This Is My Home (379 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 2 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by John Galt (View user info) at 2004-04-09 13:54:41 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
Tom was excited. It was the first date he'd been on in over a year. They never seemed to go well either, and he was too busy with work to worry about women. This one, he thought, might turn out different. Julie was a fairly attractive woman. She had brilliant blue eyes, the kind that could light up a room when she laughed. They were clearly her best feature. Her auburn hair flowed over her shoulders and spilled down to the small of her back. She was short, around 5'2", and had an average build. Not too skinny, not too fat. All-in-all, she wasn't a bad catch, at least not from a purely aesthetic point of view anyway.
Julie was excited as well. It had been 9 years since Julie's husband had left her. He told her he was going on a business trip, and he never came back. Her friends and co-workers constantly pushed her to get out and date again. She just couldn't let go of the hope that someday he would return. Finally, she gave in and her best friend set her up with a guy she knew from work. When she got to the restaurant, she sat at the bar to wait for her blind date. Before he arrived, she had met Tom. His resemblance to her husband was remarkable, and all her memories came rushing back in a flood.
After a few drinks he had to leave, and they agreed to meet a few nights later for dinner.
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The date started out well, but it quickly went down hill. Tom wasn't convinced that "love at first sight" wasn't possible, but Julie got carried away with it. She'd already told him that she loved him by the end of dinner, and she was talking about their wedding as he tried to distance himself from her and get home.
"Please, please come home." she begged of him.
"Come home? Come home to where?" he replied. "Are you completely nuts?"
"How can you say that? How can you just walk away from the life we've made together? How can you just throw it all away?"
"Look lady, I've only known you for 4 hours."
"4 wonderful hours."
"Fine, 4 'wonderful' hours. That's hardly a life."
"I-I just don't understand. How can you dismiss what we have so easily?"
He'd finally gotten enough space between them to jump into a cab, and slammed the door in her face. As the cab sped off, she was swearing to track him down and cursing him for leaving her again.
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It was a big city, and she only knew his first name. But she just might be crazy enough to track down every Tom in the phone book until she got to him, he thought. It took two weeks after that fiasco before he could finally sleep with the light off again.
Without any warning, after not seeing or hearing from her for months, the first date from Hell showed up at his office. He didn't know how she got his number or how she found his office. When she called, the secretary told her he was in a meeting. She came in to see him in person at once. There he sat, meeting with one of his biggest clients, when in bursts Julie. His secretary was trying desperately to hold her back.
"Where the hell have you been, you worthless son of a bitch?" she demanded.
She kicked over his favorite Kentia Palm, snapping it in two.
"Excuse me, Mr. Stevens." Tom said nervously. "I apologize for this outburst. Please, wait here while I sort this out. Julie, please come with me to the conference room."
She followed, glaring at him and looking as if she hadn't slept in days.
"You didn't answer my question! Where have you been?" she screamed at him.
"Julie, please calm down. I--"
"Don't you tell me to calm down! I've been looking all over for you. You leave without a word, then you don't call, you don't write. Is it...I mean...are you...is it another woman?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Don't you play dumb with me, mister. I know you've been seeing someone else. Who is she? Is it that tramp that answers your phones?"
"Mrs. Brighton? She's 80 years old! That's disgusting. And what difference does it make to you who I've been seeing? We've been on 1 lousy date. This has got to stop. You need to leave this office immediately before I call the police. And if I ever see you again, I'll have a restraining order out on you before you can blink. Is that clear?"
She started to sob, and stormed out of his office. He nearly lost that account because of her. "Stupid, crazy bitch," he thought to himself.
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That was the last time she came to his office in person. But he got a letter from her every day for the next week. By the end of the week, the tone had gone from pleading and hysterical to belligerent and threatening. The next Monday there were flowers waiting on him when arrived for work, with the following card attached:
<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3
Sorry I got upset with you. Please come home.
Love always,
Julie
<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3
At first, he decided to ignore it. But that obviously hadn't been a good plan so far, and the more the thought about it the madder he got. He decided that he had to take action. After work, he would drive to her house and put an end to all this craziness once and for all.
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He called the florist to get the billing address, and headed out immediately after work. He grabbed the tire iron from his trunk and put it in the seat beside him, just in case she attacked him. He also figured if he scared her enough, she might just leave him alone.
He pulled up to the gated drive in front of the address scribbled on the post-it note on his dash. He decided to pull around the corner and walk up, so that no one would see him go in. He started toward the gate, tire iron in hand. As he was prying at the gate, he glanced over and noticed an electronic lock. With his hands suddenly trembling, he punched the digits for his and Julie's weddomg anniversary into the lock's keypad. The gate slowly began to slide open. As he stood and stared in shock, the tire iron fell from his hand.
"Huh," he thought out loud, "I guess this is my home after all." It was the first time since he'd turned up in an alley 9 years ago that he'd remembered anything from his past. He'd been beaten and left for dead, with no money and no ID, on his way to catch a plane home.
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Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2004-05-19 17:39:25 EDT (#)
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Submitted by Fenrir (user info) at 2004-05-18 07:56:38 EDT (#)
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