Inflatable Hugh

by Terry Ravenscroft

  The sound of the ‘boings’ was enhanced as it bounced off the hard edges of the gloss painted brick walls. Fine for hi-fi but crap for what I’m being forced to listen to, thought Cleaver, as he rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth in the half light of the cell. He was having just as much trouble with an inflatable rubber woman as Arbuckle had experienced with his, although in this instance the sex doll in question belonged not to him but to his cell mate, Mason.

  Boing...boing...boing...moan...boing...boing boing.

  “For Christ’s sake, Mason, it’s three-o-clock in the morning!”

  “When a man’s got to fuck a man’s got to fuck,” came Mason’s voice from above, quite uncompromisingly and interspersed with further boinging noises from the steel springs of the bunk bed.

  It was the first time Cleaver had ever been in prison. He had heard tales of life behind bars, what could be acquired while you are inside, smuggled in by a visitor or got hold of through a bent screw; booze, cigarettes, drugs, food you could eat, but he had never suspected that inflatable rubber women could be so readily obtained.

  Boing...boing...boing....groan...boing...boing...boing...“You’re the only one, Baby, you’re the only one.”

  “She’s not the only one, there’s another one in the fucking bin,” said Cleaver, with feeling.

  There was too, discarded there by Mason when his new inflatable rubber woman had arrived by post that morning, a necessary replacement after he’d worn out the other one. “They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” he had complained. “I’ve only had it six months, the one I had in the Scrubs lasted me two years.”

  Two days after he’d been sent down Cleaver had asked for a transfer to another cell. From the cell in which his cellmate had a chronic farting problem. This was the cell he’d landed up in. The following day he would have given his right arm to be returned to the cell he’d briefly shared with Farting Fred. He would have happily shared a cell with ten Farting Freds but prison policy dictated that a prisoner could only request one change of cell and he had already exhausted his quota.

  Boing...moan...boing...groan...boing...moan...boing.

  “Good, the moans and groans are getting more frequent,” Cleaver said to himself, now familiar with the pattern of Mason’s lovemaking. “He’s getting close to the vinegar stroke, won’t be long now thank Christ. Then maybe I can get some shuteye.”

  The noise from above suddenly stopped. But surprisingly without the extended moan, followed by a huge sigh of contentment, with which Mason usually reached his climax. Cleaver wondered why. Had Mason by some unfortunate chance died? Make that fortunate. Could it be that he’d had a heart attack whilst doing the business with Moist Moira? Cleaver had never wished death on anyone but he wished it on Mason right now. He sat up, put his hand to his ear in the time-honoured manner and listened for a few seconds. Shit. He could hear breathing. So the bastard hadn’t died after all. But at least the sex was over, the boings and the moans and the groans had ended and his tormentor was almost silent now; wonderfully, peacefully silent. Cleaver breathed a sigh of relief, lay down again, pulled the blanket up over him, snuggled up in the foetal position, muttered “Thank Christ that’s over with for another night,” and prepared to be welcomed into the arms of Morpheus.

  “I haven’t finished yet.”

  “What the....?” Cleaver sat bolt upright. Morpheus would have to wait for him a bit longer. “What did you just say?”

  “I haven’t finished yet.”

  “What? Why have you stopped then?”

  “I’m making it last.”

  Cleaver was gob-smacked. “What for?”

  “You know, like you do with a real woman. To satisfy her. I read it in ‘Loaded’. The bloke said if you make it last longer she’ll enjoy it more and if she enjoys it more you’ll enjoy it more.”

  Cleaver could scarcely believe his ears. “It’s a lump of rubber for Christ’s sake!”

  “Not to me it isn’t.”

  Boing...boing...boing...moan...boing...boing...boing.

  Cleaver slapped his forehead with the heel of his hand in despair. The moans were back to their normal level. And no groans. It went moans on their own, then moans and groans, but Mason was back to moans on their own again. How much longer was he going to be at it?

  “What can I think about?” called Mason, over Cleaver’s thoughts and the sound of the last two boings.

  “What?”

