by Guy N Smith
“That’s right.” And I’m not telling you the number.
“It’s nice up there.”
“It’s okay. I might move before long.” When they rehouse me into single accommodation.
“What did you say you did for a living?”
“I didn’t. I’m not doing anything in particular at the moment.”
Fuck you.
“I guess I’d better be going,” he got to his feet, turned away from her and hoped fervently that she had not noticed his erection and that she wouldn’t see it now.
Jesus, I’m not letting him walk right out on me now that I’ve finally found him. Her heart was pounding, her intuition had gone wild. The build, the stance; she tried to blank out his features, visualise them with a hood over them, the lusting eyes staring through the twin holes. Everything fitted her mental identikit picture.
Her gaze lowered, it mattered not that he swivelled another quarter turn away from her. That was right, too, she saw it again, the surplus flesh that had eluded her. She even heard the voice camouflaged through a nylon filter.
“I’ll see you around sometime, Kate.”
Sheer desperation, she tried to make it sound casual, “Why don’t you call round one evening, Jason? We’re both alone and bored. Just coffee and a chat, or maybe go out for a drink. No involvement, if you see what I mean.” It sounded tartish. Come round and fuck me one night. And I’ll circumcise you. Or castrate you. I’ll kill you, too. Afterwards. The thought was becoming orgasmic; she was fighting to hold back.
“Maybe I will,” he paused in mid step, “but I’ll have to be on my way for now. Valley Tower, thirteenth floor, number 177. I can remember that.”
You might forget it. Or change your mind. Dates aren’t your scene; only a rape will satisfy you. And I’d be happy with that if I could be sure. Just one last time.
“See you, then,” he was walking away, not looking back.
“See you, Jason. And don’t forget!” She had to shout over the blaring music from the ice cream van.
He was hurrying. Because he had to get home, relieve his feelings in a way he had not done for a very long time. And then he’d be all right.
Which was why his habitual sense of alertness was temporarily inactivated. He had no reason to suspect that she might follow him, stalk him with all the cunning of a night hunter of human flesh. She just wanted him to call round and screw her. And that would be breaking the chief’s trust in him, a professional betrayal. Sex is the focal point of all evil, Ford.
* * * *
At least he had told her the truth. She stood back, saw him let himself into number 19, Weedon Road. Then she turned and retraced her steps. The hunt was drawing to a close; she scented blood, trembled with anticipation.
But all that had happened in between, her trophies in their new shrine beneath a loose floorboard in the flat had not been a waste of time. It had been a process of learning, savouring. There would be others after Jason Ford. And she had not forgotten Doctor Glenn Whittaker.
28.
Tanya Mitchell promised herself that before long she would give up working for the punishment parlour. After the police had caught the Black Mantis. Ford had asked her, albeit in a roundabout way, to help him. It was just a question of keeping her ear to the ground, nothing more, snippets of conversation with clients, particularly when they were turned on. Nothing dangerous. So, she would take it as it came, not go looking for anything. If Madam phoned her …
Madam did.
An irregular, but old-established, client had requested a home visit. That put the price up, an extra twenty quid. Spencer Rees-Edwards could well afford it, he was loaded and a good payer, often tipped the lady who attended to him in a generous manner. And Tanya had still to pay her previous month’s council tax contribution.
“You know him, you know exactly what he wants and how he likes it done,” Madam was forceful, if ever you had made up your mind to turn her down, you somehow never did. “Tomorrow morning, about eleven. His mother’s going on a coach tour, you’ll have the house to yourselves.”
“All right, I’ll go.”
“Don’t sound so enthusiastic, my dear,” Madam was a firm believer in dedication to duty; if a customer had a fetish, no matter how weird, you were expected to satisfy him as if it was your own personal turn-on. “We can’t afford to lose custom. This Black Mantis publicity has frightened a lot of men off, we’re fifty per cent down on takings already this month. There’s a good girl, I know I can rely on you.” Which meant that she was having her doubts on that score.
