All stories

Kate and Tony were soaking wet from standing in the rain. Tony’s team had lost, but he grinned from ear to ear when Kate took his arm and they filed out of the stadium. The crowds of football fans were thinning as they descended the steps into the warm belly of the underground. Scarfs and wisps of hair trailed on the currents of hot air that rose up around them and as they wove their way through the tunnels they caught the echoes of devotedly sung football songs. They sat together on the carpeted seats hardly noticing the wet dog smell of all the bodies packed tightly into the tube as it trundled off into the darkness.

Two stops to go and Kate laughed at something that Tony said a little too loudly. She looked about self-consciously, but no-one was looking at her. The eyes of fellow passengers were darting about from one another to the man sat next to Tony. Kate glanced over at him. The man was pallid and balding, he looked worn, as if he hadn’t surfaced for a while. A murmuring that Kate hadn’t noticed before was getting louder and louder. The man was talking to a wooden box on his lap, as if having an argument that he wasn’t winning. As the man slowly slid the lid off the box people gasped and tried to skitter away from him like frightened horses. The carriage was packed so tightly there wasn’t anywhere to go. Couples gripped hands tighter, people shifted from foot to foot or crossed their arms over bags on their laps to hold them closer. A woman sat opposite Kate chipped harder and harder at the nail varnish on her left index finger, all the while staring at the man and his box. Kate glimpsed the gleaming hatchet inside and froze. Tony squeezed her knee. He turned to the man and calmly said ‘Alright, good game today, you see it?’ The man continued murmuring to the box. ‘Though we were totally robbed’. The man glanced up scowling. Tony lifted his chin slightly to give the man clear view of the gold cockerel emblem on the scarf around his neck. It was only then that Kate noticed the same emblem tattooed on the man’s forearm. Tony continued to talk in a level tone about the detail of the game with a casualness he couldn’t have felt. The man’s murmuring eventually lapsed into silence. He gave a slight nod of agreement to a comment Tony made about the ref. As they pulled in to the station people were stepping over each other to get off the tube in a panic. Tony stood up slowly and said ‘well this is us…nice to talk to you.’ The man looked Tony in the eye. All of Kate’s muscles tensed, Tony motioned her to leave, as if facing down a bull. Just at that second the doors of the carriage slid open and 4 police appeared in front of them. Kate took Tony’s hand and pulled him out on to the platform.

It was pissing it down. That kind of freezing rain that soaks through to the core and doesn’t stop there. Sergeant Robbins knew he’d feel the chill hours after he got dry, and god knew when that might be. He hugged himself a little tighter, and tried not to think about the scene that lay behind himself and the police tape.

That poor girl. She barely looked older than Sophie. Sgt Robbins had just dropped his 18 year old daughter off for her 2nd term at Bristol University the previous week, she was studying sociology, whatever the hell that was. Yeah, sure, she probably went out and got drunk, maybe wore slightly skimpier clothes there than here in quiet old Hastings, but she’d be safe, right? She’d grown up with a policeman as her dad, she must know better than to walk alone at night wearing bugger all, surely?

Just thinking about Sophie was making him feel sick. What that bastard had done to this girl was above and beyond reprehension. He kept seeing those hands, the nail varnish chipped and fingers raw from scrabbling at the pavement. He must have dragged her into the alley by her ankles, judging by the bruises. Stop thinking about it, he reprimanded himself. It’s NOT Sophie, and it won’t be her. Not ever. Just do your job, keep people away, and try not to freeze to death. He wished he was back at the station, or on patrol, or just about anywhere but here.

A movement across the street caught his eye. Dark clothes, hat pulled down over his face, lurking behind a telephone box, the figure seemed to be watching the scene in the alleyway.

Looking over his shoulder at the crime scene, Sergeant Robbins made a snap decision. Everyone there was busy; taking photos, searching the area, no-one was looking his way. This fucker was going to pay. He reached for his Taser, and began edging his way towards the figure. Keeping his pace slow and measured, he circled around. The figure was still there, hunched and silent. As he grew closer, he saw he was shaking. Bastard! Masturbating over a dead girl. Fuck the Taser, this guy deserved a wallop. He sheathed the Taser, and pulled out his truncheon, wishing police here carried the same weaponry as their brothers the other side of the pond. Well, a truncheon well aimed to the base of skull could cause as much harm as a bullet.

There was just the telephone box between Sergeant Robbins and the suspect. Steeling himself, he prepared to strike. The figure was too busy watching the scene in the alley way and, it appeared, pleasuring himself to notice the figure behind him, arm raised, truncheon at the ready. As the arm dropped, Robbins realised too late, the figure was neither male, nor masturbating, but a young girl, around the age of the victim -‘of Sophie!’ the thought flashed into his mind the second the truncheon connected with the sobbing figure.

