“Pssst!”
It’s the Boy. I can’t see him, only hear him. The medina is crammed with noise, its maze of tiny streets choked with the scents of paraffin, leather, spit-roast meats, sour sweat, baked earth and strong rough tobacco. Here and there, the souk opens out, exposing its squinting stall-holders to a livid blue sky. But for now we’re in the thick of it, two clueless pink-skins in an ancient labyrinth, lost among beggars, hawkers, shoppers, mopeds, donkey carts and big wire cages squawking with heaps of angry hens. The Boy’s hiss slices through the chaos, clean as a whistle, but I can’t spot him anywhere.
I’m disappointed. I’m supposed to be relieved because the official line is he’s been annoying us from the off, prancing around like some mad imp of consumerism, urging us to buy this, buy that, buy the other. The thing is, we do want to buy a carpet, a nice Berber runner for the hallway, but he’s probably on commission and, besides, we’d rather do it in peace.
My disappointment tempers the arousal I’m half-ashamed to acknowledge. At first, I couldn’t be sure it was sexual although I suspected it was. Heck, it usually is with me. And then I knew damn well it was when my groin flickered its need and I grew aware of my inner thighs, filmy with sweat, sliding wetly as I walked, my sarong flapping around my ankles. But it’s a weird kind of sexual. It’s not as if I fancy him, this slip of a lad with the calm, creepy eyes, but I’m drawn to him in a way I can’t identify. He keeps dropping back from us to sidle among the crowd or prowl at a distance, elegant and stealthy, stalking us like prey. My money’s in a belt. I must have checked it a dozen times. I don’t think he’s a thief though.
I don’t know what he is. All I know is he’s sparked off in me some intrigue, some furtive hunger that makes me not quite trust myself. We keep walking, Tom and I, and within the humid fabric of my knickers, I’m as sticky and swollen as a Barbary fig.
“Pssst!”
His call sounds so close I actually look over my shoulder, expecting him right there, but no sign. It’s as if he’s invisible, some mythical djinni up to no good or a golem from the old Jewish quarter, laughing to himself as I pat my money belt once again.
“Seem to have shaken him off, the little shit,” Tom says mildly as he unscrews his water bottle.
I realise Tom’s not hearing what I hear, making me question my senses. The heat in this place stupefies me and I haven’t been sleeping well either. At night, after an evening of jugglers, magicians, fire-eaters and snake-charmers, the bedsheets tangle themselves around my legs, cobras for the pipe-player, and my mind whirls with madness and enchantments. To soothe me, I think of the stillness beyond the town: snow-capped mountains, endless deserts and a black velvet night sprayed with silver stars. But I sleep fitfully, slipping in and out of dreamscapes, grotesque and lewd, and I wake each morning sloppy with desire. When I sink onto Tom’s cock, drowsy and heavy, I feel fucked already, post-coitally limp, as if I’ve been possessed by an incubus, a gleeful demon who screwed me senseless as I slept. My limbs seem to liquefy as I ride Tom, awash with vagueness, remembering feral creatures, how they pawed at my flesh, and priapic monsters with gas-mask faces, rutting in steamy swamps.
I don’t imagine we’ll buy a carpet today. I’m not really in the mood. Feeling a tad psychotic, to tell the truth. But I hide it well. I’m probably just premenstrual.
A few minutes later and the Boy’s with us again. I don’t see him but I smell him, a pungent sexual whiff as we pass stalls selling metalware, shards of sunlight glancing off pewter, copper and brass. Then, in the shadows behind, I see two green beads peering out from the gloom, points of luminescence, freakishly bright. My heart pumps faster. Among so many brown-eyed folk, those eyes are hauntingly strange, non-human almost. He doesn’t belong to these people, I think. An outsider, perhaps; a man who leaps across gullies high in the Atlas mountains, surviving on thin air.
“Oh, God, there’s that smell again,” complains Tom.
A few yards ahead, the Boy darts beneath a tatty awning. He’s wearing filthy, calf-length shorts and his legs, I notice, are dark with hair. He’s a youth, I think, and then some. Old enough, I’m quite sure, to go snuffling under my sarong.
“It’s foul,” says Tom. “Really fucking rank.”
