by Morton Bain
‘Sure, sure,’ Joey replies. ‘Come on, I’ll show you where it is.’
‘How much did you pay them?’ I ask Tony when the girls have followed Joey upstairs.
‘Two hundred.’
‘Worth every penny.’ Reaching for my wallet, I say, ‘I’m going to give them another hundred as a tip.’
Later, as I’m driving back home it occurs to me that killing a prostitute might be a good place to start. Not one as good as the two I’ve just shared. I could pick up a rough old street walker and start there. I’m reminded that lots of serial killers seem to target prossies. A lot of them seem to have an issue with women, which certainly isn’t the case with me. I’ve got a problem with humans of either sex. No, I just think stabbing some old junkie slag that is known to virtually no-one might be a low stress way of getting my first blood. I could take her out to the countryside and take it nice and slow. Maybe even fuck her first if she isn’t too minging. Fuck it, I think. I’ll stick to the original plan.
Joey rings me a week later. He’s taken a first delivery of five future whores, and wants to know if I want to help him break them in.
‘What do you mean break them in?’ I ask.
‘Well, they still think they’re in England to work in hotels. And I guess some of them will work in hotels.’ He laughs. ‘But you know what I mean. We need to slap them round a bit and generally lower their expectations. This bunch are staying with me until I can move them on. The convent will be able to help out for the next batch.’
‘I should bring my wife along. She needs a bit of that treatment.’
‘So are you coming?’
‘Okay. When?’
Two mornings later I’m sitting with Joey in his living room. I have a whiskey, which I am more gulping that sipping. ‘You ever done anything like this before?’ I ask.
‘Once. In Brooklyn. This was before I was made. I was young.’
‘So we just go in and start getting fresh with them? What do we do when they tell us to get lost?’
‘Give ‘em a slap. They have to know who’s boss.’
‘And you want me to fuck a couple of them?’
‘No. Just one. And you can take your girl upstairs. I do the same with one. Those two will tell the others, and they’ll start getting the message.’
Joey takes my silence as agreement, and says, ‘Okay, let go to it.’ He leads me to a heavy door in the hallway that has numerous bolts on it. Tapping the door he comments, ‘An elephant couldn’t knock this down.’ Unsliding bolts he goes on, ‘We’d better be careful now. Just in case they’ve heard us and try to barge out.’ He opens the door. ‘Get that switch over there.' As I flick the switch a bulb on a short length of flex illuminates, revealing wooden steps leading down to the basement. I follow Joey down, smelling damp brick. Turning left at the bottom I see two mattresses, on which five young women are sprawled. They lift their heads, looking at us through squinted eyes; they’ve obviously been dozing. I quickly take in suitcases stacked to one side of the space, a few half-empty bottles of mineral water and a bucket.
‘Joey, you’ve got all the makings of a fine hotelier.’
Joey grunts. ‘Which one do you want?’
There’s a blonde with really long legs to the right. ‘Her,’ I say, pointing.
‘Good choice. Take her up to the bedroom next to mine.’
I walk over and pull the girl up by the hand. She looks confused, but doesn’t struggle. ‘You speak English?’ I ask as I lead her towards the stairs. She shakes her head then nods. Whatever that means. ‘Come on, let’s get you out of this vampire lair.’ She’s in front of me as we take the stairs, and I give her butt an encouraging push. ‘This way,’ I say when we’re out of the basement. ‘Up to the beddy bed.’
As we climb yet more stairs I find myself considering the similarity between vampires as they are typically portrayed in popular culture and real life psychopaths. I know quite a bit about psychopathy – for a layman – having decided that the maxim ‘Know Thyself’ is of utmost importance. A psychologist by the name of Hare devised a ‘Psychopathy Checklist’, which has become the most commonly used diagnostic tool when assessing this condition. Traits and behavioural characteristics that feature in the checklist include glibness, superficial charm, living a parasitic lifestyle, grandiosity, and lack of remorse, all of which would seem to apply to your common or garden variety vampire. Has the mythological figure of the fanged blood-sucker evolved to make sense of a class of individual that has been wreaking havoc from time immemorial, a class of individual that includes me? I think I might give this woman I’m following upstairs a bite on the bum in a second. See how it feels.
