The Word Cloud

anyone want to submit a poem, or short story for constructive feedback?

xoxo
-cj

Ok, here's the first chapter of pilots, some of you may have cast an eye over this before - however, as always, I'm eager for feedback. This chapter - hopefully doesn't come across as gratuitous - it is integral to the overall plot.

Pilots - Chapter 1 XXX WARNING SUBJECT MATTER VERY SEXUALLY EXPLICIT MAY OFFEND XXX

“What the fuck are you doing?”

To be fair, I was finding it a little difficult to hear what she was saying due to the somewhat uncompromising situation I now found myself in.

“Do you know what a clitoris is?” her tone was definitely a little tetchy.

Of course I knew what a fucking clitoris was. My mind meandered back to GCSE Human Biology where I had come top in the class for naming the bits of the, er, fanny. Not a massive claim to fame – but a claim to fame nonetheless. The thing that had always troubled me whilst gazing at the artistic impressions of all the male and female giblets – both internal and external – was that they never looked the way they were supposed to.

Which kind of brings me to the matter in hand – so to speak. Well, more the matter sort of sitting on my face and wriggling about in a frustrated manner that I’d only previously seen in my cat, Jake, when he’d had worms – so to speak.

My problem was that I found it very difficult, at this very close range, to discern the difference between one part of the female frippery from another. As such, I was, I felt, more than making up for my lack of technical know-how with an enthusiastic, albeit orally cramping, random and far reaching tongue waggle and thrust combo.

Previous conquests had been more than happy with my input. Previous conquests probably felt sorry for me, faked their orgasm and rolled over cursing the day when the batteries ran out on their vibrator leading me to be the ‘any port’ in this particular storm. The thing was with these fine women is that they didn’t complain. They clearly saw that I was doing my best, chose not to say anything about it at the time, and refused any offers of hanky and indeed panky in the future.

Jen, much to my dismay, was not one of these women. Was she doing a service to all those women that lay before me, or was she was just hedonistically wanting me to get it right for her? At this moment? Right now!

I suspect it was the latter.

“Just up a bit…” her demands were slightly muffled by her thighs.

“Not that far…” she stopped short of calling me names, but I knew what was on her mind.

“There! Fucking there! Now just do that and don’t fucking move!”

Suddenly it felt like I was in a bank raid. Do that – but don’t move. What was I supposed to do? My tongue was really aching after all it’s earlier exaggerated movements. I prayed that I’d be able to keep going for just a little longer…

This was our first date. Jen was a nurse on one of the wards where I’d been social workering. She’d caught my eye and, hey, you know the rest… Well, in reality, she’d obviously seen me as some kind of interesting specimen upon which to experiment and had asked me out.

“D’you fancy going out for a drink?” she’d smiled whilst holding my gaze just long enough for me to engage the fight or flight response.

“Sure,” I began kind of nonchalantly, any thoughts of Mr. Galbraith, the elderly client who I’d come to visit just dribbled away – in a very similar manner to the rest of my response which kind of went, “weeaaargghh…” a sort of gentle, drooling sound that didn’t really mean terribly much.

Ignoring my obvious mental seizure, Jen carried on, “What about tonight? I finish up about 6, I could meet you in the Black Bull around 7?”

Given my earlier failure to produce any coherent noises, I nodded meaningfully and manfully, turned quickly and clattered into a drip stand that was attached to some unfortunate individual who was talking to his relatives on the hospital payphone. He screamed, a little ostentatiously if you ask me, as the needle that attached him to his drip was torn out of his arm. I smiled meekly at Jen and then scurried off down the corridor before I could wreak any more havoc.

****


‘Disinterested’ is probably the best word to describe Jen’s demeanour as she sat nursing her gin and tonic in the bar of the Black Bull. I had been terribly excited and had led the conversation on everything from Mr. Galbraith’s massive hernia to the distressing news that West Brom had just been knocked out of the cup by Burnley.
I knew it wasn’t going well when she looked up at me with a bored expression. That caused me to babble more and faster.

“Listen John, I’ve had a hard day at work and I’m really tired…”

Fuck, I thought, and it had all looked so promising…

“I’m not up to all this small talk – so can we just go back to my place and fuck?”

So that’s what we did. Well, that was partly what we did. The rest of it was a kind of journey through every pornographic fantasy I’d ever had – and several pornographic fantasies I hadn’t.

What is the social etiquette when a woman you’ve only recently met manages to take the whole of your erect penis in her mouth? Thankfully I managed to stifle my first urge, which was to clap, replacing it with an equally embarrassing response which was to say, “Well done!” slightly more enthusiastically than I’d have liked.

I was genuinely amazed. Sure, I’m not endowed with the biggest cobblers in town, but I couldn’t help but think about the sword swallowers who’d appeared on a variety of shit magic shows in my youth. I wasn’t terribly sure if I found this erotic. It was definitely a neat trick and, if much of the internet porn I’d waded through in my time was anything to go by, it was what guys really loved. For me though – well, I could have done with just a little more kissing.

She came on, er in my mouth with celebratory cries and yells that were only slightly less ambivalent than her demeanour had been in the pub. She looked at me scornfully with a look that implied, “Thank fuck for that…”

I wasn’t done yet. Oh no, not by a long stretch of the imagination.

“Do you want to fuck me up the arse?” she still sounded slightly aggressive and almost businesslike. I wondered where we might go with the next suggestion if I refused. Again, shagging someone – ideally female – up the arse was something I felt I really should be terribly enthusiastic about. I’d never done that kind of thing before – and had never been in a position where I felt safe enough or even interested enough to suggest it.

“I, er…” I rubbed the short hairs on the back of my neck as I looked down at the floor – avoiding eye contact at all costs.

“Go on,” she enthused, playfully tweaking my hard nipples that acted like mini loudspeakers, declaring, “This poor, inexperienced and naïve fool is willing to try anything you come up with…”

She rifled through several drawers in the Ikea cabinet next to her bed. With a satisfied sigh she pulled out a plastic bottle with the word “JOY” emblazoned on the side of it in jagged yellow letters.

Then she assumed the position. You know, the ‘anal sex’ position - well, the doggie-style position with which I had some level of familiarity. She used the handy pump dispenser on the bottle to squirt the viscous gel-like substance over her arse-hole. Her, erm, chocolate starfish. It glistened as she fingered the lubricant in.

My heart was pounding. Not out of rampant male arousal – more out of anxiety and fear. Fear of losing my anal-sex virginity during an unexpected liaison with a nurse that I didn’t know terribly well. Fear of doing something that I wasn’t terribly sure that I wanted to do. Fear of all these thoughts getting in the way of my performance and my cock going all flobbery under the psychological pressure.

I could hide nothing from my penis.

Usually I think of Russian tractors to ensure the longevity of my performance. If I really focused I could see the hairy faces and warts on the faces of the peasant women collecting the harvested potatoes – this could keep my coming to fruition at bay for ages.

