Chapter 1: The Girl
"See ya later, pal," called Charlie from the bend in the stairwell.
Standing in the open doorway of the apartment, Frank gave him a wave. It had been good of Charlie to take all this trouble and Frank was grateful. Charlie was a good friend - always had been.
Charlie, now further down the stairs near the front door, yelled, "And maybe you'll get a little surprise before I come back."
"Whaddya mean?" shouted Frank, taking a step towards the stairs.
"Maybe you'll get lucky," floated up the stairwell from Charlie, mysteriously, before the sound of the front swing door closing ended the cryptic conversation.
Not understanding any of it, Frank shook his head and, bewildered, turned back into the apartment. He closed his door and, as he took the few paces towards the bedroom, glimpsed his reflection in the hall mirror. What a sight! The scars on what was left of his face might heal eventually but they would be there for a long time. He moved on down the hall to the bedroom, sank onto the bed and took stock of his surroundings and the past twelve months.
It had begun some time last year; he couldn't remember when. He couldn't exactly remember anything, except that his motorcycle had finally come off at that bend and thrown him over a cliff, bouncing him off the rocks on the way down. His injuries had been bad; the hall mirror testified to that. The guys in the oncoming vehicle had been even unluckier, one of them dying in the accident. The paramedics had fixed up Frank, before handing him over to the hospital - and the cops. When he was fit to stand, they threw more rocks at him - of the legal kind.
This was Frank's first taste of freedom for some time. Those months behind bars had been tough (aren't they always?) and this bed (king-size: what had Charlie been thinking - that he'd be entertaining guests?) was the best thing he'd known in a year. The rest of the apartment was also well appointed: comfortable, big enough to relax in, for several people. There was a second bedroom, plus a big shower, a long cooking-dining-living area and a full-length balcony through the French doors. How the hell Charlie thought he was ever going to pay all this off ...
Frank gave up trying to figure it out and turned to open the bedside cupboard. There was a bottle of Scotch, a glass and a note which read, 'Hey buddy, you've been away a while. Help yourself!' Yeah, it had been a while, he thought. Collecting ice from the freezer, he lay back to let the whisky tingle its way down his throat and start to remind him what it was like to be a human being again. He got up, switched on the cable TV to watch what other human beings were doing.
His body now began to remind him how long it really was since he had last relaxed like this. He realized he was thirsty, and tired - and, yeah, he was horny, too! But - first things first. Three slugs of Scotch later, he was just starting to drift off into a fantasy world, half-sleep, half-reality, when the apartment doorbell jolted him fully awake again.
He switched off the TV and, as he weaved along the hallway clutching his glass, the half-bottle of scotch he had already drunk causing him to brush unsteadily against the walls on either side, he thought to himself, 'That Charlie thinks of everything except keeping his own key!' and reminded himself to give his friend a good-natured kick in the teeth. He swung the door open with the half-prepared accusation on his lips. But it wasn't Charlie. To his stunned surprise, standing there, looking a little lost, a bit confused and shy, was a really cute-looking schoolgirl.
Frank's first thought was, 'If this is about selling cookies or collecting for charity, I'm not interested.' Charity, however, prevailed in his second thought: maybe the girl was another of Charlie's ideas. Her appearance was just unusual enough to make him wonder. He looked at her again, more closely this time. She could have been 18 or 19 but she looked younger. He seemed to hear Charlie's voice in his ear, saying, 'Just the way you like 'em, eh, Frankie?' And Frank could not but admit that this was, indeed, exactly the way he liked them.
It should be said that Frank was no child molester. Horny as he was now (and, for that matter, all his life) - and having been so long separated from anything feminine, his appetite was sharp as a knife - nevertheless, sex for him was 'anything goes, except with children or animals'. But a schoolgirl fantasy - that was something else; and this girl was a wet dream! He noticed with some relief that, even though she had registered the scarring of his face, she had not recoiled in horror. for the first time in a year he felt human - and for the first time since leaving jail he felt his penis harden.
He allowed himself a few seconds to take in the whole picture. It was close to perfect. Tucked into her pleated skirt, she wore a a long-sleeved white shirt, beneath which her budding young breasts were discreetly obvious, gently separated by a striped tie, echoing the colours in her school jacket. Below her knees, visible a little lower than the skirt hem, were long white socks and the ensemble was complemented with black, ordinary, 'sensible' shoes. Her light brown hair, parted in the middle, was shoulder length and floppy, perfectly framing her wide-eyed, pretty, little-girl face. over her shoulder she carried a school bag. Even at this short distance it was possible to detect the subtle hint of a dab of perfume over her natural body scent. She was gorgeous!
Then he suddenly realized he had long been staring at her in a very personal way and, with a touch of embarrassment, was about to speak when she beat him to it, asking, "You Frank?"
Unprepared for her to start the dialogue, he was momentarily stunned, eventually stammering, "Uh - yes ... sorry - you want to come in?"
Without replying, she stepped past him into the hall and made her way towards the bedroom he had just left. She seemed to know her way around. Obviously this was indeed the 'surprise' his friend had alluded to when he left. Her rear end jiggled sexily just in front of him: not too obviously but, like with plenty of teenage girls, just enough to keep him highly aroused.
He adjusted his hard-on in his pants and, without thinking, his gaze fixed on her buttocks moving beneath her school skirt, he asked, "Charlie send you?"
The girl stopped, turned to him and said, seemingly totally innocently, "Who?"
