Do you know how long it takes to dig a six foot hole? All day. And it wasn't even six foot by the time I'd done. Five, more like. It had already got dark so I took the bike and picked up a Chinese, a treat to end a hard day.  Not like yesterday. Yesterday there was Carly. I had her before I got up and had her again before I went out. Sweet Little Sixteen. 38-24-34. I cut her out and stuck her in pride of place, right next to the bed.  Being Thursday, I had two fried eggs on toast before going down the dole to sign on. On the way home I swiped a copy of Vogue. I like the shiny paper. The newspapers find some tasty stuff and it's dead young, but the paper turns yellow and makes the display look sort of cheap. I started putting up pictures when I first came here and it's taken two years to cover the walls and ceiling. The beauty of it is, now I'm done, I just keep going, adding more layers, more memories. It'll never be finished. That's the thing about these women. They're everywhere.  That's why it was unusual having Carly twice in one day. Sweet Little Sixteen. Where do they find them? I mean the slags in the home weren't like that. The slags at school weren't like that. You go down the shopping centre and they're not like that. How do they get those enormous tits and still stay thin? Must be a freak of nature.  Something that puzzles me about the ones in Vogue is that they're supposed to be classy, but to me they don't look any different from the scrubbers you see down Kings Cross: they've all got their tits hanging out, the classy ones just look sort of snooty about it.  The magazine I'd nicked wasn't up to much, hardly a nipple in sight, but there was one good ad for Swiss watches. This scrubber was bending over like she was double-jointed to look at the time. She's got small pointed tits, a tight little arse, and these long silky legs with a watch round her ankle. I don't know who thinks up these things. Anyway, I cut her out and stuck her in the narrow space above the doors, French windows Mrs Gordon calls them.  Then I tidy up. I keep my room smart. I've never had my own place before and now it's decorated nice I spend a lot of time here. I'm always careful the way I cut out the pictures and I've made the design so the lips and tits and bums are all peeking out like they're anxious to be seen.  By the time I'd finished with the Swiss bit the local paper had arrived. They deliver it free. I suppose the ads pay for it, people selling cars and fridges, themselves. That's the page I like: Miss Ling Po gives Chinese massage at £35. Mother Daughter Lesbi-Duplex. Turkish Delight...020 5557 9021...I'm from Australia and love going Down Under.  I read the porno page every week but it's all pretty naff. Now, I come across this: Sweet Little Sixteen will visit you in school uniform. I mean, talk about fate. It was Carly, still on my mind.  I called the number and some old bag answers. Sixty quid, she wants. Sixty! I mean, Miss Ling Po's £35. You sure she's sixteen, I ask, and she says she'll bring her birth certificate if I want. So, in the end, I agree to the price and give her the address, not my address, naturally. I'm not stupid. I gave the street where the telephone box is and arranged to meet at number 34 sharp at six.  I walked home and found my landlady sweeping leaves from the garden path.  'I'll do that, Mrs G,' I said and took the broom.  'You are a good boy, Darren.'  She stands there watching like I was the son she never had. She then went off and got a rubbish bag and when I'd filled it she tied it with a piece of string she found in her apron. Mrs Gordon's full of odd bits of string and elastic bands like an old drawer. I followed her upstairs to her flat and she made a pot of tea. The place stank of sweaty underwear and I almost gagged getting her fruit cake down me. She started going on about her sister Gladys in Norfolk and I sat there on the other side of the fire wondering why these old bats don't do everyone a favour and stick their heads in the oven. I hear there's an organization that helps old people do themselves in. I don't know how it works, but I think it's a good idea.  While I sat there fiddling with the cake crumbs, I started to picture myself grabbing the brass poker and beating the old witch across the head. Then I thought it would be easier just shoving her in the oven, and I was still weighing it up when the clock struck six.  'Gotta go, Mrs G,' I said. 'Thanks for the cake.'  'What's that, Darren?'  'Said I've gotta go, Mrs G.'  'You're always such a good boy.'  'Bye, then.'  I had to run to the phone box and it was already ten past by the time I arrived. About a minute later a schoolgirl on a bike turns up. I say schoolgirl, she was dressed in a school uniform but she must have been about twenty.  She checked the house number and was about to go up the path.  'Hello there,' I said. 'I think we had an appointment. I'm not going to be able to make it.'  She stopped and looked at me, at my clothes, my trainers.  'It's my mum and dad's place. I thought they were going to be out but they came back early,' I told her. 'We'll have to make it another day.'  I turned to walk off and she walked along beside me. She was about to get on her bike again.  'We can go to my flat, if you like,' I said.  I could see she was thinking about it; thinking about the sixty quid. She hesitated and gave me another good once over. I look harmless enough, but I know how to handle myself. I was a bit of a loner at the home and they always pick on loners. Anyone who picked on me only did it once. When it happens, something sort of clicks inside me like the electric's been turned on and the current makes me so powerful I imagine I can do just about anything.  'Is it far?' she asks.  'No, it's just round the corner.'  She pointed back at the house. 'Why don't you live at home?'  'Don't get on, do we.'  She still wasn't sure what to do but I suppose because we were about the same age she decided it was worth the risk. I remember the one I had last year telling me how she couldn't stand all these old blokes of forty slobbering all over her, pretending they were young again.  