F5: The Games She Plays

F5: The Games She Plays

(Author's note: This story is an entry into FAWC (Friendly Anonymous Writing Challenge), a collaborative competition among Lit authors. FAWC is not an official contest sponsored by Literotica, and there are no prizes given to the winner. Every story for this FAWC begins with the exact same line. Where it goes from there is up to the author.)

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Upon the table lay three items: a handkerchief, a book and a knife. He walked further into the room taking in everything, looking for anything else that could be seen as being out of place in frugally furnished room. There wasn't much in the small space; the table was low and surround by two large comfortable armchairs. Two shelf lined walls were crammed with books arranged apparently without rhyme or reason. A third wall held a bay window where a cushioned bench lay invitingly in the sunshine.

Once again he looked slowly taking in every little nuance. This was her room, her sanctuary. He had built this room for her, her own special retreat. He both loved and hated this room. He loved that it gave her solace when she was feeling down or neglected by him as he concentrated on a project of his own. He hated it because it took her away from him time and time again, not just her physical presence in his world, but her mind seemed to drift to another place, another time, another love. He shook his head and tried to remind himself he had won her love and loyalty a long time ago, he adored his eccentric wife with all her quirks and idiosyncrasies but sometimes like now; it drove him to distraction.

This wasn't the first time he had woken to find her gone on some escapade, or another, but she had usually warned him of up-coming trips or adventures she was planning. Maybe she had mentioned it, and he had not been paying attention as he pottered around in his shed out the back working on some never ending project of his own or when he had been writing the column that was their main source of income in his semi-retirement.

She had packed a bag, and as the sun lit the horizon had kissed his cheek and murmured, "I love you."

"I love you too," his sleep addled mind had not realised exactly what she was saying. He groaned remembering his drowsy voice as he had replied, "I love you too." How could he have not realised she was saying goodbye? How could he have let her go so easily without finding out where she was going or what she was doing?

Old jealousies and resentment warred within him as he looked for clues within the little room. He was hoping this was just one of her little games, a mad moment in time, the beginning of an adventure. It wasn't like it was an unusual event in their lives, for her to disappear for a while. Mostly it was just a need to escape for a time. There had been one time though that that he had endured weeks of heartache as she ran away with mandolin player for a wild month of abandon in a hippy colony down in the hinterland. That had been the worst of her flirtations. Mostly they led to nothing but a mad moment in time, as she liked to call them. The time with the musician though, had hurt, and left him with a feeling of insecurity that he had never quite recovered from.

He shook his head dispelling those dark times. She had always come back seemingly more in love with him than ever and promising never to leave him alone again. He had been helpless in his love for her and despite the advice of friends and family had taken her back with open arms. He once again looked at the table and taking a breath decided it must be one of her games. It had to be one of her games. The alternatives were too heartbreaking. Looking for hidden meanings in the items she had left on the table, he scratched at the morning growth on his chin thoughtfully.

He sat in one of the large armchairs and studied the table. The handkerchief was crisp and white, ironed to a perfect triangle with lace softly curling its edges. An old fashioned thing in today's disposable world but it also told of his wife's femininity that she would never go anywhere without one, "just in case." He often chided her about her just in case scenario, but she was adamant that a lady should never go anywhere without lipstick and a handkerchief.

He smiled as he remembered times where those dainty squares of cotton had held the treasured lost teeth of their children, or precious things like special shells found on the beach. He picked up the neatly folded handkerchief and held it to his nose, closing his eyes his mind filled with the image of her when they had first met so many years ago.

She had been the most beautiful debutante of the season, escorted by a handsome young man of the right social standing and surrounded by friends and family. He had met her as she escaped the crowd seeking fresh air and glowing with perspiration she had fished a handkerchief from her cleavage to dab at her forehead and nose.

He found himself chuckling at the memory of her turning to find him standing there watching her. He had been part of the hired help, so to speak. As a member of the band he held some cache but the elite crowd here was way out of his league, and he knew it. Rather than ignoring his presence or simply dismissing him, she had surprised him by approaching him with a flirtatious smile and fluttering eyelashes. She had wanted two things from him that night, firstly a cigarette, which he quite happily supplied from his breast coat pocket and secondly music that wasn't going to put all the young people at her party to sleep.

While the first request was easily done, it took some fast talking to convince the percussion and brass players of the band to up the tempo and create a bit of a stir for the younger crowd. He'd been fired after that night, but he didn't care as he had managed to land a date with the most beautiful girl in the world.

