Funny Old World

I'd like to thank my beta readers and Randi for her editorial support.

This is a quick, short read at about 19450 words. It's not an RAAC story, nor is it a BTB tale and it's arguably quite bleak, so if that sounds like this will not be your cup of tea, please hit the back button and seek out one of the 1,000s of other stories that are hosted, gratis, by Literotica.

Mike looked at his wife of 39 years, Sonya as they stood in the south facing conservatory of their detached house. "So, you are going to stay with loverboy, are you?"

She was anxious not to annoy him, so she replied as calmly as possible "Charles is not my loverboy. It's just that we have a great deal in common and I like his company."

Mike shook his head in disgust. "I wonder what Sally would say if she knew you and Charles had made me your bloody cuckold?"

She stamped her foot "like the spoiled brat you are" thought Mike. "You are most definitely not a cuckold to Charles and me! That's a monstrous thing to say!"

"But is it? Is it really? The definition of a cuckold is that of a man whose wife has lovers other than him. And that's me, isn't it?"

She deliberately softened her attitude. "No, I don't have lovers. There's only Charles and I didn't appreciate your crack about Sally. Obviously, my sister didn't want to die and leave Charles by himself, so I took it upon myself to help Charles out. Much in the same way that I'm sure Sally would have come and comforted you had I been the one to die."

He shrugged "I somehow doubt that would have been the case. I don't see that Sally would have played the hussy with me."

The slap she gave him brought him up sharply. He took a step back and said: "Your resorting to violence will not make things any better."

She almost apologized but wasn't quite able to do so. What she said instead was, "I'm not a hussy!"

"But you'll be staying with Charles and sleeping in the same bed, having sex with him?"

"Probably. But nothing I do with Charles takes anything away from you. I don't do anything with Charles that I wouldn't do with you."

The little liar's tell she showed (he'd wisely never told her what it was) made him realize that there was probably sexual stuff that the lovers did that she'd never even considered doing with her husband. "Not a hussy?" he thought, ironically.

"Mike, please make sure you take your medication when I'm away, okay?"

That question genuinely floored him. "Why do you care if I take my medication or not? After all, if I died, you'd be freed to marry Charles, wouldn't you?"

She shook her head. "No! That's just not it! I still care very deeply about you and I don't want you to be ill. You must take your blood pressure medication and your heart drugs! I worry about you! Neither of us is getting any younger and we both need to look after ourselves. You are nearly 70, and I'm 66."

He allowed her to give him a peck on the cheek before she drove off in her sporty car for her assignation with Charles, the widower of her sister Sally.

Charles lived 40 miles away, which in the terms of many countries was a short drive, but in UK terms, 40 miles was considered to be a fair old distance.

As she drove, she cast her mind back to 15 years previously when her sister had suddenly died as a result of a fall at work. Charles had been absolutely devastated, and Sonya had regularly made the trip to his home to help him come to terms with his grief at unexpectedly becoming a widower at a relatively youthful age.

She couldn't quite remember when her missions of mercy started to involve sex, but she remembered when her previously clueless husband Mike had found out. He and Charles had fought, but then the two lovers felt shame because Mike had collapsed on the floor, clutching his chest. Which was the first sign of his heart disease.

She'd called 999 and she almost swore that the ambulance crew had known what had happened between the two men and why. After all, she was nearly naked, Charles was wearing boxers and Mike had been wearing street clothing.

But the ambulance crew had not mentioned anything to her or Charles as they worked to stabilize Mike's condition.

Mike was rushed on blues and twos to the General Hospital where the cardiac team worked on him and fitted a stent.

Meanwhile Charles, how fucking magnanimous of him, agreed to not press charges against Mike.

The incident had caused some physical problems for Mike leaving him on heart medication and tablets for his high blood pressure, but it had also wrought some other changes. He felt as if part of him had broken.

After a month or so of Mike recuperating, Sonya recommenced her weekend assignations with Charles. No matter how much Mike complained or threatened her with divorce she remained steadfast in her desires to 'help' Charles get over her sister's death.

Now, after nearly 15 years, it was as if Mike had come out of a fog. He knew that Sonya was just using that as an excuse to get some strange cock, as the old saying put it.

It was a little after 9AM when she had left, and Mike decided to shut himself away in their south-facing fully glazed conservatory. He hadn't been feeling all that well but hadn't told Sonya as he had worried that she would have wrongly concluded that he would have been trying to keep her away from Charles. Far from it. Fucking Charlie-boy was welcome to her!

He sat down in his favorite recliner and soon fell into a deep sleep as the June sun climbed higher and higher in the sky and the temperatures in the conservatory rose and rose.

