Storiesonline.net ------- The Voices by Openbook Copyright© 2006 by Openbook ------- Description: Frank is visited by voices inside his head. Things happen which change his life, his marriage, and finally, the way he leads his life. Codes: MF ScFi ------- ------- Chapter 1 I was very normal until I turned twenty eight. I had gone to college, graduated, gotten married, gone to work, had a child, made friends, bought a house, settled down, all of my life as normal as can be. Then, the voices came to me. Not just one voice, but hundreds. It first started on a clear April day when I was out playing golf. It was a business foursome, with my boss and two of our company's biggest customers. We were on the eleventh hole, a par four, with a sharp dogleg to the right. There was a large green, surrounded by bunkers on both sides. I was in the trap to the left of the green, thinking about how unfortunate I'd been to roll off the green and into the bunker in the first place. Mr. Ames, my boss, was already pissed that we were losing. He was super competitive in everything he did. Losing, at anything, wasn't something that he would tolerate for long. It was my poor play that had us down by two holes. If we went down by three here, his mood was going to get even darker. That was when I heard my first inner voice. I was addressing my ball, getting ready to try to scoop it out of the sand. I was startled to be hearing any of this. I'd taken golf lessons before, but not while I was playing, and not from a voice inside my head. I took a deep breath, adjusted my stance, and swung my club with the face opened a few more degrees. The ball lifted out just like it should have, landed close to the pin, and came to rest less than a foot from the hole. I made my par, and with the stroke I got on the hole, we won it, putting us only one hole down for the match. Mr. Ames patted me on the back for my amazing bunker play. We finished off the match, pulling even when Mr. Ames fired in a thirty foot putt on the final hole. I didn't hear any more voices for another week after that first time. It was a Saturday, and I had just come in from three hours of doing some weeding, mowing and edging out in the back yard. My wife, Ginny, was in the living room, laying on the floor with Kaitlyn, our two year old daughter, playing a game where they rolled a ball back and forth to each other. Ginny was twenty seven, not beautiful perhaps, except to my eyes. She has hair the color of maple sugar, a light, light brown color. She keeps it short, and she still had the extra fifteen pounds she hadn't lost after Kaitlyn's birth. She has hazel eyes and is warm and witty, with a good disposition that made her seem happy and bubbly most of the time. I first met her at a party right after graduating college. We started dating, and just grew on each other over the next two years. I asked her to live with me, and she refused. We had been intimate since the end of our first month of dating, so her refusal to move in with me kind of took me by surprise. We already spent most of our free time together, and she slept at my apartment most nights anyway. "Why not?" I was genuinely curious, having assumed that she would immediately see this is a good move for both of us. "I thought you were going to ask me to marry you Frank. That's what I thought you were leading up to with this. You've been spending the past week, as nervous as a cat, and so I figured you were getting ready to propose to me. I already told my family, and all of my friends, that you were finally ready to ask me." She started crying. My parents were divorced. Ginny's parents and both of her brothers were divorced. Half the people I knew, who had gotten married, were now divorced too. To me, marriage didn't seem like it was worth all the bother, fuss and expense. Ginny and I had talked about all of this over the past two years. Never once had she said anything about expecting us to wind up married. I didn't understand where this emotion of hers was coming from. I looked at her, not really knowing what to say. She went and got her purse, preparing to leave. "Suppose I didn't ask you to come live with me? Would you still be upset right now? We never even talked about getting married before." "Forget it, Frank. It doesn't matter. Look, I'm sorry about the way this conversation turned into something you weren't prepared for. I need to go home and think about us some more. I'm not sure there is an 'us' anymore. We're obviously in different places as far as our expectations are concerned. Can we give it a few days, and then we'll talk again?" She came over and kissed me on the cheek and let herself out of my apartment. I didn't try to stop her. A week later, she was going out with some guy from her office. I called her a few times, and even went over to see her at her apartment, but she said our relationship was over and she was out looking for someone new. Just like that. After a month, when I knew how much I missed having her in my life, I went over and asked her to marry me. She accepted right away. I felt like I'd been manipulated into proposing marriage, but I was happy to be back in my comfort zone. We were married two months later, a small wedding, with no honeymoon. We were saving up to buy a house. As soon as Ginny told me she was pregnant, about seven months after we got married, we went out and bought a house. We needed more room than my apartment offered, if we were going to have a baby. When Kaitlyn was born, it was a happy day for me. I fell in love with her as soon as I laid eyes on her. Her hair was thin, but what there was of it was light, almost white. She had my nose and looked like my mom around her eyes. She had Ginny's jaw and neck, and it all seemed to work to make her absolutely the best of both of us. I thought we were a happy, normal family. Back to that Saturday, a week after my first encounter with the voices. I came inside, dirty, sweaty and itchy from all that yard work, and I stopped for a minute to enjoy the sight of my wife and daughter playing their game of roll the ball together. I had put the voice from the bunker behind me, relegating it to some unexplained phenomenon. I had concluded it was some forgotten golf lesson that my mind had recalled in vivid detail. This was a different voice. This was no remembered conversation either. What was happening to me? People who heard voices inside their head, were, almost by definition, crazy. Besides, never once had Ginny given me even the slightest reason not to trust her. I was having some kind of attack, some mental disorder. 