CLICHE #1

Written by Vandemonium1

Edited by CreativityTakesCourage

Three fellow Lit authors I admire, Maninconn, Imhapless, and Britease all wrote stories called ‘Cliché’ or ‘Cliches’ so sorry for any confusion my title choice may cause, but when you read this series (I have 4 outlines so far) you’ll see why I couldn’t call it anything else. The bulk of these stories are entirely well-used-to-the-point-of-tiresome words and ideas. Maybe the endings will break the mould, maybe they won’t. Let’s just say, all stories feature a guy called Dave. 

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THE SCENE: A restaurant opposite the family law courts.

“Can’t I even eat my lunch in peace, Laura?”

“I just want one more chance of talking you out of making a huge mistake, Dave. If you continue on this stupid path—”

Dave interrupted, “Do you really want to air our dirty laundry in public, Laura? Do the dozen or so people sitting within earshot really need to know our business?”

“I don’t give a toss who hears us, Dave. We could have done this quietly in my lawyer’s office any number of times in the last six months but, no, you had to refuse after getting all snitty and stubborn.”

“And why the hell shouldn’t I get blazing mad for what you did to me, bitch? Twelve years we were married. Twelve fucking years. Then I find out you never loved me. I was just a convenient sperm donor for our two kids, oh, and a source of funds. Let’s not forget that bit.”  Dave snorted. “Let’s just call me The Bank of Dave.”

Laura let this vehement comment go unanswered. It was true, after all, and she was human enough not to be proud of that fact. In the silence that followed, both parties thought their own thoughts.

Dave’s thoughts centred on the unspeakable nightmare his once happy life had degenerated into. Being sent home sick from work one day, just before lunch time. Seeing Laura’s ‘friend’, Karen’s car in the driveway, the sight making him feel even worse. The woman never seemed to know when it was time to leave. Letting himself into the house only to be met with sounds of grunts and groans coming from upstairs. The climb up the stairs revealing Karen fucking a squealing Laura up the ass with an eight-inch strap-on dildo in their marital bed. Shock stole his tongue for a moment or two.

The silence didn’t last long.

And then he was shouting out his rage, only to be told to wait downstairs by an obviously unrepentant but sad looking Laura and a smug looking Karen.

“I still struggle to believe what you told me that day, Laura. That you’d loved Karen since college, and she was your one true soulmate. But you wanted children and needed someone able to support you and them. You wanted to be a stay-at-home-mother, and, as you let me know ever so nicely, fucking Karen needed her piss poor income supplemented. Boy, what a schmuck I felt; for not noticing that a big slug of my hard-earned salary was going to support your girlfriend. You never loved me did you, Laura? I was just a sperm donor and a meal ticket, wasn’t I? No, don’t just nod, damn well own it. Own your choices. I want you to look me in the eye and say it.”

“Alright, alright, Dave. I admit it. I loved only Karen. I pursued you only to get the kids. You were the best candidate—”

“Best candidate? You targeted me? Who the hell were the other ‘candidates’,” Dave spluttered.

“Um, Keith Davenport and Eric Jensen.”

Dave was stunned at how matter-of-fact Laura was. “Keith? Eric? So why didn’t you choose one of them? Why me?”

“Keith and Eric were players. You weren’t. You were always honest and trusting, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy. Karen thought that you being so trusting would make it easier for us to get away with our deception.”

“Well, she got that much right,” muttered Dave sourly. “Meet Dave, the con-man’s, or in your case, the con-woman’s dream mark.”

“Yes, you were. Look, I’m not particularly proud of what we did, but you have to remember it was a different world when we married. Lesbians cohabiting and having kids was still heavily frowned upon.”

Dave quirked an eyebrow, his expression scathing.

“Okay. Okay. I admit it. It wasn’t just about society and wanting kids. I wanted the lifestyle you could provide that neither Karen nor I would ever be able to afford for ourselves.”

Laura looked down in shame. Dave looked up in anger.

“And what’s with the dildo in the ass? You always told me that was an exit only.”

Laura reddened in embarrassment.

“Um…, Karen was punishing me.”

“What the hell for?”

