The Collection Read online

  Charlotte was almost impressed – she had never known Jason to be quite so vocal and stern. She knew she should get up and walk out of that tent, but her legs refused to move. The compulsion to stay a while longer outweighed the need to please Jason.

  Who the hell does he think he is, anyway, she thought with a flash of anger. I want to stay.

  “Charlotte. Let’s go.”

  “Let the lady decide for herself,” the man said in that strange accent of his as he looked at Jason as if he were shit on his shoe. “I expect no less from the mind of a mathematician. You cannot even begin to comprehend the wonders of the world beyond the narrow field of your vision.” The sexy man narrowed his eyes at him. “And I sense a darkness within you, my friend. An ugliness. Charlotte, this man is no good for you, you must leave him while you still have the chance. He will destroy you.”

  Charlotte almost laughed at that; Jason was such a wimp, he got upset swatting a fly, for fuck’s sake.

  Jason blanked him. “Charlotte, this is your last chance. If you don’t come with me right now, you can find your own way home.”

  She gaped at him. Surely he couldn’t be serious?

  “Then I guess there’s nothing more to say.”

  As soon as the words left her lips, she knew she’d fucked up. It was only sheer bloody pride that dictated she should stay.

  Pride? Who are you kidding? It’s lust...

  “Have it your way,” Jason said, turning to leave.

  Numb with shock, she just sat there and watched as he angrily swept the tent flap to one side and disappeared out into the brightly-lit night. Her paralysis broke when she suddenly remembered that she only had loose change in her handbag and hadn’t bothered to bring her wallet with all her cards in.

  “Jason, wait,” she cried, jumping up from her seat and stumbling out of the tent.

  But he was nowhere to be seen, instantly swallowed up by the milling crowd. She looked around herself in confusion, disorientated and inexplicably frightened. Where the hell had they parked? Not being able to drive herself, she never really paid attention to such trivial details…

  Tears prickled her eyes and she gasped in shock when a hand grasped her shoulder. She spun round and found herself staring up into those black eyes; eyes which seemed to reflect the blackest pits of hell right back at her.

  She shuddered at the strange thought. Seems like I’m full of them tonight.

  “He is gone, you will not find him here again tonight. Men like him, they are not worth your time. They will destroy what they do not understand. Do you understand what I’m saying?” She didn’t, and just stared at him open-mouthed. “One day, your hidden strength will save you. You will find it within yourself to fight him. Come, you are in shock, I will look after you.”

  “But I have to find him,” she said in a small voice. “He can’t be far away –“

  He silenced her with his forefinger pressed to her lips. “Hush, the moment has passed. Fate has spoken.”

  Fate has spoken? What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  But the thought was fleeting, because all her senses were on high-alert with his finger pressed to her lips like that. The other hand gently massaging her shoulder didn’t help much, either – that small action alone sent ripples of desire coursing through her body, muddying her thoughts.

  I feel so strange… Is this a dream?

  She gazed up into his dark eyes, then at his cruel mouth. All she wanted to do was to kiss him. What’s happening to me?

  “You are so beautiful. Come.”

  His hands dropped away, and he turned his back.

  III

  He walked, she followed. She wasn’t entirely sure if she even wanted to follow him, yet her legs obeyed his command. Through the crowds they wove, until they came to the edge of the fairground. Nestled against the trees at the edge of the area that usually served as a communal patch of green for the surrounding housing estates, some caravans were scattered around. He led her to the one furthest away, and in a daze she followed. Back here, away from the bright lights of the fairground, it was a lot darker and much quieter. Some young teens huddled together, sharing an illicit fag, and a few people moved in the shadows.

  “In here,” he said, pulling open the caravan door.

  She stepped inside the dark interior. Behind her, he flicked a switch and her surroundings flooded with light. To her right was a heavy, black velvet curtain that cornered off the other half of the caravan, and to her left was a double bed with black satin bedding. Black material swaddled the small, oblong windows. That was it. Well, almost it; the wall behind the bed was one huge mirror.

