet me at the door with a hug and a kiss, since that's what couples who are madly in love do. For her to not be there probably meant she needed my help with something. As I rounded the corner, though, I knew I was in big trouble. Splayed across the dining room table was a modest collection of pornography, all of it mine, and all of it which had been quite well hidden, in a few different spots. She glared at me, and watched as all the blood drained from my face and I started to stammer, trying to act surprised.

The argument that followed was epic in proportions. It seemed that she had stayed home that day because she had the feeling I was hiding something from her, and she had torn the house apart to see what it was. She had found everything that I had stashed away over the years, and wanted an explanation, and now. I lied, and kept lying. I compartmentalized each area, telling her that the box in the crawlspace had been moved from the apartment, and I never even looked in it, and I had no clue I even still owned those. The stack of magazines in the top of my closet were supposed to be a present for Dino at his last birthday, but I had forgotten where I put them at the time, so I had to buy some others, and boy was I glad she had found those for me. The Britney Spears video and calendar were a little stickier, but I told her that those were a present from Dino and I couldn't throw them away in case he asked me about them someday, but that I hadn't looked at them in forever. And so on and so forth, deflecting every single thing she had found, but her expression never changed. I was proud of myself in a perverse sort of way, as I had gotten pretty good at this sort of thing, but there was a niggling seed of doubt in the back of my head. She just sat there and watched as I tapdanced around every single piece of porn on the table. When I got done, I put on my best wide-eyed expression of innocence and apologized in as heartfelt of a manner as I could for my oversights causing her so much pain. Then she pulled my laptop off her lap, where it had been concealed by the tabletop, placed it on the table, and asked me when I had changed my password.

Shocked by the change of tactics, and silently grateful that I had changed it some time before, I stammered a bit and told her it had been a while ago, and that my previous one had expired and the computer had made me change it. She kept a stony expression on her face and she opened it, went to the password login, turned the screen towards me and told me to log in. I stuttered a bit and asked her why she wanted to see my laptop. It was my work laptop, and there wasn't anything on there. If there was, the server at work would have seen it every time I connected. This was a baldfaced lie, but she couldn't know that, and it sounded good. I was very nervous at this point, because there was a LOT of porn, as well as records of purchases I had made online with money I had hidden from her, a journal I had played around with for a bit that had some pretty nasty things to say about her, and god knows what else. She had always taken no interest in it, though, so as long as she didn't have the password I had felt totally safe.

She told me in no uncertain terms that she was going to look at my laptop, and if I had nothing to hide then there was no reason to not log in for her. I fought her, hard, and accused her of not trusting me, and how offended I was at her implications that I would intentionally hide something from her. I got madder and madder as the war waged, with all of the negative feelings I always kept so carefully hidden away bubbling to the surface. My words got harsher and louder, and hers matched suit. When I told her that if she really didn't trust me, then why were we even together, she stopped and sat back, as if thinking. I was so mad by then that I went straight for the jugular.

"Jen, if you insist on seeing my laptop, then I'll let you, but you'll be proving to me that you don't trust me. Without trust, we have nothing, and there'll be no reason for us to stay together. Is that something that you really want to risk?"

Yeah, ok, in retrospect it was a pretty low blow, but I was desperate, and mad, and a part of me relished saying those words, and having the prospect of leaving her be just that close. That part of me wanted desperately for her to push the issue, and I would leave on the moral high ground and get to feel great about myself. Freedom seemed like such a foreign concept, but I just wanted out. Imagine my shock when she sat forward and, with tears in her eyes, said she was sorry, but she just had to know. She had to know if I was cheating on her. She had to know if I was lying to her and hiding things from her, and my word wasn't going to be good enough. I was furious, and with a chest full of righteous indignation I erupted. I said as many mean and hateful things as I could to her as she just sobbed. I ended my tirade by snatching the laptop out of her hands and slamming it closed. I jammed it under my arm and headed for the door.

I had almost made it when she hit me from behind. Literally. She hit me full force with a fist in the middle of my back, causing a loud thump and making me stumble forward. I spun around with a roared curse, and she met me full tilt. We screamed and shouted, with her swearing I could never leave her, and me screaming that she didn't trust me, and so what was the point of it all. She finally got it in her head that I was leaving, and just lost it. She started to punch me in the chest as she screeched that I had never loved her the way she loved me, and how she was going to kill me, and kill herself, if I tried to leave. I restrained myself from the physical attacks but met her verbal ones with gusto. Five years of aggravation and desperation came rolling up inside me, and I totally lost my temper. I don't remember all that was said, but at some point it stopped being about the issues at hand, and was just about pain. We had both said so many hurtful things that all we wanted to do was to hurt the other person, so we started hurling insults like meteors back and forth, both saying all the things that we knew would hurt the other person the worst. All the nastiness raged out of control, as she continued to hit and kick me any time she got an opening, and I finally just snapped and grabbed her by the throat.

I pushed her against the wall, hard, and held her there as she tried to get back the air I had knocked out of her lungs. To my horror, I couldn't let go of her throat. All I could feel was how good it would be to squeeze, and squeeze, and watch all the breath leave her body. I tried to calm myself, but in the deathly quiet my adrenaline still coursed through my body, making the blood roar in my ears as I struggled for control. Fear shone across Jen's face as she tried to break free, but my grip was like iron. She started to cry, and it was just like waving red in front of a bull. I was completely out of my head, and I started to squeeze her throat, feeling a dark sense of pleasure at the sensation. She started to cough, and then wheeze, and I think it was the wheezing that broke the spell. With a start I let her go, and she slumped to the floor. A deep sense of shame flooded my body, and I couldn't believe what I had done. I backed away quickly, grabbed my laptop on the way to the door, and closed it behind me, leaving Jen coughing on the dining room floor.