“For sleeping with you the night before. It was our anniversary. Remember? She was jealous every time I slept with you. If you want to know the truth, I lied to her as well, told her you and I never made love. But I couldn’t do that to you, honestly. It was bad enough that you didn’t have the life you thought you had. Turning you into a eunuch was just too much for my conscience. So, I bullshitted Karen. That day I was so tired I went straight back to bed after getting the kids off to school. Karen came in and could smell we’d had sex. She put me over her knee and then, ah, did what she was doing to me when you found us.”

“So, Karen had a key to our house?”

“Yes.”

“And she came over how often and fucked you in our bed?”

“Not that often, honestly, Dave. Most days I went over to her apartment.”

“And fucked?”

Laura sighed. “No. Made love, Dave.”

“The apartment I was unknowingly paying for?”

“Yes, Dave.”

Laura dropped her eyes. Being confronted with all her actions like this was very embarrassing. Deep down she’d always thought of herself as a decent person, trapped into her behaviour by a society that didn’t know what minorities like her and Karen were subjected to on a daily basis.

“So, you never really loved me, Laura? Not even in the beginning?”

“Um, no, sorry, Dave. I’m a lesbian, I love Karen. I… like you, Dave, and totally respect you. But, sorry, I could never love you.” Something in the set of Dave’s jaw, the cold fury in his eyes made her turn the knife that little bit more. “I actually hated the sex at first, it made me want to gag. I probably deserve an Oscar for my performance, but I came to not mind it after a couple of years.” As if regretting her barb she threw him a bone. “Sometimes, when you were going down on me, I could pretend it was Karen and I even came close to coming a few times.”

“Respect, huh? Our whole damn life was just a con orchestrated by you and your butch fellow carpet-muncher.” Dave allowed himself to enjoy the flare of anger in Laura’s eyes at his use of the derogatory term. “If that was fucking respect I’d hate to see what disrespect looks like.”

Despite her anger, Laura’s  eyes left Dave’s, but that didn’t deter him, he kept going.

“So, just like your supposed love, all your orgasms were fake?”

“Yes, Dave.”

“And all those times you cut me off for weeks or months at a time, pretending to have a yeast infection or some other mystery disorder?”

“I’m sorry, Dave, Karen was jealous.”

“You really are a piece of work, aren’t you, Laura?”

This was the final insult for Laura. Yes, she was feeling guilty as hell but her anger that had been simmering throughout their conversation flared again, washing over her like a tidal wave.

“Just shut the hell up, Dave. The court reconvenes in less than fifteen minutes, and I want to get a message into your thick skull before we have to go back.”

Dave threw up his hands in surrender, his lunch forgotten.

“Just what do you want, Laura?”

“I want us to go back to normal, Dave.”

“Normal, like me moving back into the house and turning a blind eye to you fucking Karen normal? Pretending to our sons that we have a common-or-garden variety marriage just like their mate’s parent’s have. Where their old man gets a pity fuck every now and then?”

“Well, no, Dave. Now that you know, we’ll stop all pretence that I like heterosexual sex. You can move into the spare room and Karen could move in…”

“No fucking way, Laura. What kind of wimp do you think I am?”

“One who has no choice, Dave! One whose balls I have in my back pocket. What’s that joke you always tell? Oh, that’s right. If you have a moth ball in one hand and a moth ball in the other hand, what do you have? A bloody big moth that’s going to do everything you tell it to. That’s you, Dave, you have no choice at all.”

Laura smiled. It wasn’t pretty.

“Sorry, I’ll rephrase that, you have exactly two choices. Live a normal life, well, near normal, living with your kids. I’ll be off limits but everything else will be exactly the same as before. Or, march over the road to the courthouse, make a dickhead of yourself and see where you end up.”

Laura didn’t wait for Dave to reply.

“We pulled Judge Reynolds, for fuck’s sake. Karen says he’s been there for twenty years and has a collection of men’s scrotums on the wall of his chambers so big that you can hardly get in the door. He has never once in his entire career sided with the husband, no matter what the wife did. He’ll give me the house with you paying all the utilities. He’ll make you keep me on your insurance with you paying all the deductibles and I’ll tell you now, Dave, they’ll be very sick kids. I’ve never worked so he’ll award me alimony that will rival the GDP of a third world country. And all this time you’ll be living in a shoe box on the county dump, dreaming of having enough cash to afford mac and cheese.”

