Cost of a Glimpse

Thanks for the comments on my story, Just a Glimpse. I read them all. Most wanted the other side of the story, so here it is. The time frame starts a short while after she and her lover were seen by her husband in that parking lot. So you should read Just a Glimpse first. Just a glimpse was written all in the mind of the husband (Jeremy) and what that single glimpse told him. So to keep equal time with the sexes this is all in the mind of Kat. (sorry for those of you who wanted something more). There's a further limitation in that this entire story. Happens in Kat's mind only after 2:10am, then for the little bit she's in bed. Before she starts her day.

This story is dark, the darkest that I've ever written. It's a story about a woman whose mind and body are in trouble. The time and subject can jump back and forth within each episode in her mind. I hope not to confuse people, but it is a mind in trouble. Again with the warning, there's no sex in this story.

Enjoy...I hope.

*

That warbling, keening wail brought me up further toward consciousness....

Africa, the plains with the heat and dust rising...sun, endless sun...

The pain, grief and the loss...undulating wail for the dead and dying...

Primal...

Old, eternal...

Kat.

A walking, talking, bright and shiny, used Dildo doll. Comes complete with musical voice box. Pull the string and get random flattering sayings; your hair's so soft, you're so beautiful, I love your eyes, etc. etc. Or one of several romantic love songs. Comes complete with all the newest dance steps. Painted in flash, charm, and fancy clothes.

Deluxe package includes; flowers, candy, jewelry, long intimate lunches, romantic dinners and dancing, complete with platitudes of care and love.

Eric model comes complete with the high end package. Rolex watch, a gold and ruby ring, expensive custom silk suit, and handmade Italian dress loafers, with the obligatory silver gray BMW.

Also included one on-off switch, turn on and use. Turn off and leave, no maintenance, care or emotional feeding required. Look at, and smile to activate on-off switch. Frown and turn away to deactivate. Available for immediate rental, anytime day or night. By any warm and moving woman, eighteen to eighty. No I'm not bitter at all.

That's Eric, the man Jeremy saw me playing kissy face with in the parking lot at work.

Yeah, well used Dildo doll. I can't say that I didn't know what he was. The joke that's common knowledge around work is; don't even bother filing a sexual harassment report against Eric. Everyone knows that if Eric is talking to a woman, that there's only two subjects. Work or pussy, so if you're talking to Eric and it's not about work. You must 'want' to be talking to him about sex, that's pussy to him. It's the only two options open to either man or woman, locker room brag or seduction. No I'm not bitter much.

He's really kind of sad. His life, outside of work, is built around seduction. His clothes are chosen to be seductive, after shave, hair style. Anything around or touching Eric is selected for its seductive potential. But Eric is anything but seductive. You can't go around with two foot high neon letters over your head reading. 'I'm going to seduce you', and be seductive.

That sadness is possibly the only seductive portion of Eric. That terribly broken, hurt little boy inside a man. That you're not really sure, if it's in there or not. He was married once, years ago. Why it failed no one knows and he never talks about it. Whether he was hurt or he hurt her. It closed off and locked up any depth of Eric's personality. Now all that's there is that surface of seduction and the meaningless chase for pussy.

A woman would have to be a mental midget to not be able to see that. The only thing that can account for his quantity of success, is that some women just want to be seduced. Somewhere in that is the key to Eric's seduction, that woman's choice.

Whether it's hidden deep in her sub-conscious and pushed into an active choice. Or she just decides to play. It's all in the choice of a woman's mind, not in anything that Eric does. Eric's seduction is so blatant that he could accomplish the same result by just going up and asking a woman if she wants' to fuck.

The only good thing about Eric and seduction is that he understands the word no. If you don't want to play with Eric, that's fine. Sayonara, see you later, and he's gone. He's fine with that, plenty of other fish in the sea and all that. If a woman doesn't want to play, it's a waste of his time. All that's left of Eric is:

Constant...meaningless...endless...pursuit of one more notch on the bed post.

Like me, notch. No I'm not one fuckin bit bitter.

So did I fall for that hurt little boy and try and fix him...HELL NO. Nobody even knows if it's there or not. Plus it's not my job to fix him, I don't even like him. So why...did I get involved with him. I. Don't. Know.

