Ruth Be Told

Home Raker: Episode Three

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Home Raker is a “thriller burlesque” novella in progress, spawned from vitriol and serialized at a diabolically measured pace to allow for proper execution of plot elements and intrigue. And to torture you, obviously.

If you can’t STAND the pacing of this project, you can always return when it’s complete. But I hope some of you will choose to bear witness to its development in real time. It’s going to be messy. But that’s half the fun!

This story is stationed behind my paywall because it’s a true work-in-progress. Translation: it’s as likely to be a raging success as an epic failure. It also contains naughty bits that some readers may find offensive. Think sex, drugs, murder, profanity, melodrama, and sex.

If you’re a FOREVER subscriber and you’d “rather not” partake in this offering, no worries. You can toggle off the Home Raker section in your subscription settings to avoid receiving future chapters in your inbox. 💜

As for the rest of you brave souls, I say come as you are, stay if you please, let loose, go hard, and embrace the beautiful mess that is Home Raker.

Previously, on Home Raker:

Celeste matched libidos with the alluringly still alive, barely legal, slice of entrepreneurial beefcake, Harold Raker.

Hot age gap notwithstanding, spicy banter ensued.

While her husband was holed up in his office with the indiscretion du jour, Celeste allowed young Harold to stoke her feminine fire as she secretly watched him stimulate the petulant rose in her garden.

Time well spent.

Speaking of time, let’s get back to the present.

Harold Raker is dead now. Remember?

Photo courtesy of Canva

Content Warning: A “thick layer of marital dissatisfaction and harbored suspicion.”

3. Ruth Be Told

Celeste used to panic before Ruth came home from a campaign trip. Not because she was afraid of him. She wasn’t. He was harmless. A threat to no one other than his political opponents, the questionable standards of young women, and democracy.

To put it bluntly, Ruth was a pussy.

A deceitful cock of a husband, yes.

But a pussy, nonetheless.

Sometimes he would come home in a frustrated fit after a long day of stump speeches, and Celeste would perform an exhaustive dance of spousal support as she listened to him rant about his brain-dead constituents and the “woke wave” that threatened to turn the whole world queer.

She’d nod submissively, loosen his tie, stroke the cropped, salt and pepper hair at the nape of his neck. She’d caress his thigh, bite his earlobe, and beg him without words to pay attention to her.

She didn’t agree with his views, but knew it was pointless to argue against them. And even more pointless to point out that Ruth’s view of the world had been twisted absurdly out of shape since she met him. Sometimes Celeste wondered if the man sitting next to her, the man sharing her bed while failing to perform his husbandly duties was the man she married at all. And not some flaccid android sent to do the bidding of its right leaning creator/cult leader.

Not that she harbored conspiracy theories herself. But the least the cultists could do was give their robot doppelgangers a functioning cock. 

What Celeste feared most, was that one day her husband would come home and fail to see her. That her presence wouldn’t register. That all the work she had done, all the work that had been done to her, wouldn’t be enough. That he’d stop noticing her. Stop wanting her. And that she’d dry up and disappear. Like all women loved by weak men eventually do.

All that changed with Harold. He couldn’t stop noticing Celeste. He worshipped her. He saw her. He loved her.

And he wasn’t weak.

He was…

“Dead.”

“What?” Ruth asks, flustered by the interruption.

Celeste blinks him into focus. His tie loosened. His earlobe pink and swollen. Her hand inches from his uninspired package.

“Harold Raker.” The voice is hers. She’s almost certain. “Is… dead.”

Celeste shakes her head to clear the remaining memory film from her eyes, then studies her husband’s expression. She reads shock, but underneath there’s curiosity. Under that, relief. And way, way down at the bottom of his emotional barrel, she finds what she’s looking for. 

Triumph.

“Oh shit,” he says. A burst of air escapes his mouth. A cough? Or a laugh?

He stands up quickly and paces in front of the coffee table. He throws his shoulders back as soon as he realizes he’s slouching.

Celeste perks up.

It’s a tell. He’s getting ready to lie.

“Do we…” he starts in, lowering his voice a few decibels. Another tell. “Do we know what happened?”

Celeste recounts for him, in detail, how she found Harold’s body.

“Holy fuck!” He sits down heavily beside her, as if too horrified to stand at the news of his rival’s demise. His performance has real merit, but he’s not fooling her. “That’s…” Ruth pulls hard on his right earlobe. One of the oldest tells in the book. “That’s awful.” He lowers his hand and sucks air through his teeth. Four for four. “I’m really… really sorry.” He reaches over and takes her hand in his.

Celeste’s skin flushes. She looks her husband in the face and sees something unexpected.

But it can’t be. Just because he said the words, doesn’t mean he feels anything resembling remorse.

His eyes glass over as if he’s conjuring something in his mind. "Where’s Renata?”

Celeste bristles. “I sent her home. She was traumatized.”

