Djinn: An Extreme Horror Novel Read online

  The white guy pushed her to the floor. She landed on her rump, the shock of it knocking her sick for a second.

  “Hand over the money,” he said.

  “We saw that money fall out of your jumper at the bus stop,” the black guy said. “So hand it over.”

  “What money?” she asked bravely. Stupidly.

  The white guy kicked her in the side of her head and she went sprawling to the floor. Everything started to spin, and she could taste the coppery tang of blood in her mouth.

  “Fuck this,” he said, reaching down to yank her pullover up over her fat stomach and heavy breasts. “Christ, what are you, the living dough girl?”

  His friend snorted laughter and reached down to prise the wads of money out of the cups of her bra. In doing so he dislodged the bra and her big tits spilled out.

  “Fuck, she’s disgusting,” the white guy said.

  But when Pam gazed up at him through blurry vision, she saw that her being so disgusting didn’t stop him from rubbing the obvious bulge in the front of his designer jeans.

  “Help!” she screamed.

  Her cries for help were cut short when the white guy kicked her hard in her bare, flabby stomach. She doubled over, the air whooshing out of her.

  The black guy finished fishing out the last of the notes from her torn bra.

  “I don’t fucking believe this, there’s fucking thousands here.”

  “Check her bag, maybe there’s more,” said the other guy.

  He proceeded to tug down her scruffy cleaning jeans, taking her knickers with it.

  “Hey man,” his friend asked. “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for more money. If she keeps it stashed in her bra, who knows where else she keeps it. Like, up her ass, or something.”

  “Shit, we don’t have time for this, you dirty fucker. What you wanna fuck that dog for? Let’s get out of here.”

  Pam remained doubled over on her side, the air cool against her bare buttocks.

  Why is this happening to me? Oh God, my money…

  In the distance a police siren could be heard.

  “See,” the black guy said, “they’re on their way already.”

  “Don’t be so fucking soft. This is fucking London, there’s always police sirens.”

  “I don’t care. I’m gone.”

  The white guy stared longingly down at her, then sighed deeply.

  “Fine. Hey man, what’s that?”

  “Dunno. It was in fatty’s bag.”

  Pam blanched when she saw he was holding the lamp.

  “No,” she wheezed. “Please don’t take that.”

  That was absolutely the wrong thing to say.

  The black man smiled. It showed lots of white teeth and the coldness of it sent a shiver down her spine.

  They turned to leave, leaving her half naked and beaten, sprawled out in the alleyway.

  “Shit,” one of them was saying, their figures and voices retreating. “I can’t believe that fat cunt had so much money on her…”

  Pam groaned softly and pulled herself into a sitting position. Her attackers had taken every last penny. The fuckers.

  But the worst thing of all was the lamp. Now she would never get her remaining five wishes.

  What a fucking day, she thought miserably. She had drunk shit, been beaten up, lost ten grand, lost her job and any chance of a happy future now the lamp was gone.

  Could this day get any fucking worse?

  She didn’t think so.

  She was wrong.

  “What the fuck happened to you?”

  “Hello Wayne. I got mugged on the way home.”

  Wayne glared at her and Pam shrivelled inside. She knew that look and it wasn’t good. She dragged her aching body over to the tatty sofa that served as a wall, dividing the kitchen from the living room and collapsed onto it.

  “I couldn’t give two shits what happened to you on the way home. I meant what the fuck happened at work.”

  Fuck, he knows. He knows I walked out. Now I’m really in the shit…

  “I’ve just been beaten up and mugged. Can we talk about this later?”

  He was on her in a flash, pinning her down with his big body against the sofa.

  “I don’t think so, sweetheart. This rent don’t pay itself, you lazy, good for nothing slag.”

  His breath was sour in her face, making her cringe. It wasn’t even yet midday and he’d already hit the booze.

  Fucking marvellous.

