by Sam West
Crystal squealed when Mark yanked down her red thong to her chubby knees. Stevie licked his bone-dry lips, unable to stop the groan of longing escaping. To his virgin eyes, it was the sexiest sight he had ever seen in all his eighteen years.
Ratski sat there, statue-still, his phone clasped meekly in his lap. Stevie saw how his little brown eyes twinkled, and the way his nose actually twitched.
He is a rat. A nasty, vicious, scheming rat…
Yeah, and so are you, the little voice in his head reminded him. Because you want this to happen as much as they do.
“You filming this, Ratski?”
“Nah, mate.”
“Good, I want you to wipe what you just recorded, then we’re gonna do this thing properly. Stevie, put this over your head.”
Mark chucked him a pair of tights and Stevie caught them, staring stupidly down at them.
“Over your head, fucktard,” Mark kindly repeated.
“What about me?” Ratski piped up.
“What about you? You’re the cameraman.”
Stevie looked from the tights in his hand, to Crystal’s arse, back to the tights.
“Stevie’s just a kid,” whined Ratski. “I reckon he should film it and you should use me for the action shots.”
Mark looked at him thoughtfully, still holding down Crystal’s head like she was nothing more than an over-excited, squirming puppy. Eventually, he shook his head. “Nah, sorry mate, this is a family thing. What do ya say, lad? Do ya finally wanna step up and be a man?
Yes. More than anything…
No. What am I thinking… Not like this...
But no sound escaped his lips and Mark’s expression changed from jovial to scowling in a heartbeat. “I said put the fucking tights over your head, fuckwit.”
He leaned down and picked up a pair for himself, and in doing so, his grip must have slackened on the back of Crystal’s head, for she squirmed out from under his grip and crashed onto her side on the floor, foiled by her own knickers that hugged her knees.
She let out an almighty howl, and Mark was on her immediately, pressing his hand to her mouth, all attempts to pull the tights over his face temporarily abandoned. He flipped her onto her back and straddled her chest, her short-skirt riding up to her waist with her bucking and thrashing. She screamed into his hand, her face red and her cheeks puffing.
“Ratski, for fuck’s sake man, put the TV on.”
Ratski sprang into action, lunging for the remote control which was on the arm of the sofa where Mark had been so innocently sitting a few seconds before. The sound of the TV filled the room – a car chase and people shouting – but Stevie barely noticed.
Stevie gulped – he could see everything. Her legs kicked and she arched her back, trying to shake Mark off her. Her frantic air-peddling gave him a bird’s eye view of her snatch. Yes, he had fingered a girl a few months back, but unfortunately, it hadn’t led to sex. And it wasn’t like he had actually seen anything with his hand rammed down the front of the girl’s jeans like that.
Now he was getting a view of the like he had only ever seen before on his laptop. Guilt twisted in his heart, but he couldn’t stop staring. Her pussy was a revelation to him. It had more hair than he was used to seeing for a start. The triangle was a lot broader, the hair darker and courser. The pink, fleshy folds of her labia parted under his hungry gaze, exposing all the secrets of her womanhood.
“Don’t just stand there gawping, get the fucking tape out the drawer.”
In a daze, Stevie realised that his brother was talking to him and he wrenched his gaze away from the spectacle. Robotically, he made his way over to the tatty sideboard shoved up against the wall. He yanked open the top drawer, rummaging through the debris of non-functioning ballpoint-pens, unpaid bills, rolls of sticky tape and dried up glue-sticks, until his fingers curled around a roll of black electrical tape.
On numb legs, he approached his brother sitting atop the squirming girl.
Mark rolled his eyes and spoke through gritted teeth. “I’m going to lose my temper with you in a second, you dumb cunt. Why can’t you use your fucking brain? Rip me off a piece for her mouth, for fuck’s sake.”
“Why don’t I help?” Ratski said from close behind Stevie.
“Fuck off,” Mark said. “You want me to hurt you, or something?”
