To the Devil - a Diva!

by Paul Magrs

  Her life had changed direction so quickly. Plans were underway. They wanted her up in Manchester this afternoon. To start work Monday morning. They were putting her in the TV company’s own hotel. They’d given her Rupert, this talkative, excitable driver. Really, none of it had properly hit Karla yet. From accepting the part, to the papers coming out this morning, to parking her bum on the Brunchtime sofa this morning. It was only then, as that poisonous Brenda and her twat of a husband started nattering on that it had all come home to Karla.

  She was going home. Back to the north. Back to Manchester. She was going to be a star again. Flooding the late night TV screens, purring her lines, being a personification of voluptuousness itself and probably flashing her knockers.

  The good old days had come back again.

  But coming back to the north. She hadn’t even been on a visit, in all this time. She wondered if she was ready to face it. All this time. She was a different person now, surely. She could face it. She could do it.

  And, as the miles went by and the landscape shifted and changed and she could see hills in the distance beyond fields through her tinted windows, she felt the weight of the south falling away. She felt the north coming back into her. She was ready to see those faces again, and ready to hear those voices again. They would love her. They were her people and they’d take her to their bosom again.

  ‘Hey, it’s a mucky old show you’re going to be in though,’ laughed her driver, Rupert. ‘You’ve seen it, haven’t you? It’s a right scream.’

  ‘I’ve caught it once or twice,’ she smiled tightly.

  ‘I won’t let my kids see it, of course. But me and the wife tune in now and then. It’s amazing, isn’t it, what they can get away with these days …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Karla. ‘Things have moved on.’

  ‘Well, what I say is this,’ said Rupert, warming to his theme. ‘There’s nowt wrong with a bit of titillation. Everyone likes that. A bit of slap and tickle, a bit of suggestion. Well, like those old films you used to be in, Ms Sorenson. A bit of messing on. Nothing too explicit. Nothing too graphic. Like you vampire ladies copping a bit of a feel of each other. Well, that’s quite respectable now.’

  ‘Hm,’ she said, watching the traffic. It was spitting on to rain. Manchester, here I come.

  ‘I hope you’ll bring some respectability to that show. That Menswear. A bit of old-fashioned decorum and class.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I will.’

  ‘Cause some of it’s been bloody filthy. That old woman they’ve got on there. She’s a disgrace. And that younger bloke. That whatsisname. The big fairy. Well, that’s not nice. The way he goes on.’

  This perked Karla’s interest. ‘Lance Randall, you mean?’

  ‘Aye, that’s the woofter’s name. Fancies himself star of the show. Cock of the walk. Well, I reckon you’ll show him a thing or two. Knock him off his big poncey perch …’ Her driver chuckled and rummaged a finger in one of his hairy ears.

  ‘I certainly intend to.’ Then she grew charitable. ‘But give the lad his dues, Rupert. He was the first man, after all, to get away with a full-blown erection on a late night terrestrial soap.’

  ‘Bloody disgusting. Who wants to look at his nasty business?’

  Karla shrugged. ‘Plenty of people.’

  ‘Well, people have obviously got bored with it. Otherwise they wouldn’t be getting you in, would they, to rescue it?’

  Karla smiled indulgently. Oh, she was looking forward to this.

  Her mobile trilled. Number withheld. She knew who it would be, though. ‘Daughter …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You are doing very well …’

  The voice was sepulchral. Vile. She gave an involuntary shiver each time it spoke into her ear. But still it thrilled her.

  ‘Thank you, Master. You saw my interview this morning?’

  ‘The brothers are not accustomed to tuning in to Brunchtime …’

  ‘But you saw it?’

  ‘We did indeed. You acquitted yourself well. And your topless pictures in the papers this morning were a nice touch. We have been watching on with great pleasure. And great anticipation. Things are proceeding nicely, daughter …’

  Karla felt herself glowing. Just the sound of his voice could turn her insides to soup. ‘But Master … what are my instructions now? My agent Flissy told me about the job and got me onto the TV this morning, and the company is putting me in the hotel, and I start work on Monday … but … but …’

  ‘Yes, my child?’

