Simon Says Revenge Ch. 01

This is my version of an ending to the story "Danielle's Revenge" by Damon X. While the version by FinishTheDamnStory had its own appeal, I found the idea of criminal prosecution of the wife and her partner-in-crime to be far more satisfying myself.

My wrists chafed at my bonds in the darkness, even as I wondered how the fuck I was gonna get free. Then again, with Danielle now out of the room, and likely to be gone for a good while, I had some time to work out a solution. I recalled that I had a pair of hair clippers from a family shaving kit and it struck me that they should be powerful enough to cut my restraints. After that, of course, I would be out the door and give my vicious bitch of a wife a nasty surprise of her own.

Any love that I had for her was now twisted with anger and hate at her despicable cruelty. My arousal was only due to having seen a sexy woman get fucked in so many ways, but that required part of my brain to forget that this was part of her psychological torture plan. She was clearly demented or insane or something. Perhaps she had borderline personality disorder. I wouldn't be shocked if she did.

In any case, I hobbled my way to the bathroom, turned on the lights, and sure enough found my clippers. It took no small amount of work to cut through the bonds, but once I freed my hands, liberating my feet was much easier. I stared at the chafe marks left by the restraints and decided to keep the bonds themselves as evidence. I also knew that I needed to go to the hospital. I didn't know what kind of drugs Danielle had used on me to put me under long enough for her to tie me up, and there was a legitimate concern about their side effects.

I found my phone, checked the bank account, and moved as much as I could into another account that I had thankfully never closed or mentioned to Danielle yet. There were sounds for that. For one thing, I didn't know how much I would have to pay a lawyer for his or her fee and I would definitely need one. For a second, I didn't know how much the doctor co-pay would be, either.

Furthermore, I wanted Danielle to deal with the first shocks of my revenge, which would be financial in nature. Two could play that revenge game, couldn't they? She was gonna be on her own henceforth, anyway, no loving hubby to pay her way for anything at all. It would be a case of "goodbye, dear," indeed, to use her own parting words to me.

I was never into the whole "burn the bitch, burn the bastard" mentality in the past, but now, now I wanted to douse that stupid cunt with gasoline, light her on fire, and then piss on the ashes. Of course, that was metaphorical..mostly. All I knew was that I was Simon Avanti, Jr. and I was about to teach my darling wife why we Italians invented vendettas (okay, half-Italian, half-Jew, but who's counting?). I was Simon in any case, and what Simon said was supposed to go, right?

I quickly gathered whatever else I could, rushed out the door, piled into my Jeep, and headed straight for the Urgent Care facility posthaste. I doubted that I even bothered to lock the front door, but who cared? It wasn't my home anymore. I wanted nothing more to do with that place. Danielle and her loverboy Ramone could keep it, for all I cared.

That was when it hit me, why Ramone was so familiar...he was my cousin! Ramone Divoli, of all people! Ugh, what a traitor! That would make family reunions rough, if I ever bothered to show up for them. I had been a little too groggy to remember him earlier, but now I was much more alert, thank Heaven. Well, the family could spoil his rotten ass, but they could do so without me. They had always coddled him, but I never did. Maybe that he was so eager to make me suffer.

When I got to the Urgent Care Center, I stopped in the parking lot long enough to take several pics of my injuries, just in case I needed them for documentation. Oh, yes, I was a methodical prick when it came to revenge and Danielle was about to learn what that would entail. Others might act on impulse or white-hot rage, but I would act with a cold fury and meticulously plan every detail down to a science.

I was in the waiting room for a good while, of course, at which point I started getting texts from Danielle. Where was I, she asked. I ignored her. Why had I left the front door unlocked? I ignored that one, too. The next one was...why had I moved money from the joint-account and why were my possessions gone? I ignored that still, as if I never even saw it. The phone rang. I let it go to voicemail. It rang again, same result. It rang a third time and I could see that she had the temerity to leave an actual voicemail this time.

"Honey, if you're hearing this, please call me back. We can work through this. I just had to teach you a lesson, that was all. You said it yourself. We can work through this. We couldn't until I taught you the lesson. Now that I have, we can work it out. Please, don't do anything rash. I didn't mean the 'goodbye dear' part as permanent. The Ramone thing..it was a one-night stand, that's all. Please come home! You're starting to scare me, Simon."

