'It was just getting down to winter'........ a cautionary tale of disappearances in London

It was just getting down to winter, with the last of the dead leaves blustering about along the deserted streets. Here and there a young girl’s face would pop out of a shop doorway, scanning for signs of a slowing car which might hold the promise of a punter, and enough money for another quick hit before the weekend really got underway.
Thursday night’s were always like this, a slight lull in the storm before the main punters began coming down from Scotland and the north, for their football and rugby. Then, the nearby pubs would fill to the sound of Brummie or Gorbald accents, pubs with such names as ‘Flying Scotsman’, ‘Dunredin’, ‘The Caledonian’.

Claire’s starting off spot was normally the ‘Scotsman’. Deep inside the spit and sawdust bowels of this time- honoured establishment she could make out the swaying motions of the strip, pole and lap dancers through the frosted glass of the side windows, and the occasional open flap of the doorway as the shadowy outlines of men passed back and forth between the street and the satanic invocation that took place on the altar that passed for a miniature stage.

Whores, like junkies and Freemasons, are creatures of habit, and seek to preserve their rituals, and here was the starting point for Claire.
Here she would drag her shivering body out whenever she came to, and from wherever she had come to, and, sharpening her wits would commence her lookout for the men she would get herself picked up by.

The Scottish guys, she had found, were generally the most naïve. Often she could lure these to an isolated spot where Big Looey, or one of her other associates, would arrange for a rendezvous. The punter would then be subjected to a heavy beating and robbery.
Either that, or she would try and get enough money, say, sixty quid, up front, and then disappear round the corner with an excuse to ‘look after the baby’. She would be back in a minute, though. The last time she had done that, though, the irate punter had stormed all night long round the block of flats into which she had taken refuge. The punter, a six foot six Scottish rugby afficianado had shrieked his outrage all through the early hours of the morning. Even the fellow junkies in the flat where she had lodged had grown restless at this, in case, through some feet of incredible intuition, the punter should suddenly have become able to discern which flat exactly she had disappeared into.

All night the paranoia had grown, and the man’s indecipherable utterances had increased in volume as he stormed along the outside edge of their fortress, then grown fainter again as he vanished round the back side of the block, allowing a temporary respite for the inhabitants within- not to mention for all the other tenants in the block. But their relief was to be all-too short lived, with the sound of his curses increasing again as he came back round the side of the building.

As the night wore on, and as the quantity of crack which Claire had been able to purchase with his money diminished, it was under one of the beds that Claire began to seek a place of hiding, just in case this demon from hell should suddenly break into the flat to seek her out and exact his dreadful revenge. Eventually the gear ran out, and in the come-down that is every smoker’s worst nightmare Claire realised that she hadn’t accounted for enough to get some smack. She looked around the room at the small collection of deep soul friends that she had been treating to a decent smoke not twenty minutes before, but now that she needed something back from them there was suddenly a dearth of eye-contact. No, nobody could help her out. Everyone was broke. In the pregnant silence that ensued Claire realised that it was going to be down to herself to get herself sufficiently together to get back down to the Cross, to ‘The Scotsman’ if necessary, to get some more readies together. She cursed herself, for having chiselled the punter, for having blown all the money on crack, for not having put something aside for the come-down, for the brown that would be the beautifully soft parachute which would gossamer-like allow her to drift back to the ground with barely a bump.

But right now she was in a plane that had just been shot down by the German anti-aircraft batteries, and was coming down over the rooftops really fast, faster even. As she looked over the rim of the wings, she could see the faces, even, of those who until moments earlier she had been dropping bombs upon, their arms upraised in gestures of exultation as they saw the flames billowing out from where the shrapnel had pierced the side of her Spitfire. She was going to have to do something quickly, or within a few more minutes even walking out of this flat was going top become increasingly difficult.

But Claire wasn’t an officer for nothing; she always kept an emergency ration for moments such as this. Because no matter how much love and unity there would be in the moments of heavy crack invocation, after the ceremony, as she well knew from her extensive experience, there would be noting but cold comfort and averted glances, at best.
At first she though about making her way to the toilet, but there was no need. Here we were all friends together. Deep inside her bra she had kept a syringe-filled with just enough brown for a one-off shot. If she brought it out, it wasn’t impossible that someone would grab it off her, and shoot it himself. If she were quick, she would probably avert that, so that ruled out a vein shot. Pinching the miniscule fold of flesh on the side of her bony bum, she slid the needle straight in and immediately began pushing hard on the plunger. Hopefully the fucker wouldn’t block up and then suddenly spurt out all over the fucking place like what had happened to her a few nights and a lifetime ago in some other part of the Cross. Luckily enough, the clear brown liquid flowed straight into the fatty cells and emptied out. She pulled the syringe out, and saw the jealous faces of some of those in the room that envied deeply her that warm loving embrace of the brown, and instead reconciled themselves to the savage and humiliating slam into the ground that their come-down was bringing them.

In the corner Easy the dealer sat, watching and not watching, right there aware of all the intricacies going on within the group and yet Buddha-like apart from it. Inside his mouth he kept a stash of small plastic wrappers, in two colours. The blue ones were for the white- the crack- the red were for the brown- the heroin. One to go up- the other- equally if not even more important- for safely coming down. Reckless would be the traveller to buy one ticket without the other. Whenever a punter came in and wanted so many of each, Easy would bring out the depository from inside his mouth and pick out, so many of red, so many of blue, depending on what they wanted. Thus, his nights rolled into days, which I turn rolled again into nights until all his wraps had turned themselves into cash. By then, a friend would have arrived with the next shipment, ready for packing and wrapping with the two kinds of plastic he kept in readiness. The cash would filter out through the same person and get deposited in a safe place. Throughout the junkie community there were always an infinitude of legends concerning where this dragon stash of wealth might actually be, and what might be involved in gaining access to it.

Right now, Claire was ready. She could feel the soft glow of the brown running through her, spreading out like the branches of a tree, like in those speeded-up National Geographic films of flowers opening up in the sunlight.
She was ready.

Stepping out onto the street she felt the icy blast immediately. The light from the overhead arc lights gave the council estate an eyrie East Berlin cold war edge. The entire place was completely deserted. Not a sole in sight, not even any fellow travellers, dodging in between the dark spaces between lamp posts on their way to a crack house. Claire was thankful to her gods for the hit of brown- without it she would invariably become paranoid, and start seeing people following her, or getting ready to try and kidnap her. She could never talk about these fears to anyone, in case they should turn out to be an actual part of the nightmare. Deepest of all, though, was her fear of being buried alive.

Since coming to London, her weight had just slipped off her. In times gone by- now, far far distant, it would have seemed like a young woman’s dream come-true if someone had told her then that she would be weighing some eight stones. By now, she had other concerns- other priorities, and she moved along keeping to the shadows like some incorporeal creature of a long-forgotten mythology.

Popping inside the shop window, she stepped out of the way of the slight drizzle which had started to spit. She reached down and pulled her crack pipe out of her crotch, wrapped in a durex. It slithered at first, then seemingly resisted, as though with a life of its own it wanted to stay lodged inside the crevice of her pussy. Then, with a stronger tug, and a slight widening of her legs, the whole package came through. At least she could have a scrape whilst waiting for a punter. The pipe consisted of a small glass Martel brandy bottle with a hole tapped into its bottom. Inside its spout was a roll of burned gauze wire, on which the crack was placed at the commencement of any smoking. Claire knew she hadn’t got any more crack, but as she looked at the insides of her bottle she could see the jet b lack residue of dozens of former smoking sessions. If she worked it right she could be assured of a massive blast, maybe two. Pulling out a long sliver of wire, she hooked the gauze wire onto its end and began twirling this inside, up and down, inside the bottle. As it twirled, it wiped up all the heavy residue that was lying in wait, and soaked it onto the gauze. An additional wipe across the bottom, and around where the hole had been tapped, and then the glass bottle was once again pristine clear. The gauze she retrieved and brought back up to the mouth of the bottle. With a gentle flick she pulled this free, and then carefully set it back into the mouth, pushing, teasing and coaxing the gauze into ever more dense permutations.
There, she was ready. She reached for her lighter. Inside her jacket pocket were several, mostly nearly-finished ones. There was nothing so frustrating as starting a blast only to have the poxy lighter fizzle out on you halfway through. She made sure the one she was going to use was the new one- or at least relatively so.

A quick glance out and along the street would quell- at least temporarily- any paranoia about being watched- by the police, by competitors, or by vigilante neighbours that were always campaigning to clean the area up. No sign of anyone.
She raised the pipe to her lips, placing them around the base of the bottle, and exhaled as deeply as she possibly could. Then, like a statue of liberty, she flicked the lighter and raised the flame right up to the very top of the pipe, and with her breath drew down the flame onto and into the gauze. There was a hearty crackle, like a mediaeval hearth, from up above, and even as she glanced carefully to check she could see an immense torrent of deepest black cloud thickening downwards along the bottle stem as it poured into her lungs. Keep it going, keep it going, nice and slow, nice and easy. No sudden movement, no jerky movement, just one nice ‘n’ easy motion here- don’t let the flame get too hot for the mouth- but don’t back off now, either…..crackle crackle…..nice ‘n’sexy glowing time all running through her frame and down between her legs, getting ready for some sexy times with PUNTERS…………it was showtime…..it was Hertime………as the world inside and out lit up in glorious technicolour. The dark street became a Disneyland ride of ancient London, every corner lit and enhanced with stunning colour and detail of workmanship. The little shops became glowing mini-museums of forgotten arts crafts, quaint and cartoon-like. The cars gliding past moved like the longships from some norse myth sailing up the mist-shrouded rivers of Mercia.

Deep inside her breast Claire felt an intense love spring up and outflow. Coming up was always like getting to the apex of one of those helter skelter rides in the fairground- from the top of this place you could look down and see everything in life and how it fitted together, over past, present and future. The wisdom of the gods flowed into her at that moment, and she understood- as she had done many times before- every secret, every mystery, of her life and indeed, of Life itself. She caught sight of herself in the window of the shop, and was stunned at how gorgeous she looked. No wonder so many men fell so madly in love with her….and wanted her.
And, to top it all, she had won the lottery.
Now, she told herself, now she would find the right punter………………………

He came round the corner, watching his speed in case the cameras the police had put on virtually every street corner should trigger his number plate and send a squad car out to pull him over. Usually they didn’t bother, but an intuition told him that they were more interested in keeping tabs on the cars the known Toms were seen getting into. Something told him the police were hunting for bigger prey than people with bent motors- or out of date tax disks. Rumour had it that so many girls were disappearing from the Cross, jumping into cars left and right with never a second thought- only ever a thought for the twenty or thirty quid a quick trick would bring them. They were in a hurry these girls- too much of a hurry for their own damn good. He wondered how long they generally lasted, before the drugs, or the pimps, or some deranged punter took them off for the last time, whisking them into the mist for God only knew what fate might befall them. Part of him felt sorry for them. Maybe one day, from amongst their horde, he would meet the One that he was destined to fall in love with. For deep down, he was a romantic.
But romantics must undergo many tests of their love, to see if it is true love that burns within their heart. He smiled to himself, then, catching himself in the rear view mirror, noticed how mysterious and handsome he looked. One free hand dipped into a pocket and pulled out a small phial of black magic oil. On the tiny label were the words ‘Flying Devil’, while inside was a dark red liquid like blood with something solidifying or coagulating at its bottom. He had picked it up from one of the ‘magical suppliers’ in Camden, the one in the back road that nobody noticed, at least not any of the whites, only the black people, the West Indians and the Africans, and the Indians, the women in their saris, the occasional men in their large turbans. A dab of that, and the strange, slightly challenging aura of the mystic was about him, or so he imagined.
He felt emboldened, now imaging himself to be a predatory creature, creeping through the urban jungle, in search of something further down on the food chain. Then, his mind shifted up into a yet higher gear, and he became in that instant an ancient vampire, cunningly disguised in this, his human host self, innocently rummaging through the Dickensian back streets of the desolation that was all that remained of King’s Cross- Goods Way, Pentonville Road, Caledonian Road. Outside all was blackness, a shifting swirl of darkness and fear only kept at bay by the airtightness of the magical circle that had hidden itself in the mundane form of his car.
He glided past the Post Office on Euston Road, and got into lane to do the Ueey to come back past St. Pancras Station, in all its true Victoriana glory, a mass of swirling turrents and intricate archways, taking on its persona of the Cathedral to All That Is Dark. He imagined he could hear the sonorous Gregorian chants of the trains from deep inside, their powerful bellows hitting their notes and gathering themselves into great cascades and crescendos of sound and invocation.
A swift glance along the side showed him the Shipwrecked scattered along its beachfront- survivors from a Thousand and One kinds of tragedy, abuse and desolation, all now trying to put behind them whatever had happened and start the evening on whatever kind of fresh note could be found. He saw one girl he had picked up once before, a girl with such saggy tits even the other whores took the piss out of her, and a cunt so wide that when he was fucking her he just got tired, and settled for a hard wank instead. After the hand job, he felt, as per usual, disgusted and ashamed with himself, yet still managed to keep up his Gentleman Jim act until he had brought the girl back to where he had found her. As she got out, he hung back for a few moments, to see what she did. Sure enough, from out of the shadows came the outline of a young black kid, her pimp, her dealer, someone who was gong to be taking off her the money. An arm, like a young tentacle flicked out and in an instant was gone, snatching the money. In the same moment, almost unseen by human hand a small package passed itself, like the painting of God reaching down to man in the painting by Da Vinci.
A few steps from her, was a very young girl, looking round and round, as if mesmerized by the traffic. He had seen her before, too, and had even be chased by her as he had paused to see if she was really what she had seemed, with her voice still sounding in his ears,
‘Biznis, mister! Biznis mister! Oi, biznis mister!’ sounding more like mockery from a demon from hell than a seductive entreaty from a siren. He had then felt the first tinge of shame, as he realized the extent of the degradation that surrounded him, and wondered how far into himself it might have already permeated.
There were others, oh yes, the one-Tooth merchant, the junky girl, the Cockney, the waif, all members of an awful pantomime, a carnival of death, in which the living and the dying walked side by side, fucking together, buying, selling and betraying each other on their road to their Final Judgement.
But none of them had the special something that he knew that this evening he was on the Look Out for.
Like most hunters, he would have been unable to verbalize exactly what this quality might be, but from deep inside him their was growing a longing for something that none of these other Punch and Judy characters could provide. He pulled into the left hand lane leading into Good Way, to come back on himself, and complete the Circle. As he drove around the Cross, he liked the idea that as he went along he was making certain kinds of circles, and even other mystical shapes and designs, and that this was somehow part of a Grand design.

And as he turned yet another corner, there……..he saw Her……………………..yes…………

Yes

Claire breathed out the last of the smoke, the felt the rush of power flowing deep inside her. Now she could face anything, and knew she would win.
Glimpsing quickly out of the shop doorway, she saw- somehow highlighted out from the other cars- the one that was carrying her punter to be. Like other girls that worked in the Cross, she had quickly developed a sixth, seventh and eighth sense to ensure her survival. In fact, so highly attuned had become these powers that she had veritably flourished, easily making over a thousand pounds in a good night.
The car slowed. It was almost as if some strange unearthly power would pre-select certain cars, certain punters out for her, and then by some strange magnetic or kinetic power draw them inexorably over to the side of the road where she was. At other times she thought it was herself, imbued with the telekinetic power that the god of crack cocaine bestowed upon those that partook of its sacred rites.

The car slowed, and as she took a glance of the punter’ face she knew he would be alright. It was mostly the blacks and Turks that were out to rob the girls, often banging them and then taking away all their money before driving off into the night. After such an experience, all the girls wanted to do was get back to the street and make some money for some brown, so as to cool themselves down. The last thing any of them ever wanted was to sit around I police stations, where their reception was variable, at best.
The bangers knew this, and hence focused their attacks on them as easy prey. Often the rape gangs could get away with their shit for years, or until some other kind of justice caught up with them. On the street were many kinds of justice, and much of it far more dread than anything the courts and the judges could ever hand down.

The near- side window wound down, electronically. The punter’s cheeky, chubby face leered up, slightly stoned on something- probably a bit of weed, Claire thought.
She leaned her slender body through the portal that was created.
‘Bit of biznis, mate?’ she asked, half closing her eyelids in imitation of something she had once seen in a sex film that her dad had once shown her, when she had been around ten years old.
‘Yeah, alright, darlin’, jump in’ he said, as she yanked open the door and whisked herself in, slamming the door ultra hard behind her. The sound- which she had been prepared for- always made punters jump, and gave them a little hint that she could look after herself in a tight spot, if push came to shove. It told them that she was no wimp; that she could look after herself, if it came to it.
At once her feet came into contact with rubble. Looking down, she saw several empty cans. Pieces of fish and chip wrapping paper, grease-smeared and stale-smelling curled up around it all, and over it all scattered like confetti were the buts of cigarettes.
Claire wondered what the fuck was wrong with this clown that it was too much effort even to get rid of this rubbish. All it would have taken was one swift sweep and it would all have been out the door.
But some punters loved the shite they lived and breathed in; for some it was almost like a biological support system, an eco-system, they called it, on television.
Bringing her mind back to the punter, she quickly sized him up, and gave him one of her most seductive smiles.
‘Alright luv?’ she said to him, in her best cockney. She started stroking his left leg, always a good way of getting the punters started.
‘This way’ she pointed up ahead, directing him where to go. It was important to take control as soon as possible. The longer you left it the more danger you put yourself in. If a punter thought he could take control, then the chances were that he would. That could mean anything, from getting short changed to getting robbed. Some girls had even been held in punters’ places for days when the punter thought them too weak to do anything other than go along with it. For a lot of the girls, as long as they were getting the drugs they needed, even that was OK by many of them, too.

Her hand moved further up along the inside of his leg, and rested over his balls. Giving these a little friendly squeeze was usually an excellent way of getting the punter primed and ready. Whereas the punter may have budgeted for a spend in the region of thirty pounds, for oral and sex, by priming him like this Claire had long since found out that easily up to a hundred pounds could be gleaned- often more. Thirty was just a quick spurt out. But for a really good sexy time, an hour, say, a oner was the price- but why not- if you’ve got the money, honey- go for an all-night session with the lady of your dreams?

Many a time Claire had been amazed to see the huge doorstep-like bundles of wedge in punters’ wallets when they opened up to pay out. In more than a few cases it looked as though a bank had been robbed. Many a blagger, after a nice successful job, would high-tail it up to the Cross to pick up a young piece of cunt.

In other cases, the punter could be swayed to pull-over by a cash machine, and pull out an additional five hundred- especially if they liked a smoke while they were getting their cock sucked.

‘I think I know the place’ the punter said, his eyes occasionally flickering like a snake’s across to her, already red-rimmed with the desire to spunk into her. Or maybe he’d already had a smoke before coming out. Those punters were the best. Some times they were already so out of it they didn’t even notice when she dipped them. This, she mused, as she twinked the end of his hardening cock between her thumb and forefinger, was probably what was going to be on the agenda for Big Boy here.
They were pulling in to a deserted car park, the kind Kings Cross specialised in, without any lights, security, cameras, where literally anything could happen- a woman get raped, a man beaten, and nobody would pass, at least until another car with punter might happen along and see them. Normally, though, punters were the last people on earth to be interested in anything other than their own gratification. Fuck everybody else. As long as I’m alright Jack.
They would see a woman lying ripped apart and bleeding form here arse and cunthole and just drive off into the night, without phoning for any ambulance. And not without reason, either. The Old Bill would probably have stitched them up, to get a conviction, so desperately short of true culprits they were known to pin anything on anyone, just to get their statistics up, and make it look to the Great British public that they were doing such a marvellous job.

Twink twink………twink twink……the bloke’s prick was almost standing up on its hind legs begging by now. She could feel the thing hard as a plank under his trouser fly.
‘Would you like half an hour?’ she asked him, coyly.

The punter was looking round. Something was telling him that all was not well. Something here was amiss. Punters, like the dealers, and like the working girls, generally develop sixth, seventh and eighth senses which are vital if they are to survive the extremely adverse environments which their economics thrust upon them.
He looked around. Everything was still, quiet. Possibly too much so. The key went back into the ignition, and the engine thrust again into life.
Just in time. At that precise moment three black youths wearing hoods came streaming out from behind a nearby car, each carrying something in their hands, a weapon of some kind. Something capable of doing harm, of causing pain.
The punter gave a little wave as he sailed past them, back up the ramp that had led in, and past another car, driven by a large African-looking black. The punter looked to see if beside him was a young white girl, but he didn’t think so. Strange- who knew what that guy was about? The punter thought about a possible police surveillance vehicle, trailing this young slip of a girl he had just picked up, possibly making sure she wasn’t getting abducted. He knew instinctively that there was some massive police operation on to try and catch the kidnappers – and in turn murderers- of these young women.
‘Friends of yours?’ he asked her, as he navigated his way past balisha beacons, cones, and into the honeycomb of adjacent streets which ran from Goods Way up to off the Cale Road.
‘No mate. I swear on my kid’s life!’ Claire stated emphatically, scared now in case the attempted mugging that had just happened should be something the punter might think she had had a part in. She felt a bit more explanation might not be a bad idea. Otherwise she might be getting her own arse cut. She had seen many a girl end up with big knife marks across her face from trying to set people up.
‘Honest guv’ she continued, ‘I never saw ‘em before tonight. They would have robbed me too. I’m glad you pulled out when you did.’ In truth, Claire had not had a part in arranging for the muggers to be waiting there. But many muggers knew like the back of their hand the spots round the Cross where they could get away with murder, where the Old Bill were too nervous to go by themselves, especially if they ran the likelihood of coming up against someone with a shooter.
The punter was silent for a moment. For Claire, this was not a good sign, neither was the fact that he was navigating by now out of the Cross area entirely and up towards Holloway Road.
It was time to say something.
‘’ere’ she said, harshly, ‘where the bleedin’ ‘ell you takin’ me? I know some proper spots, but not this way. Let’s head back. You’re takin’ me on a fackin’ trip rahnd the bleedin’ world, you are, and no mistake. And all for a fackin’ firty pahnd, ya cunt’.
The punter merely smiled.
‘Oh ma fackin’ gawd’ she thought, ‘I’ve gawn and gotten a right nutter ‘ave I’.
She was just about to swing her hips round and start using her young legs as the powerful kicking pistons they were. Many a time she had beaten back an out-of-order punter by kicking in this way.
Suddenly, though, the punter’s smile widened, and inside the rim of his mouth she thought at first that she was seeing things; several small multi-coloured plastic wraps, one set white, the other black, sitting on the top of his tongue as his teeth pulled back. Was this guy for real, or a trickster?
‘Wassat then?’ she asked, doubtful, but certainly curious. A punter that was mad enough to smoke with a working girl was a dream come true.
‘Wot do you fink?’ he asked back. ‘A little something for a nice sexy smoke’. There was an undertone of authenticity to his voice that made her start believing him. Anyone that was a mere bluffer would be a bit more keen than this one for her to believe him.
Hhhmm, she thought to herself. A nice sexy smoke. Immediately the liquids inside her starting bubbling again.
‘Well, in that case, no harm in me opening one up, then, is there?’ she said.
‘’No harm at all, but we go back to my place for the main course’ he added, as he reached up with one hand to his mouth and transferred one of the white packages into his palm.
Then, reaching across to her, he handed it.
Skinning back her teeth, Claire zipped open the package, and almost simultaneously brought out her bottle to put it on the end of. Using her lighter she melted down the pearly white stone onto, and then more firmly into the gauze wire.
Raising the bottom of the bottle to her lips, she fired up the top, and began pulling down masses of the thick black cloud that would taste so sweet in her mouth and lift her straight back up to the Throne of Heaven.
The burning seemed to go on for ever, although in reality it must only have been for two or three minutes. But in that time Claire systematically filled as many cavities in her lungs as she found humanly possible, cramming and jamming every available molecule into her cells, feeling the drug kick through along her arteries, into her lungs, then her heart, then straight into her brain. It was like the Christmas illuminations coming on, in full 3 D and moving, a kaleidoscope of movement, thought and every kind of fantastic feeling………….
As she was gasping for breath, she could vaguely hear the punter’s voice sounding off beyond the other side of a thick mist.
‘Feel it? I said, did you feel it?’ she could hear his voice. Cunt. Why did these cunts always talk when she was getting into her buzz?
She couldn’t answer, only nod. Better make up a pipe for him, too, though. He was the restless type, so the sooner he went sky-high and started getting more amenable, the better. She kept nodding, as she broke off another piece for him to smoke, melting it down in the same way so as to avoid the possibility of it becoming dislodged by any sudden or unanticipated movement of the car.
There, within moments, it was safely melted into the gauze.
‘That’d better be for me, right?’ he was saying.
‘Yeah, yeah, it is’ her voice now lost the calculated hard nut edge from the cockney, and was reverberating back to the slight west country burr, native to the area of Reading from where she actually hailed.
He pulled over, and eagerly took the pipe off her. Raising the flame, he sucked long and hard through the glass stem. He took his time, sucking nice and gently, soft and slow. Only the amateurs smoked too quickly. You would get more out of it through going softly, and consistently. Sucking the devil’s dick, they called it.
After he inhaled, he sat there at the wheel, staring straight ahead of him, saying nothing, doing nothing. He was completely motionless, totally still. Then, without warning, the smoke he started to exhale, a thick vapour like the body of an oriental dragon, coiling and uncoiling itself as it made its way out of that genie’s bottle, its head appearing in one place, only to retract and come out in another, over and over again.
The air smelt of thick chemical. But Claire loved it. The punter’s face was bright red by now, his eyes bulging, as if inside the pressure had suddenly jumped.
Then he went again, for a second round. He knew that from the amount she had put on there was plenty left for second or even third rounds. Claire liked to put biggies on, especially when someone else was paying for it.
When he had finished, there was something spent about him. Most punters would be even more charged up, ready for all kinds of James Bond action after a blast like that. But this one was one of the other kind, the type that liked to take it a bit easy after a heavy blast. OK, then so be it, she said to herself. That makes my job even easier.
Everything came to a stop. Even the police sirens in the distance seemed to switch off. Nothing moved along the streets. Claire knew to let the man have his buzz. They were all wired as fuck, in this game.
He passed the bottle back. Inside the plastic packet in her hand the white stone was nearly done. A shadow of its former self remained- she plucked it out and started putting it on the top of the gauze. She would need a new gauze wire on it soon. In one of her pockets was a large piece of spare wire. She had already taken the precaution of burning it, putting it through a flame long enough to flame off all the metallic outercasing of the wire, turning it over and over on the flame to ensure an nice all-over burning. The wire had changed from pristine silverlike to darkened black, and was ready. But changing gauzes in midsmoke was always to be avoided. Better to wait until they were back at his place before getting a new gauze on. That way, it wouldn’t be any problem about soaking the first stone into the wire to get it properly ‘smoked’. It always took the initial stone to get a new wire properly soaked for a thorough blasting.
‘No more’ the punter said. Hoho, so we’re getting a bit of a tough guy, now, are we, Claire thought to herself. Getting to be a bit of a cheeky bollox. Okay, then, matey, she thought to herself. I know how to play your little game.
‘Okay guvnor’ she said, though, meekly, doing her best imitation of an orphaned waif out of a Charles Dickens story.
The punter seemed to come to life, getting into the role play. Whatever kinky frolics the coming night was going to hold, Claire realised, it was going to be good. The thick stream of juice flowing down the inside of her fanny tube was too strong and too thick to be wrong.

The car swept further through the darkened streets. The silence engulfed them. At the end of a warren of streets they arrived at what Claire supposed was, for the punter, home. She had never been to this part of London before. In fact, she wasn’t even sure which part of London she was now in. Normally she would keep tabs on where she was being taken, but this punter had distracted her with the free sample. She started to get paranoid about even that. Maybe that’s why he had given it to her- a perfect ploy, if he had a kidnapping in mind.
No, he’s alright, just a bit lonely, she told herself. Most smokers were like that. Lonely fucks that everybody else had given up on.
Along the sides of the road were trees, some really big, reaching out across the wide lane up ahead and even to the other side. The houses here were each of them different; large, really old, and each one of them different from the next. She imagined the large windows at their tops like great eyes, and the doorways, which had curved archways, as mouths, opening up to gobble up those that entered, or merely gaping in astonishment at the outside world.
Together they got out of the car, and Claire waited until she got some sign from the punter as to which amongst these places was the one he lived in. She imagined him to be sweating it out in some little housing benefit place. A basic bed, a tiny sink and pair of taps in the corner, a paper cupboard with its standard issue broken railing inside. She knew the score.
The punter led her up towards one of the great houses. In years gone by this had probably been a family house, with the rich man’s daughters living in the upstairs front rooms, right at the top. She could see there was a basement flat in what used to be the servant’s quarters, and the house was at least three floors above this. In the front garden was a small tree growing in a circle, around which tapered a concrete drive with an old Volvo sitting there. The car looked like a genuine antique piece, shiny black in the night, the orange and white streetlamps gleaming off its chassis. Following the punter, Claire walked through the front door, with its old stained glass emblem in its frame, into the hallway. Inside it looked like the doors she had seen one time when she had bunked into one of the Inns of Chambers with a punter for a screw. The tiny little doorways, with peoples names crudely hand painted in black on white backgrounds on signs just outside. Up the stairs, and the stairs double-backed onto themselves, then along, through a really dark bit, where for a moment Claire thought something dodgy might actually be about to take place.
The punter pushed against a delayed light socket plunger in the side of the wall, and the light above them went on, but only for a few seconds. Just as the punter found his keys and started to open the door to his flat, they switched off again, leaving them both in absolute darkness. Then a square of light opened up ahead, as his key turned and he went in.

Inside it wasn’t too bad. She was used to some of the lowest dregs in the planet up inside her, but this one, she could tell, could be a real pushover, if handled properly.
Things like books on shelves and records by a turntable proclaimed this clown as a real fucking idiot. In the corner was an Indian looking statue of some goddess or something, dancing, quite tall, about three feet, with two smaller dancers carved, one on each side, each different. In a corner, by the side of a large wide window, was a computer, on a pedestal. The curtains were opened, and across the panorama Claire could see the whole of London lit up, from pyramid-tipped building of Canada House in Canary Wharf on the left, to the British Telecom Tower on the right, with all the dishes and transmitter screens hanging from its bulbous stem, clinging like so many beetles and aphids scurrying for juice.
It was an impressive view. She hadn’t realised just how high they had come, to be able to look down over London like this. In fact, she had never really seen such a view in all the time she had been working in the metropolis.
The punter seemed quite cheerful. Now as the time to strike.
She assumed her frozen posture- and put her right hand out, palm up.
‘Oi, I want me fackin’ munneey’ in her crudest cockney. And if that accent wasn’t guaranteed to freeze a man’s balls, she didn’t know what could.
The punter reached into his wallet, and pulled out a red one. Fifty quid.
‘And where’s the fackin’ rest?’ she added. It never did any harm to go for what you could, when you could. After he had spunked out, he wouldn’t be anywhere near as keen to open his wallet up. But the, you never knew. Claire had a funny feeling about this one. Not a bad feeling but just different.
Ahh, that might be it, the thought crossed her mind. Maybe a tranny. Hhhmm, that could be interesting, especially if this one turned out- like most of them- to be a sub. Subs were a dream. You could dream them, cream them, drain them, and still not have to give any pussy.
She glanced in the direction of the cupboards, and a sneaking idea that inside were all his girlie outfits. But she would wait until they had settled down for a good thick smokie- a nice sexy smokie- before she started cracking the whip and getting him into those frillies.
Then the next immediate step would be his fucking bank card with pin number, and we’d be off to a reasonable weekend. With dildo dollie here tied up, she’d invite some of her other pals over for a Torture garden.
For any sub, a dream ‘come’ true, literally.
‘Look, I want at least a oner, for bringing me all this facking way’ she insisted.
Meekly, like the good little tranny she now knew he was, he reached into his seemingly ever-full wallet and brought out another couple of fifties.
Snatching the money from his hand, she crumpled and snuffed the notes into the right cup of her bra.
‘Here, dear’ he said, all suddenly wimpy-like, why not make yourself comfy?’ as he pointed towards a set of large cushions positioned right in front of a TV and video system.
‘Yeah, right’, she said, opening her legs as she started sifting through the man’s porn. This was beginning to acquire the makings of a real turn-on for her, too. It had long been her dream to start getting into the bondage side of things. Straight sex for her had long since been something that she had totally explored, even discovering some things she didn’t think had previously been put down on any map. But the dom scene had always just been out of reach. She had met loads of girls for whom it had become a big thing. The word was that fortunes had been made from individual punters, too- girls being jetted off to far away places- bought expensive cars for, furs, and restaurants- some girls had even been bought houses and flats for themselves by their punters. It was a different class- a very exclusive class- the mystery of which had long since been an item of intense fascination for her. Many of the girls in the scene had carried an intense hatred for the men they punished, often born from childhoods in which they had been sexually abused.
The instruments of punishment- she had seen some of them- come close but never actually used them- maybe this punter would be an ideal target to get her practice in on. She started thinking about treading a bit more carefully then. Maybe she shouldn’t just clean this one out with a blagging.
‘Oi, and hand me the gear, while you go and get showered, and then I want you to change into something a bit more comfy- UNDERSTAND?’ she raised her voice, strict-like, at the end. She had always proved herself to be a resourceful girl, when she had to be , which was often.
For a split moment, in which time itself seemed to slow down and freeze, then the punter’s hand moved, almost as if it had an independent motion from that of the main body. It went up to the mouth, and as if by metal springs the little set of plastic packages popped out, and into the palm. The punter’s eyes were fixed on her, and as his hand opened towards her Claire could see that he was only handing her one- one to be getting on with. She used her X ray vision to guestimate how many were left- she guestimated about six more of white, and probably about four of brown. Good enough to get the party started, at least. If, after that lot were demolished, the punter might get a little pussy. Although possibly not. If the gear finished early, then she would be off out the door, unless he had the means and the wil to get a fresh supply brought in. For sure, this would be how it was going to go.
Claire relaxed a bit, not fully letting go of the Dom act, but realising that she was going to able to have an in-depth session with this punter, the kind she liked to have.
The package in her hand as he passed it to her was wet and warm, from his mouth. Some punters – the more paranoid ones- even kept their gear up their arseholes, in case they got robbed or stopped by the law. Then there would be a real shit smell hanging about for hours while they blasted away on the crack. Not that that ever put her off, but even in her most drug- crazed states had she ever actually sought out the odour of something so depraved. She had known those that did, though- girls that would shit on punters for a smoke, even girls that would receive punishment, of cigarette burns and cuttings in exchange for money- or, even better- gear!
‘Now go and shower’, she ordered. ‘When you get back, you’re going to be sucking on some pussy.’ She stood with her legs widely apart, in that very powerful position that most men found almost hypnotic. Her small black miniskirt was riding up the back of her schoolgirl legs and bony bum. Her jacket hung open, her tiny tits inside her top puffed up by a wonderbra, to give the illusion that she was more curvy. The punter, though, could see that he had struck lucky. This one looked like a young schoolgirl. Probably about nineteen, though. Many of the really young looking girls already had daughters and sons of their own, although often the social services would have long since stepped in -with their nonces in the wings- ready and willing to ensure the next generation’s crop of young whores and rent boys.
‘Fuck the shower’ said the punter. He wanted to get down to some good old-fashioned cunt-lickin’, straight away. Claire fixed another meaty blast on the end of her pipe, and spread her cunthole wide over his cushions. She smiled. She liked it when the punter was a right crude fucker. This one was wise, too. When the punter went for a shower, any working girl would be onto his wallet like a ferret up a cunthole, and the, probably, straight out the fuckin’ door. Probably Billy Punter here had already been done that way. Once bitten, thrice shy. It only ever took one girl, like herself- a clipper- and the punter would be awakened to a world he had never known had existed. Often they wouldn’t know what had hit them, until too late. Literally.
She opened her legs, and flicked the switch of the lighter.
‘Come on then, cunthole, lap it up’ the crack at the end fizzled and crackled, heavily. The heavy odour of burning aroma the familiar chemical smell of ammonia drenched crack cocaine began filling up the room. The pounter’s face was warm and sexy down by her cunthole. Hhhhmmmmm it was good. She raised one leg a bit, to allow his meandering tongue to slide between her pussy lips, up and down………..up and down……..up and down……………now there’s a good little boy.
‘Yesssss’ she said ‘Lick the cunny…………..in and out………..lick the cunny……….do as your told………..’ she knew that many punters relived what they had been through in their initial sexual experiences when they smoked………and many, many of them had been abused as kids, as she had.
But it was so lovely. Oh God, it was so nice, so wrong………..she relived being a young kid when her dad left her in the care of a male friend, and he would make her stretch into all manner of positions while bathing her, photographing her, then sharing the snaps with his mates. She often got the smans when she went to meet her dad from work, where he was a brick hod carrier. The other guys would sman and point to her. Little remarks followed her all the days of her youth, till eventually her dad found out. But she had been getting groomed by his mate for several years by then, and knew nothing else. Her dad had been furious, and had only calmed down when she had performed a perfect blow job on him, and for free. After all, what would you do, if you discovered that your little girl was widely renowned as the best little cock-sucker on the estate and you weren’t even getting your slice?
She stretched back into the cushions. She could relax a bit more now. Fuckin’ hell, this cunthole was good- a nice natural pussy-licking little boy. Suddenly the even kinkier idea of getting him to give head flickered into her mind.
‘Hhhhmmmm, that’s a nice little boy. I’ve got some nice cocky for you to be lickin’ off, and all, after this. You’re in for a nice long suckin’ party, aren’t you?’
With her free hand she reached out and ripped at his hair. Then her hand went for one of his nipples, tweaking it harshly with her hardened fingers. Her clit was rock hard like a cock by now, sliding in and out of little boy’s mouth. She could see the potential of this one.
‘I’m going to pimp you, little boy. Lots of nice niggas comin’ round for some sucky’ The juices were running like a stream down the insides of her legs by now. She snapped off another chunk of white magic and with a heavy breath managed to get it on the top of the pipe. With both hands she flamed and crackled the piece, and the thick black fumes- jet black- absolute black- flared down the stem into her lungs. It was like breathing perfume. She would have to put another one on for little boy, too. Keeps him nice ‘n’ little. Hehehe. Hhhhmmmm.
Ooooohhhhhhhhhh.
He was getting more and more into the licking…………then, when she had his pice ready for him, sher tapped him slightly on the shoulder. His head raised up, flushed with happiness at having found such a compatible girlfriend. She was going to move in, she decided. This place would be OK for bringing punters back. Now and again she would feed them to little boy, for some additional amusement, of course. Then, occasionally, she would let him watch while the real men made love to her- on his bed, leaving beautiful romantic spunk stains all over it for him to lick off, after they had finished fucking. And make him dress as a girl. She wondered what kind of girlie gear he kept in the cupboard over there. That would come later. She was going to come at this rate. Fuck it, she might as well. Come all over this cunt’s face. Make a nice big stain, with her juices. Let him have something to remember her by. It was a nice touch if the guy had a girlfriend, to leave a pair of really stinking panties in the marital bed right deep down where they wouldn’t be discovered for weeks, and then, only by the girl herself, who would immediately realise what had been going on.
Claire was getting wetter and wetter, and the treacle was spilling all over the cushions. This was so wanton, being nicely licked out whilst blasting on stones……but as she rested the soles of her shoes up on little boy’s shoulders, affording him a wider pussy crack with which to devote him ministrations she noticed he still had his trousers on. She flicked out a hand and unbuckled his belt, and sharply pulled his trousers and boxers down, to just above his bent knees
She had already spotted his wallet, tucked away in one of the trouser pockets, so, maintaining her balance whilst his tongue continued to plate her, she stretched out a bit more with one hand and- hey presto- his wallet appeared in her hand. With consummate skill she eased out all the notes using her fore and second fingers, sliding the wallet back into the pocket whilst at the same time slipping the notes into the right cup of her bra. Always nice to have an insurance policy. Sometimes punters could get funny and just throw you out, for no reason, especially if they hadn’t been able to come, or sometimes precisely because they had. Either way, it was nice to have a little extra to look forward to for when the party here would be shuddering to its inevitable end.
She felt herself coming, for the second and then third time. The stone in her hand had diminished to a bare crumb of what it had been. More gear was required. It was hard for her to speak when she was in this state, but speak she must, unless she wanted to start coming down. She readied herself to speak, and started to slide back into her best Dickensian cockney accent.
‘Oi, mate! Oiiiii, you. Where’s the fackin’ gear? Come on, spunk it out!’
Old silly bollox opened his left palm where he\was keeping all the rest of the gear. Hhhhmm, she thought, a fair way to go. There must have been about six or seven wraps of white, and about four of brown, ready for the come-down. The gear was nice and strong though. There was no rush, really.
‘You’re not in a hurry to come, are you?’ she said, emphasising the last two words, giving it the edge of an order.It was always a good move on a punter, because it implied the punter was in for a bigger session that the one he had set out for- and that he was getting a bargain. After all, think of all the kinky fun they could have together right up until the point where he came. After that, as we all knew, it would be a case of ‘on yer bike, fanny’, and probably turfed out into the street. That was why she liked to delay these cunts from coming, sometimes preventing them from coming at all was another kind of victory in itself. Just keep them wanking about, on the edge of a come, but never getting there.
She spotted a box of rubber bands on the side, and grabbed them, pulling several out and sliding her deft fingers into the midst of them. These usually worked a treat, especially where the punter had submissive tendencies. She wrapped these bands right around his balls, using both hands to make sure a really tight fit, doubling the bands back over twice, then three times, round the balls together, then the balls individually, then one round – the third, and the most vicious- round the cock stem. The balls instantly starting to bloat up a deep angry red. But as she put on another heavy blast for the punter what might at one point have become pain now blossomed into an ecstacy of heavenly pleasure, as the black smoke hit his lungs and coursed through his blood, setting off fireworks right behind his eyes. She knew that in this state it was possible to take a lot of punishment, experiencing it as pleasure. Some she knew seemed to thrive on the cuts and the burns they were able to pick up as they went along, proudly showing off their battle scars to each other as their paths crossed in some of the crack houses through which they moved.
She thought about using the heated end of the crack bottle, but no. That might be a bit too much of a shock for this one. Always better to build up slowly, yet surely. A slow, consistent, persistent pain that dulled into an indefinable ache was a surer bet. She dropped the thought, too, of burning with her lit cigarette ends. All that could come later, when she was more sure of her catch on his little hook. She didn’t want this one wriggling off prematurely. This could be a good weekend’s beginning. And if he proved able to come up with other funds, he might be able to afford the pleasure of her company for the entire weekend, even. We will see, she thought.
As he kneeled on one side, coming up for air only rarely, now, and then only at her behest for a further pipe, he seemed to be showing signs of anxiety that the gear was going to be melting away rather too quickly.
His face appeared between her legs, like a skin diver, his mask thrown back, gasping for breath.
‘Well come on then, bitch, do something! Get down and suck my dick you fuckin’whore’.
Well, that put paid to the notion that he was a goodie goodie, out for a bit of naughtiness. She had better do something, then, so she pulled herself down and put her teeth around the edge of his cock and balls, playing with her tongue and mouth around them, coaxing them into action. She used her fingers to pinch them, her chipped fingernails cutting into the sides of them to remind him of who was boss. He got back to loving it. She could tell from the extra graceful motions his tongue was now making up against the sides of her arsehole, round by the beefcurtains, then up along the bony cunt stand itself, where she had shaved her pubes back to make the cunny look more like a little girl’s hole. The peedos really liked that effect.
No, this was a streetboy, Claire realised. He probably wouldn’t be such an easy walkover- he had obviously been down this road before. Unless she could get him to fall in love with her- now that would always raise the stakes. She picked up a ruler- it wasn’t so amazing the things this guy kept by the side of where the action was happening- he had obviously planned it all out this way- and started smacking his bum, then his balls. Not too hard, at least at first.
But nice measured strokes, nice ‘n’ easy peasey, with a little gap in between, almost as if she had become distracted from the punishment, had forgotten, or was teasing him into thinking that she had, or even encouraging him into distraction. But then the ruler would strike back, each time getting a bit harder, a bit crueller, hitting an ever-more sensitive edge of his apparatus, giving him the thin edge, and no longer the flat side, the bastard.
What she would give for a good cane right now.
The gear was rapidly burning down. She had already come about twenty times, but best to bring this wanker off right now- if he still hadn’t come by the time the gear ran out there could well be hell to pay, Claire realised. Best to get those fuckin’ silly bands off his gear and then just wank him off, as in the time honoured tradition. Then out the door, before he realised he’d been dipped.
She peeled back the rubber bands, as was thankful the tosser hadn’t been physically injured, so tight had they been biting round his equipment. The gear was wearing off now- she realised that they had reached the point where no matter how much more you smoked you weren’t going to get any higher than you were at this point. It would e a waste of gear. Maybe because the gear wasn’t as strong as it could have been, or so it seemed. The more you smoked, the more you thought that the gear was getting progressively more cut with each stone you unwrapped.
Then, putting her bottle down, she started wanking the tosser for all she was worth. If he wanted more after that he could get his arse down to the cash machine and dig some more out.
The punter’s face was red as an apple, his mouth open and his breathing laboured. He had closed his eyes, which Claire was thankful for. She hated punters that liked to look her in the eye when they came. Then, from nowhere, she could feel the come coming. Like the rumble of a train along the tracks from far away, at first a soft trembling, then getting closer and closer, till with a grunt like a pig the punter was blowing his muck all over her hand, and his cushions. Then she let it go, and like a dying snake the last of the muck spilled out, trickling more slowly now. His eyes had opened, and Claire jerked up her panties, ready to shift if he suddenly realised about the money missing from his wallet.
‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’ she said, keeping her face straight. She didn’t want any nervousness on her part be the one thing that might alert him to the clipping.
‘Well, you surprised yourself there, didn’t you?’ she asked again, a slight tinge of uncertainty beginning to creep into her voice.
From the spunk he had blown all over the cushions- she wiped the stuff off from her hand with a deft swoop- he had certainly had one hell of a time. But she had better watch it. Some kid of an alarm bell was sounding off, deep inside her, and she didn’t want to set this bloke off, if nutter he was. Maybe she could sit in and have a b it more of a smoke. Nice and friendly, like. Maybe the punter would start getting the sap back in his branches, ready for a second round, by then.
‘I’d better……pay you’ he was saying. Oh bollox, now he was going to discover the missing money. But maybe not. She would have to bluff it out. Be wrong and strong.
He pulled his wallet out, his trousers still halfway down his legs, his boxers wrapped round his ankles. Halfway across the floor Claire could see the rubber bands, grinning merrily back, insanely.
Opening his wallet, Claire knew that the best policy was to distract him.
‘Wot abaht some more gear, mate?’ she asked, loudly. The punter’s face was a puzzle. He WAS a muppet, after all! What joy! He hadn’t even the savvy to realise that she had tricked him, let alone have the balls to openly accuse her.
This was dreamland.
‘That’s funny’ he began.
‘Wos funny? Wot, jer fink arv gawn an’ nicked off ya, is that it?’ she started off aggressively, ready to throw a punch at his fat face.
‘No, no’ of course not. Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply……..’ his wimpy voice trailed off into nothingness.
Now to take the intitiative.
‘Yeah, well, wot? Oh, I suppose your makin’ out you’ve gawn and spent all yer money on sumpfink else now, when you should have been keeping it back for me. I want anuvver oner, mate, or I aint leavin’ here. I can get yer dun fer rape, mate, yer fackin’ wanker’.
Instantly the punter started shitting himself. Inside Claire revelled in her effective and powerful her way of dealing with wankers like this was. They all started bricking it when the subject of a nice little rape accusation came up, as it invariably did when the punter tried short-changing the girl. She had heard other girls’ stories about this one- with the end result working out much more expensive for the punter than if he had squared off with the girl an extra thirty or forty while he had the chance. There were some girls so vicious they had even sent guys down on that one, too, she knew.
‘Now, there’s no need to get excited. I………er………I can pop down to the cash machine and get a little extra, if you like…………….or’ at this idea he seemed to brighten up a bit, ‘We can continue smoking out of my stash, and see where that takes us’.
See where that takes us? Is that what she had heard him say? She must be losing her fucking mind. See where that takes us? From the way sillybollox was talking anyone would have thought he was talking about a taxi ride round London – The Sights by Night. You fackin’ wankstain, she thought, we all KNOW where a few more stones is going to fackin’ well take us. And that was another thing- all of a sudden the US word. Cuntholes, she had just won the fucking lottery, finding this fucking spastic.
‘She leaned forward, her arms resting on her knees. Sitting on the floor in front of her, he still hadn’t pulled his draws back on. Let him have a sneaky glance right up her snatch. See them neat little panties, peeping shyly back at you, wankstain? See the cunthole you are definitely NOT going to be fucking tonight, or any other night, you fucking wankstain?
Yeah, give him a little ray o’ hope. Just enough to encourage him down to the cash machine for a quick two fifty, or whatever his daily limit was. After that, roll on midnight, when he’d be able to pull out the same again. Some punters could pull up to five hundred at a time. Now that was dreamtime come true. Ohhhhhhhhh yessssssirrrr………cum suck babe………….I’ll be YOUR bubble gum babe…………………daddy.
This fucking clown she had pulled had some kind of self-image as a fucking Oscar Wilde type, a rake out of Victorian times, an aristocrat who liked to run with the foxes and hunt with the hounds, as it were. She had met a fair few like this. Pratholes like this liked the idea of ‘saving’ girls like her from a life of vice. Their other trip was of becoming a ponce, a Haymarket Henry, a Lord Peter. It was two sides of the same coin, and invariably guys like this liked to play at roles, which she would encourage, let alone permit, but for as long as the old spondoolicks lasted. After that, it was adios amigo all the way, and she would leave them, broken and bankrupt, totally spunked out in every sense, completely vampirised.
Deep inside herself she loved the notoriety of being a femme fatale, the kind of woman that men such as these would turn mad on meeting, becoming drawn in on the level of pussy first, then increasingly drawn into perversions and submission from which there would be no escape. She had never had a slave before, but maybe now that one had more or less appeared, on her doorstep, so to speak, maybe now was the time she began playing a gentler game, and started turning these guys places into her knocking- shops. That could be a very savoury act of desolation in itself. A real spicy thing to do. Just to sit back and watch everything about such a punter’s life turn to shite, as she started bringing back other punters to use the place as a bonking gallery, while the slave himself descended into deeper and deeper levels of addiction, helplessly looking on as he begged for a fix at the end of each day’s worth of total denigration. How sweet that would be- after all, hadn’t that had been what had happened to her? Now that things were turning full circle, how delectably sweet for her to find herself on the dishing-out end, at long last.
‘All right, well pop along then. And leave the gear here. I’m going to be handling that from now on, my poppet.’ She reached out and pinched the cheek of his face, almost affectionately. ‘But you’d best get your trousers up before going out’. She couldn’t believe it when the cunthole actually put all the wraps into her hand. She tried not to let out a sigh of relief. Keep it looking as though all he’s doing is what is completely normal.
As the mug tugged his skids back on, he said,
‘You’ve no idea what a big step it is for me to trust anyone quite so much’. With that, he was on his feet, and heading for the door.
‘See you in a mo’,’ he said, musically.
‘Take yer time’ she replied, under her breath. ‘And don’t forget to write’ she added, as the door shut behind him.
Fuck me, she said aloud, to herself, and to whatever ancient gods might have been loitering there to overhear, ‘I’ve just won the fackin’ lottery’.

