FLASHBACK
When the man came back from his trip, he was eager to meet his wife.
He had been gone for about two weeks, which was way longer than he had planned, and it might have gone longer than that, if it wasn't for the constant ache in his chest.
The ache that came from missing his wife too much. He missed her skin and how soft it was, how easily it broke beneath his touch.
For once, he wasn't angry. He wasn't mad at her.
Hell, he wasn't even planning to punish her for just existing and breathing in the same air with him. All he wanted was to give her a gift — a black thong that would leave her all exposed and sexy.
All he wanted was for her to please him sexually and make him feel like a man.
He had missed her so fucking terribly during the trip that he made a mental promise to start bringing her on his trips.
She would stay in his hotel room and lay in bed all day, all naked and sexy, waiting for him to come back from a long, boring and monotonous day of meeting.
But the moment he stepped into the house, the man knew something was wrong.
A weird and unfamiliar wrongness had permeated the entire house, and the stench of emptiness hit him straight in the chest like a bullet.
The man felt as though he was standing in a stranger's home.
He scanned the living room with his eyes, searching for whatever it was that was wrong.
And without moving from the doorway, the man instinctively knew what was amiss.
The strangeness that was in his house suddenly made sense, and he knew.
His blood started to hum in anger.
His wife was not at home.
His wife, his beautiful, stupid wife who was created to receive his punishments was not in the house.
A mixture of fear and panic flashed across his face, but his growing anger squashed those irrelevant feelings away from his chest.
She was gone.
Gone where, exactly?
It made no sense that she wasn't there. It was as though the house had been built with her as a permanent fixture in it, and now everything looked weird without her.
The man started to wonder where she might have gone. He made sure that she had no job. Whatever did she need a job for, when he was rich enough to provide all of her needs?
She had no friends too. She didn't need friends, they would do nothing but influence her badly.
She had no family to go and visit. He was her only family.
There was no need for her to go to the grocery store, the man always made sure that the house was stocked to the fullest with any food she could ever want.
So where the hell could his wife have gone?
The man, like a robot, walked into the house. He closed the door behind him with a hollow click, and very slowly, made his way to the bedroom they've shared together since they got married.
The room was empty. There was no sign that she took anything from the room. Her closet was filled with clothes. Her handbag was on its hanger. Her cellphone was on the night stand.
Nothing was amiss.
Everything was where it was supposed to be. Everything except her.
Methodically, the man started looking in all of the extra rooms in the house.
The more empty rooms he saw, the more his anger rose. It crested higher and higher, until he could take it no more.
Pushing open the door to the last room, the man already knew what he was going to see.
And his anger broke through the wall he was keeping around it.
His hands balled into fists, and his breaths started to come in gasps.
She really was gone. Without a note. Without an explanation. Without any fucking reason.
His wife had left him.
His entirely face turned red, and for a long moment, all he did was stare into space.
And then, all of a sudden, he went off. Like a fucking detonator.
The man smashed his phone against the wall, and without stopping to think or even breathe, started to destroy the house.
He stormed back into their room and tore every single one of her clothes. He broke all the lamps and breakables in the house, ruined the furniture.
His anger was at a dangerous level, and he needed to take it out on his wife now more than ever.
But she was gone. She was gone and she had taken her soft and breakable skin with her.
How could she have done that to him? It was cruel and selfish of her, and he was never going to forgive her.
Just as he was about to start smashing the ceramics, her precious cooking equipment, her phone vibrated in his pocket.
He brought it out. It was a text message.
As the man read the text, his anger suddenly abated. A wide, reckless grin spread across his face, and he knew what he had to do.
The woman might have left him, but in her haste, she had forgotten something.
And in doing so, she had left something very important behind.
She must have been in a hurry, too preoccupied with leaving him that she had forgotten the most important thing to her.
And now, it was with him now. Sooner rather than later, his wife would have to come back.
Once she was back for what she forgot, he was going to make her pay for even daring to run from him in the first place.
And with that resolution in mind, the man scrolled through her contacts and found the number he was looking for.
He stared at the number for a long while, waiting to see if all of these was an illusion, if she was going to walk inside and tell him that he was hallucinating.
But the moment passed, and she didn't appear.
So the man made his decision.
He knew she was going to hate him for what he was about to do, but if she had thought of that, she wouldn't have left him in the first place.
So he did it.
He dialed the number, and he sealed her fate.
Sooner rather than later, his wife was going to realise her mistake.
But it would be too late for her then.