The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 7

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Underneath

  Kevin Mullins & Marcelle Perks

  They coughed between kisses, sucking in mould-ridden air as sex-lust quickened their needs. The man leant down to enter her mouth, his body mimicking the curve of the ceiling. His hand pushed and slid to part her as the metal gods roared their approval. In, tight and holding, both thrilled further by the vibrations of the tunnels around them. The searing singing! Ah, so good! Just a wall beyond there were people chatting about West End shows, something about Britney Spears. They were going home, easing the day away. But the real underground was here where life was deadened. It was sealed disharmony, a jerking cock-in-the-mouth, a secret world where fugitives took a mystery trip to the unconscious.

  Chris thinks he looks dead ordinary in his London Underground Oranges. Sometimes, when he dons the illuminated vest, punters ask him about trains and tickets. As if! But he’s meant to blend in, don’t want nobody to know. See, it’s been happening a bit too often. They keep jumping, don’t they? Two a week or more, no let up. Sometimes they’re lucky and they get pushed into suicide pits, hollow ovals designed to displace a man-made corpse from the thrust of the engine wall, but there’s always the blade’s breath of the rails and the resulting severed limbs; artery overload with its blood spill; bone drop-out, giant skin tags.

  If he’s unlucky the body gets drag-pushed the entire run to the mouth of the tunnel, greasing and falling out the whole stretch. Although it’s filthy down there anyway and rats will pick-eat the carnage, the carriage has to be uncoupled, everything taken out of service. The whole thing pulled out to a lone siding, rubbed down, strip-searched. He collects all the evidence: bones, earrings, jewellery, teeth, scalp fragments. Often a photo from the morgue is sent to him, so he can fill in the gaps. His official title is Search and Recovery. You wouldn’t believe how far a pinky finger can fly! Scrape and wipe, that’s his job description, a position they could never advertise. And it’s demanding, takes a genius to work out where everything is, the possibilities for fall-out, the angle of the blood. A hard job, but someone’s got to do it. Gossamer webbing forms between his gloved fingers as he delicately fingers stumps and seared flesh.

  Rhonda gasped at the chill of the wall on her back. The rounded gloom looked congenial, but moist speckles drizzled onto her hair. It was damp down here. She’d chosen him for his perfectly spaced, open blue eyes. There had been a spark between them, a subtle movement of breath. And now they were here there was less need for talk, far easier to just feel and press his penis. He had a nice hefty cock that felt heavier the more she sucked on it. Good energy, pulsating all the way down to the base. It was sexier in the dark. They were like mime figures in ancient Greece, shuddering shapes moaning in darkness. Down here her senses were heightened, her nipples never harder, insides leaking out with longing; all the pinky skin screaming out for flesh, a good hard shaft.

  It was so unreal, it almost didn’t count, this milking of men in forgotten shadows. And this one too, already she could taste the pre-come droplets on her tongue, imagine this stranger’s entire body cued up to deliver a last extra-hardened jerk of orgasm. It would come like a wave of electricity, pulsating all over her. Vital, alive. This one she would engulf raw, until every bit of him had fizzled inside her. Here, their heartbeats were magnified, body movements in extreme close up and heat. His hand pushed into her slippery slit, the finger tickling the edges of her labia, the panty edge useless, now being breached. Look how the bitch wants it! They could smell each other over everything else, the scent enflaming them. Kissing like pigs, nonsense noises loud now. Sitting on it, riding it, deep deep into the spot! Hah! Agggh!

  Sliding underneath now. Have to get the body out first before they can do anything. And this one was a splatterer. Fat ones were always the worst, some of the shits that came out of them! And their body fat, even uglier unpeeled, its consistency of chip fat and liver nearly gagging him every time. The work load here is overwhelming, all chore. He’s now tired of this. Needs something else to keep him busy. Maybe the latest closed circuit video passed around among the crew.

