Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience. Jealousy It was a white day. White days were good. On white days the shadows would be translucent like trailing smoke and the noises they made were mere hums. He tugged a little at the straps but without conviction. He had given up fighting a long time ago. Now he just watched passively. Some days were white, others colored (he hated them), others gray and dull and restless and there were black days too when the shadows were thick and gained substance and the hums almost turned into voices. But today it was a white day. He would lay there relaxed and just watch his floating thoughts, memories of another person, float out of his head and up to the ceiling. *** The woman sat there on a bench in front of the facility and lit a cigarette. She smoked with long relaxed drags, holding down the smoke for a long time, exhaling big plumes of white smoke. Traces of smoke kept coming out of her nose after she exhaled. She was a rather petite but well-rounded woman in her late thirties, clad in black, with a black scarf covering her head and dark sunglasses obscuring her face. She always sat on that bench to smoke a cigarette or two after her visit to the facility every Saturday or Sunday. *** When did it start to go wrong, he wondered. In fact one could say it started the day he met her, or asked her out on their first date. But that wasn't fair. Maybe things took a wrong turn when they married. But was that fair either? Could he have done better? Things definitely were going wrong after five years of marriage, but the exact moment couldn't really be placed. Perhaps things had started to go wrong much earlier, but in the end it didn't really matter. What mattered was only the piece of shiny metal in his hand. It was heavy and it fitted into his hand like it was designed to mold into his palm. Like it was intended to fit there. Holding the gun in his hand, resting in his lap, gave him a sensation of peace and comfort. He had finally found a way out. He would use it twice and then the demons would be expelled. *** He had given up fighting. She always had her way regardless of whether he agreed or not. She would sometimes give in, only to pester him for years. She could never totally forgive him for anything. The slightest mistake he made she would turn into a disaster and would sulk over it for days. No, there was no point in fighting her. *** She had gone out with her friends, leaving him behind. 'You wouldn't like it anyway. It's only the girls and we don't talk about things you're interested in. It would only bore you.' She had told him when he protested. There was no way he could talk her into introducing him to her friends. She could be extremely strong-headed if she wanted to. When she gave in to one of his suggestions or wishes, she always did it reluctantly. Sometimes he got the feeling she did that on purpose, just to spoil his pleasure. Yes, she was a great spoilsport. Never ever had she shown real joy or delight over a present he had given to her. It didn't matter if it was the right thing, whether he had bought it secretly or had taken her out so she could choose her own present. *** It had all started so promising! They had met in college at a party. She hadn't really impressed him, but he was alone and interested in finding a date. As she was one of the few girls there that had come alone too, he had given it a try. From the start her pleasant ways impressed him. It would take him years to find out that her natural self was quite different. She had given him the feeling she understood him. They danced a bit and then went outside to talk and he found himself talking about his latest disappointments in girls, a thing he wouldn't normally do when first meeting a girl. But with her it somehow felt different. She gave him that particular feeling of familiarity like they had known each other all their life. Too late was he to find out that it was simply her way and had nothing to do with him as a person. *** They started to spend more and more time together, a lot more than he had ever spent with a girlfriend before. At first the attraction he felt for her wasn't the explosive sexual thing that had sometimes happened to him in the past. Yet, she raised a sort of protective affection in him he had never felt before. Slowly he began to see her in a different light. She was petite but in no way frail. She had all the bulges in the right places and when he held her close for the first time, the softness of her body had felt so wonderful, better than with any girl before her. Slowly he got more and more aroused by her. She wasn't a very good kisser, but he wasn't a womanizer either and somehow they mastered the next stage of getting really involved quite well. In bed he found her to be completely inexperienced although he found no trace of a hymen when he first penetrated her. She claimed to be a virgin, but that was maybe the only thing in which he doubted her. He attributed it to her natural shyness and dismissed the thought. After all it didn't really matter. After a few not very successful attempts they managed to work it out and afterwards he found sex with her to be if