  “It said if you think about something else you can make it last longer.”

  “Think about what a twat you are.”

  The box containing Moist Moira, one of An Hour In Bed’s super-de-luxe models - ‘She’ll never let you down and we’ll bet you never let her down’ - also contained a brochure which listed the full range of the firm’s sex dolls. With nothing to read, having finished his library book, ‘Escape from Cell Thirteen’, and having read for the twentieth time the Prison Rules posted on the cell wall above the lavatory (so you had something to read while you were pissing, Cleaver had surmised), and also having read the graffiti on the cell walls for the twentieth time, the pick of which was ‘Prison Rules!’, Cleaver had glanced through An Hour In Bed’s literature. Bloody disgusting. He had a repugnance of all sex toys but a hatred of inflatable rubber women in particular. Bloody hell, they had one now with a realistic anus. It wasn’t enough to have a realistic fanny, after you’d fucked her you could turn her over and give her one up the arse!

  Inflatable rubber women hadn’t had such refinements back in the days when as a ten-year-old he’d stumbled across his father astride one; when he had innocently informed his mother of his father’s hobby by asking her what daddy was doing; when she had then seen for herself what daddy was doing and promptly walked out on him and left Cleaver motherless, with only his pervert of a father to bring him up.

  Boing...boing...boing...moan...boing...boing...boing....“I’m thinking about Man U. Wayne Rooney’s just taking a penalty to win the European Cup in the last minute of injury time.”

  “Well I hope he fucking misses.”

  Boing...boing...boing...moan...boing...boing...boing.

  Christ I don’t think I’ll be able to take another ten days of this, thought Cleaver. But he would have to take it. He’d lived up to Mrs Wisbech’s forecast and early release was now out of the question. He’d kicked that in the head when he’d called the Governor a twat for refusing to do anything about Mason. “It keeps him quiet,” the Governor had said, when Cleaver complained about the nocturnal missions and emissions of his cellmate.

  “Quiet?” echoed Cleaver. “He’s making more noise up there than a road drill. He sounds like a road drill. When he’s not sounding like a sludge pump.”

  “As long as it’s occupying his mind I couldn’t care less what he sounds like,” the Governor had replied, unimpressed by Cleaver’s observation. He was fully aware of how much trouble the minds of serial offenders like Mason could dream up if their thoughts weren’t engaged elsewhere. “He has a history of violence.”

  “I’ll have a history of violence if you don’t do something about it,” Cleaver had warned. But it hadn’t cut any ice; Mason had three years remaining of his sentence, Cleaver had little over a week, the Governor knew which one of them he wanted to keep happy. And there wasn’t much chance of Cleaver starting a history of violence, as he had threatened he might, at least not violence on Mason; his cellmate was a much bigger, harder man, otherwise Cleaver would have duffed him up already.

  “He’s scored! Rooney’s scored! We’ve won the cup, we’ve won the cup, ee–i-addio we’ve won the cup.” Boing...boing...boing...moan...boing...boing...boing.

  Mason and his rubber lover finally finished their exertions just before four-o-clock, Mason apparently having run out of things to think about. Now unable to sleep, a situation not made any more tolerable by Mason snoring his fool head off, Cleaver began to think about what he would do when this nightmare was over and he was released. Lots. His first priority would
be to shake up those Mary Anns at VAST. Shake them out of their lethargy and get them going, get them moving. Bollocks to sending letters to people asking them to stop buying sex toys, it was time for a more positive approach. And he was the one to supply it.

  ****

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The tour by Hugh Pugh of his newly inherited inflatable rubber woman factory had been going quite well until he was asked by Wainwright if he would like to take a break for a coffee before or after they visited the Realistic Vaginal Juices Department.

  Pugh had dined in the works canteen on a rather greasy mutton cobbler only an hour earlier and the thought of what the Realistic Vaginal Juices Department might contain, coupled with the rustic fare he had eaten, caused his already dodgy stomach to turn over and a small amount of vomit to find its way into his mouth. His attempt to swallow it might have been more successful had there not been a bit more cobbler coming up. The resultant collision between the two, with the concomitant cutting off of his air supply, had caused him to cough and splutter.

