Christmas in the Woods

Suddenly, predictably, Katie reacted. She turned quickly and slapped the shit out of the young guy behind her. "Kyle!" She screamed at the top of her lungs, giving me a name to include on the divorce papers.

"At any time during the past six months that we've been together, have I ever given you the idea that I was even remotely interested in anal sex?" Her voice was so loud the neighbors could surely hear her. I was worried that she might have overloaded the sensitive microphone built into my iPhone.

"Yeah Kyle," I chimed in, further humiliating a man who already looked like a whipped dog from her verbal assault on him. "After six months of fucking this whore, you really ought to know what she likes. But cheer up Bucko, the two of you are going to be together for a long time. You'll have plenty of time to get it right. Now both of you pack your shit and get the fuck out of my house."

* * * * * *

Katie

It was my most wonderful hope and my greatest nightmare all rolled into one. Over the past few days, I'd been trying to figure things out. I had finally come to my thoughts enough to actually do the math. The fact was that there was a big assed difference between static money and living money.

Living money was income. Living money continued to grow and come in. Static money was one set amount and every time you bought something it lessened the amount. On paper a half million dollars seemed like a fuck of a lot of money. I would get some interest if I invested it wisely. If I invested it now while I was thirty five it would grow depending on the market until I was ready to retire.

It would, depending on luck, grow into a decent amount. But what was I supposed to live on until then. I had bills to pay. My car note, car insurance, mortgage and all of my other bills would still need to be paid. There was also the fact that the insurance company seemed at this point very unlikely to declare what happened to Clint an accident.

The two scenarios they had their teams of investigators looking into were mechanical failure and human error. Neither of which was accidental. It was more than likely that I was only going to get two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Living off of that amount, meant that even if I was very frugal and only spent a paltry twenty five thousand dollars a year, I would run out of money by the time I was forty five. Even if I could tap into whatever pension Clint had coming, I wouldn't be eligible for that until I was in my sixties. That left a big assed gap during which I would probably have to get a job.

And all of that was a fucking fantasy. There was no way I could live on twenty five thousand dollars a year. It was simply not possible. It was all Clint's fault. He had spoiled me over the years. He simply loved me too much. He got me used to having whatever I wanted and not having to lift a finger to get it.

And the idiot humping away at me ... Kyle was useless. He would never amount to shit. The only reason he was still here was that I didn't want to be alone. I was having a lot of sex with him lately, because it was the only way to shut him up. Fucking him was less painful than listening to him trying to Rap.

Whenever we weren't in bed, he walked around the house mumbling and trying to make absolutely ridiculous things rhyme. There had been several times when I wanted to just hit him in the head with a brick. And then just continue doing it until he was only a stain on my floor.

Kyle suddenly stopped pounding away at me. He tried to flip me over and I did it just for a change. I had the weirdest feeling as I got up onto all fours and stuck my ass in the air so he could penetrate me. Perhaps it was the guilt I was feeling. But that was stupid.

If I was going to feel guilty, it should have been back while Clint was alive. If I didn't feel guilty then, why the hell should I feel it when he was dead?

Hell, Clint, God rest his soul, the man loved me like no one else did. He'd have wanted me to be happy. I flinched as some of Kyle's sweat dripped down onto me. What was taking that moron so long. I couldn't believe he was having so much trouble finding the same pussy he had just been in.

There comes a time when the sex slows down in every relationship. I think that Kyle and I had reached that point. It was funny but Clint and I never seemed to reach that point. Clint literally worshipped me. Kyle just fucked me.

Just as I started to remember how good Clint made me feel when he wasn't at Frank's neck and call, I felt it. Kyle was trying to push his dick against my asshole.

"Kyle!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. I wanted to kill that stupid bastard. I was so pissed that it took me a while to form my next insult. He was going to pay for what he'd tried to do.

"At any time during the past six months that we've been together, have I ever given you the idea that I was even remotely interested in anal sex?" I screamed. There were some very nasty images going through my mind at that moment.

I saw myself jamming a foot long, three inch diameter strap on, up his ass without any lube. After that he'd never even consider sticking anything up my ass.

