Read by Lois Tucker
Inspired by the painting Saint Michael Triumphs over the Devil by Bartoleme Bartejo, right
The Devil’s name is Gavin. He’s this weird, monstrous thing – half-snake, half-toad, half-dragon, half-insect, half-bird, half-bat, half-moth, half-lots of other stuff too – a wriggly, odious green lump, a kind of amphibian, dragon-like worm. His eyes – all four of them, two in his head and two in his manboobs where his nipples should be – are hard red jewels with black, soulless pits at their centres; his reptilian scales each oozes green slime at its edges; vicious, hedgehoggy spikes run all down his spine, poking out through his office shirt, right to the tip of his pulsing, prehensile tail. Like, gross.
They say the Devil was once as beautiful as he now is foul – Michaela finds that hard to believe, though if it’s true he must’ve been pretty fucking beautiful. His name is Gavin, it says so on his ID card, pinned to his shirt pocket, beside his tasteless tie – but to Michaela, he’s simply the Devil. That’s what she always called him, in her head. She knew, right from her first day working here. Because just look at him.
*
One Friday evening as work is ending for the day, a couple of weeks after she’d started at this minor admin job, the Devil asks her out for a drink. Being as polite and normal-seeming as he can, his forked tongue flickering over and between the thin spikes of his teeth, his four glassy red eyes rolling all over her body as if he were preparing to feast, the barbed tip of his tail coiling and uncoiling. Michaela stops herself, just barely, from going: Ugh, gross, God no, no way I’d ever go out with a creep like you! – saying what she actually thought would’ve been, like, not wise, especially seeing as the Devil is her immediate superior and this is Michaela’s first job straight out of school, a job she already feels like she’s only just hanging on to anyway. Instead she makes some excuse, a feeble lie, doesn’t meet his gaze – either of his gazes – turns and flees. She tries to forget him, to get his image out of her mind as, back home at her parents’ house, where she still lives, she sits watching stupid old silent movies, kind of funny, with her dad all Friday evening.
*
The next thing with the Devil is one time when Michaela’s alone in the break room. Everyone else who works here, it seems, smokes, so they’re all outside in the designated area like a little cluster of chimneys each polluting itself with heart disease and lung cancer and whatnot, readying themselves for Hell, and Michaela’s for the moment sat alone with her vending-machine coffee and the cheese-and-tomato sandwich her mum made her that morning, and she’s just fixing her makeup when in her compact’s little mirror she sees the Devil creeping up behind her, slithering belly-in-the-carpet towards her. She almost screams, she turns, instinctively shows him his own reflection in her hand – and at the sight of it, the sight of the repellent creature that he is, he shrieks, scurries off in fright, retreats through a crack in the wall back into his cave – or into his corner office, whatever you want to call it. The tiny mirror in Michaela’s palm like a shield of crystal, fending off the monster. Though sadly it’ll only work once, Michaela’s sure – that’s how magic goes.
*
Lots of times after that Michaela feels Gavin the Devil’s eyes on her, their touch a cold slime on her skin, even when she can’t see him. Though he doesn’t come close to her, not for a while, not till she’s let her guard down a bit and she’s doing some photocopying in the print room and then she feels a hand – if you can call it a hand – on her bottom. A reptilian kind of paw: she feels its cold, hard flesh, the webs between its digits, the claws at the tips of its three fingers resting lightly on the top of her thigh, the long thumb curling round her waist. Implicitly threatening what deeper damage such claws might do.
All alone at last, the Devil’s voice hisses in her ear.
She freezes, panicked. The photocopier is still whirring and flaring before her, spilling out hardcopies of meaningless data projections for some upcoming meeting.
Don’t you know you’re mine? the Devil says. Mine all mine all mine. His other scaly green arm snaking about her midriff, working its way down her front.
Get off me! she says, whispering it in her fear. I’ll scream.
You won’t, though – you won’t, you won’t, you won’t…
His one hand squeezes her bum, the tips of its claws digging in just a little, the other rising now towards her breasts … and then he’s giggling manically as she starts to struggle, turns around, tries to squirm from his grasp, elbow him away. Anyone might come in at any moment, but no one does – has he locked the door? – why is there no one to help her? He pins her up against the photocopier, one scaly arm – more like a reptile’s foreleg, actually – either side of her, their vulture’s talons gripping the machine. His face up close into hers, his breath noxious.
Please, she says – her hands on his chest, holding him back, and – urgh, gross – she can feel his body’s sweat-slime even through his shirt, as bad as all those unblinking round eyes on her. His serpent’s tail twists with delight.
You want to leave, leave. I’m not stopping you.
He stands there sneering as she wriggles out from between the revolting lump of his flesh and the photocopier, having to duck under his arm, finally breaking free… Then the print room door is bolted. She can feel him coming up behind her, writhingly, as she figures it out, works the catch: then it’s open, and she’s out, safe. Is she safe? Feeling his eyes on her as, burning with shame, she hurries back to her corner of a desk, hoping no one’s noticed anything amiss, dreading what poisonous lies would pour from his wide, wide mouth if he were found out. How could her words stand up to his?
