CUTTER'S EDGE
  

Stanley Marshall didn’t like his job, in fact he hated it. Twenty-five years ago, when he started in that line of work, he had no complaints. It was a good job then, but now being a car accessories rep was not the happiest way of earning a living.

Gone were the days when garages were garages; when the owner used to get dirty along with his mechanics — the days when they would welcome the monthly visit, stop work and have a fag and a chat over a cup of coffee whilst placing a substantial order. Today there were very few garages like that left. Now they were more like Car Health Clinics, with more bosses parading around in suits preening themselves than qualified mechanics. Busy or not — and the bosses rarely were — no rep could see them without an appointment these days, and even then they would make a point of keeping them waiting. It was obviously another way of making themselves feel important.

The monthly visits had gone too — they were another thing of the past — superseded by the bi-monthly visits where he now did not the work of two reps, as might have been expected, but that of three after the company’s restructuring. Once his whole area was mapped around his home town — he would go home every night — but now he had to cover areas so far away that getting home was often out of the question. Such was today. Another one of those kind of days that had led to the end of his marriage.

He had fought to find his way around Bristol and Bath — the West Country was a completely new area to him — and he had to miss several calls because he was running late. Experience told him turning up late for an appointment would either mean not being seen or kept waiting around for hours, thereby making him even later for the next appointment, so rather than that he always missed calling on a place when he was late.

The last call for the day was at a place called Wookey Hole. On arriving there he was pleased to discover it was not the hole he had half expected it to be. A popular tourist spot, the garage had been very busy, but nevertheless the owner had found the time of day for him and placed a sizeable order.

As nice as the place was, he decided not to try to stay there for the night. No doubt all the B & B’s would be full, and anyway the prices would be aimed at the tourist — far too expensive for a rep. He had asked the garage owner on leaving if he knew of anywhere suitable that was not too far away. It had been difficult to hear the man as they made their way out through the noisy workshop, but he had definitely said something about Cutter’s Edge.

Pulling up at the first lay-by, Stanley poured over the map. Unable to find Cutter’s Edge anywhere within striking distance on the actual map, he checked for the name in the A to Z at the back. It was not listed, and he cursed. Dusk was already falling fast, and it had just started to rain. Deciding to carry on along the road he was on to see what turned up, he had only gone about a mile when he met a local lad, one who looked like a typical farmer’s boy, whistling his way down the road despite the rain.

“Ah, well you goes on a bit, ‘bout a mile or so I s’pose, then you’ll see a double bend, an’ then you’s there,” the young yokel told him when asked for directions.

Sure enough about a mile up the road there was a double bend at the bottom of a steep hill, and lying back a little, down a slope away from the apex of the first bend, was an old-fashioned looking pub. The Woodcutter’s Arms, the swinging sign proclaimed, and on a board attached to the side of the building, in fading paint, was written vertically: Rooms.
 

#

The night had turned foul outside. The wind was howling and the rain relentless. Stanley counted his blessings as he sat warming himself in front of the open fire. It was a typical isolated one-man-and-his-dog kind of a country pub. They didn’t have a television set in the bar, but the old pop songs relayed from a speaker were nostalgically entertaining. The room he had been shown earlier was simply furnished, but adequate, and the meal he had been surprised to find was available had turned out to be exceptionally good.

Finishing off his fourth pint of the night — he was not normally a drinker, rarely having more than one pint in an evening, but the ale there had been particularly palatable — Stanley decided to turn in. He needed to make an early start in the morning.

Bidding his ageing hosts a fond goodnight, he contentedly made his way up to his room, but not before stopping off at the bathroom at the end of the landing to relieve himself.

Undressing down to his underpants, he always kept them on in case there was a fire or an emergency of some kind, he checked his travelling alarm clock was in sync with his watch before turning back the bedcovers and going to the door to turn off the light. It was then that he noticed the large sign dangling from the doorknob. ‘YOU MUST KEEP THIS DOOR LOCKED AT ALL TIMES,’ it stated boldly in red lettering. Puzzled, it was hardly the establishment to harbour undesirables, he duly turned the key before going to bed.

“Shit!” Stanley muttered on waking up little more than an hour later. He needed to visit the loo again, and he began to regret having those four pints, as nice as they were. He knew he shouldn’t drink a lot before turning in. If he did, he always had to get up several times during the night.