Ratski fell silent for a moment. Apparently, he didn’t. “Fine. Just tell me when you want me to start filming.”
Mark ignored him and impatiently held out his hand for the strip of tape that Stevie was trying to chew off. It hurt his teeth, but he didn’t dare go into the kitchen for a pair of scissors. He managed it, ignoring the throbbing pain in his eyeteeth, and passed it to Mark who snatched it out of his hand.
Mark unceremoniously slapped the tape over her mouth. Snot bubbled in the girl’s nose, and Stevie tried not to show his panic at the thought of her drowning on her own snot or dying of asphyxiation.
Surely Mark wasn’t actually going to hurt her? Like, properly hurt her? He was just going to teach her a lesson. No one fucked with Mark Jones, and Crystal was about to learn that the hard way.
Even so, he felt as uneasy as fuck.
Relax, he’ll stop in a minute. This is just pretend…
Stevie flinched when Mark slapped the girl across the face, and Ratski giggled.
“Shut up, bitch, we don’t want my little brother’s girlfriend next door hearing this, do we?” He let out a harsh sounding laugh. “Or maybe we do, we could all have a whole load of fun, together.”
Stevie’s blood ran cold. The air in the room felt charged, it crackled with energy and testosterone and made his skin crawl. In that moment, he knew with utter certainty that things were spiralling out of control.
No, they’re not. Everything’s fine and this is just a game.
“Stevie,” his brother barked. “Go into the kitchen and get the breadknife and the potato knife.”
Stevie blinked.
“I said now.”
Stevie lurched away, almost tripping over his own feet.
Out in the kitchen, he could still hear Crystal’s muffled protests as he fumbled around in the drawer for the knives. But she was a lot quieter now; there was no way next door would be able to hear the pitiful mewling noises she was making. Suddenly, his hands fell still.
What am I doing? What am I even thinking? Just leave. Leave right now. Go out the back door and call the police.
But Stevie didn’t and he remained frozen on the spot. This was just a game, after all and he was being a cry-baby. Crystal was just going to get a little scare, a little humiliated. She deserved it.
He went back into the living-room, the knives in his hand.
CHAPTER THREE
“Did you hear that?”
“Huh? What?”
Julie bit down the stir of irritation – at the relatively young age of thirty-four, Grant undoubtedly had work-related hearing loss – not that he would ever admit to it. All those years of being around heavy machinery on building-sites had taken its toll on his eardrums.
Julie put down her knife and fork, swallowed her mouthful of casserole, and strained her ears. The banging, shouting and sound of screeching brakes was unmistakably coming from next door’s TV.
She frowned. Before that, she was sure she had heard a woman screaming.
No. It’s just some inane action movie.
But even so…
“You alright? You’ve gone a bit pale. I’ll shut the kitchen-door and put some music on. We’ll drown ‘em out.”
Grant smiled warmly at her, his brown eyes crinkling up at the corners in the way that she so loved.
But she couldn’t quite bring herself to smile back. She took a sip of her red wine and watched him get up from the kitchen table and pull the door to. He fiddled with the buttons on the ancient CD player that had followed her most of her adult life, and the subdued strains of Radiohead filled the kitchen, effectively silencing the manic car chase on next door’s
TV.
He sat back down opposite her, but didn’t touch his food, instead taking a big gulp of wine and thoughtfully regarding her over the rim.
“It’s just their TV, sweetheart,” he said gently.
“I know, it’s just…”
She let her words trail off and stared glumly down at the remains of her dinner. She felt strange, a little off-kilter, and she had no idea why.
Except you do know why, don’t you?
She pushed down the bad memories that were always there, just under the surface of her mind.
No. she would not go there.
“It’s just what?” her fiancée asked.
“Screaming. I’m sure I heard a woman screaming,” she said in a rush.
Grant laughed but she didn’t join in. For the second time in as many minutes, she was irritated at him.
