Short Story: Betrayal's Fate - Writers Forum

Duvodas · 04-03-2008, 01:42 PM

This is something I wrote the other day while I was inspired. Let me know what you think, and I hope you like it.

BETRAYAL'S FATE

Jake arrived home earlier than usual, and noticed as he drove through the concrete driveway, that there was a car he had never seen before parked by the garage door. The first thing that came to his mind was “Not another of Lisa’s cousins, please” but then he remembered that Lisa would always tell him when any of her relatives—which he always struggled to keep track of since the list was seemingly endless—were coming to pay her a visit. Well, maybe this one decided to surprise her or something, he thought, which was not uncommon since a couple of them had done it already. Yet this did not convince him; for all he knew, it was very rare for one of Lisa’s cousins to suddenly show up on a Wednesday. When they came, it usually was on the weekends.

He turned the engines off and got out of his car, briefcase in hand. He searched his pockets for the house key as he hastily climbed up the porch’s steps, eventually getting a hold of the key and pulling it out. As he tried to open the door, he realized that it had been left unlocked.

What’s going on here?

Jake stepped into the house, gazing around the living room, and placed his briefcase on the wooden stand by the door. His wife was not there, leaning on the sofa and chattering as she usually would be when her cousins came over, and neither was this unknown visitor. No sound was coming from the kitchen, so they weren’t there either.

“Lisa!” he called, but all he got for an answer was the echo of his own voice.

Fearing the worst, Jake made his way up to the rooms upstairs, taking two steps at a time. He was about to call her name again when he heard sounds coming from his room, muffled by a closed door. As he came closer to the door, he recognized the familiar squeak of his own bed. He had heard it too many times, that one, as many times as he had made love to Lisa while among white blankets.

And then he heard her.

He heard her moans of pleasure.

A sudden coldness settled on him, as his initial fear gave way to rage. But for some reason, despite all his anger, he did not tear the door open there and then. Instead, his hands settled on the door handle, and as quietly as he could, he checked whether the door had been left open as well. It had.

The squeaks made by the bed as it rocked back and forth, as well as his wife’s moans, grew louder as he slowly opened the door, his nostrils taking in the scent of sweat that only two bodies merged together in lust and passion can release.

He peered inside and saw, on top of the bed, all the corroboration he needed. The two forms, entangled in the same sheets Jake had slept just the night before, were seemingly unmindful of his presence, as if their whole world was contained within the bed on which they were making love, and everything outside of it had all of sudden become insignificant.

Silently, Jake made his way to the bed, careful not to make any sounds that might alert them. His hands were trembling and his legs quivering. It was only then, when he was within hand-reach of the couple, that his wife, lying beneath the stranger, her legs curled over his back, noticed him.

Her moan became a yelp of surprise, and her eyes opened as wide as an owl’s. The man on top of her stopped moving, stared at her for a moment, and slowly turned his head around.

Jake punched the man in the face, his fist connecting with the stranger’s jaw. The man grunted and fell over the side. Jake pulled the man up and punched him again, and blood sprayed over the white sheets; then he grabbed the man’s throat and began strangling him.

“You son of a bitch,” he muttered as his hands gripped the man’s neck even tighter. The man kicked, punched, and he would have screamed, too, had Jake not been crushing his windpipe.

“Jake!” Lisa cried. “Jake, for God’s sake, stop it! You’re gonna kill him!”

But Jake did not have ears for her, all his attention was centered on the man under him, centered on squeezing out every single bit of life the man had left on him.

The man’s hands closed around Jake’s throat in an attempt to strangle him, too, but Jake had the advantage, and gradually the man relented in his fight, his hands letting go of Jake’s throat even as the room filled with the stench of defecation. When the man finally stopped moving, Jake released his grip, breathing hard.

He looked up.

His wife sat on the bed, pulling the blankets closer to her naked body, and gaping in horror at him. Her gaze shifted from the man lying motionless on the bed to the figure looming above him like a hunter who stands victorious over his dead prey.

“You killed him,” she whispered, aghast. “Oh, my god, you killed him!”

Jake’s mind was racing. He looked at his hands, disbelieving of what they had just done. It was the hands, yes. They did it, not me. And then he looked at his wife, who stared at him as if she was looking at a stranger.

“You killed him,” she repeated, and a moment later, a naked Lisa was bolting for the door and out of the room, screaming in panic at the top of her lungs. He ran after her, following her down the stairs and finally grabbing her by the arm before she reached the front door.

