Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘Oi, wake up.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Julia got off the bus.

  ‘Ta, bitch.’

  ‘You’re welcome, slapper.’

  Sonibel hurried off briskly to her lecture, carrying a plastic satchel over her shoulder, reeking of last night’s body mist and wearing, Julia noted, mis-matched shoes – one brown, one black.

  Ah, yes, the memories came flooding back. Sonibel had been at the satyr club too. And she’d, ah – Don’t go there, Julia.

  With bruised arm and gluey eyes, Julia ambled in Sonibel’s wake, past the postered walls of The Venue (which gave her terrible flashbacks of that huge devil’s cock), then crossed the road, nipped down Laurie Grove along the alley of identical terraced houses, and went through the side entrance of Goldsmith’s College.

  She loved this place. It was a world-class University located smack in the middle of one of the grungiest parts of London, the capital city of drums ‘n’ bass clubs and sleazy rock venues.

  On one side of College Green was the Richard Hoggart Building, like an ocean liner in a sea of lawn: a tall mansion block with high pilasters framing its porthole windows, choked from top to bottom in green ivy as richly fecund as mould. On any other day, she mused, this building would be beautiful, a metaphorical sight for sore eyes. Not today. Today, her eyes remained sore.

  She walked up the hill, slowly, to the media building. She was so late by now that she missed the lecture entirely, the one on documentary praxis. But she did get to the screening room in time for the short film screenings, which she mostly slept through.

  After the screenings, the last of which was an Inuit short film about a murder in the icy snows of somewhere or other, which she enjoyed, she had lunch in the canteen at Richard Hoggart with Sarah and Gabriel.

  The canteen was busy, which meant that knives were clattering noisily on plates and glasses were smashing down upon tables in a deafening cacophony of extreme annoyingness. Sarah and Gabe had bagged a table near the window, and Julia wove an unsteady path towards them.

  ‘Hi bitch,’ said Sarah.

  ‘[Grunt].’

  ‘Hi, Julia,’ said Gabriel.

  ‘[Grunt].’

  To Julia’s deep dismay, she realised that Sarah - despite having drunk more and partied more than Julia had the night before - looked like she’d just come back from holidays from somewhere very sunny where there were no mosquitoes, and where it was obligatory to sleep a lot. In other words, Sarah’s creamy-soft skin was blooming. Her eyes were bright and alert. The laughter lines in her pretty face were like ripples in cream. And she exuded - like a succubus dripping pheromones - the essence of niceness.

  Sarah was in fact so incredibly nice, and kind, and unfailingly optimistic about the future prospects of even her dumbest-fuck pals, that she made Julia feel like the bitter and twisted twin of fairytale mythology.

  And, arguably, she was.

  ‘What about that then eh!’ grinned Sarah. ‘Last night! Penis. Large. Scarlet!’

  ‘Oh, was that a large one by your standards?’ Julia said.

  ‘I’m, oh, I didn’t much like, it wasn’t really my, well,’ said Gabriel. He was easily embarrassed by matters sexual, and the sight of the satyr’s cock had given him palpitations.

  ‘Big enough,’ Sarah said sagely. ‘Big enough to – ah!’ And she allowed a bliss-epiphany to overwhelm her.

  ‘Gross,’ said Julia sourly. ‘It was gross.’

  ‘It was yummy,’ said Sarah, making munching mimes.

  ‘Still more gross,’ said Julia, outdone, and suddenly nauseous.

  ‘I would, wouldn’t you, ay mate?’ said Sarah, grinning, doing her cockney builder shtick.

  ‘It had bloody hair on it,’ Julia protested.

  ‘Not on the glans,’ observed Gabriel; betraying his detailed observation of the offending cock.

  ‘Great experience,’ concluded Sarah.

  ‘Wouldn’t have missed it,’ conceded Julia.

  ‘Hey! What happened to you in the Star Bar? Where in buggery did you disappear to?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘I, um, pulled,’ lied Julia.

  ‘Pulled?’

  “‘Oh, isn’t that the idiom? I ‘copped off’. With a fella. Like.’

  ‘You did not. You bloody liar!’

  ‘Yes I am,’ said Julia, forlorn. ‘I’m a liar. I lie, therefore I, whatever. I went home.’

  ‘Lightweight.’