not ecstatic then at least quite rewarding. *** Their graduation wasn't far away and it was her who brought up the subject first. He often wondered later on, when during one of their frequent quarrels she called him a loser, what she had seen in him. He hadn't shown signs of being overly ambitious and had made no secrets of his views on life. Still, she brought up the subject of marriage. And he? He was stupid enough to accept. Although, he was in love with her and even though she had begun to reveal a bit of her bitchy temper, he had hopes they would be happy together. What a stupid illusion! *** The moment they had moved in together, she lost a lot of her enthusiasm in bed. She would give in when he wanted it, but often he failed to satisfy her. Later on he gave up almost entirely and even on the rare occasion she took initiative he felt guilty afterwards, feeling that he couldn't give her what she expected. *** He might have accepted all of it, the degradation of their love life, her disappointment in his career, her bitching about trivial things in the household, her refusal to cook, anything, had it not been for one thing. In college she had never once shown the slightest intention to spend time without him. She was always at his side whenever their time would allow. When friends of his or hers would give a party or go out to a bar or a restaurant, there was no question they would go there together. That had been in fact one of the things he had cherished so much in her. She wanted to share everything with him. *** The moment she found a job and started to work, all of a sudden she seemed not to need him any more. At first it had been just an hour after work on and off she spent with girls from the company. Then came the occasional night out. He had been mad at her at first and they quarreled a lot about it, but those were the days they would make up in bed, the rare occasions when lovemaking was good for both of them. In the end he gave in. It hurt him a lot but he had to accept she wasn't the little cutie any more that sought out his company whenever she could. She was a grown up woman now and was entitled to have a life of her own. That she excluded him from a part of her life was almost more than he could take, but he loved her still, so he swallowed his bitterness and life went on somehow. *** The one or two evenings a month when she was out with the girls, soon were complemented by hen parties held each week at another one of the girls'. Again he had no part in it and she even refused his offer to drive her back and forth, so she could have a drink or two. She seemed to not want him even near her new friends, like she was ashamed of him. He sometimes called himself a fool for being against it. After all she was out with girls so he had no reason in the world to be jealous. Yet he was unhappy with it. For himself he hadn't found friends at work, as most of the guys there were a lot older and had different interests then he had. Besides, he didn't want friends, he wanted her for company. That's what marriage was all about in his eyes. But apparently she had a mind of her own about that. *** Unlike the days in college, when she had paid him compliments on his looks, now she often called him a slob and kept pestering him for not dressing right. She seemed to forget easily that she had taken his wardrobe entirely in her hands. He couldn't buy even a t-shirt without her approval. He had once bought a pair of shoes on a sale out and she never allowed him to even put them on, claiming they were ugly. She had very strict notions on color matching, yet he never found out what her criteria were. Whenever he chose a shirt to go with his trousers, she would protest, even if a week later it would be her to suggest the combination. *** True enough, she always looked smashingly good. She would turn her normally rather commonplace looks into those of a movie star with the help of a few cosmetic aids and she looked sexy even in the cheapest skirt or dress from Wal-Mart. He on the other side had just average looks and his muscles never endangered the seams of his shirts. With a suit and a tie he could cut quite a good figure, but at work nobody cared for formal clothing, so he wore jeans and polos most of the time, a reason for constant complaints from her on how slouchy he looked. *** Lately he began to notice that on those nights she came from her girls parties or from a night out, she reeked of smoke. She said that some of the girls were smokers, so the smoke just lingered on in her clothes. He didn't even dare to hint that it hadn't been like that in the beginning, for fear they would start into another of their fruitless arguments he could never win. She would never let him kiss her when she came home. Sometimes he felt aroused by her when she came home late at night, dressed up, her make up slightly deranged and smelling of smoke and alcohol and a little tipsy. But she would refuse any kind of intimacy, claiming she was much too tired. *** He had no real doubts on her, not for a long time. Just once did he make an ass of himself when he had dropped in at the bar she went to with the girls. She hadn't talked to him for days