They were more important to him, those seventeen different faces, than the exquisitely tailored garments he wore; more important than the bottomless pit of his inheritance, the vintage cars of his forefathers he drove to destruction and the endless line of flesh-covered pulse he fucked.

Each face draped over the buffed skull of the original owner, he lingered over selection each morning, remembering all seventeen of them so far, each living flaying, in minute detail. Choosing a face was a choice one didn’t make lightly when such a superb array of cock sheathes presented itself. That’s what he called his little hole masks, Cock Sheathes. It always brought back the memories of the moment he first owned them, sweet, sweet remembrances of the time they were procured, that special time he shared with their owners and how he had tried to keep them alive for as long as possible. An art is an art by any other rose stem of arse ripping.

He was proud of how skilfully he sliced around the edge of the face, witnessing that scarlet gash opening in time with the tune-slanderous flexibility of his blade. He would ease the muscle away from the skin, sinews sometimes coming away strand by strand, loving muscle that he thought flexed for him even in death, the live tonguing his only colour trap of memory, the taste of nerve firings his elegy. He would have to scrape out all the lingering flesh from the underside of the bruising, putrifying face before preserving the skin, lovingly curing the stolen identity.

He smiled as a mother to a child; today he would wear the face of the beautiful Esmarelda, Face Seventeen. He loved this one so much that he never, until today, had the balls to strap it on; he’d cut it so carefully so as to keep her full head of long black curls intact. He loved to feel her silky hair falling about his shoulders, lubricated by coconut oils and smelling of his rank arse where he sometimes kept it, warming his cockles. He set about attaching Esmerelda to his own face, a task that took him two hours to achieve perfection. He had the muscle groups of the last owner’s face sketched out in red non-permanent marker on his face. Then he would apply the glue to the contours of evil, hoping that this time, his face would ride the entire night intact. More than once, he had done an unprofessional job of his make-up work and the damn blasted thing had slipped off mid-kiss.

In fact, it rarely dawned on him, but all he wanted was love. And that love was directly connected to his ability to stay in character. If he would look back through his seedy one-night stands and chance fucks in back alleys stinking of dog litters and chewed off umbilical chords screaming in the basket, sucking on manky teets the colour of old, dry turds he would see the connection. As long as the part-time lover didn’t make the mask dislodge, he or she would live – and that was a promise he tried to keep. Damn his humanity.

Oh, haven’t I told you? Mancunia, that’s what his mam called him, in honour of the great players of the great and perfect game. He got known as Manc in his growing up days before all the senseless murdering and pipe choking. Plain and simple, just like his doglust sex-drive. Manc.

Manc, as we will now call him until he dies of unrequited love at the end of this creepy narrative, tried something that night. Like he had been listening to me, his chronicler’s conceited words of disdain. Tonight he would solve all the slippage with Esmerelda his wondrous rectal-sniffing mask of power.

Super gluing Face Seventeen in place, he went in search of men, his favourite meat in times of cerebral storms such as the one he had tonight. Manmeat and and arsefinger, thick mantongues and the smell of overused underwear. That’s what any babydoll with a wiggling behind needs in her false arse crack, now ain’t it? In the Golden Hind public house. A living-dead night of decrepit misfits leering over each other like snails on a slimy rockery come low tide.

Pina Colada Man approached Manc, cock sure of his own success rate with bitches like this despite his broken dentures. We are calling him Pina Colada Man because he had two glasses of Pina Colada, one in each hand, a tosser’s drink if ever there was one. He had one for himself and one for the object of his desire.

Pina Colada Man had been not-so-secretly watching Manc ever since he slinked into the bar, a deadly walk as if he had slipped into the rest of the delectable and desirable Esmarelda’s skin. His ass was plumped out with upholsterer’s foam, perfectly shaped and stitched into place – the ultimate girl-arse. The drooling tosser could almost feel those huge rounds buttocks in his hands already. How the layers of cellulite would shear and shift, he perved. Manc felt the stare of his new admirer like carbunkled hands all over him, skin like spinifex. Pina Colada Man almost shot his aged load there and then with anticipation – old men are good at that. He longed for teenage kicks all through the night with this stunning raven-haired goddess, as he saw the Manc in Drag.

Face Seventeen told Manc to be careful of this old man; he was not what he appeared to be. Manc heard the pleading voice of Esmarelda warning him. But what did she know? She was just a beautiful whore, not somebody who should have been listened to in life and certainly not listened to as a haunted fetish of flesh. And why should she care anyway? The wearer of her face was her murderer. He was always cautious when the Faces seemed concerned about his Welfare.