I think he’s talking about the Boy. I think he’s smelled his appetite and is repulsed. Then it dawns on me he’s talking about the tannery. When we were last here, I was about ready to retch with the stink of it but now the tannery’s just a backnote and it’s the Boy’s odour I’m getting. It’s as if my senses are tuning in to him, to the sound, smell and sight of him, and everything else recedes. The whole thing’s starting to make me nervous.
Tom offers me the water before taking a swig himself. He has beautiful manners, partly because he’s from Surrey but stemming too from a naturally submissive streak he doesn’t fully acknowledge. He’s no pushover, believe me, but his gentle manner, combined with a curious intellect, makes him tend to the deferential or at least a fascinated passivity. Give him a good book and he’s lost for hours. Give him a good woman – or better still a bad one – and he’s lost for months. I took him away from someone else. Well, he left her for me at any rate. Two years down the line and we’re still in love, half-daft and quite besotted.
But I’m no fool. I know damn well if some other woman caught his heart he’d be gone in a flash, leaving me spitting with rage. I like Tom a lot. I want to hang on to him. I want to keep him mine. But all I can do is hope for the best. And meanwhile, I try to catch him as I can, all those impossible charcoals and pencils, all that seductive permanent ink.
My favourite sketches are the ones I do in bed at night, Tom lying there with his mouth agape, dreaming eyeballs quivering beneath his lids. I love him so much when he’s fast asleep, when he doesn’t even know he exists. Tom doesn’t realise I do this. I keep the sketches well hidden, my treasured possessions, proof of all the hours I stole from him while I watched him sleep. I have bouts of insomnia, you see. It’s not only out here.
“Half a mo’. Batteries,” says Tom. He edges past slow, swathed people, and I wait for him by a spice stall. Black strips of tamarind and threaded figs hang like jungle vegetation over sacks heaped with nuts, dried fruit, tea leaves and herbs. SNORING CURE NEVER FAIL! says a sign and APHRODISIAC FOR THE KING! proclaims another. The air is powder-dry and colours catch in my throat, scarlet, copper, ochre and rust, an earthy rainbow of seasonings that makes me cough like a hag. “I have medicine! Never fail!” cries a djellaba-hooded man, and I protest my health, realising there’s some seriously dodgy shit for sale here: a turtle strapped to the canopy’s scaffold, bunches of goats’ feet, dried hedgehogs, chameleons, snake skins and live lizards flicking around in giant-sized jars.
“Pssst! Lady!”
His voice goes straight to my cunt. The sensation’s so strong he might have tongued me there. My senses reel and I turn, catching a glimpse of sharp brown shoulder blades before he’s swallowed up by the crowd. Across the way, Tom’s holding a pack of batteries, appealing to a stallholder who looks out with a half-blind gaze, his eyes veiled with cataracts. A woman with a wispy beard jostles me. Instinctively, I check my money-belt and I see the Boy just feet away, throwing a backwards glance, an invitation to follow. I cannot refuse him. I don’t even question my options. I just go.
As I move, Tom turns. He catches my eye, nodding acknowledgment of my direction. It’s fine, he’s cool. He rarely makes a fuss. And, should we lose each other, we’ve both got our phones. An image comes to me of my mobile trilling away, whiskery rats nosing the screen where the words “Tom calling . . .” glow for no one. I push the image away. It’s not important. But the Boy is.
Anxious not to lose him, I squirm through the crowds, keeping his shorn head in my sights. A man with a monkey distracts me briefly and for a terrible moment I think I’ve lost him. Frantic, I whirl around, a vortex of faces blurring past me, colours racing. He’s gone, he’s gone. But seconds later, I have him again. I watch as h
e vanishes into an archway so narrow that at first I think he’s ghost-walked through a wall. Panicking, I hurry, elbowing people aside. Somebody curses me but I don’t care. I’m high with fear. I don’t know why I’m following him. I only know I can’t stop. Dark eyes flash around me, and my cunt’s pumping nearly as hard as my heart. I’m in the grip of something scary, my juices are hot, and I try to remember if I’ve eaten something funny. Maybe I stood too close to those desiccated hedgehogs. God knows what they were for. God knows what I’m doing.
