To the reader:
I'm trying something a little different here and according to my editor it came out pretty good. That's one person's opinion. Let me know what you think. But I do hope you enjoy it. If not, oh well.
There isn't any sex in here so that's why I'm submitting it under Non-erotic. It does contain a cheating spouse but that isn't the heart of the story, it's just the catalyst. Well, you'll see.
Thanks to jo for editing. Any errors you find are mine and not because of poor editing.
© Copyright February 2013, by the author.
********
His story is just like that of a thousand other men with screwed up lives, sad, and lacking a happy ending. His old life ended and his new life began: A new life so completely different from the first that nobody could have ever imagined it.
His name is Phil, not Phillip, Phil. At one time he was married, had kids, a good job, and all the other trappings of an average suburban family man. Now, he doesn't. His job is gone; he just walked away without saying anything. His wife doesn't know where he is, and that's the way he wants it. But the most troublesome part was that he walked away from his two little babies. "I hope I didn't screw up their lives like I did my own," he lamented over a bottle of cheap wine. The last time he saw his house was years ago and it was still standing, but he couldn't will himself to go in. He turned and walked away with the intention of going somewhere he could drink himself to death. He got the idea from an old Nicholas Cage movie. "If I've got nothing to live for anymore then drinking myself to death is as good a way to go as any. Besides, I don't have the guts to put a gun in my mouth."
You see Phil is one of the many homeless men we pass on the streets every day: Nameless inhabitants of alleyways and abandoned cars and cardboard boxes out by the dumpster. We see them and avert our eyes because they pollute our streets and sidewalks. We purposely ignore them because with just a little turn of bad luck we could be in their shoes. Phil thought the same thing at one time, in his previous life. Now he doesn't think about too much of anything, except where he's going to get something to eat or his next bottle of wine.
Phil's life was as normal as normal could be, then he did something to screw it all up, he let his curiosity get the better of him. Snooping into things he didn't understand cost him everything and it all started with his wife Cheryl.
Phil and Cheryl have known each other since high school. She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever known; tall, slender, wavy brown hair, all the right stuff in all the right places, and way more intelligent than him. Oh Phil's no dummy. He earned a college degree like everyone else but Cheryl breezed through college and now just seemed to absorb every bit of information from the world around her. "A beautiful woman with a magnificent mind is just about the sexiest combination on the planet," Phil told his friends on occasion. The one thing that his wife has that is not attractive, at least in Phil's way of thinking is a stubborn streak. Once she got something in her mind it would take the finger of God poking her in the backside to get her to change. It's only happened once and Phil had to live through hell for three weeks until she calmed down. Even with her stubborn streak he's loved her since their first date.
They also have two daughters, Kim and Sam. They lived in a nice neighborhood and did all the neighborly stuff that good neighbors do. They had parties and barbecues and were always going out with friends and associates from work. They went to movies and the theater and never once missed any of their daughter's school events. They were your boringly average, archetypal people down the street. One of the things that Cheryl carried over from her college days was membership in a small group of friends from her sorority that Phil affectionately called the 'Gang of Seven.' All seven women were members of the same sorority Tau Kappa Alpha (TKA) and have remained close friends over the years. Once a month they all got together at one of their houses and had a party. Men weren't invited. Phil always thought that they sat around comparing husbands and talking trash about them but no one really knew for sure. Cheryl would only smile when he brought up the subject, never saying a word about what they did or talked about. He did know that they would drink a dozen bottles of wine in the night. Phil's even had to drive one or two of the gang home afterwards. It all seemed innocent enough and the husbands thought it was a good way for them to have a 'guy's night out' at the same time.
This party is where Phil's life took a left hand turn.
