Red Grow the Roses

by Janine Ashbless

  For a while she just looked at the box, lying there, but it made no more noises. She wondered if there was some small animal alive inside the box, and she felt worried that she might have hurt it by dropping it. What could it be, she asked herself, that the witch prized it so much? Carefully, though she knew she ought not to, Shanella opened the lid.

  Inside, nested on rose petals as red as blood, was a blackened human heart. And as she watched, it clenched itself in a single beat, spitting a little gore.

  Now Shanella was afraid, because she guessed that this must be the witch’s own heart, kept out of her breast for safekeeping. She’d heard stories of such things. It meant that Estelle was a very wicked witch indeed. Quickly she closed the lid and picked up the box – but it was already too late, because there was a black splash of witch’s blood on her white petticoat now that she could not hide.

  Trembling, Shanella rode in the elevator all the way up to the Green Room, which was high in one of the towers. It was a very beautiful room because the witch had filled it with trees and plants and flowers, all growing in big tubs, and there were birds and butterflies flying loose so that it was like a garden indoors. When the yellow lamps were lit it looked like a forest by daylight, and when the lamps were dark it looked like a forest at night, but today the lamps had green shades and the whole room looked as mysterious as the realm of Old Dame Circe, who was the first witch of all and lived under the sea. Among the leaves crept the six Siamese cats, watching. Shanella stole in quietly, hoping not to be noticed as she put the box by the witch’s favourite chair – but it was too late. Estelle was already there and waiting, her long nails clicking on the armrest.

  ‘What is your name, girl?’ she asked.

  ‘Shanella, Madame.’

  ‘Why is it that you are all in your petticoat and with no shoes, Shanella?’

  ‘I was in such a hurry, Madame, to bring you your box, that I had no time to dress.’

  ‘And what is that stain on your skirt, Shanella?’

  ‘I spilt some ink upon it, Madame,’ she lied, because she was afraid to confess that she had looked inside the box.

  Estelle nodded to herself. ‘You had better go downstairs, Shanella. There are two men there that I have summoned to attend on me. Bring them up, and don’t delay. Trip-trap!’

  Back down the stairs Shanella ran, trip-trap, all in her petticoat and her bare feet, right to the lobby of the witch’s house. There were two men waiting there, just as she’d been told. One was as golden as the sun, with yellow hair and brown eyes, and he was pacing up and down, looking nervous. The other was as pale and silvery as the moon, with grey hair and blue eyes, and he sat with his head in his hands as if in despair.

  ‘You must come with me, to see Madame Estelle,’ Shanella told them. The two men stared at her all in her petticoat and her bare feet, but they followed her into the elevator. They appeared so miserable that Shanella felt sorry for them.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ she asked, as they ascended.

  ‘We are,’ the man of gold told her.

  ‘We are afraid that Estelle will hold us prisoners here,’ added the man of silver, ‘and never let us go.’

  Shanella nodded sadly. ‘You should be afraid,’ she confided, ‘because Madame is a very wicked witch, who keeps her heart in a box of black lacquer. I’ve seen it,’ she added, as the two men looked at each other. ‘But I will try and help you if I can.’

  ‘What can you do?’ wondered the man of silver. ‘You’re only a servant girl.’

  ‘Hush,’ said the man of gold, who was even more handsome than his friend. ‘Don’t say that. We may be grateful for her help yet.’

  Shanella led them both into the Green Room where they found the witch sat waiting for them, a knife in her hand and a bowl of salt on the table next to it. The black lacquer box was in her lap and, as they approached, Shanella heard the lid snap back into place, and she saw the witch lick her lips.

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ she said to the two men.

  ‘Estelle …’

  ‘I never give instructions twice.’

  So they obeyed, and Shanella didn’t know where to look. The green light made their bodies look all sea-shaded and glimmery, but made the witch look as dark and deadly as an eel lurking among the weeds.

