Tom pulled his car up on the opposite side of the street and turned the headlights off, the engine still running in case he got cold feet. He had heard things, sure, but is that all they were? Rumours? He could be making a huge mistake. Tom drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and looked at the house to his left, illuminated poorly by the lights of the adjacent homes.
616 Alloway Road was a large, old residence in a state of disrepair, bordering on dilapidation. The front garden was overgrown and the wooden fence, rotten and ruined, had half collapsed into the forest of grass.
He turned the engine off and reclined into the ancient cracked leather of the car seat, sighing as he looked out at the tumbledown property. He twisted the wedding band around his finger, but it wouldn't budge. He licked at the digit before slipping it into his mouth, trying not to gag as he sucked and tongued at the gold ring. Another hard pull but there was still no give.
The doorbell was old and faulty and Tom had to give it a few good presses to get it to chime his arrival. The melody was distorted, the pitch shifting as it rang. Tom waited for someone to answer, doubt plaguing him as he lingered in the dimly lit doorway. He fought the urge to turn tail and run, to get back into his car and go home to his wife. He shuffled his feet nervously and took a small step backwards, his resolve finally crumbling.
Just then there was a click from the other side of the door, and slowly it slid open, juddering as it scraped across the stone threshold while the loose hinges did all they could to stop the door falling completely free of the rotten timber frame.
The first thing Tom noticed as the heavy door was dragged open was the smell. It was like opening a refrigerator and realizing something had gone off, but you couldn't quite put your finger on what. The next thing he noticed was the woman who answered the door.
Her hair was a frizzy of dirty grey strands. Her porcelain white face looked ghostly, an image enhanced by the dark rings around her eyes and the chewed, chapped nature of her pale lips. She was wearing a long faded grey-brown knitted sweater, full of holes and stretched from all the washing and hanging it must have gone through. Her legs were bare, dirty and unshaven. The woman used the sleeve of her sweater to wipe her nose, sniffling as she stepped back, gesturing for him to enter. Tom nodded and stepped inside, pulling the broken door closed behind him.
He walked into the entranceway and glanced around nervously. The rumours said her home was filthy but that wasn't strictly true, although it was definitely messy inside. Tom noticed the fine film of dust that blanketed the old wooden furniture in the wide hallway. Clothes of all kinds, he observed, were strewn across the floor. The piled clumps dotted around the domicile were numerous, but there were no signs of food scraps or littered garbage nor any traces of semi-feral animals that you might have expected.
The woman shuffled as she peeled the knitted garment from her naked torso, wriggling out of it before discarding it amongst the rest of the clothing. She stood before him as naked as the day she was born. Her body was slender and lithe, her breasts pert and high. The pale skin of her arms and torso adorned with faded tattoos, obscured by the accumulated filth. Her sex was hidden beneath an overgrown mop of dark pubic hair.
She wasn't what Tom had expected to find here. Not after Kirk had told them all about her. "The slut who would fuck anyone who came to her door" was what he'd called her. A part of Tom hadn't believed his friend, but the stories about her were widespread. They were whispered in hushed tones among groups of men congregating in dimly lit pubs and on lonely night shifts at the plant. Tom had thought about her every night after he heard the tales, lying in bed next to his sleeping wife. Tom loved Kathy. He truly did. She was the mother of his children, all now grown and gone, and while their sex life was hardly the raging inferno of lust it had once been, it was still burning.
Yet even after a night of passionate love making Tom would cuddle with his naked wife and he would think of her. The woman they called "Dee". He would overhear snippets of hushed conversations where groups of men gathered. Some claimed to have friends who had visited the lubricious lady, a very few even boasted about experiencing her for themselves. Tom often wondered how many had really come to see the woman, how many had lost their nerve and fled, and how many had stayed, even after smelling her home and seeing her unkempt appearance. Tom's mind raced as he tried to think of something to say by way of introduction.
"I'm Thomas." he blurted out, pausing before opening his mouth to add "Tom."
He tried to think of something sexy and clever to add that would break the ice and endear him to her, but instead he stood there silently, staring at the woman. The grime that coated her also disguised her age. Was there a young twenty something under there? Or perhaps a healthy fifty year old?
Tom realised that she was taller than he first thought, almost six feet tall if he had to hazard a guess. He raised his hand and reached out towards her, more reflex than planning, an involuntary movement born of his desire to touch her flesh but she pulled away and turned her back to him. Tom froze, his hand outstretched and hovering in the air, but he sensed no malice and felt no rejection. He admired her still, unwashed and ungroomed as she was. Her back shapely and, like her arms and torso, intricately decorated with a faded illustration.
Dee gestured for him to follow as she lead him back into the hallway, weaving through the debris that littered the house. She led him to a carpeted staircase, the fabric was possibly once a resplendent scarlet, now just a faded, reddish brown umber, patchy and worn. They began to climb the stairs, the wood cracking and creaking beneath them. Tom watched as his hostess ascended before him, her hips swaying hypnotically, his eyes transfixed by her sex that flashed him intermittently through the forest of hair between her legs as she walked ahead of him.
At the top of the stairs, they entered another smaller hallway, still littered with strewn clothing. They walked past a couple of doors before stopping at a third, the pink paint flaking from the aged wooden door. The woman reached out, her slender fingers coiling around the metal door knob, twisting until the door clicked open. She pushed the door ajar and turned on her heel.
"Get ready for me," she commanded, as she walked away from him. Her voice was surprisingly husky, like hot coal simmered in whisky. Tom stepped into the room while the woman disappeared further down the dark hallway, without even a glance back at her guest.
