Bitch Slapped

BITCH SLAPPED

by Vandemonium1

A lighthearted one, not to be taken seriously and independently rated at 3/5 pickaxe handles. Edited, proofread, and improved outa sight by the peerless CreativityTakesCourage.

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Damn the police!

What did they expect? A full physical description? My attacker was female, mid-thirties... probably. She wore a hat and dark glasses. You try guessing age behind those two things. That description was the best I could do.

Um, I'm probably not making much sense. I'll begin at the start and maybe that will make more sense. I sure hope by writing it all down it will make more sense to me.

The shock of being assaulted for no reason, in public, was so far removed from anything that had ever happened to me that I just couldn't process it.

Just a few short hours ago, I'd been on top of the world. I had a life I loved, including a beautiful house, comfortable bank accounts, and a husband that worships the ground I walk on. None of those were the reason I was glowing with happiness as I stepped out of the office at the end of the Monday workday. That was for a less public reason. Said husband was away on business for the week and I had a date with my lover, John, just as soon as I could get home and get ready. John was a relatively recent acquisition and took me to places in bed that no man had ever done before.

That's why I was walking with a skip to my step and a smile on my face as I headed toward my car in the office lot. I'd just reached it when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see who it was, hoping like hell it was John, and saw a fist coming straight at my face. I barely had time to glimpse an angry female face behind the fist before pain exploded from my mouth.

Instinctively, I think, I dropped to the ground and rolled into the foetal position allowing the woman, who never uttered a word, to kick my back. She must have tired of this at some stage because the next thing I knew, she was gone. Afraid she might return; I called the emergency number. An ambulance carted me to the hospital where I caught a break. Being before the nightly rush, I was seen straight away. Apart from a split lip and some bruising, I was pronounced fine. With a vague warning to watch for the symptoms of delayed concussion and advice to ice pack my bruises, I was sent home.

The police interviewed me in the waiting room after the medical staff were done with me but with only a vague description of a slim, blonde-haired woman wearing a hat and dark glasses there wasn't much hope of catching the crazy bitch. I couldn't even tell them if she was a natural blonde, let alone provide a motivation for the attack.

I asked them for a lift back to my car but they explained it was against the rules. I attempted one of my helpless female smiles but it hurt my lip too much. I tried ringing John to ask for a lift and beg off our evening tryst but he didn't pick up, so I had no choice but to call a cab.

My new plan for the evening was to pick up a bottle of painkiller, probably vodka, add some ice for the bruising, and have a long, hot bath until it was time to ring my husband after his workday. He always knew how to make sense of things for me and make me laugh when I felt down. After I told him what happened, I wouldn't be surprised if he dropped everything and drove the four hours home. I've always been his priority.

I suppose I'd only been home thirty minutes or so, the bath was full and the ice was cooling my martini, when there was a knock at the door. Thinking it was the delivery of the Chinese takeout I'd ordered I opened it.

When I woke, I had only vague memories of what happened. I tried to sit up, but my head hurt like hell. Easing my head back down, I felt my face. Something had dried on it. I scratched a bit off and looked at the scraping under my fingernail. Blood. Oh, no. Gently and ever so carefully, I felt all over my face. Eyebrows, cheekbones, and jaw weren't gashed. My nose was sore but felt intact. I thanked the gods it didn't seem to be broken. I turned my head slowly. There was dried blood splatter on the floor too. Whoever my attacker was they must have hit me hard. I continued my explorations. The back on my head had a bump and felt bruised as well, probably where it hit the floor after I fell.

Painfully, I lurched upright. My head protested. I slammed the door and staggered to the couch where I practically fell onto it. I think I hallucinated for a while and my brain conjured up images that flitted across my mind; halfway between memories and movie-like frames. Definitely female, squat, with long black hair, and almost bushy eyebrows. The rest of the face was obscured by a scarf. That's all I saw except for some sort of wooden handle or bat coming straight between my eyes.

