Hound Dog

by Richard Blandford

  I saw her in my local. She was shy but pretty, with glasses, hair that fell in front of her face when she looked down, which was always, and dowdy clothes. She was sexy in the way librarians are sexy. They’re all sensible and demure, but you wonder what they’d be like if you turned them on. She must have been in her early twenties then, and I wasn’t even thirty. Chatting her up was hard because she was so shy, and even once I’d persuaded her to sit with me for a bit away from her boring friends, it was like talking to a frightened bunny rabbit, always desperate to get back to its hutch. But she liked me, or at least she secretly liked the attention, and I talked her into coming back the next night. Again, the conversation was a little one-sided, but she opened up a bit and told me a little about herself, how she lived with her mum, that her dad had run off, and that she worked in a film developer’s. At the end of the evening, I walked her home, and kissed her on the lips. She ran to her door, but I asked if I would see her again down the local the next night, and she nodded, before disappearing inside without saying goodnight.

  I saw Chrissie the next night, and the next, and most nights after. I took her to the pictures, fancy wine bars, even to a play she wanted to see. Each night I’d walk her home and snog her on the way, for longer each time. Of course, I wanted more than that, and she freaked out when I groped her little tits in an alleyway, but she let me do it. Finally, I persuaded her to come round my place. I bought a takeaway and had candles and wine and everything. Even had a nice dessert. We were snogging on the sofa and I was feeling her tits, then I took her hand and put it down my trousers. She backed away and started crying. I explained that it was something that we’d have to do sometime, and she finally told me that she’d never done it before, that she was really scared about it and didn’t think she’d be any good. I told her not to worry, and took her upstairs.

  From that point on, it was serious. We were a couple, I was fucking her regularly, and she was even enjoying it. Her mum wasn’t happy though. She didn’t want her daughter living with her if she was going with older men, or indeed any man, and pretty much chucked her out. She moved in with me, and it seemed to make sense for us to get married. And so we did, in a registry office with just her mum, her three friends and family, and some bloke I knew from Luton in attendance. I suppose the marriage was doomed from the start. We went to Brighton on our honeymoon, and I was so fucking bored I ended up shagging some bird staying up the corridor in the same hotel while Chrissie was having a nap. When we got back, I realised the idea of having to screw the same boring bird over and over again for the rest of my life made me sick. I mean, Chrissie was all right for keeping things tidy in the house and that, but in the sack she was, quite frankly, rubbish. So I started going out to the pub without her, and often I’d pick up some bit of stuff and I’d either go back to theirs or just do it down the allotments or something. Chrissie was too timid to make a big deal if I came back late, but if she even mentioned it I’d tell her I could come home any damn time I wanted, and it was none of her fucking business anyway. It went on like that for a bit, until one day Chrissie broke down in tears and told me that her friends were telling her I was going with other women. She wanted to know if it was true. It occurred to me that keeping it a secret was doing me less good than just telling her, so I explained that I had a very high sex drive, and I needed to go with other women so as not to burden her with the responsibility of meeting my needs. I got her to agree that this was reasonable, and with her permission went on shagging my merry way around Cambridge. But after a while, I got tired of having to trek out to the bird’s place if she lived some way off, and I was definitely sick of doing it in the open air up against some shed, so I thought to myself, seeing as I’ve got Chrissie’s permission anyway, I may as well bring them back home. So I walk in one night with some bird, and Chrissie’s sitting on the sofa watching telly. I just nod at her and take the bird with me into the bedroom and shag her. Chrissie doesn’t say anything to me when the bird leaves a bit later. Soon I’m doing this pretty regular, and Chrissie never says anything. Now round about this time I’d taken to telling Chrissie every day that she’s not much to look at, boring in bed and a general fucking pain in the arse who should be grateful for what she gets. Just wearing her down, you know, so it’s easier for me to do stuff without any hassle. Anyway, I’m picking up all these birds and taking them back to my place and shagging them, in the bedroom if Chrissie’s still up, or on the sofa if she’s gone to bed. Then one night, I take a bird home and Chrissie’s up watching some programme. Now the bird sees she’s watching it, and she wants to see the programme too, so she kicks up a fuss and it ends up that me and her have to sit down on the sofa and watch it with Chrissie. Of course, I’ve seriously got the horn, and it’s a fucking long programme. It goes on and on, and I’m just fed up with waiting, so I start touching the bird up right there, and before you know it, me and the bird are shagging on the sofa, with Chrissie sitting next to us watching the fucking telly! Pretty soon after that, I’m banged up again, and Chrissie’s sodding friends talk her into divorcing me while I’m in the nick. Nice, eh? Kick a man when he’s down, why don’t you? So there you have it. That’s the story of my third marriage. And I suppose after all that you think I’m a cunt of the highest order. Well, maybe you’re right, maybe I am. But you know I don’t see it like that. I’m certain that I am a psychopath, whatever that test did or didn’t prove. I don’t believe I have a conscience, and it’s like I said before, if I don’t have one of those, then there’s no way you can really hold me responsible for what I did, is there? It’s not like I’m making an informed moral choice. What it comes down to is, you can’t tell a snake why it shouldn’t bite you, and it’s the same with me. I’m an animal acting on instinct, and my instincts tell me to fuck people over, to hurt or destroy them if I gain something from it, or even if I just feel like it and want to get something out of my system, work off a bit of steam. Not that it ever really does the job, because I’ll just end up having to do someone else over soon enough. So, no, I don’t believe I am a bad man. I see myself more as a prisoner of fate. Come to think of it, I’ve lived a pretty wretched life.