I was going to do it too. I liked the idea of torturing Kyle. I often made him do things that he didn't like. He had no choice if he wanted me to pay his rent. Sometimes I punished him just because he wasn't Clint. But this time I had a reason.

Suddenly, I heard a voice. I was in too much shock to make out exactly what he said. I probably couldn't have heard him anyway over the rushing sounds in my ears. I turned and saw my husband, Clint, back from the dead and standing in the doorway.

My vision dimmed as I realized the predicament I was in. I was butt naked with my ass in the air like a whore, while a naked twenty-something man tried to shove his rapidly shrinking dick up my ass.

Okay, I thought. I can black out now. But it didn't happen. I did tumble off of the bed as Kyle pushed me away from him as if he'd just discovered that I had syphilis. He was moving around like a jumping bean trying to shield himself from Clint, who hadn't moved and trying to find his clothes at the same time.

I was still having trouble breathing. I sucked in a breath and barely wheezed out,"Rape!"

I don't think Clint heard me. He was just standing there in the doorway, smiling. He had his phone in his hand. Who was he going to call? Slut busters?

I just couldn't figure it out. Maybe I was crazy. It made no sense.

Kyle was trying to open the window and jump out. He cut his hand on the sharp edge of the metal latch on the window. He screamed in pain and then screamed again as Clint moved towards him, with that Damned phone still in his hand.

"Kyle, Buddy, it is okay for me to call you Kyle isn't it?" he asked. Kyle nodded stupidly. I wondered if he was capable of doing anything any other way.

Neither of us could figure out why Clint was just smiling and talking to him so calmly after discovering him Jack-hammering his wife in his own marital bed. But he was. He sat Kyle down in a chair and ran out into the hall and kicked Kyle's pants and shirt back into the room.

"Here are your clothes if you want to get dressed," he said to Kyle. I swear his smile was even bigger. Then he turned to me.

"He ... He raped me, Clint," I spat angrily. Clint just sat on th edge of the bed and laughed his ass off.

"Come on Katie," he laughed. "You must think I'm as stupid as Kyle to fall for that."

"Kyle did you rape my wife?" he asked calmly.

"Of course not," spat Kyle. "I love her. I'm going to be a famous rapper some day. As soon as I blow up, I'm going to give her everything she wants."

"Well good luck with that," said Clint. "I thought I'd done that and look what it got me." He even chuckled as our eyes met. Both of us knew that the only way Kyle would ever blow up would be if someone jammed a stick of dynamite up his ass.

It suddenly hit me why Clint was so fucking happy. You never truly know people. We have both been surprised at the same time. Clint had been surprised to find me fucking Kyle. And I had been surprised to discover that my husband of all of those years harbored a secret wish to see some other man fuck me. I began to think that this might all work out.

"Well," said Clint, still smiling. "I've been really kind and very polite considering the circumstances, but I think it's time for you two to be moving along."

"What do you mean, Honey?" I asked. "You want him to fuck me again?"

In less than half a second Clint's face morphed. The change was so quick and so severe that it was as if he became a different person.

"Fuck no, you slut," he spat at me with nothing but utter disgust in his voice and his expression. "I don't care what the two of you do. I just want to get you both out of my house!"

"B-b-but Honey, it's our house. I picked it and you bought it for me," I stuttered.

"All kinds of people pick all kinds of shit," he sneered. "Little kids walk past car lots and pick out cars. It doesn't mean they own them unless they can pay for them. Your name doesn't appear anywhere on the mortgage. Th only way you could claim ownership of the house would be if I died." I was shocked by the hatred in his voice.

As the tears rolled down my face, he seemed to calm down. "Look Katie," he said calmly. "Maybe you should just go and stay with your parents for a while. Once you get a lawyer, we can talk about who gets the house while we work out the settlement."

"What settlement?" I asked.

"The one our lawyers will work out," he said. "I'll start out by offering you the bed. I don't think I could ever sleep on it again."

"What lawyers?" I asked. "Why do we need lawyers. Oh shit, Frank told you didn't he? You are so smart, Honey. If we're gonna be rich we need to start investing."

