The package arrived at work on Friday, just a padded envelope labeled, "Annalisa Johannsen, Personal and Confidential," and the address of her company. Whoever had sent it, they had left no return address at all. The mail carrier gave her a bit of a curious look, but all she could do was shrug helplessly in response.
At lunch, she took the envelope off to a quiet portion of the cafeteria and opened it. It turned out to contain a CD-ROM and a note. The note was printed on a computer, not hand-written, so the identity of the sender remained as mysterious as ever. It just said, "You need to know. Watch me alone. A friend."
Need to know? Need to know what?
*****
Annalisa made it through the rest of the day without thinking about the disc too much, but that didn't mean she was any less glad to be able to get out the door and drive home. She always made it home an hour or so before Sam, and she took that time to head to the upstairs "office", slip the disc into the DVD-ROM drive, and open it up.
The disc only contained one file, a video clip. Wondering what all the trouble was about, Annalisa opened it.
It turned out to be some sort of low-budget fetish pornography. The room had been draped with black cloth to give it a "dungeon" feel. Annalisa shifted in her chair. She'd never been comfortable with pornography, even the relatively tame things Sam was interested in. This looked to be several orders of magnitude worse, the sort of thing she'd heard of but never seen. The woman in the video was kneeling in front of the camera, dressed in some sort of...outfit...was that rubber? Annalisa shuddered. Who the hell would send her something like this?
Then a second person walked in front of the camera. He said something, but Annalisa didn't even listen. She just stared, open-mouthed, at her husband's naked body.
She didn't believe it. She couldn't believe it. Sam didn't, wouldn't, couldn't, didn't! But the woman on the screen crawled over to him. Annalisa couldn't tell much about her; the rubber covered her from head to toe, with the exception of a few body parts that just made Annalisa's mouth set in a firm line as she continued to watch. Maybe this was a prank. Maybe Sam was going to stop her, turn to the camera, and say, "You know I love you too much to do this, honey!"
No, she was sucking on his...oh God. Annalisa closed the window and sat there for a long moment. She looked at the house around her, at a life that had suddenly become thin and brittle like ice on the surface of the water. She'd gone through the ice now, into black waters of betrayal and uncertainty, and...and she didn't know what to do next. Did she stop loving Sam? Should she leave? Confront him? Deny it? Did she need to pack? Who was the other woman? Was it just the once? How many women were there? Was she sure it was Sam? Did she need a lawyer?
The emotions just seemed to pile onto her, fighting each other for supremacy until all that Annalisa felt was a numb sensation. After what felt like hours, she heard Sam's car pull into the driveway, and she ejected the disc and slipped it back into the envelope.
It was just too much to handle right now. Sam didn't have to know she knew. Not yet.
*****
She'd surprised herself with her ability to act naturally. She'd kissed Sam on the cheek, they'd had dinner and talked about their day, and she somehow didn't include, "I found out you were making pornographic videos" in her recap of events. They'd watched a little TV, cuddled a little, and fallen asleep just like normal.
Except for she hadn't slept. She just lay there, wide awake. Was this her fault? She kept coming back to that one. She knew her sex drive wasn't exactly high, but Sam had never said a word of complaint. Maybe this was why. Maybe he was satisfying himself elsewhere with the urges she knew she could never bring herself to gratify. Maybe this was only fair. She got her wonderful, loving husband, who gave her everything she wanted and made her happy, and he found some...pervert...to help him deal with his sexual issues. Maybe she could just turn a blind eye to it all, let the whole thing work itself out.
An hour later, she was upstairs in the office, watching the video.
She huddled in the chair, hugging her own knees, as the woman in black sucked her husband's...sucked her husband. She had the sound low, but she could still hear him saying, "Good job, slave. You know you love to please your master, don't you?"
The woman in black didn't answer, unless "bobbing her head up and down faster" was an answer. But Sam kept talking to her, telling her what a good...oh, God, she'd never even heard him use that word! Then he told her to stop, and just like that, she did. He told her to turn around, and, and...the fact that he said, "Spread your legs like the slut you are," that didn't bother Annalisa. Obviously, whoever this woman was, 'slut' was an apt description of her. What bothered Annalisa was the moan of pleasure the woman gave when he said it. She seemed...happy.
Annalisa reached for the mouse again when the two of them started...making love...but stopped herself. She needed to find out everything. Her own husband had suddenly become a total stranger to her, and she needed to learn everything she could about this new man before she decided whether or not she could live with him.
