In Our Name

IN OUR NAME

By Lesley Corina

Published by Lesley Corina at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Lesley Corina

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

Chapter 1

‘Fuck off you bastards’ Sam Cross, nee Streetwise, previously Brown, previously Dutton, screams at the closed prison gates. She can feel the anger building up in the crowd behind her. She loves this activity. Loves the excitement. She loves the feeling that she, Sam Cross, is acting out her own life on a wider stage.

As a stream of verbal abuse leaves her lips she reassuringly squeezes the hand that holds hers. Her heart races. She feels sheer powerful joy. She is exhilarated by being part of this baying crowd. For it is only now, as part of an ugly mob, that her blood can pulse and surge through her sluggish veins.

She’s dressed carefully for the occasion; skin tight blue jeans, trainers and the obligatory Hang-‘Em High embossed pink T-shirt. For Sam this is a well-worn garment that doesn’t hide the black bra from which her breasts are trying to escape. Being the mother of two young girls, Sam Cross, for ease of care, wears her dyed red hair cut into a short bob. Today she’s wearing it lose allowing it to flow across what should have been her pretty face. Only today she is not pretty. Today her features are contorted by an ecstasy of agony as she hurls verbal abuse towards the prison gates.

She loves being part of the crowd who torment the men inside the prison vans. It’s the highlight of her week; especially when there’s national coverage for a case. Then there is always a large crowd; mainly women from her estate, the place, where she belongs. They all met to scream abuse at the prison vans as they make their way, slowly, to and from the court. Especially now. For now the van will contain a man who has been convicted of sexual offences and is on his way back to the court for sentencing. The screaming, when it starts for real, will be deafeningly exciting.

She glances around before willing the gates to open as the screams grow louder. She knows many of the faces in the thousand plus strong crowd. She flashes toothy grins to them as she screams abuse at the top of her voice. Exchanging self-satisfied vigilante smiles with everyone she recognises she feels part of something and much stronger because she’s sharing it. She wills her pleasure to grow, overtake all her reasoning before finally releasing her.

She glances towards some of the unknown faces. She tries to stem her resentment of them otherwise it may spoil her pleasure. But she’s always known that, as his trial had national coverage, there would be many faces in the crowd that she wouldn’t recognise. Still she can’t help it and try as she might she resents their presence so screams all the louder to cover her own feelings of being trespassed against. She feels angry that her pleasure is gate-crashed by outsiders. She’s deeply hurt that the local women, the ones who’d started the ritual, are overshadowed as the TV coverage appears to focus on the outsiders. They select the women with good haircuts, slim figures, real jewellery, posh accents. Women who will go home to lives unimaginable to Sam and to the others who live on her estate.

‘Sisters against sexist bastards,’ the posh woman on Sam’s right screams as she smiles at Sam.

Sam turns her back on her. She’s an outsider. She doesn’t have the uniform so she can’t be part of them. Okay she’s shouting now but tomorrow she’ll have forgotten all about Sam and her life. Sam notices the expensive clothes that the woman’s wearing. Instantly she hates her with a passion that only jealousy can provoke. It’s obvious that she doesn’t have to live with the fear that having that hostel on your doorstep brings. Especially if you’re the mother of two young girls.

Over the head of her small child Sam throws a smile to the woman who’s standing on her other side. She is a local woman who has lived on the estate all her life. Lives a life like Sam does; suffers every day all day. The woman says something but the words are lost in the tumult. Sam opens her mouth to ask her to repeat herself. Then aware that her words won’t carry, she mouths The bastards, and after a helpless gesture she continues with her own screaming. Their exchange of smiles, their recognition of each other is knowledge enough. They are sisters in kind. Sisters who know what they have to protect. The woman smiles back before joining in the chorus as loudly and as passionately as Sam.

The child clings to her mother’s leg as her tears drip onto her jeans. She’s afraid, loud ruckus voices are filling her small brain and terrifying ugly sounds are stuffing her ears. She cannot hear her own sobs, nor does anyone else. She pushes her face deep into the cloth and momentarily recoils at the smell of stale fags and booze that cling to her mother’s clothing. She forces her face closer as if she is trying to bury herself in Sam’s leg.