In the court case of my life, I could plea a case of temporary insanity. But neither the judge nor the voice of my inner conscience are buying it. They're both calling bullshit. The sad part is; I don't know of anything else that I could plea. If a plea of temporary stupidity was allowed, it would be Nolo Contendere.

Yeah no contest, the judge would get behind a vote for that. So would my conscience; my lawyer, the prosecutor, the bailiff, the jury and everyone in the audience. Temporary stupidity, with the temporary part being negotiable.

The smell of dust, of heat and that wailing, keening, undulating cry. Brings me farther awake.

I pull my arms back from the cold sheets on Jeremy's side of the bed, and groggily turn over to read my alarm clock, 2:16am. Yesterday it was 2:18am, the day before it was 2:12am. The day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that. AND every day for the two months since Jeremy left.

That keening cry has awaken me. Somewhere between 2:10am and 2:20am every morning; and I haven't been able to go to sleep much before midnight, no matter how hard I try. Even drinking myself stupid didn't help. Nor have I been able to get back to sleep after the cry woke me up. Two hours of sleep every night is marking me out as a liar. For trying to show that Jeremy's leaving hasn't completely torn me apart.

For as much good as it does me, I know where that keening cry comes from. It's not a noise that I can hear with my ears. You would have to be in my mind to hear it with me.

It comes from an old television show, National Geographic, or Animal Planet, some documentary show such as that. It was cast in Africa, out in the savanna somewhere. Where there are still some of the old nomadic tribes. It's a mourning, grief elegy, in noise and pain, the women will cry out when someone has died.

An explosive keening lament, a traditional undulating scream of grief and loss. When I first heard it, on television, it cut through me like a knife. Some facet of that cry resonated with something in my soul. It was primal, it was old, and you just knew that thousands of women had been voicing this cry of grief and loss down through the ages of time immortal.

I knew that no matter how hard I tried, it would be a useless attempt at going back to sleep. So I got up to begin my long, long day.

Warbling, undulating, rising and falling I could feel the cry in my throat, hear it in my mind.

Mad, frustrated I try and ignore it. Try to clear my mind like Doctor Everson has tried to teach me. Breathe in deeply, exhale slowly, in deeply, slowly blow it out.

Clear my mind, try for the blankness of the river, water flowing slowly, peacefully by. Clear and flowing...and it's curiosity that is my undoing. As I pull my arms from the cold sheets on Jeremy's side. Drowsily roll over and look to the alarm clock; 2:18am. Four months and eight days since Jeremy left.

Yeah Doctor Everson, I went out and started seeing a psychiatrist. First it was a medical Doctor, who I'm still seeing, then I went to a counselor. After just one session of listening to my problem he recommended this Doctor Janet Everson.

My medical Doctor, David Robertson told me that I was having physical problems, caused by psychological conditions. It only starts with sleep deprivation. Compounded by weight loss, yeah this 5'9" girl is down to 111lbs. I was on the slim side at the 126lbs I started at. My golden blond hair is now straw brittle yellow, sky blue eyes are now dull slate, blue gray.

Marge, damn her, damn her, she asked for her sunshine girl back. She didn't have to complete that sentence. I could read the unspoken one; not the dark cloud girl. I told her something funny one of the girls said at lunch today. She just looked at me, with pity in her eyes, walked off and left.

Well no use laying here in bed, up to another day.

The cry was distant today. It's amazing that something fashioned only in my mind can be so different every day, yet remain essentially the same. The cry, rising, falling, only to rise again. I can see the village huts off in the distance, see the women huddled together, wailing.

Cold sheets in my hands as I can barely roll over, 2:16am. 8 months 12 days since my Jeremy left. 91lbs yesterday, now I have friends, relatives, and Doctors' nurses calling me to see how I'm doing, every day.

Because there's a new wrinkle in my subconscious's flagellation of my body. About a month ago, shortly after waking I had to bolt for the bathroom. Didn't make it, as I lost everything that had been in my stomach all over the floor. Now I sleep with a wastebasket beside the bed. It's become my early morning friend, almost every day. A week later I started losing it after lunch too. Not every day but most.