"Mr. Avanti?" the nurse called me up by then.

She was a very pretty Asian lady with a more slender physique or build than I usually preferred, but that was okay. Anyone who didn't remind me of my nasty wife was far more attractive to me all of the sudden. In any case, I showed her the chafe marks and she looked at me in real shock as well as concern. She also noted an elevated pulse and high blood pressure, both systolic and diastolic. Well, duh..I thought..that tends to happen when one is drugged, bound, and held hostage in one's own home.

"Mr. Avanti..this is..very troubling. I'll let Dr. Habib know about this for sure. This wasn't playful bedroom bondage, was it? This was abduction and false imprisonment. Those are crimes, sir. You've been a victim of a crime. Dr. Habib will have to report this matter to the police. Were you drugged at all? I didn't see any evidence of sexual assault, so hopefully we can rule that out, but perhaps we should do a rape kit, just in case," the nurse, whose name read Pham, informed me now.

"No..I wasn't raped. But I didn't agree to be tied up at all. I was basically hogtied, as you can see from the ligature marks. Yes, I believe that I was drugged, because I came to from an unconscious state already in captivity. My wife..she did this. With help from her..partner," I told Pham, eager to throw Danielle and Ramone under the bus now.

It was an eternity until the poking and prodding, which included a blood and urine screen, finished, and Dr. Habib entered the room. She was a seriously gorgeous Middle Eastern woman, though her professional attire minimized her sultry sex appeal to a limited extent when she was all business as with right now. Her eyes were as wide as saucers as she read what information she could find on her chart. It was very alarming indeed. She even looked a bit traumatized from reading the chart, as if it brought back really nasty memories or flashbacks.

"Mr. Avanti, this is deeply disturbing, I don't mind telling you that. It appears to me, from little information I can collect, from the evidence, that you've been the victim of a serious and violent crime, not just a little conjugal horseplay. You said that your wife, Mrs. Danielle Avanti, drugged and restrained you? She said that she had a partner. Was the partner a man or a woman? Were they..sexually intimate with your wife? Were either or both of them sexually intimate with you during this..crime?

"That's clearly what it was. At the very least, reckless endangerment, false imprisonment, kidnapping, assault, depraved indifference, domestic violence, the list of criminal charges potentially invoked is legion. This is also a very serious betrayal by one's own spouse, and no, I don't necessarily mean the adultery part. I mean abduction, captivity, drugging, and endangering your health with drugs whose side effects we may not fully realize for months, maybe even years.

"I will have to report this as a criminal matter to the authorities, you know. I'm required to do so by law. Mr. Avanti, I am deeply sorry that you endured what you clearly did. Sorry if I have to hit you with so many questions, but I have to know the scope of the assault committed against you for both your medical needs and evidence of a criminal act. Several in this case. If I were you, I would recommend pressing charges and seeking a restraining order from a judge. Your spouse is evidently a danger both to you, to others, and to herself," Dr. Habib then shocked me by hugging me a little.

"Sorry, didn't mean to be so..familiar. It's just that..it reminds me of things that were done to me and my family back in Libya after Gaddafi fell. Trust me. Some nasty stuff went down. Like me, you may very well suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of this incident, too. It's obvious that you're telling the truth and I can see that you're still in shock and your nerves are on edge," Dr. Habib even cried a little, as this situation hit a little too close to home.

"She..said that this..was..revenge for me sleeping with her friend, before we got engaged, when we weren't even exclusive yet. I have this..voicemail, if you wish to hear it," I offered to play it for the doctor, "she..in her words, wanted to 'teach me a lesson' about cheating on her and what she could do to me if I cheated on her again. She had..sexual relations with him, oral, vaginal, and anal, the last something that she denied me, while I was bound and forced to watch. She even stepped on my leg and bent just enough to display the..deposits for me to see for myself," I explained, making the doctor's nose wrinkle in disgust.

