The Cop

Very Good

That was dark and very original. Well done.

It had a Dragnet

kind of appeal, with Jim Friday. I liked it but had some trouble with the confusion in names. Was it June or Ruth and was it Charlie or Jim?

Good, but...

You really need an editor. How could you change the names of two characters halfway through the story? That's what an editor is for.

story sucked8

worst i ever read

Dark....

I think I knew... as soon as he said that he knew what he had to do what was going to happen.... as for the name switching.... been there and done that myself.

Always, E

Very Good Story

Best story Ive read in a while even if it was depressing as hell. Thanks very much for writing.

Good story

but is any woman worth dying over? I think he took it to extremes.

Good, imaginative twist...

thanks for sharing it with us.

Gus

Again mixed emotions on this one

It was a good story, but I have to agree with some of the folks, was she worth dying over?

Your a good writer and write some good provoking peices, but you started out with a strong male lead. Doing the part about moving on with his life even though it was painful to do. But you didn't introduce a female that had any intrest in him, or at least by omission you didn't, and it seemed that after his divorce you left him sad and grieving for the only woman for him. Then the daughter did it to, and for months kept the secret from her husband, cheated again after the father warned him off. I'm kinda intrested in if you decided to keep the husband and daughter together.

The story "Almost" seems like it had a moral to it, but for me personally life has a bigger moral in it. I personally have about 10 buds that I sometimes run around with. And while 6 of them are divorced, those 6 all seemed to have moved on with their life and found other people to be in it with them, not spending the rest of their life pining for the woman that got away. Only one of the 6 was divorced because he cheated, 4 are divorced because the wife cheated, and 1 because he has a gambling problem and wouldn't get help at the time. It took a divorce to wake him up.

But almost the majority of the stories on Literotica have the husband basicly stop living once the wife cheats and life pretty much stops. This story "Sorta" suggested that in the part of the male lead. It also suggest that he blamed himself for the wife dying without knowing that he loved her, but he was trying to make it up with "Suicide"? I mean often people find others to fill their life and it doesn't mean they never loved their first mate, but I wonder why thats almost never possible in most storys though. It also leaves a question about what happened with the daughter and her husband? It almost suggest that the husband will forgive the wife and stay with her, even though she betrayed him multiple times willingly with that guy, just so he doesn't end up like his dead father-inlaw. And again that would be ashame for the husband to be so openly betrayed like that because the wife wanted some strange in her life and didn't care if it hurt the husband, because according to her in your story "He would forgive her if he found out". That seems like too much of a deliberate betrayal to get past. But its your story to write as you see fit though =)

I guess we may never know (^_^)

But it was a pretty good story that pulled at the emotions somewhat. And I think thats what you were going after. The pain and frustrations of the male betrayed. But in its presentation, it kinda left me wondering about the husband and his inability to at least pretend to see other females or be seen by them as attractive.

Very well written!

Certainly a dark story, but then there are dark days sometimes.

People find it easy to forget how delicate the human psyche is. Murder does happen (yeah, you can get shot for honking at someone for cutting in front of you on the highway!) Suicide does happen. It happens all to often.

Maybe he wasn't totally sane at the end but how many of us are always totally sane?

I liked the imaginative approach - I haven't seen anything done on this site from that perspective. Yeah, an editor could have cleaned up a couple of things, but the story was certainly readable. It had a nice pace and drew you in.

I really liked the story.

pretty good story

you really need someone to proof read for you....did i remember Charlie? No, because his name was Jim earlier and I assume he actually called June, not Ruth or Rose...places like that take away from good story, it always makes me wonder if perhaps someone else wrote the story and you tried to change the names to keep people from remembering

Disappointed,

originality and imagination were a five plus, fantastic concept. The info balance was a solid five, not too much and not to little. After these five pointers, everything else plunged. Way below your previous deliveries. No comparison between your previous works and this one. Felt as though I was reading a story by a completely different author. Knowing what you are capable of, I remain a loyal fan and will be looking forward to your next one. A fan always.

It Sucked

The story sucked. You put in a lot of work on something that isn't worth reading. It started out interesting. But whoever termed it a disappointment was right on.

