Story Details - [Just some info before the narrative begins. One; I have set this as part of the "Cuck" category but this may be wrong. Sure, its being played out by someone whose made to witness an affair, but I'm not sure if the style matches exactly what people who go for this category expect. Part of me has always imagined you'd read this like the self-insert is the other person and you were seeing that person from another perspective. But then in one respect, what does it matter. Read it however you like, maybe even change the characters around; you're the one reading it, you can interpret it however you like. Two; I don't explicitly confirm who people are. It is inferred within the story, but I don't go this person = A, this person = B. Some people may not like this but I had to do to make it read naturally. In one respect I never actually confirm anything, but then that is part of the point.]
----------
Warm day, today. I don't feel too bothered by it though; maybe everyone else on the train was bothered by the heat but I'm not. They all looked at me like I should have been, so maybe I should have pretended to be? I was just pleased that the track works were completed early meaning I'll be home almost an hour earlier than usual.
Although I don't know why it pleases me as much as it does. Sure, I have an impressive home with a beautiful wife, and a successful son. I've heard he passed another round of exams although quite why he is back home again for the break is beyond me. Maybe his accommodation isn't quite what he is used to but I wouldn't have thought that was enough to warrant coming back here when he could be out there.
Angela likes having him around though, and you know what they say: happy wife, happy life. Sure, life at home isn't quite like it was at the beginning, but its pleasant enough for the time that I am back in it. But I enjoy my work and the people around me while I'm there, so a little sacrifice is for the greater good.
And so he continues to mull on the juxtaposition between his home life and his work life as he stands at the station exit waiting for a Taxi to summon him. He is not alone however as the shade from the small patch of roofing poking out from the station walls is enough to collect a small group of people all standing irrelevantly to each other even though they all share a common demand.
But one by one the number of them whittles down as taxi's pull up to collect their purpose, until the last one arrives to pick up he who stands alone. It is not exactly far to travel, especially by car, and the fare he will pay will be far more than the journey is worth. Some people would wonder if it wasn't just better to walk but he wouldn't even think of that at all, instead behaving as if the taxi journey was thrusted upon him. It was just as it was meant to be.
Whatever the case it is shortly over, and he is deposited at the end of his long driveway leading to the family home. It is a large house but only by conventional standards, and isolated only because no one around him deigns to give his life a second look. Alone again after paying the taxi fare, he walks up to his front door in much the same way as he would any other day, and opens it with equal ineptitude.
The house is silent. This is not by any means strange as the dΓ©cor screams for the echoes that reverberate off it, but he still expected for there to be something to greet him. Once inside his routine is the same as it always is. He takes off his shoes, then he takes a single step inside and looks around to see if anyone is looking back. There never is.
I wonder where Angela is? I guess I figured she would be in the kitchen but all I see is the light still billowing through the windows. But the dull hum of the oven at least assures me that she is here somewhere in the house.
It is not concern which drives him to investigate, but more a curiosity; so as he shouts out for her it rings out more as if a cub was shouting for their master. The echo back is accompanied by a slight unidentifiable ruffling, but is enough to lead to the assumption that she is upstairs and so he begins the ascent. He is only about half way up when he gets a response in earnest.
"I'm upstairs, dear. What are you doing here?" Angela exclaimed through muffled doorway.
"What do you mean?" he returns while continuing his approach.
"What? I mean, at this time. This is much more earlier than usual."
"Oh."
The conversation fails to get any less harsh as he gets closer, but then even as he arrives onto the upstairs landing he still cannot be totally sure as to exactly where she is. And it is as he comes to a stop that a thought enters his mind. Sure, it was something that he had worried about years before, but not something that he had thought about lately. The tone, the enquiry, the un-assuredness; they hint at just one thing.
And how quickly a thought turns to a panic.
A look down towards the closed door of the Master Bedroom is soon followed by a sprint of soft steps towards it. But, just as he reaches the cusp of the doorway, he hesitates. His hand clutches the handle, but it does not move. It can't, because he does not want to know what is on the other side. To know would be to confirm it, and all that it meant.
A feeling floods his mind. It is not alien to him, but is not something he would have been prepared to feel. Whatever it is to him, it is enough to make him finally turn the handle and reveal what dared to be obscured behind it.
And it is nothing. A well-made bed and the empty sounds that accompany such a sight. Confusion soon turned to shame, which was only reinforced when he glances over to the ensuite to see that it is also empty.
What was I even thinking? What did I expect to see? What did I want to see?
Then he hears what he thinks to be a door opening from back in the corridor. In response he calls out her name again to be greeted by a sound similar to a door closing again, but for which it made no sense to be. She responds, but again from behind the muffled barrier that he had heard before.
"Well?!" she exclaims with obvious contention.