Inexplicably and somewhat excruciatingly, I found myself not only struggling with the rights and wrongs of sticking my willie up someone’s bum, I was also doing this under the impassive gaze of the horny handed mothers of toil. My brain had engaged a kind of Pavlovian response – we’re in bed with a woman of the opposite sex, so to prolong the pleasure/ agony/ suspense, call it what you will, we have to think about these gnarled lovelies.

Flaccido Domingo springs to mind.

My internal dialogue suggested that if I were to do the deed, then we might have to mentally introduce some more attractive guests to the forefront of my mind. I flicked through the readily available images I’d prepared earlier. Suddenly I could see a couple of women with whom I’d had the pleasure in the past doing all the lovely kissy, sucky, licky things that I’d particularly enjoyed. Their hair cascading over my cock as they gave it their full, undivided attention.

That did the job. I knew that this psychological tussle would continue for a while yet and that this would have a profound effect on my knob. As such, I seized the moment and stuck my cock straight up Jens’ arse.

She made a strange pain/ pleasure kind of sound as I began to thrust and er, unthrust in the statutory shagging motion.

It felt odd. Whereas the front bottom of your average lady friend is lined with a mucusy tube of tissue and muscle that welcomes the sword of love in a similar way to peristalsis welcoming a sausage, for example, at the other end. The arse, conversely, has none of these accoutrements. It has a tight elastic sphincter that provides limited friction and rubbage to one’s ning nong. I felt that I’d pushed my cock into a tight hole only to find a large underground cavern on the other side. Had I been a pot-holer, I’d have been delighted.

However…

After a minute or two of thrust and counter thrust I decided that this really wasn’t my cup of tea and withdrew. I hoped that Jen would have further plans for my journey.

Unsurprisingly, she did. Wahay! She decided that enthusiastic oral attention would be what I required. I was carried away in a wonderful fugue state of ecstasy as I watched her blonde bob going up and down on me. This was going to be quick.

I could feel the point of no return come and go. I was just about to…

Suddenly, she stopped sucking and clenched her hand hard around my cock in what could only be described as a vice-like grip.

‘Preventative’ is a word that applies well here. She held me like that for 30 seconds, a minute, a week, four years… who knows? Her grip yielded and she wanked and sucked me until I ejaculated in her mouth.

I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the word, ‘ejaculate’. I feel that, if the word hadn’t been made up by a man, then it was surely a man who had first applied it in this sort of situation.

Ejaculation to me implies an explosion of stuff, of fluid, of passion – similar to the water gushing out of a fire hydrant after being knocked over by an out of control police car. The disappointing grunt and subsequent or, indeed co-ordinated, grunt and squirt that at the very most produces a teaspoon of sperm and semen, does not, to my mind, constitute an ejaculation.

Now, I’ve got to say that I’m with my male counterparts that live in internet pornland in that I find doing the old grunt ‘n’ squirt into a woman’s mouth terribly horny.

Why?

Why would that be remotely sexy? Why is it sexy when some guy on the net does this to some woman floating around in the same digital ether?

Am I some misogynist monster, dominating and claiming my woman by marking my territory?

Am I gay? I mean, watching some guy splodge onto some woman’s face… If it had been custard that he’d squirted into her mouth that wouldn’t be anywhere near as arousing. There is something about it having to be the male lovejuice…

Ok, if it was just a guy having a wank and spunking off into space, would that turn me on?

Oh fuck, maybe I am gay?

It’s displacement. I’m not looking at that guy per se, I’m imagining it’s me doing the squirty love thing. So when I’m imagining a guy having a wank, am I thinking about me having a wank?

Fuck, I think I’ll file this under, “Things not to discuss with your friends.”

“Cup of tea?” I hadn’t even noticed Jen get up, let alone leave the room.

“Er, yeah, thanks,” I was amazed that we could still speak to each other as humans after what had gone on.

“Sugar?”

“Yes, Honey?” I’m fucking funny, I am.

“I mean, do you take sugar?” she snarled

“I’m sweet enough?” I offered.

“Is that a ‘Yes’ then?”

“Yes.”

I took the tea to mean that I wouldn’t be having a sleepover at Jen’s. So, gone was the need for the “How do you like your eggs in the morning – unfertilized” gag.

Ambivalence had given way to a cold indifference. Even with my clumsy, uninsightful and manly ways, I could tell I was no longer welcome here. I drank back the scalding tea so quickly it tore away the inside of my mouth. Ok, I drank the hot tea and it hurt a bit.

“I’ll be off then, Jen,” I said, ambling towards the front door.

“Great, see you then,” she barely looked up from whatever deed that suddenly required her urgent attention in the kitchen/ diner.

“I’ll see myself out…”

It had to be raining. An apt obituary to the night. Fuck, how odd was that?

***

“John?” it was Jen, I didn’t know she had my work number.

“D’you fancy going out tonight?”

It had been three days since I’d heard from her. I’d tried to contact her at work and at home, but without any joy. I hadn’t been playing hard to get.

“Hi Jen, I thought you’d…” What? Died? Fled the country? Decided that you never wanted to see me again?

“…I thought you’d, er, lost my er, number…”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing, I er…” there was no way of getting out of this without sounding completely pathetic.

“I thought we could go to Scorpion tonight.”

My heart sank. Throbbing music and lasers. Probably pole dancers. Fuck, probably dancing. I hate fucking dancing. I feel so bloody self-conscious. What does it mean? What’s the purpose of it?

“You do like a bit of a boogy, dontcha?” she coaxed. Shit, I could imagine her doing a little demonstrative shimmy as she said it.

“But it’s a school night…” It was. It was a bloody Wednesday. What kind of lunatic goes out in the middle of the week? Well, sure I’d done it as a student, but that was in pursuit of extended drinking hours. That, and the prospect of bagging off with some inebriated soul who should know better. The thing was, you couldn’t hear what people were saying. God, you couldn’t hear yourself think.

“I’m not working tomorrow,” she insisted, “C’mon, I’ll have you in bed before 2…”

“Yeah, I know, and if not you’ll make sure I go home…”

“Is that a ‘yes’, then?”

“Ok…” Fuck. Shit and fuck. Assert yourself, John!

“Great, I’ll pick you up at 9?”

“Er, where?”

“Your house. Oh, one thing – I haven’t got any money. I don’t get paid until the weekend. You don’t mind subbing me a few quid?”

Fuck. Dancing, going out to play on a week night, and now I’m paying for someone else…

“Ok…” I wonder if she’ll kiss me tonight, “You don’t mind if we finish up kind of early tonight?”

“Absolutely fine – it’ll be a quiet night – seriously.”

***

When Jen turned up that evening her appearance, and general demeanour come to that, didn’t exactly scream ‘quiet night out’.

