Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘Let me show you something,’ said Roy later, as they rested in a chill-out room surrounded by exhausted dancers.

  And he took out a flick-knife and triggered the blade. And with a dazzlingly swift motion and an eerie smile on his lips, he used the sharp tip of the blade to gouge a ditch along her cheek. She screamed as she felt the sting, and with unnatural peripheral vision saw her own blood drip on to the floor and her dress. Her instinct was to strike back, to kill the bastard.

  But she realised that she couldn’t.

  Smiling still, Roy took out a mirror from his inside jacket pocket. A round mirror with a handle, bejewelled, of a kind she remembered from her own time. And she looked at herself in the circle of glass. She saw her face, flushed with sweat, ripped apart. The rent went from her eye to her jaw, and hung horribly open. The scar’s red lips spilled droplets of blood that sheened her throat and had already stained her cream dress an ugly scarlet.

  Fillide saw at a glance the woman she had become. A victim now. The mark of her defeat and humiliation was written all over her face.

  She stifled a sob.

  ‘Wait,’ said Roy calmly.

  She waited.

  ‘Let me.’

  He wiped her cheek with a handkerchief, a silk one, the one he kept tucked in his front jacket pocket. He spat on it and wiped a bit more. Eventually he had to throw away the bloody rag. Then he took hold of her gown and ripped a piece from it and wiped her face with that instead.

  And now the blood was smeared away and she could see the scar in the mirror again. It had stopped bleeding, but it still looked ugly. But then, as she watched, and to her astonishment, the slash on her cheek puckered and began to heal. After three minutes only a white ridged line remained. Then that too faded.

  Roy spat on another scrap of cloth and wiped again, until she could see that her skin was restored and without a blemish.

  ‘You see. You have superpowers,’ said Roy smiling.

  Fillide smiled back at him.

  She loved being on Earth.

  Chapter 15

  But in the course of the weeks that followed Fillide’s hopes of happiness faltered, then expired.

  It began with a tiny spat during lunch on the balcony of Roy’s Chelsea flat, high above the traffic.

  ‘Another wine?’ he said as she finished her lunchtime repast: olive bread and a spread made of chick peas washed down with Frascati wine.

  ‘Fuck first,’ she informed him firmly, fixing him with a sultry gaze that she knew would inflame his lust.

  There was a momentary pause.

  Roy scowled, transforming his handsome features with the grimace of a petulant child. But then he rallied with a smile.

  ‘No no, wine first, then fuck,’ Roy insisted, a cheeky sparkle in his eyes.

  She snorted. ‘You know what’ll happen if we do that!’ she said mockingly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He was smiling still. But thinly.

  She raised her hand - the good hand, not the one with the damaged little finger - and she bunched two fingers and held them aloft; and then she let them flop. The perfect mime of brewer’s droop. And she grinned at her own delightful jest.

  She was greeted not with laughter, but with an awkward silence. The mood had, she realised, soured.

  ‘Bitch,’ Roy muttered, almost inaudibly, and drained his glass. Then poured a second glass.

  ‘Whatever,’ she said casually, but by then it was too late.

  A bottle and a half later he took her into the bedroom. He was horny, without doubt, and his erection did not disengorge. But he fucked her as if he were hammering in nails.

  A few moments after he ejaculated, he fell asleep. She had to shove him off her before he started snoring. So much for romance.

  He woke at about six in the evening and freshened up and put on a new suit. But instead of taking her to dinner as he had the other nights, he left without a goodbye. And then he returned in the early hours smelling of another woman. He hadn’t even bothered to wash his hands. However Fillide remained relaxed about the situation. He was a man, after all, and men did such things.

  But the following morning Roy woke up with a hard-on and he reached for her and without thinking about it, she slapped his face. And she told him to wash the bitch’s fucking minge off his fingers first, if he wanted to fuck her!

  He was shocked. But then he forced a smile; and for a moment, the old Roy was back.

