The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet)

by Peter Empringham

  So rapt with the action on the field were the Gods and monsters surrounding him that few noticed the gradual change. The gentle, smiling yogi who had entered the stand in a haze of incense was reddening, his greying hair becoming inky black, horns popping from time to time from his temples. It was as if someone had switched on a red lamp beneath the white cotton sheath he had adopted as a disguise, and there was a palpable rise in temperature. The reddening maharishi, murmuring foul incantations under his foul breath, trained his eyes fixedly on the football match, in the hope that this would at least offer some redemption.

  Banks of people from every background, geographical, religious, cultural, were as intent as he on the spectacle before them. The game was as enthralling for the eighteenth century pearl fisherman from the Maldives as it was for the Japanese Soldier who still wasn’t sure the War was over, or the yak farmer who had found himself in the strange world only a day earlier. There were few exceptions in the crowd which stretched almost to the horizon in all directions, at least if they weren’t wriggling under a net or weeping with frustration in a maze.

  Mussolini’s regiment were now, in the main, sleeping soundly, dreaming dreams of flower, and song, and little doe eyed deer. The only other group who had failed to be absorbed into the drama were the Gold members of Fiends Reunited, who, stoked by Marcel’s disinformation, were imploding under the weight of their own perfidy. Now unconcerned with the progress of the attacks, given their view that their own pre-eminence was of much greater consequence, they had turned upon each other, and plots were giving way to random violence.

  The Russian and the Lithuanian were at each other’s throats, while Pot had his lackeys wiping out those allied to any of the other despots. They didn’t know it, but they all needed to get on with it, having been poisoned by Elizabeth, who would have revelled in the agonies they would soon endure if she wasn’t lying face down with Ivan’s knife in her back. They were oblivious to the swell and sway of the crowd, which in return was unaware of them and their violent dissolution.

  The German team had defended with staunch determination, and as the minutes ticked by, even the samba rhythm was unable to lift the tiring Brazilian team. The Germans edged forward in pragmatic echelon, switching the ball between them to further exhaust the ragged opposition. They forced a series of corners, which resulted in goalmouth scrambles, heroic blocks by defenders, goalkeeping saves, and desperate clearances. With only seconds to play, every player except the German goalkeeper was in the final third of the pitch as they pressed for the decisive strike.

  All, that is, except Giovanni Dos Santos, who had been doubled up gasping for breath in the centre circle. Giovanni had lived an unremarkable life in the shanties of Rio, dividing his time between scavenging for food, scamming tourists, and playing football in the endless games of the Copacabana. He had also managed to procure enough loose change to support (with the connivance of the manufacturer) a forty-a-day Marlboro habit which had left his lungs ill-equipped to help his feet to do what they would have wanted.

  Finally he had been unable to chase back any more, and had spent the last five minutes on his knees hacking and wheezing in an effort to stop his eyes from popping out. When one of his team’s defenders managed to hoof the ball forward in a desperate search for respite from the pressure, Giovanni had just managed to regain his feet, and unsteadily watched it bounce past him and roll to a halt ten metres inside the German half.

  There was the hint of a bullfight as he and the German goalkeeper eyed each other from opposite sides of the ball. Giovanni was closer, but his opponent was big, strong, less exhausted, and had lived a somewhat purer life. He forced himself into one last effort and broke into a trot. The German, who had been all but pawing the ground, set off in a muscular sprint, and the two figures closed upon the ball as the crowd fell silent. Even halfway from his objective, Giovanni was gasping, and knew that he could not win the race; his lumbering enemy was far faster, and his grimace had turned to a grin as it became clear that he, too, knew the ball was his.

  The goalkeeper toe punted the ball with all his might at the same instant as Giovanni fell to his knees as if in supplication. He thought that the lack of air had caused his head to explode, but the sensation was actually the ball smashing into the top of his head, from where it flew back in the opposite direction. There was a massive gasp from the surrounding thousands even as the goalie craned his head to watch the ball sail over him. It flew high and pitched at the penalty spot before bouncing twice and rolling into the net. The referee blew his whistle for full time, but those who were listening couldn’t hear. In moments, Giovanni, now supine, was surrounded by his ecstatic team-mates, who threw themselves down alongside him in celebration.