In the alley, I pause to catch my breath. I’ve got the Boy in view again. The alley’s cool and whitewashed, not much wider than a person, and a few feet in, the racket of the souk goes dead. There’s no one around but us. Suddenly, it is so still. So silent. My own breath surrounds me, a whispering rush like a seashell to my ear. I walk on and yet I don’t think I move. I just pant. The sun doesn’t fall here, but the alley seems to shine with its own light, the white walls reflecting each other in a numinous glow, and I wonder if this is it. I wonder if I’m dying on an operating table, my soul sailing up to enter the kingdom of heaven, or to at least try tapping on its door. I want to look back to see where I’ve come from but my head’s far too heavy. I can’t turn.
There is nothing but this: me, my breath and the Boy. It’s as if I’ve slipped into a chink in the world.
Several yards ahead, half-crouched, he creeps along with cautious grace. His slender torso is sweet and supple, the rack of his ribs visible beneath grimy fudge-brown skin. The scent of him drifts in his wake, pheromonal and ripe. Civet, perhaps, or musk. How pliant his body must be, I think. How smooth his skin, how eager his hands, how tireless those beautiful, plum-coloured lips.
I follow, both of us keeping a steady pace, then the Boy stops, poised low. His arched spine protrudes in a knobbly ridge and the stubble of his hair prickles with light. I freeze, feeling I ought to, and realise I’m barely breathing. Then, slowly, the Boy swivels his head around to face me. And that’s when I nearly keel over. Because the eyes that look into mine belong to no man on earth. For several stunned seconds, I stare back. They are cat’s eyes: green as gooseberries with black slit pupils.
Fear thumps me in the gut but I cannot scream. I cannot move either. I can’t do anything. I just gawp, rooted to the spot.
He smirks and turns away. I think I must be in one of my dreams. Soon, I tell myself, I’ll wake at the hotel and I’ll straddle Tom’s cock in a trance of remembering. I’ll rock back and forth, head swimming with a post-human dystopia, a stinking medieval market peopled with DNA freaks or interspecies offspring. Look around and they all seem perfectly normal till you spot their webbed feet, forked tongues, folded wings or dog-fang teeth. And I’ll climax and so will Tom. Then we’ll get up, have breakfast, take a bus to a town with tiled palaces, koi carp and orange trees, and we’ll buy something lovely in Spanish leather or cedar wood and everything will be all right.
The Boy creeps forwards. I’m so scared and I’m so wet. But wet is winning. I follow, turning a corner then another until he ducks into a small archway in the wall. Moments later, I’m there too, head down and heart hammering as I descend three worn white steps.
In front of me, a cool cavernous chamber opens out. Hung with tapestries and oil lamps, its edges are banked with stacks of carpets, and in a far corner stands a cluster of earthenware jugs alongside sacks of grain. Sunbeams, soft and fuzzed with dust, slant down from high plaster-work arches, a tranquil light for prayer. It smells of straw and mice.
I catch a glimpse of the Boy as he flits from one stone pillar to another then stays there, hiding. Sitting cross-legged on a tall pile of carpets is a bald, muscular man with dark skin and heavy brows, his jawline shadowed with bristles. He’s bare-chested, whorls of black hair clouding his pecs and making a seam over his neatly rounded paunch. He looks like a cross between the Buddha and a thug. It’s not a look I’m familiar with but I do like it. He has a small, neat smile, and he’s observing me steadily, chin propped on his fist. I get the feeling he’s been expecting me.
“Hi,” I say, trying to sound brave.
I walk deeper into the chamber, across the flagstone floor, shoulders back. I know this man is going to fuck me and, frankly, I’m ready for it.
No one replies. The man keeps watching me, smiling. Though I’m still scared, I have an inkling of a new confidence. I’m starting to feel powerful and ageless, like some whore of the Old Testament. The Boy emerges from behind his pillar to lean against it, arms folded and smirking. His attitude’s changed. He has the jaded, haughty air of a rent boy, hard faced and sleazy. It’s attractive in a sick kind of way. His eyes are normal too. Well, relatively speaking. They are the most astonishing sea-green – National Geographic eyes – but they are normal in that they are human. I must have been seeing things earlier, a trick of the light, nothing more.
They both watch me as I sashay forwards. I feel deliciously easy. I’m a harlot, houri, concubine, slave. I could dance like Salome, seduce them with a strip show, except I don’t have seven veils, just sarong, vest and Birkenstocks.
Besides, my guess is, these guys really don’t need seducing.
