Screaming for Vengence

She'd flown to Boston for a conference. The same one she went to every year. She got a room in the hotel she always stayed in. The conference was a one day seminar that she always told me was two days long. After the conference ended, she had dinner with Randall. They sat there in the restaurant talking to each other until the restaurant closed. She even mentioned me a couple of times. Then when the restaurant closed they exchanged a very nice kiss and she went back to her room. Randall went out to the parking lot and his car to drive home.

As Randy got to his car, I was sitting on the hood.

"Hey that's my car," he said.

"I'm sorry," I said. "It's wrong for people to bother things that don't belong to them isn't it Randy?"

"I agree totally," he said. "Is that one of my hub caps?"

"Yep," I said smiling. "I pried it off myself. But let's not talk about hub caps Randy. Let's talk about Mary, your wife. Who right now is waiting for you at your house on Sycamore street. It's probably too late for me to go over there to talk to her right now. I should probably wait until tomorrow to visit her."

"I'm calling the police," said Randy. I pulled out my phone and tried to hand it to him.

"Randy you can call the police anytime you want. It'll be my word against yours and either way you'll lose because somehow in all of it the fact that you've been spending time with my wife, Erica, while your own faithful little wife was waiting at home for you will come out."

Randy's whole face went pale. "I'm not the sharing type of guy Randy," I said.

"I think you've made a mistake," he said. "I do know Erica, but we haven't spent any time together." He looked at me and saw how serious my face was.

"Okay, we had dinner together tonight. Some of the things we learned at the conference were interesting and we both wanted someone to talk about them with, but that's it. Nothing happened, we just lost track of time."

"Whew," I said. "You had me worried."

He smiled at me like he was glad we cleared everything up. I punched him in the face as hard as I could. He went down like a bowling pin. Then he got on his feet and started running. I threw his hubcap and caught him in the legs. He tripped over it and fell heavily again. I pounced on him and started beating him mercilessly. When I was done both of his eyes were blackened. His nose was broken and his lip was split.

"You really had me worried Randy," I said. "For a moment there I really thought that I wasn't going to get to beat the shit out of you. I know that all you had was dinner tonight. I was there. What about last year or the year before. How long has this shit been going on?"

"Maybe fifteen or twenty years," he sputtered through his busted lips.

"It's over Randy," I said. He nodded quickly. "If you so much as say her name ever again, I'll end your marriage and your life. Are we clear?" he nodded again.

"Don't visit her," I said. "Don't write her or even call her. There will be no further warnings."

"I got it," he said.

"Randy, the next time we talk won't be this pleasant," I said.

Apparently it worked. When I got back home, Erica was her usual after the conference self. She tried to kill me with sex, but I just didn't go for it. Usually, after she came back from the conference we'd go off on vacation somewhere together. That year I pretended to be too busy to get away. As hard as I tried to put the whole thing behind me, I couldn't.

A big part of my brain was in Judas Priest mode. Okay most of you don't know what I'm talking about. There's a heavy metal band called Judas Priest. Arguably their best album was the one called Screaming for Vengeance. And that was how I felt. Try as I might, I couldn't calm down. I wanted blood. I wanted someone to pay for my pain. If misery loves company, God damn it I wanted someone to be miserable with me. And I picked Randy.

Through some business connections I had, I got Randy fired. I didn't go all Snidely Whiplash and let him know that it was me who did it. It was enough that I knew. I felt great about it. I had no regrets about it at all.

It gave me the same warm glow that I once got when I did something nice for Erica to do something evil to Randy. I've spent the last five years of my life ruining his. At the same time I was sure that divorce for Erica and me was inevitable. Why didn't I confront her and file? Because despite what she'd done, I still loved her. In my heart, I really wanted to believe her and give her another chance. But my head, just as in my job, told me to be prepared for anything. I told Erica that we were under a raise freeze at work when I actually got a raise. A few months later the promotion I'd been working for the past ten years was finally mine. I didn't tell Erica. My salary nearly doubled. I diverted most of the new income into accounts that she knew nothing about. Two years later, I got another promotion and another raise. Again I told Erica nothing about what was going on.