after that. Even after she started to come home later and later, he didn't get suspicious. After all that gave him more time to surf on the Internet, a pleasure newly discovered by him. After he found out that there were a lot of sites that offered pictures or even short clips of a topic he had always been interested in, he could hardly wait for the days she went out on her own. He had resigned inwardly and still thought that otherwise he was luckier then a lot of other guys. After all his wife kept the house clean and did his laundry, although he had started lately to not only vacuum the house which had always been his task, but also ironing and sometimes cooking on Sundays when she loved to get up late. But still she was a good housewife and maybe when the time was right she might be a good mother, or so he hoped. So on the nights she went out, instead of watching TV or going to a movie, he surfed on the web and visited what he called the "Smoking Sites". *** Ever since he started to feel differently about women, at the age of eight or nine, it fascinated it him to see women smoke. Images of beautiful lips pursed to blow endless streams of dense white smoke, cheeks hollowed by thirsty drags, long slim all white cigarettes with a beautiful cherry on their ends between long fingers with painted fingernails, haunted his wet dreams. He had never in real life given in to this perversion of his as he called it. He didn't even like the smell of cigarettes and when he dated a girl that would out herself as a smoker, there wouldn't be another date. Yet, watching those pictures on the Internet was a different affair. He could allow himself to daydream about those girls and women smoking on front of the camera, some of outstanding beauty, without feeling guilty. It was a virtual world and he wasn't actively involved in any way. In a way it was also a sort of revenge on his wife. *** He should have grown suspicious when she asked him to move to the spare bedroom. She pretended he snored and she couldn't sleep at night. As she had fought off all his approaches lately, he accepted it. He had all but given up the idea to have sex any more. She had been so bitchy lately, he had started to believe it that he was no good. He took the computer into his bedroom and found it more practical in a way. Now he could surf any time he wanted. No more "light out" shouts from his wife whenever she wanted to sleep early. When he felt like sleeping, the reading light of his wife wouldn't keep him awake and she wouldn't wake him up when she came home late. He had long since given up waiting for her when she was out anyway. *** Then for a short while things seemed to take a turn to the better. Suddenly she came to him to make love. She almost caught him in the act, but he managed to close the website he was watching just in time. She didn't complain that he wasn't very enthusiastic and she even came to a climax, although he couldn't tell whether it was genuine or not. For a while this made him believe the old spark had ignited again and she was quite affectionate to prove it. Till the day she came over with her reason, that was. She wanted to go on a three-day trip to Vegas with the girls, or so she claimed. That kicked the bottom out. She had always declined to make that trip with him. He had wanted to go there with her ever since things had started to go wrong, hoping a change of scenery would help. But that now she didn't need him any more and planned the trip with someone else was almost more than he could take. It wasn't even that he was jealous. The fact alone she didn't want him to join her on that trip drove him crazy. *** They had endless rows on the topic. He went through the whole repertoire. From caustic remarks to begging her not to go he tried everything. She wouldn't give in. There were moments she tried to soothe him, offering her body, but he was past that. In the end she was mad at him because he failed in bed too. Finally they stopped talking to each other and she went. That day he got drunk. Not that it helped. He just grew sick and the lump of ice in his bowels didn't melt away. Finally he sought relief like often, jerking off in front of the computer while watching smoking fetish clips. *** When she returned he knew it. There was another man in her life. He had no proof but he simply knew it. Even that didn't drive him over the edge. He felt it was only the natural consequence of the way things had evolved. Her occasional bitter remarks on his supposed lack of interest in her, which were so far from truth as they could be, as it had been her who had driven him away, her staying out late, all that had prepared the way. *** He had always hated smoking, regardless of what he felt when he saw a beautiful women drag on a cigarette or perhaps exactly because of that. He honestly believed smoking should be fought by any means and the way Big Tobacco still managed to acquire new adepts or better addicts all the time, despite the open fight against them, disgusted him. He sometimes wondered how it would be to kiss a smoker, how her breath would smell or how her mouth would taste. When he came near a person that had smoked recently he found the