At fourteen years of age, Abigail had left the straight road, dropping out in a spiral of self-loathing, mixed with more than a small amount of defiance and rebellion. A heady concoction that took her to places only the truly down and out would ever visit.
At fifteen, she had turned her back on the education system. The rules and regimentation of an orderly day did not fit within her chaos of life. Resolutely, she refused to go to school, sparking off furious rows with her mother, who in exasperation, washed her hands of her daughter and threw her out of the family home and into the clutches of the welfare state.
The fights were not all about school. Two women in a small space with convergent ideologies is a match made in the suburbs of hell. Increasingly, the close bond that had been mother and daughter eroded until the inevitable crash. It was predestined that they would clash in spectacular style, their characters being so close that it could be thought Abigail was cloned from her mother; it was predestined as an outcome, but vastly hastened by the sudden departure of her father.
Neither mother nor daughter had any inkling of his intention to up stakes and run from their lives and not leave a forwarding address. What he left were debts that amounted to twice their annual income, the hangover of his gambling, a house part owned by the bank, an ancient car with more curiosity value than ability to run or realise any money and an envelope on the table with two words scrawled in haste on the outside; I m sorry.
He had left with all of his clothing, what money was in the house and Abigail’s piggy bank that might have had twenty pounds in loose change in it. Her mother’s paste jewellery had been tipped out of her box over the bed so that he could take his birth certificate and some commemorative coins that had been collected and stored with her rings. They never heard from him or had any idea where he might have fled. For the two women left behind, there was no closure, it was as if he had suddenly died, they were emotionally and financially destitute and, because he hadn’t died, had no income as such from a pension or insurance.
It wasn’t just their meagre valuables he took, just as effectively, he took from them the bond they had shared, leaving them bereft of even the ability to turn to the other in solace and comfort. They blamed each other and themselves simultaneously, drawing lines and barriers that neither had the tools or inclination to ever remove.
At sixteen, Abigail was on a fast track to oblivion. For some short time, a guy she met on the road someplace, had fed her, then introduced her to drugs and then put her to work. She had been popular at first, a nice fresh face, an unblemished teenager; blonde haired and firm breasted, she had been all the rage. It lasted for a short time at least, but then, as drugs always do, her body started to show the rigours of abuse and deprivation of food.
In a matter of months, Abigail was totally on her own, relying on handouts and whatever she could scrape from the back streets. Tricking where she could to raise enough cash for her next hit, then crashing wherever she stopped until the craving for heroine woke her and the process started all over again the next day.
That was how Paul found her. Alone in the street, soaked through by incessant rain that had steadily drizzled all day and hardly able to stand from enforced DT’s. He was pretty much the worse for wear himself; the party he had left a little earlier was taking its toll, or at least the amount of alcohol he had consumed. He weaved an erratic path through Bermondsey, blindly staggering his way to his converted warehouse beside the river.
It was not how Abigail liked to remember it in later times; instead, she concocted a story of how he had entered the smoking room at the office, nervous and unsure of his new surroundings and the people he found himself in company with. First days had that effect on most; she liked his vulnerability and struck up a conversation. They had gone out for a meal or something; he was new to the area and had yet to find his bearings. She couldn’t be certain, but it was either the third or forth date that they fumbled around in bed, hardly a momentous occasion and somewhat less than memorable. It almost finished the relationship there and then, but they got to know each other and sex gradually got better. A more acceptable story than the truth; She even got to believe in it and covered up the past effectively, but that is some way ahead.
She was curled up almost into a ball; perched on the kerb with her arms tucked around her knees. Abigail rocked slowly back and forth, waiting for the cramps to subside before trying to find some shelter and if she could, hook up with one of her street outlets for her daily trip to a less painful place.