  ‘Now take up these chains and bind their hands,’ said the witch, and Shanella obeyed, binding the wrists of the two men behind their backs. She did not do it very tight, though, because she felt sorry for them. It made her feel strange, holding their arms and seeing their bodies, without a stitch of clothing on but still so handsome. She was too busy concentrating on her task to listen to what the men were saying to the witch, and their protestations were of no use anyway because Estelle had no mercy. She dipped the knife in the salt and took the man of silver by the hair, pulling his head back and bending him right over until he was almost falling.

  ‘Make no sound, or it will be the worse for you,’ she warned him.

  Then she began to cut his chest, drawing her wicked sigil there with the tip of the knife. The man of silver made no cry, not then, though his face twisted with the pain. Not until she had finished, and the blood was running in little lines all the way down to his thighs, and she took up a handful of salt and rubbed it into his wounds: then he made a small noise of pain.

  ‘What was that noise?’ the witch asked.

  ‘Madame,’ said Shanella, wringing her hands, ‘it was only the mew of a cat.’

  ‘Is that so? Then you keep silent too.’

  The witch turned to the man of gold next, warning him also: ‘Make no sound, or it will be the worse for you.’ So he was silent while she cut his chest, making the same signature there on his breast as on the other man’s, only this time his chest was all rough with golden hair and the blood did not run so freely down to his belly and thighs. But when she rubbed salt into the open wounds, he too could not help crying out a little.

  ‘What was that noise?’ the witch asked.

  ‘Truly, Madame,’ said Shanella again, ‘it was only the mew of a cat.’

  ‘Is that so? Then sit yourself down, girl, and you keep silent too.’

  Shanella obeyed, as she had to. She saw that by this time the pain was making the pintles of those two men swell up stiff and proud, all sticking out and getting in the way. Their eyes were strange and dark too, from the blood. The witch laid hands on both men and rubbed their pricks cruelly, making them writhe with shame. They could not stop her because their hands were tied at their backs, you see. She licked the blood on their chests and kissed their lips and though they tried to pull away from her she had them both firmly in hand and they were as helpless as kittens. Then she pulled them both so they were facing each other and their two pintles bumped up together, fip-fap, one springing from a nest of gold and one from a nest of silver, but both big and fine and eager.

  ‘No,’ said the man of silver, whose name – Shanella had gathered – was Wakefield. He tried to pull away, but his prick was still pointing at the other man.

  ‘A prize to the rider,’ laughed the witch, rubbing their lengths together between her palms. ‘Which one of you will it be?’

  The man of gold, whose name was Ben, did not try to pull away. His mouth had gone a very strange shape, like he was trying to hold himself together, and he was breathing hard as he pushed his hips forward, rubbing up against Estelle’s hands and Wakefield’s cockalorum. He kept staring at the blood on Wakefield’s chest, and Wakefield kept staring at the blood on his, and both men were panting and looked so angry and strange that Shanella didn’t know what to think.

  Even when the witch stepped away altogether and left them to it, the two men did not break apart. Ben pressed in closer to his friend, nuzzling his lips to the man’s cheek and jaw like he was smelling something good to eat. Two hard pricks fenced against each other like parrying swords, and two velvety ball-sacs brushed and bumped together.

  Shanella thought she had never seen anything so disconc
erting as those two pricks a-rubbing each other. It made her feel all sweet and sticky, like honey running out of a comb.

  ‘Come on,’ said Ben, with a voice thick as batter.

  ‘I am not her toy –’ Wakefield gasped.

  With a wrench Ben got his hands free of the chains. He lost the skin off them doing it, but he got both hands out and seized Wakefield’s face between them, and to Shanella it looked for a moment like they were kissing, before she saw the flash of teeth and the blood on both pairs of lips. In the green light the blood looked black.

  Shanella was glad, though she was shocked. She had wanted the man of gold to kiss her, not the man of silver, so she was glad he was only biting. She was glad when he wrenched the man of silver over on to the rug, pinned him flat on his back by the jaw, and bent his head to the slashes on his chest to suck and gnaw at the wounds there. When the salt made him spit he fastened on the man of silver’s dark nipples instead, piercing them both in turn. Wakefield howled and arched his back and writhed from side to side, tearing his own hands from his bonds. Their stiff pricks bobbed and stabbed at each other. As Wakefield got his hands on Ben’s head it looked for a moment as if he would break his neck. The man of silver’s throat corded with strain and he threw back his head, his lips peeling back from teeth like daggers.