  Gently, the man steered her the short distance to the foot of the bed. He stood behind her, forcing her to look at their reflection in the mirror opposite.

  We look amazing together, came the detached, dreamlike thought. Not what kind of sleaze has a caravan like this, or, what the hell am I doing here?

  Dimly, she was aware that what she was doing was weird and wrong, but she felt powerless to stop it.

  “You are right. We do look amazing together,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  A tiny part of her registered that he had given voice to her own thoughts, but the feeling of unease disappeared almost as quickly as it had come.

  She looked at herself, and at him. Really looked.

  Charlotte knew she was beautiful. Many hours of her short life had been spent admiring her reflection, as well as more than her fair share of perfectly-posed selfies. On the rare occasions that she was lucky enough to bag herself a catalogue job, she liked to look at the resulting photos for hours at a time.

  But this time it felt as if she were looking at herself anew.

  I’m so fucking beautiful, came the lust-fogged thought.

  The man behind her drew her back into his front, and his strong, tanned forearm snaked around the top half of her chest, his hand cupping her unblemished, milky-white shoulder. She squirmed in his grip, admiring how perfectly they went together; him so tanned and masculine, her so pale and feminine. Her waist-length, natural ginger hair which she dyed a vibrant shade of red spilled over his forearm, partly obscuring the simple green sundress she wore; a shade carefully chosen to exactly match the moss-green of her eyes.

  He ground his hips into her backside, and hot arousal flooded her pussy. Arching her back, she pushed into his erection and delicious shivers of sexual excitement pumped through her veins.

  What am I doing?

  But again, the thought evaporated into nothing.

  “You are so beautiful, my darling,” the sexy stranger whispered in her ear. “Look at us together, two perfect specimens of both sexes. We belong together.”

  On an intellectual level, she knew his words should send her running for the proverbial hills, but it wasn’t her intellect that she was thinking with. She was alive with desire, awash with it, drowning in her own, greedy need to be fucked.

  She gasped when in one fluid motion he yanked down the straps of her dress and the flimsy fabric pooled around her ankles.

  Yes, she thought dazedly. More.

  She half-closed her eyes and tilted back her head, but not once did she take her eyes off their reflections in the mirror. Her matching black bra and panties were in sharp contrast to her creamy skin and she drunk in the sight of her hourglass figure. His dark, brawny hand curled around her throat, partially cupping her jaw. His hand left her throat, and in a matter of seconds her bra was unclipped and her panties slid down her legs. His hands explored her nude body, cupping her naturally full breasts that were so at odds with her slight figure. He pinched a pale pink nipple, making her gasp. His other hand slipped between her legs, his fingers parting her slick folds. When his index-finger found the swollen nub of her clit and circled it slowly, her legs threatened to buckle beneath her.

  She reached round behind herself, her hands seeking the hard cock encased in his jeans. She sighed in pleasure when her fingers made contact,
and her eyes rolled back in her head in pleasure.

  “You’re fucking beautiful,” he said behind her.

  For the briefest of seconds there was just empty air where his body and hands had been, and then she found herself being pushed forward towards the bed. She was bodily lifted up, and planted on all fours on the black satin sheets where she bounced for a moment before falling still. Then his weight was crushing her. It was the most natural thing in the world to spread her thighs and succumb to the pressure of his body. He pushed down on her shoulders so that the side of her face was mashed against the satin covers with her arse in the air.

  She squirmed against him, tilting her hips so that he had easy access to her sopping cunt. In a horny daze, she heard the descent of his zipper, followed by the feel of hot, rigid flesh probing her crack.

  Her pussy ached to be penetrated; every nerve-ending in her body fizzled with the need to be fucked.

  But in a single heartbeat, everything changed. One second her entire being was a puddle of molten desire, the next she was a bundle of confusion and humiliation.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” came a new, and very pissed off, heavily-accented, female voice.

