How to Kill Your Wife Read online

  Table of Contents

  Other Books by James Hockings

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Did you like what you just read?

  How to Kill Your Wife

  James Hockings

  Copyright © 2011 by James A. Hockings

  2644 Sunningdale Road West

  London, Ontario N0M 2A0

  Canada

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-9877054-4-0

  Four books written and a thousand to go...

  BUY OTHER BOOKS BY JAMES HOCKINGS

  VIEW HIS AUTHOR PROFILE HERE

  Chapter 1

  “Dr. Dempsey.”

  “Mr. Broviak.”

  Peter liked his first glimpse of Lisa Dempsey BA, MA, PhD, Clinical Psych. He liked her style. She “dressed for success” in Hugo Boss, basic black, accented by what looked to be a Hermes scarf in a muted cream-and-black pattern. Her look – a tasteful, conservative and classic blend - complemented her smooth caramel coloring. Lisa’s smile was as warm and bright as her Caribbean heritage. Her voice was an uncommonly pleasing blend of lilting island notes and the haughty precision conferred by an English public school education.

  Peter was quirky when it came to his passion – women. He loved a slutty look, but in contrast and in keeping with his personality, he also loved a woman in a tailored business suit. In Peter’s fantasies, women who dressed in this severe fashion compensated for the masculinity of the look by wearing Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie underneath. Peter felt driven to try to sleep with women who dressed this way.

  Lisa was pretty and appropriately dressed but lacked the chiseled look that Peter craved – another one of his quirks. She did not make the cut. Peter’s erotic appetite was specifically for a certain type of woman, but he liked that type too much and often, in quantities unsafe to handle. Having determined that he was not immediately called upon to seduce his therapist, Peter was able to relax a little.

  “I’m Peter.”

  Looking at his referral sheet, Lisa saw that he had been diagnosed as depressed. She looked closely at him. He didn’t look depressed.

  Peter was tall and had the gangly, loose-jointed look of an eight-week-old puppy. He was handsome, in a Sam Shepard sort of way. He was dressed in a worn, bright-red corduroy shirt over casual black pants that looked brand new. In fact, they still had a sales tag showing in the back but Lisa could not see this. His black, tooled cowboy boots were old but freshly shined. His hands weren’t tough cowboy hands. Lisa thought they looked artistic. He was smiling a cockeyed smile at her. He looked playful, but a little sad. Lisa had the impression that this expression was artificial, as if her new patient had practiced it in front of the mirror as a calculated ploy to disarm women.

  “I’m Lisa. Feel free to call me by my first name. Will you sit down, Peter? Take any seat you like but mine,” she said with gentle humor, gesturing toward her own seat. “I see on your intake form that you were referred to me by your family doctor. I also see she has given you a prescription for antidepressants, and that you have a history of depression.”

  “That’s right,” he said. There was no way he’d take those pills. To do so would be an admission of weakness. What weakness and why, Peter never bothered to formulate; he just didn’t like taking legal drugs.

  “Are you depressed, Peter?”

  “I don’t know if I’m depressed or not. I thought you would be able to tell me. Aren’t you supposed to ask me a lot of loaded questions to diagnose me?” Peter had seen a lot of psychoanalysts in movies and that’s how they operated.

  Peter heard his soon-to-be ex-wife, Kathryn, in his head. “You don’t need to see a shrink. I can tell you what’s wrong with you right now. What’s the use? You won’t listen to me. Why do you want to pay somebody to listen to you whine? You’re an ass.” Peter had been listening to Kathryn ever since she left. In fact, she was more of a nag now than she’d ever been.

  “What kind of questions do you want me to ask you?” Lisa queried in her neutral, professional voice.

  “Now that’s the kind of question I expected you to ask,” Peter said, looking pleased with himself.

  “Peter, I’m not here to play games with you. I asked if you were depressed because most people who are depressed are actually able to tell a therapist that they are depressed. You obviously mentioned it to your family doctor or she wouldn’t have given you the prescription.”

  He heard Kathryn in his head again. “You aren’t depressed; you just need to get off your ass and find a paying job.”

  He answered Lisa, “Right. Okay. I’m sorry. I guess I am depressed, but I’m not taking those pills.”

  “No need to apologize for anything you say to me. Now, you guess you’re depressed or you are depressed?”

  Peter thought she was being a little pushy. Throughout his life, he had specialized in pushy women. “Okay, I’m depressed.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m depressed because my wife left me.” Peter also thought it was a relief that she was gone, but was afraid to say so as he thought it might make him appear cold. Kathryn “spoke” again. “You’re a complete fraud. You’re a shell of a human being. You’re a sociopath and you’d fuck any dirty thing with a hole.”

