Moment of Clarity

I got up and walked into the light to meet her. As I entered the light the breath caught in her throat and she staggered backwards.

"Oh, my God!" she gasped.

"You've never screamed for me, Diane. You know that? You've never screamed your head off while cumming with me inside you, like you have for someone else. You just lay there and let me do my thing. You honestly think I can't tell how bored you are with my lovemaking?"

She stopped backing up and reached out with one shaking hand and tenderly touched one side of my face, the fingers gingerly feeling the swollen flesh that surrounded by a nearly shut left eye. I knew the rest of my face consisted of various shades of yellow, red and brown. My lips were swollen except for a chunk missing from the left side.

"Oh, my God, they found you and beat you too. Why didn't you go to the hospital and get some medical help?"

I tried to smile and that in itself must have been scary as hell judging from the expression on Diane's face.

"You oughta see the other guy."

I saw from the expression that slowly dawned on her face that she was realizing what my face meant.

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I stood in the darkness toward the lake side of the RV park, listening to the music, imagining I still heard wisps of laughter from the people around Diane and Bobby. I didn't have to go back to know she was dancing with him.

I could have gone back and faced down Bobby. I'd been beaten up before, back in the days when I'd run the streets of South Boston as a wild fatherless kid. Been beaten up a lot as an undersized shrimp trying to stay with 16 and 17-year-olds before my mother finally wised up and moved us to a small town south of Boston and away from gangs.

I didn't mind the beating, if it came to that and it probably would because I didn't' fool myself that I could take him in a fair fight. He was bigger and stronger and undoubtedly tougher than a guy who made his living standing in a classroom running his mouth,

But it was the look in her eyes as she dared me to do something about Bobby's insults, the way she had let him hold her and rub her down, the easy familiar way his hands had roamed over her...

I think I'd always known, but now I couldn't make myself ignore the truth that he was fucking her. Sometime, somewhere, another man had the center of my life all to himself and she was sharing with him things that she would never share with me. How do you have a life when it's built on a lie?

I leaned against a tree and stared up at the cloudy night sky and wondered how you turned around a life that had gone off track somewhere back and make it right again

How do you forgive a woman who is your entire life when she's giving her body and probably her love to another man. I wondered if they laughed about me when they were together. Had she really called me a pencil-dick? Was I that small or was he that huge? I didn't think I was tiny down there. At least I'd never gotten any complaints.

I heard the stumbling of a body crashing through weeds and bouncing off trees as somebody staggered toward the lake. Coming to a stop about a dozen feet away from me, facing the dark lake, he never even looked back at me but unzipped and let a stream go. I heard the piss hitting the leaves of bushes in front of him.

Even from the rear I knew who it was. I didn't intend to do anything. Pounding on people was the asshole way. It never really solved anything.

So I was surprised as hell as he gave his dick one last shake and tucked it in, turning to go back, to find myself hitting him in the side of the face with everything I had on the run so it had even more force behind the blow. He spun and fell without a word, only groaning as he hit the ground.

Before he could get himself up on his hands I kicked him as hard as I could in the stomach, lifting his whole body This time he grunted hard. I tried again to kick him in the balls, but this time he turned enough to catch the kick on a thigh and grabbed my foot as I was drawing it back and threw me away from him. Off balance I fell backwards.

By the time I was up on my elbows staring through the dark night he was up on his hands and knees. He touched his forehead with a finger and I saw something dark and shiny. I'd tore the flesh with my glancing punch, probably with the college ring on my right hand that had two diamonds held in place with small prongs.

"I'll be damned, Lyle. I didn't think you had it in you, you pussy. Of course, you had to sneak up on me, but at least you had the balls to try to hit me. But now I'm going to hurt you bad, real bad, boy. And I'll be in the right cause I'll tell everyone including Diane how you sucker punched me."

I was trying to get up when he launched himself at me. I went down under his bigger, heavier body, trying to wriggle myself free. Lifting himself a little, he raised his fist. I didn't even see it hit, but it did hurt like hell. It felt like somebody had hit the side of my head with a metal gong. There was a ringing in my ears and the vision in that eye went black for an instant.