  ‘I am a lightweight, it’s true,’ Julia admitted.

  ‘You didn’t stay the course,’ Sarah accused.

  ‘Nope, I bailed. Saddo am I.’

  ‘Huh.’ Sarah grinned. A triumphant grin.

  Years of sibling rivalry culminating in total humiliation of the inferior twin; that was the subtext of Sarah’s triumphant grin. She might as well have had a thought balloon above her head.

  Julia took her defeat gracefully. She made a few noises, which she realised didn’t make sense. Oh fuck, she realised; she was losing it. Finally she managed to blurt out: ‘So what time did you...?’ before faltering.

  Sarah shrugged, nonchalantly. Implying she hadn’t gone to bed at all, merely hosed herself down in her party clothes in the street before strolling into the lecture. Then she grinned, licking-lipsly, this time implying that a whole world of sin had occurred in the many hours after Julia had, so pathetically, bailed.

  ‘Who?’ Julia said, jealously.

  ‘No one you know.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Sarah looked sheepish. ‘Harry.’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Tall Harry. The geeky film nerd Harry.’

  Julia was shaken to her very core: albeit, briefly.

  ‘Harry’s one of my best friends!’ she protested.

  ‘Ah you do know Harry. Sweet, isn’t he?’

  ‘You went with Harry?’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘Yes! Well no. I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like I ever slept with him, myself I mean, or even wanted to, or - but. Well. And? No. But the point is –’

  Sympathy dawned in Sarah’s eyes.

  ‘Yeah, I get it, you think he’s more your type.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Julia, relieved she’d been understood despite her blathering.

  ‘Sorry.’ Sarah was the very picture of remorse.

  ‘Don’t sweat it.’

  ‘No but I mean, I really am. Sorry I mean.’

  ‘Yes, but as I’ve pointed out, you don’t need to be.’

  ‘Even so. I mean it, girl. If I’d thought for a second that –’

  Julia erupted. ‘You bloody slapper! I mean, Jesus and Lucifer! You absolute and comprehensive whore-bitch from Hell, no offence, Gabe.’

  ‘None taken,’ said Gabriel, visibly stung.

  ‘What you did was treachery of the, what’s the word, highest, mostest, yeah, you know what I’m saying?’

  Sarah made a mocking, ‘Who, me?’ face, which threw coals upon Julia’s burning rage.

  ‘I’m serious, you ho! We had a deal. Remember? Tacit understanding thing. To the effect that you’re meant to be the emotionally shallow slutty twin who gets all the good looking guys. And I’m meant to be the soulful introverted geeky twin who dates, well, geeks.’

  Sarah was looking at her pityingly by now. While Gabriel was looking anxious; he hated these sisterly spats.

  ‘Hey, like, “dude”,’ Sarah taunted, ramping it up. ‘This isn’t an American high school movie. And I’m sure as fuck not the mean girl everyone hates, and you’re no WAY the brainy sensitive nerd who we root for because the writer is a nerd too. And besides I didn’t date the geeky one, I fucked him.’ And Sarah grinned a bit more.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Sue me.’

  ‘I might.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Fuck you, too!’ Julia snarled. ‘Or did Harry beat me to it?’

  ‘Ooh oooh ooh,’ said Sarah, orgasmically. ‘Oohh!’

  ‘Ah, sit on thi
s,’ said Julia, doing the middle finger thing that was so in vogue at the moment.

  Sarah grinned, and had no comeback.

  ‘Lost for words?’ said Julia.

  ‘Whatever, yeah,’ Sarah conceded.

  The His Girl Friday banter ebbed.

  Julia felt her headache return.

  She knew it was pitiful: four pints of beer and a couple of tequila shots and she was totally fucked off her face.

  How did Sarah do it?

  ‘Are you guys done?’ said Gabriel, anxiously.

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘For now.’

  Gabriel sighed, with relief.

  ‘Boy, I really loved La Jetée, didn’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Which one was that?’ Julia asked.

  Gabriel sighed, in dismay.

  Gabriel was young for a demon, barely three hundred years old. He was seven foot tall with bright scarlet skin, soulful jet-black eyes fringed with lashes sharp as daggers, and those petite horns. But, or so Julia often mused, if it weren’t for the skin and the horns, and the eye-lashes, and the height, you’d never know he was spawned in hell. And his smile was notoriously infectious.

