Xavier Leret

I gave the first bit of Daisy to a writer friend of mine who suggested that I re-order it by putting this chapter first. This would have followed all the material I have already put up, so if you have already read it then this will carry the story on for you. If you haven't this takes you a little more gently into the novel. I've copied the rest of the book so far, into this post, to save you having to scroll through the rest of the blog.

Enjoy.

Xav

Caring For Daisy Byatt

1. Stanton Parks

Contrary to the mores of the time Carlo discovered that personal enlightenment involved acquiescing to the desires of his fellows rather than pursuing the self- discipline of personal pleasures or wealth. Although admiring the teachings of Buddha, the toning of the spiritual self, the individual was not important to him. Carlo had a long-term plan. He remembered once seeing an image of an indigenous American Indian, played by a modern and handsome Irish import, pressing his ear to the ground in order to assess what trouble, if any, was slowly approaching. All soldiers know that the battle is won often before armies drop bombs or fire guns. The art of preparation is everything. The tactician, if talented, is more valuable than a clairvoyant. The most important gift for both a tactician and a clairvoyant apart from luck is knowledge. To progress, to win, to triumph at anything involves hard study, not just of the situation at hand but the genuine overview of the land, its inhabitants and the way that prominent individuals think. Psychology is vital to the gambler, the warmonger and the businessman. To become a champion of chess one has to develop a three dimensional knowledge of the game which is really an understanding of all eleven dimensions. It is not enough to play by instinct. Instinct might make you a talented student actor but technique is what wins the plaudits and the numerous prestigious awards. Being gun-ho often results in you being shot. It is not an attitude a government should take into war, or an entrepreneur into business. It is certainly not a personal life style choice whatever the fashions of the time. Carlo despised all discussions of individualism because he understood that to allocate so much of ones time to its contemplation somehow placates it as a theory. By thinking on and discussing you open the door to allowing.

Individualism was as sordid a business as pornography. In later years Carlo would explain that to let him-self philosophically go down that path, was as bad as wandering aimlessly in cyberspace and chancing upon something shocking and unwanted. The feeling of horror and filth under the skin is impossible to erase. Individualism, he would explain, is as bad as stripping down to your bones and challenging the sun to do it’s very worse in order to prove once and for all how powerful, enlightened and ahead of the game you and singularly you can appear to be. Masturbation without the occasional break to fuck is an unbearable monotony. With practice it happens in a flash and is of benefit to no one, whatever the symptoms of relief displayed at the time. To climb Everest alone is to be alone. Isolation can only lead to humanity turning its back on you and walking away. As this distance grows so does it’s memory of you; because distance is like age. No great individual is truly alone, for to be great one galvanizes, one melds with and one ignites the imagination in others.

This is an enormously tall order for one so young. But as we have established Carlo is no ordinary boy. And this is no ordinary tale.

*****

The world flashed by. The sun shone through his closed eyelids. His lungs embraced each particle as he breathed. He felt Daisy’s stomach rise and fall against the back of his head. He turned his head so that the side of his face was against the wool of her jumper. The jumper, which was coloured like a rainbow was rough. Through the gaps in the wool he could smell her. Her smell was three dimensional and as soft as her skin. Daisy’s eyes were closed too. She enjoyed the heaviness of his head upon her. As he breathed she became a genii and disappeared into his nostrils. She shot into his lungs and dissolved into his blood. His heart, which was pumping gently, distributed her throughout the whole of his body. For a moment the trees blocked the breeze and the sun became gloriously hot. It stretched his skin and made room for her. As she expanded he felt her feed each muscle, each bone, each tendon, each sinew. His time of singularity had ended although he would always claim that it had never begun.

The two of them were silent. It was Friday. For weeks now Carlo had not desired the use of Daisy’s hand but rather chose to enjoy his time with her in silence often with eyes closed and often in stillness. On his suggestion they met each week in a different location. This had nothing to do with any fear of being discovered, but simply to bring about some extra magic that the back streets of St. Paul’s could not provide. He took her to the museum once and showed her the thing that most scared him in the world. This made her laugh, as it was only the fossilised skeleton of a giant deer. She was quite rude to him and he was upset but he had no idea of the reality of her life. He did, however, sense that she was scared. She had walked past the grand museum building and never had the courage to go in. It was a club that she was not part of. Her green eyes hated him that afternoon and when he looked at her he saw that they were solid cold emeralds that stopped him from looking into her heart. Even so she looked forward to seeing him the following week, and he her.

One afternoon he took her up the red-bricked Cabot Tower, and showed her the whole of Bristol. Beneath the statue dedicated to commerce he put his arms around her and she quite forgot herself when he gently squeezed her. When he was done she smiled at him and looking over the tower edge she looked out to where the bronze arrow said Australia was. Before he could say anything she threw herself over the edge catching his school tie and pulling him with her. They flew faster than either of them had ever tried before; the world below was populated by slow moving speckles. She made him fly so high that for a time he was scared as an astronaut fears a space walk, hundreds of miles above the earth, floating weightless attached by a thin white line. She made him feel weightless.

When they landed they were lying on the grassy verge of a river bank. The water was clear and flowed gently over smoothed rocks. She looked at him with her emerald eyes and the sun bounced off her rough short red hair. She kissed him. She kissed him and for the first time she saw it all. She saw the boys wanking themselves raw, she saw him being fucked over a toilet sink, she saw him drooling at the hirsute armpit of Madam Floren, she saw him. What she didn’t bank on was that Carlo was in every way as powerful as she and as she opened the door onto his life he too looked through the key hole onto hers. The sensation was quite overpowering for both of them. Truth often is.

When he had finished looking at the deepest part of her he withdrew himself. Daisy pulled away. They both wanted to talk. They were both embarrassed by the encounter. They were both a little shocked. She was used to lifting the lid of a man’s skull and looking in but had never thought that one-day someone would do the same to her. He gently took her hand and as he did so the river bank melted into the view of Bristol from Cabot tower and the weightless rush of the water became the long steep drop to concrete some 50 meters below. They felt like they had been beamed there from the future and when they heard footsteps behind them Carlo half expected to see an extraterrestrial with pointed ears and 1960s chin. He knew something was wrong when he looked at Daisy’s face and in her eyes he saw a face that he had only momentarily caught a glimpse of earlier when he had been searching her soul. Her magic finger filled him with fear and for a moment he froze.

To date Daisy’s life had a tragic ring to it, so tragic in fact that had she been caste from softer metal it might not have lasted quite so long as it had. There were times when she could quite happily have ended it all and she would have done but she genuinely wanted to go out on a high. A real high, some moment of success or tranquillity as others, no doubt, do. It was this desire that kept her going. It was this desire that made her stubborn. Sometimes it was this stubbornness that made her seem harsh and at times heartless. For now, had this moment with Carlo lasted she would have been happy to lie down right there and then given up her life. It wasn’t that the day was fine, because it wasn’t – it was overcast. It wasn’t that she wasn’t wired and overstretched by her usual cocktail of drugs – because she was - no one could rub that feeling away. It was Carlo and only Carlo. Innocent Carlo. Kind-hearted Carlo. Loving Carlo. Gentle, thoughtful, giving and enlightened Carlo. It was Carlo who made her want to lay aside her life and in the same moment cling more tightly onto it. It was Carlo now who would act out of an unbelievable and ancient sense of chivalry weaving their paths together into an unbreakable embrace.

Standing before them was Stanton Parks. One could have a degree of sympathy for the plight of Stanton Parks for like Daisy his origins were of the very worst hardship. He too had been abused as a child. He did not discover being fucked up the arse like Carlo but rather had an uncle’s prick thrust up him and at such an early age he would probably not have lived to ripen and then fade into senility, his prostate brutalized rather than loved. Such was the lad’s plight that not a soul could have saved him. Numbers of shrinks and social workers had been assigned to him, all sorts of court orders and special schemes assigned and neglected. Society could claim that they had given him its best shot and now it was up to him to take care of himself. A task for which he displayed a unique talent and had he survived these turbulent years he would have been a much talked about legend of the West Country underworld. Unlike Daisy, however, he lacked the fortitude or indeed stature to bear his ills but rather allowed them to follow him around like a cloud. Like the weather at sea Stanton Parks had a temper. Carlo, always a man of infinite understanding would always argue that Stanton Parks had been badly let down and it was pointless to lay the fault for his actions at his feet and had his victims given enough thought to his hardships then perhaps he could have been saved – but people, lets face it, don’t pray for cunts.

Stanton Parks developed a taste for Daisy when they once shared a care home on Redland Road. It was a big house that must have once belonged to a trader or a banker or a lawyer before being taken over by the council. Before anyone could complain a care home was installed and drove loads of unfortunates, slightly better dressed than their Victorian equivalents, but no less abused were filtered through on their way to who knows where. Stanton Parks saw Daisy for the first time when she was thirteen years of age. She was beautiful and the young Stanton was overcome by a profound sense of love. It was a feeling that he had never encountered before. When she was near by he could smell her. When they shared a room he could not look at her for fear of her gaze. She dominated him. She haunted every hour of every day. She lay with him at night. She breathed against his back, his neck and in his dreams she caressed his ear. She played with his cock and made him groan. When he bullied and raped the younger lads he imagined that he was hitting on and fucking her. Sometimes he would have to suddenly rush from the dining table and relieve himself quickly in the toilet. One day he came so quickly and so totally that he shot his sperm over the toilet windows and walls. It was uncontrollable, unfathomable - unstoppable. Stanton Parks came and came and came. He had more sperm than a horse. He just kept going and going. It was so intense he could have died. The sheer strain on his heart was immeasurable. When he came to he was too shaken to notice his mammoth ejaculation. The mess was sure to be the last straw that would lead to eviction.

If it were anyone other than Stanton Parks the house would have had pity on him. When he returned to eat he failed to notice that he had seeped through his pants and trousers. The gunk had crystalised in a patch of diamonds for Daisy. He would have scraped it all up and packed it into a solid rock of engagement for her had the house not taken notice and started to laugh. Stanton hated being laughed at. It was too painful. This laughter was like paper cuts, really deep ones. Even the little ones were laughing at him. Little ones who should not have known what it was they were laughing at – but they all knew. It was, after all, a care home. And for a moment he could have sworn that Daisy had a smirk on her face. Was it a smirk or was it that when she looked at him there was nothing but contempt and that the look was not so much a look at - but a look in? In that moment she saw the truth and he could not allow the truth to come out. In his private self he desperately wanted her to know everything but deep, deep down he was terrified that she would not desire him. In that moment, in that one look, he saw her ship sail away from him. She callously made no attempt to save him and he swore that if he made it back to land he would take his revenge on her. His revenge would be absolute, total and irreversible. In that moment he made the decision to kill her.

Lying in the dark he hated her. He twitched like he had been electrocuted. Each shock was an intense hit of odium. He hated her so much that he could not agree the method of her death. He could not follow a fantasy through. He was so excited he could not concentrate on her fate. He kept seeing her face flash out of the darkness. She was spitting blood and in so much pain. He saw barbed wire wrapped around her throat, he saw himself kicking her, he saw himself ripping off the skin from her breasts, he saw himself cutting her from the cunt up. But the more pain that she suffered the more he was torn apart. His passion was no anaesthetic.