  Inside her, the chemical reaction. Millions of live sperm cells in chase, needling and reacting to her. He was still shuddering, penis limping down now. She’d be bumping and jerking off for hours. Probably get Chris to milk her velvet insides too, even if he’s not that fertile, at least his lovable cock could push this sperm around her even deeper in. Manual insemination. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, not when he was being hurt by his failure already. Her legs were damp like the weeping walls. She felt malleable, but the station would be a hive of activity after the last train had gone and they had to go a while before they reached the abandoned interchange to the other line. She reached down to pick up her keys. He stammered something, but she only put a finger to her lips, gently pushed his chest, easing him towards the concealed exit. It was powerful, this primal guiding instinct. A fantasy woman had snatched him and fucked him underground. There was only the moment. For her two fertile days she had to work fast.

  Chris was used to death, to scraping it matter-of-fact off rails and trains. What he had problems with was life, creating it. Since the clinic had told him he had a low sperm count, it was like his penis had died. When she looked to it for sex, he pushed her away and she had to dry-hump his leg to get off. (Funny, he thought, that she now got off with him on one of the parts that was routinely cut off on the lines.) It was cool that he was kinky (they’d found each other at the Scala screening of Nekromantik) but not enough. Twisted things gave her pussy ache, but sometimes a hard cock and a soft cunt were the only language she needed.

  “The smell is stronger tonight,” she said, ruffling his dark, almost black hair. Repeated exposure to death permeates, you can’t simply wash it away. Aggressively, she pressed her semen-imprinted body in front of his. Nothing. He didn’t resist, just started whining.

  “Another fat guy, you know how they stink. Make more mess. Overtime for a week long, though.” He looked tired, his hands were shaking. He saw her looking at his faded eyes.

  “Why can’t it be the cool goth chicks that jump the trains?” he joked feebly, he was still exhausted, head down.

  She smiled, kissing him, knowing already that female bones are less likely to fragment, and thinner mortals stay more intact, are easier to dispose of. Tonight, he was tired. Let him watch fucking TV then. Like there was nothing else going on. He still didn’t want to talk about it. She hid the pregnancy testing kit she’d bought safely in a drawer. If he couldn’t guess the date, then fuck him. When it was positive she’d show him. Low didn’t mean zero.

  Underneath the very streets everyone walked on was something old and sacred, scarred into the city’s shape, listless but fertile in the dusky dirt. London breathes resonance that tugs at the subconscious. Is it the pagan gods, or the Greek ones, or the apostles of Lucifer that haunt its medieval-formed alleyways? She could imagine her forefathers worshipping in dank caves, pushing out winter, hunger, unmedicated pain. The chanting faces mixed with hope and sorrow. Oh yes, then.

  Now the awe had left the people. Everybody was the same and nothing. London on the surface was a bubble palace, all flash lights and gab. A sprawl of unmatched buildings, most of it old and shady. Everybody rich-poor and raging. But underneath, there were oh so many undercuts and passageways, in this most undermined city in the world. And all along the stretches and sprawls of commerce and laid back-to-back housing, the arteries of the city flexed its nerves. Hundreds of trains teemed in, out and around the tunnels, feeding ever more strangers all the way, forcing them into darkness and decay. But under the neon lights, if you looked them carefully in the eye, you could see a tremor of hesitation, on dark nights it looked like fear.

  Maps didn’t really help. The old stuff wasn’t built logically. The plans were still secret, freemason’s mischief, whiffs of occult magick. There were platforms that joined in the shape of a figure 8, a double track constructed that was never used, the abandoned st
ations left whole and rotting to slug up the city’s heartbeat. And this was Chris’s world, the dungeon behind the tiled façade.

  The first time he’d taken her to an abandoned tube station she’d nearly pissed her pants. It was that scary, all the fear that she’d ever felt before was like nothing in front of it. He’d shown her the key, made her lick it before they scurried through the discreet door. Then down a decrepit, still dirty staircase to the now disused platform; just yards from the hub of the main station, but here was deserted, fading posters still on the walls.

  He’d leaned her against the hush and eased down her panties as images of mummified corpses flashed on the wall behind them. A surprise film show for her, something his bosses were trying to sell as a concept. Somebody laughed, a horrid cackle in the background. There were a few workmen in the tunnel, enjoying the show, the screen crackling as they watched. Each image had a shadow cloud of filth as the moving dust spots squeezed the dead station into life. That was good, the first time he’d touched her inside, the hesitating but unstoppable fingers. Her skirt, as always, was short and provoking. She looked past her lust at the flickers of the moving screen.

