by Gary McMahon
Two years ago she’d been working for a successful finance company in Leeds, her salary enough to afford the good things in life. Now, after a run-in with a sex pest boss, and a case of unfair dismissal she’d failed to win, she felt trapped in a life that didn’t feel like her own. The small detached property Hayley was born in had been sold to pay legal fees and expenses, and the council had re-housed them here, in a tiny two-bed flat on this dismal estate situated south of the city.
Lana felt so useless. She could not even support her child, the product of a loveless encounter with an ex colleague after a work function. An alcohol-baby, sired during a moment of vodka-induced madness. And where was the father now? She didn’t know, didn’t care; as far as she was concerned, he might as well be dead.
The rain fell harder against the glass, sounding like tiny fingertips desperate for her attention. She slumped into an armchair – one of the few items left behind by the debt collectors – and stared at the electric fire she could no longer afford to run.
She’d borrowed a few grand from Monty Bright when there had been no other way out. Her benefits had been delayed, Hayley needed to eat, and the bills were mounting up like a paper hill in the hallway. Going to the loan shark had seemed like a practical plan: a temporary solution. Unfortunately, things had become so bad that she had needed him again. Before long, her debts were uncontrollable, growing like a living thing; metastasising like a cancer.
“Mummy. I’m ready.” Hayley was standing beside her. She’d barely been aware of her daughter coming into the room.
“Ready for what, honey?” She smiled through the tears. That was all she ever did: grit her teeth and smile, pretend that everything was going to work out when she knew it wasn’t.
“Anything.” Hayley’s eyes were wider than before. She looked dazed, as if it were she who had suffered the blow to the jaw.
“Are you okay, Hayley? You look poorly.” Lana reached out, put her arms around her child, hugged her, feeling the scant warmth of her underfed body.
“The Slittens came again.”
Lana stiffened. She didn’t mean to, but it was a natural reaction. The doctor had told her just to go along with whatever Hayley said, to gently change the subject, but it was easier said than done – easier discussed in an NHS office than carried out in a grubby council flat with rain on the windows and broken toys on the floor.
“Hush now, honey. You know I don’t like that kind of talk.” She squeezed tighter, hoping that Hayley might get the message.
“But they can help. They told me. The Slittens saw what those men did, and they say they can put things right. All you have to do is ask.”
Through gritted teeth, Lana let out an uneasy laugh. “That’s what they all say, honey.” She buried her face in Hayley’s chest, smelled her rich scent, the odour she’d been born with and that had never left her – a misplaced baby-smell that should by now have been replaced by a melange of oestrogen and cheap perfume. “We’ll be fine. Everything will work out right. I promise.”
Hayley tensed against her, as if she were trying to outmanoeuvre her mother’s touch, to pull away without actually moving.
Lana felt like she’d just told her daughter the biggest lie of all.
****
Later, after tidying the room and rearranging the remaining furniture, Lana left Hayley to play with her jigsaws and headed for Monty Bright’s place. She had spent the rest of the morning trying to think of another way, to formulate an alternative plan. Not long after noon, she had finally faced the truth and begun to prepare herself for a confrontation.
It was still raining when she stepped out of the building and into the street. The wooden windows of the shops opposite were dark and streaky, reflecting dense banks of cloud; the glass panes had still not been replaced from when local kids had thrown empty beer bottles through them a fortnight ago. Young people in tracksuits and hooded sweatshirts gathered on corners and in doorways, their faces featureless smudges against a flat grey background.
She followed the narrow lanes that led to the row of shops where Bright kept his offices. The environment deteriorated around her: buildings low and stooped, windows broken or boarded. Soon she was standing at the kerb outside a shut-up bookmaker’s. A light shone sickly and weak from an upstairs window. The sign over the recessed door had been sprayed with whorls of black paint, its text long since obliterated. Even the graffiti in these parts was meaningless.
