Snowballed

***Author's note. Just an FYI to protect my butt; I've intentionally misspelled more popular brand names. Not sure if it would matter if I used the brand name, but I leaned towards the side of caution. I hope you enjoy.***

*****

Airports. Tyler Bond hated them. They were a necessary evil for his work, but he loathed them. They were hurting his marriage. They contained masses of people waiting around to be shipped and treated like cattle, by air, to their destination. Realistically, the experience was ten times better than it used to be for him. Maybe he should realign his thoughts on that and just accept that it is what it is, and he was well paid to endure it.

Ten years ago, he had to stand in line to check in, then stand in line at security and then stand in line to board the plane, where you would have to stand in line again while waiting for those in front of you put their luggage away in the overhead compartments, while he slowly moseyed his way to the back of the plane.

Now, he didn't have to speak to anyone if he didn't want to. With the experience of his own and other savvy travelers, he never checked luggage anymore because he packed conservatively. TSA-Pre reduced his wait times at security drastically in most airports. His years of traveling cross-country once a month, plus another shorter trip each month had built his status with his favored airlines to where he usually didn't have to sit in the back of the plane anymore and could board after the first-class passengers. His credit card even gave him lounge access now, which there at the Miami airport was quite nice.

While, the experience was much better now, it still wasn't something he enjoyed; usually. Today, however, in the lounge, Veronica, an attractive, middle-aged woman, appearing several years younger than him, wearing a frilly, low-cut dress, covered partially by a cardigan when she wanted, was chatting with him about her recent travel experiences. Towards the end of the conversation, she had allowed the cardigan to not cover quite as much. Mouth-watering. He happily and candidly shared his own travel-war stories too, and at the end of their chat, she handed him a business card.

He looked briefly at the card, not wanting to take his eyes off Veronica, and discovered that she was from Denver, also, which led to several more minutes of conversation. Instead of catching his flight, she had one more stop to make before going home. Probably for the best. They parted for their respective gates having had a pleasant chat.

Was she flirting with him? Maybe. Probably. He wished he had recognized that while they were speaking. Decades of marriage had dulled his senses regarding flirting. Damn. Not that anything would or would have come from that. He had been one-hundred-percent faithful during his twenty-six years of marriage and didn't have plans for that to change.

This had been one of his cross-country trips, and despite his dislike of airports, he was in a decent mood due to the earlier lounge conversation and some success on his trip, which would pave the way to an extra bonus next quarter. He had just sat down on his plane, in the larger economy plus seat, to return home, when his phone rang. He was about to put it into airplane mode when it happened. It was his wife, Rebecca. Sigh.

It was very early in Denver for her to be awake, much less calling. Given the hour of the morning, he wondered if it was important. Probably. His finger hovered over the phone to answer; then he turned the phone off.

If it had been one of his kids, he certainly would have answered it, but whatever that bat of a wife of his wanted could wait. He admitted that the travel, which started ten years ago, though limited, had been hard on them, but it shouldn't have caused so many arguments. He was rarely gone more than six nights a month, but he guessed that had become too much. Women!

He wished his wife were more understanding. When he told her about the new position all those years ago and the increase in salary and bonus, his wife practically pushed him out the door, and then she would welcome him, and his money, home with open arms, and legs. Now, even with his efforts to wine and dine her more and spend more time with her, she had become distant. Recently, his boss told him that if he would accept a new position, which required more travel, he could make even more money. He hadn't mentioned that offer to his wife. To do so would serve no good purpose.

The whole situation saddened him, but he still had his kids, who were fantastic. He loved his children. His daughter, Jamie, had just entered pharmacy school in the fall, and his son, Mike, was grinding through summer school to get a head start on his junior year in engineering, like his dad. Both parents were expectedly proud. He missed attending their events and missed having them underfoot. He guessed Rebecca did too, as she has seemed sad lately. Whatever their current troubles, they had raised two exceptional kids; smart, fun, hardworking, selfless, humorous. They had received many complements on them over the years. He wished he could see more of them.