As he plotted and muttered moves were a foot to have him thrown out of Redland Road. His semenal mess had been discovered and it was decided that there was nothing to be done for a lad who had sexually peaked before he had reached that emotional plateau necessary to deal with his urges. Rumours had been abound of his violent and aggressive sexual treatment of the other boys. No one had come forward to name him as this was not the etiquette of the time; but the house staff knew even if they could not prove it. For Henry Mazza it was not enough to simply evict him. The smell of Stanton Park’s ejaculate drifted into his nostrils like the bouquet of blood to a shark. It ignited a desire that he had spent a great proportion of his life fruitlessly trying to suppress. And thus, following some carefully concealed counselling Stanton Parks was let out onto the streets in the knowledge that if they could not care for him at Redland Road then eventually the penal system would. But Stanton Parks’ need for revenge was like an invisibility blanket so no matter what terrible mischief he was involved in - he was never caught.

On that terrible afternoon which was to change his life forever Carlo turned to see a fifteen-year-old boy in a green combat jacket with rabbit fur around the rim of its hood. He had blonde hair, hazel eyes and a narrow face. It would be good to imagine that he had cold dead eyes but far from it, he was very much alive with the force of several grown heavy weight champion men. He would get his revenge and make Daisy just a notch on his tally of chicks. Although she would have pride of place in his memory as she was the first.

There were times in his life where Carlo felt entirely abandoned. He would fly out of his body and realise that he was small and insignificant. He’d know that as far as this situation was concerned it is up to him and only him to work this one out. In many instances this was a fabulous challenge, the outcome being a triumph or some minor personal or public success. At other times the feeling of helplessness might sweep over him like a pre-historic moon shadow eclipsing the sun, stealing the light away, plunging the world into a terrible and fearful darkness. Only the miracle of amazing fortitude would save him. Such was the situation that Carlo found himself in that afternoon. That tragic, monstrous, magical April afternoon.

One moment of trouble can be an enormously long time. Carlo’s mind could bend space making the solution and the problem occupy the same space. The imagination is the great key to survival. If Carlo couldn’t imagine a positive outcome then chances are the fruits of success were hanging on the other side of the tree. They are not out of reach he is just blind to them. Carlo’s imagination was his guardian angel. He saw what needed to be done. Daisy’s lack of faith or belief in any one was the thing that in this instance would let her down. In the future she would always look on Carlo as the person who had changed all that.

Stanton Parks held a knife. It was a long one. It was an old-fashioned army bayonet. A spear that had once belonged to Second World War German infantryman. It had seen action. It had killed. Although Stanton Parks could not verify this last piece of information he could somehow feel the truth of the weapon as he held it in the palm of his hand. He had cared for it as if he was an ancient warrior. He oiled it. He cleaned it. He kept it sharp. It was a hungry blade. It had a taste for flesh and Stanton Parks would use it to cut his meat. The blade’s hunger was its power and he knew that he had to keep the taste of flesh alive in its metal or it would fade. When he had found the knife sitting in an antique store it was almost dead. It had been hungry for over thirty years. It was on its last legs and was making its last cry for help. Stanton Parks looked weirdly about him as he picked up the massive weapon and walked out of the shop. He didn’t run. He didn’t even hide the thing. He held it close to himself. He caressed it to his chest and swore that he would love it and care for it and nurse it back from the brink. Which he did, bit by bit until it was all but totally recovered. Age, of course takes a little out of all of us.

Both Daisy and Carlo felt the power of the blade in Stanton Park’s right hand. Carlo put himself between Stanton and Daisy. He had assessed the risks, looked into the future and knew that there could be only one possible outcome. Whereas Stanton was furious he was perfectly calm. There was not much room to move, but Stanton Parks blocked the way down so it was stupid to play cat and mouse by running around the circumference of the parapet. And even if they should tease him away and make it to the stairs there would be no way that they could race the circular staircase down without falling, and then at the bottom of the stairs was the ancient and stiff turn-gate system. No, Carlo had to draw the battle to its natural conclusion there and then.

Stanton Parks smiled. He waved his spike like blade. He sliced at them and enjoyed the knife as it swished the air. He sketched the damage he would do in each of their bodies. Carlo held his hands up. He held the air as a barrier between them whilst he looked into Stanton Park’s eyes. There was no conversation between them. Carlo then reached forward and just took the knife from his hand. And that was it. Stanton Parks made one lunge with his fist and Carlo deflected him over the barrier wall and Stanton Parks fell to his death.

Both Daisy and Carlo watched him disappear before peering over to watch him fall. Even if death is quick it still manages to slow time down. Before the void life flashes before its victim elongating that final breath as this world makes one last attempt to comfort or panic its prey before turning the world off forever. Contrary to the pain of the final moment, the crash, the bang or the silent slip, this final cinematic moment is relatively physically painless. You are your own judge and so it is up to you to be as ruthless or as kind to yourself. It is between you and no other. For those less blessed with education or ethics this final moment can be anaesthetised by ignorance. For those who have read too much or have just been told the wrong stories this moment can seem like an eternal hell. And then of course it goes black, finally, totally and instantly – so instantly that there is no time for that last sigh of relief. It just goes - !

Daisy and Carlo saw everything but it happened in a flash, an exhausting, frightening horrendous flash. A Kino vortex that dragged them in, threw them around, spat them out leaving them shocked, inconsolably moved and devastated. This moment, not the death but the life - Stanton Parks’ life was the most significant moment of their lives and would leave them armed with the greatest gift of humanitarian insight and compassion. In life Stanton Parks had been a nothing, a nobody, a cunt with the wrong kind of imagination, his skin so soiled by life that it had long since soaked through. Each organ, tissue and sinew of this young man had been tainted, damaged and irrevocably spoiled. But in death Stanton Parks achieved solace in at last finding personal redemption in his own eternal silence. There were no fireworks, angels, prayers or heavenly drops of champagne; it was a quiet moment of personal triumph that would go unnoticed at the inquest and then be lost forever in the records. It was over. It was quick. They saw it all. And he was dead.

Carlo took Daisy by the hand and silently led her down the spiral stone staircase. They stopped momentarily. Carlo looked at her and gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead. For the first time in a long time a tear welled up in Daisy’s eye. There was no expression in her face. Carlo gently wiped the tear away with his thumb and softly said come on. They wound their way to the turn gate, clunked through and stumbled out into the afternoon.

The sun hurt their eyes.

2. Carlo

For the years of his adolescence Carlo was haunted by the fear that he was a homosexual. His parents held much of the responsibility by being the staunchest of Catholics. They belonged to a sect that had been outlawed from the main body of the Roman Church for still practising the Latin mass.
At an early age Carlo was warned against the crime of masturbation by his mother, who was too afraid to look him in the eye, as she spoke to him. Her attempts to extol the biological certainties which had just gently plopped into his scrotum and the processes there in were further hampered by her refusal to name the relevant areas of his and the female anatomy. Thankfully the playground conversation had already succeeded in filling in the gaps. However, as a result Carlo was in eternal fear of his penis and the demands that it placed upon him, so much so that when the others would masturbate communally in the showers after rugby he would get on with his business of washing and watching quietly. Such abstention had been remarked upon on more than one occasion and the conclusion that had been collectively drawn was that he was gay, the result of which was that he was never again invited to partake in such group activity. Indeed as the other boys massaged their engorged members Carlo was fascinated by the sheer variety on show and he accepted that perhaps his eye may have stayed on one or two to the point when his gaze had outlived its welcome, but the truth was that he didn’t want anyone to see him take such pleasure in himself. What would Jesus say?

Following his ostracism Carlo could not get an erection without thinking of the boys and their ability to ejaculate simultaneously whilst still covered in mud. It escaped Carlo’s attention that his arousal was as a result of his teenage encounters with young miniskirted femininity. Unfortunately for him, however, the moment that he was up he was unable to stop himself recalling the entire rugby team grunting and pushing together, and thus the fear that he might be what his father would often describe as a “sordid deviant” was enough to deflate him.

*****

At the age of fifteen Carlo had his first encounter with a prostitute. Her name was Daisy, she wasn’t much older than himself. He had seen her a few times as he walked through the St Paul’s area of Bristol. Her stepfather, J G, had sold her to sailors passing through the port, from out the back of his van, when she was just three years old. By the age of ten she was drinking regularly and like Drew Barrymore had a healthy drug habit.

When she propositioned Carlo she was at an all time low and on the run from yet another care home. Carlo had managed to save two days dinner money, which he planned to spend that weekend at the cinema. The famous film director Steven Spielberg had released a movie about a daredevil archaeologist. His parents strictly forbade him from any cinematic excursions. They believed like many who are devout that Hollywood was a root course for all that is bad in the world. They had formed this opinion as result of their first date together when they had seen Bonnie and Clyde in the early Sixties. They blamed this film for the break down of morality in the decade that followed and the huge demand by women for the pill. To see what is now considered to be a classic of modern day comic book escapism Carlo told his parents that the film was purely educational and to see it would be a tremendous help to his studies. As they lived purely fictional lives it was not hard to convince them that he was telling the truth especially as he had found an article which discussed the films flirtation with the Ark of the Covenant. Of course he had to pay for this adventure himself and it was they that suggested he divert his dinner money on the Wednesday and the Friday, as these were traditional days of fast.

Two days dinner money is not enough to purchase full intercourse no matter how much penance is involved but Daisy was desperate so she agreed to take him round the back of City Road and give him a hand job which took a lot longer than both of them imagined, because as soon as he got it up his self imposed homophobia would kick in and he was unable to retain wood. It was not until Daisy began to describe having a great cock inside her that he could do the same. Finally, he could fully give himself over to her.

Over the next few weeks they would meet on a Friday and he would give her his weekly spiritual earnings. Although they were both tentative it was impossible for them not to form a strong bond together and before they knew it they had developed a friendship that would last the rest of their lives. The acclaimed film The Raiders of the Lost Ark finished its run and moved on without Carlo ever seeing it. It was not until years later that he finally saw it on video. He was disappointed that it was just like sugar which, when placed on the tongue, melts quickly away and is thus forgotten.

*****

Every Wednesday of that year meant that Carlo had to walk from his school to the playing fields, a distance of about four miles. Each term would involve a different activity. In the first term the school played Rugby Union not League, in the second they played football and in the final term they dressed for cricket. Carlo revelled in the contact and aggression of Rugby Union and had a fondness for Football. He particularly wished to emulate the legs of professional footballers and would later comment on the gazelle qualities of players such as Beckam or Viera as well as his inspiration as a small boy the rough and ready Scottish Liverpudian star Kenny Dalglish. He rarely went to games during the summer term as Cricket is pointless.

Throughout this year, however, Carlo was caught up in a battle with his Religious Studies teacher. She was French. Sometimes she would wear a sleeveless blouse that would reveal her un-shaved armpits that looked liked a vagina. In the summer, when it was hot, her pits would glisten like nectar rich flowers.
She was what his parents described as a religious tourist who taught a perennial view of religion that encompassed everything from Islam to the pantheistic Hindu religion. “When one has bathed in the light of Christ why swim in murky waters,” his parents would say? Of course they failed to understand the Christo religious conspiracy that had engulfed the classrooms of Britain, this was after all before Multi-culturalism made Anglo Racism a topic to tackle. Madame Floren, for she was married, was a strict Catholic of the new post sixty eight evangelical order (which his parents despised with as much vehemence as they would summon for the Moonies) and had shrink wrapped the faiths of the world in impenetrable Cling-film which made them dry and stale when left out in the sun.

