Category Archives: Blog

The Bus Route: Part VI

Blog, , ,

The Bus Route: Part VI of a brand new KDG story

I hope all of you are staying safe during lockdown. For me and many others, it feels like an opportunity to press the restart button in a world gone mad. For me this has been a time of intense writing and reading. Anyone who follows my blog loves to read or they wouldn’t be here. So I’m choosing this time to share a brand new KDG story that has never been made public before.

Be warned, this is a different kind of KDG story, a hybrid of erotica, crime and paranormal with a pinch of horror thrown in for good measure. I am sending you an instalment of The Bus Route once a week for seven weeks, so be sure to check in every Friday for a new instalment.

 

Sex in derelict buses. Who knew it was a thing?

A money-making thing for Seth Allen, who blackmails enthusiasts stepping out on their other half by catching the deed on cameras he’s rigged at a public transport scrap yard known by frequenters as the Bus Route. Sadly the paydays aren’t as regular as Seth would like until con artist, Jon Knight, suggests they team up. With Seth’s tech and Jon’s charm, the money rolls in and the future looks bright until their marks start disappearing mysteriously.

 

 

 

 

The Bus Route: Part VI

 

I didn’t go to Jon’s suite. I went home instead. I’d not been there in several days. I wasn’t sure how many. The place was cold and smelled like stale take aways. I took three nighttime cold tablets and crawled into bed, but my sleep was riddled with nightmares, a heaviness in my chest, a pillow pressed against my face. Then my soul was leaving my body, looking down from above only to discover that it was Claire Richardson’s body below me displayed like sleeping beauty on satin sheets. And then I was trapped inside Eleanor’s corpse, and there was no escape from her decaying flesh, and no one knew where I was.

I woke unrested, tangled in sweaty sheets. My head pounded and everything ached. I crawled into a tracksuit I taken off days ago and sat bleary-eyed looking at a text from Jon.

You were asleep when I found you. I left you to it. Breakfast on the counter. Eat something. You look thin. 

I ignored the bakery bag in the kitchen. The thought of food nauseated me. I took more cold tablets instead. The TV droned background noise as I leaned against the counter making tea. There was no milk in the fridge and I didn’t feel like getting any.

“The body of missing mining heiress, Eleanor Willis St. Charles was found early this morning at a scrap yard in greater London,” the announcer said.

I burnt my tongue on the tea and slopped the cup on the counter as I fumbled to turn up the volume.

“Authorities have released no further details at present,” the announcer went on.

It had to be the Bus Route. It was too much of a coincidence not to be.

When no more information was forthcoming, I pulled up my laptop. With no illusions about being a good citizen, I never paid much attention to current events, until now. The news of Eleanor’s death was all over the web. There were no new details, but lots of stories about the woman’s past and her unhappy relationships with hubby and daddy. And then there were the comments.

You can’t tell me this isn’t another Incubus killing.

Got to be the Incubus Killer. Willis St. Charles was a looker.

In spite of police efforts to keep things quiet, most commenters suspected the Bus Route was the crime scene.

Honestly,one comment said, who would even risk a hook up at a place like that with the Incubus Killer out there?

I didn’t live in a vacuum, but I had little time for news when I was busy trying to keep a roof over my head. I never even looked at a newspaper before I met Jon, but clearly I had missed the bigger picture.

When I Googled Incubus, there were dozens of hits, some giving definitions varying in length and detail, of the mythological male demon who came to people in their dreams and drained them of their life force while impregnating the women who survived. Most of the hits, however, were about the serial killer who had been plaguing the more sleazy bars and meat markets in Greater London for almost a year.

Autopsies always showed that there had been sex not long before the time of death, which as far as coroners could tell was consensual. Any sign of struggle was more in line with kink rather than rape. The truly strange thing about the deaths was that there were never any visible causes. Police suspected the killer might be a chemist or a doctor who knew how to cover his tracks. So far there was no real evidence other than the rising body count of people who shouldn’t be dead.

