A Turn of the Word (750 Word Story)

I came up with an idea for a 750 word story. Hopefully this works the way I think it does.

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"What is your name?"

"Jennifer Robbins"

"Correct"

"Where do you reside?"

" 3454 MacArthur Court"

"Correct"

"What is your favorite food?"

"Cheez Whiz on Spam."

"False". (when it was a false reading, it would go "Boink!"

So what happened to bring us to where we are, in the office of a polygraph expert? My wife Jennifer and I had been together 10 years, married 8, we both had respectable white collar jobs (myself an engineer, Jennifer a partner in a law firm). Jennifer is a beautiful woman, and our sex life for most of that time was great, we experimented with all kinds of things, and had a ball. We were just starting to think about starting a family as well when it all seemed to go downhill.

Instead of a wonderful sex life and a warm emotional life, it became distant and cold. Sex that used to bring us joy, seemed to become a once a week chore. Instant of teasing each other and talking out everything, we became two civil people passing in the night. Worse, Jennifer, who in her legal life knows the power of precise language, that cases rose and fell on such precision, started talking to me like we were in court and I was an opposing lawyer, everything was precise, carefully said and was about a warm as a banker's heart in Wyoming in January. Nothing spontaneous, and what little sex was sex by numbers.

I had the final insight when I ran into a colleague of Jennifer's, who I finally cajoled into telling me what was going on. She told me there were rumors that my wife had been spending time outside work with Steve, George and Jerry, 3 of the other partners in the firm, who like her had made partner at a young age.

I confronted her, asked her if she had fallen out of love with me or if she was having an affair. Suddenly I had a combination of a prosecutor and a banshee coming at me, telling me how dare I say that, how coud I accuse her of that? When I pointed out her behavior and coldness towards me, she told me that wasn't true, but couldn't even tell me the last time we had a date or had sex. I knew this hit home because her eyes looked down, but then she went on the offensive, the tears and anger, then ran into the bedroom and slammed the door and I slept on the couch. We didn't talk for several days and I finally had had it.

I moved out of the house and into a local long stay motel. It took Jennifer a couple of days to even figure out I had left, and then when the texts and calls started I ignored them. I also talked to a lawyer to start the process of filing for divorce.

Eventually my wife confronted me outside my hotel room and she looked devastated. At first she tried the anger stuff, which didn't work, and then she turned on the tears. I felt bad, but I also knew that Jennifer being a top notch trial lawyer could act with the best of them.

Still, I felt a glimmer of hope, and when she said she would do anything to prove she wasn't lying, I suggested a polygraph. Initially it didn't go over well, but when I turned to go into the motel, she relented.

So that is where we are.

"Do you love your husband?"

"Of course I do! It is why I am here."

"Correct"

"Are you having sex with George or Jerry or Steve?"

"No! We are just work colleagues, I swear!"

To my surprise, the response was "Correct."

Was she telling the truth after all? I was beginning to think so, but I glanced at her when she thought I wasn't looking, and I saw something ugly on her face, the look I knew on her meant she thought she had pulled one over on someone. I thought a bit, thought about precise language and her, and thought of something to have the poly guy ask her and whispered it to him.

I smiled at her, and she knew something was up, and for the first time she looked concerned, she had seen that look on my face when I solved a difficult problem.

"Did you have sex with George AND Jerry AND Steve."

She wailed "No!"

"Boink!"

*

Well, my first attempt at a 750 word story, and obviously it isn't fleshed out. The idea of this came from an old Isaac Asimov mystery short story, where a character who is someone not capable of lying and is accused of theft of bonds and stocks and turns to a group of amateur detectives to try and help clear him. In the course of the story the character says time and again he didn't steal the stocks OR the bonds. The waiter, who always seems to solve the mystery in these stories, asks him "Did you steal the stocks AND the bonds", and he is unable to answer because of course, he did steal them.

I realize this is not a full story, we don't know Jennifer or why she does what she does, but that doesn't mater in a 750 lol.