I push my girl into the designated room. She’s still looking at my blankly, like she doesn’t know what’s coming next. How stupid can someone be? Does she think I’ve brought her up here to read her a story?
‘Take off your clothes,’ I say.
More blank staring.
‘Clothes – off.’ I try to mime the act of disrobing. ‘It’s okay – I’m a priest. We’ll say a little prayer after we’re finished.’
Still nothing. I start to undress. There seems to be some comprehension dawning, as the girl puts a hand to her mouth in alarm. ‘That’s it. Take your clothes off.’
When I’m down to my boxers I decide to give my companion a hand. I place my hands on her waist, then start to lift her top up. She pulls away from me, shouting something in her language. I can see now that this isn’t going to be a walkover. A scream from the room Joey is in confirms that he’s having a similar experience. Deciding it’s better to go in hard rather than pussy-foot round for half an hour I grab the girl by her wrist, twist her arm behind her back, and force her over to the bed. ‘Now, let’s get one thing straight . . .’ I say.
I suppose you could say I raped her. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it that much. I might be sick in the head, but I don’t think I’m a natural born rapist. Sex is always enjoyable I guess – that nice wet and warm feeling on your cock – but the fact that I was having to use my body weight to constrain the girl, along with the fact that I had to hold her wrists for fear of being scratched in the eyes, combined to distract. I certainly didn’t have any desire to go at it for ages, and squirted pretty quickly. After finishing I shout out to Joey to see what he wants me to do with her. ‘Hold her in the room until I come in!’ he shouts back.
Joey finishes up about ten minutes later, and we take the girls back downstairs. They kick and fight when they see we’re returning them to the basement, but we manage to push them down the stairs and lock the door behind them.
‘What did you think?’ Joey asks me.
‘Different. If you’re taking twenty or thirty at a time you’ll have a job breaking them all in.’
‘Like I said, you give a couple the treatment, and they tell the rest. ‘
‘You won’t be able to do this when your girls are staying at the convent,’ I say.
‘I know. That’ll just be a place for them to stay at the beginning. We’ll move some of them straight on to customers and some will probably spend a bit of time here after they’ve had their two weeks with the nuns.’
I hang around with Joey for a while, talking crap. At one point we hear a commotion from the basement. To hear it from the living room the girls really have to be making a racket.
‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
‘I think a couple of those girls hate each other. I’ve seen scratches on one’s face, and bruises on the neck of the other. They tried to go for each other when I was taking their bucket out once. Must be the worst thing imaginable, being held hostage, and with someone who hates your guts.’ Joey snorts a laugh.
‘When you going to move the girls on?’
‘Two are leaving in a couple of days. I’m going to make sure one of the fighters goes.’
‘What’s to stop them just disappearing when their working from a flat? You can’t watch them 24/7.’
‘That won’t be my p
roblem. Once they’re sold, they’re sold. New owner’s responsibility. Apparently they don’t normally run away, though. Their boss will hold their passport, tell them he’s saving a bunch of money for them from their earnings, and that they can have it and go in three months or something. Of course, three months becomes six, which becomes twelve. By the time they’ve been doing it a while they’re used to it.’
On the way home I think about women as a commodity. How they can be so easily bought and sold, and then rented for a while to strangers in return for money. I wonder if at some point in the future, when society has well and truly gone to hell, you’ll be able to get a mortgage on a working girl. Buy-to-let babes. I think deep down women want to be possessed, and in a fucked-up way that’s what happens when they are trafficked and bought and sold. They might belong to cunts, but at least they belong to someone.