With the children now having places of their own nearby, he had thought of downsizing from that big-assed house. Rebecca wouldn't hear of it. In addition to her work at a hospital as one of their finance execs, she was on multiple charity boards, and the house, neighborhood and neighbors fit her image. A little extra house and yard maintenance compared to a smaller house was one of the sacrifices Tyler was expected to make for his wife's social standing. Sigh.

The flight languished as it often does, or more accurately, he was languishing on the long flight. He wasn't in the mood for a movie, and he didn't get much sleep during the trip, so he decided to close his eyes for a few minutes while he could.

It was the bump of the plane touching the ground that had awakened him. He was surprised that he had slept almost the whole trip.

He turned his phone back on, and it looked like something had blown up. Voice mails and messages from everyone that was close to him. He rang his daughter, "My God, Dad. Thank goodness you called."

"Jamie, you knew I was on a plane. What's going on? Everyone has been trying to get a hold of me, but no one has told me anything."

"Well, I'm not going to either at the moment. Stop by my place, since it is on your way home. Mike will be here, too."

"Jamie, you can't leave me like this. Are you and your brother okay? Is your mother okay? Is anyone hurt?"

"I'm sorry, Daddy. It's just a big mess. No one is hurt. Well, no one we love. I'll explain what I know when I see you."

What the hell?

Tyler made record time from Denver International to his daughter's place near the university. He knocked hurriedly on the door, and she was almost in tears when he walked in. He saw his son sitting solemnly in one of her chairs.

"What's wrong, Baby?"

"Oh, Daddy. We're so sorry. It's a huge mess."

Mike spoke up, "More like a clusterfuck."

"Tell me; what happened?"

Jamie continued, "We didn't mean for any of this to happen. It just sort of snowballed."

"Didn't mean for what to happen?"

"Well, we meant for some of it to happen, but not like this."

"Honey, you haven't told me anything, yet. Tell me!"

"Okay. Okay. It started about a month ago when you were on your last trip to Boston. I was going to drive over and visit Mom at dinnertime, and as I approached, I saw a strange Teslass pulling into your garage spot, which was odd. I didn't recognize the car or know who it could be. From the street, I could see that the lights in the house were on, and by the way the shadows moved, I saw someone walking through the house towards the garage.

"I called mom on her cell, and she didn't answer. I waited a few more minutes and called her again. When she did answer, I asked her if she was home, and she said that she was still at work and would talk to me later. Obviously, I suspected this was a lie, so I hung up and watched the house a little longer wondering what to do. After a while, I pulled my car out of sight and snuck to look in the garage window. Mom's car was there along with the Teslass.

"I was furious. I returned to my car, called Mike and told him what I saw. I wanted to know who was with mom. With my anger stoked, I watched the first six hours for him to leave, and Mike came and watched until he left at 7:00am the next morning. Mike followed him to his work at a large office building in Cherry Creek, walked in a few minutes later and asked the security guard if he recognized the man that just entered. He gave Mike a name, and Mike called me.

"We didn't know what to do. I called mom the next morning, not happy that she didn't return my call, and have been cool towards her ever since. On your last trip, we were watching, and the same thing happened. So, Mike and I decided to do something about it.

Mike jumped in, "I was there when you checked all the smoke detectors a few weeks ago, and when I saw the one in the garage, I got an idea, which we thought was funny at the time. I guess it isn't funny now.

"We were afraid to tell you, because we knew you would want to catch them in the act and would probably kill the bastard and wind up killing mom, too; either accidentally or intentionally and land yourself in jail. We didn't want that. We wanted to think of a way to out them and embarrass them at the same time.

"I suggested to Jamie that I sneak into the garage around midnight and cause one of those unexpected sparks that's known to happen from time to time with electric cars to create enough smoke to set off the alarm. With the smoke detectors in good working order, I didn't think much would happen, except the fire department showing up.

Tyler replied, "I guess this means that you didn't know it was a heat detector, not a smoke detector in the garage."

Mike had a surprised look on his face and said, "Oh, shit. That's why it took so long for the alarm to go off."

Tyler shook his head.