*
This isn’t the last of it, of course. There’s lots more incidents, derogatory comments from his wide leering insect-like face. He keeps finding ways to catch her alone. If you want this job, he hisses, and God knows you need it – then you have to keep me happy, don’t you? A hand cupping her breast as he’s come up behind her again, his dick she can feel against her hip, pressing through his trousers and through her skirt. Come on, I know you want it – not meaning the job, this time. Let me tempt you. She tries to go, he holds her arm – the grip demonically strong. Our little secret, he says, his agile tongue licking quickly once up her cheek before letting her go for now.
*
Michaela’s always been kind of shy, a bit nervous, socially awkward. A teeny bit scared of the world. And on the bus ride home, squeezed between the other commuters’ bodies like the souls of the dead being ferried to Hell, she suddenly realises that’s why the Devil is picking on her. Not because he finds her particularly attractive among all the other girls in the office – of course not – but because he thinks himself safe with her, reckons she won’t tell anyone – he, like, calculates that she’s quiet, vulnerable, not really got any friends at work, she’s too timid and mild, too much of an angel, to want to make a fuss; that he can have his bit of fun – his harmless fun, as he’d no doubt think of it, harmless fun that’s ruining her life – without any danger coming to him. What does Michaela matter, she’s no one, just a girl, the junioriest of junior staff – while he’s on the way up, department manager soon, regional before too long – and she’s nothing. Michaela realises all this, and it’s this realisation more than anything else, this insight into how the Devil’s mind works, that finally pushes her, though it takes all her courage, into doing something. Into making that fuss after all.
*
At the sexual-harassment-and-bullying-in-the-workplace grievance session the Human-Resources guy representing her spends most of his time poring over the regulations and protocols, like a devout man knelt at prayer, and he’s not really very helpful. Comes down to your word against his, he tells Michaela – And who’s going to believe you? he might as well have added. But your words against his words doesn’t sound so bad to Michaela – it’s like a war in which the only weapons are words, like a trial by combat of words. And, like – okay, maybe this is a bit goofy of her, believing this – her words happen to be true, so that’s got to mean they’re the stronger weapons, right? The HR guy shrugs, looks at her funny, returns to his notes. The Devil is sat across the room, next to his solicitor, totally smug and self-assured. Michaela avoids looking at him, mostly, though when she does once glance over she finds all four of his eyes locked on her. Like, his head’s eyes fixed on her face, hatefully, even as his lower eyes ogle her breasts, her legs. His forked tongue slipping in and out between his flesh-tearing teeth.
How can we lose? she asks the guy meant to be on her side. I mean, look how he’s looking at me, he’s sexually harassing me right now in the tribunal. What’s wrong with him? God, those hideous eyes. How can this be happening?
The last thing was when she’d come out of work the next night to find him lurking in the car park. A trap laid: she’d been working late, extra paperwork and filing that she’s pretty sure with hindsight the Devil himself had arranged to be dumped on her, keeping her in the office till darkness had fallen. Crossing the car park to get to the bus stop, hoping they weren’t too infrequent at this late hour, she’d spotted him skulking in the shadows, waiting for her. His eyes glinted redly in the night’s murk like the spots on a four of diamonds, the eyes in his skull and the eyes in his chest. His two mouths were open, the one in his face and one in his belly, both sets of yellowish fangs catching what little moonlight there was. His dark mass, gone totally animalistic now office hours were done, slithered from the shadows towards her. His clawed mitts reached for her.
And this is when she’d really at last been like: Okay, fine – enough. And whether it was right then in the car park or metaphorically earlier in the tribunal-by-combat-of-words, she’d drawn her weapon – reached in her little shoulder-bag to pull out a shimmering silver sword as long as she was tall – watching the unprecious gems of the Devil’s eyes widen with confusion – like, how’d she fit that in that? – and then with loathing and fear, as the Devil lunged forwards, she swung at him righteously with her sword of truth and struck the fucker down with one blow.
He can’t hurt her: she feels like she’s wearing golden armour. He howls in pain and defeat – as in the tribunal he’d shouted with anger as she calmly gave her evidence – howls in agony and failure, crawling on the car park’s concrete like the worm he is, pleading for mercy. But Michaela’s no saint, mercy’s not what she deals in, she’s finding to her delight: she pins him down with the spike of a heel – the Devil’s foul greenish-black blood bubbling stinkingly from the wound – and raises her sword above her head to deal the killing blow, feeling her bright new wings unfold behind her.
(c) Barney Walsh, 2016
Barney Walsh lives in the north of England. His latest stories are in The Warwick Review, Unthology 7, Litro, Shooter Literary Magazine, The Manchester Review, and The Honest Ulsterman. He recently won The Fiction Desk’s ghost-story competition, and was shortlisted for the Royal Academy and Pin Drop Short Story Award.
Lois Tucker has done various bits and bobs and may very well end up doing more. Stuff includes penning and performing three solo shows as her silent comedy alter ego ‘Lois of the Lane’ and releasing the MissLLaneEous EP on Bandcamp earlier this year which consists of catchy, silly songs that you just might like. (She’s not always as serious as her headshot makes her out to be …) www.loistucker.net
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