  Christ, I’m feeling ill here in the back of this limo, and it’s not just because the CD’s up to ‘Wooden Heart’. I can feel the ground dissolving and the chasm beneath me beckoning again, and all I can see is a swarm of bees. This isn’t right, I think. In fact this is very, very bad. I try to call out to Dave, but he’s too far away now, and it’s too late, I’m already falling. There’s nothing to grab onto, nothing at all. I’m plummeting at what seems like a thousand miles a second. And I fall and fall, further than I’ve ever gone before. Then, after many millions of miles, and what seems like years, for the first time, I hit the bottom.

  Chapter 20

  It’s a funny place, Hell. It’s just like you’ve heard, very dark, fucking hot and everybody’s in chains. What they don’t tell you about, though, is that you’re being incessantly fucked up the arse with something that feels like a road drill. I’ve been down here so long I’ve lost all sense of time, and I’m having trouble remembering a moment when I wasn’t down here in the dark, being rogered. I know there are people all around me, but there’s barely any light, and all I can see are dark shapes. But I can hear them, all of them. It’s an incredible sound, almost like a wave, starting out like the moan of someone coming, before slowly building into an awful pained scream, and then starting all over again as a whimper.

  There’s a smell too, of sex and gore. It’s the strangest smell you’ll most likely ever come across. Anywhere else it would be abominable, but down here it seems to make perfect sense. All the time I’ve been here I’ve wanted to be sick and have sex simultaneously, which is a new one on me. Meanwhile, I’m feeling jism being shot into my arse like bullets every twenty seconds or so, and I’m sure that there’s nothing left there but a crater, a gaping wound at the bottom of my spine. I even wonder why it hasn’t reached the other side, leaving a hole ri
ght through my groin you can see through. I can hardly bear to look, but I’ve been here for an eternity already, so I suppose it’s time for me to investigate. So I turn my head round, and unusually, it travels a full one hundred and eighty degrees. I look down, and my worst suspicions are confirmed. My arsehole is a bloody pulp, and there is a strange dick-drill thing pounding into it. Then I look up to see who it belongs to. Of course, it’s Eddie.

  ‘Well, hello my boy,’ he says. ‘How absolutely lovely to see you again.’

  ‘Eddie, what are you doing here? You’re not dead.’

  ‘Neither are you, old chap. A lot of people down here aren‘t.’

  ‘Funny, I’d have thought that would be a prerequisite.’

  ‘Oh, a lot of people you know are down here, look.’