Not up to

your usual standards. There were enough errors (spelling and name mixups) to detract from the story. Also he found his wife cheating while he was a beat cop but later she didn't start cheating till he made detective? The daughter was a totally unsympathetic character. How someone from a broken marraige could be like that is beyond me. A different story but could have been better.

Sad

I didn't like the ending. I don't think suicide solved any problems. If the "hero" really wanted to punish himself, he would have allowed himself to be incarcerated after executing the two villians so he could spend the next 30 years suffering.

Boyd

Very Realistic!

Yes - the ending was sad but so is life at times. I enjoyed the level of detail and the emotional interplay between the characters. A father acted to protect his daughter and a husband acted to avenge the destruction of his life - not my choices but look at any newspaper and you will find similar outcomes.

Thank you for avoiding the usual plotlines and writing a realistic and heart-felt story.

SleeplessinMD

Original, gripping and poignant

Switching names at the end created only a minor issue for me. Poor editing will always detract from a good story, but it may become a minor distraction in a very good story, and this was a damn good story.

Good Stuff

A dark tale, but told extremely well.

great

jimmy charlie lol a few minor editing errors but still a great story...dark but great ...sometimes betrayal is the hardest thing to ever get over if you can ...keep it up ..i will look for more by you

Stark reality. Very good!

This is a story of real feelings of a man who loves with all he is. Love is respect and truth, anything else is self-serving. To him everything is black or white. This main character could use some counseling, but as in real life that is easier for an outsider to see then the person effected. I don’t have any writing skill but I know what I like to read and this is a very good and enjoyable story. Please keep writing.

Fantastic

Would it - Could it only be that the married or those contemplating marriage truly understand that this depression and non-rational abnormal behavior caused by infidelity is very commonplace - part and parcel for those who initially think marriage is an all forgiving stage for selfish acts of short term pleasure and thinking.

That You cannot go home or back in time as the mind has changed the arena, the game and the rules forevermore. Anger succumbs to pain and self recrimination as in IF ONLY ---- but do over's are only a wish for peace - not remotely close to any possibility.

So KUDO's Author - a keyhole peek into one of our real life possibles - an uncomfortable one in ending as many real life one's are with one or the other taking a way out of the self imposed or imposed upon non-managable grief (at least in their mind at that moment in time). If you haven't contemplated suicide don't judge.

I'm very impressed with your mind and imagination in this theme of marital consequence - a breath of fresh air's realities in your efforts to date. An editor will help you much more than you realize - takes a lot of the pressure off and improves your mind and product. Don't let it be pride as at our ages what does that matter eh.

More reality please at your comfortable interval as you are very much appreciated - With High Regard

As usual - very very good

This one was SAD. Keep writing

Oh well.

Well written and consistent story. Thanks for writing. Too bad you had to go with a formula 'bad cop' who just happened to be an unforgiving and remorslessly vindictive bastard. Have not had too many of those; so in love with their own righteousness.

This Cop is not a man

This is a story about one person and he is the only one that counts; to destroy his daughter's marrige is just selfish. A very little man is this "cop".

Dark, Very Dark

Celt:
You've told a tale that could well happen. Those who work in law enforcement are up to their butts in the crap humanity shoves at them, and year after year it gets deeper and deeper. What keeps them going? Their own integrity, their comrades in arms, and their families. Remove one leg of this pinnacle upon which they stand and they may well tumble to the ground in shattered pieces. How did Sallie survive after his wife's infidelity? By pure iron will and rage. Trust me it works, but at great cost. When he caught Rose repeating her mother's cheating he simply tripped off the line, as Dynamite Jack so aptly observed. The pinnacle had toppled. Dark, true, and well written. Thank You. Ronnie W.

I liked your srtory

It was a bit dark, but that's acceptable.
Unacceptable is the anonymous wimp who accused your main character of destroying his daughter's marriage.
Precisely who did the fucking around. Not the cop, well not in the story I read. The daughter did the extra marital fucking, she damaged her own marriage.
Destroyed may well be to strong a word because he left it well open to Rose and Ted to reconcile.

Very good dark story!!!