It was when I saw the images of the victims that my stomach gave up the battle for containment, and I spent the next ten minutes on the bathroom floor hugging the toilet. When there was nothing left to puke and my legs would finally support me again, I forced myself back to the laptop. While I didn’t recognize them all, there were at least four victims I was certain I’d seen and several more that looked familiar. All of them had passed through the Bus Stop. All of them had been with Jon. I had watched him seduce them, I had admired his finesse, his grace. I had even considered studying his technique and trying it myself. But I had none of his charm and good looks, none of his skill at seduction.

According to the articles, the victims of the Incubus Killer were always found displayed in some cross between strange funeral rites and works of art, always with a great deal of care and tenderness and lots of symbolism that baffled police. I recalled the strange way Jon had behaved when we found Claire Richardson dead, almost like he wasn’t surprised. But bloody hell, if it was Jon, why did he bring me there? If it was him. But it had to be him, didn’t it? There were too many coincidences.

An update popped up on the site I was reading. Police were interviewing people who frequented the Bus Stop. Just like that, all doubt disappeared. Surely that explained why Jon had come to me when he certainly didn’t need my help. Were my videos trophies? Did he want to capture the act for posterity? Was that the only reason Jon had involved me? It hurt that he used me like a fool when I thought he admired me. I thought we had a bond, even if it was just the bond between thieves. When the light bulb finally went on, it was all I could do not to puke again. He was toying with me. Had been all along, and the only plausible reason he had sought me out was that I was his next victim! Christ! Had he been drugging me all along? I thought back over the few weeks I’d known him. I wasn’t fond of wine, and I never drank when I was working. I couldn’t afford to. And yet somehow, even after Eleanor disappeared, I had convinced myself I’d celebrated our successes a little too hard and was hung over. Then there were the flu symptoms that only went away when I was feeling drunk and euphoric, only when Jon was around. And the nightmares – me who never remembered dreams! With a shiver I recalled last night’s horror fest. This couldn’t be happening. I thought he was my friend.

The Bus Route: Part V

Blog, , ,

The Bus Route: Part V of a brand new KDG story

I hope all of you are staying safe during lockdown. For me and many others, it feels like an opportunity to press the restart button in a world gone mad. For me this has been a time of intense writing and reading. Anyone who follows my blog loves to read or they wouldn’t be here. So I’m choosing this time to share a brand new KDG story that has never been made public before.

Be warned, this is a different kind of KDG story, a hybrid of erotica, crime and paranormal with a pinch of horror thrown in for good measure. I am sending you an instalment of The Bus Route once a week for seven weeks, so be sure to check in every Friday for a new instalment.

 

Sex in derelict buses. Who knew it was a thing?

A money-making thing for Seth Allen, who blackmails enthusiasts stepping out on their other half by catching the deed on cameras he’s rigged at a public transport scrap yard known by frequenters as the Bus Route. Sadly the paydays aren’t as regular as Seth would like until con artist, Jon Knight, suggests they team up. With Seth’s tech and Jon’s charm, the money rolls in and the future looks bright until their marks start disappearing mysteriously.

 

 

 

 

The Bus Route: Part V

 

“This her fuck pad?” I asked.

“It’s for when she needs to stay over in the city, so probably, yes.”

He’d told me she was a banker or a broker or some such. He poured me a whisky and we drank in silence. I glanced back at her room. “How long do you think she’ll be?”

“Why?” He eyed me wickedly. “Someone make you a better offer?”

I chuckled, trying for suave, but just sounding nervous. “For this,” I patted the envelope tucked inside my jacket, “I’ll stay all night if she wants.”

“Half the fun is the dance, Seth, and you and I are doing the tango.”

“She has been in there a long time though.”

He shrugged it off. “You know women with their makeup, especially if a camera’s involved.”

I sat on the sofa and leafed through a copy of the day’s Telegraph. “Looks like they still haven’t found Eleanor.” I tossed the paper aside. “She was a nice lady.”

Jon came and sat next to me. “I’m sorry it upsets you so.”

“Doesn’t it upset you?”