Carlo found her intolerable, she was extremely strict in that Franco fashion but he wanted more than anything to fuck her. He would sit in class wishing that she would hover by and invite him back at the end of the day for a special catechism. As he was continually distracted from the dizzy heights of religious aestheticism by thinking of her pussy, in which the entire male sporting community jerked off together, she was indeed constantly ordering him back to serve longer and longer bouts of punishment.
How was she to understand his torment? He felt uncertain about which path to take and like many teenagers lacked the necessary personal resources to deal adequately with his situation. Should he inform her of his passions? This would inevitably mean having to come clean about the uncertainty he felt about his sexual orientation. How would she take this? There are three types of religious people in this world those who are strict, those who are not and those who reinforce their faith through the practice of sin. His parents, who loved him a great deal were rigid and occupied the first camp. Could it be that she pitched her tent with the liberals and would therefore take him under her wing and in time alleviate his malleable tension with her delicate maturity? Better still she could be an advocate for the third school of religious thought without which many will argue there can be no good.

There is nothing like the talk of internal sexual conflict to thwart abstinence and open the legs of wisdom, one only has to re-call the tale of aged Aristotle and his penchant for nimble adolescence or think of the understanding displayed by certain welcoming members of the Anglican clergy who discover and farm the sexuality of their beleaguered youths, a very different energy to their rampaging Catholic counterparts. To have been aware of all this then would have made Carlo shine brighter. In a conversation he would have with Daisy when they were old and living in a home he would realise this and curse the ignorance of these his formative years.

Madame Floren had a particularly sadistic character and would insist that his detention should take place on a Wednesday. This would mean that Carlo would have to walk the sizeable distance back to school following the rigours of athletic pursuits which fell on a day of fast, a day dedicated to affording his Friday with Daisy which by four o’clock in the afternoon left him inconsolably hungry. And of course Wednesday was group masturbation day and even though he had been forcibly excluded from this activity, there was nothing he could do to stop himself from hearing the lads singularly together in the showers. He had a vivid imagination and each whip from those uncontrollable wankers would leave a gaping wound that would, as we already know weep and weep and weep.

For weeks Carlo fought the feisty French bitch pulling at her chains and denying his own desires. Did Christ have to fight such temptation? It is one thing to turn down a devil who offers you little more than the rocks in a desert, it is quite another to turn down the potential advances of a bad tempered foreign bit with fine tits. He would visit Israel on holiday in his thirties, stand on the peak of Masada and tell the devil he can keep the desert, he was happy shagging in the damp his discarded jeans getting more and more soggy. With each week he missed she added an extra hour to his inevitable period of detention, for it was only time and he knew it before he’d be forced to trek the full hour back to school. An hour is an eternity for a young lad who is hungry and damp with a cock rubbing against cotton shorts with one thigh briskly stepping in front of the other.

It was March when, finally, he gave in. The afternoon was a fine one tempting birds out to sun themselves whilst hanging on the uplift of a thermal. He walked back to the school with his head bowed in prayer. Don’t abandon me now, Lord, he thought, don’t leave me now, for he knew his penis was too full of itself, the build up too great, to be simply ignored and packed away. Each step marked the rhythm with which he would thrust and each thrust marked the beat of the mantra of his pleas. By the time he arrived at her office his cheeks were glowing and his skin glistened provocatively.

Madame Floren was struck at how attractive this young man was. He was tall and sinewy and reminded her of a portrait of a young Jesus working the wood, his gentle body taut in his carpentry. For occasional moments as she presented him his penance she would bend over him with a teenage abandon. He could smell her. He imagined her armpit dew damp gently staining her pale chemise with its unmistakable allure. He could taste her aroma rising off her like heat from summer tarmac. The figure on page thirty-seven of his illustrated prayer manual reminded him of the lad with a large dick leading the others in their weekly ritual. Flicking between him and her and bouncing his prick against the desk he came like a jewelled archangel cresting six wings and flashing many eyes. Madam Floren looked up. She saw him bent over his desk like a young sap twitching. When he straightened his back his eyes were closed. When he opened them it took a while for him to focus. When she caught his eye her cheeks flushed as her fanny became all warm and wet. She didn’t quite know what to say.

When he was in his thirties he would watch the disappointing film by Mira Nair of the Karma Sutra where he would once again see his French beauty, except that now she was Indian. The likeness was striking particularly as in the movie she would strip her to her cunt. Experience had taught him that arm pits, eye brows and the general thickness of a woman’s hair reveal the identity of her pussy. His judgment of Madame Floren’s bush was now, with this film, shown to be irrefutable. Critically missing the mark the Karma Sutra never the less made him feel years younger.

3. Daisy

On the day that she was born Daisy resembled her shrivelled body just moments after her death. She had shot out of the birth canal like one of her mother’s vibrators. She had a full head of punk red hair. When she opened her eyes she thought for a moment and then decided to scream. Her mother was tired and wanted a fag. Because she was cold the doctors put her underneath a radiator for five minutes before chucking her in a white dish to be weighed. It wouldn’t be long before she would be accustomed to this professional stir fry way. Her skin would become numb to it.

When her mother finished her fag she took Daisy home. It was cold. Daisy was small enough to fit into a thick sock. The sock had been worn a lot and had a hole in it. There was a bit of a draft but for the most part it was warm. Daisy learnt from early on the use of her mouth. Her mother had a multi coloured Roman porn book, it was an illicit cartoon thing that was full of ancient orgies. She didn’t know how she got it. She might have stolen it from a pub or somewhere, anyway she couldn’t remember. She had a bloke who got off on Tiberius and acted it out with a six month old Daisy in front of a raging party, whilst humming The Who song “I’m your wicked uncle Ernie”, but he kept forgetting the words and after a while was just saying yeah, yeah and then fuck, fuck. Tiberius like to be sucked off by babes with no teeth. He had an island populated by couples and groups who would start fucking whenever he came by. Cristol, Daisy’s mum, thought the story of the island was funny. Tiberius had a small penis that was desiccated with warts and the like when he died. He was killed by his adopted son Caligula who used to stick his dick in his sister. When Daisy was very young she went to her first toga party in a council flat in Hartcliffe. It wasn’t as glamorous as a night out in Rome and the food didn’t taste as good as MacDonald’s.

Like all young girls, Daisy liked to play with her fanny as soon as she was out of nappies, she really loved it. Tiberius said it was fucking spiritual. Her mother never stopped her from doing it in public. J G, Daisy’s dad from about the age of two, thought it was cool especially teaching her to squeak at the end before licking her fingers clean. She was his party trick for visitors. J G was what they call an entrepreneur. Daisy learned to perform to ABBA which was played through what they named the old wog box that had turned up in the flat one day. By the age of four she had learnt their entire repertoire and would play it all the time. Sometimes they would all dance around their front room missing the harmonies, but mostly she danced alone fingering herself and the more the room laughed with her, the more she enjoyed it, she was like Pinocchio dancing without strings and at the end of it everyone threw her some money. J G would keep hold of the cash and if she got in a two year old kind of a mood, he would threaten to knock her silly. She was everyone’s darling and the centre of attention. By the time she was eight she would feel like a burnt out movie star.

Daisy had an extended family, most of whom where uncles. Unlike other children of her age she used to stay up late to see them when they came back from the pub. It was then that they would play with her. She enjoyed playing all sorts of games, but she didn’t like them putting their dicks in her mouth. She would say to her mother in front of the wrong type of audience that men’s willies didn’t taste very good. One time when she was four they brought someone round with a really big cock. It put her in hospital. They all said that they had found her playing silly buggers and the doctors fell for it because it was more innocent times.

Every night she used to watch the telly on her own when Cristol and J G went out. She used to stay up for them like she was their mother, falling asleep on the sofa before being woken up by their drunken laughter. Sometimes everyone was in good spirits and sometimes they weren’t.

J G used to pick up girls. He used to drive about a lot. Cristol didn’t like it at first and caused a bit of a stink but after a while she just shut up and joined in. On the whole they got on quite well. They kept a strict regime because children need discipline.

J G used to like to take cocaine up the arse. The prostrate is a sensitive gland which homosexuals swear by because it can make a man come again and again like a woman; the membrane is thin which allows the powder to be absorbed into the bloodstream almost instantaneously, so you fire up like a dragon. He got the idea from a story about the film star who had dipped a shaved gerbil in his powder box and then let it run up his rectum. The gerbil got stuck and died. The star had to have it surgically removed, much to the amusement of the local hospital team. J G used to like having it done whilst he was having sex. He was aware that a rodent’s corpse up his anus would draw the unwanted attention of the RSPCA so he trained Daisy to pop him whilst he was doing her mother or sometimes when they had group sex. She would stick a peashooter up him and blow. The coke made her feel good although sometimes it might raise a terror in her and on other occasions it would break her little heart. It wasn’t until he made Cristol shoot him and she complained that J G bothered to clean his arse. Up until that point he often had monkeys dangling; when he got horny his rectum would get sweaty and the smell was terrible. It was all perfectly normal. Some of her neighbours felt sorry for Daisy but they would never let her play with any of their children. She had a foul mouth and knew about things she shouldn’t.

When she was old she would look back on the afternoon that Cristol took her to MacDonald’s. She had pointed at the picture of a Big Mac and her mother also bought her a giant chocolate thick shake. It was bigger than her and because they were both high it took hours to finish. A clown was there who made her giggle. He made a purple handkerchief disappear with a farting noise. They both laughed a lot and she went home really happy. Sometimes her Mum was the best person in the world and no one could take that away from her.

J G’s favourite food was curry. He liked a double hot vindaloo. They would eat it all the time. The cupboards were full of it and the kitchen was stained red. J G always said that it cleaned his bowels out and sure enough it made his shit runny. Daisy learnt how to make a curry at the age of five. She learnt that she could make a super strong one by mixing curry powder with ground small chillies. She imagined that she was making flash powder make up, the kind that good witches wore so that when they needed to disappear they could just wink and vanish in a puff of smoke. She would spend afternoons grinding down the chillies before mixing it all together. It would then stand for exactly two months. Daisy was quite particular about this period of time, because for the magic to really work, it had to dry out thoroughly, so that on the last night of the second month the pixies could sprinkle pixie dust on it. The pixies would watch her to make sure that she was trustworthy enough to look after their special magic powers. Daisy knew that with pixies patience is everything, that if you can’t wait for them, then they can’t work for you. At the end of two months she would do a final grind. When she was ten years old she would make an explosive Indian with this mix for the care home in which she was staying. She hated it. The curry would take the roof and doors off which made the route clear for her to run away.