Well, now that I’ve got this drum to myself, Claire thought, what do I do with it? First thing, she thought, give it a quick spin. You never knew what goodies cuntholes like this might have stashed away. Buckets of gold coins, jewellery, maybe worth grands, she had even heard of some girls finding colossal stashes of drugs. Hhhmmmm now THAT would be a turn on. She thought of all the heavy orgasms she might be able to have with something like that dropping into her lap.
Imagine finding a kilo of Charlie. Yummie. Imagine all those big fat cum stains that would be sliding down the back of her throat, too, the kinky thought entered her head like a charm.
She looked at the wraps sitting in the palm of her hand, and thought to hold on just a mo’ and have a peep round at whatever goodies might be lying around. Clasping the wraps even tighter, she jumped to her feet. She glanced up at the rows of books, all stacked along ordinary planks out of a makeshift bookcase made of loose bricks. Books was not her thing, at all, but some of these titles seemed to be about the Devil. The Satanic Bible, she noticed, and ‘The Satanic Witch’, was another. There seemed to be quite a number of books about demonology, and voodoo. Something stood out which mentioned the Orishas. Was that the name of a yardie gang round Trenchtown?
Being a working girl from the Cross, she had gotten to know more than a few Jamaicans, most coming in to the country for the first time, and hence really naïve, especially around white girls on the game. Underneath all their testosteronic bravado was a deep naivety and simplicity which was easy to twist into something that could be beautifully abused.
Especially when it came to getting tick- credit, for drugs; ‘honest guv you’ll get the money later, mon’. Later my old cunthole. Later.
That, and a hint of some possible pussy, was normally enough to trick the poor nigga out of some of his wraps. When the money came in, if the guy was a pussy, and had been too soft, the girl would deliberately diss him, so as to draw down heat on him from whoever had laid the drugs on him in the first place. It was always a laugh seeing someone who had tried to help you getting his arse cut because his money was short.
Hahahaha
Popping open the cupboard door, Claire looked inside. Ahhh…….there we have it, she thought. On the left hand side was all his masculine stuff, shirts, jackets, ties, socks, all wrapped up nice and neat, ready for work, presumably- what did he do, she wondered?
On the right hand side was a row of all his girlie gear. Big-time trannie stuff, too- the kind of stuff no actual woman would wear- big frillie knickers, gigantic wigs, rows of basques, a small army of six- inch high heel shoes, standing to attention. She noticed inparticular a pair of red shiny ones, bright as a pin.
Just as I thought. Well, the first thing to do with him when he got back was make him dress up as a girlie, and then start raining insults down on him for being a big sissie. That ought to get him going. Claire continued scouting around the flat. She opened a drawer. Ohoh……..bank statements. She flicked up a sheet- hmmm, not bad, thirty grand sitting in this one.
Well, that was going to be the first thing that got pumped out of there, or her name wasn’t Claire cunthole.
Thirty grand. Whooooaaahh….wait a minute………that was a nice one. She quickly thought as to who she knew that she could pass this over to. Ah yes, now she had it. A friend of hers had introduced her to a big fella - a white guy- called Steve at a crack house, where they had both been having a smoke. He moved like a bear; looked as though he could handle a bit of the rough stuff should it ever rear its ugly head. But he and his girl Pauline handled mainly fraud. She hesitated, but decided to take one of the bank sheets, as they were always handy iin giving a complete stranger such as herself full details of account and sort code numbers. What thoughtful people they were, those bank heads.
She wrapped up the sheet into a tiny square of its former self, and slid this, also, into the right cup of her bra.
Going through the erest of this guy’s stuff, she found a nice stack of porno. Well well well well well…….now this is where things started to take off. There were mags on rapes, submission, trannies, even a kiddies corner, this one showing in the frist hald Swedish-looking adults standing with all their tackle hanging out right next to their five and seven year-old looking kids. As if it were the most natural ting in the world- standing there with all yer tackle hanging out. There was something about the faces of these adults that made them all look somehow the same. It was as if they were all infected with the same disease, or DNA fault; they all looked tinged with retardedness, somehow. Maybe that was the noncey ‘look’. Claire had long since noticed that certain kinds of perversions seemed to leave their imprints on the faces – and certainly in the minds- of those they afflicted. Gays, another example- had a certain ‘gay’ mutation to their faces, after a while it was as though taking so many dickies up the Khyber pass resulted in their facial muscles, too, undergoing distortion. Maybe from all the pain of having their arseholes plundered constantly. The second half of the mag was really naughty. It showed an Asian-looking couple making oral sex in front of what was presented as their daughter, who looked to be about five or so. Claire turned a page, now the mother was showing the little girl how to suck dicky. Claire’s fingers were trembling now, as the next page flipped over. The little girl’s face was an expression of absolute agony as the ‘daddy’ tried taking her from behind. |The mother’s face was an expression of absolute glee, as if she had been waiting for years to play this trick upon her own daughter, and was finally getting her own back on her for a painful birth. She was almost cheering on the dad to really go for it. Claire took a deep breath. OK, well, this could be coming out when Billy Punter returned. She had always fancied a bit of the naughty stuff herself, and in the course of her work certainly came across a fair bit of it. It made ordinary bonking as boring as hell, though. Once you had gone the kinky way, Claire knew, there was no going back. Being a straight fucker was like drinking water forever, after that.
She had come across more than a few punters with kiddies gear before. Having been plonked from the age of dot herself, it came as no particularly big deal. Mentioning a similar find once before, in a crack house, she had then realised how common it was for the girls that worked the Cross area. The other big thing was bondage.
Sorting through another drawer, she came across what looked like a toolbox. Opening it up, a velvet lining gave an aura of the exclusive to the set of medieval torture equipment that was stacked inside.
Here, a pair of clamps designed for affixing to the nipples, with an adjustable screw at each end, for tightening the pressure. Here, a body harness, which had straps for the legs and arms to go through, and even a piece which promised to fit over the mouth. Here a large red rubber ball hung in place, ready to stop up the mouth of any prospective slave as a gag, and around the back of this an attached strap with notches along its length for adjustment through a buckle.
Different sets of handcuffs lined the bottom. Some, she noticed with an experienced eye, had quick-release pressure clasps embedded along the side. These would enable any victim to release themselves if any role play started getting out of control. Other handcuffs, though, didn’t have these features. She could guess which set might be worn by the punter, and into which sets he might try and encourage his girls.
Hhhhmmm, she had one sick bastard, she realised. She wondered about what might have happened to some 0of the other girls he had managed to lure back to this drum. She, too, had heard about how so many of the girls that worked the Cross were supposed to be just disappearing, vanishing off into the blue. There was supposed to be some big police operation going on, in which the Old Bill were trying to track down where the girls were going to. Some said that they might be getting shipped out to some place overseas. Maybe in Arabia, or Africa. She herself wondered if some of them weren’t still sitting at the bottom of certain punter’s basements with chains around their legs. Like in the pictures of some medieval dungeon. The thought chilled her. But the sooner the sick fuckers who were doing all this were nicked, and put inside, out or the way for ever and a day, the better for all concerned. That way the streets would become safer for your average girl to pop out on an evening and rustle herself up an extra oner or two, when she might have need. She remembered the time she had been pulled over one night, and nicked for soliciting. Taken to Stoke Newington Police Station, she had been amazed at the sheer size of it. The cells in the underground basement seemed to run round in a gigantic circle for ever. There must have been a hundred cells down there, and as she passed by on her way to the one set aside for her, she had heard the voices of so many of the other working girls she knew, call out to her as she passed by. The police must have nicked about twenty or thirty of the girls that night, which was a rough average for them. One of the girls, she knew, had been nicked earlier that evening for setting up some punter with a couple of black guys she knew, and getting the shit beaten out of him. Another one had clipped some punter, but when it came on top and he realised that while she was blowing him with one hand the other was sliding down the insides of his wallet, he had actually nicked her, and driven her to the police station himself. It amazed her that punters could get away with virtually anything, and the girls not. The law seemed to have an inbuilt bias towards the men, all the time.
After a short while sitting on a rubber mattress on a small raised concrete section up from the floor, the cell door had opened and two coppers had walked in. From their way of entering, she knew that this was going to be an ‘off the record’ chat. Good news, because that meant that as soon as she had told these cunts whatever they wanted to hear, the sooner she could get her arse out of there and back on the streets. Already she could eel herself coming down, not just from the crack, but from the heroin as well. She knew that as the withdrawal symptoms kicked in, her legs would become wobblier and wobblier, and her guts start opening up to make her shit herself in all the wrong times and places.
‘Ello Claire’ said the chubby Scottish sounding one, ‘My name is Bob’. His grin seemed to hang in mid air, like the picture she had once seen of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, the grin of the cat being the last thing to fade before its complete disappearance. The copper turned to his colleague, ‘And this is Alan’ The younger, slimmer one nodded, and they stood around where she sat, clucking and sweating, with her legs crossed in front of her.
‘What we’re looking for, Claire, is information. Who is dealing, where and how much. Who’s got the shooters. They’re big reward going, Claire.’
‘Money rewards’ said the slimmer.
‘And for pieces, the sky’s the limit’. A ‘piece’ was their word for gun.
‘So, who do you know that’s carrying, RIGHT NOW?’ said the Scot. Right now, in that Glaswegian guttural that so many of her punters had spoken in, whilst waiting for their trains to take them back up to Scotland. Some of them got so distracted it took them many years to find their way back home, if they ever did.
Some simply wandered round the streets of Somerstown, drunk and in a state of mindlessness, until someone attacked them or they got themselves arrested. Then it would be to the Ville for a spell, usually for six months, ready to be back out and on the streets in time for the summer season, once again. Many, many men that she had met lived their lives in accordance with this ancient clock, following the seasons like a herd of migrating animals.
She had spilled the beans on who she knew that was carrying, and where drugs were being dealt. She gave them the addresses of some of the crack houses she knew. They nodded to each other, and wrote down a phone number, a mobile.
‘Keep this number safe- or remember it, better still’ said the Scot.’ And don’t mention this to any other officer here, either.’ That told her there was something going on which involved other officers here in this station that were probably under suspicion. She herself had heard tales from some of the dealers about certain Old Bill they boasted they had in their pockets.
Then, they were off, and shortly afterward she was allowed to go, her belongings being handed back to her in a large see-through plastic bag, with Metropolitan Police in words and the logo stamped in translucent letters on the outside.
She couldn’t wait to get back to her spots on the beat as soon as possible. Luckily she had picked up a punter within minutes of stepping outside, and within half an hour she had scored, enjoying the smooth feel of the brown heroin move through her and wave its magical wand of power over her massively disjointed nerves. Phew, that felt better……

She had quite surprised herself. She still hadn’t tucked in to any of the remaining stones during the absence of the punter. Where the fuck was here, though? She thought, just then, that she could make out the sound of his car coming up the same steep hill they had had to climb in order to get here. Presumably the nearest cash machine was way down by what had proclaimed itself to be Archway Towers, where she had herself spotted a row of cash machines, lit up in a green luminescent lighting. What the fuck was he doing, trusting her with the run of his fucking drum, and having only just met her? It didn’t bear logical thinking. Claire had long since departed from the realm where so-called ‘normal’ thinking applied. She had known of just about every kind of madness imaginable from those who, like herself, smoked this stuff.

She had even heard of punters who would be smoking with girls, and the girls to walk out of their own places and leave them sitting there, with their kids, while they went out and picked up other punters, disappearing for days at a time. One such punter she had met, and, according to him, a girl called Hayley, that she actually knew, had bailed out of her own place in Archway only to return some two days later, simply having ‘forgotten’. Luckily the punter hadn’t called social services. Like a rare gem, he had actually sat there and looked after the kids – and fed them and changed them- in all that time. Some of the stories which Claire could recite were tales of the amazing aspects of human behaviour, on the side of good.

She could hear the front door downstairs slam. He was running up the stairs. Then, he was right there in front of her, puffing and gasping for breath.
‘Well, wotcha runnin’ for? Scared I was gonna nick off ya?’ she screeched.
‘No, no, not at all’ he replied, obviously relieved to finds that his new-found sense of trust hadn’t been totally misplaced. It was obvious that along the way he had had an opportunity to reconsider the wisdom of leaving a just-met street girl from King’s Cross in charge of his flat, with all the things in it. He glanced around the room, quickly noting that the CD player was still where it had been, as was the television. He saw the porno collection opened, along with the bondage gear.
He was staring to get embarrassed. Claire was amazed to see this clown actually blushing.
‘Anyway, let’s get back down to business’ she said.
Important to get moving- and keep things moving along- before Silly Bollox here had a chance to see them slow down. If she could keep the momentum going, she knew she could just keep smoking merrily away indefinitely. She might not even need to go back on the streets again for maybe a month, or so. If she could sit tight, play whatever role playing game Silly Bollox might want, and in the end clean him out on her way out the door. Then she could make it back to the Cross and start with a fresh punter. She had been through a fair view punters, leaving them when all the Charlie and smack had run out, sometimes even leaving them broken, weeping men on the side of the street as she strode off. Many of these wankers would be Love Freaks, falling under the spell of love which crack cocaine seemed to exert over them. These would start getting all sentimental after the first few blasts. This was always welcome- some girls didn’t mind giving out pussy after a good blast. But it was always a bonus if you could get as far as tricking the punter out of that. Some of them, when you got them started smoking, would find their big stiffies all turning into melting wax in her firm hands.
‘Let’s get nice and comfy’ shall we?’ she said, as soothingly as she knew. ‘you got the extra dosh there, ready for when we need it?’
His baby face nodded yes, quite pathetic, she noted, especially given what his likely outcome was going to be. She looked into his face and realised that it was either him or her. They were both trapped in a food chain. She had no choice but to eat him. It could all too easily have suddenly turned out the other way. Maybe one day that too would happen and she would step into the wrong car, or come back to the wrong house with the wrong punter. Perhaps that was inevitable, ultimately, because she only had so many lives, after all, and she kind of knew she was using them up at a ferocious rate.
‘Come on, I want you as a chick’ handing him some of his tranny gear with a strict expression on her face. Suddenly something deep inside him seem to go limp, and in a submissive way he took the set of bits and pieces out of her hands and trotted off to the bedroom. In the meantime, Claire thought about her likely course of action. Play it by ear. In an ideal world, part of her reflected, it was sad that what started out as a meeting of two strangers in the night should invariably end up as a collision between two trains crashing into each other, with all the casualties that this invoked.

But this was fate. So many punters would suddenly switch on her, right after they had blown their cum all over her face or up inside her arse or pussy, often becoming real savages, really aggressive, chasing her out with the bare money she had managed to eke out of them beforehand. Some even tried to take back the money she had earned, or, worse still, tried to rob her of that and everything else she had made that night up until then.
She looked around the room. Okay, she had sussed him out, mostly. This was going to be easy money.
‘Where’s the rest of the fackin’ money?’ she screeched, harshly. The harsher , the better, the more his tiny dick would be pulsating back to life, ready for those tasty clamps, she thought, smiling inwardly. She relished the rare pleasure of recruiting a slave. She would make this one beg, and beg long and hard into the night that was opening up its massive jaws around them.

But there was something she was missing. Somehow her eyes rested on the computer on its stand, over by the window. The view wasn’t bad, for what it was. The lights of London flickered, pulsating slightly brighter for a moment. Claire thought it was more likely the coke buzz coming back strong. Coke could be like that. You could do up a great pile and then sometimes you’d feel fuck all. Maybe a bit numb, only to have to main effect kick in much later, a really heavy snow storm, and blast you totally out of your head.
If only I could get into that fackin’ computer, she thought. Still, if she played this wank stain right, she would be moving into this place, and using it for her punters as well. What a true delight. She looked forward to getting Silly Bollox ready for his Ultimate Trip. She looked round at the pictures on the walls. Mostly they were a bit spooky, no not spooky, just very 70s man, really. Dragons, pyramids, one of a fackin’ dolphin, for crissakes. How fackin’ daft, a right wally, a fackin’ dolphin. You couldn’t get more muppety if yer tried.
She could make out a sense of movement from the bedroom. Probably Silly Bollox sliding into his frilly knickers. Heh heh, she thought about putting another pipe on. Heh heh, no, hold on yer old cow, the thought traipsed across her mind, try and stay in control this time. She was aware how she had screwed up many a good chance for big takings, only to end up running down the street with a nicked tenner out of some punter’s wallet. Popeye, one of the old yardie-style smokers from the Temple, one of the crack houses she was famous in, had on more than one occasion sat down with her, over a pipe, and gone into how she could maximise her takings, and bring a bit of business for him and the lads too.
His deep bassed Caribbean accent crooned, upped, and dipped as it went along in its persuasive, pervasive lilting tone, humming her into a trance as she listened to him.
‘Look here, dearie Claire’ he had said, ‘De best way of movin’ for you is to hold on, when you meet a punter that he have more dan a few bob to spare’. Refrain yourself from clipping he, and instead, give me a ring.’ He had written down his number on her hand, but he must have known it was pointless. Claire, like all too many girls, didn’t actually activate brain before acting. They grabbed whatever small change was available right then and there, and then ran for the punter’s front door. Very often the punter would let them go, all too painfully aware that he would be up on a rape accusation if he tried to interfere with the girl from leaving. Imagine the screams and shrieks from outside your front door, and, as you drew back the curtains, the sight of your neighbour struggling with a young girl that seemed to be trying to get away!
Popeye would regularly go through the same spiel with the young girls that drifted in through his place, and sometimes it would pay off. For some reason it was right then and there that Claire remembered his number. In a flash she could see the numbers as he had written them down in biro on the back of her hand. She picked up the punters phone and cursed herself for not having noticed the actual address as she had been coming in. maybe, she thought, soberingly, that had been why the Punter had been only too generous in plying her with crack during the car trip on the way over here. No, that was paranoid, she realised. He wouldn’t havhad to have done that- and if he had wanted to abduct her he had had ample chance to do so already. And walking out and leaving her in charge of the place wasn’t the normal sign of a control freak. Quite the opposite. No, she was going to be OK on this one, she found herself thinking. Hopefully.
‘What’s the address here?’ she called out.
There was a silence from the bedroom, and a sense of all movement or preparation suddenly coming to an end.
‘What do you want to know that for?’
Claire thought quickly.
‘I’m supposed to check in with my ………’she scrubbed out the word pimp--- that might give the game away and alert him to an upcoming robbery- instead she substituted the word ‘girlfriend.’ That made it sound more user friendly. If Silly Bollox had started thinking about a team of killer niggas on their way over for a friendly visit, it might interfere with his ability to relax and keep smoking.
‘Er, okay, if you must’ came back the earnest voice, sounding more than a little nervous now.
‘Yes, I must’ she said, putting some annoyance into her words. As if she could do anything else.
‘We run by a system here, you know’ she said. ‘We each of us have to check in with a girlfriend, and give the address, just in case a punter starts getting out of order. You must understand. There have been lots of girls disappearing from round the Cross. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you won’t mind, will you? Now, what’s the address of this place?’
‘Flat 6, 92 Hornsey lane, N.6’ came the answer. Perfect. It was all going to go like a dream.
She dialled Popeye’s number, and was met with his answer phone.
‘Look,’ she said, straight onto the answer phone. ‘It’s Claire. I’m with a punter, just letting you know where I am’. She caught herself in a mirror which the punter had had hung on the wall. It was a 1920s styled thing, with the green face of a goddess or something on one side, and a row of fruits encrusted in plaster around the edges. In the reflection she looked radiant, saintlike. It would be nice when Popeye showed. Then Silly Bollox could get into some submissive stuff for real. Oh boy, that was going to be a laugh. She couldn’t wait to see his face when the team turned up, hatchets a-swinging ready to roll on one when the bell rang and she would go to the door and let the Fiends From Hell in through the fackin’ front door. Hehehe.that WAS going to be fun.
She rattled off the address the Punter had given her, and then hoped she had got it right. If he had given her a wrong ‘un, and Popeye went to all that time and trouble, only to find himself having been given a bum steer, things could get decidedly unhealthy for her. The least she could expect would be a slap for not having checked the address herself.

Anyway, it was done now. So hopefully Popeye would get the message and soon be on his way. But you never knew with Popeye. Many a time he had tried to get her on this trip. But even if he did turn up and roll this guy, what was there to stop him rolling her, too? He might want to tax her on her earnings, or to charge her a handling fee, as it was sometimes called. On top of that, what had she done? Popeye would simply slash this guy and that would be the end of the matter. All she had to do was sit tight and keep taking the money and drugs off this Silly Cunthole. He had even been out to the cash machine again so as to keep them topped up, especially with drugs, as the long night ahead beckoned and would eventually turn into dawn.

She cursed herself for her own stupidity. Well, experience would teach her when discretion was the better part of valour. She had probably screwed up with this punter, she realised. A shame, really, because things had seemed to be going so well. Couldn’t have gone better, really. Eespecially with the drugs and the upcoming fantasy role plays. Christ, the punter even had all the sub dom gear lined up, ready to roll.

‘Bollox, she thought, I don’t give a fuck. Let’s get down to a abit more smoking and then let the fackin’ Devil himself appear and do what he wanted to. Fack it. If that meant blue murder, then so be it, she thought, smiling to herself, as she put another large lumpy piece of crack on the end of the pipe. Hhhhmmm, luverly, my old china………….as the flame from her lighter went crackle crackle and turned the white marble into black fume, tumbling down the tube of the bottle and hitting her lungs like a hammer.
Phew…………….that was a blast, for TRUE.

Instantly she saw how short-sighted in her thinking she had been. How negative! When life would always be bringing her a never-ending supply of punters like this one- how could she go wrong?And, with each punter that came her way, she would be functioning more experienced, more aware, more savy, MORE CRUEL. Ten times crueller, she thought, feeling a massive upsurge in cruelty springing up like an ill wind from somewhere deep inside her.

She had only once or twice felt that icy blast move inside her. All her life she had known of it, had feared it. Had feared what might happen should she ever let it out of its cage, let it free to roam inside her.
For somewhere deep within her, she knew what would happen. What was going to happen- tonight, maybe- who could know?

Then the Tranny was there in front of her. She hadn’t heard or noticed him come back into the room. It was dressed in a white bridal gown, slightly skimpy and with frills and lacy bits outrigged all over it. Over its face was a veil, beneath which the face, now heavily festooned with makeup, actually looked very feminine. The eyes were suddenly in possession of long, curvy eyelashes, and the lips were now a deep, satisfying dark red. The head was adorned underneath its lacy crown with a long blonde wig. On the fingernails was red nail varnish, giving the hands a blood-taloned, bird of prey kind of look.

Claire felt impressed. Most of the cross dressers she had come across turned themselves into absolute parodies of womankind, but here was an example of something that really worked. This was fairly convincing. There was something in the manner, too, which she found arousing. As she looked across at the bust, she was impressed to see a ripe pair of breasts heaving back, rising and falling gently. The legs were thinnish- veering more towards a schoolgirl’s than a mature woman’s. Still, that lent itself to some interesting variants later on in the evening!
The shoes were excellent- nice high red shiny 6 inch high heels- totally at variance with the demure, self-respecting image of the about-to-be –married section of the bride above. Hhhhmm, Claire thought to herself, this was beginning to come to life. This fantasy was beginning to take off. She broke off another chunk of crack for the Tranny and carefully placed it on the end of the pipe. Lighting it, she indicated for the Tranny to come in under the radarscreen and get her lips round the end of the pipe, which she did by semi-kneeling. That was a nice touch in itself, Claire thought. Get the Tranny to kneel for her hits. Hhhmm.a nice touch…..she thought, as the black sexy smoke went right down the tube into the Tranny’s throat. The look of exquisite ecstasy right then and there as the hit travelled straight through the blood and hit the high spots in the brain. It was like seeing whirlitzer lighting up, or a pinball machine coming on. Now, why don’t we stretch out in the bedroom, Claire said, when she saw that the hit was really going through the Tranny’s brain. Slowly at first, the Tranny got up and with Claire taking her by the hand, waltzed into the bedroom.
All round the side were mirrors, but above the bed was a picture of something out of a horror movie. It showed some goat-headed animal, not unlike the theme in ‘Alien’- with a reversed Five Pointed star made up out of unborn babies. The bedspread was wide and pink, and all along the dressing table were wigs resting in their polystyrene heads, forming an Pretorian Guard array of ministering spirits. It was slightly weird, Claire mused.If she had been tripping , she might well have imagined that these bewigged stands were actual people, or held their souls or spirits in some scary way.
She sat down on the bed, careful to let a piece of her pussy poke through the opening of her legs, her thin black skirt already riding up around her hips so naturally. This was a bit fuckin’ surreal. She looked on to the other side of the bed, and there was a row of gowns- ballgowns, outfits, nurses uniforms, schoolgirl uniforms, rubber outfits,; there must have been a small fortune standing there, like a row of soldiers, ready at an instance to march off and complete any given fantasy like the good loyal soldiers they were.
Resting right by the side of the bed was the box containing the instruments of pain, along with a collection of different whips and canes. The Tranny swivelled her hips and legs over onto the bed, and Claire reached out to start playing with the toys. Her hand picked up a thick leather strap, with braidings at the end. This was a wanker spanker, so-called because it gave maximum possibility to the spanking of the balls whilst the punter tried to manage a wank.
But Claire wasn’t having any of that. She dug deeper until she came across the rubber bands again. Yes, these were the babies to start off with.
Slipping a few out, she managed to gather up the Tranny’s cock and balls in one deft motion that encased them thoroughly as the nice submissive collection of canables that had ever graced her fuckin’ fruit bowl.
The spanker came into play, and with a swift motion brought it down right onto the meaty area of the balls.
‘Oww!’ shrieked the Tranny, in the high-pitched voice that Claire knew them to use when they were enjoying the role playing. Claire hacked off another good piece of crack, and gave the Tranny a blast.
The Tranny went deep and quiet for a moment, savouring the punishment. Claire’s eyes flickered over at the outfits. Hhhmm, the schoolgirl one looked tempting, she thought. And it would only take a moment to slip into it. Hehehe, just in time, too, before Uncle Popeye turned up with all those friendly meat cleavers.
Then we’d see who was taking the fuck.