Tanya had serviced Spencer a couple of times before, the last almost three years ago. He only called the parlour when his particular fetish had reached such a pitch that he was no longer able to satisfy himself with his own self-torture implements. He was a foreskin freak.
At 41, he was a rich, unmarried wimp who lived with his 85 year-old mother. Spencer had neither the need nor the desire to work; his father, a multi-millionaire industrialist, had died twenty years ago and left his widow and only son a large Victorian town house and an inheritance that far exceeded the demands of their reclusive lifestyle. They never took holidays; instead they embarked upon regular day outings with a local coach firm. Always separately. The house must never be left unattended in case of burglaries.
Spencer was the victim of a public school education. Neither a scholar nor a sportsman, he had endured unrelenting bullying up until he left school at the age of 17. The fact that he was ‘pretty’ added to his misery in the beginning. Later he discovered sexual ecstasy within his own predicament as a ‘pash boy’. Prefects and senior pupils found in him a source of pleasure but only rewarded him with contempt.
The school was divided into two factions, ‘cavaliers’ and ‘roundheads’ according to one’s circumcised state, or not, as the case may be. Spencer was a cavalier and consequently his foreskin became prime concern to his tormentors and, latterly, to himself. His guilt became his secret pleasure.
His school day tortures transcended the bizarre. The spartan bath and shower area was in a building separate from the main block and was, therefore, ideally suited to perverse games. And in the unlikely event of a duty master entering at an unfortunate moment, having breached the customary ‘cave’ sentry, then this was the place where one expected to find pupils naked.
The tortures were many; Spencer’s foreskin swelled and bruised to the stretching and pinching of clothes pegs and spring clips, and from the frequent lashings with birch twigs. Whereas originally that small part of his anatomy had been modest and of little consequence, within a year it had lengthened and thickened to unsightly proportions, and had become of major significance to himself and overseers.
One night, Spencer was convinced that they were going to circumcise him; they had toyed with him for so long that pseudo rituals were becoming boring. They had stolen a scalpel from the biology laboratory, a needle and thread from the sanatorium’s emergency cupboard, together with a jar of antiseptic. He was terrified to the point of ejaculation. But it was all just another game. He sobbed, pleaded with them to circumcise him, but they backed off at the crucial moment. Because they were spineless, gutless. They laughed at him.
All right, give me the scalpel and I’ll do it myself. You can watch. They snatched the instrument away, held it out of his reach. Later that night Spencer attempted to cut off his foreskin with a table knife, made a botch of it and had to undergo emergency stitching by the matron. And all because he had gone for a piss in a hurry and had caught himself in his zip. They believed him.
At least, he was proud of his scars.
After that the others got scared, left him alone; it was frightening even to try to guess how far Spencer might go. His fetish left school with him, stayed with him. In the privacy of his own room he devised new tortures and carried them out. He fitted acoustics to the walls to mask the sound of his stereo from his mother; the last thing he wanted was to cause her any annoyance. She was grateful for his thou
ghtfulness.
Periodically, when satisfaction eluded him and his frustration became too much to bear, he phoned the parlour and specifically booked Tanya. She was the only one who knew exactly what to do and how to do it. After all, rumour had it that she had once circumcised a man for real. And there was always the outside chance that she might do just that to himself, albeit accidentally in the heat of the session. The secret was to enrage her; in the past meetings he had discovered her Achilles heel. Cats.
Recently Spencer had fantasised about this so-called Black Mantis woman. He had even considered venturing down to the red light area in the remote hope that she might select himself for her next mutilation. It was only the prospect of being accosted by an ordinary prostitute that prevented him. He was terrified of the sex act, both heterosexual and homosexual.
He was a virgin.