'Who in the hell was us?' That was the first thought that popped into my head. 'Why me?' I thought. 'What makes you think Ginny is cheating on me?' 'Why would she do something like that? It doesn't make sense. We've got a good marriage. I thought she loved me.' 'That's not true, she has my nose and is the spitting image of my mother around her eyes, and in the shape of her forehead.' 'No!' Leave me alone. This isn't what I want, Just leave me alone.' All the time I'm thinking this, of course, I'm also thinking that I'm going crazy. Still, I looked at Kaitlyn more closely. As she had gotten older, her hair had remained very blond. Not as white as it had been, but still far lighter than either my hair or Ginny's. Lighter than anyone I'd ever met on either side of our two families. My nose was pretty average in appearance, not distinctive or anything. No, I was being paranoid, that's all. Schizophrenic and paranoid. I wanted to cry. If I wasn't crazy, then the voices were real, and my wife had made a cuckold of me. She even had me loving and raising another guy's kid. If I was crazy, that was almost as bad. Either way, my life was shot to hell. I wasn't sure which way I wanted to root for it to turn out. I went in and changed out of my old sweaty clothes, and took myself a long hot shower. I was upset. I was scared too. I really loved my little girl. I loved Ginny too, of course. Unless she had done all those things the voice had told me about. If she had done all that, then I hated her. I didn't want to know though. I was too much of a coward to want to know for sure. The thought that Kaitlyn might not be my child was the most upsetting thing of all to me. I dressed and walked back out into the living room. "Gin, do you suppose there's anyway that Kaitlyn could have been switched by mistake at birth?" "Are you crazy, Frank? Why would you even think something like that? You saw her in the delivery room with me five minutes after she was born. What even made you say something like that?" "I don't know. It's her hair being so light. The older she gets, the less I think she looks anything like me. Maybe we should get one of those DNA tests that they do on Jerry Springer's show? Just to be sure. I'd hate to think that our real daughter could be out there somewhere being raised by the wrong parents." "Her hair is light, that's all. Its getting darker all the time. My hair was like hers, when I was her age." "No, I've seen your baby pictures, and those from when you were a little girl like her. Your hair was always a lot darker than hers. It wouldn't hurt to get her tested. At least that way we'd both know for certain. She's still young enough, that she could learn to adjust, and grow to love her real parents." "This is the most bizarre conversation we've ever had, Frank. You've never talked about things like this before. I'm getting worried about you. Is there a problem that you aren't sharing with me? Something going on at work that has you all upset?" "Ginny, someone told me you've been cheating on me ever since before we got married. He says Kaitlyn isn't even my daughter." "Who said this to you, Frank? I'd like to know. I think you're making this all up. I don't know why you'd do something like that. When am I supposed to have the time to have had this affair, Frank? I get up, make you breakfast, get myself ready for work and take Kaitlyn over to my mother's house. I go to work, and when I'm done, I then rush over to pick up Kaitlyn, come home and make us dinner. When would I have the time?" "I'm sorry Ginny. I've really got to listen to my friend on this. I want to have Kaitlyn tested. I'll go to court to get permission if you force me to do it." "You spiteful bastard! How dare you attack me in this way? Couldn't you be man enough to just come out and ask me about it first? Why use Kaitlyn?" "All right. Is it true?" "I'm not even going to dignify your question with a response. I'll pack up some of our things, and Kaitlyn and I will go to my mother's house. I'll get a lawyer, Frank. You can't treat me like this." Kaitlyn started crying right then. She wasn't used to hearing people yelling in anger around her. I picked her up to comfort her, but Ginny grabbed her right out of my hands. "Let my daughter alone, you bastard! You can't have it both ways." The house was silent after they left. I was confused. My one consolation was that Kaitlyn wouldn't be around me if I really was going crazy. I was probably a danger to myself and others if I really was schizophrenic. You saw on the television all the time the people who killed their loved ones because these voices told them to do it. I believed Ginny. Which meant it had to be me that was going off the deep end here. What was I thinking? I needed to get some help. On Monday, if the voices came back, I'd go get myself some professional help. I did close my eyes. I'm not sure if it was by my own choice or not. Over the next few minutes, I was shown Ginny and her paramour in countless illicit meetings. He was a very blond man, with hair even lighter than Kaitlyn's. I watched helplessly as