Oblivious of the rain that had soaked through his jacket, shirt and everything else he wore, Paul sat beside the girl, even matching her rocking motion with his own. “Twenty pounds for French,” She informed him without looking up. “Or twenty five for sex; thirty for Greek.” “What?” “I said, twenty for French, twenty five for sex or thirty for Greek.” She still hugged her knees to her chest, but glanced at him, waiting for his choice and the exchange of money. She needed the cash. “I ain’t got a clue what you’re talking about.” “Listen mister, do ya want to fuck me, get sucked or what? It’s gonna cost ya whatever.” She impatiently asked him, pausing her rocking and reinforcing each syllable with a nod of her head. “Don’t want to fuck you.” He was somewhat confused and more than a little affronted at the same time, he was trying to make some sense of how the conversation had started so badly. “I don’t want to fuck you.” “Well if you ain’t here for business, are ya carrying?” He shrugged, both shoulders almost touching his ears in an exaggerated expression. It seemed a safe way to answer her question that he didn’t understand at all. “If you ain’t carrying and you ain’t here for business, you can fuck off. Okay?” She turned and looked at him full in the face, her lips curled back in a snarl as she mouthed the words.
Paul was almost sobered by the vehemence of her voice. But, more than the viciousness of the sound was her dead eyes. She looked at him, but the expression of her words didn’t reach her eyes. It was as if he was looking into two pools of dead, grey water. They stared back at him, utterly lifeless, but at the same time, unfathomable in depth. He realised that she might have been pretty once, but was now emaciated, her skin sagging like curtains around the sockets of her eyes and cheeks where the fatty tissues under had been used up by her body. Her hair hung in lank strands, dirty and uncut or cared for and he became aware of her smell for the first time. Involuntarily, he shifted away from her a few inches, shuffling his bottom along the quartz of the kerbstone.
If he were to be asked later, it would be quite likely that Paul would not be able to provide a good reason for his actions, but without any thought, he grabbed her arm, painfully aware at how his hands easily encircled her, then yanked her to her feet and began to drag her like a rag doll along behind him. She started screaming and feebly trying to tug her arm away from his grip. “I ain’t got no money, so it ain’t worth robbing me.” She screamed at him, spittle flying from her lips and adding to the rain already seeping through his clothes to his skin. Paul didn’t answer her, but just continued to drag her unceremoniously by the arm towards his home. If ya gonna rape me you bastard, you might as well do it right here and now and let me get on with things. But, Paul ignored this as well.
Eventually, they made it to his recently moved into apartment in the converted warehouse. She had continued to scream and rage at him loud enough to wake half of London. At three in the morning, anyone on the street was far more interested in their own private business and disinclined to intervene with what was probably a domestic spat, so their progress was completely unimpeded and not noteworthy.
He adjusted his grip on her arm to unlock the security deadlocks and punch in the numbers for the alarm. Then adjusting his grip again, he shoved her from under the armpits up the staircase and into his new residence. At the top of the stairs, Paul paused and took a second to think, now that he had her here, where to put her. Throughout the trek to his apartment, he hadn t given too much thought to why or what he was going to do with this skeletal girl, just a singular purpose of rescuing Abigail from the street.
Ho opted for the spare bedroom. It was unfurnished as yet and he could lock her in. There was an old loft access where the floor sacks were hauled up, but it was two storeys up and concrete below so escape was not feasible through there.
Unceremoniously, he dragged her to the room and pushed her inside, pulling the door shut even as she span to claw at the closing portal. The key turned and her yelling was muffled to a tolerable level.
So began her slow and painful break from the monkey. Days when Abigail couldn’t control her body, shaking and going into spasm. Unable to keep food down at times, even when she could be forced to ingest anything solid, what ever she swallowed was ejected from her, forcefully.
Abigail could not control her temperature, alternately shivering and sweating. She had no control of auto-functions and really, became child like or incontinent as an aged person might after their reasoning leaves. He threw away most of her clothing, replacing it from items bought in a charity shop then, throwing them away as well when she soiled them beyond redemption. He found that tracksuits were easiest to clean and lasted longer then pretty much anything else. He would remove her dirty clothing in the early days, dispassionately looking at her emaciation and the needle tracks in her arms, feet and groin. He was as far from sexual interest as it was possible to be, the sight of her body made him cringe and renewed his resolve to heal her.
After four or five weeks that seemed like years, she began to settle down, managing to take sustenance and process it in the normal way. Her violent moods subsided and, gradually, like the regeneration of scar tissue, she became a person again, even holding conversations with Paul, but always as a long-term hostage might talk to their keeper. She held back and would not open, even on mundane topics, giving only enough information to be an active party in the dialogue.