  “Wayne, please, have a heart. I’m really hurting right now…”

  “I’ll give you hurting, you stupid fucking slut.”

  One meaty hand was a dead weight on her collarbone and the other slapped her across the face. Normally it wouldn’t bother her, but her muggers had already hit her there and the inside of her mouth was bleeding where a tooth had cut her cheek.

  She whimpered and clutched her throbbing face.

  “Leave me alone Wayne, I mean it.”

  Wayne’s face was red and his eyes bulged. She could see the way the thick, body builder veins in his neck were protruding and she quivered beneath him. That meant he was really mad. Not for the first time she wondered why she was still with him.

  Because you’re too scared to be alone and you’ll never get anyone else. Ever.

  “Stupid whore,” he said, sitting up and edging away from her slightly.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. The threat of violence had passed. For now.

  “I’m sorry baby, I’ll get another job right away, I promise. How do you know anyway?”

  “Because you’re boss called and said you could forget about getting paid for last week.”

  Oh my God, the complete fucking bastard, she thought angrily.

  “I’m really sorry, Wayne. He was just such a bastard and I couldn’t stand it no longer.”

  “We got rent to pay, you’re gonna have to get your sorry ass another job today or you’re gonna have to go out and whore yourself.”

  Pam knew he wasn’t joking. She had never actually done it, she’d always managed to talk him round by telling him that he might catch some fatal STD if she did it. That had seemed to work. So far.

  “I’ve still got the other cleaning gigs, and the care work, and the weekend factory job, it’s not like I’ve lost everything, and I’ll replace the job I lost today.”

  “You’d better.”

  Maybe you should get a fucking job, came the unbidden thought.

  Immediately she felt guilty. She loved Wayne. She was lucky to have him. Women that looked like her never got guys that looked like Wayne. When he wasn’t drinking or taking drugs he worked out. And how. His midriff was maybe a little puddingy from all that beer, but he was sculpted and completely out her league in the looks department. He had that shaved heard, Bruce Willis thing going on, except Wayne was a whole lot bigger and meaner looking.

  He reminded her of this every day, that she was lucky to have him. That’s when she wasn’t working or he was beating on her.

  I love him, she reminded herself. If you love him so much then why do you have to remind yourself that you do?

  She shrugged off the dark thoughts. It must just be because she was tired and hurting.

  “Why’d you get mugged anyway? You ain’t exactly Paris Hilton, are you?”

  Pam shrugged. How the hell could she possibly even begin to explain?

  Oh well, you know, I meet this Jeanie in a bottle, and he offered me ten grand if I drank out of a dirty toilet. Some thugs saw the money fall out of my bra at the bus stop and I got mugged…

  “Just unlucky I guess.”

  Wayne got up and crossed the short distance to the fridge to retrieve a can of lager.

  “You need to get yourself cleaned up. You’ve got to go to work in a few hours.”

  Pam had another cleaning job this afternoon and she mentally groaned at the thought of it. She took her weary body into the mould ridden bathroom and set about the arduous task of cleaning herse
lf up.

  Work passed without incident. Another four hours of mind numbing, soul destroying crap, cleaning up other people’s shit. When she got home on the bus, weighed down by a shop in Tesco, Wayne was laid out on the sofa snoozing.

  “Hey. What’s for dinner?” he asked through half closed eyes.

  Pam dumped the bags of shopping in the kitchenette and proceeded to stab holes in the microwavable lasagne.

  “Lasagne,” she said, casting her eye around the shambolic, filthy flat on the fifteenth floor of a tower block situated in Bethnal Green. Empty tinnies surrounded Wayne, along with Pizza crusts on dirty plates. There was crap everywhere, so much so her head hurt just looking at it all.

  “Lasagne?” he asked.

  Something in the tone of his voice had her on edge.

  “Yeah,” she said warily.

  “But you’re not working tonight.”

