108 comments/ 28911 views/ 8 favorites Revenge in Advance By: edrider73 Many thanks to HMAuthor for all the hard work in editing and improving this story. Further thanks to mickymouse113, whose comment pointed out some holes in the story that are now hopefully fixed. The comment was deleted to prevent confusion, so if there is another comment by mickymouse113, it was written after the story was changed. * "Are you sure, you'll be all right until Sunday evening?" asked Renee. "No biggie," said Oscar. "I'm mostly going to hang around the house watching some college games tomorrow and the pros on Sunday. It's been a tough week, so I want to veg. But I'll shave before you get back." "I shouldn't be home too late," she said, "so if you're cleaned up and ready to go, maybe we can do something fun Sunday night." "Where do you want to go?" he asked. "Who said anything about going somewhere?" she said and laughed. A horn honked outside. "They're here," she said. "Stay out of trouble." She went to him and held him tight while giving him a deep kiss that took his breath away. Then she grabbed her bag and was out the door before he could say anything. She had first brought up the girls spa weekend a couple of months before. She and her best friends, Evelyn, Madison and Darcy, would be leaving Friday night for the resort and spend two nights there being pampered and relaxing. They would arrange for all of their kids to be at grandparents' homes until Monday, so the husbands wouldn't have any responsibilities. She asked him if he would be upset at her abandoning him for two-and-a-half days. It was the first time they'd be apart since they were married more than 12 years ago. Oscar couldn't think of any objections. He asked her why they weren't including Patty, because the five of them always did everything together. She said that they were working hard on persuading Patty, but she was irrational and stubborn. He thought that was a strange response to his question. The weekend went pretty much as expected for him. She had suggested he get together with the other husbands, but he was enjoying being an antisocial sloth too much to call them. When the phone rang on Saturday night, it was Renee. "I've been thinking of you," she said. "Are you checking up on me?" he asked. "No," she said, "I just needed to hear your voice. Now that I have, I'm fine, except I have this need to prove how much I love you." "What brought that on?" he asked. "Did you do anything to make you feel guilty?" There was a long pause. "Why would you ask that?" she asked, and from the tone of her voice he realized that her response was defensive. "It was just a joke," he said. "And it went over like a lead balloon. Forget I said it. Are you having a good time?" "Yes," she said, and her voice was bright again. "It's been great, except for this need that I mentioned. Maybe I can take care of that need Sunday night, if you don't have other plans." She got home a little past five on Sunday, and he was glad he had eaten a big sandwich in front of the TV for lunch and remembered to shower and shave during halftime, because supper didn't happen until nearly nine, when he called a truce, although she was ready to go on. He couldn't remember ever having sex that wild and exciting, even before the kids were born. If she was proving anything, she certainly convinced him. Renee usually took the mail in by the time he got home, but occasionally she was so busy with the kids that she forgot, and she'd ask him to go to the mailbox while she was preparing dinner. The second time he saw something from Fidelity Insurance, he looked at it closely. It seemed to be a bill. "It's addressed to you," he said. "We don't have any insurance with Fidelity. It's all Prudential." "I'll take that," she said, grabbing the envelope from his hand. "It's just something I decided we needed. I've got it handled, so don't even think about it." "But we sat down with Sam and agreed on all the coverage," he said. "I don't mind if we look at more, but I'm surprised that you didn't tell me you were concerned that we didn't have enough." "Forget it," she said. "It's not worth bothering about. If it was something major, we'd talk about it. Please call the kids to dinner." The third time he saw the envelope was three months later, another time when took in the mail. He glanced at it and thought to himself she must be paying monthly or quarterly. He wondered how much it was and what it covered. He began to ask her again, but then he stopped himself. She hadn't wanted to talk about it before, and there was an easier way. The next day, Sam returned his call and Oscar asked about the Fidelity policy. "What Fidelity policy?" asked Sam. "The one that Renee took out with you." "All your policies are Prudential." "Are you saying we don't have a Fidelity policy?" "Not that I know of," said Sam. "Then why is Renee getting a bill from Fidelity?" "She is?" asked Sam. "Why would she go to another agent for Fidelity? I handle it, too." "That's what I'm trying to figure out. Is there anything you can find out since you're a Fidelity agent?" "Not much," said Sam, "but I can check." "Thanks." A few days later, Sam called him and said that he was 99 per cent sure