  Then Shanella saw which way he was pushing: down. Down toward his own belly, which Ben bit avidly. Down toward his crotch and his full prick, all shiny with its being swollen, and bursting with the need to be sheathed – even if that sheathing meant being bitten. Perhaps especially if it meant being bitten. Both men spasmed as Ben’s teeth fastened in the flesh offered to them, and Wakefield cried out. There was a moment of stillness. Then the man of gold swung himself in a circle, right over the man of silver, straddling his head, prick to mouth, and with a groan sank down into the waiting throat and jaws below.

  Gold and silver, they made a perfect match, two halves of a circle without beginning or end. Gold and silver together, they kicked and humped and wriggled on the rug; two pricks in two mouths and both men ravenous, both almost choking each other, rolling from side to side and heaving their bodies one upon the other. The pounding of their hips became frantic, but their groans could only be heard coming muffled from their chests, as each man’s throat was crammed with meat. Hips pumped. Muscles locked like stone. Wakefield’s hands clawed muscle – drawing more blood – and then, as Ben stretched out quivering legs and thrust to his triumphant conclusion, those hands suddenly dropped limply.

  Both men fell away from each other after that, revealing bloodstained lips and turgid, bloody cocks as they rolled on to their backs.

  That was when the witch stepped in, taking the man of silver by the hair and pulling him across the floor until the two men were hip to hip. Wakefield hissed protest once, baring his teeth with instinctive fury, but Estelle slapped his face and he swallowed his indignation. The witch knelt over them both. She took their crimsoned pricks in her hands and bent to suck from each in turn, swallowing hard. Her dark head bobbed from pintle to pintle, and neither man put up any fight when she bit them, or offered to bite her in return. They simply submitted, bucking and arching their backs and groaning, as she fed deep and long. Two pricks emerged and disappeared between her dark lips, shiny with spit and blood. She took them both up to a climax – first Ben, then Wakefield – and each time pulled her head away so that their seed spurted out in great gushes over their bellies, white as salt.

  Shanella could only stare in terror; at their red flesh kneaded in the witch’s grasp, at the glaze pooling on their beautiful bodies. She clutched herself between the legs for comfort.

  The witch did not stop. The witch did it again, hounding them to crisis after crisis. She kept drinking until they were gasping in fear and torment as much as in pleasure. Only when she was replete did she let them go. Their eyes were black and blank with hunger.

  ‘My poor boys,’ said she. ‘You must be parched.’

  Swaggering to her feet, she lunged to snatch up Shanella, who thought she had never seen anything so awful as those empty witch eyes or those full, black-stained lips. Her heart was racing so hard, trip-trap, that she thought she would faint.

  ‘Here,’ the witch said; ‘take this one.’ So saying, she tossed Shanella into the outstretched arms of the two men. Shanella shrieked once.

  ‘Those noisy cats,’ said the witch, shaking her head.

  And Shanella lived happily ever after to the end of her days.

  10: One is one, and all alone

  So I quit nursing altogether, after he turned up. There are some things no one should have to put up with – and I’ve put up with a fair fistful in my time, let me tell you. Drunks and loonies every night when I was in the public sector: knife-fights in Casualty and people who’d spit on you even while you were trying to staunch their bleeding wounds; hysterical mobs of girlfriends and dirty old bastards who’d stick their hands up your skirt. Not to mention halfwit young doctors who knew less than I did, and consultants who treated us like dog-dirt.

