The Office Widow

by Vandemonium1

Like you, dear reader, I’ve always found the concept of an ‘office husband’ really offensive. Prepare to be offended.

It is predominantly dialogue. If you find that hard work, you have been warned. In nature, it’s most like my ‘Chased’ and “Seven Deadly Sins – Lust’. If you liked those, hopefully you like this.  

I had a comment exchange with a reader of ‘The Sniper’, where the guy basically accused me of laziness for not ending the story with the mechanics of the divorce or how his wife sold the house etc. I left that to people’s imagination. Yes, there are lazy writers. I think there are also lazy readers. My response was to write this one. The ending is fairly clear but not spelled out in the slightest. Once again, I feel compelled to remind readers, this is fiction and thus doesn’t have to be realistic.  

Once again, your thanks should go to the beautiful CreativityTakesCourage for improving this story with her editing skills. You can read her stories on this site, or by visiting our blog, the details of which can be found in the bio of our joint story profile, SemperAmare.

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 “Thanks for coming, sis. Are the kids okay?”

“Yes, they’re fine, Sarah. Mick is looking after them. They were sound asleep when I left.”

“Did you ask him about money for bail? The police say it will be around fifty grand but you’ll get it back after they drop the charges.”

“Mmm, about that. Mick asked why Dave isn’t posting it and I have to say I’m curious as well.”

“Um, I’m kind of hoping for all this to go away before Dave gets back in two days’ time. Honestly, this is all a misunderstanding. As soon as Paul wakes up, he’ll sort it all out and the charges will be dropped. Dave need never be any the wiser.”

“Who is Paul? I think you’d better start your little tale from the beginning, don’t you?”

The dishevelled woman on the other side of the bars of the interview room of the holding cells, looked very uncomfortable as she mentally surveyed the conversation ahead. She’d devoted some thought in recent days to having this conversation, or a similar one, with her husband, Dave, but never anyone else. Now she needed to shed some harsh light on what she’d done. Perhaps because of her current locale, it looked a little sordid to even her own eyes, not to mention, selfish. But she needed to put it all on the table to get her sister’s help to avoid having the same conversation with Dave. Breaking eye contact, Sarah Brown began her story.

“Um… Paul is my work husband.”

“What the hell is a work husband?”

“Oh, Wendy, you’ve always been a bit prudish. It’s all the rage these days; shiiit, over half the girls in my office have one.”

“I repeat. What the hell is a work husband?”

Sarah sighed. Why did her bloody sister have to be stuck in the dark ages?

“Well, it’s just a bit of fun, I suppose; a way of relieving either stress or boredom on the job. A guy in the office pairs up with one of the girls and, at work, they act like husband and wife.”

Wendy stared at her sister with incredulity.

“How much like husband and wife?”

“Oh, you know. Watching each other’s backs, telling him when he has his fly undone, bucking them up when they’re sad, going to lunch with them, stuff like that.”

“And, ah, what about some of the more popular stuff that husbands and wives do?”

Sarah quickly thought ahead. Could she get away without telling her sister much more? No, she concluded. The rest of the story couldn’t be kept secret and without full disclosure the whole wouldn’t make any sense at all. She mentally prepared herself for the condemnation to come.

“Um, yes. Just quickies during work time, you understand. Or occasionally, pretending to work late and doing it in the office after everyone else has left. But that only happened four or five times. Mainly, it was just getting a room in the motel across the road for an extended lunch hour.”

Verbalising it, Sarah began to see just how pathetic her reasoning sounded. She avoided eye contact with Wendy and stopped talking.

“And tonight? That was neither an extended lunch nor working late. You rang me after midnight…, ah, I see. Dave is away on a business trip, isn’t he? So, it was a case of lie to sister, get her to look after kids and have an all-nighter with so-called work husband, wasn’t it?”

Sarah’s gaze sinking lower was all the answer Wendy needed.

“And how many times have I been used to look after your kids while you backstabbed your husband? I’m not at all happy about being made an accomplice like this, you know?”