'All right, then,' she said.  I'd timed it right. Just gone six and it was already dark. The street lights were on and our shadows stretched out in front of us on the pavement. I lifted her bike into the hall so no one nicked it and went down the passage to my room at the back.  She didn't say anything about my decorating. She didn't need to. As I closed the door she looked back at me like I was a weirdo.  'I like to get paid first,' she said.  'Do you?'  'It makes it easier.'  'Does it?'  'Look, what's going on?'  She was raising her voice and I don't like that. Mrs Gordon might be half deaf but that's not the point. They shouted at me at the home for fifteen years and I vowed the day I left no one would ever shout at me again.  I only hit her once but that was enough. Like I said, I'm a strong bastard. She went down on her knees sobbing and I put my hands under her arms to lift her up.  'I'm sorry,' she whimpered. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry.'  'I bet you are.'  'Please, please let me go.'  I was going through her buttons and zips, pulling off her school tie. It's a funny thing, but uniforms make them look sexier. There's a Wendy on the wall somewhere in a copper's uniform, tits hanging out the jacket, one hand holding up her skirt to show us her fanny. This one, the schoolgirl, looked tastier with the uniform on than she did when I took it off her. She was wearing black underwear, see-through stuff. Doesn't do much for me. I just ripped it off and stood back to get a better look. Sweet Little Sixteen she was not. She's all right, but nothing like my Carly.  'Please don't hurt me. Please. I'll do anything.'  'I know you will.'  'Please. Please.'  Gets on my nerves, all that begging stuff, so I gave her another whack. Not too hard. Just enough for her to know what's what. Tears were running down her cheeks but she had enough sense to keep her trap shut.  'You. Bed. Legs up.'  See. It's easy when you know how. I lifted her legs over my shoulders and plugged myself in. She was as wet as you like and for all her whining, I swear she was soon rocking back and forth, really getting off on it. Of course there's always a danger with diseases. Don't imagine I don't think about that sort of thing. I do. But who wants to live forever anyway?  When my jaw started aching I turned her over. It must have been the Swiss girl with the watch around her ankle still on my mind. It certainly wasn't the home. Home! Funny word that. You think of home as somewhere warm and nice. I don't know about them all but I know about the four that I've been in and I was given it up the bum in them all. It's the way it is. In the end, when you hear footsteps at night, feel their hands reaching under the sheets, you don't even care. It's normal and what's normal doesn't bother you.  'Please don't,' she whispers and I stopped what I was about to begin.  'You talking to me?'  'Please.'  'It's foreplay, darling, you'll love it.'  And in I go. You get a taste for it. They're always tighter in the back hole than they are in the front hole and you start getting that feeling that you're going to come straight away, running up your legs, up you sides, into your arms. My fingers were curling round her neck and it's a good job I've got the self-control and can stop myself.  And you have to stop yourself. It's a waste otherwise. See, the thing is, the best bit's looking into their eyes: watching their eyes watching you. I turned her over. I was so hard I thought I was going to burst. I slid my hands back round her throat and pushed up inside her. As I squeeze she stares back at me, too scared to struggle, too scared to move. It's only a few seconds but you get a rush when they relax and you know at this moment the bitch is getting more out of it than you are. Three strokes and that was it. We'd made it together. I came and she was dead.  I rolled over and dropped off to sleep.  I dreamed the usual dream that I was back in the home, the last one, and there was a fire. I was on the top floor leaning out the window shouting for help. There were loads of firemen running up and down ladders carrying children to safety but, no matter how much I screamed, no one came to save me.  When I woke I was covered in sweat and was surprised to find this stiff next to me. There was a revolting smell, worse than Mrs G's parlour. She'd crapped herself. I mean, you think they'd have some self-respect.  I had a bath, made a pot of tea and some toast. Then I went down the garden and started digging a new hole. The ground was rock solid and the roots from the big old tree at the end made the work, not so much hard, but sort of boring. I was feeling a bit low, to tell the truth. I was having a rest when Mrs Gordon appeared at her bedroom window. She had lowered the sash cord and was peering through the curtains.  'Morning, Darren,' she called. 'You look busy.'  'Doing a bit of gardening, Mrs G,' I said.  'You are a good boy. Would you like a cup of tea?'  'That'll be nice.'  She was wearing her pink dressing gown when she came out with a mug of tea and some custard creams. We stood there looking in the hole.  'There's a bicycle in the hall, Darren, is it yours?' she asked.  I'd forgotten about that and was glad she'd reminded me. 'No, it belongs to a mate of mine,' I said. 'I'll get rid of it later.'  It took all day to finish that hole. I stuck the girl in after dark stuffed in dustbin bags and went out to get some Chinese.  I stopped on Wandsworth Bridge on the way back. The water was silver. I threw the bike in and watched the splash. It's a funny thing, but you'd think something like that would go down straight away. But it didn't. It floated for a few moments on the current before slowly sinking beneath the surface. © Clifford Thurlow		Short Stories Home The Little Black Dress Tail Lights Family Planning Voices In The Dark An Acquired Taste Oneshot Calling Poppy Conjugations Greta May Holes North Of Nowhere Smokers The Glass Labyrinth

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