Felix Shill Deserves to Die

by Gareth Busson

  The poor woman could hardly believe what she was hearing. The anguish disappeared and for a brief moment relief took its place. However, once the full extent of my offer sank in, her compassionate nature came to the fore. Unable to look him in the eye, she tilted her head in my father’s direction. There was a plea for clemency on the way, I could tell. I moved in for the kill.

  ‘If you don’t do it now, Violet, while your balance is in the black, then he’ll only go and bleed you dry again. You know that, don’t you?’

  My father could stand it no longer.

  ‘Why don’t you just stay out of my life, eh? Fuck off back to where you belong.’

  ‘Mallory,’ Violent said, pushing him away, ‘I’m warning you, if you don’t keep out of this then, by God, I’ll call the police, so I will.’

  My father fell reluctanly silent, though his scowl remained.

  ‘Now,’ I continued. ‘Do we have a deal, Violet?’

  His outburst must have tipped the scales in my favour. She nodded her agreement.

  ‘Good, now how much do you owe? No – I’ll rephrase that, how much did he steal?’

  ‘About eighteen hundred pounds.’

  I pulled a pinch of money from my pocket and began counting.

  It did cross my mind that the whole thing was a set-up, that she and my father were playing an intricate double bluff. But any doubts as to Violet’s authenticity were removed when I handed the money over. With fresh tears pouring down her face, she clutched the bundle of notes to her breast.

  ‘There’s two grand,’ I said. ‘Call the difference severance pay. All I ask is that you call me a cab.’

  She nodded and left the room. As she did so, a hint of freshly baked bread drifted up from her uniform. It reminded me of Bebe.

  My father turned on me the instant she was gone.

  ‘You cunt,’ he spat. ‘What the fuck did you go and do that for?’

  ‘To teach you a lesson in what it means to be a man.’

  ‘And what the fuck does that mean?’ he said, bewildered.

  ‘You might ask,’ I smiled and buttoned up my jacket. ‘It’s simple. I’m paying the bills.’

  He spun away from me, trembling with a dangerous blend of tiredness and rage and fear. When he turned back his face was pure evil.

  ‘I know what this is. You think that I ruined your life, don’t you? You think I ruined your life and so you’ve come back here to return the favour. Isn’t that right?’

  I held the glass aloft and let the last drop of whiskey fall onto my tongue. Licking all those dirty notes had made me a little dry.

  ‘That’s one way to look at it.’

  ‘Yes, well, whatever happens, just you remember one very important thing, Felix.’

  I invited his answer with the casual grace of someone who didn’t need it.

  ‘I didn’t ask to have you,’ he snarled.

  ‘So? What difference does that make? You’re a man, aren’t you? You deal with it, just like the rest of us.’

  My father shook his head. ‘No, you understand, I’m saying that I didn’t ask to have you. There was no agreement from your mother.’ The smirk returned. ‘I just took it.’

  Intuitively my grip tightened on the glass.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said, stepping to within a foot of me. ‘You think you’re a man? Let’s see what kind of man you really are.’

  If he’d goaded me like that yesterday, when my morality was intact, then I would’ve probably obliged him with a crystal necklace, but the events of the previous night had changed me forever. This is a different man today. A weaker man. I forced myself to laugh. Set the glass down on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘Y’know what, old man? I don’t believe you. You’re lying.’

  I looked hard into him and then pushed past.

  ‘You have a nice death,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there at the funeral.’

  It was a confident man that walked out onto the street and never looked back. A proud man who walked to the end of the road knowing that he would never see his father alive again. But beneath all my poise and conviction my heart was being pulled in different directions. I’d just backed my father into a corner, forced him into a situation where he had nothing else to lose, and when he had reacted, his tell was nowhere to be seen.

  He was telling the truth.

  The whole. Hole. Whole.

  Truth.

  And now there’s nothing, nothing but the truth.

  “And he replied, ‘Whether he is a sinner or not, I do not know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!’” John 9:25

  *

  You were blind.

