Brothers in Blood (10 page)

‘Later, maybe.’

Matt then showed Alex the master bedroom. In here the lighting was muted and discreet. Chocolate hessian adorned the walls and there were silky black sheets on the bed. Alex thought it was bordering on the tacky but strangely macho.

Matt sat on the bed and patted the covers by his side as an invitation for Alex to join him. He did so; and within seconds they were kissing and fondling each other. Despite the amount of alcohol Alex had consumed and that cotton wool feeling in his head, he was quickly aroused.

Soon they were rolling on the bed, snatching each other’s clothes off. Matt slipped out of his leather trousers revealing a large penis pressing fiercely against the sheer material of his thong. Alex’s body pulsed with excitement and anticipated pleasure and, pulling the thong aside, he went down, slipping his mouth around the erect member. Matt groaned with pleasure and fell back on the bed.

Alex was just about to bring his new lover to a climax when, to his surprise, Matt suddenly pulled back and jumped off the bed.

‘You’re a good boy, but I don’t want to come just yet,’ he said in a strange matter-of-fact manner. ‘Not on a blowjob anyway. I like it nice and snug up the arse.’

Alex found himself saying, ‘That can be arranged’ – but he was a little puzzled by Matt’s calculating behaviour. It was though he was playing some game by his own rules. Somewhere deep within the recesses of his foggy mind faint alarm bells started ringing. He began to sense that all was not right here. But it was too late now.

‘Certainly it can be arranged,’ Matt was saying as he moved to the bedroom door and threw it open. ‘And, in fact it has been. All arranged. OK fellas,’ he cried.

Two men entered the room. One was shaven-headed, plump with a beer gut visible below the line of his black T-shirt; the other was of a more athletic build, blonde-haired with cruel, mean eyes.

‘Boys, this is Alex,’ announced Matt as though he was some night club compere. ‘And Alex, these are the boys.’

‘What the fuck is this?’ snapped Alex, fear rapidly sobering him up.

‘This, my friend, is what is known as a gang bang. So brace yourself, Sheila. It’s gonna be a bumpy night. OK, boys, let’s take him back into the gym.’

When Alex eventually opened his eyes he found himself lying on his back staring up at a grey overcast sky. It was morning. His body was stiff and his head throbbed with a kind of dull bass disco beat. It took him sometime to recollect his thoughts and when he did, he cried out in pain and disgust. Had it really happened? Had he really been treated like a sexual puppet by those three men? Man handled and raped. Buggered until it hurt. Until he’d bled. The ache he felt told him without doubt that it had
really
happened.

He lay there – wherever he was – gazing at the early morning sky – and began to weep gently.

Slowly the events of the previous night came back to him in fragments. The pickup at the club, the strange house with the chintzy downstairs and the modish, masculine upstairs. He pictured Matt, Leather Man, and their initial embraces on the bed and their wonderful promise. Black sheets, he thought. He remembered the black sheets. Now things were getting hazy. Part of his brain had blocked out the most unbearable moments, but he remembered the animal-like pleasure of the three men, Matt and his cronies, as they had taken turns to … to use him. His own cries of pain and distress reverberated in his ears. They had taken no notice. They had used him like a rag doll. It wasn’t just the sex that inflamed them, it was the power, the brute force, the notion of inflicting pain, while they received pleasure. His stomach lurched at the thought of it and with some urgency he pulled himself up into a sitting position. He wiped his eyes and he noted his surroundings – he was on a bench in Greenhead Park, half a mile from the centre of town. And then with a sudden lurch, he leaned over sideways and was violently sick.

There was a brief respite and then his stomach heaved again, expelling its contents in a foul gush. He remained still, hanging over the side of the bench, for some minutes staring down at the ground and the pool of his own vomit – wondering if there was any more to come and more vaguely what the hell was he to do now.

He heard the sharp staccato clip-clip of female footsteps coming his way. Glancing up he saw a young woman walking down the main avenue of the park. With some effort, Alex pulled himself up into a sitting position and waited for her to pass by. She did so quickly with her head averted from him. He didn’t blame her: he must look a sight. In fact, he thought, if he looked like he felt, it’s a wonder she hadn’t screamed and run off in the opposite direction.