Renee didn't have a policy with Fidelity, unless it was under another name. "No, the bill was addressed to her." "Next time you see the bill, bring it to me," said Sam. "This is strange." About two and a half months after the last bill, Oscar told Renee that he'd like to take the mail in for the next few weeks because he was planning a surprise for her and something might tip her off. It was true about the surprise, but he lied about it having anything to do with the mail. When the bill came, he didn't give it to her. He took it to his office and stuck it in a drawer before he gave her the rest of the mail. That night, he told her he had to stay up late to finish some work. After she went upstairs, he took out the letter and looked at it. It did say Fidelity Insurance, but that was on the second line of the return address. The first line said MMAS. The address was in Boston, and when he Googled it, he saw a huge office building. There was no suite number on the address. He searched for MMAS but didn't come up with anything. Feeling like a spy, he quietly went to the kitchen, heated some water until it was steaming and then moved the envelope back and forth over the steam until the glue loosened enough for him to carefully open the envelope. He took out the sheet of paper inside, copied it on his office all-in-one and carefully placed it inside the envelope again and pressed the glued flap down. He looked closely at the envelope, wondering if she would notice that it had been tampered with when he'd give it to her with tomorrow's mail. He went to his desk and examined the copy. There wasn't much to examine. The amount was forty dollars. He knew there wasn't much insurance Renee could get for a hundred and sixty a year or even four hundred eighty, if it was a monthly bill. Next to the amount was the notation "Fidelity Insurance." The bill had the same address as the envelope, and below the address was a phone number. He put the copy of the bill into his briefcase and went to bed. It took him a while to fall asleep. The next morning at work, the first break he had, he called the number. "Good morning, MMAS," said a woman's voice. "What is MMAS?" he asked. "Mutual Marital Assurance Society," said the woman. "Would you like an appointment?" Oscar ignored her question. "What is Mutual Marital Assurance Society?" he asked. "I'm sorry," she said. "All I can do is make an appointment." "I don't want an appointment," he said. "Please transfer me to someone who can tell me about the company." "There's no one here who can do that," she said. "All we can do is make an appointment. You can talk to my supervisor if you want, but she'll tell you the same thing." He thought a moment. "I'm not in Boston, so I can't make an appointment. Can't I just speak to somebody?" "It doesn't matter where you are," she said. "Just give me your name and number, and I'll call you back with your appointment. It may be a few days." It was a week before the woman called back. In the meantime, Oscar had scoured their checking account and credit card bills. There was no check or charge to MMAS. In fact, there was nothing in the amount of $40 for the last year. That bothered Oscar because it meant that Renee must have a secret account. It was hard for him to accept, but it was the only explanation he could think of. The woman set the appointment for the following week on a Thursday afternoon, which would usually have been inconvenient, but that Thursday everyone at his office was being sent home at noon with a day and a half off while the exterminators worked on the building through the weekend. "I've blocked out two hours for you, but it may not take that long," the woman said. "What may not take that long?" he asked. "I'm sorry," she said. "I told you what it says here. I don't know anything about your appointment." After he hung up, he thought of another question he wanted to ask. She probably couldn't or wouldn't answer it, but he dug out the bill with the phone number and called her back. He tried four times, but each time, there was a recording saying that the number had been disconnected. He told Renee that he had some things he had to do Thursday afternoon out of the office and he would be home later than he had planned. She didn't seem suspicious, he thought, but then why would she be. She was the one hiding something. On Thursday, he went to the address given to him on the phone. It was a large office building he had been in once before. The offices were on the twelfth floor. It was a small suite with only the letters "MMAS" on the door. Inside was a small reception room with one chair and a thirty-ish woman behind a desk. "Mr. Warren?" she asked when he had closed the door behind him. "Yes," he said. "You're early, but that's fine. Please follow me." She opened the door to the inner office and waited until he went through. Then she went back to the door leading to the hallway and flipped a dead bolt lock, followed him into the office and closed the office door behind her. "Please have a seat, Mr. Warren," she said as she went to a small round conference table in the middle of the room and sat down. He looked around. There was one other chair at the table. Otherwise the room was empty