A Haunting
THE small town I grew up in was beginning to feel like a prison, so when a job came up in a town near the coast, I saw it as an opportunity to escape. Upon arrival, I booked into a bed and breakfast advertised in the local paper. It seemed ideal. The rent was affordable and it was only five minutes' walk to the factory where I would be working. But the bed and breakfast was not how I imagined it would be. Run by Mrs Kenton, it was more along the lines of a workers' hostel, with half-a-dozen rooms upstairs fitted out as bedsits. Everything in the building was older than me, including the other guests, who were exclusively male. That said, it did at least serve breakfast, with everyone eating together downstairs at a long table in the dining room. A full English; it came with fried tomatoes, mushrooms, bacon, sausages, eggs, black pudding and beans and as much toast and tea as everyone could manage before their departure for work, with Mrs Kenton bustling backwards and forwards from the kitchen.
Being in my early twenties, everyone seemed old to me, but I would guess that she was in her mid-fifties, though she may have been older. Small and wiry, she had jet-black hair tied up in a tight bun and she seemed to be always on the move, her wild eyes searching for things to do. Constantly busy, she rushed from kitchen to dining room to living room to cleaning cupboard to porch and back again, sometimes pushing a hoover, at other times carrying washing or, as was the case on the morning in question, plates stacked high with buttered toast.
"You went to the pub last night?" she asked, huge brown eyes staring straight at me.
I nodded. 'Don't speak with your mouth full,' my mother's voice warned from somewhere a long time ago.
"Any good?"
The cries of seagulls from outside reminded me of a group of girls who were near where I had been standing at the bar. They kept looking my way and cackling. By the third beer, I became certain I was the source of their amusement and left.
Swallowing what was in my mouth, I said: "I didn't stay long."
Mrs Kenton curled her bottom lip, then: "You need to get yourself a girlfriend, nice young lad like you should have no problem. There's a Juliet for every Romeo."
"I
do
hope so," I replied and immediately regretted the accidental emphasis.
Across the table from me another guest, a heavy-set man in his forties snorted. Placing the platter of toast on the table, Mrs Kenton caught the side of his head with her elbow: "That's enough of that," she snapped.
Everyone around the table chuckled. Mrs Kenton was not to be taken lightly. She ran her guest house like a military barracks. Breakfast was served at 7.30am sharp by the large railway clock on the dining room wall. Washing had to be placed in a bag, labelled and left outside residents' doors by 8am Tuesday. One minute late (again by the railway clock in the dining room) and it would remain there until the following Tuesday.
The washroom regimen was stricter still. Woe betide any guest who left the bathroom in a condition other than the one in which it was found. Mrs Kenton's ears were finely tuned to the distinctive sound of its doorlatch clicking home and within seconds of hearing it, she would be upstairs, ostensibly to see if any of "her boys" needed anything and checking that all was well -- but the true purpose of her visit was to establish exactly who was in the bathroom so that blame could be fairly apportioned later. And at 11pm prompt, all radios and TVs were to switched off. Not turned down, mind you, but switched off.
On the night of my desperate plea to the fates and the elbowing incident that followed, I was in bed as the call came along the corridor: "Turn 'em off now please, gentlemen," followed by the snap of the hallway light switch. The narrow shaft of yellow light along the bottom of my door disappeared. I had yet to organise the rental of a TV -- payday was still some way off, so the order did not apply to me. Instead, I closed my eyes and tried to blot out the distance calls of seagulls. Then my room door opened and, just as suddenly closed. Propping myself up on my elbows, I stared into the inky blackness. Just as I opened my mouth to ask: "Who's there?" a finger pressed against my lips: "Hush!" a woman's voice whispered; quiet but commanding: "I wanted to have a chat with you about something that's been on my mind since breakfast. Now, don't say anything...well, you can't at the moment, I know, but it's important that you don't interrupt because you're young and you'll probably say something daft, so it's better if you don't say anything at all, all right?"
I nodded. Slowly, she sat down beside me on the bed, which let out a creak. Freezing in position, she looked towards the door, raising a hand in an appeal for silence (whether the appeal was to me or to the creaking bed remained unclear). Satisfied no one had been alerted, she slowly turned to regard me once again. In the darkness, I could see only her outline and her eyes, lit by flashes of light reflected from the streetlamps beyond the room's curtains.
"Right," she continued in a hurried, urgent whisper: "what I've been thinking is, 'here I am on my own, since my dear husband, God rest his soul, passed on, and here you are, on your own, neither of us by choice, but both of us under the same roof and so what should we do? I mean, you'd never dare say anything to me and I wouldn't dare say anything to you, I mean, why would a young lad look twice at an old boiler like me, but then I thought: 'All cats are grey in the dark' and if I explain that to him and tell him that I don't mind if he's not thinking of me while we're doing it...I mean I
don't
mind..."
Perhaps it was youthful inexperience or maybe lack of self-confidence that was to blame for my confusion, but for whatever reason, I had not the first idea what Mrs Kenton was talking about.
Seeing my blank expression, her shoulders slumped in resignation and then, with the finger still pressed firmly against my lips, she reached under the duvet and placed her other hand on my groin. My eyes went wide. Mrs Kenton leant in so close that I could feel her breath on my face. She began whispering again: "You're probably a bit nervous and don't know what to make of this and if you're a virgin, which I think you probably are -- don't worry, we'll sort that out in a jiffy -- you probably have no idea what to do next, which is fine, just leave it all to me. I know I'm not very ladylike and not to everyone's taste, but believe me...I've never had any complaints in the morning. And it's so much better if you lose your cherry to someone like me, who knows what they're doing, rather than to some young lass who'll probably mess it up. You don't have to do anything; I'll take care of it. All you have to do is lie still and stay quiet..."
The hand on my groin was moving slowly. Fingers were pressing rhythmically against the area beneath my balls, while her thumb was pressing, pressing, pressing against my cock in counter-time with the fingers pressing, pressing, pressing close to my anus.
