When the Shooting Stops

This is my entry for Crime & Punishment 2023 Story Event! Hope you enjoy and thanks to soflabbwlover for organizing the event!

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My wife should have died that day.

No, wait, hang on.

If there's one thing I've learned from this whole ordeal, it's that some jackass on the internet will take anything I write in the absolute worst possible way.

When I say "should," I'm not wishing that she died; I mean that it's amazing that she didn't. But if I'm being completely honest? My life would probably have been a lot easier if she had. That's another thing I've learned: if people are going to quote you out of context and twist your words, you might as well just say what you mean anyways. So, yeah. The fact that she survived the shooting meant I got a lot of shit that I shouldn't.

The shooting itself should have just been a blip. Or, I suppose, it shouldn't have. Every shooting, big or small, should be driving our public officials to fucking do something useful. But in terms of the nuthouse that we live in these days? It "should" have been a blip.

I'm not going to name the shooter; fuck that guy. His name should have died with him. We'd all be better off if we didn't give psychos like that the press they want. Of course, our society and our media, whether that's mainstream, citizen, or social media, won't do that on any level that matters. There's no rep to be made in forbearance.

Similarly, I'm not going to say why he did it. He could have been an incel, a white supremacist, a religious extremist, a nutcase, or a jilted lover. Doesn't matter. Regardless of which flavor of asshole he was, six people died and nine went to the hospital. A two-year-old will never know her mom. A father had to watch his son die. A couple dozen people--more, probably--will have nightmares for the rest of their lives. No. Fuck his agenda. Whatever idiot excuse drove him to shoot up a restaurant, the only lasting impact was on the lives of the people left behind.

People like me and my wife.

But, as I said, there should have been nothing noteworthy enough for the shooting to be more than a blip in today's culture of soundbites and doomscrolling. Oh, people looked, and they eventually found something that would propel this particular shooting into the public consciousness, but there was no immediately obvious hook for clout chasers and talking head vultures to hang their hats on.

The culture warriors found no purchase from either the left or right. The death toll stayed in the mid-single digits, so it lacked the ghoulish statistical heft that made for easy ratings. One child died, and another two would suffer from injuries for the rest of their lives, but the victims overall were adults, so that angle was out, too. Take all that away, and why should some jackass shooting up a Chipotle with an SU-16 matter to the jaded, overstimulated American people?

Why? Because someone found a personal angle, and that angle turned out to be the destruction of my marriage and everything that led up to it.

The day of the shooting, I found myself stuck in an interminable scrum stand-up, a sort of daily check-in on software development projects. Stand-ups should take no more than fifteen minutes. This one had just ticked over into its second hour as the project manager, product manager, and director of development argued over stupid, trivial shit.

Ray, one of my buddies, watched his phone while the three of them measured their dicks. Hell, half of us spent the time surreptitiously scrolling through social media feeds or watching videos with the sound off, but Ray hadn't bothered even with that level of obfuscation. He just had his phone out on the surface of the table, popping between apps and laughing at articles. Or he did, right until he elbowed me in the ribs.

"Bill!" he hissed. "Bill!"

Tearing myself away from the teaser trailer for Bloodstomp 4: The Stompening, I whispered, "What?!"

"There was a shooting downtown."

I shrugged, palms up. "Okay, and?"

He flashed his screen at me. "Is that Traci?"

His Twitter feed--I refuse to call it X--showed a video of a woman and a man, standing just inside a police cordon, locked in a passionate embrace. The guy, a big muscular dude that looked vaguely familiar, had his tongue down the smoking hot blonde woman's throat. She molded herself to him; this wasn't the V-J day photo of the sailor kissing the nurse as she struggled to free herself from a stranger's grasp. No, the blonde kissed him back as if she had done it dozens of times before.

Suddenly, though, she stiffened and pushed him off. The woman looked around with an embarrassed, uncomfortable expression as she staggered away from him, but I had no doubt: my wife of four years was cheating on me. Maybe it had gone no further than making out; that's all I had proof of. But her body language, and his, told me more had occurred.