except for a large flat screen television and a small table next to it that held some kind of tech equipment. In front of the woman at the table was a laptop, and next to it were a few papers in a stack. For the first time, he was worried. This was a strange scene. What had Renee gotten herself involved in? Was she being blackmailed? For a hundred and sixty dollars a year? No. It had to be something else. But what?" He sat down and looked at the woman. She was nice looking and dressed in a tailored suit similar to those worn by the women executives at his office. "Can you answer my questions about MMAS?" he asked. "That's why I'm here?" she said. "May I call you Oscar? If that bothers you, I'm fine with Mr. Warren. My name is Patricia; you can call me Pat." "Oscar is fine, Pat," he said. "Tell me about your company." "What would you like to know?" "Why is Renee paying you one hundred and sixty dollars a year?" he asked. "She's not," said Pat. "She paid us in full, one thousand, six hundred dollars for her lifetime fidelity policy. Now that you're here, we'll be putting the charge through on your credit card. It should show up on next month's bill. It won't say MMAS." "If you're charging that on the card, why has she been paying you," he asked. "I told you she hasn't," said the woman. "Have you noticed any money missing from your accounts?" "No," he said. "If she's not paying you, why are you billing her?" "That's how we set up our appointments," said Pat. "What!?" "How did you get the phone number you called? The only way was to look at the bill." "Why is that number disconnected?" he asked. He looked around. "Why is there no phone in this office?" "We only needed to rent the phone number until you called, Oscar," she said. "It was forwarded to our answering service. Once we heard from you, we canceled it. And there's no phone here because we don't need one. After you leave today, this office has served its purpose." "Is Renee in some kind of trouble?" asked Oscar. "No," said Pat, "and neither are you. As far as I know, everything is great at the Warren home." "Then why did she pay you sixteen hundred dollars?" he asked. "What did she get for the money." "That's why we're here, Oscar," she said. "Renee wanted you to know exactly what is in her policy and why she took it out. That's why we sent her the bills and why she had you take in the mail until you got the phone number and set up the appointment. "I know you're confused, but before you leave here, you will see her policy with her signature on it, and I will show you an audio visual presentation that will explain everything in that policy. From past experience, the best way to understand a fidelity policy with Mutual Marital is for it to be explained the way I'm going to do it now. "Some of the things I'm going to tell you may cause you to react with strong emotions -- maybe anger, maybe revulsion, maybe disbelief. You might want to interrupt me with questions, but please try to control yourself because if you don't interrupt, I think all your questions will be answered in an hour or so, and you can be on your way home." "All right," he said. "Before you start, just one more question. Does Renee know we're sitting here right now?" "Yes, Oscar," she said. "Why do you think we scheduled the meeting on an afternoon when you aren't at work. She's been involved in this every step of the way. You'll understand more when I explain." Oscar leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. "Okay," he said. "Go ahead." "I see you are angry and anxious," said Pat. "I'll try to make this as quick and thorough as I can. A lot of what I tell you is the same thing I told Renee when I first met with her. "She was referred by a friend. Mutual Marital doesn't advertise. It is a subsidiary of a dummy company that's a subsidiary of another dummy company and so forth. But one of the companies is registered as a privately owned business; I won't tell you where, but it's not Boston. The return address on the envelope was a dummy. It's not that we do anything illegal, but in order to serve our customers, secrecy is vital. "The woman who started Mutual Marital was a lawyer who went through a crisis in her marriage. She found out her husband had been cheating, and she lost control of herself. She hatched a scheme for revenge and carried it out. Not only did she physically abuse him to the point of injury, but she was even more extreme in her mental abuse. Her humiliation of him almost drove him insane. "It took him months to recover from what she had done to him. She was lucky he didn't press charges, put her behind bars and take the kids. A year after their separation, they met to discuss their divorce and found they both still loved each other and wanted to save their marriage, which they managed to do with the help of a therapist and a lot of hard work. "Afterward, the woman had nightmares about what she had done and what might have happened to her, her husband and the children. "She was not in family law, but she began studying it and also male and female psychology, especially where it relates to marriage and fidelity. Two facts came up again and again, and they gave her the idea for Mutual Marital. "Psychology