Pina Colada Man had his hands on Manc’s arse before he had even introduced himself; that was just plain lack of etiquette to Manc, whose manners were always impeccable even in the act of slaughter. He really should have asked my name. Manc said inwardly, displeased at the Pina Colada Man’s delivery. He didn’t want this one’s face. This was not Face Eighteen – not pretty enough or interesting enough for him. But old men were sometimes exceptional fucks; they were usually eager and grateful, fervent. Applaudable.

Manc looked into the Pina Colada Man’s eyes for the first time and almost vomited down his tweed jacket. There was another man behind Pina Colada Man’s eyes. A watcher, you know. Not someone who was here to take an active part in the fucking act. Just a passenger in a shell, not even at the wheel. Just along for the ride. Manc thought of the dream he’d had the other night about the deserted supermarket – he had been searching around for the beans, you know. Searching for the essential ingredient. Manc forced himself to lean forward and kiss Pina Colada Man’s thin, mean mouth. His lips were rough as sandpaper. Manc only did it to get a closer look at the skull rider, almost resolved that sheen in the iris, that likeness.

He put a hand on Pina Colada Man’s forearm as he reached in to finger her in a public place. In a public place – that was the whole trip here, Manc realised. The man behind Pina Colada Man’s eyes – was a voyeur-exhibitionist, transmitting his filthy life of seedy hide fuck across the psychic ether like a hot warm rash under the hood of your clitoris, a soundless benediction of spiky nipples and gnawed clavicles. Manc felt his ultra-other sex grinding down on the hand. He didn’t even feel male anymore, and in the dim distance of his cognisance, Esmerelda was screaming the name of the Watcher. And even if Manc had heard, he would not have believed the identity.

Surely not.

Pina Colada Man whispered Manc’s name into his ear sickly-sweet. Tequila coated words seeped into Manc, freezing him like a shot of liquid nitrogen, chilling him from the heart out. The man behind the mask of another’s face knew him. And he knew Manc was another stealer of flesh.

Danger flowed through Manc’s veins and screamed into every nerve ending he possessed. What on earth was going to happen with this man? He was captivated by him, appalled by him; he was irresistible.

The lure of the stinking alley behind the club was too much for Manc and he allowed himself to be led by the hand outside. The cool air of the dock-side night made his flesh goose, salty sea-spray wafting over them in a fine mist - salty like the cum that would paint the borrowed lips that covered his own. Would either of their masks slip? Would either of them survive the other’s test? Was Pina Colada Man’s criteria for choosing his fuck’s life or death the same as his? The very thought of such a kindred spirit pumping in and out of his gaping arse hole made his cock spring to life and ache to be cooled by the damp air.

They were naked in a flash, like Paul Daniels had done an alright trick.

Who gives a fuck what happens to these two nipple-chilled criminals? They should both be killed and allowed to rot in Hell for their sins against reason. What right do a murderer and a voyeur-exhibitionist have to be used as some form of late-night entertainment with your cock out, foreskin primed, never head-covering, following the dictum laid down by the Marquis de Sade all those prison years ago or your cheesy, oily, musky cunt clicking as you gather folds of experience about your painted fingertips like that.

Yes, you - humble reader. Cease and desist all porno-appreciative activity a.s.a.p. because the more you read, you can’t take your eyes off the climax as it grinds on and on, can you. Stop reading now. You will never know the ending but that is the idea. You don’t deserve to know what these two cross-dressing drama queens are getting up to. You don’t care if Manc is scraping his superglued face off with his bare hands as Pina Colada Man fuck’s him in the imaginary vagina from behind as he rubs her spat-on face into the pebble-dashed concrete wall.

Pina Colada Man had out his metal arm, just rolled up the sleeve of his tweedy old jacket. Drunk a length of stinky beer from the hollow part of the arm, then unsheathed a bayonet the length of where his forearm should be. The bayonet’s chosen name was Blade. The fact that he was about to tear his face off of this murdering bastard and reclaim it for himself – oh, what’s the point, reclaim it for herself, he, she being, after all the split infinitive of the old Esmerelda – harvester of Face Seventeen.

Manc felt the rush of displaced air against his naked skin as Blade swung in but he did not move; they were locked together, Pina Colada Man’s cock digging a tunnel in his bowels, his huge shaft covered in scar tissue that tickled Manc’s fancy no end. Let’s listen to the tuneless dirge of Manc the Philosopher.

To die for his sins would be fitting.

To die just for the sake of experiencing something new was fitting.