I woke, confused as hell, still on the couch. The clock above the mantelpiece said it was 4.25 a.m. My head hurt like hell. Any movement was like a bowling ball was clanging around inside my skull, bashing against the sides. As I staggered into the kitchen I felt pain in my groin. Whoever the bitch was she must have laid the boot into my groin. By the feel of it, it had landed on my left labia and inner thigh. I downed two painkillers then reeled to the bathroom.

The bathroom mirror didn't reveal a very pretty sight. Whatever had hit me had just missed my nose but I had a bruised cheek and black eye.

Who the hell was that woman? And the other one this afternoon, sorry, yesterday? Despite being a real estate agent, I didn't think I'd made any enemies. Certainly not ones bad enough to belt me. What the hell was going on?

I wondered if I should call another ambulance but decided against it. The doctor yesterday afternoon had said to watch for delayed concussion for eight hours. It was already longer ago than that since I was hit for the second time. I also debated calling the police but again decided against it. Our front door wasn't visible from off the property and I had even less to give them than last time. Still, one woman randomly attacking me was one thing, two was just bizarre.

I decided, despite the late hour, to ring Dave. He'd know what to do. Oh hell. Dave. What would he have thought when he tried to ring me last night, as he always did, and I didn't answer? He would have tried my cell and the house phone then wondered where I was. I hope that didn't get him thinking that I was sneaking away from the house when he wasn't here. I'd always been incredibly discreet about my affairs. Wouldn't it be ironic if I was given away by a false clue?

Picking up my cell, I checked to see how many missed calls I had from my husband. Odd, there were none. Picking up the home phone, I dialled the number for recent activity. The last unanswered call was from three days ago. What the...? I couldn't remember the last time Dave hadn't spoken to me when he was away. In fact, it was part of my security arrangement that I normally rang him on his hotel phone, citing the alleged dangers of too much cell phone use, before going to meet my lover at a motel, or, on very rare occasions, inviting him around here.

That reminded me, I'd rung John from my cell the previous afternoon and hadn't yet deleted the record. I wasn't stupid enough to have his number stored on my phone and with no trail, there was no evidence. There were some photographs on it that should never see the light of day, but my phone was the only place they were stored and they were hidden on it. I'd also taken the precaution that it wasn't locked with a regular password or one of those pattern things, just my fingerprint and an enormous, secure password. Dave thinks it's a work requirement to not share my password. On the rare occasion he needed to use my phone, I unlocked it for him and never let either of them out of my sight. I figured it was safer to store them on my phone, which I could protect, than on any other form of media that could be discovered.

I deleted the call I'd made to John, left a message on his message bank, and noted that he hadn't returned my earlier call either. It was weird Dave hadn't rung. Despite the early hour, I rang him. I really needed to hear his comforting voice. It went straight to message bank which was strange. Maybe he'd mislaid his charger and his battery had gone flat or something. It wouldn't be the first time.

By this time, it was after five and I had a 9:00 a.m. showing. There was no way I could turn up looking like I did, so I laid out more make-up than usual to cover it up. I had quite an array, after all. I should probably explain that.

You see, all through high school I'd been the plain one. You've all met her, the one that watched from the sidelines as all the boys she considered worth pursuing, ignored her to chase the sporty, popular, early-developer girls. I'd prided myself on not being like some of the other plain ones, though. They'd put out to all and sundry in the mistaken belief that sexual popularity meant they'd 'made it'. Thus, I was a virgin when I left school at sixteen.

My parents weren't that ambitious for me and gladly supported me doing a series of night courses for this or that administrative qualification, while I worked as a waitress in my free time.

I actually lost my virginity to what I recognised too late was a clever predator. I realised that, when after a quick, uncomfortable, what could only be called fuck in his hotel room the next morning, he asked me to leave. I chalked that up to experience and thought the episode made me an expert at picking predators. It didn't. My next two sexual liaisons ended similarly disastrously. The one after those was with a guy with less experience than me. I dumped him after the first night.

That's the way I drifted through my life until I was twenty. That's when Dave bumped into my life again.