He turned her around.

“Let go of me,” she yelled, struggling to get free of his hands. “Let me go, you murderer!”

He slapped her in the face, hard. “Shut up!”

Her screams reduced to sobs then, and tears began streaming down her face. “Oh, my god, oh my god,” she kept whispering as her face became a glistering mirror.

“Who was he, huh?” Jake demanded, shaking her. “Who?”

Lisa did not respond; instead she stared up at him with an expression that had nothing on it but pure hatred. “Murderer!” she screamed and punched him in the nose. All Jake heard was a loud crack and then his vision went black for a second. Staggering in pain and cursing under his breath, he noticed that Lisa had slipped away from his grasp and was now running for the kitchen. Blood leaked from his nose, staining the tiles.

Damn bitch. When he got to the kitchen, he saw Lisa unhooking the phone, her fingers desperately trying to dial a number. She looked up at him, a wicked smile on her face, and told him, “You will rot in jail, you murderer!”

Looking at Lisa, Jake realized that he did not know her, this woman he called his wife and who now stood before him, phone in hand, about to give him up to the authorities. A woman who had cheated on him and betrayed his trust, his love, and thrown away five years of marriage.

He walked toward her, watching as her determined expression shifted to suddenly fearful, and he imagined how he must have looked himself. Do you fear I will kill you, too, my dear? He snatched the phone away from her fragile and shaking hands, shoving her against the cabinets, and hung up the phone. Lisa fell to the floor, whimpering. He kicked her on the ribs, and she bent over in pain.

“You want to turn me over to the police, huh?” He kicked her again. “Do you?” And again.

“Fuck y—” Lisa could not finish, as the excruciating pain produced by yet another kick spread over her body.

“Whore!” Jake yelled. By now Lisa’s body was a field of green bruises. “You fucking whore!”

Lisa coughed up, and blood came out of her mouth, quickly forming a miniature pond beneath her. “Please,” she then whispered. “Please no more.”

“Go to hell!” he screamed and kicked her in the face. There was a snapping sound and then Lisa went still. Yet Jake kept kicking her; he kicked her until her blood-covered features became unrecognizable and many of her teeth laid splattered here and there on the tiled floor.

When his leg became numb with the exhaustion, Jake slumped on the floor, both of his legs sprawled before him on their own accord. He stared at the blood on his shoes, and then looked at the still form of his wife, who lay on the floor as naked as the day she had come to this world. For a good minute, he fixed his eyes on Lisa, his mind reeling back to the moments they had shared and enjoyed together.

Unmindful of the broken nose and the pain Jake now felt returning as his adrenaline began to fade, he covered his face with his hands, the hands of a murderer.

And cried, begging forgiveness.

Grapefight · 04-03-2008, 04:32 PM

I kept waiting for something original to happen. It never did. Seriously, what you have here is nothing but an unimaginative recitation of the guy-comes-home-early-and-subsequently-catches-his-wife-banging-some-dude (with a general purpose double-murder ending tacked on) scenario that's roughly as old as the oldest of hills. From the strange car in the driveway to the moans of illicit pleasure to the "You're gonna kill him!", this non-story is so solidly cliched it could almost be mistaken for satire.
Well, fine, okay, maybe originality wasn't your goal here at all. Maybe this was just an exercise in prose, character, and dramatic tension; a recitation perhaps, but, hopefully, a skillful one. In that case... still. Close, but no cigar. The characters are anonymous and unlikable. The reader (me) is never given a single reason why they (I) should give a damn about any one of the characters. Given that such reasons aren't hard at all to come up with, their absence hints strongly at laziness, and that's a tiny bit insulting. Think: would it have been such a digression to mention that Jake was driving a 1963 Ford Mustang which he was annoyed to have to leave exposed in the driveway because of some damn cousin's car blocking the garage? Or the adorable way his wife would start tugging at her left ear when she was about to come? And imagine how completely pitiful the character of her lover would become if, after his strangling, you mentioned his Pink Floyd tee-shirt hanging over the back of a chair.
Your sentence structure is decent or better; you're able to avoid monotony by varying structure from one sentence to another while maintaining a fairly smooth flow. That's huge. However, the prose itself suffers from a lack of a strong voice, and is too verbose; that is, you seem to have very little to say, and you use way too many words to say it. For instance:
"The man’s hands closed around Jake’s throat in an attempt to strangle him, too, but Jake had the advantage, and gradually the man relented in his fight, his hands letting go of Jake’s throat even as the room filled with the stench of defecation."
...could be:
"The man seized Jake's throat as well, but he was at a disadvantage, and his grip was weak. Eventually it failed altogether."
Okay, I'm going to have to finish this later. Sorry to run off so abruptly, but I'll be back.