  The Devil exploded. One moment he was there, the next, anyone near him was engulfed in a ball of sulphurous flame. The crowd around the burning ball rapidly cleared, and began to exit the grandstand with all haste as the beautiful Amish construction began to burn. Iron-Crutch Li, who had been leaping with delight as the Brazilians scored, slunk away in the knowledge that his chances of collecting his winnings from a ball of flame were slim indeed.

  The consequences, given the size and proximity of the crowd, could have been horrendous, but as luck would have it Tawhiri and his brothers were lurking a few metres away. They had been refused entry to the stand on the grounds that they were too noisy, wet, and windy, and had taken up a position close by, where they formed their own microclimate. Now they were called upon to bring their rain-bearing properties to bear on the burning grandstand, blissfully unaware that at the core, and being doused, was the incarnation of evil.

  Slaven saw, in the conflagration, his plot going up in smoke. What he didn’t need, but got anyway, was Marcel appearing before him with a self-satisfied smile. Slaven was sweating, whether from the heat or the realisation of his situation was hard to say.

  “Hello Sleighbell.” Said Marcel.

  “Slaven.”

  “I understand you’ve been looking for a new job. How do you think the chances look?” Marcel gestured towards the flaming woodwork, from which badly disguised Gods rushed willy-nilly.

  Slaven looked at the Frenchman sourly. How had all this happened? Without a word he tried to push past Marcel, who did not move to let him through.

  “I guess the future’s not too rosy, is it?” he said.

  “I was in Hell, I’ll be in Hell. That’s just the way it is.”

  “I think,” said Marcel with a laugh, “you might find things have got considerably worse even than that.” He walked away, leaving Slaven inhaling the choking smoke and steam, and wondering what on earth that could mean.

  Around the Committee Room, preparation for the award of the trophy was under way, and Ron was nervously mouthing his speech one more time, as blissfully unaware that no-one would be listening as he seemed to be about the pall of smoke rising opposite.

  Rogues snored, randomly strewn around the hillside; even Mussolini had found solace in sleep. Mary had found Jenkin, who like the rest of the crowd, was still applauding the players.

  “Hello Jenkin. Looks like it all worked out, doesn’t it?”

  He looked at her, glad that she didn’t know about the sexually harassing emails sent from his father’s work mailbox.

  “Well, I suppose you’re right. I was thinking I might try to find my mum. She- well, I mean maybe it wasn’t really her fault.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. Anyway, you two take care, we’ve got to be going.”

  “Thanks for everything, Mary.” Jenkin, so unlike Jenkin, gave her a hug.

  Mary, Justin, and Geoffrey The Panda met up with Marcel at the bottom of the hill, and they made slow progress through the crowd towards the door.

  “Did you see Slaven?” asked Justin. Marcel nodded.

  “He won’t be taking your place now, will he, Marcel? Not since all of this Fiends thing went wrong?” Geoffrey had a real look of concern on his face, framed by the panda suit.


  “I hope not. Not this time, and certainly not him.” They walked on in silence for a moment, in a bubble amidst the noisy crowds. “I suppose I should thank you all for your help.”

  “You should.” Said Justin, easing a dancing couple away from them.

  “And Geoffrey, for being the bait. That could have gone horribly wrong.”

  “Don’t mention it.” said his old friend. Mary glanced at Marcel, who in turn was looking at the turnip picker skipping along. She tried to establish in her mind whether his expression was one of affection.

  “No, really,” she said, “mention it.”

  Marcel didn’t, thinking that mentioning he should mention it should have done the job. She didn’t give up.

  “I think it was really brave what Yogi Bear here did for you.”

