Hello, below is a short work of fiction that I recently wrote and I hope you enjoy it
07:45. Helga smoothed her grey skirt down as she made her solitary ascent in the lift, which crawled up the spine of that infamous building on Alexanderplatz, East Berlin. Her heart rate was higher than usual. It was an unusual meeting she was to attend that morning, and although routine, she knew its contents carried particular, personal significance for her. The lift arrived at the prescribed floor, and she stepped out onto the brown, linoleum-paved corridor where cigarette smoke hung beneath the polystyrene ceiling in thin clouds.
A few doors down, she gently pushed open the conference room door to reveal a long table sparsely populated by four attendees: Comrade Director Schmidt, Comrade Müller, and Comrade Hartmann. Helga took her seat opposite Hartmann, who raised his eyebrows at her through the cloud of smoke coiling up from his cigarette. She was the last to arrive. Director Schmidt began the proceedings in his gruff, quiet voice—quelled from a lifetime of whispers and tobacco.
“It’s my pleasure to inform you all that Operation Jacknife has been a complete success,” he began, his face revealing not a hint of elation. His whole complexion sagged as though tiny weights had been attached with fishing wire. His black, thick-rimmed glasses seemed to press heavily into the bridge of his nose. After he had spoken this initial sentence, a secretary entered the room with an armful of brown folders, one for each attendee.
“Here are the photographs now. Hand them out, will you, Sabina?”
The folder placed in front of Helga was so thin it might have contained nothing but the stale, nicotine-tainted air that pervaded the room. But she knew exactly what it held. She saw the others opening theirs. Not wanting to stand out, she bit her bottom lip and flipped open the slip of beige card.
“As you can see,” Director Schmidt continued, “last night Mrs Rochdale had herself a euphoric evening.”
Inside Helga’s file were four black-and-white photographs of a man and a woman engaged in various erotic activities within a seedy West Berlin hotel room. The woman was Cathy Rochdale, wife of a high-ranking British diplomat on the West German ambassador’s staff. The man was Helga’s ex-husband, Hans Steiner.
“This is gold,” announced Hartmann, holding aloft the picture showing Cathy seated upon Hans’ face, her breasts clutched tightly in her hands, eyes closed in an expression of serenity.
“We’ve been following the husband’s movements for weeks now,” noted Müller in her husky tone, cigarette burning in hand. “We could feed these out to him as early as tomorrow. We know he already has a weakness for drink. If we play this right, it will make the Cambridge Spy Ring seem like a footnote.”
Helga’s stomach turned. Sweat oozed down her spine. She remembered the feelings Hans had once induced in her—the convulsions, the ecstasy. Those bright summer mornings, awake for no reason, gazing into his deep brown eyes just before he took her into his arms, moments before she was lost in a carnal passion she doubted she would ever find again.
“My people will make the necessary arrangements,” Helga announced in a rock-steady tone. “Just to clarify, we’re prioritising the British Rhine Army’s distribution of armour?”
“Precisely,” confirmed Director Schmidt. Helga’s heart sank at the thought of devoting so much time to the photographs—to the whole sorry affair. “Stasi directorate is expecting significant success from this operation,” Schmidt continued. “They mustn’t be disappointed.”
Helga looked down again at the photographs, a surge of confused passion coursing between her legs.
---
She took the usual route home at 18:00 that day: the U-Bahn from Alexanderplatz to Friedrichstrasse, where she resided in her divorcee’s apartment with her cat, Klaus. This was within walking distance of the building she knew Hans lived in. He would have returned from the West that afternoon following the successful completion of the operation.
The train took a sudden turn and began to climb to street level. As Helga held onto the plastic loop above her head, the brilliant spring sun that flooded the carriage made the fluorescent tubes redundant. Helga sucked in her cheeks, stood up straight, and focused her attention on a copy of Neues Deutschland poking out of the bin in the corner by the sliding doors. It was the point at which the train rose above the level of the Wall. It was Helga’s catwalk.
“There! There! There!” Jerry urged as he caught sight of Helga through his high-power binoculars. “Second carriage! What are you fucking waiting for?”
Click-click-click-click-click went Adam’s camera. The two CIA men were stationed in a derelict building on the western side of the Wall, overlooking the section where they knew the U-Bahn line from Alexanderplatz passed through. Every day they waited patiently for clocking-out time at Stasi headquarters so they could catch a glimpse of their top operators as they journeyed home. The images Adam captured were of a woman in her early thirties dressed in a grey suit blazer and skirt. Beneath the blazer she wore a pressed white shirt, the outline of her bra clearly visible. Her expression was difficult to define, but seemed detached, if not vacant. Blonde hair wound into plaits that curled around her head; dark rims under her eyes—the result of long hours worked—staring away at something impossibly distant.
In black-and-white, the shadows cast by her cheekbones and the way the sun caught the contours of her hand as it gripped the loop above her gave these routine photographs an artistic dimension. Of all the operators they captured on their homeward journey, Helga was the focal point of Adam’s fantasies.
“She sure is some piece of ass!” he announced through the filter of his cigarette, chewed flat between his teeth. The train snaked back below the level of the Wall.
---
Helga alighted at Friedrichstrasse and made her way down the crowded street. There was an emotion whirling inside her that she found difficult to place. It infused itself in her heart and vanquished her appetite. It demanded action, yearned to be satisfied. She passed the gate to her own building and continued down the street, past the market vendors and toward the tower block where she knew Hans resided.