research is often inconclusive, but every study on the subject agreed that nearly all men are prone to cheating. Now, hold on, Oscar. I'm not accusing you. Rene assures me she's never suspected you. What I mean is that you've imagined yourself sleeping with another woman. Most men do. And most women imagine sleeping with another man. "The difference is that most women have an internal mechanism that holds them back from turning the thought into action, and a large number of men don't. Let's not waste time by talking about all the women who cheat. There are plenty, but they are still a small percentage of wives and girlfriends. Estimates of cheating men vary, but the lowest we've seen is one out of three, and some studies put the number at nearly seventy per cent. "The second fact is another big gap between men and women. Both men and women are hurt and angry when they are betrayed, but they react in completely different ways. After the shock, men tend to use their brains more and think about their wives and their children in perspective to their bitterness. They are much more likely to try to forgive and work things out. Yes, you've read horror stories about what jealous men do to girlfriends, wives and even children. But only a tiny percentage of men are capable of hurting a woman or a child. "No, most men reason things out. They see the disadvantages of retaliation and divorce and they can forgive more easily because they can relate to temptation since it's part of their psyche. That's why we have no policies for men. They don't need the protection, because they won't go off the deep end. "But women are different. They may be the gentler sex, but not after they've been cheated on. Like our founder, their emotions often make them lose their grip on reality. In their primitive thirst for revenge, they will do terrible, violent things to the man who humiliated them. They almost always regret it later, often from behind bars. "That's what's behind the MMAS fidelity policy. It's the only one we sell, and we're constantly working to improve it. What our policy provides to your wife and her friends is what we call revenge in advance. "It begins by lengthy meetings with a prospective policyholder. That's one of the reasons for the expense. Many woman hours are spent by myself and our other agents talking to prospective customers, and sometimes the woman backs out at the last minute, so no money changes hands. The first time this happened, we started to initiate steps to collect for our time, but we found that privacy was more valuable to the company than what litigation would have collected for us. So your wife and our other policyholders unfortunately have to pay for those who get cold feet. "We've developed a system of holding the initial consultations with a group of women who are by themselves for a weekend. They are friends who go together to a resort or spa, where we meet them. We interview them individually, and the meetings are intense and often emotionally wrenching. But once the policy is written and signed, nearly every client experiences a profound sense of relief and peace of mind. Many women have written us years later that taking out our fidelity policy is the best decision they've ever made. "What makes them so happy is they have accepted the fact that any man can stray and they no longer worry about what would happen to their marriage if their husband cheated. They know exactly what the various outcomes might be, and with our help they've already decided what they would do in any of the situations. "Let's get to you and Renee. How does she know what will happen if you cheat on her? Because we helped her take revenge on you. We put her through hell on the weekend we worked together. We had to make her imagine you were cheating on her, who the woman might be, what you were doing with her, how you were covering it up, how some of her friends knew but didn't tell her and how she was being humiliated and shamed and had become both an object of pity and contempt. Revenge in Advance "Take a deep breath, Oscar. I know this is hard to listen to. But there was a reason we had to make your cheating come alive for her. Doing that brought out things from deep inside the darkest corners of her mind, things you would never imagine and even she didn't think she was capable of thinking. "Our doing this in secret was mostly to protect you, because if you had been there and heard how she reacted to your betrayal of her, it might have destroyed your love for her. She was an absolute savage. She wanted to inflict tremendous pain on you. She thought of a particularly horrifying way to destroy your manhood and humiliate you. She said you had the kind of personality that was strong and confident -- except when you felt that somebody was making fun of you or laughing at you. She said she's seen you devastated when you are the butt of a joke. "So she thought of something that would mortify you so much that you would never be able to show your face in front of anyone you knew again, and you would have had to get a new job because you wouldn't be able to face anyone at your office. There was no physical pain involved, but she was certain you would have nightmares about it