Very Bad Virgin , livre ebook

Title Page
A VERY BAD VIRGIN
Bernard Veale



Publisher Information
A Very Bad Virgin first published in 2011 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.
Copyright © 2011, 2013 Bernard Veale
The right of Bernard Veale to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.



Dedication
For the blonde woman in my life who is neither a witch nor a devil but makes my heart race.



Chapter 1
His first clear memory was of a monster in a bulky sweater holding his eyelid up while probing his seared eyeball with an over-bright flashlight.
“He’s coming around. Dump him on that bed over there.” The monster instructed.
“He has been awake ever since we found him but I think he is still drunk. He reeks of booze.” A much more masculine voice replied.
“That’s nothing unusual around here.” The monster with the female voice and outsize spectacles commented.
He tried opening the closed eye. It worked better since it did not have a bright light shining into it.
He saw three people standing around him and a hint of other presences in the background.
“Where am I?” He said predictably.
“You’re on a bed and halfway back to being sober.” The monster said briskly.
“Go back to sleep. We will talk once you have recovered enough.”
“I am not drunk.” He assured them. “I don’t drink.”
There was sarcastic laughter from the background population.
“That is what everyone who comes in here says.” The monster assured him. “Go to sleep and I will look in on you later.”
She said it with that “I-brook-no-nonsense” tone, so he turned away from the audience and made as if he was settling down to return to the land of Orpheus.
He heard the masculine voice say as it faded into the distance:
“We found him staggering around on the highway. I thought at first that he might have been hit by a car but one whiff of the booze put me right. Even his clothes reek of the stuff. You’d think he had taken a bath in it.”
“Don’t worry about him, Dan. A good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast will probably put him right. What is his name?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t have any I.D. on him, in fact, he doesn’t have anything on him except a few dollars and change. If you hadn’t been able to take him, I would have had to throw him into a cell until he sobered up.”
After that the voices moved out of range of his hearing, which was not at its best due to a persistent buzzing in his ears. He fell asleep almost immediately even though he remembered thinking that he should get out of that place if only his head would stay on his shoulders.
When he awoke he was in silent darkness. He struggled to work out where he was and failed. Then he struggled to work out who he was and also failed.
He tried to think back but his earliest memory seemed to be that of the monster peering into his eye with the aid of a small flashlight.
He got out of bed and felt his way toward a faint glimmer of light. It turned out to be a doorway opening into a passageway at the far end of which a crack of light shone through an almost closed door.
He made his way toward the light, experiencing a feeling of unreality and staggering more often than walking.
The light opened into a male toilet complete with ten stalls and a long tiled urinal wall. There were also two hand basins underneath a fly-spotted mirror.
He moved to the mirror and inspected the total stranger that he met there.
The man in the mirror was moderately tall with over-long shaggy brown hair, blood-shot gray eyes, straight well-cared for teeth and a straight, if bruised, nose.
The chin was covered in unshaven bristles and the overall effect was someone that could do with a good scrubbing in near-boiling water.
The clothes were not much better: rumpled, although that could have something to do with the fact that he had just slept in them, smeared, stained and dusty.
A short-sleeved blue (?) golf shirt and fitted blue jeans, no socks and a grubby pair of running shoes were all that he possessed except for one other very strange addition.
Hidden under the aforesaid golf shirt was a leather belt. Not old, scratched or grubby but good broad leather, unpolished and dull it is true, but much too good to be worn by that stranger in the mirror.
Now how the hell did he know that?
He could not recall his own name but he knew that the belt was too good for that mirror-person.
He stepped into one of the cubicles and locked the door and dropped his jeans where he found a very respectable pair of under-shorts; not old, dirty and grubby but fresh and clean. The mystery deepened.
The under-shorts bore no manufacturers label, the golf shirt likewise and the jeans were manufactured by one of the most widely-used brands on the market (and how did he know that?) as were the running shoes.
He turned the belt over and over before he realized that it was a reversible belt. You unclipped the belt buckle, turned the belt over and re-clipped the buckle back on and you changed from a broad black leather belt to a broad brown leather belt.
He was still experimenting with this marvel of human ingenuity when he noticed a tiny protrusion from the leather “sandwich” at the clip-on end of the belt. He pinched at it with the dirt-filled nails of his index finger and thumb and he pulled forth a sheet of paper.
This was not any old piece of paper. This was a hundred dollar bill.
He flexed the belt leather further down its length and established the likelihood of additional bills, probably another four in the belt.
He reinserted the first bill into the belt and dressed himself again.
He felt a great feeling of relief to discover that he was not the down-and-out that everybody believed him to be. Then despair overtook him once more, maybe he was something worse than a down-and-out. What sort of person carries no wallet or personal identification but loads five hundred dollars into his belt?
There was a knock on the door leading into the facility.
He recognized the monster’s voice.
“Is there anyone in there?”
“Yes ,ma’am.” He said, pulling his clothes on as quickly as possible and then stepping out of the cubicle.
He saw a mass of tangled dark hair and a large pair of spectacles behind which was an indistinct face peering around the door.
“What are you doing up? It’s three in the morning.”
“I didn’t know where I was and this was the only light burning.” He said defensively.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to flush the toilet when you have finished using it?”
Then she added as an afterthought: “And wash your hands. At least part of you would be clean.”
“I didn’t use the toilet. I was just checking out my clothes. I’m not a bum.” He assured her.
“If you are not a bum, who are you?” she asked bluntly.
“Er, I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“Now that’s an answer that doesn’t fill me with confidence that you are not a bum. Your eyes are bloodshot and you came in here smelling of whisky and staggering all over the place. That makes you a bum in my book.”
“The guy that brought me in said that he thought that I might have been hit by a car.”
“If you were hit by a motor vehicle, it must have been a whisky truck. I can smell the stuff from here.”
“I can’t explain it but I know that I am not a drunk.”
“We’ll see about that. Go back to bed. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“I’d like to but it was so dark when I came out that I don’t know where the bed is.”
“Follow me, I’ll show you where to go.”
“Sure thing, ma’am. Oh, by the way, what is your name?”
“Doctor Natasha Reficulo to you, Bud.” She said somewhat defensively.
He knew that she was telling him the truth.
“What sort of doctor are you, Doctor?”
“Medical. I am also the director of this place.”
Again, something in his head said that she was telling him the truth.
“What is this place?”
“Reficulo Home for Derelicts. We’re modeled on the Salvation Army homes.”
His head kept affirming that this was the truth.
“Did you start this yourself?”
“No, my parents did. In those days it was mainly a religious home but now I guess it’s mainly medical. You know, you sound like an educated man. What led you to turn to drink?”
“Doc, I keep telling you that I don’t believe that I am an alcoholic. I don’t know why I was soaked in whiskey but I am pretty sure that I was not drinking it.”
“Yeah, a likely story! And you got those blood shot eyes how?”
“I don’t know but when I do find out I’ll let you know.”
“There’s your bed. Now get back into it and stay there until you hear the get-up bell.”
“No problem, doc. What time is that likely to be?”
“Six a.m.” She strode away back to her own bed.



Chapter 2
On the following morning he woke up feeling a lot better than he had the night before.
He still had the dull ache in his head and he still could remember nothing before Natasha Reficulo had shone the light into his eyes, but at least he felt halfway human again.
He realized that it was the loud insistent ringing of a bell that had woken him up and that relieved him because he was beginning to think that he had also devel