"Mr. Avanti, whatever you did or didn't do before or after marriage, your wife had no right to take the law into her own hands and become some kind of..sexual vigilante or whatever. She actually violated you in very serious fashion and it is plain to me that she will have to face criminal charges for this. Felonies, in fact, in this state and most other states. You might be in a pickle, since they can't force you to testify against your own wife, but you are also the victim here.

"Anyway, the toxicology report will likely be damning, too. I've ordered a full battery of tests and trust me, we'll get to the bottom of whatever drugs were used to render you unconscious long enough to be held against your will. I would seriously recommend a counselor for trauma and an attorney to file for divorce. This is not a healthy relationship, sir, and she is likely a seriously mentally ill person. These are not normal behaviors, not even for women scorned. We're not all like that, not at all, trust me, sir," Dr. Habib insisted, as sickened as she was by this barbaric behavior of my wife's.

"Thank you...Doctor..Habib. Can I be released yet?" I asked her now.

"Um..I'm afraid not. The police will need to interview you and receive the evidence that I'm providing them of your drugging, kidnapping, and assault. This is now a criminal investigation, you do know that now, right? Also, here's the number for my divorce lawyer. He's a real shark, that one. There's a number for my counselor..a trauma therapist, if you will. Sadly, there aren't even close to as many facilities for battered husbands and boyfriends as for wives and girlfriends. Mind if I ask how long have you been married?" Dr. Habib probed a little more now.

"Six..weeks," I gulped.

"Well, as bad as this is, count yourself lucky that you got out early in your abusive or toxic marriage. Some of us were stuck for years in misery and pain. It's no way to live, that of a battered spouse or any other kind of victim," Dr. Habib then showed cigarette burns on her arms left by someone, "I was an actual slave, bought and sold in the open-air markets of Tripoli, raped, whipped, and worse, believe it or not."

The police were rather less sensitive and caring in their tone, but as they interviewed me and saw my marks, the bonds, and heard the voicemail, their reactions changed. When they saw the lab report, one of them, Detective Reuben Kaplan personally shook my hand and got me a burger, fries, and a Sprite (anything else would have caused me to puke right then). He was truly shaken by the proof that I had indeed suffered that way.

"My..sister..Esther..she was..abused by her ex-husband, not unlike this, in some ways worse. It's a gut-punch to see this happen to someone else, including a healthy man substantially younger than me. Let me assure you, Mr. Avanti, that if someone did to me what your wife and her lover did to you..I'm not sure that even I could avoid taking the law into my own hands. And I'm a cop, so that should tell you something. It's not the adultery by itself..it's the goddamn kidnapping. Sick," the detective assured me now.

When I was finally released, I didn't bother trying to find friends at whose places to crash. I simply rented a room just barely inside the city limits and crashed with my door firmly locked and a chair in front of it. I didn't want to take any chances. I also kept my phone off and planned to get rid of it soon so that I couldn't be tracked at all by my evil bitch of a wife.

I called in sick to work the next day and didn't spell it out, just that I had been a victim of a violent crime and it left me injured and ill. Jamie was furious when she heard that, not at me, of course, but at whoever did it. She asked me if my wife helped me through it at all, and that was when I broke down.

"She's..she's the..one..who..did this to me," I cried, feeling a lot more anguish than I actually thought at first.

"Jesus Christ, Simon! I knew that cunt was trouble, didn't I tell you that? You should be like me. Avoid monogamy. It's a fucking trap. You're a lot better not trusting people with so much power over your life like that. Take the week off, honey. You'll need that long just to get the divorce and everything else ready, trust me. You'd be a wreck at work, a hot mess, anyway.

"And crash at my place, babe. Save yourself the motel rates. My boyfriends all know about each other and that I entertain other men, believe me that. Unlike her, I won't ask your whereabouts and I won't charge for your stay unlike the motel. Besides, didn't I always joke that I was your 'work wife,' anyway? I'll even give you a bath," Jamie encouraged me, much to my surprise.

Was my boss actually hitting on me now? Well, weirder things had already happened to me that week, hadn't they? This was already the week from Hell, I decided, as I hung up with her and called the lawyer that Dr. Habib favored, a Yuri Natansky. I just hoped that he was every bit the shark that the good doctor claimed. In any case, Jamie wasn't likely to be worse than Danielle, was she?