66‘Yes, I understand what you’re saying—by tomorrow morning it will all be over, but, if I don’t hear from you, I will do what I have to.’
Suzanne was talking to Lenny. Amy could hear it in her voice. She must be talking to him because she was speaking English and it was in a softer, higher tone than when she talked to others. But Amy could tell she was irritable. After she had finished the phone call, Amy listened to her pace around the flat, and then she burst into the room making Amy jump. Amy was sitting at her table working on the necklace for Suzanne. She had constructed the best necklace ever. She had put a lot of thought into it.
‘Get off that chair and come here.’
Amy blinked hard, slipped her brace out of her mouth and surreptitiously slipped it into the bead box, hoping that Suzanne wouldn’t notice.
‘Yes, Suzanne?’
‘I’ve bought you some clothes to wear, put them on.’ She threw some things at Amy. Amy caught them full in the face. She was the worst catcher in the world.
When they had to pick teams for netball she was always the last one to be chosen.Amy picked them up and looked at them: two items—a denim mini-skirt and a white cotton stretchy boob tube.
‘They’ll be tight on you, but they should do the job. Put them on.’
Amy blinked up at Suzanne.
‘Go in the bathroom then, just get on with it.’
Amy disappeared into the bathroom and came out with the outfit on. Suzanne picked up the chair and dragged it to the centre of the room where there was good light and she could see what she was doing.
‘SIT.’
Amy did as she was told.
Suzanne pulled out her makeup bag from her handbag and began examining Amy’s face. She took off her glasses. Amy sat patiently whilst Suzanne made her up. When she’d finished, Suzanne sat back to admire her work.
‘There, that ought to do it…’ she giggled.
Amy didn’t know what to say. She was waiting to be given permission to move.
‘Well, go and have a look at yourself, and for fuck’s sake, don’t you smudge it.’
Amy got off the chair gingerly. She stared at her reflection. A pale-faced, rosy-cheeked doll stared back. Her eyes were blackened with kohl, her lashes long. Her lips were bright red. Amy’s eyes flicked back and forth over the image. It fascinated her. She reached to touch the mirror. It was true—it was her. She smiled
and was alarmed that the girl smiled too. Boy, would her mummy be mad if she saw her looking like this!Suzanne’s phone went off. It was Sunny, Amy could tell by the way she barked at him like a yappy dog. Amy stayed in the bathroom and continued to stare at her reflection. Something bad was happening. This wasn’t the usual.
‘Tomorrow morning it all kicks off. We move the merchandise over to the Filipinas’ house, and then we start the auction.’
Suzanne hung up, and Amy waited for a few seconds before she called out from the bathroom: ‘Suzanne? Have you got a different outfit? I don’t think it really fits me.’
Suzanne laughed. ‘It doesn’t need to fit you. Come out and let me see.’
Amy stepped gingerly out of the bathroom. The white top clung to her fat pointy breasts. The rolls of fat around her stomach meant that the skirt, which was supposed to rest on her hip bones, got snagged above her waist and stopped where it met her stubby, shapeless legs—it barely covered her square bottom. Amy tugged at it but it wouldn’t budge.
‘Thank you for doing my makeup and bringing me these clothes. Shall I make you a drink, Suzanne?’
Suzanne considered it, then she looked at her watch.
‘Why not? We have a long night ahead. Make it a weak one. I have loads to do tomorrow.’
Amy went into the lounge. She carried the bottle of gin and the tonic, a glass, a plate of sliced lemons all on a tray. Very carefully she came in; the tray was
tinkling as the contents touched each other. Amy set the tray down.‘Then, please, Suzanne, can I brush your hair?’
She began mixing the drink the way she had learned. But, tonight was different.
‘Pour yourself one too, Amy. Pour a gin out. Do it.’
Amy did as she was told. She made one drink for Suzanne and one for herself. She tasted it.