“I swear, Wendy. This was the first time. Honest.”

If Wendy was a betting woman, she would back her sister as a truth teller with that answer.

“Why is that, sis? Was this the first time his wife was away or something?”

“No, he’s not married.”

“Well, that’s all right then. At least, he’s not committing adultery.”

Relieved that the worst seemed to be over, Sarah missed her sister’s sarcasm and answered without thinking.

“No, he’s quite a decent guy, he would never do something like that…”

Sarah’s brain finally caught up with her mouth and she flushed beetroot red. Wendy just looked at her little sister and shook her head, thinking, not for the first time, their parents had overindulged their youngest offspring.

“And what about your husband? What about Dave? What are you going to say when it’s him sitting across from you, not me?”

Sarah looked panicked for the briefest moment.

“I told you; if you get me out of here in the morning, Paul wakes up and tells the police what he did, then Dave never has to know anything about any of this.”

“Unless I told him, of course.” Wendy paused before adding, “Or Mick does.”

“You do that and the possible break-up of my family will be on your heads. The kids will be fatherless because of you.”

Sarah stared defiantly at Wendy, who stared unbelievably back. She knew her little sister always had a problem accepting blame for a mistake, but this was ridiculous.

“Okay, your thinking is flawed, Sarah, but even saying Mick and I don’t do that, Dave is bound to catch you one day. Cheaters always get caught in the end. What was your plan if he found out?”

“I didn’t even give it a thought until Dave almost caught Paul and I one night last week.”

“What happened?”

“I’d rung Dave to tell him he would have to cook dinner for the kids as I had to work late.”

“But it wasn’t work, was it?”

Wendy, already knowing the answer, couldn’t hide her disappointment in her little sister. Sarah, however, was oblivious.

“No. The office was empty and the front door to the building was locked, but the bloody cleaner let Dave in, the stupid bitch. He’d bought me some dinner. Fortunately, Paul had finished bending me over my desk and, luckily, I’d thought to lock my office door. When Dave knocked, I had to jam my panties between my legs to stop myself dripping on the floor. Paul and I cleaned ourselves up in record time and I opened the door. Lucky Dave is so naïve, he swallowed our story of accidentally locking the door.”

Wendy shuddered at the look of pride at avoiding a bullet on her stupid sister’s face, then just shook her head.

“So, after your brilliant evasion, what was your cunning plan in case Dave really caught you?”

“Well, according to my friend, Jen, I didn’t really have to do anything. If Dave kicked me out, I would get everything; custody of the kids, the house, alimony. Apparently, unless the mother is in jail, she gets everything. My plan was simply to point this out to Dave because then there’d be no way he’d leave me. He lives for the kids.”

“I don’t think you’d have to explain it to him, Sarah, not after his first wife did that number on him.”

They both pondered Dave’s well known sob story of his first marriage. His ambush by the wife and her lawyer lover. The trumped-up allegations of physical abuse that allowed the ex to get a complete restraining order. The constant whispers in the children’s ears so that they eventually refused to speak to their father, even on the phone.

Wendy had tears in her eyes as she empathised with Dave’s no-win situation. She was ashamed of being related to Sarah. How could Sarah even consider doing such a thing to her husband?

“You’re right, Sarah. It would kill him to go through that again.”

“Exactly.”

Wendy stared at the loathsome creature her sister had become and just wanted to wipe the smirk off her face.

“You never know, though, Dave is smart. He may come up with a solution that gazumps you.”

“No, Wendy. The worst that can happen is that I lose Dave but gain everything else.”

“If Dave throws you out, you can always shack up with Paul, I suppose.”

“Not after what the slimy little prick did to me! I can’t believe they’re charging me with assault. I was just defending myself; the prick raped me.”

“What? Your office husband raped you? Well, spousal rape is a hot topic at the moment. Okay, Sarah. Tell me the rest of it. You said he was decent, so how did you come to be raped by a ‘decent’ man?”

