As she closed the door behind her, Lana felt more alone than she had ever felt in her entire life. Far different from the way she felt last night. For the first time in years, she felt so wanted, so desired…, so alive. Statistics might show that most people that have just completed a night of “indiscretions” would be thinking about their significant others and the pain that the circumstances might cause them.

The only thing that Lana could think about as she walked through New Orleans’ French Quarter was how much she must have hurt David. He seems like a very “down to earth” type of guy. He is someone that she should have met years ago, before she made the biggest mistake of her life; before she married Jay.

After she went to the parking garage and paid the bill, she steered toward Canal Street. While negotiating the heavy evening traffic, she simply could not get David’s image out of her mind. What had she done?

When she drove into the driveway of the modest home she and her husband shared, Lana sat in her car for several minutes gathering her thoughts. She couldn’t get David out of her mind. It wasn’t long before she saw her husband’s 5’9” 185 pound muscular frame walking towards her car from the back yard.

As Lana exited the car, she went to the trunk and retrieved a small over night bag that she had. Before she could close the trunk’s lid, she could hear Jay yelling at her. “That fucking conference was supposed to be over by noon, where the fuck have you been?” he yelled.

Before she could respond, she saw her vision blacken as he slapped her across the face. She could instantly taste her own blood at the corner of her mouth as she felt herself being thrown into the side of her car by the surprise blow. She knew that if she fought back, the beating would be worse; so she picked herself up and made her way towards the house without saying a word.

But Jay wasn’t that quick to stop. Lana could hear him yelling and screaming at her the whole way into the house. Once inside the house, she felt him slap her in the back of the head. The force of the blow sent her into a nearby wall. Having had enough, Lana stood up and starting swinging back at her abusive husband. In the course of the fight, she could feel every blow that Jay delivered to her ribs and face. After what seemed like forever, Lana gave up the fight and fell to the floor as he delivered another powerful blow to the side of her head.

Jay couldn’t let it go at that though. He stood over his abused wife and continued his verbal assault. When he was finished his yelling, Jay stood and left the room. Lana lay on the floor for what seemed like hours crying her eyes out. After several minutes, she struggled to pick herself up from the floor and went to the bathroom to clean up.

She knew that this would happen. When she arrived home early the day before and packed the small bag, Jay was still at work. She called him at the shop and told him about a “Conference” that she had to attend in Baton Rouge for small business owners.

She knew it was a lie but she just couldn’t pull herself from the thought of spending an evening with David. Although the “date” wasn’t supposed to last all night and into the next day, she wouldn’t have changed one thing about the time she spent with him. For the first time in years, she lived a dream.

Lana spent the rest of the evening tending to her injuries. Neither Jay nor Lana spoke to each other for the remainder of the night.

The next day came sooner than she wanted. When the alarm clock started ringing at 4AM, Lana rolled over and felt the pain in her sides from the beating that she sustained the night before at the hands of the man that was supposed to love her. She pulled herself out of bed and into the bathroom for a morning shower. Looking into the small shaving mirror that Jay has in the shower, she could easily see that her face was already starting to show some signs of bruising.

After her shower, Lana went into the kitchen and made her a small pot of coffee then sat and started fingering through her small personal phone book. Looking at the phone numbers in the book, Lana contemplated whether or not she should call her assistant manager to cover the shop today.

The more she thought about it, the more she knew that she wanted to go in. She wanted to go to the shop in hopes that David would show up. She really wanted to see David again. After finishing her coffee, she went and began applying a liberal amount of make-up to try and camouflage her bruising. Once she was ready for work, she went into the bedroom to wake up Jay so he could go into work as well.

To her surprise, she walked in and found that he was already in the walk-in closet retrieving his clothes for the day. Just as the night before, neither spoke to each other for the first several minutes. As Lana started walking out of the room, Jay finally spoke, “Lana, I’m sorry about last night, I didn’t take into account that you may have run into traffic on your way back or even that the conference may have run over”.

Lana couldn’t believe this bastard. How could he actually be so stupid as to think that she would actually like getting beaten down at least once every month and that a simple “… I’m sorry” could make it all better? “Jay, I’m tired of the bull shit. What happened last night will never happen again I can promise you that.”

Jay walked over to Lana and tried to give her a hug saying, “Baby I was drinking and you know how I get when I‘m drinking”

Moving away from him to avoid the hug, Lana replied, “Jay, you inconsiderate prick, you are supposed to love and cherish me and not beat the shit out of me.”