  Four nights a week she did a twelve hour shift down a care home where she got to wipe shit fresh at the source instead of from a toilet.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “So therefore you’ve got plenty of time to cook a proper evening meal. My God, I’ve had nothing to eat all day apart from last night’s pizza, and now you’re gonna serve up something from a microwave?”

  Pam was bone weary. She knew where this was headed, and after the day she’d had, she didn’t think she could face it.

  “I’m sorry Wayne, I’m just a bit tired. I’ll make a nice salad with it.”

  “A salad?” he spluttered incredulously. “You have got to be shitting me.”

  He got up from the sofa and joined her in the tiny kitchen, grabbing her by her soft upper arms and violently shaking her.

  “Stop it!” she protested, her teeth rattling in her head.

  “Shut up, you lazy bitch.”

  His face had gone that same shade of red it always went when he was mad. She noticed that his pupils were dilated. Probably speed, she reasoned. He was always cranky when he took speed.

  He spun her round and bent her over the kitchen work top.

  “Oh no Wayne, please, I’m too tired for this…”

  “Shut up and pull down your pants.”

  She heard the whiz of his belt being pulled through his jean loops and she knew she didn’t have a choice. Not unless she wanted to make it ten time worse for herself. So she pulled down her jeans and knickers and offered up her fat, pimply arse.

  The belt came cracking down on her fleshy buttocks. Tears stung her eyes and the singing pain in her backside had her gasping and choking back the sobs. She gripped the work top and took her punishment like a good girl, counting the devastating blows to her arse.

  He stopped after six. Her arse throbbed like it had a heartbeat of its own and she had great difficulty righting herself.

  “Now get the fuck out of my sight.”

  She hobbled into their bedroom which was right next door with not even a hallway dividing the two rooms. She shuffled to the bed with her jeans round her ankles and collapsed onto it face first.

  She could hear the whir of the microwave as Wayne heated up the lasagne and her stomach grumbled, despite having eaten her own body weight that day in various pastries from Greggs.

  She doubted that Wayne would talk to her for the remainder of the night. When he was cross with her he usually stayed up late and watched porn. Sickness and dizziness enveloped her as she lay on the bed. The sound of grunting women drifted to her through the closed door. So he was starting early tonight then. Tears stung her eyes and she eventually fell asleep to the sounds of the violent pornography he so enjoyed watching.

  CHAPTER TWO.

  Pam woke up at half six with Wayne snoring heavily besides her. By rights she didn’t have to get up seeing as she’d lost her cleaning job in the pub, but old habits died hard.

  In the kitchen she switched on the kettle and unhooked a mug from the mug tree, absently picking at a pimple just underneath the sagging elastic leg hole of her big knickers.

  “Good morning.”

  Pam let out a short, sharp scream and dropped the mug she was about to spoon instant coffee into. It shattered on the floor at her bare feet. Fleetingly she thought she might have woken Wayne. But no, she could still hear him snoring through the wall. Nothing would wake that man right now, he would still be pissed from last night.

  “You,” she gasped. “What, how, why?”

  The entity with no face shrugged. He was still wearing the same black suit from yesterday.

  “You have freed me from the lamp. I have no need for it until our deal is complete. I told you that I would appear to you every day until we are done.”

  Pam was suddenly painfully self-conscious of her shapeless, night t-shirt. It only came to the top of her knickers because she was so fat and she wore nothing else. Surreptitiously she tugged it downwards, not that it helped any.

  “I lost the ten grand yesterday. I was mugged. But I suppose you know that already, right?”

  “Yes, Pam. I know everything about you.”

  “So do I still get the other five wishes?”

  “Of course you do. But I’ll tell you up front, immortality is off the cards, we cannot mess with the cyclical quality of human life. So what wish may I grant you, Pam?”

  His face, or lack of it, was starting to hurt her brain and she lowered her gaze to the smashed mug.

  There was the million dollar question and her heart surged in hope. Maybe, just maybe there was a way out of her miserable life after all.