the rest of your life." "We have a lot of experience with such feelings, starting with our founder, and we guide our clients smoothly past their first impulses, not by negating them but by making them think about consequences. I barely had to do that with Renee, because almost as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she recoiled from them. She started beating up on herself for turning into a monster. I had a tough time getting her to refocus on why we were there. "When she finally finished taking revenge on you, you got off with the easiest punishment of any husband in my three years of working for Mutual Marital. I'm not saying you weren't hurt or humiliated, but you didn't suffer much. I asked Renee if she was sure this was all she wanted to do to you, and she was firm about it. So her policy is signed and in effect. "How does this affect you? Only positively. She told me she had never suspected you or even given a thought to you cheating except when the subject of other husbands cheating came up. There was always someone telling her that all men cheat if given the chance, and she always defended you and was ashamed that doubts ever entered her mind. "Now she has no doubts at all. No matter what she hears, it won't affect her. No matter how angry she might get at you about anything you do, she'll never worry about you dishonoring her. If you're late, she'll never doubt your explanation. If you have to be away at a moment's notice, she'll never check up on you. She's always been loyal to you, but now she has total faith in you. "The only thing that could go wrong is you cheating. She might never find out, because she wouldn't suspect. But I'm sure you've heard that cheaters are stupid. You could make a mistake and tell her a lie to cover up something, and by accident, she might find out the truth. Or you might just have the bad luck to be seen by one of her friends. It would have to be something strong enough to shake her faith. "Even then, she couldn't come to Mutual Marital to collect. She would have to hire a private investigator on her own and bring us incontrovertible proof of your cheating. That's the only way we would honor the terms of her policy and reimburse her for the PI and all the expenses enumerated in her policy. "So, as I explained to her, in a way, her policy allows you to cheat on her at least once, and maybe more than that. Unless she finds out you've betrayed her and then gathers evidence that can't be contradicted, nothing would ever happen to you. And that evidence would probably need to be photos or videos, because sound recordings are easy to misinterpret or doctor. "Once we get that kind of proof, we will honor her policy. Unlike most of our policyholders, she's chosen to take no part in the revenge. We don't either. We just give Renee a list of people and phone numbers; no suggestions, no directions. What she does with the list is up to her. "After she hires her subcontractors, she tells us where to send them copies of her policy. She sends us copies of agreements with them that aren't itemized like her policy. All they say is that she is paying for personal services. We pay all the expenses for her revenge and for the video she'll get of what they did to you. "Don't ask me any questions about the legality of all this. As I said, our founder goes to great lengths to make sure Mutual Marital is not involved in anything except creating a fantasy with your wife, giving her a list of phone numbers and paying her claim. "Renee knows what will happen to you and also the different scenarios for what might happen afterward. The way things are set up, it will be hard for you to prove anything in court, even if you wouldn't mind your affair being made public and allowing the world to know the humiliating details of your cheating and punishment. She told me public disclosure would probably scare you even more than her revenge. "As for your marriage, it will all be up to you. She's already satisfied with your punishment even before you receive it. Her signature on the policy confirms it. After her revenge, she feels that as devastated as you'll be, you will want to work through your betrayal and punishment to keep the family together. "We've thoroughly explained what might happen if she misjudges you. Here are just a couple of the many scenarios we went over with her. The revenge might twist your mind so much that you'd desert her and the children, and she'd never see you again. Or maybe you'd decide that you couldn't live with her any longer and get a divorce and share custody and try to hide from the children why their mother is repulsive to you. She told me that might be worse for her than being abandoned. So she knows that taking out this policy is also taking a risk. "I think that covers it, except for the revenge. Some wives want us to show their husbands an extended presentation. They're usually the ones who think the husbands have already been unfaithful, so they want to scare them straight. Renee said to keep it as short as possible because she knows you've been true to her and will never cheat. So I edited these videos, and you're just seeing the highlights. Turn around to look at the TV, and I'll turn off the