Faceless, page 2
‘Loser, loser, loser,’ he whispered to himself, and he put his foot on the gas to escape this road that was now just another reminder of his failings. Then a form caught his eye, fifty metres ahead on his left. She was wearing jeans, a hoodie, sneakers; a slight figure, perfectly normal-looking with none of the advertising, but parked out on the kerbside, trying to catch a ride, as it were. She had none of the over-the-top sexuality the others screamed out; if anything, this one seemed almost shy. Shit, he could feel the thrum of his pulse hammering in his neck.
‘You can do this.’ He flicked on his indicator and pulled over to the kerb, and as she came over and her hand reached out to open the door he fought back the overwhelming urge to pull back out into the traffic and flee.
Don’t be a fucking wuss, he told himself. You can do this. And before he could change his mind, the door pulled open, the hubbub and roar of K Road poured into the car, and there she was, sitting in the passenger seat.
‘Drive,’ she said.
Billy
‘Sex or a blow job?’
His mouth forms an O of surprise. ‘What? Oh God, right … um.’
He’s a first-timer. God, she hates the first-timers, they talk too much; she prefers to get on with it and get it over and done with, businesslike, no polite chat, then she can get her money and go. She needs to do a few jobs tonight to get enough for the paint to finish her Neptuna, and to buy some food.
‘Give yourself a moment to decide. Just turn left down here.’ He indicates and turns the car into Gundry Street. It is an older car, an ordinary car, well looked-after, but not the car of a wealthy man. ‘Yep, keep going, right to the end of this street, then left again, down that driveway.’ She takes him to her usual place, behind some businesses that have shut up shop for the day. There are no people or cars around, it’s as private as you can get outdoors in the middle of the city. It’s also close enough to walk back to her spot on K Road. ‘Park round there.’ She points under the shelter of a carport. The car headlights swing around and illuminate a beatific Madonna holding her cherubic child, a halo of serenity and godliness surrounding them. Her brown, radiant face shines down upon that of the Pasifika Christ Child swathed in golden cloth patterned with tapa. This is one of her early works, and the fact it still remains when all the other graffiti and tagging has been conscientiously cleaned away or painted over makes her smile. She brings her johns here because it reminds her of why she does this.
He kills the lights and turns off the engine.
‘So, what would you like?’
He looks around wide-eyed, like an overwhelmed kid lost at the funfair. ‘Ah, won’t someone see us? Isn’t there somewhere better we could go? I thought you’d take me to a hotel or something.’ Like in the movies – why do they all think it will be like something out of Hollywood? God, he looks like a greying, friendly, middle-aged man who should be back at home with the wife and kids, not getting a cheap one in the front seat of the car. He is so timorous Billy feels a pang of pity for him. What is he doing here?
‘There’s no one around, we’re quite safe here. I don’t go to hotels.’
‘Okay, well I guess, right, um … a blow job?’ She smells the sharpness of his perspiration overwhelming the remnants of his cologne. ‘So where do we do this, then?’
She gives it 80:20 that he’ll change his mind and she’s wasted her time – and she hopes he does; the anxious ones aren’t worth it, even if it means it will take her longer and a few more jobs to get her paint.
‘Here, in the car.’ She makes her voice as soft and alluring as possible. ‘Just relax.’
She angles her legs around so she can reach across to him, unfastens his seatbelt and then begins to unbuckle the belt on his trousers. She feels him tense up, push his heels against the floor and his back into his seat, and sees his hands grip the door handle and the handbrake so tight, they’ve turned white.
‘I um … ah … Do you do this often?’
She ignores the lame question; she’s heard it before and recognises it as the desperate attempt at conversation of the nervous. She unbuttons his trousers and slowly slides down his zipper.
‘Um, what? How? I … um.’
She carefully pulls down the elasticised top of his underpants to reveal a perfectly pink and perfectly flaccid dick. This one is going to take a lot of work.
