Twelve Mad Men

by Ryan Bracha et al.

  “Lalley, O’Malley, Foley..” His head straightens and the chanting stops, although the arm keeps perfect time.

  “Are you fixing the lights or not,” he asks, never missing a stroke. His voice is softer than any man’s, he sounds like a woman, a pretty woman. I search for words, but my capacity to speak has been taken away by the sight of this very slight man with a cock like two cans of Red Bull stacked on end, wanking at me.

  His arm starts to slow, so I start talking. “Yes, sorry Mr Wilson, if you could just stay in the corner, I’ll..”

  “What’s your name?” He asks gently. His eyes are curious, but something else, there’s excitement there, and maybe fear as well.

  I tell him my name.

  His face softened, and he tilts his head again, throwing me a seductive look.

  “Are you a religious man?” he asks, with a giggle.

  Involuntarily, my eyes dart to the faded image on the wall and back to his quickly. Not quick enough though, he saw it. His eyes narrow, all friendliness gone.

  “My sister asked you a fuckin’ question, cunt!” he roars at me in a booming baritone.

  The change in him is staggering. The softness is gone, so has the curiosity. His whole posture has changed, all playfulness and grace has vanished and pure predatory aggression glares from him.

  Fuck knows what the right answer to his question is but his arm has started pulling at that two-can cock with such ferocity that I’m genuinely frightened for its well-being despite the danger I’m in.

  I blurt out, “No, I’m not. Used to be, but..”

  “Shut the fuck up, ya dick.” He spits at me.

  I do. I watch him transform again in front of me. The face softens, the eyes widen and the body becomes a graceful swan in movement once again as she returns.

  Something’s changed in her though, she’s no longer throwing me admiring, curious looks. She’s looks friendly enough, and her wanking has returned to normal pace, but something’s shifted.

  She moves beside me to get a good look at my face. I use my peripheral vision to make sure that I have an egress.

  “I’m sorry about my brother. He’s a little overprotective,” she says gently. “I’m glad you’re not religious, I like the religious type, but Paul, my brother, does not.”

  “Okay,” I sing, with false cheeriness as the lean man with the woman’s demeanour and voice wanks serenely in my direction. “Best get on then. Would you mind going back to the corner, don’t let me interrupt…” I nod down at her... his reddened cock.

  “I’d like you to stay for a few minutes. I so rarely get to talk to anyone.” Her face darkened a little, the threat of Paul behind her eyes. “Paul gets angry if I’m not happy. Let’s talk, just for a little while.” I nod and watch her walk back to her corner and resume her previous position, only this time she’s facing me.

  I sit a few metres away and ask. “So what’s a nice girl like you doing here?”

  Her face drops. “I’m not a nice girl,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” I blurt out, it was just a joke, y’know, cos that’s what people say.”

  She nods, but I can tell that I hurt her feelings because her cock twitched at me in response.

  “Why don’t you tell me how you came to be here, you and your brother,” I suggest. “if you don’t mind, that is….” I suddenly feel ridiculous, but have to ask.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  The wiry little, very scary man with the huge dick, blushes, he actually blushes and pauses his wankery for a second in surprise.

  “Nobody ever asks me that, not in all my time here. They just call us both Wilson.” She smiles with genuine warmth before resuming her stroking at a more leisurely pace than I’d seen her do so far.

  “My name’s Mary. Pleased to meet you.”

  “And you,” I say with a ridiculous little bow that makes me feel stupid, but it makes her laugh and the cell lights up when she laughs.

  “Would you like to hear about how I came here? She asks

  I shrug, “Only if you’re happy to tell me.”

  She gives me a little bow of her own, mirroring mine in a gentle mock, making me laugh. Her eyes dance with light and she drinks in my happiness as she starts to tell her story. I sit and stare into the face of the scariest, most beautiful man I’ve ever seen as he-she, as Paul-Mary speaks.