Her mother and J G sent her to school so that they could sleep all day. She was a quiet kid because she had too many secrets to keep. She wore gypsy clothes and her brilliant red hair was shawn short. Her bright green intelligent eyes knew when to laugh and when to keep her giggles to herself. The boys wouldn’t go near her because she was hard and knew how to look after herself. She used to steal things, once taking a whole pound note which one kid spent an entire three months saving up. The little girl had bright blond spoilt curls, so who gave a shit anyway. One lunchtime she played I’ll show you mine if you show me yours and surprised the class by sticking a pencil up herself. Word got round that she performed tricks and before she knew it they were rolling up. She had learned a thing or two from J G and for a small fee she would let the lads touch her up. On the way home they would come with their older brothers and they in turn would bring their friends. It doesn’t matter how old boys are, they all like to look and touch. Some would even want to fuck her, which she did as long as they had more cash. She had quite a racket going and would spend the money in MacDonald's. Sometimes she would go there every night and buy her self a Big Mac with fries and a large chocolate thick shake. She would always go there alone and sit by the window and watch the world go by. Christmas, when it was dark and cold, was her favourite time. She would love coming in out of the rain and sit in the warmth munching on her burger. The food would taste better in the winter. She liked to do this because she hated curry.

She had loads more money than she needed so sometimes she went shopping. Although she was still not eight she was no virgin that meant she didn’t carry herself like one, so no one questioned where the money came from. She would buy a lot of useless kit, trying everything on, sometimes spending hours in one shop pulling cloths from the hangars like dressing up cloths from a hamper. She had tried every Barbie costume. She loved dressing up like a pop star and would dance in front of the mirrors like she was a member of Pan’s People or a swan gliding up and down the shop floor with her arms picking up the wind like wings. She was so happy she could take off. Because she didn’t want J G to know that she was working on the side she would chuck it all before she got home, the pleasure was in trying it all on like a princess. J G had a bit of a temper which drinking made worse but thankfully he didn’t use to fuck her any more, he was rough and didn’t really know how to do it. She wasn’t even eight but she appreciated a good screw especially when she had a bit of J G’s coke because it helped her talk dirty with a speedy fluency which made blokes thrust faster so that she came really quickly. She preferred being on top because it would stop them getting too deep or crushing her if they were fat. A shrink would once try to find out what took place internally for her during those early years, he would try to stimulate her to talk by playing low-grade mind games but she would never tell him anything. He would talk a lot about memory pools, that our entire consciousness is made up of them and some times we might get stuck when we paddle out too deep. If a memory pool was deep it was because it had a special significance. The deeper it was, the more dangerous it was. All this lost Daisy because it was stupid. If she had a screw loose she knew exactly why, but even in her maturity she just needed to throw money away and a shrink seemed to be as good a place to throw it as any. When he suggested that he try to hypnotise her so that she could get in touch with her id she “id him in the head”. He was remarkably understanding but then that’s his job.

The money that she didn’t spend she would hide in her bedroom under a floorboard. She was saving up. She knew that something was wrong with her life because the boys only wanted one thing and the girls would never talk to her. Daisy still used to sleep with the lights on because she was afraid of the dark. It didn’t matter that her visitations didn’t materialise out of thin air but came through the door and were always mates with J G. After a really violent fight Cristol changed Daisy’s surname to J G’s. It was an act of love. Daisy hated him. She tried to scrape her self clean of him with an iron brush. This only made her more sore.

J G couldn’t give a shit. He simply lacked any talent for empathy. He could switch off from someone’s tears or pleas rather like a surgeon operating without anaesthetic. He was a cunt and that’s all there was to it.

One evening, it was a Wednesday, Daisy came home and as usual she went straight to her room. She pulled back the carpet and lifted up the floorboard. She could hear an orgy going on next door in her parent’s room. J G was at it with Cristol and a couple of others.

For a moment she didn’t know what to do. She looked at her empty bank and then sat back with her knees under her chin putting her right hand against her cheek. She didn’t cry. Instead she got up and went next door. On the bedside table was a great mound of cocaine. Cristol was being fucked up the arse from someone she had never seen before. J G was licking a mature pussy. When he looked up she was frothy and he had a beard. When their eyes met she knew exactly what he wanted. She said that she needed a pee and J G told her to hurry back. She went to the kitchen and carefully filled the peashooter with her pixy magic witch’s curry powder. She put a tiny paper plug in the but end to stop it all falling out. She then went back into the bedroom. The other bloke pulled her over and stuck his tongue down her throat but Cristol was jealous and grabbed him painfully by the balls to pull him back. Daisy went over to the coke and put as much as she could into the tube, a good couple of grammes. As he was getting a hand job she stuck the tube up his arse and just before he came she blew the entire contents as far up him as she could.

It didn’t just hurt, it killed him. As he lay writhing and clutching his exploding heart the others panicked. The eight year old Daisy watched for a little bit, then she packed the coke in its plastic bag, walked out of the room, picked up her coat, opened the front door and stepped out into the early evening sunshine.
She was neither happy or sad.

4. Hereditary Poison

At an early age Carlo was able to see things that weren’t really there. His earliest memory of it was from before he was two. He watched a pair of shoes walk down the stairs without a body. He remembered looking up at his father to see if he saw it too. He didn’t. Like all who are wrapped so totally in the religious blanket, the metaphysical is out of reach until the recipient is dead. Only then can the magical myths that surround them be ghost written into history. Only then can they have happened. The shoes came to a stand still. The young lad still not able to walk marked this moment in his life as his very first memory. A memory whose significance he would not understand until the moment of his death many years later.

Carlo’s experience of visitations was a wholly physical phenomenon. It could chill or warm to the very core. It undressed him leaving him spiritually naked. In some instances it could leave him nervous or unsettled. On occasions the mere hint of death’s musk would arouse him and make him giddy. Invisible fingers magnetised his hair. A sensual breath brushed an earlobe. He was fondled into the great hereafter. He was drawn out into the sea of eternity by a sexy siren with a scythe.

Carlo’s father somehow knew the truth of his son’s sexual destiny. A child’s personality is stamped in them from the moment of conception. It is not simply the joining of one man and one woman that makes for the creation of a new life. It is the weaving together of generations which helix forever upwards.
From the moment that Carlo had been born, his father, with the full support of his wife, had set aside a celibate monastic life for his son. It was his answer to the family legacy, his long line stretching forever back into the sordid pool of history. He wanted to disengage himself with this backlog of sin with one great noble deed of penitence and thus escape Satan’s torturous pit. The future of his line was, from the moment that he found his very own dad giving back room sustenance to some lad and a lass, finished before he donned long trousers. He instinctively knew the corruption that festered in his loins. Although he had managed to suppress the sensations by waking each morning to prayer and self-flagellation, an art he bestowed upon his wife, he nevertheless recognised the look of his father in the eyes of his son, a man notorious for his relentless sexual appetite.

Carlo’s grandfather had indeed sustained himself, solely, by eating pussy, but it was his less publicised hunger for a bit of pork that had really put on the pounds. When the sun went down on his well-spent, thoroughly enjoyed existence, he was so large that he was unable to move. He was left to rely upon the manual services of the casual, corruptible, affordable hospital staff. His wife had long since packed her bags for Dis.

Carlo’s mother was the seventh of twelve children born to a prolific and penniless labourer. Carlo’s other grandfather took out his suit on a Friday for use at Sunday Mass before returning it to the pawnbroker on a Monday. He was honest and hard working. He turned a blind eye to the secret Sunday catechism practised by the Fathers of St Aloysius and hoped that his daughters might one day become brides of Christ. His wife neglected to inform him of the blood in the seat of his adolescent son’s pants. It is difficult to keep in touch with the coming and goings of such a large family. He used to carrying on with Annie Ducket when the wife was up the spout. His brother had his eye on his slowly maturing gaggle of girls. He had a few spare shillings to exchange for their silence.

Had Carlo’s father been aware of this lineage then perhaps he might have chosen differently as the match was never a happy one. It held together because of the prize of eternal life and the fear of never-ending solitude. Indeed, when either of them toyed with the notion of finding a way out they nailed themselves to the floor and re-counted the variety of punishments that might well await them. Thus they never preceded any further with separation. They never once uttered the word “divorce” however much Carlo secretly wished that they would.

Carlo’s father felt the genetic rope of his ancestors slowly tightening around his throat. He felt his blood pumping full of their need to spray his seed into whoever or whatever might stand by. The sins of the fathers were unfortunately cast into the very fabric of Mr. Roberts, their reluctant heir. They consumed him, they enveloped him, they gave him no rest, no earthly hour of gentle respite, no kind moments of silence, no sweet peace of mind. There was just a constant throbbing. A never-ending ache between the legs. It could only be momentarily dulled, each morning, when his wife lashed his great ancestral thug of a cock until it could spit no more hereditary poison.

*****

In order to define what hell is Carlo would muse one evening, people set about inscribing it in others. Some great practitioners of the monotheistic faiths pushed the boundaries of human experience. They could create a pain threshold that was so extraordinary that it could only be divinely inspired. Punishment was super-natural, pain was spiritual. The Russians, he would explain, as well as being great writers, it turns out, are also masters of agony, misery and death. It is a trait that goes back beyond the secular purges of Stalin to Ivan the Terrible who fashioned his cruelty from the visions of hell which were popular at the time. To establish his hegemony and claim the land for his government and his faith he fried, cooked, peeled and slaughtered great swathes of the aristocracy and peasantry. To fully understand the sheer extent of his power to make hell manifest, here on earth, one only has to look at the murals on the walls of the Alexandrov Monastery. The monastery was his magical powerbase. A pit of despair replaced the traditional catacomb bowel. It was here that the terrible Ivan practiced his art like a chef. These grim paintings bear a remarkable resemblance, if not a finer hand, to the images of hell conjured by Hieronymus Bosch in the fourteenth century. Thousands of souls line the walls like the queues of Treblinka, wishing simply for the kind mercy of the Buddhist void.”

Carlo’s father had real sympathy if not leanings towards the Russian Orthodox Church. He particularly admired the Russian ability to stand for hours on end in the freezing cold. To emphasise what is meant by strength of spirit he occasionally would force his son to accompany him on forays, often at the height of winter, to the local Russian chapel. This Slavic enclave was actually run by English new age hippies. They preferred the extraordinary choral music of the Eastern Church to that of the dreary congregational hymn singing of the Western Rites. Rumour had it that they were in fact sex addicts who used the liturgy like an aphrodisiac. Certainly, one or two of them fell pregnant outside the bounds of marriage. A fact that Mr. Roberts would ignore because the singing was heavenly.

Carlo would be forced to stand throughout the entire three-hour service. It felt to the young lad like an eternity. It was an eternity of feeling his father by his side. An eternity of believing his back would not hold out. An eternity of the most acute boredom.

Standing agonisingly in this freezing Russian hell Carlo hoped that heaven, should he make it there, would not be quite such a painful bore. He hoped that God would turn out to be a little less self-obsessed and fragile as to order that the share holders of his kingdom should engage in so much pointless prayer. The variety of the Hell’s punishment, it would seem to him, was much more preferable than an eternity standing or kneeling in the shadow of God.

For Carlo eternity is incomprehensible, it is beyond that which can be imagined. His father tried to engrain it in his consciousness by constant repetition. He read once that Muslims force their children to learn parrot fashion the verses of the Koran. He came to the conclusion, like many before him, that an intimate relationship with scripture is vital to reach the celebrated imaginative state of religious ecstasy. The barometer of religious ecstasy is more often than not self imposed agony.