  ‘What do I do then? What do the brethren want me to actually do?’

  He chuckled. An oily, deep chuckle. ‘Simply to be yourself, child.’

  I’m sixty-six! she thought. Child, indeed!

  ‘That is why we wanted you. Simply to be yourself. That is enough for the brethren.’

  ‘Very good, Master.’

  ‘And then … when the time is right …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We will let you know.’

  Her phone clicked off abruptly.

  She realised Rupert had been earwigging. ‘Was that someone close?’ he asked. ‘Offering their congratulations?’

  ‘Hm,’ she said. And sought refuge in her icy vampire queen persona, drawing herself back on the luxurious upholstery. She offered up a little prayer, for guidance in the days ahead. For guidance and wisdom in the difficult days ahead.

  Then, suddenly, they were coming off the motorway. Rupert was announcing: ‘Manchester! You’re home, Ms Sorenson.’

  Karla nodded, very graciously, and fished her shades out of her bag to brave the drizzle and grey.

  FIVE

  Colin felt conspicuous crossing Piccadilly Gardens in his Slag! T-shirt. There hadn’t been time to change. He put on a good burst of speed through the lunchtime crowd of shoppers and business suits and hoped that no one would read his chest. Not that he was ashamed of where he worked. He’d just had a couple of nasty run-ins down this end of town.

  He’d crossed the square late one night, where the new fountains were (the ones that somehow looked a bit lavatorial) and he’d been stopped. Not by a mugger or a junkie or a queer basher, but by four – four! – uniformed coppers standing abreast. He’d had a bit of gravel in his trainer and he’d paused to fish it out. The coppers had appeared out of nowhere and started asking him all kinds of questions. It dawned on Colin slowly that they’d thought he had drugs concealed in his insoles. He’d been quite drunk, and slow to cotton on. The coppers had packed him off home in a taxi before he knew where he was.

  So, funny things could happen when you got onto Piccadilly Gardens. When you were out of the relatively safe haven of Canal Street and the gay village. It was only there that Colin knew his way around, knew all the faces and the way that the world worked. But it was only a short hop, step and a jump into a completely different country where everything was changed about.

  Usually he wasn’t tempted to leave the village during his lunch break from Slag! He tried to keep himself away from the shops. It was too easy to end up spending money on stuff he didn’t need. Today however, because of the news, he had to venture out. He had to go and see Rafiq. Raf had to be told.

  Colin quickened his pace, imagining the look on his pal’s face when he told him what had happened. He hoped he hadn’t already heard. Raf was hard to catch out with gossip of this calibre. He was always up to the minute because of the news sites on the Net.

  Raf worked in SpoilerSpace, a comics shop on Oldham Road, just off Piccadilly. Recently it had become a trendy part of town and all the spaces above the old shops were being converted into studio flats and crash pads. The kind that had stripped pine floors and rooms that were about four feet square. Or they were one big open plan room of twelve feet square. Colin had looked in estate agents’ windows with his mouth open. He dreamt about owning one of those places and he didn’t care how small it would be. He didn’t have much stuff to put in it. He would love it. Right in the middl
e of the city. His own front door. His own few, but expensive, belongings. Less to dust. A rail with a week’s worth of outfits. Doing just what he wanted and keeping his own hours.

  His old gran could come and visit if she wanted. But he wouldn’t have to pad around carefully in the early hours, trying not to rouse her and scare the cat. His own hours! His own place! These were dizzying thoughts. He’d live above shops like these – rare vinyl record shops, swanky clothes shops, smart cafe bars. He’d pop down, out of his studio flat, and be right in the thick of it all. Urban living. No more sitting on a tram with his work clothes stowed in a sports bag, watching the city centre rooftops and wishing himself there.

  It was a muggy, warm day. People on the street – the curious mishmash of types down this part of town – seeming harassed. Students and trendies and shambling old people bundled in anoraks. Some rough-looking blokes knocking about around the amusement arcades, smoking. The sweet, deep-fried smell of chips seeping out around them, mingling with diesel fumes from the buses that were shunting, groaning, pushing towards Piccadilly.