  “That’s all wrong, Mary.” Said Geoffrey. “Firstly, Yogi Bear is a bear, and secondly, he’s not real, he’s a cartoon.” They all stared at him. This was a complexity of cognition he had rarely displayed. ‘He’s not real’.

  What is real, she thought? She looked around half a million dead people hooting and dancing as they watched a much smaller group of dead people parading an upside down wartime helmet to cheers from all around. Somewhere close by there were evil-minded people lost in a maze, struggling under a net, lying in a hole in the ground, or snoozing in the late afternoon sun. The smoke from the fire still hung over the grandstand, the flames having been doused by the combined efforts of a family of Maori weather Gods. Closer to home, she was slowly walking along in the company of a seventeenth century libertine, a recently dead wheeler dealer, and a gentle thousand year old man in a viscose panda suit.

  “What is real?” she asked no one in particular.

  “We are.” Said Geoffrey without hesitation. “And Elizabeth Montgomery.”

  EPILOGUE

  Slaven, tall and thin, was becoming taller and thinner, since he was being slowly stretched on a mediaeval rack. The familiar rimless spectacles were steamed up because the temperature in the cavern was just over seven hundred degrees Celsius, meaning that the temperature at which he would burn remained a little way away. He couldn’t remove them because the aluminium frames had melted onto his cheeks about fifty degrees ago, and in any case some Romanian gargoyles were chewing his hands.

  His flesh was being gnawed by around three million nematode worms, piercing the heat-softened skin with their sharp stylets and sucking his juices into their muscular pharynx. This part had long since become merely excruciating, and not diminished by their constant excretion of ammonia onto his bubbling skin.

  Beelzebub, who had managed to overcome his disgust at the watery ministrations of Tahwiri and his family, wandered over to the cause of the soaking, and looked him in the eye.

  “This is a bit over the top, isn’t it?” said Slaven, who had long since assessed that he had nothing to lose.

  “Oh, you think so, do you?”

  “Well, I thought you’d just banish me to the pit or something. This is just plain nasty.”

  “Plenty of time for the pit. You promised me chaos, and I got celebration. You promised me slaughter and I got not a wound. You promised me a dance of victory and I got the Conga. Bad enough you think?”

  Slaven demurred, thrusting out what was left of his lower lip as though undecided.

  “But then this was slipped under my door.” Through the steam on his lenses, Slaven could see that Satan was waving a large brown envelope. A horned hand, mistily viewed, reached into it and pulled out some large pieces of shiny paper.

  “Here,” said Satan, “let me help you see clearly.” A crusty, dark, stinking finger was inserted between Slaven’s eyeball and the lens of his glasses, wiping off the condensation. The thick serrated nail cut unnoticed welts in the bridge of his nose. The process was repeated on the other side. Slaven would have sighed if his throat hadn’t been scorched. He didn’t really need any more reason to annoy this beast.

  The Devil held in front of his eyes a large photograph that clearly showed Slaven helping an infirm nun across a zebra crossing. There was something strange about it, not least that he had no memory of it ever, alive or dead.

  “Can you hold it closer?” he groaned. The picture came into sharper relief. The face in the wimple was unmistakeably that of a Spanish twin, though whether Lisa or Paola he couldn’t say. Another photograph appeared before his eyes. He was tossing sheaves of cash into the bowl of a black shrouded beggar who held up a copy of Big Issue for him to take. The next was Slaven shaking the hand of a long-haired bearded man with dilated eyes under the logo of Amnesty International.

  He groaned (although to be fair, he’d been groaning subconsciously for while). It was The Lost Evening. That night he had left for the party in London and woken up on the sofa in the hotel the following lunchtime, with It’s A Wonderful Life either still on the TV, or on the TV again.

  The prints followed in a litany of charitable goodness. In all of them he had the slack face of a congenital idiot, but one stopping a thief (in a black cowl again), giving up his seat on a bus for a lithe young girl, serving food at a homeless shelter. It was sickening.

  “They’re all fake.” He said through cracked lips. “They’re not real!”