Jamie jumped in, "We thought that the fire department having to come would be embarrassing, but not enough, so I sort of got involved, too."

Tyler looked stunned at all the different implications of what his kids told him began to sink in. He asked, "So it sounds like my marriage has burnt to the ground. Is our house still there?"

Jamie replied, "What? Oh, yeah. Well, most of it."

"Oh, God!"

"I visited the house after mom went to work both times and both times one of mom's magnum bottles of wine was in the trash. I know she likes to keep a bottle on chill most of the time, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to add to their embarrassment."

"It's really easy to get Viagoro or its equivalent online these days, so I ordered some. You know that I'm studying to be a pharmacist, and with my degree in chemistry it wasn't hard to convert the pills into a liquid."

Tyler interjected, "you didn't."

"I'm afraid I did. Yesterday afternoon, I snuck into the house. I looked at the wine cooler and mom had her magnum bottle in the vertical slot already opened, resealed and standing. It appeared that only about a glass or two was missing, so I poured in my concoction, swirled it around and returned it, carefully leaving no trace that I was there.

"We thought that they would have to run out of the house when the fire department showed up, and he wouldn't be able to hide his erection, which would expose her and her lover to all the neighbors."

Mike said, "Just before midnight, I crawled through a window in the garage that I had unlocked the last time I visited. It took a while but using the charging port on the car and some tools, I was able to create an arc repeatedly enough that the metal around the area became hot. I don't know if his car was defective or what, but suddenly a shower of sparks started. I knew that would set off the smoke alarm, or so I though, and I got the hell out of there.

"Apparently, after I left, it did more than that. I never thought the actual battery would catch on fire. I guess it did, because before the fire department could get there, not only was his car on fire, but so was mom's. By now the house alarm was going crazy and the whole neighborhood could hear.

Jamie said, "You know how flustered mom gets when she's upset. It's like her brain simply disconnects from her body. This is where the story gets interesting."

Tyler said, "More interesting than my wife cheating on me and my house burning down?"

Jamie continued, "We told you it didn't burn down."

"Oh, great."

"Anyway, during the few minutes I was allowed to talk to mom this morning, she told me that she jumped out of bed when she heard the alarm. She shook her lover, Eric, but he wouldn't wake up. She knew he had drunk a lot, but she couldn't wake him. She thought he was dead and became hysterical. She called 911 from the house phone and started yelling 'Fire! Call an ambulance!' Then she grabbed him by the ankles and started pulling him out of the bedroom and towards the exit...not realizing or thinking about their both being ass naked.

"He was too heavy for her to lift down the stairs, so she kept dragging him. Again, she wasn't thinking, so he was face down. Remember my telling you that there was a carpet tack near the entrance to your bedroom that had popped up enough to snag one of my socks a few months ago when I was visiting? Well, it seems that either you didn't fix it, or it or another one popped back up, because guess what; Mom drug Eric across that area and he must have been heavy enough, or it popped up more, and it caught him.

"This is where him drinking all that Viagoro with the wine comes into play. Not only did the carpet tack slice his testicles, which were being drug underneath him, but his pecker was still hard, and the tack sliced it and all the way up his abdomen and face too. Being somewhat dark in the house, and his being unconscious, Mom didn't know this and continued to drag him down the stairs." Bop. Bop. Bop.

"I almost feel bad for the dude. In addition to his three foot long scratch, which was bleeding profusely from his groin, he has carpet burns from his balls to his nose, which must have busted open when it landed going from the bottom step onto the tile floor in the kitchen." Thwop.

"I'm sure being drug across that tile and out the front door didn't feel very good either; especially when his head went across the threshold and banged off the concrete porch and down the stairs onto the sidewalk" Bop. Bop. Thwop. "It looks like he has road-rash and a nasty gash on his face."

Tyler wasn't feeling too bad about this at the moment and replied, "You don't say."

Mike took over the story, "The house alarm must have woken the rest of the neighborhood, because it seems there was quite the audience when Mom dragged her lover, both of them ass naked, out the front door, in front of everyone. Timothy from across the street even videoed the scene on his phone and sent it to me. Watch this."