‘Yuk—that’s disgusting.’ She shivered and stood with her stomach sticking out, making a face. She undid the skirt at the front and her stomach seemed to expand by six inches. ‘I feel sick.’
Suzanne giggled. ‘Do my hair now.’ She sat down and waited for Amy to get the brushes. Amy poured another gin for her.
‘You can drink, can’t you, Suzanne, because you don’t have to go anywhere this night. You have to sleep here.’
‘Yes, fucking Sunny and that new guy who never says a fuckin’ word, Pat, they’ve got something else to do—and I’m stuck here with you for company!’
‘I am sorry.’
‘So am I, believe me.’ She downed her drink.
Amy filled up her glass again.
‘And what the fuck have you done to that lamp?’ Suzanne stared at the wire frame of the raffia lamp.
‘Sorry, Suzanne, it just fell apart. I was touching it—I just noticed there was a thread—I started to pull…’
‘All right, all right—you don’t have to go into so much fucking detail. Thank fuck we won’t have to stare at all this crap for much longer.’
‘Can I go back to school, Suzanne?’
Suzanne laughed again. She was getting drunk, Amy could tell.
‘You’ll be learning something very important soon, believe me—now brush my hair and stop talking.’
Amy took long, even strokes as Suzanne closed her eyes and relaxed. Amy looked at the bottle of gin. It was two-thirds empty.
‘Can I tie your hair up on top of your head into a bun, Suzanne?’
‘Do what you want.’
‘Here, Suzanne—you haven’t had hardly any gin.’
Suzanne’s eyes opened and she drank the rest of her glass. Amy filled it up again. This time with three-quarters’ gin and a quarter of tonic water.
Suzanne tasted it. ‘Fucking hell. What are you trying to do? That’s way too strong.’
‘Sorry, Suzanne.’ Amy went to take the glass off her and put some more tonic water in, but Suzanne snatched it back.
‘It doesn’t matter. I feel like getting drunk anyway. This is a celebration, Amy. Tonight is the night that Lenny has promised to leave his ugly little wife and marry me.’
‘Do you want to lie down, Suzanne? I can give you a foot massage.’
Suzanne looked at Amy curiously then kicked off her shoes.
‘Okay, why not? There’s nothing else to do. Here…’ Suzanne fished in her makeup bag and found some almond oil she used on her cuticles. ‘Use this, but don’t waste it.’
‘Thank you, Suzanne.’ Amy put it carefully down beside her whilst she slid Suzanne’s pop socks off. Suzanne had painted toes—so pretty, thought Amy.
‘And get me some paracetamol out of my bag—give me four—I have a thumping headache.’
Amy looked around for Suzanne’s bag. She found the pills. She gave four tablets to Suzanne, who swallowed them down with gin. Amy began to massage Suzanne’s feet. She looked at Suzanne’s handbag. The bottle of sleeping pills sat on the top. Amy kept her eyes on Suzanne, whilst she eased one hand gently across and tucked the bottle back inside the bag.
67‘Good evening, sirs.’
Comfort smiled. She looked around the table at the Colonel, Brandon and the Teacher. The Teacher’s blue eyes rolled slowly up her body and settled on her face. He flashed a big sarcastic smile back, which stayed on his mouth as he spoke.
‘Hello! Now bring me a beer and fuck off.’ He turned to the Colonel. ‘Where’s Terry.’
‘Terry is busy. He has a lot of things to coordinate. The end of the world is nigh. We must prepare.’
The Teacher studied him closely, a sneer on his face.
‘You should lay off the stuff. You are beginning to look more than a little crazy.’ He looked at Maya, who was slumped in the crook of the Colonel’s arm. ‘And you should put that little girl down. She looks sick.’
The Colonel leaned forward. His eyes bulged and his breath made the Teacher reel. Brandon sat watching.
‘I will put her down when I please. You may be the big man’s right-hand man, but this is still my world. I am God here, remember that.’
