Author's note: I have always wanted to write a true revenge fantasy, where a man takes forceful action against a person that's wronged him. The civilized world, of course, frowns on such action, but there is an elemental part of everyone that often likes to see scores settled in such a decisive way.
I think I have found a vehicle for my little revenge fantasy in the form of the recently released story "Tricia," by the prolific Just Plain Bob.
If you are a regular reader, you probably have an opinion about JPB, as he is known. Personally, I find him to be a bit of a guilty pleasure. He is certainly a talented writer, and I generally find him to be entertaining, even if I sometimes agree with his many critics that he often writes stories about very unsympathetic characters who do extremely maddening things.
In "Tricia," Bob tells the story of a couple that builds a cabin in the mountains, next to a semi-retired black fellow that the husband and his two sons come to befriend, but whom the wife loathes.
One weekend, the husband – we'll call him Rob – takes his sons for a hike up into the high country overlooking the cabin. Rob stops to look down on the cabin, where his wife – Tricia – is sunbathing. While he's watching through binoculars, the neighbor, Archie, comes over and proceeds to rape Tricia right out in the open.
At some point, however, Tricia goes from victim to willing participant, then on ensuing days engages Archie in sexual trysts while Rob and the boys are away from the cabin. Rob is fully aware of what's going on, and as the story ends, he is headed back to the cabin for a confrontation with his wife.
Here is what I think should have happened next. Remember, this is a work of fiction, so don't go thinking that it's acceptable to really do the things that are done in this story.
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I was lost in thought as I drove the familiar route to the mountain cabin that afternoon in late spring. It was Memorial Day weekend, school had just gotten out for the summer and we were getting away from the city.
It was our first trip back since that fateful weekend the previous October when the events occurred that I detailed in my earlier tale, and it was likely to be one of the last.
I had already called ahead to meet with a realtor about putting the cabin on the market for sale, and she had agreed to meet me the next morning to appraise the property.
I couldn't enjoy the place any more, not after what had happened on our previous visit. So much had changed since then, and none of it for the better.
I looked over at my older son, Charlie, sitting in the passenger seat next to me. He was staring out the window with the earphones from the MP3 player blasting out some industrial strength rock. He hadn't wanted to come, because he had somehow figured out that the breakup of his parents' marriage had started there that weekend at the cabin.
But I needed him to be there, both to help me around the cabin and as an alibi. He and his brother – who was still mostly unaware of what had happened the time before – were there to make sure I didn't do anything that could be seen as violent toward Archie, the neighbor who had started the whole thing.
He had raped Tricia, no question about it, but then he had somehow tapped into my ex-wife's latent slut, a side of her I never knew existed, and she had welcomed him into her lush body on two subsequent occasions.
I still remember every little detail of that Sunday afternoon, as I accompanied the boys back from our hike, where I had observed the cabin from a high overlook. I had watched Archie leaving after an hour inside, then saw Tricia standing in the doorway naked, sending him off with a wave.
I knew I was going to confront her with what I'd seen that weekend, but I wasn't sure how I was going to do it. I didn't want to cause a scene, especially with the boys around. They were quite close with their mother, and I didn't want them hearing about what a slut she'd been that weekend.
I finally decided that I would wait until we got home that evening to have the critical talk with Tricia, when we could be alone, in private.
I could see no reason to draw this thing out, and I wasn't one to beat around the bush. I'm a pretty direct person, and when I make a decision, it's done.
I just couldn't see myself living with – never mind sleeping with and having sex with – a woman who had so completely disrespected me the way Tricia had that weekend. Every chance she had that weekend, she let that black bastard come over and fuck her, and she had turned me away that first night.
In the space of three days, she had forced me to question the whole 17 years of our relationship, the two years of courtship and the 15 years of marriage. I had to wonder if that had been an isolated incident, or the manifestation of behavior she'd exhibited on other occasions, in other places.
And it really didn't matter. She'd cheated on me, more than once that weekend, and I couldn't abide that kind of behavior from my wife and the mother of my sons.
