No Future Ch 57

LVII

Sinners, Poor and Wretched

Olive

2083

This wasn't how it was supposed to be, thought Olive. It was supposed to have been a quick transaction. She'd pay the cash, get a discount by offering a blowjob as collateral and then take the packets of brown crystal back to Oz who'd pay her double what she paid for the stuff. And maybe after that she'd treat her daughter Emily to a burger and fries after school.

Instead, she was writhing around in a filthy back alley outside the decrepit slum where she'd just been robbed, raped and discarded.

There was nothing she could do, of course. You couldn't expect help from the fuzz. They were no fucking use and never there when you might need them. All they were good for was offering protection for as long as you paid them a cut of the action.

If only she'd been able to get help from the police on this occasion. Then the cunts wouldn't have taken advantage of her. They wouldn't have ripped off her clothes and fucked her serially, violently and repeatedly. They wouldn't have stolen the few hundred pound notes she'd borrowed from Oz to do business and they wouldn't have thrown her into the alley when they'd spunked all over her.

Olive now doubted whether there'd been any brown to begin with. They wouldn't have given it to her even if there was any. Was Oz in on this? Was it his idea? He was a real fucking cunt however good a fuck he was.

And now she was lying bruised, battered and, from between her legs, bleeding. And it wasn't just from her abused vagina that the blood was seeping out. Her nose was pressed against the kerb. Her hair was pasted over her bare shoulders and flecked with coal dust and rubbish. Her limbs were splayed out awkwardly. Her clothes were filthy and ripped and had been tossed over her naked body, but Olive was still too bruised and shocked to tidy herself up.

It took a while for her body to recover from the immediate pain. But recover she always did. This wasn't the first time she'd been raped. Nor was it the first time she'd been robbed. But the timing could hardly be worse. The Fat Cunt Ozzibanjo would be coming round any day now for his dosh and Olive already owed two weeks' rent. Would a blowjob be enough to hold him off this time? Would she have to let him fuck her? Last time she let him he'd rammed his fat cock up her arse and that fucking hurt. Then there was Emily whining about how all her clothes didn't fit her any more. Well, she was a growing child so what would you expect, but even Olive could see that in her ill-fitting clothes her daughter resembled some kind of fucking Turkmenistani in a Russian refugee camp. Olive, on the other hand, probably looked more like one of those nuclear fall-out victims in Jordan or Palestine. Only her wounds didn't come from some fucking big mushroom cloud.

Olive lifted herself up onto her knees and felt the start of a bruise growing across her cheek. Her face had only just lost the blue traces of its last encounter with a fist where Mick had punched her during an argument over a crack pipe. He'd fucked her well and proper and still kept the fucking pipe. Bastard! He wouldn't be getting a Christmas card from her. Not that Olive ever gave anyone Christmas cards anyway.

There wasn't just the Fat Cunt landlord. There was also Oz who'd want either the smack he was expecting or his grand back. Olive had no illusions about Oz's charitable inclinations or, in truth, his total absence of them. He might be a good fuck but he'd probably still fuck her over.

Olive sat up on the alleyway kerb and was for the first time aware that she wasn't alone. There were the usual bags of rubbish, but these were all torn open by urchins and urban foxes who'd been scavenging for what the better-off could afford to discard. There were broken bottles, the remnants of a bicycle that had been pulled apart and some ancient electrical devices that had been disembowelled for any part of potential value. There was also a tramp sitting several metres away who hadn't noticed Olive and probably still wouldn't register she was there if she'd hit him with a brick. He was almost certainly out of it on crack or smack or maybe just alcohol (although the last was by far the most expensive). At the other end of the alleyway were three young children, probably not much older than Emily. Nevertheless, Olive wasn't to be fooled. Children were often the worst. She'd heard of people being knifed or having their throats slashed just for a sandwich or a battered old computer tablet. Street urchins had no morals or principles. Just as they also had no homes or parents.

What was now apparent to Olive was that it wasn't safe for her to stay here.

Although she'd not even begun recovering from her ordeal, Olive struggled to her feet and squeezed her pale blue-bruised frame into her torn tee-shirt and denim shorts and retrieved the battered old cheap plastic handbag that the fuckers had so considerately left with her. It still had all the stuff that a woman always needed that no man had any use for, like lipstick, tampons and condoms. However, it no longer held her purse, her private stash or the keys to her flat. But, fuck, the lock hadn't been working properly for months and any cunt could just push his way in anyway.

Olive had to think a bit. There were several ways in which she was fucked. Not just a bit fucked, but royally so. She was more fucked than a whore with a broom-handle shoved up her cunt. She staggered out of the alleyway past the tramp and his personal pool of vomit that had stained his threadbare jeans and was still spreading out between his knees. She ventured into the hustle and bustle of the high street where she was safer than she would be anywhere else in the world.