Her freshly washed blonde hair was tied up in floppy ‘shag me now’ bunches. She wore almost no make-up except for a very ripe and shiny red lipstick. I remember reading that red lips were a sign that a woman was in oestrus. That’s why lipstick came into being – to make women more attractive to men by indicating that they were more, er, receptive.

As I stood gazing upon the deliciously sexy form that was Jen, my mind drifted to the events of that night. All the sexual gymnastics mixed in with lipstick into a great erotic splurge.

This was all brought to a sudden handbrake halt when I thought of rimming - the act of licking someone else’s bum bit – tied in with Rimmel, a famous manufacturer of lipstick… What does it all mean?

What about Red ring showers?

On her tee shirt, as a kind of homage to a famous high street brand, the word ‘Fuck’ was printed across her breasts. Less of an invitation, more of a demand.

Oh God.

“You look…” Nice? Shaggable? Like the woman I want to spend the rest of my life/ evening/ next twenty minutes with?

She smiled her smile and I was carried off to Scorpion.

As expected, it was shit. There were lasers and smoke and an astonishingly loud pulsating fucking racket.

“I’ve made a policy with myself never to sleep with anyone twice…” she bellowed at me over the sticky glass table.

“What never?” I may have sounded crushingly disappointed.

“Not at the moment anyway,” she grinned as she flicked my nose and vanished off to the dance floor.

I’d read somewhere that dancing was a kind of elaborate foreplay – or perhaps a display of property – or availability – or physical prowess. Whatever I’d read, didn’t to my mind, mean I’d ever have to actually do it.

So that was my evening. I sat and watched Jen dancing – for whatever reason – as the sound and lights gradually melted my brain. Occasionally she’d skip back, grinning so happily, flattering me with her presence – a bit like a daughter chatting to her old dad – until I gave her some more money for a drink, and then off she’d go again.

I drank too many expensive bottled - ‘I can’t believe it’s not chemicals’ – ciders. I looked around at all the dancing folk. What were they getting out of this that I couldn’t even begin to see? I looked at some blondesque women, who, to the casual observer, had stripy hair. Why was stripy hair supposed to be attractive? What bloody maniac decided that stripy hair was going to be the next big thing?

Jen was dancing with two men in tight white shirts and significant hair product. They appeared to be playing some kind of sexual ping-pong with her as she laughed and whirled between them.

By the time she came back to the table I was astonishingly drunk and not a little maudlin.

“I’m going back to Steve’s tonight,” she yelled at me, “He and Mark are having a bit of a – er – party…”

My face felt several sizes too big as I managed to drool, “All I want is a girl with stripy hair…”

Jen afforded me a patronising, “Aww…” before she rubbed my head and vanished off with fucking bastard Mark and Steve.

Aside from its wonderful self-marketing properties, alcohol has a number of other fantastic intrinsic talents when blended with the human grey-matter. In this case it was the sudden, almost compulsive, desire to return home. It didn’t matter if the drink was half-finished. It didn’t matter if I hadn’t bagged off. Home and bed were all that mattered.

“Hi!” suddenly a pretty woman clattered through my malaise.

I squinted at her in a vain attempt to focus. She appeared to pulsate. Through the fog though I could see she had shoulder length stripy hair.

“Jen sent me over…” she smiled.

“Hi,” I grinned, “stay here, I just have to go to the loo…”

With the music from Mission Impossible one, two and three playing loudly in my subconscious I sped to the bog. If I allowed myself to metabolise any more of that chemical cider nonsense, I’d be incoherently pickled.

“I must puke, I must puke…” went the inner mantra.

I did, indeed, vomit. A golden waterfall of apples and bile. It wasn’t exactly an advert for shampoo, but it was wonderfully purging.

But no-one’s going to snog you with a mouthful of fetid flotsam and jetsam, are they? That’s why God invented the handy, buy in the bog and stick them in your gob, chewable toothbrushes.

I piled four into my mouth and chewed and crunched and licked but the taste of the lining of my stomach wouldn’t go away. I looked at the condom machine. Ribbed, flavoured, fuck, you could even buy ones with a little vibrator on the end…

Flavoured!

Ok, they were whiskey flavoured, but well worth a try. I pumped in my money, got myself four flavoured condoms and quietly secreted myself in one of the cubicles. I opened all the wrappers and, without a moments thought, stuck them all in my mouth and chewed vigorously.

Flavoured my fucking arse! They all tasted like rubber with a hint of God knows what. I momentarily panicked as I thought, “Rubber breath” but really, I was too pissed to care.

I got back to the table to find stripy haired lady waiting for me. How lovely. It was time for the smoochy dances and we found ourselves draped languidly all over each other…

Then I woke up.

This wasn’t my bed. This wasn’t my bedroom. This wasn’t my house. I have a friend, Gordon, a chemical engineer who travels around the world, who, when he finds himself in predicaments such as this looks at the ceiling and returns to his default setting which is the Hotel Moskva in Moscow. So, if he’s not at home, and he’s got no idea where he is – he’s usually there.

I, unfortunately, had no such default setting. If I wasn’t in my own bed I’d usually close my eyes, think, “There’s no place like home” three times, and then find myself… well, in the same place really.

I looked around for clues. In the darkness I could make out the gently snoring form of stripy haired woman.

That wasn’t good enough for me. I needed more. Where did she live? Was it near me – if it was then that was a good thing because I had to get changed out of my vomit spattered clothes –

Oh Jesus, had I really chewed on condoms?

I also needed my car for work. What kind of moron goes out drinking on a school night?

Oh bloody fucking shit.

I didn’t even know stripy haired woman’s name. I’d actually done talks on sensible sexual behaviour among teenagers, and now here I was. Well, here I was. At least if I knew her name, I wouldn’t feel… well, I wouldn’t feel such a tart.

I could make out the shape of her bag on the floor next to the bed. If I could find her purse, there must be something in there, like a driving licence, an identity badge of some sort to tell me what her name was.

I quietly rolled out of my side of the bed, round to her side where the bag was. I gently opened it and looked inside – a veritable Aladdin’s cave of womanly accoutrements.

I reached inside and quietly lifted out her purse/ wallet thing. It opened out into three sections. There was an NHS card in one of the transparent windows. K. Wilson it said underneath a ridiculously unflattering photo. I decided I couldn’t call her Ms Wilson for the rest of the morning, and so I dug deeper in my search for her identity.

God, she had loads of credit and store cards. I spread them out across the bottom of the bed as I went. I could just read them in the half-light. Many of them didn’t give me any further information – until I got to her bankcard – her name was Kate.

But was she a ‘Kate’, or a ‘Katy’ or a ‘Kitty’ or..? I emptied all the contents of her purse on the floor. Surely there must be something?

“What are you doing?” Kate, Katy, Kitty sounded kind of drowsy, but a little angry too.

