Happy Birthday Corry

Corry lay in bed listening to the rain which tumbled down from the grey sky bouncing off the rooftops and cascading down to the sodden road. It was his birthday tomorrow and he couldn’t sleep with the excitement. 13, the big 1 3, he was going to be a teenager at last. A June baby, he was one of the last in his year to turn 13, so tomorrow would be a real coming of age.

He wondered what his mum and dad had bought him. He knew what he wanted but he didn’t dear dream that there’d be an iPad waiting for him in the morning. And Lisa, his little sister was so cute with birthdays, she always came up with something nice, but his parents, his sister, his  grandparents who would stuff a tenner in an envelope, none of them would be able to get him what he really wanted. And that was to see a real live girl ... naked. All his friends claimed they had, Billy had seen his sister’s friend Lucy when she had stayed over at his house, while Shane had been on holiday to the South of France where the beach was full of them – or so he said. But Corry had never seen one, never ever but how could he ask for that for his birthday?

The rain of the previous night had given way to bright sunshine, Corry didn’t remember falling asleep but he must have because his mum was waking him up with a cup of tea and a pile of post. A bundle of birthday cards.

‘Open those and then come downstairs, there might be one or two things for you there,’ his mum said with a smile. Corry often thought his mum was more excited about his birthdays than he was. He sat up in bed and she sat on the edge of it beaming at him as he opened the envelopes. Then she ruffled his hair and left him to get up, understanding his need for privacy now he was growing up.

Corry was sitting in his room smiling and playing with his iPad mini. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he’d unwrapped the box and seen the Apple logo. He’d hoped but he’d never believed it could come true. But it had.

He was sitting in his window playing Angry Birds and hoping he’d catch a glimpse of Georgie, the girl next door. Georgie was 17 and beautiful, spikey black hair and lovely shoulders. From his room he could look down into her parents’ garden and every now and then she’d pop out to hang the washing or water the plants. He’d just completed level 5 when he saw her, but today she was not doing chores, today she was carrying a sunbed and wearing the smallest bikini Corry had ever seen. Corry’s sparkling new iPad was forgotten as he was transfixed by the sight of this wonderful dark-skinned girl setting up her sunbed and lying face down on it. She was lovely and had perfect skin and of that wasn't enough she then reached around and undid her bikini. Corry’s tongue nearly hit the floor.

Corry watched, transfixed by this vision of beauty.

‘Turn over, turn over, turn over,’ he mumbled under his breath, willing Georgie to reveal herself to him and give him the best birthday ever.

‘Corry, you ready love?’ His mother’s voice jolted Corry back into reality. Crap they were going to see Granny and then stop off at the shops so he could spend his birthday money. By why now, why now?

‘A couple of minutes mum.’ he could hear the desperation in his voice.  ‘Turn over,’ he mumbled again, putting his shoes on without taking his eyes off his nearly naked neighbour.

‘C’mon it’s time to go.’ His mum's voice echoed up the stairs, she was getting impatient. Corry reluctantly stood up and left his sentry post, he grabbed his coat and took one last look at the Venus in the garden below, ‘turn over’ he willed her one last time. Just then Georgie fidgeted, she stretched and yawned and turned herself over, wriggling a little getting herself comfortable and then closing her eyes and letting the hot sun beat down on her naked breasts.

Corry's smile was bigger than when he had first seen the iPad.

‘Happy Birthday Corry’ he quietly mumbled to himself.

Human behaviour.

Okay so a lot of explaining for this one, after the comments on this story I decide to write Robert's Story. I did it using quotes from those comments and it has lines from the song suggested on that thread intertwined. See the song at the end. 

‘There’s definitely no logic, I can’t explain it really, it just happened.’ Robert had been going through his own little hell since the flood episode, that damn rescue had bought a flood of comments - in person, on Facebook, in emails, not one of them complimentary. Now he was in a stuffy room answering his wife’s questions in front of a complete stranger. He wasn’t comfortable, but his wife had insisted they went to marriage guidance or she would leave him and he certainty didn’t want that. What he really wanted was to keep the status quo but that was pretty unlikely to happen now - even with the marriage guidance.

Beth offered him nearly everything he could ever want, she was his best friend, a fantastic wife, a great mother, she had given him two lovely boys. She was intelligent, pretty, loyal - everything. The only thing she wasn’t was sexy. She just wasn’t sexy.

Take what she wore for instance. The jogging bottoms and the baggy jumper, it didn’t stir a great passion in Robert. Okay she was in the house all day with the kids but she could make a little effort. Even when they went out, which wasn’t very often these days, she never seemed to dress in a way that stirred his loins. She always looked great but never GREAT!  Not that he could ever tell her this - not even in this ‘truth’ session the counsellor had instigated.

