by James Crow
She rubbed his leg. ‘Love you too, Bobby.’
The idea came to take Carol to Moxley market. She liked the charity stall for old clothes and they’d have fish and chips from the little van that weren’t too bad if you put plenty of ketchup on. They’d people-watch while they ate on one of the benches, and they’d give them names like Bulldog for the fat lady in the wheelchair who rides around with a Yorkie on her lap, or they’d say “penguin alert” whenever a nun was spotted. Then there’s the floozies, that’s what Carol called those young girls with denim shorts so short their bum cheeks had no shame. Girls no older than Beth and some a lot younger who obviously had no parents to keep them straight. At least Beth didn’t dress like that, although she’d look good in denim shorts, wouldn’t she? Wondering how he might wangle that sweet young ass into wearing cut-off jeans so short they looked like a belt with a gusset, Bobby felt his neck flushing and his balls tingling. He’d just found the next dance project. He imagined Carol and Beth both wearing them, added bikini tops and saw himself choreographing their moves, smooth bum cheeks longing to be touched, stroked, kissed, tasted. Long white legs are all the rage, don’t you know? Persuade Beth to dye her hair red and you’ll hit the jackpot. She’s all yours, Bobby, all there for the –
‘We shouldn’t really, Bobby.’
‘What?’
‘Screw.’
He’d been nudging Carol in the back. She reached behind and guided him between her legs, shifted herself onto him and he responded by feeling for her breasts and rocking against her. ‘Nice and gentle, Bobby. We don’t want Beth to hear, and I’m still a bit sore from this morning. Take it slow.’
Bob took it slow.
9
Sleep isn’t coming. Too much noise. Beth’s hearing is super sharp. According to Mum she could hear a pin drop in the next room. Beth once tried throwing a pin from the hall into the living room but did not hear it land. If they were in a restaurant, Dad would ask her to concentrate on tables far away, listen in on conversations then fill him and Mum in later. Beth always heard the conversations but never relayed what was really said. She heard couples talking about sexy stuff, whispering things each would do to the other. Talk of taking drugs was common, too. So was being spiteful about family or workmates. Beth didn’t like any of these things, nor did she like eavesdropping, so she’d make stuff up to tell them later.
A loose floorboard is the reason she’s still awake. It sounds like the lightest bough of a tree creaking gently back and forth in a breeze; she knows which board the sound is travelling along, beneath the wall and skirting and towards her bed. She knows the M&Ms are doing it. Doing it quietly, so she wouldn’t hear, she supposes. She feels a little embarrassed, remains still, careful not to move. She knows how people do it. She’s seen pictures on Charlotte Allsopp’s phone at school. Disgusting, really, and to imagine Martin doing that to Muriel makes her heart float into her head. No way will she ever let a boy do that, it just seems wrong. Charlotte bragged she was doing it with Mikey Goodwin, and they were only fourteen at the time. He feels my tits and shags me in the dark behind the community centre. We drink cider and do it every night. It’s ace, you should try it, Bethy. I’m sure Mikey would shag you if I asked. Beth had kept away from Charlotte after that, but those pictures on Charlotte’s phone were in her mind forever.
The creaking halts, Beth sits up, she needs the loo again and hopes the M&Ms will get to sleep now, but the creaking starts up again, and on it goes, slowly, quietly. She lies back down, covers her head with a pillow, but the motion of the creaking board can be felt through the bed. She tries to ignore the need to pee by imagining a hot desert and the sun beating down on her, but the creaking pulls her back; more frantic now, louder. A distant grunt, a sigh. Then it stops.
545 creaks in total.
10
The night was dark and fresh, the stars countless and unbelievably bright. Rose was feeling better, closer to normal. She came to the southern tip of the loch where the ground turned to marsh and the pathway led to raised wooden walkboards and a short wooden bridge. She stopped on the bridge, lit a cig and leant on the handrail to look out over the silver-grey loch.
