JUDAS KISS- Seventeen- At Last ✍

Caterina was a sweet little girl. She was a happy child; never fussed like the other two when they had been her age. She was happy to see one or both parents! She had learned at such young age not to take

sides, and to love both mommy and daddy the same. At the time of the divorce, one thing both Steve and Helen agreed to, which was not written anywhere in their divorce decree, was to do everything they could possibly do for the well- being and comfort of the children! This oral harmony was only for the good of the children. They promised each other never in front of the children they say something unpleasant about the other; and would stay friends for the sake of the them; even though Elizabeth and Chris were not children anymore, yet they were still at home and leaving with their father and Nancy. Helen Still had the key to the house. She could go there anytime she wanted; but she never used or abused this privilege. They were a lot better friends than husbands and wife, so strange but true! A few times a week Helen even had dinner at the house.

It took Helen a while to find the secretarial job for the famous Dallas designer. Helen was almost three yeas old when it happened. Steve always wondered how could she live without any income, but anytime he offered help, she refused. When Helen began working, and Nancy volunteered to baby sat Cterina, Steve was again went through one of his temper tantrums.

"Am I not giving you enough child support? Why do you have to work, and drag my child every morning here and there?"

This happened in front of Nancy. Strangely, Nancy took Helen's side.

"You didn't let her work all these years. Leave her alone now. I said I take care of Caterina!"

"What if one day you had to go somewhere, or you have something to do? Then what?" Steve flared up to his new wife.

"So what! People always use daycare for their children! There is nothing wrong to take Caterina to day care once in a while! It is good for her." Nancy deliberately put some emphasis on the word GOOD.

Helen these days had more trips to the bank and to her little, black bag. Besides Steve paid Child support only for Caterina, since Elizabeth and Chris stayed at the house, and they both had passed age eighteen. Steve's spiteful tantrum did not work this time. The two women, one former wife, and the other new wife, told him that he was an old fashion man, who thought he was still in military and these two women were working beneath him!

Helen had refused any financial help, or even half of their community property that lawfully was hers. She had refused to receive any alimony. Time had come for her to work; she wanted to work. For the last twenty four years Steve had prevented her from working, had run her life, had watched her as if she was a child! Now, she was at last free. She tried first different colleges for a teaching position; but things had changed since last she had taught. People she knew, they were all gone, retired, or else! She was older. She had not worked for so many years. According to one of the places that she applied, she was not a desirable person to be employed. They told her that she had no experience. She faced a brick wall everywhere she applied. Lastly she decided to try different kind of jobs. The first ad in the newspaper caught her attention. It was a secretarial position in this fashion industry corporation.

They responded to her call at once; invite her for an interview, and asked her to bring her resume and references. She did not have much of a resume; but she did have the education, and she still had her good look!!

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- Sixteen- The Agreement *

The party was a success. People talked about it for a long time. Helen played her role as a hostess very well. She acted in a way that no one could suspect there was anything between Jacob and her! She began feeling comfortable in her red dress that she hated it when she had put it on.

All the women in the party complimented her dress and her beauty. Evidentially, Steve's plan to show her off as a loose woman did not work.

Melisa, Jacob's wife, was wearing a black, velvet dress. It was a very simple, short, and strapless dress. She was also wearing a black velvet stole with red satin lining around her shoulder. She wore her hair in a French twist. Amongst all the women, Melisa and Helen were the prettiest; and Jacob had both of them.

Helen was sure that Melisa did not know Helen was her husband's mistress; even though she knew of his adultery.

The dinner was served; but people decided to take their plates and sit in different places in group of two- three, or more. Helen noticed that Steve, Jacob, and John, the friend who had had the accident, were together the entire evening, talking, drinking, laughing!. She, herself, drank a lot, although it was her tactics not to drink too much when she gave a party!

Since Steve had told her earlier offensive things again, she decided to act the role of what Steve had called her! She was sexy and flirtatious. She swished her red chiffon dress when walking, began to feel comfortable in her low cut dress that showed her wide, beautiful back and her cleavage in the front! She noticed that Jacob's eyes followed her everywhere; but she had made up her mind that night to break up with him. She thought to herself: "Even if his father- in- law forced him to come to this party, he could had done something to refuse it!" If he truly loved her the way he always said he did, he could had found a way not to come to her home and befriended her husband!