  ‘Sorry love,’ he murmured.

  When he was showered and cleansed of the other’s woman’s aroma, he came to her in his towelling robe.

  ‘Forgive me?’

  ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because I love you?’

  ‘Do you really?’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  He was lying of course, but it was the apt lie, and she liked it. And it meant he was due a reward.

  ‘Take the robe off,’ she suggested.

  He dropped the robe to the floor, revealing his naked body. She observed, approvingly, that the red eye of his desire was eagerly unskinned.

  ‘You must wait,’ she told him.

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Just wait.’

  For ten long minutes, nude and dripping wet, with a cock as hard as marble, he waited. His smile was a frown now: Roy Hall was not used to waiting. And Roy Hall was certainly not used to being in a woman’s power.

  But she knew that deep down he was enjoying it. For he was a man, after all, and all men loved the lash of a woman’s whip. This Fillide knew well. It was one of the secrets of her great success. There she stood, gown-clad, beautiful and coolly unattainable, a hand’s touch away from his naked body; yet he dared not touch her.

  ‘Now you may,’ she said.

  ‘May what?’ he asked, courteously.

  ‘You may shake my skin-coat, if you so desire.’

  He laughed at her choice of language.

  ‘The wrong word?’

  ‘A lovely phrase, which should never have gone out of common currency,’ he said gallantly.

  Then he reached for her and she tore her creamy sleeping gown off herself, and they fucked. He was awed by her passion and inventiveness, as she had intended him to be. And the sex was wonderful, though she didn’t feel the need to climax.

  But that night he went out on his own again, and didn’t return home at all. Indeed, he didn’t return to his flat for three whole days. And during that time, she missed him. She watched a lot of television, she took a few walks down to the river and back, but otherwise she was bored.

  But when you are a kept woman you cannot have expectations. And so she had none.

  Finally he came home. It was seven days after her resurrection. He was flushed and clearly drunk. It had taken him several minutes to open the front door of the flat. Eventually, tired of his endless rattling with the wrong key, she had opened it from the inside. And when she saw him she knew was in trouble, but she preserved a calm façade.

  ‘Good to see you, Roy,’ she said. ‘I was about to make a fry up.’

  He stepped into the hallway, holding his keys, which she could see at a glance weren’t the keys to this particular flat. He was clearly at a loss as to where he was or indeed why. She took the keys off him.

  ‘Let me put those somewhere safe,’ she said gaily.

  ‘Fucking bastard,’ he muttered. She could perceive all the hallmarks of a many-day bender: incoherence, confusion, smelly clothes, and blood stains on his chin from a rash attempt to shave.

  ‘Tell you want, why don’t you have a shower?’ she said. ‘Then I’ll make you breakfast and we’ll have a nap.’

  ‘Don’t need a shower.’

  She bent down and levered his shoes off him. She raised herself up again and slipped off his jacket. Then she gave him a peck on the cheek, letting him smell her clean freshness.

  ‘Who is the “fucking bastard?” ’ she asked.

 
‘Him. My boss, as he never ceases to fucking well remind me. Boss of me. My fucking “Master”! Grand fucking greasy fucking – fuck! He thinks he’s better than me, but he’s not. Without me –’

  ‘Is this your Master in the police force, or in the Masons?’

  ‘Both. No, neither! I have no boss, I am my own boss. I – I – I –’ His rant dribbled away to nothing. She undid his trousers, helped him out of them. His legs were skinny and pale. In his socks and underpants he looked absurd.

  ‘They won’t elevate you within the Masons?’ she guessed.

  ‘I should be a Grand Master. After all I’ve done.’

  ‘You should be.’

  ‘It’s my due.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘After all I’ve done.’

  She took off his shirt and led him by the hand to the shower. She left his socks on, that was too hard. And she stood him under the shower and turned on the powerjet. She stood behind him to prop him up, soaking her own clothes. His cock was flaccid, he barely registered he was standing naked in a shower with a beautiful woman.