"What the hell are you babbling about, Katie," he said. "We're splitting up. We need lawyers to handle the divorce. I don't want to stand in the path of true love. I hope you and Kyle are very happy together." Even as I went deeper into shock, I saw him high fiving Kyle.

"We are not getting a divorce," I screamed. "No fucking way. The only true love around here is you and me. Fuck Kyle."

"You already did," he said. "I've got it on video. It's going to be used as evidence in the divorce."

Kyle was dancing in the background and waving his hand while shaking his butt the way women did in the Rap videos. "Evidence," he sang. "E to the Vee to the Dee E dense."

The only thing dense around here was Kyle. There was no way I was getting stuck with that moron. Clint started video taping Kyle's pathetic rap.

"Kyle, get that phone," I said. Kyle stopped singing and looked at me.

"You serious?" he asked. He looked a little bit afraid of Clint as I nodded.

He turned to Clint and in the most menacing tone I had ever heard from him said, "Mah woman told me to take yo phone ... So gimme ..."

Before Kyle had finished his sentence, Clint punched him in the mouth so hard that Kyle left his feet. Clint grabbed Kyle by the seat of his pants and frog marched him out into the hallway and then threw him down the stairs.

He turned to me then. "Get dressed, Katie and get out or I'll call the police and play the tape of you ordering Kyle to steal my phone," he said.

"But, Honey, we can work this out," I whined.

"Get a lawyer and we can start the process," he said. I nodded.

"Kyle," I screamed. "Come up here and start loading some of my clothes into my car."

"Katie, you're leaving here with the clothes on your back," he said. "I'm still paying for that Lexus. It stays here until we work out who gets what."

Luckily Kyle hadn't spent all of the money I gave him. We had to take the bus to my parents' house. I hadn't ever been on a city bus before.

"These are mah peepoh," intoned Kyle. "Watch this ah'm a give em a lil sump'm." The next thing I knew, Kyle had stood up and started rapping. Three old ladies grabbed him and threw him off of the bus. They looked at me since I'd gotten on with him. I jumped up and got off on my own since it looked painful when he landed.

We finally got to my parents' house two hours later. It was normally a twenty minute drive. I tried to explain to my parents what was going on but apparently, Clint had already called them.

To be honest, he'd called them to tell them to tell me that he would pay for my lawyer and that he wouldn't cancel my credit cards until after the settlement had been reached if I agreed not to run up the balances.

My mom, who Clint could never say no to, wheedled the rest of it out of him. She told my Dad what was going on and both of them were pissed.

They started yelling at me as soon as I rang the doorbell.

"It ain't that bad," interjected Kyle.

I have serious doubts about Kyle's ability to carry off the role of street tough white rapper. It was one thing to see my well built husband beat Kyle up. But seeing my sixty eight year old father put his foot up Kyle's ass surprised me.

The last glimpse I got of Kyle was of him limping down the street as fast as he could with my Dad hot on his heels. If my mom hadn't made my dad come back in the house, who knows what might have happened to Kyle.

The divorce was fast and bloody. I got my clothes, my car and some money. I had to settle for that because Clint refused to back down. I tried to go for counseling and to cancel the divorce. He decided to put the videos from his phone on you tube.

The scandal would have embarrassed my whole family and destroyed my personal reputation in the only city I had ever lived in.

I asked for the house. My lawyer and my dad sat me down and explained the facts of life to me. The facts of life were that no judge would ever give me more than fifty percent of our assets. Since I had been the party at fault and I had done it while my husband was perceived to be dead, I would be an extremely unsympathetic person if the case couldn't be settled and went to court.

The second fact was that I simply couldn't afford the house if Clint gave it to me. We lived in a four hundred thousand dollar house. We had paid off about a quarter of its value. We had about a hundred thousand dollars worth of equity in the house. If I wanted the house, I'd have to assume the mortgage and pay Clint fifty thousand dollars. No bank on earth would give a woman who had never had a job and had no credit history a three hundred thousand dollar mortgage.

"But I thought that the woman always gets the house," I said.