His slim body was covered only by a red silk dressing gown when he answered the door to Tanya’s ring. She wore a full-length dark dress. When she removed it, she revealed a black leather bra with studded belt and G-string to match, and thigh length boots. She carried an assortment of miniature whips, a curved ceremonial knife of debatable origin, together with other means whereby pain might be inflicted, in a green carrier bag.
She seemed distraught, uncommunicative.
“Chin up and smile, we’re going to have a barrel of fun,” he fingered himself in anticipation.
“I’m sorry,” her lips moved but there was no smile reflected in her dark eyes. “My favourite cat is poorly, she isn’t eating. I’ll have to take her to the vet this afternoon.”
“What would you like to do to me first?” He seated himself naked on the edge of the bed, clearly piqued because her attention was not focussed on his erection, even when he stretched his foreskin meaningfully to an unbelievable length for her voyeuristic pleasure.
“It’s entirely up to you, you’re paying,” she tipped out the contents of the carrier. “Ask and it shall be yours.”
A mock bow and they both laughed.
She whipped him, made him hold himself so that his foreskin flowered, used a bobbled lash to bruise and swell it quickly. His knuckles and fingers were streaked with her flogging but it was not these weals which had him screaming and urging her to even greater efforts until she was forced to pause for breath. She was shiny with sweat, her leather strapped bosom rose and fell.
Spencer lay back gasping, whispered hoarsely, “That was … beautiful. Now, I want you … to … Circumcise me. For real!”
“If I’d circumcised you the first time you begged me to, you wouldn’t be having fun now, would you?” She was bent double; she always got a stitch when she exerted herself beyond her limits. She would take it steadily from hereon.
“Don’t sound so bloody eager!” He was always annoyed when he couldn’t get his own way. “I want you to this time. You’ve done it to a chap before, haven’t you?”
“How do you know that?” Her voice was sharp, angry.
“Madam told me. A long time ago.”
“Madam has no business telling lies just to turn-on her clients.”
“I believe her. Don’t worry. I won’t tell a soul.”
“You’d better not!” She would ask Madam about that sometime. More than likely her courage would fail her, you always wilted in Madam’s presence.
“I think I know who you are,” his eyes were closed, he was breathing fast.
“Go on, to tell me. I’d really love to find out after all these years.”
“You’re the Black Mantis and don’t you deny it! It figures, nobody could circumcise so regularly and as efficiently as you.”
Jesus Shit! “And I guess you’re this rapist they’re looking for.” There was contempt in her tone.
“No!” His eyes opened; there was an expression of horror on his darkly handsome features. “Not that! I wouldn’t want to have … intercourse with a woman!”
“All right, let’s keep our wild suppositions and accusations to ourselves from now on, shall we?” She tested the knife blade; it brought a trickle of blood to her thumb. Sod it, she’d have to be really careful, remember only to touch him with the blunt side. Mere contact with cold steel would have him writhing and jerking ecstatically on the bed.
“I’m going to circumcise you, Spencer,” she tried to sound threatening. It wasn’t easy, it was all so bloody boring. “And this time I’m not pretending.”
He began to moan, groaned for her to hurry. “I’ve waited forty-one years for what should have been done when I was eight days old. But it’s been worth every second. This is the Eighth Day!”
“This is it, then,” she reversed the blade, drew the unhoned topside across his taut skin. “Now!”
He bucked upwards, flopped back down, lay quivering with an anguished ecstatic expression on his sweat glistening face. His eyes opened, he raised his head and stared in disbelief at his uncut foreskin still stretched between Tanya’s forefinger and thumb. His look changed to one of anger, he yelled, “stop playing at it, you bitch. Do it!”
“Look, I …”
His eyes narrowed, his expression altered once again, this time to sudden guile as an idea hit his masochistic crazed brain. He was tottering on the brink of his supreme fantasy; he wasn’t going to fall off ignominiously.
“Your cat is ill, you told me so.”
“Yes.” Tanya stared, disbelieving her ears.
Spencer Rees-Edwards didn’t give a shit about anything except circumcision, his entire warped life revolved around it.