One day Carlo would be standing in a church in Budapest reading a plaque in a church commemorating King St Stephen who united the disparate corners of Hungary. The plaque says that the King, fearing that his kingdom might pass into the hands of a Muslim rival when he died, had the poor fellow bound, blinded and ordered that hot lead was poured into his ears. His crown, now a national emblem of the country’s once imperial past, is an elaborate gold affair with all manner of encrusted jewels peaked by a crooked cross. In a room out the back of a solid gold basilica he would find a case holding the dusty grey remains of King St Stephen’s hand. After paying a small charge to the Victorian spook house timer the clockwork light would dutifully shine for two long minutes. In the dim light he was able to see the hand clasped in what he would later describe as a wanker’s fist.

*****

Carlo was taught that Christianity ordered a world, clearly and cleanly. The Church dictated philosophical, moral and artistic perimeters. We are made in God’s image. Life taught him that this was not so. In fact he would surmise, it was God that is made in our image. In coming to this conclusion he was to realise that the mysteries of life were, therefore, like an enormous puzzle that could be unpicked and understood. He would one day read a book about Renaissance Italy and the golden age of the Roman church. The book belonged to his father. He read that Capitalism infected the minds of men. Money lending was traditionally the business of Jews. For a Christian it was illegal to profit from the art of usury. The Medici were masters of it, they opened a bank at the Vatican superstore and were able to buy Europe with the profits. They had so much money that they could invest in artists and philosophers. Icons once two dimensional and artistically plain were replaced by beautiful and natural renditions of the chapters of Christ’s life. Jesus now died with splendid lean muscles writhing on a rod of pain. To better recreate the structures of the body artists sliced and dissected corpses. They peeled back the layers of skin to look in on the muscles and tendons. Da Vinci made detail diagrams of the internal workings of the body. He began the process of ending God’s monopoly on the human design. Galileo looked out into space and couldn’t find Paradise. The beginning of the end had begun.

*****

When Carlo started out on life mortality seemed distant and improbable. His body was a mass of energy that could live forever. He knew that death and damnation would fill him with fear as the drive and the ability to act pro-creationally waned. He would be spent. Finished. His purpose done.

Many times during his childhood Carlo was teased with the notion of death. It was an intellectual frolic prompted by his parents insistence that there is life beyond this one. His father especially was pre-occupied with his own physical demise often declaring, “that in the midst of life we are in death”. He was forever prophesising that his own singular quietus was near to hand. In his maturity Carlo lived life purely for the moment, unconcerned about the imagined retribution of Jehovah. But as a child he had an unhealthy fascination with the moribund and pain, which thankfully never followed him into adulthood.
His favourite game for a while was the Passion of Christ. He would nail his action man, like Robert Powell, to the cross beams of the dining room table and then at the anointed time sought final absolution from the great father in that foreign sky. Of course Jesus was always modelled on some androgynous rent boy hired by Da Vinci or Caravaggio with an exquisitely youthful body of glistening stone muscles, like Michelangelo’s David. His adoring parents looked on lovingly, excitedly even. They were proudly approving of this innocent game. He took on each and every role of his poor toy’s tormentors. Sweat dripped from his young back as he raised his hand made leather scourge and brought it down again and again. They celebrated the look of ecstasy achieved in that final countdown towards that pre-destined solemnized moment of deification. Three would become one. Father, son and Holy Spirit would give up the ghost. A little plastic American GI, not unlike John Wayne, pierced his well-chiselled side. The game was finished with an almighty groan.

Carlo had no interest in the resurrection, it was implausible, it was impossible. It was a lie. The game was nothing more than a crude expression of absolute finality. For Mr. and Mrs. Roberts their son’s daily re-enactments were enough to precariously keep alive their love for each other.

5. Temple Meads

You couldn’t describe Daisy’s twelve-year-old vagina as a pussy because it was waxed. She had been waxing it for a year now. She could still pass for under ten but the pubic hair was a bit of a give away. She knew that sometime soon though this would change and that the waxing would be pointless. The premium attached to her would be taken away and she would then become just another whore.

She lay back on the bed whilst a big man tried to fuck her. He was not very good at it. He was way too fat and he kept running out breath and having to stop. It was taking forever and she had long since given up making any noises or pretending that she was party to the thing. She just looked away as he got on with it. Her fanny was numb. As he was going at it she slipped out of her body and looked down on the scene. She saw his overweight hairy back with moles and blotches on it. Some of them were red and some were brown. He was like an animal rutting in a field. A great boar or a fat dog. He had folds of skin and he sweated. He grunted rather than moaned pleasure. In the end she had to jerk him off because he couldn’t push fast enough to stimulate himself. He couldn’t get a proper hard on. She took the rubber off so that he might feel a bit more. It was already a little dry. The lubricant had begun to turn to a kind of yellow crystal. He lay on his back as she did it with his head cocked up so that he could see her. Because he was fat he didn’t have much of a view. He came without energy his spunk being leaked out rather than spat. There was no mess.

Sometimes she could feel that decay had set it, that she was rotting like a tooth, from the inside. This feeling was at its worse when she watched other kids of her age playing in the parks during the day. She would sit on a bench sometimes and smoke a cigarette, an ultra because they are better for you. She would always sit in the middle of the bench. She looked tiny. She would sit blinking occasionally and the wind would sometimes catch her hair. Sometimes she would be tired during the day and sometimes she would not. Some of the little kids were cunts because they had everything. They did not have to think or fend for themselves and would throw right little wobblies. If she was their mother she’d slap them and tell them what’s what. She didn’t have a problem with hitting kids. Often they deserved it.
Daisy had a regular room at the Astoria in Temple Meads. It was run by an Italian. For his son’s thirteenth birthday the Italian bought him a whore. Not a child but a real woman with proper tits and everything. The whore was told to spend an hour showing him a good time. He came all over her in the first few seconds. Because he was young he could get it up pretty soon after though and he fucked her like he was running a dash. It nearly burst his lungs. When his time was up his old man slapped him on the back and squeezed his balls in front of all his mates.

A lot of prostitutes and rent boys would use the hotel. The Italian didn’t give a shit how old the traffic was. It was better here than out on the streets. What happened in the their room was their business. If it got violent it was their business. If there was rape it was their business. He couldn’t give a shit if they fucked up the ass, if they choked on come, if they bruised their pretty little pussies or they ruptured their anal fucking canals. That’s why they all used the place, because no one gave a shit.

Daisy would take her men up in the lift to the third floor. She liked to use the same bed. She used to imagine that it was her bed room. She could lock the door. She had always wanted a place where she could lock the door. Had always wanted it since she was small girl. She wanted to control who came in and who went out. The bloke always paid for the room up front. That was the deal. They paid for everything. That way the concierge, or whatever the fuck he was called, wouldn’t carry the can for handing over the keys to kids.

The linoleum was a little worn in the corridors and each of the rooms had the same personality. They had black fake marble bathrooms. The beds were all soft. They were too soft for Daisy. She would have preferred a bit more support for her back. The tellies all had a porn channel which was charged at the end of the session. Some men liked to watch pornography as they were doing it. It was like they couldn’t get it on without imagining they were fucking someone else. Daisy would later learn that they did this throughout every aspect of their lives. Their wives wouldn’t fuck them anymore because it doesn’t feel like love making when you know that your hubby ain’t sticking it in you, even though they are. Daisy would never understand why they liked to fuck a child whilst watching some grown up tart. It wasn’t like she was any tighter than them on screen.

Sometimes they would fuck her with closed eyes. She would look inside their ears to see who it was they were thinking of. She would see that they were dreaming of some young virgin. All their bodies were the same flat chests and smooth fannies. She would watch some of them drag a kid into the back of a car and do their business with their hands around their throat. Some would tempt them with sherbet lemons. Some would climb into a bunk bed or visit a tent when the other adults were singing around a campfire. She would witness all this without letting on that she was there.

The smell of a man tells you a lot about them. Some men hide who they are behind cheap aftershave which can keep you awake. Some men spend a bit more money because they care what other people think about them. First impressions are everything. Some blokes don’t use anything, no deodorant or nothing. Their smell is not something that can be washed away. When they sit down on a sofa or lie down in a bed they always leave their aroma behind when they get up. Their smell would hang about Daisy like a spectre. They would haunt her for the best part of a day, until she could exorcise them with a bath. When it was like that she would still hear their voices when she went to the shops. When this happened men would blur as she could hear them whisper dirty things to her. She would look at glossy magazines with almost naked girls on them and hear the blokes telling her that she was good. That she was the sweetest little girl, really lovely. She knew that she wasn’t sweet. One time the smell was so bad that she hit a little girl in W H Smiths and then told the mother to go and fuck herself, because she might as well, cause her other half had been doing her most of the day. She ran away before they got the manager. The ghosts really scared her. That’s why she did the things she did, because they told her to, although sometimes she would do things in spite of them.

*****

Once she spent an afternoon and night with a man who clearly had money. He wore a nice suit. His tie was wrapped around his neck as if he was a present. He wore a gentle eau de cologne. His cuff links glinted in the sunlight. He bought her some things that she didn’t need. She took him to the Astoria but he didn’t like it. It was not surprising, so they went out into the country. He had a Jaguar car. The car stereo had the best sound that she had ever heard. She would have liked him to play Adam and the Ants but he didn’t. He played orchestra music. It took her by surprise because when the choir let rip it was so intense it made her close her eyes. When she opened them again the world had changed. She remembered looking out of the window and seeing the fields for the first time. They were brilliantly green in the sunshine. The insects caught the sun as they flew. When she breathed she felt her lungs filling with sunlight. Her heart pumped it all around her body. When they arrived at a small country cottage, which was at the end of a long winding dirt road, she got out of the car and felt that she was meant to be alive. The slight chill in the air made her feel like a diamond. He took her by the hand and lead her in. When he talked about things, he did it in such a way that made the whole world seem different, deeper. When he made a coffee he knew about the man who planted it. He knew that his hands were hard and his skin like old boots. He made a sophisticated salad that they had with a slither of steak that he insisted she eat almost raw. When she bit into it, it was like her teeth could melt it. The raw flesh in contrast to the cooked surface was smooth. Her tongue could tell that it was still red. He said that flesh is better young and raw - infantile. It is more succulent then. It is better to devour before a thing has had time enough to live. The more a thing has lived the less easy it is to find a bit that is soft. Soft young flesh is like sweet ripe fruit. It kisses with a tentative tongue. It melts.

Later he lit a log fire. Not because it was cold but because it was a nice thing to do. He put out a rug on the floor. He kissed her gently and looked into her eyes. When he smiled she felt important to him. When he took his clothes off he looked like any other man except that his socks were held up by suspenders. She couldn’t help but think that he looked stupid. He wasn’t all that attractive without his suit. His dick was a casual one. His chest sagged, it was grey and wiry. He was more considerate than the usual hyenas that attacked her. He explored her. He was genuinely interested in what gave her pleasure. His tongue slid all over her immature body. When he fucked her he did it with finesse. They came together.
When they were done they looked into the fire and he told her that fire was something that set humanity aside from the rest of the animal kingdom. We had tamed nature and made it our own. Fire stood for warm rooms, cooked food and passion. He said passion for life, passion for ideas, passion for each other; even a passion for war and violence, all those things fore grounded us from the rest of creation. Animals function. They eat, they hunt, they attack, they mate. Their existence is defined by behaviour. Behaviour is taught and trained as they develop towards maturity. Human beings experience life differently because we think, we feel. We are not purely reactive. We are not slave to the elements. Daisy didn’t agree with him although she didn’t say anything. She didn’t know how to. She knew that people were as much slave to their instincts as everything else. He put his arm around her and held her close. She was small against him. She curled up smaller. He held her like she was a baby.