A black mass sat on the water a short way out. It appeared to be a small island. Rose recalled the map on the wall at reception and realised she was standing on the ball sack. She smiled at this. She touched a hand to her shirt. No phantoms, only the scars. It had been an eventful first day. No, not eventful, just plain crazy. She could barely bring herself to think about her antics in the shower. Tomorrow she’d aim to stay indoors, chill out, no wine, no joints, just tea from her stupidly expensive cup.
She flicked the cig into the water, waited for the hiss and little circles of ripples. Off to her left in the darkness of the trees a small square of light appeared. The map had shown a cabin here. Rose wondered who else could be taking a holiday at this time of the year.
Another light came on at a bigger window – a shadow moved across it. Rose knew all about human compulsion. She’d written about it often enough, the inner desire a sure means of finding conflict to write about. Instead of thinking about why she was walking off the bridge and heading for this cabin and not back to her own for a good night’s sleep, she felt the compulsion at work, her feet taking one step after another, off the walkboards now, off the marshland, turning onto the bend, dry ground, one step after another, the lights in the windows pulling her on. She was almost sitting on her own shoulder and being taken along for the ride. She’d put a stop to it soon, of course, and pull herself round. But she was too close, maybe fifty feet, maybe forty, and there was a figure on the porch. A white figure. Pain, sharp as a hot needle, zipped through her right hand once again. She almost cried out. She ducked into the trees, rubbing at the copper bracelet, moved forward quietly, closer again, and, still feeling like she was sitting on her own shoulder. Twenty feet now. Close enough. Rose clung tight to the thickest tree trunk.
The figure was a man, age unclear, head in shadow, white bathrobe; smoking a cig. Rose watched each drag, each puff of smoke, the way his loose bathrobe pulled slightly apart when he lifted the cig to his mouth. He flicked the cig into the night and moved down the few steps, paused, looked into the trees where Rose was holding her breath. He looked away, head still in shadow, and walked a few paces to a lone silver birch, gleaming in the moonlight.
Rose heard running water. It took a few seconds to realise he was taking a piss. Good God. She felt like a peeping Tom. She watched him shake then return to his cabin. At the top step he paused and let off a fart that sounded like a duck’s quack. Rose stifled a laugh, watched him go inside and close the door.
She stepped through the trees and back to the path, checked that the cabin door remained shut then hurried away. She reached the bridge and was almost across it when something moved in the bushes to the right of the path, a dark shadow, low down. Rose held still. It could be a dog, from its shape; a dog lying down. Or a wild animal – something that could hurt her. Foxes could be vicious, she knew that. The thing darted out and ran across her path and into the shadows on the other side.
Rose breathed again. In the brief glimpse as it crossed the moonlit path she clearly saw the white stripe down its snout – a badger. A really fast badger.
11
Pete had the sweaty shakes all the way home and still has them now. He would crash or hallucinate before long, but he pushes on regardless. Storing the five keys of speed in the wardrobe for later, he sets up the three new smoke alarms. Lennie might have charged him the earth, but these were really special; Lennie hadn’t let him down on that score. Round and white and looking exactly like the smoke alarms he would replace, each was motion-activated with boosted transmission, and the receiver, which he’d tape to the balcony, would feed directly to his laptop with only a two-second delay. That was almost real-time.
Now, he stands at the table, holding one of the alarms. He points the hidden lens at the painting of the eye on the table. On his lapt
op’s screen the image is shaky but clear as day and in full colour; the eye stares back at him and he smiles at it.
1
Pete wakes with a morning glory to beat all morning glories and a smile on his face. For the first time since being a teenager he stays in bed to deal with it, without the aid of a sock. He plays with his cock with excitement in his heart as he stares at the smoke alarm on the ceiling and tries to imagine the outrageous fun that lies ahead. But no visions appear on the smoke alarm. No voiceover from Mr Wood. The vision that does come arrives in his mind’s eye: the writer woman with her friendly smile, and there’s a whispering of muffled words as though a moth flutters in his ear, words he can’t make out. Pete relaxes against the pillows, closes his eyes and returns the writer woman’s smile as he works himself off. He wants to reach out and touch her, smell her, lick her face and neck and open up her shirt and . . . her image fades as release comes and Pete watches in awe as his cum arcs in the air and splats across his chest, not once but six times, six eruptions of healthy spunk. With a feeling of overwhelming weightlessness, Pete sinks into the mattress and closes his eyes to the come-down.
