II

Salford Kiss*

Sebastian arrived at the Salford Funtom factory on the outskirts of Manchester in the late afternoon. It was in a fairly grim looking neighbourhood full of factories and warehouses. After appropriating the current head manager's office for his investigative 'interviews' and kicking the devious bastard out on his lecherous, larcenous arse, Sebastian spread himself a bit. He'd thoroughly enjoyed turning the head manager out to wait like any other employee for his unannounced 'evaluation' of the way the factory was being run.

He would let the fellow stew in his own sweat for a few hours, worrying whether or not the owner of the factory actually already knew what sorts of things he'd been getting up to or not. Since he was one of the three managers Sebastian was there to punish and then make redundant, the demon judged his behaviour was totally justified and part of his master's orders. And it was ... sort of.

Typically Ciel gave the demon plenty of leeway in how he interpreted such evaluative/investigative orders. "Go find out if what I'm hearing is true and if it is, do something about it." is the way his orders were usually worded and this time was no different. Sometimes he asked if he'd had to kill anybody or as a joke asked where he'd hid the bodies. Usually the demon just laughed, but once or twice he'd had a different answer all together that made the boy sorry he'd asked.

The Butler took off his coat and ordered the pretty little seamstress the manager had appropriated from the shop floor as his 'personal assistant' to go make him a pot of tea and bring a couple cups(it was really going to be for her). She was just one of the unauthorized moves rumour had it that the head manager and his two cronies had got up to in their imagined isolation here 'oop north', so far from London and the owner, his lordship's, eyes. The handsome butler and the little former tweeny** had a nice little chat about exactly what her 'new job' actually involved. She was very nervous, terrified she was somehow going to be held accountable for the behaviour the manager had in fact blackmailed her into and seemed close to genuine collapse until Sebastian assured her it was the manager who was in trouble, not her.

The savage smile on her face as she strutted out of the appropriated head manager's office and locked eyes with her former boss was truly priceless, almost as good as watching the blood drain out of the boss's face as he watched her flounce back to her old sewing machine as she made a great show of resuming the piecework# she'd originally been hired for.

Sebastian got so little opportunity to really express his naturally demonic inclinations, he really cherished these little business excursions. He fully intended on cutting loose and 'letting the demon out to play' up here in the Salford factory. He then planned to evoke his ability to manipulate and obliterate human memories to his own advantage so the worst of his behaviour would not be remembered-by *most* of the workers. However, he meant to ensure this day would be one hell of an 'inspection' for the three suspected managers, who had been fiddling the books, helping themselves to the profits and treating the factory girls as their own private stable of prostitutes, would be a day they'd relive in their nightmares for the rest of their lives.

It was already been near dark by the time he'd finished terrorising (and just for the pure hell of it, buggering senseless) the three corrupt shop managers. Their worst sin, in Ciel's eyes, had been pressuring the women on the shop floor into publicly performing all sorts of lewed and humiliating sex acts in return for hiring and retaining them as employees. It seemed merely the just, sensible (and of course thoroughly demonic) thing to do to give them a taste of their own medicine before he booted all three of them out of the building, naked, awash in scalding demon seed and completely bereft of any memory of who they even were.

He then appointed two quivering and far less troublesome replacements, the two men who had essentially been bullied into performing the work the three managers should have been doing while they were busy grabbing it up with the helpless female workers in their direct employ. The two men had already proven they could do the jobs so he gave them the titles and the salaries that went with them as well. Then he took his leave to the sound of the entire shop floor cheering for him. They had only a vague impressions of what had actually transpired thanks to him scrambling their collective recall, but they got clear the important points: the horrible men who'd been taking advantage of them had all been thoroughly shamed, treated to a taste of their own medicine and best of all, were not coming back, ever again. And the tall, dark haired man who had come up from London as representative of the owner, their young Lord Phantomhive, (and who was so handsome he was almost pretty) was the one responsible for their liberation.

Just at the door, as he was slipping into his coat, his arm was caught by a dark beauty who pressed against him and whispered her gratitude in musical Hindi 'to the pure, white incarnation of my lord Krishna' before stroking his thighs suggestively, then grinding hard against him, giving him a deliberately arousing kiss of pure gratitude.

How delightfully depraved; how personally satisfying! The only problem was at that moment his lust could not begin to compete with his animal hunger. He did decide Salford was his sort of place and he really should visit more often. But now, on to satisfying more urgent, more basic appetites.

* a 'Salford Kiss' is actually a head-butt (ye-eah...it's a really rough neighbourhood, see.)like Grell gave Sebastian when they were reciting Shakespeare whilst running over the rooftops of Whitechapel together. But Sebastian gets a saucy buss from the grateful Hindi woman there too, so I figured nobody would mind if I played fast and loose with the meaning for my title.

** A Tweeny is a maid that works in very very large houses and is a sort of floating worker who can be used by any of the three main head servants: by the butler, cook and housekeeper (not all houses had all three, often the cook was the housekeeper too.) She also works in the kitchen serving the servant's hall like the servants deemed more experienced and easy on the eyes serve the family 'upstairs'. A tweeny's often the first to go when money gets tight and they got phased out as the years went by and more conveniences were invented (like washing machines). Her lot could also be a miserable one if-as often happened-the three main servants: butler,cook and housekeeper, didn't get along and/or argue over her use and time.

# Piecework means instead of being paid a set salary, a worker would be paid a few pence per piece they produced, and each girl typically only sewed a single seam or dart and handed it on to the next worker, in assembly-line fashion. So it was in their interest to sew as fast as possible, producing many pieces. But working fast around such machines could lead to dreadful industrial accidents. In a typical factory (or 'sweatshop' if the conditions were particularly bad) the electric industrial sewing machines never stopped once plugged in, had only one speed (ridiculously fast) and were notorious for stitching the girls' fingers to their work.