The reason behind all of this deception was that in the case of our divorce, she'd have no idea about my actual income. She'd really believe that I was still making forty grand a year. So that's what our divorce would be based on.

And I know that all of the legal geniuses out there are thinking that there's no way that I could get away with something like that. The first thing that any good lawyer would do is go after my tax records and talk to my company's HR people to find out what I made.

The thing about it is that my boss had been absolutely raped in his divorce so he saw no problems in helping me. Officially, on the books I was listed as a mid-level manager. No one outside of the company ever even asked why all the other managers deferred and reported to me. It just seemed like the way our company ran.

Three quarters of my actual salary was regularly paid to another company that on the surface looked like one of our vendors. I was not one of that company's officers nor did I own it. All of the officers of that company were fishing buddies of mine. In exchange for the usage of their names, I took them fishing once or twice a year. They were all listed as volunteers so there were no salary or tax implications for them. The money from that company went directly into my offshore account so there was no tracing it after that.

There were a couple of times that I did withdraw some of the money. Once was after Samantha and Darren got married. I put a large down-payment on their house to start them out in their marriage without a lot of financial stress. I didn't buy the house for them outright but I put enough down that their regular mortgage payments were under a hundred dollars a month. The other time was to buy Sam and Darren a second car since they both worked and their jobs weren't in the same part of town. It just made things easier for them.

Again, even in giving the kids their gifts I had to be careful. The way I managed to give them their house and the second car actually worked in my favor and allowed me to give Erica even less money. The money for their house supposedly came from me pulling it out of my retirement package. That meant that in the case of a divorce, I'd have next to nothing in my retirement account for Erica to get her greedy cheating hands on.

To get the money for the car I ostensibly took out a loan, which even further lowered my disposable income so I'd be able to give Erica even less.

One of the great things about my situation was that Randall worked in manufacturing. He specialized in inspecting castings. My company was also manufacturing based. We owned a lot of direct to factory manufacturing concerns all across the company. I had a PI friend who lived in Boston. I had him regularly check on Randy. Every time he got a job, I'd talk to one of our account execs. If we had an account with the company Randy worked for, one of my friends had lunch with someone who worked there and Randy got fired. If we didn't have an account with Randy's new company, we got one. Then Randy got fired.

I kept a spread sheet on my computer that was dedicated to keeping track of Randy and all of his misfortunes. Some of them I didn't even cause. After a while Randy's reputation in the manufacturing community was so bad that he couldn't even interview for a job. Just before Randy passed his last jobs were in landscaping or day labor.

His misfortune had also taken its toll on Randy's marriage. His wife had gone back to work to help support the family. I never touched her or her career because I had nothing against her. I also did my best to make sure that Randy's kids got everything they deserved. I single-handedly got his daughter into law school. I invented a scholarship just for her and gave it to her.

Of course, the scholarship ended the year that she got her degree. The scholarship also deposited the full amount into an account. She was also never able to find out where the money came from. Her grades were excellent and she received a few bonuses during her time in school, from her mysterious benefactors.

The fact that he wasn't able to support his family and barely contributed to their upkeep was rough on Randy. He was a proud man and wanted to be both self-sufficient and a provider. Finding that he was neither, hurt his pride. He started drinking and over time became obsessive with it. To his credit, he never became violent or abusive towards his wife or his daughter, but towards the end he was only a shadow of the man he once was.

I also looked at the changes my actions brought about in me. I too was no longer the man I'd been when I first discovered my wife's cheating. I had always been a soft spoken, easy going guy. I'd been open and honest for most of my life. But the trauma of discovering that the woman I loved had betrayed me on a regular and continuing basis had unhinged me.

When I looked in the mirror, I didn't see a psychopath who could calmly and with relish, plan and oversee the systematic destruction of a man whose only mistake had been to have sex with the wrong woman. I still saw myself. I still saw John Forrest, all around nice guy and family man. Shouldn't a villain have some kind of recognizable traits? In the old days all of the bad guys wore black hats. Maybe I should trade my Mustang in for a black one.