“I was just…” and then I looked at the fruits of my labour. The open, rummaged through bag, the empty purse with all the credit and debit cards lined up across the foot of the bed, and the little pile of money and bits of paper on the floor between my legs…

“I know what this looks like…” but what? Go on John, impress her. But what? You were rifling through all of her personal possessions, because?

“I’m phoning the police,” she looked at me defiantly as she pressed 999 on her phone.

“I, er…” I had nothing to say. Should I run away?

“Police please,” she almost spat.

“Can’t we...?” What? What could we do? Dance? There’s a great idea. Talk? Yeah, we could talk – ‘So, how often do you have guys home who help themselves to your things?’

Calmly, she gave her name and address. The good news was that she lived just round the corner from where I stayed. I could have gone home and had a shower, got changed and picked up my car. However, things were now looking altogether less certain.

She explained how she’d invited me home – paused while she was admonished by the voice on the phone – defended herself by saying I was a friend of a friend, and then explained how she found me emptying her bag and wallet.

She was succinct and factual. I thought she did rather well in the circumstances.

She put the phone down.

“They’ll be here within an hour…” she sat on her bed, folded her arms and stared at me, daring me to make a false move…

“Will I just pop your things back in your bag?” I offered brightly.

“That’s evidence – a crime scene,” she snarled.

I nodded in agreement and sat like a naughty primary school child awaiting the headmaster.

We sat there for the full hour. I didn’t want to leave because I thought that would make me look even more guilty in the circumstances. I thought I’d be able to talk to whatever police officer who arrived and explain away this whole unfortunate affair. Goodness, how we’d laugh.

Bad cop, bad cop finally arrived in the shape of PC Berryman and WPC Salisbury. He was tall and slim with a slightly pointy nose and piercing grey eyes. She was about a foot shorter, quite Mediterranean looking. I imagined her taking her hat off as her glossy auburn hair cascaded down her back, her lips pouting in wet anticipation…

Kate, Katy, Kitty explained what had happened. I nodded enthusiastically in agreement at all the bits I could remember.

“Did we really not have sex?”

She rolled her eyes and blushed slightly, “You fell asleep and started snoring before your head it the pillow…”

“Oh…”

“You’ll have to come back to the station,” said WPC miserable.

“Fine, I understand, it would be more than your paperwork could stand to have a section that said, ‘Misunderstanding – no further action’ in it, would it?”

“It wasn’t a fucking misunderstanding, you were going through my bag while I was asleep…”

“…and I told you that I was just looking for something with your name on it,”

“You could have asked me when I woke up…” she did have a point.

“We’ll have to handcuff you, sir,” PC Berryman had got right into his role.

“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’, my name’s John. And you don’t have to handcuff me - I’ll come quietly…”
“Sorry sir, health and safety. If you refuse, we could call for backup,” PC Berryman would have made a great straight man for someone. He’d even have made a good straight man for many of the straight men I’d seen.

“Health and safety!? Health…” I was stammering with incredulity, “She,” I said pointing at WPC Salisbury, “Would have no difficulty putting me in the back of the police car on her own. I’m a fucking social worker. I’m I lover, not a fighter…” God, did I really say that?

I put out my hands and PC Berryman cuffed me. I smiled a goodbye to Kate, Katy, Kitty as I was ushered out of the door. I was amazed by the amount of people out and about on the street. The whole world seemed to stop and watch me as I was escorted, handcuffed, into the police car.

And, on the subject of reality - here's the first chapter of my autobiography - which i'm still trying to flog....

Square Pegs - an Autobiography - chapter 1

Published by Inzie on Tuesday 17th March 2009 03:03am | View all blogs by Inzie

If I’d had my wits about me I would have had some recollection as to how I appeared on ward 6 at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital that day in late December 1993.

It sounds kind of innocuous, doesn’t it? The Royal Edinburgh Hospital. The Royal Ed. Edinburgh’s Bin of Loons.

Had I been firing on all cylinders, I would have been struck with the smell that exuded from the carpet in the communal area. It was a heady mix of tea, coffee, biscuits – probably digestives – some undisclosed medicines, bodily fluids and, of course, piss

The following memories gradually trickled back to me over a period of weeks, months and in some cases, years.

The male nurse, dressed in non-threatening civilian clothing, who admitted me to the ward was a tall bespectacled fellow whose role it was to ask me exactly the same questions as the admitting psychiatrist, whose role, interestingly, it was to ask me exactly the same questions as the GP.

The psychiatrist did add one thing. If I, at any time, attempted to leave the ward, I would be sectioned. Even in my somewhat unhinged state I was overcome with the righteous indignation of the patient who had been admitted voluntarily. Why say that? Was it just in case I was under some bizarre delusion as to who was in charge here? I was all too aware who was in charge. It sure as Hell wasn’t me.

Bizarrely, I thought of my time working as a nursing assistant on a long stay ward in a psychiatric hospital. We were taught control and restraint. Part of which was being controlled and restrained. It had taken 6 male nurses to get me down. That was without me kicking and/ or punching.

If anyone was going to section me, I wasn’t going to come quietly.

What a knob. Only I could be competitive about being held under the Mental Health (Scotland) Act.

Fade to that morning at the Social Work Team meeting at the Western General Hospital. It was held in the hospital’s Chaplaincy. The meeting started at 9.30, most people drifted in by 10 and the ambient ‘God Music’ started, somewhat comedically, at 10.30.

This was my first qualified social work job. “A community care social worker in a busy hospital team” I think the advert had said. I had qualified in late June that year and had started work in July.

Seamless.

It was what I’d always wanted to do. I had always wanted to be there for others. Probably because when I was younger, no-one had been there for me.
Just for the record, especially for all those potential social workery types, this may not have been the best motivation in the world.

I sat in the meeting smiling and joking. Perhaps I was a little detached. Perhaps I was a little flippant, even sarcastic at times. No-one noticed what was going on behind the scenes.

Because I’d been a student at the Western, I hadn’t received any induction when I’d started work there. I’d been a good student, so I was expected to hit the ground running.

So I did.

I loved working on the care of the elderly ward. They hadn’t had a dedicated social worker for some time, so they were pretty delighted with me too. They had a backlog of work and they merrily chucked whatever they had at me – and I lapped it up.

Until one day…

In a team meeting, my boss explained that my post also involved covering the medical wards. It was my role to take any referrals from those 2 acute wards – as well as the care of the elderly – and do any work that was involved with them. Trust me, it was a lot of work.

Following the guidelines from the tutors on my course and from any social work textbook you care to read, I challenged him. I explained that this amount of work would put me under a lot of stress and that it was unlikely that I’d be able to do my job.

There, I’d admitted it. There was no shame in showing weakness. I was a new worker for Goodness’ Sake.

Cue understanding from my manager.

Cue support from my colleagues?

