“I have to do this darling. It is really who I am,” I said as I pleaded with my wife.
I was dressed in a way that she’d not seen before. I was wearing a dress, makeup and all the rest including my first pair of high heels!
“Don’t give me that rubbish. These past few years it has all been about you. I don’t get a look in.”
“Really? I don’t think so.”
“Now you are just grasping at straws. If you think that I’m going to sit here while you go out all dolled up like a dogs breakfast then you have to think again. After all the things I do and have done for you…”
“Really? I never said no when you wanted to learn to sail? I never said no when you decided that I didn’t need a car. We have to save money, you said. So, I sold mine but you never thought to put me on the insurance for your company car… Then I never said no when you thought that it was a good idea to go pot-holing. Did I say no when I was left to pay off your hospital bills when you decided not to take out the correct form of Travel Insurance that would have covered you getting stuck and breaking your leg. Did I say no to paying for all those Taxi’s that ferried you about when you were getting better? Did I deserve to get an earful for spending Fifteen Quid on a haircut when your last one cost what? Close on a hundred quid? Well did I?”
“What! Have you been reading my private documents?”
“Not really. You were working on them when your mother called last weekend. Your credit card bills were right there in front of me. You spend more than I bring home on clothes and stuff yet it is me who pays all the bills for the house and the mortgage yet you earn how much? Oh yes, Seventy-Five grand a year. I earn… Well, you know how much I earn as there in generally nothing left at the end of the month after I’ve paid all the bills. If my paying all the household bill is what you mean by ‘me, me, me’ then yes perhaps you are right. It might help if you paid some of the bills from time to time but alas, nothing is forthcoming.”
She stood there imitating a drowning fish.
“So, my darling, I’m going out tonight to an LGBT club to be with friends. Oh yes, I do have friends that are not yours. You systematically drove all my old ones away when you became an account executive. And thanks for asking where I got this outfit from. It all came from charity shops. It cost me a grand total of forty-six pounds. That’s one tenth what you spent on those shoes you are wearing. Yes, the cost was right there on that credit card bill.”
With that, I picked up my coat and a purse both curtesy of the local Oxfam shop and left her alone.
It was well after midnight when I returned home. Her expense account BMW was gone as were all her expensive clothes and stuff.
I slept like a log that night. For once I didn’t have to be on edge in case I disturbed her oh so important beauty sleep as it might affect her job. For once, I could have the whole of the bed to myself rather than just a small strip down one side. For once I did not worry if I snored or not. Bliss, absolute Bliss.
I didn’t worry when I saw all my male clothes all cut up and scattered around the living room. I’d already secreted the ones I had that were half decent away and were in storage. What was left were pretty well only fit for the rag bin anyway.
The next morning, I made myself breakfast and didn’t have to worry about leaving a few crumbs on the table. I didn’t have to worry about not washing every item of crockery and cutlery up as soon as it was used. My darling wife was a total neat freak.
Just before ten and the phone call I’d been expecting had not come, I picked up the phone. It was dead. I sighed.
“Typical. Who paid the bill all these years eh? Not you but you have to be a real meanie and cancel it today.”
I rummaged in the bag I’d used the previous night and found a phone. It wasn’t mine so ‘she’ could not cancel it.
“Hello,” I said when the call was answered.
“Yes. She’s gone and had the phone line cut off already.”
“No, there will be more but she has to get her revenge somehow.”
“What’s next? The locksmith. He’s due to come in about an hour. She can’t cancel it as I paid him in advance but I expect all my cards are blocked and my bank account is empty not that there is much of anything in it. I took most of what was there out as cash yesterday.”
“I’d love to see you later. “
“What time?”
“I’ll see you then.”
I finished the call with a smile on my face. The real love of my life was coming to dinner.
I spent the rest of the day clearing up all the bits of my clothing that Denise had left behind. I also bagged up the clothes I wore the previous evening. All my LGBT friends had a good laugh at my get up but really didn’t think that I’d make a good woman but I thanked them for putting the idea of how to get rid of the thorn in my life. It certainly worked. I looked forward to coming out as a ‘Gay’ man. Denise would have never approved but I didn’t care. What should I cook for Thom?
[The End]
[Authors Note]
There I was watching a White-Tailed Sea Eagle soaring over Loch Carbost on the Isle of Skye when the ambience was ruined by a couple having an argument over what else but money.
