Casca 18: The Cursed (2 page)

Lieutenant Marshman had arrived in China only a few weeks earlier, having sought service in the Far East because of the tales he had heard of the beautiful, lascivious women, their ready inclination to perversion, and their extreme poverty, which made them available as slaves to any whim of any man.

He had been profoundly disappointed with what he found. The debased whores of th
e shantytown red light district that had grown around the outer perimeter of the British army barracks were a far cry from the cultured courtesans described by Marco Polo and other visitors to the East who had recorded their travels for the information or titillation of European readers.

What exotic charms the women did possess were wasted on the Englishman. His ideal of feminine beauty was a fantasy creature based upon the a
ristocratic English rose, but without the excessively long nose or the prominent teeth and with the peaches and cream complexion and ample bosom of a country milkmaid. This figment of a sex starved imagination had huge, round, blue eyes, and thick blond hair that fell in cascades to her rump. And in lieu of the real life aristocrat's aloof frigidity, this ideal woman was permanently consumed with a passion to receive into her body in every possible way, and in an endless ecstasy of excitement, the tiny member of this fat, flabby, inbred younger son of a fast failing third rate aristocratic family.

Fei
Jiyun had been especially disappointing. Marshman was revolted by everything about her except the price. The epicanthic fold that hooded her almond eyes repelled him even more than the black depths of their loveliness. Her body was slight and muscular; her tiny breasts not even as large as his own; her buttocks so slim that he could hold both in one of his huge, fat hands while with the other he tried desperately to fit his half erect piece of meat into the tight little slit between Jiyun's legs.

Fei
Jiyun did her best to help him, spreading her legs wide, nibbling at his ears and neck, fondling his scrotum. But his lack of any real desire for this woman, together with his advanced state of drunkenness, defeated all their joint efforts.

His failure to enter her before he ejaculated infuriated him, and he cuffed the cowering girl unmercifully about the head, squeaking at her in English every term of abuse he could lay his tongue to.

"Filthy slut," he rasped. "Dirty rotten useless thing. Slant eyed harlot. Titless fucking dwarf. Not a woman at all, just an ugly yellow thing."

In the next room
Fei Qili tried to stop his ears to the lieutenant's curses, the sound of his blows, the whimpering of his sister. But as the frustrated lecher's fury grew, his blows fell more and more heavily, and Jiyun's cries turned to despairing moans. Qili snatched up a small stool, the only solid object in his room, and hurled himself upon the naked white man's back, striking him several times on the head before the leg he was holding came loose and the stool went flying to leave the small boy confronting the now thoroughly enraged lieutenant.

Marshman's
huge fists smashed the boy's head from side to side. Fei Jiyun clung to Marshman's back, her arms around his thick waist, begging him to stop. At the same time she was bewailing Qili's interference.

"Stupid little boy," she cried at him, "
you know you must never fight with any barbarian, no matter what. Better always that one of us suffer rather that two."

But the boy had no further interest in her remonstrations,
nor in anything else. He was quite unconscious, Marshman holding his inert body with one great hand while the other dealt blow after blow to the loosely flopping head.

For the first time since he had come to Asia,
Marshman was enjoying himself. The blood squirting from the boy's smashed nose aroused him to greater frenzy. The girl was now on her knees on the floor behind him, her arms around his thighs, her fluttering hands clutching him here and there, frequently chancing upon his penis, which was now truly erect for perhaps the first time in his life.

He let the boy's slack body fall to the floor and turned on
Fei Jiyun, knocking her to the floor and falling on top of her, ramming himself into her.

She screamed as he forced his way through her unready vaginal opening and screamed again as he thrust frantically into the depths of her body.

"Scream, do you? You filthy prostitute. Don't you scream at me."

He clamped his big hands around her throat and shook her like a rag doll.

Fei Jiyun's pelvis and thighs jerked in a response spasm, and Marshman found the sensation altogether pleasurable, and so he shook her again.

This time her spasm was more powerful, her legs shooting apart so that he penetrated deep inside her and set off another response, her interior muscles clutching at the head of his prick.

He shook her repeatedly by the throat, and her spasms became wilder and wilder. His erection grew and grew. He penetrated deeper and deeper, setting off more and more spasms, which excited him to jerk more and more frantically at her slender neck.

He didn't notice the blood that was pouring from her nose and mouth, any more than that which was pouring out of her vagina and drenching his loins. All he knew was that, at last, he was getting out of a woman something like what he had imagined sexual satisfaction to be.