Again, whispers, that fluttery moth in his ear. His eyes open when the whispers form words and the plan makes itself known again. Of course, THE PLAN. Last night he’d fallen asleep acting the plan out in his mind along with helpful nudges from the naked man with the lion hair, who always seemed to be on the edge of his inner vision. The three-point plan is simple, even for a fuckwit: Flush then Fix then Fuck.
FLUSH
FIX
FUCK
Fuck them all.
After showering and dressing in his green maintenance overalls, Pete retrieves the five bags of speed from the wardrobe and puts them on the bed. They’re big and bulky, and the sight of so much billy makes his skin tingle. Unsure of how much to use, he links the number three with his three-point plan and figures three bags should be enough to cause mayhem, leaving two whopping great bags for his own enjoyment.
He opens one bag, dips a wetted finger in and rubs it round his gums. By the time he’s packed three bags into a rucksack, tied his boots and found a spade from the maintenance hut, his blood is on fire and he feels like a rooster sniffing hen heat. It’s going to be a grand fucking day. Aye, Pete knows it.
The water tower is located on the hill, just beneath the spring that feeds it. He climbs the ladder, remembering to scan the loch path below, in case someone should see him. A pair of squirrels leap through nearby branches sending golden leaves twirling to the floor. A rabbit hops along the loch path. There’s no one about. He unlocks the padlocked service hatch and carefully pours the first bag of speed into the tank, stirring it up with the spade straight after. He can’t resist a dab from the second bag before he pours and stirs, and takes a double dab from the third bag before emptying it into the water. Whispers hiss approval in his ears. He’s so fucking fortunate.
He gives the water a final stir with the spade, then replaces the hatch and padlock. Part one – The Flush – is complete. Pete realises it could take a day or two before the whizz starts getting through to the taps in the cabins and making his guests horny as hell with a hotdog up its arse, but he has an idea how to speed up the process.
He returns to his cabin light-footed and merry-headed, packs the smoke alarms into the rucksack, fastens his tool belt round his waist and grins at himself in the mirror, surprised at seeing the ginger stubble. He hasn’t shaved and he’s not going to. He likes what he sees. His ginger hair is gleaming, he flicks a hand through it. ‘You’re such a pretty fucker.’
The whispery giggle in his ear agrees.
2
Ever the early riser, Rose is on the porch with a coffee (not in the lucky cup) a cig (not a joint) and her notepad. A pleasant fine mist floats above the loch and autumnal leaves are falling with a colourful vengeance. There’s a nip in the air.
She pulled her thick cardigan around her and waited for the muse, pen poised on the notepad. She sketched the face of the woman at the pottery, the bob of white hair, the little teeth. She remembered the fishy smell and the woman’s sometimes abrupt manner. She shook the thoughts away. Now she sketched the white-robed man pissing up a tree – although he had no features, she believed he might be a handsome chap. Next, she drew the badger. She’d never seen one in the flesh, only on TV or dead at the side of the road. Rose had lent her voice to the protestors when those awful culls were introduced. Mindless, truly mindless. She turned to a clean page and fancied to write a poem. Not that poems were her thing, not at all. She just felt – inspired.
At the top of the page she wrote: The Badger.
Across the middle of the page she wrote: It could have been a big black dog.
Rose heard herself laugh. And the laugh made her grin. It felt good. Pleased in a childish way, she sketched a badger beneath the one-line poem and shaded in its striped head and drew a love-heart around it.
She read the one-line poem again and realised it was not a poem at all. It was nothing but rubbish.