Laura’s face was red with anger by this point. Dave bowed his head, looking down at the table, the picture of defeat. With a glance at her watch, Laura decided to play her ace.

“What about your boys, Dave? Your precious sons. You’ll be allowed to see them for one weekend a month, or so the court will rule. But guess what, Dave? They’ll be sick that weekend, or playing soccer, or… any one of a thousand other reasons I will make it my business to invent.”

Laura stopped and took a couple of panting breaths before continuing.

“And all throughout your destruction, Dave, I’ll still be fucking Karen in what used to be your bed, while you won’t even be able to afford a date with your right hand. Come on, Dave, be sensible. I’ve got a three-grand a day barrister, you’re representing yourself. Why fuck up your life totally? Why, when we can almost go back to where we were? Nothing much will have changed.”

Dave looked up, his eyes glowering.

“Nothing except living with a total lack of pride. Not being able to look my sons in the eyes.”

He stopped and shook his head.

“Tell me, Laura, you reminded me you haven’t ever worked. Even when the boys were old enough to go to school and I asked you to look for a job and help out with the bills, you never did. Was this your plan all along? Putting yourself in a good position just in case I ever discovered your sordid little secret and you needed the leverage that non-working spouses get in divorce courts?”

“Karen suggested it, yes. Besides, that’s when we saw each other, during the day.”

“Ah, the penny drops. So that’s why she only had waitressing jobs in the evening, so all day, every day she could spend time with you, while I worked my ass off supporting my family and paying the difference on her apartment that she couldn’t afford on minimum wage and tips.”

“Look on the bright side, Dave, if she moves in with us it will save you a heap.”

Laura glanced at her watch but it was Dave that spoke next.

“Why do you want to stay married, Laura?”

 “Because the boys need a father, Dave.”

Then, as an afterthought.

“And I don’t want to see you destitute and devastated, Dave. You’re a good man, you don’t deserve the shitstorm that will come your way if you don’t get with the program.”

“So, nothing to do with the boys refusing to stay at their own home when that slut of a girlfriend is sleeping over? They’re staying at Mum and Dad’s. Did you really think I didn’t know, Laura? Or is it that you’re rapidly losing all your friends who are ditching you as your disgusting behaviour comes to light? Nothing to do with our priest asking you to stay away on Sundays? Any of this sound familiar, Laura?”

Laura just shrugged and looked at her watch again.

“Time to go. What do you say, Dave?”

“Hmm, I say go fuck yourself with a prize-winning cucumber, bitch. I’ll see you across the road.”

Laura sighed disappointedly as she got up and walked back to the court.

The divorce hearing was over forty-seven minutes later and went pretty much how Laura envisaged it. Judge Reynolds ranted about husbands who refused to participate in counselling and how non-working mothers were saints who should be hoarded and protected from evil husbands who crapped on about out-dated concepts, like fidelity. 

Karen was jubilant when alimony was set, it was even higher than Laura’s lawyer had predicted. Laura was a little sad, though, Dave really was a nice guy. It wasn’t his fault he was packing the wrong sort of genitalia to keep her. She was already thinking of not cashing a couple of cheques so Dave might intercede with the kids and maybe the better of the friends she’d lost. She looked across the court, expecting to see a look of devastation on her former husband’s face. Instead, she saw what? Pity? Why would he pity her? It was supposed to be the other way around.

Just then she heard a voice behind her.

“Mrs. Laura Brown, nee Thompson?”

Laura swung around to see two uniformed state policemen standing there.

“Yes, Officers.”

“You’re under arrest for fraud and breaches of sections 257A and 258 of the state Criminal Code, in that you dishonestly obtained a benefit by deceitful means. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney…”

His litany was interrupted by Karen who’d come storming over from the public gallery.

“What the hell benefit has she obtained?”

The second policeman spoke.

“Alimony, child support, free accommodation, to name but a few. Are you Karen Smythe?”

