KC and the Moonshine Band
One
When I married Todd, I thought it would be for life. I was right in that respect, but the timescale was just a little shorter than I expected. For a while it was all sweetness and light but by the time he overdosed on a lethal mix of amphetamines, coke and Tennessee sour mash just shy of our fifth anniversary, I was almost past caring.
We met when he joined the Investment Bank I worked for in London. He was on a secondment from their headquarters in Chicago. We lived the dream -- young, wealthy and, although I say it myself, beautiful. We made money with a practised ease and spent it like water. Our Thameside apartment cost over a million, but we could afford it.
It was an intense relationship and we were completely open. I had always been a wild child and had a very wide circle of friends who lived a hedonistic lifestyle. Todd bought into it and couldn't believe his luck when I introduced him to my best friend Lucy and we had our first threesome. There was no holding us and we worked our socks off and partied even harder. We were stupidly well paid, could afford the best hotels and restaurants around the world and went at everything full-on. When bonus time came around, we took off to Dubai, Singapore, Sochi. We skied, watched Grands Prix, Open Golf, Wimbledon and the NFL games in London - all from VIP lounges on the best hospitality packages.
Shortly after we were married, Todd was offered a relocation back to Chicago. It was a wrench for me to leave England, but I soon fell in love with the Windy City and America in general as I got to see more of the huge country.
My job was more or less the same as before, but Todd's was more intense than ever and the pressure to perform and make vast profits increased almost by the day. I didn't see it coming to start with, but the mood swings and erratic behaviour soon made me realise all was not well.
When I found a large bag of white powder in a holdall when he was away in San Diego for a week, I really began to worry. Despite being party animals, we had never done drugs. I had snorted one line long before we met -- the night of my first orgy in fact - and had shared the odd joint occasionally, but I had seen what it did to a couple of friends. They got over it, but it was hard work for them, and I made sure I steered well clear thereafter, despite the frequent temptations.
When I confronted Todd, he said it was just the odd hit to keep him going through some heavy periods at work. He promised me he would stop, but as he became more and more aggressive and withdrawn, I knew I was fighting a losing battle. I was feeling the strain and hated my job, so it was understandable he would be even worse.
We began to drift apart and our party lifestyle stalled. Our arguments seemed to spring from nowhere and we could go from kissy-kissy to daggers drawn in an instant. When things began to fly around the room, my alarm bells rang very loudly indeed. He never hit me, but there were many occasions when I thought he might. Our sex took on a darker side and although I loved being tied up, it was to tease me, not to allow my husband to dominate and call me demeaning names.
I now dreaded sex and on more than one night, cried silently on my side, my throat sore from his hands around it, my back passage on fire from his onslaught and my butt-cheeks raw from slapping and paddling with his new favourite sex-toy -- my hairbrush. My ears also rang from being called a whore, a slut, a bitch and worse. I was only grateful that his interest in me was diminishing almost by the day so my ordeals were fewer and further between.
It all came to a head one night when we accepted one of our regular invites to a swinger party at a friend's condo on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Before the real action of the night began, we would mingle over drinks and canapes, scoping out likely candidates for later. That night, I lost track of Todd for a while and when he returned, his eyes were glazed and his nose glowed like Rudolph's on Christmas Eve. I decided to give him a wide berth for the rest of the evening and soon found myself in a very nice threesome with the host and his girlfriend. As Abbie lapped at me and I took Dwayne in my mouth, I caught sight of Todd over by the bar, palming pills into his mouth and downing them with a swig from a bottle of Jack. I went back to my work and tried to forget about him but it put a damper on what had been a very enjoyable fifteen minutes.
Then an hour or so later came the kicker. After a breathless bout of group sex, I fancied a little gentle me-time with a lovely black lady from the office who I had my eye on for a while. Marsha was a real babe and I had long wished to slide between her thighs and fold back her dark outer lips to reveal the pink pleasures inside. We liberated a bottle of Merlot from the bar and made our way to one of the guest rooms.
As I opened the door, I held my arm out to stop her from entering and stood in shock and disbelief at the scene before me. Todd had Abbie pinned to the bed on her stomach, his leather belt tight around her throat, a ball gag in her mouth. He held the strap of the belt and her long ponytail in one hand, pulling hard on them as she mewled into her gag, clearly in pain. The other hand slapped her buttocks with resounding cracks as he slammed into her back passage like a man possessed. He had gone hard at me in recent times, but this was just sheer brutality.
The look on his face and the words pouring from his mouth made me shudder. We had always talked dirty during sex, but this was just sheer humiliation and vitriol. Abbie was clearly struggling and I was about to step in and put a stop to it when he pulled her head back viciously and smacked her hard across the cheek, leaving a livid red handprint. She screamed into her ball gag and I turned to Marsha, who was now by my side and wide-eyed in astonishment.
"Fucking hell, go and get Dwayne, Marsha -- this has to stop."
She ran off to find our host and I tried to drag Todd off poor Abbie and received an elbow in my chest for my pains. I crumpled back, winded, now sobbing at the pain and the scene in front of me.
I barely saw Dwayne fly into the room and grab Todd in a neck lock. Punches were thrown and Marsha led a distraught Abbie away as Dwayne rightly kicked seven shades of shit out of my husband.
It was the final straw for me. Despite his pleading and whining, I couldn't risk being next. I moved out and shared with a friend from the office for a while before I rented a downtown apartment. By then, Todd was on written warnings at work and was finally suspended when he was arrested while on a bender up in Milwaukee for beating up a hooker.
He never got to trial and six weeks later, I was a widow at twenty-eight.
I couldn't process my emotions at first. I was by turns relieved and angry; sad that what had been such a bright light had been snuffed out. I was also grateful I had not been carried down into the dark whirlpool that claimed Todd - or suffered the same fate as Abbie or the hooker.
I took indefinite leave and was out of action for a long time, despite friends rallying round and encouraging me back into their midst. It was Abbie who finally told me to pull myself together. We had become quite close since Todd's assault on her -- there was no other word for it.
"Gotta get back in the game, Claire. Still got years of being a stunner ahead of you. Guys are still hanging out for you." She let out a little laugh and touched me on the arm. "And girls..."
She was the first person I slept with after Todd and it felt good. A lovely, gentle interlude in what had been a turbulent and violent time for me. It also felt like closure for what had happened at her condo. As she left the next morning, she kissed me tenderly.
"Do something, girl. Promise me?"
I hugged her. "Will do, Abs."
I decided enough was enough in finance. I had hated it towards the end and it had cost me my marriage and my husband. Fortuitously there were redundancies in the offing and I applied for one. It was rejected, but I argued that it was far better to allow me to go willingly than to sack someone who wanted and needed the job. Plus, was I likely to be fully committed, given my circumstances? Somehow, I convinced them and received a very generous severance.