As Claire slid into the uniform, she thought she’d slide one of the wigs on, too. The long dark haired curly one took her fancy. She relished the thought of Popeye getting his eyes popped as he walked through the door and saw her in full regalia. By then she’d have this clown nicely tied up and ready to get ripped apart. So why was she turning this job over to Popeye? All he’d do would be to take everything and leave her sitting there with fuck all except a corpse. The more she thought about it the crazier it seemed. Crazy to ring him up and let him take over. This punter was ideal, in every sense. Maybe she could even work out to stay with him. He might well be more then ideal- if she could stay it might help her get off the stuff, and then she could begin the long process of trying to get her kids back. Years ago, when she had started out smoking crack cocaine, they had come along and taken them off her, all too quickly.
And if Popeye really fucked this guy up, what then might happen? It might come out that she had been the one to set him up fro the robbery. And if Popeye- she didn’t know- but now that she thought more about it it seemed only too possible- actually killed the guy, she would be hunted on a murder charge. She realised that she had used the punter’s phone to call Popeye. That would come to light, surely. The more she thought about it the more likely it seemed that she was going to end up on a murder charge.
She felt herself sliding down into the most massive depression in history. It felt as though from nowhere the trapdoors of hell had suddenly been sprung and she was now hurtling down. Oh God……please….she found herself crying out…….. please…….. nooooo
Then she was suddenly back with the punter, feeling as sexy as ever……….she leaned back and opened her legs a bit more. Let her have a peek………..she rubbed her hand over the Tranny’s legs, feeling the stockings and suspender belts with her fingertips.
She didn’t even know this joker’s name, but then did it really matter?
This was lovely, this and moments like this. When the whole of the world slowed to a stop and became everything wrapped in the intensity of the feel of those lovely sexy stockings on the end of her fingers. So sweet and sexy….aaaahhhhh….she gasped in ecstasy as a wave of sheer pleasure swept through her.
She felt something slip, and the next thing she knew she was leaning on the side of the bed, her body keeling over, the bedcovers looming closer and closer. Ohhh the sexual kick of this stuff …..a wave of orgasm sprang up from within her and kicked outward, like the ripples from a drop of water falling into a still pond. She wasn’t sure if her breathing could keep up with what was happening with her body. The sexiest thoughts were blossoming in her brain, in her body, swelling like the openings of flowers in the sunlight, rows upon rows of petals, desires within desires within desires. Sexual feelings, kinkier and kinkier by the minute were blossoming and opening up, like a massive fireworks display. The thought that she might be overdosing flashed into her mind, but it came too late………too late……….too late for her brain to do anything but register ………the last impressions of feeling and vision before it finally clicked off and she was left in a well of darkness…………..
The Tranny stretched back and enjoyed the feel of the young girl’s fingers wandering all over the stockings. Now and again she would suddenly remember the cruelty that lay dormant within her and allow her fingers to slide up to where the fruit bowl lay wrapped up in rubber bands like a wild bird bound and awaiting its execution. Then, they would ease off into pinchy mode and start pinching out the pain. The spasms of ecstasy were incredible, turned into delectable moments of heavenly delight by the coke. The feelings of humiliation and submission awakened spread their wings like angels and took flight, going higher and higher. The Tranny wondered if she had ever been this high before. The crack was extra strong, and each further blast put forth by the girl whooshed her up further and higher into the clouds. She thought with a delightful feeling of shame about the pins and syringes which would be coming into play very shortly. Then the young girl could start with the safety pins first, running these through the skin- and foreskin- of the cock, then the balls, doing each pin back up nice and neat after it had been inserted. She looked forward to looking down and seeing a nice neat row of safety pins all piercing through the skin and shining, reflecting the subdued lighting like the helmets and shields of a row of gladiators in some ancient Coliseum.
That moment would be ecstatic, and she would then be able to look up into the face of this young maiden and see- hopefully- that most exquisite expression of hate and loathing looking back. The Tranny was so far away in this dream, that she didn’t even notice that the girl was no longer there. Where had she gone? For a second she wondered if she was even real-yes, she was sure she was- had she not even gone out and brought her back, from the Cross? From the side of the bed she heard a noise, or, rather a sense of movement of some kind. Pulling out of the deeply delectable revelries was a real downer, but the Tranny managed it, and swivelled to be able to look over the side of the bed. Down on the ground the young girl was having what looked like a fit. She was jerking her arms and legs, and she seemed to be both shitting herself and vomiting at the same time. The smells that suddenly hit the air just then made the Tranny jump up.
‘Fuck me’ he thought, suddenly back into his male aspect, ‘This one’s OD-ing’. Should I ring for an ambulance?, came the idea from nowhere, crossing his mind at sixty miles an hour and then vanishing out the other side of his head equally quickly. The idea of having to deal with an ambulance crew charging in here, with all these Class A drugs lying around, didn’t have any appeal. The police would automatically be involved, and charges would be brought for all manner of things. Even if the girl lived, it would mean a charge of providing drugs, and allowing his premises to be used for drug-taking. Then the Old Bill would sniff around even further, and maybe look on what he’d downloaded onto the computer. Even the ordinary magazine porno he had in his collection was enough to get him seriously nicked, he knew. If he ended up in jail, he could then expect a severe beating for being, what in prison talk, was ‘ a nonce’.
No, no, forget that idea.
As he looked down, the girl seemed to have emptied most of her bowels into a pile of excrement in between her legs. The stench was appalling. She lay crouched up in a ball, in the foetus position, with her hands till twitching by her sides, like two fish suddenly out of water, gasping for breath.
In one hand she still held tightly the glass bottle of her crack pipe. The Tranny prised open her tightly balled fist, and was able to pick out the wraps of crack and heroin that had been given to the girl for her entrustment. These would come in useful for later. When she came to. Because when she came to, the game would certainly reconvene, but on a slightly different note.
Claire’s body had gone by now into a general trembling, which told the Tranny that she was well into her overdose by now.
With a sigh, the Tranny swung her stockinged legs over the side of the bed and leaned down to be able to get a better grip on the quivering form beneath her.
With a heave she managed to get Claire more upright, and at least away from the twin piles of excrement and vomit.
The Tranny managed to get her to her feet, and started walking her up and down the bedroom.
‘Hopefully this will work’ she thought to herself. If it didn’t, well, there would be time to cross that bridge later, if it came to that.
Claire slowly…..desperately slowly, began to phase back to consciousness.
Bit by bit she was able to place a bit more weight on her own feet, and less reliance on her arm around the Tranny’s neck, the Tranny’s arms bunched up around her waist to keep her upright.
Groggy…..but by now aware that something like this had happened to her, Claire tried talking, but gave up when she seemed to run out of energy and no words came. Only a vaguely audible grunt which seemed to come of its own volition from somewhere inside her chest.
She looked down at her right hand, which was empty, the pipe which reflex-like she would clutch come hell or high water, was nowhere to be seen. Instantly it became the single most important thing in her universe.
She tried to voice her concern……but the Tranny that was moving her up an down…up an down……..the corridor outside the bedroom now that her feet and legs were regaining their strength and the space in the bedroom was becoming too limited.
What had happened? She tried to think. Somehow she seemed to know, with the kind of intuition and ability to Know that those of the street sometimes seem to possess in vast quantities.
Claire thanked whatever gods had watched over her for the comforting presence of the Tranny. In the bosom of this strange, luxuriant that she had come across, was a caring, compassionate being. She leaned on the shoulder of this being, feeling the soft feminine skin under the thin lacy lines of the black bra and silky baby doll outfit she felt, more than any ‘normal’ male punter; she could let down her defences and begin, perhaps, to learn to trust again. From far away, she could begin to make out the words that lay buried in the soothing sounds that this creature was making.
Her breathing was slowing down, and the shakes were fading. The trembling in her hands was receding, and she instinctively tried to make sure that her stash of gear and cash was still there inside the right cup of her bra. She raised her hand to check, but just then the Tranny gave her a meaningful glance, and she thought better of it. She tried to tune in with her body sensation, and wasn’t sure if the stuff was still there. But she thought it was. Otherwise it would look as though the Tranny had deliberately spiked her, maybe to rob her, maybe to immobilise her.
But that wasn’t likely, she decided. Otherwise she would be coming to not like this but in the bottom of a dark cellar somewhere, where the sound of her cries for help would not carry very far, and her kidnapper could begin to gloat over his new prize.
Claire breathed a sigh of relief. Somehow she knew that from the way she was living her life, there was always going to be a possibility that she might one day met the Punter from Hell, the one that it would be to come along and snuff your life out from you. This character was the real bogey man of the drug scene she frequented, and many of the girls she knew from working the beat had tales about how they had managed to escape from someone, or somewhere. Chilling stuff, but in the end it just became an occupational hazard to be dealt with if and when it ever surfaced. By and large, though, as a working girl you had to at least feel a bit lucky to start with, otherwise you were never going to have it in you to start leaping into and out of men’s cars, touting for pieces of money with which to get their habits sorted that night.
It took more than a little bit of guts to do that, yet when you got into the swing of it, it all seemed so fucking natural, so commonplace. You had a few seconds to scan the punter over, from when his car slowed down to how he would talk with you. Any signs of nervousness or shiftiness weren’t too bad, usually. A lot of the punters were like that, on the prowl for some nice young twat to fuck, bored with some fucking ancient cunthole back home in the form of the Wifey. It was when punters started trailing in twos or more that the warning signs for rape and abduction cut in. Some girls didn’t care- they just jumped in and did however many punters they came across in the backs of vans and even trucks. Claire herself remembered some of her friends getting out of vans as they pulled onto the side of Goods Way by the railway station, the girls wobbly from just having been fucked by ten or more punters, all cheering and jeering from inside the back of their vehicle.
Then, all too often, the working girls’ pimps would dart out and snatch the money off them, making them go out and get more business, even when the girls were exhausted, ready to drop from being fucked by armloads of punters, spunk trickling out their pussies and down their legs. Some punters really like the girls that way. They called it getting their meat properly seasoned with the stains of other men’s seed all over them, in their mouths and fingers, the heady odour of spunk in their clothes, spraying pheremones into the air. Many punters loved their girls that way, nice and creamy.
Claire’s mind drifted back to where she was, being propped up by the soft shoulder of this Tranny, noticing the thin sexy lace strap of the women’s bra, the scent of some expensive perfume trailing in the air just underneath her nose, noticing for the first time how soft and beguiling it was. A wonderful doorway of gentleness and steadiness opened up for her then, drawing her in to the world of this mythological being. It would be nice to really get to know this creature. Maybe they would become two good sisters together. Claire wondered if she hadn’t somewhere along the line seen a film about something like this, where a transvestite befriends a working girl from the streets. Was it set in Brazil, or somewhere? Over the last few years she hadn’t had any time at all for films, nor anything from her former life. Neither her kids, her former friends, nothing- everything had been displaced by the never-ending treadmill of running to feed her crack and heroin habit. Yet other girls that worked maintained their children, were able to keep their relationships going, look after their health, go to their select gyms. Why not she? She didn’t know, she couldn’t say. A deeper breath moved through her and she came back to being walked up and along the corridor again, past the toilet and bathroom. She recognised these rooms, and as they came back together along the passageway the Tranny moved her into the bathroom, and sat her on the side of the bath. Instantly she felt where she had soiled herself underneath, and began to feel the first pangs of shame. Now it started to come back to her what had happened. She had just had that really big smoke, and the blast from that had just creased her over, like a piece of paper being folded in half. That was when she had crumbled inside and just flipped over onto the floor. She recalled her heart suddenly speeding up, frantically hammering inside her chest like a bongo drummer gone mad. The recollection of the bile in her stomach backblasting and spurting up suddenly through her throat and out her mouth came back. It had hit with such a force that there hadn’t been any time for her to find somewhere to direct that spray, only right in front of her, in fact, as she looked now over her front, she could see that for the most part it had just emptied itself out down her top. Her arse, too, had simultaneously exploded, releasing a huge pile of liquid shit. Form where it had come she had no idea. She hadn’t eaten for days, and only rarely had to take a shit. That such an amount of shit should have been stored up inside herself by her own body seemed incredible in itself.
The Tranny reached beyond her and began running the water. Claire felt the heat of the water from the red-topped tap, and then the Tranny’s hands were picking up a packet of bath salts, and dropping these into the water.
Still hardly able to move, she felt the Tranny’s directions rather than heard them, as she allowed herself to be shepherded into the water, peeling off her rotten and soiled clothes and letting the Tranny take them away. Take them away, she thought. For sure the Tranny would give her replacements when the time came. Mind you, if she played her cards right, that time might be a lot farther off than she might at first have supposed, when this punter’s car had first slowed down and she tumbled inside it. The Tranny went out, slightly puling the bathroom door to to afford her some element of privacy and leaving her to enjoy the silence and feel of the water gently lapping at the sides of her body. It had been ages since she had had a bath.
Claire tried to think back as to when that had been. She couldn’t remember. Several weeks, at least. When things got busy and she went on a roll the days, weeks, months even flew by.
Some girls would find that years, even, might have passed before they came down and had to pick themselves up from where they had last exited from their lives. Many would return to homes that had long since been abandoned, to children long since taken into care.
The high of crack cocaine was wonderful, but the come down was the most awful mockery in the world.
Slowly the water seeped into her, restoring her with its own magic and bringing her back to life. The bath salts, too, had their desired effect, and Claire felt the sense of a profound and natural warmth of relaxation sweep through her. What, she wondered, was going to happen now? She suddenly remembered the crack and heroin wraps, and feared that while she was sitting in this fucking cunthole of a place, old Tranny Bollox was lifting off, hitting up the last of the gear, laughing her fucking tits of as to how silly cunt here was sitting in a fucking bathtub. She suddenly felt unbelievably stupid, and could almost imagine all her girlfriends from the Cross laughing their tits off at the very idea of her being a complete muggings and getting smoked out of all that precious gear.
Cunthole, Claire said to herself, as she tried clambering up and out of the side of the bathtub.
Cunthole- I’m a cunthole, eh? She wondered, almost aloud, for Claire rarely talked with people other than herself, or the imaginary people that inhabited her world.

A red rage flared through her, as mental picture of the Tranny sitting there on her fucking throne in her stockings presented itself, with her red shiny high heel shoes tipped at their ends. As she looked up she could see all the last of the gear going down Tranny Bollox’s throat, and she wanted to reach out and strangle the cunt out of her. Her? It! This ‘thing’ wasn’t a fucking woman. It was a perverted piece of shit that deserved death. The fury that suddenly boiled up in her almost choked her, and her body gave off another little spasm of reaction as she came steaming out of the bathroom, the water still in the bath, and rivulets running off her as she pulled back the bastard door. Into the hallway, she looked up and down for any sign as to what was going on in the place. It all seemed so unbelievably quiet. Nothing stirred. The fury that tore through her began to abate a little, but now it turned into a cold fury, one in which she was capable of doing something extreme. She kept silent, and remained motionless.
Where was this fucking freak?
How long had she been in the bath? An hour? Two? No, not so long, maybe half an hour. Then she remembered that this freak was a real freak that had gone out and even left her in charge of the place while more money was amassed from a cash machine. Maybe Tranny Bollox had popped out, yet again. Well, this time he was in for a rude awakening. Claire resolved to have a look round this drum, in a way she hadn’t fully had a chance to before.
She moved carefully down the corridor, and noticed a flight of steps running down. They were wide and, she noticed, made of stone, and seemed to go quite far down where they disappeared into the shadows. Treading gingerly she made her way down the cold steps to where she could now begin to hear what sounded like a vague humming sound.

Popeye sat in a darkened room with his mouth full of plastic wraps. He could sit for hours- days, even- like this, patiently, waiting like some ancient Venus flytrap plant or some insectoid creature, the kind that has a long retractable tongue capable of flicking out quickly and catching smaller insects. He had been motionless like this for some two hours already. The last customer to call in to the flat had been a working girl, some new seventeen year old piece of stuff recently come down to London to make her fortune. Instead, she had discovered the joys of the world of crack cocaine, and was busy shovelling as much of this drug into her system as she could. It was like it was going out of fashion for some of these punters. She had appeared at the bottom of the steps and tapped on the side window. Taking a quick peek out the side he had recognised her, and shouted for the clown on the front door to let her in. Some hulking piece of human wreckage had shuffled, Frankenstein monster- like to the door and pulled back the intricate system of levers and bars which made up the reinforcements and heaved it open wide enough for her to slide in and glide down the hallway. There was barely any lighting in the place- all the bulbs had run out and not been replaced by anyone. Only a pale glow from the kitchen gave any illumination. He smelt her as she came in- things were going well for her- the punters that crawled round the Cross were always keen to get their fangs on one of the newer girls. Lovely, to sink their fat dicks into some nice fresh cunt and spunk fiercely into it. The cunt as well was as keen as mustard. The middle class women were the only ones who didn’t know what was going on. The wankers who couldn’t get any dicky themselves and who inwardly knew they had been replaced with younger models. The left-overs.
Haley was her name. She stepped into the dark room, where he sat in an armchair by the side of a bed. Things were obviously going well for her- the perfume was probably something from one of her regulars. Ohohooo……..maybe one of them was in love with her. This often happened, especially, increasingly, with muslim boys, who couldn’t get pussy in any other way. More men than liked to admit to it had difficulty in securing a regular pussy flow. Not with their fucking useless wives, who didn’t know the sharp end of a dickie from the blunt end.
Haley was a cockney girl that had managed to get herself a tiny flat off Copenhagen Road, where a big bunch of council flats lay sprawled on their way up towards Highbury, where the rich barrister class heralded by Tony Blair lived, protected by their small fleet of unmarked police cars which circled their area.
Popeye had already marked her place out as a possible future crack dealing den. For the time being this one was alright. Though, and easily brought in several hundred pounds profit a night. Out in the kitchen shuffled the human wreck whose place this had once been. Popeye had been able to get in here by giving the poor clown a smoke, then another, then plotting himself out in the guys front room, then giving him a little more to smoke and getting the bedroom. Now it was all his. The guy’s spirit was totally broken- he had the beaten look of a poor wanker written in his face. Steve his name had once been- a white boy. This council flat had once been his mother’s. She had died, and somehow this wanker had been able to keep it on, possibly by not informing the council. If he had, they would probably have had him out in a flash. After all, you don’t get to have property rights with council stock! Steve now would sit huddled in what had once been his kitchen, humbly waiting for the flash punters with money to come rolling by and sit there, puffing smoke in front of him, some of them- the girls were really keen on this- puffing it right into his face, like the cheeky cock sucking whores they were. To the winners the spoils. Now that he had allowed a dealer in, there was no going back. Finders keepers, losers weepers. Steve’s humble way always aroused the ire of Lady Jane, as she called herself.
She took a special delight in humiliating him n front of others when they came round for a smoke. She totally delighted in paining him, imitating his whining voice as he would beg punters for a small smoke. He would sit there, night after night, day after day, not moving, too scared to go out, in case someone came by when he did and scored, and had a smoke that he might have been a part of if he had stayed put.
Popeye didn’t pout up with that situation for very long, though. He would load the guy up with wraps and make him trawl up and down the riskiest roads in the Cross selling the gear. He had to be careful not just about the Old Bill, but even more so with regard to getting turned over by Blaggers. If that happened, he would himself be liable to any losses, quite apart from getting cut, which would be an additional part of the punishment. It once happened. Or so Steve had insisted. He vanished for the best part for a day and a night- then returned to the flat really blasted out of his head. It was obvious that he had smoked up all the shit, and tried to say he had been robbed. Popeye went mad, and started slamming into him, brining great bruises up on his skin and on his face. There was the sound of bones cracking as he went to work, with ribs being broken, or at least seriously dislodged.
It had taken Steve about two weeks to get himself over that beating, and Popeye had been right there with him when his giro money had finally come through, to take it all the fuck off him. Steve had run along the side of the road with him, begging him for at least one little hit to tide him over until his next payday- which was a further two weeks away. Popeye, though, was anxious to maintain his reputation as a hard man, and knew that to give any credit at all to this wanker, especially after having been had over by him, would start tongues wagging. Once that began, it would only be a matter of tie before the word on the street was that he was a pussy, an easy cunthole to fuck over and then everybody would be trying to rob him- from the girls setting him up to even the smallest weakest wankers having a go. He had walked away, cussing Steve and slapping with the backs of his hands at Steve, making him shy away and back off, tears running down the side of his face. The Drugs game was a tough game. Don’t play if you can’t take the lows as well as the highs. Few could- and certainly as dealers. Popeye had seen a lot come and a lot go- young pussy holes who thought it would all be plain sailing setting themselves up as dealers. All you had to do, was get a piece of work, preferably straight in from Jamaica, and wash it up into pieces. Then smaller pieces, as the big pile of cocaine coalesced in the glass saucepan into large white chunks of crack. This cocaine would have sodium bicarbonate added to it, to turn it into the crystal form that allowed instant smoking, the form favoured by the aficionados of this high. Popeye had seen it down first years ago, when a friend had flown in from Jamaica with a couple of kilos- stashed up his white girlfriend’s cunt and arsehole. White girls always got through easier than their black counterparts, and besides, if they got nicked, so what?
If anyone got nicked, so what? Since then Popeye had been back to Jamaica a few times, always on different passports, taking with him muppets to carry the stuff back and keep him going in his business. Popeye knew that if things ever went bad for him, he could expect no mercy. From the police he would receive nothing but their hatred, from his customers, even, they would like nothing better than to see him get tucked up or fucked up by robbers, or whoever. All the sweet friendly and sexy faces of those that came begging him for credit and offering blow jobs, some of which he would naturally take up on, wouldn’t give him a moment’s thought if her ever got slashed or nicked. Within seconds they would be off in the trail of some other dealer, and he would instantly become a thing of the past. All the Paros sweet talk would not be worth the steam off his piss.
Hayley stood in front of him with her legs apart. She looked good, he knew. In her short
Within Hayley stood in front of him with her legs apart. She looked good, he knew. In her short seconds they would be off in the trail of some other dealer, and he would instantly become a thing of the past. All the Paros sweet talk would not be worth the steam off his piss.
skirt, which would ride up around the base of the cheeks of her arse as she stood provocatively in front of him. Her long blonde hair flayed out across her shoulders. He sensed she had just been fucked, and was in the mood for some more.
‘What do you want?’ he asked her.
‘Three whites and a brown’ she replied.
He paused for a second, motioning with his eyes that he wanted to see the money first. He didn’t like getting the gear out only for the punter to start begging him for credit. To give credit would not just earn him the immediate reputation of being a complete cunt, it would also for sure lose that punter for ever. Because when the chips came down, and the girl got lucky and came back with an armful of cash, the last thing she wanted to know about was what she ‘owed’ people. She was then the Boss, the Queen of Narnia, and invariably they liked to snap their fingers and have dealers come running at any time round the clock to cater for their drug needs. That way they would spend the grands they had just made, mostly ending up stoney broke the next day. All too often, the very same girls that that night had spent one or two grand cash with him would be begging him for twenty pounds worth credit- tick- of brown. And he would always refuse. That way they would learn not to expect any favours. There were no favours, ultimately, in this business. As long as ‘you had’- i.e. had piles of drugs ready wrapped and ready for sale- the junkies would roll in shit to butter you up and grovel in front of you, offering their arseholes up in the air, and their children’s arseholes, too , if it came to that. But you had to be hard enough to repel the inevitable flow of chancers and wank stains that holding would inevitably draw- magnet-like, towards you.
But the nano-second you went weak, or in some way showed lack of control, these hyenas would be all over you, snapping at your bollox from behind until they eventually gathered enough courage to overwhelm you and piss all over you.
Popeye gave Hayley a long look up- and a slower look down. Her hand flipped into her bra- it was generally where many of the whores chose to keep their dosh, and hey presto! In her hand was a bundle of fresh new notes. He could smell fresh notes, even hear them, as they were brought out. They gave off a noticeably different aroma to that of older monies, the sound of which was a duller, damper sound. The smell of which was similarly damp, or musty, even. New money- straight from the cash machine-was ideal. In an instant Popeye had checked the dosh, and slipped it into a bundle, ready to get poked up his arsehole. He would wait till the girl had fucked off for her smoke before slipping the readies into a Johnny and, tying a not in this, slipping it up his bum, just in case he should get rolled. Up inside his arse he already had about twelve similar wraps, all of which he would extract after he finally finished his shift in this drum and went back to his own actual place, leaving Lady Jane in charge with the stash to be sold on his behalf. From a rough reckoning, he must have made about a grand since he came on sometime over the last twenty four hours. There were about a dozen bundles of dosh, some amounting to sums such as two or three hundred pounds, where a girl had come in with a rich punter, and bought a pile of gear, to take with them as they disappeared for a weekend’s perversion somewhere. His hand flicked back with a sudden movement from his mouth to the girl, and delivered the stones and brown she had specified. He might well wait till she ran out, and then let her try and get him going enough to do a trade with her for a stone, in exchange for a thump into that nice cunthole of hers. He felt the first stirrings of astwinge deep down there, and thought it might be a nice one to empty his aching balls into that nice young white girl’s bony cunt moorings. A nice bareback ride, though- no fuckin’ silly white man johnny spunk bags. When he spunked , he loved the thought of a big fat pile of spunk getting shot straight up inside a young girls pussy. There was something so…….right…….about it. He loved it when they put on that little girl lost look as he entered their pussy, a nice little gasp as the lubrication kicked in and the crack from their lungs translated into fanny foamings and his slidings down in that cunt went slipperier and slipperier until that sweet moment of pumping out. That was definitely the way to do it. These girls always talked amongst themselves, much as whores have always done since the dawn of time, about all manner of fuckery, from the particular idiosyncrasies of punters to situations out in the flats and streets where they got their money together.
Hayley, now that she had got what she wanted, was off into the deep interior of the flat, though, to smoke up her stuff. Inside, people would hang around for ages, for days and weeks at a time, for punters to come in. Girls that did their money here would sometimes hang on and se if they could get a punter. It by-passed the need to get your tail down to the Cross where you could get busted. Sometimes the girls had gone too high on the crack, and hadn’t budgeted with enough heroin for the inevitable come-down. Their faces when that happened were pictures of dismay. They weren’t happy bunny rabbits when that hit them. Then, they would all transform back out from being porno stars into cock wielding and cock sucking dogs only too eager to do it fro the sake of a single lousy pipe.
Not a stone, but a ingle solitary smoke, a chip from a stone. The deal was one chip if you spat, and one extra- at the end- if you swallowed. Mostly the girls would be only too keen to get it down the backs of their throats. It was always an added turn-on to see these once-haughty whores brought down to the level of taking bare dicky in their throats and arseholes for the sake of the small chips they were then paid with.
Popeye grinned to himself. Let this white bitch cock-tease as much as she liked. After she had smoked up all her gear she would soon be back, crawling around him for another blast or two of something- anything- only too ready to put that nice tight twat of hers on the line.
He kept his attention fixed on what was happening, not just outside the flat, where a big proportion of his attention went. You had to keep your senses peeled constantly in case the Old Bill suddenly appeared out of nowhere and started heaving in the front door or windows, flushing out whoever and whatever they could from these flats in one of their raids. The raids never ended, and, given the way the drug scene was taking over London, never ever would, either. Time and again the police would turn up and steam into a place, normally ripping the entire reinforced door clean off its hinges as they swarmed in, piling in and spreading out all over a place to try and prevent anyone holding from getting rid of their evidence. Most pissed off of all were the junkies, just about to spanner up and sweating the sweat of a nice heavy Cluck, the needle poised over a big juicy vein just as the Bill suddenly appeared right before them. Their faces were sick, all right. The dealers would normally be all right, though, having their stuff already stashed in wraps inside their mouths ready for just such as an emergency as this. Mostly it was the muppets who would be getting nicked. The Old Bill would always paint up their arrests as part of a big crack-down, though anyone really in the know would only smile and turn the page of whatever tabloid it was that was proclaiming the dedication and intelligence of the Bill. What a joke. Popeye knew enough stories – stories he had heard from his fellow dealers- about the bent coppers that worked for Stoke Newington and Islington Police Stations, taking rake-offs in exchange for advance warnings, or even selling off gear that had been busted from other dealers. There was so much money being made from the drugs that it was inevitable that some of the coppers would try and grab their fortunes while it was available. Some of them reasoned that if they didn’t take their rake-offs someone else would take over from them and it would still happen anyway
The raids were a laugh, sometimes. If it was known that the dealer was keeping a dog or two inside a flat. The Bill would appear with a couple of dog catchers right at the front of their detail, men armed with long poles with lassooes on the ends, into which they would try and get the dealer’s dog’s heads. Then the rest of the so-called raiding party could proceed into the flat.
If their grasses ever even mentioned about there being knives inside a flat, phew!! The Old Bill would roll out like a fuckin’ SWAT team, all armoured up and ready for bear, when all their feared opposition was in possession of was a kitchen knife. The cowardly shit arse cowardly bastards.
He thought he could hear footsteps coming along the pavement. Through a crack I the curtains he could see more or less all along the street. Everything looked totally dead, but even more so. More like a stage setting, or a movie setting, with the actors round the corner, out of sight, from where the cameras were, ready to come on and do their piece at the director’s bidding.
Spooky. Popeye thanked his lucky stars for having been born with at least a modicum of sense- sense enough not to have ever smoked that fucking stuff that sent people mad and depraved- the crack. Back in Kingston, and in Trenchtown, he had seen the devastating effects of crack smoking in his own community. Men would disappear into one area called Friendship Lane, a vast ghetto, no-go area which even the police were too scared to go into, even when the sound of shooting could plainly be heard ringing out from inside there. No one could say for sure what happened inside there, but whatever it was it was definitely to be avoided. There were women dealers, there, that would snare a crack smoker and for smoking their stones would make the depraved bastard get down on his knees and lap out their flowing fanny juices, one after another. The guys that it happened to would usually keep on smoking till they died. Certainly they were never heard of again. Popeye remembered one case when a particular guy had vanished inside the ghetto and actually had a few friends outside who still- amazingly enough- still cared sufficiently about him to form a search party. They even found him, living inside a burned out car, where people would sail by and use him sexually in the most despicable ways- getting him to lick their arses out, and to receive punishment. Canings of the balls were common, and when they looked they saw his balls covered with welts and with hundreds of cigarette stub marks. That guy was truly the exception, because by the time a man came to vanishing down Friendship Lane he had generally burned out al his friendships with rip-offs and thievings.
There were some real freaks that inhabited the outskirts of the world of crack cocaine, knowing they could always rely on the paros overwhelming need for gear to bring them a never-ending supply of fresh and all-too eager victims. Certainly all-too vulnerable ones. Sadists, heavy punishers, vicious freaks who enjoyed smoking themselves, even, but who used the drug to line up other users into situations from which no escape was possible. Then the gloves would come off, and the poor bastard that had maybe started out by accepting a friendly smoke would find themselves being pimped, often their kids pimped too. And all the time totally unable to do anything about it- only keep begging their master – or mistress- for a fresh smoke, regardless of whatever else was happening.
Popeye would try and keep away as much as he could from the insidious fumes of the fucking stuff, even. Some of the girls would sit there, right in front of you, if they could- if you let them get away with it- with their skirts riding right up around their arses, showing off their little V of pantyline, while they blasted away. Others would be only too-turned on to show you their actual minge, sometimes shaved nice and bare, like a little girl’s, the kinky way many blokes liked it.
But behind this little peep show was yet another ploy- as they sat their flashing their cunnies the guy in front of them would be constantly breathing in the fumes, which in the confined space of a small room quickly built up and which would very shortly start affecting him, too.
Then, the dealer would start turning into a muppet, and handing out gear on tick to people willy nilly. In seconds of this happening his reputation- a thing maybe hard earned over many months or years- would be instantly finished. He would then become a designated Softie- a Pussyhole, and every cunthole for miles around would start tuning in to come over and do a spot of piss taking, if they could. Guys that allowed this to happen could become involved with a girl that did it, and start treating her like a duchess. This always brought about howls of derisory laughter amongst the girls whenever they congregated together to talk about their recent conquests. The poor Pussyhole would sometimes even be sitting outside in the car while his duchess sat up in the flat, licking off his pile of cash with her mates on their pipes, and then even doing a few blow jobs for a tenner a time, while he sat outside in the fucking rain, wondering like a cunt what was going on up in there, with everyone else having a right royal laugh at what a clown they had been sent.
Sometimes he might fancy doing a bit of business with one of the girls, but he preferred the teeny looking types, such as Amy or Natalie, girls with little girl type bodies but with lovely slagbag tendencies.
From further inside the flat he could hear Hayley wandering about, seeing who else was around. He wasn’t too sure, as he was keeping focused here in the front room, which gave him a view of the street. But he thought lady Jane would be only too willing to take some time off to sit down and have a laugh with Hayley. Especially as Hayley had just scored. When that happened, you were never short of friends. Everyone loved you, and wanted to be in your company. But when the gear ran out everyone just switched off and walked away, which was one reason the come-down was particularly hard. Those who had been the life and soul of their own little party right up till a few moments before, would suddenly find, when their gear finished, that they were nothing, worthless pieces of shit that had just done their last monies on a bunch of worthless cruds who now wouldn’t even give them the steam off their piss.
It was one hell of a come-down.
But Hayley was only just coming up. In the kitchen, she had indeed bumped into Lady Jane. Lady Jane’s main talent was to walk around wearing a baseball cap. When Popeye- or one of the other dealers that plotted out in the flat- or the Temple- as it was known- clocked off he would sometimes give her his remaining stash and let her go on selling the stuff all through the night. In exchange for that, she could smoke one out of every six stones she sold, be it white of brown. On top of that, whilst holding for him, she could sit there and smoke up with the punters that bought off her. Very often they would be only too keen to have someone to sit there with them and join them, especially if in return for the smoke they got interesting company, relevant news on what was happening in the scene, and other interesting information. Hayley, in particular was always interested in what kinds of prospective punters were sailing past. Were there any yuppie types, for instance, business-looking gents around? Hayley, she knew, had two kids, and had wondered if she wasn’t herself up for a bit of noncing. There was also the aspect of news coming in, too. Sometimes the girls got very lucky and got to bring in complete sets of bankbooks and cheques, which had to be turned round and kitted out to would-be fraudsters in as soon a time period as possible, before the punters realised their losses or the banks were able to do anything about it. Then Lady Jane would stand to make an earner on what went down. Sometimes hundreds of pound s could be earned that night- within an hour or two of the bank books coming through the door, by getting the material into the hands of someone who knew what they were doing, and could pull off the job.
Hayley leaned against the side of the stove, and broke out the wrap of one of the stones she had just bought. Lady Jane knew that Hayley was a Martell bottle smoker- the little glass brandy bottle improvised with a hole tapped into the bottom of the bottle and a piece of gauze wire across the top. But would she prefer to use her water bottle? This could often offer a smoother smoke, as it passed the fumes through the cooling chamber of water first before bringing it up, billowing, into the punter’s lungs. As with the Martell, it still came nice and frothing, though. Hayley wasn’t sure. She liked to collect up all that lovely residue from her pipes. It was always a nice bonus to look forward to when the gear had run its fucking natural course and petered out to get the scraper out and pile that gooey black stuff up from the insides of the bottle, heaping it up bit by bit on top of the gauze and then blasting that up. Often it was the best hit of all, and came right when it was truly needed. Lady Jane was worth the occasional free smoke. Sometimes it would only be her on when everyone else had fucked off, and Hayley would appreciate having another woman around. In the middle of the night, especially in between punters, there would only be the more freakish of the crack-smoking types around- guys that were most likely rapists, certainly muggers, burglars, blaggers, desperately looking for a quick smoke before going out and getting nicked on their money-making ventures.
Lady Jane was also worth knowing for another reason. Although getting tick off her was something even Hayley didn’t think was something that the average punter might ever be able to get, she herself, Hayley thought, might well be able to.
All these little puffing billy sessions would soften her up in readiness for the big push, or so Hayley reasoned. One definite way of getting credit was in offering to pay twice the normal price when you did pay- say- a day or so later. This way it tended to give the person holding an actual incentive to step out a bit on trust and lay the stuff on you. Otherwise they were taking a risk for absolutely nothing. By letting you take away a stone they were letting go a stone that would otherwise have been going out to someone else but for definite money, on the spot.
Popeye’s hearing scanned through the flat- he could vaguely make out the almost subterranean stirrings of Steve- the white boy that would crawl round whoever had a stone and humbly ask them if they needed a new piece of cigarette ash on the end of their water pipe. The piece of fresh ash was placed over the tinfoil, pierced with dozens of tiny holes by a needle point, and it was on top of this that the piece of crack was put, ready for melting down with the lighter flame.
‘Do you need a nice new piece of ash, mate?’ Steve would always ask, like something out of a Charles Dickens novel, as he proffered the little pieces of cigarette ash, all laid out on a piece of paper and ready to be transferred to the top of the water pipe.
Popeye smiled. That guy was fucking unreal. Like that little guy he had once seen in a film about Hobbits, or whatever it was. He had been in prison at that time; normally he never had time to sit through an actual fucking film. Gollum- that was that little fucker’s name, he remembered.
Things were quiet. He felt the remainder of the wraps inside the roof of his mouth. He never took them out. Because if you ever did, that’s when the fucking police would steam in, or someone try and mug you off. It was weird how it worked. The moment you showed any vulnerability, the moment something would happen.
There was almost something supernatural about it. How the coincidences would pile up and suddenly the scales of justice would turn against you, and everything you had built up over so many years could suddenly be wiped out and taken off you, either by the police or by some competitor, or worse still, a fucking crack head smoker, that had somehow worked out where the stash was being kept and crept in. Popeye had had that happen to him once, when a girl he was fucking had double-dealt him and gone in with another guy to clean out all his stash, which he had kept buried in the garden. He remembered all too clearly the shock of going to where it had been and discovering nothing but a hastily covered-up hole where all his wealth had effectively been stashed.

He felt a vibration coming from his pocket. He had witched the mobile phone onto vibrator mode, and as he lucked it out saw a number being registered that he didn’t immediately recognize. Before he could do anything more the phone switched over and received a message on its answerphone. Well, no rush, if it was a customer than they could call back. Just then he heard the pitter patter of steps coming along from the street. It was the distinctive sounds of high heels clattering along, and he well knew whose. That was the sound of Amy’s mum. A right little cock teaser too, that one. She was about five feet nothing, and had stopped growing at around the age of sixteen. The result was one horny little devil woman, who had given birth to her daughter that grew up to look just like a slightly younger version- all blonde hair and sweet little face. When her daughter had reached the age of about fourteen she had taken Amy down to the Cross where she had got her started doing punters, and earning big money every night. She had been a big success down there herself, attracting hordes of punters all eager for a roll with this tasty-looking babe. But her daughter had really brought out the freaks. Some punters had had to come back within the hour after fucking Amy- so strong was their desire for her. Men would beg for her mobile number, and offer to drive her around indefinitely while she did her business. There had been a real surge of would-be and wanna-be pimps to take that little babe under their wing. Amy’s mum had also developed a reputation of befriending other youngish women who happened to have daughters around that age, and while mum was being kept busy having a nice free smoke with someone designated to keeping her busy, she herself would be taking her daughter down to the Cross and getting her started, too. She would prime the girl on what to say and how to move, and for safety reasons take the money off her after she had done each punter. Each night a nice bundle would rapidly accumulate, and onwards of a thousand pounds would soon come together. Then, when she felt that they had been going long enough, she would take herself and the girl off to a nearby crack house where she would get the lass a good strong smoke, impressing all the dealers there with her pupil, and how much she was capable of earning out of her.
Popeye peered through the chink in the curtain, and saw Amy’s mum. Funny, he had been told her name, and in this business, as in any other, it always paid to be able to remember the name of an important customer. But Amy’s mum’s name always kept slipping from his mind. He had seen her a few times of late, with some big gorilla of black fella around her, and she telling everyone that this was ‘her daughter’s boyfriend’. It was the kind of thing guaranteed to get a few stiff pricks, which was the kind of side effect she tended to have, even when not fully intending in. Popeye knew that this guy was almost certainly a nonce. He had seen him once hanging around Hayle’s place when he had been phoned- by him- to go there and bring a nice big piece of crack, for he and Hayley to smoke up together. Whilst there, Hayley, he noticed, had been sitting on the bed with him, wearing only a black lacy top, her long blonde hair flowing around her shoulders. Then , with a slight shock, he had spotted Hayley’s seven year old son sitting on the bed, naked. The black boyfriend had taken the crack, and handed over the five hundred pounds for it on the spot.
‘This is his daddy’ Hayley had said, indicating the young boy on the bed, and the gorilla that was already stripping down to his boxers. Popeye thought whether or not he should try and hang around. The half ounce the fella had just bought would be running out sooner rather than later, so if the dude still had any cash than it would be a good idea t be around for when he wanted more. In situations like this the dealer would just sit in an adjacent room, while the punter and his girl would get it n and do their thing, till the gear ran out. Normaly the money would finish, and then they would start begging for credit. That was when you walked out and left them sitting there, barely able to stand, their tongues hanging ourt their throats and their eyeballs on stalks, desperate for yet another smoke. But you had to be tough, because if you gave them credit, they would invariably lose respect and start taking the piss. He had heard that one of Hayley’s games was noncing. These girls would get progressively kinkier as the years rolled by and the toll of crack smoking further addled whatever was left of their brains. Well, Popeye thought, leave them to it. He was to busy trying to stay alive and afloat in this jungle to concern himself with trying to change the world. Even so, it was fucking evil stuff, but if these cunts were so determined to smoke the stuff why should he be blamed for bringing it to them?
A couple of other human shapes loomed up from down the street. It was weird. Sometimes it was almost as if there weren’t any normal people living in this street at all- because none would ever show, either to leave from their places in the morning or to return to them in the evening. It was like one of those CIA experiments you read about in the conspiracy-theory articles from time to time. He thanked his lucky stars he wasn’t a smoker. Because, right then, he knew that if he had been his sanity would have started slipping away at something like that. Then he would be the same as those other nutters, gradually going more and more mad as they drifted into a series of alternative realities. Most of them, he knew, were patients up at the Whittington Hospital, which is where they mostly knew each other from.
That was one serious fuck-up of a place, too, he knew. One of the girls had been ECT’d there, effectively had her entire brain emptied, and had been shuffling around like a zombie for ages afterwards. Funnily enough, it had been her going back to smoking crack that had been the one thing to pull her back together. After that, she seemed to get back in touch with reality. Drugs were like that. They were more of a lifeline for those on them than the rehab people ever suspected. All they knew was what they had read in their psychology books and articles- all written by other wankers in the field which professed a greater degree of knowledge that they actually possessed. After getting theire little certificates they would trundle out and get themselves nice paying jobs where they could fuck people about for their scripts and engage in other such piss-takey games. They were lucky they didn’t get their arses cut more often, Popeye realised. Very rarely did you ever hear about these Little Hitlers ever getting their come-uppance from their ‘clients’- mind you, that was probably because the ones they dealt with were generally too far gone to be able to put up any resistance.
The two shapes came closer. He could see now who they were- two crack heads from the Cross, who would normally stay within that manor more than get up this way to Archway. Maybe they had just done some handbags or some other little robbery and wanted to get out of their more familiar area for a bit. He knew them though.
They came down the steps and tapped on the window. Just then he had a funny feeling that something ‘was up’. He suddenly knew what he was going to tell them. That he only had one ‘of each—one white( crack) and one wrap of brown( heroin). This would deter them from attempting to rob him. But if they wanted to rumble, bring it on- this would be an ideal time for him to establish his Alpha male standing and earn his reputation a s a hardnut. He reached into his pocket and opened up the end of his Stanley knife; the retractable blade peeped out from the metallic casing a half inch or so, and gave off a dull gleam. If these cunts started he would take their fucking faces off. He shouted out to someone to let these clowns in, and heard the hundred and one beams and pulleys being pulled across the door’s entranceway to make way for the new customers to enter. As they stepped into the hallway, these bolts and pieces of wood were all placed back against the door, to give maximum resistance for if- no, when- the police turned up.
There was something about these tow that was making Popeye jumpy. They weren’t talking, not even to themselves. Normally if people had the money to score they were in a good mood, and were looking forward to take –off. But these two seemed to be on a real down. He put his hand into his pocket ready for when things kicked off, as he increasingly was feeling was going to.
One of them still had his hood up, the other, also a shaven- head type, had his off. One was black, the other half caste. He raised his eyebrows, quizzically.
‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘Everything you got, boss’ the Halfling replied, bringing out a long bread knife from his inside pocket. Popeye inwardly laughed. What a clown. Something like that might work with your average chicken-shit scared white man, but not with the kind of hardened Yardie dealer material that he was woven from. Instantly his foot lashed out and caught Blackie in the balls, who went down like a good little boy. Popeye knew that he was out for the count. Softie cunts like he didn’t get back up again. They would wait till the fighting was al over before they got back on their feet, and then try and take what they could. The Halfling was a bit more eager, and made a pass at him with the blade, missing him by a mile, though. Probably too shit scared to actually slam it into anyone.
Mostly these types relied on scaring someone into handing everything over, but when they met real resistance they generally proved a bit too shy to actually get stuck in. Unless it was clear that they were in for a walkover. In that case, they would be only too happy top rip somebody to shreds. He had heard about one case when a woman down in the Cross had put up resistance to having her handbag snatched, and had clung on to the car bonnet as the robbers- a man and a woman team- had spun of. The result was that she had gotten herself killed, and the press went mad until the robbers had been caught, which only took a couple of days until that came to pass. Very rarely did the Old Bill bother to actually take off their kid gloves and go all out for a definite nicking, but it could still happen.
Popeye whipped out his blade, and put it straight against the ear of the Halfling, then brought it down with full force, severing it completely. There was a fountain of blood, as it spurted across the room, over the bed, and floor. The Halfling was howling like a wolf now, but all he could do was put his hand up to his ear and then look around for the door, to try and get his sorry arse off now to hospital. Lucky for him the A&E of the Whittington was only just a few blocks away.
Either way, it was perhaps time to get the fuck out and let things here cool off for a bit. These two clowns didn’t look like the grassing type but even so if they or someone else phoned for an ambulance the Old Bill would almost certainly turn up anyway. Time to make himself scarce and get along to another crack house for a bit.
As he got up to make his way, he quickly flashed through some of his options. You couldn’t just turn up at a lot of these crack houses and start dealing. Well, you could, but you might need to back yourself up with a bit of muscle if anyone should think of trying to deter you. After all, you were taking some other dealers’ customers away from him, and that meant competition. But he was generally known as one that would back himself up aggressively, and many of the other softie so-called dealers shied away from him for that reason. The real dealers would often leave the younger boys I charge of the individual flats, coming back every so often to collect the cash and restock their wraps supplies. As long as they were knocking out their supplies, some of them didn’t even mind some other dealer coming along to knock out his stuff too.
Popeye made it out onto the street, leaving the two would-be muggers crying like babies on the floor of the bedroom. He felt the cool wind in the street, and again noticed just how deathly quiet the whole place was. Walking along, he rounded the corner to where Swain’s Lane ran up to the side of Highgate Cemetery. Then he noticed that his phone carried a message on its answer phone. He pressed the button, and was amazed to hear Claire’s voice speaking to him. From the sound of it, it sounded as though she had landed a prize punter- or a prize mug, rather. He felt in his pockets for a pen, and brought out one of those small ones from a betting shop somewhere. He had to play the message back a second time, but he was now sure he had the address- Hornsey Lane- wasn’t that near here, somewhere? He wasn’t too good on addresses, but thought for a moment and realised he knew- more or less- where Claire had managed to locate herself. He walked up the hill that led on to Highgate Hill, passing the big old Catholic church to his right as he did so. St. Joseph’s, a big sign outside it said. Up to the traffic lights, and straight over, he found himself walking over Suicide Bridge. This was the 19th Century bridge that arched over Archway Road and connected Highgate with Crouch End. From here he could look out right across London, and saw the little fairy lights in the distance twinkle away- over to Canary Wharf, at the top of which was a pyramid lit up with beams. As he looked right down he could see the cars and busses going past, up and down the main thoroughfare. It was from this bridge that so many of the suicides threw themselves, almost invariably killing themselves in the process. There were very few cases of mere injuries. Always, local people would rally round and place bunches of flowers right alongside the spot at the top of the bridge from where they had jumped. A ghoulish practice, in a way, the thought.
He passed over the bridge, and found the road meandering down with a slight incline, passing great trees on either side of the road. The houses here were very traditional, too, originally built as big old Victorian style family houses. Each house was different, with variations on the front, the height, the style. Some seemed to have held on to their identities of being family houses, whereas others had about twelve bells outside the front of them, and indicated that inside they had been chopped up into mini-flatlets. These would be the ones rented out- and for small fortunes, too. Stashed in various bank accounts, Popeye had secreted nigh on two hundred thousand pounds. Yet if the police ever caught up with him, he knew only too well that he stood to lose the lot if they ever found out about it. Great bundles of money he also kept in stashes only he knew where- and almost always would he walk about with minimal money on him, just in case he ever got grabbed by another team and shaken down. Some of those boys could be totally ruthless, even using boltcutters to find out where a man’s stash or money stash was kept, and only too eager to use their tools in order to get to the goodies.
Popeye came down the small crest of the hill, following the curve in the road along as it swept down from the bridge. On either side he noticed the curved fish lampposts, reaching upwards as if trying to escape from one stagnant pool into another, hopefully fresher one.
Popeye vaguely remembered that one of his competitors- Stichey- was based around here. Stichey was also from Jamaica, and was getting quite big- he was importing niggas in from JamTown en masse- each one of them with a kilo in their intestines- business was booming.
He had best kep a eye out in case any of Stichey’s soldiers might be passing him as they ferried their drugs up and around Highgate and Hornsey area. Even reaching into downtown Crouch End in order to make their deliveries. By and large he tried to avoid any direct conflict with other teams, but even this irked him. A man of his stature should hqave his own soldiers by now. What the fuck was he doing, running around with the stuff on him, getting involved with fucking idiots like Claire, to shake down punters she thought might be an easy touch?
There would be time enough yet ahead for expansion, her thought to himself. Let him take the next few steps one at a time. He had seen enough people fall and stumble when they attempted to run too fast and found out to their cost that they couldn’t handle it. Hospital, cemetery, or jail, hospital cemetery, or jail. He found the house number- 92- that Claire had given him, and pressed the buzzer. He could vaguely hear the sound of it going off in one of the flats upstairs. Hopefully this would be an easy in, easy out kind of job.