In her drunkenness, she believed that at one point, Jacob loved her for who she was; but as he had become a powerful lawyer in the law firm, and had noticed that most of these successful men had wives and a mistress at the side, he had also changed; and Helen had become just an affair, just a mistress, not a true love that she had been before! She believed that the childhood crush, the love of that New Year's Eve party did not exist anymore. It was now all about having an affair. But she also knew that she had always loved Jacob! Now this love had changed to a love with disgust!!

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- Fifteen- Never Again ☃

Even though it was Chris's second birthday, Helen, who loved her son in one way and her daughter in another, could not have any hope of enjoying this party unless she knew who these mysterious friends of her husband were. Steve had refused to say their names. He shrugged his shoulders when she asked him: "You'll find out soon!"

The revulsion of feeling in her was too strong to be called joy, the joy of her little boy's birthday! To her, within her, everything was tumult like when one was sick to her stomach and could not reach to the bathroom soon enough! It was all agony along with the strain of getting the last minute things ready for practically two parties they had that day. It all made a painful impediment. She could only perceive this day's joy when she recovered her power to feel it!

From the time that Steve told her about these new friends to two o'clock when people began showing up with their children for the afternoon party, she felt the length of time which was only a few hours was like a long highway with no exits that one drove on it for miles and miles and hours after hours, stretched endlessly ahead, like her life, like her nightmares which now she had them in this day time while being awake and celebrating her son's birthday!

They arranged games, prizes, and many activities for the children. Chris was so excited. Elizabeth was moaning in her room and did not want to get ready. Helen did not know whom she needed to calm, Chris's incitement, Elizabeth's jealousy, or her own horror. Finally it was Steve, who calmed Elizabeth.

"Come on my beautiful Liz. You had much better party than Chris when you turned two years old. Don't you remember it? We'll have a big party for you in a few months when you turn five. I promise!"

She was always daddy's girl. She hanged on to his neck and let her daddy to kiss her. "Okay daddy!" For a while when Chris was a baby, she had become mommy's girl. At this moment, she even refused her mommy to dress her.

"No, I want my daddy!" She kept screaming.

Helen left the room. She told Chris that even though it was his birthday and his party, he needed to share his toys with his friends and to be happy when other children would win a game.

"Okay, mommy." He said while a knot was forming in his little throat!!

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- Fourteen- Unending Tears ☼

Sun was in Helen's eyes! Her eyes were moist; therefore, her vision saw the rainbows looping and dancing in the sky. Her eyes had become sky after rain, which saw the radiance pouring down like a waterfall from the sky! She lowered the window. Her hands were still on the steering wheel. Someone behind her honked the horn. She knew that she had to move her car. The carpool line, seemed to her, was moving faster than usual. She drove her car a little to front and then back and was able to get out of the carpool line. She drove her car to the opposite direction and then onto a narrow residential street and parked. Jacob walked behind her car. She could see him in the rare view mirror. She did not get out of the car while thinking real hard in a few seconds that she had before Jacob would reach her car. Should she run or stay? He opened the passenger side door and came inside her car and sat next to her.

"Oh, you ran away from me twice; I won't let you run again!" He took the handkerchief out of his jacket's chest pocket and wiped her tears.

Helen leaned straight to the back of the her seat without moving her head to look at him. Her tears flowing like a heavy rainfall. She remembered the other time, at the New Year's Eve Party of 1067, he had also wiped her eyes with his handkerchief. How strange that every time they saw each other, he had one ready for her unending tears!

It was almost six years since that short affair they had had. The son she had with him, was now over five years old. She could never tell him that he fathered a child with her!

She would be thirty two years old in a month, yet her look, youth, and beauty had not changed at all.

In fact the maturity had made her more appealing, much sexier, and prettier! She was wearing her normal style of clothing- a big shirt, a pair of blue jeans and sneakers. She had her hair, which was long and blond again, in a pony tail. Jacob seemed that had come from work. He was wearing a business suit, navy color, with white shirt and red tie, and red handkerchief, the one that he used to wipe her tears. Helen finally looked at him!

"What are you doing here?"

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- THIRTEEN- Lost in Thoughts ☯

In love, there would be no such thing as more or less! Helen loved her children; she could not say that she loved her daughter with one kind of love and her son with another! But she also loved her first born, the son of Jacob, whom she had never even had a glimpse of! He would be four years old soon, she thought. "Is God punishing me for the murder of Mark with the Roger's hand and because of me? Is he punishing me that I didn't tell Jacob that we had a son together, and perhaps gave him the opportunity to raise his son?"

