Dead Famous

Slowly, being careful not to move the blanket that covered them, Hamish began to edge his hand down Kelly’s body. Down across her ribs, which rose and fell so deeply, and so regularly, across her smooth, flat tummy, until finally slipping it beneath the tiny triangle of her G-string.

Hamish was blind with excitement. The prospect of touching such forbidden fruit had completely intoxicated his already drunken mind. Now Kelly let out a deep snore.

In the bunker they heard Kelly’s snore and, noting that the blanket beneath which Hamish and Kelly lay was scarcely moving, they concluded ruefully that the excitement of the night was over.

But the excitement wasn’t over: it was reaching fever pitch. Hamish had his hand between Kelly’s legs now, he was touching her, discovering her, discovering to his surprise that Kelly had a little secret… her labia was pierced. This she had not revealed to the group; her nipple rings she had mentioned often, but this most private piece of jewellery she had kept to herself. Until now.

As Hamish gently explored, a phrase suddenly appeared in his fuddled consciousness, a phrase which he remembered from his class on forensic medicine. The phrase was digital penetration.

That’s what he was doing now. That was what it would be called if anybody ever knew.

Suddenly Hamish became aware of the appalling risk that he was running. He was committing a serious crime. This crazy drunken improvisation, this sex prank, was assault. He could go to prison.

Hamish began to remove his hand, but reluctantly, very reluctantly. And as he did so, for a moment he pulled aside the thin, damp gusset of Kelly’s G-string and in that moment, in that one blinding moment of lust, he seriously considered taking his straining, aching erection from inside his own underpants and with it entering Kelly’s unconscious body.

The thought lasted only for a moment. Drunk as he was, the terrible, life-changing risks that he had already run were clear to him. In fact it was the momentary contemplation of this even greater abuse that truly brought home to Hamish the gravity of what he had already done.

Digital penetration. That was serious enough, for God’s sake, leave it. Leave it. Quickly, gently, with the practised and steady hand of a doctor, Hamish rearranged Kelly’s gusset in an impression of how he had found it, pushing the warm wet string into the crease of her vagina and then threading it up between her buttocks.

All the while he was deadly careful to avoid moving the heavy blankets and rugs that covered them. It was imperative that the people whom he knew were watching thought that he, like Kelly, had been asleep.

Having removed his hand, Hamish began to pretend to snore a little, not too much, just the occasional little noise to accompany Kelly’s deep, drunken slumber.

Reaching down to feel himself, Hamish realized that his pants were wet. Unwittingly he must have ejaculated or at least leaked considerably during his excitement. Had he stained the cushions? Or, worse still, her knickers? If he had, could he pass it off as an embarrassing accident? Tense with fear, he felt about to discover if any evidence of his shame had escaped. It seemed not. He had been lucky.

Kelly was unconscious and he had left no sign.

The blankets were thick and they had scarcely moved.

He was safe. He truly believed that he was safe. But the risk. The risk he had run! It made him cold to even think of it.

Now Hamish let his body twitch a little, as if he had been sleeping and had startled himself awake. Kelly did not stir as he pulled back the rug, scratching his head, rubbing his eyes and looking around as if to say “Where am I?”

Then he feigned a smile and winked at the camera. “Nearly, eh?” he whispered up at the little red pin light. “I can’t believe it, and it was me that fell asleep first. For God’s sake, don’t show this on the telly. My mates will never ever let me live it down.”

With that he got up from the cushions, put his trousers back on, gently rearranged the rug over Kelly’s unconscious form and returned to the party.

He was greeted with a chorus of leery cheers.

“Sorry to disappoint you people,” said Hamish, “but we both nodded off. I think I went first, if you can believe that.” Hamish desperately hoped that they could.

Then he retreated to his bed and to a very troubled night, as over and over again he asked himself if there was any way that Peeping Tom could have known the terrible thing he had done.

Digital penetration.

Silently in the darkness he thanked God for stopping him before he had done something even worse.

DAY NINETEEN. 7.00 a.m.

Kelly groaned once and she was awake. “What the f…?” Then she remembered. She was in Copulation Cabin. The Shag Shack, Bonkham Towers, Haveitoff House. Even before the show had started, when Peeping Tom had announced this refinement to the house structure, the press had had about fifty names for it. And now she was in it, in front of the nation. What must she look like?

“Don’t worry,” she said to the camera that hung directly overhead. “Nothing happened.”

She reached out from under the rug for her jeans, grinning sheepishly. Like Hamish before her, she felt obliged to address the camera.

“Was I arseholed last night…? Still you have it to do, eh?”

Kelly’s shapely legs emerged now and she donned her jeans with considerable elegance considering her hangover. “Bet Hamish feels rotten too.”

She smiled once more at the camera, but beneath the smile lay unease. Why did she feel so dirty? Why did she feel such a sad old slapper? Just the hangover, surely? After all, she knew that nothing had happened. Had anything happened? Had she let Hamish get further than he should have done?

Definitely not. She was sure about it. She remembered everything clearly, she had snogged him and then she had crashed out. Going exactly as far as she had intended to go.

So why this feeling? Why this unease?

There was something, something about herself that she could not quite define, except that she wondered… Had anything happened? How could it have? She remembered it all, she always remembered, that was one of her characteristics as a drinker, she always remembered what she did. What she didn’t do.

And she remembered it now. She had kissed him, and crashed out. And yet… She had this feeling that she’d been…

Abused? Was that it? Did she feel abused? Surely not. Never.

It was an illusion. It had to be. The Peeping Tom house was the safest place on earth. There were cameras watching all the time. Nobody would take such a risk under those circumstances. Least of all Hamish. He was a good bloke. And a doctor.

Someone else? Later? No. It was absolute madness. Even as she sat there thinking, she knew that there were five cameras watching her. Five all-seeing chaperons there to look after her. She smiled up at them once more. “Yeah, lucky nothing happened, eh? You’re my protectors, aren’t you, Peeping Tom? My dad don’t have to worry, does he? Nothing’s going to happen while you’re watching.”

In the monitoring bunker Geraldine, who had arrived breathlessly in the small hours to be confronted with the night’s disappointments, was livid.

“That’s not the idea, you stupid cow!” she shouted at Kelly’s face on the monitors. “That’s not the fucking idea at all!”