Onslaught

The connection abruptly cut off indicating that Lorraine had slammed down the phone.

Listening to the same time segment on the kitchen voice recorder revealed an anguished scream from Jenny and a shout of, "IT WASN'T LIKE THAT!"

I was a bit pissed at Lorraine. I'd asked her not to directly threaten Jennifer. It was vital that Jennifer gave up her plan but for the right motivation. If she responded to threats there was no guarantee her new desires wouldn't just be driven underground. She had to see for herself the error of her ways.

With the wonderful view of 20/20 hindsight, I realised I could probably have stopped there after just the two phone calls. Surely with three people saying she was mad Jennifer would have agreed to counselling. But my plan was on auto pilot at this stage.

While Lorraine was on the phone to Jennifer, I was on the phone to John. As soon as Lorraine had hung up on Jennifer, I quickly rang him and gave him the go.

Chapter 4 Judgement Day 9.32AM-10.03AM

John's job was to deny all of Petra's lies and tell Jennifer the truth about his feelings regarding Petra's lover and why he stuck around and put up with her humiliating behaviour. He would deny her claims that their married sex life was improved. He would beg Jenny not to tell Petra of his call explaining it could destroy his family.

She got that call at 9.32AM. I won't go through a blow by blow account of what Jenny and he discussed but will note that Jen's polite phone manner had been replaced with an abrupt, "WHAT", when he rang her. Truth be told, the pain that Jenny was obviously suffering through made it very uncomfortable for me to listen to the recordings. Jennifer was surprisingly quiet throughout this call. I judged that this was caused by utter bewilderment rather than any attentive listening on Jenny's part.

While John was playing his part, I rang my solicitor. In my previous briefing with him we had gone over what he was to say to Jennifer. The bastard sounded like he was having the time of his life.

Isn't it strange how humour intrudes in the most inappropriate times? I think it's a self-preservation reflex. A bit of humour to save your sanity perhaps. An old lawyer joke leapt into my head.

A demon is driving his hot rod through hell when he loses control and smashes into a wall and knocks a hole in it. It turns out to be the wall separating heaven and hell. God calls Satan over and asks what he is going to do about the damage. Satan looks at the hole and says, "Nothing." God responds with, "You'll be hearing from my lawyer." Satan smiles and says, "Where are you going to find a lawyer?" God realises he is defeated before the fight has even started.

I mused, is he a bastard because he is a lawyer or is he a lawyer because he is a bastard.

At the end of our call, I reminded him to ring me immediately after talking to Jennifer.

By 9.43AM, John had rung me and I had rung phase 5.

The solicitor's job was to tell Jennifer that he had heard that she had been ill advised on the outcome of any divorce she caused by her infidelity. He was to relate what he heard from me on her idea of a split, then relay the advice his colleague gave me. I had asked him to slip both the words infidelity and adultery into the conversation as I really couldn't decide which of them was the most emotive. He pulled it off.

Listening to the recording I don't know how much of his advice she heard as she was ranting throughout most of his speech. Trooper that he is he just kept going with that even, deep voice of his.

He had rung me as soon as he finished and wanted to speak but I quickly shut him down and rang our family doctor to give him his cue.

This time, when he rang Jen at 9.58AM, she answered with the total silence you'd expect of the condemned prisoner looking up the steps of the gallows.

After a very brief greeting, the good doctor launched into a prepared speech expounding the need for the gentlemen in any extramarital relationship with another man's wife to wear condoms to protect her from STDs. He was to go into some detail about the wide selection of such diseases and the health and treatment of each. He was also to remind her that as the straying wife she held a duty of care not to bring home these diseases to her husband.

I say he WAS to say all that. 108 seconds into the call Jenny let out a strange, strangled cry and hung up.

After the medico had rung me I made my last call of the day to Father Wayne who confirmed he was standing at our front door. It was 10.03AM on judgement day.

I cast my mind back three days to that Wednesday morning.