“Of course it does, but all we can do is hope she’s all right.” He laid an unsolicited hand on my forehead. “You feel feverish again. Seth, you’ve got to let go of this misplaced sense of guilt over something we have no control over. Oh it’s natural under the circumstances, but it’s making you ill, and I don’t want you ill. I want you to enjoy the ride.” He stood and offered me his hand, pulling me up off the sofa. “Come on, let’s go check on our porn star, then after, I’ll take you back to my suite and see that you take care of yourself.”

He knocked softly on the bedroom door. “Claire, darling, are you all right? She’s probably passed out cold, and you’ll still have time for that better offer,” he whispered over his shoulder to me.

Sure enough, Mrs. Richardson lay sprawled across her bed. She’d stripped out of the power suit leaving only silky black knickers with a matching bra and dark stockings with suspenders. A few tendrils of expensive blond hair escaped her chignon and curled around her face.

“Isn’t she lovely?” Jon sounded like he was admiring the Mona Lisa rather than an aging executive fighting to hold on to her beauty in a world that devalued her more every minute she aged. With a guilty start, I realized that Jon didn’t devalue her. He really meant it.

“Yeah, she is,” I replied.

“Well come on then, my darling, let’s get you tucked in.” Jon sat on the edge of the bed, pulled her to him and then froze.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” The hair on my neck stiffened, and I knew when I saw the pallor of her skin, the blue tinge around her lips. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” I swallowed bile and stepped back toward the door. “Bloody hell, Jon, she’s dead! What the fuck are we gonna do?”

“First of all, we’re not going to panic.” To my surprise, he leaned forward, pressing a kiss to the woman’s lips before he settled her tenderly onto the mound of pillows. Then he carefully lifted her into his arms and rearranged her so he could pull the duvet up over her, gently tugging and tucking as he did so. For an eternity he sat silently stroking her cheek. All the while I fought not to panic or be sick, or both. I mean respect for the dead was one thing, but we had just conned this woman, and Jon’s behavior was kind of creepy. “Pleasant dreams my darling,” he said at last.

“Surely we can’t just leave her. Besides our fingerprints are all over, Jesus, Jon, at the very least we’re implicated.”

Still he didn’t move, only sat there stroking the dead woman’s face. The longer he didn’t move, the more I wanted to run away. At last he spoke. “Go back to the suite Seth. You’re not well. I’ll take care of her.”

When I didn’t move, he took in a deep breath, then stood slowly, as though the act itself took a great deal of control. When he turned to me, his face was set in hard angles, his eyes cold like I’d never seen them. Maybe it was just the shit situation, but the fight or flight instinct kicked in, and I turned to run, but I stumble over my own feet suddenly dizzy. And then he was there, gripping me around the arm, the hard lines softening, his gaze once more warm, filled with sympathy. “Go back to the suite,” he said again. And when I still didn’t move, he cupped my face in cool hands. “Listen to me, Seth, you’re not well. I shouldn’t have pushed you to this job so soon. I should have let you recover a little more thoroughly. He slipped an arm around me and walked me to the door. “I’ll call a cab to take you home. Just get some rest and don’t worry. I’ll be there soon.”

 

The Bus Route: Part IV

Blog, , ,

The Bus Route: Part IV of a brand new KDG story

I hope all of you are staying safe during lockdown. For me and many others, it feels like an opportunity to press the restart button in a world gone mad. For me this has been a time of intense writing and reading. Anyone who follows my blog loves to read or they wouldn’t be here. So I’m choosing this time to share a brand new KDG story that has never been made public before.

Be warned, this is a different kind of KDG story, a hybrid of erotica, crime and paranormal with a pinch of horror thrown in for good measure. I am sending you an instalment of The Bus Route once a week for seven weeks, so be sure to check in every Friday for a new instalment.

 

Sex in derelict buses. Who knew it was a thing?

A money-making thing for Seth Allen, who blackmails enthusiasts stepping out on their other half by catching the deed on cameras he’s rigged at a public transport scrap yard known by frequenters as the Bus Route. Sadly the paydays aren’t as regular as Seth would like until con artist, Jon Knight, suggests they team up. With Seth’s tech and Jon’s charm, the money rolls in and the future looks bright until their marks start disappearing mysteriously.

