A Sticky End (28 page)

“We're going to the music hall,” he said. “We're going to watch a few turns, and we're going to eat pies and drink beer. And then, when I think you're ready, I'm going to take you back to my room and drive my cock so far up your ass you'll be tasting me.”

“Thank you.” This seemed an inadequate response, but I could think of nothing else.

“After what you did for me last night,” said Bert, “it's
the least I can do. And look! I've already put a smile on your face.”

A light rain was falling as we walked up the road, enough to wet the pavement. The facade of the Duchess Theatre was ablaze with lights, the yellows and reds reflecting on the pavement; it looked like the gateway to fairyland.

Bert hustled me through the door, handed over some coin, and pointed up a stairway. The place was elaborately decorated—vulgarly, some would say, with ridiculous torches projecting from the walls, their glass shades fashioned to resemble flame, the wallpaper a crazy mix of chinoiserie and regency stripe, the carpets thick and red but so worn down and covered in spilled beer and cigarette ash that they were starting to look like beaten earth. All around us, people were coming and going—workingmen like Bert and Sean, and women of the same class, their hair tied up in scarves, middle-class couples in suits and stylish coats, a few obvious “toffs” in evening dress, slumming it for an evening south of the river. Everyone was laughing and talking, their cheeks flushed, their eyes bright.

The stairs led up to the circle, which commanded an excellent view of the stage, where an old man in a dinner jacket with a red nose and long white hair was playing the “Barcarole” on a musical saw. The audience joined in with whistles, catcalls, and raspberries. The “artiste” did not seem to mind, nodding and smiling at the front rows of the Orchestra, so buoyed up with drink that he thought he was getting an ovation.

“Back here,” said Bert, his hand on the small of my back, steering me to the rear of the circle. The view of the stage wasn't so great, but it didn't take long to figure out why he'd chosen these particular seats. All around us were couples whose attention was not entirely focused on the entertainment. Young couples kissed and cuddled; toward the very back, they did a great deal more. A few satisfied
customers snoozed with their legs over the seats in front of them. And I was surprised to see at least two pairs of men, their arms around each other's shoulders, their laps, in one case, covered by raincoats. I knew pretty well what that meant. Nobody but me was paying them the slightest attention. The Duchess was definitely my kind of theater.

We made ourselves comfortable, Bert's huge thighs pressing against mine, his heavy arm draped over my shoulder; he was a large, warm, and comforting presence. We watched and laughed at the exit of the old musician, who left the stage on a wave of fond, if ironic, applause, and settled back to watch a trio of acrobats introduced as The Three Adagios—a girl and two boys, one of whom, said Bert, had quite a reputation for his offstage acrobatics. They tossed the girl between them, they formed bizarre balancing shapes, they did a tricky bit of business involving a unicycle and a couple of flaming batons, at which point my attention wandered.

This was no reflection on the quality of their performance, but simply a response to the fact that Bert's hand had worked its way down my back and inside my pants, where one thick, blunt finger was probing between my buttocks. I shifted in my seat to give him better access; his finger found my hole and, after a bit of effort, penetrated me. The Three Adagios could have been levitating, and I wouldn't have noticed; my mind was clearing, my attention narrowing to that single point at which his flesh entered mine. He worked his finger further inside me; my dick was almost instantly hard, and I longed to get it out and relieve myself, but every time my hand strayed toward my groin Bert swatted it away.

“Save it for later,” he said. “I'm in charge now.”

This was exactly what I had been wanting to hear for the last two days—a chance to surrender myself, to relinquish control. I concentrated on the feeling of his finger—now
fingers—moving gently inside me. His fingers were large—not as large as his cock, of course, but big enough to cause a certain amount of discomfort, and in order to transform that into pleasure I had to breathe deeply, relaxing my muscles, clearing my brain…

The world was narrowing down to two thick workman's fingers and one rather stretched rectum.

How long we stayed like this I do not really know; acts came and went from the stage, drums rolled, cymbals crashed, the audience laughed and cheered and sang along. People came in and out of the auditorium, sometimes in and out of our row, squeezing past us; at one point we even had to stand up to let a couple through, but Bert's fingers never left my ass.

