Manners Cost Everything (Manners Trilogy Book 1)

by Paul David Chambers

  ‘... causing a ……’

  The magazine browser has decided now is a good time to go to the toilet. Good. He won’t look me in the eye, and I won’t him. Less blushes for everyone.

  ‘…. It doesn’t cross your mind I’ve got a brain. That I’ve actually got a degree…’ Point.

  ‘ …scene. Will you….’

  ‘…. Or that I may have a bloody boyfriend! Oh yeah. I’ll meet you for a drink…’ Point.

  ‘…please not…’

  ‘…you’re a southerner, I’m a northerner. Gagging for it aren’t we? I’m bound to go to your room…’ Pointing. And now shouting.

  ‘…a few drinks, maybe a meal..’

  (SNAP!)

  Just like that. Pivotal moment.

  ‘…SHOUT AT ME LIKE THAT!’!

  I grab her rude, pointing finger, and with all my force slam her hand down on the counter. Polly goes quiet.

  There is a moment. A pause. The world stops.

  She is breathing, her chest heaving. My ire is as I have never known. I am no longer me.

  (….I wish you were dead…)

  I didn’t say it out loud. I know that, for sure. It was a thought, but Polly must have seen something in my eyes. Her flushed, livid face froze. Realization crossed her eyes.

  I am ice. ‘Say sorry, Polly’. I spit as I squeeze her hand, still under mine. I squeeze hard.

  ‘Apologise………….Polly………It’s good manners. You know that. Say sorry and we’ll be done with this’. I say very calmly, but my voice thick with new venom. I hear myself as if I am elsewhere.

  Her lip begins to tremble. Her beautiful eyes brim with tears. She looks at me. So vulnerable. Why does that thrill me so?

  (…getting hard again…)

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she replies, with a quivering voice. The words come out in a sob. Tears are running down her face leaving silvery trails

  (like the pre-come in my boxers…)

  down her cheeks. She seems to shrink before me. Crying with an open mouth. Tendrils of spit and mucus stretching between her lips.

  ‘I. DIDN’T. HEAR. YOU.’ I roar each word. Someone roars each word.

  I feel like a God. Power throbs in my temples and convulses through my cock. I feel like I could reach over, lift her like a kitten and snap her. This is not me. But this is me.

  I apply more pressure on her hand, bones clicking over other bones. My erection feels huge.

  ‘S-Sorry. I’m so sorry. I was out of order.’

  ‘Go on…’ I prompt. I can feel I’m grinning lasciviously at her. Gritted teeth. Clenched jaw. Hard cock.

  ‘I’m sorry. Please stop hurting me. I’ve apologized, I’m sorry, really I am.’

  I give one final squeeze of her tiny, insignificant hand and let go. ‘Thank you’, I say, turn around and walk out of the door. As the door closes behind me, like a volume control fading out the noise of her now uncontrollable sobbing, I glance at the sign.

  Close: 23:00.

  Right.

  Chapter 3

  The defining moment. No turning back. Past the point of no return. You’ve heard it a hundred times, but that’s how it was. One became two. And I didn’t even know it.

  I leave the garage shop. Climb in my car. Scream.

  After banging my fists on the steering wheel for what seems like an eternity but is no doubt more likely to be 10 seconds, I regain my composure. Composure, but not my balance.

  I sit there in my shitty little quiet Peugeot, wondering what the fuck had just happened. Some little, insignificant bitch had questioned my good nature. Had undermined me. Had confronted me. Embarrassed me, above all. Angered me like never before. That’s not good manners, not good at all.

  But what had happened to me? I’d never lost my temper like that. Fear of confrontation always took care of that.

  …Confront her…

  I twist the key of the little 306 two notches, wait for the light for the engine’s coil to extinguish, and then turn it fully to its third position. It chugs in to life, with all the bon viveur of a tractor.

  Nice exit, Manners. She’ll be laughing at you.

  I glance up and look through the glass by the serving area of the garage shop, and see the dark set eyes of the girl looking out,

  ..… I wish you were dead…..

  wringing her hands in anguish, no doubt hoping she has seen the last of me. I drive out of the garage forecourt, and pull over almost immediately into a quiet side street. I climb out, slam the door with a distinctly unsatisfying ‘clunk’ and storm over to the fence on the other side of the pavement.

  My rage needed outlet. The wood offers a submissive and silent recipient. Uttering a cry of pure fury, I begin to kick and punch it with a vigour hitherto unrealized. But still, every muscle in my body quivers and vibrates with unspent fury. I need more than a fence.

  ….. you need her face….

  I am not a violent man….

  …you need her body….

  Sure, I have had explosive moments before, but never in anything more than an alienated diatribe. I had never laid a hand on anyone, be it premeditated or reactive.

  Historically, I’ve never had to fight. I’ve always been the one with the gift of the gab to either talk my way out of any potential problem, or smooth things with a grin. Either that, or any one of my friends would be more than willing to stand a would-be attacker down.