This is a wonderful story. Cheating spouses never understand the hurt they cause to all of their loved ones. My father cheated on my mother for fifteen years of thier thirty year marriage. When it came to light, at my sister's graduation party no less. it destoryed any respect that I had for him. I was 29 years old and it almost cost me my marriage. You never truly trust anyone ever again after infidelity strikes. This story shows how a man never really recovers after being a cockold. JDseller

Wow!

Captivating story. I hung on every sentence. It would make a great 1-2 hour movie on LIFETIME or some other cable channel.

Thanks Celt.

Ron West
Tempe, AZ

Great Story

But it sure isn't a happy ending.
Some really raw emotions revealed here.
Powerful.
And dark!

Name Confusion a small problem.

But overall I liked the story.

The only unbelievable aspect is that a father would go to the extremes he did over the daughter's betrayal of her husband when he never went to those same extremes with his own wife's betrayal of him.

The fact that he waited to it unitl after his daughter cheated doesn't really count.

It was a good story Celt, I enjoy your writing.

Charleybear

Funny

I know Ted was probably enjoying the attempt.

>>"I'm coming, I'm coming."

Good

Sad but very powerful. I liked it

Too many cop programs

That's what this is written for. Never the less, I stuck with it, even though bad Jim became bad Charlie in the end. Many more errors too, this is not a well written piece. But it is raw, emotional, and it has a rather complex plot for Lit. And no real sex scenes!
Why was this story posted on Lit?

Incredible story!

Yes it was a dark story. With a terrible but all too often true story line. It was sad though that he didn't forgive his wife on her deathbed. But in the end, he did the right thing. He evened the score for everyone, including the daughter.

Good story ruined by errors

I would have rated this story much higher as it was reasonably well written. But the constant errors in names detracts from the story. The fact that it is mis-classified and should really have been in non-erotic would also have helped set the right expectations.

'Tis Why WOMEN Must Avoid These Maniac

and suicidal killers!

i'll rather live with some dimwitted big dicked, steroid junky who could satisfy my physical urges than be married to these sanctimonious, would-be killers who think, like Pat Robertson and Oral Roberts and other TVengelists shennigigans, that they are here to purify soiled women like their cheating wifes and those men the wives fuck with!

but the author and most readers think the man has more than right to kill these evil men who had fucked their wives and daughters and marriages! what complete nonsense! if these men want to die, they should die alone, by their own hands/guns, and they should not marry to any other whom they can blame their insanity on, thinking they are just righteous and morally incorruptable beings! it's sick! lol

Intense

Errors in text do not take away from the dark excellence of this tale. I can see this happening as we all get affected by emotions - some more than others. I would like to see a sequel on the daughter.

Cheating spouses always see it as a mistake

after they get caught. Why don't they see it is a mistake before they commit the act? The daughter even had an example happen right in front of her on the bad effects of cheating.
I hear and read all the excuses that people give for cheating. In my opinion, it is for just one reason. Because they chose to do it. Black and white. Cut and dried.
Another great story by you, thank you for having strong husband characters instead of the wimps that infest this site from other, lesser authors.

Loving Wives?

Pathological husbands!

The way the scam works is...

Martin the con artist so totally enraptures the wife with his wiles that she colludes with him to frame the husband, Ted, for the crime while they split the money. It resembles an episode on "Law and Order" where the wife's lover convinces her to steal explosive material from her husband and frame him for the explosion that occurs at a construction site to get the insurance money. Some child playing at the construction site died as a result. The jury convicted the husband but "McCoy" figured out the scam and redressed the situation by getting the convicted husband to affirm that his wife helped him do it. The wife flipped on her lover and the coviction of the husband was overturned. Yes, it was a dark story that could have even gotten darker for Ted if Sallie didn't intervene. It is obvious that the marriage isn't fit to continue and the daughter isn't worth a damn!

The way the scam works is...

Martin the con artist so totally enraptures the wife with his wiles that she colludes with him to frame the husband, Ted, for the crime while they split the money. It resembles an episode on "Law and Order" where the wife's lover convinces her to steal explosive material from her husband and frame him for the explosion that occurs at a construction site to get the insurance money. Some child playing at the construction site died as a result. The jury convicted the husband but "McCoy" figured out the scam and redressed the situation by getting the convicted husband to affirm that his wife helped him do it. The wife flipped on her lover and the coviction of the husband was overturned. Yes, it was a dark story that could have even gotten darker for Ted if Sallie didn't intervene.