  ***

  My sibling and I had been in St Margaret Mary’s for around six months. We’d been to other schools, loads actually. We were good kids, but dad moved around a lot. Army officer. Came from money and gentry, couldn’t be bothered being a parent after Mum died. It was an alright school and was close to Edinburgh city centre which was awesome for a couple of fourteen year olds with time to kill and no parents around.

  On our first day, the head teacher, Father Connelly, introduced us to our peers at the house assembly. He made a big deal of us being twins, we were the first twins to attend St Mags’. Father Connelly was a lovely man, I really looked up to him, to all of the staff, to be honest. That’s probably why I have a thing for the religious type, especially Catholics. Never works out though.

  Paul played rugby, Mary studied hard. Friends were difficult to come by, most of the kids our age seemed withdrawn, sullen. We didn’t particularly care, we had each other after all, but it would’ve been nice to have some more friends.

  Eventually we were invited along to one of Fr Connelly’s private dinners. He’d been telling us for months how special being twins was. He really liked that about us.

  Mary wore a very white dress, one that father Connelly had remarked on at an assembly some months before. Paul looked as scruffy as always, but at least he’d had a shower. When we entered Fr Connelly’s quarters, a huge table filled the room. On it was a large white sheet, covering the food and around it sat sixteen of the school’s priests and four nuns. I remember our eyes fixing on the sheet. Paul took Mary’s hand and began to drag her back towards the oak doors we’d entered by, but Mary pulled free of his grasp. This was Mary’s big night, and Paul wasn’t going to spoil it.

  I remember rushing to Fr Connelly and apologising. He smelled strongly of wine, they all looked a little drunk, even the nuns. Paul grabbed Mary from out of Fr Connelly’s hands, she let him this time. The elderly priest we had so admired smiled at us as we backed up to the doors. Doors that had already been locked.

  Paul rushed at Father Connelly and rugby tackled the head teacher to the floor, clattering the old man’s head against a strong wooden chair leg as they fell. The room erupted, in laughter. Strong hands grabbed at Paul, grabbed at Mary also. Strong hands tore off our clothes and bound us and violated our bodies.

  They passed us round. The tore our bodies as well as our clothes. They fucked the nuns, they pulled the sheet from the table and fucked each other with the implements of sex that lay there. They pushed them into us as well, those toys.

  Hours passed I came and went. Some minutes passed torturously as years of pain and humiliation. Some hours passed in seconds of unconsciousness when I blacked out. Mary, Mary Magdalene. Fuck Mary Magdalene, they chanted as they passed us around.

  I woke many miles from St Mags on a rocky shore of the Firth of Forth. I’d been tied in a mail sack, along with my sibling. I’d freed my head and breathed. My sibling had not. It was a mercy. I climbed out of the sack and onto the smooth, cold pebbles of North Queensferry, a wretched creature. I kicked the body of my twin, still inside the sack back into the water and blew it a kiss.

  I didn’t go back to Edinburgh, instead I went home to Dundee and emptied my father’s safe at home. I went online with the black book full of passwords I found in his safe and emptied every one of his accounts too. The bastard deserved us for putting us in St Mags’.

  I disappeared. I got a new identity, I travelled, I grew up. I came back to Edinburgh, but I’d changed. I’d grown, become a man. A strong man, younger and more capable than the elderly, filthy men who’d violated Mary and Paul. The fir
st one, I took whilst he crossed Charlotte Square. It was pathetic how old he had become. The hands I remembered clawing at my thighs and pants, were sparrow’s claws, ineffectually pulling at my grip as I dragged the old cunt into the back of my van. I bestowed upon him every torture my sibling and I had suffered at his hands and the hands of his brethren.

  I went so much further with him than even they had with Paul and Mary. I cut his eyelids and placed him in a room full of mirrors to watch as I sliced and pierced and fucked and ripped and gouged every ounce of fucking pain I could drag from the evil bastard. I did things to that creature that some would say makes me worse than all of them. It doesn’t though, because he wasn’t a child. That’s the bare truth of it. He and his brothers of the cloth, men of God, betrayed children. I tortured and fucked an evil old man into a bloody puddle, then I hunted some of his fellow holy men. I still have some to find, to punish. For me and for my brother.