 

 

 

The Bus Route: Part IV

My hangover turned out to be a recurrence of whatever bug I had, and Jon insisted I stay in his suite until I was better. Three days later, we took a cab to the Bus Stop. Within minutes we were squeezing through the gap in the fence. I pointed out to Jon all the buses I’d equipped with cameras so we could choose together.

Inside the scrap yard Jon marched over to the double decker he’d done Eleanor in, pulled out his keys and scratched a deep, spine-shivering scrape in the paint next to the collection of slashes left by others who had done the deed in this bus. “Didn’t get a chance to leave my mark the other night,” he said with a smug smile.

“Christ, you’re like a dog pissing in the corners of his patch.”

Jon only chuckled. “Too bad we didn’t make it upstairs the other night. I could use it again, I suppose. I’ll be with someone different, so it’d still count for a new mark, maybe we’ll do it on the stairs. Something about a blow job on the spiral steps of a double decker sort of gets you right in the sac, doesn’t it?”

“I have a better one in mind,” I said.

Why this bus was so popular, I had no idea. There wasn’t much of it left, but it had made me more money than any other. The back of the bus was a raised row of seats up over the engine; all the other seats had been removed. The rear window was missing and the metal paneling on the driver’s side looked like it had been peeled back with a tin opener. There was nothing inviting about it, but it was well kitted with cameras, and Jon said he quite fancied a fuck across the back seats.

This time I waited in the bus. The night was clear and cool and the moon was a thin crescent. I was freezing my balls off by the time I heard drunken laughter, but I forgot all about the cold as Jon appeared with a well preserved middle aged blond, hair done up in a chic chignon. She wore a dark pencil skirt and jacket and had no-nonsense glasses balanced on her nose. The high-powered female exec look suited her, but then she was one, according to Jon. They stumbled right past me and practically fell up the steps leading to the remaining row of seats. I pulled out my phone and began recording as I tiptoed closer to the huffs and grunts that accompanied the slip and slide of clothing. Utility bulbs bathed pale skin stippled with goose bumps in rusty light.

I had just maneuvered into an unobtrusive position, when Claire Richardson looked up and beckoned me over. “There’s no need to hide. I think it’s hot watching you film us. Don’t be shy. Get in tight. I want lots of close-ups, and lots of Jon. Lots of Jon.” She gave him a solicitous grope.

“You heard the lady,” Jon said as he shoved Mrs. Richardson’s skirt up and positioned himself behind her for a bit of action doggie style. All the while she groped and grabbed for him from her awkward position on her hands and knees in the seat. But Jon dominated the scene, and just when I was about to signal him to move so I could video Mrs. Richardson’s face, Jon mantled her and turned her head with a brutal twist of her neck until her every ecstatic expression was camera front and center. Then he made a huge production of freeing the equipment and plunging deep. Mrs. Richardson cried out. I was sure it was pain, but when she reached around and grabbed Jon’s ass to draw him still deeper, I figured she was one of those who liked pain just fine. As tension rose, Jon’s fingers stroking her throat curled in against her trachea and tightened. When her struggle for breath was beginning to scare me, Mrs. Richardson came in a strangled desperate gasp. But it was the look on Jon’s face that made me lose it like a boy who’d just discovered his cock. Jon looked like he’d heard the angel chorus singing hallelujah. Wherever he was, it sure as hell wasn’t the back of a gutted bus fucking a stranger.

Jon had told Mrs. Richardson I directed artsy porn films and videoed at the Bus Route just for inspiration. He told her I’d hit on hard times and had to pawn my expensive equipment to pay the rent, but if she could come up with the cash, I would be happy to go to her flat and record the two of them in their own little porn film.

Afterwards, she was all over Jon in the limo, breathlessly mumbling that we could start the porno right there in the back seat, but before I could record anything on my phone, she passed out, head in Jon’s lap.

“You sure she’s all right?” I said to Jon, who sat stroking her hair. “She looks a little pale.”

“She’s fine. She did a few lines before we hooked up, for nerves, she said. Don’t worry.”

By the time the limo dropped us in front of a Mrs. Richardson’s building in Soho, she was awake and all but bouncing off the seat. With Jon at her elbow, she all but fell into an entryway of polished parquet and marble.

