The Art of Revenge
Chapter 1
Ad Vitam Aeternam (To Eternal Life)
The following story is not for the faint of heart, for the politically correct, or for the sentimental romantic. Instead, this story is for the person who would like to visit the shadow side of the self, the self that explores those hidden thorny parts of the psyche that are too painful or difficult to visit. In these hidden thorny parts lies Georgia’s story about one of humanity’s most universal experience: betrayal. Georgia’s twisted tale becomes an inquiry into the manner in which this painful and difficult universal experience should be handled.
On that fateful October night, Georgia saw the telltale signs again: The haunted look, the scattered gaze in the opposite direction, and the nervous blinks. Georgia had seen these expressions of guilt repeatedly in the previous few weeks whenever Maurice had left the house. And there it was again. Maurice was on his motorcycle in the garage, holding his helmet in his hand and ready to go, while displaying this exact behaviour as soon as she stepped in front of him.
“I thought that you would spend the evening with me now that our son is having a sleepover next door. Yet, you are leaving again as usual,” she said.
His scattered gaze returned to her briefly. “I need to help my friends out. I promised them,” he responded in his shaky voice.
“You mean your outlaw biker friends, the criminals.”
He was agitated. “Not all of them are criminals! And I gave you my word right from the beginning that I would not do anything shady for them. But they are my friends, and they did help me out a lot when I was opening up my motorcycle-parts store a few years back. They are also great customers. I will not abandon them when they need my help.”
“Why can’t it just wait until tomorrow then? Why does it have to be on this Friday night, in this late hour, at a bar?”
“Georgia, you know that these people don’t exactly keep regular office hours.”
“But, if it is not illegal, why can’t you just call them on the phone? Besides, if it is not illegal, why can’t you just tell me about it?”
The haunted look, the scattered gaze in the opposite direction, and the nervous blinks–there they were again.
“I think you’re making a big deal out of it. I will–“
“Argumentum non-sequitur,” she said, interrupting him.
“There we go again with your over-rationalized analysis, ending with one of your favourite Latin quotes you had learned in university. You are the prime example of what’s wrong with society teaching people critical thinking: You’re over-rationalizing everything, dissecting every detail of every action the other person takes to the point where the other person–this time, you husband–has to justify every detail to your absolutely well-thought-out rational mind. Enough already! This isn’t a rational mind game. They asked me to meet them and I agreed in order to help them out. Don’t overthink it! Please! I love you, Georgia, but I need to go. As I was going to say before you interrupted me, I will make it up to you, I promise.”
The haunted look, the scattered gaze in the opposite direction, and the nervous blinks–there they were one more time before he put his helmet on and started up his rumbling motorcycle. The garage door opened and he shot out of the garage, taking a sharp right turn at the end of the driveway almost running over the last portion of the white picket fence, bending it out of shape. Georgia watched the scene silently. She waited until the garage door closed in front of her to go inside.
She had a pretty good idea of the root cause of her husband’s guilty look–or, at least, she thought she did. If it were about biker business, she reasoned, he would not display the signs of guilt; he would simply be agitated. Therefore, Georgia was confident that she could tell by his look that Maurice had something to hide that was personal rather than biker business–a personal business that even his biker friends might not know about: He was most likely having an affair with another woman in complete secrecy. As far as she was concerned, that was the only rational explanation for this type of guilty look. But was she right it or was she just overthinking it, as usual, just like her husband accused her of doing?