He brought himself back from the memory to the feel of the soft handkerchief against his face. He sighed out loud, "Where are you baby? Where did you go this time?"

Once again he looked at the only clues she had left as to what was on her mind before she disappeared with the last vestiges of the night. Holding the handkerchief in his hand, he looked at the two remaining items on the table; the knife glinted in the stray beams of sunlight as they filtered through the curtains.

"Why on earth would she have left the knife in here?" he asked himself and leaned forward to pick it up. He studied the implement. It was a plain butter knife, silver with a heavy handle and a thin blunt blade. He knew it was here for a reason, but his mind wouldn't bend to its meaning. He closed his eyes willing himself to think of something. This had to be one of her games; it had it be, he felt himself slipping into the darkness he did not want to acknowledge. He gripped the knife tightly willing an emotion, a distant memory, anything, to try and make sense of what she had left for him to find.

"Please baby," he said out loud to the empty room, "Tell me where you are, before it's too late!" Dropping the knife back to the table at an absolute loss as to why it was there and despairing that the time limit he knew he was on would run out. There was always a time limit with her games. He knew there was always a need to prove himself to her and always a need to show how well he knew her and loved her.

He understood that when he took her from the world she knew, leaving behind a disapproving family and the friends who turned their backs on her, that he would need to be her world until she found her own place in his world. He had hoped as they began their new life together that creating their own family would be enough. His own working class family had embraced his new wife at first but began to resent that she was so far out of her depth. She had no knowledge of even the most basic housekeeping or cooking, and they were not about to act as housekeepers for her.

Taking on more work so he could afford a housekeeper on top of the mortgage that was barely with his means had had meant that his lovely young wife had been left on her own even more than they planned. It had been a difficult time for both of them but their love had conquered all in those early years of marriage. While his colleagues bemoaned married life as an end to any sort of exciting sex life, he had commiserated and smiled smugly thinking of his beautiful wife who constantly amazed him with her creativeness and need for that kind of physicality in their relationship.

Those early years had been filled with blissful joy, but as his career grew to include greater responsibilities so did his time away from home. They had three children within the first five years of their marriage, and his extended absences began to create a wedge between them. One day he came home to find the housekeeper with the children and no sign of his wife. He had begged the housekeeper to move in for a few days and began his search for her. That had been the first of her disappearances.

She had returned a week later and with teary eyes had confessed that she had felt trapped that they never did anything together anymore. That their life had become stale and boring, and she had runaway only to realise how much she loved him and their beautiful children. She had sworn that there was no one else, could never be anyone else that she had only ever loved one man, and that was the man she married.

Relief and passion for the woman who had returned to him filled him, and he took her in his arms, kissing her hard. With a sense of urgency, they had practically torn each other's clothes off and made passionate all-encompassing love right there on the living room floor. Her cries of pleasure echoed through his mind with the image of her sitting atop him riding his cock, her tits and hair bouncing as if in slow motion, in his mind's eye, made his cock stir.

Leaving the children with the housekeeper, they had spent the weekend in a small hotel wrapped in each other's arms and renewed their love and commitment to each other. They each made promises to make more time for the other, to be more thoughtful, to remember how they felt on their honeymoon when they were so madly, deeply in love that no one else in the world mattered.

Life has a way of getting the better of people though and over the years she had disappeared at regular intervals, always coming back to him with words of love and commitment. She was not hard to find after the first couple of disappearances. She had always escaped to an idyllic bohemian community within the hinterland, populated by artists and musicians of all descriptions. It was enough for him to know she was safe and had not left him and their family for another, so he had never interfered with her time away. In fact, in some ways he enjoyed the break himself, indulging in his own passions. He went and saw friends he had lost touch with from his band days and played the occasional gig.

That was until she returned to confess her first affair, blaming him for not loving her enough, for treating her like a maid hired to keep his house and his children. She accused him of forcing her into another man's arms and took no responsibility for her own actions. There was no passionate reconciliation as he had flown into a rage. He had been understanding, had understood her need to runaway sometimes and recharge her life, he had provided everything she could possibly need, and she had thrown it all away on some unemployed musician who could never love her like he did.

The fight had been long and loud, ending with him calling her a bad mother for constantly leaving her children and making them feel unloved and unwanted just like him. He remembered the look on her face, as if he had physically slapped her. She had fled upstairs at that point, and he had slept on the couch in his den. When he woke in the morning, she was gone and had taken the baby with her, their daughter, Honey.