If the frame target of the scam was Sallie then his intervention can be construed as self preservation. After all, what would be a better mark than to frame Sallie as a crooked cop who used his knowledge and background in law enforcement to pull off this coupe.

The fact that she is of such low character as to betray her spouse with infidelity and stupid enough to knowingly get involved with a con artist (remember she lied about him working with her) it would have been best to disclose the affair and all its surrounding facts so that Ted could make a clear and cogent decision to determine whether or not to remain in the marriage. It is obvious that the marriage isn't fit to continue and the daughter isn't worth a damn!

I gotta say...

...that I disagree with the readers who thought poorly of the way this piece was written. With the except of the name slip and a "set" instead of "sit" here and there, it was well planned and well written, and the only people who don't make such slips occasionally are the ones who have never tried to write. I thought this was a great job, plausible, with a very possible reaction by the protagonist. Keep up the good work!

No doubt - It helps to be lucky in life…

I kind of predicted that a story with such dark themes would come with its ‘price tag’ attached to it in the form of readers who simply can’t accept that level of darkness. Is wishing for some light at the end of the tunnel a unique American trait? Maybe it’s too strong a language, but people are yearning for some happy stories – even if they come only in fiction form...
I remember when I was a teen and heavy into the darkest of Ingmar Bergman films (half of it I did not understand but it was considered “in”), my father was shaking his head: “why suffer, isn’t life depressing enough?” I didn’t know enough about life’s dark side and claimed that art should reflect life’s deepest realities (Yada, Yada, Yada). I don’t see that many of Bergman’s films any more (can’t remember the last time actually), pretty much for the same reasons as my father. But don’t draw a quick comparison, thecelt is not Bergman. Even in his darkest story he moves forward fast to the rhythm of lively very active very practical characters that have very strong moral convictions. One person just happened to be pushed into a very dark corner in his life. Can anyone - I hate putting it this bluntly – deny after 9/11 that very bad things may and do happen to good people? Could anyone deny that the crushing weight of immensely devastating circumstances COULD lead to one loosing the will to live? A possible yes would suffice.
You get a clear sense that you read some sort of a tragedy. But which kind? Unlike the 9/11 or an earth quake family tragedies as we may call them, are born from within the human nature which is within our reach. What is left to find out then is to what extent what happened was truly within the father’s reach (no doubt the main tragic hero here) or whether there were external –mitigating factors to complicate the picture.
In essence I believe that at the end this is what the father comes to grieve the most. Not so much his bad luck or what his wife and daughter did to him, but what he could have done but did not. In doing so, I believe that he went too far, not seeing that he too is subject to circumstances which he did not choose or could evaluate for their impact in some extremely unusual circumstances. Maybe a Jewish ritual could have helped him maybe not. I’ll get to it.
In his professional life he learned to crack every human tragedy and get fast to its elemental evil roots: greed; mistrust Narrow-mindedness; lack of imagination; lack of loyalty. If asked, he could probably break it down further. Still, with his own family he could not do it. Maybe he was too close to the human dark side in his daily line of work. Maybe he needed to believe that his family is the one island of respite from all that filth. Maybe being hit just in the spot he marked for nor suspecting a thing was the Achilles hill which led to his undoing. Sure, it would have been nice to know in details (plus therapy) what really led to his wife’s cheating. To be honest, her explanation on her death bed, even if sincere, still sounded flimsy and superficial. It was too late for therapy then…But isn’t it exactly the nature of this modern tragedy? His character, his profession – did not allow him to sit and get “the full Monty” of her ugly betrayal, and none of us could blame him, that is until she was about to die, and he got himself into even bigger emotional mess. Lesson Learned: if you find your spouse cheating -immediately get the full story! Who knows what might happen next (just kidding, you can wait a week…still kidding).
Tragically his professional skills could have been those that could have provided him, if not with a way to salvage his marriage, then with enough understanding to just get the minimum insight into his wife’s circumstances which would then would have allowed him to turn a monstrous evil act of betrayal into the more tolerable dimensions of ‘irreconcilable differences’. It would have allowed him to forgive her – NOT FOR WHAT SHE DID IN THE PAST but FORGIVE THE DYING PERSON asking his forgiveness AT PRESENT; the one who is carrying the memory of the horrible betrayal and probably feels at this point as alienated from this action as the husband (probably more).
When he is exposed to his daughter’s cheating, he is re traumatized and the thin thread he was hanging to life with - his work routine (note: no new home no new family or wife) is irreparably cracked.
The daughter is the perfect portrait of ‘the cheater’ – she loves no one but herself, shallow and selfish. Had I not known that so many men and women like her do exist I would have said that she is a caricature. I have to wonder though, what part of her adult traits could be traced back to her relations with her father? (An open question). Had he been able to listen to his wife, then to forgive the dying person and give the full picture to his teen daughter - might she have grown a stronger, more principled person?
To remove any doubt- by no means am I blaming the father! He was handled a lousy hand of cards in life. In the Jewish holiday of Passover, just before the end, there is a song which you could call kind of philosophical it certainly does not reflect most of the spirit of the freedom oriented festival. Rather, it’s sort of a grim ‘song’ which speaks of deterministic nature of the universe. It’s called Had-Gadya: Literally One fait or one luck in Aramaic. It covers the fait of every creature under heaven from the most vulnerable to the highest angels in heaven (all under the God’s rule of course) all the creatures in between are but links in a chain of cause and results. Each doing its thing in one chain of causality. If it sounds more than a little like a Greek tragedy that’s how it also sounded to me – and that’s how this story sounded too. How could a concept of Aristotelian chain of causality might have helped our cop? The Key word is CHAIN. The responsibility the concept tells you does not end on your shoulders. It does not say that you are free of any responsibility because you are an actor as much as you are being acted. But at least you are not bearing the sole responsibility or blame. The cop is not to be blamed - not for his profession or for his mindset, certainly not for finding his wife cheating on him; his daughter WAS to be blamed for sure for cheating but SHE if given a chance would not have chosen this set of parents and this kind of divorce proceedings and the kind of distant and withholding father she was dealt either. She in turn ends up inflicting terrible pain on her innocent husband. And who knows what would the emotional scar left on him do to his future wife /children? In other words: Sometimes life sucks big time and even the best therapy can help only a little…
I have to wonder though, had the father shared that view of a long chain of causality which has not started with him and has not ended with him, might that be enough to keep him from taking himself out of this chain of life…
BTW, this is not a replication to the moral equivalency argument. It is an argument which says that life does not always treat you fairly, even when you are, and that blind circumstances shape our blind spots as well as our personalities.