She curled up on her living room couch. She thought about it. Maybe she was actually over-rationalizing the matter. Maybe he was right about her tendency. Maybe she was just driven to paranoia by her highly rational mind. For a while, she willed this paranoia, this feeling of infidelity to be untrue over and again while staring at the dark screen of the television in the silent living room. Her strategy to defeat her feeling was to cite a list of reasons that would justify her husband’s strange behaviour beside the obvious conclusion of an extramarital affair. The list she composed in her mind perfectly explained the potential reasons for him not having a romantic affair, but, instead, hiding a secret of some kind of biker business in order to protect her and their young son, Tommy. On top of her list was the theory that, even though he was not directly involved in some shady business, he at least knew about it, and tried to offer free consultation for the biker club on the matter. This theory would explain Maurice’s insistence on keeping his original promise to her that he would not be involved in anything illegal and, at the same time, would also explain his guilty look. Contemplating this option gave her a satisfactory feeling of a rational conclusion that eliminated a married woman’s irrational fear. She felt satisfied by her theory—for a while.
Eventually, the power of rationality could not outweigh the power of intuition that the explanation just did not ring true to her. The sickening feeling of a secret infidelity kept returning on that October night. Finally, after three hours of nail biting and nervous twitching in her stomach, she could not calm her anxiety anymore: She needed to do something. She needed evidence. With a burning desire to act, she was ready to investigate the matter. Overthinking it or not, she wanted to know.
Naturally, she felt guilty at first. Who wouldn’t be? After all, what if she was wrong about her husband? Eventually, she overcame her initial guilt of spying on her husband by focusing on her logical conclusion that she just needed to check on Maurice, not to prove that her husband was guilty but to prove that her own suspicion was wrong. As she was getting dressed, she kept repeating to herself that she was ready to show herself that she was weak, not that he was. By the time she was dressed and ready to go, she was fully convinced that she was in fact paranoid.
Despite her conviction, she got into her dark silver SUV and rolled out of the garage. She made a sharp right turn, and just like her husband, she bumped into the last section of the already bent-out-of-shape white picket fence that, this time, landed on the ground behind her car. She took a note of the damage nonchalantly, too preoccupied with the nervous twitch in her stomach, and then she headed to the bikers’ favourite bars. She wanted to give up the investigation and go home after checking out the parking lot of just the first bar. She could not shake the guilt of even potentially suspecting her husband of cheating on her. She kept asking herself, Where is my faith in him?, at every corner she turned. Still, she could not make herself give up her quest. She drove to the next bar. His motorcycle was not in that parking lot either. Guilt-ridden, she fought a battle with her intuitive suspicion once again. Her breathing was heavy, her heart was pounding, and her palms were sweaty. Every turn and every corner was another struggle. Nevertheless, she drove to the third bar.
The bar was located at the edge of town on a paved country road. It reminded Georgia of a roadhouse from American western movies. Erected amid of a forest area, the one-story farmhouse-styled building had rather small windows with an oversized porch covering the entire front structure. Enough wood was cleared around it to accommodate at least a hundred cars. Georgia did not have to look hard: Two dozen motorcycles had parked right in front of the bar, her husband’s amongst them. She sighed. At least, he may not be lying about the biker party, she thought to herself.
She parked her SUV close to the road. It was almost pitch dark; there were no lights in the parking area. Still, the lot was made somewhat visible by the street lamps from the road and by the escaping glow through the small windows of the bar. As Georgia casually walked in the direction of the front door, situated in the middle of the porch, she became aware of the utter silence under this dark blanket. At first, it appeared as if she were walking in a three-dimensional dream setting of a still landscape with pictures but with no sounds. It was reminiscent of some western movies where the main character is shown to approach a bar in complete silence as a way of foreshadowing some impending disaster the person is about to face. Here, the sound engineer drops all sounds to create the utter silence to make the movie watchers’ heart pump faster. It is just like a dream. Or, for Georgia, perhaps a nightmare.
Actually, the silence and the stillness were deceiving. Getting closer to the building, she saw two women quietly smoking at one end of the porch. So, there was some noise and movement on this landscape. The women did not look familiar. Georgia ignored them stepping closer to the front entrance. She heard music. It became louder with the final steps. The bar seemed to be well insulated, even soundproof. As she placed her hand on the front door, though, she could feel the vibrations of loud music under her fingertips.
