Story

I’ve done a bit of writing over the years and got a great deal of pleasure from it. No money or enhancement of status it’s true (apart from that time I got an article published in the Times Educational Supplement) but it’s kept me sane and helped keep the black dog at bay. In recent times I’ve joined a couple of writing groups where other would be authors listen to your literary gems on the obvious understanding that you listen to theirs. These monthly pieces are of necessity quite short, so the example which follows is a quick read, and won’t keep you away from Twitter for too long. The subject we’d decided to respond to on this occasion was:

The Door.

It was very ornate as doors go.  Full of carvings of figures in various poses and juxtapositions.  The small brass knocker kept up the theme.  It too was a figure, of a naked male torso facing the door.  He looked like he was clutching a trapeze; his legs bent backwards from the knees. It was by grabbing his feet that you knocked; a suggestive movement that made me feel slightly uncomfortable.  

But not as uncomfortable as the creature who opened the door. She was dressed in black.  I say ’dressed’.  She actually looked like she’d been dipped in matt, black plastic – or was it latex?

“Err…” I began.

“Come in,” the woman replied, swinging the big door a little wider. She moved her right arm backwards, her palm open, inviting entry.  And she smiled.   A big wide, inviting smile.  

I must say that the combination of costume, smile and undoubted attractiveness did unnerve me somewhat and I found myself entering in silence.  There were words there to be said but my mouth wouldn’t say them, or rather my temporarily overloaded brain wouldn’t let it.  So in I went – like lambs reportedly do on their extended journey to the supermarket.

The hallway was large and sumptuous.  There were several panelled doorways and a wide, maroon carpeted staircase bisecting them.  On the walls between the doors were oil paintings, also of figures and just as suggestive as the door knocker had been though the bodies depicted in them were mostly female. Beneath were luxurious, three seated sofas in soft teak coloured leather. It was to one these that she guided me.  I’m not sure how she did this but before I knew it, there I was, feeling swallowed up by the soft, brown leather.  She placed herself (the word ’sitting’ doesn’t really do justice to the way she descended and arranged her latex enclosed body) at the opposite end of the same seat.

“Let me guess,” she now said in a velvety voice, her tone soft and sensuous enough to wrap priceless porcelain in.  “This is your first time.”

“It is here,” I managed to croak.

She greeted this with a slight tilt of her delicate head, her eyebrows gently raised – an expression which said “Oh yes?  Perhaps there’s more to you than I had thought.”

I tried to smile.  I doubt I achieved anything as disarmingly radiant as the one that beamed back at me.

“You’re younger than the ones we’re used to,” she observed.

“Am I?”

“Yes,” she said simply.  Her smile moderated now; became less a display of teeth, more a gentle widening of the lips.  If anything it was even more alluring.

And then one of the doors opened and a man appeared.  He was immaculately dressed in a dark suit, pale shirt and darker tie.

“Ah, Gerald,” said my companion, unwinding herself from the seat until she was standing, fully erect, in front of me. 

“Could you show this young man to the utility cupboard.  He’s here to read the gas meter.”