Lana reached out a shaking hand and pressed the buzzer. It was set into a metal plate that had seen better times. A low droning sounded somewhere deep inside the building, like the mournful call of an ailing elephant. Lana closed her eyes, pressed her fingernails into the meat of her palms.
“It’ll be okay,” she whispered. “Be fine.”
The door banged open, slamming against its frame. “What you want?”
Lana opened her eyes and stared at the man on the doorstep. He was huge – well over six feet tall – and his head was shaved right down to the glistening flesh of his scalp. His eyes were narrow, untrusting, and a black snake tattoo ran around his skull, an inch above his ears.
“Well, bitch?”
Lana took a step back, feeling a breeze press against her legs. She wanted to run but knew that she could not. “I’m here to see Monty Bright. My name is Lana Temple.”
The big man laughed; his shoulders rolled in a strange loose movement. “Lot of people want to see Monty. He’s a popular guy, especially with the bitches.” His smile was all gold teeth.
“Just tell him my name, fuckwit. He’ll want to see me, I’m sure.”
The man leaned backwards, momentarily shocked, and then smiled again. “Stay there.” The door slammed shut.
Minutes later she was climbing a dingy stairwell. Three floors: a landing on each, with doors that led into tawdry boudoirs and chambers of ill-repute. Behind the closed doors she heard abrasive laughter; the open ones showed her skinny women clad in male-fantasy underwear; sluttish scraps of red-and-black lace. Bruised smiles and empty stares.
“This way,” said the big man, stepping aside when at last they reached the top floor. The muscles bulged beneath his thin white T-shirt and his tight jeans showed a similar bulge at the crotch that was nothing short of terrifying. He cupped his balls and grinned, flashing once again those ugly gold teeth. “Go on in.”
Lana pushed open the door and stepped into a room that was bare, functional, but surprisingly tasteful. Framed shop-bought Monet prints hung on the walls, the pile of the carpet was thick and plush, and the furniture was all real leather. Monty Bright sat behind a long oak desk, leafing through a pornographic magazine. The cover showed a woman, bound and gagged, being penetrated by a large black man with a thick penis. Bright’s orange oval face shone with thinly disguised delight. His slick black hair looked like a shell or a carapace.
She stood in the centre of the room and waited to be noticed. Her hands toyed with the hem of her jacket. A wall-mounted clock loudly ticked away the seconds.
“Hello Lana,” he said without glancing up, away from the images of bondage and humiliation. His long thin hands turned the pages, his dark eyes consuming rather than seeing what they flicked across with an animal intensity. “How can I help?”
He’d said the same thing when she’d first approached him for money: it was his catchphrase; an ironic combination of words that she could see amused him on some level that she could not even begin to fathom.
“I’ve come here…to ask for mercy.”
Bright looked up from the magazine, setting it aside on the disturbingly neat and tidy desk top. Thoughtfully, he steepled his fingers under his rounded chin and examined her, as if seeing her for the first time. His teeth were short and pointed; his tanned face was unmoving, like a photograph, but as soon as he smiled the illusion wavered. “I see. Is this regarding the little visit my boys paid you this morning? I see they went against my orders and roughed you up.”
“That doesn’t matter. All I care
about is my daughter. I’ll do whatever you want, just cancel the debt and let her have a real life.” The request came before she’d even begun to formulate it; deep down, this was the cold truth of her heart.
“Anything, Lana? Anything I want?” He opened a drawer and took out a bottle of whisky and a small shot glass. His hands were beautiful.
She glanced at the magazine, with its lurid cover. Black leather. Pink flesh. Red wounds. “Anything,” she agreed, knowing that she had already sealed her fate, but hoping that her daughter’s might be better.
****
First he watched her strip naked and bound her to a chair. He did not even take her to a private room, just called a handful of his men into the office and told them to watch. The straps he used where thin and tight; they cut deep into the skin of her arms and legs. Blood ran freely down her shins, along her forearms. She tried not to scream but could not stop herself from moaning. The pain at this point was mild but she knew it could only get worse.