The video, just a short clip, repeated from the beginning. This time, I saw the backdrop of the kiss, a strip mall storefront with blown out windows. Cops streamed in and out, bystanders looked off into the distance with haunted stares, and my wife sucked face with her paramour.

"Send me the link."

As Ray poked at the screen, he muttered, "Shit man, I'm sorry."

I nodded to him and stood. All eyes turned to me. In a few of them, I saw something I'd see often in my future: the pity that people, especially men, have for a cuckold. The managerial circlejerk stopped their bickering, but I didn't care. I just mumbled, "Emergency. I have to go." Even as the door closed, I heard hushed voices saying words like "shooting," "wife," "affair," and "poor bastard."

I didn't know the precise location of the strip mall, but it was easy enough to find all the pertinent information as I made my way out of the office, to the elevator, and into the parking garage. Traci hadn't called, nor had the police. I doubted they would, since she appeared uninjured. From the radio, I learned more details, or at least as much as the local public broadcasting affiliate would commit to.

I was angry at what that video showed me, but that wasn't why I found myself shaking like a leaf as I drove. God, my wife had almost died! I was pissed, yeah. Hell, my marriage looked to be headed over the cliffs. But I still loved Traci. I had loved her for six years. Even if it turned out that she had cheated on me--actually fucked the guy, not just whatever that kiss was all about--I couldn't imagine hating her so much that I wanted to see her dead.

The GPS on my phone guided me to the strip mall, but by the time I was within a mile, I no longer needed it. There were enough cop cars, news vans, helicopters overhead, and curious onlookers that I couldn't miss it. After parking several blocks away, I fought my way through the crowds to the barricades.

The cop manning that particular stretch yelled at me to step away, even as I yelled back that my wife was inside. I could see Traci sitting on the bumper of an ambulance with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She stared into the middle distance, fingers wrapped around a paper cup. After I shouted her name over the cop's shoulder for the dozenth time, she finally looked over at me.

My wife stood up and ran to me, the blanket and cup discarded on the ground in her wake, then launched herself over the barricade and into my arms. The cop, who had probably been about five seconds from tasing me, grudgingly directed his attention elsewhere. I couldn't have cared less; my wife clung to me like a child, sobbing incoherently.

That's when I spotted the asshole. He had been talking to the cops, but when Traci bolted towards me, he followed in her wake until it became clear where she was headed. Or rather, to whom she was headed.

The fucker looked like he belonged in a goddamned superhero movie or on a magazine cover, one of the Marvel Chrises in the flesh. He slowed to a walk, then stopped as I glared at him. He glared back, then smirked gleefully, then changed his expression to a broad grin as he walked back towards the cops. I worried that I hadn't seen the last of him, but one crisis at a time.

A paramedic, apparently realizing he'd misplaced his patient, made his way over to Traci and me a few moments later. "Ma'am." He tried to get her attention, but she clutched me tighter. "Ma'am. Ma'am! Ma'am, I need to take you to the hospital."

Traci shouted, "No!" the first intelligible thing I'd heard her say since I arrived.

The beleaguered EMT looked pleadingly at me. "Sir, it's protocol. I need to take her to the hospital."

Traci hugged me hard enough to hurt, shaking her head against my chest. I said, "Was she injured?"

"Not as far as I can tell, but--"

She snarled, "I'm fine. Fine!"

"Ma'am, we need to monitor you. You're in shock, and--"

"No shit, asshole! I almost died!"

"Yes ma'am, and I'm sorry, but--"

My wife looked up at me, her blue eyes bloodshot and rimmed with red, and begged. "Please, Bill. Please, I just want to go home. I need to be with you. Please, Bill, please!"

"Sir--"

I stopped him. "Look, I get that you're doing your job. But she's clearly traumatized; do you really want to add to that?"

"No, but--"

"Tell me what to watch out for; that's all they'd do at the hospital anyways, right? Keep her for observation?"