The Teacher shrugged and drank his beer.
The Colonel hadn’t slept for three days. His body was so tired that he could hardly stand upright any more, but his mind raged on Shabu. He drank bottles of brandy and smoked weed, but still his eyes would not close. His leg tapped away involuntarily.
They were sitting outside the Bordello, Maya on the Colonel’s lap. The little girl looked dazed. She had not spoken a word since she had watched her mother die. She hadn’t done anything but stare. She was getting on Brandon’s nerves. But then, Brandon was getting anxious full stop. He had become more of an undertaker than a bouncer recently, and Laurence and Jed had been friends of his. He didn’t see why they had to be wiped out like that. Why couldn’t they just have been moved on? Sure, they had been getting ambitious—Brandon had listened to them talk about their plans late into the night—but they were only dreams; what ifs. They were not realities. But his reality was that he’d had to take their bodies and throw them down the same ravine that he used to throw the women down—the ones that got sick, the ones that were discarded. No one wanted to fuck a sick-looking whore.
Usually it was the small runts. The Colonel liked to finish some of them off himself. He had a penchant for torture. If they were not finished, then Brandon slit the girl’s throat at the edge of the ravine. Sometimes he just pushed them over the side. One or two had actually jumped. Brandon wondered what role he would have when the White Circle took over everything. He hoped that it would be a better one than undertaker. Hopefully Blanco would respect and need
him. Blanco was a killer like Brandon, disciplined and clever. Blanco deserved big respect as far as Brandon was concerned. He had planned out the whole operation. He had coordinated Hong Kong, the UK and the whole of the Philippines. He had called in people that they would never have been able to access on their own. Even the government were working for them, and the DDS. The Colonel was fast slipping in Brandon’s esteem. He was getting sloppy. He spent more time off his face than on it, and he was getting harder to reason with. Only Terry knew how to handle him. Terry was the master at it. Brandon watched the way he did it. He never lost control. Everything he said or did was considered first. Brandon saw how he watched the Colonel, letting him hang himself with his own rope, waiting till he was almost dead, then Terry would step in and slide a chair beneath his dangling feet and let him stand on it a while, until the Colonel decided to kick it away again. Terry would turn things around and make the Colonel look almost sane—Terry was fucking good at his job.Today the Colonel looked a mess. Normally he was a meticulous dresser, he liked his chinos and his polo shirt, but he hadn’t changed his shirt in days and the smell of stale sweat was sour and rank. He was drinking brandy chasers and looking up and down the street continually. His head swung back and forth as his leg jittered.
‘When can we expect Terry, Brandon?’
‘He should be here any time now, sir.’
‘Teacher—is Blanco here yet?’
‘No.’
‘Well, how are we going to coordinate everyone without him here?’ The Colonel was riled.
‘Everyone has their part. They all know what that is. They have been told. We all do our job, Colonel—there shouldn’t be a fucking problem. One of us cocks it up, and he effectively kills us all.’ He sat and waited for Comfort to bring him his beer and leave again before continuing. She stood back, reached over and placed it in front of him. She wasn’t going to make the mistake of standing too close. The Teacher was like the Colonel—never nice. When she had gone he sat back and glared at a group of passing locals who were not passing quick enough for his liking. ‘But, what should I care?’ He continued eyeballing them until they were out of sight. ‘You can all be replaced.’ He picked up his beer and raised it at the Colonel. ‘Cheers. Go ahead and fuck up.’
The Colonel was shaking with anger. Maya squirmed as his grip on her tightened.
‘I am a personal friend of Blanco’s—you are just hired help. Don’t forget that. If anyone is going to get replaced, it won’t be me. Where is fucking Terry?’
The Colonel sat back and downed the last of his brandy. He banged on the table and Comfort appeared beside him with another brandy and two beers.
He caught hold of her as she was turning to go back inside the bar.