Nope, not one single supportive breath came from anyone. I might have heard the thoughts of relief from the others, “Thank Fuck it’s not me…”
The others who had tidily located themselves onto their own wards. The others who my manager was afraid to challenge when they didn’t churn out large numbers of processed punters.

No, these would be my wards. I would be responsible for these people.

That went well…

In a far off future world I became a senior in a “Busy Community Care Team”. This “Busy Community Care Team” of around 10 professional folk receives around 6 to 8 referrals every day.

Now that I had adopted this tidy clutch of wards, there were days when I was receiving 13, count them, 13 referrals.

Add to this my similarity to a box of frogs, things weren’t looking too promising.

Sure, I did the stress thing. I did the “Oh my God, I need to be in the toilet 10 minutes ago” thing. I did the detached walking into things thing and the not listening to people, thing.

But on that fateful day, in the team meeting, with the God Music playing, I felt wonderfully relaxed.

The 20 godzillion referrals didn’t matter. The million phone calls a minute could fuck right off. I didn’t feel giddy. My mind wasn’t racing. Nor was my pulse. I was hori-fucking-zontal.

In case you hadn’t noticed. This wasn’t a good thing.

In my mind I had failed at the job I’d always wanted to do. Since, whilst I was on my course, I’d indiscriminately shagged a variety of women both at Edinburgh University and, er, not at University, I also felt my marriage was a sham.

At the time, in my mind at least, there was little else in the world. So, the question wasn’t if I was going to kill myself, it was how I was going to kill myself. It was during the meeting I had worked out that little riddle.

During one of my many and varied conversations with one of the medical consultants they told me that an overdose of paracetamol really hurts. That was ticked off as not really the thing to do.

One of my colleagues had a mug of coffee. She had a habit of not going back to the social work office after the meeting and often got someone to take her mug for her.

I was that volunteer.

After the meeting the mug and I took a little trip down to the men’s toilet along the corridor. All I had to do was break the mug, take one of the sharp remnants and carve out a vertical hole in my left wrist.

That was my cunning plan.

As I sat on the toilet (I was using it as my own little private seat in my own little private office) a feeling of absolute relaxation and serenity washed over me. I have never felt so calm. My mind was full of a gentle wind blowing across the wheat field near the house where I grew up. The sky was a vivid blue. The sparrows in the nearby hedgerow were having an altercation.

Perfect.

A quiet yet persistent voice came into my mind.
“Chris, if you kill yourself, you’ll be dead.”

This is Chris Young, stating the fucking obvious, News at Ten.

Suddenly it was like being held hostage. The Chris that had allowed me to bathe in that wonderful imagery was suddenly red with anger.

“Just fucking do it!”

“What have you got to live for?”

“Chris, if you kill yourself, you’ll be dead.”

I was turgid with fear. I could hardly move. All the muscles in my body were solid with tension. I was instantly covered in a cold sweat. My pulse was racing, my breathing rapid.

I had to get out. I got to my office. If I phoned my GP I’d be OK.

“Hello, Doctors’ surgery?”

“Yes, er, hi, I’d like to see a doctor… er today please.”

“Is it a medical emergency?”

“Er… I… er… no.”

“You can see someone in two days, shall I book you in?”

“No… no…” quietly, defeated.

My office was hidden away in the depths of the hospital, far from the wards and the main social work office.

I had to be with someone.

“Mabel? Hi.”

I phoned her. She was an experienced social worker who worked mainly with terminally ill folk from the oncology wards (That’s the cancer wards to you and I).

I told her everything. Suddenly she was with me. Her hand on my shoulder while she phoned my GP.

“I’m going to be unashamedly brutal with you, Chris,” direct as ever, “Think of Ben and what he’d do with no Dad.”

My two-year-old son. She was right.

“Just fucking do it!”

“Yes, it is a medical emergency,” Mabel told the receptionist, “I’m bringing him in now and he will be seen by a GP when he gets there.”

Mabel manhandled me across the car park. I was so tense I could hardly walk. I was crying so much I was unable to talk.

She drove me to the GP and then to the Royal Ed. She sat in with me during all the interviews with the GP and the psychiatrists. She said goodbye to me at the door of ward 6 as she handed me on to my nursing friend.

“Smart/ casual.” He wrote next to ‘appearance’ on his form.
“Eyes – grey”

My eyes are blue. Bright blue. How could they be grey? I remembered my Dad’s eyes when he died. They went from vibrant blue to grey.

They gave me a single room. I was on suicide watch every 15 minutes to start off. Really, they shouldn’t have bothered. Absolved of any and all responsibility, I slept for 18 hours.

Safe.

My first visitor was Poppy, my wife. She appeared to be in a bit of a state of shock. Can’t imagine why. Her husband – the man she’d known for 6 years – was languishing in hospital with his head in bits. She had spoken to my manager who, apparently, had got straight into the blame game.

“If you didn’t spend all your time training…”

“If you had taken his name when you got married…”

“If…” shit, was there anything else he could pin on her to complete his smoke screen?

Yes, Poppy did spend a lot of time running, cycling and swimming. That was the deal before we got married, so why should it change afterwards?

So often, in situations such as these, people want a scapegoat – someone to blame.

Poor Poppy spent a significant amount of time wandering around the car park at the Western looking for my car. She can almost laugh about it now, 15 years later.

Almost.

What do you bring someone who has disconnected from the rest of the world? Grapes? Flowers?

Poppy brought me two, brightly coloured wooden angelfish. I kept those fish on my desk at work for years. They served as a kind of memory. A warning. She also brought herself. And other people. She brought her brother and sister-in-law. They made all the right noises. They were friendly and supportive. She brought her sister and brother-in-law, Tom. I think Tom has always flirted with lunacy because, on that day he certainly had a look of, “There but for the grace of God…”

It was Christmas 1993. Her husband was in a psychiatric hospital. She had a two-year-old boy. This was not the way it was supposed to be.
In the meantime, I busied myself getting to know the ward staff. I was of the same opinion as most of the other patients on the ward – “I’m not like any of these nutters.” By talking to the ward staff I was demonstrating to myself that I was normal and that, by definition, the rest of the folk on the ward were anything but.

An older man befriended me. He was about 60, grey round the sides and bald on top. He was built like a boxer. He was notable partly because he called me Charles.

“It’s Chris…”

“Sorry…”

Pause.

“Anyway Charles, are you going through to get something to eat?”

The boxer found himself in ward 6 most Christmas’s. The simple reason being – his wife had died on Christmas day. Ho-ho-fucking ho. Each year he was overwhelmed with the pain and grief of it all. Every Christmas felt like the one where she had died of cancer.

He was a lovely, warm and gentle man. We never kept in touch.

Christmas Day 1993 – I was having Christmas dinner with a fireman and a local council administrator.

“If I can’t look after myself, how am I supposed to look after the public?” The fireman was terribly intense.

The administrator and I nodded sagely.