  Suddenly, faces in the darkness are visible, and I see a whole load of the old gang from London, as well as familiar faces from the nick and a few other places. Somewhere in a flash of light I see Nanette taking it up the arse from Johnny, while she too seems to be pounding away at somebody‘s gaping wound with her own appendage. I even think I see Jen in the distance, fucking someone over.

  ‘So Eddie,’ I say, ‘if Hell’s not where you go when you die, what is it? And what are we all doing here?’

  ‘Hell, dear boy, is where you and I have been all our lives. Hell is one great big anal rape, where someone shoots their load into you, and then you do it to someone else.’

  ‘Oh right. So when do I get to stop getting fucked, and get to do the fucking?’

  ‘Can’t you see, my dear boy, it’s happening right now, look.’ I turn my head round again, and for the first time I see that I have my own drill, and there is a bloody, bleeding arse in front of me, being pounded and mutilated by my own weapon. I come and shoot another bullet of jism into it, and as I do so Eddie does the same into me, and I realise my own voice is part of the mass wave of moans and screaming. Then I see, I am part of one long chain of anal violation that goes on for as far as the eye can see in all directions, and certainly beyond. This is my fate, where I shall always be, and where I have always been. It is where I belong. And then everything changes. I hear the beating of giant wings above me. Angels – I shit ye not, a pair of angels swoop down from the sky. They grab me by the shoulders with feet like talons, and pluck me out from the chain. My shackles fall away as we rise. Below me, I see Eddie look up at me forlornly, then move up a place and begin pounding away at the wretched arse that was just in front of me. We climb higher, and the darkness of Hell lifts. Then, in the far distance, I see a brilliant light. It’s like the sun, but even though it’s the brightest light I’ve ever seen, it doesn’t blind me, even when I look straight at it. The sky around it is yellow, like a sunset. It’s beautiful. The angels, meanwhile, are pretty much as you imagine them, only more manly than you’d expect, less gay. More like superheroes than the usual weedy blokes with perms and haloes playing trumpets and harps. They even have chest hair. And bird’s feet, of course. We fly closer and closer to the light, and suddenly I see that there is land below us, all green and summery. The angels fly low, and we descend faster than any aeroplane. In an instant, they’ve set me down on my own, and are already flying away towards the light. I look around, and see that I’m on some sort of riverbank. It’s like something from Swallows and Amazons or something, a bloody English riverbank. Then I know what riverbank it is. Buddy appears in the distance, looking fit and healthy and all dressed up in his gear, swinging his arms as he walks. Next thing I know, he’s right beside me.

  ‘All right, Bud,’ I say, ‘didn’t realise you were dead.’

  ‘I’m not, I’m in a coma, but Heaven isn’t about being dead, same, as Hell isn’t.’

  ‘Oh, right. So this is Heaven is it? Funny they’d let me up here then. I was in Hell a minute ago. I mean, I’ve always figured I’d be going to Hell ’cos of all the kicking people’s heads in and stuff.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ says Buddy, ‘we’re just kind of letting you look around, see if you like it. Whether you move in or not really all depends on you.’

  ‘Oh OK, I guess, still a bit in the dark though…’

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go and see Em. She’s over there waiting for me to come out of this coma, so I’ll see you later, OK?’ And with that he wanders off onto the bridge behind us, where Em waits for him. He pulls a giant bouquet of flowers out from under his Buddy Holly jacket as they run towards each other and meet in a slobbering embrace. I leave them to it and wander up the riverbank. I go up about half a mile, or five hundred, I’m not sure, and there’s Bridget, dressed in her dolly-bird gear like it’s still 1966, as if she’s about to go and see Manfred Mann, sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Hi, Bridg,’ I say, ‘how‘s it going?’

  ‘Not bad, shrimp. You?’ She offers me a fag as I sit down next to her.

  ‘I’m feeling pretty good, actually, which is weird.’

  ‘Yeah, you look less like you want to smash my face in with a rock than you usually do.’

  ‘l don’t really get what’s going on. You’re dead, right, so you’re in Heaven. But I’m not dead as far as I’m aware, but I’m here, and so are Buddy and Em. Now Buddy might be on his way out, but Em’s still alive and kicking. Also, I was in Hell just a minute ago, and there were people who are definitely still alive down there. What is up with all of this?’