Paul still kept her locked in the room, knowing that at the first opportunity, she would bolt and be lost for ever with an inevitable outcome, one needle too many perhaps or a violent death in an alley. He still didn’t know why he was doing this for her, someone he didn’t know at all, a complete stranger. But, he recognised in her, something of the wounded animal that triggers an emotive response occasionally; he put it down to that.
Paul decided after eight weeks of captivity that she could be trusted to have the run of the warehouse apartment. He left the door to her room unlocked and open. Abigail didn’t emerge from the safety of her cot for two days, but then stepped timidly over the threshold at his encouragement. She still had something of the trapped animal about her; each step could be considered furtive or exploratory, keeping her escape route firmly fixed and ready for flight, straight back to the familiarity of her room with its cot and bucket.
The cold turkey was over to a degree, at least the physical part was, but deep mental scars take far longer to heal, if ever fully. Abigail was scared at a fundamental level, leaving her unable to rationalise or function properly.
They began to eat together. Simple food that he thought she would be able to digest; soups and pasta being their staple diet. There were beneficial side effects; Abigail began to put on weight, filling out bit by bit while Paul lost some of his excess and felt the fitter for it. But, often as with television or music, her attention wandered until she sat there, almost catatonic in a far away place, her food left to cool into a congealed mass. Over a period of weeks, the vacant spaces became less and less, while her cognitive state became longer. She chose to be in her room for longer times, but with the door open and not as any kind of barrier. Paul bought her a television and a radio so she could be on her own if she wanted. He bought books for her to read and allowed her to do as she pleased, but insisted that they eat together, cook and wash up.
He was pleasantly surprised to find that Abigail was a good cook, inventive and adventurous with everyday ingredients. She continued to regain the flesh over her bones.
She had been with him for nearly six months now.
Although they were sharing time and talking, Paul still didn’t fully trust her, believing that her full recovery was still a long way off in all probability that the emotional scars were only scabbed over and could be reopened at any time. He had to go to work. Each day he took great care in deadlocking the entrance door so that she couldn’t open it from the inside. It became something of a ritual, turning the key once, hearing the tongue engage then a second turn that locked the door and disabled the latch on the other side. So it was a shock for him to find his door wide open and swinging one day after work. Fearing that the bird had flown the nest, Paul ran into the building, yelling her name, with a sinking feeling, knowing she wouldn’t be there. Abstractly, his mind took in the fact that the lock or door hadn’t been damaged in anyway. His calls went unanswered; the apartment was alone.
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For an hour or so, Paul wandered around feeling lost and a failure. She had been making such good progress. Her body had pretty much recovered from the rigors of drug abuse and the regular intake of food had regained much of her natural body mass and skin tone. He put the television on then turned it off again. Inserted a CD in the player, but didn’t press play. He couldn’t settle into any one place, his mind in turmoil; should he go out and look for her or stay and hope she came back?
Abigail had the advantage of him where the street was concerned. She would know the hidey-holes better than most of the city dwellers and certainly better than he would.
He was still dithering when the entrance door banged shut. Abigail’s tousled head appeared over the banister with a smile plastered across her lips. Wordlessly, Paul rushed over to her as she reached the top tread and threw his arms around her in a bear like embrace. Relief and other emotions coursed through his veins, mixed with a large helping of adrenalin.
I thought I’d lost you he managed to breathe into her hair. Then, without waiting for her to respond, he kissed her mouth, crushing her lips against his teeth and taking her breath completely. Paul picked her up from the floor, her weight easily distributed in his arms. He continued to kiss her, breaking only to gasp and then cover her with his mouth again as they traversed the floor to his bedroom.
Her head hit the doorjamb, but neither was really aware of it, the moment too consuming for external stimuli to have much effect. Her clothes were almost ripped off of her slender body as his hit the floor in a blur of motion and desperation to become naked. They collapsed on the bed in a mingle of arms, legs and hands that grasped and gripped. She wriggled and managed to lie on her back while manoeuvring him between her parted thighs.
There was no nicety about their coupling. Abigail thrust her hips forward in unison as Paul thrust into her body in a union that had one common goal. He fucked into her as she fucked him back in a riot of rhythm. It was sex in its rawest state that culminated in their respective explosion of orgasm, she first, then Paul, feeling her wetness splash against his inner thigh, shot his seed with a final pelvic thrust that had her head hitting the wall.