Thinking along these lines gets me onto the whole Internet dating thing. When I feel like something a bit more classy than a whorefuck I sometimes use a well known Internet site. Throughout the day I get emails telling me that so-and-so has ‘winked’ at me, or that such-and-such a person has sent me an email. Most are from women in their mid-thirties or early forties, second-time-arounders who, having fucked up one long-term relationship, are looking to start and then fuck another one up. It’s quite amazing how similar most profiles are. I would almost suggest women read a few of their sisters’ profiles in order to be able to distinguish themselves in some way. They all love travel. They all like fun nights out, but also enjoy cosy evenings in in front of the fire. Without exception, they’re keen for a bit of cock. Of course, what women write is less important than the photo they post, but here I would like to point out that displaying a photo that is ten years old is cheating, and likely if you meet me to result in an unfavourable outcome. I’ve just walked out of a bar on a couple of occasions when the reality did not meet my expectations.
I normally opt for the approach of not telling my dates that I’m married. I guess that goes without saying. To get around the fact I can rarely see them in the evening or stay over at their place I say that I’m a doctor who is currently working nights. Weekends are out because I’m generally looking after my son. Poor thing lives with his mother, I explain, and really cherishes quality time with me on Saturdays and Sundays. Of course, unless the woman is really stupid – which is sometimes the case – this arrangement tends to come with a built-in life-expectancy of about a month. After this time the excuses start to run dry and become shaky. It suits me in a way, because after a month I’m ready for some fresh blood.
So normally the woman will start to smell a rat, and that will precipitate our separation. I find if I start behaving a bit oddly this helps to encourage her withdrawal from the scene. If the woman isn’t becoming suspicious, and is happy to carry on seeing me, then I generally terminate things myself. Normally I just stop returning phone calls or replying to emails. They generally get the message. Other times I’ve feigned a change of sexual preference, or a sudden decision to migrate to some far-flung corner of the world.
There has only been one woman who has reacted badly to my decision to withdraw from the field of play. Sally was her name. She was desperate to get married, and within about five minutes of meeting me had, I think, decided that I would be the man to make an honest woman of her. To be fair, she wouldn’t have made a bad wife. Good in the sack, well-paid job, could scrub up quite well. But of course, I wasn’t interested in a wife, and when this became apparent to Sally she sort of flipped. It was as if she thought by dropping her pants we had entered into an unspoken and unwritten agreement to eventually tie the knot. It all culminated in her setting up a bogus profile on the site we both subscribed to, posting a photo of some knock-out babe and writing a witty personal summary. Then she sent me a warm message from this ‘member’. Of course, I took the bait, and after swapping several messages with ‘Samantha’, agreed to meet her in a pub. Well, it wasn’t Samantha waiting for me in the pub, but rather Sam, Sally’s brother. Sally had told him I’d been knocking her around, and he was consequently set on knocking me around. Which he did. I came away from the pub with a black eye and a chipped tooth.
Of course, this sort of behaviour wasn’t going to go unavenged. If this happened now I would probably murder Sally, but I was still warming up back then. Blood was shed, however. Sally had an elderly cat called Twinkles, which she doted on. Personally, I found Twinkles to be a smelly, hair-shedding nuisance, so it was with some pleasure that I decided to despatch her. I wanted it to be very clear that I was behind Twinkles’ demise, without it ever being provable. I knew that when the weather was fine the cat often spent mornings basking in the sunshine in Sally’s back garden, so one sunny day when I knew Sally would be at work I jumped a gate and put my plan into operation. Butterflies hovered over grass that was growing longer than a conscientious gardener should allow, and there, lying on a wooden deck was Twinkles, now minutes away from her final tail shake. The stupid moggie knew me well enough, so didn’t react as I approached it. It realised something was up as I lurched at it when I was near enough, but age had obviously slowed its reactions, because I grabbed the cat before it could flee.
My kill method was basic. I simply placed a plastic bag around the cat’s head, which I secured with a cable tie. I released the animal after doing this, and it staggered around the garden for a while, it’s vision totally obscured. I could see the bag expanding and deflating as the cat tried to draw breath. It took about three minutes before the cat died. It began to slow down during the last minute of its life, then just keeled over on the grass. I waited a couple of minutes before I approached the cat. Just to be doubly sure. As I waited I listened to the sound of the next-door neighbour crank up his lawnmower.