Then something smashed into my nose and blood was everywhere and I couldn't breath for an instant. Before I could recover from that the world exploded again and I couldn't see anything. I wondered if he had blinded me but pushing him off for a second I realized it was just a flow of blood into both eyes blinding for a moment.

I was able to move my head just enough and I was never really sure how I ever knew to move it so that his next punch sailed past me and he lost his balance and went over. I scrambled to my feet and as he rose to his knees I smashed his face with bottom of my shoe and reveled in the sight of the spray of blood as I felt his nose and cartilage crunch under my heel.

He fell backwards grunting and making sounds that weren't words. I tried to kick him again but somehow he avoided the thrust and buried his big fist deep in my gut and then pushed me off and away. I fell backwards gasping for air. Every time I breathed it felt like something sharp was trying to push its way out of my chest. The bastard had broken my ribs.

He rolled backwards and came up on hands and knees. In the darkness, his ruined nose and grunting reminded of a dangerous wild boar that I'd gone hunting with Richard Clark one day early in my marriage; sort of a bonding experience I guess. The look in his eyes wasn't human. And now I started to get scared. He wasn't just going to hurt me. I think he'd lost it and he'd kill me if he could.

I had to get up because I couldn't let him take me down again. I knew if he got me down this time, he pound me to death using his superior weight and strength.

I didn't know I could do it, but as he lunged at me I managed to lurch up and out of the way. He came down his hands and knees again, bracing himself on his left hand, his right arm out trying to catch his balance. I didn't think, I just reacted. I think I must have seen the move on some martial arts or UFC match sometime. I grabbed his right arm, held it out and came down on his back elbow and upper arms with both knees and all my weight.

I heard and felt something, maybe somethings, snap and he screamed. He rolled to and fro trying to shake me off but I held on like a bull terrier, tugging and jerking at the damned arm over and over. He finally went onto his back and before he try to kick me off, I came down with both knees on his elbow and upper arm from the other side this time.

He tried to scream but it was choked off as if he couldn't breath. I kicked the elbow again, and then again, and then just leaned on it with all my weight and kept it there while he wriggled like a fish trying to get off a hook.

Finally I let it go and fell backward. I wasn't afraid of him anymore. He held the arm to himself and just rolled back and forth on his back in the grass. He was gasping and crying.

I probably should have felt worse about what I had done to him, but the bastard had stolen my wife and probably destroyed my marriage and he'd cost me my two sons. So I had a hard time feeling too bad.

As he moaned I realized that I could still hear the faint sound of Southern Rock from the land. There were no screams, no one calling out. No one had heard anything.

I rolled back toward him and grabbed the injured right arm. He tried to swing at me, but jerking it away from him a couple of times brought screams and an end to his resistance.

"You asshole. You already broke my arm. I give, damn you. You win. I'm going to need some help, need to go to the hospital."

"In a little while, Bobby. Let's take care of some other business, first."

"Fuck you. I'll call for help myself."

After I punched his already swelling elbow a couple of times he thought better of that.

I grabbed his right hand and pulled it away from his body. He didn't have the strength to stop me. I took his little finger and held it in my right hand, with my left leaning down to immobilize his arm.

"I'm going to ask you a few questions, Bobby, and you're going to tell me the truth."

"Fuck you fuck you fuck you. Eat my dick, you Yankee cunt."

I grabbed the little finger firmly and yanked it back until I heard the joint pop and it just dangled at the end of his hand. His eyes opened wide and he would have screamed if I hadn't hit him as hard as I could in his solar plexus, knocking his air out. He coughed and gasped for air and moaned. I waited until I thought he was listening to me again.

"Every time you lie, or I don't like your answer, I'm going to break another finger, Bobby, and when I run out of fingers, I'm going to start on toes and then I'll find some other bones to work on. You understand me?"

He finally nodded, then said softly, "You're on top, Lyle, so I'll tell you whatever you want. But there will come a day when I'm on top. And when I do, I think you're just going to vanish. Your body's going to wind up in the 20-mile swamp and no one will ever know what happened to you."

