Chicken Race

Many thanks to Techsan for editing this story.

*

It was a busy Saturday at the supermarket in our small Scandinavian town. Short of parking spaces at the supermarket as usual when my wife and I went there to shop. I did as usual; instead of driving around and searching, I stopped my Toyota Rav4 in a strategic place and when a space became empty, I usually got it even when I had to win a "chicken race" to get it.

Of course, people didn't like to lose a "chicken race" but nobody had ever done anything other than wave a fist in the air when they went searching elsewhere. However, there must always be the first time and that very day was the first time the loser got really angry, stopped his small Fiat Panda and rushed toward me and my wife when we left our car and shouted with a loud voice, "What the hell do you think you are? I can tell you are a damned cuckold who thinks he can alleviate his shame by assaulting people with your fucking car."

Then he went back to his car and left. I didn't know him, but obviously he knew my pretty wife Sarah or me, why I asked her, "Who was that man?

I had noted that she had a visible look of discomfort on her face while that man had shouted at me, but now she replied, "How should I know?"

"Obviously he knew at least one of us."

"I'm not sure about that. Such insults are common today."

Probably it was a common expression in the school where she worked as a teacher, but not in my opinion because nobody had ever accused me of being a cuckold before. But how the man had shouted it and the feared expression in Sarah's face got me thinking of the old saying "Where there's smoke there's fire". I knew that I had a serious problem, but couldn't do anything there for the time being so I left that matter and we went into the supermarket to shop.

My wife Sarah is a 43 year old schoolteacher and I am Robin Norrman, a 46 year old owner of a small construction company. We have two children; our son Elliot is 20 years old and student at the university in our county capital. Our daughter Madeleine, who is 18 years old, is in Minnesota as an exchange student for the time being. Sarah and I met at a party, fell in love and, as she wanted to be married before we had children, we did it one year after we met. Our marriage, as for most people, has its ups and downs but never any serious problems.

In my construction company I have three male employees and a female accountant takes care of some administration matters part time a few hours a week in her own home. My small company has a contract with a prefabricated wooden house factory and we are usually booked up for a long time in advance and making good money.

This Saturday evening we were invited to her mother's birthday dinner and none of us cared to make any further comments about the incident earlier in the day at the supermarket.

I knew that Sarah would understand that there would be some expectation from me to investigate that cuckold matter. If she was guilty and wanted to fight for her marriage, she would search for and destroy every possible clue she might have missed earlier. If her cheating had happened a long time ago and already was history or she decided to stop it immediately, my chances of getting any evidence would be some kind of "mission impossible". But if she was still cheating and intended go on with that, I was sure to find it out sooner or later.

On Sunday Sarah had obviously been thinking about the shouting man at the supermarket and asked me, "Did you believe what that man shouted at the supermarket and do you really think that I am cheating on you?"

"No, I don't believe anything at all but I want to be sure that we are playing fair."

"So, you don't trust me, do you?"

"I can't see any reason for you to cheat on me. If you get fed up with me and prefer to find somebody better, just tell me 'I want a divorce' and you are a free woman. No problems getting rid of me if you are playing with open cards. But I will be mad as hell if I ever find that you are fucking some asshole behind my back while we are married."

"I love you, only you, and don't see any reason to think about any divorce. But can't you see how much you have overreacted because some angry lunatic insulted you?"

"I really hope that he was wrong because I will never be a man to forgive a cheating wife."

Later that Sunday I went to a soccer match with three friends and when we were sitting at a pub for a beer after the match, I told my friends what the angry fellow had shouted. I told them that if it was as usual that the cheated husband was the last one in town to know, they could feel free to tell me if they knew anything about Sarah.

None of them had anything to say and everybody took it as a good joke. When one of them promised to ask his wife, the other two promised to do the same thing.

