Enter The Black Oak: Chapter 1

I WANT YOU SO BADLY.

My hands tremble as I scroll breathlessly through the messages on the phone that I was never supposed to see.

Naked. Thinking about you.

No. It’s not possible.

The room shifts sideways as the spectre of nausea wraps its fingers around me like a vine, constricting my throat and overwhelming my body until my already shaky legs turn to mush.

Please come over later.

I’ll be your slave.

As I scroll down to another text message, my knees buckle, clumsily hitting the floor of my husband’s closet as I stare in frantic disbelief at his phone. Or at least his second phone—one that just five minutes ago I didn’t know existed.

Flicking through message after pornographic message from someone Jack has named L, I realize that they go back months and months. My nerves jangle like beads in a rattle as I scour the messages for signs as to the identity of the person texting the man I love so much.

Spotting a message with an attachment, I steel myself as I prepare to see something I know could hurt me badly.

Please, God, no.

My heart races frantically as my fingertips brush the screen causing an image to unfurl as if in slow motion: a naked woman on a bed—a beautiful brunette, late twenties, slim waist, plump lips, ample breasts and generous curves. My stomach hits the floor on a sharp inhale and my mouth suddenly feels like I’ve swallowed a spoonful of sawdust.

I know her.

The come-hither expression on the woman’s face sears into me as the panic I feel turns to rage. And disbelief.

Lydia.

Lydia Bulgova.

No.

It can’t be.

Please.

Not her.

A woman I know. A woman I’ve worked with. A woman I’ve spent months in the same building as, for God’s sake! It can’t be. It just can’t.

I try to calm my breathing as I scroll shakily through more messages, each one sending a jolt of pain through me as if skewering me with a knife.

I’m sorry. I’ll do whatever u want.

I’ve been dreaming of you all morning.

My body is your property Jack.

I flick through a litany of texts—some graphic, others tender, even desperate-sounding from Lydia.

I’m sorry.

You’re right.

Please let me make it up to you.

You own me Jack.

Wondering why she sounds so uncharacteristically submissive, I turn to the Messages Sent folder of Jack’s old-fashioned flip phone to see what the hell he has been writing to her.

Not tonight.

Don’t look at me like that in public ever again.

You’ll do what I tell you to do.

You will show me how sorry you are. I expect you on your knees tomorrow.

You’re going to be naked and gagged when I arrive.

I’m going to leave without saying a word and you’re going to like it.

Your mouth is for one thing only. Don’t speak to me outside work unless I address you.

A shiver trickles down my spine and insidious black energy seeps into me like mold spores infesting a room. I know that Jack is—to say the least—assertive in bed, but I’ve never heard him sound so cold before. As I keep reading, one message leaves my heart stalling:

Don’t EVER say my wife’s name again.

I stare at his merciless words over and over again.

Don’t ever say my wife’s name again.

Fat tears trickle silently down my cheeks. Hearing Jack, the man that has always made me feel so safe, be protective of me while talking to his mistress is too much to bear.

As if observing some terrible car crash that I can’t wrench my eyes away from, I scroll through more pictures of Lydia—her surgically enhanced breasts, her shapely curves, her striking face, her pale, naked skin, the large mole on her shoulder. A few of the pictures were clearly taken while she was pleasuring someone with her mouth, her glassy eyes staring straight into the lens. One of the pictures is of a man’s back while he’s lying on a bed looking the other way. Jack’s head isn’t visible in the shot, but very few men have an indecently hard, muscular body like his, and I recognize every sculpted line of it.

As my trembling fingers explore further, I notice that some of the messages in his inbox come from a different number. There’s no name attached to it—just three letters:

AAA

“Who is that?” I mutter, my voice small.

AAA’s messages bear a distinctly assertive tone that contrasts with Lydia’s pitiful submission:

Pick me up at 8, usual place.

Maybe. It depends what you’re willing to do for me.

You don’t give the orders, Jack.

Your tongue can do the talking.

Do not let me down this time, Wilder.

QN tonight?

I swallow past a rock in my throat.

QN? What is that?

The message has an attachment and I pause, breathing deeply as I prepare to open it. My stomach lurches once more as the image of another naked woman assaults me. Her head is just out of shot, but the slim female body lying on a bed with a man’s hand grasping her inner thigh is in clear focus. The hand looks strong and is connected to a densely muscular arm—Jack’s arm without a doubt. As my gaze wanders to a wisp of golden hair caressing the woman’s heavily tanned shoulder, I frantically scan the photo for more clues as to her identity. The woman’s body is lithe and athletic, her breasts small and pert. I don’t recognize the four-poster bed nor the hint of beige carpeting and there are no tattoos or other distinguishing features other than a delicate gold chain just about visible around the woman’s neck.

As I reread the graphic promises that my husband and his lovers have been exchanging over the last few months, the raw brutality of his betrayal overwhelms my body, keeping my bent, listless legs pinned to the floor. I bring a quivering hand up to my chest and wonder for a second if my heart could pull apart at the seams as it sinks in that life as I knew it is over, and that the man I love—a man who minutes earlier I believed was the love of my life—is now a stranger.

Suddenly there are spots, like lights flickering on and off, as a violent wave of nausea consumes me, propelling me to my feet and into the en-suite bathroom a few feet away. Thrusting my head over the toilet just in time, I heave, vomiting over and over until there’s nothing left in my stomach and my throbbing eyes are strained and watering. Flushing the toilet, I lie down and cry quietly on the cool tiles of the bathroom until the muscles of my belly ache and spasm and I can’t cry anymore.

