Alexander Stuart - The War Zone - 20th Anniversary Edition

‘Wait,’ Jessie says, her eyes not leaving me, her voice a little throatier than usual. ‘I want Tom to try this too. Lie down,’ she tells me, ‘so Sonny can sit on you.’

And we all move around like fucking musical chairs – Sonny and I have surrendered all rights to our will, to our individuality. I am led by my prick almost literally, by an overpowering need to do it now even if it means I’m a total sad wanker – even if it means that whatever is left of my sense of righteousness falls apart next to Jessie’s because she is always so clear and unsentimental about what she wants.

With the strange plasticky touch of a garbage sack under my head, Sonny sits on my face and Jessie stands over her so that our two tongues can work at once. The force of Sonny’s weight nearly blacks me out at first and I have to push her off and let my tongue strain uncertainly up into the arena above, my mouth and nose almost clogging with the sudden clash of tastes and smells – sharp, uriney, sweaty, then something sweet like jam.

I open my eyes to Sonny’s chin and Jessie’s arse and skirt overhead and think, despite all my pathetic self-recriminations and doubts, that I can’t hold out, I’m going to come in a moment, and I don’t want it to be yet, not until I’m inside Sonny – but then she changes everything, lifting herself off me to examine the arm Jessie has just exposed from her jacket, saying, ‘What is that, honey?’ in a voice of real concern.

It’s a put-up job, another one, it has to be. Everything is arranged, everything is planned. It’s all fiction – Jessie’s fiction, not mine. I lie here, some kind of rank, porky smell on my lips, and Sonny poised over me staring at the burn on Jessie’s shoulder. ‘What happened?’ she asks.

‘Tom did that.’

‘Tom?’ Sonny looks down at me in a new light.

‘You wanted it,’ I remind Jessie, feeling defensive suddenly, feeling very young, lying here naked with Sonny’s knees rooted firmly on either side.

‘You enjoy that, do you?’ Sonny asks.

‘Not particularly,’ I say. ‘No.’

‘What are we going to do with him?’ Sonny asks Jessie, settling her shins down into the flesh of my arms, her arse on my chest, so that I’d have to fight to move, and right now I seem to have lost any will to fight.

‘I don’t know.’ Jessie is behind me, her knees edging on to the tips of my hair, tugging it painfully, but out of my line of sight even when I roll up my eyes.

‘I think we’ve got to do something,’ Sonny says, sitting hard on me, taking Jessie’s outstretched hand above my head and kissing her fingers. ‘Maybe he’ll enjoy this…?’

And I feel a thin trickle, burning hot at first, start at my chest and run down to my armpit, followed by another running toward my neck. I hear the music playing and feel Jessie’s knees forcing down my hair and see the pouting, heavy lower lip of Sonny’s broad mouth as she gazes down at me with a kind of consternation, and realize that she’s pissing on me, she’s peeing all over me, lifting herself forward now so that my face is her target.

‘Fuck off!’ I manage, twisting my head sideways.

‘Taste that,’ she says, moving with me as I try to struggle out of range, spraying my cheeks and mouth. ‘It’s straight from the source.’

‘Drink it, Tom,’ Jessie tells me, ramming her knees onto my shoulders but keeping my face clear for Sonny. ‘You need this. It’s as natural as breathing, it will open all those strange, dark doors you keep locked.’

I try to shut my mouth as hard as I’ve got my eyes shut but some of it gets in, I’ve got gulps of warm piss going down my throat and a taste on my tongue that’s flat and dry, making me swallow, my mind reeling with a sense of humiliation at Jessie’s hands – this is it, she has sealed our fate, all of our fates, she is no part of me, she’s just an animal I’m going to crush.

Somewhere beyond the sick black walls of my eyes, the spurts die to a trickle and Sonny dumps herself back down onto my chest, crushing my ribs, twisting herself over me in a loose rhythm to the music that’s still playing. I feel the hem of Jessie’s skirt brush over my face as she moves forward, her knees cutting into me harder than ever, shooting veins of lightning across my head. I keep my eyes closed, hearing the music, feeling wet and uncomfortable all over, sensing the soft contact of their mouths and not wanting to live at this moment, not wanting to have to face them here in this room.

But Sonny’s not finished. ‘You’ve been a good little boy,’ she says, working her way down my stomach to sit on my dick. ‘You could get to like it as much as Jessie here—’

And I open my eyes as Jessie takes herself off me and see Sonny lifting my prick and wedging it between her legs so that it sticks up as if it’s a part of her. ‘If only you didn’t have this thing.’

And for a moment of blind panic I think they’re going to do something really crazy, like cut it off. I force myself up on to my arms, as far as I can go, but Jessie’s ready for me.

She has a towel in her hands and in an instant it’s around my head, tight, gagging my mouth, locked around my throat, my brow, the rough, furry weave rubbing against my eyes, her knees pushing me back down.

‘Don’t struggle or I’ll pull it tighter,’ she says and for a curious, floating moment I’m back in our childhood together when we used to play games like this and sometimes take them too far. But this is now and we’re older – we aren’t playing.

‘Jessie, you cunt!’ I hear the muffled fear in my voice. ‘I’ll tell—’ But who am I going to tell? Mum? The Prick? This is just another corner of the web.

‘Is that a bad thing or a good thing to say about your sister?’ Sonny asks, tweaking my foreskin back painfully with her nails, then grabbing my flailing arms with her hands.

‘He loves me really,’ Jessie tells her. ‘That’s the thing he can’t stand. Listen—’ I can feel her face close to mine on the floor, her breath hot through the towel. ‘I’m going to live up to my part of the bargain – you’re going to get laid. Now you live up to yours. No running to Mummy or anyone else. No more watching or interfering.’

For a moment I could almost convince myself that it is Sonny and her she is talking about, protecting the two of them, but that would be too simple, that would be no problem at all.

‘It doesn’t have to hurt anyone. It was never meant to—’

‘ What— ’ The towel tightens with the opening of my mouth, cutting a line across my neck, strangling my words. ‘ What about me? ’

‘It doesn’t have to hurt anyone else then, Tom. I’m truly sorry you found out, but try to understand. It’s not so foreign to you, admit it. Let me explore.’ She relaxes the towel where it’s garroting me, but only enough to let me breathe. ‘I know I can’t scare you…’

One hand is on my head now, stroking my brow, the line of my hair through the cloth. ‘…so try to understand and…’ I listen to the words, trying to work out even now how much Sonny knows, whether it’s everything or if she’s totally lost, guessing or not caring what Jessie is talking about. Jessie’s hand abandons my hair, her voice retreating in space: ‘…sympathize a little.’

There is an argument outside in the street, the abuse close through the open window. The music stops again and inside the room there is silence. I know Brixton is there, with its warring moods and its chemical sky and the nasty houses opposite – and London, which is no good either: it’s not interested in my protection. Somewhere, too, the Prick is with the Koreans – or has he brought them here, all of them, now, watching?