He’d apparently spent a lot more than Fifty Pounds on a bottle of single malt Scotch from the nearby Talisker Distillery, and she didn’t like it one little bit that he’d wasted all that money. Then it all came out. Both of them let rip, no holds barred. I left before the argument had ended so I have no idea about how it turned out.
That gave me the idea for this little story. I settled on the theme of it as I rode north up the coast of Skye later that afternoon. The weather worsened with intermittent windy squalls rolling in from the North Atlantic and this was the first week of August not mid-winter for heavens sakes.
Then… I set myself another challenge. Write a story about a contrived breakup in 1000 words or less. There is an Australian TV series called ‘800 words’. The main character is Writer has a column that requires exactly 800 words. I gave myself 25% more and this is what came out.
The photo is of the harbour at Uig. This is on the north west coast of Skye. You take the ferry from here to the Outer Hebrides (Stornoway). The dark foreboding of the sky seemed to be perfect for this story.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Comments
The Things We Pick to "Pick"
Unfortunately, your dialogue for two hateful spouses is dreadfully accurate.
Nicely done.
Hey . . . when I wrote a newspaper column, I was only allowed 750 words!
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
Having just done 500 words ...
in a series of stories - I had to check your word-count ……. and you INCLUDE your title and intro but I don't. Ah well, strokes for folks.
Nice story - unexpected twist.
We always wants more.
Thanks
AP
Word Count
I just checked and the text of the story is 998 words. Add the titile and you get 1000 words.
{no postscript}
Anyway, I'm glad you liked it.
I posted it early because Angela complained at the lack of SOLO stories. More to come next week.
Samantha
Got the same count
I confess. The first thing I did after reading the "post-script" (but before reading the comments) was to check the word count. I was all set to comment on the perfect match but you beat me to it.
Nice story.
Bru
PS
I'm not that good at exact matching. The closest I've been was an exam essay that had to be shorter than 10.000 characters and sent in before midnight a certain date: 9997 characters submitteed 23.55.
First thought in my head was
Good Riddance! It sounded like a very toxic relationship. Wonder if she gets the house and alimony?
I had fights like this with my ex
which is why we are no longer together.
It Breaks My Heart
...that people who would be much happier in a same-sex relationship have lived their lives in the closet due to societal pressures, and find themselves married to a member of the opposite sex, which is pretty much guaranteed to make both parties miserable. My hope is that now that same-sex marriage is a real thing, those youngsters growing up now won't make the same mistakes, that they'll see that even if there remains pockets of societal disapproval and abuse, their relationships can now carry an official seal of approval.
Interesting Twist
So it was a plot to get rid of his hateful wife? She's supposed to be the villain of the story, but I wonder if there isn't a bit of Unreliable Narrator involved. I wonder how the story might be written from the wife's point of view. Are there omitted facts that change the assessment of the situation? I also wonder how the divorce would go in a community property state? (I hope I got the expression right.)
-- Daphne Xu (a page of contents)
Interesting points
but they are well beyond the scope of what I was trying to do.
The comments about the wife should convey an image of the wife as being a spendthrift and never satisfied with her failure of a husband.
The husband had to look elswhere for love and understanding. My aim was that he had to do something drastic to get her out of his life. Just walking out would never have been good enough for her. In my mind, she was the sort of person who always had to get the last work in a conversation.
"Unreliable Narrator"???? That's an interesting concept and one that my Creative Writing Tutor would say with a smile on her face.
Samantha
Unreliable Narrator
That's a TVtropes trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UnreliableNarrator. Really, all first-person and third-person-limited narrators should be unreliable, because they're limited to the minds of the viewpoint characters. Sometimes it gets worse: the narrator or the person is caught up in a bizarre mental state, or the narrator lies or omits critical information.
Some of my stories have unreliable narrators, perhaps.
-- Daphne Xu (a page of contents)
Bit self-centered there
The wife made more money and he paid all the bills on his pay? What, she only had enough money for herself from her larger income? Company used car, so no car payment. So she had one bedroom as her walk-in closet? She complained about what he spent on his haircut and she spent more for hers?
He was hitting her financially left and right and she had no come back because he was right. But how he was dressed sent her over the top, causing her bitch side to fully emerge.
If the bills were in a joint name then she could have the services cancelled. But if they were in his name it might have been harder without checking with him first.
Reverse psychology worked beautifully in this instant, and let him be who he actually is.
Others have feelings too.