We sat in silence for a while, looking at our fellow ward-mates. Each displaying different types and levels of illness. From sitting in an almost catatonic state to yelling at someone who wasn’t there.

The fireman looked around and then leant towards the middle of the table. Conspiratorially he beckoned us to join him.

“Have you ever read, ‘One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest’?”

I had.

It was.

After a few days sleeping and chatting to boxing man, fireman and admin-man the powers that be decided it might be time for me to venture forth back into the community.
This was the first time I’d met the head honcho psychiatrist.

I remembered all the case conferences and ward rounds I’d attended in my professional life. Two really stood out:

The multi-disciplinary team in another hospital ward consisted of about 10 professionals including psychiatrists, nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech therapists and good old social workers. The room where this particular meeting took place felt roughly the size of a broom cupboard.

A patient was brought in using one of the hospital wheelchairs. He was sound asleep. According to his notes he had a dementia, probably Alzheimer’s.

“How are they treating you here?” bellowed the consultant psychiatrist – his spotty bow tie and bad suit combo made him look not unlike a second rate TV host.

Not surprisingly, the patients’ eyes sprang open. He looked shocked at the fright of being awoken so suddenly and with 10 folk huddled together, staring at him. He might have said, “Huuh?”

“Is the food to your taste?” continued the bastard son of Ted Rogers and Bruce Forsyth.

The patient repeated his question, “Huuh?” before being ushered out again.

The purpose of this little charade was…?

The second case was even more fascinating. I had been working with a twenty-something year-old man for a few months. He had been diagnosed as having a schizophrenic-type illness.

I had no pretensions of being a medical man, but in all the time that I’d worked with him I hadn’t spotted any behaviours from him that might suggest that he was seeing, hearing or believing things were there when they weren’t.

What did I know? I was crackers.

This particular case conference had a similar number of medical, nursing and social work staff hanging around. While we were waiting for my client to be beckoned in, one of the more junior doctors dropped an interesting bombshell.

“I wasn’t very busy last night so I took the opportunity to read X’s case notes. Did you know that no-one, apart from his mother, has ever seen him display psychotic symptoms…?”

We had all encountered his mother. She didn’t have a great relationship with her son. He wanted to have nothing to do with her. He was adamant that she had nothing to do with any decisions made about his care.

The label of schizophrenic type illness had been made by the consultant psychiatrists’ predecessor.

“I’m sure Dr. (Thingy) would never have made their diagnosis based on what his mother said…”

We all mumbled something that suggested we weren’t terribly convinced.

Munchausen’s by proxy was mentioned.

“Well, let’s have him in!” declared the psychiatrist.

My client ambled in, nodding amiably at me and a few of the others.

A few questions were fired at him which he answered confidently and concisely. He was finally asked to leave.

“Well, he looks like a schizophrenic…” the consultants’ words were met with silence.

My particular silence meant, “What the fuck does a schizophrenic look like?”

There are times when I just wish I hadn’t kept my gob shut. This was one of those times.

I knew this side of medicine was as much an art as it was a science. I had no idea what to expect from my own brand of mental health professionals.

In my own little case conference, the psychiatrist asked me loads of questions regarding my mood and what supports I had at home. He suggested follow up input from community psychiatry and psychotherapy.

It all sounded a great deal more satisfactory than those 2 surreal encounters.

I left hospital feeling altogether more optimistic.

Free! Free! I was free, I tell you.

Over time, my community psychiatrist and my driving instructor have morphed into the same person. God knows what Freud would have made of that. My fortnightly visits over the next 6 months essentially involved me emptying all my stuff out on top of him. Him asking me if I would be interested in taking antidepressants and me saying that I would have my degree in psychology ripped from my hand should I ever consider the psychotropic route.

We finally went our separate ways. I passed my driving test first time. God knows why me and the psychiatrist finished.

Psychotherapy was all the more entertaining. Having sat on the waiting list for a not inconsiderable time, I finally met the psychotherapist fellow.
We met in the corridor outside the room where all the action was to take place. It was there he told me his name. He ushered me into the large, high ceilinged, Victorian looking room. He indicated, without speaking, that I should sit on a comfortable, velveteen padded kitchen chair. He sat down on a similar chair, about 5 metres away. He looked at me intensely and said nothing.

I said nothing.

He said nothing.

I reciprocated.

It felt like this went on for about 10 hours. In reality it was probably 5 minutes. I could feel the anxiety rising. What did he want? What was his plan? What did he want me to say?

I cracked. I would have been a really shite prisoner of war. I told him everything. Rank, serial number and then everything that had ever happened in my life.

He did ask me one question.

“Did you have any thoughts before coming here today?”

“Not really, I didn’t know what to expect.”

“Really, not even any dreams?”

“Well, actually, I did have a dream where all my teeth were broken and falling out.”

“Interesting, that means you’re afraid of something happening to your head.”

Profound.

It all felt a little like the touchy feely pages of Cosmopolitan.

At the end of the meeting he told me that the NHS was paying for 1 psychotherapy session a week. He felt that I would benefit from at least 2 sessions per week. He asked me how much I would be able to pay towards that.

I had no idea. This was my first professional job. On and off I’d been a student 7 years. I was wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. What would I pay for my sanity?

We agreed that I’d get back to him on that.

Was that an abuse of power? Was he allowed to sell his private wears alongside his NHS stuff? What the Hell was that all about? What should I have done? What should I have said? Was that really psychotherapy?

After about a week of quiet reflection I decided that I could survive without his particular brand of treatment.

I dropped him and my GP a polite note stating as much.

For the time being at least, psychological services and me agreed that a trial separation was for the best.

Three months later I was back at work. I had to return really, I was about to be put on half pay and I had a wife, a son and several debts to support.

In the summer of 1994, my good friend and fellow social worker, Mark told me that he had arranged a football match against some hospital or other.

“Can you remember which one?” I asked, thinking no, it couldn’t possibly be.

“Er, no,” he said, “I’ll get back to you on that.”

Closer to the day of the big match, I contacted Mark again.

“Any idea which hospital…?”

“Er, yeah…” silence.

“Well?”

“It’s er, one of the wards from the Royal Ed…” bit more silence.

“You wouldn’t happen to know which one?”

“No.”

“It wouldn’t happen to be ward 6, would it?”

“I’m not sure, it might be…”

Of course it fucking was! I was playing a friendly football match against the ward where I had been, er, resting only a few months before.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

What is the social etiquette for situations such as these? I gave everyone, including the guy who’d admitted me, the generic, “Hi, how’s it going?”

I knew.

They knew.

I knew that they knew.

They knew that I knew.

It was arse clenchingly uncomfortable.

No, I don’t remember what the score was.

But I do remember making some darting runs down the wing, splitting their defence asunder. Which, of course, answered my question. If I had legged it from the ward, this bunch hadn’t a hope in Hell of catching me.