  I thought that things would be easier when I made the jump into private practice. I thought it would all be ingrowing toenails and breast enhancements – and to be fair it was easier, and there was plenty of that. We did a lot of cosmetic surgery at Nine Elms Hospital, a lot of hip replacements, a lot of scans and biopsies – you know: the sort of problem that isn’t immediately life-threatening but you wish could be done faster than on the Health Service, and in more comfort. If you were standing outside the place now, in its wooded garden, you’d think you were looking at a country house hotel. Inside, it looks more a luxury spa, all plush carpets and fresh flowers and guests – we aren’t allowed to call them ‘patients’ – in complimentary white dressing-gowns. I’m not saying the guests were all sweetness and light, that they always treated us with gratitude. But no one ever tried to punch me, and they were at least sober. And young. You know, relatively. In public healthcare so much of the work is in Geriatrics, and that’s a soul-crushing business. At least the patients at Nine Elms stand a good chance of getting better after admission.

  It was a good job, I had. But I’m not going back.

  The night he turned up I’d finished my 2 a.m. round of the rooms and was down in the lobby, killing time with Stefan, the night orderly. Stefan came from Poland originally and has a big bony face and big bony hands and gappy teeth. It sounds ugly but somehow it worked and he had a certain way about him, the horny beggar. He liked to drag me into a supply cupboard and shaft me from behind, up against the rattling shelves of drip tubes and dressings. He liked to push my boobs together and stick his face down into the cleft between, snuffling and slurping. He was a bit of fun, was Stefan. We’d go at it most nights when our shifts coincided.

  So I was sitting on his lap, behind the desk with its ranks of CCTV monitors, with the skirt of my nurse’s uniform rucked up to my hips to give his tickling fingers access to my undercarriage, and his big Polish kaszanka sticking up between us, hot in my hand. We weren’t doing anything heavy yet, just a bit of mutual teasing, and I was just popping his plum out to say Hello when a taxi pulled up outside the front door. I twisted to see it in the monitor; it was a black cab from the City. I was surprised to see one out this far, and at this time of night. The rear door opened and a figure got out, hunched and bulky, blurred by the camera into a shadowy mass.

  Stefan eased me off his lap as he frowned at the screen and thumbed the intercom. ‘Attention. This is private property. No public access permitted at this time of night.’

  The figure didn’t pause. The security doors, all modern smoked glass under that Georgian portico, were electronically locked, of course, because any hospital can be targeted by thieves looking for drugs. I could see the red ‘locked’ light glowing over the lintel. That didn’t stop them sweeping aside with a faint pneumatic hiss, and the man striding straight into the lobby.

  The electrics must have been playing up.

  ‘Hell,’ said Ste
fan, struggling to get his cock back into his trousers before leaping into action.

  ‘Sir,’ I said, jerking my skirt straight and hurrying out from behind the counter. I could see straightaway that he was carrying a limp figure in his arms, and there was the familiar hue of blood all over her torn clothes. ‘This is a private hospital; we don’t have a casualty department. You need to ring an ambulance.’

  ‘She needs a transfusion. Now.’ His voice was rasping and deep. I took in little of his appearance other than that he was dark-haired: my attention was all on the woman in his arms, who looked so pale and slack that I couldn’t be at all sure she was alive.

  ‘We haven’t got a casualty department,’ I repeated, louder and firmer. ‘We don’t have the facilities to deal with injuries. I’ll ring the proper emergency services for you, sir.’

  ‘Blood,’ he said. ‘O negative. Now. Page Dr Hogg.’

  My hand paused over the telephone. Dr Hogg was on our staff and he was actually on call tonight, if one of the guests required a doctor. I wondered how the man knew that, and looked at him sharply, wondering if it were someone I ought to recognise. But he was a stranger to me; dark-eyed and dishevelled. So dark-eyed, in fact, that I got the disconcerting impression that he had no sclera at all, just blackness behind those narrowed slits.

  ‘Keep calm, sir, please,’ said Stefan, finally stepping out from behind the shelter of the desk. ‘The nurse will ring emergency services for you; the ambulance will be here very soo–’

  ‘Call Dr Hogg. Now.’ His voice was extraordinary; I felt the force of it strike my breastbone. Something cold gripped my heart and squeezed – and that is no metaphor: the sensation was entirely physical and utterly terrifying. And then it was gone and both Stefan and I were gasping and clutching at our chests.