Christopher was a calm child, nothing like Elizabeth, much easier than her. Helen had much more peaceful time to breastfeed him. He would suck on her breast with his hungry eyes! He became mommy's boy from the moment he was born. "Oh, if I had not caught by Steve and went ahead with abortion, how terrible I would feel now?!"

Although Steve was happy that they had finally had peace at home, he did not like the fact that the children, specially Elizabeth had become much closer to Helen than him. He kind of accepted Chris's attachment to his mother, since he was a baby and Helen was nursing him. However he had recalled the days that Elizabeth ran to meet him at the door when he came home from his three or four days work. Now she was always in the nursery with mommy and little Chris. That was how she called her little brother!

Helen knew as long as she nursed Chris, she would not get pregnant, even though her doctor told her that there was always possibility of getting pregnant while nursing. However, she did not want to be tricked by Steve again! There was this new thing which was called IUD. When Chris was six months old, she went to a doctor, a different gynecologist, someone that had never seen her, so Steve would not find out about it. She had the doctor to implant an IUD in her uterus. She still had a lot of money left in her little black bag. She did not have to use the money that Steve gave her for the household expenses. She did not have to use her real name or her insurance. This secret she would keep for herself for ever!

Her connection with her children was so strong and beyond measure that she had a hard time to share them with Steve when he was home! She told herself once:

"Some women love their men for their depravities, I hate mine for his goodness!!"

Steve began showing his true jealousy and disgust towards Helen. He blamed her for lack of interest of his children towards him. Once he picked up Chris. Suddenly he began crying so loud and out of control that Helen ran from the kitchen.

"What did you do to him?" She asked him.

But before he was able to answer, Christopher raised his little arms towards his mother and said: "Mama, mama!" These were the first words he had ever spoken! It was sudden and unexpected. He was about eight months old now and compare to Elizabeth, Helen thought that he was slow in saying words like Mama, or Dada!!

To Be Continued

Judas Kiss- Twelve- Another One? ☃

If nothing in the past year brought Elizabeth and Helen together, this house did. The child began acting calmer, kinder, and more reasonable towards her mother! Now she came to her bed every morning. She jumped on her bed and wrapped her fat arms around Helen's neck and rained her mom with kisses. Now she preferred her mother even to her dad when he was home. Helen thought it was a miracle; Steve was happy, yet jealous; and Elizabeth was just a little child that began loving her mother!

Helen joined the neighborhood group. They were mostly young mothers like her, who stayed home with their children. Their husbands were mostly very successful business men, lawyers, or ... They would get together two or three times in the afternoons, before dinner time. Children played with each other! Mothers became good friends, and sometimes even close friends. They helped out each other with baby sitting if one of the mothers had something to do, or had a doctor appointment or even wanted to go shopping without her child or children! Elizabeth loved their two to three times a week afternoon gathering of children and mothers. Their house was used more than others since they had a pool. That pool had become the center of fun in summer time for mothers and children!

Helen began feeling good about her life. She was happy somewhat. Now she loved her daughter. Every time she held her, Elizabeth's eyes flashed of content and happiness. She touched her mother's shoulders with both hands and looked straight into her mother's eyes, that now luminance and life had come back to them. Her look at her mom was intense, loving, piercing; it did not look like a look of a two years old child!

It seemed though as light had returned to Helen's life! All varieties, all the charms, all the beauties of life were now made of radiance and rarely of shade. Steve's weekends were now calmer, less demanding, more of kindness, and less of hatred! Helen's relaxed mood brought back her true beauty both physically and spiritually! She was now more welcoming to their love making.

It was in one of these weekends that Steve told her after a satisfying intimacy:

"Honey, I think I've punished you enough for your sin!" Then he stopped and looked at her to see what kind of impression he had left. Her eyes were closed! She opened her eyes suddenly in a way as though a big lightening had just hit her. Her face contorted. She turned her face; thought to herself: "Not again!" As she was opening her mouth to say what was in her mind, Steve put his forefinger on her mouth, meant to be silent and continued himself:

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- Eleven- Home, Sweet Home ☗

Steve had turned to a true male chauvinist. To him, women were inferior to men; they were different in a manner of intellect; they were not as smart as men; and their mission in life was to inspire men to achieve their goals, rather than to attain themselves.