“I hope it dies!” He laughed. “Slowly and painfully, suffers to the very end. I’m sure it will, probably has already. It’ll be lying on it’s back, belly upwards, dead as a dodo when you get home.”
“What!”Her stomach knotted with fear. Then uncontrolled white-hot anger. Spencer didn’t know anything about cats; the vet would come round, everything would be fine. “You’re talking crap. Shut up!”
“No, I’m not, just common sense. Your flea-ridden cat is dying and I hope when you get back it’s dead, that it’s suffered. Do you keep any other cats?”
“Yes,” she snapped, “not that it’s any of your fucking business!”
“Then I hope when you get back you find them all dead. I’ve a good mind to go round to your place and feed ‘em some poisoned meat. That’d teach you. Then perhaps you’d get round to doing your job properly. No, I take back what I said; you’re not the Mantis. You wouldn’t have the know-how nor the guts to circumcise anybody!”
“You fucking shit bastard!” It was as though fire burned in her brain, heat scorched all reason, any fear of consequences. A volcano of fury erupted over her entire body, had her gripping the knife with an intensity that cramped her palm. Reversing the blade, snatching for that softened wrinkled flesh, tugging it up to its full extremity.
A tiny voice inside her turmoil screamed at Tanya to stop, but it went unheeded. A cry which she scarcely recognised as her own, didn’t care whether it was or not as she slashed sideways.
Spencer screamed, he always did when she was on form. But not the way he screamed now.
Tanya leaped back off the bed, stared aghast at what she had done. Something warm and sticky was clutched in her fingers, a particle of bleeding, severed flesh. She cried out, threw it away from her, shook her hand and splattered fresh blood all down her naked thighs. She tried to scream but the scorching bile in her throat drowned her cry. Any second she was going to spew.
Spencer Rees-Edwards was pressed back against the headboard, holding himself with scarlet fingers, blood welling up between them, starting to soak the duvet.
“You fucking bitch, just look what you’ve done to me!”
Tanya wanted to tear her eyes away but the scene was hypnotic. A game she had played for sick men on several occasions, titillated their fantasy with a simulation of circumcision. Now, suddenly, it had become reality. Oh, Jesus God, it was awful.
“I might die!” He wailed, writhed, his face was deathly white. �
�You might’ve killed me. And it was only a fucking game!”
She threw up, managed to jerk her head away, staggered towards the doorway.
“Come back. Help me. Oh, help me, call an ambulance.”
She managed to clutch the stair rail in time to save herself from falling headlong down to the hallway below. Holding on, step by step, hearing those cries upstairs becoming weaker and weaker.
An old fashioned ivory coloured telephone stood on the oak hall table, a squat monster regarding her with its single eye. She staggered towards it, lifted the receiver. With a shaking, blood slimy finger, she began to dial; it took her three attempts before she successfully managed the trio of nines.
“Emergency services. Which service do you require?”
“Ambulance. There’s a man circumcised himself at … I can’t remember the address, I’ll give you the phone number …”
Breathlessly, she rushed out into the street, fled blindly. A patrolling police car spied her, overtook her and came to a halt. Two uniformed officers alighted, approached her with caution.
This, indeed, was their lucky day.
29.
“Surely to God you don’t think I’m your fucking Black Mantis!” There was despair in Tanya Mitchell’s screamed denial. The WPC standing behind her in the crowded charge room stepped forward a pace, made ready to grab her if necessary.
“Nobody’s accused you of that,” Buckle, the bespectacled solicitor, hastened to reassure his client. “Just answer their questions, or not, as the case may be.”
“But you admit to attacking Spencer Rees-Edwards in his own house this morning?” Detective Superintendent Frank Melton continued undeterred.
“Yes … no, I didn’t attack him.”
“He says you did. Fortunately, he’ll recover after medical attention, otherwise you could be facing a charge of murder. For the moment you’ll be charged with serious wounding.”