Georgia had never liked the atmosphere she just found herself in. The combined smell of beer and sweat punched her in the nose when she finally had the courage to slowly open the door. Inside, the party must have been going on for quite some time because a large crowd of drunken men were shouting and dancing around an oversized table. The shouting was barely audible, not just due to the loud music, but also due to the level of noise the intoxicated men produced stomping and bumping into objects. Their dance moves appeared uncoordinated, most effort going toward staying on two feet. Two people moved around on top of the oversized table with their backs to Georgia. The man raised his left hand to get attention from around. As he did, a nearby disco ball shone light on his hand, striking his wedding ring. The reflection struck Georgia’s eyes. She raised her hand in front of her face for a second to block out the bright reflection. Then, she continued to study the crowd to find her husband. At this moment, the man on the table turned his head and leaned over to kiss the pretty brunette next to him. The drunken men around raised their glasses in celebration of the kiss. Georgia recognized the inebriated man on the table right away: It was her husband Maurice.
So, she wasn’t wrong about her intuition, after all. Her suspicion proved to be correct–not that it pleased her. She stood near the entrance frozen. It was the first time in her life that she regretted having escaped the self-diagnosis of paranoia. It was a very different experience to suspect that her husband was cheating than to actually see him do it in real life. She could not move. She could not even breathe properly; she often gasped for air. Her attention moved to the cheering crowd around. The thoughts of a beautifully decorated ballroom flashed in front of her eyes. In her mind, she was standing next to a round table in front of a room full of people. Large red roses made of marzipan covered the five-tiered, cream-coloured marble cake she was ready to cut into with a decorative knife. She had to pull her veil back and let it fall over the shoulders of her wedding dress to pose for the photo for the cake-cutting. Everyone cheered when she placed a piece of cake into Maurice’s mouth, smudging some of it on his nose. People had applauded then, just like they did in the bar in front of her.
The door opened behind her that shook her out of her nostalgia. The two women had returned from smoking outside. Georgia had to move aside to let them in. She decided that she had seen enough. She held the door open and, once the ladies were inside, she walked through the door in a hurry. She retreated to the silent darkness of the parking lot. She moved fast across the lot to avoid detection. The last thing she needed was for someone to recognize her with painful agony written all over her face. She held it together until she got inside her vehicle. Then, the frail woman broke down. She could not bear the betrayal. It was too much. She cried uncontrollably for a while. It could easily be assumed that her unfaithful husband’s action had caused this deep laceration on her heart. Certainly, it was the most painful part of the experience. However, there was much more to it. The happy cheer inside the bar epitomized the ultimate betrayal of her marriage. Maurice’s biker friends had been at their wedding; they had all cheered for Maurice and Georgia, just like they just cheered for Maurice and the other woman. They all betrayed her! It could not have been worse. Georgia had thought that Maurice was having an affair in secret. Of course, this rational conclusion she had been definitely wrong about. It would never have crossed her mind that the others would know about it. Facing utter betrayal from all of them, the broken woman oscillated between the emotional points of outrage, anger and hurt. Finally, she settled on a feeling that the pendulum never even pointed to on the map of emotions: loneliness. She felt like an abandoned, outcast child, sitting alone in the obscurity of her cold SUV.
It took her a half of an hour to gather herself. By the time she pulled out of the parking lot, the pendulum hit the emotion of anger and got stuck on it. Anger refused to leave. She wanted revenge. For most people, the desire for revenge is a passing idea; it passes with the dissipation of anger. Not for Georgia! The betrayal cut too deep. She knew that the feeling of the desire for revenge would endure–and she would not be wrong about that! It became crystal clear to her in that short time between spotting her cheating husband with the mistress and the experiencing of retaliatory anger that her husband and his mistress had to pay. They had to pay for the betrayal, especially the mistress who was willing to date a man with a wedding ring on his finger. There would be no more cheering for anyone once the revenge was complete!
You can read the rest when I find a publisher for it! Wish me luck!
M. J. Mandoki (mjmandoki@gmail.com)