  “Are you all right, Mr Pugh,” said Wainwright, concerned. Up until now the new owner’s visit had been wholly satisfactory. The factory manager was anxious to keep it that way. Pugh was largely an unknown quantity and Wainwright feared the worse. The only time Aneurin Pugh had ever mentioned his brother, at the time the Transport Minister was attempting to push through a deeply flawed piece of road traffic legislation, he had referred to him as ‘that pillock of a brother of mine’.

  As yet however, Pugh hadn’t shown any signs of living up to Aneurin’s opinion of him. Indeed he had been quite affable. The only untoward incident had been when one of the girls in the Dyeing and Tinting Department had approached with a piece of paper in her hand and had shyly said to him: “Can I have your autograph please?” Pugh had stopped and smiled at her. “I’ve always been a big fan of yours, Mr Lloyd Webber,” the girl continued. Pugh had glared at her and told her to bugger off and get on with her work and bloody quick before he gave her the sack.

  Pugh quickly collected himself and brushed off the stomach-churning vomit-inducing incident as though it had never happened. “Wind. Pastry, it always does for me,” he informed Wainwright, forcefully; the last thing he wanted to do was exhibit any signs of weakness in front of his newly-acquired minions. He intended to rule his new factory with a rod of iron, to start as he meant to go on.

  “Oh dear,” said Wainwright. “Perhaps you should have gone for the tripe, cowheel and onion fricassee, it’s a big favourite in Ramsbottom.”

  His mind still half on the Realistic Vaginal Juices Department Pugh’s stomach turned another somersault at the mention of the canteen’s alternative lunch offering, big favourite in Ramsbottom or no. Apart from that he’d already had his fill of ram’s bottoms with the mutton. At this point he decided to bail out in case the factory manager had anything worse up his sleeve, sheep’s entrails on a bed of silage possibly. “I think I’ll call it a day, Wainwright,” he said. “I’ve already seen far more than I can fully take in during a single visit.”

  And he had. He’d seen the Mixing Department, where the constituent elements of the rubber solution from which the inflatable rubber women were manufactured were blended together; the Dyeing and Tinting Department, which dyed the rubber pink or various shades of brown; the Forming Department, which extruded the rubber solution into a basic rubber woman shape; the Breasts Department (where he had been shown the new novelty breasts, a pair of tits with ‘Ant’ written on one and ‘Dec’ on the other); the Improving Room, which trimmed and bonded the pairs of large breasts to the rubber women; (when Pugh had commented that all the rubber women seemed to have large breasts Wainwright had explained that they had once introduced a small-breasted rubber woman but of the one thousand manufactured and offered for sale nine hundred and ninety eight of them had remained unsold); the Head and Face Department, which moulded the heads for the rubber women, stuck a variety of faces on them and fitted them with a wig; the Painting Department, which painted lips and eyes and rouge on the faces and black leather boots on the legs of the budget models that weren’t to be equipped with real black leather boots; the Sexual Organ Department (known both as SOD and colloquially as the Pussy Room, judging by the chalk handwriting on the door), where the inflatable rubber women’s vaginas were made; the Genital Fitting Department, where they were fitted; and a few other departments which Pugh had already forgotten about.

  The main factory itself had been built around the beginning of the twentieth century as a small single story calico printing works. Since An Hour In Bed had taken over the premises in 1972 many extensions to the original building had been made to cope with the ever increasing demand for the company’s product, and although the many departments were still housed under one roof the interior of the factory resembled a labyrinth.

  Pugh had been surprised at the size and scope of the operation. Including the management the factory had a workforce of 110. An average of five thousand two hundred inflatable rubber women were made every week and sold in seventy three different countries. The prices ranged from £12.50 to £180, with an average of £45. Pugh quickly worked out, 5200 multiplied by 45, that this meant the factory was pulling in £212,000 a week, mathematics being his strong subject (although not quite strong enough as the correct total was £234,000). Additional revenue was generated by guided tours of the factory (free, but healthy post-tour sales and catering); a Factory Shop where ‘pick your own’ customers could take advantage of a twenty per cent discount; a monthly Farmer’s and Inflatable Rubber Woman’s Market (apparently inflatable rubber women were big with the local farming community, so the two were natural bed mates); and the Visitor Centre, which featured a half-hour video of the manufacturing process along with the opportunity to custom-make your own inflatable rubber woman.