  Lisa nodded. “Go on.”

  “She left me because I screwed around on her and she caught me.”

  “Like hell, you aren’t still fucking that whore! You’ve been fucking whores like her since we first met. You’re a whore, too.”

  After a moment, and another nod, Peter wen
t on. “I screwed up my marriage. Isn’t that enough to be depressed about?” But Peter didn’t really know if he was depressed. He knew he was confused. He also knew he didn’t want to be there. He didn’t like the idea of therapy, but on some level, he realized that he needed it.

  Lisa said, “Most people aren’t happy about that kind of situation. How do you feel about it?”

  “I feel like a train ran over me. I feel like my whole world dropped out from under me.” He paused, then continued. “But I’m also sort of glad deep down to see her go, except now I’m broke.”

  “And how does your wife feel - do you know?”

  “I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone. You lie about everything. I feel like a used piece of toilet paper.”

  “I think she hates me.” Peter was, in fact, sure she hated him.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “She left. She was angry. She won’t come back or talk to me. And she said she hated me – many times.”

  “Have you considered that she may have left for many different reasons?”

  “No, not really. I just figure she hates me.”

  “Do you hate her?”

  He didn’t speak for a time, looking down at the carpet, then out the window. It was a nice office. The Persian carpets were suitably worn looking and were probably real antiques. There were no paintings on the walls, but there were several modern abstract tapestries in earth tones. A small arrangement of fresh-cut flowers adorned the tasteful cherry wood desk. The room seemed calculated to encourage calm or, at least a sort of peacefulness in the visitor.

  Finally, he answered. “Hate her? I’m mad at her. I miss her. I think I might hate her.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “You’re the love of my life, Peter. You’re the first man I ever truly loved and the last one I’ll ever love. You’re more precious to me than my own life. I would die for you.”

  Now Peter wanted Lisa to stop talking, to stop poking. He felt itchy all over. “Uh, yeah; doesn’t every man love his wife?”

  “I asked you if you love her, not what everyone else feels.”

  “Sure, I love her.” After a few beats … “But I’m pissed off at her and I feel guilty about that. After she found out that I had fucked around, she said stuff I’m going to have a hard time forgetting. I spend half the day hearing her in my head, still yelling at me.”

  “Am I correct in understanding that your wife left because she found out about another woman, you still love her and think she hates you, and that you’re depressed and feel guilty?”

  “Hey, that’s about it. Am I cured now?” Peter wanted out of that room and away from this therapist.

  “No, but when you’re ‘cured’ of whatever brought you here today, you’ll be able to tell me; you won’t have to ask. Now, I’d like us to back up a little. I have one or two very important questions to ask before we proceed.”

  “Sure.”

  “Peter, do you ever think or daydream about harming yourself in any way?”

  “Why don’t you just kill yourself? No one will care - not your whores or those slimy friends of yours. Do the world a favor.”

  Peter answered, “No.” But he thought, “Maybe, yes, especially when I hear her yammering in my head.” Peter didn’t want to tell Lisa this. He was afraid she would send him to a hospital or something.

  “Have you ever in your life thought about killing yourself?” Lisa asked.

  Peter wondered if he should tell her about that time in university, or fifteen years ago when he cheated on his first wife and she left him. But he decided that it would make him look really bad to his new therapist, so he just said, “Nope.”

  “Okay, Peter, thank you. If you’re sure you don’t feel in the least like hurting yourself now, we can continue to discuss your marital difficulties. What is your wife’s name, and how long ago did she leave you?”

  “Kathryn. About a month ago.”

  “Let me get this straight. Kathryn caught you having an affair with someone three weeks before she left you a month ago. Your difficulties started seven weeks ago.”

  “Well, kinda. She was suspicious long before that, but she didn’t really get all the hard facts she needed until about seven weeks ago. She started getting mad at me maybe a month before that.”

  Peter could feel his color rising, he was getting mad. “Actually, during our marriage, I often couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She would get all cold and quiet and secretive.”

  “Nothing is wrong and I have nothing to say to you. Don’t you dare talk to me either. Stay out of my bedroom and stay out of my sight. You make me sick.” And she said this even before he started fooling around.

  “Was she usually ‘cold and quiet and secretive’?”

  “Well, she liked to be bossy and get her own way. She’s really pretty straight, being a bureaucrat and all.”

  “How did you feel when she was bossy?”

  “Wow! Like I was ten years old again and my mother was mad at me … Like I had to tiptoe around and try not to piss her off.” Regretting his burst of honesty, Peter worried that Lisa would go off on a “mother thing” after this remark but she seemed willing to let it pass.

