Bitch Slapped

I berated myself for my cowardice. All those realtor seminars finally came to use - I gave myself a pep talk.

What was inspiring the beatings was a mystery to me, but surely after three women venting their spleens on me for whatever reason, they were over. Probably mistaken identity now I came to think about it.

I began looking at things logically. From the front door side of the house, I could see the door into the garage, but not inside it or beyond the wall on the far side. However, if I went out the back door, I could sneak around and approach the garage from an unexpected direction and catch anyone lying in wait.

I shuffled from room to room, looking out windows, checking out the route around the house to the garage. The trouble was, there were a few blind spots where someone could be waiting and, besides, the back yard was very private. If someone accosted me there, they'd never be seen and they could do whatever they liked to me with no witnesses. I wasn't exactly in any kind of shape to defend myself, let alone fight back.

I was pondering all this when my phone rang. Dave, at last! I dashed for it, ignoring the protest from my bruised and battered limbs.

I was disappointed. It wasn't Dave; it was my office. They'd managed to placate the client I'd stood up and organised for me to meet them at the property in thirty minutes. My excuses of being injured fell on deaf ears. They were running lean in these depressed times and if I couldn't handle it, they let me know in no uncertain terms they could find a replacement who could. Bastards!

That still left me the problem of how to get to my car safely. A lightbulb went off in my aching head; I'd call a cab. I did so, giving very specific instructions on parking in the middle of the driveway where I could see them from the house. There could still be someone hiding behind the garage or the hedge on the property boundary, but surely with the taxi driver as a witness, I would be safe. While waiting for the cab, I did what I could for my face, which wasn't a lot.

The honking of the cab horn, ten minutes later, spurred me to do a final visual check outside, then an awkward sprint to the safety of the cab. I didn't really relax until we were a block away from the house. The driver was female, which put me on edge, but after asking for my destination, she lost interest in me.

Fifteen minutes later, as we were approaching the destination property, I realised I'd stuffed up. The keys to the property were inside my briefcase, back home on the back seat of my car which was still in the garage. If I told the cab to return, I'd be at least twenty-five minutes late for my appointment and the client may well be violently resentful of being stood up a second time and demand my head from the agency. I decided to keep the appointment and muddle my way through it. I could show the client the outside and claim some bureaucratic bungle with the keys. I'd almost certainly miss out on the sale, but hopefully wouldn't be fired. I tried Dave's number once more before we pulled into the driveway of the house.

In the end, I had to wait half-an-hour for the bloody client. She, too, arrived by cab. She was a tall, dark-haired woman in her thirties, quite good-looking unless her eyes which were hidden behind sunglasses let her down. She was carrying one of those huge handbags that seem to be this season's fashion staple. When she saw me, she looked down at a piece of paper in her right hand before stuffing it into her bag while walking toward me. She seemed to swallow my excuse about the key fiasco but looked annoyed as I explained the best I could offer was a trip around the outside, peering in the windows.

Luckily, I knew everything about the property by heart, so didn't have to refer to any notes, also in the briefcase. I had it in the back of my mind that if it didn't sell quickly, the owners might drop the price to the point Dave and I could buy it. It was a lovely, leafy neighbourhood populated by young urban professionals. Dave and I would fit right in.

We reached the backyard where I pointed out the roomy artist's studio, set apart from the main house. After I finished listing off its features, I walked to the window of what I knew to be the master bedroom, peering in through a gap in the curtains to see how good the view was. I heard an incongruous sound behind me; in hindsight I would describe it as a 'snicking' sound.

Swinging around I saw the client was holding one of those telescopic baton things you see advertised in women's magazines for personal defence. The client's face had morphed from pretty to screwed up hatred.

I think she hissed, "Bitch" before she swung the baton at me with all her might; aimed right at my head. It hurt agonisingly as it hit my hastily raised forearms and I actually heard a bone snap and I think so did the enraged woman. The anger seemed to evaporate from her and she just stood and watched as I screamed when I lowered my arm and the pain truly hit. She must have had some residual anger, though, as she lashed out at the side of my head. I absorbed most of the blow on my uninjured arm, but it still knocked me to the ground. The wild woman must have left because when I came out of my daze, still on the ground, she was gone and I was all alone.

She might have been gone, but the thing that must have fallen out of her handbag when she pulled the baton out was not. It was the piece of paper I'd seen her stuffing into her bag when she first arrived. It lay on the ground, face up. It was a photograph, about A5 size, I suppose. It was a familiar image, one of my favourites. One that I'd taken. One I was totally confused on how the hell this crazy woman attained a copy of.