He knew he ought to move; he wanted to move; but he really didn’t know if he was capable of moving. His legs felt weak and his body ached. He started to cry again. These sort of things happened to other people, he told himself. It was the stuff of scurrilous Sunday newspapers. His shoulders heaved as he gave in to the wave of emotion that swept over him. Tears rolled down his cheeks and he bent over until his face was almost touching his knees and just sobbed.

At length as the tears subsided, he scrabbled in the pocket of his jeans and found a handkerchief. With a kind of self-punishing roughness, he rubbed his eyes dry and blew his nose. ‘You’ll live,’ he told himself with a sneer. Now he was angry with himself for being too naïve. Too fucking gullible. And too fucking greedy. He’d wanted sex and by hell he had got it. In spades!

Suddenly he thought to look at his watch. It was six thirty in the morning. Then he checked that his wallet was still there and the cash and credit cards had remained untouched. Everything was as it should be. Well it would be, wouldn’t it? They hadn’t been after cash or property; they’d been after his body.

As his sense or anger and self loathing rose within him, it seemed to give him enough energy to stand up. He did so for a moment but then his legs gave way and he crashed back down on the bench, his feet skidding in his own vomit.

‘Fuck,’ he cried. The word echoed around the empty park like a lost bird.

Gripping his knees, he tried again. He stood but did not try to move for at least a minute and then like a metal robot that had not been oiled for some months he began walking towards the park gates. I must look like a fucking old veteran returning from the trenches, he told himself, as he started to make his way down into the centre of town. Every step was a painful experience but he gritted his teeth and his grim determination mixed with that strange strand of guilt that had started to develop with in him, helped to keep him moving.

The sun had appeared now and the early morning chill had begun to dissipate, but this did nothing to cheer his spirits. He felt wretched and, worse than that, he hated himself. He tried hard to switch his brain off, to stop thinking altogether and to prevent the bright searing images from his ordeal returning to haunt him. But he failed. If anything they came back with greater clarity. The three sweaty bodies; their tight grip on him as two of them held him forward while the third forced an entry. Again and again. The excruciating pain mixed with a wild fear and disgust. He felt his stomach retch once more, but this time it was in vain. There was nothing left for him to spew forth.

On reaching the centre of town he headed for the railway station and got a taxi to take him home.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ John, still in his dressing gown clasping a mug of tea, rose from his armchair as Alex entered. John was angry and had barely looked at Alex as he walked thorough the door, but when he did so, he recoiled in shock at his friend’s appearance. ‘Bloody hell, what happened to you?’

Alex staggered forward and slumped down on the sofa, his eyes filled with tears. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. I won’t talk about it.
Ever!’

John sat down by him. ‘Come on, man. Something terrible’s happened. What is it? For Christ’s sake you can tell me.’

John moved forward to put a comforting arm around Alex but he flinched and pulled back.

‘No, don’t… don’t touch me. Don’t… touch me.’

John backed off. ‘OK. OK. I won’t. But surely you can tell me where you’ve been. I mean… what’s made you like this?’

Words wouldn’t come and so Alex just shook his head.

‘Maybe later, eh? Man, you look rough. Have you been attacked or something? Should I ring the police?’

‘No! No police. Nothing… just… nothing. Just leave it will you!’ Alex’s voice was hoarse but filled with anger.

John shook his head confused and concerned.

‘Well, I can get you a cup of tea, can’t I? Surely you’ll let me do that.’

‘Yeah. A cup of tea… that would be… yeah a cup of tea.’ He nodded without looking at his friend. The universal panacea. That will cure all ills – won’t it?

Twenty minutes later Alex was submersed in a bathful of soapy water scrubbing himself red raw. Attempting to scrub the pain, the shame and the humiliation away. The harder he rubbed, the more he realised the mark on his soul was indelible.

FOURTEEN

Laurence was on his way to getting drunk. Again. Well, it was Friday night. That was his excuse. There was always an excuse: he was feeling rather low; he was in a good mood; the play had gone badly; the play had gone well; he was bored; he was elated; he was out of work; he was in work; he was thirsty. In truth, it was always for the same reason: he wanted to place the real world at a distance, to soften its edges, to escape dull reality.