  Charlotte twisted round her head and saw a woman standing in the caravan doorway.

  “How dare you barge in on me! This is private,” he said, scrambling to his feet to face her.

  The woman just stood there, mouth agape. In a split-second, Charlotte took in every detail of her; she was in her mid-twenties and had long, curly black hair worn loose. Pretty tendrils framed her heart-shaped face with the small, blood-red lips and huge, dark eyes. On her slim body she wore a frilly white blouse and a long, voluminous red skirt with an oversized black bag dangling from one shoulder. She was dark-skinned, like the man she had been about to fuck and she was also the most beautiful woman Charlotte had ever seen.

  And then it hit her full-force.

  I was about to fuck a stranger!

  “You said you would never do this again. This is cheap, Jeta. It is wrong to lure these Western sluts with your pathetic spells.”

  “Melina, please, she means nothing, she is just a whore. It is her who came onto me.”

  The girl called Melina let out a harsh sounding laugh. “Why, Jeta? Am I not enough for you? Why, why, why?”

  As Melina’s voice grew shriller, Charlotte scooted down the bed, thinking that she could make her escape while the two of them were arguing. She felt strange and disorientated, like she had awoken from a deep sleep. All she wanted to do was to get the fuck away.

  “And where do you think you’re going, Western slut?”

  Charlotte froze on the spot. She was sitting on the edge of the bed and had managed to scoop up her dress which she clutched to her naked body.

  “I, I, I’m sorry,” she stammered. “This has all been a horrible mistake, I’m sorry. I’ll just go, let you sort this out.”

  “Sorry? You’re sorry?” She extended her slender arm and pointed a long finger at her. “You are a whore, and I curse you, slut.”

  She spoke further in a language that as far as Charlotte was concerned was gobbledegook. The alien words she spat at her made her flesh crawl and as she spoke, Charlotte shoved the dress over her head and scooped up her underwear, stuffing her bra and knickers into her handbag.

  The woman still stood in the doorway, blocking her way. She had stopped babbling in her strange language, and smiled at her. It wasn’t a nice smile, but rather one a snake might give a mouse before it swallowed it whole.

  “Melina, no,” Jeta gasped. “You must not do that, it is too much. You have gone too far, take it back.”

  “I’ve gone too far?” she said, turning her hate-filled gaze onto her boyfriend. “It is you that fucks everything that moves, not me. Now you will have this cunt’s death on your conscience.”

  “No. Don’t do this,’ he pleaded.

  “If I remove the spell, we are over, do you understand? So, which is it? Me, or her?”

  Jeta’s gaze flitted from one woman to the other, his eyes full of fear. Charlotte stared at him, silently begging with her eyes for him to help her. He dropped his gaze and her heart sank.

  No help there, then.

  “Please, just let me pass,” Charlotte said in what she hoped was a steady voice.

  The beautiful woman with the flaming black eyes and little red doll-lips pulled back in a nasty smirk shook her head. Charlotte froze in fear as she reached into her shoulder bag and rummaged around.

  She’s going to shoot me, came the panicked thought. Or stab me.

  Instead, she produced a roll of sticky-tape. Charlotte just stared dumbly at it when the woman held it out to her.

  “Take it, and I shall let you pass. Put it in your bag.”

  She wants me to take a roll of sticky-tape? What the fuck?

  “Take it,” Jeta said, “you will be needing it. And whatever you do, don’t lose it.”

  Slowly, she turned to look at him and saw sadness in his eyes. Shaking her head in disbelief, she accepted the tape and dropped it into her bag, for surely that was preferable to the bitch attacking her.

  It’s just a roll of sticky-tape, what possible harm can it do me?

  True to her word, the woman stepped to one side and, without a backward glance, Charlotte fled the scene.

  IV

  She stood shivering at the bus-stop, not from cold, but from shock. As luck would have it, the battery on her mobile had died so there was no calling Jason and begging his forgiveness.