Upstairs in the flat the trannie was just settling down to a perusal of what the night had brought him. The girl was young- not as young as he normally liked them- this one was in her mid twenties, but had enough experience on the streets and dealing with punters for a women three times her age. She had a lovely, undernourished skinny look- the cunt was all bony and hard, the way he liked it. It stuck out like a pair of pursed lips, on some vinegar-faced girl. Hhhm, nice. He loved it nice and bony. The arms and legs were pocked with hundreds- if not thousand- of needle marks, and here and there were the traces of wounds and infections, all in glorious technicolour, some yellow, some purple, some swollen up beautifully, though. One or two were really pussy, give them a few more days and they would be ready to burst. This young girl, he thought to himself, had already smoked as much crack and heroin as she was ever going to smoke. He had switched the crack, with her so smashed out she hadn’t noticed, and had slipped her something which was guaranteed to give her a lovely heart attack- rat poison. It wasn’t that difficult to substitute, especially when someone was already as high as they had ever been.
He rummaged through the box of ropes and chains, thinking about which set would be the nicest to start off with. But there was something in the back of his mind that was worrying him. She had made a phone call- that could prove to be a mistake. She might have been genuine in what she was saying- but somehow he doubted that. These girls didn’t give a shit about working in alliance with someone- when their money came through they were all off straight down to the crack house, where they would selfishly blast away on their gear, and fuck everybody else. Short-term thinking, it might be, but when these girls had money it was a race to get it spent out as quickly as possible, and immediately forgotten would be the countless hours, difficulties and dangers undergone in order to get it in the first place. If they saw you down there, and it began to dawn on them that they might need you for a lift somewhere, such as back down the Cross and back, then and only then might they offer you a pipe. Or if you had a place where they might be able to stay for a couple of days or so, or use to shoot up, or even just bring their punters back to. In those circumstances you might be treated differently.

Popeye went right up to the translucent glass and squinted through, trying to make out what was on the other side. The house was a little set back from the road by a small driveway, with a large tree right in the middle in the front of the garden, around the side of which curled a concrete paving on which one or two tenants might park their old, worn-out cars. Popeye looked at two such cars that were parked there, and was surprised at just how dated these old jalopies were, even for people that didn’t have a lot of money, it was almost as though the people living here thought the epitome of style might be a 1980s Humber with wind-down windows. Popeye wondered if that cunt Claire hadn’t fucked him about. He checked with his mobile, and saw that it was still switched on. Good. No point in wasting any opportunity to sell more of his stock while he was checking out this possibility. Although he hadn’t worked this scam with Claire before, he had done so with several other girls, each time with more or less successful results. On the first occasion the girl had been shortchanged by the punter, and brought Popeye round to get the right amount of money off the guy. She had staggered into the crack house wild with fury, and Popeye had been one of the several niggas to jump up and offer his services upon hearing her tale of woe. When they turned up on the guy’s doorstep, he nearly shat himself in fright, with the prospect of getting fucked up by these niggas on the spot, with the knives and other weapons they were brandishing. On top of the outstanding amount, Popeye and his mates had placed a 500 pound ‘admin’ fee for having been called out in the first place, and, taking the trembling punter down to the cash point machine which spewed its guts and pumped out the readies, all nice and fresh, as fresh as a virgin’s knickers. The other experiences flashed across Popeye’s tired brain, too numerous and too mundane to stand out particularly, for any reason. These scenarios were all-too common in the world he lived in to be particularly noticeable. These scenes were always handy to have happening, though, and not just for the money; even more importantly they gave one the opportunity to reinforce the hard-won reputation of being a hard man. This would always pay good dividends into the future, and was the best insurance against anyone trying on a robbery or- worse still- a kidnap.
He thought he could hear some kind of noise going on, but it was too vague, too indistinct.

The trannie gave himself a brief opportunity to think a bit clearly. He would be propelled into taking some kind of action soon, though, he knew, as soon as he did another blast of crack on the pipe he had hidden away specifically for moments such as these when he did his quality thinking. Getting high on this stuff had long since ceased to be a recreational thing- over the years it had dug in deeper and more firmly and had transplanted any and all religious impulse. By smoking crack, the trany could enter into communion with his gods, even hear them speaking to him, even talk back to them, and act as a priest, or intercessor. He listened to the chatter of the spirits going on around him now. One of them was saying something about the phone call Claire had made- that someone was coming- was right out there outside the front door, even. The trannie went up to the window and carefully looked out through the wooden slats. Yes, there below was a shape of someone lurking, it looked like a black man, although he couldn’t be absolutely sure of the man’s details. But it was enough of a start to give him a massive shock. Immediately he snapped out of the sensuousness of the priestly vestments in which he found himself, and, quickly peeling of his stockings and basque, threw them into a box he used for this purpose. The wig came next, and within moments the makeup that he had thickly daubed all over his face came away with a wet wipe. The eyelashes came next, also with the quickest of wipes across his lids, and with a dash they were on the side of the dresser.
Where was the fucking girl? He thought to himself. Now his adrenalin was charging through his system, combining with the crack and making his heart race out of his chest. He had been in a situation like this before- what punter hadn’t? And he cursed himself for having brought her back- always a bad move, but always the kind of stupid mistake it was all too easy to make after a simple smoke.
On that occasion the girl had been trying to let the guy in so as to do a robbery on him. How narrow a scrape that had been he didn’t even want to think about right now, as it looked as though fate itself was just about to give him a repeat of the experience. He had to find that girl, and get rid of her. Now she had back-up, and he, like an idiot, had actually allowed her to make that fucking telephone call whilst he had been totally under the influence of a good pipe. He felt gutted about his own stupidity. But there was no time for remorse now- he had played his side in this way, and now it was down to him to get himself out of this scrape.
Where was the girl? He looked around for her, but she was no longer where he had left her, in the bath. There was a trail of dripping water all along the carpet, down past the banister, and along the stone steps which led down to the back of the house. Ahh, so it was this way she had come. The way he had originally devised for her when he had set out that evening, on the prowl for a young women who would prove playful enough. So many of the young women freaked out when they got down here, into the deep underground cellar where he kept all his equipment. Which was understandable, really, given that it was the fulfilment of all their ultimate nightmares. Bollox to the nigga out on the doorstep. Somehow- although you never cold be totally sure- he didn’t think this guy was the type to start calling the police, and if they did turn up he could simply deny that the girl was there any longer- even if he was caught out lying the police would reason that there cold be an infinitude of reasons as to why a man of his standing might not want to go to public on any liaison with a women who was known to have worked the streets. He trotted off down the stone steps, following the trail of water droplets and as the cellar neared he caught a sudden blast of the demonic music he had playing, down there. It must have been the girl opening the door, or, maybe if she was already inside, opening the door to try and come out. She had probably seen enough. Ahh, the little sweetie. All those nice toys to play with, and her now not wanting to stay and get into the spirit of things. He bustled on down into the cellar, nudging the heavy wooden door as he entered. The girl was there alright, totally freaked out at what she had found. Right in the centre of the floor was a set of heavy bolts, complete with a large, multi-starred diagram, cut into the concrete and splayed out in a star shape. She was staring round, gob smacked, at the freakiness of the scene. Her wide-open eyes were taking in all the ramifications of the huge wooden chair, which sat right in the middle of the floor, its great armrests on either side hanging with cufflinks already in place, draped elegantly over each arms.
The trannie decided to go for broke. If shit came to shove, he could fob off the nigga with the possibility of the police being called. Scumbags like that didn’t generally hang around when their name got called. They were generally on the run themselves to want to show their faces when the Old Bill arrived on the scene. It was nice having a nice respectable front, unlike these cuntholes who scuttled around on the edges of humanity. Still, the idea of a nigga –possibly- worrying around, looking for this girl, or maybe coming round for a nice quick robbery was a bit unsettling. It was hard to get into the mood of a thing when there was a distraction like that. Trannie wondered what to do, then – just then- the action was given to him, triggered by the girl’s reaction. In the background the music- some satanic chanting, repeated over and over again, building in intensity, and approaching a crescendo, spinning round on a CD played on a machine in the corner, the words indistinguishable to the naked ear, but pitched directly underneath these were subliminals which cascaded the mind with all manner of sexual suggestions and encouragements for bestiality. Trannie had played this CD over a thousand times since starting out on this Path, along with the others of his collection. The sound of it all was having its mesmerising effect on the girl, though. There, there. That was better. She seemed to relax now, even visibly, and go into a trance state. Standing there, the water had by now trickled from her, and her skin, though damp, was more or less dry. Her eyes seemed to turn inward, and with a movement of one arm the Trannie was able to lead her over the crisscrossed floor, over to where the big wooden seat presided over the chamber. The lights were low, and in the air was a hint of the heady incense which he had been burning even prior to going out to find this girl.
‘There there’ he said to her, in tones that were so soothing they could only have come directly from his Satanic Master. Oh, how the Glorious Satan was truly Lord of This World, able to appear at any time and assist those that had truly turned to him for their salvation. He led the girl over to the Throne, and slipped the handcuffs round her slender wrists, and round her thin ankles. Oh, they were so sweet, those little girlie type ankles and wrists- they had done so well, too, bringing her al the way through her tiny world up to this point, where her shit existence could finally be turned into something worthwhile, into something majestic, even, for the Glory of the Lord of the dark! As the Trannie looked up at her, sitting there naked on his throne, now totally unable to resist effectively of get away, a naughty expression flickered across his face, and with his thumb and forefinger he reached up and gave one of her nipples a lovely big pinch. She squawked- in surprise, if not exactly delight. It would take her a few days to get acclimatised to the levels of pain which he would shortly be introducing her to. Such things took time, and he didn’t like to rush things. As he looked upwards, he saw her frightened little face look down, with her sweet little curling eyelashes flickering downwardly for an instant, in a sweet token of submission and soon-to be awakened masochism. Who could say, if this one took like a duck to the water and learned her lessons particularly well, the Dark Lord might even intervene and prevent her Sacrifice from taking place- and even keep her here on the earth plane with various duties. Trannie had known of such things before. Here had been one girl that had been taken away- he never knew where- it wasn’t for him to question the ways of those that were his superiors in the Order.
The Order- now there was a joke- what a way out collection of complete fucking no marks- yet- when the spirit of the Dark Lord Himself moved across the face of the waters, and arose from the depths of the earth itself- then there was no holds barred in his expression of ultimate power. The Trannie felt these stirrings now- but there was something else flickering on the outermost edges of his awareness- what was that? There it was again- ah yes, it was that fella moving outside the front of the house – that black fella- the fucking idiot that had come to rescue that fucking girl, who was sitting like a cunthole on the fucking throne, ready to get her cunt torn out……
The explosion of fury hit the insides of the Trannies head, making his heart race faster and his blood pound like sledgehammers on the insides of his head.

Boom boom boom- phew, he thought to himself, a mere flash of awareness as his head raced- don’t panic- have another fucking smoke you fucking Satanic Trannie cunthole – yes, where was the stash- oh no, it was all the fucking way upstairs where- as his awareness left his body he was transported up into the flat above- the one he kept for functioning in normal, everyday society. But as he ‘looked’ he looked at saw what was happening up there. The black fella seemed to have made his way into the place. The Trannie ‘saw’ that he had buzzed on the outside of the front door one of the other flats, and bullshitted his way inside with a story about how he had forgotten his keys. Then, using a credit card, and a hefty kick on the inner door to the flat, he had been able to get inside Flat 6. The cunthole. Even as the Trannie ‘saw’ he could make out the form of this bastard peeping around the flat and casing the joint, in the way that burglars and blaggers the world over did whenever they came across someone daft enough to let them into their place.
Well, this one shouldn’t take too long to sort out. He moved to the bottom of the stone steps, and paused. The heavy wooden door flapped shut, downing the hum of the chanting to an almost inaudible level. He could sense the fella up there in the flat, moving about, skulking around, already on the lookout for bank details, or cards with which he could presumably dash out the door and head off on towards a cash dispensing machine. And fuck the girl. All this knight in shining armour shit went off like a puff of smoke in the presence of the chance to make some real money, especially the kind that came fast. Thankfully the girl was now secured, down on the throne, where she would be settling in for a night’s deepest ecstasy, which would begin immediately on getting rid of this little rat. The skulking rat, the Trannie called him, mentally. He inched closer to the first step, then paused. No, wait for him to come here. But would he come down this far? Probably not. He would probably grab whatever he could and make his way out with that, but would he? He might just be tempted to stay around and meet up, and see what happened then. Maybe he too was into a bit of cruelty. There was a lot of it going around, Trannie thought, smiling inwardly. On the other hand, the Trannie didn’t much like the idea of this cunthole stalking around willy nilly all over his flat, helping himself to whatever took his fancy. He might take a liking to the place, and start getting kinky ideas about settling in and becoming man of the house, with Trannie relegated to the more menial duties. He had heard of this happening before, with and amongst other trannies that he had known, many of them even getting neatly pimped off by their new-found hubbies to sort out the steady stream of punters that started flowing through their own doors soon afterwards. For some of the more submissive trannies, it was a dream come true- having to use your own flat to support a savage and cruel pimp that absolutely desecrated your own pad into a shaghole. Ohh, how sweet the trannie submissive dream- but how rare it was to be able to live out such a sweet fantasy! The delights of getting all stockinged off in readiness for the bitings and canings that the heavy caners would be dispensing first thing in the morning. While all around Rome might burn and the Devil truly take the hindmost. Briefly the possible delights of this fantasy flickered across the mind of the Trannie, but he quickly discarded it when he considered that unless he got rid of this wankstain, and pretty effectively, this cunt was going to find his little bolthole downstairs and then he could truly expect all hell to break loosed. Even just that cunthole girl Claire or whatever her name was, sitting down there on the fucking Throne like she was a yet-to be crowned Queen of pain or some such wouldn’t do a lot to enhance his chances of surviving under the tutelage of the skulking rat. Old Skulking rat. Yes, that was his Satanic-divined name for him from now on. Ah yes, and Queen of Pain for the cunt on the chair, sitting there in all her jazzy cufflinks like she owned the fucking joint. He laughed, but tried to keep the sound of it down. With a bit of luck, he might just be able to draw Skulking Rat down into his parlour.
‘Come to me, my love’ he softly intoned. Like a great black widow spider, he called out telepathically to his soon- to be mated with lover, Old Skulky Bollox.

Just then he heard the soft scrape of the sound of various drawers being opened, and the rustle of bank papers and the like making their merry way into this bastard’s pockets, which were all flapping merrily open like a bunch of cunthole whores whose cuntholes were flapping in the wind for punters. A surge of anger whooshed through him as he imagined this cunthole getting his black arse down to the fucking bank and emptying his entire bank account. He would fucking well drag this black bastard into the very Gates of Hell himself before allowing that day to come. He reached round in one dark corner for a lovely hammer which he kept there especially for some purpose such as this. There she was. Come to me, baby, he called out to it, mentally, using his most feminine voice. Old Skulky Bollox was crawling closer now- ahh, there you go, he had now found the top of the stairs. How is it going, sweetie, the Trannie thought out to him. Hope your enjoying the view, making the most of it. Come on down and join the party, you black skulking piece of shit.
Closer and closernow came the nigga, careful now, whereas before he had been confident. Maybe he had sensed that up to this point everything was going too well, perhaps far too well. Too good to be true.
The Trannie suddenly realised that his Great master, Satan Himself, had in this most cunning of ways brought yet another willing sacrifice to his own personal altar. The nigga had been chosen, chosen to join in the great celebration of the Dark Lord’s power tonight, and had been inveigled through a most devious series of Cunnings into this place, and had, in his overconfidence, left no trace of where he was just about to find himself disappearing into.

Closer now came the nigga, right down to the edge of the stone steps. Trannies bladder suddenly squeezed with the excitement, and he was sorely tempted to let it trickle out all down his own leg and onto the floor. No, it would be nice to try and hold onto that. It would, when served up in the Black Magic chalice he kept specifically for this purpose, make a lovely communion wine.
‘Here come’s the bride, all dressed in white’ the Tranie started hearing the Bridal march playing in his head, not too loudly, thankfully, or it might have distracted him from his immediate duties. The nigga came almost level with him now- he could smell the man’s fear and excitement; he could feel the erection in this raping bastard’s trousers- his trouser snake bursting with Devilish desire to be let out and start having fun at some poor victim’s expense, the way it had done so many times before. Just as the niggas feet came level with his, the Tranbnie leapt out from the dark corner in which he’d been hiding, and brought the hammer down as hard as he could on top of the guy’s head. Wallop. The tosser went down like a sack o’ shit – soft as feathered pillow. Ahh, how sweet. The Trannie reached down and picked him up. He so dearly hoped he hadn’t killed the poor bastard. After all, there was so much more fun yet to be had. What a tragedy if such a great warrior as this had been put out of action by such a stray piece of passing shrapnel! Pulling him as hard as he could, he managed to drag the man’s heavy weight along and through the heavy door into the parlour.

The girl was still sitting there in a fucking trance- her eyes staring straight ahead as if she couldn’t believe what was about to happen to her. He had seen that look many times since starting down this road. The look of absolute despair, or realisation of what silly billies they had been all their days that had all lead up to their buying this no return ticket to Planet Boltcutter. This was going to be a good one. He pulled the nigga into the chamber, and flung a pair of handcuffs around his wrists, and one around his ankles, just in case he should miraculously recover and try to make a hero’s come-back. No, no no- no naughty stuff like that thank you very much indeed.
But first he had better secure the flat. Pulling himself away for a few moments, he nipped upstairs, gingerly taking the steps three at a time, and arrived back in his flat. Looking around, he could see that the nigga had indeed emptied whatever he could get hold of and pocket. Put it in his pocketsies, came the words into the Trannies head, straight out of ‘Lord of the Rings’, and the character Gollum. My Precious. Anyway, no time for that now. He went straight to the front door, and saw immediately that the coon had either kicked it in or had used the credit card trick of popping the lock form down the side. Thankfully there were no other niggas in the place. Otherwise things could have suddenly gotten very nifty, he realised, almost as an afterthought. No, such things, although they could never be discounted, did not usually happen to the True Servants of the Dark Lord Himself, for was it not promised that all devotees would be protected?
Just before closing his flat front door, he peered out into the darkened landing and over the top of the banister, to see and make sure that the building’s front door was returned to its safely shut position. Everything looked OK, and everything should be OK by now, the Trannie thought. Right, now let’s get back to the parlour where the fun can really begin.

Bit by bit Claire realised some of what was happening to her. Things had really fucked up. As she looked around she could see that she had become attached to a heavy wooden chair of some kind, and that she appeared to be in a mysterious chamber, of some sort normally only seen in a horror film. She tried to move her arms, but these were pulled back and she saw that both wrists were draped with silvery handcuffs. As she pulled on them, they only cut still deeper into her flesh, and, as she continued, panicking, into the bone, deeper and deeper.

Eventually the pain that welled up made her cry out, and tears sprang from her eyes. She heard a heavy moaning sound from round by her feet, and as she looked she could just about make out what looked like some black fella. Did she know this guy? It looked vaguely as though she might. The guy rolled himself over onto his back just then. A no mean feat in itself, given the copious amounts of blood that were springing from terrible looking gash on his head. Ughhh……..it looked dreadful. She wondered what could have caused that. Then she saw who it was. Oh no, she thought with a heavy sagging realisation. It was Popeye. Then she remembered what had happened to her – it came back to her that she had even phoned Popeye on his mobile before getting even heavier into smoking with his punter, and that somehow she had- up until then- kept it together to have gotten and given him the actual address. But if Popeye had been taken out, it was unlikely that he had come with any back-up, or the fucking Trannie sicko bastard that had done him would also have been lying around somewhere, well-fucked. At the very least there would be reassuring signs of some brethren stalking around stripping the drum down. Hopefully, maybe, maybe….Claire realised then that none of the things she could possibly hope for were going to happen, just as the Trannie came back into the room, all smiles. Poor old Popeye moaned even louder when he saw him come back in, and tried to pull himself free and away, until the chains around his wrists and ankles began cutting in, giving him those friendly little reminders that they were not overly keen on the idea of his taking early retirement.
‘Well well…isn’t it nice for us to all meet up in this way? The Trannie started off by saying. He looked down on Popeye, still bleeding profusely and trying to struggle despite the incredible pain he must have been in.

A look of concern came across the Trannie’s features. He reached out, and, Claire could see, had slipped on some surgical gloves, presumably as a guard against any of the blood and other –borne infections that were so prevalent. Then he began threading through a chain between Claire’s handcuffs and Popeye’s, like a cold gleaming umbilical cord of some kind. It was going to be a thread that would forever bind them. Claire tried to think of what she might be able to do or say- quick quick think of something please please please let me live….she started crying, the tears more full and flowing than she might ever have imagined herself capable of.
The chains started getting tighter as her captor pulled them through a series of pulleys, drawing Popeye up into this tangled web of wire that was even as she watched, horrified, being spun around them both as if a gigantic spider was controlling them.

The lights that burned dimly seemed to flicker momentarily brighter and then dimmer, but Claire realised it was probably the last vestiges of her own body’s life force lending strength to whatever light she felt she was going to need on this last run of her life. The Trannie was now ripping the clothes straight off Popeye’s back, using a pair of pliers, absolutely mercilessly, into big pieces of cloth, rending them almost with a delight, standing above them both like a demon from hell, silhouetted against the background light, enjoying the power, the absolute certainty of having total control over whatever fragments remained of their mortal lives.
Claire filled her lungs with the greatest gulp of air she had ever managed and began to scream- a long, blood-curdling scream which was never heard by anyone outside that chamber.

Popeye came to, hearing someone screaming as if from far away, only to realise, as he increasingly awoke bathed in pain, that it was his own voice doing the screaming. Then there was something being jammed into his mouth. He recognised it as something that had once been a piece of his clothing. The pain in his head was massive, and yet he willed himself to try and remain conscious. If he went under now, he might never return to this the surface world of waking consciousness. He realised how foolish he had been, in underestimating this one.

Looking up, he could see that from her slumped-over figure, it looked as though Claire had switched off the light. This fucking wierdling whose place she had brought him out seemed to be amusing himself sticking needles of various kinds into her flesh, laughing occasionally to himself, as if it were all a great joke. While he busied himself in this way, he seemed engaged in a conversation, as if there were somebody right there with him.
Popeye thought he could hear some of these voices- at first like whispers coming through the air, hitting a part of the eardrum not normally used so much by humans, maybe more by cats and dogs, picking up some frequency that humans had grown out of using.
None of this could be happening- surely. This was worse than some fucking sick horror film, this was like a scene out of hell. Popeye’s eyes were coming back into some sort of focus by now- and what he was seeing wasn’t making him any happier.

The Weird Thing was strutting about, shrieking and gibbering away, talking ten to the dozen as if someone or some other people were right there, holding a conversation with him. He had totally lost the plot- a great find by fucking Claire, that was for sure. He tried to move his limbs, but the viciousness of the teeth of the cuffs increased their bite and the veins opened up here, too, creating further streams of pain and fluid that trickle out of him.
From the side somewhere this Freak seemed to have speakers lined up with a really strange music blearing from them. It sounded as though it might be being played backwards, with the words sounding disjointed and pained. Here and there he got the sound of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’, but the words that came thorough this now were about ‘666- and ‘In a little tool shed, He taught us Pain’…
Popeye wondered how he had gone so fucking wrong as to be facing a nightmarish death that was probably going to be infinitely more dreadful than anything he might have been able to imagine.
‘Sweet Satan’…he was sure he heard those words. The Weird Thing was standing naked, right in front of him, twisting and turning this way, then that. It looked as though Claire had been able to disappear through the mists of shock and horror into unconsciousness. Well, maybe her sufferings were at last over. Popeye doubted it though. The Wierdo stopped for a moment, then went over to the corner and drew out a silver tray, with dragons inscribed around the edge. He gave a kind of giggle, then put the tray down in front of him, right between his legs. The blood still oozed out from his many wounds, forming a puddle in the middle of the concrete floor, where it seemed to be congealing, and forming into a small lake.

Above him he heard Claire give a start, as if she was being dragged back into this world. The Wierdo squatted down, and, with his face close up to Popeye’s, starting squeezing. Popeye, even in the midst of his pain, still could not help but give a grunt of disgust as he realised that this sick bastard was taking a shit, right in front of him. In the dim half light he could see that the cunt had a massive erection on, too, with his dipstick wiggling a bit from side to side in excitement. Crapping was definitely a big thing for this bastard. So obviously was maximum humiliation. The Wierdo stared right into Popeye’s eyes as he managed to get one out, and immediately in the air was the heavy scent of a turd, big and steaming it was too. The stench of it mingled with that of the blood and the pain and the fear, and was making a heady mixture. Then Popeye realised that Wiero had a pair of pliers still in his right hand and was reaching out for his face. He tried moving his face out of range of this bastard, but slowly- inch by gradual inch- this bastard was making the pliers come closer. Then, as if to totally surprise, the pliers went downward, into the dish of shit that Wierdo had just delivered, and began scooping some of it up. It was still very fresh, and steamy, and hard for Wierdo to keep it together in nice neat strands, but he was obviously an experienced practitioner, and then he could see the piece of turd that was being tenderly scooped up edging its tentative way over for him, being aimed in the general direction of his mouth.

Even through the pain that racked his head, and his body, Popeye felt his body twist in revulsion against what he knew was coming up. The stench of shit- and now the taste of it entering his mouth made his stomach and entire body spasm, and as he tried to fend of the oncoming debris he heard the Wierdo cackle like a pantomime witch and continue forcing the stuff down his mouth.
‘Come on now, little boy. Don’t be shy’ it was crooning, almost lovingly. ‘You’re going to get to like this part. There you go’ it said, sweetly, as it spooned off some that had deposited by the side of his mouth and redirected it back into his mouthy, which he was struggling to try and keep shut. But the pliers were only too powerful in forcing through them in order to get through. In fact, Popeye realised to his terror, with those pliers this Wierdo didn’t even need to force his lips apart- if he had wanted to he could have gone straight through and taken the mouth area clean away. Those pliers, he noticed, as they backtracked and the light from a corner sconce glistened off it, were heavy-duty, and were made for taking nails and screws out of woodwork, amongst other duties. Bit by bit the Wierdo managed to shovel a pile of shit down his throat, and then, just then, as Claire started coming back to consciousness, began to turn his attention to her.

Popeye breathed a sigh of relief. Thank his gods that this monster’s attention was now going on to Claire. Deep inside himself he felt an intense hostility towards her. This bitch was the one that had brought him to this. If it hadn’t been for her- manipulating him- as she had always manipulated all the men in her life she had ever known-he would still be back at the Temple, watching the slags drift in with their ill-gotten gains and blow away hundreds of pounds in single sittings. It seemed a million miles away. Like he had always actually been in handcuffs sitting here, at the base of a throne Claire sat in and with blood seeping from numerous wounds all over his head and body, just that in between humiliation training sessions his imagination had occasionally drifted off and he had imagined himself as something, and, worse still, someone other than who he really was, which was a bag of pus and pain, with a trail of shit running out from his mouth all over his chest. Suddenly he barfed and vomited it up, spraying all over his front area. He felt the warm stinging of the vomit, and the smell of acidic, of burning.

The throne next to him started slamming, as Claire thrashed about, trying to dodge the same treatment he had just been treated to. Treated to? Maybe by the end of whatever grim storyline fate was decreeing for him, yes, perhaps that little interlude from pain he had just experienced might well turn out to be precisely that. He heard the sound of Claire vomiting, as the fresh tang of this monster’s shit obviously started making its way down into her alimentary canal. He heard the Wierdo’s crooning voice, like a hypnotic chant, like a sing-song which might have been used to put a nuisance baby to sleep.
‘Come little baby, one two three……have your little din dins, on my knee…..’ there were other lines, but it was becoming almost impossible to even keep on top of what was going on now. Popeye realised this was probably the first stage of whatever shock was by now- hopefully- coming along to kill him. Oh, please, let death come soon, he overheard his mind or a voice in his soul murmuring. He longed for death, because by now it was apparent that no way was any living of waking moment from here on out going to be bringing him a single instant’s worth of comfort or consolation. Christ Almighty- he didn’t deserve this. This was like some unbelievable murder movie. What on earth had he done that justified this happening to him?
This punishment and humiliation was going to go on and on and on and on – for ever- or until he managed to find a way for his spirit to slide out from his body and escape. That was the answer- surely.

That was what humanity had been looking for, for ages- in a flash he realised that freedom of the spirit from the body- specifically the pains which the body could experience-but equally, he felt a surge of anger well up from inside him, a red flame that wiped away even the pain he had been in, and which seemed to give him strength. He had no way of knowing what was happening with Claire, although the shuddering interplay of bodies that was going on up there was more akin by now to a form of ballet, or dance, as his head could not turn round any longer. It was stiffening up, though he tried to loosen it by turning it to one side, then the other. He had to be ready. To get ready, and then to be ready, for if and when his chance came. It came to him in a flash that he was going to be allowed by the gods to have one chance of escape, one opportunity for his own freedom. Somehow something divine or deity-like had intervened, and in the council of the gods his cause had been pled, and a decision made. But there was still a wager on in heaven, it seemed- but at least now he knew there was reason to hold on and keep holding on until chance came for him to make his break.

Big Looey looked out from underneath his musty collection of blankets and bleary-eyed squinted at the clock on the side. It was just after seven thirty. More or less time to be getting ready for the day ahead. He pulled his heavy frame round onto his arse, and, with the help of his left elbow, pushed himself up so that his feet could reach the ground.

Left and right were scattered the debris of the preceding night’s revelries. Empty bottles of wine, some in the standing position, others lying on their sides, were here and there, and in the ashtrays were dozens of half-smoked fag butts. The red and green interlinked dragons which had once so brazenly decorated his upper right arm were now a faded memory of their former glory. Looey scratched them as he sometimes did, on days when money was coming to him. Or so he believed, being a superstitious man, as he was. He liked them faded- it set him a bit apart from the Johnny come-latelies who had started getting into tattooing back in the 80s and 90s. These yuppy tattooists were but pale imitations of the type that he represented. He was the true breed, the true breed of Englishman that had been here before all the fuckin’ foreign bastards had started coming over to here, and taking the entire place over, and all. Now, you couldn’t walk down Hornsey High Street and not see busses after busses of thousand of jet black kids swarming off them, all on free tickets, mind you, paid for by Johnny Whiteman, no expense spared. Nothing too good for the workers, eh mate? How these fucking useless bastards had come over and taken over his country was beyond reckoning. They had had a lot of help; that was for sure. There was no way these oversized bastards could have taken this place on their own, surely. He couldn’t work it out. But then there was yet another day to face and he wasn’t looking forward to it. Downstairs he could sense the dog was sniffing around frantically for some food. Well let the cunthole wait. Outside in the yard where he kept the cars he repaired there were a couple of motors waiting to have various things done to them that would render their owners liable for invoices up to hundreds of pounds. Well, if they were mug enough not to bleedin’ well know how much it cost to put a second-hand fan belt in, well that was their problem, wasn’t it? These middle class yuppies, or whatever title they chose to give their lardidar selves these days might be the Masters of the Fuckin’ Universe when it came to the Stock Exchange, but get them round the back of a King’s Cross repair yard and they were as lost as babes in arms. Clueless. With some of them he could tell them anything and they were usually unable to ask him even a simple question about what work had been done, or to challenge his quotes effectively. The most they could usually ever do was raise their eyebrows and draw the air in through their teeth, and then get their chequebooks out and pay on, like the nice little bunnyrabbits they knew themselves to be. The fuckin’ wankers.

Big Looey liked it when the whores came round though. Over the years he had gotten to know a good many of them, and had discovered, to his endless joy, that most of them were excellent knee tremblers.
‘Oi mate, wanna a bi’ a biznis?’ they would cheekily call out to him, even if all they could see of him were his legs sticking out from under the rim of one of his cars. Word got around that he was a serious punter, and would always see the girl alright, such as making sure she wasn’t getting pimped, or robbed of her hard-earned wages. The word was also out that he ws always on the lookout for young pussy, too. So, whenever a new face appeared mysteriously in one of the nearby flats or crackhouses, one of the girls would always make sure he got his by bringing the newby down for a quick twenty pound job. The supply of pussy was endless, with all the hundreds of new girls flooding I to London every week, and nowhere for them to go.

Teams of coons, he knew, would hover about and try and intercept these girls as they made their way off the trains coming in from up north, into Euston, King’s Cross, or St. Pancras. Generally the dealers would get the younger, better looking of their brethren to float about and talk with whatever girls were hanging around, usually round the all-night coffee bars, either inside Euston Station, or outside, a bit along, and by the one-way system round the Cross itself. These girls, he knew, were often on the run from abusive step-fathers, or families where no one wanted to hear that they were getting bullied for some pussy. Others might be from homes where the local friendly social workers were after the same thing. Even the women in these places, he had heard time and time again from these girls that had actually been through it, were often as dead kinky as the men that worked there, too. Everybody wanted young pussy. He had searched the intrnet, too, and had been amazed at how much crumpet was out there.Young dicky, too, if you fancied getting into the twinky stuff. He didn’t. Fuck that. Even with the crumpet he was always careful to draw the line. He didn’t want it getting too young. He knew from having seen it happen to others that if you started going down that road you could get addicted to that, too, and in the end you would turn into a complete nonce. Once you started getting into really sweet fruit, ordinary pussy soon lost its appeal, and it just wouldn’t turn you on anymore. That was the danger of any addiction, and sex was just as addictive as anything else in the world. Who could say, perhaps it was even the most addictive thing there was?
He managed to get himself out of bed, and looked out the grimy window and looked along Pancras Road.