Dave had been a year ahead of me in school and, from the outside, was the male equivalent of me. He was tall and lean but nothing else about him caught the eye. We got chatting at the restaurant I worked at where he'd bought some clients for lunch. I knew enough after the first encounter to know he was a man with a clear career plan and the determination to get there. I accepted an invitation for a date and the rest, as they say, is history.

I slept with him about two weeks into our dating and it was obvious we were both so inexperienced it was uncomfortable. We were both willing to learn and used each other to do exactly that.

If I had to describe my life for the twelve months before my twenty-first birthday, I would have said 'contented'. I had a guy who was obviously going places and who clearly loved me to death. We were never invited to the high-end social scene but neither of us thought that was important. We'd moved into an apartment together and I was doing a realtor's course, paid for by Dave, when my pivotal coming of age birthday arrived.

Dave was celebrating his first big bonus cheque by spending a chunk of it on me. There was my own car, a voucher for two days with my own personal beauty consultant, and a larger diamond engagement ring than I'd ever expected to be wearing. I said yes at the right time, drove the car, and held off on the voucher. Oh, how I wish I'd just torn the damn thing up. That way I might have a husband whose phone wasn't turned off and an unbruised face.

Dave reminded me of the voucher several times, but I threw myself into organising a simple wedding; neither of us having a huge friend list. In the end, I decided to use it as a little pampering reward for myself to relax before the big day. That's when I found out what the voucher was actually for. It bought me two days with Caroline. She was a thirty-something, elegant looking woman, with I don't know what qualifications, but who had an amazing eye for how to showcase womanhood.

The first port of call for us was a hair stylist where I was pushed into a major remodel and have to say, I was nervous about the result. The rest of that first day, was spent shopping. Caroline walked me right past my usual favourite clothes shops to the classier end of town. Suffice it to say that by early afternoon Caroline was using my phone to get Dave to perform some CPR on my credit card. At the end of the day, I looked in the mirror at my new hairdo and clothes and almost called Caroline to tell her not to bother the next day. The hair and clothes were for someone who was beautiful.

Oh, why didn't I?

The following day, we were at the salon by 8:00 a.m. I was pampered with a pedicure and manicure, facial, and scalp massage. Then I was introduced to Colin. Colin was obviously gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide, and if you believed him, had once been the 'cosmetic attendant' to some pretty big-name stars. He and Caroline used my face as a canvas to paint, sculpt, trim, and highlight for the next two hours, including several erasures. I wasn't allowed to see myself in a mirror until the two of them declared me perfect.

When I stood and saw my reflection, I took an involuntary step backwards. That's when Caroline's true genius was revealed. The clothes and hairdo that had looked out of place the previous day, now framed a face that, I have to admit, was beautiful.

I couldn't believe it; the change was stunning. Caroline forced me away from admiring my own reflection for a two-hour cram session from Colin on how he'd revealed the natural masterpiece that was me. I thanked him and Caroline profusely for the life altering experience. If I'd known how it was really going to affect me, I may have committed murder right there and then.

Dave took an amusing double-take when I got home but quickly recovered, telling me that the whole process had simply revealed the me he'd seen right from the start. That night was the wildest night we'd ever had in bed and three days later we were married.

The reception and honeymoon were busy and confusing for me. Men, good-looking men, who had never given me a second glance in the past, were now vying for a chance to dance with me. I took them up on it whenever Dave didn't object, he was the first to admit, dancing wasn't his favourite pastime.

With all that attention it still didn't really penetrate my psyche that the game had changed. That realisation began when the wedding photograph album was delivered. I could see I was quite stunning and for the first time felt I'd married a little beneath myself. A fact that was obvious when you looked at us standing together in the various staged settings. I guess, deep down, I still feel that today, which is neither logical or fair. What had I achieved in the five years since my marriage, compared to Dave? He'd built a business of his own from scratch and was well on his way to being a millionaire. I'd used my looks to become a mediocre seller of real estate. Despite the uneven score card, I did feel superior.