he and my wife performed numerous sexual gymnastics in a wide variety of contortionist positions. They seemed to have used up every possible place at their work to consummate their affair. Closets, elevators, his office, the back emergency staircase. Always at work. It had gone on for almost four years. There wasn't any doubt that he had enjoyed more sex with my wife than I had. They talked about me too. Laughing about how I was too stupid to even know how she was using me. I looked to my right, and there was a small stack of four eight by ten black and white glossies showing Ginny and her lover in very compromising sexual positions. In one of the pictures, she was giving him a blow job in the elevator. In another, he had her bent over across the guard railing in the fire stairwell and was porking her from behind. The third showed him eating her while she sat on a desk, and the last one showed him fucking her while he stood up against the wall inside an office supplies storage closet. In every picture, Ginny's face was easily identifiable. I went out to get myself something to eat. As bad as I felt now, at least I knew I wasn't crazy. Those pictures proved that much to me. I had finished off a hot pastrami sandwich and a large Coke, and was trying to plan out my newly revised future. You wake up one day and you are a husband and a father. That night you go to sleep and you are a cuckold that was duped into a marriage, raising and loving someone else's child. Kaitlyn was blameless in all of this. Ginny wasn't. As for that other bastard, he owed me something for what he'd taken of mine. I wasn't likely to forget about him either. That night, I didn't sleep well. My thoughts kept returning to the scenes the voice had shown me. I got up and went to look at those pictures again. I wanted the pictures to be shown to all of their co-workers. 'Can you hear me?' 'I don't care about whether they are fired or not. If enough people see the pictures at work, I'm sure Ginny wouldn't dare contest the terms of divorce I'm going to ask her for. Whatever else might happen to them because of the pictures showing up at work, I don't really care about.' 'These should be enough. Since you've decided to assist me, what other things can you do for me?' 'What can I offer? What do you need?' 'Sure, but that's dangerous isn't it?' I looked back on the table, next to those pictures, there were now many big stacks of hundred dollar bills. It was more money than I'd ever seen before. I went to get my pistol. I emptied out five of the six chambers on the revolver, and spun the cylinder a lot of times. 'Just once, for the five million?' I put the barrel inside my mouth and cocked the hammer. I closed my eyes and pulled back on the trigger. "Click!" 'You can do that?' I picked my revolver up once again, and put the barrel back inside my mouth. I already missed Kaitlyn. There was no way I could even imagine going through the rest of my life without her. I was just about to pull the trigger when a finger was inserted between the hammer and the cylinder. The gun was pulled out of my hand by a policeman, while another policeman had me wrapped up in a tight bear hug, trapping both of my arms with his. I looked up, and there was Ginny. She was holding Kaitlyn, both of them were crying, while Ginny kept screaming my name over and over again at me. I tried to get her to look over at the money and the pictures, but when I looked over there myself, the table was empty. I looked at my wife and daughter. I looked back at the empty table. Thank God! I was only crazy. I was so relieved. I've been in the hospital receiving treatment now for four months. They've got me on medications, and I've learned a lot about what really happened to me. They tell me that if I take my medications faithfully, I should be fine. Ginny and Kaitlyn come to visit me every weekend. I'm getting better now. I'll be able to go home soon. I can't wait to go back to my old life. ------- Chapter 2 I'd only been back home for two short days. My wife, Ginny, had seemed very nervous around me. I'd been at the state hospital for a little more than five and a half months, before they finally felt it was time to release me. My body had adjusted itself to the medication they'd put me on to help me control the psychotic periods caused by my paranoid schizophrenia. I hadn't had any reoccurrences of these psychotic episodes. The drugs left me feeling somewhat hazy and detached from much of what was happening around me. I think Ginny was being put off by my lack of expression, and by the delay in me answering her questions. She claimed I wasn't 'really there', whatever that was supposed to mean. I could tell my mental focus wasn't all that it should be, but I knew I needed to continue taking the medicine if I didn't want a reoccurrence of the kind of episode that had first caused me to be committed to the hospital. I liked to just sit in my chair and watch my young daughter playing on the floor. She is such a beautiful little girl. I really loved her a lot. It had been painful when Ginny had made me promise not to pick Kaitlyn up. She said it was because my medicine made me a little bit clumsy. I knew she was afraid I'd injure Kaitlyn if I somehow was to drop her or something. I had come home to a very tense situation. Because of my hospitalization, my own income had been next to nothing. I didn't really have any set salary, and I couldn't earn any commissions from my job when I wasn't out there making new presentations. We were in danger of losing our home to foreclosure, and all of the credit cards had long since been charged up to their limits, because Ginny had needed to use their cash advance options in order to try to keep as many of our bills current as she could. We had been living right on the very edge of both of our combined incomes, before