‘Ah, God, I’m sorry, I, um, haven’t done this before and, you know, I…’ His voice is high-pitched, whiny. ‘That doesn’t usually happen, I … um.’
She leans back then and looks him in the eye for the first time. ‘Look, just relax, you’re doing fine.’ And she gives him a reassuring smile as she reaches forward to take him in hand, harden him up a bit first. But a flicker of something passes across his face – something dangerous that jolts her senses – and she feels a split-second of alarm before she sees his right hand let go of the door handle and lash out, feels the crunch as his fist connects with her eye, gasps at the horrific sensation of her skin splitting and, as her head is thrown backwards, experiences an explosion of pain in the back of her skull as it hits the window, and then a flash of brilliant white light and then darkness.
Max
The cigarette butt was caked in what looked like vomit, but it was a long one, so he stuck it in his pocket anyway and moved on to the dumpster. He’d timed it well, the truck hadn’t come yet, and he was early enough that no one else had beaten him to it. He’d spotted The Ferret on his way here and had ducked down the alleyway before he could be seen. This skip bin was on The Ferret’s run, but if he was clever, he could get in quick, grab a few choice bits and still leave plenty of booty so he would never know. He knew his arse would get kicked good and proper if he was found out, so he wasted no time. He reached his hand down and felt something soft, plastic wrapped. He pulled it up. Pay dirt. A perfectly good ham bun. There was a touch of what looked like mould on the top, but that didn’t matter. He could pull the ham out. Even he wasn’t desperate enough to eat bad ham that he knew would give him the shits. Another grope down and he found an apple, slightly manky but reasonable. He tossed it back – that health food could kill you. One more dive down. All the while his eyes looked up the street, his legs poised to run. He felt something soft again, loose, rough surfaced, this time not wrapped. He pulled it up. A half-eaten lamington, a chocolate one. He brushed the dirt off it and shoved it into his mouth as he limped off down the street and around the corner.
It had been a cold night and his arthritis was giving him jip. He hated getting old. He hated feeling cold. He hated being alone. He pulled the wrapper off the bun and tossed it on the ground, then carefully pulled out the piece of ham. He gave it a sniff. Nah, it was gone. He tossed it aside for one of the dogs that roamed around the place to discover. He didn’t bother picking the mould off the bun. It made it taste earthy, like truffles. He giggled at the thought. Truffles. It was a long time since he’d tasted those things. Now he thought about it, it was utterly ridiculous to shell out huge dollars for what was effectively a bit of fungus. At the time it was the height of indulgence. He shook his head and pulled the cigarette butt from his pocket. This was his indulgence now, although it lacked the sophistication. He wiped the cigarette on his trouser leg, put it in his mouth and winced. It was vomit. But hey, beggars couldn’t be choosers. He lit up, dragged in a deep breath and closed his eyes, waiting for the calm. He didn’t have to wait long.
He was feeling melancholic this morning. Melancholic was a good word, descriptive, it rolled off your tongue well. It reminded him he was educated; it reminded him he was once able to afford truffles. It was better than thinking of people. People brought pain.
His mind was drifting towards pain, so instead he directed his thoughts to the girl. She hadn’t come by last night. She always called by to make sure he was alright and to let him know where she’d be, if she wasn’t dossing down there. And although she was nothing to him – well, other than company, and someone to talk to, share a fag with – he felt a proprietary pang of concern. But she could look after herself. He’d been on the street long enough to see people come and go; those that could make it, those that couldn’t. Those that drank themselves to death, or sniffed themselves stupid, and those who couldn’t figure out the rules and got themselves dealt to by the likes of The Ferret. No, she was different. She had it all figured out, she played the game, but she had heart. He started to limp his way back to his digs, just in case. In case she came back. In case she needed something. He’d go back and wait.