  But now you see.

  You see what an idiot you are. An arrogant fucking idiot.

  Why didn’t you just leave it well alone? You were almost healed. But no, you thought you could knit the flesh of your scars together more cleanly. And so, like some kind of omnipotent masochist, you took a scalpel and opened them up again.

  Fool.

  No.

  You utter, utter fool.

  For now those wounds lie gaping to the elements. Festering in the filth of your insecurities. Don’t imagine that you have what it takes to mend this kind of damage. You’re not skilled enough. Not strong enough.

  No better.

  Oh, you were blind, but now you see all right. Now you see it all.

  No better than him.

  Some fucker’s gonna suffer for this.

  *

  ‘Here mate, I’m gonna need to stop for petrol in a minute.’

  He just took it. Stole it. Tore it from her.

  ‘You hearing me there, boss?’

  And crushed him. Destroyed him. When he was right there, next to you.

  ‘Oi, mate, I’m talking to you. You on drugs or something?’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We’ve been driving around for nearly an hour and I’m almost out of juice.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, do you actually know where you’re going?’

  ‘Don’t you fucking talk to me like that, you cunt. Just pull over at the next boozer you come to.’

  *

  I was a child born half.

  Manage four drinks in the first bar before they invite me to leave.

  Born blindfold.

  Two in the next and then they refuse to serve me.

  A child who, with one arm, groped and built a twisted world from the scraps of clay that they left around him.

  Don’t even make it into the third.

  But now my made-up world is gone. Now I see it all.

  Stumble into some shithole. It’s there that I notice a familiar face staring at me.

  And I hate it. Hate it. Hate. It.

  There. Behind the bar.

  I prefer the darkness.

  In the mirror.

  Prefer the hole.

  The face of my brother. Come to join me at last.

  ‘What’s your poison?’ a female voice asks.

  ‘VAT,’ we growl, out of habit.

  ‘Ice and lemon in that?’ she asks, the sarcasm coarse.

  ‘Don’t give a fuck, drink your first piss of the morning so long as it was forty percent proof, rancid cunt.’

  We don’t see what happens next. Someone says something about their mother and before we know it, we’re on the floor.

  The extra pair of hands is no help.

  *

  Crawl away. Nothing broken. Cracked in a few places, but nothing’s snapped. Wind up a crumpled heap on the steps of some bank. Our bruised tail planted well and truly between our legs. The winnings are safe but the loose change feels like ballast. Empty it out onto the concrete. Flick through the shrapnel. Pick out the nuggets. Sift the papers. One there. Yellow slip. My handwriting. I flatten it out and close one eye to focus.

  “Paul Mumby, Sassies, Off Walker’s Court, Soho”

  It’s the flyer I picked up in the tattoo parlour yesterday. Shit, was that really only twenty-four hou
rs ago? So much has happened. So much has changed.

  I flip the flyer away in disgust. The paper lands on its front and catches my eye for a very different reason.

  “Mandy is randy!!! Oooooh!!!

  Cum and See!!!

  Exotic Massage. Descretion guaranteed”

  Besides being a piss-poor speller, Mandy is a lady with a fondness for red thigh-length boots, matching rubber corsets, and who bears an uncanny resemblance to a well-known American porn star. We stare at her skin.

  Exotic Massage.

  That’s just what we need. But not the twenty quid, limp-wristed precursor to a topless ham-shandy that this slag bag is offering. What we were in need of was something classy, something professional. The kind of rub-down that would milk the pain right out of this mangled mess of muscle.

  Flailing around like a puppet on elastic strings, we pull on my jacket and stagger up the road. The lack of change makes no difference to the effort that this requires.

  A few hundred yards along, we find a taxi rank. Fall inside and offer a well-rehearsed challenge to the drivers who are idly waiting for fares.

  ‘Let’s see which of you fuckers has the knowledge? There’s two hundred quid here to the man that can take us to the best massage parlour in London.’

