The Safety Pocket
You kneel in the presence of Her Magistrain Queen Addolorata
Queen Addolorata is the younger sister of Phililomeneena and Penenelenpope Philosophant-Phortitude. You can read their stories here:
You know jeans, yeah? You know how they have that tiny pocket inside one of the pockets? That’s the safety pocket. It’s why I always wear jeans. I never know when I might need that pocket.
Like today. I had to get out of the house to escape my wife bitching about how much I work. The stupid thing is, I don’t work all that hard. I just tell her I do. That’s the beauty of living in a remote village like Dernley: I might have a long commute, but I’ve also got a perfect excuse for staying over in town when I want a night away from her but with someone a bit younger and a lot filthier. So in a way, my missus is right: I do work too hard. Managing a wife and a girlfriend is a fucking chore sometimes, made harder because I don’t need either of them finding out about my occasional hook-ups.
My problem is, I can never pass up an opportunity to get my end away. That’s where the safety pocket comes in.
I round a bend in the trail, and there’s a hippy chick walking ahead of me. Even with her stupid long skirt flapping about, I can still see she’s got a juicy peach of an ass. Boho girls are usually flaky, but they can be wild, so I figure I might as well take a long shot at a risky target. I slow down for a bit, staying behind her so I can savour that ass, while I check she’s not walking a dog, and come up with the right pick-up line for a nature lover.
She seems to be alone, so I take my wedding ring off, and slip it into my safety pocket.
Then I speed up, and as I draw level with her I say, “If I was a tree in a forest, would you hear me falling for you?”
It’s not my best work, but it does work.
She stops, and turns to me with a dazzling smile. “Of course! I hear everything. I’m Addolorata.”
Christ, why do these new-age types always give themselves stupid fairy tale names to go with their bloated sense of entitlement? I bet her parents still call her Emma.
But fuck it, a girl this gorgeous can call herself anything she wants, as long as she calls me Daddy. She’s older than I thought she was — maybe early thirties?— but I’d still do her in a heartbeat. It’s her eyes that hook me: they’re like… I don’t know, like a jeweller polished… two tiny grey doughnuts? Fuck it, I’m not a poet. You know why I know her eyes are beautiful? Because I don’t know what her tits look like.
“Hi, Addy. Don’t think I’ve seen you around Dernley? And believe me, I’d remember if I had. Just moved here?”
“Yes. This morning. And I’ll be moving on tomorrow.”
She must have seen my confusion, because she giggled, and explained.
“I live in my van. I’m heading back there now for a little,” she makes a pinching gesture with a finger and thumb, and sucks at it through pursed lips, “Care to join me?”
I’ll never say no to getting stoned in a confined space with a sexy free spirit. A girl like that’s probably shagged her way across half the country, and van life can’t be ideal for maintaining personal hygiene, but I wasn’t expecting to score at all today, so I’ll settle for a safe blowjob.
Her van’s parked in Nick’s field, right on the edge of the wood. Nick’s a cantankerous old bastard, but if she’s moving on tomorrow I guess he didn’t think it was worth the hassle of turfing her out. Or maybe she already sucked his dick, so he’s letting her stay.
Predictably, she lives in a battered Transit. Rather than have the dents knocked out and the scratches covered — the way a proper person would — she’s just painted over the entire bodywork in swirly psychedelic patterns.
When she opens the doors, I can see the inside is no more inviting: there’s not much in there except a grotty mattress with a fleece blanket on it, and at the front, up against the bulkhead, a battered chest of drawers she probably pulled out of a dump.
The only illumination is two fat candles dripping wax onto the wheel arches, which I’m grateful for, because apart from a single flower in a jam jar, the decor inside is the same as outside: rainbow colours spray-painted everywhere with no pattern or purpose. Dim light can only improve that.
Addy hops in, and crawls across the mattress to the dresser.
“Do you like my rondure?”
I was looking at her ass, but she’s pointing at the jam jar.
“Is that what it is? I don’t know wildflowers.”
“Not the flower! That’s just an aster. I mean my rondure, on the flower. Come see!”
That’s another good reason to wear jeans: you never know when you might be crawling across some tart’s filthy mattress to be disappointed by the sight of a scratched glass marble sitting on a flower.
She’s proud of it, though. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Yeah, it’s gorgeous, love. Special. We gonna burn, or what?”
She roots around among the jumbled crap in the top drawer to pull out a pre-rolled joint and a lighter. While she’s sparking up, I try to get comfy kneeling on her mattress.
In amongst her chaotic attempts at ‘art’, I spot two photos of little girls taped to the wall. They’ve got the same intense eyes as her.