At some point he started dreaming. He was dreaming that he was in the desert. Eventually he woke up and noticed that the digital thermometer in the conservatory was showing 50C, 122F. He managed to stagger from his recliner but a wave of dizziness made him fall to the floor. Normally, the stone tiles would have cooled his skin but they felt hot to his touch.

The heat was stifling. He crawled towards the closed double doors into the living room of the house, but his strength failed him.

Sonya had insisted on buying him a special gift one Christmas. It was a pendant which was Bluetooth enabled to link to his mobile phone. It was programmed to call Sonya's mobile phone, but it was going straight to her answerphone. "Help me! Please!" was all he could croak out.

His phone was in his jacket in the living room. He kept crawling, nearer and nearer to the doors. Suddenly he realized he was no longer alone in the conservatory. He looked up into the smiling eyes of Sally, his sister-in-law.

"Sally?"

"Yes, Mikey, it's me."

"What's happening? Why are you here?"

"I've come for my lovely brother-in-law. Come on! Stand up!" She had always called him Mikey. She was the one who ever had. She reached her hands toward him.

He stood up, then realized he was looking down at his corpse on the floor of the conservatory. "I'm dead, aren't I?" he asked, in a matter-of-fact manner.

Sally nodded. "Yeah, that's right. You are dead. However, you are to come with me. I got a special dispensation to come for you and take you to the other side. I'm so sorry for what Sonya and Charles have done to you. And you were right. I would never have done what Sonya did. Not because I don't think you're handsome, but because immoral is immoral no matter what. And you are right. I'm no hussy!" She said that with a saucy grin.

She took his hand and they began traveling to a far, far better place.

Two days later, Sonya was returning home. She realized that she would have to do something for Mike. Some serious making up. Previously he'd been upset by her visiting Charles, but this time it had been different and she was worrying that perhaps she'd pushed him just a little bit too far?

She mused to herself about what she'd do. She'd make him his favorite meal, maybe run a bath for him, pamper him a bit? Take him to bed and love him?

She bitterly regretted slapping him. She'd long been an advocate for women just leaving their husband after even just one slap. So, why shouldn't Mike leave her based on that theory? She hoped he wouldn't, but wouldn't that make her a hypocrite? She'd have to cross that bridge when she came to it.

It was when she was almost home that she remembered she hadn't turned her phone back on. There was one message, from Mike. "Help me! Please!"

She panicked. She accelerated the car until she was just over the speed limit, guilt adding to her need to get home as quickly as possible.

She arrived home, noticing that his car was still on the drive. She parked next to it and ran through the house, shouting for her husband.

She stood in the living room and looked through the glass doors into the conservatory and saw a sight that would be with her for the rest of her life: the remains of her husband lying on the stone tiles of the conservatory, his hands reaching toward the doors into the house.

When she saw what was left of him, she nearly fainted. After all, three days of 50c temperatures in an enclosed space have an absolutely appalling impact on a corpse, as one would imagine.

She called 999, they sent a specialized team out and Mike's remains were bagged up and taken away. A sympathetic coroner's officer wearing a mask opened the doors of the conservatory that led out onto the garden and opened the multiple windows.

He gave her the name of a specialist firm that dealt with scenes of crime and accidental death clean-up. "They're very good," he said. "Ask for Andy and tell them Dave from the District Coroner sent you, and they'll look after you."

She closed the doors into the conservatory and hid in the kitchen and with a bottle of gin to hand, she phoned the one person who she felt, or hoped, would understand what she was going through. Charles answered his phone in a rather cautious manner. "Hello?"

"Charles, it's me. Sonya. When I got back, I found that Mike had had a heart attack. He's dead."

Before Charles could respond Sonya heard a shrill, female voice shout: "Charles! Are you speaking to that slutty cow who's letting you turn her husband into your cuckold? Just get her off the phone, now, you bastard! You're supposed to be railing me, not talking to her!"

Charles started to speak, but Sonya cut him off. "Just fuck off, Charles. I thought we had something special going on between us, you and me. And to think I nearly divorced Mike for you, years ago. What a fool I was, because all I was to you was another fuckbuddy. And tell that shrill, tin-throated little strumpet who's with you to fuck off, as well."

She terminated the call. Her next step was to block Charles' phone number. Yeah, too little, too late, she knew that. Then she called Andy's Expert and Professional Cleaning Services and left a message on their 24-hour service number.

"I'm sorry I hit you, Mike. Sorry I cheated on you! I'm so, so sorry!"

Tears cascaded down her face, tears for her Mike, tears for her dead sister and tears for herself. Mostly tears for herself, because you'd have to be a narcissist to act like Sonya had acted.

Funny old world.