  It was uncensored footage from the Bodyworlds exhibition, real corpses plasticined and exhibited for the public. It was bizarre. At one point they stepped in front of the projector and the footage played on their frantic bodies. It was an experiment, maybe they would use the disused Aldwych to pander to film premières. The underground was a treasure trove of such decay. A stripped away horseman on screen grinned at her thrashing pleasure. And passion swept over all like a blackout. A lust that tunnelled her into nothing.

  It seemed to take ages for them to get to have sex. Oddly, he was old-fashioned, sometimes unbearably courteous. But after their first time, a heavy blanket of lust had dropped over them. They couldn’t seem to stop, yet had little lasting satisfaction. Nightly they’d made love, all the positions, mutual masturbation, all to heat and exhaustion. Sometimes, it was four a.m. when the bed stopped heaving. And even after they had come the fourth, fifth time, it was never enough. Even after they were married. For all their sex, still nothing happened. The stirring of life they planned, failed to bud. Then came the consultations with doctors, strange pills that made them feel listless. The encroaching silences. She had become desperate to revive her dark prince. And where better than in his kingdom, the womblike tunnels of his private underground – the forgotten stations – to court and milk her donors? What happened there wasn’t real. It was passion and adventure, secrets and darkness. And the underground was so much a part of Chris anyway, like the caverns behind his eyes. She took copies of his keys and found the best locations. Cruised from work’s end when she was hot and ticking. There were risks of course, but she targeted the one-time thrill seekers, hunted for the surprised look. She wanted a result. In the midst of life we are in the midst of death. And Chris was so down, he needed it.

  After four weeks of cruising, she felt a flush of expectancy. Her eyes shone brighter, breasts pointed higher north. Something was in the air. At the same time, she had seen even less of Chris, who had dealt with nine deaths below: an unusually high number – 56 percent of attempts were unsuccessful. They were like Hades and Persephone, he to quench life, she to bring it forth. She thought of this as they curled up on quiet evenings. But something was stretching out, far and away. They were drifting apart, long tunnels separated by empty static. They sat in the evenings caught in the TV’s glow, a still life of sadness.

  The walls were stark, meant to be white. But it was impossible to judge colour down here. The grain of the breezeblock chewed into her hands as the man who she often saw at Holborn thrust into her from behind. Funny, although he looked a capable guy, he had the angle all wrong, and it was hurting a little too much on the left hand side. She tried to manoeuvre, but, ooh, everything goddamned scraped the skin here. The entrance this time had been a bugger to find. Odd that people had actually lived here once.

  Yeah darling, come over from Jamaica and get a nice job with London Transport with a free flat. Well, a codenamed hell known as The Hostel; it had been a revamped bomb shelter from the Second World War. Must have seemed like they’d left the sunshine and gone to hell. Roll fifty years, still she’s keeping up the fucking spirit in platform 6. I bet those guys (usually they were guys) had brought some gals down here. Yeah, just like she was giving this some fizz.

  He couldn’t get a full rhythm going because the corridor was too narrow. But his cock was hard and it was inside her. The usual mashing rhythm. She let go, fell forward, her breasts scraped against the rough painted surface. If she closed her eyes she could have been pressed against the roughness of a cave or tree. He was mauling her with his greedy hands everywhere. She decided to moan, give him some satisfaction. Aggh. His finger pushed hard up her anus. Unexpected. Extra kinky! Her stomach tightened.

  “Harder!” she gasped. She could feel the poke of his finger span deepen. Yeah, come darling, before I leave you here to wank by yourself. She’d thought an older guy, one with silver streaks in his hair, might at least be proficient. Up for it. Maybe she wouldn’t let this one come inside her. His sperm wasn’t good enough for Chris!