In the morning they had breakfast, quietly. They got dressed without saying a word and then drove silently back to Bristol. It was early when he dropped her in Temple Meads near the train station and in the middle of the fly-over. They looked at each other momentarily and then he was off. He drove towards the M32 and was gone.

Daisy dumped the bag of expensive junk that he had got her. It was her habit. In the home where she lived stuff just went missing. It was better this way. Less distressing. She went for a coffee at MacDonald’s. She sipped it gently once it had cooled down enough to drink. She could smell him on her. There was a trace of his touch on her cheekbone. She looked out of the window as he talked to her. He was already beginning to go stale. He was there sat beside her in his shorts and suspenders. His shorts were immaculate and white. When the door to the restaurant opened the wind caught the hairs on his chest. He would talk thoughtfully and softly. She was looking out of the window hardly listening. Because he was a spirit his breath was cold and it would get inside her ears freezing her brain a bit. She wanted him to be warm again. She wanted him to treat her like a little girl. She wanted to go home to a nice house and find him there. She wanted the Jag to be parked reassuringly outside. She wanted him to help her with her homework. She wanted him to tuck her up in bed at night. She wouldn’t even mind if he crawled in next to her. She wanted him to watch her grow up. She wanted to see what he would be like when she was in her twenties. She wanted to see how frail he would become. She wanted to come home one day and suddenly notice that he was old man. She wanted him to be there by her now eating a cheap burger. She wanted to get the relish all over her mouth and have him clean it up. She wanted him to smudge her nose with ketchup. She wanted him.

When she looked he was already becoming faint. The coffee had become cold. She looked at it for a bit. One of the students who worked there was cleaning the floor. He had three stars and wore mucky black trousers and cheap black leather shoes. She smoked another cigarette. As the smoke floated in the air she noticed that he was gone. At first she was a little sad. And then she became angry.

She finished her fag and then left. She was alone. Little Daisy walked up Park Street. It was steep. In the evening kids would roller-skate down it backwards. They would get pissed and stoned and then fly as fast as they could. Sometimes they would crash into the cars. One evening a lad’s stoppers would fly off so that he was unable to stop. He was nearly killed by a bus. He went right underneath. When he emerged he laughed and did a little dance.

When Daisy got to the top of Park Street she turned right and walked along Park Row to the NCP car park. She walked into the car park. There was no one in the station. She went to the staircase and climbed up to the top. When she got there she looked out over Bristol. In the distance she could see the green of the countryside. It was far away now, like him. She smoked an ultra and thought about the difference between animals and humans. She thought about instinct. She saw that it was like the narrative of a fairytale or any story for matter. People in stories do what the story needs them to do and that’s all there is to it. You eat because you have to eat. You fuck because you have to fuck. You build a house because you’ve had enough of a cave. You think because you’re bored. You take a whore cause you got a wallet. You have a taste for young flesh cause it melts. Fuck’s sake.

She turned around and saw a new Jag parked. It had its own personalised number plate. They all said the same thing. Cunt. She stood in front of it. She had a look inside. It had leather seats. She walked around the back and kicked in its rear lights and then did the same to headlights. She took out a set of keys and then scratched it all the way down the left side and set about doing the same to the right side. There were a whole lot of other new cars. Some were big and some were sporty. She vandalised those as well and attacked others on the five floors below. If they were old and poor she left them alone.

She left the car park and walked the couple of miles back to Temple Meads. She wanted a man.

A real rough man.

Someone who could really fuck her over.

6. The Butterfly Trinity

It came about like this. The rumours of Carlo’s homosexuality had spread throughout the school. So much so that within the confines of this little institution his notoriety could be described as fame. He was like a recognised movie star buying veg in a market. He was whispered about. The rumours would follow him in looks and glances. Word had it that he kept a jar of Vaseline on his person at all times. Some said that his arse was so tuned from regular sodomy that he could play musical interludes with his farts, like the infamous French star Le Ptomaine. Others claimed that he had been so over worked that it was he who was responsible for the spate of damp chairs left in classrooms and the unmistakable rank smell of flannel farts.

Boys, on the whole, were in fear of him and girls in awe. At no other time in his life would he enjoy the confidence of so many young ladies. He was aware of their inner most secrets and was privy to the torments of their cycles. Their fantasies would fuel his own. Once or twice he was even allowed into the inner sanctum of the girls changing room and bore witness to their adolescent crew cut bushes. Such is the trust bestowed on one who is believed to be homosexual.

Carlo did nothing to refute the charges against him as he, as we have already discovered, feared that they might well be true. Neither did he engage in any acts that might confirm the rumours, as he had encountered the viciousness of schoolboy homophobia. In fact he had been party to it. Their victim had been an effeminate lad of the same age. It had been systematic over a period of weeks and had involved many of the boys in his year. Sometimes they would kick the kid on the way home from school. Sometimes they would steal his bag and empty the contents all over the playground. Sometimes a whole gang would stick his head down the toilet and then flush it. They were like most other boys of their age – animals.

*****

Carlo had befriended Peter some weeks before. They had walked up to games smoking cigarettes together, talking about nothing in particular. They found that they had a lot in common with each other. They even fancied the same girls. Carlo never let onto Peter that he couldn’t get the image of the rugby team’s communal entropy out of his mind. For all he knew Peter didn’t engage in such fantasies.

Peter was not a member of the Rugby team, he was too small. Only the team got it on together. They were the kings of the year and had their own corner of the dressing room and would often shower separately to the other pupils. Carlo was a talented rugby player and was respected as such, even though he was excluded from the lewder aspects of the sport.

One Wednesday afternoon the two boys stopped for a leak, at a public toilet, on the way to the sports ground. The toilet was an old Victorian one and it was highly possible from the smell that it had not been cleaned for some time. It was certainly not the kind of place that you would want to have a sit me down in.

Carlo pulled out his penis and started to urinate just as Peter pulled out his and he found that he could not help himself from looking over. He took one look at the slowly maturing member and began to imagine it hard and pulling in and out of the young and lovely vagina that he had been privy to the day before. He could not stop himself becoming rigid. Peter looked over to him and smiled and before he knew it he too was erect. They looked at each other for a second and then Peter reached over and started to masturbate Carlo. Carlo reached over and returned the favour. They both exploded like athletes escaping the blocks. It was over very quickly. Both of them had tomato faces. The taps did not work and there was no toilet roll so they wiped what they could on the walls. Peter had a handkerchief that they tried to flush down the toilet. They did not exchange kisses or anything because it was not like that. It was just two boys giving each other a hand job. It felt better than doing it to themselves. They left the toilets and arrived early for games.

*****

Because he hadn’t been told that it was wrong Carlo would insert things into his arse. It felt good and it was not masturbation. He wasn’t, as warned by his mother, playing with his dick so his actions never inspired any deep fear for his soul. He would stick things up himself and jiggle them until he couldn’t control himself any longer. Afterwards he would fall asleep. In years to come he would put women off by asking them to fondle his anal cavity. Daisy was different.

Peter was a homosexual and would come clean to his parents before he was eighteen. His parents would throw him out of the house and they would not talk to each other for many years. His sister would begin the process of reconciliation when it was announced that his father was terminally ill with cancer. Unlike Carlo, Peter did fancy boys and had not the slightest interest in fucking girls. He too had witnessed the treatment of alleged sodomites in the playground and kept his leanings very closely to his chest. Because he was not at all effeminate it was not hard to lie to his peers. He could see which girls were attractive and could talk dirty with the best of them. He was a champion of the chocolate biscuit game hitting it every time with his cum. The boys would play it at parties behind closed doors. Most of them jacked themselves so quickly that they would spurt it everywhere. Peter was measured and practiced and would delight in the great cocks on show. He would always come the last. He was always hot till the last and would express himself like a marksman and then shiver with a hunter’s pleasure for the kill. No one noticed that it was always his idea to play.

Peter desperately wanted to fuck someone up the arse. He fancied Carlo but was not in love him. To fuck someone who he was in love with would have been dangerous. At this young age he knew that he would not be able to control himself. He had watched his peers go mad over the adolescent girls. They lost all their sense of judgment and were always played for fools. Love was a dangerous emotion, it would give him away and he did not want to have his balls burnt off. He was not interested in anyone in particular. His sexual drive was as normal as the rest. He just wanted to fuck and would have said yes to anyone who would have offered. He would even try it with a girl once and although he did manage to get it up, it did not satisfy him in the same way.

Following his sexual interlude with Carlo Peter resolved to try and repeat the session and perhaps even push the encounter towards an anal probe and who knows what else. He was wise enough not to chase after the Carlo. He never tried to touch him or imply that he was in any way attached to him or up for more. Carlo was inarticulate on what had taken place in that seedy toilet; a wank is a wank is a wank. There hadn’t been much time for fantasy but rest assured he saw a pussy in there somewhere. Like cocks they were everywhere. He could taste them. When finally he put his tongue in one he was surprised to find how accurate his culinary imagination was.

Wednesdays came and went and once or twice Carlo and Peter made the journey to the playing fields together chatting about anything and everything but never mentioning what had taken place some weeks before. Masturbation is an activity that is alluded to playfully in a group of more than two and only engaged in communally if it is spontaneous. Sex, Carlo would once remark, should not be planned. It should only be undertaken when the need is there; desire should be the basis for improvisation. To improvise like a jazz great one must be completely in the moment. Without being subservient to randomness you cannot achieve the heights of personal, dual or group sensuality and the feeling is forced. What is better, he would ask, to arrive at the top of a mountain in order to fuck, but be put off by tourists; or to arrive there and give into the necessity of a moment regardless of whether there is somewhere to hide or not?

Carlo arrived at the top of his first mountain without exhorting any effort. It was a Wednesday. The day had passed without anything of note taking place. He had set out for the playing fields with Peter and two other friends. The others decided to stop for chips so Carlo and Peter continued together alone, walking quickly, mulling over what it must be like for a woman to feel a man inside her. The conversation came about following the en masse sex education class that had taken place in the biology lecture theatre that morning. Carlo should have been excluded, as his parents had expressly forbidden him from taking part, but a gentle slight of hand had allowed him to go undetected. Nothing could have been worse than to spend that hour isolated and apart from his compatriots. As far as he could tell he would have been the only one barred on religious grounds, with the exception of Stanley, who’s parents were hippies who had converted to Islam because they were fans of Cat Weasel. Of course Stan’s parents weren’t hippies. They weren’t into weed and they didn’t have long hair. Stan had tried to make out their ultra-right stance on developing sexuality was in fact an act of absolute liberalism and that they were protecting his right to a pluralist sexual existence. As Islam was still an unknown entity most of the school bought this theocratic interpretation. It was exotic.