When she finally arrived, her patent leather bag clutched under her arm, all twenty stories of brutalist concrete loomed above her. Hans lived on the fourteenth floor, where he would no doubt be listening to Bach with a vodka, as was his custom on Friday evenings. She ventured inside, seized by unbending determination. As she climbed the building in the shoddy lift—solitary once again—she smoothed her skirt and breathed through her mouth to avoid the odour of liquor and urine engulfing the grimy space. The door opened on the fourteenth floor, and Helga stepped out.
The muffled sound of Bach transmitted through Hans’ door as she stood before it. There was no doubt in her mind about what she was going to do. She knocked as loudly as she could. Inside, she heard the clatter of a glass on a tray. The music turned down, and the muffled sound of footsteps approached across the carpet.
Shirt half-undone, jet-black hair flopping over his forehead, vodka-filled tumbler in hand—Hans radiated the charisma and charm that Helga remembered so keenly. When he opened the door to Helga, however, his face melted, his shoulders tensed, and before he could slam the door shut she was upon him. The tumbler fell to the floor. Despite his physical superiority, Hans’ mind and the twisted desires within would not permit effective self-defence. Helga forced herself through the door the moment she heard the catch lift and, within moments, had Hans pinned against his hallway wall by his biceps. She was at his neck, kissing, biting, inhaling his scent. Within moments, the familiar firmness between his legs made itself known.
She wasn’t usually like this, but something deep within told her force was warranted—that she needed to reclaim him, to provide him with something that the Rochdale woman never could. She took him firmly by the forearm and led him through to the lounge, where Bach’s Air on the G-String played quietly from the record player.
“Strip!” commanded Helga as she turned to face Hans.
“Helga,” he pleaded, “what on Earth—”
“Strip, you whore! Like you did for that English idiot!”
Hans was not a stupid man. He spoke four languages and had recently persuaded the wife of a high-ranking British diplomat to degrade herself in the most unspeakable ways, despite the risks to her marriage and her country. But there was something in Helga’s eyes that evening—a coldness expressing intense passion, an outrage impossible to ignore. Hans was hard beneath his grey trousers, and it was a signal he had always struggled to resist.
He unbuttoned his shirt entirely, slipped it off, and repeated the process with his trousers. Who is this woman? A voice within him asked. But he ignored it. The cold intensity of Helga’s gaze transfixed him, and he could do nothing more than obey her will to the letter.
Finally, Hans stood completely naked before Helga.
“Did she like that?” she asked, gesturing to his genitalia.
“I think you saw for yourself,” he replied, making no effort to conceal himself. Helga walked the few short paces to him, close enough that he could smell her standard floral perfume—the one she always wore to work. He could hear her breathing, feel the coarse material of her blazer against his bare skin. She took him in her left hand, hard.
“Did she like that?” Helga repeated softly.
Hans’ eyelids fluttered. “She loved it,” he answered in a quivering voice.
“Turn around,” Helga commanded, and Hans obeyed.
Once his back was to her, Helga ran her index finger between the cheeks of his behind.
“Did she like this?” she asked in a whisper.
“She didn’t see that,” Hans replied.
“Oh.” Helga softly exhaled, still running her finger up and down. “Well… I like this. I like this a lot.” With that, she slipped her index and middle fingers into her mouth, probing deeply. When she removed them, they glistened with saliva. Before Hans could protest, Helga rubbed her wet fingers against his tight orifice, decorated with black hair she knew would enhance his sensitivity.
“What are you—” Hans began, but before he could finish Helga had slipped her fingers inside him, feeling a wet torrent surge between her legs as she did so. Hans steadied himself on the nearby couch, bent over, and submitted fully to Helga’s excursions. He groaned softly as she fed her fingers into him. Reaching around, she found Hans harder than ever and began stroking in time with the rhythm she had established from behind.
The setting spring sun shone through the windows, and Helga felt a level of power and control difficult to articulate as Hans’ moans filled the small living room. He forced himself back against her, willing her to finger him deeper and deeper.
“Was that whore good?” she demanded.
“Yes!” Hans cried.
“Did she do what you wanted?”
“Yes! She was a filthy whore!”
“Yes,” replied Helga. “Well, now you’re my whore, aren’t you?” She stroked and pulled at Hans just the way she knew he liked, synchronised with the motion of her fingers inside him. She had an uncanny natural ability.
“Are you my whore?” she asked.
“Yes!” Hans replied, his answer muffled as he buried his face into the sofa.
“Are you?!” Helga pressed, releasing his penis and grabbing his hair and pulling his head back. The expression on his face inflamed her passion and determination as she continued to work his orifice with her fingers.
“I’m your whore!” Hans admitted in a desperate cry. Moments later he ejaculated—without any assistance other than her probing—onto the sofa against which Helga had been driving him. He collapsed against it, breathless, like a ragdoll.
Panting, Helga stepped back to look at the spent man sprawled face-down on the sofa. Her panties were wet through, and she knew Hans would take some time to recover. She retrieved her patent leather bag from the hall and took one last glimpse at him, savouring the contrast between the positions he had enjoyed with Mrs Rochdale and the one he found himself in now: his behind prostrate and eager, his panting breath, his clutching hands.
Helga was satisfied. She pulled the door to the apartment shut with a soft click as she departed. Down the linoleum-lined corridor of the tower block she adjusted her plaits and pondered what she should give Klaus for dinner.
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