Split
Kate and her boyfriend, on holiday in the Yorkshire moors, arrive in a strange village called Heddlestone whose only attraction is a puppet museum. One night, they stumble upon an odd scene unfolding inside Heddlestone’s Working Men’s Club. A woman in ghoulish make-up and shabby ballerina costume, stands alone in the middle of the room, raised arms tethered to a rope. She’s soon joined by two men. Kate and her boyfriend (‘you’ in the scene below) stand outside in the dark, watching through the window.
I wanted to be that woman. I was scared for her and yet I ached to be in her place, two strong horny men prowling around me. Her powerlessness was horribly appealing. She was entirely in their hands and they were randy and reckless. God, what luxury.
‘Do you think she’s okay?’ you asked.
A small moth fluttered at the window before settling there, its cottony wings mottled with silver-grey, camouflaged against the dirty glass.
‘I’d say so, yeah,’ I replied, and I cupped a hand to your crotch, thrilled to find you hard within your jeans.
The bearded courtier walked away, out of view again, and the first guy, the bruiser, took up his position, standing before the woman. He fluffed up her skirts in a gauzy snowstorm, reaching beneath them. With his feet apart, his arm hidden beneath her nets, he began to work her, just a slight movement of his elbow to betray what he was doing, his tattooed band flexing on his beefy arm. Only when one of them moved could we see her face. For a while she was expressionless, just a black-eyed, rosy-cheeked mask of madness, then her mouth was open, her neck taut, her breasts jutting. We watched her panting silently, her body writhing, her arms tugging on the rope.
She seemed to climax in a frenzy of pulling and gasping and immediately the man untied her. His mean expression faded and he kneaded her upper arms, the two of them talking normally as she rolled her shoulders and rubbed her wrists. The courtier came into view again, and he was dragging across the lino an old gymnast’s vaulting bar, the suede of its padded beam worn and patchy.
I hadn’t seen one since school days and the mere sight of it was enough to make my stomach churn in anxiety. I associated it with public humiliation. I hated games, especially gymnastics. I was always too chunky, too soft and fleshy to go hurtling about as if my body were light as a feather.
Together, the men moved the vault into the centre. Without a word, the woman leant over it, her upper body lying along its length, her sheepskin boots just touching the ground. She wriggled for comfort as the bruiser untied her red sash and wound it around her body and the beam, knotting it so she was bound to the apparatus.
The woman was calm, lying there with her cheek pressed to the bar, her panda eyes two holes in her panstick face. The man walked around, appraising her from different angles. My heart was thumping. He had such a cool arrogant manner, such a swagger in his attitude. His face was impassive and he showed no emotion either when, with a couple of sharp tugs, he pulled down the woman’s skirt, tossing them aside. Her pale buttocks were bared, and he looked at them as he fiddled with his zip.
His jeans crumpled around his knees and he shuffled closer, penetrating her with a quick jab. He fucked her with a light, casual manner, one hand pressing on her back as he gazed blankly ahead. It was like seeing an animal fuck, his pumping so regular and functional. Every now and then, he glanced down, perhaps to check if she was still breathing. She seemed so unimportant to him he might have been masturbating alone.
I couldn’t take my eyes off his thighs. They were immense and glorious, full of curves and muscle, sheathed in fine hair.
Next to me, you said, ‘Ah, c’mon, fuck.’ In a hurry, I began undoing your fly and you undid your belt, moving into position behind me, stones scuffing up around us. We might have looked over our shoulders to check we were alone. I don’t recall. In London, we’d have been scanning for CCTV, wondering if grainy footage of us was going to end up in some murky corner of the internet. But not in Heddlestone. There’s nothing like that here. There’s no need. Everybody watches everybody else.
Do you think we were alone that night? I doubt it. Someone, somewhere would have been watching, night-vision binoculars trained on us, two unknown figures fucking in a ghostly, green-tinged world.
You lifted up my skirt and I shimmied down my tights. The air on my skin was cool and thrilling, and the exposure made me loosen. I felt earthy and lewd, and I could picture my buttocks, plump pale moons surrounded by dark rumpled fabric. Urgent and hard, you drove into my wetness, clasping me around the waist as you thrust. My arse cheeks jiggled as your hips bumped up against their flesh. The stone crunched beneath our feet.
Flakes of paint, I noticed, had chipped off the window frame and the corners were furred with black mould. Beyond the glass, the bearded guy was grinning at the woman, thrusting out his pelvis and rubbing his crotch with comic lewdness. Then he unbuttoned, wanking close to her face before he stripped completely. In one swift movement, he straddled the vault, edging forward until his erection was by her head.
The women raised her mouth for him, her body jolting from the impact of the hulk pumping her at the other end. Eagerly, she swallowed his cock and I could see the bulge in her cheek as she sucked up and down. He wound her blonde hair around a fist, exchanging a few words with the other guy who was still ramming her with detached regularity, his arse cheeks hollowing above those giant thighs.
You and I weren’t so cool. Your finger was on my clit, tapping as we fucked. Where I braced myself, the stone was cold and rough beneath my palms. We got into a good rhythm, me slamming back as you shoved high and hard. The air snagged in my throat as I panted, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming. Just keep me there. Just …’ I could feel that soft, gorgeous easiness in my hips and thighs, waves of it carrying me closer. And at the same time, voices from the village road. ‘There, yes,’ I urged, desperate to come and not be interrupted. ‘There, there.’
You nuzzled past my hair, your breath warm on the back of my neck, teeth scraping, half-kissing, half-biting as you fucked and frigged me to climax. Indoors, the bearded guy closed his eyes, head tipped back, mouth parting slackly. He might have been coming, I don’t know. But his small moment of surrender nudged me past my limit and I hit orgasm, gasping quietly. There was no time for you.