In a final prolonged surge he ejaculated, his big arms pumping in time to his spurting semen, hammering the girl's head into the floor, his fat hands crushing her windpipe, breaking her neck.

He didn't hear the bones crack or feel her body go limp. He felt nothing but the enormous tide of his own orgasm, which went on and on until, at last, he collapsed, spent, into the mess of body and blood that lay beneath him.

"Well," he tittered in drunken exultation as he began to realize what had happened, "at least I've had a decent fuck at last, even if I did have to fuck the slut to death to do it." He giggled again and collapsed happily into sleep.

He stirred after a little time and was revolted to find himself covered in some stinking, sticky mess. He realized dimly that he was lying on something, and when the flickering light of the lamp revealed the still unconscious form of
Jiyan's brother on the floor beside them, he began to recollect.

When full realization struck him, he leaped up, the sticky mess of
Jiyan's blood making a sucking noise as the length of his body parted from hers. "Good Lord, what a frightful mess. I've got to get out of here."

He found a small pail of water and upended it over his head, using the single blanket from the bed to wipe away most of the blood. Then he donned his uniform and ran out into the strangely deserted street. Not a ricksha
w in sight. He set off in a shambling run in the direction of the British army barracks. "What a mess," he panted to himself as he ran. "What a shocking awful mess."

As soon as he reached the first turn in the narrow, twisting street, a dozen forms came out from the shadows and, one by one, entered the
Feis' two room shanty.

Hisses of astonishment gave way to wails of anguish, and then to roars of anger. More and more people came from
neighboring shanties. All of them had heard the blows and cries, but none had wished to intervene, or even acknowledge their awareness to themselves. It was common knowledge that, where foreign devils were concerned, the only safe course was to stay as far away as possible.

But now the wails and angry shouts grew and grew, until, at last, the sleeping ward watchman was aroused and he came, belching and farting and scratching himself awake to see what had happened to
disturb his sleep.

Fei
Qili was revived, only to collapse again in grief and exhaustion from the severe beating he had endured. When he was again revived, he struggled to get back to unconsciousness rather than hear that his only sister had gone to join their long dead parents and their other ancestors, and that now he must be the sole support of the family.

How could a boy support himself, let alone two children? A girl always had something to sell, and there were things for a boy to do around the girl. But what could a boy alone do?

None of the neighbors mentioned the British officer to the watchman. Nor did Qili. In the first place, it wasn't necessary; this was hardly a Chinese type of crime, and all the customers for the girls of the district came from the British barracks, or from British ships in the harbor. In the second place, only bad could come from foreign devils, even from talking about them. What difference did it make that one more Chinese had been killed by one more British soldier? A report to the British authorities would only bring much welcome attention to the neighborhood. Better to get on with the business of survival.

Casca had deemed Lieutenant Marshman's execution perfectly just. His knowledge of the local language enabled him to hear the rumors from the Chinese barrack slaves. He had hurried to the red light district early that afternoon, and had heard the whole story from Fei Jiyun's neighbors.

That same night he caught the subaltern returning late from yet another drunken carouse, and dragged him by the throat the width of the parade ground, one massive forearm choking off the officer's desperate attempts to shout for help, to the flagpole where he had strung him up.

Casca tautened the flag halyard until Marshman's feet just touched the ground, the noose in the rope not quite cutting off his breath.

The fat man struggled to support his weight on his toes while his fat fingers sought to prize the rope away from his neck. A very fit athlete might have had some chance, but
Marshman's flabby musculature was not equal to the task. He could barely manage to breathe, and his attempts to shout for help produced nothing more than a hoarse wheeze.

Casca stepped back a pace and looked the purple faced officer in the eye.

"Hanging is too good for you. You murdered a woman I liked very much, and you have condemned her family to probable starvation. Now you're going to get some idea of what it's like to be fucked to death."

He swung away, pivoting on his heel, to swing back again and sink his size ten British army boot into
Marshman's groin with all of his two hundred pounds of bone and muscle behind it, crushing the ruins of testicles and penis into the mess of shattered pelvic bone.

First Lieutenant
Marshman tried to do several things at once, and failed at all of them.

He tried to bring up his knees to wrap his legs around his frightful injury; he tried to clutch at his balls with his hands; he tried to scream; he tried to breathe.

As his feet left the ground for an instant, the noose tightened around his throat. His hands, which had been sweeping downward for his balls, reached back up to try more desperately than before to claw the rope away from his neck. Although his nails tore his throat to bloody shreds, he failed to get a finger between rope and neck. No sound came from his mouth. No air entered his lungs.