I ever got sick. I could see that my illness had been very hard on her. Her being worried that the doctors had released me too early didn't help things either. It wasn't a happy homecoming that I'd returned to. I didn't blame her. I still remembered what had happened to me that time. I knew it was important that I didn't allow my bloodstream to go too long without the medicine they said I needed. The last thing I wanted was another visit from those voices inside my head. I knew how self destructive I'd been before. I had come home full of hope that I'd be able to resume the life I'd had before I started listening to the voices inside my head. When I'd called Mr. Ames, the boss at my company, and told him I'd been cleared to go back to work, he'd let me know about the recent company cut backs, and how they hadn't wanted to say anything so that I could continue getting my worker's compensation disability payments. Now that I was well once again, he told me that I was one of the ones who'd lost their jobs in those recent company cut backs. Ginny didn't take the news about my layoff as well as I'd hoped she would. That's when I first found out just how precarious our financial situation really was. On top of everything else that had happened, this seemed like more than she could cope with. She'd been back and forth, between our bedroom and the living room, trying not to let me see her crying. I sat there in my living room trying to keep everything I needed to know positioned in the forefront of my conscious mind. I was out of work, broke, and having to constantly see my wife, who I loved, crying her eyes out in hopeless despair. Oh, and my medication, the cost of which was being covered under my company provided medical insurance policy, was now going to become an additional personal financial obligation. I looked over at Kaitlyn as she slid along the carpet, rolling her toy across the room and laughing as all the lights on it sparkled, and the noises coming from it made all those musical sounds she loved so well. The sound of the voice inside my head startled me. My first reaction was relief that it wasn't one of the voices I'd heard before. During that time when I'd been saved by the police from killing myself. My second reaction was a bone deep sense of fear and horror that I was in the living room alone with my beloved Kaitlyn, while in the midst of undergoing a brand new psychotic episode. I feared first for her safety, and secondly, despaired for my own safety and sanity. I was close to weeping when the voice spoke to me again. I know what you're thinking. I know it because I thought the same thing at first. The medication had somehow failed, and I was again crazy. There was something different about it this time though, something that hadn't been present the last time. Whoever this voice was, I felt him radiating a feeling of calm within me. I'd been in a panic at first, and then I could feel myself getting more tranquil and relaxed. I didn't know how the voice was doing what he did, but I also felt an overwhelming sense of trust that he was there to do exactly what he claimed. "Can you speak to Ginny for me? Help her not to be so sad and upset? This has really been difficult for her. If she knew those voices were real, she might not be so worried about what has been happening with me." In about ten seconds Ginny came into the living room from the bedroom. She looked at me as if to ask me why I'd summoned her. I could tell the exact instant when the new voice started talking to her. I couldn't hear anything, but I was watching her facial reactions when it first dawned on her that there was a voice talking inside her head. "Frank, what's happening? Ooh, oh my God, Frank. Can you hear him too?" I continued watching her until I noticed that she too was becoming a lot calmer than she'd been in the beginning. In just another heartbeat, I sensed the absence of that voice inside my head. When I turned back to look at Ginny, she'd already launched herself into my arms. The force of our collision nearly knocked me over. The way her lips attacked every part of me she could reach above my neck, told me more than any words from her ever could. I didn't know what that other voice had said to her, but whatever it was, it had broken down all the barriers that had been keeping us separate since my release from the hospital. Never was the warmth of another human soul as welcome as what I was now having lavished upon me. "Oh Frank, I didn't know. I'm so sorry." "The voice told you I wasn't crazy?" "I meant I'm sorry for not believing you about the voices. It never even occurred to me that such a thing was possible." Whatever this last voice had done to me to make me calm, it remained at work. I felt better than I'd been feeling. Much better. Ginny and I started talking about whether I should continue taking my medications or not. If the voices that had been inside my head were real, and Ginny sure seemed to believe hers had been real, there was no reason for me to continue taking them. One benefit of this visit from the latest voice was that Ginny quit treating me as if I were a ticking time bomb, and she stopped being so on her guard when I was playing with our daughter. We still had all our same financial problems, but the voice had told me to do nothing, to make no changes until it returned. I didn't have any ideas about what to do to improve our situation anyway. Ginny and I talked more about our situation, and we both decided to wait to see what would happen. That night, Ginny and I made love. This was something we hadn't yet done, not since my release from the hospital. It ended up being somewhat awkward between us for some reason. In spite of everything that had happened, I wasn't able to rid myself of the pictures and the video the first group of voices had shown