  She stood proudly looking at herself in the mirror. She looked back at her shining eyes and lustrous hair, something was up. Why didn’t he notice the change in her? He was bathing again with the door shut. They always used to do it together, drinking lashings of wine with the water. Should she pop into the bathroom, show him her breasts? No, his bag was here. She just had time to steal a cigarette. Her hand reached down right between a file. Shit, it was photos, perhaps she’d creased one. Quickly, she pulled the file out. He was bringing his work home again. Photographs dotted with unique codes. All corpses vaguely swollen or mangled, rendered fantastic through the extent of their injuries. It was their vagueness that got her in the throat:

  “AA456G T. 17 pieces + fluids. 8 Stone.” The picture was of a teenage girl without clothes, both her arms had been crudely severed. The pressure in Rhonda’s head tightened, a flash headache was forming at the base of her neck. Still, she was somehow unable to draw her eyes away. More of them, too many. A fat woman in a flowery dress, the cloth surprisingly more intact than her body; a punk rocker whose head had been badly mangled. Was it really human? The gent with the snarled body, as if a dragon had breathed fire and cut him to pieces. His silver hair all that was normal. The curious way after everything it still looked so neat and dapper. Her fingers throbbed just looking at it. It could have been that guy from the other night, the one who didn’t know where her vagina was positioned and had made her sore. She pushed the photos back into the file. She couldn’t face this shit now.

  The man wiped his hand with a neatly folded white handkerchief. Another stranger. Underneath he looked gnome-like, pig ugly. He looked ruefully at the smears of red and brown on her underwear. Sometimes she got carried away. She inspected the scratches on her breasts and stomach, thinking ahead to how she could conceal them. Sometimes she felt weary doing it, it was just like another job.

  It took minutes of silent readjustment before they were ready to re-enter normal life. From the open platform side the doorway looked like a storage cupboard, so it was difficult to go in or come out without it looking odd. Timing was everything. She listened for a long time whilst her donor shuffled impatiently behind her.

  When the coast seemed clear she edged open the door, checked that there was no one visible and swung through. The man bundled after her. A moment after she’d looked up, a thin-faced black woman in LT uniform turned the corner and faced them. She seemed horribly familiar, somehow. The woman gave them a quick hard glance then turned away. Perhaps the security cameras had picked something up. Normally she got the man to take the first train, but they were both too eager to escape for that protocol to be even suggested. They separated with an awkward touch two stops down. She felt she could feel the ticking of her body as she eventually climbed a thousand steps onto a train.
Yes! Surely this was it! How then to break it to Chris?

  When she’d said she wanted to do something special, she’d meant dinner, candles. The local Italian round the corner maybe. But tonight he was the old Chris again, dressed in gothic clothes he hadn’t worn in two years, a daub of kohl around his eyes.

  “Hey babe,” he reached for her and pulled her lips hungrily to his mouth as she came in. “I gotta see a man about a dog, know what I mean.” She stared at him quizzically; it was their codename of old.

  “You mean you got another way in? Another dungeon for us to explore?”

  “Yes, babes, this one’s the best. We’ve gotta travel with my mate on the 8.15 from Finsbury Park, right behind him in the cab, then when we get there, a little tap and he’ll let us out at the old Brompton Road station. And on the last train, he’ll pick us up just before he goes to the depot. You wanna come?” He held out his arms for her.

  “Oh, Chris, you are fabby!” She jumped into his arms and ran to change into her army trousers and dockers. Time to go underground again. What better setting than the disused Brompton Road station, which they had never explored, to proclaim her pregnancy?

  When they caught the bus to Finsbury Park station, darkness was falling. It was a cold Autumn night, the trees slowly dying in the battered streets. They made an odd couple. Chris painfully tall, his skin so white it looked grey. He was wearing his work clothes just in case; it was easier if there were any awkward questions. Rhonda wore her own uniform of slick black over her trim short frame, with the familiar orange waistcoat over it; a fake LT Visitor badge completed the deception.

  They spent a long time on the platform, nervously waiting for Pete to turn up and give them a lift. The other passengers, perhaps thinking they were checking tickets, avoided them like the plague. They stood near the mouth of the tunnel, talked without looking at each other. Going to these disused stations had always been something they did together, now she felt guilty after her own private forays into this domain. Near the watching eye of the CCTV camera, she felt like an insect in an open glass. If they waited much longer, someone on station control would get suspicious.