  Typical, isn’t it? Come into a little money and suddenly you’re riding cabs everywhere.

  The drivers take one look at us and then return to the Racing Post.

  ‘Come on,’ we demand, ‘this is fucking serious.’

  We pull out considerably more than the sum originally offered.

  ‘Two hundred quid, all you have to do is drop us off at the door.’

  A young Asian guy takes the bait.

  ‘Just the door, man, right?’

  ‘Absolutely right on.’

  The other drivers shake their heads when he picks up his keys.

  ‘Right-o, but you better not puke in my car, man.’

  We cross our heart and hope to die.

  We’re a mile or so down the road, in the back of a clapped out Honda with fluffy leopard skinned seats and a veritable mobile of religious emblems hanging from the rear view mirror, when the driver turns the radio down for a brief respite.

  ‘You’d better sober up, boss,’ he says. ‘You won’t get through the door in that state.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, don’t you worry about us, we’ve got a little plan for that.’

  And we do too. See, the flyer was not the only remnant of yesterday that we found when we were sorting through our pockets. There was a small plastic bag containing a creamy white paste in there as well. We recognised it immediately as Waters’ cocaine. There was more of it left than we remembered, too much to take in one hit, and it was no longer dry enough to snort, but in the present circumstances, that suited our purposes perfectly. Like a child with a bag of sherbet, we spent the rest of the journey contentedly dipping a finger into the mush.

  Fairly soon, the bag was empty.

  *

  ‘Here you go mate. It’s number twenty, I’ve dropped you off around the corner. You’ll see why when you get there.’

  ‘Where the fuck are we?’

  ‘Chelsea.’

  ‘Chelsea?’

  I glanced around at the four-storey town houses and spotless pavements. Not only was my mouth completely numb again, it felt like I’ve been stabbed in the throat with an icicle. Still, at least I knew that the cocaine had successfully rebooted the mainframe – there was only one person staring back at me from the rear view mirror.

  ‘Hey, you wanted the best, bro.’ The driver held out a hand.

  I paid him and then crawled out.

  At number twenty the row of spears, which were doing such a wonderful job of keeping me upright, evaporated, sending me plummeting towards a shiny slab of a door. A hundredweight of lion was waiting for me when I landed. After a brief exchange of snarls I tamed kitty with a couple of cracks on the nose ring.

  No answer.

  I pressed my ear to the cool surface and listened. I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but I could make nothing out over the noise of the street behind me. At no point during this course of action did it occur to me that I was acting conspicuous, the cocaine was doing such a wonderful job of blocking those thoughts out. Then I noticed that a small CCTV camera was trained directly on me.

  Don’t smile, Felix. Whatever you do, don’t smile.

  I lifted the lion’s nose ring again, but before I could bring it down, a hefty bolt slid to one side, the handle turned and the giant monolith slowly opened to reveal a tightly-suited monster with slicked back hair and Clark Kent glasses.

  ‘Can I help you, sir,’ he asked, in a manner befitting a royal footman.

  ‘I hope so, yes. I’m after a massage.’

  ‘A massage, sir?’ The footman looked stupefied by my request.

  ‘Not from you, obviously.’

  ‘I see.’ His expression remained blank.

  ‘Look, this is number twenty, isn’t it?’ I stepped back from the door and squint at the brass plaque on the wall.

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Right, well, I’ve been given your address by a very trusted source.’

  ‘Sir, I’m afraid that this is a private club, for members only.’

  ‘Really? Well, I don’t know how this usually works, but perhaps I could become a member for the afternoon?’

  This made the footman smile. ‘I’m sorry sir, but membership is strictly on an invitation-only basis.’

  ‘I see, and exactly how much does it cost to be invited.’ I pulled out a half an inch of money from behind the lapel of my coat.

  Still the thin smile persisted. ‘Really, sir, I’m afraid that won’t hold any sway here–’ Then he tilted his head slightly to one side and I could see a radio receiver curled around the back of his ear. A quick reprogram and I had his full attention again.

