Inseparable Bond (11 page)

Wayne Russell
was now 65-years-old; fifteen years had been spent in a high
security prison and twenty-five years in a psychiatric
hospital.

John followed
the smell of cabbage, which got stronger as he approached the
dining room. It was half full and his plate of Lancashire hot pot
and cabbage was waiting on his table. Dorothy was rapidly tucking
into hers with her face virtually in the dish.

‘Hi, John,’
she spluttered as bits of food sprayed out of her mouth. Harold was
in the kitchen on washing-up duties, with Elizabeth doing her
normal sloppy serving.

An argument
broke out at the far end of the dining room when someone had thrown
a plate of hot pot at Elizabeth, The warden came rushing in with
two male colleagues and marched a young guy out of the dining room.
The way in which they escorted the lad out of the dining room was
reminiscent of the way the screws approached violence on the wing,
the difference being the lack of chanting from the others.

Dorothy had
been an attractive girl in her younger years. She had worked the
streets of Sheffield as a prostitute for a number of years while
she cared for her invalid mother on a council estate. Her father
was imprisoned for armed robbery and had hung himself in his cell
shortly after being convicted.

A kerb crawler
who regularly visited the prostitute area offered Dorothy £20 for
sex. They drove to a remote area on the outskirts of Sheffield
frequented by other couples and voyeurs, where he parked a good
distance from the other cars.

He became
violent as he forced her head between his legs, slapping her as he
held her down. She reached for her handbag and secretly produced a
small knife, which she and the other girls always carried. He lay
back as she performed oral sex, and then castrated him with a swift
slice of the blade.

She ran from
the car, fearing a further attack and waited for a passing car to
drive her back to the city. Nothing ever came of the incident as it
probably went unreported. It only came to light when she admitted
the offence under questioning for a similar offence with two
accomplices.

Not being able
to take a punter back to her house, she had rented a small room
near the area she worked. The Pakistani landlord visited once a
week for the rent, which was payable by a full sex session.

She had taken
a punter to her room; a middle-aged married man with a family who
lived in an affluent suburb of the city.

After
protesting, he agreed to bondage and submitted to her request of
being tied to the bed while she performed sex on top of him. She
fastened his wrists and ankles to the bed legs and got him aroused
by smearing his body with sandalwood oil.

During the
session, she blindfolded him, giving assurance throughout and to
lay back and enjoy the experience.

At an
appropriate time, two of her gay friends entered the room and
endured him to a full homosexual ordeal. Although he fiercely
objected, his restraints rendered him helpless to fight off his
assailants as they continued to satisfy their sexual pleasure.

As Dorothy sat
in a chair in the corner of the room counting her fee from the
punter and the cash bribe from the two guys, they released his
ankle restraints and while one guy held his legs above his head,
his accomplice violently buggered him, changing roles for a second
ordeal.

They placed a
pillow over his face to drown his screams and shouts which had
alerted the neighbours who had called the police. On their arrival
they found the victim suffocated and arrested the three
assailants.

They were all
charged with murder and sentenced to twenty years each.

Dorothy had
been hospitalised in a psychiatric institution for the majority of
her sentence as she had been diagnosed mentally insane after
stabbing a prison officer in the back of her neck with a kitchen
knife.

Providing she
took her drugs regularly she caused no harm, which could be said
for the majority of the residents.

She had become
a lesbian while doing her time in Holloway prison, where she had
her first experience from her cellmate who had murdered her husband
after four years of enduring rape and battering from him.

Dorothy was
totally repulsed by anything male and would violently react should
anyone refer to her as ‘a lesbian’ she preferred the word ‘gay’.
She felt that the word ‘lesbian’ carried too many derogatory
connotations from old Victorian prejudices and she would lash out
at anyone who called her a lesbian.

Dorothy was
well-educated and freely, if not proudly, spoke of her preference
of sexuality and had turned her love towards women as a matter of
an acquired repulsion for men, she had found kindness and genuine
love with Elizabeth who had also been married in her younger years.
She had suffocated her young daughter and her two other children
were taken away from her. They’re now living with her husband.

Elizabeth was
a schizophrenic, but John had thought she hadn’t a mean streak in
her body when he first met her, she may have been weak and
constantly tormented by the cruelty of her husband but she needed
constant love and attention, which Dorothy was only too pleased to
oblige.

Old Tommy
found ‘lesbianism’ repulsive and despicable and did not hesitate in
expressing his opinion to the girls, which always turned to
violence, and always in the dining room. Food and fists would fly
at Tommy when he referred to the girls as ‘muff eaters’ resulting
in the warden and his two male nurses dragging him away from the
disturbance and popped pills into his mouth to calm him down.

John sat in
his favourite chair watching television but his thoughts were
firmly on a weekend with his sister than on the football match on
television. Young Peter Scott was in the chair opposite, scratching
his genitals through his grey tracksuit trousers he always wore,
with his stinking feet resting on a footstool.

Old Tommy was
also dressed in his usual attire, his open dressing gown heavily
stained on the lapels with the remnants of his evening meal and his
previous breakfast where strands of yellow egg-yolk had congealed
against the dark blue frayed material.

The annoyance
of Tommy loudly munching a packet of crisps, the smell of Scott’s
feet drifting across the room and the television on full volume for
the benefit of some deaf residents proved too much for John. He
left and went to his bedroom.

He undressed
slowly, first removing his shoes and putting the shoehorns inside
them, removed his jacket and hanging it on a hanger behind the
door, then his shirt and trousers, carefully folding them and
placing them in the chair, doing everything by feel and habit,
unhurriedly tending to the creases in his trousers. He finally
removed his long white underpants and lay on his bed wearing only
his socks. He reached over to the small dressing table by the sink,
opened the bottom drawer and shuffled around the few clothes;
picked out a pair of panties he had stolen from the staff
locker-room at work and sniffed them while he masturbated.