The noise grows to a staggering crescendo as the gates gently rock on their hinges. The crowd surges; the gates remain closed. A smaller staff door opens and a stream of police officers file out. They form an impenetrable line in front of the women before stepping back and forcing the crowd to move away from the gates.

There follows a silent moment before all hell breaks loose.

The crowd surge. Their movement is held back by the physical restraining arms of the police officers; linked arm in arm. The gates open and a white van appear in their frame. Slowly the van inches its way out of the protective cover of the compound and alongside the baying crowd.

Chorus of fuck off you bastard, die and hanging too good for shit like you fill the ears and hardened the hearts of even the youngest there.

The woman next to Sam bends down in order to pick up a stone. Seizing her opportunity Sam moves closer to the van. Between the linked arms of the police cordon she manages to slam her open palms against the van sides as she screeches abuse at the top of her voice.

In order to carry out this ritual Sam has to allow the hand of her frightened daughter to drop. Yet the child still clings to her mother’s leg as the angry voices drown out her own cries for comfort.

Sam takes a step forward to repeat the thump on the side of the van. Her daughters grasp baulks her so Sam tugs her leg free and slams her hands again and again against the side of the van as it inches its way teasingly through the screaming throng.

‘Perv! Perv! Kill the fucking perv.’ they scream as several of the group, Sam not in their number, try to climb on the van and open the back doors. Sam runs forward momentarily forgetting her child who, by now, has been disentangled from her legs.

‘Kill the fucking perv!’ she screeches, her body bent over with the effort, as the van weaves into clear space and speeds off with only a few of the fitter demonstrators in pursuit.

Sam turns, she looks around. ‘Jo-Lo, where are you, you little bugger? Get here where I can see you.’ The group part and tiny three year old Jo-Lo Brown, tears spoiling her bright blue eyes, wipes her soiled sleeve across her tear stained face. ‘What you run off for?’ Sam demands grabbing her daughter by the upper arm. ‘It’s to keep the place safe for the likes of you that we’re doing this. Stop that snivelling, or I’ll give you something to cry about.’

As Sam chastises her daughter an older woman, in her sixties, approaches and starts to walk alongside them. She also has the uniform on, jeans, trainers and a pink T-Shirt with the words – Hang ‘Em High. Being emblazoned across the older woman’s ample bosom the message encourages an unwelcomed innuendo than had not been part of the original design. Her dyed blond hair is held off her face by an Alice band that would have been more appropriate in the wardrobe of a much younger woman.

‘Sam, ain't that perv off to the same nick that your Eddie’s in?’ she asks as they draw ahead of the crowd and at last can hear what they’re saying.

‘Well if he is my Eddie’ll sort him out. Have his face down the bog before the nights out.’

‘He’s due for release soon, isn’t he?’

‘Couple of weeks.’

‘He coming to you?’

‘He’s got no one else. My Mikey won’t like it.’

Sam stops walking and looks at the floor. After three years of living with Michael Cross Sam knows two things. She knows that he doesn’t like her family, especially Eddie and that he’s touchy about having his name pronounced as he wants it to be. He insists that it’s pronounced Mikey and not Mickey like some cartoon mouse. She tosses her head and her hair flies around her face. She shrugs. The two most important men in her life will just have to sort themselves out. She has more important things to worry about. She sets off walking again as she continues her reply to Kath.

‘Eddie’s flesh and blood and you gotta keep faith with each other. I guess he can kip on the couch for a night or two. Just till he gets his bearings and then he’s to sling his hook. But, Kath, as I said he’s family and he’s only got me.’

‘Your Dad still…’

‘As much use as a chocolate fireguard.’

‘Oh, Sam, he took your mum's death real bad.’

‘Not worked a day since. Come to think of it I don’t think he’s bothered to wash since either.’

‘Still how long was they together?’

‘Don’ know. How long do you need to get two kids and then bang?’

‘Gosh, that’s sad. So he was left with two kids and no wife.’

‘Kath, can we change the tape? Look isn’t that your Jason? Jason,’ Sam calls to the fast approaching youth, ‘you put on a good sprint after that van. At one stage I thought you was going to catch up with it an all.’

