Photo by Joey Nicotra on Unsplash

The Affair

Joseph Davis
5 min readAug 16, 2021

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A week ago I discovered that my wife was having an affair with her coworker, Anson. According to their texts, the nights that she was “staying at the office to catch up on work” were actually the nights that they’d spend screwing each other and laughing at how much of a moron I was. She covered up her tracks pretty well, but one night she came home late and when I greeted her at the door, I noticed a faint scent of aftershave hovering in the air around her neck.

After a few days of deciding whether I was on to something or just being paranoid, I went through her phone and found the answers that I needed. Chloe and I shared two years of a good marriage and four of a bad one, so I wasn’t exactly shocked at the discovery. That being said, I still felt obligated to kick Anson’s teeth in.

In this day and age, if someone wants to find you, it’s only a matter of time. An afternoon of research and a little subterfuge on the phone with Chloe’s coworkers and I found myself standing outside of Anson’s apartment door. It was late and the halls were quiet. Before knocking, I placed my ear against the door and listened to make sure that he was inside.

It was noisy in there. It sounded like he was unwrapping plastic and using power tools to build something — new furniture I assumed. I was surprised that no one had banged on his door to complain, but I gladly accepted the role and pounded my fist in groups of three. Eventually I stopped knocking to listen again. The apartment had turned silent. “Open up fucker!” I yelled and banged until an old lady from across the hall cracked her door open and stared at me with silent disgust. I gave up and went home.

Later that night, I sat at our dining room table, waiting for Chloe to return from an “overnight business trip.” I couldn’t stand her face anymore, but I figured I could catch her in the lie and get her to admit what she had done if I pounced on her as soon as she walked in the door. At around 1:00 am, she strolled in with a glowing smile and a bottle of wine in her hand.

“Where have you been?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “What do you mean babe? Don’t you remember? I was on a business trip in Chicago?”

I couldn’t believe that she was lying to my face. “The flight attendant gave you a complimentary wine bottle to take home?” She looked down at the red bottle in her hand and scoffed. “I bought it at the airport on the way out. It’s for us to share tonight dumb dumb. My bags are still out front, can you grab them while I run upstairs to change really quick?”

I nodded in silence and reluctantly stepped outside to pick up her two oversized suitcases — typical of Chloe for a 24-hour trip. I threw them down the basement steps, shut the door, and listened to them tumble down the stairs behind me. Then we had wine.

“Sooo…did you miss me?” she asked with a playfully raised eyebrow and a glass in hand. “You were only gone for a day, Chloe.” I let the words hang in the air as I sipped the pinot noir. The acrid flavor stung more than the awkward silence. “How much did you pay for this crap anyway? It tastes like rat poison.”

Her eyes narrowed but her smile lingered, “I didn’t exactly splurge if that’s what you’re asking. When were you going to ask me about Anson?” My heart jumped. I didn’t expect her to bring him up before I did.

“Well…Are you fucking him?”

“Nah. He’s a friend,” she said plainly. “And I’m supposed to believe that you were actually just on an overnight business trip?” She let out a facetious frown. “If you don’t believe me, just ask him yourself. He’s is the basement.”

I jumped out of my chair, angry, not understanding what she’d meant in that moment. Chloe pulled a white tablet out of her pocket and swallowed it down with one final gulp of her wine. She watched me storm over to our basement door. Anson was waiting for me — in spirit anyway. One of the suitcases sat ripped open at the bottom of the stairs, his head peeking out the side. The staircase was splattered with flecks of blood that had leaked out of his plastic wrapped appendages. “He wasn’t my first you know.” She smiled and put her phone to her ear. I stood motionless, unable to process what was happening. She screamed to the operator on the other end of the line that her husband was trying to kill her.

Later I’d figure out that the white tablet she took contained flunitrazepam, aka the “frat boy drug.” I watched her stumble her way over to the table and grab the wine bottle firmly by the neck before smashing herself in the head with it and falling to the floor. A fountain of blood ran down her face and she laughed hysterically. “Youuu should‘ve’ stayyyed out of my businessss.” Those were the last words she ever said to me. Soon after, the red and blue lights showed up and our front door was kicked in. The police were not kind to me.

Anson’s chopped up body and the old lady who saw me banging on his apartment door were enough to put me away for a long time. Chloe’s injuries and her toxicology report were just icing on the cake. The jury never gave me a chance and the judge was not shy about my sentencing.

Every appeal I’ve requested thus far has been denied. Most nights, I stare at the chipped ceiling of my cell, wondering what Chloe is up to. I imagine her finally slipping up, the police busting down her door while she’s cutting her next victim into travel-sized chunks. If that happened, the court would have to revisit my case and set me free —no doubt about it.

Will she ever make a mistake? What if she stops killing for a few months, or even a few years? What if she never kills again? All I can do now is wait.

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