The traffic was snaking its way down from north London, coming in thick and fast as it did this time in the morning, especially, on its way through the Cross and then either into the City, or, mostly, the west end. He could smell the fumes the traffic was giving off, and even taste the chemical smell in the back of his throat. Up on the wall a poster of Pamela Anderson was baring its bottom at him, with the model’s face turning slightly askance, as if she wanted to strike a pose that was both alluring and shy at the same time. Time to go and do some work, he thought to himself. It was an OK day, really. A bit grey and overcast, but along the street he could see that most of the other car repair yards had already opened up, swinging back their crude corrugated iron gates and the air teeming with the sound of the merry dwarves that inhabited them pounding away for all they were worth. He briefly considered the possibility of a wank. No, it was too much trouble. He had been out the night before, at the ‘Flying Scotsman’, one of the pubs in the area where the pussy wasn’t too crack-ridden or strung-out. He smiled to himself. There had been some alright crumpet in there last night. One of the birds had started her act by standing with her legs apart, and, as her theme music had kicked off, of widening them so as to slowly- and teasingly- raise the hem of the baby-doll outfit inch by inch, right up to where it raised sufficiently high to expose her shaved cunt. By now the crowd in the sawdust-strewn barroom was jawdropping, with many of the guys standing rock-still, all eyes fixated on the crack hole, which, also, was slowly widening. At first a gash or red running from north to south appeared, and then it got wider, opening up like what a woman’s smile should always mean- that the cunt is wet and ready for some sausage meat. Looey breathed deeply and thought about taking a nice steady slow streamy wank. Yes, that would be just right. He lay back, then turned slightly on his left side, so as to give his right hand maximum opportunity for usage. He remembered back to his early childhood, when the babysitter had come round, and, after his mum had buggered off down to the pub to get herself pissed, had left her with him. The moment she had gone out the door the babysitter’s manner began to change, and become a bit more perky. Her little panties from deep up inside her miniskirt started flashing, as she crossed and uncrossed her legs. This woman’s snatch was very like the babysitters, Looey realised, which was why he was wanking heavily in her direction right now. He used to love sitting on the floor and looking straight up at her sweet little cunt, as she would start talking rudely and mockingly to him about why he was being a cheeky boy and loking up her skirt.
Looey’s thoughts drifted between her and the Mauritian dancer that had followed her act. He liked the Mauritian style, with the very distinct mix of Chinese and Indian blood, and the big innocent, wide-open eyes of the womenfolk, almost as if you had caught them in the middle of something, which in a way you probably had. The jet black hair, in her case tugged into two bunches, one on either side, gave her a babydoll, ‘yes sir’ look that as she looked back over her bare bum and titties hanging down in the middle gave Big Looey the final spurt he needed to pump out the splurt or two of spunk into the paper tissue he had handy and which he held in readiness. Ohh, that was better, as he pumped out the final few drops, and found himself breathing for all he was worth. The orgasm kicked through his balls right into his middle, his core. His balls felt like two orange squeezing machines, so rigorously were they attempting to pump out the spunk in his system.
He lay back on the bed, just for a bit, he thought to himself, as his breathing came back to normal and his thoughts steadied. Gradually the room settled down again and when he was ready he reached over to the side and put the wrapped up tissue down on the side table.
The first thing to be done was to fix some toast and tea, so Looey went through the mechanics of getting the kettle and toaster switched on and running. The smell of toasting bread came into the air, and the kettle sounded up its screech, then flicked itself off, while the water inside bubbled down. The dog appeared out from nowhere, running up the stairs now it could hear him moving around in the upper level, and he let it in. Looking inside the fridge, he could se there was nothing there, certainly nothing that would appeal to this creature.
‘Well Freddie, what are we to do for you today, then?’ he asked his pet.
The dog jumped up at him, resting its paws on his chest, and gazing into his eyes lovingly. Looey felt a pang of guilt for having ignored the poor animal much of the previous day, and thought about taking it out for a quick stroll, in the course of which he could pick up a few necessities, as well as some pet food, too. He would have to get a shift on, though, time was ticking by, and from the clock on the wall he could see that it was nearly ten o’clock. The fact that his gates were still shut would definitely have been noticed by the other mechanics in the adjacent repair yards, and would start becoming the butt of people’s jokes and remarks. If you were in business, you had to be seen to be in business in order to be taken seriously, and avoid ending up as someone else’s joke fodder. The dog would have to wait, he wanted to get those gates open and start finishing off the cars that were waiting for their yuppie owners to come by and collect them. Once he got them bashed out, he would be back in the money and be able to work out what came next. He pulled the toast from the machine and handed Freddie one of the slices. The big Alsation swallowed it down almost in one gulp, barely slowing to chew it, so hungry was the poor creature.
Heading downstairs he was hit by the cold. It was still midwinter, and although the upstairs was easy to heat – as long as he kept his own tiny living area sealed off- down here the wind was blowing freezingly through the shutter gate which formed his door. At the base of the door was a small aperture, through which the postman could push the mail, and at the bottom of this were a small pile of letters. Looey realised that Christmas wasn’t far off now- not far off at all. The air in the downstairs was murky. It was really the inside of an archway, in one of the archways which made up an overpassing railway bridge which ran right to King’s Cross station. Throughout the day- and night- trains would chug along here, rumbling the masonry and sending tremours right through the structure. Platform 9, where Queen Boadicea was reputedly buried, was just around the back. Although Looey didn’t know much about history, he still felt it strange to happen to find himself living where so much history- significant as far as concerned the history of his homeland, Britain- was concerned.
Looking around the inside of the yard, he realised that thankfully, before going out and getting blitzed at the ‘Scotsman’ he had managed to keep it together to get, from the knacker’s yard, the necessary 2nd hand pieces with which he was going to be able to repair the two cars he had in and which were due to be going out today.
The yuppie clowns that were due to be picking their vehicles up over the next few hours wouldn’t know the difference between a salvaged piece of engine, which was what they would be getting, and a brand new one, which was, of course, what they would be paying for.
He had been under the bonnet of one of his protégés for some hour and a half, when suddenly he heard the distinctive sound of a woman’s shoes clip-clopping louder and louder as they entered the outer section of the yard, and came into his enclosure.
‘Hello! Is there anyone there?’ came the pleasant-sounding female voice, putting a slightly, seane’like touch to the final words of her sentence, as if she were attempting to contact the dead. A real joker, thought Looey, morosely, aware of what a miserable git he had become, bit by bit, especially when women were around from whom he was unlikely to be getting any pussy. Although you never knew. Some of these lady customers, he suspected, were bang at it on the internet, all skimpily dressed up in their little baby doll outfits, wiggling their charms, all eager for new punters, in whatever shape, manner or form that these punters would be paying with. But pay they would, for sure. There weren’t too many men to get anything off these whores that didn’t come with some sort of price tag. You could see them every night, even on SKY television, sliding around on their mini-stages with their black dildos, putting the ends round by their arseholes and pussies, thenup to their mouths. Maybe it was old age catching up on him, Looey wondered, but was he, of all people, finally beginning to disgust at the whole thing? What had he come to- and, more to the point, what had the world come to, as well?
‘Er, I’m down here!’ he called out, just as the pair of white high-heeled shoes came to rest by the side of his head where he was working. Cor, he thought, a nice pair of legs. He could just about see the beginning of the topmost parts, too, by straining his neck, and peeing. Hhhm, what colour panties is she wearing? Oho, he spotted a saucy pair of black lacy numbers. Very nice too. He wondered briefly about trying it on, maybe this was one of them internet types. No, this was a schoolmistress, or something. For a moment he wondered if she wasn’t going to respond to his calling out by kneeling down and peering under the car to where he was still laying. But then he realised that this woman would have been instantly aware of the fact that in so doing she would have been displaying her twat, and although that might have been the biggest thing that she wanted to do in her life, she wasn’t going to fall for that one, was she? It would have been nice though, to have had an immediate butchers straight up into her family fortune, though. Oh well, time to make an appearance, Looey thought to himself, which he wasn’t exactly miffed about, especially as it was going to result in him hitting the cunt for some four hundred pounds repair bill. That would do. He surfaced, and dusted himself some, smiling. Never did any harm to get into someone’s good books, when you were just about to hit them for a pile of money. But the money he was getting off these people was peanuts, it dawned on him. He could go on hitting them for ever with bills like these, and it would still never make a difference to their situations, nor to his. He would always be skint, and they comfortable, in their mortgagaed homes and wealthy stupid husbands, keeping them in the lap of luxury, while meanwhile they played the field and ran up and down like whores all over the internet. It was truly fuckin’ amazin’. That these bitches could be allowed to run double- double what? Triple lives- all over the flamin’ internet and still be whores, parading their wares like tuppeny happeny whores from the east end was unbelievable. Still, it was nice when one of them ended up on drugs, and suddenly became more amenable to spreading her legs for yours truly. That was always a nice one, a bit of a climb down for the slag, though, having to open her legs for a twenty or a thirty, if oral was included. But what a significantly more honest system- compared to the white man’s hypocrisy of marriage, where the rules could be bended in proportion to the cleverness of the whore that paraded herself as ‘wife’. Wife cunthole. The middle class had an infinite capacity to trick itself, especially when it was to their interests for this to occur.
Big Looey crawled out from under the lady’s car, resentful that she hadn’t treated him to an upskirts peek at her wottsit. I suppose that’ll cost me extra, he thought, morosely to himself.
Standing there, was a bright young woman of about twenty five years of age, little the worse for the wear her brief score years plus a bit had given her, but certainly a fair bit wiser than when she had started out on her road to life.
‘Hi.’ She began, ‘I brought in this car- about two days ago../’ she raised her hand to the car he had just come out from underneath of.
‘Oh yes’ he replied.
Round her neck was a pendant, a heart shape lying on its side. He had seen other young women wearing a similar design. This was no slag. He had to watch himself. Be careful. Don’t say anything that could give him away as a punter type. Most women disdained, in their typically hypocritical middle class way, any man whop openly admitted to liking a bit of pussy. Oh no, that wasn’t correct at all. But then in their empty bedrooms, after their pretty boy Harry Potter types had spent the whole of two minutes fucking them and then drifted off to sleep, what happened then? It was window wanky time, wasn’t it? Their pretty little hands started fumbling for the door bell in the dark, with little fantasies about actually getting properly shagged, with a man holding them down while he repeatedly used them as a spunk bucket, filling them with his manly cream while they hit orgasm again and again. But for women such as these, they were destined to remain unfulfilled, as they would only ever seek out little boy types that wore the right aftershave and had the ‘right’ waist line, but who just couldn’t fuck. Fucking, they had yet to realise, had nothing to do with pretty boy appearance, or even attractiveness. Similarly, Looey noted, many of the really stunning-looking girls he had come across were useless in bed, just lying back and taking a cock up their cunts, and doing fuck all. The real goers, it was true, were often the Old Battleships whose tits were all saggy, or whose legs were all fat and wide, their cunts as wide as the M1, but who could really get you going with a few little gestures or some encouraging words. He like the really crude ones, that peeled back their arseholes and opened their legs up against a brick wall in some back alley but who gave off some pheromone which drove you mad with the intense desire to spunk her.
From out of nowhere Freddy came bounding along, interested not just in some company but maybe whatever food they might be bringing in with them. His nose was all over the girl, round her shoes, then up along the insides of her legs, right up to her crutch. She made out she was embarrassed, but Looey did nothing to discourage the dog. It was sweet seeing the women get all wet and bothered, trying unsuccessfully to fend off Freddy’s wet and willing nose from round her cunny. Instead of doing anything, he was content to just stand there and get a hard on. A fact that did not go unnoticed by her.
‘Friendly, isn’t he?’ she asked, embarrassed, mainly at her getting so turned on and in front of a compete stranger. Freddy had his uses. He always loved sniffing a bit of cunny when it came round, and from the reactions of the girls concerned Looey could tell if he might stand a chance in inveigling her into a bit of kinky nooky.
Her hands tried fending him off, but Freddy took all this as part of the game, especially as Looey was just standing there, lapping it all up, relishing the sexiness of the girl’s wiggly movements as her bum moved this way and that, and her breasts pointed in all directions, now this way, now that. Eventually, though, through the first flush of embarrassment a different emotion started seeping through, one that was colder and angrier, and which told him that if he continued to stand there and do nothing things might get a bit less pleasant. He had had his fun, the woman’s expression told him, now call his fucking dog off. A turn on it might be, but she wasn’t here for that, was she, and the prospect of getting into something with him obviously didn’t come across so strongly as to detour her from her own business. Well, maybe not for now, Looey thought, but who knows what seed had been planted, as it was in so many cases when the female customer got her cunt sniffed out by Freddie. Even if they never came back, they would still be getting a few good hard wanks out of this as a turn-on to come back to. Big Looey knew his women, and his human nature. It wasn’t even a cerebral knowledge type thing. It was something you could either smell or sense in the air, or not. Maybe that was what they meant when they talked about pheremones, or vibes.
‘Oi, Freddie, git dahn!’ he called out, as if he had up until that moment been hypnotised, or had just returned back into his human body from having been beamed up and away in some far-away place. He lunged toward the animal, and shooed it off.
‘Sorry abaht that’ he said, in tones of barely disguised apology.
‘Oh that’s OK’ the girl responded, in similarly mock tone of assuagement. ‘I just came to see about my car, how it’s doing. You said it would be ready by midday’…..she left the last words trailing off slightly into midair, like a bridge that runs out from a precipice and just suddenly runs out, like a bridge from the cartoon character Road Runner, for instance. Looey got the impression that this was a tendency of hers. It told him something- that this woman was a person of many false leads- she was elusive, probably with a tendency to delude and deceive herself as to what her own true wants were. She was easily influenced by others, who could get into ther mind and tell her what to think and do. Probably she was the type to be doing counselling, as that tended to attract people who didn’t know what to do or think for themselves and who constantly needed someone else to take over their actions.
‘Erm, yes….’ He began; always a good way of getting the concern level up in their faces. They immediately started thinking that the job had suddenly just got a lot bigger or more serious, and that they were now due for a cleanout. At that point, very often, if he caught the cunt looking really scared, well, then so be it, the price really did start doubling up, maybe even trebling.
‘He moved over to the side of the woman and picked up a set of documents he had previously taken great pains to have placed and awaiting on the front seat, ready for this moment. With a slight flourish, he brought them out. The woman, scenting a theatrical touch had unintentionally allowed amore than a drop of scepticism to fill her features. She already knew that she was just about to get fleeced, but then the middle class was used to that, wasn’t it? Normally it was people of his class- the working class- that were getting shafted, left and right, by the middle class. Bank charges- £30 fines for instance if you went unintentionally overdrawn by even a few pence. Strict draconically enforced restrictions that made life difficult if not impossible for the bulk of the working class, fares up, this up, that up, but with every man and his dog almost on minimum wage- it was all a massive piss take designed to keep the population in poverty and humiliation. But as soon as the piss take started moving the other way, oho, watch out for all the articles that would start pouring out in the press and the media about rip-offey garages and plumbers. That was definitely not supposed to happen. Yet it did, all too often, and was very often the only remaining weapon of the working class to dish out anything back to that side that had stripped them of their trade union rights, and any other form of redress for their injustices.
‘Yes, I put in a brand new fan belt, also had to do an oil change and a couple of new pistons.’ He rustled the paper in his hand, along with the fake invoices he had just run off the computer to make it look more authentic. The middle class liked all that- the more papers and documents you could shake at them the happier they generally were.
He waffled on for a bit more, mentioning ‘work’ that had neither been done nor even asked for. Certainly not needed. All in all, for about thirty quid’s worth of effort- not including the second-hand parts he had fitted in, which might have cost him about three quid, all in, he was now ready to sting this bitch for a good few hundred quid. About four, call it four fifty, he said to himself. Then, of course, there’d be the ‘VAT’ on top of that. Unless she wanted to settle in cash, hehe. He thought, further. In which case he might be able to see his way to letting her off light.
He showed her the invoice, with all the faked figures neatly totted up, and seemingly making everything easily available for ‘inspection’. Her hand reached out, and even at this point the aura she gave off was one of suspicion, no, more than that, certain knowledge that she was being taken for a cunnie. Women tended to know, far more quickly, and more certainly, thane men, when this was happening, even though often they might not have ben able to do much about it when it was happening to them. Her eyes forced themselves to read through the wording which he had put on the page, but he knew- and she knew he knew- that she was clueless, and hadn’t the slightest idea as to what she was reading about. It could have been in Chinese fro the difference it might have made. She gave off a sigh, of weariness rather than anything else, and handed it back to him.
‘So, is it all working OK now, then?’ she put a slight emphasis on the word ‘now’ as if to imply that she didn’t care how much it was going to cost- all she wanted was to pay and get the fuck out of his yard. Well, so be it, then.
With a few words of reassurance, Looey succeeded in getting the dosh out of her, and handed her her keys. Then, she slid her neat little bottom into the drivers seat, on top of the thin plastic seat cover he took care to always put in when a job came in, as it gave the whole operation a nice professional touch, as well as saved the upholstery, very often, from having to be specially cleaned as a result of his dirty jeans.
With a quick bust of energy from the engine, she was moving forward, pleased to be getting out of the yard, giving a slight wave of the hand to offer something in way of recompense.
With that, she was gone.
Big Looey was now richer by the sum of for hundred and fifty quid, so what now to do? He thought he would carry on, seeing he was in the frame of mind to do some work, for a change, and fix the second one. Then her would be clear fro a bit, and able to slide down one of the crack houses and see what kinds of crumpet might be available. It was always nice to waylay a nice fresh-to-London maiden, new to the ways of the world.
Just as life wwas beginning to come back into his nob, with the first stirrings of a twitching going on down there, he noticed something unusual. On the side where the women had pulled out her purse to use her credit card to pay, she had left a small leather wallet. Opening it, he was amazed to see that there was no money in this, but rather something else which made his blood race and eyes stand out on their stalks. It was a set of photographs, of the very same young woman, but in some extremely suggestive poses. Also, there seemed to be some kind of internet site written down there, along with some access codes as to how to get in on it. How very interesting. Looking through, he could find nothing else, no address, although now he came to think of that he would have that written down on the original order form when she had first brought her car in.
But first, let’s have a butchers at her internet room.
He got back upstairs to his room, and switched the computer on. Within moments the internet application was patching him through to a site called friendfinder. Whoa, this was a sweetie, he thought, as her looked through the lists of women advertising themselves for various kinds of lovers. How convenient that this one should turn out to be looking for a dominant man. Rape fantasies. Hhhmm, it couldn’t have been a mistake that this woman had accidentally left behind her wallet, with al this spicy information loaded up inside it. It rang a bell deep within Looey’s mind that this mistake of hers may well have been….what did they call it, in psychological circles- oh yes, a Freudian slip- like when the mind deeply desired something but couldn’t consciously admit to wanting- like being held down and fucked. The rape fantasy was a common one, Looey knew. But society was still half in on its Victorian heritage- where nothing sexual was ever admitted to. Instead, the men would crawl round the brothels and the women would either stay at home and pleasure themselves, or- if they were feeling adventurous- have a fling. But with the advent of the internet all that was changing. Or so it seemed. Now it was as easy for a woman to get a man between her legs, but then again, that had always been the case, really, hadn’t it? But now she could play the whore with a dash more secrecy than before, maybe. But was that really what women wanted? Seemed so, give the enthusiasm with which they had embraced the seemingly inexhaustible supply of fresh dickie from the internet.
Loey wondered whether this demand for fresh meat wasn’t some kind of aberration on the part of women, and that maybe some other, possibly deeper needs, weren’t being sacrificed in order to attain them.
He clicked on some of the woman’s available pictures. What a sweetie, flashing her arse right up in the air like that, pulling back on her bum cheeks, with, written in red lipstick, the words BUM and WHORE scawled. On another picture he saw the words HURT ME, with her face darkened out in each picture. Clever. Quickly, just in case she had realised what was actually a genuine mistake, or even just getting cold feet about the possible idea of trying to attract him, he downloaded the pictures. Now, even if the woman tried to pull the pictures off her site, he would still have a copy, and who knew how they might yet come in handy, and for what?
But he didn’t think she was going to suddenly pull out. She had obviously left those pics there for the very reason of drawing him in. Even now his cock was hard and ready for another spin, ready to cream out on the idea of some fun and games with this little woman.
Looey took a look at his watch, and, as he looked out at what traffic was moving outside, realised that he wasn’t in a rush to get the second job done. Let tomorrow deal with that. Freddie came up and licked his hand. He would have a drive round to this woman’s place and see what kind of vibe he got from it. He was interested, but he wasn’t necessarily going to rush in like a fool and get himself too tied up in something he knew fuck all what was going on there. But first, he thought, let’s get some food inside this animal.
‘fancy something to eat? He asked the dog. The dog’s eyes seemed to register some kind of knowledge, and sparkled. The dog barked, once, then twice and panted with its mouth wide open, salivating, hungry to eat and get out, and see what the day might bring.
Looey realised that he hadn’t even taken the dog for a walk in several days now.
Getting the animal’s lead, he affixed it round the side of his neck. The collar the dog wore went back to at least a couple of predecessors – one a Rottweiller, the other a Bull terrier. Looey had a reputation for having a hard dog, which in the area meant something that could take on somebody else’s dog and come out with a reasonable chance of victory. It had been quite a while since Looey had entered one of his dogs into a fight, although they still went on in the area with the Nelson’s Eye from the local police.
Getting a firm grip on Freddie he shut the roll-down shuttered aperture and locked the gates of the yard. The dog was pulling quite frantically, eager to be off and on its way round the part of the Cross Looey always took him along. They moved up along Caledonian Road, and took a turning which led off on the right down into a recently-created garden area, which in turn went down to a canal. The water moved grey and sluggish al;ong here, although it was quite deep. In summertime ambitious swimmers and divers would strip right down when the weather turned hot enough and went straight in.
There were plenty of weird types around here, mostly crack heads and other smokers, everyone spent out and coming down already, wondering how they were going to get together the dosh for the next round. What a relentless circle of ups and downs, with no chance at all to get off the merry go round. Black kids especially, seemed easily drawn into the world of crack cocaine, possibly because of the presence of the easily-available white pussy- all those young girls offering their crack for a smoke! If you liked your pussy young, then white or dub as it was known was definitely the drug of choice for you. Things just became so much sexier, colourful, exciting when you hit on a stone.
Looey himself liked a smoke, but from his extensive experience he knew how bad things could get for you if you let yourself be carried away by the drug. He took care to regulate himself and his consumption.
With Freddie firmly in hand they made theire way onto the towpath, and set off westerly along the canal in the direction that would lead them along past Goods Way. Here it was that, a few years back a gang of black youths had set upon a lone white woman and repeatedly rapoed her, afterwards throwing her in the freezing water in order to try and get rid of any evidence that might be left over. It hadn’t worked, and afterwards the police had been amazingly successful in nailing the little black bastards that had done that shit. Their cheeky faces had even for once been allowed to appear I the papers so as to brand them further. Good job too, Looey thought, about right to let people know what kind of shit was running around right in its midst. If the authorities were unable or uninterested in protecting white people, then let white people take up arms to defend themselves.
In his pocket he still had the woman’s wallet. Funny, he hadn’t even registered her name- that was so unimportant compared to the saucy way her bumhole poked right up into the air in one of their photographs. That told him a hell of a lot more.
Looey and the dog made their way up along the canal, past the underpass which took them along the side of Goods Way. The canal, although built only relatively recently in terms of British history, around the early 19th century, had a far more ancient feel to it. It was as if some vibe or sense of way back from the pre- Roman era had stayed behind round here, radiating a feeling of continuity that the comings and goings of Industrialisation could not cut across. Along this walk, Looey felt consoled, reassured, that the history and spirit of his people, though perturbed by so many invaders and immigrants over the centuries, was for ever inviolate.
His mind went back to the case involving the raped woman. He recalled that she had just come back from the continent, and had happened to come across the black youths by chance, as she was out walking one evening. So many rapes, committed by these immigrants, or offspring of immigrants, went unrecorded, in what- if the truth of it al were ever to be known- would surely amass as one of the greatest acts of racial attack in history. For years and years these blacks had systematically attacked white women, using their imported drugs, their gangs, and the manipulation which their drugs imparted over the women they were able to induce to take them. When the newspapers mentioned racial attack, it was only ever in the context of a gang of white youths stabbing up some black teenager- cowardly little cunts, to be sure, but missing the point completely in comparison to the massive assault on white people and white culture that had been allowed to go on, by the white authorities, by those whose responsibility should have been to protect.
All the muggings, stabbings, shootings, rapes, of whiter people at the hands of the blacks- all these were played down. If the truth were ever known, there would be an immediate explosion of white rage against the never-ending stream of attack from the hands of their oppressors. And the cheek of it all was that it was these same blacks that constantly moaned about slavery! They themselves were, through their drugs and the addictions which they deliberately spread, themselves the biggest enslavers of all, a fact conveniently overlooked by everyone in the dubiously-owned media but widely recognised by the blacks themselves. He knew. He had listened to them talking and joking about ‘their bitches’ when he went down to any of the crack houses in the area on his own little look-outs for pussy.
The coons, th0ough, did have their uses, one of which was rounding up a fresh supply of teenie pussy, which would find itself shunted off to one of the backrooms in a crackhouse and put straight on the needle, normally after a nice big sexy blast of white.
He had seen one girl brought in once, and immediately all the coons and punters in the place started salivating. The girl must have been about sixteen, and had come down to London from Reading, or somewhere. Beneath the high hem of her little skirt were two very bandy legs, both encased in white socks. Looey even felt his own knob immediately harden when that came through the door, and as he looked up to see her face it was radiant, shining like an angel, her hair a halo of gingery radiance around her head. A sweet little angel, just about to be made into a sexy little nymph from hell itself, and she knew it, and was looking forward to it, he could tell!
As he looked round the room he could almost see the steam coming out from the ears of the other fellas. Even some of the other girls, he noticed, started getting turned on, although some others started giving off the signs of jealousy, obviously feeling less secure about their supply of punters now that fresher meat was now available. The coon that had recruited her led her straight into the back room, where he introduced her to the dealer. Together they made out that this was his flat, and that it would be OK for her to stay there. For that she was grateful, but imagine her delight when she was offered something to relax into. At first she was uncertain, but the coon was gentle and reassuring. He broke off a piece of crack, like a chink of marble, pure white, and placed it on the end of a water bottle. This was made out of a volvic plastic water bottle, and had a cover made onto it of aluminium foil, into which dozens of tiny holes had already been punched by needles. This foil cover was secured onto the water bottle by means of an elastic band, wrapped tightly many times around the neck.
From the side of the bottle protruded a syringe barrel, secured into the hole from which it sprang by blue tak. Sucking the devil’s dick, they called it, in the trade. The girl sat amazed as she looked, obviously for her first time, at this thing. She already smoked cigarettes, without which getting her to start sucking the devil’s dick would have been a task made more difficult by a factor of about a thousand. The coon nodded for one of his henchmen to do something, and at once a long sliver of cigarette ash was brought out of nowhere, where it had already been primed and made ready for this most holy of moments. Then it was paced right along over a great number of the tiny holes, and the piece of white marble gently rested on the top of that. In the bottom of the waterbottle was about three inches’ depth of water, with a pipe running down from underneath the tinfoil layer actually into the water, and underneath it, for a further inch or so.
Now came he most magical, most holy moment of all, in which this young maiden was to experience her Eve in the Garden of Eden moment of revelation. The fire was held above the stone, and the coon directed the young girl into first of all completely emptying all her breath from her lungs. This she dutifully did, looking apprehensive as she brought her mouth close to the stem from which she was going to suck the devil’s dick. The fire from the bic lighter started melting the stone, and it rapidly began turning into a liquid, which then began to drip down into the cigarette ash. As the flame steadied, the young girl, under the tutlelage of the coon, began breathing in the thick black smoke which at first trickled, then thickly flowed heavier and heavier through the apparatus and into the stem from which she was gently sucking. Encouraged by her tutor, the girl kept this up for a couple of minutes, just gently bringing the heavy black smoke down through the chamber of this pipe into her lungs, and as she did so you could see that the stuff was hitting her. Her eyes went kind of blurred, and heavily ecstatic, and from deep within her there was a groan of ecstasy as the drug travelled fast through her body and into her sexual regions. Fireworks previously unsuspected and certainly unimagined were set off inside her mind, and inside her pussy, and as she filled herself to maximum capacity, a brilliant hit for a first-timer, she laid back on her arse and opened her legs, showing her panties. There you go, went the collective thought right the way round the room, now there she had the right idea. That girl was well on her sexy way to having forty orgasms a day, like so many of the crack whores that scoured round the area, looking for sexy times with punters, day and night, for years afterwards.
Looey went out the door shortly after that, having something else to get busy with than witnessing this young girl’s Initiation. These Initiations were going on constantly, anyway, day and night, in this area and in fact right the way round the world. It was said that crack cocaine was the world’s fastest-growing religion. If you bore in mind, that for centuries humans had always attempted to break down the barriers between this world- and what they believed was the realm in which the gods inhabited- then in a sense cocaine usage was just the latest link in the chain going back in which humans had used chemicals for spiritual means.
Looey mused, as he walked with Freddie, along the side of the canal, as the wind picked up from the north and came blowing hard and cold. Funny how the weather always seemed to get a bit colder after Christmas- it was as though it seemingly waited till the passing of that event before really taking its gloves off, and getting down to the serious business of freezing as many poverty-stricken and homeless white people as it could.
Standing by the side of the water, he noticed a young, very pale-looking white girl, satnding with her legs fairly wide apart, her hands on her hips. Looking at him. The wind move in her long blonde hair, and for a second or two he didn’t recognize her. Then his memory came back to him and he remembered her- she was a girl that he had picked up, some months ago. But this girl was an emaciated skelteton compared to the one he had stopped for, and allowed into the front of his car. It had been a summer’s morning, he recalled, one of those nice warm and welcoming mornings when a piece of naughty snatch is so welcome- such a sweet little thing to pick up along the way, just where Caledonian Road starts running into the one-way system. She had in fact been a little bit down a side street, where an old block of flats had been bunkered into a bomb-shelter-type design presumably to resist the advent of the crack whores and dealers, something that ultimately no building has yet been able to do. She was thin, even then, with one of those pussies that push out a bit at the front, and are so captivating in their suggestiveness. He had seen her before, fucked her before, and knew her to be quite a randy little thing. She was standing on the side with a black girl, but although this one gave him a welcoming smile, she left him cold. He just didn’t go for black girls. He preferred his crumpet more feminine- the black girls were too masculine, too aggressive. Ideal for him were the young Japanese schoolgirl-type whores that were coming into the country, but these were charging fucking fortunes, even £60 for a basic blow job. He had tried one once, and fucking blindin’ it had been- actually worth every penny but fucking dangerous- if you got addicted to one of them you’d soon go bankrupt. He had been gasping for breath coming out of that girl’s flat, he remembered, over in Notting Hill. The thin girl had gotten in, and started off in one of the ways he really loved. The leg-stroker, strolling her thin fingers up along the inside of his leg, going further and further, cleverly getting the money being talked about up and up as she was getting the pulse rate up as well. She knew what she was doing. He called it Walking the Dog. Few of the whores actually did know how to get a man going- many of them just peeled off their tops or their track suit bottoms to reveal a hole, ready for filling, after the money had passed into their hands, and from their into their little stash hole, usually their sock, if they had any on. As he was getting sucked off, he said into her ear,
‘Think about that nice big sexy smoke you’re going to be able to have after this- hhmm, nice eh?’, and as he did so he noticed that the girl’s eyes widened, and actually became more bloodshod, and he could suddenly see all the dozens of tiny blood capillaries pulsating, getting redder and redder as the exciting thought of getting a sexy smoke filled her mind.
Before he had blown straight into her, he wanted to extenuate the pleasure by offering hera ‘top up’. This was a nice bonus on top of the money he had already paid her, and, while he still could, and before the orgasm started sweeping him away in its current, he pulled out a fairly large piece of crack and, dangling it in front of her face, said,
‘Yo9u get this on top of what I’ve paid you if you swallow the load’. He looked straight into her eyes as he said this, and could see immediately that she understood. It was not that unusual request for a whore to get- she probably had at least one or two like him every day, who derived an extra tinge of pleasure from seeing the bitch humiliated by having to swallow down her mouthful.’ You’ll have to gargle it a bit, too’ he added, ‘And don’t rush it. It’s my favourite bit’ he added, in his typical, no-nonsense way. If you let the whores know right from the start that they couldn’t fuck you about, chances are they wouldn’t. But if they sensed any uncertainty in you, or thought they could have one over on you, then they would always try it on. And that could range from trying to dip your pockets while they were blowing you, to luring you to some out-of –the way spot where their comprades could kill or at least beat you senseless.
Needless to say, the girl had proved more than gladly co-operative when this bonus was offered, and after he had heavily spunked into her gob, had placed his hands around her throat, and said,
‘OK, now open up. I want to see it all swimming around in there.’ Open she did, and the insides of her mouth were coated with rivulets of sperm, all creamy and yummy-looking, salty and perhaps sweet at the same time, like a good choice of wine, trickling between her teeth. She saucily moved her tongue around by her lips, offering him the chance to kiss her, as many punters loved spunk swallowing fantasies, whether from themselves or from other men, that came to their own gobs through the sweet lips of a whore, either dribbled in slowly from the girl standing above, or spat straight in like a piece of shit coming in quick.
‘Right, now do a bit of gargling’. This was fun, it meant the girl would have to try and collect all the spunk into the back of her mouth and gargle it, like it was a dose of alka seltzer or mouthwash, or something. So sexy, because it tok the event on to a new level of submissiveness and domination.
When he was ready, he gave her the order to swallow.
‘OK, sweetie, there’s a good girl, now down the hatch’ and down it all went, with the girl licking her lips afterwards to collect up all the remaining goodness, even licking her fingers to show him, as she looked up with her long eyelashes flickering sexily, just how obedient she was. Phew, this girl knew her business, or maybe was relly into the trips she could so easily portray. Either way, Looey made a mental note to try and seek her out if he should ever happen to see her as he drove by.
Catching his breath again, he asked her,
‘Where’s your part of the beat? Just along here?’ knowing full well how jealously certain prosperous streets were guarded by certain girls, who would as quick as anything beat up a solitary girl that dared to step into their patch without their say-so. That normally involved a few pipes in the local crack house.
‘Just along here’ the girl indicated, taking her forefinger in a circular motion, clockwise. The girls often said that, but when you really fancied finding a particular one they often proved really difficult to find.
‘Do you have a mobile number?’ he asked, interested in seeing this one again. She was a good little performer.
It transpired that she did, but she couldn’t remember the number and she had left the phone in the care of a dealer, as she had had something ‘on tick’ before coming out. Not to worry, Looey thought. Plenty more where that came from., Still, in times when he himself smoked the white there were occasions when his thoughts turned to a more mystical bent, and he thought he could discern a mystical influence at work in the backdrop of human affairs, in which certain coincidences were made to happen so that some divine plan could be unfurled. He didn’t know whether he believed in a god- singular if events in the heavens were anything like how they went on on the earthly plane, then the only reason that all that chaos could be accounted for was by the existence of many, many gods all of whom competed against each other. If below was a reflection of above, then the chaos on earth must surely reflect the chaos in heaven. Yet, there was certainly something of the paranormal at work in the world, Looey believed, although he never really talked about it, and certainly not with those fake types that pretended to know much more than they really did about it.
As he approached, the girl asked him,
‘Biznismate?’ she didn’t not recognize him, he knew. These girls would come maybe forty times a day and with the right stuff inside them could keep going for days at a time, leaping in and out of cars, one after the other. In a way, they were quite amazing, and deep within himself Looey felt a certain respect for who they were, and how they were able to go about doing what they did with no regard for the dangers.
‘No, I’m alright, luv’ he replied, and continued walking past, with Freddie taking a certain interest in who this talking young female might be. Giving Freddie a gently but insistent tug on the lead, the dog dutifully followed, and they continued ambling along. The wind had picked up by now and was clearing his lungs and head. Thank god for Freddie, otherwise he might rarely – if ever- make it out of his tiny place and get a spot of exercise.
They were approaching up along Kentish Town now, and beginning to pass some very expensive-looking yuppie-style properties. All set along the water- on the far side-away from the public tow path, some with little sets of steps leading down from balconies to landing areas where they cold tie up their boats or houseboats. Looking up into the insides of some of them, he could see the rims of great big chandeliers, all lit up, like Christmas trees, or royal crowns. In one he could just about make out a great mirror which seemed to have been hung over a massive fireplace, along the sides of which were carved intricate designs of dragons and goddesses. Under this bridge, under that bridge. Overhead the world of everyman ran its normal course, totally oblivious to this reality which lay underneath, hidden, yet still accessible to the public through the many sets of descending stone staircases which draped along its path. Looey knew that it wold only be a matter of time befoe all this was sealed off and turned over to private landowners. These days it was money that was King- and the big pound note was the thing that called the shots, even where the local councils were nominally Labour, or Liberal. They might give themselves whatever colour they liked, but when the stakes of a land grab were in play anything and everything else rolled out the window, unfortunately. The land grab going on round the Cross- and in Camden, one of the presiding boroughs- was massive, and involved so many thousands of millions, especially with the new Channel Tunnel coming, not to mention the effect the Olympics in 2012 were already having on London property prices.
The water alongside flowed, seemingly still and silent, but it gave the impression of something very deep.
Just then Looey stopped, and something in Freddie made him do the same thing at the same moment. In that instant, it was as if time suddenly slowed down, and a droplet of water from an overhanging branch ran down the side infinitely slowly, falling from the bough, till it hit the water below. In ancient times, the presence of wells or water often indicated that gods or goddesses were present, deep down below. But there and then Looey felt within him a sense of great fear rising up, although he could not understand why.
Freddie seemed to become aware of it, too, and gently whimpered, looking up to his master and then back to where the both of them were gazing into the depths. It was a strange moment, and when the feelings it brought up had dissipated, Looey gave the lead a gentle tug and the two of them continued on their way.
They were approaching the bend in the canal where it approaches Camden Lock, and further ahead could see the overhanging bridge where above was based a building which proclaimed itself as a ‘Pirates Castle’- some sort of children’s place at weekends. The entry to the Lock market was becoming more and more built up, burgeoning under the weight of all that extra gold that was flowing in to what had since become London’s main tourist attraction. Where before, only two or three years before in fact, there had been little here except a barge tied up on one side and a sparse selection of makeshift stalls dotted around the edges of the otherwise desolate yards in this area. There was originally little here, except a cobbled street and a few old buildings which, from the cranes which still hung form their exteriors, spoke of former days of having been warehouses for the goods which had been transported up and down the country through this canal. There was always a quiet atmosphere here, at least during the week. It was only at weekends that the mainstream tourist contingent poured in, flooding the area with young Japanese and Americans, to mention but a few. Looey entered through a small archway set into a side wall, which led off from the canal path and took him right into what was called the West Yard. Along the side on the left were a series of buildings which served as shops, and which opened up at weekends, with shutters and blinds which pulled out to protect from the rain and the sun. Further down, Looey could see a set of black and white step leading upwards to the entrance of what seemed to be a wine bar. ‘HQs’ it was called, and with its sign and it demeanour it cast a distinguished glow over this area. Further across the square, Looey could see a shop that sold board games, in fact, as he looked into the window, he cold see a great deal more than the chess boards and backgammon boards he at first had noticed. A wide selection of card games, even some packs of tarot decks, with some of their mysterious symbolism portrayed in see-through plastic sheets through which a prospective hunter for such a deck might be able to determine if the design patter suited him. Immediately next to the games shop was a small office, selling tickets for the boat ride up the canal to Regent’s Park zoo, and back. Inside was a woman who, Looey could see, had once been stunningly attracted, but who know had developed into a deeper beauty- the kind of beauty that could easily make a man such as himself fall in love if he stayed around too long. On the other side of the archway was a musical instruments shop, with all manner of brass and string instruments for sale. There seemed to be a steady stream of people interested in the instruments, coming in and with the assistance of the guy in there who ran the shop, definitely one of the original hippies from the 1960s, were picking up the instruments and making sounds come from them.
As Looey made to turn right, to come round the side of the water area where the river boat was already tied up, ready to go, he noticed something he had seen before at the Lock, but had never approached; a tarot reader. He had seen this Chinese-looking guy several times over the years since coming round the Lock, browsing as to what was happening there and what was being offered for sale, but because every time before there had seemed to be a queue for this guy’s services, he had always walked on by. Now, however, the small fold-up table on which his cards and crystal ball were arranged was empty, and the seat in front of him from where he sat was actually vacant.
He had always thought there was something vaguely oriental about the fortune teller- or that his nationality or age was indeterminate. Now that he could see him more clearly, though, he could see that the guy was English, although with a reddish beard that definitely set him apart form ‘normal’ English- and suggested a more alternative sort of person- which, Looey accepted, was basically what you would surely expect form someone offering to read your fortune. On the side of the stall were two signs- both handpainted. One read ‘It is Wise to Know your Future’ and featured an owl on the board, while on the other sign there was a representation of The Wheel of Fortune which showed a happy married couple at the top, but on the side, just as the Wheel was about to be turned round by a great hand that was already moving the handle that controlled it, a man was falling off the side, evidently to a fate of terrible abandonment somewhere.
There was something of such antiquity about these signs, and not just the message but the vibe or emanation which they carried, that Looey, somewhere deep inside himself, knew that this guy was what people called ‘The Real Thing’. He had always known that when you came across it, you would somehow know. Although ‘how’ was something you never knew till you actually got there.
As he looked at the fortune teller, there seemed to be something so ancient within him, and yet he felt tears welling up inside him. Even Freddie, normally a bundle of energy, was suddenly subdued, and weirdly respectful, glancing from one to the other expectantly.
The fortune teller reached out with one hand, and signified the empty chair. Looey felt himself drawn to sit down in it. As he did, he realised that something in his world, in his life, had suddenly changed, and looking around at this yard he began to see it all from a very different perspective. He wondered if this change in perspective was not just something he was going to be experiencing from now on, on the elementary plane, or if this omen was the harbinger of deeper changes to come. There was no going back now, and for the sake of the five pounds which this reading seemed to be priced at, had to be something of a bargain. The fortune teller reached out and gathered together his cards, which had been splayed round the crystal ball as a circle, taking his time as he did so. There was no rush. The pack was handed to him, and Looey immediately felt how age-worn the cards were- there must have been thousands of people that had had their cards read through just this pack alone. Already he was convinced of the man’s authenticity and genuiness.
‘Breath into the cards’ was all the man said, pulling back the cards and indicating just how, with a simple blowing of his breath.
Looey did as he was directed, and was amazed to feel the vibration of the entire yard seem to become more tranquil, quieter, and the sense of movement from all within it more graceful. He shuffled the pack, and handed it back to the man. Here, the reader began laying out the cards in a cross formation, with some of the cards overlapping others, and already Looey could see what looked to his untrained eyes to be an incredible confusion. He hoped it wasn’t his future he was looking at, and that he hadn’t let himself in for being told something incredibly disempowering, such as ‘Fear death by water’. In front of him were many cards by now. Over here he could see a man hanging upside froma rope, which tied to one of his legs. The other leg crossed the former at a strange intersecting angle, and around the man’s face was radiant halo of peacefulness. On the side were other cards, showing coins, swords, and batons, many of them crossed in various designs and patterns. Beneath his main spread was The Moon, with a wolf and a dog shown gambolling around in the scene of a mediaeval moonlight.
The fortune teller took a couple of minutes to take in what he was being shown, and began.
‘Here, we are looking at past, present and future’ the reader began.
‘From what I see of your past, I see a major emotional upheaval that has taken place’- the reader lowed down, then stopped for a few moments, looking up above his glasses to look at Looey- ‘Is this still going on?, I wonder’
Looey shuffled uncomfortably in the chair, not sure what to say or do, aware that any way in which he might react at this moment could result in some interpretation being made by the reader.
‘Do you know how far back this goes?’ Looey asked.
‘Well, it over the last 3 months’ the reader replied, studying his cards closely now, ‘But I think in some ways it is still going on’. The reader stretched forth his hand and pointed to a point on one of the cards, a scene where people seem to be arising out from the dead and exiting graves in ‘The Day of Judgment’ card, where an angel is blowing a trumpet from its heavenly canopy.
Looey felt bit uncomfortable, but recalled that the cards didn’t always mean what they seemed to say, sometimes even the opposite meaning was applicable, apparently.
The reader seemed by now to have gotten the gist of the reading, and was already underway in delivering what he believed the message was for Looey. Was this what they meant by channelling, Looey wondered?
‘There is going to be a clearing away process, of negative or outworn influences, to make way for new or more positive influences. It will be important to get your priorities in order, and to keep your feet on the ground, so as not to be influenced by emotion or imagination.’
Looey listened as attentively as he could , but as the reader spoke, he felt deep within his own mind a kind of intense relaxation awaken, and blossom, lulling him almost into a kind of sleep. By the time the reader had finished, he ws almost dozing off, so relaxing were the words he was hearing, or rather not actually hearing. Although somewhere, somehow his mind must be recording what was being said to him. But maybe this was how a tarot reading ‘worked’, by the lulling of the conscious mind and by the message being imparted straight into the unconscious or subconscious mind. Then, when the mind needed it, that information would be played back, either in the form of a feeling or intuition, a dream, or a resolution.
Walking away, down through the archway and into the ancient-looking cobbled street, he realised he had failed to ask about the crystal ball. He had always wondered how that thing worked, indeed, if it worked in the way people thought it did- with images or pictures flickering inside the sphere, or if it was all just hocus pocus. Perhaps there was a middle way, or point in which somehow the suggestions of events or people’s presences might flicker inside the reader’s head with the crystal as a conduit, if indeed he needed one at all, and it wasn’t just for the benefit of ‘the audience’.
He looked upwards at the sky- already the sun was going down, and great waves of mauve and rain were coming in from the south and west, curling round in the sky above like a great dragon of Chinese mythology, heads appearing from random in the body, and tails vanishing and reappearing as limbs and the torso, all of it constantly moving as it floated above and along.
As Looey moved along, past the food stalls selling all their variants of Chinese and Indian food in plastic packets, he came out onto Camden high Road, and passed the Canarven pub opposite. Inside he could see all the leather jacketed brigade members, all with safety pins in their ears and noses, the intense smell of beer unfolding like a carpet of aroma as the heavy doors opened momentarily and a lone worshipper staggered out. He could hear the sounds of one of the heavy rock bands starting up, all heavy electric guitar jangles and deep thud of drum beat in the background. Down on the slip road which led to the canal path the coons were out, too, punting out their supplies of weed and, probably crack, too. There were about a dozen of them, definitely a team, judging form the unified sense of body language with which they all moved; like the several appendages or limbs of one single creature, which, in a way, they were.
The woman’s address was nearby, more or less. Round the back of Inverness Street. Yes, he had remembered it as soon as he had seen it. Inverness Street. He made his way down Camden High Road, past the dozens of stalls on either side of the road which made the area look like something out of Marrakesh or some other far away place. He could call by and drop off her wallet. He wondered if he shouldn’t have phoned first, or even e mailed her. What if she weren’t in, he wondered? Well, he could cross that bridge when he got to it. If need be, he could drop it all through the letter box- hopefully she wouldn’t be sharing the same mailbox as anyone else, no he didn’t think so, but then in this area it was a very common thing to come across.
Entering Inverness Street, his nostrils were hit by the smell of the fruit and veg stalls. The gravely sound of the cockney stall holders, calling out their wares and their prices, filled the air. The rows of stalls, on both sides of the street, were surrounded by budding customers, dozens of arms and hands reaching out, passing bundles of bananas, apples, pointing, passing monies.
Along the side were a variety of shops, some were cafes, some Brazilian or other such foreign- based restaurants. One, a record shop, still sold the old-time 331/3 albums- vinyl- indeed, this place, from the scurryings of the small crowd which constantly flowed into and out of it, seemed a veritable hive of commerce.
On the far end of Inverness Street things started things started to get very drongo-ey, with a motley collection of very rough elderly trampish-looking types hanging around, just outside and around a huge building which, Looey knew, housed several hundred such men. It was a Sally Army building, and, as these places generally were, run by the staff with a total disregard for any respect of the people who had to live there. They were all turfed out at a certain time in the morning, while the lackeys went round with their brushes and mops and cleared up the puddles of piss and vomit left behind by the previous-night’s occupants. These men would then have to shiver around all day long, looking for something to do, or eat, and by around 1ish the Hare Krishna van would come hurtling round the corner, loaded with vegetarian food which they always freely gave out to whoever wanted it, in fact, however much they wanted, too. Their cartons of rice and vegetables were always gratefully received by the many who flanked the sides of their van when it pulled it, which it did, every day. Those in the know would also pick up their food parcel from the Catholic church, which opened before the Krishnas were due to arrive, and which handed out teas, and white bags of sandwiches to a long row of shabby men- and some women, too, but basically all in need. Round the corner from there was the Spectrum Centre, which Looey hadn’t been in for some time, and which had certain open hours for the homeless. Inside they had facilities such as washing machines and showers, and every morning could be seen their regulars lining down Park Road, some huddling underneath the small lean-to shelter which kept the rain off some of them, at least. The others would brave their way through it all, giving their names to the person on reception as they went in, and went about their business inside. For many it was the chance to make a cup of tea or coffee for themselves, have a chat, trade information- people on that rung of the ladder often had unique insights or special knowledge, or information.
Looey went right to the end of Inverness Street, and from there into a side street, in which this woman lived. He took out the sheet of paper with the address written on it, and saw on the other side of the street where her number was. It seemed to be one of the houses at the end, one of the old Victorian houses. She must be worth a few bob if she lived here, Looey thought to himself. Going up to the door, he tried ringing the bell, leaning on it, an placing his ear against the heavy wood to try and hear it sounding within the building. He couldn’t hear it ringing, and at fist thought about just dropping the woman’s stuff through the letterbox. But he was now worried in case there might be someone else sharing the building with her, that might discover the privacy element of this wallet if they should happen to open it. And why shouldn’t they, when he hadn’t even an envelope to put in it?
He didn’t have a very clear idea as to what exactly he would do when he got there, having an instinct that he would be guided by his own awareness as to what to do at the precise moment he actually got there, a very prevalent characteristic in the thinking of crack smokers. You could call it mysticism, or, if you wanted to use a word he himself associated with the ‘New Age’ types that congregated more up around Camden, and, beyond, Hampstead, ‘Intuition’, which had overtones of things dark and unknowable.
But deep within the thought processes of those that regularly beamed up into the heavens of the Gods of Crack and Heroin was an implicit acceptance of this principle, and of how there was a certain spirit or team of spirits which intervened in human affairs, if not all the time, then certainly from time to time, at their own choosing. There had been times when he had even heard them muttering and whispering in the background amongst themselves. The shrinks had once asked him if he had ever heard ‘voices’, but he had known that to admit to having heard them was tantamount to admitting what for them was insanity, so he had said he hadn’t. But there had been a look in the eyes of the interviewing shrink that told him volumes- that ‘the voices’ as they called it were electronically manufactured and transmitted into certain designated victims homes in order to drive them further along the road to madness. All this he had seen in a flash of truth, and had at the time made out that he was none the wiser. He had heard long time before that the shrinks had their own conspiracies; ‘strategies for mental health’ they called them. How they were going to extend their control over society by expanding their own profession, and increasing the controls they were able to hold over the lives of people. In the States, especially, where private medicine was even bigger, they had made a fortune out of getting people binned, and held, for six months, the maximum period most insurance health schemes would cover any of their policy holders. Then, when the insurers would no longer pay out, the patients were suddenly released back out into society, to whatever was left for them to return to. Very often the families of these weren’t interested in them any longer- if they ever had been- and these people would be homeless, and just become part of the debris of society, wandering around with supermarket trolleys at the mercy of whoever they came across.
It was the same here in Britain, if only a little less strident, or obvious. Things tended to be done more in secrecy here in Britain, a country less acclimatised to the glare of a campaigning press and more accustomed to dealings in the dark, out of sight to the ignorant, unsuspecting public.
Looey tried the bell again- still he could hear no sound at all from anywhere deep inside the house. It was a fine old place, two stories high, and, as he looked now, a basement below. Aha, he thought, this was where she lived. Somehow he knew that she would be living down here, and took the set of steps down the side to the bottom, where he found another door. Smoking crack imparts certain gifts, Looey knew, and the gift of Knowing was one of them. Sometimes you might be a bit out, but in general the enhanced power of knowing things that were beyond the capacity of non-smokers to even guess at was well-known amongst Users, in fact, it was one of their best-kept secrets. The society of Crack Users was a secret society, and you would probably never know another person was a member unless you were one yourself. Then, you might begin to spot others also on the same wavelength, as you realised just how extensive was the membership of this society and how far throughout society it had spread its tentacles. Running right the way through the realm of Crack Cocaine use was an implicit mysticism, that was hardly if ever actually admitted to, but universally believed in, and which acted as the guiding light for all of its adherents. There were many truths which the White Stones would reveal to its worshippers. One was the sham of marriage or ‘relationships’- as believed in by the outside, hypocritical world- except of course when the husbands wanted to slide on downtown to ‘where the action was’, or the wives wanted a piece of extra on top of whatever they were getting at home. You can never own anybody, contrary to the conditioning taught by ‘society’, with all of its vested interests, from the dating agencies, the restaurants which catered to the courting couples, the bridal gown –makers, the churches, the lawyers, who stood to make from the ensuing divorces. Looey recalled one girl he had met in a crack house, back at the beginning of his path, who had told him that she came forty times a day. Such was the power of Crack Cocaine, to make those that had tried it come back to it again and again, and, even when they hadn’t actually done any for years, still think of it in the highest moments of whatever sexual orgasm they might subsequently experience. Thus the gravitational power would almost always pull them back in again. But there was more to it than that. After such a powerful experience as crack usage, life was inevitably going to be incredibly dull by comparison afterward. The rehabs, bless their naïve socks, would give out things like sachets of herbal teas and auricular acupuncture, to those that had been through the maelstrom, and hope that these things would act as remedies to retune their patients to their new, drug-free lives.
There seemed to be no idea at all amongst those that worked with ‘the addicted’ as to what even the experience of being high on these drugs was like. It reinforced Looey’s notion that England was the most naïve country in the world. Not only England, he supposed- every place in the world where they had established ‘treatments’ so- called for the addicted, these places were run along similar lines. Totally fucking ineffective. Often run by people who were the least savoury types to have around those that were supposedly sick or vulnerable- people that just wanted to throw one up their patients- and that included the female nurse too. Looey knew, from talking with those men in the crack dens that regularly sold themselves to the sadistic women that came to them for cigarette burnings and other painful treatments, that many of these were nurses who met their victims either directly through these places, or heard about them through word of mouth through their friends, who were also frequenters of their services.
Freddie moved in his leash and looked up to him. They were at the bottom of the stone steps now, and Looey could see that the front door, although solid-looking, could be negotiated into letting him in. As an old-time tripper, Looey could almost sense the spirit of the house. In fact it was in Camden, years before, in the heyday of the acid craze, that he had dropped some acid, in Bayham Street, just around the corner from the Ferdinand Street flats, and had seen an entire row of houses turn into gigantic human heads- he knew from experience that what you saw in a hallucinogenic state was more a representation of something than an actuality, or something to be taken literally. But even so, it was still a powerful truth that had been revealed to him, and that was that each house had – or rather was- a spirit- a collective of energies which on a certain level coalesced and became personalised as single ‘entity’- the Romans, for instance worshipped this spirit as an actual deity, dedicating the hearth to it as its altar.
He rang the bell here, too, repeatedly, but nothing happened- even though this time he could hear the bell sounding within the flat.
Standing at the doorway he ‘saw’ the entity of this dwelling, and in his spirit mind addressed it- in words which he consciously could neither hear nor control. Some deep part of his mind took over and spoke to the spirit, and the next thing he knew the credit card from his wallet came into his hand and he was sliding it in between the crack where the door lock met the door frame. With a bit of effort, he was able to slide it up and down, and within a few moments found entrance granted. With the plastic card still in one hand, and Freddie on the other, he entered the flat. He knew that it would be OK for him to do so, as he had gained permission form the spirit of the flat itself to come in. He knew, from his years of having contact with spirits via crack cocaine that without that permission the spirit itself would have tipped off telepathically someone, leading to the police being called. It was funny- the middle class wanted to learn techniques such as this- which they called shamanism- yet all along in society the real thing was floating around right under their noses and they couldn’t see it. Everywhere in society real magic- real sorcery was going on- and yet because it was hidden, concealed in the arts and crafts of those society considered ‘drug ridden’- the outcasts, the rejects, the failures, the misfits, whose experiences were written off as madness, fit only for incarceration in so-called treatment zones, mental hospitals, prisons, and so-called rehabs, where they would have their ‘sickness’ brainwashed out of them, all at the hands of the freaks and perverts who had control of them through the administration of their medication. Most druggies knew just how dismal and humiliating it was sitting in those forlorn places, where the local authorities would be charged hundreds of pounds daily for their being there, constantly invoiced for all manner of fictitious therapies. Which is why come what may most druggies would sooner sell their souls than end up sitting there at the tender mercies of people who they knew wanted nothing more to take the piss, or, if they could get away with it, torture them, in one form or another.
Looey remembered the time when he first smoked. It was like Eve and Adam in the garden of Eden- after having his eyes opened, there was no going back. Not even in the sense of needing to repeat the experience, even, although he had certainly done that too. But more in the sense of having certain things revealed to him. He recalled from somewhere having read about those who in ancient times would take a herb, or a root, and make a drink out of it, or a smoke, even, and enter a state of trance- or communion with these gods or deities-and be shown certain truths and given certain gifts. These gifts would normally be things of a non-material nature- such as an ability to commune with spirits, or influence people telepathically, or even just to discern the will of the gods or surrounding spirits. But the gods had certainly blessed him, and he had received what, he supposed, was his baptism. There had been no turning back from that point, neither for anyone whose minds had been opened to the incredible realities and possibilities shown by Crack. Which was why those freaks from rehab were always so keen to try and intercept any devotee that was on a down and ‘turn them’- which would only last so long, anyway. Ultimately the tide of new consciousness being unfolded would sweep even further through society, bringing about the kind of change that they world needed, if it was going to survive. Looey wondered just how much change that had already occurred was as a direct result of people’s awareness shifting, through mind-opening drugs such as Crack cocaine. The internet and computerisation, for instance, might even have its roots in the new level of awareness being engendered by the realisations brought about by Crack cocaine.
He was in now, and as he walked through the massive doorframe he was swallowed up by the blackness which lay within. Freddie sauntered in merrily along with him, sniffing interestedly at various corners and areas. Looey smiled to himself. Whoho, he thought, I wonder what’s here for me to find out? It was like stepping into an Aladdin’s cave, whenever he did this. As a car mechanic man, it was never any big deal for him to get around door locks, and the like. Doors like this were simple. He had even done safes in his time, too, not that they were particularly difficult, just energy-consuming, heavy enough to get out of anywhere, true, but once you had you had all the time in the world to bust them open, and could take your time about it, as well, hacking in with a chisel and hammer at will.
The hallway led down into a kitchen area at the end- if the woman, or anyone else turned up while he was here, he could get away with being here by saying that the door had been open when he had arrived here. Although they might be sceptical, in the absence of any damage, or anything stolen, there would be no proof against him, and although he might be initially arrested, they would have no option but to let him go, and within a short space of time, too.
Freddie, meanwhile, was picking up all manner of interesting scents in the place. Looey let him of the lead, and within seconds he had disappeared out the room and down the hall. Looey went over to the phone, and opened an address book. Like all Crack users, he had several alter-identities, and at this point the Chief Inspector of the People’s Army came to the fore. He was a senior agent, sent undercover to investigate all manner of counter-revolutionary activities being carried on against the interests of Mother Britain. Britain was constantly being undermined by the treacherous activities of counter –revolutionary agents from a wide spectrum of foreign and anti-B interests, especially American.
Paramount was the consideration that his work remain secret, because there were plenty of foreign agents, some of them very sussy, who were always themselves on the look-out for Revolutionary Guards such as he, and who would then go out of their way to sabotage, either through a rape accusation, or some other fuck-up. It was a constant war, and one did what one could. Sometimes all he could do was sabotage their cars when they brought them in. Once he had been in a flat, and a working girl he knew came in, and was going to shoot some heroin. She filled up the barrel of her syringe with the liquid heroin from the spoon, and flicked the syringe, the needle being pointed upright- to get any final air out of the barrel. Just then she did something unusual- she asked him to go to the bathroom for her and put the barrel under a tap of cold water- ‘to cool it down’ she said. He knew at the time that there was something else going on, she wanted him out of the room so she could do some deal with someone else there in the room, but, seemingly playing along, he took the works from her and went into the bathroom. Sitting in the toilet crapper besides the sink, though, was a turd at the bottom of the water, and, carefully emptying about half the contents of the syringe, he replaced it with the dirty-brown water surrounding the solitary turd. The colour was the same, but the effect would be to bring down this enemy agent good and proper. He scuttled back to the girl, and handed her her syringe. Pumping up her arm, she popped the veins up as big as they could go, and directed the syringe into one of them. Within seconds there was a blossoming of red into the barrel of the works, and she pulled further back on the barrel, and then pressed downwards. The whoosh of the contents into her system was something wondrous for Looey to behold. Her eyes went blank, and started spinning upwards into her head. She went straight down, and onto the floor.
Gasping, she stearted kicking her legs, spasmodically, and went into a fit.
‘A dirt hit!’ Looey chimed in, not even bothering to keep the joy out of his face. The others in the room were looking over in her direction, but no-one was bothered to see this bitch die. In fact it was turning into quite an interesting spectacle- something you could later on include in your war stories or put in a book about King’s Cross. Looey looked down on the girl with the attitude of a victor, for whom there was no mercy, turned on his heel, and went out. He knew that within seconds others would be going through her pockets, taking out whatever money and gear she had on her, and then leaving her for dead. No once cared fuck all. He didn’t. For him it had been a good day’s work and he had taken out someone who he was fairly sure was an enemy of Britain. After all, she fucked with coons, didn’t she? Well, then, what further proof did you require that she was on the side of the blacks, and therefore constantly undermining the integrity of the white race? Deep in his heart he knew he was fucked up- but the stuff was keeping him going, so what could he do? It was his link with the mystical spirit of Crack cocaine that gave him his powers, his insights, his Knowledge. It was his way of getting in touch with the spirit of …….well, you could call it god—but he preferred to call it the gods- plural! The drug counsellor never really sussed about the mystical- or even sexual links of Crack cocaine- in their tiny worlds they just assumed the High that Crack users experienced was something like the weed which they themselves smoked. Somehow the Great Secrets of Crack usage had been preserved, kept from the piggy little eyes of the drug workers- also spies against the gods themselves. It was these scumbags that also needed to be taken out, he knew. There would be time for that, he knew, as he looked through this woman’s private business, feeling totally OK about it. Drug and social workers often wondered why those on Crack often felt no guilt about the so-called ‘crimes’ they had committed, whilst on Active Service. The reason was that there’s was a great call of duty, to the great spirit which ruled over all human consciousness and was about to herald in a new era of understanding, in which Mother Britain was destined to play a leading role, as indeed she always had.
He found, deeper into the interior, a computer, and managed to switch it on. There was no password, and opening up the hundreds of images was easy enough. My my, he smiled, quite a self-styled love goddess, wasn’t she? He saw images of her in every pose, looking up at the camera with those nice long dark eyelashes on, her lips nice and red, her body looking fantastic, curvaceous breasts pointing saucily in different directions. Hhhmm, just the way he liked it. But wait a minute- there was something almost too good about his bird. This was a professional-he realised, aha, now he had it. She was on the game, true, but not waltzing around the backstreets of the Cross doing knee tremblers for a score a time, no this was top-notch cunthole. Pussy was amazing- it could cost fuck all or it could cost you the earth, depending on how big a cunt you wanted to be. He himself had long realised that he was a pay-as-you go type of guy, shelling out bit by bit for each piece of pussy he got- rather than to wait till the end of a marriage, or ‘relationship’ and find yourself being charged for everything you had.
But this girl was something else. Here on her computer were lists of some of her ‘boyfriends’- the popular euphemism for punters, or clients. Whether through one way, or some other less direct way, men paid for the pleasure of a woman’s pussy, an all the attendant emotions and states of mind that that gave access to. For some men, the preference was to play Man in Love, for others, Knight in Shining Armour- men who wanted to try and save the girl from her life of sin, and carry her away to something better- i.e. a life of servitude, namely, with ‘him’- the saviour! Men were strange, yet simple creatures, who had certain basic needs- women, too, but although he couldn’t blame them for following the true designs of their craft, Looey could neither sympathise much. Cunthole, at the end of the day, was a grossly overvalued commodity. Yet so it had been since the dawn of time, and probably would till the last human remained. In his mind he wondered what that Final Day might actually look like. He checked all the internet sites where she had wandered, using History, and saw that she had been round Flirt, Adult Friendfinder, and even some of the Dominant Women sites in her trawl for punters. He felt the magic rising of the sap within the trees beginning to affect him. Especially enticing, were some of the messages she had been sending some of her punters, drawing them in with higher and higher levels of sexual urgency, till in the end she was able to get them to come in and put money down, presumably.
When he had checked out enough on the computer, he shut it down, and continued looking through her place. Now he found himself in her bedroom, which is where the real magic was bound to be going on, he thought, as he stepped into it. Instantly impressed, he saw the mirrors on the ceiling, on the walls, and strangely arousing scents and perfumes which seemed to hang magically I the air. On the bed itself- which was a Queen- he noticed- were drawn silk and satin sheets, black. On the radiator were a pennant of different-coloured G strings. All nice and slender, like floss for doing your teeth with. Just for good luck he ran his fingers along them, putting them back up to his nose instinctively just for good luck, as a man will naturally do. What was it about a woman’s cunthole, he wondered, that made such a natural association with a man’s nose, mouth, and fingers? It was amazing how rapidly we all came back to Mother Nature, once that connection was re-established through touch, nose and taste, and slipped off our moorings that kept us chained to outworn and useless notions of conformity.
How ironic, and yet so typical of the way the world went about its way, that those in the very forefront of such momentous ideological change and at the cutting edge of such social transformation should be so lowly regarded by the petty-minded systemites and bureaucrats that had managed to get their dead hand on the wheel directing everything. Those that communed with the gods using Crack were the modern day equivalent of the shamans, magicians and healers and had formed the ranks of the early Christians, the Buddhists, the bringers of light. Implicit in the Crack world was an awareness of the power of sex and attraction. One working girl had once told Looey that she would come forty times a day. This kept coming back to him, in some of his more meditative moments. What a girl! Yet so typical of those that prowled along the dark streets of the Cross- and elsewhere- in all the other ‘Crosses’ throughout the world- connecting through Bangkok, Rio, New York, Sydney, Dublin- like a meridian of energy running throughout the world, carrying all kinds of information back and forth, like a huge multi-levelled radio beacon or fibre optic band wavelength. The actual smokers were those that ran the individual consoles, and downloaded and uploaded the information, sending it back and forth, one way and the other. But further along the food chain were those getting it into the country, organising it in from places such as Colombia, Jamaica, and Spain. At each stopping-off point it would pass from one set of ownership to another, and a different team responsible for its movement across borders would step in to take responsibility. Many of the girls who ran the stuff through the British airports, Looey knew, from having talked with them, were re4cruited from amongst those that came drifting into Lonodn and got picked up by the recruiters who were waiting for them, around the Cross, but also in other places, such as Camden and Embankment, where there were known to be hundreds of homeless and increasingly desperate kids stranded out of doors.
Those recruited usually had little or no choice- they would be fronted a small piece of money ort- more usually-gear, and the next thing they knew they would find themselves on a plane heading out to the Caribbean somewhere, flanked by thousands of normal British holidaymakers. If they made it back, and got the stuff through, they might get paid- if not the full amount they had originally been promised- 5 grand, but at least a few hundred pounds. Then, they would be spun a story and made to get ready for their next run, to get a few more kilos in. Looey even knew of mules that had yet to be paid for two, three, even more jobs they had already done. The mules in these cases were just hanging out for a smoke, and had even lost hope of getting what they had been promised. They would keep running stuff in, making other people rich, until they dropped dead or got busted. Even after they did their time, they would still come out and go back to muling for those that had sent them out in the first place. The situation of these hopeless people was worse than people outside the reality of Crack cocaine could ever even begin to appreciate. Just that of complete slaves, really.
Looey remembered Sandra and Donna. Sandra was the one who would tell the Old Bill that she lay on her back and got money that way, even though she was a prolific shoplifter, constantly on the move with her Scottish lesbian and very butch lover Donna. All up and along her legs were track marks, like spidery lines and red pitted dots making swirls and curls up and along her veins, sweeping towards her crutch. I between were dozens- literally dozens of purple and red-brown swellings and lesions where she had missed the vein with her syringes and shot the shit straight into the muscle area, causing these abscesses. Donna had been with Sandra for – nobody really knew quite how long- but it was apparently since her getting busted at Heathrow with 6 kilos of pure white, where she herself had actually gotten through, but her then girlfriend, who was also carrying an additional 6 keys- was stopped by a customsman who picked up the vague scent of weed on her clothes. She had had a puff of green just before getting on the plane, and it was this that triggered the official into stopping her. Rather than brazen it out, though, as soon as she was stopped, she immediately admitted being in possession of a massive amount for coke, and even then called out to her ‘friend’ Sandra- indicating to the official that she was travelling together. When the official brought Sandra back to his counter, all her girlfriend could say to her, was ‘sorry’ for bringing her into that shit. Sandra would regale her small circle of admirers, usually a small group of single guys, with her traveller’s tales on occasion, in between pipes and shooting up smack. It was always an interesting gathering up at the little squat where she and Donna would tune into, after a good day’s hoisting round the shopping centres of north London. Though the electricity had long been cut off, they would light up candles and pace these out along the table’s edge, giving these meetings an almost spiritual quality that you would remember, years after they had happened and sometimes think back to.
Sandra had even told the tale of how she had even ‘gone Queen’s Evidence with the Old Bill,’ in other words, had completely grassed up the dealers in exchange for a lighter sentence. She may have been looking over her shoulder ever since as a result, but at least she wouldn’t be in the frame for a ten year sentence- rather she had apparently gotten off ultra lightly. But it would all turn into false economy should those she had grassed ever find her and want to take it out on her skin. That was when slags like this disappeared and went under somebody’s patio, an occurrence Looey had heard about on more than one occasion. You never knew if and when someone went under the patio, all you would ever know was after a along time you might realise that you hadn’t seen them in a long time.
But even that wouldn’t be any big deal. Nobody ever went looking for someone who had disappeared. If you were homeless, or on drugs, you had already disappeared, to all intents and purposes, as far as society was concerned.
Looey went further into the bedroom, and found himself going through her knickknacks- well well a real dildo dolly this one was, for real. Underneath her bed, in a drawer where they all seemed congregated for safety, was a collection of dildos, a range of colours, shapes and sizes. The dirty old cow, Looey laughed to himself, this one certainly had a preference for the better built gentleman, as it were. A laugh escaped from his curled lips. He loved this bit, the old little rummage through my lady’s chamber. Also, one of them gave a whole new slant to the accountancy concept of double entry. So sweet, he could feel all the old circuits and neurons coming back to pulsating laugh. This was a fuckiing treasure. He thanked the gods of whatever fortune or misfortune were out there, if there were any left with any interest of what was happening on this plane. It seemed unlikely- in the world in which he lived the spiritual deities had long since baled out, or moved on to wherever their golden lands might be. Those left behind were the demons. He was amazed at the amount of wank material this woman seemed to have amassed. All manner of heavy bondage gear, women trussed up, being caned, being rammed both ends with ‘toys’.
Loey had to do a double-take. Many of the pictures were of the woman herself, some with two cocks in her mouth, both of them creaming up and overfilling her gob, running down the side of her neck, the sperm foaming like it was coming out of the top of an opened champagne bottle. Looey was steaming up. Flashing through his mind was an image of skulking away inside some recess of this woman’s place, not now, but maybe some little time ahead into the future, and doing a house hermit on her. House hermiting was when you camped out in the victim’s place, making sure all the time that they never really sussed you were there. He had done it a few times and it was always a good laugh, especially with the pensioners. When they were watching the telly, or asleep, he would creep out and down from their loft, and have a nosey around. It was always a laugh to see the fuckers laying in bed completely oblivious to the world around them while you could stand over them, even wank right on top of them, without their becoming any of the wiser. Sometimes they might even suspect what was going on, but if they tried to tell anyone you would always hear the poor dozy cunts on the phone downstairs trying to get somebody to come round and take a look round. Thus you had time to slide under a p[iece of insulation, prior to them coming up into the loft. You would then hear the voice of their visitor, loaded with doubts about their sanity, merely say that there was nothing- and nobody- up there. After they had gone it was great, sometimes Looey had been tempted to give a couple of knocks on the beams, just to let the old faggot know how pointless was their appeal for rescue. He had heard about the police in south London looking out for a creeper, some con that had raped eighty really old ladies down there. He had even met this cunt, he was sure of it, in a crack house round Archway, just a few roads up from the Cross, not that far from Highgate Cemetery, really. This fucker, after a few good smokes, would like to whip his dick out in the presence, not just of some of the girls, but even of the guys, just to see who he could inveigle into becoming a girl for the night. When the crack was flying about there were plenty of possibilities. Men turned into boys, boys into girls, and girls into whores. After a really good hit, even he himself would – more often than he let on, too- have sexual fantasies that involved men- and even quite young men. One of the crack bitch’s best-loved secrets was the fantasy- and in some cases, reality- of the prostitution of their children. When crack was oozing through the blood stream, the kinkier the idea the more potency it had, and the more irresistible its appeal. If a man or a woman was up for prostituting themselves, it was really only a matter of time before they started their children out on the same road, and loved it. The more you smoked, the kinkier you became- it was a relationship of direct equivalence, if not exponential. With each incremental rise in Crack consumed the recipient would heighten their own inner propensity to perversion, and feel that they were becoming one of the gods at the same time. It was an association between sexual intensity and religiousity. Which is what religious or spiritual experience was anyway, basically, if you thought about it. Where did the one end, and the other begin? The real communions were occurring not in any churches, built by mortal hands, but in the clubs and in the streets, where people everywhere were taking ecstasy and coke and getting into each other’s pussies. That was where the real religion of god- or the gods, rather- was to be found. Getting some of that lovely cunt juice all over your face- that was the real baptism- or even some lovely creamy stuff from some of the holy brethren- where the salty stuff and the creameries could be found. Also a form of baptism- a real eye-opener, for man or woman, to become the god- to become the goddess- because ultimately it was one and the same hermaphroditic Being anyway, and each of us were cast in its Divine Image. Sex was the gateway to sharing in the space and mind of the gods-it was the real thing of which the Christianised concepts of drinking from chalices were but pale reflections, mere shadows.
Where was Freddie? Things had gone very quiet, Looey realised, and he stopped what he was doing to listen out for any sound from the dog. There was none. Maybe time to go and have a wander around the place and see what he was getting into.
Looey walked down the hallway, and found himself in the kitchen area. Freddie was over by the back door, scarping his front paws against the door, whimpering gently. He just wanted to get out. Strange for him to be acting this way. Looey went to the door, and slid back the bolts. Freddie instantly rushed out, wagging his tail as he did so, immediately made happier at the prospect of getting back into the fresh air. The garden area was quite desolate, Looey realised. Freddie was over by the far corner, scraping with his claws against a pile of earth. It looked as though the dirt had been heaped up in a pile against the fence.Going over to it, Looey had the strangest feeling that everything that had happened that day had been designed to bring him right to this place, this heap of earth that had been heaped against the side of the fence. A shiver ran through him, and he looked up. A spread of high-standing bushes and ferns shielded this garden from any overlooking eyes- it was totally secluded. Freddie was continuing to dig at the ground, and there before his eyes was along bone, with what seemed to be some pieces of ragged clothing around it. The bone was like a piece of shoulder. At first he thought he might be imaging things, but as he and Freddie both tugged at the shallow depository of whatever it was – animal or human- that lay down there another, this time longer piece of bone came out, attached to an elbow. There was no doubt about it- it seemed to belong – if not to a human- than to a sheep, or goat, perhaps. That was it, probably some of this house’s previous occupants had been muslims, and didn’t they have sacrifices of animals just such as these, in which the creature was suspended upside down and then its throat cut, the blood being allowed to drain out from the body? Looey didn’t really have an idea as to how long this woman- Louise, he had seen from some of her documents, a solicitor, or some such- had lived there. But probably a few years. What to do? He didn’t want to go running to the police, as that would involve him. They might well try and link him up to whatever body it turned out to be. No, even an anonymous call might result in him getting stitched for this. His immediate instinct was to cover himself. If people were getting knocked off than someone ought to be told about it, or something done. But grassing to the police wasn’t an option. Looey wondered what he should do about this. The more the dog dug down, the more apparent it was becoming that there was a large body down there. Even from the earth that Freddie and he had already pulled back he could see a ribcage beginning to appear. He wondered whether or not he shouldn’t just get the hell out and get on the phone to the Old Bill. Fuck it, he had come to this house to bring back the female customer’s wallet, and had found the door open. He had entered, not sure if the owner was there, or indeed if there wasn’t an illegal entry taking place at the time, and had taken a look around. But if the police began to suspect that he had the ability to get into people’s places as easily as he did, might they not also try and suggest that it could well have been he that carried in this body and buried it here? It could prove to be a sweet way for them to clear up this crime. But was this a real, actually human body? Or, was it just a fucking dog, or a sheep?

