Revisited

This is a very dark little opus, and fairly short vs what I had originally conceived. (For those of you concerned with such things, I get a lot of inspiration from dreams and those just-before-sleep / just-before-waking periods.

This is in Loving Wives because that's where many such stories go; but, it has an exceptionally strong Fantasy component. If time travel or general fantasy are not turn-ons, please skip.

Also: Not an homage to Papatoad; but influenced? Yeah, prolly.

I awoke slowly, processing the tableau.

I was in bed; I felt young; there was someone in the bed with me.

Remembrance seeped into my consciousness. I smiled at the thought: It was the morning after my wedding. My newlywed wife, Sherry, was laying beside me.

I glanced over at her pale skin, placed a finger to her neck, and smiled even more broadly.

I reached for the phone.

++++++

(Twenty years earlier)

I reached for the phone. Its shrill insistence had roused me from a light nap. I glanced at the Caller ID, and cursed. I knew what was in store.

I picked up the handset. "Hello?" I lied.

"You're late again, asshole." Yep, my bitch ex-wife. I had harbored a vague hope it might be one of my two sons. Fat chance: they hated me more than their mother did. As if that was possible.

"I'm two days late. It's not an emergency for you, and we both know it."

"I DON'T GIVE A SHIT!" she shrieked. "You're gonna pay me that pissant little two hundred a month, whether you like it or not!"

"You have plenty. Why don't you and Screwer just get married and leave me alone?" I was getting hot, though I knew what was coming.

"None of your goddamned business what STEWART and I do. Learn to pronounce his name for a change, shit-for-brains."

"I know how to pronounce your names. Scary Sherry and Stewart the Screwer." I recognized the complete lack of decent rhyme scheme; I just loved to steam her.

"Just send the goddamned money NOW!" she screeched, and hung up. Loudly. Clearly, a land-line with handset.

I stared at my iPhone, wondering (very briefly) why Steve Jobs had not preminisced the need for such an attachment to his signature creation.

Then, I stared at my surroundings. I lived in a small (and I do mean small) condominium, two bedrooms, one bath, purchased before I met Scary Sherry (and thus a non-marital asset), the stairs being my sole source of exercise. Not a bad place to live; but at this point in my life (and career) I should have been doing much better.

I sat down in my recliner, a worn but trustworthy souvenir of my bachelor days, put my head back, and started a small pity-party.

++++++

I'd been out of school for three years when I met Sherry. Bachelor's in Accounting, good job, nice little condo, saving money left and right, just about to sit for the CPA. Life wasn't just good: it was sweeeet.

Then I met Sherry.

In retrospect, she was strictly take-no-prisoners. She pursued me with a righteous fire. She WAS going to get on my motherfuckin' gravy train, so there.

Within a year we were married and expecting. No, she didn't conceive until after the wedding, unless kids take fifteen months to gestate.

We were doing okay, I thought, until the birth of our first child; and then, the drumbeat began. New house, new house, new house. New car, new car, new car. New... well, you get it.

A couple years later, I'd knuckled under to most of her pronouncements, and we had another little boy.

Throughout the kids' younger years, there were few waves. Once they started middle school, things changed.

I was oblivious, of course.

Not everyone was, though. Don and Sheila, mutual friends, tried to drop hints. Phil and Susan, another set of close friends, confronted me directly.

I was being stepped out on. Cheated on. Cuckolded.

I dismissed most of it; but as the days and weeks and months rolled past, I began to see our friends were right. Something was going on.

Right after our seventeenth anniversary, an event marked by chilly relations and no warmth, she announced to me she'd fallen in love with someone else.

Don and Sheila were direct in their scolding; Phil and Susan less so, but still angry with both of us.

Scary Sherry slapped me with a restraining order and served me with divorce papers, and then moved her lover in with her.

It all happened so fast, I couldn't make head or tail of it. Not at that moment.

++++++

The judge was very sympathetic to me. She grilled Scary Sherry and Stewart the Screwer (as I'd taken to calling them) about their extramarital activities. The pair were smug as they blamed me for everything under the sun; Judge Kosar sliced up their arguments, and while she admitted I would have to pay the mortgage on the house, and child support for the children "everyone assumed were mine" (her words -- that got a spray of invectives from Scary Sherry, which earned her three days for contempt), I would have to pay my beloved ex two hundred dollars a month alimony. (More invectives, three more days in contempt)

++++++

And so life went on.

I sat in that comfy chair, and felt sorry for myself.

And then everything went white.

++++++

I thought I was dead. I'd felt no pain, I'd experienced no transition.

I was simply sitting, and everything around me was white. No, check that: colorless. Not clear, but just... nothing.

So this is death, I thought. I looked around; seeing nothing, and enjoying the seat, I just, well, sat.

At length, a figure approached. Nothing discernible, just a figure.

It sat across from me, where I do not know.

"Tired of this shit?" I heard.

I nodded.

A hand reached toward me, proffering a vial. I took it. It contained one pill.

"It's all she'll need," came the voice.

++++++

Twenty years earlier

I was awake, again, in my honeymoon suite.

The water was running in the bathroom. I remembered: Sherry had taken a bath, solo, before presenting her non-virgin pussy to me. We'd never had sex -- I'd honored her wishes, to inaugurate one another on our wedding night -- and she proclaimed a desire to present herself clean to her husband.

I looked at the nightstand.

There was a vial, with a single pill.

I debated for a microsecond before I extracted the pill.

As I recalled, we'd toasted one another with small glasses of -- you guessed it -- sherry.

I dropped the pill into hers. It vanished immediately.

At length she emerged; we toasted one another with the sherry, and then went through the gyrations of a wedding night.

We fell into an intense slumber.

++++++

I awoke slowly, not exactly sure if I had been dreaming; and then my senses kicked in.

My newlywed wife, Sherry, was laying beside me.

I glanced over at her pale skin, placed a finger to her neck, and smiled even more broadly.

I reached for the phone. "Please hurry! My wife isn't moving."

I gave more information, and then settled back.

I grinned and dressed. I needed to find a new wife.