  “Not real?” The Devil looked down on him, his red and black face sparking into patches of flame as he looked down upon the writhing mass below him. He was sharpening a very large bradawl.

  “Not real?” Satan raised the razor sharp tool. “Well, I am.”

  End of Book 2

  Found Footage

  From the archives…

  AS YE SOW

  “I’m having that vole.” His sister pointed with a slender claw at a particularly fat roll of meat laying on the platter, thick gravy sliding slowly off its rolled back.

  “That’s what you think.” he said, with more assuredness than he felt. He was taller, older, and more male than she, but history suggested that she was more likely to be correct.

  “Now now.” His mother performed the habitual swipe of rags and weeds from her face, scratched a mole the size of a penny with a dark nail. “Your father will be here in a minute. He’ll decide who gets which.” A minute turned out to be somewhat longer than the literal definition, and the gravy had begun to form a skin by the time their father crashed through the door, robe whirling, and stomped over to the table, leaning his scythe against the chair as he sat.

  “Some bloody day off! Just having a pint with the lads and I get bloody bleeped.”

  “Language!”

  “Bleeping bleeped. Quick job, they say. No delay.”

  “I thought Victor was on call.” His mother said, looking at the thickening sauce on the voles with some concern.

  “Oh, yes. Migraine! Since when do grim reapers get migraine? Mind, he was off with athlete’s foot last week. Some athlete.”

  “So who was it? That was so urgent? Which vole, dear?” She raised a large spoon towards the cooling pan, and he pointed to the one selected by his daughter, causing a snigger from his son.

  “Don’t know what you think is so funny, lad.” His father’s glare was dark, his pale forehead hunched over black eyes. “This is all coming your way soon. Bloody Pablo bloody Escobar needing terminating on your day off.”

  The youth mumbled something.

  “What? Speak up boy.”

  “I said I’m not going to be a Reaper.”

  His father was temporarily lost for words, the colour of his face changing from white to grey as he clenched the cutlery ever tighter in his hands.

  “My father and his father.” the head of the family spoke in a voice deep as the ocean. “Me. You. It’s what we do, what we are.” He shovelled some food into his mouth, grimaced. “This vole’s bloody cold.”

  His sister, Velvet, had the misfortune to be a harpy, whilst he (at least as far as his own mind viewed it) was merely the recipient of Grim Reaper genes. The latter, he was sure, meant that other avenues of employment lay open to him. F
or her, there was little future other than being cruel and violent, stealing from people the food they wanted to eat and shitting on the rest. Half bird (on her mother’s father’s side), but with the head of a woman (his paternal grandmother, considering that his mother was a crone, bless her), her career opportunities were limited. He was just tall, pale, hooded, and with dark-rimmed eyes; there had to be something else he could do where he would fit in, even if most of them, such as working in an Amazon warehouse, hadn’t actually been invented yet.

  His parents didn’t understand that, of course.

  “Do the washing up, Malcolm.” his mother said, stacking dishes with scrawny, leathery hands.

  “Again? Why is it always me? What about her?” he gestured towards his sister, who grinned as she smeared gravy over her plate.

  “She’s got wings, Malc. It’s hard for her to keep a grip on china.”

  “Oh, bloody wings!”

  “Language!”

  “Oh, wings. Why doesn’t she use them to clean with? Like, I dunno, a scrubber?”

  “Mum, he just called me a scrubber.”

  “Don’t call your sister a scrubber, Malcolm.” His mother worried a wart with a long fingernail.

  “We’ll all eat some of those mis-shaped chocolates I got from the market,” his father said, voice so low it made the fronds of his cowl vibrate, “and then we’ll sit down and play Cluedo, as a family. After you’ve washed up Malcolm.”

  “This is just so unfair! I always have to wash up, because she’s got wings. All she does is preen and poo all over the place.”

  Velvet grinned at him, unseen by their parents, casually waved a wing. God, he hated her.

  “I’m not playing crappy Cluedo. It’s juvenile.”

  “Then you can wash up,” his mother said, “ and go to your room.”