Susie Learns the Hard Way by Roger Quine Page B

who was wearing it now, nor did it match the baggy corduroy trousers gathered in bunches around legs which were clearly too short for them. As he shambled into the dimly lit room, revealing a shirt open at the collar, Susie caught the scent of last night’s drink and stale tobacco.
    â€˜Hello, my dear. Annie, isn’t it?’
    Susie squeaked quietly and he nodded approval. ‘I see you’ve dressed the part,’ he croaked, and she realised that her breaking-and-entering clothes might easily be mistaken for a school uniform; blouse, pleated skirt and socks. He took a step closer, and as the bedroom door swung closed on its spring, the light in the room faded so he was just a shadow, and the croaky voice assumed a sinister aspect.
    Intending to say something intelligent about misunderstandings, but almost paralysed with fear, Susie only made a small noise in her throat. She backed away as the man advanced. Her legs stopped when they bumped the edge of the bed, and she sat down suddenly.
    â€˜That’s my girl,’ he wheezed, pulling off his jacket and dropping it on the floor. ‘That’s my girl.’
    Wanting to tell him in words of one syllable that she most certainly was not his girl, Susie made some small bleating noises.
    Presumably taking this to be a sign of pleasure or encouragement, or even both, he shuffled closer. She instinctively tried to squirm back away from his grasp, realising almost at once that it made her situation worse instead of better, placing her in the middle of the bed with her feet on the edge and her knees raised, allowing him to look straight up her skirt. It was not an opportunity he wasted, and his watery eyes suddenly seemed to find focus, boring in on her groin. She felt his gaze on her like a physical thing, a hot glare that added to the heat between her legs. The effort of screwing up the muscles of his eyes seemed to deplete his ability to control the rest of his face, and his jaw muscles slowly slackened, letting his mouth hang open.
    Susie was afraid to move; she could feel the terror all over her body, in the sharply tensed muscles of her toes, the rigid stillness of her arms and legs, the cold trembling in her tummy, and the warm oozing sensation between her legs as liquid soaked into her panties.
    As if in sympathy, a long strand of saliva dribbled from the corner of the old man’s mouth, slowly lengthening towards the floor in a series of gentle, elastic jerks. Susie watched, spellbound, as a fresh flow of it surged out of the visible gap between his dentures and his shiny pink gums while he stared at the feminine curve of her within the soft material, saw the darkening dampness and the deep furrow at its centre.
    Susie knew she had to speak now, or not at all.
    His hand, fingers spreading and closing into a bony claw, lifted from his waist.
    It was slow motion to Susie; a gradual movement that seemed to last for minutes. Now his hand was in mid-air, stretching slowly forward, slowly downward, moving lower between her thighs, reaching nearer until his fingertips were almost brushing the tight curve of her knickers, and she sat, paralysed with indecision and fear, unable to do anything because she couldn’t decide what to do. And as she wondered again whether she should speak – it was too late.
    With an appreciative sigh, like a man dying of thirst swallowing a glass of chilled lager, he grasped the area of his delight and sighed again. His scrawny fingers clawed at the soft mound inside the swell of her knickers, felt the heat and moisture her fear had produced, and wriggled about as if trying to force a hole in the material or push it all the way inside her.
    Susie squealed again, louder and more convincingly this time, she thought, but clearly not loud enough, as she felt his fingertips digging with jerky movements that sent little tremors through her.
    â€˜Arrr,’ hissed the old man, blowing a gale of old beer across her face.