“No. Sheâs knocking the edge off. Says she wants a little bit of fun out of it. Wants to see us virgins suffer a little bit. She says if she's doing this she's going have a bit of fun with it,” Bob said.
The 1971 version of me looked very nervous. He may not be able to get it up, and my friend had actually had a blow job. Now watching the rerun inside the bubble I could see this girl had the devilment of the little pixie in her. I feared for the other me back in the past.
I took brave strides into the bedroom closing the door behind me, thanking God it was lit only by a table lamp. Under bright lights I think I would have been too embarrassed to perform. Sweat was breaking out on my forehead because it was very warm in the bedroom, much warmer than I remember from our earlier inspection. With the door closed it was positively hot. She was very relaxed sipping on a glass of something that had appeared from I don't know where. It looked like a dark spirit, rum or brandy.
“Anne, you can call me Anne, and please don't call me Jesus when you come. Your friend did!” She laughed at this. The shirt had remained on and was now open enough to reveal her dark nipples, and her womanhood was on full display, her legs very relaxed. She swung round dropping her feet onto the small fluffy rug next to the bed. A little bit of luxury. She beckoned me towards her. I obeyed. Then without hesitation she started with slow deliberation undoing my belt with one hand, and rubbing my testicles through my trousers with the other. She pulled my shirt out of my trousers, and was kissing my stomach flattened hard by too much work on the farm.
“Nice. I might enjoy this!” Anne said, continuing to work on my already stiffening penis now exposed to the soft light of the room. A woman, a girl, was actually touching me, kissing my stomach, and not laughing. I wasn't in a hurry to get on with it. I wanted this experience to last more than a few minutes. It wasn't because we were paying for it. This girl was beautiful.
“Can you take your shirt off? I want to see all of you,” I asked.
Anne looked up at me from down by my waist, hesitating for a few moments before firmly saying, “NO!” Taking her shirt off would have revealed the true nature of her need, her desperation, and expose the real reason why she was giving the best of her young body away. I was too naive to realise her arms were already bearing the scars from the needles. I was too naive to realise a lot of the time she wouldn't be giving sexual pleasure to virginal teenagers. A lot of the men who visited would be much older, much more violent, some demanding everything in the pervert's dictionary of horrors.
Tonight was an easy fix for this desperate girl. Two nervous young men who appreciated this girl's ethereal and soon to pass beauty.
To me as a spectator to my own loss of virginity she looked very relaxed, and time was passing slowly for us both. It looked to me as an observer as if Anne had decided to pretend I was the boy next door who she might fall in love with, a small escape from her sordid world. Her slow caressing moved into kissing me on the lips with a passion I hadn't expected. For reasons known only to her, this girl had decided to treat me like her lover.
“Get the fuck on with it. I want a fucking go. I am paying for this!” It was Bob from outside the room banging on the door. He had a nastier edge to his voice than I'd ever heard. He'd been drinking the cheap wine topping up his inebriation. Now he was raving again banging on the door with an insistence that couldn't be ignored. All the while I wanted to relax and enjoy what would be remembered for a lifetime. This girl was a prostitute, desperate to fill her veins, but this night she was a girlfriend, this night my angel saving me from the devil of virginity.
“Shut up, Bob, shut up! I'll be ready when I'm ready. Until then shut up!” I shouted over my shoulder in a loud whisper. I was desperate not to break the mood.
There was a splintering of wood around the lock as the door burst open. Bob stood there in a drunken rage. He was drunk out of his mind. I am sure he'd finished the whole bottle of wine.
He was pulling at his trousers, opening the front, fumbling with his penis.
“Get off her. It's my go!” he raved.
“Make me!” I said.
He walked towards me wild-eyed.
I was bracing myself ready for Bob's attack and pushed Anne back down onto the bed behind me to keep her safe. Whatever path life had pushed her down she didn't deserve this. My adversary lunged towards me and I experienced the unexpected force of a rope around my waist pulling me backwards with huge force. I was at a loss as to understand how this tiny girl on the bed behind me could've put a rope around me, and where did she get the strength from?
The pull increased and I shot down a black tunnel backwards, a tableau of the three of us in the room shrinking to a small dot of light before disappearing. There was an audible pop and a huge splash as I came out of the bubble. To my horror I was attached to the back of the riverboat being towed along at four knots in the grey water. This strange coloured murky water was thick and oily like acid. I did not think my sins warranted it, but this acid scoured at my entire body, even my eyes.
The towing continued for hours it seemed, and I was in an age of agony, dissolving until I could feel the bones of my body held together by sinew alone. Imagine some sadist with a passion for putting cigarettes out. This is practised on your eyeball. The nerve endings never die and the pain is continuous in its bleak agony. Imagine this a thousand times over with your entire body slowly melting without nerve death. In this world you would be unconscious or in cardiac arrest, but you're not!
The rope was towing me towards the exposed propellers, thrashing white water. This was the end. After all this agony I was going to be cut to pieces. The foaming water behind the riverboat salved my pain, slowly washing away the oily acid. Each beat of the propellers threw cool refreshing water over me. As I got nearer vortexes from the propellers started to draw me in for decapitation. I closed my eyes when the blades were so near I could reach out and touch them. Suddenly I'm pulled upwards at speed my toes missing the rotating blades by an inch, and thrown unceremoniously like a landed tuna onto the observation deck. I'm cold and shivering.