  ***

  My eyes are stinging and I become aware that I hadn’t blinked the entire time Wilson had been speaking. He’s still sitting in Buddha position wanking away in the corner.

  “Your brother?” I ask.

  “Yes, Paul, my brother.” She makes a sort of ‘duh’ face at me. Standing, she continues tugging on her cock and extends a hand for me.

  “Thanks for listening. You should go now, Paul will be back soon. He doesn’t like you much. Go.”

  I reach out and give the offered hand a little squeeze, similar to the one Benny had offered me earlier. As I let go my eyes go for a wander to Wilson’s feet. They are small, maybe a size four or five. The legs are lean and strong but long and slender also. Whilst Wilson’s torso is scarred the scars screamed a familiarity. I’ve seen scars like those on she wears on his-her chest somewhere else before. Maybe a TV show.

  Wilson catches me scanning his body. That smile lights up the room again.

  “You like it?” She asks. “I paid a fortune for it. Tits out and sewed up, vagina closed and this,” She jerks that cock. “This I’m delighted with. Nice and big, plenty of damage done tae a hole wi’ this big bastard, I can tell ye. Three piece titanium rod inside, hard whenever I want for however long I need it.”

  I gape at the scars.

  “Only problem is that I’m a dry-shagger. They cannae give ye baws, well wee rubber wans, but not working ones full of spunk.” Her eyes mist for a second as she loses herself in a rapey-reverie. “Och I’d have loved it if I could’ve had spunk tae splash over thae bastards,” she says, wistfully.

  Suddenly her face begins to darken once more and her voice deepens. Half way between Paul and Mary he-she roars. “Get fuckin’ oot!”

  She doesn’t have to tell me twice. I rocket through the door and lock it shut behind me. Peering in through the little trap, I watch Mary kneel back into the corner and her back straighten. Paul’s voice comes.

  “Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene. She’s fuckin’ coming fur ye, ya basturts.”

  Six

  As the light above Keith’s door blinks off, the one above me sparks into being, and the temperature drops cold. That kind of cold in the atmosphere that you get when it’s about to start thundering. When you just know that a storm is brewing, no matter whether you’re inside with the radiators on full or out there in a t-shirt, just about to get caught short because it was gloriously sunny when you left the house, and a coat would have simply been a hindrance. It’s that kind of cold. In the glimmering radiance which falls around me from the only light in the corridor that’s working I can see a faint ghosting of my breath, swirling and spilling from my mouth and into the hall. Wilson, or Paul, or Mary continues to thump their fist against an erect titanium cock. The rhythmic slap of wee rubber balls against thighs. The thing behind the door is all kinds of damaged. Physically and mentally. Beyond redemption. The tender look in its eyes when it was Mary, the kind of look that you could fall in love with. The kind of look that would throw you so far off track that by the time you remembered yourself it would be too late. You’d be having your throat ripped out by her violent alter-ego as he fucked your arse until you were torn like a lone ragdoll in the company of possessive twins. My lungs involuntarily and suddenly demand a sharp intake, as they remember that I haven’t been breathing since I left Wilson’s room. My hand searches for the wall to steady myself, and I take another minute to compose.

  The moth – my only company on this bizarre endeavour, since Benny continues to perform genocide on my patience with his relentless avoidance of all things insane – tip taps overhead. Following the light. Following me. A wild goose chase on the path to clarity. To closure. If Benny could just keep the lights on, instead of somewhat inexplicably replacing one with another as I visit each inmate. Resident. I’d never noticed it before, but there’s a blinking red light above the door to the stairs. A camera. Benny didn’t say anything to me about CCTV. At least I don’t think he did. Did he? I can’t be sure. Either way, I certainly haven’t been shown a monitor room. Is he in there now? Hilariously turning lights off and on to wind me up, in some ritualistic rite of passage for the new guy? Much the same as you might be sent out on your first day as a vocational apprentice at wherever, to find some tartan paint, only to return three hours later to mirth amongst your new workmates. This thought spikes in my mind and I’m abruptly self-conscious. I leave Wilson to its onanistic compulsion and approach the blinking light of the camera. It’s not so state of the art that it has the ability to shift, so it simply stares right back at me as I look into its iris from the dark. My unmoving face off with whoever is, or isn’t, watching me continues. Keith screams from the flames in his mind but I’ve grown accustomed to it. It doesn’t frighten me anymore. I’ve been here less than two hours and already I feel like I’ve been here for years.