‘Wait. Comfort, I need you. Go and wait for me upstairs. I need you to do something for me. You are my favourite, Comfort, always were. You know that, don’t you?’
Comfort smiled and nodded her head. The Colonel watched her until she was out of sight. Reluctantly, she handed over her tasks to another girl at the bar and went up to the top floor, to the Colonel’s apartment.
68The Colonel sat on his bed in his shorts, his back resting against the rattan headboard. It would not let him sleep. His skin was bathed in old and new sweat. His bony chest rose and fell rapidly. He chewed the inside of his lips and they needed continually wetting. Comfort stood at the end of the bed, waiting. Maya sat in the corner of the room. He stroked his member as he sat watching Maya. It grew hard.
‘What’s the matter, Comfort? You look tense.’
Comfort had worked out who Maya was. After her meeting with Wednesday, her mind had been troubled, and slowly the pieces had fallen into place and she had remembered the face of someone she had called a friend. She had seen Brandon take the wrapped sheet containing Wednesday’s body and she knew he was heading towards the ravine and that Wednesday’s body was destined to feed the animals in the marshes. It would be devoured by the crawling creatures. Sadness consumed her now, sadness and desperation and a screaming anger that made her
heart beat furiously. Comfort always had that anger in her, that’s how she had been able to hurt Peanut. Most of the time she could shut her mind to it, but now memories came back of her horrible childhood, of her father who had beaten and molested her, and of the Colonel who had used her as a toy and then discarded her. The only sweetness in her childhood memories were the days when she had played with Wednesday, when the older girl had looked after her until the day she had been rescued and Comfort was left behind. Now she hated the Colonel more than she had ever done before. She looked at Maya and saw herself sitting in that chair all those years ago.‘You know who came to see me?’ He smiled. ‘You remember Wednesday?’
Comfort knew better than to try and lie to the Colonel. She nodded.
‘Never thought you’d see her again when the priests took her, did you?’
She shook her head.
‘No one ever escapes me, Comfort. You should know that. Now she has paid the ultimate price for disobeying me. Come here, Comfort. Come to me. It’s been a long time since you slept in my bed, since I have a new little girl to play with. Does she look familiar, Comfort?’
Comfort turned and looked at the child sitting in the corner of the room. She nodded.
He laughed. ‘And what will happen to little Maya now?’ He looked over at her. She stared back. ‘I suppose
I will have to bring her up like my own—but then I do own her. I own you all.’ He laughed. ‘I will have her like I had her mother and I had you.’‘Please—Kano, please, I beg you not to.’
As Comfort spoke the words, she knew she had overstepped the mark. It was like looking into the red-rimmed eyes of the devil.
He moved down the bed a little and made himself comfortable. He straightened his throbbing cock inside his pants. The Shabu gave him a hard penis like when he had been a teenager. It ached for relief, but it took him a long time to get it.
‘I am feeling generous today, Comfort. Take off your clothes and come over here.’
Comfort did as she was told. She crawled naked onto the bed and knelt beside him.
‘Turn around. I want to see if you taste the same as you did as a child.’
Comfort turned her back to him and swung her leg across his lap. She looked at Maya. Maya was hiding behind the chair. She saw Maya’s eyes staring, horrified. The Colonel held onto Comfort’s thighs and pulled her sex to his mouth. Comfort shut her eyes tight. His mouth was hard, always hard; even his tongue was angry and aggressive. He reached down and removed his shorts, kicking them off the bed with his foot.
‘No hands.’ He fed his cock into her mouth. He picked up a length of cord and pulled Comfort’s hands together behind her back, tying them tightly. ‘Just mouth.’
His cock was hard and huge in her mouth. Her mouth wouldn’t open wide enough to take it in.
He pressed his hands to either side of her skull and held it in a vice. He kept her head straight as he forced his cock deeper into her mouth. Comfort began to struggle. She was squealing in pain as he began chewing her as if she were a juicy peach. He could taste the blood in his mouth. He pulled at her sex with his teeth.