His visit to the doctor for the trouble had merely resulted in the man sticking his finger up his backside to explore his prostate, only to then say, “You’re early!” That was no news. When you’re fat, fifty, and fucked-up what surprise is an enlarged prostate gland? Everything about him was enlarged!

Cursing, he rolled out of the bed and stumbled across to the light switch. Carefully peering out of the doorway first to check there was no one about, he padded down the landing to the bathroom, all the while picturing himself as a dancing hippopotamus he’d once seen in a Disney cartoon. A few minutes later, despairingly — it had not been a very productive trip so he knew he would be visiting there again during the night — he made his way back to his room.

Closing the door and remembering to lock it, he turned around before going to switch off the light. He gasped, almost choking, on seeing the beautiful young girl lying naked on top of his bed. She was very young, not much more than sixteen, he guessed, and she was looking directly at him. Smiling at him, with a come hither look like no other he had ever seen, she beckoned for him to join her on the bed.

Stanley just stood there, flabbergasted. He didn’t know what he should do. He knew what he’d like to do — but should he? However the decision wasn’t his to make. In one move the girl was off the bed and draping her arms around his neck. As her hand found the light switch behind him, plunging them into darkness, her mouth began devouring his, and she writhed up and down mercilessly against his now eager and attentive manhood.

He was a man who hadn’t had it for years — his marriage had been over for two of those, but the last time had been many years before that — so he was explosive; unable to control himself. Kicking off his underpants, he pulled her down on top of him as he collapsed onto the bed, and squealing loudly she rode him like a jockey on the final furlong of the Grand National.
 

#

Next morning Stanley woke with a start. Bright sunlight was drilling his eyes through the net curtains. He looked at his alarm clock and cursed. Nine o’clock. Seven-thirty the alarm should have awoken him. Then he remembered the night. Was it true? Had it really happened, or had he dreamed it? Sitting up, feeling the soreness of his nether regions and seeing his ripped underpants on the other side of the room, told him it had all been for real. He lit a cigarette and enjoyed it before getting up. So what if he was late? It wasn’t every night something like that happened to him, was it?

He grinned to himself as he remembered the fifth time she’d satisfied him that momentous night, and how he’d wondered then how many more times she would want to go for it. Five times, he thought — he’d never done five times before, not even when he was young — but she seemed not to tire. She always wanted more. She must have still been going full steam when he fell asleep, he guessed, hoping he hadn’t disappointed her.

Washed and shaved, twenty minutes later he was sitting at a table in the bar apologizing for being late up as the hostess served him his breakfast.

“You did lock your door, didn’t you?” the woman asked.

“Yes. Yes, I did.” he replied.

“Only we thought we heard noises in the night from your room,” she went on.

“Noises?”

“We thought perhaps you’d forgotten and Cathy had got her hands on you,” she told him, whilst studying his face.

“Cathy?”

“She was the previous owner’s daughter. A right little tart, apparently. Came to a sticky end, she did. Only sixteen and literally done to death one night, she was.”

“Really?” Behind his innocent look Stanley’s brain was racing away.

“Now she hates all men. Any man who sees Cathy does so at his peril.”

“But didn’t you say she was dead?”

“Some things don’t know how to die!”

Stanley hurriedly finished his breakfast, paid his bill, and thanked his hosts for their excellent hospitality, before leaving.

Driving away, through the double bends, up the hill, he had barely reached the top when he felt a hand reaching around from behind him and grabbing hold of his crotch. Looking in the rear view mirror he may or may not have seen the girl before the carving knife sliced through his throat and his life-blood emptied through his spouting jugular vein, gushing down the windscreen like a red waterfall. At the top of the hill the car continued on, not following the road left but plummeting over the precipice. Several hundred feet below it bounced and rolled over a few times before bursting into a fireball.
 

#

“Some people never listen to you, do they? He seemed such a sensible guy too,” the garage man with the wrecker truck said to the patrol officers. “I told him not to stop anywhere until well past Cutter’s Edge.”

“No, there’s no telling some,” the policeman agreed, staring down the hill at the derelict and overgrown remains of the burnt out pub at the bottom of the hill. “How many is that now?”

“Gotta be something like thirty, I guess. Yeah, it must be all of thirty years ago that old George burnt the pub down. Right after his girl had been shagged to death by that group of potholers one night whilst he slept. Thirty men have died since then. Thirty in thirty years. And still she feeds. When will it end?”

Copyright ©Michael Knell 2006.

 

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