Occasionally he leaned toward me and whispered some obscene endearment in my ear, or kissed me lightly on the neck, his stubble sending electric shivers up and down my body, nearly making me come. I was going into a trance…

What brought me around was the deafening volume of the audience singing along with the headlining act, a very clever male impersonator who came on as a perfect Mayfair dandy, in evening dress, top hat, and cane, sporting a fine set of whiskers, singing a jaunty, slightly saucy song about “strolling down the Mall, looking for a gal.” “He” then did a quick change into a policeman's uniform, and gave us an equally popular number with the refrain “I've always got my truncheon in my hand,” which became more suggestive with each verse. Bert was laughing so hard he was shaking, which added to the sensation inside me.

At the climax of the act, to the resounding cheers of the crowd, the policeman tossed his helmet into the wings, pulled out a couple of hairpins, allowing long locks to tumble around the face, and finally, as the
coup de théâtre
, whipped off the moustache, transforming a handsome young man into a very fine-looking young woman. The
illusion was shattered, and she skipped off the stage, blowing kisses and laughing as she went. Bouquets rained onto the stage from men and women in the boxes; I imagine that our little deceiver was madly admired by both sexes.

“Time to get you home,” set Bert, wiping his fingers on his trouser leg. My ass, empty and not happy about it, agreed.

I followed him out of the Duchess Theatre like a devoted dog.

BERT LIVED IN A BOARDING HOUSE THAT BACKED ONTO THE railway tracks; from his room on the top floor you could see up and down the line that led from the center of town to the sleepiest southern suburbs. The whole house smelled of men—not unpleasantly so, but this was clearly an environment lacking the feminine touch.

The landlady, said Bert, was so fearsome she made her tenants look like kittens, and God help the lodger who was late with the rent, or who left the bath or the toilet in an unsuitable condition. She was, however, a heavy sleeper, and accepted with a degree of resignation the fact that men of Bert's class needed nocturnal company from time to time. She did not tolerate “living in sin”—but that was probably because she did not want two people getting a room for the price of one. Overnight guests did not concern her. She lived in the basement, said Bert, sleeping on a trundle bed in the kitchen so that she could rent every available room. Bert lived three stories up. We wouldn't trouble her, and she wouldn't trouble us. From what I gathered, most of his
neighbors were either so drunk they wouldn't hear us, or so accustomed to the rumble and thump of the trains that a bit of extra noise wouldn't bother them. Or, like Bert, they were entertaining.

We wasted no time. As soon as the door of his room was shut and the key turned in the lock, his arms were around me, his mouth seeking mine. Bert was taller than me, and in order to kiss him I had to lean my head back. His face was rough, but his lips were soft and his tongue as hard and probing as his fingers had been. He grabbed my ass in his two huge hands and lifted me off the floor; God, he was strong. This was the strength of a man who spends his days digging up roads and carrying hods of bricks, and his nights fucking. It was the strength that I needed.

He lay me down on the bed—a single bed, of course; a double would have encouraged cohabitation, even though Bert could have filled it adequately on his own. He pulled off my shoes and socks, unbuckled my belt, unbuttoned my trousers, and soon had me naked from the waist down. I helped out by pulling my shirt over my head. My cock was as hard as it has ever been, lying up against my stomach, pulsing, the head already wet and sticky; all that warming up in the theater had caused precum to drizzle out of me like honey from a honeycomb.

Bert stood at the foot of the bed and looked down at me, his eyes half closed, one hand dangling in front of his crotch. Was that a sigh of regret? Was he wishing for a repeat of the fucking I'd given him last night? Was his ass, like mine, aching with emptiness? Possibly—but I'm a great believer in fair play, and, seeing as two men have the great advantage of being able to do exactly as they would like to be done, I had no hesitation in pulling my knees up to my chest, holding my buttocks apart, and saying “Fuck me, Bert. Fuck me now.”

