Irvine Welsh - If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

Scott and Eugene froze, looking in open-mouthed vacancy at the barrel of the pistol.

Madeline swallowed hard, then crouched backwards, feeling the wall of the tent behind her. — What… what do you want?

Alejandro looked her up and down. A faint, mordant grin of contempt crossed his mouth. Then he turned to the others. — Feenish, he spat.

Scott looked up, Eugene’s cock, dripping with blood, still in his hand. — What… we weren’t—

— Leesen to thees, Alejandro commanded, gun trained on them, — you feenish sucking hees deek, and you suck it right. Suck it like a leel gorl would suck your deek, he smiled coldly.

— But — Scott protested.

— FEENEESH! Alejandro roared, as Noe nodded frantically, imploring them to acquiesce with his brother’s demand.

— Do as he says, for Gad’s sake! Madeline begged.

As a terrified Scott started to obey, Alejandro regarded Eugene. — And you; you weel enjoy eet. I wahn see you come in hees face like he ees your beetch.

Suddenly Scott started to gag on Eugene’s cock. It looked horrible and it tasted foul, the metallic blood so strong; he began to wonder if it was the snake’s poison in his mouth, going down his gullet and into his stomach. He thought he’d spat out most of the venom but he couldn’t be sure.

And then there was Eugene’s dirty blood. He thought of his old college friend’s behavior at UCLA and then in San Francisco. By taking that shit into his system he was sleeping with every campus slut, every drunken waitress or bartender, every poxy whore on Sunset or the Tenderloin that his buddy’s filthy dick had ever been inside. And this meant, by extension, he’d taken in every diseased cock that had breached all those germ-incubating pussies. The odds against him not contracting something seemed so overwhelmingly vast. He could now hear Eugene’s boasts of those whores he’d enjoyed on their trip to Vegas last month, and he could, in his mind’s eye, envision their harsh, painted faces as well as the complacent, arrogant smirk of every John who had brothel-crawled across the globe from Tijuana to Thailand on expense accounts. Scott’s ears rang with the phantom clinks of Vegas slot machines and stoical chants of stern-faced croupiers as they flagged up impossible odds against the avoidance of fatal infection, as his mouth struggled around that sweaty, bloody cock.

But he had to go on. Because a bullet from this range in your face offered worse odds still. Worse odds than just about anything.

That gun; they had a gun pointing at them! These men were psychopaths. The crazy eyes on that sonofabitch with the revolver, it was like looking into hell. In a bitter fear, Scott decided that he was destined to die hopelessly, his skull blown apart by some wetback assassin’s bullet before he could liberate his trust fund. His money. The legacy bequeathed to him. Everything Pops had worked for. The old man: all he had ever expected Scott to do in life was to simply stay alive long enough to collect. And he couldn’t even do that one damned thing. There would be no band, no success, nothing to impress his father. He would perish out here in the desert and his last memory in his short life would be of Eugene’s goddamn bloodied cock in his mouth. The horrible injustice of it all hit home, and Scott started to sob. Then he heard Eugene protesting, — I can’t do this. I can’t come. I can’t even get hard! I don’t like him. I don’t like boys…

Alejandro laughed loudly and thumped his chest in disbelief. — He no like boys! You hear that, my leel brother? He turned to Noe. — He has a faggot sucking his deek and he no like boys! He shook his head in disgust. — You steek it in thee leel gorl on her bad time. You are animals!

Eugene protested, — Look, man, I told you I got a snakebite and—

— Shut up weeth your fucking mouth! Alejandro roared, eyes blazing. — Estás como los frijoles, al primer hervor se arrugan!

They hastily complied as Alejandro turned to Madeline, and grabbed her roughly by the arm.

— Alejandro, please… Noe pleaded.

— Be silent, leetal brother, he commanded in a low hiss, pulling Madeline over to Scott and Eugene. — Take off your top and your brassiere, he whispered at her in soft threat.

— You really think I’d — Madeline started in defiance then faltered, as she looked at Alejandro for a second, then again at the .38 in his hand. In one quick motion, she pulled off her tank top. Noe, now half in the tent, saw the St Christopher’s around her neck, hanging on her chest bone above her breasts and was moved to cross himself and say a silent prayer. He then drew a breath as Madeline removed her bra.

Alejandro thought of them all; the lazy wives and daughters of the rich men. How, as they lay by their pools, in their bikinis, sipping their drinks, they never, ever saw him as he sweated in their gardens. And he wanted them to see him. Wanted them to take off their tops. Free those big breasts they had pumped with silicone. Now he could make them.

— You see her teets, seesay boy? Alejandro turned to Eugene who had his head to the side. He’d bowed it at first, but that had only forced him to regard Scott. — Look at her, seesay boy, Alejandro urged, waving the pistol, — look at those fine teets, so feerm. She want you, seesay boy, she want you so much… so much…

Alejandro gasped, and a horrified Noe realized that his brother had dropped his trousers and was masturbating himself with his free hand.

Noe took a step back out of the tent, trembling as he held the flap open. Madeline closed her eyes and Scott sucked, fearfully swallowing that dark blood. Alejandro continued jerking himself off, filling the tent with his commentary. — She want you just like the leel faggot want you, seesay boy, so wheetch one you choose? Wheetch one, seesay boy? You, beetch, he spat at Madeline, — you touch those teets! Make your neepels hard!

Madeline began caressing herself, first in stiff fear, then attempting to divert her thoughts to Scott, in an effort to black out everything else. She was trying to think about whether or not she was in love with him. Those soft, dark eyes, so full of sadness, yet hope. He was a beautiful boy and they’d had a great experience together on the yagé, and she’d seen something inside him, his soul, and knew there was more to him than the fearful trust-fund kid trying to avoid and appease a distant father and an alcoholic mother.

She thought of how she should have phoned her own folks. They liked to talk to her at least once a week. She knew they worried about her. What would they think if they knew she was here, now? Madeline considered the path, so apparently mundane, that had taken her to this terrible place. Just over six months ago she was working in Walgreen’s and living at home with her parents in the Cleveland suburb she grew up in. She hated it, and had particularly detested her high school. Most of all, she despised her surname: Madeline Frostdyke.

Or Frigid Lesbian, as the nastier kids had called her at school.

In San Francisco she could be Madeline Frost. Sometimes, when her feminist spirit was ascendant, she would take on her mother’s maiden name, Kennaway.

When the insults started, Madeline reacted by trying not to draw attention to herself, but that was exactly what she ended up doing. By letting her conservative mother dress her, Madeline Frostdyke, in her fifties-style outfits and her big glasses, became one of the most obvious geeks in her school. And she’d have stayed that way, trying too hard to be anonymous, but then puberty hit her hard, and left her with curves that her shapeless, dowdy clothes couldn’t quite conceal and drives that a decent, God-fearing suburban American household couldn’t contain. However, save for a couple of encounters hastily engineered largely in order to gain rudimentary carnal experience, she was determined that Cleveland, so cruel to Madeline Frostdyke, was not going to get the best of Madeline Frost.