me. I'd been fine with everything, just as long as I believed the voices were simply a product of my mental illness. Now that I knew the voices had been real, I wondered just how much of the story they had told me were lies, or, if any part of them could have been the truth. Naturally, I couldn't raise this subject with Ginny. That's the main reason why our lovemaking ended up being awkward and unfulfilling. After I came, neither of us said anything. We just rolled away from each other and said nothing. Sometimes, saying nothing communicates a lot. After that happened, I lay awake, only pretending to sleep, wondering if I'd be able to find out for sure whether what the other voices had said to me had been truthful in any way. Even if the video they'd showed me had been totally bogus, it had seared itself into my memory. I couldn't get those images out of my mind. ------- Across from Frank on the bed, Ginny too pretended to be asleep. She'd noticed that their lovemaking had lacked its usual zeal and enthusiasm. Frank wasn't a great lover, not even at the best of times, but he usually put on a better performance than he'd put on this time. It felt like he was only going through the motions with her. More like doing what he thought was expected of him rather than actually wanting to be with her like that. Ginny was very worried. As she lay there, hoping for sleep to overtake her, Ginny prayed that Frank would never discover her single great lapse in judgment while he'd been in that hospital. Looking back on it now, she still couldn't believe she'd let herself be talked into submitting to that ridiculous night of drinking, and later on, all that groping around in Kevin's back seat. What could she have been thinking? Her only excuse was in having had so much to drink that night, and having no one close by to help her with all the worry about what was happening right then in her life. She knew it had been wrong, and she was ashamed. In the weeks since it had happened, she had so wanted to find the strength to go to Frank, to confess her one night of weakness. She felt like the guilt of what she'd done was more than she could bear. All this was even before that strange voice that just came into her head and started talking to her. At first, she'd been panicked, but then she calmed back down very quickly, as the voice explained what it was, and its purpose in being there with her. Now though, all that calmness and serenity had fled from her mind. In its place was the stark terror of not knowing if that voice had somehow learned of that night. What if it had, and then told Frank before she could steel up her nerves to do it herself? She had been so happy, so relieved, to find out that Frank hadn't really been crazy before. She had thought this meant that everything was going to be all right again. It was only after she'd had a chance to think of some of the other implications, of possibly having the voice know her terrible dark secret. That was when she began to have these worries. She loved Frank so much. She'd loved him from the first few times they'd gone out together. She knew that she had been the one of them most anxious to make their relationship a permanent one. She'd managed to get her way, but only by insisting on them getting married. As much as she'd been frightened at the prospect of losing the house, and of not having enough money to pay their bills, that had been infinitely better than what she now faced. Ginny prayed that somehow everything would work out between Frank and herself. She mentally searched for some good way to tell him about her one evening of weakness. She knew she had to tell him before that voice returned. As bad as it was, the prospect of her having to confess her actions to him, it would be much worse if he were to find out from anyone else. At least she didn't have to worry about Kevin telling anyone. Ever since the night it had happened, he'd kept as much distance as he could manage from Ginny. He knew that Connie would never forgive his having taken advantage of Ginny like he had. For the hundredth time at least, she wished with her entire being that she hadn't insisted on needing to get back home that night. If she'd only listened to Connie, and spent the night on Kevin and Connie's living room sofa, instead of insisting on having Kevin drive her home. It had all been so innocent at first. Harmless flirting between two long time friends. Perhaps she'd always been a little envious of Connie. Kevin was such an attractive man. It was all the drinking she'd been doing. She never would have allowed things to go as far as they had if her inhibitions had been as high as they normally were. It had seemed exciting, and Frank had been gone for so long. Still, drink or no drink, she had known she was going too far when she agreed to getting in the back seat with Kevin. She was thankful that she'd finally come to her senses before Kevin had managed to actually insert his penis. As bad as it was, she could still take some comfort in the fact that she hadn't gone all the way with him. Letting him finger her while she had rubbed her hand over his hard on, from outside his trousers, was bad enough though. It made a difference, to her at least, that she hadn't let him actually penetrate her with his penis. Would it matter at all to Frank though? ------- I awakened slowly, refreshed from one of the few nights of halfway decent sleep I'd managed in the past few months. I'd slept in the beginning, at the hospital, but this was due, at least in part, to the early doses of medicine I was given. Once they were satisfied that they had the correct dosages, my sleeping pattern had reverted to the very light sleeper I'd always been before. I wasn't an insomniac, but I seldom slept for more than an hour or two at a time, before something happened to wake me up. Usually