James Craig: Nobody's Hero

Struggling to shift away from the damp patch sticking to the small of her back, Sandra Middlemass wrinkled her nose. With the benefit of hindsight, opening the window would have been a good idea. Even the waves of pollution rising up from the thousands of vehicles making their way along the road outside would have been an improvement on the fetid atmosphere inside the room.

From the other side of the thin glass, the relentless hum of early evening traffic rumbling past at six miles an hour was suddenly interrupted by a series of screaming police sirens trying to force their way through the capital’s near-gridlock.

‘Ugh.’ With his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth, the fat man half-pushed himself up as he gave a nervous glance towards the window.

The idiot thinks they’re coming for him , Sandra thought, feeling him beginning to soften inside her. As if. Scratching her nose, she watched the guy struggle to put his tongue back in his mouth. Who was he? She tried to remember the name. Steve something or other.

Whatever. He was one of Aqib’s white mates. Not the kind of bloke to waste any money on deodorant. And not very good when it came to putting on a condom.

Had she screwed him before? Sandra had no idea.

‘Fucking coppers,’ the guy grunted, still looking through the window at the milky sky.

Don’t you worry , Sandra thought wearily, it’s not like they’re coming to save me. They never come for me.

As if on cue, the sirens immediately reached a crescendo and began dying away.

See?

Sandra had learned over the last six months that there was no danger of any of her abusers being caught in the act. Once, she’d even been to the police station to beg for help; ended up sitting in an airless waiting room for four hours without even an offer of something to drink.

No one came then, either. In the end, she just walked out. An hour or so later, she had been back on the job.

Most likely, the coppers dutifully rushing across West London tonight were responding to reports of another gang of shoplifters targeting the nearby shopping centre. It was a routine occurrence – one that always got a prompt response from the boys in blue at the nearby police station. That was the thing about the police in this city – they only dealt with the right sort of crime. Protecting iPhones and Rolexes was one thing. People, on the other hand, were nowhere near as important. Leave them to their own devices and they would eventually go away. Crumble to dust. Disappear.

If that was the name of the game, well fine. She would play the game. She would disappear. Problem solved.

Mumbling to himself, Steve – if that was his name – rubbed at the tattoo on his left forearm. It was a crude drawing of some bloke’s face. The bloke had spiky hair and shifty eyes. Underneath the face, in small letters, was tattooed Captain, Leader, Legend .

Legend? Bell-end, more like , Sandra thought, stifling a giggle. Inside her, Steve was continuing to wilt. She hoped that the Durex would stay on. Even more, she hoped that he managed to restore his erection. Otherwise, there would doubtless be a beating in it for her.

As the sirens faded further into the distance, she felt the guy’s attention finally return to her naked body. After toying with Sandra’s left nipple for a couple of seconds, he flopped down on top of her and began grinding away. The weight on her chest was crushing and she could barely breathe as he picked up speed.

Get on with it, you stupid bastard.

Looking past the punter’s left shoulder, Sandra noticed that there was a large cobweb in the far corner of the room, near to where the ceiling met the wall. Next to it was a massive spider. It looked like the spider was watching them. For some reason, the idea struck her as amusing. This time she allowed herself a laugh.

‘What’s so funny, huh?’ The fat man pushed himself off her chest, balling his right hand into a fist as he did so.

He just can’t manage it . Taking a deep breath, the girl braced herself for the inevitable blow. When it came, his wedding ring split her lip. Sandra hadn’t noticed the ring before. What kind of idiot would marry a loser like this?

Running her tongue across her gums, she tasted the salty blood. ‘Is it still in?’ she grinned, sticking out her chin, defying him to hit her again.

‘You little bitch,’ the man hissed, sliding off her. Standing by the bed, he tore off the empty condom and tossed it on to the floor.

Wiping the sweat from her left breast, a sense of giddiness enveloped her. Sandra finally realized that she knew how this should end. What was it called? Short-term pain for long-term gain. A few more minutes and it would be all over. She could say goodbye to all the fat men and their tattoos, forever.

It was time to disappear.

‘I’m sorry,’ she propped herself up on her elbows, ‘it’s just that for such a big man, you have such a small cock. Tiny, in fact.’

The guy stepped forward and Sandra was sure that she could see his dick shrink even further, getting smaller and smaller until it had almost disappeared into an unkempt nest of black pubes. Her grin grew wider as the second blow rammed her nose back into her face. Her head bounced back onto the pillow but immediately she lifted herself up again, inviting more punishment.

‘I’ve never had anyone who couldn’t get it up before,’ she managed to say. ‘But I’m sure there’s an explanation. Maybe you’re gay?’

The look on the guy’s face as he reached for her throat was a mixture of confusion, hatred and pure rage.

Got you. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with that,’ she smiled sweetly as his hands tightened around her windpipe. Then gurgled: ‘Nothing at all.’

Overwhelmed by a sense of ennui, Joseph Belsky pushed his chair back from his desk, stretched out his arms and yawned theatrically. Closing his mouth, he looked past his reflection, gazing out of the window at the orange glow of the lurid metropolitan sky. From somewhere in the heavens came the whining of jet engines as an aircraft made its descent towards Heathrow. Were the flights becoming more frequent, or was it just his imagination? One day , Belsky thought unhappily, one of the planes would inevitably fall from the sky , for some reason or another. Still staring blankly at the rain, his thoughts turned to long-gone skyscrapers far away as he listened to the aircraft’s Rolls-Royce engines slip off into the distance.

The city below lay silent and uncomplaining. Not for the first time, Belsky wondered just how he had managed to end up living so far from the ground. Never having a head for heights, he had been the most reluctant buyer of a seventeen-hundred square foot, three-bedroom home on the twenty-second floor of the Whitehouse Apartment building on the South Bank. It was his late wife, Winnifred, who had chosen it. At the time, Belsky had been too meek to resist; after Winnifred keeled over – felled by a fatal heart attack during a visit to a garden centre in Elephant and Castle – he simply didn’t have the energy to pack up and move on.

From the moment she first walked into the place, Winnifred had been hooked on the views that the flat offered across the historic centre of the city. When he had tried to complain that the price was way beyond their budget, the look on her face had sent him scurrying back to the bank to beg for a massively increased loan, underpinned by a ludicrously optimistic assessment of his future income. When the teenage mortgage adviser had signed it off with barely a second glance, Belsky knew he was sunk. Those were the days before the credit crunch, the sub-prime crisis, the banking crisis and the seemingly endless recession that had seen home loans for ordinary people dry up. Thank God London property prices hadn’t crashed too, otherwise he would have been taking his monster debt with him to the grave.