“I was thinking maybe in front of the fireplace on that white rug,” she said, battling not to tangle her words. “Wait right here.” She disappeared into the bedroom room and came out with a bulging C4 manila envelope, which she handed to me. “I hope it’s enough for you to buy back your equipment. That’s all the cash I have in the safe, but I can get you more tomorrow when the banks are open. Now,” she said, pausing long enough to give Jon a tonsillectomy of a kiss that had me hard again. “Stay right here, help yourself to drinks,” she waved to the full bar in the corner, “and I’ll go change into something a little more porny. She shuffled to the bedroom giggling as she went. I found the washroom and cleaned up as best I could. When I came back Jon was standing by the bar pouring whisky from a crystal decanter.

The Bus Route: Part III

Blog, , ,

The Bus Route: Part III of a brand new KDG story

I hope all of you are staying safe during lockdown. For me and many others, it feels like an opportunity to press the restart button in a world gone mad. For me this has been a time of intense writing and reading. Anyone who follows my blog loves to read or they wouldn’t be here. So I’m choosing this time to share a brand new KDG story that has never been made public before.

Be warned, this is a different kind of KDG story, a hybrid of erotica, crime and paranormal with a pinch of horror thrown in for good measure. I am sending you an instalment of The Bus Route once a week for seven weeks, so be sure to check in every Friday for a new instalment.

 

Sex in derelict buses. Who knew it was a thing?

A money-making thing for Seth Allen, who blackmails enthusiasts stepping out on their other half by catching the deed on cameras he’s rigged at a public transport scrap yard known by frequenters as the Bus Route. Sadly the paydays aren’t as regular as Seth would like until con artist, Jon Knight, suggests they team up. With Seth’s tech and Jon’s charm, the money rolls in and the future looks bright until their marks start disappearing mysteriously.

 

 

 

 

The Bus Route: Part 3

 

I met Jon for brunch at a posh suite in the Ritz chuckling at the cliché of it all. “Wow! You must have given Eleanor one helluva ride if she coughed up for this.”

“Oh this is all my own money,” he said with a dismissive sweep of his palm, and before I could ask, he added, “what you and I do, I do for the chase, for the challenge of it.” He led me to a table set with what was surely breakfast for six complete with a bottle of Moet & Chandon on ice. “The payoff it was good?”

“Are you kidding,” I said as he motioned me to sit. “The earrings alone were worth a mint, and all that dosh to help our poor dear mum.”

“Why yes, darling brother, a rare tropical disease that can only be treated in America.” He opened the fizz and gave a dismissive shrug. “Transparent as hell, I know, but in all fairness, dear Eleanor was rather distracted.”

It was a week after we’d scored. We were supposed to meet for brunch the next day, but I came down with some strange bug. I felt like shit for nearly a week, fever, shakes, bad dreams. Then, strangely enough, I woke up feeling just fine. We demolished breakfast along with a second bottle of fizz. I was slouched at the table thumbing through Jon’s copy of the Times when I came face to face with an image of our Eleanor, dripping diamonds and pearls. An over-sized headline read, Mining Heiress Missing. “Bloody hell, did you see this?” I shoved the paper over to him.

“Oh my God,” he said, staring at the image. “This is terrible.”

“You did see her home okay, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did, and everything was,” he swallowed a chuckle, “more than fine when I left her.”

When he simply handed the paper back and refilled his coffee cup, I sat in silence for a moment, then I said. “Do you remember anything, anything out of the ordinary?”

“Nothing. She was just fine.” He thought about it for a moment. “Pretty drunk, but you knew that.”

“Creepy coincidence though, don’t you think?” I said nodding down to the paper. “Don’t they say the police won’t even pursue a missing persons report until they’ve been gone twenty-four hours? It must have happened not long after she was with us. And the woman is an heiress. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Look,” Jon brushed his hand across my wrist, and his voice took on the tone you’d use with an ignorant kid, “the fact that she is an heiress is why dear mum will get her medical treatment and you can afford a new wardrobe,” he gave my aging hoodie a disapproving look. “Besides, she could very well be hiding out at some friend’s house, a little comeuppance for daddy and boring hubby. What happened to her after she left us is not our business, Seth. Don’t let it ruin our celebration of a brilliant team.” And that was the end of it. He flashed me a bright smile and said, “if you think our last job was lucrative, wait till you hear what I have lined up next. There’s an art to what we do, Seth. You’ve just never had the liquidity to enjoy the creative aspects of your work, until now.”