that something was Ginny stirring in her sleep, or turning herself over to get in a more comfortable position. It had taken me several hours to nod off to sleep, but, once I did, I'd slept for a good five or six hours. When I woke up, Ginny was gone. Kaitlyn would have gone over to Ginny's mom's house for the day, to be watched while Ginny worked. I got up and washed up a little before heading out to the kitchen to look for something to eat. My plan was to spend the day trying to see if I could make some inroads on the condition our yard was now in. Ginny didn't do yard work, and there hadn't been any extra money to hire anyone to take care of any of the outside landscaping. I was thankful to have something to do to take my mind off of the way my thoughts had been going. I didn't want to think bad thoughts about Ginny. I loved her. I couldn't imagine she had really done any of those things the first voices had tried to get me to believe she'd done. Maybe we didn't have a perfect marriage, but who did? We loved each other though, and we both loved Kaitlyn a great deal. I just had to put all those other images out of my mind and concentrate on how things had been for us before those voices came into my life. I really lost myself in my gardening. Things had been neglected out in the yard for so long, that I was able to make significant improvements simply by cutting back on all the over growth that had occurred. I mowed, edged, raked and trimmed. I pruned and dug, spread fertilizer, and re-seeded a few areas that had long been neglected. I had to replace one of the sprinkler heads, and to clear away leaves from some of the drainage spouts coming off of our roof. By the time Ginny and Kaitlyn pulled up into the driveway, I was tired and sore from all that unaccustomed labor. Looking around though, I found myself well pleased with what I'd been able to accomplish. I remember looking around and thinking, right before Ginny came home, that my life was a lot like my lawn and grounds had gotten. A lot was wrong with it right now, but I could begin work to make it better. I really wanted to get my life back into good shape again. After dinner, Ginny told me to go sit in the living room while she took Kaitlyn and got her ready for bed. She told me we needed to talk. Something in the way she said it made me very nervous. I don't know why, but my first thought was that she wanted to tell me that all those things the original voices had told me about, and had shown me, were true. I took my seat, trying to stay calm enough to listen to what she was going to tell me. I have to confess that I was actually quite a bit relieved when she only told me about what she and Kevin had gotten up to the night he drove her home from her evening spent over at his and Connie's place. I heard her trying to justify what had happened, and her saying it couldn't have possibly happened, except for a long combination of things all coming together at that exact same time. While I listened to her, I thought she was trying to make it seem like she hadn't been at all at fault. It was all her drinking, the financial problems, me being away in the hospital, her being lonely, and four or five other things. All that aside, I was angered most by the inordinate amount of pride she seemed to be taking in the fact that she hadn't actually done most of the things that god damned Kevin had wanted them to do. Neither Ginny nor I were virgins when we first met. That time we had broken up, after she got so upset that I hadn't proposed to her, she'd had a short lived affair with one of her co-workers. I didn't think I was one of those guys who had some insanely jealous streak, but Kevin and Connie were really our best friends, for God's sake. Knowing what had happened, how was I supposed to act around him, or even around Connie for that matter? Still, as bad as her confession seemed, it was a lot less of a problem than the other would have been for me. You better believe I asked her about the other too. She swore none of that had ever happened, and even offered to let me come to her work so she could show me the guy she'd been fucking when she and I had been broken up. She told me he was shorter than I was, and had dark brown hair. She said he looked nothing like the man I had described to her from the pictures and the video that the voices had shown to me. After we got done talking, we went straight to bed. We didn't even try to touch each other. I hadn't been able to tell her that I forgave her yet, and I was as much upset by her attitude about the thing that happened with Kevin, as I was with what had happened itself. I knew damn well, if I told her I'd gotten drunk and ended up diddling Connie in the backseat of my car, she wouldn't have seen my drinking as any kind of a damn excuse at all. I was glad she hadn't let him fuck her like he wanted, but I didn't think her refusal to let him do that undid any of the things that the two of them had gotten up to. I was going to have my own damn talk with Kevin too. He better watch his ass around me from now on. That was some pretty rank shit he had pulled. Talk about taking advantage of a friend. Surprisingly enough, I enjoyed my second consecutive night of good sleep. Ginny and Kaitlyn were once again gone by the time I finally awakened. After breakfast I went over to our bills desk and started looking through all of the accumulated financial mess. Ginny hadn't ever needed to handle our bills before I went to the hospital. It wasn't that she couldn't do it, it was more like she preferred not to do it. To be fair, she had everything better organized than I usually did. She always remembered to write down all the checks she wrote, and she had reconciled our check book every month. It took me only an hour and a half to confirm everything she had told me about the