Editor's note: the
author of the original story
gave open-ended permission for other writers to create derivative works.
*
'
Just Once, if you don't mind
', deals with some extreme phycological issues that have been overlooked in other endings to this story. I wanted to address these issues as well as align the behaviors of the characters in the story with the accomplishments that they were said to have achieved in the original story. Colonels in the U.S. Army are being prepared to become Generals and are Alpha and Sigma Males, so displays of Beta behavior is incongruent with this achievement, particularly one that flew attack helicopters. Marcy's behavior is extreme as discussed in this version of the ending.
My apologies for the length, however I am a story teller and wanted to be thorough.
Your Votes are important, as Writers this is our Art. If you have a negative thoughts, leave a comment that can improve the Art, but don't just leave a negative vote. What is the point of that?
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Leslie sat across from Rick in the kitchen, looking cute as could be and in a different time, in a different situation, he would take her to bed and enjoy himself.
Rick looked at the Marcy's letter and wondered, what was she thinking?
Like many people, she seemed to have forgotten, Rick was a Retired Colonel from the U.S. Army. A former Attack Helicopter Pilot, that hung up his love of flying at the request of this ungrateful bitch. He was now a retired Intelligence Officer, working for a premier international security company. She talked about making sacrifices in her letter, but apparently, she had forgotten that it was a two-way street. He thought that maybe she was thinking that once he retired, he left his Code of Honor with the Army. That is not something that had happened. He had his morals and integrity, before he had entered the Army, so that was not going anywhere. One hard fast rule he lived by was, he didn't sleep with married women, regardless of their arrangements in their marriage.
"Leslie," Rick said, looking up at her. He seemed to startle her with his words, as he had been silent for some time, lost in thought.
She had been staring at her wine glass, running her finger around the rim.
"You are lovely woman, but I have a rule about not sleeping with married women." Rick said, with a smile on my face.
"But Rick, your wife gave you a hall pass, aren't you going to use it?" Leslie leaned forward in her chair with her hands between her legs. She had flashed him her bare pussy again, putting her hands between her legs and then she pressed her breasts together with her arms, maximizing her cleavage in the top of her sundress. It was obvious that she wasn't wearing a bra as her nipples were trying to poke their way out of the thin cotton material of the dress.
"Yes, she gave me a hall pass, after she took one for herself. She gave it to me as a consolation prize." He let his anger be heard in his voice. "Do you like being a consolation prize, Leslie?" He asked, softly.
She lost her smile, dropped back in her chair, arms folded across her chest and crossing her legs at the knee.
"No, I don't like being a consolation prize." She pouted. "Especially one that not wanted."
"Well, Leslie, thank you for the wine. I think you had better go home, now." Rick said politely as he stood. He gestured towards the door.
Leslie left without further comment. He watched her cute ass wiggle as she walked across the back yard to the gate to her house. He closed the door, before she could look back, as he didn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing he had watched her.
Rick thought; all Marcy's reasoning was just bullshit rationalization. It was faulty, didn't take into account how he felt about anything.
If this is the way she was going to disrespect him, he didn't owe her anything, at all, he thought.
She was just a selfish bitch, not the woman he had sacrificed so much of his personal happiness to maintain marriage with, and definitely not a woman he wanted to continue to be married to in the future.
"Know your enemy and know yourself, and you will be successful in battle 100% of the time." Sun Tzu
This was a quote that Intelligence Officers lived by or should and it was one of Rick's favorites. He even had the quote framed on the wall in his home office.
Rick took a legal pad of paper and began to write out something of a psychological profile for Marcy. This was something commonly done in the intelligence community. As a matter of fact, the first psychological profiles had been done by Military Intelligence during World War II. Commanders and politicians used these profiles to anticipate the action opponents. Rick was going to do the same and use it as a filter for his emotions as he was detaching himself emotionally from Marcy. He knew he shouldn't be doing this as he was too close to Marcy, but he had little choice. Her comment in the letter about learning interrogation technique while helping him study, made him laugh, because she had completely misread his embarrassment as him lying. He wrote down her actions with regard to her planning her adultery, the steps she had taken, writing the letter, planning with Leslie, etc. He analyzed the letter she wrote, looking for keys to her thought process. He concluded that Marcy had developed a feeling of entitlement from her position of importance at the hospital. Her position also fed her ego, which in turn caused her to believe that she was more important to the marriage than an equal partner. Her ego fed her growing delusion of self-importance to the point where she felt she could do anything and Rick just had to put up with it.
Rick concluded that Marcy, despite how hateful she had been in the letter and phone conversation, did want to return to the marriage, but it would be on her terms. Rick would just have to put up with whatever Marcy demanded.
If Marcy wanted to just leave him, she would not have tried to appease him by offering Leslie.
Rick wrote 'Narcissist?' at the bottom of the page, but Marcy admitted in writing to being a coward and a narcissist wouldn't do that. Then he wrote 'SOCIOPATH' as if he had unlocked the key to what made Marcy think. Her career success, sleeping with a younger doctor, had made her believe 'normal rules' no longer applied to her, like her marriage vows. The definition of a sociopath.
Rick now knew his enemy, Marcy. And in the course of working on the profile, he had already begun to formulate my plan.
He had been a Colonel and if there is anything he could do, it is plan. He was also a Ranger, having suffered through Ranger School as a young Lieutenant and there you learned to plan under duress. He was under duress now. He had also been an Operations Officer as a Captain, when he was flying and again as a Major, when he switched over to the Intelligence Branch. Operations Officers do nothing, but plan.
The job he had taken at Gibraltar Securities, Director of Operational Planning, that allowed him to work largely from home, was because he had been recognized for his ability to plan. It was also the reason he was being considered for General, before he retired.