Before I knew it, most of the day had passed, and after lots of scheming and plotting and a lovely dinner delivered to the suite we hadn’t yet left, I was raising a glass of expensive French red, toasting us and toasting Jon’s brilliant plan for our next mark. I suppose when I was drunk enough, the question was bound to come up. “Does it bother you, another bloke filming you fucking a stranger?” Those slurred words must have sounded naïve to someone as sophisticated as Jon. A love life was at the top of the long list of things my impoverished condition did not allow for.

“Of course not. It’s business. I’m playing a role, just like in the movies. And now you’re the director.” His face took on the look of an adolescent boy with a great porn stash. “What about you, does it bother you that I’m doing the dirty with someone else?” When I didn’t answer immediately, he brought his ankle up against mine under the table. “Or do you rather enjoy it?”

“We should sort the money situation,” I said changing the subject, which felt pretty irrelevant considering Jon’s finances.

“Not now,” he said refilling my glass. I wondered when we’d started another bottle. “I trust you. I know you won’t cheat me. Besides,” he said, lifting his glass and holding me in a vice grip gaze. “I know where you live.” And then he laughed when I startled at his words and spilled wine on the white tablecloth.

I woke with the sun streaming through the curtains of the guest room in Jon’s suite. I was tucked into a mound of fluffy bedding on a cushy mattress with a seriously pounding head. “Couldn’t let you go home in your condition,” Jon said. He was sitting in the chair at the foot of the bed reading the paper. “You drank a lot.”

“Tell me you were not watching me sleep?” I mumbled, to the protest of my hangover.

“You were having bad dreams. I didn’t like leaving you alone.” He came to my bedside and poured me a big glass of water, standing over me until I forced it all down. Then he glanced at his watch. “I have a lunch meeting, but the suite is yours. Stay as long as you want. I left a spare card key on the dressing table if you need to go out and come back. Oh, and there are some clothes for you in the closet in much better condition than your old ones.”

The Bus Route: Part 2

Blog, , , ,

Welcome to the 2nd Instalment of The Bus Route. I hope all of you are staying safe during lockdown. For me and many others, it feels like an opportunity to press the restart button in a world gone mad. For me this has been a time of intense writing and reading. Anyone who follows my blog loves to read or they wouldn’t be here. So I’m choosing this time to share a brand new KDG story that has never been made public before.

Be warned, this is a different kind of KDG story, a hybrid of erotica, crime and paranormal with a pinch of horror thrown in for good measure. After today, I will be sending you an instalment of The Bus Route once a week for seven weeks, so be sure to check in every Friday for a new instalment.

 

Sex in derelict buses. Who knew it was a thing?

A money-making thing for Seth Allen, who blackmails enthusiasts stepping out on their other half by catching the deed on cameras he’s rigged at a public transport scrap yard known by frequenters as the Bus Route. Sadly the paydays aren’t as regular as Seth would like until con artist, Jon Knight, suggests they team up. With Seth’s tech and Jon’s charm, the money rolls in and the future looks bright until their marks start disappearing mysteriously.

 

 

 

 

The Bus Route: Part II

 

The woman Jon brought to the Bust Stop our first night as a team had the airbrushed good looks that rubberstamped the filthy rich. She was dressed to the nines except for the clunky oversized shoulder bag, but I cared way more about the filthy rich part than her fashion statement. I planted myself at a table near enough to hear the occasional tinkle of nervous laughter over the canned music and see the flutter of long lashes when Jon pushed her color-me perfect hair aside to give lip service to her throat and earlobe. But when his hands headed south she made a half-assed attempt to push him away. He quickly regrouped and went for mouth to mouth instead. She gave over to the full-on lip-lock deluxe package with plenty of tongue and teeth, as her tastefully manicured fists clenched the back of his shirt. Then I realized while the face eating finesse never faltered, Jon’s gaze was on me. It was show time.