current state of our finances. If I needed to only use one word to describe our financial position, that word would be BLEAK. We were tottering on the edge of insolvency. Even when we'd had two fairly good incomes, our fixed expenses were very high, considering the money we had coming in. We had borrowed heavily on our credit cards in order to swing the down payment for our house. Both our cars were heavily financed, as was the bulk of our home furnishings. Not counting our mortgages, yes, we had a second on the house too, our other debt amounted to about one year's combined gross annual wages. Not good. Not good at all. The only thing I did see that was good was that Ginny had managed to keep all of our credit card debt current. At least our credit rating wasn't being hurt, as of yet. After I had a good idea of what our financial situation was, I had no ideas about what to do to improve it. The obvious thing, of course, was for me to go back to work and find some way to match or exceed my prior earnings, what they had been before I went into that hospital. That wasn't going to be very easy. I'd made the mistake, after graduating college, of taking a position only peripherally connected with my degree. I'd migrated, over the last several years, into account management, something that had nothing whatsoever to do with my formal education. I'd been seduced by the hope of more rapid advancement, and by the prospect for a much greater earnings potential. I'd done well enough in my old position, but I didn't have any idea if what I'd learned could be transferred over to any new job I might be able to secure. There was also the problem with how I'd be able to explain away the past five or six months. Once again, I fell back on the advice I'd been given by the voice who'd come to me the day before last. He'd told me not to do anything until after he returned. I had no idea about what he'd had in mind when he'd promised to take care of any problems those other voices had caused for me. All I knew was my waiting for him to return seemed like my best available alternative at the moment. By the time Ginny and Kaitlyn came home, I'd managed to put in some time straightening up the house, and doing some serious cleaning up in the kitchen. I was happy to see Ginny carrying in a pizza when she came through the front door. I knew, with our finances we probably couldn't afford to be going out buying pizza, but I was hungry, and I'd always liked pizza. Ginny noticed, right away, that I'd been busy doing some cleaning while she was out working. She even made some comments about how the yard and the kitchen were really looking a lot better. Ginny isn't a bad housekeeper, but she doesn't care much for deep cleaning. She can vacuum and mop with the best of them, and she has no problems with doing the laundry or making the beds. The idea of getting down on her hands and knees and scrubbing anything just didn't appeal to her. In our marriage, my job had always included cleaning the bathrooms, taking out the trash, doing all the yard work, scrubbing the floors, organizing and cleaning all of our storage areas. In my absence, Ginny had neglected doing much in the way of any of my normally assigned tasks. I had already decided to spend the early part of the next day thoroughly cleaning up all three of our bathrooms. "Frank, I can't go on like this, wondering what you're thinking, or if you are even thinking about what I told you last night. You never even told me that you still love me. I need to know if you do or not." I knew I still loved her, but that didn't mean I was ready yet to sit down with her and discuss where we were going to take things from here. In some ways, I wished she hadn't been in such a hurry to tell me about that thing with Kevin. It didn't help with what I was trying to do. It just added to the problems I was having. To the problems Ginny and I were having. I already had enough problems that I wasn't sure how to deal with. "Gin, I'm not really ready to get into all that with you right now. You only told me about it last night. I hadn't been expecting it. I know you told me that none of what those other voices told me had really happened, and I guess I believe you. I want to believe you. If you hadn't told me that thing about you and Kevin, I probably wouldn't have all these suspicions like I do now. I don't know. You seem to think I should be happy that you only let him do what he did, and not some of the other things you two might have done. That makes me think I need to really be sure about all of it, before I start giving any thought to what needs to be done." "I didn't say you should be happy. I said it could have been a lot worse than it was. It wasn't easy for me to come to you and admit what I'd done. I should get some credit for being honest with you at least." "Is that what you want, credit? Okay, Virginia, here's some credit. I'm thankful you didn't let him stick his dick in your mouth or in your pussy. Is that enough credit for you? Do you want me to call Kevin and tell him how proud of you I am? I'll call him if you really want me to, but I can't promise it will be those words that come flying out of my mouth. For Christ's sake, Gin, can't you just let me have some time to get used to the fact that you had this fling of yours with one of our best friends? Is that too much for me to ask from you?" Instead of giving me an answer to my question, she got up and grabbed Kaitlyn in her arms and went off to Kaitlyn's bedroom. Somehow, she must have thought her doing that would be some kind of a punishment for me. I was happy to see her leave. I didn't want to fight with her. I just wanted her to leave things alone until I had whatever additional information I could get after the other voice returned. If he ever did return. At that point, I wasn't one hundred percent