At that point, Karen bolted toward the door.

EPILOGUE

Hi, Dave here. I feel like you should know me and I sure feel like I know some of you.

The memory of the court Usher, alerted by the yells of the policemen, tackling Karen as she ran through the courtroom door still brings a smile to my face. The fact she crashed head -first into the heavy oak wall when his arms wrapped around her ankles was purely a bonus.

Satisfying my sense of justice, it turns out that while lying and cheating aren’t crimes in themselves, financially gaining from them is. It’s called fraud. A generic category of criminal conduct that involves the use of dishonest or deceitful means in order to obtain some unjust advantage or gain over another.

When I’d first learned of Laura’s…, well, words fail me to find a big enough word to describe her behaviour, let’s say ‘life plan’, I was quite understandably devastated. Laid low by thoughts of my naivety and the thought of losing my sons, I did what any normal guy would do. I got drunk.

Then I got lucky.

As I was slurring out my story to my friend, Johno, my story was being listened to by another pair in the bar. Tom and Mike were holding a wake for Tom’s marriage in the same bar Johno and I were. Tom’s divorce was made final that day, making him another victim of Judge Reynolds. Tom was out to inflict some pain, and my story gave him the outlet. You see, Tom and Mike are state detectives.  Between them, Johno, Tom, and Mike dragged me home, and between the four of us, we started plotting.

Laura and Karen’s financial fraud included being kept women on solely my coin. All a bit wishy-washy, and with rather tenuous proof. That’s why we needed them to win in the divorce case. With a clear admission of her intent to deceive me, recorded by Tom sitting at the next table in the restaurant with a recorder, and her judgement award by Judge Reynolds, we could prove intent, dishonesty, and gain.

Laura’s lawyer tried to argue that the recorded conversation was inadmissible. The judge ruled that Laura tacitly gave her permission to be recorded with the words, “I don’t give a toss who hears us, Dave.”

When Karen regained consciousness, she was handcuffed to a hospital gurney. Laura bailed her out but Karen pretty much immediately did a runner. Our little cabal had been expecting that and Johno and I rotated watching her flat. Tom was waiting for her 200km away, at the state border. Karen was remanded until the trial, Laura exploded when she heard of Karen’s betrayal. Her lover was her main witness as well as her supposed soulmate.

Laura cut off support for Karen, whose legal aid lawyer convinced her to plead guilty, knocking what credibility Laura’s case had into the gutter. The judges in both cases were offended by such despicable behaviour and both women received five-year sentences. Laura’s was extended by six months when she slugged Karen when they first met in the exercise yard of the women’s correctional facility. She wasn’t even allowed to attend the second family court hearing where I was awarded everything back.

By the time Laura was released, a disappointing for me four years later, I was re-married to Tom’s beautiful sister who the boys call mum. I’d asked them if they wanted to visit their birth mother in prison or whether they wanted anything to do with her after her release but got the same shrugs of indifference every time I mentioned her. Laura became increasingly strident to see them but always ended up going away, sobbing and alone.

As painful and challenging as the whole thing was I ended up a wiser man.

And a much happier one.

THE END

Before you say something extremely boring like, ‘this couldn’t happen’, remember this. You live in one of the 195 different countries in the world, maybe they do things differently in the other 194. Besides, it’s fiction where anything can happen.

Now lighten the fuck up. You can thank Dickie for this one.

THE MAGIC ELEVATOR

An Amish boy and his father were visiting a mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver walls that could move apart and then slide back together again. The boy asked, “What is this, Father?”

The father (never having seen an elevator) responded, “Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life, I don’t know what it is.”

While the boy and his father were watching with amazement, a fat old lady in a wheelchair rolled up to the moving walls and pressed a button.  The walls opened and the lady rolled between them into a small room. The walls closed and the boy and his father watched the small circular numbers above the walls light up sequentially.  They continued to watch until it reached the last number and then the numbers began to light in the reverse order.

Finally, the walls opened up again and a gorgeous, voluptuous 24-year-old blonde woman stepped out.

The father, not taking his eyes off the young woman, said quietly to his son, “Go get your mother.”