  Gabriel was a registered citizen of Outer London: one of the 60,000 or so Free Demons who were allowed to dwell and work outside the precincts of the sovereign nation of Demon City, aka the former City of London. Julia loved him like a brother, despite his alien origin and horrific features. She loved him in fact almost as much as she loved her sister - but without any trace of that other side of the love-hate hyphen.

  Julia, Gabe, Sarah: they were a team. They were the Three Whatevers. Though one day, they often resolved, they’d have to think of a cooler name.

  ‘So how did your encounter with the Beast go on Friday?’ Julia remembered to ask. She knew that Gabriel had been dreading it.

  ‘Bad.’

  ‘You always say that.’

  ‘He’s always so tough on me.’

  ‘That’s why they call him the Beast,’ Sarah pointed out.

  ‘He’s a bastard. Passive aggressive manipulative son of a, whatever. I prefer Mick.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ Julia said defensively.

  She had a soft spot for their tutor and mentor the Beast, aka Tomas Matheson, once among the hottest screenwriters in Europe, though not for many decades.

  ‘Write what you know, he keeps telling me that.’ Gabriel frowned, visibly distressed. ‘But I don’t want to write what I know. I want to forget what I know.’

  ‘Yeah but Gabe, hon –’ said Sarah.

  ‘Yeah!’ Julia agreed.

  ‘- you should, you know, you really should. I mean, you‘ve got such great material! Damnation, Hellbeasts, the Devil,’ argued Sarah.

  ‘Compared to us!’ Julia bemoaned.

  ‘Yeah, poor pathetic us. What have we got to write about!’

  ‘Chichester.’

  ‘Chichester!’

  ‘Christmas with mum and dad.’

  ‘Chichester Festival.’

  ‘Chichester Festival with mum and dad.’

  ‘Posh girls’ school, no one even took drugs.’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘Okay – apart from me.’

  ‘No life experience.’

  ‘No inner pain.’

  ‘How can we write what we know? When what we know is so fucking boring!’ Julia concluded.

  ‘Whereas you, you met the Devil didn’t you?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘In passing,’ Gabriel conceded.

  ‘I thought you met him properly. Socially I mean.’ Julia said.

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘What’s it like then?’

  Gabriel sighed. For a moment, his smile ebbed. He exuded an aura of dark melancholy that seemed to suck the life out of the very air.

  ‘That’s exactly what I don’t want to write about,’ Gabriel said. ‘Or even talk about. Or even think about. I want to write sitcoms.’

  Sarah laughed at that. The sound of laughter made Julia’s head hurt just a little bit more.

  ‘The Beast doesn’t approve of sitcom,’ Julia pointed out, though they all knew this.

  ‘I know. He told me that. It’s not a genre, it’s not even a mode, it’s a mockery, that’s what he said. Especially Friends, he was horrified when I said it was my favourite show. Nothing but shallow clichés. Corny jokes. Bad guitar playing. What was I thinking of? That’s what he told me. Then he lit his pipe. His actual pipe! That must be against University regulations.’

  ‘Almost certainly a violation of our human rights,’ Julia dropped in, with impeccable timing.

  Sarah pointed a finger as a gun, and fired it, and blew away the smoke: meaning, you said it, girl!

  ‘And he said,’ Gabriel dropped his voice a couple of octaves, quoting the bassoon voiced Matheson: ‘“You have a dark heart, my boy. And so you must write darkly.” And then he didn’t say anything for forty minutes.’

  ‘Write darkly then.’

  ‘I’m writing a sitcom!’

  Three humans in a flatshare; that was Gabriel’s sitcom. Julia had read it; it was funny. Though he couldn’t, in all honesty, write human.

  ‘You should help us on our script,’ Sarah suggested.

  ‘Horror? No way.’

  ‘Psychological horror,’ Julia insisted.

  ‘The guy gets his cock cut off.’

  ‘Yeah but it’s surgically –’

  ‘No it’s not –’ Julia rebutted angrily.

  ‘It is in MY draft,’ Sarah snapped. ‘Sliced off with a cleaver, then surgically reattached!’

  Julia made a sound like a snarl and said: ‘Fuck!’ Gabriel blinked in horror at the eruption of fresh venom between the twin sisters.

