Penny Black

Royal Mail Cash Security Depot

Her night began as normal as any.  Penny’s watch flashed 02.30hrs.  Blinking her eyes repeatedly only provided brief respite from the fleeting burning welling beneath her eyelids.  That long awaited sound of the siren indicated the end of the night shift, its high-pitched tone always invigorating the weary into rejoining humanity once again.  The customary muffled cheers echoed along the walkways as workers jumped to their feet, abandoning their workstations in droves, each joining the mass exodus towards the exits.  One followed the other, like waves ebbing relentlessly onto the shore. 

Hurrying along the corridor to the lockers sparked the usual competition.  Shoulder bumping and jostling for position to be the first out of the main door was naturally inherent in everyone.  No one wanted to stay a moment longer than necessary and tonight, especially, was no exception. 

Burdensome snow clouds hovered with threatening intent over the sleeping residents of Kent.  The tempest beyond the office walls had grown into chaotic spirals of snowy pillars, each gusting across frozen roads before crashing into steadfast buildings.

Normally, Penny loved that short walk home in the early hours of the morning.  It was only a five-minute stroll to her home, and the streets were always deserted.  Just Penny, alone, with a million eyes twinkling down from the endless blackness above watching over her, ensuring her course along the desolate streets remained secure until Tommy resumed her welfare once more. 

Penny waved her goodbyes to her colleagues, who had already donned their coats and were leaving by the main gates.  Bed beckoned them all, like the ringing of church bells calling its congregation from afar. 

As Penny closed her locker door, she felt one hand rest on her shoulder.  Hot breath burned onto the back of her neck a millisecond later. 

‘Well, what about it then, Juggsy?  Do you want a lift or not?’

‘Shit!  Alexander, you scared the-!’

‘Fear not, Juggsy,’ Alexander interrupted with his well-versed sarcasm.  ‘I’ll save you from that peril out yonder!’ he said, pointing dramatically to the snow-splattered window above.  ‘Juggsy’ was Alexander’s nickname for Penny, due to her being more overly endowed, than the average female, as though it afforded her some form of clandestine compliment.  Nevertheless, she dared not share her true feelings of utter distaste for such comments, especially as Alexander was her manager. 

Alexander didn’t care if you were married or single.  So convincing was his own autolatry, there was little opportunity for indulging another’s considerations. 

Average in few areas, but below in most, Alexander relished his flirtatious sparring.  Most women at the office laughed off his vulgarities and innuendos as harmless fun.  However, this did little to suppress such undesirable behaviour, although Penny’s notion to his candour was more a show of bravado than confidence.

‘Thanks, but no, Alexander, I’m only five minutes away.’ 

‘I know where you live, Juggsy, and I’m going past yours, anyway.’  Alexander said, stepping a little closer to Penny. 

Alexander possessed a tongue sharp as a scalpel, it could lacerate with a single word, but tonight, his over-exaggerated actions were unusual, his demeanour desperate, and his normally crass responses, absent. 

Alexander’s advances towards Penny, during the six years she had worked in his department, were as plentiful as the flakes of snow falling from the sky.  Until now, she managed to avoid them with cool rebukes, and sarcastic wit. 

‘No, honestly, Alexander.  You should share your high intellect and charming personality with  someone else tonight who hasn’t had the pleasure of working with you for the last eight hours straight;  it’s only fair, isn’t it?’ 

‘Overwhelming am I?  Too much for ya then, am I, Juggsy?’  Alexander replied, smirking at his innuendo. 

‘You’re too much for any woman,’ Penny said, smiling as she closed and locked the door to her locker. 

Unamused by her negative response, Alexander raised his voice in an aggressive response.  ‘That’s it, is it?  Not even good enough to give you a lift home!’ 

‘It’s not that.  You know that.’ 

Alexander moved a little closer as Penny pulled her coat around her shoulders.  ‘Here, at least let me help you with your jacket.’ 

Before Penny could answer, Alexander snatched the jacket from her grasp, held it with out-stretched arms, and beckoned her to turn around.  Realising it was easier to concede to Alexander’s offer, rather than to begin a tug of war in the middle of an empty locker room, Penny moved forwards, allowing Alexander inside her personal space. 

Alexander pressed his body closer to Penny, lightly brushing her lapels with his fingers, and discretely feeling the contours of her body beneath the coat’s silky, satin exterior.  A shudder of unease scurried up Penny’s spine.  She stepped back, breaking Alexander’s touch, re-establishing her boundary.  Penny loathed confrontation, and tonight was no exception; she didn’t have the strength, or inclination to argue.  All she desired was her bed, and the warmth of her husband at her side.