That was all the encouragement he needed, and in a flash
he was on his knees with his face between my cheeks and his tongue preparing the way that his cock was soon to follow. He worked saliva inside and around my ring, jabbing gently in a way that he knew would relax me and open me up, while his hands kneaded the muscles in my ass, causing the blood to rush down there, preparing me for maximum sensation. My dick stayed hard, but it was of less interest to me than usual; this was all about Bert's cock, and what it was going to do with me.

He tore his clothes off, dropping them on the floor, and soon he too was naked, his massive cock standing out at right angles from those powerful thighs. It looked big on him, even with all his bulk; on a smaller, slighter man, it might have looked freakish. It was certainly going to be one of the biggest things I had ever taken inside me—but if I was ever going to be ready for the challenge, I was ready now. Holmes's fiddle, Poirot's liqueurs—Bert's cock. He dipped two fingers in a jar of Vaseline, smeared it over his thick shaft and bulging head, and pressed against me. My ass lips opened, and he was in.

Any mental activity was instantly canceled by the sheer overwhelming sensation of that massive column of maleness working its way, inch by inch, into my hole. I knew well enough how to deal with this most difficult phase of the act of sodomy—and I knew that, once he was all the way inside me, and I was relaxed around him, this was going to be the fuck of a lifetime. I might not walk for 24 hours, but it would be worth it. However, for all my experience, my deep, controlled breathing, my efforts at muscle relaxation, it hurt like hell. I bit my lip; Bert stopped.

“Want me to pull out?”

“Never. Just give me a moment.”

He caressed my chest, my face, my mouth. Finally, when the tide of pain receded, I opened my eyes and said, “Go ahead. I'm all yours.”

And I was: completely, utterly his. When I felt his groin pressing against my butt, and I knew that I had taken all he could give me, I felt a sense of surrender and submission unlike anything I have ever felt before. I wondered if I had come; there was certainly something running from my belly down my side. Perhaps I had shot a load; perhaps it was just an extraordinarily large volume of precum produced by the immense pressure on my prostate gland. Either way, I wanted him to stay inside me, to start moving, to increase the tempo and the force until he was pounding me like a jackhammer.

Bert could read me like a book, and matched his actions to the demands of my ass. The fuck started small and slow—back a little, forward a little, the shaft of his cock moving within its sleeve of skin. And then a little more, so he was coming out of me a few inches, then pushing back in. When he judged me ready, he fucked me harder, pulling out further, reentering with greater force. Within five minutes, he was fucking me harder and deeper than I would ever have believed possible.

I would not say that I lost consciousness, exactly—I was fully aware at all times of where I was, who I was with, and what he was doing to me. But some part of my mind cut adrift of its customary moorings, freed perhaps by the intensity of the experience, unable to process rational thought, behaving more as the brain behaves during sleep and dreaming.

I started to experience sudden, vivid flashes—images that appeared to my inner eye, as it were, even as I watched Bert's heavy, handsome face a few inches above mine, his brow furrowed, breathing heavily though his mouth, sweat gathering on his upper lip.

Flash! The male impersonator at the music hall, handsome in her whiskers and uniform, the hair suddenly tumbling around her face, the moustache ripped away, dangling from her fingers like a little dead mouse…

Flash! The blood in Morgan's hallway, that haunting, horrifying smudge in the shape of a leaf, there one moment, gone the next…

Flash! Cigarette ash on the bathroom floor, a letter discarded or destroyed alongside the razor and the mouthwash…

Flash! Face after face after face, like images on a magic lantern—Sean Durran—Arthur Tippett—Hugh Trent—Jack McDermott—Stan Knight—Sergeant Godley and Inspector Weston—Walter Ross—Gerald Osborne, MBE—Tabib the Turk—Morgan's housemaid—Belinda—Morgan himself, ashen with fear…

Faster and faster they spun before my eyes, dancing and laughing and crying…

And somewhere behind this crazy parade were the two faces I had never seen—the face of the dead man, Frank Bartlett, and his wife, Vivien.

Something is wrong.

Something is wrong.

Something is wrong.