Peter knew that if he turned the conversation towards women there would be nothing that Carlo could do. Young male bodies are unable to control themselves. To tame a fledgling erection one can only tackle the problem head on, it is like removing a tumour. Carlo had a tremendously scientific mind; he wanted to understand how the universe was held together. He particularly wanted to get into the minds and bodies of other people, other genders. He had a chameleon imagination that was able to walk in the footsteps of the great figures of history. He could watch the news and know what a man’s trousers felt like in the cold of war, or how a woman felt when viewed through the eye of a lens. He prized this talent above all else. It was a magical gift of empathy that he had to constantly train. He was not unlike a holy man in this respect, a spiritual master with an oriental streak. Where others experienced the world from inside their own skins, Carlo would flick himself through the personalities and bodies of the world with the speed and dexterity of a guru. Magic like this needs to be practiced, it cannot be achieved by sitting inside whilst it rains or hiding when the storm comes. To catch lightening one must stand out in the thunder, he would one day tell Daisy.

As Peter led the conversation, Carlo was willing to follow even though he knew the words would fall like silent footsteps to the public latrine, that they would not be able to control themselves and that they would, on this chilly damp day in October give into the pursuit of, at least in his experience, a feminine understanding. He was quite happy to take it; he didn’t want to fuck Peter up the arse. All he would say to him was don’t come in me, even though he knew that this was a waste of time. As a result, the afternoon games would seem a little sticky.

It appeared that the public latrine had been cleaned. The porcelain had a saintly glow, rather like the bright glare of a halo. The smell, although not entirely gone, had diminished and hung about in the background, like a bouncer in the shadows. As they walked in, the sunlight was filtered through the misted windows, it could have been winter through the magic wardrobe, the taps were small elks with horns who had stopped to drink in the sinks. Carlo walked straight to the urinal and unzipped his fly. Peter followed and they pissed together. When they had finished Peter reached over and took Carlo’s dick in his hands. He was not like a lad going for a girl for the first time, as he knew the mechanics of his trousers and pants. He had played enough games with boys to be able to control himself and take his time. By now he was bursting out of his foreskin. Carlo looked at him. They both knew what was to take place; their conversation had been dominated by it for an entire half hour. Carlo reached into his bag and pulled out a pot of Vaseline. Rugby players smear Vaseline all over their legs so that they can escape the grasps of a rough tackle. He covered Peter’s prick with the stuff and then bent over the sink and bared his arse. Peter slowly entered him. Carlo’s rectum expanded. Peter, who was a small lad, was dwarfed by the size of his penis. It filled Carlo right up. He felt Peter’s cock rub against his prostrate gland. It was both painful and intensely pleasurable and the faster that Peter went the more he felt himself rush with colour. He felt him punch his colon and a feeling shot from deep in his stern. As he stared at the bright white of the walls the sunlight shot a flash so bright it momentarily blinded him. His body felt like an angel had breathed on him. His skin slipped off and his nerves stood on end. It didn’t take long.

That afternoon Carlo had a little difficulty running. The teacher commented that he was running like a poof and when someone tackled him from behind it hurt. Once he lay face down in the mud a little longer than he had too. He hoped that when he sat up the world would seem like it did when he awoke that morning; but it didn’t. He lifted himself so that he was hanging on the wind and looked down on the field where he saw himself and the other boys. He looked at them all and realised that they, for the most part, would never transcend. Their bodies were too watertight. They might excel on this field but it takes a different quality to mingle with the elements like a grand wizard, to allow your body to dissolve with the rain water and diffuse evenly throughout out the whole of humanity. When Carlo breathed it expanded his mind so that when he saw, he could take more in. He knew then and there that there would be a point that he would not be able to expand any further. At that moment he would let his cells unlink, rather than burst, and then the wind would disperse him. That would be his moment of transcendence.

As the boys wanked that afternoon Carlo sat back and closed his eyes, he thought of Madame Floren and her thick black bush and the red meat of her wet cunt and then from all over the world he could hear people fucking. It was like the great roar of the sea, squeals came in as swirls, whilst the rocks groaned as they were whipped. When he stood a great wave crashed him down and picked him up. The sand had ripped his skin raw and the sun beat down. He felt himself becoming hot for the second time that day.

The last moult of a caterpillar is quite an event. The new skin is not the skin of before but a new form, the pupa. The dermal cells of a butterfly are trimorphic: caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly are all the same. The pupa is a metamorphic transmorphification machine. The larva is dismantled chemically and the embryonic cells divide. Within hours of pupation the adult comes into being, its characteristics are formed, wings, mouthparts, thoracic muscles and legs. When the butterfly breaks free of the pupa haemolymph is pumped into the wings and they expand and the hormone buriscon makes them hard. In the wind the wings twitch until they take command of the air and in a multi–coloured moment of self-expression the creature lifts, floats and flies.

7. Cock I

The cock was so deep in her mouth that Daisy couldn’t help but retch. She had been drinking Special Brew by the gallon. Her face was swollen from it and the drugs made her bruises seemed washed out. She could never get used to being raped like this. The mixture of the bloke’s prick and the alcohol made her vomit. She chucked her gut all over his dick. This made him more angry so he hit her in the face. Her nose shot blood everywhere and then he fucked her up the arse. He pounded her really fast and hard. She knew that the best thing she could do was to relax her body. The drugs dulled the pain, but he was doing it with out any lubricant, just her vomit, and so she thought that she was going to split. It wasn’t giving him any pleasure either, so he pulled out and then punched her eyes. He got something, she didn’t know what and started to fuck her vagina with it. She began to pass out. Her pupils started to look up into the back of her skull, but he kept spinning her back.

She could see people looking in through the window. She was used to no one coming to help, so she never bothered waving. She wanted to drown. She knew the faces in the window weren’t alive. They were dead. The dead never did anything for her. They just watched. There was nothing else for them to do. Some cunt of an evangelist once tried to push salvation on her one day by telling her that Jesus died to save the world. Jesus had done it for her. She hit him over the head with a bottle of cheap cider and then just looked over at the window of the hostel to see Jesus looking in with the rest of them. She showed Jesus her ass and told him to fuck it.

She knew that she wasn’t going to die. She hated life because it clung on to her like a limpet. Little girls who get nicked from fields or playgrounds never make it to see the end of the day, but little whores have got more lives than cats because blokes pay to fuck them up. A beating or a rape is just part of the deal every now and then - unless some sick fuck ripper feels lucky with a hammer or a screwdriver or something. Because she was young she was a prize bit of commodity and so no one would go out of their way to leave her dead in a doorway or nothing like that. But it wouldn’t be like that for long and deep down Daisy knew it.

Of course she hated cunts who did her over like this because it meant that she couldn’t work for weeks while she got over the bruises and the internal cuts. Her throat took the kind of battering that meant she would never fully recover. It would leave her voice sounding cheap and raspy. When she laughed she sounded like an old age smoker. She’d never make it onto telly or be a film star, although she could have gone into silent porn if she had wanted.

When she came round she could have heard one of the girls telling her that it was time to find herself a pimp. Nothing doing. They would rip her off and would take free sex; they would stop her from getting this kind of a beating from a punter but hand it out themselves. She had experience on her side so no one was going to have to break her in or have to pretend that they were a nice guy or kick her into submission. She knew that she would never find the right one. Friends of hers had been done over right proper and then, lets face it, it’s hardly an honest profession, no matter what anyone says. It’s not a relationship built on trust; it’s a business transaction and one that she would inevitably loose out on because protection doesn’t come cheap. Anyway, once you have let someone in on your vulnerability they’re more than likely to take advantage of it and if they don’t they’ll know someone who will.

Daisy couldn’t move for ages. She lay naked on the hotel bed. The sheets were stained with blood. She had difficulty breathing, her nose was blocked and it hurt to swallow. Her left eye wouldn’t open. If she had been a boxer they would have cut the eyelid and let her back in the ring like Sylvester Stallone. He arms were black and blue and her nose felt broken. She was lucky because it was only angry and bruised. She wouldn’t grow up looking like beaten flat fish. Her nose was made of metal, she thought, because somehow it always made it through. She had been bleeding heavily from her vagina and her anus. She was still bleeding from between her legs but it was a trickle rather than the gush it had been. Thankfully he only stuck blunt things up her. He had internally battered her and she would get shots of pain in her womb for the rest of her life.

After a while she was slowly able to roll onto her side and eventually she sat up. She sat on the edge of the bed slightly bent and breathing gently. She had no idea how long she had been there. She had to get out of the room because every little bit over the time that had been rented would have to paid for. It didn’t matter how bad she had been done over. She knew the deal. She went along with it. It was the reason she had cash on her. It was better to go to the Astoria than be out on the street. The lack of care of the place was as much an advantage as it wasn’t.

She carefully stood up and holding on to the wall she precariously made her way to the bathroom. She was slightly delirious because she was coming down from cocaine. Her right eye was glazed, the pupil dilated and the white was bloodshot. She paused for breath at the doorway and again when she made it to the bath before turning the shower on. She was old beyond her years; even her skin seemed to sag. She was an average height for her age but somehow, now, she seemed smaller. She turned the shower on, then sat on the toilet seat for a while and let the bathroom steam up. The mirror misted up. She didn’t want to look into it in case a face would suddenly appear behind her own reflection. She was too beat up to experience the sudden jump out of her skin. Her skin was cut in places. She knew that the lesions would easily split and a bit of her would leak and vanish when the steam cleared.

When she was ready she stood up and put her hand under the water. It was too hot so she bent under it and added the cold until it was the right temperature. The boiling hot water splashed on her back but she was beyond the pain. She got the temperature right and then stood under the jet of water. It ripped the dry blood off her, pulled away her raw scabs. She gently padded her face. Her shaking hands felt the swelling around her mouth, her nose, her eyes and her ears. She made herself wash her anus and her vagina. She watched the blood disappear into the plug-hole. It would fall thickly off her, thudding as it hit the plastic bath and change shade as it passed away.

Daisy stood under the shower in the plastic hotel bath surrounded by mock black marble longer than she could afford, but the shower, which was hard, reminded her that she was alive. It was worth running up a small debt for. She didn’t lift her face to the jet because the rush of water would have been as cruel as a punch. She let the jet bang into her shoulders and beat out the knots. Her head was bent forward and she looked at her feet. Blood still ran down her legs but it was beginning to stop and the stream was washed out pink before it hit the plastic.

When she was done she turned the water off and carefully reached for the towel. She had slipped before on the plastic when she first bathed there when she was nine. She had long since learnt her lesson. Because she hurt everywhere she dried herself slowly, softly and meticulously. When she was dry she looked at herself in the full-length mirror of the bathroom. She stood for a long time looking through her one working eye. She was thin. Other girls of her age had puppy fat but she was lean, with two small mounds where her breasts would be. Her ribs stuck out and were a mass of colours, browns, yellows, reds and purples. Her lips were swollen and the top was split. The insides of her thighs had bite marks and she could see the imprint of a fist where he had given her a dead leg. She was marked where he had held her down. He left massive handprints on her shoulders, her neck and her belly. She slowly felt the outline of her body making sure that none of the cracks and cuts would let anyone in. She scared herself for a moment imagining that from his marks he might materialise like in that cheap Carry On horror flick where Odd Bod is reformed from his fossilised thumb. Until they faded, and for a bit longer after, he would still be on her, holding her down.

Once she was dressed she sat on the edge of the bed. He hadn’t left any cash but he hadn’t taken what was left of hers so she picked herself up and made to leave the room. Her head hurt too much for her to be able walk like a proud war widow, and anyway she didn’t want the attention, so she made herself small, almost invisible, and slipped out of the room.