Still my favorite thecelt story

I've re-read this many times.

depressing well written story.

the story was well written as are all your stories, but it was too depressing for my taste. Everyone lost,the wife, the 2 con men , he himself. You can only hope the daughter and Ted learned and grew through his mistakes.
60 year old George

I liked the celt's plot in "Billy 1-5" much better! The Cop should have given his "sizable sum" of money to the con men, let them take his daughter if and when she wanted while she set up his house for parties, and then taken the con men out for drinks. All in the name of foregiveness. Don't ya think!! Great story that Billy!

I liked the celt's plot in "Billy 1-5" much better! The Cop should have given his "sizable sum" of money to the con men, let them take his daughter if and when she wanted while she set up his house for parties, and then taken the con men out for drinks. All in the name of foregiveness. Don't ya think!! Great story that Billy!

tradition

mother started and daughter carried on w it. as for daughter, and preston along the way, to come. ideally ted can just get out of the way of another train wreck.

Quite so

Well, He did get his patience sorely tested. If that is enough to kill people? Nah, not really. But i can't say that those two characters was something to have. A spring cleaning perhaps?

I liked the story very much....til the end.

I'm all in favor of lying cheating whore bitches dieing, but not the long suffering victim of the lying cheating whore bitches.

With his knowledge of police work I would think that a scenario could be created that would allow him to "dispose" of the assholes so they are never found.