Every step Helen took towards relieving herself from obligation this bondage and captivity had brought her, added to her weakness and debasement as an individual! She began to see clearly and to apprehend the deeper propensity of life! She was no longer content to feed upon opinion of people who knew her, while her soul yearned the tendency to get her former zest for life back!

When Elizabeth was born on May, twenty seven, 1969, exactly a year to the date from the birth of her son with Jacob, Steve told her in a manner as if he was asking for food or something simple:

"You're going to quit your job! I don't want my baby to go to daycare or have a nanny!"

Helen thought for a moment. Her teaching was all she had. It was her soul, she loved it! It was not because that was the only chance she had to get out of the house, or she needed the money; it was because all her life she wanted to be a teacher. She had turned earth and sky to get her degrees in order to become a teacher. Nonetheless, she said simply to Steve's demand:

"Yes, you're right!"

It was with wrench and pang that she left her career; that she wrote a letter of resignation. She carried away with her the voices of her students, the touch of her desk, the smell of the board and chalk. All along, driving home from this chain of serfdom, obeying Steve, she carried with her the memory of the only three semesters she had taught! The faces of her students, the campus, the old trees in it, the different buildings, the rooms, everything she could bring up to her mind, lingered with her like the memory of a beautiful song that one kept murmuring it without being aware of it. By the time she got home, the song was no longer echoed in her soul or mind! She was again alone!!

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- Ten- Beastly Old Days ☗

"Oh, my God, how far am I from my childhood, and how far am I still from the end of my life! How am I going to go on?"

These were the words that often came to Helen's mouth, but no one heard them, no one showed any sympathy; no one knew but Steve, the one, who was causing all these agonies! He was taking his revenge for the three years of war overseas and the war at home now that Helen was pregnant! He was happy and in control. He had finally brought this wild, beautiful woman to her knees. His revenge was calculated in the calmest manner possible. No one could see, no one could tell.

The summer of 1968 was a gruesome experience for Helen, the worst she had known yet. She was home till fall semester would begin. That was the plan; so nobody would know that she was pregnant. Steve was also home, looking for a job, and resting his body and soul from the atrocities of war, from the inner and outer wounds he had received in the last three years in Vietnam and at home, from the politics of the war, from the unwelcoming Americans and the way they treated the servicemen as if the war was their decision; never considering they they were mostly were drafted and were sent by the President of the United States to the war!

They were on each other's face and nerves the entire summer. He treated her with gentleness; however, she knew that behind that soft spoken, gentle tone of voice, it was an evil of a man who had taken his revenge on her by deciding on his own to give her baby for adoption. "No divorce, no keeping the baby!" That was his condition; otherwise he had threatened to let everybody know that what she had done while he was fighting for their country overseas!

No matter how he insisted and brought up the subject in so many different ways and times, she refused to tell him who the father of her baby was. She had many secrets, more horrific than this one, but she would keep this secret for herself for ever and into the grave!

"Oh, how far am I still must go?" In a life time, one travelled through an indefinite period of time. The horrid chasm of memory from her childhood into adulthood haunted her always. She kept having nightmares about things her father had done to her; about her mother, who had not saved her and her sister. She had nightmares of days with Roger, things he had made her to do! She had nightmares of opening Roger's safe and stealing the money! She had nightmares of when she had read in the newspaper of the murder of good- old Mark, the only true friend she had had in those horrible days! His death still terrorized her. He had lost his life to save hers! He was killed because he had helped her!

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- NINE- HEREAFTER ☏

Helen knew in what perplexity hereafter she was suffering; and what apathetic torment was teaching her the secret of a little joy! This new elation was not losing Jacob, but was gaining part of him! She was not thinking about the future, about when Steve would return and would find out that she was pregnant! Those were things for future. For now she had part of a man she loved and loved him only, with carrying part of him with her at all times; listening to its heart beats as if she was listening to jacob's heart heaving when he had taken her in his arms and made love to her!

She heard from her friends at college that this man coming everyday and asking for her; however she had made up her mind to let him go to his wife and his son. She craved him like a mad woman; but she decided from the two of them he needed to be saved and to have a normal life. She believed in the cliche: "Time heals at wounds!" She was certain that Jacob eventually would froget about her!

"Hereafter, he'll love his wife again and forget about me!" She kept saying this to herself. She sent a message to him through a friend:

"Stop coming after me! You're ruinning my career and yours! I don't love you. My Steve is retiriung and coming home soon. I've realized he's the man I love. Go to your family and let me go to mine! Please for God's sake leave me alone. I don't love you. It was all a big lie. It was all a big mistake; it was all about sex!"