Five years. The months after the reveal of my true self had been like a re-birth. I'd become popular, complimented, entitled, and yes, within six months, an unfaithful wife. In my defence, it would have been extremely hard to never yield to temptation. All of a sudden, my mind that still believed it was being carried around by a five-out-of-ten-star body, was being hit on by nine-out-of-ten-star men. It took me waking up with the third such man to realise that they were just better looking versions of the predator that had taken my virginity. From that time on, I was well and truly in the driver's seat when it came to choosing my lovers.

So, in the bruised face here and now, I prepared to apply a good layer of concealer and foundation, feeling sorry for myself. I tried Dave's phone every fifteen minutes or so with no luck at all. It took an hour-and-a-half of layering until I had everything hidden to my satisfaction. I had no luck at all in either raising my husband or explaining the bizarre behaviour of the two women.

I made myself a coffee and drank it feeling lonelier than I had for years. I'd never made female friends easily and with Dave not responding I was isolated at my darkest hour. Having an hour to spare, I sent a text to John to call me when he could, then watched some mindless crap on the idiot box until it was time to leave for the office. Carrying my laptop bag and the flashy briefcase Dave had bought me last year out to my car in the detached garage, I put them on the back seat. Slamming that door, I turned toward the driver's door.

I don't know where she came from. All I know is that she was standing full in front of me when I turned from the back door of my car. I can only assume she must have been hiding along the side of the garage wall outside or somewhere else when I'd first come in.

Again, it all happened so quickly it was hard to remember after it was all over. I recall falling to the ground and feeling a foot stomping on my arms and hands which I'd instinctively raised to protect my face. The blows eventually stopped and I made a dash for the front door again. The ferocity of the attack was quite shocking and my face stung like a bitch.

I rested for the briefest of moments against the locked door before stumbling to the downstairs bathroom. The mirror revealed three long scratches down my left cheek and two down the right, obviously caused by raking fingernails. My right hand and forearm were sore but, thankfully, nothing was broken.

I rang the police again, then Dave and John while I waited for the cops to arrive. Neither answered. I felt so alone. Just after nine, the office rang to ask why I'd stood up the client and were only slightly mollified when I told them I'd been attacked. Working for a realty company, they obviously assumed I was either lying or exaggerating the extent of my facial damage.

As I suspected, the police weren't much use. In fact, I got the distinct impression that with a murder and two armed robberies just yesterday, I was wasting their time with vague descriptions of a woman of average height with either red or auburn hair which could be natural or dyed—hard to tell when most of it was hidden under a baseball cap.

They interviewed a couple of neighbours for appearance sake, then left after asking me if I needed an ambulance. No, I didn't need a damn ambulance. I needed my husband to answer his fucking phone so I could get comfort with his sweet voice for my utter confusion.

I closed the door on the cops and walked into the lounge and yelled at the photo of Dave and me resting on the mantelpiece ledge, "You will take your fucking phone charger next time, David, even if I have to pack the fucking thing for you myself."

Being attacked by one random woman wasn't that unusual. Two was statistically improbable, but three was nigh on impossible, so it was time I thought really hard as to possible reasons why I'd made so many enemies. I couldn't.

This time there was no amount of make-up that could hide the scratches. Worse still, I had to wipe the previously applied creams off with make-up remover pads so I could put some disinfectant on my new scratches. No telling what germs the psycho had under her fingernails.

The pads burned like crazy and the disinfectant felt like I'd poured petrol on my skin. The task was made even more difficult by the fact my right hand was beginning to seize up with the bruising. By the end, my face was red and blotchy and the latest bitch must have been wearing heels or something; there were distinctly shaped bruises forming on my hands and forearms.

I tried Dave's phone again, desperately needing to hear his voice, but it went straight to message bank again. Then I kicked myself. I could send him an email. When he retrieved it he would hurry home for sure. Trouble was, my laptop was in my car. I lumbered down the stairs like a woman of ninety - the bruises on my lower back, legs, and groin were doing their share of seizing up too, but when I went to turn the deadbolt on the front door, I just couldn't. Bad things waited out there.