Making her way through the traffic, that was all she ever seemed to do. It wasn’t too bad, coming down through Royal College Street, but getting round the one-way system in King’s Cross always slowed her down. Having just picked up her car from Looey’s Car Repairs, she was keen to give it a bit of a drive around, just to see how the vehicle responded. It seemed Ok, but for the money he had charged she couldn’t help free herself of the feeling that he was having her over, secretly laughing at her while she forked out what were really quite significant sums of money for what might well be in reality tiny amounts of work actually done. Coming down Euston Road, she passed the British Library to her left. The squat, bomb shelter-style building looked more like something to take cover underneath in the event of a nuclear attack than a place of study and research. She had been inside once or twice, not as a member but to visit the John Rimbault collection of rare books and manuscripts on display inside the front entrance. It had been magical, passing along the collection of music scores composed by Beethoven- one was of the Ninth Symphony, she noted. Each note had been painstakingly written in ink by Ludvig van’s own hand. In another case were the diaries of James Joyce, with wild letterings of jumbles of words and pieces of dialogue, probably overheard by the great man himself in Dublin as he wandered the streets and committed to history. Inside another case was a letter by Lenin, in perfect English, applying for membership of the Library under an assumed name. In other cases were beautiful, hand-painted illuminated Bibles- Guthenburg Bibles, they were called- with fantastical, illustrations of animals and interweaving letters coiled like serpents’ tails around the pages. In the centre of the exhibition was a vast cabinet, which housed the Magna Carta. This massive parchment, signed by King John in 1215, consisted of lines after lines of italic writing, the Latin words in which it was written barely legible to her untrained eyes, but now that this was the first document which constrained the rule of the king by the force of law, and that as such it constituted an important document in English history. She had felt strange stirring deep within her sold as she had stood there, before it, getting a sense of the conditions under which it was written and enforced upon the then king.
Her ancestors had withstood so many invasions- Romans, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Normans, French, the Irish and even the Scottish had all been contenders to get the skids under her people, under her country. More latterly, the Germans had done their level best to take over, even doing quite a professional job, relatively. But what was happening now was a deliberate systematic attempt to poison the spiritual vibe of Britain, to desecrate and prostitute the inner essence. This attack was coming from the blacks, she knew. They even had the cheek to demand equality, but how could they claim to be equal? All you had to do was take one look at who comprised the lists of doctors, engineers, architects, writers, designers, inventors, scientists, to see the vast representation of whites in these areas. The coons were OK for being waitresses, ticket collectors, broomsweeps, or car park attendants. They weren’t bad, by their standards, for being arsehole wigglers and rappers, although they still had a long way to go as a species before they could lay claim to being able to play- let alone compose- anything that for the whites could be described as music. As dealers, pimps and muggers they came more readily into their own, even attaining par excellence. Every time she switched on the TV she was accosted by images of these thugs, usually arrayed in all their prison finery snarling at the camera, under the guise of this being their ‘art’. Rap- what a sad excuse for the absence of any culture. The men glorifying murder and rape, even proclaiming the beating of their women as an ideal to be attained, all set to the most primitive jungle bunny beat you could imagine.
But Louise kept her views to herself. In her job, where the left wing were in every nook an cranny, it was by far the wisest policy. All over the place were the Political Correctness Commissars, constantly on the look-out for anyone who showed even the slightest deviatist tendencies. Those that did invariably got the bullet. The same thing had happened years before in teaching, where the left wing had infiltrated and started spreading their multiculturist view of Britain. Now they had spread into the legal profession, even into the firm where she had, years before, started as a junior, and had steadily worked her way up to the position of partner, in the firm Barbara Hospice and Parners.
Her speciality was with family law, dealing with people’s rights to access their own children mainly, after their relationships had broken up and both partners found themselves on different roads.
Driving along, she passed St. Pancras and King’s Cross stations to her left. She had always liked St. P- with its ornate –looking stonework embellishments like a great Gothic palace. It always had the suggestion of some archaic mystery. The station of the Cross, though, had always created a completely opposite sensation- its extreme functionality, although not devoid of any inherent beauty, was more of a powerful archway stretching across the great expanse of the unsupported width of the glass ceiling, which ran down the length of the massive platforms. Queen Boadicea, she had heard, was supposedly buried somewhere under what was now Platform 9. The greatest queen of the Britons, the leader of the Iceni tribe when the Brits had risen up against the Romans, and striven for the own freedom. The great misnomer was that prior to the arrival of the Romans the Brits had been ignorant savages, with nothing. They ahd in fact had a complete system of society, based on the tribal pattern, with their own equivalent of roads, transportations, harbours, and smithies.
Moving through the heavy, slow-moving traffic of the Cross, Louise kept her temper, and her concentration, noticing vaguely some of the human debris that littered the sides of the streets. Young girls, some looking extremely young, were lined up along the front of the Cross station, looking round, trying to get chatty with the men that were walking past. Loiuse herself had heard some of the things they would say.
‘Biznis mate?’ ‘Are you looking for a girl?’, or ‘Fancy a date, mate?’ were amongst the usual opening rounds they would fire off. It was early evening, and the sun was already going down over the far end of Euston Road, already throwing most of the area into an immediate freeze as the shadow formed and began crawling across the streets. On the far side Louise could see, outside the Post Office, and just along, outside the MacDonald’s and, beside this, the change-money till, some of the girls whose faces she was already semi-familiar with. Although occupying a very different life style, she could not help the existence of a certain fascination with the women who streamed out onto the street each night in search of easy money for their drugs. Even before she had specialised in family law, she had, in the course of her early practice, come across a good many of such as these when they would get busted and she, as Duty Solicitor doing the graveyard shift, would have to trail down to King’s Cross police stations, where her punters would be waiting for her to come and get them out. Normally she would have them out,too, within minutes, at the very least bailed to reappear the next day at Court to answer a charge of soliciting. Some of the girls, so as not to annoy the police when arrested, had an annoying habit of making an immediate confession; as far as they were concerned it was all in a night’s work, getting nicked, then out again as soon as possible before the cold turkey crept in and started crippling them. Louise could tell immediately if the girl was withdrawing, and as soon as she saw the tell-tale signs of the girl leaning frailly against the wall, or seemingly too weak to stand and take her own weight, she would kick up a fuss with the cops and insist that a doctor be sent for, so that the girl could at least get some DF118s to tide her over. These little codeine pills were all that the average police doctor could dish out, and these only three a night. The cops would be given a little set of these white pills in an envelope, and every eight hours of so the junkie would be handed one of them, along with a glass of water. Thus the long cold night would fly away, and the junkie be spared the horrors of having to do their cluck till after they had sailed through court, with whatever result they were able to get there. Normally a fine was all they were given, and here at Clerkenwell magistrates court, down in King’s Cross Road, on the way down towards Farringdon, where the post office flagship building was based, and the old Morning Star communist newspaper rested, looking forlorn and humiliated as it unhappily tried to play it’s new life as a series of wine bars and expensive yuppie tapas bars. Even down here the extent of prostitution was rampant. Many of the young, incredibly attractive women that paraded themselves along the salubrious streets, in between their clubs and music spots were on the game, just that they were from a slightly higher echelon that enabled them to meet men under different circumstances and charge them even up to two or three grand for the night. Mind you, for that, you had to be a top notch crumpet, such as a Pamela Anderson look alike, and pretty good as a shag. But when the coke was flying about, as Loiuse well knew from some of the parties she had been to, everybody could start shagging brilliantly well, in fact. Even at one party she had been to one of the girls there, she didn’t know if she had actually been paid to, or if the girl had just become very turned on with the effect of all that coke she had just snorted, but she started blow-jobbing the guy’s dog. And what was more, Loiuse hated to admit to herself, she made a very sexy job of it too. Many of the other women present there in the room at the time had al had expressions on their faces of being really turned on, and Loiuse could tell that their pussies were really watering, too. Well, it was Friday and the evening was drawing in. Christmas, and the New Year celebrations, thankfully, had just passed, and things were pretty slow. There was, though, Louise recalled, an SM party on later that night. Time for her to have a think about whether she was going to attend, and, if so, what she was going to wear. An SM party was the abbreviation for Sado Masochism, where all manner of weird sexual activity was encouraged. Louise looked at her watch. She had a fair few hours before the party was due to kick off, at Smithy’s Wine bar, in fact, in one of the side streets just off King’s Cross Road, at the bottom of Leeke Street. During the week, this sophisticated place functioned as a watering-hole for the well heeled young urban professionals who worked in the area, but once a month it was rented out for a Friday night by the Submission Club, headed by a black guy Ronnie and a white girl.
She didn’t fancy going all the way back to her place in Camden just to hang out for a few hours- she was too revved up. What flickered across her mind was the idea of picking up a teenie, and getting her pussy sucked off in a back alley somewhere. Suddenly there was a torrent of juice flowing through her lower body, between her legs specifically. No, she could not afford to get caught with her pants down round here in the Cross. She knew – as a Duty Solicitor in the area- only too well just how well camera-ed up the area was, and what the terrible consequences of discoverty would mean. Her name in the newspapers, probably even on TV, if it came to that. Immediately she decided to hang on and get her business sorted out later, in the bondage club, but for that she would have to get back and get her Catwoman gear on.
Turning left at the lights, she headed up York Way, passing the grey, east-Berlin style wall of St. Pancras railway yards to her left. She passed a row of people, waiting at the no. 29 bus stop, but kept her attention on the long, straight road ahead, which would take her back to Good way, and from there across into Camden. Parking her car, she went down the stone steps and let herself in. Feeling in the mood for little smoke herself, she went into the bedroom and popped open the small box she kept her stash in. Inside was a nice big piece of yellowish Crack- her dealer had washed it for her in front of her. Robert was a frail-looking white boy she had been introduced to who eked out a living by dealing the stuff onto others, forming a kind of canopy around himself as he did so, in much the same way as a large tree will create an ecosystem for other vegetation. Robert was a smoker himself, who regularly turned out and hopped on planes for those who knew him, always with promises of getting paid, although whether or not he ever did was another question. He might have gotten a few free smokes, though, which was basically all he wanted, all anyone could expect once they’d reached that stage of degradation. But as a dealer, he was Ok, as long as you didn’t front him any serious sums of money, in which case he definitely would knock you. As long as he was kept on the leash by his master, or mistress, rather, Mons, the black Caribbean woman that used him as her mule, he was OK. He would wash- and even re-wash the crack that he had been fronted to sell to his small circle of punters, of which Louise found herself a member. She had gone directly through Mons, but buying this way she was expected to buy at least an ounce a time, and that for around eight hundred pounds. Once she had done this, but in chipping away constantly- which is what you did if you were a smoker and happened to have that much lying around the house-she had found to her horror that the whole amount had melted into nothing within three days. Three days of pure sexual ecstasy, but adding up to a grand none the less.
She remembered what it had been like. Janice had been round, with that bandana round her head, swinging her sweet-looking hips and arse, to drop off the piece. Louise had already been shown how to make up the water bottle version of the crack pipe. She had met her at a lesbian club by the name of FIST- appropriately titled, given to what tended to happen to many of the younger females that went down there and took too much E. FIST was located under the railway arches outside the entrance to the Mi5 building in Lambeth.
The big beefy battleaxes would line up and hover round the entrance – and even inside – the toilets, ready to pounce on any pretty young thing that seemed to stagger at all on her way out from the bogs- a sure sign that E or coke had passed nicely into the maidens’ blood stream, and that sexy delights were ahoy. These girls would get pulled over, or, if they found themselves stuck- as many did- actually inside the cubicles unable to find their way out- again, from excessive coke usage- the axes would steam straight in. Even better if their pussy was out of it- they preferred it that way. Louise had been one such girl, and had just banged up through her nose a massive line of beautiful pure white Charlie. The kick had been tremendous- it cut through her like a dose of ice, clearing her chest, her heart and then her head, like a wave of clarity and then ecstasy, giving a massive boost to her feelings of sexuality and attractiveness. She felt – and believed she looked- the most appealing and attractive woman there was- and that everyone there at the great party- the great convocation, this Witches’ Sabbath- was hungering for her. It was as much as she could do not to pull down her panties and let herself be used by whoever happened to come by and push open the door. The music blaring in the background, a big pumppumppump like a massively speeded-up heart beat, out on the dance floor where a massive swathe of scantily clad female bodies was all pulsating as one, came filtering through to the row of cubicles. Along the runway a butch female security guard, complete with motorcycle cop-style cap and gigantic glaring biceps steathily moved, specifically on the look-out for weird goings-on.
She had met Janice, who was from Australia, and claimed to be writing a book, if only ‘by hand’, through her firm of solicitors, where J was also working, though as a legal secretary, by day, ‘a whore, by night’ as she had herself put it. Louise initially had laughed, thinking she was joking. Janice swivelled her large hips this way and that, but reaffirmed that after hours she would sign on with en escort agency, who would send her on all kinds of assignments. Listening to Janine talk, an entirely new world began to open up for her, and she began to hear the tales about Janice’s actual punters. With one of them, she had to dress in a bridal outfit and appear at his door in the expensive and elite area of Knightsbridge at exactly a certain time. His butler would then open the door and let her in- but all this time she wasn’t to say a single word or let any sound escape her lips. The butler would lead her into an underground crypt area where there was an open coffin, luxuriously lined with red satin, and into this did she have to climb. Then, lying still with her eyes closed, she had to pretend to be dead, while the punter crept in- like a naughty little boy- and wanked all over her, his semen spurting all over her face and mouth at the end.
For this, apparently, she was paid hundreds of pounds. Most of this went straightaway on coke, though.
‘Look, I’ll take you to a party’ Janine, said, with a hint of mystery, as she peered sideways at Louise while they were both standing one morning by the photocopier. Louise was intrigued.
Later that week, on the Friday evening, Louise was to arrive at Janine’s place over in west Hampstead by eight, dressed in whatever black and lacy outfit she happened to have. Smelling nicely of perfume, she appeared at Janine’s door and, after trying a myriad of bells, realised that none of them worked. She thanked the gods for her mobile phone, and rang Janine, who came down, dressed in outlandish fish net stockings and high heel shoes. Her huge legs seemed as though they were ready to bulge out of their constraining influence, and leading the way back up to her third floor apartment her legs were a bit wobbly in the heels. Smiling mildly to herself, Louise felt that there were certain things, such as wobbly walking in these heels, that automatically made her laugh.
There was a bit of time to spare before things started to get into motion.
On the table was a half-full bottle of whisky.
‘Fancy a drink?’ Janine offered.
‘Don’t mind if I do’ she replied. The whisky was rich and warm as it went down, the taste mellow and strong. She had never really been a whisky drinker, and could feel it’s effect on her already. She began to feel really lightheaded, more than you normally did from a single shot of whisky. It was possible that the drink had been laced with ecstasy, or something similar, because she began to feel really suggestible, as though almost waiting to be told what to do by Janine. Eventually the time came for them to move on to where the party was, and a cab arrived. On the way, they snaked their way through the dark and rainy night of a typical London winter. Streaks of rain smeared across the windscreen, and were cleared away by the gentle rhythmic movement of the wipers. The traffic was slow moving, but eventually they found themselves crossing the Thames and pulling into the side street where the railway arches were all lined up, with garish lights blazing from them. FIST was there, and along the street, and disappearing round the corner was a long queue of weirdly dressed people. Louise could see men, dressed as women, wearing wigs, although more were clutching bags which, she presumed, contained the outfits they would be changing into once inside. Some were wearing military style caps, some German World War 2, others looked Russian, with the red star up in front. Most of the people seemed fairly subdues, as though gathering their energies for what would begin to happen once they got in. Everyone was being really economical with their energy.
‘Come on, let’s get in on the guest list’ she said, and took the two of them directly to the front of the queue.
‘Hey, there’a a queue waiting here’ someone from the side called out.
‘We’re on the Guest List’ Janine answered, immediately heading off this heckler with practised ease. Going to the security woman at the front, standing there with a clipboard with a list of names on it, Janine gave her name, but as the guard looked up and down the list, she began to purse her lips and shake her head.
Janine wasn’t going to stand for that, though. She was used to going up to the front of any queue and getting in. Queues were for lesser mortals.
There’s no way, surely, Louise thought to herself, but, sure as shit, the next thing that happened was the security guard spoke to someone inside the building on her walkie-talkie, and, after a short delay, received the information she needed, and nodded Janine through. Louise found herself instantly saved the waiting time of maybe two hours which the others queuing were going to have to undergo. Entering the lobby area, she was amazed at the appearance of the girl behind the glass booth, who resembled a cross between a female vampire and a ghost. Her eyes were blackened out by makeup, and her hair, through the use of extensions seemed long and black and flowing, really sexy, each follicle reaching out like the limbs of an underwater sea anemone as it trawled through the ocean in search of prey. Each hair was like a tendril or aerial, picking up and sending out its own individual signals. There was no excess body weight about herbare frame, and as Louise looked she could make out the individual ribs across the top of the girl’s chest, the girl’s black fingernails and the antique lace that flowed around her hips and wrists.
Then, they were through, and as they entered the foyer, Louise suddenly realized that laying on the ground in front of her was the figure of a nubile young man, dressed in a loin cloth, laying on a mat, over which was spread a collection of broken glass.
‘You’re supposed to step on him, in order to get in’ Janine had told her.
‘But doesn’t that hurt?’ Louise found herself asking, the sound of naivety clear as a bell even to her own ears. She stepped on to the guy, and barely heard him grunt as she pressed the whole weight of her body down through her heels into his flesh. It gave her a strange yet deep sense of satisfaction, and she wondered if this sensation might be the herald of the awakening of her own sadism. Even as she looked down she could see individual shards of glass glinting up through the interior of the club’s nightlights.
Now they were through, and Janine leading her upwards into a set of stone steps. Like Virgil leading Dante. Thought Louise, through the Inferno. On either side, though, was a row of black dragon-shaped candles, each lit and giving off a pale luminous greenish glow. At the top of the steps Louise saw a sight which made her gasp.
They were now out in an open area which led off in three directions. Behind them, to the right, was an area where people could deposit their coats and heavier and outer garments. Janine was wearing only a black lacy top, though, but now even this seemed overdressed, and she peeled it off, revealing her two naked breasts held up in place by a black lacy cupless bra. Her two breasts stood straight out, naked, with both nipples erect, Louise noted. My god, she thought, this girl was ready for action, immediately.
To the left, was a smallish area where there seemed to be a number of stalls. On one of them, were a series of video films, some showing people from somewhere in Asia having spikes thrust through the sides of their cheeks with pineapples stuck on either end. Some of the films, Louise noted, were entitled ‘Guinea Pig Films’ and this series she seemed to have recalled hearing about, although from where she couldn’t remember. They focused on people being kidnapped and forced to undergo severe torture, whilst made to take drugs at the same time. Mostly they seemed conscious while the torture progressed. She looked up and saw some of the films being shown on a multi-screen. Other films focused on a vegetarian festival in Phuket. Reading the blurb on the back of one garish, and gruesome DVD cover, she learnt that this festival had some kind of ‘healing’ intention- somehow those that were chosen by the gods for their spirits to manifest in were made immune to all pain, and, as she watched, she could indeed see some incredible things being down to their bodies by fellow devotees, such as their tongues made to run red with blood by being run up and down along the edges of swords, even chainsaws.
Next to this was stall where a wide variety of body-piercing armour was being offered for sale- nipple, penile and vaginal piercing rings, some long bolts called ‘Prince Alberts’ which were inserted through the length of the penis and run through. This would then be secured against a fixed chain inserted into the back of the ball bag and which would force the cock to behave itself. The vaginal rings were also being fastened to some girls, sitting down there, even as Louise watched, completely uncaring about having someone else stand there and relish the proceedings. Louise realized she was entering a world of different values. In this domain, perhaps there were those who actually enjoyed having an audience while they had the most painful- and even humiliating- things down to them in public. She found herself getting wet with pleasure.
Immediately next to this stall was one which offered brandings. A Bunsen burner was burning on one side of the table, connected up to a gas cylinder buy a thick, snake-like rubber tube, the end flaring with menace as the flame was heated up by the thread on its stem being turned tighter. Above, and resting on a tripod were a set of branding instruments, long metallic stems at the end of each was a symbol, like you might expect on a wooden printing block- one carried the symbol of a dragon, another a wolf, one was the shape of an octopus, with its outreaching tentacles seemingly trying to grab hold of its prospective victims. These designs were turning red already, and Louise wondered when the first of the new victims, or slaves, might be expected to be brought in.
‘Like to try?’ Janine asked her, snapping her out of her trance-like state. She wondered if people would willingly sit down here and allow this to be done to them, but Janine reassured her that here the principle of consent was in full force. She wasn’t so convinced. The feeling of sexiness crept up on her again, and she began to relax into it, enjoying the sensations which were coming to her, stronger and stronger.
Walking around were many girls now, mostly dressed as mistresses, with their stockings and suspenders on, high heels, and rubber or leather appendages. One had a series of straps tying her around the waist, and at the end of a leash she walked, on all fours, a younger girl, who wore a mouth gag- a thick rubber ball which strapped up behind the girl’s head and which prevented her from talking. Her eyes looked glazed over, and unfocused. Whatever she was on, Louise could see it was strong. The girl was completely naked, and across her backside were many thick lines of red where her mistress had carried out successive punishments. Probably part of her training. Some of the slaves were used as toilets. And might even have toilet seats affixed round their heads. These slaves were set aside for toilet activities, and were expected to eat the faeces and drink the urine streams that were directed their way.
Just then three young men, all dressed in black leather trousers and jackets, but wearing crudely-made black balaclavas over their heads, to avoid recognition-came up to them, and started talking. Janine immediately went into coy mode- which was for Louise rather reminiscent of watching a Walt Disney elephant running around in a Rara skirt, trying to look seductive and dainty. After a few moments chat, one of the guys expressed his admiration for Janine’s breasts, so prominently on display. Louise thought she overheard him asking permission to get down on those nipples and give them a nice big suck. Janine agreed, and so the three heads started bobbing up and down on her boobs. From the side Louise could see their tongues lapping like waves against the beach that her big tits had become. Janine’s face immediately became ecstatic, and after a few more words, all of them decamped for the ladies loos. Louise found herself being dragged along, and, once inside the toilet cubicle where this piece of action was going to be going down, was made to sit down on the toilet seat. Janine then spread her legs over and around hers, sitting with the back of her head against Louise’s face.
‘Get your fingers on my nipples and start giving them nice big squeezes’ Janine said to her. Then one of the guys was passing a small bottle from his mouth to Janine’s and she saw and heard a flare of fire going on up there. From around the side she could see Janine’s big red lipsticked lips sucking on a stem, which came out sideways from this bottle, and a cigarette lighter- a Bic- was what fed the flame to the contents of the cradle, where there was a crackling going on. Louise could se that there was a thick, jet-black stream of smoke running straight the way down the stem of this pipe into Janine’s mouth, and that her sucking was slow and steady, clearly practiced, and draining every available drop out of the fumes for her brain cells.
Janine’s eyes seemed to swell, and her eyelashes became much heavier, more erotic, and filled with a ‘fuck-me’ kind of faraway look. He nipples, right underneath her own fingertips had suddenly swollen and hardened, becoming like two real bullets. Louise took encouragement from this and started to squeeze them much harder. She could tell, from the delighted little squeals that were starting to come out of the interior of Janine’s mouth, that she was loving it. As she looked up the faces of the men in the balaclavas were hardening, but that wasn’t all that was hardening. She could see their pricks sliding in and out of Janine’s mouth- she was taking all three cocks at once, and succeeding in sucking them off successfully, to orgasm. Buckets of cream came spilling out from the sides of her mouth and racing down her cheeks, like a bottle of champagne popped open and spurting over, and Louise realized why it is that the popped-open bottle of champagne was such a turn-on for so many women- it was a reminder of the prick spunking out all over their faces in a state of heightened sexual desire. Pretty soon Janine had succeeded in sucking all three men dry, and, emptied of their seed, they rapidly decamped from the toilet, and she and Janine were left alone. Janine turned round, and gave her a deeply loving kiss, filling her mouth, too, with these men’s sperm, all flavours of cream and saltiness, at first hitting the back of her throat and making her want to vomit with disgust. But then Janine had that same small glass bottle round and under her face, and with her nifty fingers was breaking off a piece of the white, marble-like substance and getting it melted in to the gauze-wire topping in the mouth of the pipe. Louise was transfixed at this point, like a rabbit caught in the glare of the headlamps of an oncoming car, or the stare of a snake. Then, the next thing she knew, her mouth was at the side opening, and she realized it was a stuck-in barrel from a syringe. Ugh, she thought, as she emptied her lungs totally and, with Janine firing up the piece from above, began to inhale. Slowly, nice and slowly did the smoke blacken up and thicken, becoming here almost solid, totally impenetrable. The glass of the bottle seemed to grow an evil staring dragon’s eye that peered deep within her soul, refracting the overhanging light in the cubicle, and, having found whatever it was looking for, drew back, satisfied. Louise felt the stirrings of a deep submissiveness grow from deep within herself, her womb overflowing, flooding its clear stream down the sides of her legs as a thousand and one images of high sex flashed across her mind and opened up ecstatically within her body, like a flower opening to the rays of the sun. The deeper she went with this, the more glorious was the vision of possible fulfillment. She heard Janine saying something into the side of her ear, but the exact words were lost. If she were trying to brainwash her, so much the better. She wanted to be a sex slave, to be a submissive appendage to this great women, used and abused to draw men and women into Her sphere, for Her Supreme Pleasure. What a Garden of Delights. But now that she held her breath, and felt the rays of the holy smoke flood into her, she realized that the taste of the sperm in her mouth was actually quite pleasant, creamy and salty at the same time, actually an honour to be chosen as the receptacle for their cream. How beautiful to become a toilet, to be spat on, shat on, even, certainly pissed all over by these gorgeous Dominants- what a privilege to be chose to be Janine’s Toilet, her mind went over and over it again and again, round and around it. She visualized a lifetime ahead of being sat on, straddled, and forced to kiss off all Janine’s punter’s Apples’- that part where the sun most definitely did not shine, but offering her an opportunity to do just that! She relished the idea of getting her toilet training in with some of these characters, hopefully tonight. Her eyes peeped up at Janine, and she was aware of every flash of her eyelashes, of her eyelids, of how her face was framed by the beauty and majesty of the brilliant lighting they had in this place, where even the toilets were shining and the graffiti on the walls was the latest statement in modern art, with the great red curving lettering spiraling around and along like the path of serpents, the letters having become three dimensional.
She leaned towards Janine, and became aware of her lips opening up into great red flowers, softening around her face, and draining the life breath from her.
‘Breath in! Breath in!’ Janine was saying to her. She was needing to breath in, she was blacking out. Maybe this was how it ended- maybe it was time for this all to end……..phew, this was one hell of a way to go. Maybe the only way, certainly the best way, maybe……. She let some of her breath out, and a cloud of ultra-thick white grey jet immediately escaped, but halfway she stopped- she knew she was losing a lot of the power this way, but it was better than dying. Then she drew her breath in again, and mixed the remaining grey cloud with air, and felt the double, then treble kick thud against her heart and lungs. The lighting from the overheard bulbs grew even brighter, and became even more exotic, designer styled, really expensive, like something out of a TV studio, or a film setting. Maybe this was what it was, in reality- a huge film setting for when the gods came out to play, and when they did, why, was she not now one of their playthings? Was this not what the word communion meant? Where gods and mortals could come together and play? Was there not in the ancient African tribes the practice of bringing the gods down into the material plane- that is the plane of sense and feeling- through the taking of strange and secret substances, and where the god would wish to feel the pleasures of this fleshly realm, through sex with their devotees? What powers, what gifts would these strange deities decide to bestow upon her, she wondered, both during and after the lovemaking that was to come? How amazing to have been chosen for their service, then she let a little more greybeard out from her mouth, and took in some more air- she was feeling the full impact of the smoke now, sailing on the crest of a wave and being able to look down on all of life from where she now found herself. It was as if she had finally made it to the top of a great helter skelter ride, and now could see the totality of life- the entirety of the fairground set out beneath her; she now like a god, or goddess, looking down upon the sum total of human endeavour below- she could see her entire past, and, just around the rim of possible futures, what seemed to lie ahead for her on the road of life- from where she looked right now it looked amazing- that she was going to become the bride of some fantastic deity here on earth. She wanted nothing more in her heart than to remain at this spot of incredibly enlightenment, of total understanding, and of utter sexuality, feeling the upsurge of her own beauty and sexual desire surge through her body, electrifying her mind, and liberating her soul from the crude and savage bondage of time and space. All her life she had waited for this, and now she finally Knew, finally had arrived at Knowledge- and this was her moment of magical marriage, of being crowned Bride of the gods, and, as she looked back to the deeply enchanting eyes of Janine, allowed to escape from her lungs a tad more grey smoke, and replaced even this with some more air, forcing the remnants of the smoke still inside her back through her lungs, feeling the stuff reinforce and redouble its efforts, lifting her onto yet still another crest of gorgeous sexuality.
Janine was leading her out of the cubicle now. The realm she had stumbled into had turned everything into a golden, shining world, where even the toilet seats were seemingly made of some fantastical, marble-like stone, and everyone that was crowding into them for their kicks was a film star, top model, or something top level. She seemed to recognize some of the faces, too- were they the faces of footballers, sportsmen, politicians? Many of the faces were covered, either partially or more completely by masks, but she thought she saw the face of a female member of the royal family underneath one, standing completely naked, with the pussyhairs showing, standing completely out of it, laughing and falling around, next to a similarly naked guy that had the perfect physique of a body guard, also masked up. They were moving back into one of the other chambers, ah yes, she seemed to know where this part was, although it had intensified massively since she had previously come this way. In her addled thinking, Louise remembered thinking that this was like the place she had come in to, when, all that time ago, how many years or decades was it now ?- she had…..then she recalled that it could only have been an hour or so ago. Somewhere she had slipped through the continuum of time and space and traveled twenty years – either into the future, sideways into another realm- or backwards into the past, without even realising it. Maybe that was the condition under which humans were able to travel in time and space- when they least realized it, when the conscious mind was sufficiently overloaded or distracted for the soul or spirit to slip out.
She was being directed down through a swathe of faces and uniforms which seemed instinctively to know who she was and the crowning that had just happened, and parted on either side, to enable her to come closer to where the fierce red glowings were happening- the hot sweet coals seemed to grin when they caught sight of her, smiling sweetly and seductively. She wondered what symbol she was going to be honoured with- then one appeared that she hadn’t seen before. Oh goodness, one specially made up for her- it was lovely, too- a female sow- how appropriate, she thought, as she gazed up lovingly at Janine- something beautifully demeaning and humiliating, so that whoever saw it would know her to be the lowest piece of arse-licking filth in female form ever born- barely worthy to be made to eat her own shit. The symbol as glowering fiercely in the brazier, now, nearing the stage of whiteness upon pearly whiteness that signified readiness to sink its sweet fangs into some receptively submissive female flesh. Around her a circle had appeared, a small clearing of eager onlookers, but for Louise the sound was now dimmed out, and she entered the cleared circle to the accompaniment of a great silence that had sprung up, cocooning her from some of the cackles and laughter of derision which she could see etched on many of the faces. They were all gagging for it- to see her get branded off as Janine’s slut- after that, maybe they could start shooting their loads over her, too, just as a kind of confetti equivalent, really. Louise looked into the eyes of the Brand Master, and saw an incredible cruelty there such as she had nevere before come across outside of a horror film- it was so cold and eerie it made her run thicker with juices even more, and the cream sliding down out of her pussy into a thick wad. The air was heavy with the sacred incense of cum and fanny juice, interwoven between other clouds of noxious and metallic-tasting and smelling substances that were also spreading their pollen throughout the chamber.
In front of her was the face of implacable coldness- the absence of any human warmth or light or compassion, only the visage of absolute cruelty- the kind that would eagerly- yet, to be fair, slowly and methodically- dismember her piece by piece, or bury her underground, slowly reducing her air intake over many days to maximize her last gasps as she descended into hopelessness, and her soul learnt thoroughly that there was no hope in this world or the next.
She found herself guided into a sitting position, into a huge wooden throne, along the rim and armrests of which were scuff marks, presumably from where people had been handcuffed and had struggled against these lovely chains at the last moment, just as the iron had began biting deeply into their flesh, sizzling through their thin, paper-like skin. Skin, funny stuff that- people so used to running around in these paperbags, and their fitting so snugly, that they even got used to them, got used to them fitting, too, so that wherever they went, these outer casings went with them. Imperceptibly, they would peel away, and flake off, covering the floor with their debris so slowly, you wouldn’t see it, until after a month r so if you cleaned up around that time later on you would then realize just how much shite the skin would let off- dirty, filthy, disgusting stuff, how dare she drop her skin! Louise began smiling to herself, as she saw and felt her arms and legs being strapped into the great throne, smelt the fear and excitement that was emanating throughout the chamber. B now someone had dimmed the lights, and the impromptu ceremony was spotlighted, and all the beautiful, multi-coloured lights sprung up, as if possessed with a life of their own, like moving fairies, bringing highlights to various areas, and then moving on, and focusing on other spots of attention, amongst the crowd, the body the congregation of worshippers, gathered around to see the consecration of her body, not even on the altar, but as the altar.
Immediately behind her was Janine, directing her attention, muttering a stream of words, some diabolical cacophony, some of the words in English, others from other languages, some of them even long dead to the use of the human tongue,. Louise thought she heard syllables in Latin and Greek, then something else that might have been Bable for the sense it made. But it was not her that was being addressed with this, but something they were contacting that went beyond her mortal mind and into the vast unknown. Louise felt something stir within her, in her insides, particularly. It was as if some kind of very basic life form was being awakened within her, or possibly even placed there, by these worshippers, initially as an embryo, in order to grow and evolve into a more active and malignant life form as its life span opened, and it began to grow. Standing on the inner rim of the gathering was a uniformed maiden, capped with a German SS cap, complete with SS double thunderbolt cap badge, looking as if she had just stepped from ancient Germanic times into the present, her pure blonde hair was braided in Saxon-maiden form, one on each side of her head, her features severe, the bright red of the lipstick on her lips more reminiscent of s streak of blood licked off the wounds of a captured Celtic or Roman warrior than of any modern cosmeticians creation. Her fingers were also bright red painted, as if with her hands she had ripped apart a man’s genitals, and held them up to the Full Moon she worshipped, high and bright and big in the night sky, calling to her ancestors to witness her act of sacrifice.
From deep within her arse Louise felt it move, as if something had just awakened, and was now already struggling to find itself, gather itself, and start striving to push and push on its way to the outward world. Then there was a whoompf from the brazier, as extra air was pumped into it from underneath, and the whiteness brightened of the metals inside its furnace. Louise could see the big full bellied sow making her merry way over to where she sat, strapped into the chair, when suddenly another pipe was beneath her mouth, and as she crossed her eyes to see how big the piece was that was on its end she could see it was meaty, and mighty, indeed. A flame- long and consistent as an oil rig streaked out from the end of a Bic lighter, and the piece crackled and sank slowly into the gauze. Luise emptied her lungs to be able to take the full force of the blast, and putting her lips to the hold at the bottom end, started, very slowly, to suck and pull through the thick black smoke. It was thicker than she could ever recall, and the taste was of pure metallica- heavy heavy on the taste buds, told her that this was the boom, and even as she slowly, slowly sucked now, slowing down on the intake, making every cell of her lungs carry as maximum impact of blast as they were capable of holding, she took in the thick, almost solid sludge that this pipe offered. Sucking the devil’s dick, she heard from somewhere. When an impossible amount of time had passed, and a thousand and one thoughts and ecstasies had moved through her, she looked back into the bottle’s interior and saw that the innards were still jet black, and unchanging, even as sometimes happened with lesser pipes to the dark grey tone. Not so now. Her lungs were almost full to overbrimming, and now seemed ready to burst. Just a bit more, nice and slow. Be greedy. But don’t worry, because there’s always the next blast after this and its nice to have something to always come back to. The lights in the arena brightened, and the gods themselves were now spiraling down from their lofty heights to walk and move amongst us. Behold, the garden of Eden, she heard, maybe from inside her own head.
From somewhere far off she heard the sizzle of the Great Sow, and a flash of pain and pleasure passed through her as her god touched her, and marked her with the baptismal sign bestowed upon all new devotees chosen to the Path of service. As the Sow was pulled away, Louise saw the expressions of victory and ecstasy on the faces of all those present. Janine moved the pipe beneath her mouth for a further blast, and she settled into that, not even noticing the hiss and bubble that the branding had bestowed upon her arm, as creams and oils were rapidly rubbed into the open wound.
‘There, I own you now, you great sow’ she heard, and, looking up through her heavy eyelashes, saw the severe form of Janine looking down on her, a bevy of instruments of pain-giving capacity in her hands, all looking seasoned with use.