  He’d leave me in a heart-beat if he knew what I’d done.

  Her relationship with Jason was suddenly the most precious thing in the world to her; in that moment she loved him with all the remorseful passion that only a guilty heart could muster.

  From behind her, the thump-thump of the music coming from the common was like a knife twisting in her heart, a painful reminder of her indiscretion. All she wanted to do was go home and crawl into Jason’s arms.

  At last, the red double-decker rounded the corner and she dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. The backs of her hands came away smeared with the black gunge of her eye make-up and she licked her forefingers and rubbed under her eyes, doing her best to minimise the damage.

  I bet I look a right state, she thought miserably as she fumbled in her handbag for the loose change residing in the bottom – just enough for the bus-fare. As she did so her fingers grazed the roll of sticky-tape and she snatched back her hand like she had been bitten.

  What the fuck was all that about anyway? A roll of sticky-tape, for fuck’s sake. Ignoring the bad feeling that churned in her guts, she boarded the bus.

  She made her way to the long seat at the back, keen to be away from any prying eyes. Not that there were many people on-board given the late hour. Her misery and humiliation was a palpable thing, a badge that she wore for all to see.

  And guilt, she thought. Let’s not forget about that.

  Meekly, she clasped her hands in her lap, letting her waterfall of brilliant red hair fall in front of her face. Her body went slack, giving in to the rocking motions of the bus. Absently, she focussed on her hands.

  What the fuck is wrong with my finger? Trembling, she lifted it to her face, gasping loudly in horror. What the fuck?

  It defied comprehension, but there it was, right before her very eyes. Her fucking forefinger was coming unattached below the second knuckle. It dangled there, jerking slightly with the motion of the bus.

  I’m hallucinating.

  Obviously she was as there was no blood and no pain. She slapped her hand against her ribcage, firmly sandwiching it under her armpit. The wave of panic surged through her, making her vision swim. She closed her eyes, close to blacking out.

  It isn’t real…

  She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Keeping her hand tucked under her armpit, she opened her eyes and stared out at the black night, illuminated by passing cars. She lurched in her seat as the bus nosily brake
d and the three last remaining passengers – an old woman and a teenaged couple – alighted the bus.

  The bus jerked forwards again and Charlotte had never felt so alone and scared in her entire life.

  She knew she had to look at her hand; knew she had to confront the hallucination head on. Removing her shaking hand from the warm safety of her armpit, she held it up before her eyes.

  A small scream escaped her lips because it wasn’t a fucking hallucination. The end of her finger was only attached precariously to her hand by the flap of skin on the underside. Everything else was severed.

  It looked like one of those 3D shots of human anatomy on a computer, where parts of the body were perfectly sliced to show every last detail of the workings of a person’s insides. Her finger bone, encased in the spongy pink and red innards showed not a drop of blood, and both edges where the digit had been severed were mirror smooth. The blood was evident in the tiny blood vessels, but beyond that, nothing. The bone gleamed white amidst the red and her world dimmed to black.

  She didn’t know how long she had been out. Five minutes? Ten? She opened her eyes to the rocking motion of the bus, the side of her face freezing and wet from being mashed against the window.

  Groggily, she sat up, her mind dangerously close to spinning out of control. Tears blurred her vision and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. The injured hand that defied the laws of nature rested in her lap and she refused to look at it, instead staring blankly out of the window. Her reflection stared back at her. Her eyes were like blackholes with the smeared mascara, her complexion ghostly pale.

  I look like a ghost, came the unnerving thought.

  In despair, she averted her gaze and unconsciously her good hand slipped inside her handbag. It may only have been a gesture of self-comfort, but her fingertips automatically sought out the roll of tape. Without thinking, she pulled it out and looked at it.

  The woman’s strange words echoed in her head: You’ll be needing this…

  Her finger was hanging off and there was no blood. It occurred to her that it would make perfect sense to ‘wrap up’ her damaged finger.