A tall lanky youth in anti-fit jeans, hooded black top and designer trainers approached them. His face and head are all but hidden in the folds of his hood. As he talks with the two women his voice is animated; its high pitched tone the only indicator of his true age.

‘I got my fingers on the handle. Then the guard saw me in the mirror. He signalled to the driver and he swerved to throw me off. Tell you what Gran, if I’d caught that bastard I’d have saved a prison place. I’d have got my hands round that fucking tiny dick of his and twisted, and twisted and twisted and then yanked. Then -.’

‘Okay, Jason. Honestly the language these kids pick up these days. Do you talk like that to your teachers?’

‘Gran, where you been? I’m off down the park. Some of the lads … Well we’ve got business to attend to. Know what I mean. I’ll not be in before you go out to work. See ya.’

‘Jason…,’ his Grandmother calls before, standing to watch his departing back she adds sadly, ‘honestly you’d not think he just 14 and still at school; would you?’

‘Had my first on the way at 14. You think they’re going to be young forever, don’t you. But we all grow up.’

‘I think it’s this area. And that hostel. Okay they say they’re low risk offenders. But however you cut it they’re all the same; criminal an' up to no good. Sorry begging your pardon. I know your Eddie’s okay; deep down. As I say it’s this area and he just got in with the wrong crowd. But honestly, Sam, that hostel's got to go. We’re going to see Councillor … - Now what’s his name? That big black fella; lives with his sister and her kiddies. You know who I mean? She had a couple of kids by that Irish drunk. Then she had one with that other young lad. I think he’s a shelf stacker at the supermarket.’

‘I know the one, Kath. You know what they say about them.’

‘You think he gives her one when the curtains are closed?’

‘He’s too attractive not to be getting any. I wouldn’t say no if he were asking.’

‘Sam Cross, and you a newlywed. Honeymoon over then?’

‘Well and truly. Bring on the socks and babies.’

‘So are you? I was saying, to her at number five, that you looked blooming. So it wasn’t just the sun, sea, sex and sangria.’

‘I think I am, but the quack said it’s too early to tell.’

‘And which one is this?’ Kath asks stooping to smile at Jo-Lo. ‘She’s quiet ain’t she? Not said a word.’

‘Jo-Lo say hello to Mrs -.’

‘Oh stop that Sam Cross. You know as well as the rest that I’m just Kath from number 17.’

‘But don’t you think they should be taught some respect and call adults by their real names?’

‘Was that what you were trying to do, Sam? Teach her manners? By bring her here?’

‘I want her out of this.’

Sam looks around her and drinks in the poverty of her surroundings. She feels tears sting as she notices the playground and the equipment. Last year they’d all been so proud when it had first been installed. And now, now it’s broken; all of it. The swings have been yanked from their hinges and thrown into the paddling pool. The climbing frame has been pushed over and beaten with clubs until its twisted frame is beyond repair. Worst of all, the tiny kiddie rides have all been smashed. It’s all uncared for, unmaintained and would forever be unrepaired. The bark, that had been used to cover the ground, has been thrown over the grass exposing dark brown earth. The lack of care encourages public defecating, including by humans of both sexes and all ages. The young saplings that had been planted to provide shade have been snapped in their protective cages. In that state they’ve been left to droop and die as a fading reminder of what they had once tried to build.

A derelict row of terraces edge the park and look on through broken windows and smashed door frames. Roof tiles scar on the ground where they have fallen. Evidence, if any was needed, of the deadly games of cat-and-mouse that the neighbourhood kids play nightly.

‘Grow up quickly don’t they,’ Sam almost whispers. ‘And look at how the little buggers treat the play areas for the tots. It ain’t right, Kath, and I want better for her, and...’ she says while squeezing the tiny hand of Jo-Lo in one of her own and patting her stomach with the other, ‘…and for this one. That’s if it comes out at all.’

‘I grant you it’s not a pretty sight. I’d like to move, but where could the likes of us go?’

‘Anywhere. Oh, Kath, I’d move anywhere just to get away from here.’

‘And leave me to let them pervs know what we think of them on my own?’

‘It’s the only pleasure I get these days.’

‘But you’ll be happy when your Eddie comes home; won’t you?’