She gave herself a shake, turned the page, and the pen seemed to have a life of its own,
I feel him, he’s here
He feels me, I’m there
I think I saw him, up the path
Pissing up a tree
And a duck fart to follow
Or was it the grapes of wrath
Ridiculous but . . . funny? The grin had returned. But no, Rose frowned at the page, it wasn’t funny at all. She thought of Ophelia Thomason-Jones with a badger on her head, chewing grapes from her hat. She drank her coffee as golden leaves fell around her, pondering the senseless badger culls; so many beautiful animals destroyed for nothing. Her misanthropy seemed to Rose to always be on a simmering increase. She bled it out in words and doodles and three pages of scribbles later another poem was formed:
Black n white, a badger’s arse
Cull ’em all – what a fucking farce!
Flush ’em out with starving hounds
Senseless cruelty knows no bounds
Man at his worst
Or maybe his best
Arrogance, ignorance, feathering the nest
Cull him instead
Cull them all
All DEAD!
Was she on a roll? A shiver ran through her. Rose decided not. It was a novel she was looking for not silly poems. Danni would no doubt be proud, though.
On a clean page she sketched again: a perfect pair of breasts with perfect nipples, her breasts, her nipples. There was even the small mole near the right nipple – she remembered that now, as she’d played in the shower. Good God.
The sound of a throttling engine broke her thoughts. She closed the notepad as ghost-man Peter turned the corner on a filthy old quad bike. He killed the noise, offloaded a rucksack along with a small set of steps and approached with a tool belt jangling round his middle and a huge grin on his face. Rose pulled her cardigan tight.
‘Aye. Lovely morning,’ he said, and went on to explain that he’d be fitting a new smoke alarm.
Rose remained at the front door and kept an eye on him as he carried the steps through to her bedroom. He pushed her bed to one side and climbed the steps. She remembered him saying he wrote the odd poem, and the thought came to show him her notepad. Heat warmed her cheeks and she dismissed the thought with a shudder. She wanted nothing to do with this man or any man.
He came down the steps with the old smoke alarm in his hand, fished in his rucksack for the new one and went back up the steps. Rose’s heart gave a jolt when she spotted the lucky cup on the bedside table. If Peter noticed the eye staring out . . . in her mind she saw him falling, tumbling backwards, cracking his head open on the floor. Death by cup.
‘Nearly done,’ he said, screwing away at the fitting.
Rose kept him in sight, notepad tight, cardigan too. He came down the steps, pulled the bed back into place, collected the steps and rucksack and went into the kitchen. At the sink he ran the tap and tasted the
water with a finger as it ran. This went on for a few minutes before he turned the tap off.
‘Doing a filter flush at the water tank, might taste a wee bit bitter for a day or two, but it’s totally harmless.’
Rose didn’t offer that she used bottled water for the kettle. She backed out onto the porch as he left.
He stopped right beside her. ‘We have to replace the alarms every year now. Always new rules and regs, aye?’
There was that grin again. Cocky. Salacious even. And there was a strong musky smell about him. Rose held her breath. She nodded and wished him away. His eyes were roving, conniving. She was on the verge of saying something – God knows what – when he walked off and loaded the steps and rucksack onto the quad.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
She listened to the quad circle around the top road and saw it reappear at the next cabin down. She went inside, put the lucky cup in the fridge for safety. Her hands were shaking. Despite his rugged good looks and his toned body, the man unnerved her, for sure. Drugs, she told herself once more. Probably amphetamines; he had no colour. She decided to get some air, walk the loch the way she’d gone last night, see how it all looked in the ordinariness of daylight. She sprayed the bedroom with body spray, sprayed some on her cardigan, donned her walking boots, made up a small joint, ensured all windows were closed and the back door locked. She opened the fridge and looked at the eye in the cup. ‘Wish me luck,’ she said. The eye didn’t reply.
3
That was a piece of piss. And the writer woman had been giving him the eye, for sure. Smiling to himself, Pete knocks on the door, waits, notices the 4x4’s not here. Must’ve gone out for the day. He’s about to let himself in when the lock turns and the bolts slide. The door opens and the Black woman appears. Through the material of her jumper, it’s obvious she’s braless. Frenzied whispers return to Pete’s ear and his balls tingle with a flourish that momentarily takes his breath away. As his cock stiffens in his pants, he sees himself pushing her inside, forcing her to the floor, tearing her clothes away.