  “Fuckin’ dog!” bellows Furchtenicht as the light blinks once, twice, thrice, infinity. I continue to look up from the darkness.

  “Lalley! O’Malley! Fuckin’ Foley!” Paul roars from Wilson’s mouth with each violent thump of their cock and still the light blinks once, twice, thrice, infinity.

  “Kill Benny. Fuck him, before he fucks you,” demands the calm voice of Godwin, beneath the shouts and screams, and still the light blinks once, twice, thrice infinity.

  Then it happens. The camera’s pupil dilates. There is somebody watching me. A quick dissolve transition edits my facial form from gormless stare to knowing grin. Without any prior warning my hand raises of its own accord, balled up into a fist, and my middle finger unfurls from the bud, alone. I’m on to them. I am so on to them. Whoever they are. I have a job to do.

  I spin on my heels and approach the sixth door in the hallway. It’s a windowed affair. The kind of window I remember from school. The mottled and wobbly glass, fortified by the criss-cross of the thin wires. I stand before it and knock. Nothing. The slate beside the door says Miles, Allen. I remember Benny telling me that this is another one who demands to go by another name, but I don’t remember what it was. Melchitt? I don’t remember. I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough. I knock again.

  “Get in the corner,” I say, keys out and door unlocked, “I’m here to fix the lights.”

  “Get-”

  “If I could, I would, believe me,” says the voice as I open the door. The voice belongs to a tall, slender man. He’s laid upon a bed, one hand resting nonchalantly against his flat stomach, the other behind his head. At first it looks like he’s supporting his neck, but as my eyes become accustomed to the dark it becomes apparent that the one hand is cuffed to the bed.

  “You aren’t here to fix the lights, are you?” he asks. He’s well-spoken but with a definite northern edge, like a Yorkshireman with the rare ability to enunciate.

  “I am, I’m-”

  “I hate liars,” he says, cutting me off, “liars do not deserve to breathe.”

  Still he doesn’t move from the bed, or even try to. Just stares up at me from the thin mattress. Even in the dark I can make out unforgiving br
uises on his cheeks and around his eyes. There’s a black slice of an open wound across a recently broken nose. Several of his teeth are missing.

  “Miles, I-”

  “My name is Melluish. Vincent Melluish. You may call me Mr Melluish. If I hear the word Miles roll from your tongue again I will rip it out, do you hear?”

  I nod.

  “I’m going to give you one chance to redeem yourself,” he says, and he gasps in pain from some internal injury as he twist his legs around as the mattress springs crunch harshly beneath him, his hand remains cuffed, thankfully, “would you like that one chance?”

  I find myself nodding again. I daren’t speak. His head drops, and for a brief moment it looks like he’s dropped into a narcoleptic sleep, but then his face turns upward toward me and a malevolent smile breaks through the calm. Then he speaks.

  “What’s your favourite film?”

  Clarity

  By Allen Miles

  A burly-looking chap in orderly scrubs comes in and unhooks the CCTV camera. He looks at me and smirks, like he's got some sort of upper hand. I've been here for twenty-three days now and this will be the fourth time its happened. I don't care, to be honest. They think I'm insane. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm what comic-book writers would call an avenging angel. In old testament times they'd call me a righteous man. I watch through the wired glass as dirty money changes hands between the security staff and some repulsive blob of humanity who is wearing an appalling fleece jacket and stone washed jeans ensemble. A guard with no academic qualifications unlocks the door to my cell and gestures him through with his baton. I lay down on my cot and stare at the ceiling as I hear him murmur to the fat boy,