Inzie,

I think that you are a very talented writer, i love the way you convey your message with such presence in your characters, and the explicit nature of you writing. Im very interested in reading more of what you have written. I am compelled to read, because of the passion you put into your writing. Please keep me posted with your progress.
xoxo
- CJ

Intersting read. I am still troubling over the inclusion or otherwise of explicit material in the mainstream novel I am close to finishing.

An erotic exerpt from my recently finished novel:

The Englishmen were entranced by the music and the dancing, immersed in the novel spectacle of noise and movement. They cheered and applauded with enthusiasm, joining the locals in tossing coins onto the stage in support of the dancers and their musicians.

After a short while the guitarists took to the stage once more. Their nimble fingers struck up a haunting, rolling melody, a kaleidoscope of sound seducing and drawing the audience in. Onto the stage came Armanda, dressed in a long multi-layered, fiery red dress, her substantial waist cinched in by black lace and her massive bosom threatening to break free from the low lace fringed cut top. Her jet black hair was held up by a scarlet ribbon, her beautiful face, glistening in the heat of the room.

She began to dance, a slow swirling dance, punctuated by the occasional rhythmic clack of her heels on the hard wooden floor. Subtly the tempo of the music increased and Armanda�s movement followed closely, her turns were more abrupt, her heels crashed more loudly to the floor. As she spun around the dance floor, she swirled the hem of her dress higher with each turn, exposing her legs first to the knee and then offering tantalizing glimpses of large creamy thighs.

Faster and faster the musicians strummed their guitars, Armanda crashed her heels to the floor, spun wildly on her toes, her skirt whirling higher and higher, momentarily exposing the full length of her powerful thighs to the lascivious glare of the clapping crowd. Her face ran with sweat, her breasts shone with slick moisture, as the music became ever more frantic, faster and faster she spun and twirled, hammering her heels in perfect unison with the musicians. Suddenly she spun on one toe, her skirt ballooning around her, stamped her right foot to the floor and let out an almost orgasmic scream as the music stopped and the room held its breath for several silent heartbeats, before a rapturous round of applause and whooping cheers broke the mood. Armanda, breathless and smiling, took her bow and left the little stage. David stood entranced and with a smile realised he had been standing with his mouth wide open throughout the startling performance.

Armanda never reappeared but the dancing continued into the early hours of the morning. As much ale and wine was consumed, David and his companions were drawn into shouted conversations with several locals, though their limited grasp of Spanish made it difficult to be understood. Eventually the garrulous town�s people began to leave and the Englishmen retired for the night, as they had an early start in the morning.

Bidding the others good night, David let himself into his room. After a brief struggle, he lit the small oil lamp and by its glow spied a note lying on the floor, close by the door. Curious, he read the note as best he could, for it was in Spanish. With a smile and hoping he had translated it correctly, he left his room and ascended the back stairs. With a gentle knock he entered the room at the corridors end.

Armanda sat in luxurious armchair, dressed in a black silk robe, which struggled to cover her ample form. Smiling, she rose and embraced David warmly.

�I hope you enjoyed our simple entertainment?� she purred, slowly for David�s benefit.

�Magnificent. Your dancing was just� wonderful,� he managed to reply.

�Was your hunting not successful?� she asked.

�We could not bear it any longer, the errrm �� David hesitated and then mimed swatting mosquitoes buzzing around his head.

Armanda laughed and slipped from his grasp, returning with two glasses of thick red wine. They shared some more difficult small talk and laughed together over David�s imperfect Spanish until Armanda took David�s glass to refill it. As she returned to him, she slipped from the robe to stand naked before him. David ran his eyes appreciatively over her statuesque thighs, large, almost spherical breasts resting on the gentle rise of her stomach, her full lips smiling as she took David�s hand and placed it around her waist, to rest on her surprisingly small, firm bottom.

*

David was woken by the sound of horses in the yard, with the first light of dawn barely showing through the room�s shutters. Next to him, Armanda lay sleeping, her breath shallow but rhythmic, a slight smile on her face. Their lovemaking had been wild, almost violent in its intensity, her strength and demands surprising even him.

One of the horses snorted and clashed its hooves on the cobbles. Hushed voices could be heard and then the horses moved off. David breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Costa was now on his way to Portugal and safety. David and the other two would leave by the mail coach later in the morning. David hoped that by separating this way their sudden departure would seem less noticeable.

An hour later and he was woken by Armanda�s warm embrace. The two lovers kissed deeply and passionately for what seemed an eternity until he attempted to roll Armanda onto her back. Using her incredible strength, she resisted and eventually forced him to surrender. She clambered over him, squeezing him painfully with her thighs, as her fingers twisted and tore at his chest muscles. In one smooth movement she slid up the length of his body, pinning his head between her silky smooth legs, forcing her wet sex against his mouth. She took her pleasure from David�s skilled tongue, swamping him in the folds of her aroused body, crying out with pleasure as she imprisoned him between her enormous thighs. He clawed at her taut rounded buttocks, rasping and pulling the smooth flesh, as his tongue stroked her on and on toward a long and intense orgasm.

As she lost control he was able to break free, forcing her onto her back and in one powerful lunge, he slid his large erection deep into her. Her large but supple legs he looped over his shoulders, opening her wide to the ferocious assault by his painfully hard member. On and on he rode her flailing body, barely able to hold her down as wild eyed and out of control, she writhed and bucked against him. Her hands clawed at his back, drawing blood with her long nails.

Oblivious to the pain, he thrust into her, rapidly losing control, her hands now clawing painfully at his buttocks. As he began to come, he felt her pull his buttocks wide apart and without warning he felt the intrusion of one, then two more fingers into him. This drove him over the edge and he exploded into her, both of them howling and roaring with pure, white hot physical release. The moment held for what seemed a lifetime before they collapsed against each other panting uncontrollably, drenched in sweat and laughing like children. He buried his face in her slippery wet chest trying desperately to slow his racing heart, on what he knew was to be his last Iberian night

Hi everyone. I've just this minute joined, and am really excited to be given the chance to read fresh, new prose. Here's a short story of mine that I'd appreciate comments on. Currently everyone I show my writing to are very close to me and, I suspect, are not the most objective of people :) Cheers.

Jamie

Who Loves You, And Who Do You Love?

With the utmost care. With hands covered in the reddened and shiny skin of a manual worker of considerable age. With slightly trembling, sausage-like fingers Arthur placed the twentieth snail on the stem with the rest. He lent slowly back and squinted at his work. It looked, he thought, almost disturbing. It looked like nothing more than a hellish stalk of sprouts.