  That’s how it is with me. Usually. This feels different. I feel different. I want to take on the world. I hold my clenched fists up in front of me, and they are twitching as if an invisible wire from an electric fence is running through them.

  ……..What are you going to do, Manners?..........

  It’s my voice. Only with a different timbre. It calms me momentarily.

  My last appointment is a four o’clocker. You tend to make those kind of appointments with the safe bets, the nice clients when you are staying away from home base. They are the easiest to postpone and reschedule, with the minimum of repercussions. This one is with the owner of a chain of chemists, a Mr. Singh, with whom I get along famously.

  ………The decision is made. My decision is made………

  Reaching into the door pocket, I get my Nokia 1610 out and bring up Mr. Singh’s number on the little black and white screen. Now I have a sense of purpose, I am a lot cooler. Focused.

  Angry….. but focused….right?

  Right.

  Chapter 4

  Half an hour later, I’ve checked in at reception and am in my Travelodge hotel room. Standard stuff, double bed, trouser press, the ghosts of a thousand cigarettes and a hundred illicit rendezvous fill the air. Glorious view of another similar typically London grey and heartless building from the window. I check out the bathroom… not bad…. Still no white bathrobe though.

  ……one day you’ll have a room with a nice white bathrobe, Manners….

  … Bitch…..

  I saunter back into the main part of the room, pick up the remote control on the desk next to the standard hotel pamphlets, and turn on the TV. I slump on the end of the bed, glazed eyes blurrily fixed at the screen as it pops into life spouting some children’s programme or other.

  …….So angry…….

  I run my fingers up and over my face,

  …….so fucking angry…….

  then through my hair.

  Massaging my scalp with my fingertips, it’s as if I’m working in invisible shampoo. Cradling the back of my neck, I raise my head, stare blindly at the TV, and let out a long shaky breath.

  ……bitch, whore, clever cunt…..

  Releasing my head, I lean down to the overnight bag I had dumped curtly on the floor minutes earlier. With a satisfying loud razz, I open the zip and rummage inside. Nothing of interest. Not what I want right now, anyway. Shit. Briefcase. I grab it from beside the bag, snap it open, look in the pockets at the back. Nothing.

  FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

  Then inspiration hits, as memories flood back
to previous stays in similar places. As a fairly regular hotel room dweller I know what can and what does go on with lonely people in lonely rooms, and subsequently what happens with some of the evidence.

  I drop to my knees at the side of the bed. Lifting the covering sheet with one hand, I search under the mattress with the other. Left, then right, then my fingers touch something that feels like exactly what I’m looking for.

  ……..aha! gotcha. See. I make things happen, you bitch…..

  Pulling out the magazine then standing up, I scrabble at my belt buckle, then throw the publication on the bed,

  (blood pumping ferociously again. Pounding…)

  wrench my shoes and socks off, jump clumsily out of my suit trousers, and stand there.

  Erect once more, urgent, threatening to rip through my boxers.

  (her eyes, scared, vulnerable)

  I’m hastily yanking off my tie, whilst simultaneously unbuttoning my shirt, and I strip to just my underwear.

  (her bottom lip, trembling)

  I snatch the magazine, open it up, massaging my cock and balls, flicking them through the material for the pleasure. For the stimulation.

  (the feel of her hand bones clicking in my hands)

  I slide down my boxers, my engorged cock snagging on them, then bouncing up, proud and needy.

  Naked now, in the bathroom, I place the magazine over the opening of the sink, and look into the mirror above it. My face is flushed. My eyes darkly sparkling with heat and passionate hatred. The head of my penis is gazing back at me, defiant, proud, aching for release.

  ……oh, you’re going to fucking get it, you…..

  I grasp my shaft, and I start pumping my member with my hand, flicking the pages of the magazine; complacent poses, compliant expressions, submissive forms. All metamorphosing into Polly’s. I wank myself harder.

  …..Polly want a cracker…..

  Grinning at that, I pump my fist more intensely and faster along my length, page after page goes by, tearing and ripping. More poses, all Polly. Pretty Polly…..

  … Polly want a cracker, Polly want a cracker…..

  I look in the mirror, still pleasuring myself. I do not see my reflection, for I am back in the garage. I am behind the counter at the garage, and I am holding Polly down, bent over the surface, one of my hands over her mouth. I’m roughly raising her skirt to waist level, ripping her white G-string entirely off, effortlessly, the muffled protestations against my hand turning me on. In my mind’s eye, I am trying to slide my aching member into Polly, as the wriggles to avoid the inevitable. Too late, I am inside her warmth. I slide in and out, she grows wet and hotter…….

  …. Oh god, oh god, oh God……

  ..as my focus returns to my reflection, eyes locking on eyes that don’t seem my own, flushed and angry, a spurt of liquid silk projects over the open magazine and onto the mirror, making small spatting noises.

  …… pretty Polly, Polly want a cracker……

  I continue massaging myself, draining out the depleting squirts of come, as the rigidity becomes less, my burning subsiding, my breathing shallower, my eyes less enraged.