With the last of the calls and a difficult piece of co-ordination complete I had finally relaxed. I could imagine the scene in my old home. In my minds eye, I could see a very distraught Jenny, still in her dressing gown after being woken up. She would be devastated by the five very intense and emotionally wracking phone calls.

She would have had no breakfast and absolutely no time to process the calls since the first call just after 8.30AM. I could see her now opening the door to gentle Father Wayne, our spiritual guide for the last 12 years.

Chapter 5 Judgement Day 10.04AM and beyond

It had been just over an hour later that I got the expected call from Father Wayne. "Come home she needs you." I was already parked outside our house. He met me at the door and said "please forgive her and call me if you need help." He then left.

I had imagined all kinds of responses from Jenny when I walked in the door. From remorse to anger. Remorse would show I had been successful. Anger might indicate remorse and embarrassment or a lack of success. Never in my wildest imaginings did I expect what I did get.

Jenny was sitting slumped at the kitchen table with her head on her arms looking to the side towards the window. She was a physical mess. Eyes puffy and bloodshot, hair all over the place and a torn dressing gown. I never did find out how that happened.

I called her name softly and sat down next to her. She didn't acknowledge my voice, touch or even my very existence. I looked in her eyes and was terrified by what I saw. I saw absolutely nothing. The lights were on but no one was home. My Jenny had gone.

I immediately knew that I had gone too far. I had planned to shock her but instead had destroyed her.

I called an ambulance and they took her away. I stayed with her all that day and that night at the hospital but in the morning, when they transferred her to the mental facility, I had to be parted from her.

I explained to the resident Psychiatrist what I had done. I played him my recordings and was honest with my part in her damage. To his credit he didn't judge me. He didn't have to. My self-condemnation was clear enough.

He now had enough to commence treating Jenny. He explained that she was in a catatonic state. He was good at explaining things in layman's terms, I'll give him that. Catatonia is one of the brains defence mechanisms. When the mind gets absolutely overwhelmed, it sends your consciousness away for the metaphorical lie down somewhere quiet. It is a state familiar to all skilled brain washers. Destroy the old mind then implant a new one.

So here I am. At home, cut off from the love of my life and with a very guilty conscience.

Despite how hard it is to listen to all the recordings, I am forcing myself. I can feel myself heading for catatonia myself now. The light at the end of my tunnel that I am concentrating on is the goal of finding out what finally triggered Jenny's downfall. If I can find that out, I can tell the Psychiatrist and maybe that will help Jenny's treatment. If only that egotistical little bastard of part of my soul wasn't congratulating me on a job well done. Maybe then I would have had some sleep in the last three days.

I was convinced the final trigger was in the early conversation that Jenny had with Father Wayne. I didn't have to listen to that recording again, it was clearly etched in my memory.

Once in the house he had confronted Jenny with the fact that he knew her plans. She had again denied it vehemently and convincingly. There was several minutes of quiet while the good reverend got his laptop out and fired it up.

Within 30 seconds of starting listening to the recording I had given him, all hell broke loose. You know, the one starting, "Have I got this right? After 21 blissful years of marriage you want to prove your sexual attractiveness by taking a lover or lovers, outside of our marriage and you want my approval before you do it. Is that right?"

There was no doubt that was the moment of Jenny's collapse. I may not be a detective but the screams and incoherent babbling gave it away. Surely the doctor would want to know which part of that recording and its implications mattered. Was it the fact that she had just been caught barefaced lying to the gentle man of god. I mean, it is one thing to lie to your daughter, mother, solicitor and doctor. But one of god's representative on earth?

Or was it that she actually believed her own delusions at this point, remember, she had had absolutely no chance to process since her lies started at 8.32AM. Having her own ears hear the recording must have brought that house of cards crashing down.

I just couldn't decide and it was eating me.

Epilogue

Jenny was institutionalised for nearly six weeks. For the first three I couldn't see or talk to her. The doctors wanted total control of all her sensory inputs.

After the three weeks her chief shrink wanted to confirm that her mother, Laura and I all intended to forgive Jenny. He didn't say as much but it was obvious that contact with Jen was contingent on a yes to that one. He also stressed that negative influences such as Petra and Joan should be kept right out of the picture.