It makes sense. She probably thinks she’s into ‘free love’ rather than just releasing her inner slut, but whatever you call it, a woman like that is bound to have a couple of mistakes kicking about. I don’t mess with single mums, because I don’t like kids. My missus does, but she’s out of luck: I had a vasectomy on the down low before we got hitched.
“These your daughters, Addy?”
She giggles again. “They’re my sisters.”
Her laugh was cute the first time, but it’s getting on my nerves now. I’m looking forward to keeping her mouth busy.
“So you’re an auntie, then?”
Her brow furrows, then realisation must have dawned because she fucking giggles. Again. “No! I am their sister, and they are mine.”
Sisters? She’s probably thirty, and I don’t reckon they’re even ten.
“Christ, that’s a big gap your parents left! Or are these old photos, and your sisters are adults now?”
She shakes her head. “There are no adults where we come from.”
Okay. It’s a bit freaky, but I don’t mind a touch of schoolgirl roleplay, if that’s what she’s into. As long as it’s not primary school, like those two in the photos: I do have some standards. But if she wants to play any age that ends in teen, I’m on board.
She passes the joint to me, and I take a deep hit. Maybe if I’m stoned enough her giggle will get cute again.
“So how old are you, Addy?”
“We’re all younger than time, but older than clocks,” she indicates the youngest child. “Penenelenpope is the oldest. Your predecessors knew her. And Phililomeneena is the same age as you.”
“What? She’s fort— thirty?”
Her giggle hasn’t got any cuter. “No, silly! You, plural. Humans. The first true people brought Penny into the world.”
Fuck me, she’s a proper drug casualty. They say ‘never stick your dick in crazy’, but my personal philosophy has always been ‘let crazy suck your dick, just never give it your real name’. So I’ll play along, unless she wants to play at being fucking eight.
“So what age are you, then?”
She takes the joint back. “I’m the youngest. I was born a heartbeat after Philly. Or should I say, the absence of a heartbeat.”
“I’m lost, babe. What the fuck are we smoking? It’s powerful stuff.”
“It’s my own blend. I call it Truth and Consequences. One truth is that the first minds created Penny. Even before you were civilised, you knew Chaos, and knowing gave her a form. She was alone for so long, until you learned imagination and you thought of ways to escape her. You imagined other places to be, places she couldn’t go. You dreamed them into reality, and you gave yourself souls so you could live on in your dream worlds.
“But your souls needed a guide to lead them to their eternal sanctuaries, and so Penny needed a sister. That was Philly. Penny’s spirit is in your lives always, but you only meet Philly at the end.”
What a load of bollocks, and none of it’s getting my dick any closer to her mouth.
“This Penny girl is in my life? I’ve never seen her. Where is she?”
“She’s with your wife.”
Some lies you tell so often they trip off your tongue easier than truth. “I’m not married, love.”
She lays a finger on my lips to shush me, then puts on a weird sing-song voice. “Penny’s with your wife. She gave your wife a knife. Your trouble and strife, has taken a life!”
She giggles again, but when she speaks her voice is serious.
“That’s where Philly is now, guiding your girlfriend to her dream world. And I’m here, with you. All alone.
“You see, before people dreamed heavens and hells for themselves, death was a simple loss, and you bore it as animals do. But then you began to dream, and your dreams turned death into a torment for the living. Those you had known weren’t gone, they were tantalisingly out of reach, waiting for you with rewards… or retribution. And so I was born.”
She stands up, and her head seems to brush the ceiling of the van. That would make her seven foot tall, which can’t be right: I didn’t look at her tits when I met her, but I definitely would have if they’d been at eye level.
Her voice is deeper now, almost booming, and it seems to come from everywhere at once.
“You kneel in the presence of Her Magistrain Queen Addolorata! I am Chatelain of the House of Philosophant-Phortitude, Sovereign of Sorrows, Knight of the Long Dark, and Màthair of Mourning. You will be an old man before you enter whatever hell your nightmares have built, but until then, my misery will be with you every day!”
Then she’s gone, and all the colour seems to fade out of the world, everything turning to shades of grey. I’m alone, kneeling in the burnt out carcass of a van, an agonising pain in my crotch and my phone going crazy.
So that was it: my girlfriend’s dead, and my wife’s in prison.
You know how some women get crushes on murderers, write filthy letters to Manson and Bundy, marry serial killers in prison so they can get conjugal visits, and all that? Well you wouldn’t believe how many women get horny thinking about a bad boy who made his wife so jealous she sliced up his mistress.
Ever since my missus got banged up, I could be drowning in freaky pussy. Except after the cops got me out of that van and into a hospital, a nurse found my balls tucked into my safety pocket.