Wendy’s sarcasm went straight over Sarah’s head. She paused for a moment before deciding to tell her sister the whole sordid tale, however embarrassing it was.

“Well, as I said, I’d never had a full night with Paul before. Just some nooners in a motel and a few quickies in the office. So, when Dave said he was driving to Ballarat for three days, I jumped at the chance to see what Paul was really like.

“Don’t roll your eyes like that. I get it; you disapprove. Get over it; it’s my life and it was my choice. I dropped the kids at your place, went to dinner with Paul, then rang Dave like I always do when he’s away.”

“How do you do that, Sarah?”

“Do what?”

“Talk to your husband like there’s nothing going on.”

Only Sarah knew just what demons she’d faced in the early stages of her office romance with her lover. Those conscience jerking moments had quickly faded from her memory, though, just as had the knowledge that Dave was so easy to dupe because he trusted her. She chose to see her sister’s question as rhetorical and ignored it.

“After I managed to get off the line with Dave before he asked to speak to the kids, Paul and I got down to business. I have to say it was a bit of a letdown. In the motel it was rushed, different and fun. When he bent me over the desk at work and just fucked me, it was basal and exciting.

“I suppose, I’d built an all-nighter up in my head and the reality couldn’t compete. It was routine and, dare I say it, a little dull. Paul isn’t big on foreplay. I was hardly wet the first time he entered me. Just as I getting into it, he came, rolled over and went to sleep. He’d drunk most of a bottle of wine at dinner. I dozed for a little while then roused still feeling horny.

“I woke him by sucking on his—” Sarah broke off mid-sentence at the look on her sister’s face. “Sorry. You’re right. You don’t need all the detail, do you? Anyway, once he was hard, I didn’t want to make the same mistake again, so I made to sit on his face, but he said I needed to shower first. I’d no sooner gotten the water to the right temperature and Paul had joined me, when all the lights went out.

“He told me it was an old house and was always blowing fuses. He got out and I heard him fumbling the doorknob back into the bedroom. I thought he’d grab a torch from somewhere and go and replace the fuse before coming back to the shower. I waited the best part of ten minutes, but he never came back. I yelled out to him and I think I heard him shout back from the bedroom that he was waiting in bed. I wondered why he hadn’t fixed the fuse or lit a candle or something. It was still pitch black.

“I turned the water off and called out, but there was no answer. I couldn’t understand why he was being such an annoying prick. I groped around until I found a towel, yelling that I was just going to get dressed and go home. My clothes were in the bedroom, though.

Wendy yawned. It was very late, and Sarah’s words and demeanour contradicted her claim of rape. Besides, the story was getting boring. Sarah saw she was losing Wendy and hurried on.

“I felt my way into the bedroom, thinking I’d feel my way to the bed. I knew my clothes were on the floor between the bed and the door. All of a sudden, Paul grabbed me from behind and pushed me forward. I fell onto the bed. The next thing I know his hands are lifting me by the hips and I feel a very erect cock on my ass. Dave and I have sometimes role-played the whole forced sex thing, it’s a thing of mine, so I decided to give it a go and spread my legs a little.”

Heat warmed Sarah’s cheeks and knowing she was blushing at the admission of one of her sexual fantasies to her sister, she fidgeted and dropped her gaze to her hands, watching with detachment as she twirled her rings around her finger.

“Anyway, um, I felt one hand leave my hip and the next thing I felt lube being trickled into my crack. It was cold. I shouted to Paul that he didn’t need that shit; I would be wet enough. I have to say, the scene was hot. When I felt his hands spreading my cheeks, I put my feet further apart. I felt his cock penetrate me a couple of centimetres and yelled at him to just stick it in.”

Sarah paused in uncomfortable remembrance for a few seconds. Wendy yawned again just wanting the whole sad sorry tale over.

“The bastard pulled out of my vagina and just rammed it up my ass, full depth and full speed. I’ve never liked anything up there and I have to say, Wendy, it hurt like hell. It still does.”