It was a selfie I'd taken about three months or so ago. My phone was in my outstretched hand when I took the shot. Despite everything I was still impressed I'd had the wherewithal to press the button at the time and the good framing of the shot was pure luck. I was on knees and elbows at the time, with my ass pointed to the ceiling. Looking past my face, obviously in rapture, you could clearly make out John kneeling behind me with an animalistic expression on his face. He was as obviously loving forcibly taking my ass with that delicious cock of his, as I was at having it taken. It was the perfect photo, taken at the perfect moment, and had given me numerous orgasms as I masturbated to it since.

I still remembered the seedy motel room we'd paid cash for the day of the most spectacular orgasm of my life. John and I hadn't been able to hook up for a couple of weeks and he was horny and impatient. He'd thrown me on the bed, lifted my hips and pressed his cock into the right general area. I prepared my phone to take some memory joggers for later, as I often did. I think he genuinely made a mistake when his impatient head pressed against the wrong hole. When I yelled 'wrong hole' at him over my shoulder, I fully expected him to pull back and lower his aim. Instead, he spat on my ass, smeared juice from my cunt, of which there was an ample supply, on his cock and pushed it relentlessly in. Initially, the pain made me squeal like a stuck pig and try to crawl away, but his hands held my hips firmly. The feeling of being helpless while I was roughly sodomised triggered a desire I had no idea I possessed. The pain morphed into pleasure and in record time I was coming on his cock. Somehow I managed to take a picture at around that time.

The picture that woman had used to identify me. Judging by her anger, Mrs. John I presumed.

I'd never asked John about his wife, just as we'd never spoken about Dave. I'd just not considered it relevant enough to think about it before.

Cradling my broken arm, I rolled to the sitting position. No internal debate on whether to call an ambulance this time. I did so. No police, though; that way led to exposure of my affairs, which led to Dave finding out, which led... somewhere dreadful.

How the hell John's psycho, baton-wielding wife had gotten a hold of that photo was the question that occupied my mind while I staggered to meet the ambulance at the front of the property. I'd never shared that photo with any other person or any other device. Not even John. Had my phone been hacked?

It was the same triage nurse at the hospital and she was going to call the police, but I talked her out of it, convincing her it was an accident. She looked at my arm and the scratches on my face and clearly didn't believe me but respected my wishes anyway, after me vigorously shaking my head when she simply asked, "Husband?"

They set my arm, didn't admit me, failed as much as me to alert Dave, then bundled me into a taxi with some heavy-duty pain killers. The taxi driver was kind enough to accompany me right to my front door. He even waited while I opened it, went in and deadbolted myself inside.

Despite medical advice, I washed the painkillers down with a large, make that very large, vodka, while all the while concocting a story to tell my husband. I'd left messages after three of the attacks on his message bank. He would be very confused and worried when he charged his phone and heard them. I tried ringing him again, failed, then remembered my idea of sending him an email.

My laptop was still in the car and it was dark by now, so there was no way on Earth I was going to risk another attack to retrieve it. Then I remembered our old desktop computer. We'd used it before we both had laptops and Dave once in a blue moon continued to use it when he wanted to see something on a larger screen. Even mostly unused, it was still there in the study.

I turned it on then went to refill my vodka. When I got back it had the little spinning hourglass on the screen and the word, 'synchronising' below it. Synchronising what? I answered a call of nature which took a while. You try undoing a side zipper on a pair of trousers with one arm in a sling. By the time I got back to the study, the computer had finished synchronising, and what it was synchronising with was horribly revealed on the screen.

Well, that explains that! Everything!

Who those horrible women were and why they'd done what they did to me. That knowledge was almost comforting after the utter confusion of the events of the previous twenty-four hours.

What the screensaver on our old house computer was showing, though, explained much more than that. It showed why for the first time in forever, my husband, hadn't rung me while he was away on a business trip and why he wasn't answering his phone. Why he might never ring me again. How I'd been an arrogant bitch and very probably fucked up the rest of my life. I just made it to the bathroom before I painfully puked.

I touched the tender left side of my face, then felt the livid bruise and scratches on the right, before leaving the bathroom to turn off the monitor displaying the sick, devastating photos by the screensaver on the computer I hardly ever used.

It was displaying the contents of my phone. More specifically, the photos on it. They were now flashing on the screen of the computer, changing every ten seconds or so. Incongruously, photos of houses or specific interior features alternated with far more, ah, graphic ones.