The sensation of cold rushes up from my feet, through my knees and from my hands up through my arms. Everything is centred inside my mouth which is freezing. All the wetness of the River has gone from my clothes. With my mouth numb with cold I look across and with clearing vision I see Jennifer smiling back at me.
“Why are you sucking on the ice cube from your gin glass?” Jennifer said.
I spat it into my hand and threw it back into the gin goblet. The ice cube swirled around the glass slowly spiralling to the centre. The Pixie had to jump twice to avoid the cube before it came to a halt. The Lylybel leaned against it and crossed her flippers. She smiled at me and laughed, raising her middle finger at me in defiance. The whole sensation of punishment had finished, and making the pixie jump had given me a little bit of comeback, for once. I was ready to resume my life in this otherwise unspoiled paradise. Once all the truths are known this world will carry no pain, only sublime pleasure.
In the background I can hear the pixie frog woman laughing like a drain at the torments she made me suffer.
“Would you like a gin and tonic? I think I fancy another,” Jennifer asked.
“Go on have another. Please do it will be delicious!” the malicious frog shouted up from the glass. She was ready for me still wearing her sub-aqua gear. I declined.
I was beginning to understand Bob had been the instigator of something I knew would be terrible. The pain I'd suffered was sufficient for a lifetime. Did I really want to suffer more pain to find out what' we'd done? The strange thing was I didn't question where this other life had been lived. Somehow, in this universe, it seemed the punishment was for another life, an old life lived before in a distant place, and I suppose in a way it was!
The three days in Paris were wonderful long relaxing days of sightseeing. Boat trips along the Seine, laughter on the steps of the Louvre, and walks around the beautiful gardens at Versailles. This is how all our days passed, all the time seeing everything through new eyes was a revelation. The
Mona Lisa
was made up of a quarter of a million brushstrokes. I could feel Leonardo de Vinci's deep passion in every single crafted stroke of this centuries old painting. Some of the other pictures in the gallery were equally amazing. The madness of some of the great artists made me shiver with cold, my stomach a sea of nerves driven by crazed thoughts. I could not look or go near van Gogh or Edvard Munch.
The days passed in wonder, we were arm in arm, hand in hand, together most of the time. Three days in the alternative universe, and I'd never lived anywhere else. On the third night, the night before we were to catch the train back to another England, I fell asleep in her arms content in knowing I'd found the love of my life. Bright light greeted me as I woke in the morning. The bed was empty next to me, and my senses had gone numb. I was bitterly disappointed I wanted to live in enchantment forever. There were no feelings of lingering guilt, because now I was learning all the dark secrets.
For reasons I never understood when I awoke to an empty bed my thoughts immediately returned to Rachel. I began to recall the closing hours of our two-day conversation and the moment she revealed too much leg for her age. I've always had a vivid mental image of the moment Rachel described her revenge on the man who'd tormented and tortured her young life.
Rachel, that vision of Rachel, clawing at her dress, was heavy in my mind.
She'd been telling me about recovering the knife from the dustbin, and she told me something that had shocked her. Digging in the trash aroused deep memories of the desperation of the concentration camp. She'd pulled a filth covered hand from the dustbin. On her wrist was a smear of aromatic grease from a discarded fish and chip wrapping. Rachel shocked herself by licking it. She was also tempted into licking the sticky goo from her fingers. At the last minute she stopped herself by wiping her encrusted hands on her old dress. It had been a close call.
Jumping up from the sofa Rachel placed herself in front of the fireplace and she revealed most of her legs to me. The action was totally unintentional, a manifestation of the torment inside. She wasn't looking at me. Her eyes were closed. Both hands were down by her side and she was pulling at the material of her dress as she recalled her story. Throughout she was kneading the material in her hands. The subconscious gathering of the material filling her hands to stop her fingernails cutting her palms, such was her tension. I was slightly embarrassed and at the same time fascinated, she still had great legs. I felt guilty looking and dragged my eyes away to stare into her intense face. Her eyes remained closed throughout, but fascinating expressions passed across her tired but still beautiful face as she told me what happened next.
She returned to the back door of Maximilian's exclusive block of apartments. The caretaker was snoring in his chair, while the loud radio was spreading the news, something about the Princess Elizabeth becoming Queen. On any normal day Rachel would have listened. All she could hear was her own heartbeat. She tried to move with the silence she'd learnt when trying not to disturb Maximilian in his concentration camp “love nest”. Now she was using the same techniques not to get away from Maximilian but to meet him face-to-face.
Like a statue Rachel had been on the landing outside the door for several minutes. She had no way of knowing if it had been two or twenty. Inside her head was a violent dialogue. If she knocked on the door would she run, if she didn't knock on the door would she regret it for the rest of her life. If she managed to infiltrate his apartment to plunge the knife hard into Maximilian's heart would she then be caught and hung for murder?