She cried for two days when she heard that Jacob had received her message. She knew that he did not believe her; but she also knew that she had injured his pride. The only thing that now she had to hide form everybody was her pregnancy until some God sent wisdom hit her on the head. She did not want to quit her job, yet she did not want anyone know that she was pregnant There was no way by passing days that she would go for abortion as the doctor had recommended, beside the fact that it was illegal then. She would keep this baby even if Steve would kill her. Now this baby was her true love; her new Jacob!

By Christmas, her clothes were tight on her and she had to wear big sweaters to hide the little pouch of her stomach. Luckily she had no sickness concerning this pregnancy. No one knew! No one was suspicious. She had seen Jacob a few times when she was leaving the college. He normally stood by the main building just in case she would change her mind. On these occasions, she would always walk back inside the building and stayed inside until he got tired of waiting and left!

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- Eight- Disarray ✔

Steve was among U.S. Combat Units, who were deployed in 1965. At the time, operation stretched over borders, while Laos and Cambodia were severely bombed. The Cambodian Campaign was a civil war and a conflict that set against the forces of the communist party of Khmer Rouge and North Vietnam and the Vietcong, who were against the government forces of the Cambodia, with the support of the America and South Vietnam. By May of 1965 about 10,000 Air force personnel were serving in Vietnam.

The three years that Steve was in Vietnam, he participated in many campaigns and operations. He was an expert pilot. His crew was the best. The other twelve airplanes and their crews that were under his control, were the best!

When he left Vietnam in 1968 to come home, he was a wounded worrier both physically and emotionally. He had seen things that no normal human being should encounter! The first sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam that he had participated, was the Operation Rolling Thunder which had begun on March of 1965, shortly after he had left home to go to Vietnam. It had lasted all the way through 1968. By then, when 1968 came to close, 58,000 airmen served in Vietnam.

His bravery and courage in this Operation gained him the rank of major. He received many medals for his valor and heroism. President Nixon pinned the purple heart medal on him. Helen refused to go to the White House for that ceremony.

Steve decided to retire from Air force. He was only twenty seven years old. He had so many job offers from different airlines. Luckily his wounds from war were not that serious to prevent him to get a job as a pilot. He Chose Pan Am as his employer under the condition to fly their route to Western Europe. He would began working only after a few months of rest and healing. He had gotten his wounds when he had crash landed his airplane in the jungles of Vietnam. That was why he got a purple heart. No one in his plane was seriously wounded. In fact his bravery in these act had saved many lives! He had been able to fly his broken plane out of enemy's approximate nearness to safety.

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- Seven- Going Rogue

Helen was finally ready. She never wore too much make up to go to work; just a little powder to smooth out her aging, yet still beautiful skin

and some lip

gloss. She drove to work but not before saying goodbye to Miss Daisy and Tony one more time. "You two be good kids until mommy comes home!" She hanged her jacket in the back of her car. It was an excruciating summer. Texas had broken all kind of record this year from heat to draught. Early in the morning her car temperature read 106. All these years she had been in Texas, she did not remember anything like this, even in 1980 and 1987 which she recalled clearly how the summers were dry, hot, and unbearable! This year's heat combined with draught had caused a huge disaster for Texas farmers. The insects in search of water and cooler temperature were coming inside people's houses. She read a story about it in the Internet and also saw the same story on the local news. Her own apartment was infested with dead or almost half alive insects. She had called someone to come and spray her place. The man told her the same story that she had read on Internet and saw it on television.

She was happy that she did not have a yard to worry about the trees and grass and flowers. She recalled her house which she had shared with Steve, her former husband. They had a huge yard with many trees and flowers and a pool. Because of the draught the foundation of the houses all had moved. She had a call from Steve the other day telling her that the pool had cracked and lost all the water in it.

"I'm not going to fix it. I'm just going to fill it up. Texas is like a desert." He had said.

With all the work she had at home with children and a man like Steve, she loved to get her hand dirty in the dirt. She was always busy either planting flower or vegetable garden. She even cleaned the pool, since Steve mostly was not home, and when he was, he was either out getting drunk or with his girlfriend. When he was home, he acted as if he was a guest.

