THE POLICEMAN'S SON

THE POLICEMAN’S SON by Stephen Mitchell

While his father was at work, six year old John Watson moves secretly and furtively around the house, closely following his mother as she carries out the daily housework, scribbling copious entries into a pocket notebook, detailing her every movement. His mother catches him out of the corner of her eye as she feeds the washing through the mangle. It’s a Sunday, but it’s no day of rest for her.

“What are you up to?” she asks.

“Nothing,” the boy replies mysteriously, before retreating into the shadows of the living room.

When his father comes home that evening the boy runs to greet him. He opens his notebook and gleefully reels off the list of things he’s seen his mother doing that day. His father smiles, pats him on the head and says, “Good work, son – I’ll slap the cuffs on her later.”

And that night, behind a locked door, while the boy sleeps, that’s exactly what his father does to his sex-hungry wife, as she lies panting breathlessly with desire, wearing nothing but a pair of open crotch panties, her arms and legs splayed and handcuffed by her wrists and ankles to the four posters of the bed. Her husband struts around the room in his expertly tailored Gestapo uniform and with a giant strap-on rubber penis attached to forehead.

In the next room the boy dreams of his future. Like his father and his father before him the boy wants, more than anything in the world, to be a policeman – but despite his unerring powers of observation he remains blissfully unaware of the fact that both his parents are perverts.

“Did you tell mummy off last night?” the boy asks his father over breakfast the next morning.

“Yes, son,” his father replies, “but I don’t think she’s learned her lesson yet and I may have to tell her off again tonight.”

“You must be very naughty, mummy,” the boy says.

“Oh, I am,” his mother replies, pouting at her husband. “Now, finish your breakfast and be off with you to school.”

His father stands up, adjusts his uniform and says, “Right then, I’m off to work.” He walks over to where his wife is leaning against the sink in her dressing down and kisses her firmly and passionately on the lips, running his fingers over her erect nipples at the same time.

And then he leaves the house to pound the beat on the mean streets of Blackpool.

My creative writing tutor (a very prim and proper woman who wrote extremely twee poetry) was horrified when I read this out to the rest of the group, bearing in mind that most of them were retired ladies of a certain age who wrote their own versions of the Mills & Boon books they had read that week. My friend Danny thought it was hilarious and after class a number of the old ladies asked me if I could maybe write some more of the story and supply them with a copy of it.