Chapter 3 – Aricia
Chapter Three
Aricia
Rana holds my hand as I slowly unlock the front door to my home.
I don’t want to alert them to my presence yet.
But maybe I should have banged two pots together because the second I push the door open to my home…
It smells like sin. And by that, I mean Johnson’s baby oil, a cloying smell that I will forever associate with pure fucking evil.
The smell causes Rana to grip my hand harder and sink her fingernails into the palm of my hand.
I press my finger to my lips as I slip out of my work shoes and my feet unclench from the tight ass heels I’ve worn every day of my working life since I was eighteen years old working as a clerk at a law firm.
Back when I told Kennard that I had no plans on getting married or losing my virginity before law school.
The memories feel so hollow and my feet spread across my cold tiles, sending a chill right through me.
I don’t feel like myself at all. Rana takes her shoes off and gently taps her index finger to her right ear.
Yeah, I can hear the music too. It’s Peaches & Cream by 112 and that creature Diddy.
My stomach drops again and I feel like I’ve been strapped to a roller coaster being controlled by a super villain.
My house smells like baby oil. Diddy is on the radio.
And that’s not the only weird thing going on when I come home in the middle of the day to my ex-husband and his mistress upstairs.
Rana and I walk towards the stairs that will take us to the second floor when we hear the first sound halfway between a grunt and a squeal. That’s the best way I can describe the noise, but really it sounds like something out of a horror movie and a little bit like childbirth.
“You like that? You like taking mommy’s big white cock?”
It sounds like a little girl using a baby voice saying that depraved statement and I almost take a detour to the kitchen to grab a knife.
Rana slips away from me, probably to follow just that instinct, so instead of rushing upstairs right away to uncover the mess, I follow her into the kitchen.
We can’t hear the music anymore, but we can still smell the baby oil and hear the nasty grunt-squeals.
I feel sick to my stomach already and we’re nowhere near the stairwell anymore.
“I’m getting a weapon,” Rana hisses. “It sounds like they’re killing a pig up there.”
I never connected the dots like that, but I can’t prove that they don’t have a pig running around up there just based on the variety of the noises I’m hearing as well as the volume of everything.
Rana pulls out my largest kitchen knife.
It’s one of the good ones – a hundred dollar Japanese blade that cuts through an onion like its butter.
I don’t know what to grab onto, but my instincts push me towards something rigid, stable, and most importantly – strong.
Silent anger fuels me as my fingers clasp the long handle of my cast iron skillet.
A wedding gift from Kennard’s sister. Rana raises her eyebrows, probably thinking the same three words I’m thinking – blunt force trauma.
I only have the pan for self-defense and I won’t use it to do anything but scare the hussy that Kennard has in our marital bed.
A loud, piercing squeal makes both me and Rana jump.
For the time being, our presence remains undetected, but the louder the noises and the more disturbing the smells wafting through the house, the worse our nerves become.
I catch Rana’s gaze and gesture towards the staircase again. We have to face him.
She nods in silent agreement and our bodies move in tandem towards the stairs together.
After this, I’m going to need a stiff drink – and a hotel reservation.
Because I am not sleeping in this damn house tonight.
By the time I stand at the bottom of the stairs, the smell of baby oil mixes completely with another diaper-themed smell. Booty. Farts. Poop.
I glance over my shoulder at Rana whose face already lost its olive undertones.
Her body convulses as she fights back vomit and tries to stifle the noise from her gagging.
I don’t blame her. The smell is outrageous.
The squealing is even louder than before.
And the Peaches & Cream song is playing on a loop to add to the depravity.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a bloody pig trotted out of that room like Rana suggested.
The hallway lights are off when we get upstairs, but the smell is even stronger and the noise coming out of the bedroom sounds like a mixture of squeals and grunts.
Definitely two people, but I can’t separate the two sounds.
I can’t even tell what my own husband sounds like with his mistress…
Although that’s the least of my concerns.
Rana and I press our backs up against the wall right next to my bedroom door.
She glances towards the ground, pointing out that another step would make our shadows visible in the doorway, so this is our last chance to take a deep breath before entering the freaky sex room where I would have inadvertently laid my head to rest.
I can barely make out Rana’s features, but her eyes are dark and wide. What the hell kind of mess am I dragging my homegirl into? This isn’t who I am. I wanted to get married and never ever worry about situations like this for the rest of my life because I am a peacemaker goddamn it.
“Are you ready?” Rana mouths to me.
I want to shake my head. Sink into the ground.
Use the cast iron pan to knock myself unconscious.
But that’s not what a strong woman would do, is it?
I look Rana dead in the eye like the courtroom pitbull that I am and do something that doesn’t feel anything close to what I want to do.
The older you get, the more you learn that life doesn’t always work out exactly the way you want.
I nod, which isn’t exactly lying. Sure, I’m ready to catch my husband sleeping with his mistress. I take the lead and push the partially open bedroom door all the way open, slamming my hand on the bedroom light switch as I raise the cast iron pan up high…
But when the lights go on, I’m the one screaming the loudest. I scream so loud that I can feel my eyes bulging out of my head, which only forces me to look harder and take in the horrific sight with deep, penetrating awareness.