lights." She sat down at the laptop and pressed a few keys and a video started playing on the screen. "These scenes are all from a video made by a previous client who was kind enough to share it with us," she said. "I started by showing Renee some extreme revenge involving the husband with several contractors of both sexes. She stopped me the first time she saw a man with a large penis forcing sex on a helpless husband and told me not to show her any more videos with men. She said that would not only humiliate you but might destroy your mind. "She rejected everything as I worked my way down from the extreme to the mild. When I came to this video, she let it run all the way to the end. Watching her eyes as she looked at it told me it connected with her. I told her she could add some things to it, but she said, no, it was exactly what she wanted. "The woman you see in the video is one of those on the list that we'll provide your wife. The others are similar. Like her, they are all tall, statuesque women, but not slim fashion model types. Even with her face mask on, you can see she's beautiful, and she'll be wearing a similar bikini outfit that barely covers anything. "She's standing next to the man, so you can get an idea of how her size dwarfs his. As the camera slowly zooms in on her, you notice that her voluptuous, full-bodied figure is solid muscle. The women on the list all hold advanced belts in mixed martial arts, Brazilian jiu jitsu or Muay Thai. Even though you're pretty fit and bigger than this man, once your wife gives her the key to your house on a night you're home alone, you won't be able to prevent this woman from doing whatever she wants. "We're showing you everything she will do to you, except for how she restrains you and starts by giving you an enema. Here, you can see how all your body hair will be removed with creams and waxing, except for the hair on your head, which will be compacted and slicked down so you look androgynous, like neither a man nor a woman. Your naked penis and testicles appear much smaller once you are hairless, which is part of the humiliation. "When you are ready, you will be attached to her portable massage table like that. As you can see, only your wrists will be connected to heavy chains that are looped over the table and secured to the legs. The chains are loose enough to give you almost complete freedom of movement. "The woman will explain that it will be better for you to bend over the table and keep your feet close together to receive your strokes. Once she begins, she will aim only at your buttocks and upper thighs with her long rattan cane. She will take the same full swing each time and continue at the same pace for twenty five strokes before she stops to rest. "As you can see, you are following her instructions, and you're grimacing from the first few strokes but clenching your teeth and dealing with the pain. What you forgot is that even though she's taking her full swing, she's holding back and softening the strokes until she reaches nine or ten. "Now I've jumped to the fifteenth stroke, and you can see the difference. She's swinging as hard as she can, and you are out of control from the pain you're receiving. You're screaming and crying and your nose is running. Your body is no longer still. You're jumping, almost dancing, with each stroke and lifting up from the bench and twisting every way you can to try to shield yourself from the strokes. "Now I'm jumping to around thirty strokes and you can see that you're just making things worse for yourself. She doesn't care how you're moving. She continues to swing as hard as she can in the same rhythm, aiming at your buttocks and thighs. But because you're not holding still, she sometimes hits the front of your thighs, and when you can't help lifting from the bench and dancing around, your legs are apart, and your testicles aren't shielded. They are swinging loose and inevitably, one of her furious strokes will hit them; there, you can see what happens. "I'm jumping to the end. She's finished, and you're collapsed over the table. She's spreading your legs apart, so you can see the marks on your testicles, which are black from the bruises. Your buttocks and thighs look like bloody shredded beef at a butcher's counter. "This looks worse than it really is. I mean, it will be as painful as it looks, but there are salves and lotions that will help the skin repair itself. In a month, you won't have anything to show for Renee's revenge except your memories. Even your balls will recover. "Here is the second part. The woman has put tight pink latex panties on you. You're in a chair, and the woman is working on your eyebrows and face. She's trying to make your hairless face as beautiful as possible. You'll also get a feminine manicure and nail polish on both fingers and toes. "She's dressing you in a cheerleader outfit. Your wife didn't want to choose an outfit for you, so it will be the woman's choice. After you're dressed, she puts you on the table face down and restrains both arms and legs and puts pillows under your belly to lift your butt up high. "She's lifting up your skirt and pulling down the panties. You can see the blood has dried, and there are huge purple