“Nate honey, give your dad’s door another knock please. Tell him it’s almost ready.”
The ten year old boy slid from the chair by the table where he’d been making spirals out of spilled salt, barely stopped to yank a roasted carrot from the oven tray in his mother’s hand, and darted through the low doorway which led to his father’s study. Genine heard his quick staccato knocks bounce off the rather heavy door that sometimes seemed to form a line of demarcation between Peter and the rest of the household. Nate’s voice, still a distance away from breaking, came to her, followed by unintelligible and deeper sounds. Peter no doubt saying he wouldn’t be long. Busying her hands amongst the trays and pans in front of her, transferring steaming vegetables and arranging thick slashes of meat just so, Genine worked to soothe the kernel of frustration which was making itself known in her abdomen. This is just how it, how he, is and it’s a waste of time and energy getting worked up about it. He was always five or ten minutes late whenever he was locked up in his study, which was virtually everyday since he’d gone freelance. By concentrating on making sure everyone got the same amount of sprouts she managed to control the brief fizz of annoyance.


SinBad4SickJerk looked up into the tiny camera set above the screen of his laptop. He ripped the black electrical tape with his teeth, allowed the small matt roll to drop to the bed and patted the end flat. He wondered how many were watching today. It could just be the five anonymous day-pass surfers and the three fulltime members who had identified themselves to him. It could be thirty, fifty, a thousand for all he knew. XtreamViews.NU allowed members to watch unseen. You knew the rules when you joined. If you go live you can’t choose who see’s you. This ignorance went some way to keeping him incredibly aroused whenever he was in front of the camera. The ignorance and the poppers. The electric butt plug set to a random timer. The heaviness of his cock and the odd sensation between his thighs. The tape that he’d patiently wound around his chest flab as he’d knelt on all fours. These things combined had him tuned to a keening ache of arousal. He turned and looked at himself in the mirror on the back of his door. Two purpley red globes the size of golf balls sat above an inch and a half of black tape. His nipples looked to be swollen to three times their usual size, standing proud like the sacs of near-gorged ticks. Greying chest hair frilled out from the tape, like a pair of halos. A garish Mexican wrestlers mask, all red, white and black sequins forming fat zigzags, hid his face, Above this sat an old blonde wig he’d taken from his wife’s belongings three years ago, and which she’d never seemed to notice having gone. It had taken him an hour to comb, tease and bind it into two identical pig tails. Both arms were tightly bound in cling film either side of the elbow, which allowed movement, and each had a scattering of dress-making pins pressed against his skin. They worked in tandem with the butt plug, delivering him unpredictable spikes of beautifully bearable pain.



Nate walked back into the kitchen with the exaggerated air of defeat that only ten year olds can truly master – shoulders forced down, feet dragging and a heavily downturned mouth swayed side to side by the metronome movements of his head.
“Mum, if Dad stays in his study for another five thousand years, and I knock on it like that twice a day and my knuckles get quite big because I’ll be a man then, do you think I’ll wear that door out?”
Genine decided to smile when she saw Nate’s slightly challenging expression. He was frustrated at his usual lack of success – perhaps once a month his dad opened the door when he knocked, seemingly just to surprise him. He was now trying to entice her into an utterly pointless debate which he would eventually win by a combination of childish logic and cold, relentless attrition.
“What I think is that if your father hasn’t made an appearance in five minutes, you can go and try your luck with your granddad instead. Guaranteed win, there. Back of the net.” Genine instantly despised herself. Back of the net? Jesus…
“Granddad’s room smells funny.”
“Don’t be horrible, Nate.” It did, though. It smelled damp and mossy, which was impossible because they’d just had the whole house damp-proofed and re-pointed.
“Anyway granddad’s weird and boring and he smells as well.”
His mother drew in a workable amount of air sharply through her nostrils. Nate didn’t look at Genine but his change of posture said he realised this might be pushing it a little too far. He flinched, or tensed, somehow seemed smaller to her. She exhaled as gently as she could.
“Your granddad is the same as everyone else in the world. He’s been brilliant, he’s been awful, he’s had years of happy boredom and moments of terrible pain. He’s lived his life mainly alongside your granny and now he’s living without her.”
“I miss her, mum.”
“So do I, poppet, but neither of us miss her in the same way that he does. He doesn’t smell, but his pipe does. He isn’t boring; he just doesn’t understand a lot about today’s world. And he’s certainly not weird. He’s just coping with everything getting weird on him. So come over here and give your mum a cuddle, eh?”



‘Stufffucker UK40 has entered the room’

He liked Stufffucker. He’d watched him sat in his cheap computer chair, wearing a tight, shiny mask of black latex. A modest six inch dildo protruded from both the forehead and the chin, and he’d seen both used, as well as the man’s own long and slender penis. He’d once seem him use all three, in turn, to penetrate what looked like a dead cat. On one occasion he’d seen him fuck a handful of his own shit.



Genine finished folding the cotton napkin and placed it on the table in front of Nate. His face was fixed in concentration.
“So do me four more, as close to that as you can and I’ll go and tell May to come down in a bit.”
Nate was going to fold the napkins in the way a robot would. His movements would be precise and minimal. He would fold them all identically and would take exactly the same amount of time on each. Like a machine.



SinBad4SickJerk’s laptop beeped and a video box appeared in the top right corner of the screen. Stufffucker UK40 was privating him with a request. Instead of sound, a text box at the bottom of the link relayed the question. He reached over to the box at the other end of his desk and picked out a blood red lipstick. Facing the mirror he clumsily wrote, in stacked letters starting at his throat, the words ‘slut hole’. The letters ended a little way above his tunnel of a navel, so he added a downward facing arrow to fill the space.



Genine was having an argument of sorts with May, their eldest. The argument was being held in slow and quiet words but they managed somehow to suggest both volume and vehemence, although neither quality was actually present. Genine, having performed a knock-and-enter-all-in-one-go, was wondering what May had been looking at on her laptop that made her pull an almost pantomime face of shock before closing down the page. May was trying to engage her mother philosophically, arguing that the absence of a reason for an action does not, in fact, render the act questionable. Mid-forties meets mid-teens. Genine was feeling old and tired as it was and really should, she thought, just let it go. More tiring was the argument raging in her own mind, where noise and anger had never seemed an issue.

“Big deal, she’s looking at porn you fucking hypocrite…”
This howled by a slimmer, younger her complete with an asymmetric bob, a T-shirt dress that barely covered her arse, and someone else’s boyfriend.

“For all I know she’s buying industrial strength laxatives and branded razor blades!”
A fatter, drabber and clearly addicted to Marie Claire her was bellowing, simultaneously managing to cross her ham-like arms and thump the table at the same time.



SinBad4SickJerk hisses~ ‘We’ve chatted before. You like it really nasty, don’t you?’

Stufffucker UK40 whispers~ ‘We have, and I do. Never seen anyone as disgusting as you, you fucking hole. You get me so hot. What’s under the arrow, you filthy shit?’

SinBad4SickJerk hisses~ ‘I can see I get you hot… You love rubbing it to me don’t you? You need help, my friend ï