  “Money. But in a bank account this time. I don’t want any more nasty accidents like yesterday. I want a brand new account that Wayne can’t access.”

  I don’t want Wayne getting his grubby mitts on it. Because I’m gonna take that money and run…

  The thought surprised her. She wasn’t even aware that had been her plan until it had clarified in her mind in that precise moment.

  “Very well. How much?”

  “A million,” she said unthinkingly.

  There was no way he’d go for that…

  “It is not my place to influence your wishes. But why just a million? Can you not even comprehend an amount bigger than that, yet alone wish for it?”

  He had a point. What were a few extra noughts between her and her magical friend?

  “A billion pounds, then.”

  “Done. There is now one billion pounds sterling in your brand new bank account.”

  He reached into his trouser pocket and showed her a bank card. It looked exactly the same as her old one, it even had her signature on the back of it. But it wasn’t her old card because the long number on the front was slightly different.

  Pam felt dizzy. Could her life really change like that in the merest blink of an eye? There had to be a catch. There was always a catch.

  “What do I have to do?” she asked with bated breath.

  “Yes, your task. I am sure you are aware Pam, that everything comes at a price. When you complete your task today, I will give you your new debit card when I come to you tomorrow.”

  Pam was beginning to feel distinctly uneasy.

  “Go on,” she prompted when he fell silent.

  “Only when you have completed the task will you be able to draw on your money. Today, I would like you to retrieve the lamp that was stolen yesterday. And when it is safely back in your possession, I would like you to kill the same two men that mugged you.”

  “You want me to do what?”

  “Kill the men that mugged you.”

  Pam had heard him the first time. Unconsciously she clutched her chest to still her wildly beating heart.

  “I can’t kill someone.”

  “And I can easily retract the one billion pounds.”

  “We don’t even know where they live.”

  “Pam. Do I look like a normal kind of guy to you? Of course we know where they live.”

  “Can’t I just go and get you back your lamp? Why do you want me to kill them?”

  “Because
that is just the way it has to be.”

  “Jesus, I can’t, I’m sorry. The deal’s off.”

  “You would forgo a life of wealth and happiness for the sake of two lowlife scumbags? For a pair of boys that would stab their own mother in the back for a paltry sum?”

  “I am not a killer.”

  “And I am running out of patience. It is your obligation to complete the deal.”

  Pam’s blood turned cold in her veins.

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  His face, or lack of it, seemed brighter than before. The glow had spread to the rest of his body, illuminating him as if he stood in a pool of bright sunlight. Except there was no window in this sorry excuse for a kitchen.

  “The moment your first wish was granted, I owned your soul. A deal is a deal, Pam. You made your choice, now you must honour it.”

  “But what if I refuse to kill for you?”

  “If you are adamant on such a trifling matter, then I will claim you soul early.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You will kill me if I don’t do it?” she asked, her heart suddenly pounding extra hard. “You lied to me. You said that if I failed to complete a task, I would just go back to how I was at the beginning.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a lie. More of a little fib to get you to agree to partake. If you do as I ask then you will live a long and happy life of your choosing. It is entirely up to you. Oh, come now Pam,” he said on seeing her stricken expression. “Those two have it coming, you will be doing the world a favour, ridding the earth of such vermin.”

  One billion pounds and a way out of my shitty life. He’s right, they’re scum, I’ll be doing future innocent victims a favour. Better them than me…

  Pam was horrified at the direction her thoughts were taking. But God, the money. That, and the fact she didn’t want to fucking die.

  “What if I’m caught?”

  He shrugged. “Then you know what to use your next wish on.”

  “Jesus.”

  Her mind whirred with the possibilities. Even if she was caught, and she used up her third wish on not being locked up, she still would have three wishes left. And three more wishes really wasn’t so shabby. She could be rich beyond her wildest imaginings. She could be beautiful. And still she would have one wish left.