smell repelling. *** On night she came home early from a night out. She came to his room reeking of cigarette smoke that he still believed to be second hand smoke. Obviously she wanted to talk to him but he had no mind for it. He had just discovered a new site with tons of pictures of smoking ladies and she had disturbed him. When she saw he didn't want to talk to her, she left slamming the door behind her. Feeling a little guilty about it, he followed her a few minutes later. She was nowhere in sight so he sat on the couch in the living room, assuming she had gone to the bathroom or something. She entered shortly after, coming from the back porch. The smell of smoke on her was much stronger and harsher now and suddenly he realized it. She had outside to smoke! He froze inwardly but the ice inside him quickly turned to the blazing fire of anger. He shouted at her and she shouted back. Defiantly she admitted she had been smoking for a long time and called him a stupid idiot that he hadn't noticed it before. Then, to drive things to a climax she took a cigarette from her purse and lit it in front of him. He couldn't take any more and fled out of the house. *** The sudden arousal he had experienced turned into outright rage against both her and himself. How could she! Now he was sure she had a lover. Probably it had been him who turned her into a smoker! He ran around through the night along the deserted streets of the suburb, alternatively crying and cursing till he didn't know were he was and what he really felt. When he came home short of sunrise, the house reeked of stale smoke. He found her on the couch in front of a full ashtray. She looked at him with eyes swollen from crying. She wanted to embrace him when he returned, but he pushed her aside and locked himself in his room. She knocked on his door, but he didn't react. *** The next day she was gone. The smell of cigarette smoke lingered on, scraping on the open wound he felt where his heart had been. He had lost her for good. For days he tried to cope with the situation but he couldn't. Slowly his anger swamped any other feeling. Fantasies of punishment and revenge raged around his feverish mind most of the time. He took his handgun from the closet where he had stashed it away when they moved in. He had all but forgotten it till now. The gun had belonged to his grandfather, an old nickel-plated Colt that had come into his possession when his grandpa had died shortly before he had graduated. Finding out where she had gone was easy enough. He had simply called personnel at the company she worked and they gave him her forwarding address. After watching the building a few times he was pretty sure he knew where their bedroom window was. He would wait till they were in bed together and crush his way into the apartment and shoot them both, hopefully catching them in the act. *** It had started as a white day but it turned into red. One of the shadows had come dangerously near and suddenly the smell was there, driving him rabid. For a moment he believed the ghost of her had come to haunt him, to punish him for killing her and her lover. He tried to rip off the straps in a futile attempt to lay his hands around the neck of the silhouette and strangle it. The hums grew louder and he almost could distinguish words in them. Then a paler shadow came near and he fell into darkness once more. When he woke up everything was white again. Only a trace of the smell persisted. *** She stood in the hallway sobbing bitterly, one shoulder propped against the wall. The doctor came and tried to take her into his arms, to comfort her, but she pushed him away and straightened up. He asked her if she needed help, a pill perhaps, to help her get over the shock. He said he understood that it must have been quite a shock to see him get into a fit like that. She had never seen that before. Usually he would ignore everything around him. His catatonic state had persisted ever since he had been transferred from the closed ward. She declined his offer and left. Outside on the bench she allowed herself to cry some more, even though she had often believed she had no tears left. She lit a cigarette and dragged furiously on it. Ever since that night she had turned from a light smoker into a heavy one. A carton rarely lasted longer than two days now, but she didn't care. She deserved to die from a smoking related illness. After all her smoking had been at least partially responsible for the way things had developed. Hadn't she accepted a light from a stranger in that bar... But no, she was deceiving herself. She had cheated on him and had gotten her punishment. The scar on her scull from the misled bullet still hurt sometimes. Her lover hadn't been so lucky. Whether intentionally or not, he had received a bullet right between his legs and had lost most of his gear and with it the ability to make love to any woman. But in a way it served him right. *** The doctor had told her the chances for her husband to recover were nil. And even if, all he could hope for were years of imprisonment for his attempted murder. She would conclude her life as a penitent, avoiding men and chain-smoking herself to death. THE END