“By what?”

She jerks her hand away.

“Harold’s murder!”

He shakes his head and blinks rapidly.

That’s five.

“Right. Of course. That would do it.”  

He takes her hand again and when she tries to pull away, he holds on tighter. “Celeste… stay here, please,” he says gravely. I need … I just need to check something.” He stands up and heads to his office.

Celeste takes a deep breath and replays his reaction to the news. It didn’t go as she’d imagined it would. She expected him to be colder. More distant. More jubilant.

Harold Raker had been screwing her. Under his roof, under his nose, under his bushes. He suspected. He knew. That’s why he threatened Harold at the open house open pit barbecue fundraiser. That’s why he suddenly had a year’s supply of Hardfelt supplements in their medicine cabinet. For her, he’d said. He wanted to do better.

Better for her? Or better than Harold?

It didn’t matter. He wasn’t off the hook. Far from it.

“Celeste?” The voice behind her is Ruth’s but the tone is enough to startle her into turning around to be certain of that. “Did Renata clean my office today?”

Celeste’s brow furrows impatiently. Why is he asking this? Why isn’t he comforting her? Or asking if she’s called the police?

Where is his head?

As she stands up to face him, her broken fingernail snags on the fabric of her skirt.

She tenses.

Now she has to lie.

“Yes,” she says flatly, not letting her voice tilt up at the end. “I think she did.”

Ruth runs a hand over his concerned face and then, as if the doppelgänger handlers are busy at the controls, he twitches on a smile.

“Shall we go out for dinner then?”

Celeste’s stomach rumbles defiantly.

“Out?”

He can’t be serious.

“Yes. I’d like to take my wife out for a nice meal. We have things to celebrate.”

Blood drains from her face so rapidly, Ruth can’t help but register her shock.

He hurries to her side and steadies her before she passes out.

She’d rather he let her fall. Maybe it would knock her unconscious. Split her skull. Snap her neck. End this day—this life—once and for all.

She leans pathetically on his padded shoulder as he coos to her something about poll numbers. He’s in the lead. He’s likely to win.

That makes one of us.

In the car, he sets her hand in his lap, and she’s surprised to discover he’s hard.

Must have popped a little purple pill before they left the house.

Her instincts kick in and she methodically services him.

Maybe SHE’S the android doppelgänger.

He comes in a matter of seconds.

Guess he only took half.

He thanks her, and she tells him it’s nothing.

There’s nothing here.

Nothing.

“I think we need to let Renata go,” he says calmly, pulling to a stop at a red light. “I don’t think she can come back after what she’s seen.”

Celeste sighs her resignation.

“Fine.”

“And I don’t want you to worry about the property. We’ll find someone new to take care of it for us.” He reaches over and tucks a strand of her blond hair behind her ear. She would shudder if she wasn’t completely numb. “Someone who has a clearer understanding of its boundaries.”

Her throat catches and she turns her head away. Ruth shifts his Hummer into gear and peels out of the intersection.  

Celeste’s eyes burn with the empty promise of tears.

She can’t sleep. She’s passed the point of exhaustion and entered survival mode. Only her most basic systems are functioning. Barely.

Her heart pulses stoically around what Celeste imagines are black, festering wounds. Any attempt to heal themselves is met with the vigilant scraping of the question gnawing on her synapses.

Who did this?

Ruth is snoring beside her. Celeste would have preferred he sleep on the daybed in his office as he had been for the last six months, but he insisted they sleep together tonight. He said he was worried she might do something to herself if he left her alone.

Perhaps he should be more worried she might do something to him.

But she won’t.

There was a time in their marriage when this would have comforted her. To have him next to her. It made her feel safe to hear him sleep so noisily. Not like she felt in her childhood home, where her passed out father would sleep so still and silently on their couch, or floor, or bathtub, Celeste would think he was dead.

Or wish he was.

But Ruth was different. He came alive in his sleep. He mumbled, gave speeches, sang songs. Sometimes he would tickle her or hold her hand and say silly things. Call her Baby. Sweetheart. It used to make Celeste laugh and for a long time it kept her loving him.

She’d convinced herself that Ruth couldn’t lie in his sleep. Couldn’t cheat or deceive or flipflop or hide.

She’s never tested this theory. Never asked him what his hopes and dreams are. Why he spends so much time alone in his office. What exactly he gets up to when he isn’t alone in his office.

Whether he still loves her.

Whether he ever loved her.

And she won’t ask him how the man she married, a man who has never so much as swatted a fly or been in a fist fight. Never been hunting or fishing. A man afraid of needles, spiders, pit bulls, judgement, failure, and the sight of blood could have murdered her true love, or anyone, so brutally.

She won’t ask. Not tonight. Because she doesn’t want to know the answer.

It’s easier to lie beside him when they’re both lying.  

Photo by Jake Charles on Unsplash