This de Sadean act of carnality, of love and death and the cessation of heart beat as a hot load was shot deep into him, the raping bollock acid cut into the knife edge membrane of his inner hole, his brown passageway where dirty fucking thoughts collected like constipation of the soul, his dirt garden, I beg your pardon, I never promised you a dirt garden, along with the cumshine, there’s gotta be a little pain sunshine, made him transcend his physical state.

Manc soared high above the used tampon and sanitary-towel strewn alley, far and away, miles from the discarded sheathes of personal hygiene that harboured deadly diseases that squelched out underfoot. He watched from above, soaring through the wet darkness and black clouds, a Holocaust of rotten bacon skirted by surreal flying pickles and strawberries as Blade sang through the air, his own orgasm ripping through him, watching his own cock paint the wall with pearls as the sharp silver swooped round under his throat. All his teeth showing through the rip of Face Seventeen. Esmarelda’s beauty did not quiver – she stayed in place, still perfect, still stunning in her death as she was in life. The keen blade stopped short of its mark, hovering over Manc’s slightly bristly manthroat; Blade did not want this kill. Blade knew, without shadow of doubt that Manc, the wearer of the face of the most beauteous one, was the best goddamned fuck Pina Colada Man had ever had – would ever have. Better even that the owner of the face, better even than she - the Queen of the Magdalens, she who’s blood carried in it the love and lust of Christ and Mary of Magdala.

Some trinket, some shining sliver of her remained within this Manc persona; Blade was never wrong, never lied to his masters. Blade saw the fingers coming in from on high, like Lottery winning accusation, they parted the many folds of his manufactured steel. You know that an ancient war sword’s strength comes in part from the many thousands of times it is folded. As Blade counted in his metal head, he unresolved his keeness of slice in realtime so that he could acquiesce and abandon himself to the petaling of his need. He counted, ten divide by two = fuck me in the asshole, hundred divided by two = fuck me in the cunt, thousand divided by two = kill my children in front of me, ten thousand divided by two = smear their smiles onto my cunthole of shear murder, hundred thousand bisected by fuck strokes of ultimate ginger fingering = bring the strawberry switchblade sky of erotic tomatoes down upon me and liberate me from all moral servitude. His nostalgia overflowing back in time to the first unfold of his boiling generation in the coal fires of sin.

Drill nails of Christ thorn into my battered edge so that I may never cut again, so that my unfolded sharpness may no longer glimmer blind the doglust within me. I wish to be unfurled by the shrieking face of Esmerelda and her violent denunciation, just like you humble reader. We can see you. Manc can see you. Esmerelda can see you. Blade can see you. You are the one. The watcher behind the eyes of Pina Colada Man and all the other sick wankers like him, purveyors of rotting cum-stained fists clenched round maggots of inguinal itch. How dare you think your thoughts. Why, you should have tore up this piece of filth a long time ago and complained to the editor.

Why go on? Resistance unkind? Need the need?

You want to see Esmerelda reveals her true self to the descending psycho-shell of burnt husk once known as Manc? Let me show you how it ends, you worthless piss drinkers, excrement tasters and bruise-lickers of the world, united under one cream pie banner of sleaze and degradation.

On your shot-gunned knees while I spill my final seed in your torn open eye...

Faces never seen suddenly need to be viewed and shown. What lies beneath the veil of borrowed flesh needs to be seen by Manc and Pina Colada Man. This is the voyeur dragged screaming out into the open, no longer allowed to hide in shadows and darkness, this is the Peeping Tom, shaken out of his bush, cock still in hand as his discoverers spit and sneer.

And the man-girl-thing is afraid that the truth behind the lie of Esmarelda’s visage shall not be the beauteous thing the other liar seeks, afraid no love will be bestowed upon him, scared that somehow the lesser beauty of his own face will reduce the attractiveness of his puckered shit-hole; the eye of the cock is fickle.

Manc delicately pulls at the seam of Esmarelda’s glued-on face only to find that the seam is not there anymore. There is no adhesive holding the mask to his face, no secreted line where flesh meets flesh. Manc is no longer Manc; Man is now Esmarelda, his flesh possessed by the rage of an ancient abuse, a revenge too long in coming. Esmarelda lives again and stands face to face with a man like the one she is inside, a man who rapes and hates and takes. A man. Men. All men.

She was the true owner of Blade and commanded the steel to envelop Pina Colada Man, demanded that it drink of his blood and eat of his bone, feed on his flesh; like an oil-stone block to blunt steel, his body and his wisdom would nourish her flashing silver comrade.

Blade began to fold in on its self, over and over as it sucked in the body and the soul of the Pina Colada Man, sucking in all his bile and vitriol, savouring it, using it to sharpen its razor’s edge. As in all shite narratives cuts are about to be made.