HAPPILY EVER AFTER NUMBER TWENTY-THREE

Toxteth, Liverpool, The Dog and Pony pub on Church Street

26 February 2018

I looked at my phone and sighed. He wasn’t late or anything. But the sooner I could get all of this over and done with the better.

I rocked my hips and back on forward on that bare, dirty mattress. Fucking embarrassing. But whatever. He kept paying me three hundred quid for these little meetups of ours, I’d keep pitching up I suppose. But it was the super sweet ones that always made me nervous.

The room was disgusting, but I knew for a fact nobody ever came around here. The council would tear it down sooner or later, but for now these crumbling, graffiti-filled walls were my little patch of peace and quiet. I was pretty sure that whatever twisted thing he was going to ask me to do this time, we wouldn’t need anything fancier than a dirty bare mattress and about ten minutes to do it in.

I checked my phone again.

“Megan?”

I looked up and he was there in the doorway. Looking squeaky clean and nervous as a kicked puppy. I bet he thought he was the first guy to fall madly, stupidly in ‘love’ with me. He had it written all over his face. Truly, I don’t care if some poncey asshole thinks he’s living on the edge just because he knows a ‘girl like me’. Just as long he’s paying, the joke’s on him, right?

He stepped into that broken room and sat beside me on that broken mattress. His aftershave smelled pretty good, actually. Cold and green, like a fancy forest.

It was plain as day that he didn’t belong here. Truth was, I was maybe a little interested to be doing any of this with, well, a ‘guy like him’. I waited. I looked down at his legs inside his trousers. At his shoes. At the awkward way he held his hands in his lap. At the tiny hairs on his knuckles.

“I wish you’d let me take you somewhere nicer,” he said at last.

“I like it here just fine,” I said, and spread my legs out in front of me. It was a dump, but neither of us paid a penny to be here. Plus I knew all the exits. I had very little in this world, but I wasn’t about to incur any debts, if you know what I mean. I’ve learned my lesson with that one – I didn’t need some weirdo thinking he was taking me out on a date.

“So?”

He sighed and took out a notepad, as he had done all the times before, and I glimpsed his now familiar handwriting. I guessed it was just about getting to that time when his little pretense of being a journalist would wear thin. I waited. He immediately put it away again. I stared at his feet.

“Megan, can we just talk off the record for a moment?” he said.

Ah, there it was. There was an exit out to the right and one a little ahead down the passage and opening to the back alley.

“Sure.”

“You seem like… I’ve just been wondering…”

I waited.

“Is it true, everything you said to me the last time? About the men in the bathrooms?”

“It’s true.”

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you do it? Why let men take advantage of you? You’re so beautiful, and smart and—”

“And I deserve better?” I said smiling wryly.

“Well, yes.”

“I deserve a man who would take good care of me?”

“Well…”

“So it’s one man who takes advantage of me a lot or a lot of men who take advantage of me a little. Same difference,” I said and let the smile fall from my face.

“Megan, don’t say that.”

“I’ll say what I like, thank you.”

He had tiny, almost invisible hairs just at the open triangle where his shirt opened. I wondered what his cock looked like. He was way, way too old for …well, anything. But a girl had to wonder.

“I’m sorry, I take that back. You’re right. I just…”

“You see this?” I said and thrust my arm at him. He looked down, a little taken aback.

“This was one of the first tattoos I got. I got it when I was fifteen. My first serious boyfriend. He threatened me with a knife one night. He said he was going to skin me alive because he was jealous I’d leave him. Of course, he cheated and left me within six months, but I got this tattoo of a knife to remember him.”

“Why would you—”

“And this one?” I said, now unbuttoning my leather pants and pulling them down to my knees. Oh, that had his attention alright. His eyes looked down at the blood red roses blooming on both of my upper thighs as though he was afraid he’d be arrested for it at any moment.

“This guy? Well, his weapon was a little different. I was still young. Seventeen or eighteen. I didn’t realize that in a way, it’s better to be stabbed outright than given a bunch of roses without knowing what they really mean, you know? I got these tattoos to remind myself of that fact.”

“Megan, please…”

“Now this one, this one’s pretty funny…” I pulled up my pants, and then wriggled my shirt up high to show a large ribcage tattoo of a little boy fairy admiring himself in the mirror. “Can you guess why I got this one?” I pulled my shirt down again and smiled cynically.

“You’re the most fascinating woman I know,” he said quietly.

“And you’re the most boring man I know,” I blurted. He smiled like my insult was nothing more than a kitten bite.

“What tattoo would you get because of me?” he said.

I snorted.

“None? You’re not worth the skin,” I said, and that’s when I fucked up. At the exact moment I said ‘skin’, I couldn’t help thinking about skin, specifically his, and before I knew it I was looking at that triangle of skin at his collar, and when he caught me doing it, I tore my eyes away and looked elsewhere. Too bad that place was his crotch. He saw that too. Fuck.