Billy
Billy wakes with a start. Her body cringes back into the corner, and the plastic ties that bind her wrists to the cold metal pipe rake into her skin. She gasps, and with that sharp inhalation of air, whips her head around, listening. What has she heard? Is there someone coming? Is he coming back? She must have fallen asleep. How could she have fallen asleep? She is appalled that she’s let down her guard. She won’t make that mistake again. She holds her breath and strains to listen, but can’t detect anything above the overwhelming noise of the rhythmic whoosh and buzz of her blood pulsing, the thud, thud, thud of her racing heart, which feels like it has migrated up to under her chin, and a high-pitched, almost electronic squealing that originates from within her head. The harder she listens, the louder it all gets. The silence is deafening. She knows she is in a room within a room; she recalls groggy impressions of a deserted street, of her concrete prison. She hears no one, and no one will hear her.
What little light there was before has vanished. Her eyes scan the blackness, darting, trying to land their gaze on something, searching for any change in tone, hint of grey, hint of anything to orientate herself. She turns her face to where she remembers the door is, squints even harder for a crack, a line of light, but there is none. There is only the blackness, blackness interrupted by the odd pinpoint flash of light from the puzzled firing of her retinal cells. The only source of light is from within her.
She leans into the cold concrete wall, rests her head against its solid reassurance. Its rough texture is so real, so permanent, that she moves her head from side to side gently, scraping, scraping, until the action moves beyond discomfort and the pain makes her stop. She squeezes her eyes tight shut; the tears track their way down her face. She feels their warmth trickle past her nose, over the bow of her lip, tastes their saltiness on her tongue. That minute amount of moisture reminds her of how dry her mouth is. The thought triggers her swallow reflex, but the act feels thickened and difficult. She tries to swallow again, and discovers she can’t. The swell of panic rises and she makes herself try again, breathing heavily twice and then chewing the insides of her cheeks to force some saliva into her mouth, moving the gobbet with her tongue to the back of her mouth and then with what feels like a gargantuan effort, swallows.
Her focus shifts to pain: the sharp sting of the fresh scrape on her forehead, the dull ache of the bands cutting into her wrists. The throb of her swollen eye. The dragging weight of her full bladder sitting like a stone in her abdomen. At this moment, in this pitch-black room, this is what she dreads. Not the man, not what he might do to her, not the dark, not the thought of vermin scuttling around, the rats, not thirst, nor hunger. It is this. What she has tried to ignore since she was brought here and what is now too urgent to avoid. She has to pee.
Her hands are tied. She can’t pull down her jeans, can’t pull down her undies. Of all the humiliations, this is the worst. But she can’t hold on any longer. She has to let go.
Bradley
The pungent stench of stale urine made him recoil as he opened the door to last night’s mistake. He should have thought of that, realised what would happen, but his mind was still coming to grips with the enormity of what he’d done. He shouldn’t have panicked. He should have just paid her the money, taken her back to where he’d found her and driven away. Men used prostitutes all the time, and it was probably nothing new to her, but she had been amused at his inability to rise to the occasion. She may have thought she’d hidden it, but he saw the smirk curling the corner of her mouth, the derision in her eyes. And if he’d paid her then and there and driven away, all that would have been hurt was his pride. But he hadn’t. He’d seen that look on her face and all he could think was, here was yet another woman belittling him, another woman he couldn’t stand up to. A wave of anger and shame and guilt had overcome him, and before he’d even realised it, he’d struck out at her, hard, and then she was bleeding and shocked, and he had to fix it all somehow.
His eyes gradually adjusted to the dim light in the small inner room. He could make out the hunched form of the girl, slumped against the wall, her wrists secured to the pipe with cable ties. She was cringing against the sudden influx of light – or was she cringing at him? The sharp beam picked out the bruising around her eye, which stood out against her dark skin, the dried blood matted in her long, tightly curled brown hair, the terrified expression on her face. Every ounce of her body seemed to scream out her terror. Jesus. He pulled his hands through his own thinning hair, dampened with a slick of anxious sweat. This was hardly what he’d call a fix, but last night it was all he could think of.