But even as I'd wondered about those things, I continued. I couldn't stop myself. My shattered heart needed revenge more than healing. My soul screamed for vengeance far more than forgiveness.

Even as I watched Randy's life fall apart, I watched Erica. I found that I simply didn't trust her any more. It's a terrible thing not to have faith in the woman you've pledged to love and cherish forever, but that was one of the things that her affair with Randy did to me. It destroyed not only our marriage but my ability to trust anyone completely.

So for a full five years, while I crushed Randy under my heel, I also watched Erica and prepared for my divorce. Unlike most men who have a few days or maybe a few weeks to try to protect their assets, I had five years to prepare. I'd originally planned for more than that. Erica had been, though fading, still relatively decent looking when we divorced. I'd intended to wait until she was on the full downswing. But Randy hadn't been able to keep going for as long as I thought. For five years I'd hidden and squirreled away as much money as I could. I didn't need to worry about the house that we lived in because it wasn't ours. The home had been in my family for generations. We lived in it because my parents, who were still alive didn't need a place that big. When I went through the divorce, I made sure the lawyers knew my parents owned the house and simply allowed me to live there rent free.

When Erica came back from the conference, she'd texted Randy about how much she'd enjoyed their dinner together and how wonderful the kiss had been. She'd also told him that she missed the times when they'd made love, but she was glad that it hadn't happened this year. She'd always felt guilty about being unfaithful to me as she was sure that Randy felt the same way about his wife.

She told him that what they had now, their sex-less romance was actually better because they could enjoy their relationship that way until they both died, with no guilt on either side. Maybe they were growing older and their love didn't need to be expressed physically, just being together was enough. That way they'd be together forever. And she ended the text with, "Until next year, my love."

I read that text as I was waiting for my luggage in the airport. I wanted to strangle Erica, and though I still loved her in some ways, my feelings for her changed drastically. Sometimes it was hard for me to hold it all together.

When Erica got home, I was sitting in the den watching a football game. She came in and wrapped her arms around me and tried to kiss me. I moved away from her and told her I had a cold and didn't want to make her sick.

"Just make sure we're better by this weekend," she said smiling.

"Why, what happens this weekend?" I asked.

"You and I are going off on vacation together, remember?" she said. "We always go after my boring conference."

"Well maybe you could do a mother daughter vacation and take Sam this year," I said. "I really can't get away from work this weekend."

"But honey, it's the weekend," she whined. "You'd really only miss two days of work. Think about it four nights and three days in Hawaii. It would be just the two of us. Thinking about it gets me hot. We might never leave the hotel room. I bought all kinds of nasty new things to wear for you."

I wondered how many of those things that Randy would have seen if they'd gotten together earlier.

"Erica, we're under a wage freeze and the company is trying to cut costs every way they can. I have to make sure that they never get the idea that I'm one of the costs they could cut," I said.

"I understand Honey," she said. "I'll go call Sam. I want you in the bedroom ten minutes after I get upstairs though."

She went up the stairs and I heard her talking to my daughter Samantha on the phone. At the same time she texted Randy again wondering whether or not he'd received her previous text. It just disgusted me.

When I didn't come to bed, she came looking for me. I dove on the couch and pretended to be asleep. Over the next few weeks I came to terms with things. It was a big adjustment. I became a far better actor than I ever thought I could be. We still had sex more or less as regularly as we had before. I don't know whether or not Erica enjoyed it as much, but I sure did.

I didn't have to concentrate on pleasing her anymore because I just didn't give a damn whether she got off or not. I had to look at things from a totally different view point. Instead of thinking about Erica as my wife that I loved, I just looked at her as some woman I was fucking.

Our sex was rawer and less loving. But at the same time it was more adventurous. Erica had always been kind of vanilla when it came to sex. During the guilt period just after the conference, when she needed to assure me that she was mine she rarely refused me anything. I started fucking her ass then. It was a first time for us even after all of those years of marriage. Before Erica could protest and tell me that she wasn't the kind of woman who did that...she was.