When I looked up again he caught my gaze and held it there.

“You like playing tough, but I don’t think you’re very good at it, Megan.”

Before I could argue he had taken my hand in his and I looked down at it hanging limply. He took his pen, clicked it and then pulled me closer. His hand was warm and dry. The pen tip hurt a little as he dragged it over the back of my hand, over and between the veins. I watched as he traced out some jagged shapes, but as the pen caught my skin and rolled out ink more smoothly, it became clear that he wasn’t drawing, he was writing. By the time I realized what the word was, it was too late. I yanked my hand away and stared at those thin, ugly letters. “CUNT.”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I hissed at him, and began furiously rubbing away the ink.

“Only what you do to yourself,” he said.

I froze.

“Very clever. But fuck you. I’m leaving now,” I stood, but he grabbed my hand and his grasp was so firm and unexpected I staggered and fell back onto the mattress next to him.

“What’s the problem? That one you can at least wash off.”

Perhaps I had underestimated him. I waited.

“Give me your other hand,” he said.

I thought for a moment. I’ve made some pretty stupid decisions in life. I’ve been drunk and irresponsible, I’ve been sad. I’ve done things that, even as I did them, I regretted them. But this felt different. He wasn’t telling me. But he wasn’t asking either.

“Not where people could see it,” I said at last, and then we sat together in the silence to see where that left us. It had taken three interviews with this ‘journalist’. But now that something was happening I had to admit, I was a little excited. Was I going to do this? Sleep with some old guy on some old mattress? I mean, his pick-up technique was a little unorthodox, but I couldn’t deny I felt curious. Curious in my body.

“Show me somewhere else, then,” he said. “Somewhere you haven’t ruined for the sake of some asshole boy from the past.”

I thought for a moment. Thought of myself as some part-ruined, part intact girl. Patchy and marked. I lifted my shirt again, but this time took it off completely. I expected him to look at my breasts. At my black and turquoise lace bra that I had spent a week’s wages on. But he looked only at the bare skin on my belly.

“Lie back,” he said.

My heart skipped. Oh fuck. This is how girls end up in trouble, isn’t it? I didn’t care.

One of his warm, dry hands came to rest on my side and the other balanced the pen tip over my naked skin. I watched his chest rise and fall with each breath. I could see it, with him up this close: what he might have looked like, at my age. That he might have actually been pretty hot once. I mean he was hot now, in a kind of nasty way. Hot for an old guy. Nice in a way that grows on you, maybe.

The pen moved more quickly this time. The word was “WHORE” and it curved slightly round my bellybutton in large, straight letters. I looked at it, then at him, and then it happened. I don’t know why. Don’t ask me to explain it. But it was hot. Despite myself, watching him focus carefully on spelling that bad word over me felt …good.

“You like everyone to think you’re a bad girl, don’t you?” he said, not lifting his eyes to mine. He gazed around me, reading the rest of my flesh and looking for his neck blank piece of canvas.

“Yes, I guess.”

“Isn’t that what all these tattoos say? You’re bad. You want to chase men away I think, but a part of you also… wants them to come closer anyway?”

“Cum slut,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

All at once I flopped over onto my belly, giving him a good view of my backside.

“I have some un-tattooed skin on my butt.”

The smile on his face came slowly but sent a quick, delicious little thrill through me. I liked this. Not some sweaty fumble in a backseat. Not some sad fuck with some dumb loser from the bar. Not some desperate groping in a club that was boring before it even started. This felt fun. This was a game.

I closed my eyes and could feel that this time the letters were bigger. He dragged that sharp pen point up over the curve of my ass and then right down to the crease where my thighs began. One half of the word for the left cheek, the other half for the right. Cum slut. What a disgusting, filthy, perfectly wonderful word. And now that I was labelled with it, I imagined the ink seeping in and making it so. I guess I did want people to be intimidated by me. To think I was ‘bad’. I wanted them to stay away. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want them to look. And want.

My trousers came off easily after that, and I let him do it. I let him pass his hungry eyes over me, and lay there, and let him read. In my bra and panties, the best pair I owned, I lay back, stroked my hands over myself and then pointed to a blank spot above my knee.

“Fuck doll,” I said.

He nodded silently, the same secret smile on his lips, and got to work lettering my leg. Next came “bitch” on the other knee, and “cock slave” on my lower belly. The old, professional, permanent tattoos were starting to share space with the new, amateurish, impermanent ones.

I looked down in amusement as I noticed him start drawing a huge, veiny dick on the side of my leg. I giggled but he was dead serious. I was almost certain I felt a stiffness as he brushed against me, moving here and there to reach around his wriggling canvas, but I couldn’t be 100% sure.

“You want to fuck me, don’t you?” I said at last, and the pen tip came to a rest. He didn’t look up at me though. He was hovering directly over me, still fully clothed, but he had yet to really touch me. The pen started moving again. He gripped my thigh hard and repositioned it roughly, allowing him easier access to the smooth, blank skin there. I squeezed my eyes shut and began to wonder if he could tell that I was getting wet.