The last three weeks completed the re-build and allowed the medics to get her HRT doses optimised. Without understanding all the big words it seemed that Jenny's psychotic episode had been triggered by pre-menopausal hormone changes which were treatable. Yes, he did confirm it was a type of insanity.

The shrink also postulated that dear Petra had exerted an almost hypnotic influence on Jenny due to her vulnerable state.

Whatever the case, by the end of the treatment I was 99.9% convinced it was all over. The recorders staying in place covered the 0.01%. I was finally seeing the remorse that I needed to relax my guard. A month after her release she is still trying to kill me with sex and affection.

She copied a Spike Milligan quote and uses it at least weekly. "I've got a certificate to prove I'm sane, do you?"

Like I said, I kept the phone taps in place. The most amusing call was from Petra. Once Jenny heard who it was she went into a towering rage. She called her twenty synonyms for slut, some of them I hadn't heard before and had to google. She finally hung up with the wish that Petra would "fuck off and die." All very un-Jenny like language and behaviour.

Joan went in a gentler but no less firm way.

I provided John with emotional support in his final four months with Petra. Boy I loved that. He started off with an ultimatum to her to stop fucking around on him. They fought and he asked her to leave. She fell into his trap and left for a month before crawling back and begging forgiveness. She promised to be a good girl from then on. Three months later, a well-advertised trip out of town for him with a video camera in their bedroom gave him the last piece he needed to end his charade of a marriage.

One piece of luck was her lover's wife coming to the family home and bitch slapping Petra in front of her kids. That was one of the most productive phone calls John reckons he ever made.

He played it very well. The assault, Petra abandoning the family home for a month, the recording he made of him begging her to give up her lover, the video footage plus the fact that he had already reduced his work hours to school times tipped the judge in his favour. He got a 60/40 split, kept the house, got custody of the kids and she had to pay child support. On the day of the divorce he came over and personally thanked Jenny for the reduced work hours idea.

Bill tried to get me to meet him, I refused. I like to think I respect everyone's right of choice but I know I have trouble even talking to people I have absolutely no respect for.

I knew my own healing was complete when my sense of humour finally returned. Sitting alone in the lounge one night sipping a single malt, I was reviewing the whole episode in my head.

"Fuck Jenny is lucky I didn't know the Pope's phone number."

The end.

*****

Those that don't think that this and my first offering are BTB stories have obviously never seen someone have a nervous breakdown. Asylums around the world are full of people that have never recovered from one.

Thank you for your feedback on 'Grim Reality'. Loved it all, both good and bad. I hope it improved this one. Although when feedback varied from "Brilliant" to "Crap", it can be hard to decide how to improve. Remember it is only fiction though. The author isn't Dave. Dave is made up.

One negative comment about feedback though. If you put a comment in 'Anonymously', I have no way of responding to your thoughts. If this feedback is nasty and not meant constructively, that just makes me think you have a tiny winkie and need to grow a pair. Sorry that's just a design flaw in me. Perhaps the most hurtful feedback was calling me a Brit. I'm not.

I know there are many Literotica and real world clichés above. It is quite deliberate.

The above is loosely based on Adriannalovestodoit's 'That Wasn't What Should have Happen' (her spelling mistake, not mine). A great read that I thoroughly recommend.

Yes I really do work in the mining industry and my ability to compartmentalise logic and emotion is very real. I have had more than a few conversations with psychologists and counsellors about it. Usually just after a question like, "How did you feel when you were giving CPR to that guy for an hour that had cerebral fluid pumping out of his ears even though you knew it was a complete waste of time but did it because his brother was standing right there?" Two of them have outright said I was wrong, the other's eyes betrayed the fact they didn't believe it. I know it's true. How else can ambulance officers do what they do day in day out? How else can police officers rock up to people's door and tell them their parent or child has been beheaded in a traffic accident without themselves breaking down. Just think, for a moment, what those guys do and honour them.