Waiting outside the old church that morning was even more dismal than it normally was. The vicar was starting to crack down on the never-ending waifs and strays that congregated underneath the arches every night as a way of getting out of the rain. Everybody just wanted to move them on, anywhere, it didn’t really matter, just as long as they got progressively out of sight. From the public view as they shifted on the conveyor belt. The homeless, almost all white, were he last of the people ever to get considered for any help from the authorities. The social workers- calling themselves CAT workers- as in Contact and Assessment Teams, would prowl along and talk with the occasional gaggles of youngsters, but no-one here trusted them, particularly. They were more akin to prison officers, the kind of person the system would put in place to watch over you, or to try and enforce your thinking into their patterns. These same social workers would make every promise under the canopy of heaven, but if you took up with them, and trusted them, after a short stay in one of their hostels they would come along and fling you straight out into the street, usually in the early hours of the morning, and usually they would wait until it was raining heavily, just to try and get you to catch the flu. The social workers were heavily known to be peopled by people that were from para-military and other political organizations, such as the far-right National Front, and were even more paranoid than the people they claimed to be trying to help. They would usually be on the look out for those they could get to control, usually through giving them a prescription, then encouraging them to get a bigger and bigger dose each day, so that should they ever try and break free it would by them prove to be nigh-on impossible.
• Tim looked out over the rim of the cardboard box he had huddled himself into. This was his skillet- the spot where he would spend most of the day, except for the brief interludes in which he needed to actually hobble out and get something to eat, drink or smoke. As he looked out past the pillars of the church front, each carved in the form of a Greek god or goddess, he saw the early morning traffic crawling along the Euston Road. If he leaned his head out past the brief railings which lined the front of the churchyard, he could see, by looking to his left, on the other side of the road the bomb-proof British Library, looking like a bunker ready for a massive explosion to be thrown against it than a place of actual study. In its courtyard was a statue of a gigantic man leaning forward over a pair of compasses, the kind used by ship’s navigator’s to measure distances on vector lines and over meridians. This was a representation of some god, perhaps, who was looking down at his still-to- be finalized product of creation and work out where he had gone so utterly wrong. The cars twirled around in the never-ending curls of their one-way systems, incessantly, like characters out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting Tim had once seen, where all over the canvas there were people being changed into animals, items of cutlery, eventually moving through the various delights of their earthly pleasures until they began to meet the demons associated with each of these on the other side of a mist or bridge through which they had to pass. Was this a question, Tim wondered, of life imitating art? He could feel his cluck coming on, now. He had managed to hold onto a small piece of brown for precisely this moment. Pulling himself up in his makeshift sleeping bag, he crouched his forefront into a ball, and thereby manoevred to keep his front space relatively covered from the husts of wind that hurtled through this semi-open space. Looking up and along, at the rows of other people stuffed inside their cardboard boxes, he saw that most of them were still- well asleep was perhaps putting it too strongly but certainly still out of it. Reaching into the lining of his tracksuit bottoms, he pulled out a small, very crumpled silver paper wrap, and carefully opened it, Inside was just enough brown- heroin- to get his day started. It would be just enough to get him on his feet and up and running, to be able to function so as to get together enough dosh that by the end of the day he would have enough money to buy another one. Reaching around into another pocket, he withdrew a piece of silver paper he had specifically kept for this moment, and tapped out a slither of brown powder onto its surface. Shiny side down, dull side up, he put the crease in the paper down which the brown would soon be running. Bringing out the pipe was next- this was a tube, made up out of silver paper, too, but in a carefully designed way, a bit like those paper airplanes that bored kids in classrooms make for themselves, and then launch through the air. This was then rolled tight, so as to collect every molecule of heroin given off in the dragon chasing. Tim gave the outside world one final glance around, to make sure that there weren’t any Old Bill around, ready to pounce on him the moment he started his boot, or, worse, any other junkies that would try and roll him for his line. No, a row of heads on the ground and faces switched off to the world told him it was safe to go on. He had been had over enough times to be caught at this vital moment. Nothing was worse than getting busted- or turned over- just when you were at your most vulnerable. Yet, with the Law of the Street at work, that was precisely the most likely time for such a thing to occur. Living on the street, you really got to see the true face of people, Tim thought, to himself. It was as though because you were broke and – in their eyes, helpless- you didn’t matter. Those that came up offering help were almost invariably people that had some sick reason for doing so- or wanting to be seen or known for doing so. Like the rich people who would willingly pay ten grands for dinner seats at charity events, in the States and over here, too. They didn’t give a flying fuck about who was suffering, or whose suffering was supposedly being addressed by the alleged aims of the charity they were supporting. They only wanted to parade themselves in their ball gowns, or be seen with their beautiful trophy wives, and get their photographs in the fashion and celebrity magazines. To them it was worth all those grands to get that kind of celeb coverage. It was all pure ego. Not that hardly any of the monies ever paid in to these huge money-gathering charities ever got there, anyway. Of each £1 that went in, wasn’t it about a penny that ever arrived in whatever faraway place or for whatever forlorn cause it had been donated? The vast and prestigious buildings that housed these businesses, the chic and sveltely attired ‘secretaries’ who coasted around their corridors, highly-paid whores with clipboards stabled in for the benefit of their punters, the massively-paid ‘professionals’ whose tasks were to raise funds, and keep the entire circus going round. If you looked at their adverts, all incredibly tear-jerking appeals that emphasized it was ‘only two pounds a month’ from you that would go to protect these children from abuse, or from having to drink piss water in their polluted wells. Who could refuse such heart-rending appeals and not for evermore think of themselves as a pure bastard for refusing them? Then there were the websites- if you looked on them you would be immediately taken back by the amount of intricacy in design and lighting that went into the powerful presentations that you would find there. Surprising how many of them carries adverts for new staff, on forty an fifty grands a year, yet also had vacancies for volunteers who were expected to do all the carrying-outs for naff all except a pat on the back occasionally.
Tim leant forward inside his small, self made bivouac. Although hew didn’t know tha time, he knew that son the vicar- or worse, his verger, would be round to start kicking people’s legs to get them out of the church grounds. It had been his allocated duty to do so ever since the homeless of the area had started using the grounds as a place of refuge- a kind of sanctuary. But over the years the entire thing had mushroomed and by now those in charge had grown fed up with so many homeless cluttering up the area in such a visible way. It was no problem them being homeless, but now there seemed to be big plans coming up for King’s Cross, which involved a lot of money. Big big money, turned many heads to look a different way. So, time to get these stinking homeless out the way, off these particular streets- let them eat cake and move on down the road to Westminster, say. Not that the homeless needed any help. This was the great misconception spread about by social worker types and charity worker types keen to cement their positions of power in the new hierarchies that were springing up to deal with these problems.
The homeless were able to look after themselves. Any help offered was a mockery, a barely disguised and piss-takey attempt to put those at risk under some kind of mind-control or mental domination, as part of someone’s attempt at empire-building. The left-wingers were if anything bigger Jobsworths than the right-wingers they claimed to be attempting to depose. Tim vividly remembered his encounter with a charity-a so-called rehab centre called City Roads, where he had managed to get himself checked in. It was based up towards Islington near the Angel, and had over the years established itself as a place where all the flotsam and jetsum was directed by all the other bands of ‘agencies’ working in the drug field in north London. Haringey, Islington, Camden, Westminster, to mention but a few, all had the misconception of this place as a pukker rehab place, or at least as somewhere where those in crisis could get themselves into and cleaned up. Tim had checked in, and immediately found a big Scotsman with ultra-long hair start patting down his pockets. As only someone from the street can know, he had immediately sussed that this bloke was into this trip to try and get his end away into some young arse. All in the name of making sure he wasn’t smuggling drugs into the building, he was made to go through a long list of searches, including the Scotsman making him squat naked in front of him, front ways and back. Hmm, bet you liked that one, Tim thought, as he squatted down with the cheeks of his arse wiggling slightly while the Scottie tried to keep the lust light out of his eyes. Then, for his piece de resistance, Scottie pulled out a set of plastic gloves just to make sure there weren’t any secret compartments hidden in the more innermost recesses of his anal cavity. Tim noticed how all the rehab type blokes seemed to love patting down the trouser pockets of the new inmates. Not that you were allowed out. While he was there they had a visit from the local MP- and everyone seemed to brighten up and look as though halos were hanging from round their heads fro the short durtation.
‘Jolly good show’ the local MP had said, as he looked round, like a visiting General looking in at the officers’ mess, with all the men standing to attention. The only thing missing were the white gloves with which to carry out the inspection, with which he might be able to run his fingers along the rim of some of the cupboards or doorways to see if there was any dust still sitting there.
Then, after the General had left, along with his entourage, they all went back to watching the TV, or playing ping-pong. Round about eleven one person would be nominated to go along with one of the rehab workers to the local shop where all the tobacco for each person would be picked up. You would be given £2-50p spending money, each day, and this after having to sign all of you dole money over to the charity- or whatever it was- that actually owned City Roads. Someone- whoever the shareholders- or, to use the modern, cropped word, ‘stakeholders’ were, were making money hand over fist out of all these junkies hobbling in, and being dosed to their eyeballs with the huge scripts that the doctor there was banging out.
Tim remembered his meeting with him. He had been a South African, with an especially large medallion-like gold ring on one of his fingers. ‘It was a gift from someone in Israel’ he said, cheerfully. It seemed to be a lion or some such animal designed on it.
‘How much are you on?’ the doctor had asked him. Tim knew from experience that however much he said, this guy was going to cut him down by half. So, the ruse was to double the amount you claimed to be using.
‘I am on about a hundred mills a day’ Tim had replied. In reality, his own script of methadone was about forty mills, and half of that he regularly gave away to his girlfriend.
Thew doctor looked through his notes, and spotted this inconsistency.
‘But your notes say that you are on forty mills a day’ he queried.
‘Yes,’ Tim answered, having prepared this part of his answer long in advance, ‘But I have to top it up because it’s not enough to cover me’. The doctor looked back to his notes, and seemed to nod. Result? He was scripted for sixty mills, and later that day was summoned by the mighty Scotsman up to the medical room where his meth was already poured out and waiting for him. It stood in a glass cup, with the sunlight shining through the window behind it, bringing the bright green juice to life and making it veritably light up with its own radiance.
The Scotsman was standing there with a female nurse, both of them silent and menacing as a pair of insects that have suddenly come face to face with one of the predators that feed upon them. Tim knew something wasn’t right. They seemed to know him, but were busy pretending they didn’t. As he knocked back the linctus, the idea entered his mind that they might have added a top up into it- he suspected a liquid cosh. Minutes later, when he had made his way downstairs and sat back on the beaten-up old sofa that was reserved for the use of the junkies, he felt a massive blast of unconsciousness and drowsiness wash through him. He could barely sit up, let alone even hold in his hand the roll-up he had just taken fifteen minutes to try and put together. It dawned on him that his intuition was serving him well. Upstairs in the medication room he had been aware of the beady and excited eyes of the two goons on the green shining methadone as he had raised it to his lips and swallowed. He had even then felt the perverse pleasure of the poisoners as they watched their unsuspecting victim knock back what he thought was going to be his medication. Now the room was swimming, and it was becoming difficult to stay in an upright seated position. He looked at the television screen and saw the newsflash- that the IRA had let off a bomb outside the BBC studios in west London. He was dimly aware of some of the others in the rehab- some of them either pretending to be or playing the role of patients-were coming in to gloat over their apparent victory- that of getting him helpless. At last he would be unable to resist whatever was being planned next for him. He wondered what that might be. When some of them saw what was happening outside their hallowed BBC they seemed to fly into a barely suppressed fury. Whatever had happened there was somehow affecting whatever mini-drama was being played out here. Although he couldn’t quite see what the connection was
It was patently obvious that in their books there was one. Then it came to him- they had to have been so paranoid as to have thought him some kind of active participant in the IRA. The truth of this idea struck with the kind of ferocity and uncompromising intensity that such impossible-to-believe notions. These people themselves must be linked to some extremist organization, probably on the opposite side of the spectrum from the one they hallucinated all their suspected enemies belonging to. Whatever it was, Tim knew that he was right in the middle of a very mad bunch of people, and that his life was in danger. Because of what had just happened at the BBC, whatever plans they had had for him were now put on hold, it seemed.
Just then, he thought it would be a good idea to get out from this common-room, in which people were now dotted all around him, scowling and staring menacingly. Behind him some apparently homeless skinhead crack user was sitting, his mask a barely concealed mask of outrage as he looked from the TV screen to him, and back again- and again. Others were coming in- one of the girls- some quite middle class girl that looked as though she would have been more at home in an office in the City came and sat down. The other of the two girls that was staying at the time, a very thin girl from Neasden, who had been clucking madly when she had first been brought in- came and sat down next to him. She had previously been a bit chatty with him, even to the point of creating jealousy in the other girl, being able to monopolize all the attention away from her. She started chatting with him, initially about TV programes, which would be better to watch, something about animal rescue or a rerun of a soap. He knew that there was a reason for the girl to talk with him. Someone had told her to do just that. There was a purposefulness and a directionlessness about her conversation that was both instantly concealing and simultaneously revealing about what she was doing there with him. She was trying to get behind his defences. Probably to sabotage him in some way later on.
Tim wondered why he was becoming so paranoid. Maybe that’s all it was. But no, whenever his intuition was sending him signals such as these if he ignored them it would be to his own detriment. He had had this lesson over and over again many times throughout the years, and knew better than to ignore what he was now sensing.
Pulling himself upright, and finding that the planet’s gravity had increased many times since that half an hour ago of downing the green shining methadone- plus whatever else the two assailants up there had slipped into it- some kind of liquid cosh- he stumbled up the stairs and made it to the third floor, which is where the men were roomed. In his room were two other beds, both singles, and the window was half-open, the maximum amount of opening it would go to. He sat on the bed and put his head through and out into the fresh air of the street outside. It was cold and invigorating. He looked up and down the wide expanse of City Road and saw the traffic snaking up and along from Angel down towards King’s Cross- he saw a young –looking girl and from the way she moved thought it was Claire- a young women that he had met down the Cross that had treated him now and again to a blast from her crack pipe. He wondered where she was- if she was even still alive. It was strange the thoughts you had when you were detoxing- although how he was supposed to be detoxing when he was higher here than he had been in weeks was beyond him. But supposedly ‘detoxing’, then, let me put it that way, he thought to himself. ‘They have put me up here on palookaville, and not for no reason’ Tim thought to himself. Deep within his own waters he knew that the Jobsworths were setting him up for somehting. He wasn’t as daft as maybe some of the other dumplings they were mor used to dealing with. He had survived a thousand and one things which they- in their cushioned little lives- would probably never come across, even. Survived? He had positively flourished! True, he might have ‘fuck all to show for it’, in a material sense, but then who did, really? Britain wasn’t the States, where those that worked hard actually seemed to get ahead and accrue benefits from their labours. Here, in Britain, people were so used to slaving all their hard lives just to pay all their money over to the variety of people who called claiming their rents. The Brits were used to being serfs- landless peasants, scratching aorund with a few chickens and thweir children in their little plots all life long. Where the wealth went nobody ever knew- but for sure the lights always burned bright from the chandeliers in the rooms along Regent’s park, in the great houses where the wealthy lived.
While sitting on his bed, thinking of Scanky Claire, the little rip off bitch, still he kind of loved her, certainly missed her and the things she would say and do. He remembered once she had gone out and more or less grabbed hold of a punter, and brought him straight back, almost holding onto him by the balls in case he got nervous of the junkie surroundings she was leading him back into for the screw. She had obviously been paid already, because instead of taking the punter – a gigantic Polish or east European fellow- up to the bonking bed- a massively spunk and blood stained bed where all the spunking was done- she started fucking about. Stepping outside the room for a split second, she brought her own hand up to her face and with the other hand made the sound of slapping- as if she were being slapped by him- Tim- out of sight of the punter. The punter immediately jumped up to her rescue- cunt- he wanted to play the role of rescuer, probably so he could carry her off for his own pleasures. Claire made out she was scared, and begged Tim not to slap her any more. The punter made to grab her and head for the door; but by now Claire realized that she had fucked up- Tim made no move to protect her from this giant. If she thought she could provoke an incident between him and this gut she had been mistaken. Tim was more than happy to see him dragging her oout the door. Poor Skanky Claire- well, if she wanted to try and set him up to get beaten let her go. She could be the Polish giant’s slave from now on. Tim was getting fed up with the chaotic element brought into his life by this girl anyway. He preferred having his own meth, or whatever, and having a peaceful routine to his small life- left to his own devices the meth was more than enough- in fact on his own, prior to Claire’s return into his life, he had been taking himself down in his daily dosage from the original fifty mills right down to about twenty five.
Just then two odd bods- really scummy cockney crim types came showing their thin and mean faces outside his door. The way they were skulking about out there instantly told him that they were trying to build up enough courage to try and rush him, but, in the absence of any gear, they were having a hard time. These were the types that would need a stiff shot of vodka, or whatever, before grabbing some helpless woman’s handbag or cutting her in the street for whatever they could get. But now that there wasn’t any source for their dutch courage, they were fucked. These were the types that would need to find a bigger fella- a coon was what this type would normally try and find- someone who had the actual bottle to do the grabbing- while they would scuttle along behind and try and make out how useful they had been while the smoking up was going on afterwards. Real cuntholes. Tim could read these little wankers like a book. They infested every nook and cranny of London’s lowlife- it had become his lot that these were the lowbreeds he was stuck in hell with. If not these exact individuals, then this type.
The next thing he knew Scottie was bounding into the room, along with some other heavy-looking thug.
‘You’re going to have to leave!’ he commanded. ‘I can’t guarantee your safety here anymore.’ It was pretty much as he had expected. With these rehab types you coud always expect to get stabbed in the back when you were most vulnerable. Normally they waited, though, until you were clucking or it was raining heavily, outside. Hopefully, then, you would get soaked and develop pneumonia. Hard to believe for normal people, safely removed from the machinations of types such as these, but there you go. These people functioned on a very negative and malicious wavelength- in fact, it was only later that Tim realise how much of this was already common knowledge- to a large extent it was only amongst the really broke and down and out junkies that there seemed any naivety left over for the rehab types. Perhaps that was why society- at least in Britain- was so cynical and doubtful about any public funding for these places. Not only was in known that they hardly ever succeeded in getting any junkie off the stuff for very long, the self-serving types that gravitated to working with junkies were seen by society in the same way as were psychiatric nurses; basically when someone said they wanted to help such and such a person, it meant they wanted to shaft them. There were a lot of kinky old cunts out there, Tim knew for real.
Many of them couldn’t get a job in any proper capacity- there inadequacies would be exposed to the pale light of day and there stupidities would become too apparent. That as why they preferred to slip into the half-light world of the drug culture, where they could float about, even getting a high salary off someone, and all for floating about with pieces of paper in their hand.
It was a fine old life, to be sure. On top of that was all the pussy they might be able to ensnare along the way. Don’t forget, people’s scripts could get mislaid, of course, unless certain customs of humility and propriety were observed. A little bit of groveling went a long way. Tim remembered from going to DASH a drug service in Haringey, when he had been hanging around that area, and had been sufficiently together to have qualified as a state registered addict. Going along to their building at the back of St. Anne’s hospital in Tottenham he had always enjoyed the female drug worker flashing her arse at him as she led him up the steps. Did he ever have a chance of getting his tongue down on that pussy- probably not- but it was nice to get a flashback anyway. So things couldn’t have been that bad. It was astonishing, really, how much you could get to read into small signs and events in your daily life. But when there wasn’t that much in fact going on in any objective sense in your life, little things became bigger and eventually assumed the significance of divine revelations. At another point Tim would wander along various streets, and began to notice that suddenly dozens of people had started dumping old suitcases outside their front doors by the side of their bins. He had never noticed this before, but even then realized that this was a subjective phenomenon he was going through, rather than objective. For sure people had probably always been dumping such old and broken suitcases outside their doors, for to be carried away. It was just that at this phase, for some reason, his unconscious mind was only just starting to notice it. But, from one sober and drug-free time in his life, when he had done a couple of courses in hypnotherapy, and had learnt about the way in which the unconscious mind worked, he knew that his mind was giving him a sign of some kind. The Irish called this ‘fey’- and meant magic or having been touched by magic. But in hypnotherapy, and other studies of the mind, there was a special phrase or term for this phenomenon. It was most clearly visible when, say, you bought a red BMW- wherever you went you then tended to see red BMWs; or, if you were a cat burglar, you tended to meet other cat burglars, and could even spot them in the crows.