welts on your ass and thighs. Now she's pushing lots of lube into your anus with a finger. She's inserting a second finger and then a third. "I'm jumping to where she pushes her whole hand into you. And now I'm jumping to where she squeezes her second hand in beside the first. It takes a while until she loosens you up enough for that. Renee was worried about the woman causing bleeding or internal damage, but I assured her the woman has a lot of experience and knows exactly how far to go without damaging you. If you can't take both hands, she will know it. As you can see, your face -- I mean the man's face - looks worse than when she was caning him. "This is the final part. She unfastens your legs and puts you on your hands and knees. As you can see, you're exhausted and mentally devastated by this time, and you're not even trying to resist. Now she gets behind you and does the push and pull. She grabs your hairless balls and penis and pulls you back toward her. At the same time, she makes her other hand into a fist and pushes it into your anus. Once it's in, she pulls it out and pushes it back in faster. As she increases her speed, she looks like she's punching you in the anus. You're trying to escape, and she lets you move away, but then she pulls you back by the balls again for more punches. "Now, I'm skipping to the end. She's stopped punching you, and she's just massaging your prostate with the hand that's inside you. Her other hand has been dipped in lube and is now pumping your penis. There, she's made you come on the table although you didn't enjoy it much." Pat stopped the video and turned on the lights. "Are you all right, Oscar?" she asked. He was looking at the blank screen, and his face was pale. "Take a few deep breaths," she said. He followed her instructions. He started speaking, but no sound came out. He cleared his throat and started again. "You said this was the easiest punishment you've ever seen," he said. "You must have been joking." "Oh, no, Oscar," she said. "You won't believe what some wives come up with. The chemical punishments are the worst." "The chemical punishments?" "Yes, there are all sorts of drugs out there that have certain effects. If women know where to buy them, they can add them to their husband's food, and his penis will gradually contract until it's smaller than a little boy's. You can imagine what that will do to his mind, especially when she starts telling their friends about his problem. "Other drugs can make his muscles atrophy until he is much weaker than she is so she can control him physically. She may choose to restrain him and spank him or cane him as often as she wants or torture his balls or worse. She may make him parade his tiny penis for their friends. "She's only allowed to do it for six months, and the husband recovers completely, although the psychological damage may last much longer. No, you're getting off lightly. You would be amazed at the kinds of things angry women are capable of doing to the man who betrays them. Nothing is beyond their imagination. Do you know your wife's friend, Patty?" "Yes," he said. "She didn't go to the spa with the others. I guess she wouldn't agree to do those things to her husband." "Just the opposite," said Pat. "Renee's really worried about her. Patty's high strung and very jealous. Renee and the others tried to explain what Mutual Marital was all about, but Patty told them that wouldn't be enough for her if her husband cheated and then told them some of her thoughts. Her poor husband will be in a bed with tubes attached if she ever finds out he cheated, and Patty will spend most of her life in prison." Pat stopped talking and looked at him expectantly. Finally, she said, "Do you have any more questions?" "Hasn't any husband tracked you down yet?" he said. "A few have tried, but as I told you, we are very careful and put a lot of effort into preventing any breach of privacy, although our founder has structured everything to be completely legal should someone ever succeed in bringing us to court. "A couple of years ago, at one of our retreats, she gave a talk on how a husband might bring us down, and since then we've shared the information with any husband who seemed to be interested -- like you. "Our investigators are the same people who do security checks for government employees who handle top-secret material. They moonlight for us because we pay well, and your wife, her friends and every potential policyholder are submitted to intense scrutiny. "To overcome the background check would be too expensive for most husbands because he'd have to hire actors. First he'd have to get his wife to go along with his plan. Then she'd have to find a friend to refer to us who was an actress married to an actor. Why? Because my colleagues and myself are veteran interrogators who can easily sense when people are pretending to be someone they aren't. It would take experienced professional actors to fool us. "The first acting couple would have to find three more acting couples. Early in our company's history, we accepted policyholders one at a time. But for cost efficiency, we now only take them in groups of four, like your wife and her friends. A women's group vacation is also less