"Maybe, but for right now, I want to know how long you've been fucking Diane."

He was silent for a moment.

"This time, or before?"

"I already know you were fucking her when I met her. I mean since we've been married."

He smiled. I was tempted to break another finger but I wanted to save them in case I really needed them.

"About four years."

"Four years!"

"Yeah."

"How- how did it happen. How...often?"

There was a gloating smile but it vanished and from his tone I believed his words.

"I was after her from the day after you married her. I tried everything, showed up at her work, just stopped by the house, played sad, tried to make her laugh. But she would never cheat on you. It drove me crazy.

"Then one day, about four – four and a half years ago, she came up to me as I was coming out of a 7-11. She wasn't smiling or flirty, but she asked me if I'd like to go somewhere for coffee. We didn't' do anything that day, or for another six months, but she came after me.

"And then one day we wound up at my house and she went crazy on me. She sucked me off, fucked me, made me take her asshole, tittyfucked me, did every damn thing a woman could to you. She acted like she was starving for it.

"God, it was great. I tried to get four years worth of sex in one day and we almost managed it."

He tried to laugh, but choked and had to lean his head over and spit out blood and what looked like the white sliver of a tooth.

He breathed slowly and then said, "I thought I had her back again. I thought she'd leave you. I came by your house the next day and she slugged me when I tried to grab her tit. She screamed at me and swore she'd call the cops and have me arrested for rape. I wanted to kill her, I was so mad. She was just a cheating lying whore. So I left. And I didn't see her for three months. I tried to stay away from her. Man, I was never so pissed in my life. And then one day-"

He spit again and laid his head back in the grass.

"She showed up at my place. Not a word, just walked in, dropped to her knees, unzipped me and sucked me until I came all over her. We went into the bedroom and didn't come out for 48 hours. She told me you'd taken the boys up to see your mom in Massachusetts and were going to be gone for a week. We fucked for five days off and on."

He shook his head and looked up at me with what almost seemed like a friendly smile, a guy smile in that ruin of a face.

"Shit, we're all stupid as hell when they wave pussy in our faces. I thought I had her again, but as soon as you came back, she wouldn't give me the time of day. When I came over while you were there she'd be friendly, but that was it. No touchee, no fuckee otherwise."

He tried to move the hand I had immobilized but could only wince when I put the tiniest bit of pressure on it.

"And that's the way it's been the last four years. Every three or four months she'll come around and we'll fuck our brains out for a day or two and then she goes back to you and it's as if it never happened."

I tried to process what he'd told me. This wasn't any one night stand. Four years. Four fucking years she'd been stabbing me in the back. Enjoying a life with a guy who didn't have grease under his fingernails and who gave her a good life and the only thing she had to do was put up with his boring fucking.

He screamed again and bucked upwards but I was able to hold him down until he stopped trembling.

"Sorry about that. I didn't even plan to break that one. I just lost it for a minute."

"I'm gonna kill you, slow..."

I didn't want to know, but it was like pulling a scab off a hurting sore. I had to do it. I grabbed another finger and he almost tried to hit me awkwardly before he realized I could just keep hurting him and he couldn't stop me.

"So she stayed with me for the money? Otherwise she would have left me for your big dick? Is that it?"

He moaned softly under his breath and then surprised me by laughing.

"You fucking idiot. You don't get it, do you?"

"What don't I get?"

"She never needed your money, asshole. I drive a backhoe and I make almost as much as you do, according to what she told me in bed one time. And you know that Richard and Ricki have got it all set up to split all their money before they die. In a few years she's gonna be able to buy and sell you, shithead. You're no fucking prize money wise."

"Then why?"

"She loves you, you fucking asshole. Why I'll never know."

"She loves me so she fucks you?"

"Jesus H. Christ. You don't have a fucking clue, do you? She gets more out of her vibrator than she's ever gotten from you. She told me once she could go to sleep while you're fucking her. That's how exciting YOU are. She tries to be faithful to you, but sooner or later she gets so horny she could scream and she comes to me.

