Adultery My wife through the lens of CCTV

[khemucha]

Chapter 20 : April 19th - The Aftermath

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As I watched, I felt an unexpected sensation stirring in my pants. I looked down and realized with a jolt of horror that I was erect. The sight of Dhristi, my beloved Dhristi, used and abused in such a way, had somehow aroused me. The guilt washed over me like a cold shower, dousing the flames of anger that had been burning in my chest.
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It was as if my body had turned against me, betraying the very essence of what it meant to be her husband.
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Yet, the very act of watching her in this compromised position was feeding a dark, insidious hunger within me.

As the minutes ticked by, my anger grew. It was not just at Lakhan, the monster who had violated her, but at Dhristi herself. How could she just lay there, allowing herself to be used and discarded like that? A part of me, deep down, felt betrayed. Our marriage vows had been desecrated by his brutish hands, and yet she made no effort to clean herself, to erase the evidence of his touch from her body.
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As the clock struck 6:15,  and I stepped through the door, my heart racing with anticipation. Dhristi looked up at me, her eyes wide and slightly glazed over. She offered a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, a facade that she had perfected .

"Hey," she greeted me, her voice a little too soft, a little too tired. "I'm just going to lie down for a bit. I'm not feeling too well."

"Of course, Dhristi," I said, my voice heavy with concern. "Let me know if there's anything I can get for you."

She retreated to the bedroom while I saw the recording of me watching TV completely oblivious of what happened on the same couch I was sitting on. Dhristi's tactics to avoid any sexual approach from me were becoming clearer. The way she would suddenly claim exhaustion or illness was a clever ploy. It had worked for a while, keeping my suspicions at bay, but now the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place with a sickening thud.

Dinner had been a silent affair, the weight of the unspoken hanging heavy between us. Dhristi had barely picked at her food, pushing it around her plate with a plastic smile that didn't fool me for a second. Her eyes had been elsewhere, lost in a world I was not welcome to enter. I had tried to engage her in conversation, to bring back the spark that had once danced in her eyes when she looked at me, but she had responded with monosyllables, her gaze never quite meeting mine.

Post dinner, I saw me sleeping and immediately started snoring. The camera in night mode cast a pale, blue glow across the room, turning everything into a surreal tableau of shadows. Dhristi sat in the dim light, her eyes brimming with unshed tears as she stared at the sleeping form of her husband. The digital recording was silent, but the tension was almost palpable, a mute symphony of emotions playing out in the stark contrast of light and dark.

Her gaze lingered on my chest, rising and falling with the steady rhythm of my sleep. Her eyes were a pool of conflicting emotions - guilt, anger, fear, and something else. Something that made my stomach clench as I watched from the screen. It was as if she was looking at a stranger, a man she didn't recognize anymore. Or perhaps she was looking at a man she never knew she could betray.

Dhristi's hand hovered over her own body, her fingers tracing the path Lakhan's had taken earlier. Her touch was feather-light, almost reverential, as if she was trying to understand the alien sensations that had taken over her body. Her eyes filled with tears that spilled over onto her cheeks, leaving a glistening trail in the soft glow of the moonlight. Was she crying for what had been done to her, or for the part of herself that had enjoyed it?

The post event watching husband is headed to a dark place if he is not careful ... if Lakhan had defeated Dhristi then, he seems to be defeating the surveillance video watching husband now ... is this darkness necessary to give him the motivation of watching the rest of the videos ... if that's your plot, will he be able to get out of it ... how?

That last parts are well written and the last three paragraphs are perfect, but in the ones preceding that from the time he comes home, it might be a good idea to provide more explicit separation of the response of the husband then, visible in the video when all this was happening, and remembered by the husband now about her withdrawal and growing disconnect with him, and the husband now, who is watching the videos of what had transpired, specially in the scenes where he's watching himself and Dhristi interact in those days. The part where you talk about him remembering her avoiding sexual interaction is a bit more clear in this regard, but I had to read the one below twice or thrice to get what you are actually conveying.

e.g. "... pushing it around her plate with a plastic smile that didn't fool me for a second. Her eyes had been elsewhere, lost in a world I was not welcome to enter.  ..." - did not fool the husband for a second now or then? The realization that she was lost in a world he was not welcome to enter, did this realization dawn now or was it being felt then too. The way you have written these lines, it can be interpreted both ways and cause some confusion, because it does not make sense then, even if he had felt the growing aloofness.

Its an intricate dance you've chose to dance, almost Inception-like. See if you can dance it in distinct costumes(metaphorically speaking, of course), so that readers don't get confused between the two husbands - the one then and the one now. Its not that the one then was blind; he saw what was happening, but did not know the reason and was confused and did not know how to respond, and may be made a few mistakes of omission along the way. The tango between the two avatars of the husband can be as fascinating as the one between Lakhan and Dhristi.