“You chose well,” says the man, addressing the Boy.
Now hang on, I think. Didn’t I just walk here myself of my own free will? Then I correct myself. Who am I trying to kid? I’ve been picked up, haven’t I?
“My uncle,” says the Boy, grinning and nodding at the man.
Uncle tips up his chin in a curt greeting. “Show her to me,” he says to the Boy.
Barefoot, the Boy saunters forwards. He parts my sarong, exposing my legs, and presses his hand between my thigh. All the weight of my body is suddenly in my cunt, resting in that skinny hand. My gusset is damp and he paddles his fingers there, grinning at me before latching on to my clit. He rubs through the fabric, judging my expression. I want to appear impassive but the smell and touch of him makes me dizzy with longing. Truly, I can’t remember ever feeling so horny. I guess I don’t manage to pull off the cool, composed look because the Boy chuckles softly. In a whisper, he says, “Ah, you like that, don’t you? Hot little bitch.”
Well, you got me there, I think.
“She’s OK, Uncle,” announces the Boy. “Nice and wet.” He tucks the gusset aside then pushes two fingers up inside me. My knees nearly buckle. “Really wet,” he adds, stirring his two fingers around. In the silence, I hear my juices clicking.
“Excellent,” says Uncle in a thick, languid voice. “We have a willing woman.”
“A willing slut,” says the Boy, “who wants to get fucked.” He seems to be relishing the words, testing their strangeness like an adolescent keen to rid himself of innocence.
I’m relishing them too. I like being objectified. It takes the heat off having to be yourself.
The Boy, still working me with his fingers, slips his other hand up my top. He strokes me through my bra before pushing up the cups to squeeze and massage. My nipples are crinkled tight and he flicks and rocks them, bringing my nerve endings to seething life. Then, just as I start to feel I’m losing myself, falling open to ecstasy, the Boy pulls away and crosses the floor to Uncle.
It’s a cruel, desolate moment. I’m about to protest but before I can utter a word, the Boy has sprung up onto the carpets, leaping from a standstill like a mighty ballet dancer. On his haunches, he straddles Uncle who reclines, mouth parted, to suck on the Boy’s fingers, offered like dangling grapes. The Boy cups the man’s shiny head, supporting it, and Uncle goes slack with surrender, eyes closed in bliss, as he slurps and snuffles on a sample of my snatch.
Now, I’m not averse to a spot of guy-on-guy action but I’ve only just arrived and I’m feeling a touch neglected. So I walk towards them because, dammit, I want to play too. As I near, they stop their weird feeding and, holding the pose, look down at me with benign curiosity, blinking heavily. It’s as if they’ve never seen me before. Jesus, it’s creepy. Without smiling, they continue to stare and blink for w
hat seems like an age. A pair of green eyes and a pair of bright brown ones.
Then Uncle perks up, his expression changing to a villainous leer. He looks seriously gorgeous, like he ought to be behind bars. Sneering, he sits straight, swinging his legs over the edge of the carpet-pile, and delves into the crotch of his baggy pants. His pants are slate-blue silk, and a materialistic impulse asserts itself because that’s just the shade I want in the hallway. I consider asking for a thread so I can choose a carpet with a matching weave but the moment passes. I have a different object of desire, other needs to gratify.
“Suck my dick for me,” says the man, grinning. He releases a big fat erection, wanking it gently, the muscles of his beefy arm flexing under dark skin. It’s a beautiful brute of a cock, arrogant and obscenely large.
“Dirty bitch,” adds the Boy. He still sounds like a kid trying out rude words. “Suck the man’s dick.”
I’m happy to oblige. The stack of carpets are almost shoulder height and all I need do is lower my head to engulf him. His pubes tickle my nose and, butting deep within my mouth, he’s superbly stout and powerful. My head bobs between his thighs and I’m getting weaker and wetter as I dream how it’ll be when this beast slides into me. The Boy drops to the floor and I feel him at my feet, nuzzling my ankles then crawling under my sarong. I spread my legs for him and feel him rising, the heat of him on my skin, his shorn, silky head, his tongue trailing a path up my inner thighs. He pulls down my knickers and I feel him between my legs, his hot breath on my cunt before his tongue, so delicate and perfect, dances over my clit and squirms into my folds.
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