-Grape

Tiamat10 · 04-03-2008, 04:41 PM

I'm sorry, but I have to concur with all the above. I knew exactly what was going to happen, as though I'd seen it in a thousand B movies. Oh wait, I have seen it in a thousand B movies.

The flow was decent. The sentence structure was smooth. The grammar was well put together.

You've got the talent, but you lack the content in a big way.

Duvodas · 04-03-2008, 05:19 PM

Thank you guys for the helpful feedback. I shall work on what was suggested.

Crash_Tomas · 04-03-2008, 06:10 PM

what a good sport. I liked the unoriginalness, though. Even though it was predictable, I was waiting for something huge, like he realize he went into a different house or something, lol. but anyway, get some originality, and you're set. Your style is very prestigious, and I like it.

Duvodas · 04-03-2008, 07:06 PM

Thank you, Crash Tomas, for taking your time to read my stuff. I really wasn't aiming at anything big with this piece, just something to practice my writing on.

My original story had the murder and then he burrying the two of them--the man being his brother--in the backyard late at night. But the neighbors's 17 year old had thrown a party while they were away and he had been intoxicated. Police had come and Jake had freaked out, and when the police came to his house to ask him some questions regarding the boy next door, he ended up stabbing the police woman as well. In the end, he would kill himself.

Now, I don't know if that's still unoriginal, but that WAS the original. I just have a big problem when it comes to condensing the stuff I write--making it shorter--and I feared that, had I followed my original line of thought--the story would become too big and then people wouldn't want to read it.

Oh, well, I might as well continue with the idea I discarded, see where it goes.

Monkuta · 04-03-2008, 07:59 PM

Well, Duv, there's the problem. Don't shorten. Everyone is here because they love to read and write.

Duvodas · 04-03-2008, 08:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Monkuta

Well, Duv, there's the problem. Don't shorten. Everyone is here because they love to read and write.

I wish my creative nonfiction classmates could say the same thing.

LOL
They always complain about the length of my essays...But thanks, though, I shall heed your advice the next time I post

Crash_Tomas · 04-03-2008, 08:18 PM

short stories aren't essays. Long essays like 6 or 7 pages long are ridiculous, but for short stories, it's really good. I usually write 3-4 page short stories, but am working on a little longer one. A little bit is posted somewhere on here.

babeonownbike · 04-03-2008, 08:37 PM

Don't cut short your story line; try, instead, to edit down your sentences.

Quote:

A sudden coldness settled on him, as his initial fear gave way to rage. But for some reason, despite all his anger, he did not tear the door open there and then. Instead, his hands settled on the door handle, and as quietly as he could, he checked whether the (distinguish this door from the other) door had been left open as well. It had.

A sudden coldness settled on him, as his fear gave way to rage. Despite his anger, however, he did not immediately tear open the door. Instead, he quietly checked whether this door had also been left open. It had.

Duvodas · 04-03-2008, 09:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by babeonownbike

Don't cut short your story line; try, instead, to edit down your sentences.

A sudden coldness settled on him, as his fear gave way to rage. Despite his anger, however, he did not immediately tear open the door. Instead, he quietly checked whether this door had also been left open. It had.

I don't know about that one, babeonownbike, the way you phrased, it reads very essay-ish, especially with the "however." And I don't think it flows like the other paragraphs do. But I do appreciate your time and suggestions.

Roxane · 04-12-2008, 06:33 AM

Quote:

Jake pulled the man up and punched him again, and blood sprayed over the white sheets; then he grabbed the man’s throat and began strangling him.

You can probably give us more pictures here, make it more gruesome

Quote:

Jake’s mind was racing. He looked at his hands, disbelieving of what they had just done. It was the hands, yes. They did it, not me. And then he looked at his wife, who stared at him as if she was looking at a stranger.

maybe it should be: disbelieving what or unable to believe what

I agree with the things that have been said already, your writing is good, but unoriginal content wise.

Duvodas · 04-12-2008, 09:23 AM

Thank you, Roxane, for your time and consideration. I'm already working on my second draft