James Craig - London Calling

Ian opened his eyes and smiled. ‘Oh, well,’ he sighed, ‘if you insist.’ Rolling on to his stomach, he buried his head into a plump pillow, groaning slightly in anticipation of the pleasure to come. Immediately, he felt his legs being moved gently apart. He let his mind drift off, thinking about nothing in particular. A few moments later, he was brought back to the present as a pair of fingers slipped between his buttocks and began gently probing his arsehole. He grunted in anticipation.

‘Be my guest,’ he mumbled into the pillow. ‘It’s clean.’

Under the slow, steady caresses that rippled up his spine, he finally dozed off. After what could have been a few minutes, could have been half an hour, he woke with a start as cold oil was poured over his shoulders and trickled down his back.

‘Ahh!’

‘Sorry. It’s just geranium and orange oil. I should have warmed it first.’ The voice was solicitous, calm, mature, compelling. ‘Go back to sleep.’

‘OK.’ He relaxed back into the pillow and felt the oil turn warm as it was rubbed into his shoulders. Once again, his eyes closed and sleep came quickly.

‘Ian?’

He was woken for a second time, with a whisper in his ear. At the same time, a pair of hands gently lifted his hips off the bed, pulling his buttocks apart. Smiling, he automatically tensed his cheeks. Buns of steel, he thought. Not bad for a man my age. Sleep fell away as a hand grabbed his cock and the ‘Heart of Glass’ was pushed firmly up his backside. Cool and insistent, he felt the skin stretch and threaten to tear. He gasped, unable to distinguish the pleasure from the pain. Pushing the hand away, he grabbed his now firm member and began pumping furiously.

For ten, fifteen, twenty seconds, they established a rhythm. Rapidly reaching the point of no return, he dismissed the idea of holding back and gave one final stroke, before coming for the second time. There was less semen this time, but still a respectable amount. With a grunt of satisfaction, he collapsed back on the bed, taking care to avoid his own mess.

Still well embedded up his arse, the dildo came to a stop. ‘Ian? I’m not finished yet.’

‘Do what you will,’ he said yawning, as he stuck the pillow over his head. ‘I am spent. Take me as you please.’

With more than a hint of petulance, the dildo was thrust roughly further inside him.

‘Gently!’

‘I’m not hurting you, am I?’ A hand gently stroked the back of his neck.

‘No… Well, maybe just a little. Be careful. Don’t damage the nerve ends.’

The dildo probed a little deeper and resumed its steady movement. The hand began rubbing his neck more firmly, as if to provide a distraction from the increasing pain. Ian’s eyes darted from side to side but, so close to the pillow, could see nothing. He could feel his heartbeat thumping against the mattress and a sudden spurt of adrenaline reignited his earlier feelings of pleasure. He tried to push himself up, but the hand on his neck forced him down, kept his face firmly into the sheets. Just as the sense of panic threatened to overwhelm him, the dildo slid out of him. The trapped wind made a farting noise, and they both laughed. The pressure on his neck was also released, and he felt a gentle kiss descend behind his left ear. Relaxing back into the sheets, he closed his eyes and waited for his heart rate to slow.

‘Don’t worry.’ Another kiss. ‘If that dildo is too much for you, I have something else.’

‘Just be gentle,’ he murmured. From deep in the pillow, he could see that the bedside clock read 1.05 a.m. He had to be at work in just over four hours so this time he really did have to get some sleep. ‘It’s late, and maybe we’ve had enough for tonight,’ he said, sounding as casual as possible. ‘We can do this again some other time. I need to get some rest now, but you can stay if you want to.’

‘That’s OK.’ He felt the mattress shift and heard the sound of bare feet padding across the thin carpet. ‘I will have to get going, but, first, I’ve got something to round the night off nicely.’

Whatever. Having called time, Ian had already moved on in his mind, and was thinking about the people that he had to meet in the morning. They were Chileans, dealers in ‘specialist’ technology, and very nice clients. Happily, they were also undemanding types, which would be just as well on this particular occasion.

He was just dreaming about demolishing a full English breakfast when he felt a sharp, burning pain explode through his abdomen. ‘What?’ he cried, his eyes welling up before he could even open them. This time, the flesh was definitely tearing. There was another blow before he could throw off the pillow and flip over on to his back. The sheets beneath him were turning red. Then he saw the blade, dripping with blood, his blood, being waved in front of his face. I should scream, he thought as he watched the knife scything through his cheek, extending his mouth all the way to his left ear. Help! his brain screamed, but all that came out was a gurgle.

A series of blows rained down on his face, neck and torso. Even as he was bringing his arms up to his head in a futile attempt to defend himself, he was mesmerised by the weapon. It was almost as if it was working on its own. Once, twice, three times, he tried to grab it, simply attracting gashes to his hands and arms. Grabbing a pillow, he tried to hide from the attack, but a swift knee to the balls sent him sprawling. As he fell off the bed, his head bounced off a side table and he landed on the floor.

Dazed, he tried to curl up into a ball but found himself being dragged back on to the bed. Maybe he cried for his mother; or maybe he just imagined that he did. For what seemed like an eternity, the blows kept descending. Even the repeated moaning, as metal penetrated flesh, and the occasional grunt of his assailant could not drown out the whirr of the air-conditioning.

As he drifted out of consciousness for the last time, Ian could not believe his bad luck.

Yorkshire, June 1984

‘Sit still, sunshine. This is going to hurt.’ The voice was tired, bored, provincial. Not friendly, not interested.

Fresh out of Hendon training college, Constable John Carlyle felt a long way from home.

‘You’ll feel just a little sting. Move around and it will get worse.’

‘Shit!’ Carlyle screwed up his face and closed his eyes tightly. The sweat trickled down his forehead from beneath his recently refreshed number-one buzz cut, mingling with the TCP liquid antiseptic that had just been rubbed into the gash above his right eye. Although barely two inches long, it felt massive and deep, and Carlyle could feel it opening and closing as he wiggled his eyebrows. He was sure that his skull was now exposed to the elements. Maybe my brain will slip out, he thought. Assuming that he still had one.

‘Sit still! Surely you London boys can take a bit of rough-and-tumble, can’t you?’ The pasty paramedic, dressed in a green jumpsuit, his gargoyle face looking washed out in the glare of the intense sunlight, stood back to admire his work. He pronounced himself satisfied, then quickly slapped a plaster the size of a cigarette packet on Carlyle’s forehead.

‘You’re done,’ he said.

Carlyle opened one eye. ‘It hurts.’

‘I told you it would.’ The gargoyle took a quick swig from the TCP bottle, swilled it around his mouth and spat it on the ground. He offered to share a taste. Carlyle shook his head and looked away. Wiping more sweat from his forehead, he felt the heat rising from his face and felt the snot desiccating and solidifying in his nose. This was not where he wanted to be, stuck in the middle of a row of terraced houses in the middle of some hapless, downtrodden, down-at-heel village in the middle of the north of England.