Eeeee.
She sounded like a donkey as she tried to breathe and scream. Then
Awwwww
as her body shuddered. He had to hold her hard. She was strong and she fought hard against his grip, but she wasn’t able to move more than an inch: her knees were jammed to his sides, her hands tied.
Eeeee Awwww Eeeee Awwww.
It made him smile. His balls twitched but he knew it would take him time. He held onto her head and pushed deeper. He could feel the back of her throat now, she was gagging, her teeth grated around his cock, but he wasn’t all in yet. He wanted that hot mouth to be around the whole of his shaft. Comfort fought harder than ever. She was passing out. Hot pee covered the Colonel’s face. It stung his eyes.
Fucking bitch.
He pushed her legs away from his face and knelt over her. Picking her head up in his hands he held onto it with a vice-like grip and glared at her—mad angry, but too excited to lose his way now. He had to finish it. He lifted her head from the bed and forced his cock deep into her mouth, pausing only to look at her. Her eyes bulged in her face, frantic. Her mouth was splitting at the sides—she stared at him in terror as he grinned back.‘So scared, aren’t you, Comfort? I told you—you are worth nothing in this world. I own you. I can do whatever I want to you. You and that little girl over there.’ He flicked his eyes towards Maya. ‘You watching? It’ll be your turn to please me soon. In fact, I think your time has come…’
He laughed. The thought of having the child made him much nearer to climax. He grinned down at Comfort, her face turning blue, her bulging eyes drifting.
‘Just one more inch. Open wide.’
He held onto the back of her head, pushed hard and felt her teeth jam against the thick base of his shaft.
Just there—that’s the place…
His cock was wedged inside her throat at an angle, its tip was touching the smooth sides of her trachea. He held onto her skull and squeezed it to him with both hands as he clenched his buttock muscles and thrust hard. He felt his abdomen tighten, twitch, spasm. It was coming now, relief, then he would be able to sleep. He lunged forward, pressed her head to him as hard as he could. Three massive thrusts and the Colonel threw his head back and bellowed to the ceiling in his painful ecstasy as he pumped his load into her throat. He rested there for a few minutes, breathing hard, sweat dripping from his forehead. He felt her motionless beneath him. Her head was heavy now in his hands. He relaxed his grip a little and looked at her. Her hair was wet with his sweat, her eyes were staring straight ahead. Her face was dark. Her mouth had stretched so that it had split
in the corners and fresh pink blood was smeared on her face.He held her by the hair as he tentatively eased himself out of her mouth. He was so sensitive now. Her teeth had hurt. It was a long way back. He lay down on the bed. Now he was so tired and so cold. It always took so much blood to fill that big cock, it left him as weak as a baby afterwards.
He lay there, his chest rising and falling at last, but still he was not to be granted sleep. He tried closing his eyes but they would not stay shut. The Shabu was not sated. He looked over at Maya.
‘Come, princess, you will have your turn. Come here and lie with me.’ He beckoned with his hand. Maya, still hiding behind the chair, shook her head.
‘I said
come’.She slid out from behind the chair and walked slowly forward; her huge eyes were on Comfort. He pulled her onto the bed and laid her next to him. Comfort was in the way now. He had had enough of sharing his bed with her. He bent his knees towards his chest then pushed her hard with both feet. Comfort shot off the end of the bed. From the direction of the floor he heard her retching and coughing as she vomited.
‘So, you decided to spit and not swallow this time?’ His head went back and rested on the wall behind him as he laughed his lunatic laugh. ‘Now get the fuck back to work.’
He left his head resting where it was, on the wall. He was exhausted, so spent, but still he felt the stirrings start. He ran his hand up Maya’s leg.
‘Come here, baby, come to me.’
He lifted her onto his lap. There was a banging at the door.
‘Colonel, you need to come.’ It was Brandon. ‘The place is crawling with Chinamen. It’s starting.’