As she moved down the corridor she could hear other people having sex. Some were couples and some were not. She could hear a loud tart really giving it some and screaming her head off like she was really enjoying it, yelling at the top of her voice fuck me, fuck me and oh yes, oh yes, do it faster and fuck me harder and screaming Jesus and God and fuck, fuck, fuck and stuff like that. It was all a lie but you get what you pay for. The men are always silent apart from sometimes when they grunt like tennis players or body builders in a gym. A man’s noise is never about the pleasure, its just the pain of doing it, apart from maybe at the end when they fall over the finishing line. When bees mate their dicks fall off and they die.

The whore kept on screaming. It was like she was trying to kill him. Daisy wished her luck. He wasn’t a porn pro who could keep going for ever. He was just some punter whose heart would give out some day. It happened from time to time and it would make her laugh.

Daisy had always hoped that a married man would die on her so that she could shame him and his whole family. She would have wanted to tell his mother what it was he got up to, look her in the eye as she came clean at the inquest. She would word it so that his wife would fear for her own children. But, best of all, she’d write it down for his kids to read when they got to the age that they could, and his grand kids for that matter. She knew that if it was to happen, it would have to be soon, so that there could be no doubt what kind of a man he was. She knew that she only had a bit more time before she was too old to really cause a scandal. Once she got a little bit older then it might just be her fault, or a what the hell he was just fucking a whore. There comes an age when you cease to be at the shit end of the stick, you are then perceived as the perpetrator of your own faults, the fuck ups are all your own and there is no-one else to blame, but yourself. At sixteen it is legal to be bedded. At sixteen you are old enough to draw welfare. At sixteen you can be a pro and the rules change like a madman’s personality. Sixteen was still a while off, but when she felt like this, it was as if her life was ebbing away too fast. It felt that it was only yesterday that she was ten. In a couple of weeks she would be thirteen, from then on it was only a matter of hours before she was sixteen and spat out to officially be left to fend for herself.

When the lift arrived it was on the way up to the fifth floor. She didn’t want to wait for it to come back down again so she got in. There was a prostitute with some passed middle-aged man. He looked like a mild man. A man without personality. A decent man. Daisy looked at them both. She could have been a wise old seer or an evil witch with her one eye staring out of her bruised face. She looked at the man in his badly made jacket and trousers. His shirt was cheap and his tie lacked character. He felt her eye on him. Her gaze was freezing, it was like he was standing in a fridge. He felt his dick shrink right back up into his pelvis. She didn’t take her eyes off him. It would take that whore an entire hour to coax his withered Willy back out and that was all that he could afford. She cursed him on her breath and sealed it with her blood when she spat at his feet. As his wife slept, the demons would come in the dead of night and make him wake with a whimper. For the rest of his life he would permanently fear Daisy’s smashed up sneer. He would see her everywhere. Every opportunity for happiness he might have she would be there to ruin it, hanging out in the back of his mind, her bashed up, smashed up, fucked up young girls face. She would even come to him as he lay scared and small on his bleached white, clinical hospital death bed and steal away his last prayer for redemption. Steal it away and bury it deep, deep in the earth. Her ruined angel face chuckling. No god would find it there.

The lift stopped and the couple got out. Daisy watched them make their way down the corridor as the doors slid shut. He looked back as she vanished. She began her journey down.

Daisy couldn’t tell which one of her personalities had walked out of the lift into the grimy foyer. They all felt the pain but each of them experienced it in a different way. One was angry and would piss on any fire. One was small. One was numb. One was old. One was young. One made her stand in front of on-coming rockets. When she was this dazed they would fight inside her head to get prominence. The argument would give her a headache. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had cracked her skull open because at least one of them would have fallen out. If one of them took over from the other, it would take a bit of time for the new one, at the front, to understand what was going on. That was why she seemed a little forgetful sometimes. The small one didn’t talk to the numb one, the young one wouldn’t listen to the old and the angry ones just didn’t get on. Sometimes they would fuck inside of her and spawn a new one. This was hardly surprising, considering how she lived her life. It wasn’t that she desired sex like other people, but she couldn’t help but think about it. It was, certainly, her primary means of contact with men and the reason she knew most women. They would sometimes share a cigarette between clients. They didn’t talk about sex much, fag breaks are about downing tools. But they understood what brought them together.

She knew what made her feel good and she could bring up the most in the vast majority of men. Like all professionals she had pondered her craft. It was in her interest to be a master, even if this meant getting it wrong at first. She knew men like to teach the young ones. To be more proficient each personality had to be practiced. No matter which man she was with, they would somehow choose the right persona to suit them. When she shut the door to the hotel room, she would then turn around and the right voice would speak up. As she grew up she would leave some behind.

That afternoon she had been on the super brew beer and cocaine. The mix would bring out a succession of different people in her, not always in the same order and sometimes repeatedly. Mostly she was mouthy. The cocaine would make her talk nine to the dozen and each bit of her would have its say, even her shy side. Sometimes, like this afternoon, she would be asked to talk dirty. You might think that the cocaine would make her come out with every conceivable twist of fantasy, but she could do it without thinking about it. Repetition had made her behaviour natural. She had fucked so many times that she could do it in her sleep. It was cocaine that helped keep her awake. The cocaine would make her feel really good about it, but the strong beer would bring her down. To bring out her happier side she would need more coke. The bloke, who called himself Bill, didn’t have that much, probably about a half a gramme. When he went for a piss she snorted the last bit. She didn’t care, she had had stress inoculation. She had had so much thrown at her in the past that she was immune to fear, and cocaine made her cocky. When Bill came out of the toilet, he was really upset. She told him to fuck off and so he hit her, slapping her hard across her ear. Daisy was not someone to take things lightly and she slammed a can into his nose. Bill was stunned and before he could quite register what had happened she did again. The broken can cut him right down the left side of his face. He was lucky that it was just under his eye.

It was around about now that she had a personality change. It was as if she was standing in front of a moving giant double decker bus. It suddenly loomed over her and she didn’t have the time to get out of the way. She was hit with such a force that she shut down. She did not scream. There was no point. He kept beating her over her head. He was no longer in control of what he was doing.

*****

When the lift arrived on the ground floor Daisy slipped out. She looked over at the concierge. He looked down on her, glanced over at a porter and then got on with his business. Before she said anything, you could see which one of her was real. She was no push over, even when she’d had the shit kicked out of her. You would have to go some to put her into a coma. She had the resilience of a nightclub doorman or Bruce Lee. She was small and impossible to kill.

She felt an arm under hers and the porter swept her gently off her feet and took her to the back door. Like this she wasn’t good for business. The concierge noted her down in his book and took a tally of what they were owed.

And that’s how it went on.

They never called an ambulance if you could walk.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Posted by Xavier Leret at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a little short I made last year with Mat Fraser and Tina Barnes. Both Mat and Tina will be appearing in my new show THE KAOS DREAM. The Dream will be touring in the Autumn and Spring.

Enjoy the film.

Xav

Posted by Xavier Leret at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ah it's just ocurred to me that you might want to read the whole of Daisy as it stands now. You can isten to my podcasts of the first five chapters if you scroll down, but if you want to read it all here it is.

Caring For Daisy Byatt

Chapter 1 - Carlo

For the years of his adolescence Carlo was haunted by the fear that he was a homosexual. His parents held much of the responsibility by being the staunchest of Catholics. They belonged to a sect that had been outlawed from the main body of the Roman Church for still practising the Latin mass.
At an early age Carlo was warned against the crime of masturbation by his mother, who was too afraid to look him in the eye, as she spoke to him. Her attempts to extol the biological certainties which had just gently plopped into his scrotum and the processes there in were further hampered by her refusal to name the relevant areas of his and the female anatomy. Thankfully the playground conversation had already succeeded in filling in the gaps.

However, as a result Carlo was in eternal fear of his penis and the demands that it placed upon him, so much so that when the others would masturbate communally in the showers after rugby he would get on with his business of washing and watching quietly. Such abstention had been remarked upon on more than one occasion and the conclusion that had been collectively drawn was that he was gay, the result of which was that he was never again invited to partake in such group activity. Indeed as the other boys massaged their engorged members Carlo was fascinated by the sheer variety on show and he accepted that perhaps his eye may have stayed on one or two to the point when his gaze had outlived its welcome, but the truth was that he didn’t want anyone to see him take such pleasure in himself. What would Jesus say?

Following his ostracism Carlo could not get an erection without thinking of the boys and their ability to ejaculate simultaneously whilst still covered in mud. It escaped Carlo’s attention that his arousal was as a result of his teenage encounters with young miniskirted femininity. Unfortunately for him, however, the moment that he was up he was unable to stop himself recalling the entire rugby team grunting and pushing together, and thus the fear that he might be what his father would often describe as a “sordid deviant” was enough to deflate him.

*****

At the age of fifteen Carlo had his first encounter with a prostitute. Her name was Daisy, she wasn’t much older than himself. He had seen her a few times as he walked through the St Paul’s area of Bristol. Her stepfather, J G, had sold her to sailors passing through the port, from out the back of his van, when she was just three years old. By the age of ten she was drinking regularly and like Drew Barrymore had a healthy drug habit.

When she propositioned Carlo she was at an all time low and on the run from yet another care home. Carlo had managed to save two days dinner money, which he planned to spend that weekend at the cinema. The famous film director Steven Spielberg had released a movie about a daredevil archaeologist. His parents strictly forbade him from any cinematic excursions. They believed like many who are devout that Hollywood was a root course for all that is bad in the world. They had formed this opinion as result of their first date together when they had seen Bonnie and Clyde in the early Sixties. They blamed this film for the break down of morality in the decade that followed and the huge demand by women for the pill. To see what is now considered to be a classic of modern day comic book escapism Carlo told his parents that the film was purely educational and to see it would be a tremendous help to his studies. As they lived purely fictional lives it was not hard to convince them that he was telling the truth especially as he had found an article which discussed the films flirtation with the Ark of the Covenant. Of course he had to pay for this adventure himself and it was they that suggested he divert his dinner money on the Wednesday and the Friday, as these were traditional days of fast.

Two days dinner money is not enough to purchase full intercourse no matter how much penance is involved but Daisy was desperate so she agreed to take him round the back of City Road and give him a hand job which took a lot longer than both of them imagined, because as soon as he got it up his self imposed homophobia would kick in and he was unable to retain wood. It was not until Daisy began to describe having a great cock inside her that he could do the same. Finally, he could fully give himself over to her.

Over the next few weeks they would meet on a Friday and he would give her his weekly spiritual earnings. Although they were both tentative it was impossible for them not to form a strong bond together and before they knew it they had developed a friendship that would last the rest of their lives. The acclaimed film The Raiders of the Lost Ark finished its run and moved on without Carlo ever seeing it. It was not until years later that he finally saw it on video. He was disappointed that it was just like sugar which, when placed on the tongue, melts quickly away and is thus forgotten.

*****

Every Wednesday of that year meant that Carlo had to walk from his school to the playing fields, a distance of about four miles. Each term would involve a different activity. In the first term the school played Rugby Union not League, in the second they played football and in the final term they dressed for cricket. Carlo revelled in t