There wasn't just Oz and the Fat Cunt, was there? There were the other creditors after her. Could she forever continue to dodge Igor as he went from flat to flat on the estate, smashing down doors with his baseball bat and grabbing stuff off the shelves? He was a man who frequently took his enthusiasm for administering violence beyond just the doors and windows. As a kid, he'd had several stints in borstal for GBH when the police were organised enough to do something about the young thugs in the manor. Olive should never have borrowed that tenner off Igor when she so badly needed to score. It was probably thousands she owed now. And then there was Kev whose face was criss-crossed by knife scars with a clear imprint of a bottle across his glass eye. He was after the hundred quid Olive had borrowed when the Fat Cunt was being especially obnoxious.

Olive straightened herself and glanced at her reflection in a shop window. As she did so, she also spotted the reflection of a small boy standing beside her.

"Oi!" Olive yelled. "What the fuck are you looking at?"

Of course, there was no real need to ask. Olive looked truly wretched. She was bruised and beaten and her nipples could hardly be hidden through her tee-shirt's torn cloth. If sartorial standards hadn't slid so dramatically in recent years, Olive would have been arrested for vagrancy and indecency. Instead, there were few places these days where she'd look out of place.

As Olive staggered onwards in no particular direction she reflected on how much of a shitty mess her life was. It resembled nothing more than the sight of festering turds in a toilet that refused to flush. Her life was definitely not in a place where she'd like it to be. She had creditors who'd be happy to kill her if she didn't make good on her debts. She had a daughter who lived in the same squalor and filth as her mother. She was serially fucked by her serial boyfriends, when she wasn't being concurrently fucked at parties or, as had happened just now, in the pursuit of business. She lived in a shit hole in Hackney: itself the arsehole of London. There was nothing that was good in her life. Even the drugs she took to make life more bearable were just contributing to the same spiral of failure. When would she graduate from an occasional smoker to a full-fledged user with fucking hypodermic needles and the whole palaver of terminal drug abuse? Was this what her daughter, Emily, deserved in her short life: a mother who was well on the way to become a junkie, a whore and a vagrant?

But what could Olive do about it?

Without money there was no point in even thinking about catching a bus. You couldn't even get on without a ticket, let alone try and dodge paying the fare and risk a fine. But here she was in fucking West Ham fucking miles from home. And she didn't even have a phone with an online map to guide her back.

So she was fucked. Not just raped and robbed, but comprehensively fucked.

The best way she could think of getting home was to find a bus route that led back to Hackney and follow it bus-stop by bus-stop until she eventually saw something she recognised. There was nothing familiar to her round here, although West Ham was just another shithole like Hackney Marshes. Although slightly better appointed, it couldn't be called prosperous. Beggars lined the roadside alongside street-merchants who cobbled shoes, stitched clothes, and sold dubiously obtained second-hand goods. Amongst the pawn-shops, charity stores and discount outlets, there were one or two traditional shops. There was a shop that sold batteries and reconditioned electrical goods. There was a cut-price supermarket with the traditional iron bars to protect it from armed intruders. There was even a newsagent that sold editions of the few remaining newspapers and magazines still available in hard copy. This wasn't the West End of London where the stores were manned by security guards who frisked you as you left, but it wasn't a bombed-out Tel Aviv slum either.

It took a long time for Olive to return home to Hackney. It was dark by the time she got back and her clothes were still saturated from having walked through a rain shower which had at least washed off some of the filth that had adhered to her skin. The walk hadn't been easy and she was sure there was a much better route than the way she'd come, but she'd stuck to the main roads where she was less likely to come to grief in an encounter with a violent teenage gang. Once you were outside your manor, you were fair game for any cunt who took a fancy to you. And there was fucking no one who'd protect you: most certainly not the fuzz who when they were in evidence at all were on their bicycles or guarding important buildings. The only time you'd ever seek the services of the police was when you knew it was as much to their advantage as yours.

Emily wasn't at home when Olive got back, but Oz was. He was sitting on the sofa and flicking through the television channels.

"Where's Emily?" Olive asked.

"Why the fuck should I know?" said Oz as he took a swig from the can of lager he had in his hand.

"Hasn't my daughter been home at all while you've been here?"

"You mean your brat?" said Oz. "Thought you'd meant some other bint. She came back but left with her friend when she saw me. Some Arab kid... But never mind that. You got my stash?"

Olive shook her head. "I was robbed," she said. "The fuckers robbed me."

"You fucking liar!" said Oz angrily as he cracked his palm across Olive's face. "You scarpered with my dosh more like. Where's my fucking stash?"

As Olive lay on the floor nursing a fresh bruise and a small bead of blood that was dripping from her nose, she could see that this was going to be a very long night.