The next year, when conference time came around, I watched her intently, looking for a sign that she was in contact with Randy. I checked her phone account online to make sure that she hadn't received any calls from the Boston area. She hadn't received any, but she'd sent several texts to Randy's phone.

She'd become more and more frustrated that Randy never answered her. She'd tried calling a few of her friends who also knew Randy and found out that he'd had a run of bad luck. She found out for the first time that he'd been brutally beaten and robbed following the conference the previous year. He'd also been fired and no one knew where exactly he was working.

She'd sent him several texts asking him to simply meet her for dinner at her hotel. None of them were answered. Her final attempt came when she'd got one of her friends who knew Randy to go to his house and tell him that she wanted to hear from him. Randy had told the friend that he didn't remember her and since he no longer worked in the industry, saw no reason to contact her, especially since he wasn't attending the conference.

Erica was heartbroken. She'd told me that she didn't feel up to attending the conference this year after that. I told her that she needed to go. She went every year and suffered through it. This year shouldn't be any different than last year. "What's different?" I asked her point blank, even though I already knew.

My flight landed two hours after hers did. I watched her the whole day and almost blew it. Erica didn't even stay the night. She flew back home at the end of the day. While she was heading for the airport, I called her and told her how much I missed her. I told her that I had to go out of town for the evening but it didn't really matter since she'd be at her conference.

She told me that she couldn't stand us being apart and she was flying home early. I guess I'd expected her to try to hook up with another guy. But she didn't. She just went to the lectures and the expo and as soon as it was over she flew home.

The following year, she tried to get me to go to the conference with her so she could show me how boring it was. After that she simply stopped going. For the last two years Erica has been totally faithful to me. I have from time to time either watched her myself or even hired a PI for a few days. She hasn't done a thing to arouse any suspicion. If I didn't know any better I'd have thought that she was the perfect wife, at least she tried to be.

The problem was that once trust is gone, things will never be the way they were before. So when we sat out on our deck and relaxed in our big swing together, I always wondered if she was thinking about Randy and how their love would last until one of them died.

When she woke me up on a lazy Sunday morning by sucking my dick, I always wondered if she was imagining doing it to Randy. As a result, I was never able to give Erica my heart totally again. No matter how romantic she tried to make things, I always looked for an ulterior motive. For the past five years Erica has been simply a maid with benefits and a God damned expensive one. In the two years before the divorce I looked at her body often. Sometimes I felt like a farmer inspecting his crops. Yep her tits are starting to sag, I'd notice. It won't be long now. Or I'd see a few more lines on her face. We're getting there I'd think.

"Erica honey," I'd say. "Have another piece of cake. Shit, eat a big one."

"I don't want my ass to get any fatter," she'd say.

"I love your ass," I'd tell her. "So it doesn't matter." She'd smile and hug me or give me a peck on the cheek, which was all I'd allow. She was sure that I meant that no matter how fat her ass got that I'd still love her. But I meant that it didn't matter because I was sure that our marriage would be over soon. So she could eat a cow or look like one and it wouldn't matter to me.

Our life was good on the surface. We had friends that we did things with and we spent a lot of time with our daughter and her husband. Things were good for years. I actually believe that Erica had almost forgotten about her affair, or she'd thought that she'd gotten away with it. After all, five years is a long time. If nothing had been discovered after all of that time did it still matter?

A couple of days before the ill-fated dinner, one of my PI friends in Boston had given me the news. Randy had been fired from his latest job. He was working in the fast food industry. Because of his drinking, the manager wouldn't let Randy work inside the restaurant. He was taking care of the landscaping around the restaurant for minimum wage. He shoveled snow and cut grass. On other days he had to wear a costume that made him look like the restaurant's clown mascot and spin a sign that invited passing drivers to eat in the restaurant. Randy had fallen pretty far over the five years. He was now in his late forties, a college graduate who worked for minimum wage, dressed like a clown, hawking burgers.