‘Yes. He’s good with the kids. He can take them off our hands for a bit each day. That’ll give Mikey and me more time together. But I don’t like having another adult in the flat. It sort of puts me off my stride. Know what I mean?’ she asks without meeting the eyes of the older woman.

Kath lets out a snort and smiles. ‘I was young once, Sam Cross. Sure I knows what you mean. You could always send him to church with the kids?’

‘What?’

‘It’s what my parents did. Packed us off to Sunday School when they needed a bit of how’s your father. There was, would you believe, 17 of us in one of those back-to-back three bed houses on Coronation Road. One of them that was just after the turn off for Monmouth Street. I liked that old house. Grew up there I did. An’ in more ways than one.’ Kath sighs deeply. ‘I’ve lots of fond memories. Pulled ‘em down ‘bout 30 years ago. A whole row gone overnight.’

As she reminisces Kath has a far-away look in her eyes and she doesn’t notice that Sam is no longer listening. As Sam bends to fasten the supermarket coat around Jo-Lo Kath continues.

‘They was there one day and gone the next. Almost as if something had spirited them away. I guess they knew what they was doing. Happen knocking ‘em down was all that they was fit for. Back to backs they were, warm in the winter.’

‘I remember my Mum telling me about them,’ Sam adds standing up and looking around her. ‘And here I am, years later, with the same problem – how to get the kids out of the house so I can have sex with my man.’

‘Send Eddie and the kids round to me when you want some space. I’ll give ‘em tea and keep ‘em occupied.’ She bends down and smiles at Jo-Lo as she asks, ‘Would you like to visit me? I’d like you to. You and your uncle Eddie. Will you come and see me and give your mummy a break?’

In reaction to being the centre of the attention Jo-Lo thrusts her thumb in her mouth and hides her face in the safety of a shapely jean clad leg.

‘You shy?’ Kath asks as Sam bends down to pick Jo-Lo up.

‘I guess it was too exciting for her. You excited by all the noise, Jo-Lo? Did you like it when the van came out and we pelted it? There was a perv inside and you need to keep an eye out for them. But Kath here’s asking you, Kylie and Eddie round one day. That’ll be nice, won't it.’

‘You looking forward to your Uncle Eddie visiting?’ Kath asks.

Jo-Lo hides her face and cries into the T-shirt as she releases her bladder and wishes that the smelly old woman would just go away.

‘Pooh! What a stinky pooh, you are,’ Sam recoils putting her daughter down on the ground and concluding the conversation. ‘Better get her home. Thanks for the offer.’

‘Well, this is where I leave you in any case. You okay the rest of the way?’

Chapter 2

In his prison cell Eddie Streetwise slides off his bed. He holds his blanket around his shoulders hiding his heavily tattooed body. His dark brown hair is plastered to his skull with sweat and beads of perspiration pepper his forehead. His bloodless lips are parted as he pants gently.

He walks to the door and places his right ear against it and listens. Hurriedly he changes ears and when satisfied that no one is nearby, he wraps the blanket over his head and walks away holding it fast across his hairy chest with his free hand. As he walks he manages to wriggles out of his underpants; a skill he perfected during his first stretch in the Young Offender Institution in Reading. Then, with practiced ease, he picks up his discarded boxers with the big toe on his right foot and tosses them onto the bed.

Silently he walks to the side of the bed that’s furthest from the door or the adjoining cell. He needs to be as far away from other people as he can possibly get. Fortunately he’s in an end cell on the top floor at Her Majesty's Pleasure. In position, to ensure maximum privacy behind the door and between the bed and the sink, he masturbates to his favourite fantasy. In all the years that he’s been in one form of institution or another he could never get accustomed to masturbating in public.

The single life and over five years in prisons of one form or other have taught him how to masturbate, silently, unemotionally, fast and hard. With his grey brown eyes closed his tongue moistens his parted full, yet somehow bloodless, lips over and over again. Almost reverently he whispers a girl’s name.

Shit he silently mouths as images fill his mind. Fuck, Cunt, Bitch, Bitch, Bitch! he repeats allowing his fingers to work their magic.