Tricia's hair was damp when we returned to the cabin, as if she'd stepped out of the shower not long before. The sheets had all been stripped from the beds and the dirty linens had been stuffed in a laundry bag in preparation for the return home.
I was tempted to fish around for the sheet that had covered our bed, to see if there were any telltale stains. But I didn't. I didn't have to, because I already knew what they'd been up to.
She gave me a greeting when I stepped in the cabin, but all I did was nod in her direction as I trudged back to the bedroom to change. I felt her gaze on me, but then her attention was diverted by the boys clamoring in the door.
"You guys hurry up and get your stuff packed away," I said. "I want to be out of here in an hour."
Tricia came in while I was changing from my jeans and hiking boots to my shorts and topsiders. I noticed she had on a turtleneck sweater and jeans, even though the temperature was unseasonably warm.
"How was the hike?" she said finally, when it became obvious that I wasn't going to initiate a conversation.
"It was OK," I said. "The boys had fun."
Her eyes kind of narrowed as she looked at me, but I just turned away and began to begin getting everything pulled together to go. I had no desire to linger, and I was pretty sharp with the boys about getting their stuff ready to go.
Once we were packed up, with the van loaded and the cabin locked up, we drove off, and as we passed Archie's place, he was sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair drinking a beer. I just stared at him as we passed. I was already working through ways that I could make him pay for what he'd done to Tricia.
It didn't take long for a solution to present itself.
The cabins were set up on a high ridge and the road that leads up to the ridge is fairly steep in some places, with a couple of tricky hairpin curves that require good brakes and a low rate of speed to negotiate safely.
Since we'd started coming up there, we'd heard some stories about locals who had met their deaths on those curves, and you could, in fact, see where the railing had been replaced in several places and was dented in others.
As we reached the valley and hit the main highway toward home, I had made a decision about Archie. I wasn't sure yet how it was going to happen, or when, but I knew that at some point in the foreseeable future, old Archie was going to meet with disaster on one of those curves.
With that decision made, I began to turn my attention to the more immediate problem of my marriage. I was working over my plans in my mind as we drove in silence, when I heard Tricia speak for the first time in awhile.
"Rob?" she asked hesitantly. "Are you all right?"
"Sure," I said. "I'm fine."
"Well, you don't sound fine," she said when I refused to say anything more. "You haven't spoken 10 words to me since you got back from your hike, and you were pretty sharp with the boys back at the cabin. Are you upset about something?"
I just looked at her, and I think that was when she first began to understand that I knew what she'd been up to all weekend, because she clammed right up.
If she didn't figure it out then, I gave her a none-too-subtle hint a little while later, when she put her hand on my thigh – an affectionate gesture she'd used a thousand times before – and I pointedly moved her hand away. I didn't look over at her, but I thought I heard a soft gasp, and maybe a stifled cry.
I didn't care. It was time for her to start hurting, after what she'd put me though that weekend, and it was only going to get worse.
The fact is my heart was breaking. Tricia was the only woman I'd ever loved, and until two days before, I had been nothing but flushed with pride that she was my wife, my woman. Now? Now, she belonged to someone else, and I have to say it was crushing me.
I think that was why I had to do what I did. Archie had crushed my manhood in such a profound way that I had to have retribution from him. It drove me to madness the way it ate at me.
And Tricia had so easily forsaken her vows and had so willingly slipped into a slut mode that I had to rid myself of her, immediately. There was no chance that I could forgive what she'd done. None at all.
We stopped at Taco Bell for supper, and it was dark by the time we arrived home. Since the next day was a school day, we sent the boys on to get showered and get to bed. I left Tricia in our bedroom to unpack while I wandered out to my tool shed to unload the camping stuff and kill some time.
An hour or so passed before she came out to find me working on a bird feeder. Like I said, I was just killing time. I looked up at her, and she sort of avoided my gaze. I noticed she was still wearing her turtleneck sweater and jeans.
"So, are you going to tell me what's bothering you, or do I have to guess?" she said finally.
"I think you know," I said. "Patricia, I'm taking a personal day from work tomorrow to take care of some business, and I would suggest that you do the same."
