18. THE SKIRT

A look at some of the Monastic history as seen through the eyes of a high class prostitute

It was with a titanic struggle that Imageous stopped his body from shutting down entirely, because if he’d done that he would probably still be lying on the helicopter pad deader than any dodo you ever saw, and you can take it from me that they’re all dead. But he did have that titanic struggle and all he did was twitch and jerk as his mind tried to come to terms with what, to him, was a totally alien environment. All the bits and pieces of recent days had been added in his head to the sight of a modern helicopter, and he had passed out rather than make a sensible attempt at understanding everything.

Enid’s face softened. She knew a thing or two about the male sex and chief amongst them was the fact that they were nowhere as strong as the female half of the population when it came to adapting to the really unusual, and even though there wasn’t anything really unusual about her helicopter (yes, it was hers, she could have afforded a fleet of them from her savings accrued after years of high-end prostitution), but she was equally aware that to Imageous just about everything was weird.

To go back a few years: she had actually been to the Monastery when she’d taken Bertie to enrol there as a child novice, and she had seen and been horrified by the almost vacuous lives lived by its inmates. Indeed, she had noted that some of the Brothers were little more than dribbling shells devoid of anything you’d call real life that must have departed in a wave of monotony and boredom years earlier, when they were still young. She had witnessed the intonations of absolute drivel they had to chant, words that had been repeated with such diabolical repetition that the Monks believed every nuance lock, stock and mindless barrel. She had instantly hated the place.

But it did some good, or rather had done some good in the past. After all, its dedication was to the forgiveness of fallen women and although it made her smirk when she thought of the Monastery’s interpretation of the term “fallen” (she had never fallen anywhere except out of bed once, years ago and on her own, and was well on her way to accruing her first million by doing the one thing that nature had made sure she was addicted to whilst at the same time offering an army of wealthy but lost mostly male souls a legitimate outlet for their innermost needs). Indeed, in her considered opinion she was the least fallen person she’d ever met and certainly the least abused.

But some members of her profession seemed to need forgiveness because they believed some gobbledegook about what they were doing being a sin and evil and unworthy of a decent girl, and so they had turned to the Monastery for that forgiveness whilst paying for the service with their flesh if they had no cash funds. Everyone was happy except the Monks who had subsequently to go and mortify themselves as they transferred the forgiveness they had offered from themselves to the big god of Pain.

It might be wondered at this stage why she had ever taken her son there, Bertie, because it was clear that he would have no life at all, but she rationalised that he had to go somewhere and he wouldn’t stay there for ever, she’d see to that when enough money rolled in. In the end he had seemed to enjoy it, particularly after she had arranged for him to make regular but forbidden excursions from long-forgotten entrances out into the town and eventually even to her own home (the cottage in the grounds of which even now she was standing and examining the shivering wreckage that was Imageous)

So she looked at Imageous and shook her head.

“It was a desert, wasn’t it?” she said quietly, and she stood close enough to him for him to get a good look up her micro-skirt if he opened his eyes. She had learned that the male sex is so easily diverted by glimpses up such garments. Indeed, she had even earned some of her vast wealth solely from permitting glimpses of her often divine underwear. She’d looked upon it as easy money even though the flimsy garments had cost the Earth.

It’s never hurt anyone yet it’s done a lot of good over the years, she told herself with a twinkle in her eyes. And I suppose she was right. No harm had ever come from such a display of fragrant silk or even polyester.

When he heard her voice Imageous opened his eyes, and kept them open. What he saw convinced him that he had finally reached the afterlife in Eternity, and he hoped and prayed that he was in Hell. Surely Heaven forbade such delights as he was confronted with? Surely only the great Necromancer could provide such visual marvels?

“It’s always been one,” he whispered, meaning the Monastery and a desert. “We all thought that. Am I in Hell?”

Her tinkling laugh was a reassurance that he was in no such place because such delectation as lay within its every joyous note would surely be alien to both Heaven and Hell, the former being dedicated to the highly stylised chanting of meaningless platitudes and subsequent mortification and the latter to more dubious musical sounds, like pop melodies with their underlying suggestion of sin and everything evil.

“Why am I … lying down?” he asked.

“You fell, Brother,” she said quietly, and she wriggled her delicious hips in such a way that everything within his vision wiggled a bit, and by that I mean that all he could see within his vision was up her skirt. It made him feel a great deal better. It even made him feel like standing up, so he did. His “funny turn” was over, and he could actually plant one foot in front of the other again.

“Let me help you,” she whispered, and she took him by one hand and guided him up the steps and into the helicopter, a task she contrived to perform with absolutely no difficulty nor the need for any further exposure of her still delectable body, though the winsome nudge in his ribs from one of her ample breasts was hardly accidental.

And that was it. He was safely aboard the machine as were his companions, and Enid had arranged a flying helmet fetchingly on her head so that a great deal of her fragrant hair was still very much in evidence.

“Up we go,” she said, and she winked extravagantly at Imageous who, believe it or not, winked back.

“And to Swanspottle to see what we shall see!” she giggled.

With a great deal of noise and vibration the helicopter rose into the air, and Imageous, who being first aboard was sitting next to a window, couldn’t help looking out. And what he saw made him gasp in amazement. There is, after all, a great difference between knowing that you’re going to do something and witnessing the fact that you’re actually doing it.

And Imageous was actually flying high in the summer sky.

TO BE CONTINUED…

© Peter Rogerson 11.02.17