‘Is it cos of the sex?’ Robert could hear the dreaded tears in his wife’s voice.

Yes he wanted to cry out, yes of course it bloody is, but stopped himself just in time.

Sex had been boring for as long as Robert could remember. Beth gave the impression that sex was an enjoyable passtime in much the same way that playing scrabble might be. It was safe, formulaic, get it over and get to sleep type sex. He loved his wife, he loved making love to her but he’d longed to have some great, dirty sex with someone.

‘Well, don’t you feel guilty?’ another question but he really didn’t want to get involved in the exchange. He shrugged and mumbled something, he guessed he must be coming across terribly moody, like a surly child. Guilt? Interesting one that, he’d never thought about guilt. He never felt he was being unfaithful to his wife. The two women offered him completely different things. They weren’t in competition for him; they were complementary to each other. If he didn’t have Melanie, then his life with Beth wouldn’t be the same. He’d come to the conclusion long before that either he could leave Beth and chase his dreams or try to change Beth which would cause arguments and end up with them falling out. Either way he would lose his best friend, his wife, the mother to his kids, his kids even. Melanie offered the equilibrium. It made his life balanced. It made him happy which meant life with Beth was great. Melanie actually safeguarded his marriage.

‘But why a hooker, a whore? It’s so cheap, so demeaning, so unhygienic. What will they be saying - that I can’t satisfy my man so he has to pay for it?’ Beth’s voice was hardly audible beneath the sobs.

Again Robert shrugged, he wasn’t very good at this opening up lark. And again he was surprised at his wife’s remarks. He’d thought that it’d be better to go to a prostitute than start a relationship with someone in work. He loved Melanie but he didn’t know her, he wouldn’t ever get close to her, there had been no emotional exchange just a physical one. Surely it was better to invest money than to invest emotions, that would really be cheating. Was going to a whore even cheating?

‘Well there’s no map is there, and the compass wouldn’t help at all,’ he was talking but he didn’t know what he was saying, he just knew he had to fill the silence between Beth’s sobs and the counsellor’s judgemental sighs.

Finally the hour was up, there’d be more of course, they’d signed up for 6 weeks. But for now Robert could slink off and see if Melanie had any free time for him.

The Text

 Kat threw her phone onto the sofa and watched it bounce off onto the floor, she left it there went it to the bathroom, sat on the toilet and let the tears roll down her face and drip onto the floor. With her knickers round her ankles she swore to herself that this was the final straw and that she’d end the relationship, but she knew deep down that she’d sworn that to herself many times before and here she was sitting on the toilet crying. It’d been 3 years and she was still playing the other woman, still being let down at the last minute more often than not.

She heard the phone buzz on the hardwood floor of the living room but she had no intention of answering it, she wouldn’t let the bastard have the satisfaction of smooth talking her way back in to her affections. She’d make him stew for a while, not let him build his bridges yet.

Of course she’d known he was married at the outset, so she only had herself to blame. He’d spun the usual yarns, Claire doesn’t love me, Claire doesn’t understand me, we’re only staying together cos of the kids. She’d loved it at the start, the naughtiness, the illicitness of it all. She also liked the fact she had a relationship without the responsibilities; she had all the good times and none of the man flu. But now it was getting troublesome; despite trying not to, she’d only gone and fallen in love with the ‘roach, she’d told herself not to but that was easy said that done. At the beginning she was glad when he had gone but now she missed him when he wasn’t there, at the beginning it was all about the sex but now she wanted company, reassurance, companionship.

She was washing her hands as she heard the phone buzz again, this time telling her she had a text. No doubt a corny apology she thought to herself. She went through to the kitchen and opened the bottle of wine she had in her fridge for precisely these occasions. But these days she found herself replacing the emergency bottle far too regularly for her liking.

She took her glass through to the living room, flicked on the TV and settled on the sofa, scooping the phone up along the way in one graceful movement. She still had it. What soppy nonsense would the amoeba have come up with today she wondered.

But it wasn’t his number, it wasn’t a number she recognised. She tentatively opened the message and immediately wished she hadn’t.

Hi Kat, thought you might like to know I know about you and Tim.

Shit it was from Claire, Kat felt butterflies in her stomach. She’d dreaded this moment. Tim had obviously cancelled because he’d been caught. Kat wondered if to read on, what vitriol would Claire be spewing via SMS. She took a deep breath and carried on.

but do you know where he is tonight?  I thought you might like to know about Tim and Ella. Stay tuned.