It was
Wednesday, John’s only day off from work. He woke at six as he
always did. His body being programmed to twelve years of prison
routine he found impossible to alter.

He ate
breakfast undisturbed as he watched the rain cascade down the
window, unsure about braving the weather or staying indoors with
some of the others.

The heavy rain
turned to drizzle so he decided to spend the morning in the town.
He needed some clothes and was now in a financial position to buy
them.

He called into
the small shop halfway down the hill, a Pakistani grocers which
smelt of herbs and incense as you approached it from the
street.

Mahul was the
owner along with his wife; they were a quiet couple that always
appeared happy and satisfied with their modest living and
un-judging attitude, even with the constant abuse they received
from the young gangs that hung around.

He walked down
the aisle looking for toothpaste when a man followed him into the
shop and pushed his way through to look at the same shelf. As he
reached for the tube, the man did also and his hand fell on Johns
and stayed there. John looked at him, his eyes holding him
steadily, His hand moved on Johns, like an embrace. He found it
unseemly, while at the same time it stirred something inside him.
He cleared his throat and walked to the till counter.

He was much
younger than John, by about twenty years. He was dressed in blue
jeans and a short white raincoat. John was a little flustered but
the man seemed controlled as if this open flirtation was natural to
him.

There was
nothing untoward and no one noticed and as John paid Mahul for his
purchase, the man came behind him and calmly suggested they meet in
the alley behind the shop.

John did not
answer but loitered outside the shop for the man to appear.

The man came
out opening a bag of sweets and walked behind the shop into the
back alley. John kept a safe distance behind him and followed him
into the back yard of a disused boarded-up house.

As John walked
through the tall open gate, it closed behind him by the man who was
leaning against the corner of the wall. He slowly walked over to
John and gently placed his hand on his crotch. John looked down as
he slowly un-zipped his fastener and placed his hand inside his
pants.

He watched the
man as he slowly bent down while revealing John’s penis to perform
oral sex. He pushed John against the wall, loosening his trousers,
which fell to his ankles. John knew it wasn’t the guy’s first
experience by the way he was frantically feasting on his now erect
penis as John lay against the wall in delightful enjoyment.

He looked down
at the man who was stroking his own body as if they were John’s
hands being guided by his mind as the man closed his eyes appearing
to be enjoying the experience.

The man stood
up and hurriedly left the yard, leaving John to quickly dress
himself.

As he came out
into the alley John nervously looked around in case he had been
seen, the man had gone and John continued his walk into town.

He went into a
men’s clothes shop and tried on a pair of black trousers he needed
for his work. On the way to the till counter, he collected a grey
anorak and a casual short-sleeved shirt. He placed them on the
counter and reached for his wallet as the assistant removed the
security tags off the garments. His wallet had gone. Frantically
searching his other pockets he soon realised that his previous
sexual encounter in the back yard had been a profitable gain for
the stranger. He had no other means of payment and the garments
were taken back to the shelves.

John soon
realised how the thief had been able to obtain his wallet as it was
in the back pocket of his trousers which the man had dropped to his
ankles giving him the time and opportunity to riffle through his
pockets while he was on his knees and John laying with his head
back in enjoyment.

Apart from
small change in his raincoat, he was penniless and his last week’s
work had been in vain.

He walked back
to the hostel depressed and humiliated and soon realised that his
mistrust of people on the inside extended to the outside and
although he had enjoyed the experience, £120 was a high price to
pay.

Once at the
hostel, he went to the television room wishing he had stayed there
for the day. Elizabeth and Dorothy were embracing on the settee,
laughing and talking incessantly, Harold playing solitaire and
Peter Scott standing by the window, running his finger down the
condensation.

Sat at the far
end was an unfamiliar man. He was a middle-aged, tall guy with a
dusty complexion; his hair was thick and wavy, greying at the
temples. He was hunched over his chair clipping his well-manicured
fingernails, where the bits dropped on the bag tightly gripped by
his feet. He occasionally looked up with a disapproving expression
as he continued clipping and brushing his grey trousers.

John noticed
the man looking at him out of the corner of his eye as he worked
his gum between his front teeth, stretching it out with his tongue,
his smoothly shaven jaw muscles rippling in front of his ears.

Graham Banks
walked into the room wearing a bright pink floral dress and
high-heeled shoes. We were all used to seeing him gracefully walk
around the hostel flamboyantly although he looked awkward in
women’s clothing being a hairy twenty-two stone body builder who
had murdered two elderly women on the Isle of Man while on holiday
with his family. He strangled his victims after stripping them of
their clothes to add to his wardrobe collection, which he wore when
he went out in Manchester as a transvestite. He was only caught by
the off chance when a victim’s sister recognised the dress, shoes
and handbag he wore while shopping in Marks & Spencer’s. When
police searched his house they found a wardrobe in his workshop
full of women’s clothes and accessories and through forensic
investigation he was charged with their murders. His wife had been
unaware of his crimes and also of his transvestism. He got fifteen
years for his crimes and had been in the hostel for the last
four.

The guy
stopped clipping his nails, his mouth dropped and his wide eyes
followed Banks as he pushed by, stepping over his bag and lifting
his long skirt to reveal his high-heeled shoes. He sat with
Elizabeth and Dorothy, rooting through his handbag.

John was quick
to check the guy’s expression of shock, still with mouth dropped,
as he looked around the room for reassurance from the others, yet
we were used to this apparition, which was accepted by us all.