  Pugh had thought that men would be attracted to working at an inflatable rubber woman factory like flies to a jam pot, so it came as a surprise to him when Wainwright informed him that the majority of the workforce was female. After mulling it over he hazarded a guess, which he voiced to Wainwright, that the reason might be because if they employed men they would probably spend half their time shagging the inflatable rubber women instead of making more of them. Wainwright knew to the contrary however, and informed Pugh that although a few men had taken advantage of both their position and the inflatable rubber women, especially the top-of-the-range models with realistic vaginal juices, it never lasted for very long.

  It was the ‘sweet factory syndrome’, he explained, whereby workers new to a sweet factory could hardly keep their hands off the sweets for the first day or so but thereafter largely left them alone. The same applied to male inflatable rubber women workers.

  He went on to tell Pugh that the reason over eighty per cent of the workforce was female was simply because most of the jobs were part time, which suited women more than men, and suited the management because they could pay them much lower wages. Pugh beamed on being given this news; he was one hundred per cent in favour of lower wages, especially when it was his pocket they would be coming out of.

  Pugh also learned that not only was An Hour In Bed the largest supplier of inflatable rubber women in the country but also the second largest in the world. (Molls Unlimited in America was the largest); that in 2008 the firm had won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise (but had been asked to keep quiet about it); and that inflatable rubber women were the company’s sole product.

  When car air bags had first been introduced Aneurin Pugh had toyed with the idea of getting into what was obviously going to be a large and lucrative market but had eventually decided against it, possibly feeling that an inflatable rubber woman suddenly emerging from the dashboard on impact would probably be a greater shock to the driver’s system than the crashing of their car.

  Dirigibles and weather balloons had also been considered. A prototype weather balloon had actually been made, in the shape of a one hundred and twenty feet long inflatable rubber w
oman (enabling it to double as a giant advert for the company’s product), but the project had been abandoned after pranksters had cut its guy ropes and it had disappeared into the night. It was reported a month later that after apparently getting a slow puncture after passing through a hail storm it had eventually come to earth in one of the more remote Solomon Islands, where the natives were now worshipping it as a fertility goddess.

  Passing through the warehouse on the way to the Second-hand, Organ

  Renewal and Refurbishment Department, Pugh had been surprised at the very high stock levels, palette upon palette of flat-pack boxes stacked to a height of fifty feet or more. However he hadn’t commented on this to Wainwright, crediting him with knowing what he was doing.

  “What time did you say the company secretary would be back?” Pugh now asked the factory manager.

  “Mr Plimmer? He said he’d try to get back for around four-thirty.”

  “He is aware of my visit?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Where did you say he’d gone?”

  “I don’t think I did.”

  Pugh waited for Wainwright to tell him. He showed no signs of doing so. Pugh fixed him with a baleful stare. Were they all this bloody thick at An Hour In Bed? If they were he’d soon be having a big sort out, the big stick would have to come out, by Christ would it. “So where has this Plimmer character gone to then, or is it a secret?”

  “No. No of course not. He had to go to the Inland Revenue office and the VAT people.”

  “Really?” Pugh was immediately suspicious; company secretaries aren’t summoned to Inland Revenue and VAT offices for nothing. He narrowed his eyes. “I hope there’s nothing wrong?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Mr Plimmer that,” said Wainwright, guardedly.

  “I intend to.”

  Pugh only just got the chance to question Plimmer as the company secretary didn’t get back until it had turned five-fifteen. The factory and offices closed for the day at five-thirty and Pugh was about to give up the ghost and head back for London when Plimmer finally arrived. Ten minutes later he was wishing he had never arrived.