Sarah paused, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, frowning at the ache in her ass. Memory of the pain that put the ache there came flooding back. Not just the physical, but the sudden realisation that someone she thought really cared about her could possibly treat her like that.

“What did you do?”

“Well, I screamed at him, didn’t I. Yelled and told him to stop.”

“And did he?”

“No, he just kept a firm hold of my hips and kept sodomising me. Fuck, it hurt.”

“How did it end?”

“The prick must have loosened his grip at one point which allowed me to escape and I shuffled up the bed. As I did that my hands felt something strange. I’ll go back a bit. When I first went in Paul’s bedroom there was a baseball bat leaning against the wall near the bed. I asked him about it and he said there’d been some home invasions in the neighbourhood recently and he wanted to be prepared. Somehow, that bat was on the bed. Now, I come to think about it, it seems strange.”

Sarah’s face took on a strange expression for a moment.

“Do you think Paul meant to use it on me if he couldn’t overcome me with his strength? He’s not a big man.”

Wendy watched Sarah’s face as she glimpsed the true nature of her office husband’s intentions and how much worse the situation could have become. The colour left Sarah’s face and she lapsed into silence forcing Wendy to prompt her to continue.

“What happened next?”

Sarah shook herself out of her reverie.

“Well, I grabbed it with both hands, didn’t I. I twisted around and lashed out with it as hard as I could. I felt it connect with something and heard Paul yell in pain. It was still pitch black but I made my way as quickly as I could back to the bathroom. I shut the door and groped around until I found the lock and snibbed it. Oh, Wendy, it was so scary; I could hear Paul trying the lock and banging on the door. I knew it wouldn’t keep him out for long so I felt for the window but couldn’t find how it opened. My foot hit a bin on the floor, so I grabbed it and broke the window with it. Then I started screaming and hollering. I saw the lights go on in a neighbour’s house so I just kept yelling for help and shouting for them to call the police.”

Sarah was trembling with the recollection of the fear she’d felt at the time all this was going on.

“What did Paul do?”

“I dunno, but he stopped trying to get in the bathroom. I waited five or ten minutes and, although everything was quiet, I was too scared to open the door. Then, I heard the siren of a police car. The next thing I know a cop is shouting at me to open the door. I did and came out. There were two of them with a torch and guns. I was stark naked so they could see I was no threat and there was no sign of Paul. I was still scared, so I ran downstairs. One of the cops followed me and the other stayed in the bedroom. Shortly after that I heard him yelling into his radio for an ambulance. I told the other guy I didn’t need one. He went back upstairs and grabbed my clothes and I got dressed. He took me out to the police car and started asking me a bunch of questions. I told him how Paul had raped me and how I’d hit him.

“He drove me to the hospital and they ran a rape kit on me, then brought me here. They took a formal statement, then asked if I wanted a lawyer. Of course, I said I didn’t. They then charged me with assaulting Paul and fingerprinted me. They’d found Paul unconscious next to the bed. After that, I was told they were keeping me here until a bail hearing tomorrow. I couldn’t ring Dave, of course, so I rang you.”

Sarah looked at her sister pleadingly, hoping Wendy could make her feel less lonely and confused. Wendy thought about finding a policeman and asking why her sister had been charged for what, at face value, seemed like a clear case of self-defence. However, her sister’s pitiful condition pulled at Wendy’s heart strings—Sarah always had had a knack for getting others to take care of her—and Wendy didn’t feel she should leave Sarah alone just yet.

“I really can’t see how you’re going to keep Dave finding out about all this. What’s your plan?”

“Well, as soon as Paul wakes up, he’ll tell them I only hit him in self-defence and they’ll drop the assault charges.”

Wendy looked with pity at her naïve sister. She knew that to clear her, Paul would have to admit to rape and, though she didn’t know the guy, someone who seduced a married woman was very unlikely to be that honourable. She was spared the pain of trying to enunciate this to her desperate sister by a plain-clothed detective coming into the room and asking her to leave.