convinced that he even would come back. I stayed up until after eleven. When I finally went into our bedroom, Ginny was already sleeping. I got in on my side of the bed as quietly, and with the least amount of bouncing around as I could manage. I had a feeling that Ginny might just be pretending to be asleep. I stayed as far over on my side of the bed as I could get, and managed to doze off after only ten or fifteen minutes. In the morning Ginny and Kaitlyn were again gone, but this time Ginny had left me a note. Frank, We'll be over at my mother's house at least through the weekend. You claim you need some time, well now, I guess I need some time too. Things don't seem to be getting any better with us. I hoped they would, but now I see the wounds on both sides might be too deep. I am sorry for that night I used such poor judgment with Kevin, but that is so much less than what you seem to believe I'm guilty of. Since you've come back home, you've spent much more of your time and energy caring for your precious house and yard than you've spent being a loving husband and father to me and our daughter. Maybe it would be better if we all remained apart until you come to some decisions about what you want to do, and about how Kaitlyn and I fit into your life. I still love you, with all my heart, but I can't live with the way you seem determined to treat me now. Your Ginny I read the note over and over again, trying to understand why she believed she had any right to object to me being upset by what she had already admitted to me she had done. It didn't make any sense to me. I didn't know if she believed I'd come running back for her like I'd done before, but before, I hadn't known how important she was in my life. Now, I did know that, and I also knew how much I loved Kaitlyn. Maybe she was counting on that to get me to decide that this thing with Kevin didn't really matter as much as the idea of losing my wife and my daughter. I remembered how I'd felt like she'd deliberately put all that pressure on me to marry her. I wasn't comfortable being placed in that same position by her again. I wasn't anxious to rush into anything either. I wasn't as startled this time as I'd been the last time. For one thing, my head was clearer, from me not taking my medications for three days. For another thing, I'd been expecting the voice to return. Still, not being as startled as I'd been before didn't mean I didn't nearly jump right out of my own skin, because I know I must have nearly jumped out of my chair when I heard him speak to me. 'Look, is there any way you can give me some kind of warning before you just sneak up on me and start talking like that?' I felt a soft buzzing in my head, kind of like the sound my dryer makes when a load of wash is ready to be taken out. 'Good, let's try that from now on then.' 'Can we talk about something else first? Things haven't been going well here for us, for my wife and me, not since I've gotten home. Hell, even before then if you want to know the truth. I guess you already know what happened with those other voices before? The things they told me, and the pictures and movies they showed me? At first I didn't believe what they said, but, after they showed me those pictures, then I guess I did believe.' Now, this was quicker and more direct than what I'd been expecting. When he said it like that, it made me wonder if I really did want to know. Right now, I was perfectly ready to believe everything they'd said and shown me was all a pack of lies. I knew I was pissed about that thing Ginny and Kevin had pulled, but it didn't amount to enough that I would want to be divorced from her. That other thing though, with the other guy at work, and the things I saw and heard, including the terrible way the joked and talked about me. If even a small part of any of that was true, I didn't want to have anything more to do with her. 'I hate to ask you, and even if I do, how do I know what you tell me is going to be the truth or not?' 'I don't know how I'd ever be able to decide if your offer was fair or not, not until after I knew for sure how much of what those other voices told me was true, and how much of it they just made up. Can't you tell me that first, and then tell me about their offer?' I hadn't even been aware that I'd stopped breathing until after the voice stopped talking and I let all of that stale air out with a desperate wooshing sound. I can't even begin to tell you how relieved I was to have this voice telling me that. You would think that kind of really good news would be enough for me, but, I'm sad to say, it wasn't. 'What about this new thing Ginny told me about? Can you tell me if she was telling me the whole truth about all of that?' Something about the way he said this last part caused me to lose some of the urgency I felt to get to the bottom of Ginny's account of what had taken place between her and Kevin that night. 'Sure, go ahead and tell me.' 'Seventy one of them? I don't think I ever heard from more than five or six of them. One or two that time at the golf course, and maybe another three or four those other times, here at my house. Do I have to feed them and provide clothing and shelter for them? If that's what you expect, I'm afraid you're in for a big disappointment. I'm not sure how I'm going to manage supporting myself even.' 'I guess I'm stupid, but if all they can do is talk inside my head, how are they supposed to be of any help to me?' 'Sure, go right ahead.' I did recognize that voice as being the one who almost got me to kill myself. He was lucky he wasn't standing right there in front of me. I was really angry, just as soon as I heard his voice in my head again. 'How is he supposed to do that? Do you think I have that much money hidden around somewhere inside my head?' 'I knew there had to be something. What is it?'