The next day I bought three voice operated very small electronic recorders, and then hid one in Sarah's car, one in the kitchen and one in the living room. If the lover was somebody outside her school, she might call him from her car. The neighbor's wife used to come in to Sarah now and then for some gossip, therefore the two recorders in the house.

Cuckold or not, but from now on I was at least a hunting cuckold.

Sarah and I had a shared home economy and because her full time job at the school meant much shorter days than my job, she took care of paying all our bills and such things in our family so I seldom cared to look in her ring binders of receipts. I waited until her bowling evening and began a careful investigation as soon as she had left the house.

The line-connected phone was in my name, so I had already checked outgoing calls at my personal page at the Telecom site and had not found anything of interest. But our credit card bills made me suspicious. The gasoline company bills and all my and the children's card bills were there in good order but the last two months' bank card bills were missing from Sarah's and my shared account.

She used to print out a copy of the paying order when she paid the bills via the net and I could see that they were paid as usual. Without any doubt, that was a clue indicating that something was wrong.

Instead of asking Sarah about that matter, I sent an e-mail to the card company and requested copies of the missing bills and prayed to the good Lord that there would be some totally innocent explanation in the bills. To my great luck my present job was only seven kilometers from home, so I could make a quick trip during my lunch breaks to check our mailbox before Sarah came home from the school because who knows what Sarah would do if she found my copies and got suspicious. After all, if she were guilty, she would fight for her marriage.

The next clue came from the recorder in Sarah's car. She used to share her car to bowling with one of her friends living rather close to us. On their way home the other woman had asked her, "How about Robin? Is he still accusing you?"

"Not really, but I'm sure he has a serious doubt because he offered me a divorce on fair terms instead of cheating."

"Do you think about it?"

"Of course not. It is not on that level. I love my Robin and have no intentions about dumping him. What would the children think about me if I divorced their father?"

"Don't do anything stupid. By the way did you see the nice gold chain Anne's got from her new lover boy?"

Then they began their gossip about some Anne, uninteresting for me.

I listened several times to their talk and though no cheating was mentioned, I had the feeling that Sarah would have talked quite differently if she had been innocent. But she knew that the friend knew something about her and therefore didn't want to tell her any more information to be known around town. Not much for a clue but "many drops will form a river".

Next Saturday afternoon there was a top match between two of the best teams in the country on the big screen TV at the pub and as my friends and I had staked some money on the football (soccer) pool, we even had something of our own interest to watch.

Two of my friends had nothing to tell me but one said that his wife had asked a friend of hers who usually knew about everything in our town and she had said that there had been some vague rumors about Sarah Norrman at her school but nothing was known about the man. Further one step forward. Though there still wasn't any real evidence, the several circumstantial items pointing in the same direction began to convince me that the shouting angry man at the parking lot had been right.

The relationship between Sarah and me was polite but cool. Neither of us wanted any arguing for the time being and we had skipped the usual hugging and kissing and even sex. It felt like waiting for a storm after getting a storm warning.

Nothing of interest collected from the voice recorders in the house. Both the neighbor's wife and one of Sarah's best friends had visited her but there had been only the usual woman talk without any comments about her affair.

Then I got the copies of the missing bills and my mission took a quantum leap forward. On the oldest bill was a purchase from the alcohol store in the town next to ours. One thing was for sure - I was in no way involved in or told about that purchase because I had connections who brought me everything the family needed from abroad for much smaller prices compared to the highly taxed stuff at the state owned monopoly stores. I was surprised by the amount. If it been one bottle as a gift to her lover boy, he had gotten really good stuff.

The other month Sarah had paid a gas station and a hotel in a town about 40 kilometers from home. I knew for sure, 100 percent sure, that she hadn't been away overnight that month. Not difficult to guess what that damn room been used for. Now I had to face the cruel truth; I was a cuckold.

During the years I had seen cuckolded husbands react in many different ways. Some cried and accepted their fate, some didn't care a shit about it, a few even turned hot about that and some real men whipped the shit out of the wife fucker and kicked out the cheating bitch.