The old warehouse was part of his property portfolio, something he’d picked up for a song in an area no one wanted to know about. It was solid concrete. It had once been home to a mechanical-engineering firm, but times had been tough and, like many industrial businesses, this one could not compete against the influx of cheap product from China. Now the only hint of its original use was the network of pipes that snaked the walls, the gantries across the roof and the odd pile of scrap. The building was untenanted and isolated, in an area that was now pretty much abandoned – a white elephant sucking up money in the form of mortgage, insurance and rates, with not a hope in hell of anyone moving in anytime soon to relieve the burden. Not even the homeless bothered with this place. No one would look for her here.
She was staring at him; big, doleful eyes that made her look even younger – some fragile baby bird fallen from the nest. That had been what had drawn him to her in the first place, when he was cruising K Road last night. She hadn’t been tarted up like the others, no crude neckline, no skirt up to her fanny, no extreme make-up or hooker hair. In her jeans and hoodie she had somehow looked like she needed him to rescue her. Now, with her knees drawn up to her chest, she looked like she was trying to push herself into the wall. Another wave of urine stench hit the back of his nose. He stared back at her, trying to think of something to say – anything – but his mind was awash. He turned and slammed the door shut behind him, walked across the workshop space and kicked at a pile of car tyres thrown into the corner, kicked until the pain in his toes made him stop. ‘Idiot, you fucking idiot. What the hell are you going to do now?’ he shouted, then he picked up a metal bar and hurled it as hard as he could across the vast space; the clunk and clank of it hitting the concrete floor reverberated throughout the building. He heard her cry out and then she started to sob, the sound muffled by the concrete walls of her prison. No one else would hear her, not here, but it was enough to rip at his conscience, to make him begin to fathom the extent of what he’d done.
‘Shut up,’ he yelled at her.
The sobbing only got louder.
He paced up and down outside the door, his hands over his ears, chanting to himself, ‘Oh fuck, oh fuck,’ over and over. ‘Oh fuck.’
Still she cried.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ he shouted at her. He searched the ground, found another metal bar and took it and started to hit at the door with it.
‘Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.’
She began to scream then.
No, no, no, no.
‘Stop it, for God’s sake just stop it. Cut it out.’ He whacked at the door again. He felt a surge of anger and frustration. What was wrong with her? Why wouldn’t she just fucking be quiet? But no, instead the screaming was getting louder, hysterical, insistent. He was about to whack the door again when a moment of clarity came over him: he looked at the bar and the dents in the door, and in his mind’s eye looked through the door to what he imagined was a petrified and traumatised young girl, huddled on the floor, sitting in a pool of piss, bound to a wall, and it was all his doing. It was all his doing.
What the fuck was he going to do?
He dropped the bar, slapped his hands over his ears and ran for the exit.
Billy
Billy screams and screams as the cache of her fear detonates. She realises it is pointless, that she must stop, but at this very moment, this second, she succumbs to her primal need to release her anguish, her fear. The sound of metal thrashing against wood only intensifies her terror, driving her to a hysteria of noise and blackness and pain and snot. Eventually the muted strains of her cries dry up, along with the saliva in her mouth. Their concrete echoes fade and are replaced by the rasp of her breathing, punctuated by fallow groans, as she sinks into an incoherent bundle of disbelief.
Bradley
Bradley Fordyce jumped in behind the wheel of his car, slammed the door shut and sat there for several minutes in the pine-air-freshener-smelling artificial sanctuary, cocooned from the terrors of the outside world, his fingers clawed around the steering wheel, trying to will away the swim of nausea in his stomach and the panic rising in his chest. His breathing came fast and tight, the sound grating at his ears, and he took to holding his breath for several seconds before exhaling in a burst of horror. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if by balling them up as tight as possible everything he’d just seen would disappear and his life wouldn’t be completely fucked by the spectre of a beaten, bound girl. Her image remained etched in his mind.