Long minutes pass in a haze of messy tears as I lie against the marble tile of the bathroom Jack and I designed together. My weary eyes stare vacantly, but somehow manage to zoom in on every tiny detail around me: the plush turquoise bath mat in front of me, the beige and grey swirls in the tiles on the wall, the tiny imperfection in the otherwise perfect calking around the bathtub.

This must be a nightmare.

My fingers interlock as I pray quietly, pleading, waiting for someone to jump out from behind me and tell me this is all just a bad dream or some late April Fool’s joke that went too far. But deep down, I know. I know that it’s true. No matter how much I wish it weren’t, I know. As I contemplate the fact that my marriage is over, the air around me turns to frigid ice as the safe, smug little world I inhabited so contentedly suddenly feels alien and broken.

Why?! Why the hell did I look at that phone? Why did I look in his bag? Why did I go into his damn closet? Why?!

The stupor of my ignorant pre-secret-phone bliss taunts me like some just-out-of-reach nirvana. I want to go back in time and stop myself from opening the door into this new reality—the reality where the husband that I worship, and that I thought loved me more than anything else in his world, has been screwing two other women, that I know of.

I wasn’t supposed to see the damn phone. If it hadn’t been for the leave of absence I decided to take because of the stupid operation to remove the pins in my leg two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been at home and bored, trying to make myself useful by rifling around Jack’s closet for things that needed washing. In a series of flashes, I recall seeing the strap of Jack’s black gym bag hanging over the top shelf of his closet, reaching up to grab it and pulling it down to see if there were any dirty clothes inside. It was empty so I started to zip it back up but stopped as I felt something solid in a side pocket. Then, inexplicable trepidation as I unzipped the bag again and reached for whatever was in that pocket. The memory of my fingers skimming the metal frame of the phone makes me shudder. I have no idea why I even tried to switch the thing on. I’d always been proud that we aren’t one of those dysfunctional couples who have to snoop through each other’s belongings on a daily basis just to be sure the other isn’t cheating. I’d never, ever checked Jack’s phone before, so why did I do it?

I was shocked that the third password I tried—an old PIN number of Jack’s that he used when we first starting dating—worked. I saw the home page and the silent mode symbol. I remember feeling that I should put it back. Some sage voice within me was telling me not to open Pandora’s box, but I had to check… just in case. As the memory of reading that first text message and the accompanying punch to the stomach propels me to my feet, a voice, deep and calm, addresses me as clearly as if someone were in the room talking to me.

You need to get out of here.

Within an instant, I’m running downstairs to the kitchen where I grab my phone from the counter before stumbling back upstairs and using it to snap pictures of every message and picture on Jack’s phone. I’m not even entirely sure why, but I suspect that I need proof that the messages are real so that I don’t wake up tomorrow and convince myself that it was all just some grim nightmare I conjured up in my sleep.

I know plenty of women who’d do just that. I’ve seen it with my own eyes—smart, sane, otherwise fully functioning women who choose to ignore the truth about their cheating husbands so that their lives don’t implode spectacularly. Or they try to in any case, really try, until it slowly eats away at their insides like maggots feasting on a carcass to the point that there’s nothing left of the carefree girls they once were.

With my phone now filled with snapshots of the grotesque reality of my marriage, I grab a suitcase out of my closet. As I fling the case onto the bed, the shrill ring of my phone leaves me jumping and the goofy ringtone that my friend Kevin downloaded for me ricochets around the room.

JACK

I forget to breathe as I watch my husband’s name flash before me until the ear-piercing jingle ceases, taking his name along with it. He calls back instantly and once again I don’t answer, suddenly terrified at the idea of having to converse with the man I have spent every day of the last three years of my life with. I don’t know why I’m nervous. I should be furious, should be catatonic with rage, ready to scream blue murder at him. So why am I trembling?

A message pops up:

Home in five baby.

Panic careens through my body as my eyes dart to the alarm clock next to our bed: 6.12 p.m. Strange. This is the earliest Jack has been home in weeks. The thought of bumping into him on my way out makes me shudder and I make a split-second decision to stay, flying into full-blown, stress-fueled action mode, barely aware of what I’m doing or why. I throw my suitcase back into my closet, then hold down the Off button on Jack’s secret phone in a maneuver that feels interminable, before sliding it back into the inside pocket of the gym bag like some thief that doesn’t want to be caught red-handed holding someone else’s belongings.

“Fuck!” I curse. In my uncoordinated state, I’m not totally sure which pocket I found the phone in. I slide my hand into the three inside pockets of his bag. All of them are empty but for a small golden broach pinned to the lining of one of them. I invert the pocket to take a closer look. It looks like some sort of abstract interpretation of a tree, but with the threat of Jack’s arrival bearing down on me, I don’t have time to inspect it further. I hesitate for a second before pushing the phone into the smallest pocket, zipping the bag up and throwing it back up onto the high shelf above a rack of crisply ironed designer shirts and suits.

Glancing at the clock, I see that two whole minutes have evaporated in what felt like a second and I stand, paralyzed and ridiculously ineffectual, not knowing what to do. Should I just grab my purse and run out? Should I get one of my friends to come and pick me up? Or should I stay, get the phone back out and confront him with it the second he walks through the door?

In some lonely, vulnerable place in the dark recesses of my soul where pride no longer matters, I secretly pray that if I do, he will see my anguish and fall to his knees, begging for forgiveness as he insists that he’d lost his mind and will never do anything like this again. That way everything can go back to the way it was this morning, and all this will be just a bad dream that I can stuff away somewhere. Surely it’s not too late for that to happen, right?

The neon numbers next to the bed burn into me. 6.18 p.m.

Once I hear the familiar sound of the lock turning, nothing will ever be the same again.

My heart pounds in my chest with the force of stampeding wildebeest.

A click.

Another click.

The unmistakable sound of the door opening.

And a stranger enters our home.