As his weight sagged onto his feet, his legs pushed upward into the ruined mess of his pelvis, and again he tried to scream, tried to draw up his legs to curl his body into a
fetal knot, tried with his hands to clutch at his groin.

Casca watched as the man dangling from the rope flapped his arms and legs like some fat bird in a trap.

Marshman's lungs were trying to expel their stale air. His lungs were also trying to drag in some fresh air. His heart was struggling to pump against the increasing pressure of the blocked lungs. His tongue was forced out through his teeth, where it swelled mightily until the agonized grinding of his teeth chewed it through. It dropped to the ground at his feet. Casca watched as the man's desperate flappings grew wilder and then suddenly stopped, the hands falling limply to his sides.

He saw the lieutenant's cap where it had fallen and kicked it away; then, struck by a thought, he picked it up and placed it on
Marshman's head. He headed for his quarters, skirting the moonlit parade square, as British soldiers are trained to do when not on parade.

During what was left of the night
Marshman's weight stretched the rope and the length of his own body until his feet rested flat on the ground, his capped head held erect by the taut noose. Then rigor mortis began to set in.

At first light the Chinese barrack slaves arrived to sweep clean the parade square, and the flies and the stench alerted them to the corpse.

Every Chinese for miles around knew of the murder in the shantytown and of the involvement of a British officer, and they were pleased to see one dead, no matter who or why.

It took a little longer for the troops, arriving for early morning parade, to realize that the uniformed figure standing by the flag at attention was not quite what it appeared. The area close to the flagpole was officer territory, and the closest soldiers were too far away to discern the swollen features and the dried blood as they stood about knuckling sleep from their eyes, farting and scratching as they waited for parade to start.

A few noticed the strange rigidity of the office by the flagpole. Odd to have an officer there anyway. An interested murmur was still sweeping through the ranks when Regimental Sergeant Major Forster approached the flagpole, followed by two corporals with the flag, then a small knot of officers, and, finally, the colonel of the regiment.

The RSM pranced toward the flagpole
, as he had every morning for seventeen years. His black boots gleamed in the early morning sun. His fresh shaven face shone, as did every brass button on his red parade tunic and the brass nob on the blackwood stick tucked into his armpit. He was so absorbed in his own performance that the corpse by the flagpole moved him only to the thought:
'Ullo, what's a flippin' subaltern doin' on parade afore me?

And then:
Stands more like a sarmajor than a hoffiser
. And then:
Jesus Christ Almighty, he's fuckin' dead
. For the first time in thirty years' army service the career base wallah was confronted with an unexpected dead body.

Worse.
He had to do something about it. And now.

He had one red striped leg up in the air in the ridiculous
"Sergeant Major on Parade" gait that was the pride of RSMs, and the despair of the rest of the army. Everywhere around the parade ground there were men picking their noses, combing their hair, scratching their armpits.

"Well," he mumbled, "that's
orright for 'em. They ain't on parade yet. And anyway, they're only flippin' ordinary soldiers. But Regimental Sergeant Major Forster is bloody well on parade, and that's that."

But, in spite of himself, his stride faltered, and he came to a quite unmilitary standstill, the two flag corporals coming to a confused halt just short of running into him.

"Lord almighty. This fucker really is dead," he bellowed.

The exclamation carried across a parade ground suddenly brought to brisk attention and alert silence by the unprecedented sight of an RSM coming off parade.

Even the officers awoke briefly from their hangovers, and one or two spoke. " 'Ullo, what's up?"

“Cripes, old Forster has lost his step.”

Forster turned around to see the sort of parade ground that was an RSM's dream. Not a head or a hand or a hair moved, not a tongue spoke. Nobody even seemed to breathe.

The officers (
useless bloody lot
, Forster thought) spoiled the show. They had been approaching the parade at a leisurely stroll as befits gentlemen who have breakfasted well and are looking forward to nothing more significant than a splendid lunch. But now they had broken into a nervous sort of shuffle, not at all army style, rather like a bunch of anxious schoolboys.

"
Bleedin' perishers," Forster fumed to himself. "But what the fuck am I to do?"

An idea came to him, the first in his life. He tried to put it from him.
"What? Give away a perfectly lovely parade like this? Not bleedin' likely," he hissed through clenched teeth.

But somehow his long subdued intelligence convinced him that the officer by the flagpole was going to spoil the parade anyway. His routine soaked mind yielded the point and he found himself shouting:
"Par-a-ade. Dis-miss!"

The startled soldiers sprang to attention. The officers stopped dead, blundering into each other.