When I took the bag off there was cat vomit smeared over the animal’s head. Cat sick. Cat so sick it dead. The next step was the bit I was really looking forward to, though also the most dangerous stage of the operation. Luckily Sally’s front door is shrouded by a large hedge, so I wasn’t as exposed as I might have been as I stood in front of it with cat in one hand, hammer in the other, and several nails protruding from my lips. I placed the cat’s head against the door at chest level, and whacked a nail into the door through the cat’s right ear. The nail was in firmly enough to hold the cat, allowing me two hands to drive a nail into the door through the cat’s left ear. I stood back to survey my work. What can I say? It definitely didn’t look like an accident. Sally would get the message.
I took a few moments to wipe any part of the door I might have touched. I didn’t think prints would show up so easily on varnished wood, but I didn’t want to take any chances. As I drove away it occurred to me that it was quite apt that as a vicar I should have chosen this way to display the cat. I had nailed it to wood just as Our Lord was nailed to wood all those years ago.
Chapter Three
I’m driving to see an elderly parishioner who has just had an unfortunate medical diagnosis. Under normal circumstances I would dodge such a commitment – I find the elderly pretty tedious and a reminder of how I will one day be. Nevertheless, Mrs Parsons is wealthy and now an Alzheimer’s sufferer. Joey has suggested that I should be ripping off members of my congregation – he’s been doing it for years – and I think it’s a good idea. My salary as a vicar is pretty miserable, and I spend a lot of money on whores and blow. I don’t really have an idea how I should play it with Parsons – whether to distract her and try and swipe something from the house, or maybe sweet-talk her into putting me in her will. I’ll just have to see how it goes.
I have to drive through one of the rougher parts of Clapton to get to her house. I see the normal signs of deprivation – graffiti, abandoned cars, litter – but what really gets me is how many young women are out pushing prams. It makes me mad that the modest amounts of tax I pay are going to subsidise these good-for-nothing benefit junkies. Righteous anger is something I can never fully embrace given my non-existent moral code, but
I’m filled by the closest thing I can get to it. It makes me feel even more warmly towards whores than I normally do. At least hookers fucking work!
I’m reminded of an article I read recently which argued that psychopaths have an evolutionary advantage over normal people, and that’s why so many of us exist. The idea is that psychopaths, through their aggressive acquisition of goods and money, are able to attract plenty of mates, thereby ensuring the survival of their nasty genes. This makes sense to me. Nature doesn’t care about the birth of nice people – just people who can procreate. The shame with these benefit junkies is that the government is basically subsidising the expansion of an underclass, ensuring the survival of genes that I’m not sure we really want.
Mrs Parsons greets me cheerily after opening the door. What’s she so fucking happy about? I wonder. I wouldn’t be happy if I’d just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I wouldn’t even be answering the door. ‘Come through dear,’ she says. ‘I’ve just put the kettle on.’
I sit on a floral-patterned armchair, and await the arrival of tea and biscuits. I’m going to have to try and gauge the degree to which Mrs Parsons’ mental faculties have declined in order to see what – if any – conning activities I can attempt. I last spoke to her properly about a year ago. Her diagnosis was about two months after that conversation. I scan the room for signs of wealth. I can’t see any antiques or works of art that look like they might be valuable, but then I’m no expert. I know her late husband did something in property, and the size of her house is proof she has a few quid salted away.
‘Here we go, dear,’ Mrs Parsons announces, walking into the room with a tray that is shaking alarmingly. I thought it was Parksinson’s that gave you the shakes. Maybe she’s got a touch of that. It’s impossible to keep up with all the ailments that beset the elderly.
‘How is your wife?’ Mrs Parsons asks after we’re both holding a teacup. ‘Such a lovely woman. Always has a smile on her face.’