When I opened them again I was surprised to see he had written the words, “you want to fuck me, don’t you?” down my leg.

“You’re sick,” I said, and this too was instantly scrawled onto me. By now he was grabbing me more firmly, twisting and angling my body this way and that way. I hated how turned on I was getting. How he stubbornly refused to even touch me there. If he was any other guy I’d be getting dressed again and leaving already.

“Touch me, please,” I said, without thinking. This he wrote in massive letters, across my chest. My cheeks burned.

“Oh, I will. But first, I want all of this pretty bare skin completely covered up in filth.”

How revolting. How exciting. Before I knew it, I was speaking faster than he could write, and every dirty thing that left my lips was etched in black, smeary ink over my body. The dirty words became dirty sentences, that now trailed over my squirming legs and arms. Every open space was lovingly vandalized with obscenity, the previous words smudging with the heat of my body, rubbing off slightly as he leaned over me, still fully clothed, still only catching my eye by accident, still smiling wryly. It was amazing. My heart thumped like it wanted to run away from me.

When he spread my legs apart to reach one of the last remaining empty spaces of skin, it was obvious to him and to me how soaking wet I had become. I lay frozen and avoided eye contact. He looked down for a moment, then placed the pen tip on my inner thigh, his firm hand on my knee, pulling my legs gently apart. When he finally lay the pen down and stood to look down at his handiwork, I was completely covered.

“I like being fucked so hard I can’t think straight,” said the inside of my left arm.

“Use me,” begged the skin under my bra strap.

“Do dirty things to my pussy,” said my left hip.

“Did I say that?” I said, looking down at it. His only response was a smile.

“You’re dirty, Megan. Very dirty. We should clean you up,” he said, still towering above me while I lay on that awful mattress in my black and turquoise bra. He extended his hand out to me and helped me get up. I was a walking piece of bad art. A living bathroom stall door, painted over with dirty phrases that had, apparently, come out of my mouth at some point. I was aching. The tight throb at my clit was only getting worse. I stood before him. And I waited.

“You’re coming home with me now.”

“Am I?” I said, but he was right, I wasn’t that good at playing the tough girl.

“Yes. And when we get there, I’m going to fuck you till it hurts. Tomorrow, after I’m gone, you’re still going to feel it. You’re going to scrub those words off your body but you won’t ever forget the things I’m going to do to you.”

The tight throb was almost unbearable. I reached down to grab my clothing from the floor but he stopped me.

“No. Come just like that,” I said.

Fuck. This wasn’t part of the script. I searched his eyes, then let the leather pants fall from my hands. I was shaking.

“Just like this...?”

“Yes. You’re going to walk in the streets, just like that, so everyone can see exactly what a…” here looked down at my bare legs, “what an utter cum slut you are.”

Me. Right now. Like this, walking outside the dodgy streets of rundown Toxteth, haunt of drug dealers and drunks… it was almost too much.

“Trust me,” he said, and for that second, he was Dean.

“Ok,” I said instantly.

The outside air was cool on my body as I stood tall and walked down the street, half naked and scribbled with smut. An elderly woman nearly tripped over her feet. A trio of smoking lads couldn’t tear their eyes away. My blush turned into three degree burns over my entire body. But I held my head tall. Let them see. With my hand in his, it was all a game, all permissible. And I trusted him.

After we had found our way back to the B&B, he did indeed fuck me till it hurt. He threw me down on the bed and pounded into me so hard I thought one or both of us would pass out. He bruised my wrists. I bit a gnarly, red circle into his shoulder. He slapped me till my skin went pink, held me down, and fucked me so deep and so hard I couldn’t even scream anymore. He fucked me through one orgasm and straight into another. I was begging for relief, begging to catch my breath for a second when he fucked me even harder and made me come a third time. My cheeks were damp. Of that night I only remember him stepping away from me, his chest heaving deeply, his strong arms hanging at his sides and his thick cock bouncing heavily against his thigh, still wet.

Once I had scooped myself off the floor, we both had a shower and got ready to head to the airport. Two police officers were downstairs in the lobby and looked up at us both, Dean in his suit and me in a Hermes scarf and heels.

“You lot wouldn’t have seen anything funny around here? We’ve gotten a report of a suspicious couple come in here, woman seemed a bit distressed. You seen anything?” one said in a thick accent as he watched us come down the stairs with our luggage.

“No,” I said, “I don’t think so… what did they look like?”

The officers exchanged loaded looks with each other.

“Uh, tattoos. The woman had a lot of tattoos,” the other said.

We both shrugged.

“Alright then,” said the first, nodded at us, and off we walked.

“That was a good trip” I whispered under my breath, when we were eventually alone in the taxi.

“Hmm. It was. Thanks for the souvenir, by the way,” he said and pulled his collar to the side, revealing a big, raw looking bite mark on his pec.