Bleeding Seamonster by Stan J Wild

Trixie moves in first, plays it perfectly; she says: “where’s Gee Street?” So, the poor bastard pulls his map’s app up and Max can see he is susceptible.

She collared the man, stepping out the lift at the top of the concourse. She plays dumb, gets him to really spell it all out to her. Subtlety, I tell them: she has that in abundance.

The man has his kid in a pram with a tube coming out of his nose, a massive scar across the kid’s brow to below his ear. They are laden too, Max sees this: plus the Rolex, it is the full blown whistle.

The pram rolls to just about midway between the lift and barriers, nice and slow. It is like Trixie is rolling the damn thing, total control. She has Max in her sights, and moves on to ‘Gee Street’.

Then it is Max with all the scars across his own face, all cockney: blah-blah-blah. He goes eye to eye with the man, really tries hypnotizing him with these crazy eyes he has.

He is going: “You’re a Dad, fam: me too. We got that in common”

No, no, no: how many times am I telling this kid? I say: “subtlety Max; just take it easy, why don’t you”.

Look at Trix: she gets the man with the pram; prime in anyone’s eye. She clocked the Rolex too, plays damsel-distressed and is gone.

She smiles tight lipped, since she knows that broken tooth is distinguishing but she swishes that ass as she goes, so to take the bastard’s eyes with her: she still has something.

She says Seamonster for Seamaster still, but knows them by the tick. Seamonster she says: you smell the Weston-Super-Mare on her; salt-sea-and-sewage, my little pirate.

“You’re a regular horologist, aren’t you Trix”: I said once, and felt the weight of her at my temple. All she was hearing was whore and bang. That was when she was fresh off the train from Bristol.

Not many have the scent for that hospital neither: Trix sure as hell does. So when the guy smells a rat, it is all on Max. Flailing and dumbstruck at the kid in the pram: jaw to the floor, chrisakes.

Aye, Max will say he had to be stalling; will say he had to make a damn spectacle on the concourse, which got them rumbled.

He looks a damn fool there, flapping, saying: “I’m homeless but I don’t need no home, fam”, and there in the middle of the concourse, everyone sees him for what he is.

He will say: “if Dave made his spot on time, we’d have the damn Rolex”. But that is not what happens.

Dave is thick as pig shit and that is why we say it: never let Dave talk, and Max lets him talk. Dave slips watches like WD40 squirts from his wrist, but he does not know them from a candy bracelet.

One time, I really thought Trix and me had something. She was touching this fat-cat’s whiskers while she did the reach-around, Houdinied the wallet right out the bastard’s pocket.

She clocked him from the cash machine starry eyed, stumbling: all of it textbook. It was back when her clothes were still clean; when there was more meat on her bones, less sallow at her eyes.

She was holding at the man’s face: I was spitting feathers; you could see how horny he was and he did this move to grind up to her. I swear it, he was millimetres from seeing real stars.

Then she leaves him there stranded and she is moving all sassy toward me, clacking this gum in the side of her mouth. I could have sworn she had this red lipstick on; it is just how I remember it.

She held herself to me next, slipped the watch on me, all sleight-of-hand: a bleeding Seamonster, she says; I was smitten. But then I smelled her, and she stinks as bad as everyone of us.

Stan J Wild

Image by Maurício Souza Mau from Pixabay – A Rolex Seamaster resting on a reflective surface with a city in the background. The watch is looking very smug wth a gold bezel, black face and two colour gold metal bracelet.