Indeed it was Friday night, and the play had gone reasonably well and the reviews earlier in the week from the Salisbury Bugle or whatever the local rag was called had made some fleetingly complimentary remarks about his performance but despite this he was feeling down in the mouth. He was sitting in the theatre bar with some members of the cast and stage crew having a boozy wind down after the performance. Sue Ling, the little prop girl, had squeezed herself in beside him and was paying him a great deal of attention. While he was enjoying this, his mind was not fully concentrating on her animated conversation. He was thinking about the letter he’d received that morning from Alex. It had been most unpleasant, shocking even, full of painful revelations and unsettling images. He thought he had been made of sterner stuff to react as he had done. And the letter presented him with a dilemma. What disturbed him the most was his own response to the contents. They moved him; they angered him; they disgusted him; and somehow they had driven a red hot poker into his soul. But he did not know why. He prided himself on keeping his cool at all times. Never get too close to anything or anyone was not only his motto but his natural, unforced reaction to life. He liked to think he proved John Donne wrong – this man
was
an island. He had killed a number of sad souls in vicious cold blood without the batting of the proverbial eyelid – so why then, why fucking then, had he become so perturbed by Alex’s plight? Certainly he was one of the triumvirate. One of the Brotherhood. But that wasn’t it. He had no answer and that increased his irritation and discomfort. It was a weakness and Laurence had no truck with weakness. This dilemma had played on his mind all day, only being thrust aside temporarily when he went on stage.

Sue Ling leaned closer to him and whispered in his ear: ‘The bar will be closing soon. You could come back to my place if you like. I got some beer in the fridge… and some wine.’ Laurence knew there was more on offer than alcohol in Sue Ling’s invitation. She beamed, bright-eyed, wriggling in anticipation of his reply.

Laurence looked down at her. She was a pretty thing. And eager with it. She was alluring too, with her dark shiny hair and engaging smile. Her small frame was shoe-horned into tight jeans and a white T-shirt which emphasised her tiny breasts, her button nipples pressing against the cotton fabric. She squeezed his knee. Sex, in capital letters, was being offered on a plate and Laurence could never resist such offers. The poor girl had a crush on him – how could he disappoint her? She was, he knew, fresh to the world of theatre and in her naïve way still saw it as a magical fairy land and Laurence as the dashing star. She’d learn, he thought sourly, but nevertheless her enthusiasm was flattering. He shouldn’t disappoint her. Laurence reckoned that he would just have to put his thoughts of Alex on hold one more time. After all, if he could do it while prancing up and down on stage as Andrew Aguecheek, he certainly could do it for a more energetic, exciting and sensually rewarding performance with Sue Ling.

‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ he said with a smile, rolling his eyes and pursing his lips in a comic fashion.

Sue Ling stroked his thigh with enthusiasm.

‘Hey, what are you two up to?’ Harry Boswell, the company’s leading man, could hardly keep the irritation out of his supposedly light-hearted enquiry. Laurence assumed that he was annoyed because he’d got his eyes on the little Chinese cracker for himself. Boswell regarded himself as a something of a catch. He was a bit of a name having done a fair amount of work on the telly, including a stint in
Coronation Street
. Boswell assumed that because of his ‘star status’, as he saw it, the ladies would flock unbidden to his crotch. But not this time, Harry, old boy, thought Laurence with great satisfaction. He’d take up Sue Ling’s offer if only to spike Boswell’s guns. A double hit, in fact.

‘We were discussing Andrew Aguecheek’s sexuality, considering the possibility that he was subjugating latent homosexual tendencies in order to make himself more acceptable in the eyes of Sir Toby Belch,’ said Laurence smoothly.

‘Bollocks!’ retorted Boswell with a sneer.

‘Yes, they certainly came into the discussion.’

There was general laughter and with a glare Boswell returned to his pint.

Sue Ling lived in a tiny bedsit in student-land about a ten minute walk from the theatre. She talked all the way there, her conversation punctuated with nervous giggles. She was hyper with alcohol and anticipation. Away from the theatre, she had taken Laurence’s hand and hung on to him as though he were a newly acquired possession. She was probably in her early twenties, thought Laurence, but looked much younger. He imagined that she saw this night and its forthcoming events as the start of a wonderful friendship between the two of them, the bud of a passionate romance which would blossom over the coming weeks. Instead of what it really was, for Laurence at least, a convenient fuck handed to him on a plate.