  “Did you get angry at her when she was cold and bossy?"

  “Well yeah, but I tried not to show it. It would just make her madder. It’s not like she was really doing or saying anything specific I could call her on and use to nail her down.”

  “Did you want to ‘nail her down?’”

  “I have never done anything to deserve this. I’ve been a good wife.”

  “Yeah, it would have been nice once in a while to have something on her instead of the other way around. She’s just so ‘nice’ and proper all the time. Plus, I think she’s just super sexy, but we never had sex as much as I wanted to. She wouldn’t let me kiss her if she’d just put on fresh lipstick or if I hadn’t brushed my teeth in the last half-hour. Hell, once she got injected with about a thousand bucks’ worth of that temporary collagen stuff and I just went wild looking at those big pillowy lips. But she wouldn’t let me kiss her for a month because she said the doctor told her it wouldn’t last as long if she put too much pressure on her lips. I was really bummed out about that.”

  Peter was quiet for awhile. Lisa waited for a few minutes, careful not to interrupt him.

  “Peter,” Lisa said gently, “you said that you had an affair; can you tell me about that? Why you wanted to do that?”

  “Sex. What else? And she treated me like I existed. She respected me as an artist, she was knowledgeable about art and loved my paintings and had plans to represent me to some galleries.”

  “What was her name?”

  “She used the name Francesca.”

  “If your wife was so sexy, why did you find the need to have sex with Francesca?”

  “It was like my wife was being sexy for herself and not for me. Frannie was sexy for me. Do you see what the difference is? And Frannie was there whenever we were together - not lost in thinking about something else. Kathryn really cared about the way she looked and acted and smelled. She worked out at the gym a lot and she had a lot of stuff ‘done,’ like the lip thing and breast implants and a neck lift and Botox and, shit, a hundred other things. I loved it all but none of it was for me. She wouldn’t let me touch her unless the time was exactly right and I had a bath and brushed my teeth and shaved, and I even had to wait until she had a bath, too. Hell, I’d be willing to have sex with a woman even after she came back from a run or a bike ride. I think that sweaty is kind of sexy, but she didn’t.”

  “And? Get back to the differences, Peter; that’s what I asked you.”

  “Frannie did all the same things to keep herself looking good, but made me think she did them all for me. She seemed to think about nothing but me when we were together. That’s what the best pros do, and Frannie is the best.”

  “Stop, Peter. I have some questions for you. Did you communicate any of the things you jus
t told me to Kathryn - the things that dissatisfied you?”

  “Yeah, sure. I told her in ‘delicate’ but, you know, plain English how I felt about the bath thing. I told her maybe once a year or so. I never nagged her; it just felt undignified. It wasn’t just that, either. It was the fact that she always had more important things to do than neck or kiss or do all that foreplay stuff that might have led to sex. You know, kissing in the kitchen or whatever … Sex was always a premeditated affair for her, after all the body-washing and tooth-scrubbing stuff. I told her it didn’t work for me, the way she made sex the last possible act before I collapsed after a hard day. Shit, I get up early and I’m no spring chicken. I’m bagged by 8 or 9 o’clock at night.”

  “Quit bothering me! Do you want me to help you dice those carrots, or do you want to grab my boobs? There’s the knife. Cut them yourself, buster.”

  “What did she say when you asked her to change her behavior?”

  “She mostly agreed, or seemed to, and then never actually changed anything. I never followed up or nagged; I just figured ‘that was that.’ If I wanted a sexy woman, I had to put up with a lot of shit. And these last couple of years, she was the one bringing in the big bucks. She became the breadwinner because my business had gone down the toilet … and well, I was never really mad at her, just disappointed. And she could be sweet in her own way. Once in a while she appreciated my humor. No, on second thought, I don’t think she appreciated my humor at all. She was a lot like my mother that way. My mother didn’t think I was terribly funny, either.”

  “Your pervert friends may think you’re a riot, but I just think you’re insulting. Have you ever listened to yourself? Your language is inappropriate.” Peter couldn’t tell whether this voice in his head was Kathryn’s or his mother’s.

  “So you tried to work it out with Kathryn, and she wouldn’t listen, and you had an affair. Is that a fair statement?”

  “Well, it’s not like we went to a therapist or anything, and I didn’t nag her about the sex stuff, but she pestered me all the time about lots of stuff.”

  Peter was trying hard to get Lisa on his side, which he knew was a hard thing to do given that he was a self-proclaimed adulterer. He didn’t believe that therapists were really non-judgmental.