Her daughter, Elizabeth was now married for the last twelve years. She already had four children. Even though, she was mommy's girl when she was little, for some strange reason, she reminded Helen of her sister Charlotte. Later, when she was older, and in her teenage years, she began loving her father, Steve, more than her mother. When she was mature enough to know about her parents' constant fight, she always defended her father. Now that Helen and Steve were divorced, Elizabeth and her husband and children went to Steve's home every Sunday. Steve was now retired, and Elizabeth used her father as a baby sitter a lot. Once in a while she called Helen; and if mom complained, she just said:

"You've decided to work in your old age; you're never home! What do you want from me? You don't even miss my children, your grandchildren, but dad does."

She was right; nonetheless, Helen always wondered if Steve had been like her father, the way he had molested her and Charlotte. This was something that was always in Helen's mind, but she did not dare to ask Elizabeth about it. Nevertheless, she always answered her own ambiguity: "No, no way, not Steve! He couldn't be like my father!" She also knew that she was not like her mother. If something like this was happening under her care, she would had known and had stopped it.

Her son, Chris was cause of much pain for her. He and Steve never got along and always fought. Chris was still mommy's boy, even though he was thirty nine years old. Chris had dropped out of high school when he was in tenth grade to follow this band all over the country. He played Guitar. When things did not work out for him, he came back to Helen. With his mom insistence he got his GED; but never went to college. He had had so many different jobs, and none was his dream jobs. He always came back to Helen, lived with her for awhile, and left again and did not show up for a while. Whereas him, at least Elizabeth, as unfeeling as she was towards her mother, had gotten her master degree in music and was a teacher. So if Helen could not accomplish her dream of teaching, Elizabeth did it for her. No matter how she hated her mother, she was as motivated as her.

Every time Chris showed up at her door, Helen knew that he wanted money. He always would say:

"Just this one time, mom! I'm just between jobs now!"

It was painful to have a son like Chris, But Helen liked him more than Elizabeth. Even though he was not an achiever like Elizabeth, Helen knew that he had big dreams and hopes that he could not reach them. Now he was leaving with a friend and they were working on opening a mechanic shop together. The worse thing had happened lately! Helen had just recently heard that Elizabeth had quit her job to stay home and take care of her four children. Why then go to college all the way in New York, to get a Master degree if she wanted to stay home. Oh, how much she reminded her of her sister, Charlotte.

And oh, let's not talk about Rosalyn! How did she show up at the moment that Helen had taught she was finally getting her freedom back!

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- Six- Lost Friend ✾ ✾

When Steve left on that cold January day of 1965, just twenty days after his marriage to Helen, she took a deep breath! She thanked God that she would be free again even if it was

temporary!

"I think about my life with Steve later!"

All she looked into was the same, yet they were changed. There was an extreme chasm between today and yesterday! Past for her was when she had not met Steve. Then she was responsible for herself and her college. Those days everything was simple, spontaneous, filled with light. Today she was a married woman; but she was alone in a dark and tainted place! It was this isolation that unnerved her!

She cried when she came home from college and noticed that Steve was gone, even though she knew that he had left! She was certain that his family most likely had questioned him about the absent of his new wife at the airport, specially when one's husband was going to war! perhaps the questioning went like this:

"Where is Helen? Is she okay?"

And she knew that Steve's pride and conceit had stopped him to confess to his family about his unfeeling wife!

"What if he gets killed in Vietnam?" Helen asked herself. "Would I be sad? Would I feel guilty?"

Nonetheless, the agony of her own behavior towards Steve on the day that he was deployed and left for war, did not last even one day! The next day she was her old self again, care free, ambitious, and ready to get her master degree. However one thing puzzled her more than anything else! "Why did I marry him?"

She truly did not know the answer. Was it because she had found an ordinary, innocent man, so she could take her revenge of other men, who had changed her life for ever, on him? Was it because she loved him? No, she really did not love him! He was too simple for her, too good for her. She was used to mean and dirty men, the men who only wanted to take advantage of women even if that particular woman was an eight years old child of that man, or the girlfriend of a forty years old, black pimp?

She was still afraid to socialize with friends just in case to see someone from her past life, from the one and half years being with Roger and going with men that he had forced her! Her in- laws called her a few times after Steve had left. They invited her to different events. Each time she found an excuse and turned down the invitation. Christmas came. Again she refused to go to Steve's parents' home. After that, they left her alone; never called her again!

To Be Continued

JUDAS KISS- FIVE- BITTER SWEET ☃ ☘

The sound of enchanting sea was seductive; it never ceased; sometimes whispered; other times roared; yet again it moaned ; and then allured the two lovers to stray in its abyss!