The Gang of Seven planned to meet at Phil and Cheryl's house one Saturday night and as usual Cheryl not-so-gently hinted for Phil to make himself scarce. After helping set out the food and drinks, lots of drinks, he kissed her tenderly and told her to behave herself. He got that 'yeah, right' look as he walked down the street to meet up with his friend Jerry. They had planned to go play pool and have a few drinks, you know, do guy stuff, but when he got to Jerry's house his wife told him that he had been called to work for some emergency. She looked a little pissed and since Phil didn't want to overstay his welcome, he just left and went back home. The gang was starting to arrive and since he wasn't welcome he knew he couldn't go back in the house. Instead he went around back and into the basement. His basement was his man cave. It wasn't finished, just bare concrete floor and cinderblock walls, but he had built a huge workbench in the middle of the room and had every imaginable tool covering one wall. Oh, there was also a washer and drier down there too so maybe it wasn't totally his place.
Phil enjoyed one particular hobby since he was a boy and that was target shooting. His Dad turned him onto guns when he bought his first .22 caliber rifle for his eleventh birthday. His Dad taught him everything about safety and maintenance and even signed him up for his first competitive match. Over the years he's fired competitively and won a number of trophies. His Dad also taught him how to reload his own ammunition. His Dad also insisted on buying brass shells so they could be reloaded after a day at the range. Some of their best father-son talks occurred when they would sit in the garage and reload all the shells. Believe it or not, it's a lot cheaper to gather up your spent brass to reload than to leave money sitting on the ground by using aluminum or steel shells. So he turned on the overhead light and gathered up the supplies to start reloading the bucket full of 9 millimeter shells he used in the last match.
Overhead he could hear the gang stomping around and laughing as they ate and talked. The little devil in him, actually Cheryl always called it the little smart-ass in him, wondered what they were talking about. He could hear bits and pieces of what they said through the floor but he wanted to hear everything. He looked around to see if he could figure out a better way to hear. As he looked up he saw one of the heat registers in the duct above and remembered when he cut it in. The house was build with heat on the upper floor only and he wanted a little bit of heat for the times he was in the basement working, so he added a little register to the existing duct work overhead. It just so happened that there was another register in the floor above exactly over the one he had cut in. He knew that if he opened up the one over his head he would be able to hear everything that went on in the living room. With a sly little smile he stood on a box and opened it. He could see the light from above and the voices came in so clear he felt like he was right in the room with them. His smile got wider and wider as he sat and did his work.
The members of the Gang of Seven were a diverse lot. They all went to the same college and pledged the same sorority but their personalities and their post-college lives were vastly different. Cheryl was a working mother with two kids, a dog, and a handsome husband (her words) who loved her to death. She's worked off and on since graduating, mostly off after the kids were born, but now she worked full-time again working for a real estate management group. She also seemed to act as the social coordinator for the Gang's monthly parties.
Cheryl's roommate for her two years at TKA was Beth. The best word that describes Beth is slut: A beautiful slut, but a slut nonetheless. She's twice divorced. She said they cheated on her but everyone suspects it was the other way around. She never seemed to be without a boyfriend, sometimes two or three at a time, some married, some a whole lot younger. The one thing they all had in common was money. If they had money to spend on her then she would spread for them.
JoAnne was the jock of the group: All-American Soccer player and rowed for the 8-woman crew. She was also someone you wouldn't want to piss off. She married the local television weatherman and had her first child last year. Having a baby didn't hurt her figure one bit. She's still tall and muscular with magnificent legs and the tightest ass anyone's ever seen. She's also a fitness instructor at the local gym. Sometimes at six in the morning you would see her out on the lake in her single scull doing her morning laps.
Lillie was the intellectual member and looked every bit the part: Short bob haircut, dark glasses, hardly any makeup, and the most dull, drab attire outside of Goodwill. She's the only one who continued her education and got her PhD and now is a high level manager for an insurance company. Dull is the best word to describe Lillie but when you talked to her you could sense a smoldering sensuality behind her intellectual mask. There must have been something there because her husband constantly had a smile on his face and they did have one child.
Sue was the only full-time mom of the bunch. When she stood up straight her blond locks barely reached the five foot mark. When soaking wet she was maybe a hundred pounds. Her high pitched soprano voice sounded almost child-like but with five children of her own she's anything but child-like. Everybody says she's 'cute as a button,' and for as true as that is she's also the most down to earth and genuinely lady-like woman in the bunch. She's a person anyone, man or woman, would like to have as a friend.
