5A Knight in Olive Drab Armour
Blood is like sex. Hot, sticky. Sometimes it's bitter sweet. Love is bitter sweet. Love is like blood. Sticky. You have to hurt to get love and blood. No one wants to admit this, but we all know it's true.
Love and sex aren't the same. You can spend years trying to convince yourself, but they'll never be the same. Sex will hurt you once, love will hurt you more times than that.
It's funny, how red can mean all of these things. Red for blood, anger, stop. Red for love and passion. The same colour for things on opposite ends of the spectrum.
My life zigs and zags back and forth from each end. It's like someone's toying with me. But I don't mind. Things feel better. They feel strange. Ever since that night the unknown soldier pulled me back, stopping me making a huge mistake, I felt different. I felt like maybe whores do have a chance. A slim one, but a chance still.
I seem to see the unknown soldier where ever I go. I can't escape him. He follows me like the day follows the night, like a dog follows it's master. Hamish isn't the only man I can't escape now. His eyes always follow me like a hawk, watching and waiting for what I do next. I feel like a gazelle stalked by lions, knowing that there are two men waiting to snap me up.
I saw him watching, on a few occasions, when I brought someone back to my slab of ice I called a bed, the little piece of Hell I called home. He waited until they left, just to catch a glimpse of the whore who'd tried to jump.
I deliberately ignored him if I saw him. Not many of the Americans knew of us, and I am certainly glad of that. One customer, was one too many, not that it stopped other girls starting the disgusting profession.
We had a new girl.
Bernadette. She was 17, only a baby. But if that's what you have to resort to, that's what you have to resort to. We sat in the local bar, Hamish, Pamela, Bernie, Lizzy, Vera and I, in our little, regular booth. Bernie had the misfortune to catch the eye of a soldier at the bar and Hamish released his wrath on the poor girl.
"Hamish! Leave off!"
I felt like a feral animal, a hell cat. I wouldn't let this servile man destroy this innocent young girl. Everything in his path or that which fell in his shadow, withered and died. Things crumbled to dust, people faded. Hearts stopped.
He lashed out at me. No one talked back to the bringer of death. No even his angels.
He took a pint glass from the table and stuck me with it. It was a deafening blow, the whole pub lost it's friendly atmosphere. I was sent sprawling on to the floor, discarded like the little broken rag doll I was.
My unknown saviour took to the stage once more. He threw himself at him, like a rabid dog, while I stood with the help of Pamela. The unknown knight in olive drab armour pummelled him, until his face looked like mash potato and red sauce. I took this chance to leave, pulling on Bernie's spindly wrists as I hurried out.
A trickle of blood etched down my nose and the corner of my lip. There it was again. Pain. The only thing I could feel.
I didn't know where I was running to until I got there. It was the train station. The last train was yet to leave this cold, cold hell. I wouldn't be on it. I couldn't leave. But Bernie could. I had friends who owed me favours. Taking her in wouldn't be too much to ask. I pressed my last remaining coins into her hands. It was enough to get her where she was going. There wasn't a good bye, not a proper one. I just shoved her on to the train. I did watch it leave and I felt something I'd not felt since I was rescued. Relief.
It washed over me, like water over a pebble. Like the cold water I used in a morning to wash. I sighed, in another emotion I'd not felt since 1940.
Content. She would be safe now. Out of his hands, out of our hair. Under the watchful eyes of my friends, she would blossom, making something good out of herself.
Sighing out the wasted breath in my lungs, my face, as I turned, came into contact with something hard and warm. A man's chest. I looked up, quicker than a runner's heartbeat.
It was my knight in olive drab.