Arch is in The Gardens, sat on a bench painting his fingernails, pots of varnish in a wooden box next to him. It’s a scrotum thing to do; people give up most of their food ration for ballots to enter the garden and he is painting his fucking fingernails.

No different for us, Lucy says, but she’s wrong. We’re here for love. At least I am.

This ridge of stone between us and Arch, low slung bushes. We can see out but no one can see the five seconds of bliss Lucy gives me. Slow, slow, slow, careful, at first, and then as caution begins to flee from my mind Lucy presses her hands between us, digs her nails in and stops the moment. Lucy tender as she eases the condom free, every touch a tease but that’s not her aim. She inspects the rolls of plastic up close from every angle. Satisified, she slaps the wet mass against my chest.

‘Happy now?’ she says.

‘Not really.’

It’s not pregnant before marriage is the problem, it’s pregnant without care, pregnant against the careful ordered genetic will of The Council. Two years till we marry, till I’m sterilised. But let god have his way before then, have Lucy carry my biological child? It means death for all three of us.

Right on time the rains come, a seething torrent that turns the sky grey and blacks out the cameras. Lucy strides away and in one second her linen white shift turns sheer and shows me her body beneath. Arch shows a shocked face as she appears. I know what she is saying to him. Telling him how she needs a man who can step up.

Arch is married, Arch has been sterilised. Out here they can fuck like bunnies and no one will ever know. To give the little fucker some credit, Arch takes her hand and goes willing enough.

There’s no way to argue it, Lucy’s a bitch. I said yes because I love Lucy. I said yes because maybe that’s how we get through our one day marriage. I might not be the only one but at least I’ll be the first.

But none of those reasons stop me following them into the narrow cliff paths above. I take it slow, scared they might hear now the rain has stopped. No danger of that, the noise they’re making, Lucy on her back and him working hard. Rage only comes when Lucy sees me, when she grins at me.

The rock is little more than a pebble but it does the job against his temple. My turn to smirk, the looks on their faces. Arch finds his knees, and stares back at me, fully clothed but his proud dick taunting me. It’s the first one I’ve touched that’s not mine, and I’ve never squeezed harder. Arch is squealing, beating at my shoulders, as double handed I drag him to the cliff edge.

Now it’s me grinning at Lucy staring her rage back at me. My climax denied, but so’s hers. A faint thump from the rocks below tells us Arch has found his.

The best and last of all things

Hope stood under the picnic tree, rainwater trickling into her school shirt, not knowing what to do. If she went home her mum would know it was gone immediately and she’d promised to bring it home safely. On the other hand, she couldn’t out stand here forever.

On Saturday Hope had turned thirteen. For years Hope and her mum had walked home from school the long way, past the jewellers, to look at the Pandora bracelets in the window. Hope liked the charm shaped like a tiny elephant, Mum liked the delicate rose. When Mum’s shift patterns had changed and Hope started to walk home by herself, she still made sure to walk past their jewellers to tell Mum about any changes to the display.

It had been hard since the two of them had left Hope’s dad on that terrifying night last October, but they had talked about it and they both agreed that it was better now. Mum explained that sometimes alcohol made people do things that they didn’t mean to do, not really. Hope was safe now. Hope understood.

The elephant inevitably disappeared from the window. Hope bit back the tears when she told her mum, speaking casually, but somewhere inside her a light flickered and went out for good. She walked a different way home after that.

And on Saturday, when they had come to the picnic tree, Mum had watched her as she opened the tiniest present to find her elephant nestled on a bed of pristine cotton wool. The look of delighted astonishment on Hope’s face made all those extra shifts and missed sleeps worth it. Everything.

Hope had worn it all day long, taking it off carefully at night and resting it by her bed. It was the most beautiful and expensive thing that she had ever owned.

And now it was gone. She remembered feeling its weight reassuringly in maths and then, on the bus, it wasn’t there anymore. She’d turned her bag inside out to find it; crawled under all the seats, but it was still gone. She couldn’t be trusted with nice things, Hope knew that now. She lowered herself onto her heels in the mud, wondering how she could tell Mum that the elephant was gone for good.

Then Hope spotted the corner of a box sticking out of the mud under the picnic tree, where her mum had sat on her birthday.

Frowning she leaned forward and dug it free, the chipped red of her nail varnish glinting bright, bright in the dark mud. The box had been buried for some time, Hope could tell. It was far more elaborate than her elephant’s little cardboard box - this was made of wood. It was beautiful and looked...well it looked ancient, but to her astonishment, as she brushed off the dirt, she saw etched into the wooden lid the familiar letters that spelled out PANDORA.

Hope’s fingers found the edges of the Pandora box and gently lifted the lid...