He works up to a climax as blurry images of the female form, without personality, fills his mind. He falls deep within his own inner reserves. He thinks of all the women in his life. Silently he undresses them. Ripping undies, uniforms, dresses and gymslips as he takes command. He likes to picture himself ripping silks, tearing satins or grinding cottons against young flesh. He can feel the sensuality of the material as it unsuccessfully tries to mask the body beneath. He can almost feel the softness as lace, ribbon and hair flow over his fingers. In his fantasy he takes his women by force and then discards them. Just as easily as they have all discarded him in real life.

Feverishly he works. Alternatively picturing girls and women who are sexually eager, sexually naive, sexually experienced, sluts, virgins, Black, Brown, White, Chinese, anything! For now any woman will do. And all the time he mouths, ‘Any fucking cunt will do!’ over and over again. ‘Any fucking cunt will do.’

‘Bastards’ he says aloud as he bites his lower lip. Bastard he mouths thinking of his psychiatrist. Why are the Nut Doctors in prisons all young women! He can picture her; her slim frame leaning over towards him. She’s listening intently while he recounts his latest masturbatory fantasy. And, he muses, that’s considered medical treatment these days! Telling a young woman what you like doing.

Not that he tells her this; his favourite fantasy in which he pictures her going home. She opens the door and in the hallway she rips of her suit. She has any number of dark business suits to choose from. His favourite is a black skirt suit. The jacket’s tightly tailored and the skirt long, straight, tight with a slit in both front and back. In his mind’s eye he sees her rip it off while the light from the street illuminates her semi-transparent form through the glass door. Then, as she walks up the stairs, she tears off her starched white blouses and casts it to the floor. Her tiny breasts, cushioned in her white lacy bra would be seen as she walks, slowly, past the landing window. She doesn’t wear knickers in his fantasy. She removes her bra prior to turning the shower on. Then innocently, naked, she’d open the bathroom window - just to let the steam out. It’s then, in his fantasy, that he would take her. If not in the shower then as she gets into bed. Or on the kitchen floor. With her he would play out everything that he tells her that he does in his widest, wettest, dreams. And the wilder he makes them the happier she seems to be. He thinks about having sex with her in her office. Of forcing himself on her. Not that he’d have to force himself, it’s obvious that she wants him. She has to be hot for him; or why else would she keep asking him what he wanks to?

The image fades and desperately he thinks back, searching, rooting, looking for images of females who did things to him that caused him physical, emotional, mental, and best of all sexual pain. His mind is full of images of women that have made him cry out aloud. Made him beg for mercy. Plead with them for the pain and the torture to stop. He wants to scream, yell, beg, rant and rave. He wants it to continue and yet at the same time to stop. In his pain he reaches out for the hand that hurts to once more become the hand that heals.

He closes his eyes and strains for the pleasure and pain hit that will release him from this ecstatic agony and allow him to sleep until his release from Her Majesty's Pleasure early next morning.

He sinks his teeth into his lower lip and bites deeply. He closes his jaws as he closes his eyes on the pain. He knows that not doing this would cause him to cry aloud. But he’s not alone, even in this single cell that he’s been allocated prior to release, he can never be alone. He’s been in prison long enough to know that walls have ears and that inside nothing is secret. He knows that you can never be alone at Her Majesty's Pleasure. And even if he’s leaving in the morning he really doesn’t want the rest of the prisoners, and especially the screws, to hear him. Inside he needs privacy to wank.

He mouths a scream as tears prick the back of his eyes and force their way to the front and slowly trickle from beneath his lids and over his cheeks moistening their passage with salty pain.

Silently he mouths her name, his demon, his torturer, his one true love.

When he’s not aroused he tells himself that it could be any girls’ name he calls out. Any girl for him to reach out to; it really doesn’t matter. One female body is the same as the next. Some are fatter, or thinner or older or younger. But roughly they all have the same bits in the same places.

But as he reaches a climax it’s always the same name that he suppresses. The one name that he dare not bring himself to call out aloud.

He knows that he’ll climax soon. But he wants to prolong the pain and ecstasy. He slows his action as he almost reaches his climax and relaxes his grip. It’s too soon. He wants to linger in his dream for longer, safe in the brutalising fantasy that keeps him humiliated and begging his fantasy