With a tear in his eye, Jay sat on the bed and put his face in his hands. “Baby, it will never happen again I promise”.

As Lana began to walk out of the door, she looked back and gathered every ounce of courage she had left, “Your fucking right it won’t”. With that she simply left the room and made her way out of the house.

Driving to work that morning was like any other morning other than the fact that she started to reflect on her life. How in the hell did her life take such a drastic turn. She could remember the happier days when she loved life. She thought about the day she met Jay and then their wedding day. Everything seemed so perfect.

Before they got married, she knew he had a “mean streak” because he slapped her around a little bit while they were dating. But she could also remember that she grew up with this kind of abuse. Her father beat on her mother regularly. So to her, it was the way of life. But she never believed that it would get to this point. She never believed that Jay would continue this.

She was living a lie and she realized that a long time ago. It wasn’t that she felt dependant on Jay because she brings in more financial income with her coffee shop than he does working as a mechanic.

Thinking back, she remembers how things took a turn for the worse when she caught him cheating on her about 5 years before. It was when he started his body building hobby. It was with one of those blonde bimbos that hung around the gym looking for muscle men. When she caught him in the parking lot of the gym getting a blow job, she took a bat and broke every window on his car.

To this day, she still believes that had she not done that, Jay would have never noticed her standing by the window watching another woman sucking his dick. That’s when the real beatings began. Later that night after he finally found his way home, they really got into a huge fight. She thought that she was holding her own until she woke up the next morning in a hospital.

She knew that he had been having affairs ever since. She had caught him on several occasions around town with other women. Not just in the same room as other women but actually hugging, kissing, and groping other women. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure it out.

From then on, things became progressively worse. In the beginning, she started making excuses for him. First it was the pressures of his job, and then it was that he was using anabolic steroids to help his body building competitions, and then finally it was that he started drinking heavily. During the course of these phases, she even went through the phase where she felt it was all her fault that he was beating her. But as time went on, she realized that it wasn’t her, the pressures of his job, the steroids, or even the drinking. She came to realize that it was none of those things. It was Jay and only Jay.

She came to this realization approximately three years ago. The only reason she never left was because she was terrified of what he would do if she did.

It was then that Lana began “living in her stories”, as her friends put it. She began to read several short stories that she collected from various internet sites. Most of the ones she read were of a sexual nature but she much preferred those w/ a combination of sex and romance. She always hoped that one day; her prince charming would come into her life.

The authors that she came across on a few of these sites never used their real names but instead had “pen names”. Much to her surprise, there were both men and women that wrote these fictitious tales. She mainly stayed with the ones written by women because by her own experiences, men know nothing about romance.

That was until she came across a single pen name that just intrigued her to no end. The name itself reminded her of the Tom Cruise character in the 1980’s movie “Top Gun”. She simply loved that movie. It was by far her favorite movie of all time. She loved the romantic side that Tom Cruise projected. His part was “masculine yet sensual”. She liked that quality in men. She could only imagine that “Capt Maverick’s” writings would be the same.

She first read one of his stories about an encounter in Australia. Much to her surprise, it actually had some passion involved. It was a story about a married woman that met someone then had a passionate weekend with the guy. She was actually impressed that a man had those types of passionate thoughts. After that, she was hooked on his writing style; she eagerly looked for his work every chance she got. If only she could meet someone like him she thought.

Before long she was in the Quarter and made her way to her coffee shop. Every time she heard the small bell ringing on the front door, she looked to see if it was David. Much to her dismay, he never showed. Between customers, Lana even walked to the window several times hoping to see him.

After a few hours she felt comfortable that the day’s business could do without her, she called it a day.

Once she left the coffee shop she drove to Decatur Street and parked next to Jefferson Square. Lana sat near the water front for hours thinking about everything that she has been through. Her thoughts went from her childhood to present day. She couldn’t help but think about the night before last when she and David were in this very spot bonding. They spent hours just talking about each other. It was definitely a night to remember.

When Lana finally left the Quarter, it was late afternoon. She wasn’t surprised to see that Jay was already home when she showed up. This could only mean one thing. He must have been drinking for lunch again and sent home for being drunk. She couldn’t even begin to count all the times this has happened. He was on his eighth job in the last six months because of his drinking.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she walked into the door and he started yelling first thing. She wasn’t three feet in the door when he started. This was no different than most other days. Not in the mood for any of this, she simply turned down the hallway towards the bedroom without saying a word.

It was business as usual until she saw one of her crystal vases flying past her head and crashing against the wall. Seconds later, she could hear him running at her and then she felt something hit the back of her head.