I had a very limited choice, in fact no choice at all if I wanted to remain as a respected man among my employees, friends, relatives and acquaintances. Find the damn pussy hound and make him regret what he had done to me. As long as I was on the right path and did the right things, I would get all the support I needed.

Accusing Sarah could wait for later on. The first step would be to find the damn asshole that fucked her. Because I trusted my employees 100 percent, I told them about my problems and as I had expected, all of them promised to help me. During an extra long coffee break we agreed on a simple plan.

Our plan turned to action only two days later when Sarah told me that she was invited to join a new lyrics group that evening. In the future they intended to met two times a month in one of the small rooms at the public library or sometimes even in some member's home. She even asked me if it was okay for me to have one of their future meetings in our home. Sarah sounded very trustworthy so I of course told her that I had no objections to that. She had a satisfied look in her face when she thanked me for my understanding.

But then I went in to the bathroom and pushed the send button on my cell phone, which sent an earlier written message to my employees. To my great relief none of them were busy with something more important that evening and all three replied that they were ready for action, as we had planned.

Sarah left slightly before six o'clock and promised to be back sometimes between nine and ten.

A few minutes later a Volvo V70 stopped on the street outside my house. I went out of the house and into the car and left my own car well visible on my driveway. The man in the car was Ronny, one of my employees, and within a minute he got a call on his cell phone. He said only, "Yes, yes, but keep the distance and be very discrete. Did you see the license plate? Yes, good."

Then he reported that Sarah had parked her red Opel Astra outside the library, but remained sitting in her car and been picked up by a man in a black Saab 9-5. He told me the number and I sent it to the national car register as a text message. The automatic reply with the name of the car owner came within a few seconds. To our surprise it read, "Linus Felixsen."

Thanks to his quite unusual name we immediately knew who the damn wife fucker was.

He was a well-known character in our town. A good-looking dentist in his early forties with a reputation of doing a good job for a high price. Nothing wrong with that, but he was even chairman of the board of the Football Club and very much both hated and admired in that position due to hiring an unknown but expensive player from Brazil. He was even chairman in the local Malt Whisky Club, which caused many sour comments from those who regarded sport and booze as an unwanted combination. I can't deny that I was a bit surprised to find out that it was Felixsen because I had met his wife a few times at parents' committee meetings at the school and she was a very nice and easygoing woman who even worked as his assistant at their dental clinic.

Only a few minutes later we got information on the phone from Eric, who said that Sarah and Felixsen were on the main road driving towards the town 40 kilometers away where Sarah once had paid for a hotel room. Ronny and I didn't see any reason for us to go there, so we went back to my home where I took the spare key to Sarah's car and then we went to a café for a coffee break while waiting for the expected news from Eric and Emil, who tailed Felixsen's car.

When we got the information that Sarah and Felixsen had gone to a hotel, we held a short phone conference with Eric end Emil and agreed that the damn Felixsen deserved a better punishment than disturbing them in some way and catching them when they came out of the hotel. I asked Eric and Emil to get back home again. They had no objections when I told them what Ronny and I intended to do with Sarah's car while waiting for them to come back.

While waiting for Eric and Emil, Ronny and I went back to the library, where I took Sarah's car with the spare key and parked it at Ronny's place while we waited for the two others to drop in to make further plans. After several unrealistic plans, Ronny came out with a great suggestion, which we agreed to perform as soon as possible.

After our meeting I took Sarah's car just outside the town where I parked it just after the first bend 20 meters into the narrow forest road which lead to Felixsen's picturesque farm house at a small lake 500 meters further away on the road. I put in the reverse gear and the handbrake, took the voice recorder, locked the car so it blocked the way home for Felixsen. Emil picked me up there and drove me home.