I remembered back a couple of weeks when my boss had got a tech company in to update our phones. I'd watched like a hawk while the technician played with mine.

It was obvious to me now that at least one of the changes he'd made had caused the photos I'd ever so carefully hidden on it to be broadcast to the desktop along with the rest from my photo folder. And if they'd been seen by the old desktop, could they have... oh no, Dave's laptop was much more modern than the old home PC.

A feeling of dread stole over me as I imagined Dave looking at the hundred or so trophy photos, photos intended for my viewing pleasure only. Photos of me and various men, in various positions.

Fuck, if he'd seen my second favourite one, the one taken by Paul with my phone, that showed me looking up at the camera from my position on my knees at his feet, with just a hint of cum spilling out of my overfull mouth, leaking around a rapidly deflating cock.

Could I imagine David cropping the ones that showed my lovers' faces and printing them, taking them to my work and comparing faces to names on their files with our receptionist who had always had a soft spot for him? Unfortunately, yes, I could. Names led to addresses and wives. Wives, who saw uncropped photos. Wives who, in my case, led to broken bones and bruises.

After yet another unanswered call to my husband's phone, I trudged painfully upstairs and checked out his clothes closet, What I saw only darkened my depression. Then braving the horrible photos on the old computer screensaver, I switched the monitor back on and logged into our online bank website and saw some tiny numbers where there should have been big ones.

I dropped my chin to my chest. The realisation of what a spoilt, conniving, and entitled bitch I'd become hit me. The blow was as painful as all my physical injuries rolled into one. Not only my thinking I deserved to treat myself to men who, visually at least, were in my league but doing it in such a cavalier way.

Being in commercial as well as domestic real estate, there was never any shortage of male clients to choose from. And I chose. Perhaps in the early days I ensured I was super careful about my lovers. Back then I'd had a strict no photos, videos, or trail of any kind rule. Oh, I did make a few mistakes along the way. I was almost outed by one guy who wanted to continue a relationship beyond the time it had run its course for me. That was when I decided to limit myself to married men who had as much to lose as me.

But I became complacent and relaxed some of my rules when it became obvious that Dave trusted me implicitly.

Mistake. Big Mistake. Huge. I should have stuck to the no photo rule.

I kicked myself for my absolute arrogance. Wondering how I could have allowed it. I'd become the popular girl I'd dreamed of being in school and somehow had to validate that popularity by sleeping with all the jocks.

My arrogance was in thinking my marriage was guaranteed to survive my true nature being revealed to my husband.

Now I'm not stupid enough to have believed Dave couldn't ever discover my hobbies, but I'd long ago developed a plan for that eventuality, one that I was confident Dave would accept. After all, he would never get a replacement anywhere near my calibre and would surely eventually forgive me.

My plan depended on him only knowing about one lover.

I'd been weak this one time, I'd say. He was a master seducer, I'd sob. It would never happen again, I'd promise. Now, come to bed and let me share all the things I've learned that I've been keeping to myself.

Well, myself and my lovers. I'd even planned to offer him my supposedly virgin ass. I'd holler and scream like a born-again virgin and he'd never know it was now a well-trodden path. An oft used reward for especially deserving boyfriends.

My mind was wandering. Maybe it was just an attempt at self-preservation on my part. Delaying the inevitable conclusion that Dave wasn't going to forgive me. He hadn't discovered me in bed with one other guy, triggering my long-rehearsed reaction. How could I have anticipated that he would cyber catch me with scores of my lovers at the same time?

In the bruised faced here and now, I screamed.

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EDITORS NOTE:

Those as tech unsavvy as Vandy and I may poo-poo the idea of how Dave in the above tale discovered the photos but let me tell you about something that happened in real life. Just before the Wuhan virus closed the world down, Vandy did a job in Papua New Guinea, yep, all over the world shit needs blowing up. While over there, he took a photo on his phone of a beautiful blue butterfly. That night, during his nightly call home it downloaded to my laptop.

He hadn't sent it to me via text or email.

For some reason unknown to both of us, any photos on either of our phones automatically turn up on my screensaver.

Cue the Twilight Zone music...

Now lighten the fuck up

Just like my grandfather, I want to die peacefully in my sleep, and

certainly not screaming and yelling like the passengers of the bus he was driving.

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A police officer came to my house and asked me where I was between 5 and 6.

He became irritated when I answered, "Kindergarten."