  That was bad. This whole thing was bad.

  The shower sobered him up and at his insistence they went into the bedroom.

  And then he beat her, with his fists and with his elbows. She was expecting it however, and knew enough to roll with the punches. And the bruises healed after two hours, so by the time he woke from his drunken stupor she was right as rain again.

  When he did waken, she realised he had no recollection whatsoever of what he had done to her. She chose not to remind him.

  That night over dinner, despite her best efforts to cheer him up, he repeatedly called her a stupid cocksucker. It was not meant affectionately.

  ‘Oh Roy,’ she laughed, resiliently. ‘I do love you, you just don’t care what you say.’ And he was mollified by that. It was flattery mingled with lies, and it served its purpose well. But inwardly, she raged.

  All this or similar had happened to her before of course, during her years as a whore in Rome. Normally she had ways of dealing with it. Men were like stallions: however much they hurt you, however often they threw you to the ground, they could be tamed and broken given time and tenacity.

  However the last time she had been trapped in this kind of abusive relationship, Fillide had fled within hours of the first beating. And when her bullying lover had sent his bravi after her, they’d returned with broken bones and whip marks on their backs. A lesson learned! But that was then. She’d had protectors back then. And it was her world. Things were very different now. And so, she realised, she had no choice but to stay with Roy.

  At least she had his measure now. He could no longer gull her, or make her heart weep. She knew him to be two men and only one of them was good company. The other was a beast: as cruel as any demon she had ever met.

  The following night Roy took her to the opera in Covent Garden, and from their five hundred pound seats in the Stalls she listened to the story of Figaro and his philandering; and she laughed uproariously and the music made her body exult with joy. But as they made their way out of the stuccoed entranceway of the Royal Opera House, mingling with men in dinner suits and women in gorgeous gowns, Roy wouldn’t take her arm, or touch her, or even acknowledge her existence. He walked ahead and she had to follow like a mule behind its master. The point was made. She said nothing.

  She told him later that she’d had a fabulous time and she wanted to thank him very much. And so, with her own brand of silent eloquence, she did.

  Yet inwardly, she raged.

  On the evening of the fifteenth day after her resurrection, in a restaurant in Dean Street called Quo Vadis, she saw him lusting openly at another customer, a skeleton-thin black haired woman in a tight black bodysuit. And, finally, she lost her temper. Or rather, more accurately in her opinion, she found her temper, which had been lost to her for so many hundreds of years.

  ‘Look at me, Roy,’ she told him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at me, not her.’ Fillide held his chin with her right hand, and twisted his head. She smiled, dangerously. She was looking beautiful, she knew.

  ‘You are a common turd,’ she said in her softest, most erotic tones. ‘Your mother gives it away, and you yourself take it up the arse, with donkeys, and -’ And then the translation spell failed, and her lips erupted with a stream of Italian invective.

  He looked at her blankly as her musical syllables struck the air. Then the magic translation spell kicked again.

  ‘You filthy pig,’ her spell told him. ‘You philanderer, you whoreson caterpillar, you eater of dried shit, you hairy ape with huge balls, you -’

  And similar such phrases. For the Italian of her century was hard to translate and the English version didn’t have the musicality, or the poetry. But her point was made, brutally.

  ‘What have I done?’ he said, eventually.

  ‘The woman you’re looking at. She’s nothing but a bony old crone. You’d be better off fucking a walking stick!’

  ‘I can look at any woman I want to look at!’

  ‘Not when you’re with me you - ’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, woman. Shut up. Shut the fuck up!’

  Roy was red in the face now. She realised he’d never been with a woman like her. A woman who knew how to stand her ground.

  She realised too that this was the only way she could survive. To defy him, to break his spirit, before he broke hers. And so, exulting at her own bravado, she made a popping noise with her mouth and tongue, which was the rudest street gesture she knew.

  ‘Calm down, woman,’ he said spluttering.