Dildo doll Eric left today, just turned in one days notice and left. I was only about half surprised at that. He'd started coming in less than seductively outfitted. For the last couple of weeks. Hair not completely combed one day, unshaven the next, socks not matched. I guess he'd been unable to ignore the wreck that I'm slowly becoming. Not been able to ignore his responsibility in that any longer. Then he just left, wish I could.

Marge damn her, damn her, in my night time soliloquy's I've dug through every memory I can dredge up to understand why I did what I did. I've found a tipping point, and it has to do with Marge.

I'm not blaming her, any actions I did are my own. It's just that before this tipping point. Any seduction of me by Eric or anyone else, had never been on my radar. Not even in my own galaxy. After this tipping point, the seed was there.

Eric was standing there harmlessly flirting with me, just like he'd done countless times before. I turned my head and looked at Marge, she was watching us. Standing alongside Terry's desk, leaning over with her hands on the desk, face tipped up. I could lip read what she said, 'Lucky bitch', and it puzzled me. But it also carried a tiny touch of pride with it.

So I went and asked her what 'lucky bitch' meant. She laughed, said that she didn't think that I knew, or that anyone else did either. But, she'd 'taken a ride on that', meaning Eric. Said that he wasn't bad in bed, but not the best she ever had. But a lot better than most. Said that he didn't have the biggest cock she ever had either, but bigger than most. Overall it had just been fun, and she'd bet that no one knew about it, except now me. Marge has been married for a lot years too. Damn Marge, I don't know how, or why. But the tiny germ of a seed had been planted.

Rise and shine off to start my long ass day.

Today something bad has happened. There's a lot of women here in the village, and we're all wailing, keening that undulating cry. I've been doing it so long that my throat is raw, and I can hardly make any sound come out...

I'm pissed because as I come awake as Jeremy's been on my mind. Just not in the cold sheets in my hands. I have to flop over as I vomit everything in me into that wastebasket. As I'm trying to wipe my mouth, I think that Janet, Doctor Everson is the only one left that doesn't think that I'm doing this to myself. They want to diagnose me bulimic, among a lot of other things. There's even been talk of committing me, 'for my own good', maybe their right. As I lay back down, 2:15am, fourteen months, 21 days since Jeremy left. 84lbs yesterday, my bedroom mirror told me that I looked like a holocaust survivor.

I was pissed when I awoke because I'd been thinking of Jeremy. So as I lay back down I just floated back into that. I try not to do that, think about Jeremy. I know, at best, I would be considered obsessive. At its worst I think that in the end it's going to kill me. But sometimes I just want to remember.

Today I was thinking of Spain, my Jeremy had taken me along on a trip to Spain. He'd gotten a commission to paint a portrait of a major Spanish corporation's CEO. That's what my Jeremy did, he had a talent that he'd fit into a niche market. Then he tried to be the best that he could be, just in that niche . A portrait painter, a business portrait painter, he said that there would always be powerful important men who wanted to immortalize themselves on a 'look at me wall'. There had always been throughout all of history too.

It had started with his Father, he was the CEO of a small company in our hometown. Jeremy painted a portrait of his father that won some small awards in high school. His Dad told one of his business friends, and another portrait came into being. He told two of his friends and more commissions came, and came by word of mouth.

Jeremy was doing pretty well by the time he left high school. He was getting more commissions and getting paid a lot more for them too. He cut the quantity down when he was in college, but greatly increased the quality, and the prices soared, and I mean really soared. Jeremy has sold paintings for more than twice what a working man with a family makes in a year. After college he just took off and never looked back. I once told him that he didn't need a home and I didn't need to work. We could just travel between commissions. One after the next endlessly, and we could have.

In fact, that's what I think that he's doing right now, traveling between commissions. One right after the other.

I know that another artist couldn't have stood the pace Jeremy did. Sometimes as many as one portrait every two weeks. At close to two hundred thousand dollars apiece, that adds up to a lot.

Jeremy had two advantages that most artists don't. His talent gave him the ability to paint quite rapidly. Then the way his mind worked was his other and biggest advantage. There's a condition called, eidetic memory, commonly known as perfect memory. Jeremy has a form of that eidetic memory, it's just based in images.