When she’d gone, the detective sat in her vacant chair and alternated staring at Sarah and reading her statement. Sarah tried to read his expression, hoping Paul had told the truth. Finally, the detective set the document aside and addressed the hopeful woman.

“So, let me get this straight, Mrs. Brown. You’ve been having an illicit affair with your ‘work husband’ for some months behind your husband’s back. Tonight, with your husband out of town, you decided to spend the night at your lover’s house. During your sex session you paused to have a shower, during which the lights went out. When your lover didn’t return, you re-entered the bedroom, at which point you claim he assaulted you and anally raped you. You ‘found’ a baseball bat on the bed and hit him once. Is that correct?”

“Yes, I’ve already told you everything. Has Paul regained consciousness? He has to tell you that everything I said is true.”

“Um, no, I’m afraid he hasn’t regained consciousness. In fact, it is my responsibility to tell you that you’ve gone from ‘office wife’ to ‘office widow’. Mr. Paul Smith died without regaining consciousness after being found on the bedroom floor between the bed and the wall, with massive, multiple head wounds. The coroner says that he was struck up to seven times, mostly while he was lying on the floor, probably unconscious. A baseball bat recovered from the scene had on it two sets of fingerprints, yours and the deceased.

“Sarah Brown, you are being charged with murder in the second degree. I will remind you that you have the right to remain silent. Anything you do say can be used as evidence against you…”

At that point, Sarah fainted.

EPILOGUE

Dave Brown bade goodnight to the two Victorian policemen before they left the room and reviewed his answers to their recent questions. Yes, he’d checked into the motel in Ballarat that afternoon, about five. He’d had an early dinner in the motel restaurant, which he was sure his waitress could verify, she was the mid-thirties redhead with glasses. Then, sorry, he’d retired to his room to prepare for a resumption of his business meeting the next day to which there were, unsurprisingly, no witnesses.

The only phone call he’d made or received was one from his wife’s cell at a little after nine. Now he came to think about it, it was a little strange she’d used her cell rather than the home phone.

No, he didn’t know a Paul Smith; he never socialised with his wife’s work colleagues. Were they sure they couldn’t tell him what this was all about?

After they left, he rang his home phone line and Sarah’s cell. Both went to message bank and he left worried sounding messages for her to call him.

Pondering his next move, he rubbed his bruised bicep then absentmindedly put his hands in the pocket of his trousers. Feeling something squishy, he withdrew the contents and stared tiredly at the two latex gloves and used condom in his palm. A wry laugh at his oversight escaped him. Had the police searched him it could have blown all his carefully laid plans to smithereens. The thought brought him up short and he cursed himself for his lack of thoroughness. His children needed him to keep his eye on the ball.

Cracking the curtains, he made sure the police car was gone, then left the room, walked across the road and around to the back of the shopping centre. After glancing around, he retrieved the items from his pocket again and threw them in a dumpster where they joined the night vision goggles, disposable coveralls, and intact fuse block he’d deposited there earlier.

Returning to his room, and despite his exhaustion, he set about packing while he contemplated all the details he would need to put in place to be a successful single parent. A smile played on his lips at the thought of the difficult job he’d done and done well.

THE END

Now lighten the fuck up.

You can thank/blame XTCHR for the following.

A motorcycle mechanic was removing a cylinder head from the motor of a Harley when he spotted a well-known cardiologist in his shop.

The cardiologist was there waiting for the service manager to come and take a look at his bike when the mechanic shouted across the garage, “Hey Doc, take a look at this.”  The cardiologist, a bit surprised walked over to where the mechanic was working on the motorcycle.

The mechanic straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag and said, “So Doc, look at this engine. I opened its heart, took the valves out, repaired or replaced anything damaged, and then put everything back in, and when I finished, it worked just like new. So how is it that I make $30,000 a year and you make a million when you and I are doing basically the same work?”

The cardiologist paused, leaned over, and then whispered to the mechanic, “Try doing it with the engine running.”