‘There.  Wasn’t that bad, was it?’  Alexander said, placing his open palm on Penny’s forearm, stroking it as though trying to coax her into accepting his offer.  Penny raised a painful smile of awkward embarrassment and fumbled with the buttons on her coat. 

‘What is it with me, ‘Juggsy?  I only wanna be friends.’ 

‘I don’t want to be THAT kind of a friend!’  Penny promptly replied, reinforcing her words with a sharp glare. 

Alexander feigned a smile.  ‘Of course, Mrs Black.’

There had been hostility between Alexander and Penny’s husband, Tommy, ever since their serving together in the same regiment, many years earlier.  Anytime Penny would broach the subject with her husband, Tommy would immediately deflect her questioning, conspicuous in his reluctance to discuss it.  Realising her husband’s sensitivity towards the subject, she never pressed him.  Penny understood he had his own ways to deal with his past.  Nevertheless, a soft caress of his cheek with her hand would reassure Tommy that she would always be there for him.            

Penny narrowed her eyes.  ‘Mrs Black?  What’s with the Mrs Black?’ 

‘Well it’s me, being understanding and courteous.  I promise I’ll only drop you home.  There’s no hidden agenda.  I just want this stupidity between us all to stop.’ 

Penny pondered his claim.  Was Alexander offering a gesture to finally begin the healing between him and her husband?  Many of the girls working at the cash centre had all, at some point, accepted a lift home by Alexander without incident. 

Alexander smiled, raising his bushy eyebrows in a questioning manner.  The locker room door slammed shut, its echo reverberating across the painted walls. 

Penny jumped. 

Alexander looked at his watch.  ‘Ok then.  Thank you, Mr Bates.  I would very much like to accept your kind offer of a lift home.’             

On hearing Penny’s acceptance, Alexander immediately turned on his heels, barked his orders and walked with a hastened pace towards the exit door. 

‘Come on then, girl.  Get those jugs into gear.  Keep up, we ain’t got all night!’

‘So much for being courteous,’ Penny mumbled under her breath whilst trying to keep up with Alexander’s hurried gait. 

Running across the empty car park, trying desperately to keep up with Alexander’s long striding paces, the hostile, raw wind stung at Penny’s face.  Small chaotic whirlwinds sent leaves flurrying in all directions.  Penny’s eyes watered.  Her nose stung.  Then she saw her refuge, standing alone, beneath the glow of a single orange street lamp.  Alexander’s car was barely recognisable.  Sprayed with a thick coating of snow, which clung to its original dark coloured paintwork, the irregular shaped snowball merged into the background as though morphed into its surroundings. 

Alexander didn’t utter a single word.  His eyes squinting from the biting wind, he fixed his gaze ahead. 

‘A cold one tonight, eh, Alexander?  The weathermen got it right tonight.’

No response left his thin lips.  Alexander fumbled with the keys in his pocket, then the thumping of the central locking mechanism crashed loudly, impressing on Penny to grab for the door. 

Struggling to free the hinges from the strong-force wind acting against it, Penny finally pulled her door open, throwing herself onto the front seat.  Expelling a satisfactory breath of appreciation for the relative shelter offered from a small box, Penny’s numbed fingers fumbled with her seat belt. 

‘It’s getting worse!’  Penny gasped, wiping a mass of damp, wind-swept hair from her face. 

Alexander fiddled with his keys in the ignition, cussing under his breath an amalgamate mix of incoherent expletives as the engine spluttered into life.  The automatic defrost fans whirled their magic, slowly dispersing the thin layer of ice crystals forming on the inside of the screen.  The windscreen wipers fought against the build up of snow restricting its movement. 

Alexander repeatedly depressed the accelerator pedal, racing the engine into life.  Clouds of grey smoke ejected from the exhaust before the sound of the engine settled into a recognisable humming.  The deserted world beyond the glass gradually materialised before their eyes. 

‘Soon be home and out of this… hope it stops by morning,’ Penny said, turning her head towards Alexander, hoping for a response. 

With a transfixed stare looking beyond the windscreen, Alexander’s silence only acted to confuse Penny even further. 

‘I could’ve been home by now,’ Penny mumbled, ‘Are you going to take me home, or am I going to walk?’ 

The weather outside was getting worse with every passing minute.  Penny reached for the door handle.  The central locking mechanism slammed into place. 

‘At last,’ Penny mumbled with a sigh of relief.  Alexander’s reticent demeanour continued as before as he slowly drove around the deserted one-way system for a second time.  Penny felt uneasy as she watched the same shops pass by her window for the third time.  ‘What’s the matter with you tonight, Alexander?  You do remember where I live.  Tommy will worry if I’m not back soon.’ 

Alexander turned his head to the right and looked at Penny sitting by his side.  His continued silence and featureless expression frightened her.  Finally, Alexander exited the one-way system.          

