There is a little known part of London, it is old London, an alleyway in St James, not far from The Palace.
At night, on a black moon, once a month, in the dim light of not quite enough antique lamps giving off not quite enough light to feel quite safe enough…
The tall, old, haggard and filthy men dressed as vultures come to play.
They are lanky and skinny bow-legged, with bare, muscly, bellies and low slung trousers. They each sport a massive, polished vultures beak on their heads, hiding lined faces, rotting teeth, hair long and greasy, dangling.
Their breath is rank. For they deal in human flesh. They deal in the discarded slivers of women’s body parts, thrown into the Photoshop bins. Hell is literally incarnate in this place.
And oh, they are so loved, these vile and tall men who deal in these parts, who serve the fetishists of St James. They are adored, sought, fawned and pawed over as they prance and step, black wings wide open, laughing and howling, moving in an out of the shadows and the light in that wildly ancient and haunted London street.
Their wide, black, rank leather cloaks are lined with dangling discards of disgusting flesh, flesh that is not allowed, is reviled, loathed, cursed, cut into, starved away, hated and berated. Their wings, for this is how they look, dangle with the discarded disfiguring of womanhood and they are worth a fortune.
On the night of the Black Moon millions are staked, bet, gambled for a glimpse a touch, a lick, a stroke.
The Buyers Bodies crouch down, ranged, slavering along the sides of the alley, knees wide, hands fronting their crotches, mouths wide with giggling hysterical laughter, eyes flicking and glistening in the uneven low light, heads moving as they follow the figures prancing and strutting. Occasionally it is all too much and one groans as he comes in his trousers, face suddenly a furious grimace as he wipes his hands down the glorious Georgian brick wall that has seen so much. Seen so, so much, but never this. This is new.
Women fear them, women catch their breath and sob when they smell this dark night, the air rank with rot and loathing, women clutch their clothes, their coats, tighter around their bodies, against their breasts, bellies and inner thighs on the dark nights that the tall, lanky and bow-legged dance.