  ‘I must apologise, sir. Of course, your membership would be most welcome this evening. Please.’ He stepped to one side and ushered me into an elegant, square reception hall.

  Three white doors led from the room. The footman excused himself and disappeared into the one to my right. Almost the instant it closed behind him, the one in front opened and a striking woman, wearing a suit made by the same frugal tailor, stepped out.

  ‘Welcome to The Elysian Fields, sir,’ she said, giving me the kind of smile that could seduce a president. ‘Tonight, you will know me as Lilith.’

  ‘Right, and I’m Fe–’

  She pressed a finger to my lips. ‘That’s quite alright. We can dispense with the names. Now, if you would just like to follow me.’ She spun on her barbed heels and cut back to the door from which she had appeared.

  Inside was a small office painted in the same lavish shades of white and aquamarine. Lilith pulled out a high, leather-backed chair and slid underneath an oak desk that sat between us.

  ‘Now, as Lilith, the goddess of power, I am afraid that the duty of collecting alms falls to me. It’s a hundred pounds.’

  ‘That’s very reasonable,’ I said, counting out the money. ‘I was expecting it to be much more than that.’

  Lilith smiled tolerantly. ‘No sir, this is just an administration fee. You leave your contribution…’ and she paused to emphasise the point ‘…in the ivory box that you’ll find in your locker. We collect it when you leave.’

  ‘That’s very trusting.’

  Lilith patted the money straight and placed it into one of the desk drawers. ‘There is an element of trust in everything that transpires in The Elysian Fields. However,’ and she held up a slender finger of warning, ‘we take any breach of confidence very seriously. Very seriously indeed.’

  ‘I understand. So, just how much would you like me to contribute?’

  ‘Well, let me ask you. How much would you pay for a taste of heaven on earth?’

  ‘Not being a religious man I wouldn’t know. A grand?’

  At that, she got to her feet, wal
ked around and perched herself on the end of the table. Then she leaned back, slipped off her shoe and ran one of her feet along the inside of my leg. When she reached my crotch her eyes narrowed as her mouth and legs widened.

  ‘Double that and I’ll convert you,’ she purred.

  I held her gaze, but I could see at the bottom of my vision that she was not wearing any underwear. This was worth the price of admission alone.

  ‘Hopefully that’s a threat,’ I said.

  Lilith flicked her eyebrows, as if daring me to find out. Then her big toe quivered ever so slightly, making me shift in my seat.

  ‘Of course, the money’s no problem.’

  ‘Excellent,’ she said, and slunk back onto her feet. ‘Now, let’s get you into something a little more suitable, shall we?’

  Taking me by the hand, she led me through an adjoining door and into a long hallway. At the end of it lay an empty, vanilla-scented locker room.

  ‘You can get undressed here,’ Lilith said. ‘Someone will be along in a few minutes. Is that to your satisfaction?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Splendid. I’m going back through there now, but you never know, I might see you later.’ And with a wink she was gone.

  I picked a free locker in the furthest corner of the room and stripped off. This was my first time in a massage parlour and I expected it to feel seedy, but as I removed my tattered, sweaty clothing, all I felt was inadequate, like the destitute kid who was always forced to wear the left-over sportswear in gym class.

  I wrapped one of the lush brown towels around my waist and craned my neck to see in a nearby mirror. This was the first time that my raw tattooed nerve endings had been exposed to the atmosphere and considering the treatment the canvas had suffered, the artwork was healing remarkably well. It was the rest of my body that was the problem.

  I was still studying my mottled mass of bruising when the door on the other side of the room opened and two young people – one a slender oriental girl and the other, a handsome dark man – walked in.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ the girl said. ‘We’re here to show you to the bathing rooms.’ Her voice was smooth as fresh almonds.

  ‘Really?’ I replied coyly.

  ‘Will you be needing both of us, sir?’ the man asked with a chaste look on his face.