  …….you should do that for real…..

  although spent, the pressure in my head does not wane, my pulse is a drumbeat in my cranium.

  More. I want more.

  …….. Take what is yours, Manners. It’s time to teach the world some manners…

  With that, I turn off Byker Grove, playing quietly on the TV, turn on the shower, and begin to ready myself for a night out in London, a night of fun.

  Chapter 5

  15 minutes to 11pm. Manners parks his banal car in an equally banal street around the corner from the banal garage. There are a few houses dotted along it, all quite large, and lurking safely behind high walls or foliage.

  The radio is on low, with John Peel musing over the latest offering from ‘Cluster-fuck’, or whatever the band is that he feels are deeply poetic in their angst this evening. His sombre voice calms this listener not one iota.

  Whilst remaining focused, he could not be described as calm. Oh no. As he studies the garage’s side through the leaves of the trees standing between him and

  (Pretty)

  Polly, his vision is bouncing back and forth with the rhythm of his pulse. Manners’ breathing is deep, the resonance changing slightly on each heartbeat.

  And he watches. And he waits.

  …. So grown some balls have we, Manners…?

  This time the voice doesn’t seem so third party. The feeling is more that of him asking himself the question in the everyday way.

  ‘It’s not balls I’ve grown’. He replies to himself.

  ‘I’ve got lessons to teach’.

  …..I see……

  ‘Pretty Polly in there wasn’t very well behaved earlier….’

  …….yes?.......

  ‘….and you know how I feel about respect for others? Common FUCKING COURTESY!’

  ……….but you wanted her………..

  ‘SHE’S A BITCH! RUDE BITCH!!!.....’

  It’s a strange thing to realise you are raising your voice to yourself, in your own head.

  Everything has taken on a dream like quality.

  22:55. the lights on the forecourt are turned partly off to signify the imminent closure of the premises. he watches a car pull into the forecourt.

  ……no!......

  ……and glide past the pumps only to exit the other side, having used its empty space to perform a large U-turn, joining the road again, but in the opposite direction. Turning round and changing minds. Should that happen here?

  No.

  Manners calms slightly.

  He climbs out of the car. Quietly closes the door. Looking round, there seems to be no life in any of the houses; all sensible people with sensible bedtimes. Perfect. Just the quiet buzz of the street lights to accompany this stealthy being.

  He opens the boot, carefully, in case it decides to choose that moment to need oiling and raise the alarm with a squeal of unearthly proportions. It doesn’t. He reaches in and wraps his fingers around the initial weapon of choice.

  ‘……not long now Polly…’

  Not long now Polly.

  23:03. The lights start to extinguish inside the garage shop in clusters, until there is just the greenish glow from the exit signs silhouetting Polly.

  Pretty Polly. Pretty fucked.

  Polly’s wedge heels clip clop out of the pool of ghostly faint light still coming from inside the garage, and she continues out to the darkness, to her fate.

  THUNK

  The sound of tyre iron hitting the back of an elfin girl’s head.

  Polly want a cracker….Polly want a cracker….

  The repeated utterings of a newly fledged alter ego on a petrol station’s dark forecourt as he drags a limp girl to her death, behind the garage shop within which she set the machinations in motion by choosing the wrong person to display bad manners to. She was to be the first, but she by no means was to be the last.

  Chapter 6

  (Finger depresses ‘pause’ button. Tape continues to whir).

  15 years on, everything seems so much more polished. People are more polished, groomed. Houses and lives are more polished and better equipped. Cars, clothes, houses, skin, hair: polished.

  The grimy payoff, however, is the continued desiccation of our moral fibre. So enamoured are the masses with their myriad of technological devices to communicate with each other and the world, that the act of communication has become secondary. The convenience culture has systematically spawned rude brat after arrogant brat after ignorant brat.

  The nanny culture so inherent in this litigation heavy world has created a race of hateful humans with zero accountability, a lack of respect of authority and punishment so impotent from womb to grave that it is no wonder that daily life is filled with caustic embodiments of hatred wherever you look. An entitled society who want everything handed to them on a plate, yet are unprepared to
put in the slightest bit of effort.

  Generations of little shits, growing up and greedily attaching themselves, leech-like to society. Poison and irritants pumped in, all the goodness being sucked out.

  And so, my friends, I am busy.

  Chapter 7

  Lentus looked at the uniform hanging up and grinned. THAT bastard thing won’t be missed. After over 2 years in a uniform and a few weeks tagging along with CID on an attachment, he was finally going to get his teeth into some of the stuff that actually mattered.

  ‘See ya, small time wankers. Hello big time evil wankers’ he sang cheerily and laughed as he pulled the Windsor knot on his crisp tie into perfect symmetry. He liked symmetry. Things had a place and they needed to be just ‘so’. He always part joked that his chosen vocation was down to needing to tidy the world up.

  Detective Constable Lentus. It sounded good. It sounded right. No more PC Lentus or PC George ‘Lenny’ Lentus as his colleagues had referred to him at the station. All thanks to his bloody sister spilling that little fact down the pub when he was out with some of the station.