Helen and Steve were spending their honeymoon in South Padre Island in Texas, a far away beach, with clean water, and God given beauty! They were married only five days ago on Christmas eve. That was the day Helen had chosen, since her Catholic training was so deeply rooted in her that even with what she had gone through in her young life, she never questioned her Lord. She wanted to get married on Lord's Birthday. Steve went along with it; even though he really preferred the New Years eve wedding!

For the last five days, all they had done, was walking on the sandy beaches of the island with bear foot. The water of the gulf was warm considering it was winter. They had bitter sweet intimacy!

Still Steve did not know anything about her past. The only thing she had told him about her life was that she did not have a good relationship with her parents; that she was originally from Chicago; that she had come to Texas to go to College and to get away from her parents. He did not know her source of income; but he knew that she had scholarship. He always wondered how she paid for her apartment, had a good car, and how she paid for her other expenses! She told him that she had worked since she was sixteen, that she had quit school then; that she had saved all her money. She always kept a small amount in the bank. He did not know anything about the small, black bag and the "Murder in the Highland Park" which had captured the news media for a while only five years ago. Now the bag was in a safety deposit box in her bank, so she did not have to carry it everywhere she went!

Why was their intimacy bitter sweet? She was afraid of future! She was afraid of Steve finding out about her past. She did not like Steve's point of view about women: "Women are created to give comfort to men!" When he would go to this story that she knew about it from the Genesis, Old Testament, "That God created all kinds of things for Adam and he was still lonely! First He created animals, plants, ... but Adam still felt forlorn. Then he took a rib from Adam's chest when he was asleep and created Eve, who looked like him, yet different , and then Adam was happy and found comfort!"

Helen hated each time he said this story. She was raised Catholic. Going to church on Sundays had been a custom in her home with her morbid parents and spoiled sister! She was baptized when she was seven months old, that was what her mother had told her, and had received her first communion at age seven. She knew all of these! She had gone to Sunday school for many years. But when Steve told her that women were men's comfort, she considered it a point of view of a male chauvinist!

Nevertheless, knowing all these, she still had married him. She did not know why, but it seemed like a right thing at the time. He was going to Vietnam, and she felt sorry for him. If he would be killed there, She would be a widow at a young age, have a military funereal for Steve. They all seemed so romantic!

The period of their dating and engagement was only four months. Nonetheless she got to know what kind of man he was on their first date. So intimacy was bitter sweet with a man, who was not Roger, or his customers, or her father! It was bitter sweet because she knew that marrying Steve was a mistake, and the only reason she went through it was because she felt sorry for him! She always enjoyed sex, yet even though Steve was a good lover, she hated their intimacy while enjoyed it at the same time. She, herself was confused by her double feeling!

To BE CONTINUED

JUDAS KISS- Four- Men's Comfort ✚ ✖ ✔

"But how can I know God's Will...?" Helen responded to Steve's inquiry about her belief. "Who do I ask

what shouldn't be asked?" She continued.

Steve's expression was one of distrust. But she did not look at his face of discomfort and went on: "Why all these empty questions?" She had no idea that Steve was getting more and more irritated with her; nevertheless, she proceed with her talk:

"You mean do I find something terribly wrong with immorality? Oh, that's men's skill isn't it? Still one thing at a time! First I answer you about women! You call them opportunists! You put such a generality in the way you say it! Well. I'm going to ask you, tell me is your mother an opportunist, too? Come on, tell me, why should I hold myself back? Why should I take what you say on its face value? Who do you think You are? A man? A God? What about all men? Do you think you're all good moral beings that God created? You know I am in a mood to talk now! Why should I give in to you because you think women came to this world only to comfort men! That God created women because Adam was lonely. A lonely man needs a companion not a comforter. You think that women's occupation is to comfort men because that was God's intention!?" Helen took a deep breath and without looking at Steve, she continued:

"If that is why I'm created, the way you say it, then I want to dispose of all men, who are corrupt, immoral, and dirty. I don't want to be like an occupation for you or any men!"

Helen talked not merely natural and clever, but cunningly and without pretense. She attached a great value to her own ideas and no weight to the viewpoint of Steve. He was another man, like all others, like her father, or Roger, or many others that she had known through the twenty three years of her life; the only difference was that they were engaged to get married in a month before he would be deployed to Vietnam as a pilot to participate in Operation Rolling Thunder. It was a cold February day. The year was 1965.