  Suddenly Colin felt light and easy in his tight little top. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in a hair stylist’s window and thought: Well, there goes a trim, sexy bloke. He just about skipped all the way up the street to SpoilerSpace Comics. He hoped Raf hadn’t left early for lunch.

  SIX

  They had been pals for almost a year. Rafiq was, at twenty-nine, a year older than Colin. They had met during Mardi Gras last summer, when the whole of Canal Street and the other surrounding streets were just one seething mass of faggots and dykes, all clutching plastic pints of lager and wearing cowboy hats sprinkled in glitter. Colin had spent the weekend with a whole bunch from work, staying out on the heaving streets between their extended hours at work.

  He hadn’t gone home to Salford and his gran for a full three days and, by the time he bumped into Rafiq, Colin was delirious and wild-eyed on a combination of sleep deprivation and pills.

  Raf had turned up to Mardi Gras alone, disguised as a lesbian vampire queen from some ancient movie. He explained to Colin who he was meant to be representing as they sat drinking and Colin hadn’t understood a word.

  ‘I’ve never met an Asian drag queen before,’ Colin remembered slurring, only minutes after they had first met. They were on the balcony of a pub where they could hardly hear themselves think. They were stuck out, right over the surging crowd. Music was pounding out of every doorway and window below. Rafiq had been trying, again, to tell him who he was embodying, and how he wasn’t really a drag queen, and how he had fashioned the costume himself (well, with the help of his many sisters). Apparently it was accurate in every regard; a perfect replica of the silver and black batwing number worn by the devilish lesbian vampire queen in the classic Sixties movie: ‘Get Inside Me, Satan!’

  Colin lost the sense of what his new friend was telling him. He just kept nodding politely, caught one word in ten, came out in a light sweat of desire, kept his eyes fixed on Raf’s full, purple lips and then, eventually, moved in for the kill.

  Raf had been going into a detailed account of the plot of his favourite lesbian shocker when he felt Colin’s face pushed right up into his (Raf was considerably taller), and Colin’s tongue shoving its way between his perfect teeth.

  So they had copped off easily and saw the rest of Mardi Gras weekend out quite happily. When all the music had stopped and the crowds dispersed bewilderedly, and the streets in the village were left clogged with crushed plastic pint pots and takeaway cartons, and the days started inching out of the summer and turning milder and autumnal, the two of them met up for tentative lunches and drinks now and then. Then they found, to the surprise of both of them, that they had become friends.

  They hadn’t been back to bed. It had been all right that weekend. Nothing too spectacular. Now it seemed beside the point to even mention it, let alone repeat the experience. So they had seen each other naked and they had fooled around. So what? It got that side of it all out of the way and they knew that they both wanted something else, somebody else. That’s all there was to it. They could concentrate on the friendship: an easy, low-maintenance relationship and Colin found himself pleased with that. Raf was a good mate and they were lucky. It was like having a seven-foot tall, stunningly attractive minder when they went out together. And if they were out and hard up for a shag, they could always try it out again. Just like keeping emergency pizzas in the freezer. It might not be exactly what you fancied, but if you’d missed the shops, you knew what was in there.

  When he got himself a fantastic studio flat in town, he’d get a fridge freezer, too. He’d have all of that stuff. One day.

  SEVEN

  ‘God, it would depress me, working here,’ Colin said.

  He glanced around again at the dark interior of SpoilerSpace and whistled. There were only a few, shifty-looking punters hanging around the magazines and he didn’t care if they heard him passing comment. What they looked like to him was Fans. Fans didn’t have feelings like other people. And it didn’t matter what they were Fans of, particularly. Some cult kind of thing – TV shows, comics, science fiction, films. Colin had observed quite a few of their sort since meeting Raf.

  There was a certain fleshiness to Fans: a certain not-giving-a-bugger about what they were dressed like and a slight air of unwashedness. They were shuffling about and poring over the racks and stacks of fanzines, videos, CDs and rare collectibles. Monsters, heroes, aliens, villains. Just weird. Just awful. It embarrassed Colin, even being here in SpoilerSpace Comics. It wasn’t his scene at all. He hated the very smell of the shop: new paper and body odour. Plastic and dust and dirty hair.