Tyler couldn't believe what he was seeing. On Mike's phone was a video of his wife, backing naked out of the front of the house, and sure enough, Eric's head was bopping off the concrete on the way down the steps, while Rebecca continued to drag him. Either her adrenaline was really going, or she was stronger than he realized. The EMS and fire department arrived immediately after.

He watched as the crews ran into the house to open the garage door and began hosing everything down in the garage and around that area of the house. An EMS approached his naked wife with an emergency blanket to cover her and rolled Eric over. His bleeding pecker was still hard and flopping around for everyone to see. Tyler could tell that he won that comparison versus her lover. Whew.

Mike told him, "Did you know that those electric vehicles will send an alert to your phone when something odd happens to your car? Apparently, Eric's wife, Francine, received a message, and seeing that her husband's car was at someone's house, instead of at the airport, where it was supposed to be, she came to investigate."

As Tyler continued to watch, he saw that they couldn't revive Eric. He was alive, but unconscious. They brought a gurney from the EMS vehicle, but before they could strap him in, Francine appeared and flipped it over, causing her husband to go flying, pecker first, onto the pavement. He was going to need more than a few stiches to take care of that and the new cut on his head. Pity.

Tyler couldn't remember ever seeing anyone so angry. She landed several good kicks to his groin before they could drag her away from him, still kicking. When they put him back onto the gurney, his pecker, still bleeding, now looked to be crooked, where it wasn't a few minutes ago. He wondered if Eric was awake when they tried to fix THAT. He hoped so.

Rebecca stood there aghast as there were at least a dozen or so of her socially adept neighbors watching the tragic comedy unfold. Francine turned on Rebecca, but rather than hitting her, she yanked the blanket away, leaving Rebecca naked again for at least a minute, until another blanket could be located, and she could be recovered. Having seen his wife naked on their front yard, Tyler thought, "damn, I'm going to miss those tits." However, the neighbors certainly weren't missing them, nor her landing strip. Safe to say her care of her privates was no longer...um...private. Shame.

When the officers arrived, the blaze appeared to be mostly under control, except for Eric's car, which was still spitting sparks and smoldering. Francine, practically foaming at the mouth, was yelling at the police to arrest Rebecca. On what charge? Nobody knew, but an officer led her, visibly shaken, to the back of a squad car simply to keep her away from Francine and the onlookers.

Jamie said, "We knew Eric was married to Francine, but we didn't know she was the daughter of the district attorney. It seems like she, or he, had enough pull that they decided to take Mom to the station and put her in an interrogation room the rest of the night, wearing nothing but that blanket. They let her go around 6:00am, which was when she tried to call you, but you didn't answer." And some people say God isn't merciful.

"The problem is that because Eric didn't wake up right away, they did a toxicology on him and the only odd thing they found was trace amounts of the Viagoro. When his wife heard that, she went ballistic because he has a heart condition and would never take something like that; or so she said. The medics said it was a good thing the fire happened because it meant he got to the hospital early enough for them to prevent him from going into a coma; otherwise it could have really gotten bad."

Tyler asked, "worse than this?"

Mike jumped in, "The police returned Mom to the interrogation room and went back to the house this morning to try to gather some kind of evidence, but the firemen knocked the bottle and glasses onto the floor during the fire, smashing them. With all the water and destruction of the bottles and the wine residue, there isn't any uncontaminated evidence to collect. I stopped by earlier and the only thing there for the police to see was the blood trail down the steps and out the door. I suspect they are just rattling her cage now. Everyone thinks he took a Viagoro, even though he wasn't supposed to, and without any evidence, I'll be surprised if they hold her much longer."

"Also, they were able to haul the Teslass out of the garage, and it's been taken away. Francine has been all over the news this morning. It hasn't been pretty."

Tyler asked, "Where is your mother now?"

Jamie said, "She's still at the police station. They said they would call us when we could go and get her. I'm sorry, Daddy. We should have just told you instead of our trying to get even. We were so angry and just made a bad situation worse."