  ‘What?’ said Sarah angrily to Julia.

  ‘You just, well, what, can’t –’ Julia said, incoherently.

  Sarah shook her long curly purple hair in disdain, like a horse shaking its mane. In unconscious response, Julia ran a hand through her own less impressive brown locks, which never seemed to take curls the way her sister’s did, but never looked as good short either. So much for being an identical twin.

  ‘Girls, girls,’ said Gabriel, calmingly, waving his big red fists in the air.

  ‘I thought we’d discussed that option and we’d come to a consensus about, you know, giving it a try!’ Sarah lied.

  ‘We’re meant to be co-writers.’

  ‘Yeah, but I’m the one who –’

  Julia fixed her twin sister with her most evil glare. Sarah quailed.

  ‘I’ll let you read the scene,’ Sarah conceded.

  Julia nodded, grimly.

  She was proud of her most evil glare; it almost always worked.

  ‘Blood and gore, it just doesn’t do it for me,’ said Gabriel with a smile, trying to lighten the tone.

  A third of a millennium in the hell dimension had left Gabriel pathologically unable to cope with conflict of any kind.

  ‘Fuck, roundtable,’ said Sarah, noticing the time, and leaping up.

  ‘You go first,’ Julia said, staying put. ‘I’ll join you in five minutes.’

  ‘Coward.’

  ‘It spooks him. The Beast. When we walk in together.’

  ‘That’s because he can’t tell us apart.’

  ‘Of course he can. But it weirds him out. The image we conjure up. The twin sister thing. Like two peas in a pod, except we’re not peas, and there is no pod, and you’ve got purple hair. Or like –’

  ‘No, he really can’t!’ Sarah insisted. ‘Tell us apart I mean. And even if he could, he doesn’t know our names.’

  ‘Doesn’t he?’ asked Julia.

  Sarah spluttered with amusement. ‘Twenty years of coke abuse and failed-screenwriterdom has done it for him. The Beast’s got a memory like a sieve. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s why he – you know – he does this shtick: now tell me your story in YOUR words. That’s because he can’t remember it. The story
he’s read, I mean, the outline that we have to give in advance. Assuming he’s even read it a-bloody-tall.’

  ‘He’s a very good writer though,’ Gabriel offered.

  ‘One good film.’

  ‘Two, if you count The Serene Ocean.’

  ‘One good film. The action film.’

  ‘Yeah but half of that was the director’s polish. And,’ Sarah lost her thread. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘We should go,’ Julia said.

  Sarah checked her mobile. ‘Oops, better offer just came up, sorry.’

  ‘You can’t skip another roundtable.’

  ‘Tell him I have menstrual issues.’

  Julia made an ‘ick’ face; remembering how it had played last time Sarah had used that excuse.

  ‘Who’s the call from?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Not saying.’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Not saying.’

  ‘Not Harry then.’

  ‘A guy I met. He’s been to Hollywood. He’s connected. Well, you have to network, don’t you?’

  ‘Jesu! You’re such a whore,’ Julia informed her.

  ‘And you’re a jealous bitch who no one ever wants to fuck, let alone for money,’ Sarah retorted.

  ‘Was that meant to be an insult? It’s pitiful! And not even grammatical,’ Julia snapped back.

  ‘Don’t talk to each other that way,’ said Gabriel, distressed. ‘You girls, you should be nicer to each other.’

  Sarah flashed him a smile. Her loveliest smile. Gabriel was mollified.

  ‘She loves me really,’ Julia said.

  ‘No I don’t.’

  ‘No she doesn’t,’ Julia said, in her best ‘forlorn’ voice.

  Sarah got up and gave Julia a hug.

  ‘See you, bitch.’

  ‘Au revoir, mon ho.’

  Sarah got up, her lovely young face lit by a smile of optimistic anticipation that enhanced the laughter lines around her eyes. Then she left the canteen, in a flurry of unnecessary urgency.

  That was the last time Julia saw her sister alive.

  Chapter 3

  Dougie knocked off early, as he generally did on Wednesdays, unless there was a fresh murder or an imminent arrest. Then he drove home and took the kids to the park for a kickabout with the soccer ball.

  Gina joined them there. She turned up straight from work, with her Job gun in its shoulder holster creating a bulge in her leather jacket.