“This one’s a looker, Monty. A real babe.” She did not see who spoke; the leather mask prevented peripheral vision.
She closed her eyes and thought about Hayley, knowing that she was securing her daughter’s future. The pain she suffered here would guarantee that Hayley’s life would be pain-free, at least in the extreme sense of the word. Any agony Hayley experienced would constitute the normal, everyday hurts, the small wounds of the masses.
She didn’t even call out when he started with the whip. Nor did she weep when they took turns to rape her, using her like a slab of meat as they entered her body in so many ways and via so many different routes that soon she became numb to the tireless invasion.
****
“Are we done?” She buttoned her blouse, retaining a small sense of dignity even after what had been done to her. Her hair was wet and smelled of semen; they had not allowed her to bathe afterwards, just laughed at her pathetic request, as if in confirmation that she would never be clean again.
“For now.” Bright sat in his chair smoking a cigar. His narrow hands were dwarfed by the fat Cuban, looked comical even. His bare feet were resting on the desk as he reclined in the seat, content in her debasement.
“What do you mean?” She stood and faced him, terror creeping upward, moving in waves across her defiled body. “You promised.” But any promises this man made were subject to the whims of his radical personality. She’d been a fool to let herself believe this would make any difference to her situation; but what else did she have to cling to other than foolish belief?
“I promised nothing. Consider this visit a down payment. The way I figure it, you’ll have cleared the debt in, say, fifteen to eighteen months. Even quicker if you bring the girl along next time. What’s her name, Hayley? Nice and tight and pretty. I’ve seen her through the school gates, playing with her friends. I think my friends would like to play with her very much.”
Lana knew that she should rush him, go for the throat, the eyes: attack the soft parts. But it was futile; he was too strong, and had always possessed the upper hand. Right from the start, he’d played her along, upping the odds until she came to him and offered him exactly what he wanted and could have taken at any point. But he did not want to take; it was the very act of offering that turned him on, made him shine.
“Where’s your compassion?” she said, failing to penetrate his armour. “Your basic human decency?” She hated the desperation in her voice, but it was all she had left to offer.
Bright stood and came out from behind the desk. He was shorter than she remembered in his stocking feet; barely came up to her shoulder once she’d put on her heels. His skin looked soft, malleable, and his eyes protruded like boiled eggs from a face as flat and round as a polished plate. Bright’s shoulders were hunched; his posture was awkward, as if years of ingesting horse steroids and the mindless repetition of punishing routines with heavy weights had altered his basic body shape. He slowly raised his hands and began to slip off his shirt.
“For that, dear Lana, I’d have to be human.”
The leather mask had prevented her from seeing it before, but his naked body was a mass of lumps and abrasions. They looked like ripe tumours: they dangled in clumps from beneath his armpits, clustered around his nipples; made a ribbed embossment down his hairless belly. There were mouths in there, amid the globules and curlicues of flesh, and eyes that blinked uncomprehendingly. A nose or a sex gland twitched; snot or semen spilled from its shiny, puckered end. It was a whole community of beings, perhaps even the souls of the people he’d absorbed as repayment for debts even greater than her own, loans whose rate of interest was infinite.
“Bring the girl next time. I’ll show her a whole new world of hurt.”
She was surprised he didn’t try to stop her as she fled. The door was unlocked and there was no one on the landing. She clattered down the wooden stairs in her too-high heels and almost fell out of the main door when it opened at her touch. She could hear Bright’s laughter following her as she ran along the dark street, looking for answers to questions she could not even remember asking.
Hayley was in the living room when she got back to the flat, sitting with her legs crossed and watching the empty space where they TV had always stood. Lana went to her daughter, but the girl seemed dazed, out of it. Lana checked her arms for track marks, opened her mouth and looked inside for the powder traces of pills. She found nothing, so assumed this fugue was simply another symptom of her disorder, the condition the doctors consistently failed to explain.