Steve, whereas many young men, who were drafted, volunteered. He joined Air Force. His dream was always to become a pilot. He knew that his family had no financial means for him to go to college and to take classes for becoming a pilot. He knew that perhaps soon, he would receive his draft papers! He volunteered at eighteen right after high school. His training for Air force was in the Maxwell- Gunter A F B in Alabama. One of the requirement for becoming an Air Force pilot was to have a college degree, most likely a scientific degree. He got his degree at the Air Force Academy outside the Colorado Springs in Colorado. He finished his four years college in a little over three years. His major was Aerospace Engineering. His GPA was four. It was then that he went to Maxwell AFB to get his Pilot training. In the next three years, he went through difficult, disciplined training of Air force and learned how to fly. He put in many hours of flying. So now at age twenty four, after six and half years being in the Air force, he was a well educated, young, attractive pilot. He was ready to be deployed to serve his country that had made his dream come through, but not before marrying Helen, his fiance, a woman he had fallen in love almost at once...

✔ ✔ ✔

To Be Continued

"JUDAS KISS" - Three- Ruby ✪ ✖

"Common you guys, let's get you some food!"

Helen got up from coach. She was tired, sleepless, and did not feel like going to work. She opened a can of soft cat food, it was white fish and shrimp, for Tony, and a pouch of dog food for Miss Daisy.

She took her night gown out

and put a tee shirt and a short on very quickly so she could take the dog for a walk. In the morning Miss Daisy was always so ready to go out and do her things.

Her apartment was on the first floor. There was a little creek right in front of her apartment. Finding a place to walk for Miss Daisy was easy. She did not even have to take a bag to clean after the dog; no one did, even though it was a law. They called it scooper pooper.

As her pets were eating their food, she stepped into the shower, thinking about all the work she needed to do that day. She wished she did not have to go to the boss's home. But it seemed as though going to his house had become part of her secretarial job. She said in her speaking mind: "I guess I have to be grateful to have a job in this bad economy!!" But when she thought about how their company was in financial problem like many others, she sighed loud. The middle class women who mostly were their company's buyers and liked her boss's design, could not afford anymore to spend money on fancy clothes. Her boss had cut a lot of cost, laid off many of the factory workers, like other companies was outsourcing a lot to China, since the labor there was so cheap. Nonetheless his original customers, many high end of the middle class, either husband or wife, or both, had lost their jobs! The people who had lost their jobs, were collecting unemployment benefit which The government kept extending it. Many people were taking advantage of this and truly did not want to find a job, so all this stimulus packages, extension of unemployment benefit, saving the green jobs that they would bankrupt anyway, just to have photo ups with them, "we are creating so many green jobs!" were falling on the shoulder of tax payers people, like Helen, who worked hard. In the last year and half the debt had increased so much, even more than all the presidents combined. Only half of the country worked to support the other half! She had never seen anything like this in her sixty eight years on earth and in America! She could not wait for the next election, perhaps they would get lucky and get some one in the White House, who was not socialists and inexperienced!!!

In Helen's company, they were cutting on their expenditure, as much as they could!!

✐

The bus ride from Chicago to Springfield, Illinois was almost fun. For both, Helen and Jacob, this was the first time they were leaving their home town. Her boyfriend, Jacob, was two months younger than Helen. His father had left them and her mother for another woman when he was three and his sister was five. His mother married this man she had met in a bar in less than six months after the divorce from their father. Their stepfather began living with them almost from the first day that his mother had met him in the bar. He had no job, but kept saying that he had many opportunities. All day long he lay on the coach, drinking bear and smoking cigar while his mother was at work. At the beginning before they got married, he was not violent at all; he even helped around the house; but that was not the case when his mother married him. In the next thirteen years, his true face was a brutal, lazy, violent, and a nasty man, who took advantage of his mother, never worked, and beat up the children. Every time he wanted to be intimate with their mother, he did not care that the children could hear them. He did everything in a coercive and vicious way. Jacob put his hands on his ears so he could not hear his mother's crying and begging for some gentility and sweetness. His fury and brutality was not only for the children, but was also towards their mother! In the next thirteen years he was an extra insolent and abusive man to all of them. The opportunity for work that he constantly claimed, never came, so he never worked. "I can work tomorrow if I want! But I am waiting for something very suitable fort me!" Why should he work? If the mother went along with him and with this life and put her children under this kind of castigating behavior of her husband, why would he care?!!

To Be Continued