“I’m serious. I’m sure that’s what I heard before the film came on.”
“Sweetheart, it’s just a film.”
He had stopped laughing now, and was looking at her with a strange expression on his face, like she was crazy or something.
“I know what I heard,” she snapped, scraping back the wooden chair and getting to her feet.
“Where are you going?” he called to her departing back, but she ignored him.
She marched through the kitchen door and into the adjoining living-room, straight over to the window. Ever so gently, she lifted up a wooden slat of the blind and peered at the house next door.
What she could see of it, anyway. From this angle, all she could really see was the Jones’ weed-infested, concreted front ‘garden’ with the ancient white van parked on it.
From her position by the window, the sound of the TV was even louder. Except now the sounds had changed. Her blood turned to ice in her veins when she realised what the grunting and moaning and screaming was.
Porn.
Her heart slammed against her ribcage, all the moisture sucked from her mouth.
“Jesus,” she said under her breath, her face heating up.
Grant laughed, but he sounded nervous. “Yeah, now I can hear a woman screaming, too.”
Julie ignored him, staring vacantly out at the busy road beyond the window. It was dark now, and the rain magnified the roar of the traffic. Each passing car sent great sheets of water spraying upwards, soaking the pavement beyond their front gate.
“What if we were the only ones that heard?” she said softly. “That makes it our duty to call the police.”
“You heard a porn movie.”
She spun round to face him. “Our house is the only one attached to next door. The house next door to them is for sale and currently empty. The guy next to us is like, eighty, and as deaf as a post. Not that he would’ve heard anything anyway, seeing as there is a passageway between us.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you,” he said slowly. “You heard a porn movie, sweetheart.”
“What if I didn’t? What if I did hear a woman screaming for help and they just put on the TV to drown her out?”
“Baby, that’s crazy talk.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Besides, if we call the police, then they will know it was us.”
“So?” she said, turning her back on him once more and staring out of the window.
Behind her, Grant let out a heavy sigh. “Come on, sweetheart, you need to relax. They are complete shit next door – you know it and I know it. And you know what people are like on this street. If you go to the police that makes you a grass, or a rat. And you know what happens to ratters round here. We’ll have broken windows, slashed tyres, shit through the letter-box. You bloody name it, our lives will be miserable. And all for what? Because you heard a porn movie.”
But she wasn’t really listening. Instead, she stated dismally out at the passing traffic and the other side of the street. The opposite side of the street was identical to theirs, just an endless row of red-bricked houses joined together in twos, stretching out in both directions as far as the eye could see.
Hell. I’m in hell.
A bad feeling churned in her guts as her thoughts strayed to the girl next door.
God, what was her name. Chantelle? Chardonay?
Crystal. Yes, that was it.
She didn’t see her that often, the younger woman didn’t seem to leave the house much, and Julie worked such long, erratic hours that their paths very rarely crossed. Julie racked her brains, trying to remember back to when she had last seen her. She thought it might have been last weekend, when they had met on the way to the corner shop. Julie remembered smiling and saying hello, and Crystal had blanked her like she had been invisible.
Maybe Crystal doesn’t even live there anymore…
“Sweetheart? Did you just listen to a word I said?”
Grant’s gentle touch on her shoulders made her jump.
“Don’t do that,” she gasped. “You scared me half to death.”
“I’m sorry. Why don’t we just turn the music up and go and finish our dinner? Let’s just try and forget about the scumbags next door and try and enjoy our night.”
He held onto her hand and she felt her heartbeat slow.
“How did we end up here?” she said to herself more than to him. “We both have okay jobs, we don’t belong here.”
He shrugged helplessly. “I guess it just happens like that sometimes. Hey, don’t look so glum, it’s not forever, we’ll be away from here before you know it.”
“Yeah,” she said, managing a thin smile.