Finally, she carried Hayley through to her room and lay her down on the single bed, pulling the covers over her frail form and kissing her sweat-slick forehead. Sirens wailed in the distance, tracking criminals along shadowy streets. Someone screamed a name, over and over again, but Lana could not make out what it was. Eventually the shouting faded, but the backbeat of dance music drifted on the evening air, its sonorous moan synching with the rhythm of the blood as it throbbed in her veins.
Lana left her daughter and went to the bathroom. She ran a bath and stood naked by the tub while it filled, staring at her reflection in the steaming mirror. She lay in the bath and let the badness boil out of her; the water buoyed her, kept her in the world, floating like a dead fish. After scrubbing her flesh, inside and out, she sat up and took the razor blade from the shelf, where it lay behind an old bottle of baby lotion.
She stared at the veins on her wrists, wondering if she would ever be able to do it. Then, carefully, she began the ritual. She gently pressed the blade against the papery skin, turning it through ninety degrees to make the sign of a cross at the point where palm became wrist. White marks, fading like the memories of the life she’d had before. No blood, just a slight pressure, a reminder that a solution was always there, waiting beneath the surface.
She put away the blade and submerged herself, listening to the odd sound of water in her ears.
After her bath, she dressed in clean clothes and returned to Hayley’s room. The girl was still sleeping, lying in exactly the same position as when Lana had left her. The girl’s eyes moved rapidly beneath waxy lids; she was seeing something different than the depressing sights around her. Maybe even something wonderful.
Lana leaned over and watched her daughter’s sleeping face.
“I’m sorry, honey. Mummy couldn’t make it better.” Tears ran down her cheeks and she stroked Hayley’s cold cheek. “I tried, I really did, but I couldn’t manage it. I’m sorry for your illness, I’m sorry for the things we’ve seen and done. I’m sorry your daddy isn’t around to see how beautiful you are.”
Hayley’s eyelids flickered, and then slowly opened. Her eyes were completely white, without a trace of pupil or iris. She opened her mouth and a trail of saliva ran down her chin.
“Oh, Hayley. Oh, honey.” Lana cradled her child in her arms and reached out to something she didn’t believe in. If there was a God, or some kind of greater power that watched over the fallen, then why would it not answer her pleas?
“The Slitten,” said Hayley, her voice low and cold and even. “They will help. Just ask. Ask.”
After everything she’d seen today, Lana was ready to believe in anything; any slim hope offered to her looked appealing, even the private fantasy of a damaged teenager. She let go of Hayley and fell to her knees at the side of the bed, clasping her hands in prayer. She lowered her head and gathered whatever energy still inhabited her battered body.
“Just ask.” Hayley’s voice was a whisper, an echo.
“Help me. Please help.” Lana’s voice sounded different, felt strange as it left her throat. The words were like solid objects regurgitated into the room. They had shape and form and dimensional properties: they were alive, and went out in search of something incredible.
Hayley was sitting up in bed when Lana opened her eyes. The expression on her daughter’s face was one of bliss, like a child on Christmas morning. She held her hands together in front of her chest, and then slowly, and with great intent, she unbuttoned her nightdress.
Lana leaned back, and then moved forward. “What are you doing, honey?” The hope was gone; the belief was spent. There was nothing here but a girl who had lost touch with reality and a mother who had failed to protect her.
“I’m summoning them.” Hayley’s breasts were bigger than she expected; they spilled out of the open neck of the garment, full and firm and lactating. Watery milk striated with pale crimson streaks leaked from the rigid nipples, drawing wet lines down Hayley’s bloodless, paper-thin chest.
Rain hammered at the windows, but it wasn’t raining; hadn’t rained for hours. Shadows streaked the walls and ceiling; the bricks and floorboards creaked as if in preparation for the arrival of something glorious. The air turned dusty, grey light seeping from invisible cracks to baptise the room.