What did she mean? Who was Ella? What was Tim and Ella? Why stay tuned? Kat felt uneasy, who the fuck was Ella? How the hell did Claire have her number? Her phone buzzed again, this time an MMS. The penny was beginning to drop for Kat. She looked at her new message and there was the unmistakable figure of Tim draped over a woman that was neither his wife nor his mistress. 

The Wall

That evening she followed the old bastard home. She wasn't sure why. She just wanted to claim back some power - but it hadn’t quite worked out like that.  She'd hoped she’d find a cold lonely bedsit or maybe an ugly block of flats so the next time he tried it on she could mock his sad, lonely life. She hadn't expected a well-to-do semi-detached in suburbia. She sat on a wall opposite his house, the temperature was dropping, she shivered. It was dark and she could see right into his living room through the open curtains. She hoped she’d see that he was alone, eating a microwaved dinner for one in front of the news. But no, he was far from alone. His wife was beautiful, early forties, blonde hair, pretty face, aged but aged well. She wondered if his wife knew about how the pig behaved in work; the lewd comments, the creepy suggestions and today he'd stepped it up; his hand on her leg, snaking its way up. She'd been frozen to her seat until the very last minute when she'd just about managed to get up and leave his office seconds before he'd touched her ‘there’. She’d heard him laughing as she left, it was just a joke to him. Why did he do it? Was it the power? Was it the thrill? Was it because she was easy meat; a blonde intern who at interview had said this was her lifelong ambition? The little scumbag knew she had nowhere to turn; if she wanted the job permanently she needed him on her side. He obviously took that to mean  inside her.

She watched his wife fussing around him, he had it on a plate but he wanted his dessert too. If the posh house and the sight of his wife depressed her, that went to a whole new level when his daughter came in the room and planted a kiss on the pervert’s cheek. The very fact that he had a daughter was bad enough but the fact Jenny knew her made it so worse and the way she looked made it worse again. It was Tessa, from her year in school; people in school had always remarked on how similar they were,  the same height, same colour hair, same ski-jump nose. Was it his daughter he really wanted, was Jenny just a handy substitute for the forbidden lust? Jenny felt sick to her stomach, she wanted to march across the road and ring the doorbell but what good would that do? His wife wouldn’t believe her, he was the boss and Jenny was just a blonde intern. Jenny pushed her glasses up her nose forgetting that she now wore contact lenses, got down from the wall and headed slowly home, resigned to the fact that she was in a lose-lose situation.

the Flood

This story was inspired not by the cubes but by photos coming out of the Czech Republic which has been affected by floods. 
Sunday morning. Drop the wife at church and then head to Melanie’s. He was booked in for an hour, it never seemed long enough but he had to get back to pick the wife up and get home for a nice Sunday roast and the football on the TV. The rain lashed down and the windscreen wipers worked overtime but visibility was still poor. His wife thought that he went to watch the local park football on a Sunday morning but this week as he drove to Melanie’s he realised that he’d need to tell her the footie was off or else she’d expect him to be dripping wet when he picked her up. As he indicated to turn into Melanie’s street two fire engines flew past him. Something’s up he thought to himself.

He parked the car and made a run for it through the rain, as always Mrs Taylor opened the door and ushered him in; a strange old woman who ran the two girls who were based in the house. She put her hand out for the money and he responded. Robert had first gone with Ronnie and she was good but as he was leaving he had seen Melanie and she’d stolen his heart there and then, he’d booked in to see her for the next week and from then on he only had eyes for her. He always promised himself that one day he’d pay for the both of them but that would need to be a special occasion.

Melanie greeted him with her trademark smile and black lingerie, she knew what he liked and did everything she could to please him. Robert could hear the rain hammering on the window as he slipped out of his clothes and lay down on the bed ready for the touch of this beautiful woman.

Deep down he knew she didn’t feel for him in the same way as he felt about her, deep down he knew she was just a brilliant actor as well as a beautiful woman, but for that one hour every week he allowed himself to be lost in the moment. And that’s where he was now; lost, so lost he didn’t notice the screams and shouts from outside the room. Melanie did though and stopped what she was doing and then let out a scream herself. Water was rushing into the room from under the crack in the door, what once was carpet was now part of the river than ran behind the back of this small suburban bungalow.  There was a knock on the door and without waiting for a reply two large firemen in bright orange high-vis jackets came barging into the room.

‘We need to get you out of here before this gets worse.’

Robert looked round, he found his boxers but couldn’t see his jeans.’

‘C’mon no time to lose.’ barked the older man.

Melanie had draped a robe around herself and was being carried out by the younger fireman while the older one took Robert by the arm and led him out into the street.

If being led out of a house of ill-repute in his boxers was not bad enough the sight of a TV crew filming topped it off perfectly.