school photos 43

Janine thought, sex was sex. Men sleep. Those were the rules. She didn’t count sheep, but the calories she’d burned off. She stretched. If she was a cat she would have purred. She hadn’t slept the night before, was a little fuzzy around the edges with the medication, a bit groggy, the lines of the window leaning in, eyes closing, eyelids flickering. Her mind straightened out the angles of the window, of the desk, of the covers on her bed, until it started again. Sleep was a package she didn’t want delivered. The night before that she’d only dropped off for a few minutes before falling into that dream.  The rooms stuffiness, the silver sheen on her skin and their pounding, fucking, love making had left her nerve ending without any more spark. Head on the pillow, watching dust motes fall from the ceiling, and feeling the heat from John, and the nuzzle on her neck she fell asleep with her feet locked between his-- she was a mermaid going under, no longer able to keep to the world of matter and consciousness.

          Her Da was here in the room. She tried to turn round but she was dragged by a force she couldn’t see. Pulled through doors into the void, into their old tenement block. Upstairs, someone had left a wad of grey gum underneath the railing on the first-floor landing, her legs looped and crabbed round the banister. She screamed until her lungs burned, but no-one listened and her legs and arms were stretched and racked until she let go. Onwards and upwards, she heard.  The stairwell became bleary, longer and longer it stretched, winding with marble steps, gas lamps with flickering mantles and an ornate ebony glow on the banister. The thought of flight or escape fell like an ash cloud, her body separating and floating away. She hoped and prayed –to god knows who—to an end, but each step was a stretched second, a little infinity, of waiting for something to happen, and finding out—not yet, not yet, not yet. The house door was open and her Da standing waiting for her. The coppery smell of blood hung, a presence, in the air. She fell to her knees gagging until watery phlegm dripped onto the stairs and splashed onto the knees of her denim. He gazed down at her and folded his arms in a deliberate fashion across his chest and began grinning. His face looked handsome, the way it had before he tortured her. Slowly, like a fairground carousel he began to whistle through the gap in his teeth, Frères Jacques, Frères Jacques and the song began to squeal and dip and burn her from the inside like mustard gas. As she rocked back and forth she was aware of a coldness creeping up through her feet and taking possession of her body and she recognised that the pool of darkness was not locked inside the house with her Da, but was outside with her.

          ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me.’ Her arms and legs jerked and pulled and kicked and there was a dread she’d never felt before, even when her Da was raping her. She whirled round, tumbling and falling down the stairs, to the landing. The thing was lying on top of her, pining her legs and she couldn’t breathe. Her Da was outside the front door, looking down at her, looking down at them. The rules had changed. He’d not been let out of the house before. And he was triumphant. A cackle started in the back of his throat and got higher and higher. He slipped his leg over the banister to slide down towards them. She was punching and kicking to get away. ‘For fuck sake John, let me go,’ but the harder she struggled the further they sunk deeper and deeper into the marble floor. Below them the bright eyes of a little girl watched with her hand over her mouth.

          ‘Run Lily, Run Lily,’ shouted John.

          Janine’s eyes opened as she heard the crash. John had fallen out of bed, his hair tousled and he was looking up at her in that woolly way he sometimes did, which infuriated her.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Must have fallen asleep.’

          She reached across to the bedside table for her cigarettes, pulling the blankets up and around her breasts, stretching her fingertips for the lighter. He flicked the cover back, a sudden draught on that side of her body, ready to slip back under the covers and into bed beside her. ‘I’m tired.’ She lit her cigarette, blowing smoke out in front of her and sat up straighter, patting the blanket and tucking it in under her.  He stood, his body bow-shaped like an old man, with a corner of the blanket in his hand, as evidence of what, she wasn’t quite sure, but his cock was already rising and getting hard.

          ‘Sorry.’ He let go of the blanket, forcing his cock downward and sideways, like he was trying to fold a piece of origami over into the  shape of a stork. He held his other hand like a screen over it, as he scrambled for his knickers under the bed.

          ‘Careful, you might hurt yourself.’ She jested with him, using her elbows to work her way higher up the bed, until her back was more firmly against the headboard.  He was kneeling, peering under her bed and reaching for something a sock, his denims or a stray shoe, she wasn’t quite sure. She took another drag, watching his nakedness and measured movement as he gathered his clothes into a convenient pile. ‘I’m a bit sore now and ‘ll need to go for a pee, but if you want a blow job before you go?’   

          He’d his knickers on, one sock over his ankle, and was standing on one leg trying to put the other one on without falling over. He looked over at her. She could almost hear his brain ticking like a parking metre. Tick. Tick. Tick.

          ‘But you’re smoking.’

          She nodded, blowing out a mouthful of smoke. ‘Fuck off.’ She waved him away, dismissing him. ‘Go and play with yourself in your own room.’

          Her cigarette was almost finished when he finished dressing. She watched his uncertainty, standing on the balls of his feet, whether to come to her for a final snog or just leave.

          ‘I’d this mad dream,’ he said.

          She gave him no encouragement, looking at him with blank eyes. But he continued on.

          ‘And some guy with mad starey eye.’

          Janine flinched, but he didn’t notice.

          ‘And I think Lily was there too.’ His eyes crinkled up to help him think. He shook his head.

          She yawned.

          ‘Sorry, I’m boring you. You’ll be tired.’ Then he made his run, darting across and pecking her on the cheek like she was his grandma. ‘You’ll be wanting to get a good night’s sleep.’

          The room door shut behind him.