suspicious than a wife on her own for a few days. "You can imagine how suspicious we'd be of four women, all actresses, all married to actors. No matter how the husband arranged to pay them, even using offshore accounts, our investigators would track down every penny spent by the husband, his wife and any business entity they were connected to. And we'd need to be certain of every penny coming to the other couples. Anything without a good explanation would make us decline to meet with the wives to discuss coverage. "If he did manage to fool us and record our meetings with the wives and husbands, all he could do is put us out of business. When you read Renee's policy, you'll see that all Mutual Marital does is help women create a betrayed wife fantasy. Nothing is spelled out except that the policy specifically prohibits Renee from doing anything that violates city, state and federal laws. "There are other safeguards in the language of the contract, and our founder feels sure we would prevail in a court of law. Because of the breach of privacy, she would probably liquidate the company, but she said that the trial publicity would probably result in others forming similar companies, so her work would be carried on, probably on a larger scale. Unfortunately, the other companies might not be as careful as Mutual Marital. "The main reason something like that probably won't happen is that we have very few claims. Just like any insurance company, Mutual Marital makes money by collecting premiums but paying out as little money in claims as possible. Fewer than a dozen wives have made a substantiated claim in our entire history; that's less than one a year. "We've learned from these claims and are constantly improving our service. What I did with you today used to take much longer and was less effective. I'd bet my life that Renee will never make a claim. You're never going to cheat on her." "I never would have anyway," he said. "But I am having thoughts now that I've never had before. Like I couldn't imagine her ever cheating on me, but she could imagine me doing that to her. Worse than that, she's been willing and able to deceive me like she did. She could have come to me and asked me to make this appointment without telling me anything except maybe to prepare myself to be shocked. Instead she played the game with the insurance bills. I would never have believed she'd be so good at hiding the truth and manipulating me. You've shown me a dark side of her, and I don't know if I'll ever feel the same about her as I did before I came in here." "Renee is also aware of that risk," said Pat. "Nothing is hidden from you anymore. Everything is now completely transparent. I suggest you speak about your feelings with her. I think you'll realize that her dark side is so sublimated that the only way to discover it is if someone like me pulls it out of her. Revenge in Advance "She wanted to do exactly what you just said. She told us that she would ask you to meet me and you'd do it for her. We had a hard time persuading her that based on our past experience, it was better for you to discover us through the mail and set your own appointment. That way she wouldn't be involved until you knew everything. "This morning I spent an hour on the phone calming her down. She was so worried about how you'd take this that she wanted me to cancel the appointment, keep the money and tear up the policy. "I had to show her that she was confirming how mercurial her emotions were. I reminded her of what she had been prepared to do to you before I talked her down to something sensible. I finally got her to understand -- and I hope you understand -- that she's did this to keep from ever doing anything worse. It releases the steam so she won't explode. "From what she tells me about you, I think that you will eventually understand that she took out this policy because she loves you so much that she doesn't want anything terrible to happen to you if you should ever succumb to temptation. "Think of it as kind of like a pre-nuptial agreement. You and Renee probably don't have one, because it's the last thing young couples ever think of. "When a man and woman sign a pre-nuptial agreement, they both hope they are wasting their time. They never want to see that agreement again or even think about it. Their happy marriage will make it irrelevant, just like Renee hopes her policy will be irrelevant now that she's made a full disclosure to you. "Only if things really go bad does the husband or wife remember the pre-nup and the protection it gives, because they don't have to worry about what will happen. They know it's all written down and signed, and they can look at it to make sure they haven't forgotten anything. I think that's how you should think of Renee's policy. "My advice is to forget the dark side and look on the bright side. Sure, you would never cheat on her, but a lot of men have said that and ended up cheating anyway. You now have an added incentive against straying. It might be small, but even small incentives can be useful. It's like what they say about locking your door against burglars." "What's that?" "They say door locks don't keep out real burglars. They just keep honest people honest."