  All in all, a strange place to find the immaculate Raf. Next to the short girl who was going to take his place at the till during lunch hour, Raf looked taller and skinnier than ever. He was just finishing up and had flashed Colin a brief, brilliant smile.

  Colin watched him. It always struck him that Raf was one of those gay boys who really could have, should have been born a girl. There was a particular delicacy about him; a slightly-aggrieved tinge to his beauty. All he’d have needed was a tiny sideways nudge, genewise, to make him into what he should have been. A stunning woman; a real diva: slender of limb and tall of hair. Raf carried with him a not unattractive air of melancholy, as though holding back his resentment at what nature had offered him. Colin never asked him about it. That would seem too crass. As far as he could see, Raf made the best of things and Colin respected that quietly. But he thought his pal should really be a drag queen. He’d been so good at it, and yet he cracked on that his Mardi Gras vampire rigout had been a one-off thing. And never again. Colin wasn’t sure he believed him. He could just see Raf at home, with all his many sisters. All of them crowding round, dressing him up in secret.

  Raf was telling his tiny assistant: ‘If any of those fucking Doctor Who fans come in, demanding this month’s book, just tell them the delivery’s late and they’ll have to wait.’ His voice was soft and breathy. The contrast with the girl’s voice was marked. She rasped back at him: ‘Sure thing, Raf. Doctor Who fans are the worst, aren’t they?’

  Sadly, Raf was shaking his head. ‘Unfortunately not, Vicki. There are far worse Fans out there. But we get them all. We’re the ones in the firing line when they come out to feed their funny appetites.’ Suddenly he looked up at Colin. ‘I know what you’re going to say.’

  ‘You’re a Fan as well!’ Colin complied.

  ‘I know, I know. But Raf sighed heavily, shrugging his slim shoulders. ‘But not like that. Not in that mouth-breathing, mad completist kind of way. You don’t know what it’s like.’ Then he decided he could leave the dim shop in the care of the tiny girl. ‘I’m training her up to deal with them,’ he said.

  Colin and Raf crossed the busy street to the cafe opposite.

  ‘I didn’t follow your text message at all,’ Raf complained. ‘What were you on about?’ Colin wasn’t very good at texting.

&nbs
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  EIGHT

  Their favourite cafe was vegetarian, but ironised and swishy. They ordered burgers and beans and raspberry milkshakes (syrup rather than real fruit) and sat in a red vinyl booth at a table painted with elaborate swirls of colour. Serge Gainsbourg was singing with Bardot through crackling speakers. It was hot and clammy indoors, but this was their usual place to talk.

  With great ceremony Colin unrolled the relevant pages of the Daily Mirror for his friend to see.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ Raf said at last.

  ‘Good, eh?’ Colin was gratified to be the one to tell him first.

  ‘But … I thought she’d gone for good! She said she’d retired! That’s what she was saying … back at SlashCon last autumn.’

  Colin nodded. He’d been there too. And he’d heard her say just the same thing. Last October he’d trekked down to Birmingham with Raf for a weekend and had been a reluctant attendee at his first ever convention. It was a bewildering, drunken occasion. A hotel swarming with amateurs, professionals, maniacs, Fans. All of whom wrote fiction (most of it mucky) based on their favourite TV shows and movies. Raf had run around excitedly, meeting and greeting people and talking about his own Slash Fiction, which he published on his website. Although pleased and surprised to discover his pal was reasonably well known in this rarefied world, Colin had soon grown bored. He’d ended up shagging a Buffy Fan with a scraggy mohican and one of those odd, tapering, Walnut Whippy-type cocks.

  But Colin had been there with Raf when Karla Sorenson had taken up her throne as guest of honour and queen of the convention. She’d arrived in full lesbian vampire drag and the Fans had whistled and hooted with delight. She had read aloud the winning story in the convention competition (not Raf’s, to his great disgust) and answered questions about her long and distinguished career in Horror.