It was dark when I regained consciousness. I was alone and naked, apart from my clothes, sprawled face down between several large rubbish containers down a narrow cobbled alley. A blanket of snow covered the ground. The silence was deafening.
I sat up shivering and looked around. Nothing seemed familiar. Was I still in
I had no idea.
Great thoughts of solitude welled up inside me, then gently dissipated, like hot silent farts in the darkness.
I got to my two feet and began walking with both them at the same time, nowhere at first, then everywhere desperately in search of, well, I wasn’t sure what. I felt a nagging, imprecise longing for something. Warmth, I think you call it.
After the riled Belgian had struck me with his iron fists, my legs had failed, I remember that. Lurid images exploded in my head; troupes of pretty blonde all-American lady soldiers wearing red, white and blue uniforms with short miniskirts and no knickers rollerskating up hill. Swamp creatures too horrible to mention.
Since then, everything had been a blank.
I walked on, emerging from the end of the alley. I looked a-right. I looked a-left. I looked a right mess, and decided to go straight ahead.
After a few crunchy strides I stopped and counted the footsteps I'd left behind in the snow. There were fifty-five in all.
My special ops training kicked in. It was to be hopping the rest of the way. If that Belgian thug was foolish enough to follow me, he would think it was not me he was trailing, but a one legged man.
Eventually, just before I arrived, I got there.
A door opened in the street ahead of me, spilling yellow light across the snow-covered ground. It remained intriguingly ajar. I approached, hopping cautiously.
A woman whose name I knew not, but I imagined would be Frau Marlene Schmidt, stepped out.
“Ja?” she hissed.
“Help me,” I mouthed silently, the ghosts of my words visible, hanging as steam in the frosty air.
She didn’t reply.
Slowly, it was all happening too fast. The woman crouched down low, apparently listening to the ground.
“Who sent you?” She hissed again, looking up at me.
“Albert?” I replied.
“Albert who?”
“Yes, that’s him. Albert Who.”
“I don’t know any Albert Who.”
“Neither do I.”
“Are you alone?”
“Very.”
At that she relaxed, grinned and got up off the floor, stretching up to her full height.
It was only then that I realised she was both bigger than me and slightly smaller at the same time.
She relaxed and leant sideways against the doorjamb, sizing me up openly, admiring my nakedness as she drew deeply on her unlit cigarette.
I noticed with considerable pride how her eyes lingered for several minutes on my exposed man-wand.
Flicking the cigarette away into the snow, she sighed.
“Vell, I'm afraid my dear, zat life isn’t all just about ze buttoning and ze unbuttoning.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but feeling colder than I’d ever been before and sensing her verbal nonsense might be some sort of secret code, the correct response to which would gain me access to her warm abode, I nodded.
The woman opened the door wider.
“You’d better come in.”
Once inside, the woman stepped forwards, right up close, her warm sour breath tickling my nostrils. She rubbed her cheeks against mine, enjoying the roughness of my stubble against hers, then reached down and placed both hands over my chap.
“Despite the chill, you have a big penis, let that not be denied. But I…”
She let go of my parts and ran her bony fingers seductively up her dress and under the curve of her own sagging breasts.
“...I have some sorrowful sprouts zat remain unwashed.”
Winking suggestively, she closed the front door behind her and with a surprisingly girlish giggle, skipped gaily through some gaudy multi-coloured plastic beads hanging in a doorway off to one side.
I paused for a moment, just to see what a pause at that precise moment would feel like, decided it didn’t feel that great and stepped forward through the beads myself to find her waiting.
She came closer, panting, staring into my eyes at point blank range. I could've sworn she whispered the word helium. She undid the buttons on her dress and let it fall to the floor, revealing nothing.
I placed my arms around her waist bin, bringing my by now stiffening upper lip hard up against her abundant public harmony.
She gave out a little moan of corruption. I went to kiss her, but before I could, she gripped my cheeks roughly between her neatly manicured thumbs and forefingers and jerked my head backwards against the wall.
“Tell me," she whispered. "Is it true what ze CIA say about me, zat I go around wearing a pained expression?”
Trained not to give anything away too soon, I gave everything away immediately.
“Yes.”
Her eyes widened. She was clearly angered. Her grip on my reddened cheeks intensified. But then, just as suddenly, it dissipated.
“Well, never mind all zat,” she said, patting my cheeks. “You are about to have ze physically demanding sexual intercession viz me. Have you come prepared?”
I coughed, stuttered, spluttered and coughed.
She loosened her grip on my cheeks completely, stroked them softly and smiled. Then she stood high on tippy-toes to lick my forehead, purring as she did so.
I purred too.
“Ah, ja, I know all about you,” she said presently. “And I know you’ve been ze very, very naughty boy.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Because I have my spies!” She snapped back, before slapping me extremely violently across the face...