"Rotten fuckers," Forster spit out. It was all going wrong. He had known it would. "That's what comes of ideas." Well, nothing for it now, but to go on with it. His well-trained base camp mind knew that there could be nothing more important than to ensure that the despised rank and file should know nothing of how or why an officer might have met with such a bizarre death.

"
All non-commissioned men return to barracks im-me-diate-ly! Parade will come to attention at six thirty ack-emma." For good measure he added another "Dis-miss!"

This time even the officers got it right. They came off parade and hurried over to the flagpole as the troops obediently left the square in a buzz of confused conjecture. Colonel Braithwaite hurried his pace and the other officers slowed theirs so that he was able to take the lead as they all reached the corpse.

"Good Lord," the colonel breathed. "The new chappie, the drunk rotter. Anybody know this fellah's name?"

Captain
Fotheringham sniffed disdainfully. "That mess is what used to be called Marshman."

"Yes. That's the name. Blighter can't hold his liquor. Not much loss.
Going to look damned bad in dispatches though." He turned to the RSM. "Well, cut him down, man. Cut him down."

Forster turned to pass the order on to the flag corporals, only to find that they had followed his order and left the parade ground.
"Rotten fuckers," Forster seethed. "Oh, won't I make it hard for them."

Each of the flag corporals wore a bayonet, as did every man on parade
except the RSM and the officers who carried only swagger sticks.

Colonel Braithwaite carried a crooked walking cane, a sign that he came from a Highland regiment. He saw the dilemma even as he realized that this impertinent RSM had, without so much as a nod from him, sent every bayonet back to the barracks.

Forster came smartly to attention. "Wish to report, sir. Don't have a knife, sir."

The colonel smiled to himself and muttered, "Insubordinate bastard." Aloud he said: "What's that, RSM? No knife?"

"No knife, sir."

"Well then, let's have one,
Sarmajor."

"Yes sir.
Will go off parade to get knife, sir."

He saluted, stood briefly at attention, then turned and marched RSM style across the parade square in the direction of his office. As he stepped off the hallowed area of the parade square his stride changed to the rather
more sane standard British army march step. "When I get to my office, I'm going to give those two fucking corporals bloody hell."

The officers withdrew upwind of the corpse and took out cigarettes. But time passed and the RSM did not return.

Forster arrived at his office to find it locked and empty. The flag corporals had followed his orders to the letter and were now comfortably stretched out in their barracks telling and retelling all of the rumors that had swept the camp during the past twenty four hours.

Regimental sergeants major did not demean themselves by carrying their keys, or anything else, on parade. Parade uniforms did not have even a single pocket. Forster's custom at the end of each morning's parade was to order the two flag corporals to check that all was well and tidy around the parade area while he strode off to his office. There he expected to find both of them waiting for him, one at attention inside, the other on guard outside.

But, even if he had his keys, he knew there was no spare bayonet anywhere in his office. Nor a knife of any sort. RSM Forster would have charged any man silly enough to bring to his office any item not on the list of prescribed equipment.

He looked around for a runner and realized that there was none. Not a man in sight. And the corporal's huts were on the other side of the barracks.
"Oh, Jesus, am I going to serve those two bastards some misery."

He set out in the direction of the corporals' quarters, but after he had marched a little he started to worry about the time that was passing. With a sudden awful thrill of panic he realized that he had set the new parade for six thirty.
"What time is it now?" He stopped dead in consternation.

He had never been able to dream of affording a watch. On retirement, maybe an unmarried RSM might just afford one, but for him it was out of the question. The wife he never saw (her doctor said China was bad for her) soaked up every penny of his pay with her doctor's bills in
Brighton. It didn't seem to concern the doctor that Brighton was bad for her, too.

Forster's panic grew as he tried to think of where he could find a clock.
In his office, certainly, but not where he could see it looking in from outside. That would make life too easy for the men in the ranks. Most orders around the base were set to the time of day, but no ordinary soldier had a watch, and the entire barracks was organized so that the few clocks boasted by Her Majesty's Forty-second Foot Regiment were almost always out of sight of the rank and file.

The clock in the RSM's office was on the wall opposite his desk where it could not be seen by any soldier facing him at attention. Nor could it be seen through the window by any trembling miscreant waiting outside. This included, at the moment, a very frustrated RSM Forster.

The officers' mess!

That wasn't too far away. But his steps slowed. He wasn't an officer. The clock was on the inside front wall of the entrance foyer, and it would be an unheard of trespass for an NCO to step inside that foyer un
-summoned.

And damned humiliating, too.