Alexander Stuart - The War Zone - 20th Anniversary Edition

‘The Royal A-cunt-omy,’ Jessie corrects, handing me hers.

‘Right.’

I turn Jessie’s cast over in my hand and feel a chill.

It’s all there, all the detail of her cunt and arse, Dad’s playground, like a relic that will be left when they’re dead. I feel her watching me and stare at Sonny, who seems to be enjoying this, sitting on her heels with the big sculptured torso between her legs, the white of the plaster a shock against the smooth brown of her thighs. She runs a finger down the tract in the middle, stroking the molding with a tiny circling motion performed deliberately for me.

‘This one’s mine,’ she says and I see Jessie watching me still, drinking her wine.

‘Show it to him,’ Jessie says, putting the glass down.

‘I am.’

‘No, I mean show it to him,’ Jessie repeats, getting up off the mattress and onto her knees.

She looks at me and with total confidence puts her hand on Sonny’s groin, sliding the plaster torso aside and slipping her fingers under the tight blue polka-dotted gusset of Sonny’s outfit and pulling it back, stretching it taut to reveal – what? Black bristles, pinky-brown lips, a sort of affronted vertical gasp that opens and closes again as it adjusts to Jessica’s pressure on it.

My eyes fly between Sonny’s cunt and her face, wanting to look but wanting to look away, too – Jessie is playing with both of us, but we’re letting her, we could stop her if we had the will.

‘Tom’s interested all right, aren’t you?’ she says, grinning at me and resting her other hand on Sonny’s shoulder, massaging her neck. ‘He likes to look.’

‘You ever seen one of these before?’ Sonny asks, and the flash of her eyes convinces me that I do hold some interest for her – as Jessie’s brother, as a sort of male extension of Jessie. ‘Chocolate fudge split.’ She draws the words out, accentuating them, and suddenly I realize I’m more embarrassed by her reference to her color than I am by staring between her legs.

‘I’ll take the fudge,’ Jessie says, rolling down a strap of Sonny’s suit and unpopping a tit which she immediately kisses. ‘And Tom can provide the cream.’

‘Oh God, Jessie,’ Sonny groans, dipping down to meet her face with her own and laughing. ‘You can get out of here right away. You know I’m not into that.’

‘But he’s my brother,’ Jessie croons in her ear. ‘Close your eyes and you won’t know the difference.’

I feel like a dumbo. I feel more excluded than ever – watching Jessie like this is almost worse than seeing her in the shelter, because this is her trick, her taunt, this is the absolute proof of her total control over me. I am not as strong as her, I have to take account of that – I should never have come along, I have to make her an abstract entity, something I can deal with at a distance, someone I can force through to a torturous death without entering into conversation.

‘I’m not your fucking puppet!’ I tell her, erupting out of my own thoughts into their snogging and pushing myself up, ready to kick them both where they are and get out of here.

‘Calm down,’ Jessie says sharply, pulling back from Sonny as if she can switch gear whenever she wants, we’re all just balls in her juggling act. ‘This is going to be worth it for you, I promise. You need to see, Tom, what your life is about. This is going to open your eyes totally.’ And she sounds for a moment like Mum wanting me to be there when the baby is born.

Sonny looks at her, one tit hanging out, the dark brown nipple wet where Jessie has been chewing on it, and then she grins and starts rocking and singing, ‘ It’s a fam’ly affair…’

I feel shock for a moment and wonder how much she knows, but decide she’s just thinking about this, now, Jessie, me – though why it shouldn’t be more, I don’t know – maybe she’s totally clued up about the Prick, maybe she and Jessie get together and act out an all-girl version of their scenes, what do I know?

Then Jessie takes Sonny’s hand and plants it on the fly of my jeans, jerking our strings some more, pushing Sonny’s fingers between the buttons, and I’m standing here – two good strides would take me out of the room – and I can’t leave: if I leave Jessie will think I’m scared. If I stay she’s won, but if I go she’s won too.

Sonny’s hands pull my fly open with no great excitement – this isn’t where her interest lies – so I shift my anger to her, my mind drumming ‘I’m going to fuck you, whatever you want,’ over and over, as she uncovers my dick and holds it like a wet fish flapping in her palm.

I grab her waist nervously, but I’m clumsy and knock her off balance, and she shoves me, angry for an instant, complaining, ‘Take it easy!’ But there’s a numbed simplicity to everything that must be the coke and I put my mouth to her tit where Jessie’s saliva is still damp, and see Jessie’s hands roll down the rest of Sonny’s bathing suit and linger in the space between her legs even as she warns me, ‘Treat Sonny gently, Tom – she’s got a fierce temper!’

And they both laugh and Sonny turns around, virtually kneeing me in the groin as she thrusts my jeans down with her leg. Then she steps out of the frills Jessie is holding and over to the stereo, which has been quiet for some time. Jessie crouches in front of me, the only one of us who’s still fully clothed, and tugs my jeans over my shoes, glancing at my prick as if it’s some kind of toy version of my father’s – a cheap, molded plastic imitation. ‘Just be patient,’ she whispers at me. ‘Don’t blow it.’

Sonny slips a new CD in and goes through to the kitchen-loo, swaying to the music, totally relaxed and happily naked because of Jessie, not me. I crouch on the floor, my dick dangling pathetically, and watch her as she opens a drawer, her arse bobbing to the beat, her breasts dancing on their own, the nipples drawing a line across my brain like a flesh-brown jet trail.

I feel condemned, the way I did in the tube, only different – dumped in a room – a music video set in a riot zone, only there’s no riot; another pathetic empty box where my life moves from A to B: this is where I experience sex, if you don’t count watching my father bugger my sister; this is where she looks on as I get my dick up some friend of hers whose cunt she no doubt knows better than I ever could.

Sonny comes back through, clutching a handful of black plastic rubbish sacks, humming a sort of counterpoint to the music in a rich, clear voice. I stare at the dark ridge of her cunt as she walks toward me and think about the photo in the kitchen and Lucy – I wish this was Lucy and I was alone with her now – but then I’m distracted by the bags and wonder what the hell they mean as Sonny tells Jessie, ‘Help me spread them on the floor.’

They lay them out, lifting the plaster cunts and using them as weights, then Jessie tells me to take my shirt off and lie down, but I crouch there not moving and watch as Jessie starts to perform for me with Sonny.

‘Go on,’ Jessie urges when Sonny, finding herself behind her, cradles her bum with the fur of her crotch, rubbing against the back of Jessie’s skirt with an exaggerated circling motion aimed, like both their eyes, at me. ‘This is Tom’s education, he needs to lose his fear. He doesn’t think women function like boys do, he needs to see how we work.’

That’s not the truth and she knows it, I have other fears, other horrors, to haunt me – she has taken everything: all the love, all the feeling, all my worth.

She eases around in Sonny’s grasp and draws Sonny’s head down to her skirt where Sonny’s hands have already been playing. They get down on to the floor and Sonny draws Jessie’s knickers off, casting them in my direction, where I gaze at a vague golden stain inside their front and at Sonny’s angular, high-boned face plunged between the elastic tops of Jessie’s stockings, lapping at her cunt.