It was the darkest time in his life. His closest friend had gone to find her and found her shacked up with a mandolin player and Honey. They had appeared to be healthy and happy, unlike himself and his two young sons. He had thrown himself into work and raising his boys not stopping to think about what had torn his marriage apart. Then one day he came home, and she was there, acting as if it was just another day. That night after the children had gone to bed she came to him and begged forgiveness, professing her undying love and admitting fault for everything.

He brought himself back from the past with another shake of his head. While that had not been her last disappearance, it had been the worst. She hadn't completely disappeared for a while though, she usually told him directly about some wonderful adventure she wanted to go on. This disappearance disturbed him because she had been more erratic than usual lately. He knew he had to find her; she was his world, his one true love and he was worried about her well-being.

He dreaded looking at the book. He never understood the meaning she intended when she left messages for him by book or movie choices. He looked at the title with surprise. <i>The Five People You meet in Heaven </i> he looked again at the knife lying beside it. "Oh god, she wouldn't do that!" he thought in panic. His mind whirred with a new sense of urgency.

Taking up his phone, he tried to call her again and on being sent to her message bank yet again he left an impassioned message, "Baby call me please, I am worried. Where are you? Why aren't you answering your phone?"

He walked to the bay window and looked out. It's a game he thought just one of her games. She was always trying to keep him on his toes. He turned back to the small table and picked up the book reading the blurb on the back. Okay, he thought, not actually opening the book, it's about people who have influenced my life, for good or for bad. Let me think, five people who have influenced my life, well aside of her of course. His mind immediately went to his children, and he picked up his phone again. He didn't want to worry the children, but if this was one of her games, his daughter would know.

"Hi Honey, it's your dear old, Dad," He greeted the forever happy voice of his daughter, the youngest of his three children.

"I know your voice silly, you don't have to tell me who you are," she laughed at him. "Mum said you wold probably call and asked me to give you a message.

"She did, did she?" He answered feeling part relief and part frustration at his eccentric wife's antics.

"Poor Daddy, not in the mood for a game today?" she teased him with a giggle, hearing the tone of frustrated resignation in his voice in comparison to the excited chattering of her mother who had called earlier that morning.

"So you spoke to her today?" He asked letting his relief win out.

"Oh sure, today, yesterday most days over the last few weeks she has been planning this little adventure for you for a while," she laughed.

"Tell me I won't end up in a nudist colony like last time, or in some bizarre spring solstice ritual with a coven of witches," he grumbled but there was a smile on his face as he remembered some of the more outlandish adventures they had been on together over the last few years.

"Don't worry Daddy, I think this time you will be the human sacrifice in some Mayan doomsday cult ritual so that you won't have to be a worry-wart anymore, it will all be over once and for all," her peals of laughter made him hold the phone away from his ear.

"Very funny," he groaned but his voice was light. His free spirited daughter was so much like her mother it actually frightened him sometimes, and he felt for her partner and the life he would need to lead to keep her entertained. "So this message you have for me?" he asked when her laughter finally faded enough for him to talk over it.

"Oh yes," She took a breath. "You're starting in the wrong place, you have to go backwards before you can go forwards." She said as if reciting a poem she had learned by rote. "She said she left you three clues, a fourth will be arriving soon and you will pick up a fifth along the way."

"Right," he rolled his eyes even knowing that she couldn't see him. "So backwards then forwards, more clues to come, got it," he said sarcastically, "It all makes so much sense now."

"Why don't you go have a shower and get dressed, you will feel better," she let the laughter creep into her voice again, "Don't even try and tell me you aren't standing there in your pyjama's and that ratty old robe."

"It's not ratty," he protested petulantly.

"Yes it is!" She said with certainty. "Just go with the flow today Daddy, it will be easier for you that way,"

"Are the boys in on this too?" he finally asked.

"Sure this is a big one Daddy, but I promise it won't be too painful. Just remember, we all love you very much. Now go get ready you have a big day ahead," she heard his groan again. "You're not fooling me with that groan of yours. I know you love these little adventures."

"I'm getting to old for all this shit!" It was his turn to chuckle, "I guess I'll see you on the other side of whatever this is. Wish me luck, Honey."

"Good luck, Daddy," she hung up the phone.

At sixty, he was a semi-retired columnist writing for several newspapers. He enjoyed his increasingly quiet life in their house by the lake. It had been too quiet lately, and he should have known something was up when his wife had not complained about becoming boring old people. Resigned to his fate, and much relieved to find that this was indeed one of her games he climbed the stairs to ready himself for whatever was about to happen.