That's why I knew that I couldn't lie to him about his seeing me with Eric. He could hold that image and study it under the microscope in his mind, for as long as he wanted too. In all the years I've known Jeremy I've never been able to lie to him.

He can recall in great detail any image that he's seen and wants to. It's fit into his business model. He'll get contact through one of several agents he works with. Or by word of mouth, go to see the client. Spend a day with them, agree on a price. Then just hang around them, informally for maybe another day. Set in his memory the look he wants for the portrait, the client's mannerism's and moods. How the client visualizes' the look he wants.

Fly home and paint the portrait, then ship it to them. That is one option, another is to bring it back and present it to them, when it was finished. Some clients like this more personal touch. The third option was what gave me Spain. They would pay to fly Jeremy to their home and provide for him while he was there. Provide everything, food, lodging, transportation, everything. Then he would paint the portrait right there in front of them, and leave when it was done.

That's the option Senor Feliciano Segovia choose, and allowed me to come with Jeremy. For over two weeks we; lived with his family, ate at his table, swam from his beach, played in his boats, and lived life in Spain. Two Americans tried to dance to a Spanish guitar, under the light of a Spanish moon, in a ancient canteena, in a small village in Spain. I loved it.

AND I've gotten to do pretty much the same thing in; France, England, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, and several other places in the world. Jeremy has had to do a lot of traveling in his business, at times. I didn't mind it, especially when I could go along.

I not a shrinking violet that needs her man at her elbow to know she's loved. Plus Jeremy wouldn't be gone that long at any one time. Hey, fingers work well and sometimes even a case of a little b o b might be needed until my man got home to tend to his homework. Hey, if I can't control my lusts for a couple of weeks, we're already in trouble, even before he left town.

But when Jeremy was home, he was totally here, and that made up for his being gone other times. Service wives are the ones who miss their husbands. Three, six months or longer tours of duty. That's where our sympathy should go.

I need to get up and start my...

The cry warbles and keens and dies...fading out.

I try to crawl up through the fog in my mind, hear a faint beeping noise...a strong smell...and fade out.

The cry is strong with many women's voices...wailing, keening, undulating, rising only to rapidly fall...

My mind tries to clear and I moan rocking back and forth, trying to roll toward the wastebasket as it just bubbles up out of my mouth and flows out around my face. I hear some indistinct voices, feel urgent hands rolling me over. Then fading...

The keening wails strong and violent right beside my ear. Singular voice that shatters into me.

I feel my body spasm and jerk, bunch in my belly as the vomit flies out of me. Hands try to hold me down, pin me to the bed...everything fades.

Wailing...warbling cry that screams into the dust and the heat. Three voices, two others and mine that I can feel vibrating in my throat, keening sharp and new...old as time...

As my mind struggles awake I reach for the large bedpan that's against the railing of my bed, and I try to fill it. Well I don't try to, my body does. I'd just as soon as not try too. I think that the nurse has been waiting for that. As I feel her presence start toward me. Yeah, I'm in the hospital, I guess that I've kept them running and jumping for a few days. 2:14am, fourteen months 25 days since Jeremy left me. 79lbs it says on the dry erase board at the end of my bed.

When my friend Chrissy got to work and seen that I wasn't there yet. Knew that something was wrong. When you're forced awake at two in the morning your always the first one at work. When I wouldn't answer my phone, then she really knew that something was wrong.

She flew over to my house, dug out my hide-a-key. Found a mess inside, I was half on the bed, half off the bed. Vomit everywhere, on the floor, in the bed, and on my clothes. It was in my hair, and on my face and...in my lungs. Rasping breath, totally unresponsive, little more than half alive. She probably saved my life, for what it's worth anyway.

So I guess I'll be here for a while, and there's been some additions made. They know that I got stuff in my lungs when I was that the house. They thought that I might have here in the hospital that first night too. They'd given me drugs to keep me in a coma, and hadn't even thought of the possibility of me rousing.

Little of the possibility of me waking and trying to vomit at 2:O'dark in the morning. But my body did, try to. They thought that I might have gotten more into my lungs then. Or the next day, or the next. They didn't know how my body was telling time, but still in a drug induced coma. It woke me at 2:0'dark to do my nightly exasperation of my stomach.