He could tell this was an argument he wasn't going to win. Should I have sided with him? Probably, but Traci seemed so scared and vulnerable, and I couldn't see that sending her away with a stranger would make that any better. The paramedic looked at the two of us and gave up. He had a couple of forms to sign and gave me a quick rundown of what to watch out for. The police had already questioned her, and once they got my contact info as well, the two of us were free to leave.

We had to shoulder our way past a camera crew from a local network affiliate with an angry "no comment," but eventually we got back to the car. I helped her inside, then got in and guided us toward our home. "Our home." Even then, I wondered how much longer that would be true.

We didn't talk in the car. She just stared out the window at the passing skyline; when we hit a pothole with a loud thump, she jumped and screamed. Once home, I got her inside and into a warm shower; she had no significant injuries but did receive a few abrasions and a couple of little cuts. The paramedic had treated them, but her clothes were filthy, and I wanted to avoid any chance of infection. Beyond that, she needed comfort; a warm bath might have been better, but I didn't want to take the chance she'd fall asleep in it.

As I helped Traci undress, her matching bra-and-panty combo set off a new round of warning bells in my head. Unless she planned to do something--or someone--special, she pretty much always just grabbed whatever was at the front of her underwear drawer. Maybe the matching combo had occurred by random chance, but I doubted it. I frowned but refrained from comment; adding another piece of evidence to the pile didn't change the fact that she was too numb from shock to hold a coherent conversation about where, why, and with whom she'd been.

That doesn't mean I didn't stew about it. I did as the EMT recommended, keeping her away from the news and her phone, talking gently and softly with her, making her feel as comfortable as possible. But always in the back of my mind was the thought, 'She's fucked someone else. She's cheating on you. Why the hell are you doing this for her?'

The answering voice shamed me with its simple answer: she was a human being in pain. Yes, she was my wife, too, but I would have treated a random stranger like this, much less someone I loved. There'd have to be a reckoning, but if she had fucked the guy, she wouldn't have fucked him any less in a day or two. It could wait. I might or might not have lost my wife to another man. I wasn't going to lose my basic humanity, too.

That night, I slept uneasily next to her. Even without the video and its implications to think about, I would have slept poorly; Traci woke up screaming more than once, and I had to cuddle her back to sleep, shushing her and saying loving words I was no longer sure I wholly felt. She had almost certainly lied to me; I could do the same. In both cases, though, she was the beneficiary of those lies.

In between one of the late-night screaming fits, I researched divorce laws in our state. I didn't want to jump straight there, but I did want to be prepared. We had no kids; we rented an apartment; we'd only been married for four years; our finances had never entirely merged. The divorce could go as quickly and easily as we chose.

If we had gotten to choose, that is, to choose without the world watching like a pack of jackals waiting for the next juicy morsel to feast on.

The text messages were my first warning that things wouldn't go smoothly. Ray was far from the only person to see that video and share it with me. The pings started before I reached the barricades back at the crime scene, and they didn't let up until I shut my phone off on the way home. With everything else going on, I forgot to power it back up until the next morning, when I found literally hundreds of messages on it.

Not just texts, either. Facebook Messenger, Twitter, Discord, Slack, Teams, literally every communications channel that allowed one person to send a message to another person had copies of that damned video waiting for me. I got to relive one of the worst moments of my life over and over and over as "concerned" people from my past reached out to let me know my wife had probably fucked another guy.

Most of the messages were of the "stay strong, brother" sort. A handful were, "I'll help you take the bitch out to the desert;" those guys--they were all guys--got blocked. Some, especially those from her family and friends, implored me to not jump to conclusions. Amongst those, I found out everything I'd ever want to know about Chad Wilkerson, the man captured on video kissing my wife.

I hated Chad.

Chad had a good reason for being a big, burly, smug son of a bitch: he'd been a linebacker in high school, college, and then a brief stint in the pros. He'd also dated Traci for about five minutes in high school. They didn't stay together long enough for him to fuck her--or so the scuttlebutt funneled to me by the many messages alleged--but they were moving that way before they headed off to different colleges.

