Free He Died with His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond Page B

There was something about his eyes that looked wrong as he came in. I blocked the chain with my left forearm; it cut straight through my anorak and marked the skin. I stamped very hard on his right instep. Now you're not going anywhere, I thought, and gave him my head up his nose. I caught the chain as he dropped it and slung it over a roof, feeling where he had filed the links sharp. I stamped on his other foot, cupped my hand under his chin, and threw him at somebody's front door. He went through it. After a while he crawled back out onto the doorstep and started to feel himself all over, trying not to cry with the pain in his feet.
    'Anyone else, now?' I said.
    Nobody said anything.
    'I hate that kind of thing,' I said, turning back to the car, 'especially when I've got a lot on my mind. It gets right on my wick.'
    'E's a bit of a nut, Scar is,' said the Asian boy. 'You don't want to bother about him too much.'
    'I'm not,' I said. The skinhead was trying not to scream now, while he struggled to get his kickers off his swollen feet.
    'Dad didn't look like e ad it in im,' somebody said.
    'They never do,' said the Asian boy. He said to me: 'Tell you what, maybe I could get you a bird if dark meat don't bother you.'
    'Another time,' I said, getting into the car, 'But I'll tell you this much, you've got the makings of a businessman, I reckon.'
    'Well, you gotter graft,' he said, leaning in at the window. 'What about the other deal, then? The smoke. The fix. You know.'
    'You could meet me outside the Agincourt around closing time if you liked.' I started backing the car out.
    'You won't last long in the Agincourt, you bastard!' screamed the skinhead. 'I'm gointer get you done over in there!'
    'Ah, shut up,' somebody said. 'You're just a nut.'
    He still only had one boot off, and his feet stank.

13
    Staniland's tape says:
    Barbara was hatched in fury like a wasp, and she'll die in fury. Her promiscuity is aggression; she uses sex to obliterate a man—this is her revenge on existence. She forces me to assert myself, then cuts me down by refusing to have intercourse, and enslaves me. Every time I succeed in making love to her she leaves me; she knows this is the worst punishment she can inflict. Sometimes she varies the treatment. Last night in the Agincourt, for instance, she let herself be picked up by the Laughing Cavalier; she took him back to Romilly Place with her. Everyone roared with laughter at me as they left, the two of them. She said I could come back as well and watch if I liked; the idea sickened me so much that I went outside and was sick. I spent the whole night walking round London. There was a north wind blowing; the street lights looked brilliant in a sudden frost. I was sobered by the shock of what she had done; even so, I beat my fists against a wall and cut them. Two patrolling coppers pushed me up against a fence by some waste ground at one point, down by Rotherhithe, but I had money on me and could prove I wasn't a vagrant, so they let me go after I had talked to them for a while. They said nothing at all; their faces were just blank under their helmets. I don't remember what I said.
    I realize I can't satisfy Barbara in bed. I don't believe anybody can. It's a strange form of love, to be compelled to convert the woman you love into a human being. She hates my love, she says; she says it's servile; she just wants to kick it to pieces. About a week after what I've just related, we were in our room one afternoon with the curtains drawn, and I was feeling over her body. She drew away, bored, and remarked: 'I've never had an orgasm in my life, not even when I wank. I don't really know what I bother to have sex for.'
    But I know. She has it out of hatred. Later in the afternoon I managed to fuck her through her knickers. She started by pushing me off, as usual; then suddenly she just shrugged and let me do it. 'You'll have to get me a new pair,' was all she said when I'd finished. 'Why do you always manage to