A sudden movement out of the corner of her eye made her head snap back round to the window. Two figures had emerged out of the rainy night, letting themselves in through the Jones’ rickety iron gate. One was tall and broad-shouldered, the other short and wide. Both wore dark-hoodies that looked black in the night, their faces obscured by rain and shadows.
The tall one stepped onto the Jones’ property, then stopped dead, his head swivelling in her direction. He pulled back his hood and flashed her a grin. For a nasty moment, their eyes locked and inside she shrivelled. She recognised him, although for the life of her she didn’t know his name. Him and his fat friend were often in and out of that house.
“Stop spying,” Grant said, snapping the blinds shut, effectively severing their eye-contact.
Julie found she was shaking and her forearms were peppered with goose-bumps. She opened her mouth to snap at him that yes, she was coming, when the sound of the porn changed. It was no longer a woman moaning in pleasure, but a woman screaming in pain.
She looked at Grant and he winced.
“Ignore it,” he said, reaching for her hand.
She allowed herself to be led back into the kitchen, and on the way past the stereo, Grant cranked up the music.
“Let’s just enjoy dinner,” he said. “Forget about the scum next door.”
She let out a shaky sigh and ran a trembling hand through her shoulder-length, blonde hair. He was right.
She made a conscious decision to let it go.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Turn that fucking shit off,” Mark had barked at Ratski when some naff, car chase film from the eighties had blared out from the TV. “Plug the laptop in and put some fucking porn on.”
Stevie was as embarrassed as he was aroused. He preferred to watch porn alone in his bedroom, but Mark quite often put it on the TV, insisting that he had to sit down and watch it with him. Stevie was aware that it was pretty fucked up, considering other families probably watched shows together like The X Factor or Dr Who, or something.
He and Mark had often sat there on the sofa, tinnies in hand and smoking pot, watching porn and guffawing at the shit acting. But this was the first time they’d ever watched it with Crystal around. And it was definitely the first time they’d ever watched porn with a half-naked, hog-tied woman present.
Mark had told Stevie to just put the knives down on top of the sideboard, which he had done, and then he had awkwardly stood there, watching as Mark tied up
Crystal with the electrical tape.
“Oh, man, watcha gonna do to her?” Ratski asked.
“You’ll see,” Mark said as he secured the final piece of tape around her ankles from his crouching position on the floor.
Ratski was sitting on the armchair again, his little brown eyes gleaming. As much as Stevie was aroused by the sight of Crystal, he was sickened by his presence. He wished that Ratski wasn’t here. And his brother too, so that he could have the helpless Crystal all too himself…
He shook his head to dislodge the sudden, lurid images that slammed into his brain, chiding himself for getting carried away. This was just a game, and Mark was going to let Crystal go any minute now…
Crystal was sitting awkwardly on the floor, her ankles lashed together with the black tape. Her hands were also tied behind her back with the tape, and her skirt was still rucked up around her waist. Stevie couldn’t see anything anymore because her thighs were clamped firmly together. He didn’t know if he was relieved or sad about that. Still, it was nice that his erection had dialled down a notch so it no longer felt like he was about to explode in his pants. She made funny, whimpering sounds into the tape that covered her mouth, like a wounded animal.
Steadfastly, Stevie refused to meet her imploring gaze.
You brought this on yourself, Crystal…
Yet as much as he told himself that, he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it.
Mark got to his feet and stared down at the terrified girl, inspecting his handiwork. He picked up a knife and Stevie’s heart stopped beating for a second before resuming at twice normal speed. Mark slowly turned the small knife over in his hand, before gently running the pad of his thumb down the edge. Stevie expected him to draw blood, but there was no trace of red on the blade. All was quiet in the room apart from the moaning coming from the TV – two blonde girls with fake tits were fingering each other, legs splayed for the camera.
“This is crap, Ratski, mind if I change it?” Mark asked.
Ratski shrugged. “If you want. Ain’t nothing wrong with this, though.”
Stevie and Ratski watched him as he crouched down in front of the PC and changed to a different website.