Metropolitan Lines Issue 2 - Brunel University

Pierre’s abuse began during his
first week in the children’s
home: sodomised, beaten, made to
indulge in all manner of sex acts
with men and other children. After a
time it became a way of life.
It was whilst being pounded
from behind by his sixteen -stone
carer that the revelation came to
him. For four years he had endured
the worst kind of abuse that could
be imagined. He was alive because
he did not complain. Others had
and they had disappeared, never to
be heard from again. He had
become a vessel into which was
dumped the sexual gratification of
others. The ones that liked him
called him Chicken Jack, a
nickname acquired from a certain
technique in which he had become
proficient. He had been fucked
every which way but loose. But he
had not surrendered, he had
watched and he had learnt, learnt
how to avoid the beatings, how to
please his masters, how to hide his
true feelings and how to lie expertly.
In that dark place he came to know
the nature of men, their desires,
their capacities, their weaknesses.
The headmaster looked up as the
fifteen-year-old boy placed the
stills of the headmaster himself and
the two boys he was sodomising on
his desk. The boy pressed a button
on a tape recorder and the wood
panelled and richly furnished office
filled with the sound of him
grunting with out gravelly
exclamations of love. A soundtrack
to the images he held in his hands,
occasionally punctuated by winces
of pain from two children who
otherwise remained silent
throughout his exertions.
His florid features looked like
they were going to melt, the colour
rose so quickly in them. The tips of
his forefingers and thumbs were
white with pressure as he held the
photographs. The tape finished and
the boy pressed the stop button
with a click.
Slowly the colour returned to his
fingers as if draining from his face.
He listened to the boy as he talked,
as the boy told him what would be
set in motion if anything happened
to him. That unless he made a
phone call to a very special number
every day these pictures, the tape,
and everything else would be
Filth
32
postgraduate fiction
released to the media and the police
at the same time.
The police did not worry the
Headmaster, the media did.
‘What do you want?’ he asked
finally, when the boy had stopped
talking.
He expected a series of
ultimatums centred around the
halting of all abuse. He couldn’t
have been more wrong. The boy
wanted money. The abuse was not
only to continue, but increase as
Oh, ok. So that's how it works.
I had no idea the world was this simple to figure out.
I was overthinking things all along.
I always thought the world was such a big, scary place to live in,
with no place to hide.
But no, once you figure it out, it's all so easy.”
“See, I told you it would be.”
From the front garden of my second home,
I could see a spindly old woman stalking
Down the road.
She had her arms raised up above her head,
And her fingers were hooked like claws.
As she was passing,
She suddenly turned towards me,
Letting out a guttural noise.
Her face was unclear,
But despite that,
The resulting wave of fear was like
The closing of an iron maiden,
Slamming into me
And piercing my body bone-deep.
And for a long time,
I was unaware
That none of it
Had actually happened.
undergraduate poetry
Jean-David Beyers
Metropolitan Lines Summer 2008
Chicken Jack
Perry Bhandal