Realising she was nearing her home, Penny’s anxiousness eased.  ‘Thanks Alexander, I do appreciate this, it would have-’

Before Penny could finish her sentence, Alexander carefully manoeuvred his car into Duckets Passage, a narrow, dead-end alleyway in an isolated part of town barely wide enough for a single car.  A bad sense of foreboding washed over Penny.  Her heart pounded against her ribcage.  The pulse in her neck throbbed with each increasing heartbeat.  All of Penny’s senses were screaming at her at once to get out of the car. 

‘Please stop the car Alexander.  I’ll walk the rest of the way,’ Penny said, her words nervously falling from her mouth.

The car’s headlights reflected against the old Victorian brickwork, their brilliance increasing the nearer the end wall.  With no change in Alexander’s demeanour, Penny’s reservations of her quandary manifested itself into an uncharacteristic holler. 

‘WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?’ 

Penny had decided that when the car stopped, she would jump out and run the rest of the way home without once looking back.  The humming of the engine purred as they slowed.  Penny shuffled in her seat and prepared herself by folding her fingers around the door handle, waiting for the right time to push.  Alexander turned the keys in the ignition.  The vibration of the engine stopped.  The lights from the headlamps momentarily rebounded off the far wall, filling the interior with an eerie luminescence before fading to complete darkness. Silence stifled the interior, except for the deafening sound of Penny’s shallow breathing pulsating inside her head. 

Trembling with unabated fear, Penny blindly folded her fingers tightly around the door handle and took a deep breath before pulling at it.  The sound of the locking mechanism echoed with a thud.  Penny pushed hard at the door.  The sound of the locking mechanism thudded again, sealing her inside.  Penny screamed as the interior lights flickered, briefly illuminating Alexander’s face, barely inches away from her own.

An intense panic manifested inside every sinew of her being.  Penny’s hands trembled as she sensed Alexander’s eyes roaming across her body.  The leather seat beside her creaked.  Penny moved closer to her window, its vision of liberty from her confinement beyond the thin glass, tempting her.  Her repeated hysterical tugging at the door handle resulted in the same frustrating conclusion.  Penny was trapped. 

Alexander laughed.  An eerie revelry of satisfaction chortled from his throat.  A single street lamp’s glow, diffused from the snow falling in large flakes outside, offered a little luminescence on the interior of Penny’s prison.  Adjusting her eyes, Penny recoiled as Alexander’s soulless stare calmly directed her attention to a flashing, illuminated light on the dashboard.  A warning beacon of red blinked, shouting its message with intermittent exclamations that escape from her fortified prison was inconceivable without Alexander’s sanction. 

Penny had to remain calm if she was going to survive her ordeal.  Perhaps he’s only just trying to frighten me, she thought.  Taking a deep breath, Penny summoned up a most unnatural assertiveness before releasing her anger. 

‘I don’t like this Alexander… you’re scaring me!  Now let me out!’  

Alexander’s expressionless features returned.  His eyes vacant.  His mouth open.  The icy cold from the outside had penetrated the interior, but Penny’s internal thermostat had already surpassed its safety level.  Her body was burning with heated adrenalin surging through her veins.  The windows misted inside, obscuring Penny’s vision of her salvation.  Her eyes scanned the interior, searching desperately for a way out.  But with her passenger door so cleverly manoeuvred only inches away from the alley wall, even if she could open it, it would prove an impossible escape.  Dread filled Penny’s enclosed world.  She realised her options were limited if not exhausted.  The haunting clicking from the automatic flashing lights on the dashboard of the car toyed with the frozen silence. 

An unnatural shrieking laugh caused Penny to scream.  Alexander’s face flashed orange, his piercing silhouette looming over her.  She felt his roving eyes burning inside her clothing, mentally undressing her where she sat.  Then, an echoing silence slowly returned.  Alexander’s laughter stopped, his face resuming an inexpressive, vacant stare.  Questions and scenarios collided inside Penny’s head.  Her fingers and toes twitched as the heat drained from the interior, the little warmth remaining overpowered by the falling temperatures outside.  Vapour from her nervous, rapid breathing merged with the icy windows, causing a moist film to spread across the glass, blocking out the outside world. 

Penny dredged the most inaccessible regions of her mind to try to somehow alter the inevitable.  She was desperate.  Without warning, Penny’s seat shot backwards.  Her upper body crashed against the cold leather, her skull striking the headrest.  Penny screamed.  An excruciating pain ignited behind her eyes as Alexander pounced, grabbing at her breasts with a possessed savagery.  

Penny threw out her arms, begging Alexander to stop.  Screaming and struggling to free herself from his vice-like grip proved hopeless. The more she fought back, the further it encouraged his dominance.  Alexander jumped from his seat and straddled Penny’s body, forcing her