Not long after that, she opened her eyes again and looked up at Jay from the floor of the hallway. By instinct, she felt the back of her head and found that her hair was wet. Looking at her hand it was coated in thick crimson colored blood from the back of her skull. She has seen blood before but she never realized that it was so thick and dark.

Before she knew what was happening to her, Jay was on top of her punching her in the face. Trying to dodge the blows, she could feel it when Jay broke her nose. She instantly saw a bright flash of light as his closed fist made contact with her face time and time again causing the detrimental damage.

She finally realized that he was standing over her mid section when she got over the initial shock of the assault. Lana raised her left foot with every ounce of strength she had left and made contact with Jay’s crotch. She could only hope that the impact sent his testicles to the top of his skull.

Jay fell to the floor as Lana’s foot made contact. Lana was barely able to crawl away from him as he tried reaching for her feet. Lana stumbled towards the bedroom as she felt large amounts of blood working its way into and burning her eyes.

Lana struggled to make it to her bedroom but Jay was already on his feet and staggering towards her. She was so dizzy from the blow to the head that she nearly blacked out again. When Jay reached Lana, he grabbed her by the hair and pushed her face first into the wall.

The blow must have knocked her unconscious for a few minutes because the next thing she realized was that Jay was now sitting on his reclining chair in the living room as if nothing was going on.

Not wanting to make him aware of the fact that she was awake, Lana quietly tried crawling towards the bedroom to call the police. She knew that she needed to get to a hospital soon or she would certainly die. Just as she was reaching the bedroom door, she heard Jay hollering at her again. She struggled to get inside the door. Just as she went to close the door, Jay was there.

As Lana was trying to close the door, Jay was simultaneously pushing it inwards. The struggle went on for several minutes until Lana cocked her fist back then drove it straight into Jay’s crotch once again. As Jay was doubled over in the door way, Lana reached for a small stool nearby.

She struggled to gain some form of balanced footage as she stood up and swung the stool upwards striking Jay squarely in the face. The impact with Jay’s face knocked him backwards into the hallway. Once the doorway was clear, Lana closed and locked it. She went to a chair sitting in the corner of the room and moved the back of it underneath the door knob.

Lana expected to hear movement in the hallway but was surprised that she didn’t. Looking at the stool, she could clearly see two teeth embedded into the top of it. As Lana turned to walk to the opposite side of the room, she lost her balance and fell to the floor again. She knew this was because of the massive head injury that she sustained at the hands of her husband. Gathering up every ounce of strength that she could, Lana struggled to reach the phone.

The journey took what seemed like forever. When she reached the phone, Lana’s first thought was to call David; her “Sir Lancelot”. Had she known how to contact him she definitely would have. But as quickly as the thought came to her, it diminished with the realization that she probably chased him away forever anyway.

Picking up the receiver, she started dialing the 9-1-1 emergency line when she heard a thunderous crash against the bedroom door. The crash was accompanied by the sounds of Jay yelling at her to open the door. Looking over, she could see that the door was straining inwards at the amount of force being applied from the other side every time Jay rammed his body into it but the chair was holding the door in place.

Lana began to panic as the phone continued to ring at the Emergency Center. As the operator on the other side of the phone answered, Lana could hear the wood beginning to crack under the extensive strain of the impact every time Jay hit it.

Lana screamed into the phone receiver for help as Jay’s assault on the door was successful. As Jay ran towards her, she continued to scream for help yelling that her husband was trying to kill her. When he reached Lana, they both fell to the floor between the bed and the wall as the fight ensued. Jay was once again on top of Lana beating her to a pulp while she laid on her back.

The emergency operator could hear everything as the struggle continued. The operator quickly typed in the caller’s address into the computer aided dispatching system simultaneously sending several patrol cars and an ambulance to the location of the incident.

As Lana struggled for her life, her arm ended up underneath the bed. To her surprise, she felt her hand strike something unusual. Realizing that it was Jay’s gun, she quickly struggled to gain control of it while trying to fight him off. By the time she had control of the 40 caliber pistol, she had already received several more blows to her face and head. As Lana brought the handgun out from under the bed, Jay caught sight of it. He stopped his assault and tried to gain control of the pistol. Lana began to lose consciousness again as Jay started to bang her head into the floor while they struggled for control of the weapon.

The emergency operator continued to send information across the computer aided dispatching system to the responding officers as she was trained to do. Still listening to Lana’s pleas for help through the open phone line, the operator’s stomach dropped as she heard a gunshot seconds before the phone line went dead.

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