My wife's former boyfriend owned his own business. He wasn't self-made, though. His family came from money, unlike mine. But he apparently was a decent boss; I found this little tidbit of info from an employee of his that did a bit of internet sleuthing. He tracked me down by going to Chad's Facebook page, where he saw that Chad had friended Traci, then saw that Traci was married to me. The fact that a random dude could track me down so easily hinted at the absolute shitstorm about to land on my head.

By the time Traci woke up around nine, new video showed up, including raw footage of the shooting itself, as recorded by the restaurant's security camera. I didn't want to see that; now I'll never unsee it. I won't describe it, except to say that Traci almost died, and Chad saved her. Saved all of them. He tackled the gunman, got his weapon away, and beat him to death with it. Even I couldn't deny his bravery.

My wife walked around the house like a zombie; I had called to get her an appointment with a counselor, but it would be a week before she could see him, even with the urgency of her need. We still needed to talk, too, but I knew nothing useful would come of it in her present state of mind.

People called for Traci: friends, family, a few reporters. They called her phone, they called my phone, they called her home office number. I longed for the time when the worst thing I'd hear after saying "Hello" was someone trying to sell me a warranty for my car.

I did everything I could to keep her calm and away from the internet and TV, but it was just a matter of time before she saw something. I fielded calls and the random people knocking on our door, but that meant that I couldn't keep an eye on her. And, eventually, she opened up a web browser to try to catch up.

I found her sitting at her desk sobbing fifteen minutes later, a video of the kiss playing over and over on screen--only the passionate part of it, not her pushing away from him--along with detailed information about the two of them, all plastered across a local Facebook community page she belonged to.

"I'm sorry!" She wouldn't even look at me.

"Traci, we can talk about this later."

"No! I need to--" She spun around in her office chair to face me. "I didn't cheat on you. I promise. I promise, I promise!"

"Traci--"

"I know it looks bad, but I didn't! I- We..." She wiped her eyes, then closed them, trying to regain her composure. "It's true that I dated him for a little while in high school. I didn't love him, it was never... We knew there was no future in it when we got together back then. It was just fun."

I sighed and sat down in a spare chair. 'I guess we're doing this now,' I thought at the time. If only it had been that isolated. If only it could have stayed in that 'now.'

Traci continued, "I didn't cheat on you. I didn't." She stared at me imploringly. "Please, believe me. I didn't."

"Then what happened?"

My wife worried at her lip; I'd known her long enough to recognize the tell. This was the 'he's going to be so pissed, but I might as well rip the band-aid off' lip bite. "Chad reached out to me a few months back. Said his company was going to be expanding into this market. Into our city, I mean. He needed someone to help with advertising, graphic design, that sort of thing, and he thought of me. I live here, and I know what the ad market is like, who's hot and... well, you know."

Traci was a freelance graphic designer, and a highly sought-after one. This room, her home office, had been our home office during the darkest days of the pandemic. Our marriage had started shortly ahead of the lockdowns, in fact; we got married in October of 2019, six months before the world shut down.

I knew exactly how talented and how well-connected my wife was, and I took pride in it. I got to see her skill and hard work every day for almost three years. Even after COVID, my bosses decided the savings on rent, utilities, and the like more than made up for not having face-to-face time around the watercooler. Then the company got bought out, management changed, and suddenly everyone needed to be back in the office, even though the numbers showed us to be far more productive when working remotely.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

She shrugged. "Because he was just this guy I used to know. We dated for like a month; I didn't even think of him as a former boyfriend. Not really. He was just this guy, a sorta friend from the past that I'd friended because we had a bunch of mutuals. And then he friended me back; that was like a year ago. I hadn't even really talked to him until he hit me up out of the blue.

"And you know how it is. I have client meetings all the time, like six or eight a month sometimes. It just didn't..." She sighed. "That's all he was. A client." Traci worried at her lip again, trying to pluck up her courage to continue.

I spoke without meaning to and sounded sterner than I probably should have. "At first."

Her expression changed. Sadness and worry gave way to something not too far off from fear. Not fear of the physical; I'm not that kind of guy, and Traci knew it. But fear of change. Fear of loss.