  ‘Jesus, you’re slow. It doesn’t really matter if you’re dead or alive. Heaven and Hell are just where you’re at in your head. For instance, what was Hell like?’

  ‘Well, it was like one long chain of people fucking each other up the arse, and everyone was ripping each other up in the process. It was pretty fucking grim actually.’

  ‘Exactly. As long as that’s your bag, you’re in Hell.’

  ‘So you’re in Hell if you’re a homo? Look, I’m not a fruit, I had my dick shoved in that guy’s arse against my will down there!’

  ‘No, silly! It’s not about where you put it, but the spirit in which it’s put. Hell is the place for people who inflict pain on others in order to serve their own ends. It’s not a punishment, it’s just inevitable you’ll be there if that’s your scene. Now look at this.’

  She points to the sun, and I see that it’s made up of billions of people, again all linked together in a sex chain, but this time it’s one of oral pleasure. A bloke would be sucked off by a bird, but he’d be licking out another bird at the same time, who’d be sucking a dick, and so on.

  ‘You see,’ says Bridget, ‘everyone is giving and receiving pleasure equally. No one’s on a power trip, no one’s trying to get anybody down, and nobody’s getting hurt. It’s all done in a spirit of love. And that’s what Heaven is. Everything’s in balance. The love you take is equal to the love you make. The blow job you send out comes back to you.’

  ‘Well, that’s pretty groovy. Hang on, there are some gaylords up there.’ I point to where there is a chain of men sucking dick, and in turn, having their own cocks sucked.

  ‘Oh, they’re not necessarily gay,’ says Bridget, ‘just being considerate and balancing out the numbers. Anyway, it’s nothing to do with sex really, you dummy, it’s all just a metaphor. We figured it was the only way we could get you to understand.’

  ‘Oh right. But listen, this is all very well, but it doesn’t really apply to me, does it? I mean, I’m a psychopath. I can’t really help being the way I am. I can understand you lot not wanting someone like me hanging around Heaven, but putting me in Hell when it’s no fault of my own is a bit harsh.’

  ‘Oh, stop with all this psychopathic crap. You’re no more a psychopath than your Auntie Jeanie. This is the whole fucking point. This is why we’re showing you all this. You have a choice. Heaven or Hell. It’s all up to you. Jesus, how much more do I have to break it down for you?’

  ‘OK, OK, I get your point. Bridget, question for you. Did you really have to top yourself all those years ago?’

  ‘You know full well I did.
Dad had been messing about with me since I was a baby and it had sent me mental. What else was I supposed to do?’

  ‘You didn’t have to it, Bridg. Didn’t you understand I needed you?’

  ‘No, you didn’t need me. Nobody needed me. That’s why it was OK for me to go. I—’

  ‘I needed you Bridget!’ I grab hold of her and shake her hard. ‘Don‘t you understand you tore me apart!’ I scream.

  She stops protesting. ‘I know,’ she says softly. ‘I could see you crying from up here. I could even see inside you. I guess that’s when all your trouble started, when you decided to go bad. Yeah, I shouldn’t have done it. But oh, you’ve been a silly boy, shrimp.’ She offers me another cigarette.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bridg.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sorry too. Now don’t worry about it, although I think you’ve got a shitload of apologising to do to quite a few people back down there.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Uh, yeah. Now you’re still alive and you’re not going to die for a bit, so don’t let me down, you mental case. Look, I’ve got to go, get back to the chain. I’m afraid I can’t talk to you again, now that you’ve finally got the message. So take care of yourself OK? Bye-bye!’

  Bridget flies up in the air like Peter Pan and disappears into the mass of fellating bodies, leaving me to make my way back down the riverbank to the bridge on my own, near to where Buddy lies battered and comatose, while Em stands on the bridge, crying and praying.

  Chapter 21

  ‘You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time…’

  The words drift towards me in the blackness. I don’t want to follow them, but they get their hooks in and pull me forward into a gap in the dark. Light pours in through the slits of my opening eyelids. I clamp them shut again.