"And I make her scream. You know, dumbass, I've never fucked her that I didn't make her scream when I came. I used to tease her by calling her the screamer when we dated. She was the wildest woman I ever fucked. And you put her to sleep."

He looked up at me then and for the first time in my life I was tempted to kill a man. I probably could have killed him.

I settled for snapping another finger, pressed my upper arm into his throat to choke off his scream.

When he stopped trying to scream I ease off him and grabbed his pants zipper and unzipped him. He tried to stop me but I fished his limp cock out of his pants and squeezed, hard.

"Please..." he moaned.

"Please what?" I said squeezing a little harder. It must not have been too erotic because he didn't get hard, but he did hurt.

"It occurs to me, lover boy, that maybe I can't satisfy her like you can, but I can damn well make sure you never please her or any other woman again. Just yank real hard or use that pocket knife I've got in my left pants pocket.

"You remember that guy whose wife cut his dick off years ago. He became a porno star after they sewed it back on. Well, I think I'm going to walk around the lake, throw it in the water, and with any luck some bass or turtle will swallow the damn thing. Yeah, I'd like that. Turn you into a woman."

I enjoyed the look of fear on his face. For the first time I'd really gotten through his shell. He believed I'd take his manhood. I didn't think he was the kind of man who could live with that.

All at once I wanted to hurl. I was thinking about maiming a man because I couldn't please my slut wife. He was only doing what a lot of guys would do. He wasn't betraying me. She was.

I let his dick go and he tried to roll away from me to protect his privates. I stood up and let his ruined arm and hand drop to the ground. I turned to walk away from him when he said, "You think I'm the bad guy. I'm the bastard that stole your wife and ruined your perfect marriage."

I didn't look back but it sounded like he was crying.

"You're the one who ruined everything. She was going to marry me, you know? She was going to. Those two boys of yours would have been mine. She loved me, or she would have. We had been together since junior high. We were dynamite in bed. We were the same type of people. We would have been happy.

"And then you show up with your smart mouth and good looks and talking about things she'd never seen or imagined before. And you fooled her into thinking that you were the man for her."

I looked back at him.

"You stupid bastard. I'm the best thing that ever happened to her. You just never have been able to stand it that I took her away from you."

"Yeah, guess you're right smart guy. And see how happy it's made her, and everybody else. She's tried to love you and live without sex and tried to stay in a marriage that's killing her. I lost the woman I loved and should have had. I got to sneak around to be with her and see her go home with you from these parties.

"And you – you poor fucker. You'll always be a poor second to me in bed. Every time you go to fuck her for the rest of your life, you'll know she's dreaming of me. I don't think I could stand that. But a pussy like you, you might even enjoy it....."

####### $####### ######

"You.."

She just stared at me.

"I guess he didn't want to admit that one pencil dick could mess him up so bad so he came up with that story about the bad bikers."

"Is that why?...."

"he told me everything, Diane. And I believe him. People usually don't lie when you're snapping their fingers."

"oh God."

"Four years. Four years. And he made you scream every time? Was he that much bigger than me?"

Tears rolled down her face over the smudges. I couldn't believe a part of me hated her and a large part still loved her.

"No, baby. Maybe a little, but that's not it. It's...it's hard to explain. It was that way from the first time we did it. No other man has ever affected me that way. It was like – it was like I got an electric shock when his stuck his cock inside me. That's not it, but it's the closest I can come to explaining it. And I guess, maybe, if I had told you that..."

"That I bored you to tears..."

"That you didn't excite me the way he did, maybe we could have tried some different things, some toys or even drugs, but....how could I tell you, the man I loved, that another man made sex wonderful and it was just okay with you. I knew you'd never be able to stand that. No man's ego could."

"So why didn't you leave me if he was that wonderful."

"He wasn't. It was the sex with him that was wonderful. I love you."

I reached out and touched the side of her face, wiping a tear away.

"I know you're not in love with me, but I believe you love me and our marriage. But.."

I left everything else unsaid as I stepped around her and started moving the luggage and laptop into our family Saturn. I'd be leaving her with the bigger Ford Escort for her and the kids. It took me three trips but finally I was through and I stepped back into the house. She didn't seem to have moved.