She has my husband bent over doggystyle with his ass tooted up in the air.
And this little white girl is grabbing on my husband’s bootycheeks while she…
what the fuck is happening?! I stumble backwards, falling into Rana and causing both of our bodies to crash into the wall while Inessa, my employee, pulls out of Kennard and her LONG purple tool falls out of his ass and onto the plastic wrapping beneath them with a loud THWACK.
Rana’s screaming finally rivals mine. Kennard buries his face in his hands, but that motherfucker just keeps his ass tooted up while Inessa screams and does what any sane person in that situation would do – she tries to run.
She’s trying to move too quickly and there’s baby oil everywhere, so the woman slides off the bed on her back with her limbs and the big purple strap on flailing.
She hits the floor with a loud, squealing thud and then all noises stop.
Rana gasps and covers her hand with her mouth. She doesn’t take a step forward.
But Kennard does. He finally unravels himself from that position on all fours and he sits up on his knees, taking a deep breath before he calmly gets off the bed, making sure not to set his feet on the oiled up plastic.
But the smell… and the oil is truly everywhere so we all have to be careful of where to step.
Kennard stands his ground and he looks from me to Rana.
He’s naked as the day he was born, oily and swinging around everywhere.
The scene is absurd, disgusting, and would be hilarious if I weren’t getting confirmation of exactly what I suspected. I say nothing.
It’s quiet. So fucking quiet. And then… Peaches & Cream starts again.
Kennard looks at me. He really looks at me and it’s fucking eerie because I just get the feeling he’s looking at me to assess the situation and see just what he can get away with saying.
He doesn’t give a fuck about anything but getting out of trouble.
We lock eyes again and I don’t know what the hell comes over me. The second I get the urge to bludgeon Kennard to death, I act on it and lunge for him, not caring about the plastic wrap everywhere, the baby oil, the smell, or the passed out lady with the purple strap-on in the corner.
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU KENNARD.”
Not just that, but I’m going to jail for it too.
I swing at his head with the intention to murder him, mentally running through my trial and preparing myself to get murder in the first degree.
I grunt and swing at his head, but Kennard isn’t exactly a small man, even if he’s no spring chicken.
He has the big ass cheeks of a wide receiver who never stopped running yards.
Ass cheeks he just let a white woman penetrate with a big purple strap on in our marital bed.
I scream and swing at his head again. This time, he doesn’t just duck, he slips and slides across the oiled up plastic wrap towards the door, surprising Rana who screams and jumps back, dropping the knife as Kennard flies out of my bedroom door headfirst in a slick, sloshing layer of baby oil.
I can’t tell where the screams are coming from anymore.
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!” I scream as I run out of the room after Kennard.
I don’t know how I don’t fall on my ass.
Seriously. Rana screeches and I honestly don’t know what she does next because I haul ass after my naked baby-oiled ex-husband as he sprints towards the staircase, preparing to run out of our house butt ass naked and covered in baby oil.
Adrenaline courses through me as I chase him down the stairs.
Kennard doubles back and I realize at the bottom of the stairs after I race towards the front door that he looped back around the living room and he must be heading for the back door behind the laundry room.
Fuck. I keep a tight grip on the cast iron pan as I follow the baby oil footprints down the path he took and then I see the light pouring in from the open back door.
He’s a big, strong man, so even if we’re in our forties, I don’t doubt that Kennard could have had enough of a head start to get to his luxury car and get away from me.
I don’t want that to happen. I burst out into the backyard, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
I scamper around the backyard to make sure he didn’t hop a neighbor’s fence.
Then… I hear huffing and puffing. My gaze swivels and I see butt cheeks about 100 yards ahead of me.
Then the butt cheeks fall like a basketball as he buckles to his knees.
I keep running towards him because it doesn’t register what’s happening.
Kennard’s body falls forward like a felled sequoia tree.
I skid to a stop as I watch him land face down on the ground. Now my gut screams ‘this isn’t right’.
“KENNARD!” I scream at him.
He doesn’t move. I drop my cast iron pan.
Is he faking? I bend down and grab the pan before running towards him just in case this is some fucked up scheme to get away from me.
I scream his name again before I hear Rana yelling at me in the doorway.
I don’t even know what she’s saying because all I can hear is the blood rushing past my ears.
And my own gasping for breath. I scream my husband’s name again, but he doesn’t move. I don’t think this is a scheme. He looks… still. Way too still. I glance at his chest and I’m shaking with the adrenaline rush, so it takes me a few extra seconds to be sure that he isn’t breathing.
“KENNARD!” I screech again, with an anguished distress that makes me feel like I’m a broken, fucked up woman. I was only faking that I had it together, wasn’t I? Because the situation I’m in right now…
“KENNARD WAKE UP. WE ARE GETTING A DIVORCE!” I scream at him. The urge to throw the cast iron pan at his head while he lies on the ground surges through me, but I know he’s dead. I know it, even if I don’t fully know it. So I throw the pan a few feet away from him and drop to my knees.
I reach for his arm and chills run up my hand as I touch him.
I’ve been with this man my entire life.
I don’t need to touch two fingers to his wrist to know… he’s dead.