He was taking her on the Bus Route, and I would be waiting. I didn’t need to be there. I could have done my part from my laptop in the back of the bar, but Jon insisted.

The Bus Stop itself was a slapped together bar on a dodgy industrial site, an eyesore in daylight and not much better tarted up by darkness and a few oversized Christmas lights strung precariously above the door. No one knew what might be buried under a few inches of scraped together rubble, but then no one was there to paint landscapes. No glammed up urban renewal here, just an old warehouse overdue for condemning. If the cops ever decided to shut the place down, they’d have a shitload of violations to choose from. But the always crowded Bus Stop went conveniently, and lucratively unnoticed.

The real attraction of the place was the enormous scrap yard behind the property with its graveyard of old public transport buses. The place was posted and tucked away behind by a high fence topped with razor wire. The bar was the only public, if illegal, entrance to the Bus Route. Fucking in derelict buses. Who knew it was a thing? For me a lucrative thing once I set up a few remote cameras in the more popular buses. It wasn’t hard to tell which ones were well used. Those busses sported rows of marks scratched into the paint near the front door, like notches on a bedpost. Some of the regulars had made it a game, a challenge, to see who could hook up and shag in the most buses. It was a double decker Jon and I chose. I slipped out ahead of him taking a short cut through a gap between the fence and the wall of a derelict body shop. Whatever went on inside, I didn’t want to know, but the place was always a bit whiffy.

Though they were redundant, at Jon’s request, I donned my spy specs as I slunk into the bus. I had just gotten tucked out of sight when he helped his lady up the steps, their breathless giggles and wet kisses sounded like something straight from an adolescent grope fest. The motion sensors triggered the cameras, and we were open for business.

“I always wanted to drive a bus,” she said, curling her fingers around the girth of the steering wheel suggestively.

“Seat’s a little low for you, darling, but I have just the solution.” Jon settled in behind the wheel and with a little bit of tugging and shifting for position, he was open for business too. There was no foreplay, no coaxing, no teasing. She just hoiked her skirt and climbed aboard, the noises of pain and pleasure too muddled to tell apart. Hands tangled in hair and yanked at clothing all to a wet soundtrack of heavy breathing and animal grunts.

Now I’ve recorded enough rough rides and clumsy efforts to give it or take it up the chuff to know that in a hook up on the Bus Route, there’s seldom more than an awkward fumble followed by a quick stuff and shoot. But there was cool elegance in what Jon did to that woman, and yet something distantly savage and desperate. I could have analyzed the videos frame by frame and still not figured out what he’d done to make her so completely his for that few minutes. It embarrassed me to realize that I was just as enthralled.

When the deed was done he motioned me over, the woman all but falling off his lap as she pulled up knickers and tugged at her skirt. “I want it,” she said with the wide-eyed excitement of a happy drunk. “Jon told me everything, Seth, and of course I want to buy it.”

Before I could question, Jon said, “I told Eleanor about mum. I’m sorry, Seth. It just came out.” He gave her a goo goo-eyed lover’s look. “She’s just so easy to talk to. And Seth, she wants to help us so we won’t have to do this anymore.” And bugger me if this Eleanor person didn’t pull boulder-sized diamond studs from her earlobes and hand them over “Take them, they’re genuine,” she slurred. With a wave of her hand she added, “they were just an impulse buy to thumb my nose at my husband. And this.” She shoved the clunky shoulder bag into my arms. “It’s all I could lay my hands on with such short notice, but hopefully it’ll help your mum.” She nodded for me to open it. The thing was completely stuffed with cash. Lots of cash! That fashion statement worked just fine for me.

“This will help mum so much,” Jon said. “Eleanor, how can we ever repay your kindness?” Were there actually tears in his eyes?

“Well, Seth can get me a flash drive of that delicious video, and you,” she said, stroking Jon’s exposed chest, can take me home.”

I’d done the big reveal often enough to be prepared when the guilty parties called me every filthy name in their often limited vocabulary, even threatened me with bodily injury before they twigged that they could either pay up or suffer the consequences. But this was a first.