Back home it wasn't funny to sit down and know that Felixsen fucked my lovely wife and the mother of my children at that very moment. If I had known that this had been the first time for them, I would have had a good reason to take action at the hotel and stop it. But now when they had already done it before we didn't want them to get too worried already now because there were some nice surprises waiting for them. They would see the first one this very evening.

While waiting for Sarah, I listened to the voice recorder from her car, which had recorded her taking a short call that evening, "Sarah...Yes, I'm waiting at the library......Yes.....Soon."

About nine thirty in the evening Sarah rushed into our house screaming, "My car is stolen!"

"From where?"

"The library."

"Did you call the police? Tomorrow we have to report it to the insurance company."

"Yes, I did. They came to the parking lot. Everything is clear with them."

"Did the police bring you home?"

Now she hesitated for a second before she replied because she suspected that I had seen the black Saab 9-5. "No, it was one man from the Lyrics Circle."

"Who?"

"A dentist whose name is Felixsen?"

"Linus Felixsen, that damn disgusting whoremonger who is famous for fucking the cheapest sluts though he is married to a very lovely handsome wife. Is that creep really interested in lyrics or is he there only for his damn pussy hunting? Be careful with that horny creep."

Sarah didn't look happy, not at all and my sour comments about Felixsen didn't cheer her up. But before she could think of something to reply, her cell phone began to ring. I took her by surprise, grabbed the phone from her hand when she took it up from her purse and replied, "Norrman."

A male voice said, "I want speak to Sarah. It is important."

"I would like to know who you are and what is so important? "

"It is about her stolen car."

Sarah had turned ashen gray and feared the worst when she suspected that the caller was Felixsen asking for her. Of course I knew that it was Felixsen. But I wanted him to understand that if he wanted to get Sarah's car moved from blocking his road he had to cooperate with me.

"Okay, Charlie, it sounds interesting but you forgot to tell me who the hell you are. When you have done that, we can begin talking about the car. Are you the damn thief?"

"My name is Linus Felixsen and I have never stolen anything in my life."

I knew that he hated the nickname "Felix" people used about him because there was a stupid cat in comic strips and animated films with that name. Stolen or cheated, he had fucked my wife this very evening, so I continued, "Okay, Felix, let's talk about the car."

He took the humiliation and replied, "It is parked on the road to my house and blocking the road."

"How do you know that it is Sarah's car? There are many red Astras in this town. (Opel Astra is a popular small GM car.) Have you called the police and told them that you found the car?"

Sarah looked ready to begin puking at the excitement and I began to fear that she would confess, which didn't fit in our plans. Obviously it was high time for me to calm down a bit.

"It maybe sounds weird to you but I promised Sarah to search for her car at a few places after taking her home. No, I haven't called the police, because I wanted to talk to Sarah first."

That sounded sensible so I replied, "I'm Sarah's husband and shall handle this matter from now on. Just stay where you are and give me your number so I can call you back after I've talked with the police."

He gave me the number to his cell phone. I checked Sarah's phone for it but she didn't dare to have it stored. I never asked him how he could know Sarah's number because that information is easily available from the net operator.

The look of fear or remorse still remained in Sarah's face when I told her, "It was the damn whore-fucker Felixsen. He has found your car on the road to his house."

For some reason she didn't look much happier when she heard the information that Felixsen had found her stolen car.

I didn't call the police because they could be curious why the car was left locked and without any visible damage after the theft. Of course I had preferred to have Felixsen's road blocked for a much longer time with her car but hopefully he had already had some bad feelings about it. I asked Sarah if she knew where Felixsen lived but she noted the trap and responded negatively after a slight hesitation.

I called Felixsen with Sarah's cell phone but he suspected it was me calling and didn't reply with anything like, "Hello, Darling." However, he told me where to find him.

When we got there, Sarah told me that she would get out and take her car but I had no intentions of letting the love birds talk there and then, so I said to her, "No need for you to get out. Just take my car home. I have to talk with Felix and take some photos for the police of your car."