But, with the two heavies bundling him out the door, there was little else he could do other than go along with them, for the ride. The black one, in particular, seemed keen to prove himself capable, and, who knows, maybe earn himself a pat on the back- or even a free piece of floor to sleep on. That was the sort of way in which these criminals repaid their underlings. In any event, Tim knew that he had certain rights- or right, singular, and that was to retrieve from them the cost of a one-day travel card- some four pounds, which, when he raised it with them, they grudgingly mulled over and then relinquished over, slamming the coins down into the flat of his hand with as much contempt as possible. Then he was out the door, and walking up towards the Angel tube station, working out where he was now going to go and do. Outside the tube entrance, silhouetted against the internal lights, was the shadowy form of a used-ticket recycler. These were guys that collected up all the used tickets from people finishing their journeys, and sold them back to others at a lower price than you had to pay through one of their machines. Normally you would get a ticket for about half price this way, which for anyone out of a job or without money was a fair few quid, ordinarily.
In the street camaraderie familiar to those that have served their time in this way, he greeted the fella, and duly related his story. It was good to have someone who knew what it was all about, and this guy was, like him, someone that had to stand in the cold and the rain for hours at a time in order to get together the money for his brown, too. Tim was glad that he had blagged twice his normal script off them in there; by his reckoning, he probably had as much as a couple of days to go before all that extra shit ran out in his system and he returned to planet cluck. But by then, long before then, he would make it back up to St. Anne’s and get his script back. The first thing the bureaucrats had done when he had gone into City Roads was make him sign dozens of papers turning over all his dole money to them, so that they had that as extra leverage. He had thought it strange, even then. Surely this place, if it was linked with DASH, and St. Anne’s, was part of the NHS- and if so, why should he be required to hand over all his meager social security money to them? It wasn’t till later on down the line that he found out that this place was actually a private company- the Odysseus Trust, and was run as a business, to make money, and, as its website explained, ‘To secure the interests of our stakeholders’- they had turned to the new Labour variant of the word ‘shareholders’, which obviously sounded too much like Victorian capitalism, even for their tastes. Getting down on the platform, he was amazed at how much this station had changed since the last time he remembered using it. Before, during the 90s, this place had been really ancient-looking, with a great open platform across which you could see the trains coming and going in all directions. Now, it was all bricked in and much warmer, at least. The system seemed to be spending money in some places at least in order to keep things running. But where to go- oh yes, now it came to him. He had written down on a piece of paper the phone number for a place not far from here- the Islington churches cold weather shelter. This was a scheme run in Islington consisting of seven churches, of all denominations, gathered together to be able to take it in turns to provide a place for twelve men to come along, be fed, and be bedded down in camp beds for the night. They operated a roster system, each taking on the responsibility for a particular night of the week. Tim had stayed with them before, and it was really great to have somewhere where the people were prepared to feed you and basically look after you for the night. You had to ring up the organizer each time you wanted to stay, just to book ahead, as sometimes they got oversubscribed. But if it came to it, they knew that street people weren’t that brilliant about phoning up and making hotel-style reservations. There was usually too much going on ‘in the now’ for them to be able to get it together to keep a particular number handy and actually ring it prior to realizing that they were now stuck out on the street for the night. So, even if the failed to book ahead, if the accommodating church could take them in then taken in they would be. Social worker types, usually so stuck up their own arses with their own self-importance, would always relish such an opportunity to diss someone, especially someone in real need. Tim- like all street people, had long since realized that these were the greatest piss-takers of the genuinely needy, and tended to gravitate towards jobs such ass these where they could rub it in, and feel a bit superior. They were not unlike mental health nurses, who usually loved to strap people down and take the piss that way- or prison officer types, who relished having power of their inmates. But these people seemed to be genuine Christians, and turned out to run their show, with some of their volunteers assigned to cooking up really good dinners- such as beef casseroles- while in the common room a TV played and the fellas gathered round rolling the dog ends that they had picked up alongside bus stops during the day. These they now emptied out into an opened newspaper double spread, and peeled out the extra rich tobacco from each snout, or dogend. Soon, each man had amassed a small pile – pyramid- of rich smelling tobacco, and as recycling this into a series of new rollups. Some of the blokes put small cardboard filters into the ends, peeling off small strips of cardboard from the RIZLA brand packets of cigarette papers, some of these being orange, others green, others still liquorice, the papers of these being dark brown, and which gave off a slightly scented flavour to the smoke as it burned. The one thing all packs had in common was the backward slant lettering of RIZLA on each of them, along with the small, equal-armed cross which accompanied them. When the men lit up the smell in the air was acrid, although if you were an old-time junkie it was something that, as a smoker yourself, you had long-since become accustomed to. How those well-meaning Christian folks put up with it though was amazing, Tim thought; it showed him the true extent of their preparedness to make sacrifices for the comfort of those they had come to look after for the night.
On the train, he thought quickly as to which church would be the one open that evening. He thought it might be the big one up on Highbury Islington, just a little down from the roundabout. It was an old building, dating back who knew when, probably medieval times originally, but this building seemed Victorian. Tim had stayed in a number of these churches- every winter they gathered together and opened up for a small smattering of homeless people. He hoped he had it right- without having phoned ahead and booked on the phone he knew he was taking a chance by just turning up. If it came to it he would head on over to one of the crack houses he knew round the Cross and just hang out there. It was cuntish staying on the street, especially when by using your nut a bit you could find a place to squeeze in, even if it was at a pinch.
He made his way out the tube entrance to Highbury, Islington, and all around him swirled the merry crowds of the singles, the professional, the yuppies, all of whom seemed to be there, in their full glamour, health and prosperity. Everyone around him seemed arm in arm and in love, with couples gazing tenderly into each other’s eyes as they made their way along from one wine bar to the restaurant of their choice. Tim made his way across the top of Upper Street and the old church lay before him, on the other side of the road. Round the small sidestreet he found the old gateway, with the iron gate shut across it. It was still too soon for opening time, then. One or two old timers hung around, like ghosts in the night, waiting for the doors to open. He shivered in the cold- the wind was beginning to get to him and he began to look forward to getting a meal. One of the old alkies came up to him. ‘Do you fancy a drink?’ the old boy asked him, in his Irish accent. Well, here was a turn up for the books. It wasn’t every day that you got an invite for a free drink.
‘Yeah, OK’ Tim replied, and he and his new found friend both began strolling further into the ancient and tiny side streets of Islington True. It was immediately like going back in time a couple of hundred years. Ahead through the darkness a pub appeared lit up like a ship, festooned with lights and welcoming as a tavern in a storm. Inside, all was warm and the sounds gentle- a wave of relaxed murmuring in the air, combined with the aura of tobacco smoke and the scent of ales. The Irish man bought them both a drink, and together they sat down. On the walls were portraits of a man on a white horse. Some royal figure, Tim supposed, out of history, somewhere.
‘Let’s move further down here’, the Irish man said, his voice nice and gentle, a rich and hypnotic brogue, blending in with the entire ambience of the pub. If the pub could have spoke, Tim thought, it would have been in a voice such as his.
Tim followed him further down into a recess, down and away from where the counterstaff might be able to hear anything of what was said.
The drink went straight back down his throat, and Tim appreciated feeling the stuff inside him. When he did eventually get off the gear, he reflected, he would make a point of sticking to an occasional drink- ideally real ales, he thought. What a nice, pleasant, socially acceptable kind of vice to have, he thought, as the drink flowed sweetly down the back of his throat. God, if only he could get off this stuff. This time he would make a point of staying off it, too. Fuck me. You didn’t get too many chances in life, he was now beginning to realize, so best to start making the most of them. Each time you came off it washarder to catch up with where you should have been. Each time the kinds of jobs available seemed more and more demeaning, and less and less easy to find. Increasingly he seemed to be competing with east Europeans and Turkish peasants straight in from war zones, all of whom were prepared to work- and work hard- for a fraction of what he should have been getting by then. Each time he came off the gear, he noticed, chunks of his life for up to several years had passed by, suddenly disappeared with a puff of smoke. He was now getting into his thirties. He didn’t mind, he still had massive amounts of life to get through, didn’t he? Each time a further set of friends- if friends wasn’t too strong a word for his needle buddies- had all vanished off somewhere, either to hospital, cemetery, or jail. Others disappeared off to- well, no-one ever knew, really. Maybe you would never know, unless you happened to be one of those destined to follow in their footsteps. Maybe then you would wake up in a basement somewhere with your trousers down by your ankles and blood seeping out of your arse, your wrists and ankles in chains. Then, as your eyes became accustomed to the darkness, you began to notice the presence of your former friends all chained up around you, or what was left of them. It was a nightmare vision his head came bringing back to him. He hated that picture returning, and more than anything else right then and there wanted to drown it out – he picked up his pint and slogged it back. Fuck me, he thought, I’ve nearly finished the fucker. What a shame. Maybe the Paddy was expecting him to buy a return pint. He hadn’t any money. The Paddy was slowing eyeing him up, and with a seasoned eye seemed to find whatever it was he was looking for. There was an almost imperceptible nod or wink, as he raised his glass to his lips, and took a deep swallow. For a wild second Tim felt that the man was swallowing his soul as his Adam’s apple gulped up and down. There was an instant of crystalline brilliance as he looked across the table and realized that in some weird way he was now a part of this man’s plan, if you could call it that. He gazed morosely at his now emptied glass, sadly reminiscing the suds around the edge of the rim.
‘Fancy another?’ Paddy asked him. ‘You look as though you’ve got something of a thirst about you.’ This was a man after his own heart, Tim thought to himself, as a smile crept out across his face.
‘OK, that would be nice’ he replied, reaching out to touch his own glass, and finding that the Paddy was also placing his own into it, as well, along with a twenty pound note. A fucking twenty! He tried to hide his automatic gasp- instantly the image of legging out the door came to him, with this he could dash off and score. But wait a minute, why be so fucking greedy? It was only the totally desperate and stupidest junkies that acted that way. He was OK for now- he had some drink or even drinks coming up- to be followed by a warm meal and a place to sleep- hopefully. Though he hadn’t had much chance to bok in, he would see if they could squeeze him in- nortmally if they had a space they did so, but if not, then he would slope off- ideally after getting the meal off them, and do his own thing. He restrained himself, took hold of himself, and realize that he was being put to the test. This bloke knew what he was up to, for sure. Tim had the funny sensation he was being measured up for something. Maybe the bloke had a spot of kiting he wanted helping out with. This time of year there were plenty of bent earners going the rounds, for those that weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and take a risk. Mind you, the other side of that coin was that all these ‘earners’ were really risky- such as cashing in credit cards that had just been mugged off people round the proverbial corner. You nevr knew how long ago the person had been mugged- the cunts knocking out the cards always said that it had only just happened, but then when you went to get goods from a supermarket and the usual fifty quid cash back the fucking whistle went and you had to get out from the surrounding security guards before they could hem you in. Once they had you surrounded, you would have to answer piles of questions such as your post code, and date of birth. Of course, you didn’t really have to answer any of these questions- there were some who had enough effrontery to bluff their way out from under even this kind of barrage, but if you were clucking or just really junkified in your appearance the guards could tell and you knew and they knew, too, that it was all game over by then. Even in the distance you could hear the sirens of the Old Bill coming to give you your free ride in a police car, and it was off my son for a trip to the local nick. But Tim had a funny feeling about this character. It was part of junky folklore- the appearance of a mysterious stranger who would whisk you off to somewhere it was always warm and safe- and help you, care for you. Like the stories of fairies in Irish and other folklore, where the astonished traveler would be granted three wishes, for instance. It was almost like what they called these days urban legends- you never got to meet the person whose arse got bitten sitting on the toilet seat, or who woke up one morning after a night’s carousing, minus one kidney, but you were always at least one or two steps removed. Still, in general, that was close enough.
There was something about this bloke, though, that hinted at perhaps profitable things to come.
He decided against running out the door and heading for the dealer. Deep inside himself, Tim had if not a religious belief, then a superstition that evil deeds were repaid with misfortune, especially betrayals of friendship or trust. He bought two more pints, and religiously brought the man’s change back to him, even resisting the temptation to pocket a spare quid for whatever the morning might bring. He was more interested in establishing himself as trustworthy in this man’s eyes- it could be that this bloke had a plan, or an idea for something profitable that might lead him out of this situation, this condition of helplessness and desperation. Something had to happen. In the morning his plan was to get back toe social security office, get his claim back on, and then head off to St. Anne’s and get his script back. Hopefully the blonde girl that handled all the scripts wouldn’t fuck him about too much. She was some born yet-again Christian that waltzed about with a tatty spider tattooed on her naked belly, where through her button was a series of metal rings. The spider looked as though it had just crawled out from her minge, tired and breathless, wobbly on its thin legs as it staggered up out of this black hole. Another arse wiggler- though he was coming across so much of it, Tim thought with a reflective note, that he shouldn’t complain. Mind you, he wasn’t totally fucked yet, though, it dawned on him, that was what every junkie thought until it finally hit. Inherent in every junkie’s thinking was the notion that they were somehow blessed or favoured by the gods, and would come out of every situation, every challenge, on top, and successful. Yet, instead, the drug residue increased in their minds and the fatty tissues of their bodies, and more and more their systems became choked by the toxics and poisons that built up there, over the years. They themselves would never notice their own minds becoming increasingly confused, their own speech more rambling, and their behaviour increasingly eccentric- but everyone else would.
Sitting down with the bloke, Tim thought it about time he asked him his name at least.
‘Michael’ the man replied, leaning slightly forward, as if he were imparting a secret. The man took the drink to his lips, and sipped, steadfastly gazing at Tim all the while. Suddenly Tim felt as though he were naked under this man’s gaze, realized he was still a bit thirsty, and took up his glass, too. The flavour of the brew seemed laden with herbs, or whatever it was that went into these brews. When you looked at what was written up on the blackboards that advertised these drinks, you might be forgiven for being deceived into thinking that the were something exotic, made up from all their great-sounding ingredients. But in the end of the day it was all just plonk, or rot-gut, no matter how the fucking capitalistic bastards tried to dress up their poisons. It must be the way the shit run through ya, Tim thought, as he noticed a slightly more aggressive vibe start pounding away inside himself. Not aggressive, exactly, but more energetic, let me put it that way, he thought.
It was clear the guy Michael- Michael- that was the fucker’s name, yeah?- had something to say. He leaned forward, in the act of making contrition, yeah wottsits, like now I’m a fucking confessional, or some cunthole, Tim thought. He always got a bit more sarkey whenever the juice started through him. Blah de blah, here comes the old cunthole, he caught himself thinking. His eyes skidded up at the old fart just then, just as, dead on cue, the cunt started talking about some sauna he uised to go to, where there were guys as well as girls doing these massages. Yeah, Tim thought, wait for it, here it comes.
‘Well, from what I heard’ Paddy was saying, ‘The guys used to like their dicky as much as the girls’. He followed this up with a little glance straight into Tim’s face. Then Tim could see that his eyes were staring straight at his balls. Kinky old cunt, Tim thought, still it’s been a while, and I could do with a spot of the old cock-knocking. How nice just to stretch out and bang each others’ dicks into each other, until they both blasted away at each other, leaving the two of them soaked in spunk, and the bed nice and christened, too. Sweet dreams, Tim thought. It was nice to get propositioned, even if it only led back to another man’s dick. He remembered some of his old-time wanking themes from long ago, especially at the approved school where they had held wanking tournaments, with a group of up to a dozen lads all pumping over, and eventually into, a small piece of bread. The last man to come would be the one that had to eat the bread, all beautifully drenched in cum stains. Sometimes the blend was salty, Tim recalled, other times there would be a blend of flavours. After a few months of this the drenched bread had affixed itself as a permanent part of his wanking arsenal. In fact, he found it impossible to come at all without focusing on that delightful experience. It hadn’t just been the sense of humiliation from finding the soaking bread inside his own mouth, being made to allow it to slowly melt away. He hadn’t been allowed to swallow it down quickly. The other lads there wanted him to get the full benefit, and have all those vitamins filter into his system nice and easy. As the bread gradually dissolved, Tim had had to show it by opening his mouth every fifteen minutes or so, and gargling the liquids in the back of his throat, much to the additional delight of his compatriots. They had even made him hum various tunes- one of which was ‘Danny Boy’, with the cum juice running down the side of his mouth.
He was getting the picture with this bloke. He had noticed the nice crispiness of the £20 note that this bloke had pulled out, and wondered how much more he might have on him. A vision of grands sitting in there came to his mind, and he began to have thoughts about rolling the bastard. He wondered if he could pull it off himself, or if he shouldn’t bring someone else into the picture. But usually if you did that the other robber would make off with all the proceeds, or maybe offer a small twenty or something out of it, claiming there had been fuck all in the blag. Because if you were too weak to pull off the blag yourself, it meant that you were going to be too weak to resist the entry of anyone else into the equation. The jungle had its own law, its own food chain, its own pecking order.
The main thing right now was to keep it friendly and open with this guy- what was his name again- oh yeah, Micheal.
‘I might be able to put a few things your way, if you were interested. I’m in need of someone I can trust. A sort of right-hand man’. The drinks continued to flow, and when Tim next looked up he saw that the clock had gone round about an hour since he had last looked at it, sitting there above their heads, amongst the Toby jugs, with their faces of pirates and other Olde English characters on the front of them, looking down from their perch.
Best to play it straight with this bloke, the thought came into his mind.
‘Hadn’t we best get moving along to the Crypt?’ Tim asked Michael. The Crypt was the street name for where they put their dossers, after the meal. It was the colloquial title for where all the beds lay out in military-style rows.
‘Aye,’ replied Michael, looking at a wristwatch which, although it had been on his arm all along, had remained discretely hidden until now. ‘I suppose now would be as good a time as any for getting our place. Did you phone up and book?’ Michael asked him.
‘No, I’ve just come out of City Roads.’ Michael gave him a slightly knowing look back. It was clear that he had heard of the place- almost everyone on the street had heard of it, along with some intimation regarding its tendency to keep booting people out unceremoniously in the middle of the night. In all probability, though, there was an infinitude of details about it he didn’t know. A rage began to blow, somewhere deep and hard inside Tim, as he thought about the thuggish way all these rehab places were run. There was something deeply rotten about this society, he thought, that allowed people like that to worm their rat-like way into positions where they could abuse the trust and responsibility placed in them by those, probably more idealistically –motivated types, that had founded those establishments and charities in the first place.
Together they got up, and, looking down at the table, spotted that they each had worked their way systematically through several pints. Normally the bar staff tended to run around and clean out already empty ashtrays and grab back empty glasses at every single opportunity. Perhaps it had something to do with glasses getting nicked. But, possibly because the dinking spot that Michael had chosen for them was a bit out the way, round the side of a corner, the staff had apparently missed this. It was not until he stepped outside and into the street that, feeling the cold blast of the wintry evening against his body, Tim felt the countervailing influence of the drinks inside him. They definitely cheered him up, and he hoped that the smell of them on his breath wasn’t now going to count against him as he tried to blag his way into the church building to stay the night.
He explained his position to Michael, that he hadn’t booked, and wondered if they were going to be all jobsworthy and ‘more than my jobsworth mate’ in their attitude, in the way that all too many of these types of charity staff liked the opportunity to become whenever they thought they could get away with it and make some less fortunate or vulnerable person squirm.There was a particular breed that England spawned, that , unable to get a partner or anything positive going in their own lives for themselves, instead they devoted their energies to making life as difficult as possible for others. This was the type that frequented these charities as volunteers, or phone lines, ‘help’ lines, and other such institutions where the public would unthinkingly, and trustingly give these types a pat on the back, but remain unaware of the sheer maliciousness that motivated them in the first place. These were the types that when they drove buses, loved to be able to turn away a mother and her pram even when the bus had ample space, or, as parking attendants, wait around a corner for the chance to spring out and have some one’s car towed away as soon as they got out and left it.
The drug rehab field was full of these types. Tim recalled a time when he had been invited to a meeting of a drug advisory service, in his capacity as a drug user, and found himself sitting round in a circle with mental health nurses. These were the types that were inwardly always itching to stab their victims with syringes and drug them up full of liquid coshes, and it was amazing for Tim to sit there and hear their shit. Apparently the local health service had awarded them more money. So, the fist thing they did right then was shut down al the money they were spending on counseling services for their clients, and instead put all of the £35 grand into creating a new job for one of their star boys- a new, up and coming contender of a social worker who was now calling himself ‘Head of Strategy’, as if he had delusions about being some great military genius. These types loved their little job titles, such as Team Leader, or anything that gave off a sense of greatness. All little empire builders, or so they thought. Until they came back down to earth when they tried to get a mortgage and suddenly found that all they could afford to buy was a broom cupboard, and live little better- if at all- than the druggies they shunted off to live in rabbit hutches with their single beds, tint tables and miniature chairs crammed inside.
Tim recalled one occasion when he had tried to get help from these types- the ‘Key worker’ had handed him a scrappy letter addressed to the Head of Housing which he had carried- like a real clown, now, he realized- down to APEX House, the building in Haringey which dealt with the housing.
Inside the great hall was a vast plethora of people, most of who, he realized, couldn’t speak any English. Up on the walls were signs in Turkish, and something else. In the four rows of chairs, his was the only white person there. In front of him a gaggle of what looked like Africans suddenly got up, and, all speaking in their language hurriedly, scuttled off to some hidden corner, the stout and very dark father-looking character and similarly looking mother equivalent shooing a gaggle of children along. Tim had heard one of the famous routines the Africans did was lend each other their kids, and then they would trapse round from one council office to another until they got housed. The people dishing out the council housing had no way of knowing whose kid was whose- the Nigerian passports could be written up and forged to say whatever their buyers wanted them to. All with a view to securing basically free housing or next-to-free housing from their new-found host country. Looking further along the lines Tim saw a similar gaggle of Turkish-looking refugees, waiting, the children bored and listless and beginning to writhe in their stiff-backed chairs while their parents cussed them. Eventually, they, too got sorted out with something, but as the day wore on Tim was beginning to realize the fact that he wasn’t going to get any help at all from these people. Eventually one of the bored-looking Caribbean girls from behind the counter called his name and said that as it was Christmas there was no-one there to process his papers. Which struck him as strange, as there seemed to be plenty of people able to process the housing claims of all these dozens of refugees.
As the young girl was speaking, they obviously expected him to start going ballistic, as two security guards had slowly but surely maneuvered closer to him, coming up on him from behind, while he had listened to her. So, was this was being done to provoke him
into an outburst, or with the expectation that this might come about anyway? Either way, he found himself back on the street with fuck all help from the Housing Services. As he stepped back into the cold blast of the north wind, he couldn’t help but feel within himself a resentment of those others inside that building that were getting sorted out with flats and houses. The bastards. The middle class- judgemental little jobsworths that they were, by definition, might call it racism, but in reality it was the bitterness felt by any man against someone else that was getting- fore whatever reason- preferential treatment based on race or class.
These people, he felt, were getting sorted because they were ‘refugees’- whereas the council was under little or no pressure to look after drug-addicted wasters like himself. Thus, those of the drug scene tended to cluster together, sorting one another out in small teams of girls and guys right across the country. And, as things got tighter, these clusters- cells, in effect- became more and more tightly knit. The guys would give back-up to the girls, who were often the main income generators. This included protection, or even assistance in pulling off robberies. The girls, fed up with having to take punters inside themselves for tiny amounts of money, often with the sores, infections, and bruisings that that entailed, would eventually get to breaking point when they saw just how much money was carried around by some of the punters that so often begrudged shelling out the twenty or thirty quids to these girls for their services. So, with a little help from their friends, they would set the bastards up for a roll. Very often, though, the girl would be hard put-to to get her slice of the proceeds after the event- the robbers would be off quickly down to the crack house to smoke the proceeds, and the girls would often have to rush to catch up with them there before the money got all spent out. Many of the girls were forced to lure punters into dark alleys, or take them back to squats where the robbers would be awaiting their arrival. In these situations, the punters were often mercilessly beaten for their pin numbers, and find themselves stripped of everything, including their cars.
Some punters were even kidnapped by the robbers- just tied up if the girl had been able to lure them back to her squat, and day after day his bank account would be emptied while the blaggers- including the girl- sat around and smoked it in front of him, sometimes even making him take part. Many a punter would be killed this way, their body being sometimes spirited away, never to reappear, or deliberately overdosed, so that when the authorities found it they would just put it down to a drug overdose.
Tim went back to the little brick archway inside which the thick wooden door was now wide open. Above the entranceway was a lit-up sign, too, and Tim followed Michael inside. There, was a round-faced and seemingly good-natured bloke who was obviously running the place. Tim mentioned that he hadn’t phoned to book his place, and if that would be a problem. The guy frowned for a moment, then, nodded, and signified that Tim ‘was in’.
Down inside a series of really old corridors was a large room, in the centre of which was a long wooden table with about ten or so dossers all sitting around. It was the usual collection of old drunks and alkies, mainly, although with a couple of bug-eyed speed or crack freaks, there, a generation or so younger than their alkie compadres, and all seemingly having a come-down of nightmarish proportions. They were twitching and scratching themselves, all over their bodies. It occurred to Tim that these might be suffering from some of the bug-centred fantasies which were only too common with chronic crack cocaine users- the hallucinations that they had had eggs laid inside them which were now beginning to hatch out. On the other hand, they may actually have had real lice infestations. Either way, it was a bad trip to be on, and something that he, Tim, had absolutely no desire whatsoever to get involved in.
On the far side was a kitchen area, with several of the volunteer workers already lined up to start dishing out the lasagna supper that had already just finished cooking. The smell was gorgeous, and began filling the air, even displacing the heavy pall of smoke which had immediately sprung up around the puffers round the table, some of whom were emptying out the dog ends they had amassed during the day into little pyramids of brown dust, and from that into the rizla papers, placing their snouts into rows of thin soldiers, ready for smoking as the night wore on. It was quite the busy bee’s place- hive of activity, even though it initially gave the illusion of being a place where all the dossers just hung out together and stared hypnotically at the flickering images on the screen. For most of them it was a beautiful sight, actually, bearing in mind that just about all of them had just spent the entire day sitting under a railway bridge somewhere, or begging up the price of a drink from passers-by. Some of them carried the bad bruisings of beatings they had received- here an eye, nearly gouged out- there, a wide and open gash in a man’s face, where he had been cut by someone deranged, or just malicious, someone who knew they could do that shit and get away with it.
It went unacknowledged just how many homeless people got attacked by the thug element, even while they were just sitting there on their patch, or skillet, as they called it, getting the daily money together, for food, for that one true golden shot of Brown- for whatever. A girl Tim knew that sat at one spot regularly only the day before had been slapped by a couple of skinheads as they passed by. She didn’t know, but there was something about them that suggested they might have been Russian, or something east European. More and more the fascists were streaming in from these impoverished areas of Europe, now superficially, at least unified politically and economically, sufficiently so to allow the free flow of cheap labour through to the capitalists of the west for them to keep their profits high. The old ways were coming back, Tim realized, as he looked around him, and saw the ugly face of Dickensian capitalism and exploitation just peeping around the corner. He wondered what the counter-reaction to this development might be. Increasingly life was set to become ever-more desperate for everyone in the years that lay ahead. With the systemites gearing up for full scale ‘anti-terrorism’ operations, it was clear that they wanted a full-scale war and no compromise with anyone that wanted genuine change.
More and more things would build up, especially as the system started going skint, groaning under the expense of their colonial wars for oil and resources, in places such as Iraq. Pensions had just gone for a Burton, Tim had heard, from somewhere. Years back, he had intuited that it was all a con anyway- these capitalists were very good at producing glossy brochures with pretty pie charts and multi-coloured graphs, showing projected yields and future growth. But even back in the 70s, when everyman and his dog was busy taking out all their private pensions Tim had sussed that these fatcats were only going to take people’s money, and then find some clever-assed way of getting out of having to pay it back.
Now these jokers who had been tricked into thinking that there futures might be a bit more secure than their predecessors were all finding themselves- to their collective horror- looking forward to a future about as secure as that of the average homeless person. And all this time they had been walking about, so pleased as punch with their smug selves, secure in the knowledge of their life-saving pensions, looking down their noses at the homeless as they sat there and desperately tried to beg up enough coinage for a fix of Brown. Some people, though, it had to be said, were kind, and made a point of doing something themselves- individually, and practically- to help their fellows. Some were motivated by a kind of nationalism, Tim suspected- the kind of Dunquerque spirit you might have found in London in the Blitz, or amongst those that have suffered similarly, themselves. But, in general, these people were very much in the minority. Most people just trundled along in their ordinarily blinkered way, following the carrot and avoiding the stick, as much as possible. And, in fact, Tim mused, it was pretty much the same for the homeless as well. There wasn’t much that you as an individual could do- one person standing up to a tidal wave on their own was all well and good if you were King Canute- but even he didn’t succeed in the end, did he?
The time had now come for the meal to be served, and all the fellas lined up, as if at some pre-arranged signal. On one side of the shiny metal counter was a row of bright, Christianised faces- devout and kindly ladies, Gawd Bless ‘Em, Tim thought to himself- but in many ways they were part and parcel of the many-headed dragon of Victoriana- these same women were themselves straight out of Dicken’s London- Tim wondered if they might not be part of the problem, ultimately, rather than part of the solution.
Together with the other men, he shuffled along with the metal tray in his hands, and with each step along the way someone from the other side slapped down some extra food onto one of the compartments in his tray. He even got some treacle tart with hot custard in one of the compartments. It all smelt and – he knew from experience- would taste great.
Now and again he could hear the faintest echo of a heavy glass clink as two bottles in someone’s coat pocket gently bumped together; this would be their bevvy while the night ran on, where outside already a cold wind was blowing up, the wind howling like an animal outside the heavy wire-reinforced windows and occasionaly even making itself heard over the sound of the television. As the queue moved slowly along, the guy in front of him- a black fella, quite young for a dosser, and in not too-bad a shape, at least as yet, suddenly looked up to the young woman that was serving the food from behind the counter.
‘I know you- weren’t you in that ‘Casualty’ soap, as the nurse?’ he asked her, straight out. The dark-haired thing nodded, yes, she said, that was her. It amazed Tim that people that were such high-fliers could become interested in ‘doing good’, that is, for what they plainly perceived as the ‘less well-fortunate’- coming down to slum it out with these dying embers of Dickensian London- whereas really Dickensian London had never left us at all- only for a few brief years after the War had there been any respite from the grinding poverty and oppression that had filled up and made the lives of the overwhelming mass of the population in all that time.
Sitting at the table, Tim felt the sheer ecstasy of the food filling his system- he hadn’t realized just how hungry he was, as he ate, mouthful after mouthful, the food compacting into solid inside him and filling the emptiness of his inner tubing. He felt like a bicycle tire filling up, previously totally emptied, now responding to the increase in pressure as the air flowed into it again.
On the other side of the table, Michael gave him a wink. He didn’t know what that might portend, but at least the guy wasn’t a total derelect, and even that fact alone might be reason to hope that perhaps something good, or at least profitable, might come of this new acquaintance.