One deep breath and Rachel knocked on the door with confidence. She was ready with the dagger hidden behind the clipboard. She would be a woman with a questionnaire from the water board, something about a better service with more pressure to the apartments on the upper floors. This was all she could think of. In the event it didn't happen like that because she never got the chance to get inside his apartment. Rachel never stood on the same piece of carpet face-to-face with this monster, and she didn't get the opportunity to stab Maximilian in the heart. No blood would squirt onto her clothes so she could hide the stains under the plastic coat. She would not feel the heat from his body soaking into the material of her dress. None of these things would happen.
The little spy hole door opened, and Maximilian's very pale blue-grey eye looked out of the hatch.
“Can I help you?” Maximilian enquired.
“Yes, you can. I am from the water board. May I come in for a few minutes?” Rachel asked.
“At this time of night? It's very late!” Maximilian said. He was suspicious and Rachel knew this. How could she persuade her way into this man's home?
“We are all part-timers, people with families, and we do this in the evenings,” Rachel said, pleased with the explanation. What came next was the moment she'd dreaded.
“I know you! I know you! You're that little Jewish bitch!” Maximilian said, his voice rising as he did so. Little Jewish bitch, the little Jewish bitch that he'd taken in every way possible way, and now she couldn't get to him, her chance gone forever. He would call the police, or would he?
Maximilian's eye filled the small hatch. It grew wide with a building incredulous rage against this little Jewish bitch soiling his threshold, threatening his anonymity.
She was found out. He would never let her in, and she must return to the north the next day. It was a hopeless situation made worse by this man's rising anger. Soon people would be alerted and she would be found out. Intent to murder was an offence. Maximilian was explaining what he and his associates would like to do with a Jewish bitch like her.
The knife was brought from behind the clipboard in one swift movement and pushed with every muscle fibre of her body towards the open spy hole. All the hatred in her body was driving the blade forwards. This was a long diamond sectioned blade made of stainless steel by the Third Reich. It was going home.
Imagine piercing a kiwi fruit. A little bit of resistance and then a soft giving into the body of the fruit. This was how Rachel described the sensation. It nearly didn't get there at all catching the edge of the hatchway in her wild thrust. Another quarter of an inch and it would have stuck in the door. Luck was on her side and the blade glanced inwards towards Maximilian's wide open pale blue eye. The piercing sensation was experienced for a tiny fraction of a second. This moment Rachel would expand into a lifelong memory. The knife passed through the eye in less than the blink of an eye. The mad charge of steel through tissue continued. The blade was being muscled deep into Maximilian's brain. There was a big shock up her arm as the sharp point came to a halt against the inside of the back of his skull.
Whatever she'd pierced inside his evil mind had made him go rigid like a heavy plank of wood. He didn't utter a word, there was no cry. The man didn't crumble to the floor. This tableau continued for several seconds with Rachel holding the knife handle a couple of inches away from the spy hole. Fear was building inside her that this man was invincible. Rachel was about to pull the knife from his rigid face when he started to fall backwards. The knife with her fingerprints was almost pulled from her grasp as he toppled backwards like a falling tree. The crossbar of the knife made in the fashion of eagle's wings stopped it continuing into the room along with Maximilian. These fine outstretched wings caught against the edges of the spy hole pulling it clear as the former Nazi fell backwards.
Rachel retched, not at what she done but the noise the knife made coming out of this man's head. It was like pulling a wellington boot out of mud. There was sucking noise, a terrible wet sucking noise as the blade exited the brain cavity and finally his eyeball. There was a thud to the floor like a falling sack of coal as Maximilian Haussler became no more. Rachel continued to clutch the knife without removing the blade from inside the apartment. She pressed her face to the hole and looked in to see, with deep satisfaction, Maximilian, the man who had tortured her, the man who had ironically kept her alive, now twitching in death spasm.
Rachel could feel urine running down her legs. It wasn't released with fear just a total relaxation of her incredible body tension. So complete was her story she told me every small detail, and her eyes never opened. She was recalling each precious moment. The urine hot on her legs woke her from her trance-like state as she watched this monster on his way to hell. Rachel slipped the knife inside her coat along with the clipboard. The caretaker was snoring in the chair when she came down into the hallway, and he was louder than the radio. It had amazed her that she noticed this in her desperate bid to flee without detection.
She slipped out of the apartment and down the road back towards her sister, back towards a normal life. This was the moment when she thought she'd closed a chapter on the past, but it keeps bubbling back to the surface. Rachel would walk across the river on her way home. The River Thames with its dirty grey water would become the hiding place for the murder weapon. No one would ever find it, and if they did would it matter?
All the time she recalled her moment of revenge her eyes remained closed. Now, at the finish, she had them wide. The smile on her face was one of genuine joy, and the look in her eyes was not of madness, not of anything strange. Her eyes sparkled like a woman seeing her new child for the first time. She had shared her joy with me. This was Rachel releasing her secret to the world. This woman was one victim who sought out revenge and succeeded.
The moment passed and she looked slightly embarrassed, realising her dress was more than halfway up her thighs. She smoothed it back down to just below the knees, and came to sit next to me.