  ‘I shall not! Now you must apologise, for daring to have eyes for another woman when you are with me.’

  ‘I will not fucking -’

  ‘Apologise! Or next time we are in bed, I shall -’.

  And she did the popping mime again, and whispered: ‘Eat you with sharp teeth as well as soft tongue, do you understand what I’m saying, caro?’

  He shuddered.

  She took his hand and kissed it. She licked his palm, making him focus upon her utterly. And as her tongue’s tip caressed his hand’s horny skin, she looked upwards, catching his eyes in hers. And then, as she’d expected, she saw his gaze start to roam downwards, upon the expanse of her body. And she raised her upper body up a little, making her breasts thrust out proudly. She was wearing a glittering emerald dress that he’d bought for her in Sloane Street: a tight-fitting gown with billowing skirt and inlaid gems; a gown that bared so much cleavage, she feared the proximity of suckling babes.

  She was holding his wrist, and she could feel his pulse start to race. But then he snatched his hand free.

  ‘Cheeky bitch,’ he snarled.

  ‘Roy please.’ She blew him a kiss. ‘Ti mi amo,’ she said, in modern Italian, so that her spell did not translate it.

  ‘Cheeky. Fuck. Ing. Bitch.’

  She could feel the explosion coming, and she readied herself for his blow. She might not be able to hit him back, but she could as surely as purgatory dodge this silly man’s feeble punch.

  But he didn’t strike her. Instead he raised the index finger of his right hand and held it aloft, his face a dark frown. And she became mute. Literally, unable to speak.

  Fillide was stunned. She opened her mouth, she moved her tongue: nothing happened. Speech had abandoned her.

  She stared at him imploringly. He stared back, calmly.

  Roy resumed eating. Eventually Fillide ate too. Her lips and tongue still functioned. She could taste her food and savour her wine. She could even grunt and sigh. But she could not utter any words.

  At the end of the meal, after they had eaten dessert, he raised a finger again and suddenly she could speak.

  ‘How by all that’s holy did you do that, you base cullionly rogue?’ she raged. And he raised his finger again. And she was mute again.

  She got the message. This man had total power over her.

  And that’s when Fillid
e understood the full extent of the binding spells that had been placed upon her by the grey-bearded warlocks in the Freemason’s Hall.

  She was a slave now. There was no question of that. And this came as a grievous shock for her. Never before - not even in the course of her long confinement in Hell - had she been a slave. Prisoner yes, slave no. There was a difference. Even when she was alive – firstly as a street whore, then as a courtesan - she’d always prided herself on retaining her freedom. She’d sarded and cocksucked for money, but only on her own terms and in her own way. And anyone who broke her rules got a knife across the face, or worse.

  But now Fillide Melandroni, the courtesan of choice of many of the greatest nobles of the Holy City, was a mere chattel. No better than a wife.

  You bastard, Roy, she thought, as Roy sipped his third Armagnac. I hate you. I - one day I will -

  But she could not think the thought.

  If only I could -

  Her mind became a fog. Her body screamed in agony.

  Roy, you ba-bas-basta

  ‘Something on your mind, sweetheart?’ Roy asked her.

  She shook her head. Sweat dripped down her face. Her skin was clammy.

  ‘Sure I can’t tempt you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Drink.’

  He poured an Armagnac into her water glass. She sipped it. It scalded. She spat it out into the glass. The brandy boiled. The glass cracked and hot liquid burned the tablecloth. Fillide’s vision swimmed.

  ‘I love you darling,’ said Roy. ‘You know that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I love you.’

  I hate you.

  A jolt; as if she’d been impaled by a cattle prod from the arse up.

  ‘Do you love me too?’

  I - I - I - I - I - I

  ‘Say it, sweetheart.’

  Fillide belched, and vomit and flame came out. Her throat was like ash.

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘I - I - I - I - I -’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘I love you too, Roy,’ she said humbly, and the pain went away.

  ‘Good girl.’