pest’, who had the attic room – he’d try to grab you if
you found yourself alone with him.
Sounds bad, Ava, but it was sort of fun.
As soon as whoever else was in the room had left,
he’d turn dramatically, slow motion, like a father who’s
about to tickle a child
and you would giggle, run.
It was widely known he couldn’t get it up.
And so the threat seemed dulled – a pencil not a knife.
A poke and not a stab.
You follow me?
He’d go for anyone – whatever shape or age or gender,
you’d get grabbed. Which kind of made it better? – More
democratic, maybe?
And he was handsome, so you wouldn’t run that fast.
Would you pull my hair when no one’s looking, Ava?
In the room beside the bathroom
was an accountant they called Percy – though that
wasn’t his actual name.
He was small and bald with rosy cheeks –
cherubic with a smoker’s cough, a girlish giggle.
Most of them had met in school but he had joined them
later. Seemed at odds with them.
They’d often hold him like a battering ram and use
his head to smash a wardrobe or a chest of drawers.
One time, when he had passed out drunk,
they gaffer-taped him to a plastic chair and put him in
the garden.
The next morning, he was exactly as they’d
left him –
fast asleep. Serene.
They sowed grass seed into his bedroom carpet and
then watered it – it grew.
And when he locked his bedroom door to keep them out,
they took it off its hinges, burnt it.
I sensed he welcomed each new torture, but I couldn’t
work out why.
He was in love with an older barmaid
in the pub just down the road. She was gay. It didn’t
seem to bother him. In fact I think that’s why he’d