"Only when there are kids involved," said my lawyer. "The best you can hope for is if the judge orders the house sold. Then you could buy it if you want it that bad."

"I told you to give me some God damned grand kids," snapped my mother.

I couldn't believe things had gone that far. I was losing, my house, my husband and my marriage over Kyle and my jealousy over Clint's job. Now that I was faced with how hard it was to actually make a living and pay for the things I had taken for granted, I realized what a fool I had been.

Unfortunately, Clint didn't want to hear it. He accepted my apology gracefully and tried to be very fair in the settlement. The only thing he wanted was out of our marriage. I couldn't believe he had fallen out of love with me so quickly.

"What did you expect," said my father angrily. "You broke his fucking heart."

In the end Clint got an equity loan on our house. He gave me a hundred thousand dollars to cover both my half of our equity in the house and fifty thousand dollars in lieu of alimony. I also received half of our investments which was another twenty thousand dollars. He even agreed as a gesture of good faith to allow me to keep my Lexus, but I had to assume the payments as soon as he transferred it into my name.

Once I realized what the monthly note and the service contract on that car cost, I traded it in for a much cheaper car. The service contract on that car was more than the monthly payment on my new car.

I move into an apartment that I could afford. I hoped that after some time had passed, the pain of what I had done would fade and Clint and I could start again. It had taken us less than a week to work out all of the details of our divorce. But it seemed like an eternity.

The entire family was mixed up. It just didn't seem like it was going to be a very good Christmas this year. I sat on the floor of my new apartment and I couldn't help crying. Normally I would be searching all over that big old house trying to figure out where Clint hid my Christmas presents.

For the first time since I met Clint, I would be alone and unhappy on Christmas and the only person I could blame was myself.

* * * * * *

Clint

My life could all be boiled down to a scene from a movie. It's the one in the Matrix, where Cypher looks at Neo and says, "Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill?"

Over the past week I had been working my ass off. I was working more hours than ever before, but I felt empty. It wasn't my divorce although everyone thought it was. The one thing that was haunting me was regret.

Like Cypher, I felt that I had made a really shitty choice in a critical situation and had fubar'd my life as a result.

I'd had the chance, night after night to take a piece of heaven and had turned it down again and again. What made it especially bad was that I thought I was doing a good thing. Was that what they meant by, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions?"

After a few days even Frank was worried about me. He called me into his office and told me that he thought I was too stressed out. He thought I needed to take some time off after the plane crash and then my quick divorce, I needed to unwind and find my happy place.

From the moment he said it, I knew what I had to do. I called my real estate guy and had him arrange to buy something for me. He looked into it for me and told me it was done. The seller was so glad to sell the place that he was dancing. I could take immediate occupation or start destroying the place to build something new on the site.

I told him I intended to go up there for a visit and check the place out. I headed for Home Depot and a couple of camping supply places. I dropped off Christmas presents to my parents and to my in-laws. They all seemed to understand that for just this once I needed some time to myself for Christmas.

I was sure that my Mustang wouldn't be able to make the trip if I was crazy enough to try to drive it. Fortunately, I had a jeep for the winters. It took me more than a day of driving through ever deepening snow, but what do you expect, it was Canada.

My intention was to just spend the day, remembering and trying to decide what the hell I wanted to do with a run down hunting lodge. I could probably rebuild the cabins and modernize them. Maybe I could turn cabin 6 into a summer retreat for myself. Hey, why just for myself? Maybe I could take the entire company up there for a week or a weekend in the summer as sort of a team building, stress relief thing!

As I pulled up to what was now my gate. I noticed a God damned car parked outside of it. I figured it was squatters. Probably a bunch of teenagers who lived in the area and came up there to smoke dope and make out.

Shit, I was young once. I guess ordinarily I wouldn't care. But I was up here now and I kind of wanted the place to myself so I could remember...

As I opened the fence, I noticed a lot of fresh tracks in the snow. it made it kind of difficult to figure out where they were. Judging from the size of their feet, they seemed to be really small kids.

I laughed as I saw that some of them had made snow angels. It was beginning to get dark and kids that small would probably head home if they were even still here.