The act was completed in little more than a few minutes, but the intensity of emotion and urgency had made it an experience that left them bereft of the ability to talk for a while. Instead, they lay together, her head in the crook of his arm while he stroked her neck, shoulders and breast as they calmed down from the initial frenzy of lust and then they laughed. They laughed until laughter became a little crazy, resulting in hiccups that had them giggling all over again. What is Greek anyway? Paul asked after the expression she had used when he first met her popped into his mind. Abigail lifted her chin and looked into his eyes as she told him that Greek was in the ass and that it was something she had endured on too many occasions. It was time for her to bear her soul and tell him just what it was like on the street. Abigail let him know of the times she had been fucked by many men at once until cum was dripping out of every orifice. How she was used and abused then discarded like a Christmas puppy. How some guys liked to beat up on her or how they shit and pissed over her nakedness while her pimp looked on and applauded. Abigail told him that after a while, she didn’t care what they did to her, that pain hardly registered and her holes were only entries into her body that fed her need for more drugs. She told him of a pregnancy that was beaten out of her by the pimp. She told him all of it; the worst times and that all she had to look forward to was death from an overdose. Killing herself would have been easy, but the craving for heroine kept her alive for the next hit.
During her sad tale, Paul had stroked and caressed Abigail, soothing and supporting her as it unfolded. He paused as she concluded, his hands ceasing movement. She took it as rejection, thinking that he was too disgusted by the deprivations she had sunk to. She cried, tears coursing over her cheeks. She sobbed in despair, unable to articulate her utter desolation. But, then he resumed his caress and turned her head to face him. Gently and with great care as if she were a fragile doll, Paul kissed her mouth and drew her body to him. Relief flooded her; she clasped him and kissed him back, forcing her tongue between his teeth to explore his mouth. “One day,” She murmured, “we will do Greek and it will be the right time, but for now, I think French is the language of the day.”
With those words, she bit his lower lip and then shoved her self down, kissing his chest, stomach and then his cock. Paul relaxed back, tucking a pillow under his head so he could watch and pulling her blonde hair away from her face, studied her lips as they slowly parted and swallowed his shaft.
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Abigail expertly sucked him into her mouth, drawing her cheeks in to create a vacuum as she lifted, then blowing them out as she descended again. Gradually, she increased the depth of his penetration, allowing a little more of him to pass her lips in a slow, tantalising rhythm, feeling him stiffen and leak small globules of pre-cum. She adjusted her position and sat on his legs so that he would not thrust, she wanted to make all the movement so that the exquisite sensation would be magnified.
Paul hardened at her insistence. The warmth and sucking of her mouth drew blood into his organ, building the pressure, but oh so slowly. It was almost a delicious pain between feelings of relief as she sank back down his shaft. He could never remember having a woman give him so much intense pleasure from fellatio before. It wasn’t a first for him, but certainly was a first in the delicious thrill it was affording his neural network.
By now, she had him in the back of her throat, still keeping the slow but insistent tempo, just longer strokes. She could feel his imminent release and ignored his feeble attempt to lift her off of his pulsing cock. Abigail was intent on taking him to the edge and beyond; she had every intention of swallowing his cum. The trick was to know exactly when he would explode and make sure it was on a down stroke that had him right at the back of her mouth. Paul made it easier for her to judge the precise moment, he groaned and mini thrust. Abigail lifted her head and then began a long descent down his shaft, feeling him dry heave first and then shoot the first of three or four spurts. She didn’t stop sliding him into her until his cock was fully down her gullet and her lips grounded against his pubic bone. She was rewarded by his final spurts that she swallowed comfortably. She lay still, keeping him in her mouth until his tremors subsided and he was totally spent.
So began their life together in a loving relationship. Their sexual partnership developed in a fruition of learning and awareness that progressed from the one-two-one sexual exploration to them joining a club.
The journey for them was not so long perhaps, but had many twists and turns until they had exhausted every conceivable position and scenario between two people. Abigail gave herself to Paul in love and implicit trust. Paul accepted her love and returned it as fully. Together, they set off on a voyage of sexual discovery.
– to be continue –
