Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

She bowed in return.

  ‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘Didn’t see you coming.’

  ‘We are done fo’ todaaay. Your arm needs t’ heal befooore you faiight again. I am tol’ tha’ the process is a faaast one for you kyaind.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘Let’s carry on.’

  He frowned.

  She held out her arm to him. He nodded, then gripped the arm with both his hands. She yanked, and with a crack the arm was tugged back into its socket.

  Then she took a step back. She shook her arm. It hurt, and she had only limited movement. She shook it again. It still hurt, but she had her full range of movement back. She did a windmill with her arms, and by now it barely hurt at all. He watched impassively.

  ‘Yeah I’m good,’ she said.

  ‘Yo’ fingaar?’ he said.

  She raised her left hand. One finger was crooked.

  ‘Broken, by a whore. She thought I was stealing her trade. I was. Never healed. Anything broken in life does not heal, even in this new body.’

  ‘Straaange,’ he conceded.

  ‘Many things are strange,’ she said. And was struck by the profundity of her own comment.

  ‘I am being paaiid by the awour for this work, as much as I am normally paiiiid for the yeaar. But not paiid t’ talk.’

  She gave him the mouth-pop mime.

  ‘Show respeect, young wahman,’ he chided.

  She raised two fingers, tightly held together. ‘Thrust your fat arse upon these and strut a bassa danze, old man,’ she advised him.

  ‘Show respeect, or I shall no’ continnue wi’ this.’

  She sighed. This slanty-eyes had no fucking sense of humour.

  She bowed. He bowed in return. He took his position in cat stance. She copied.

  He stepped forward, leaped in the air, kicked with one foot then swivelled and kicked with the other, then back-flipped three times, kicking and punching in mid-air each time.

  She copied him, move for move, at the same pace.

  He repeated the kata at full speed; it was like watching a tornado in a cornfield. She copied him, move for move, at the same pace.

  ‘You missed this.’ He demonstrated the move she had missed.

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘You missed it.’

  ‘I did not, you just didn’t see.’ She did the move half speed. Then full speed, his speed. Then she did it her speed. This time he saw. There was a look in his eyes. She recognised it.

  Envy.

  She grunted with pleasure, glad to get some kind of emotional response out of the inscrutable motherfucker.

  Then he embarked upon an extraordinarily long and complex kata, dancing around the dojo, fighting imaginary assailants. He used double hand strikes, head butts, he moved from horse stance to cat stance to sparring stance and back. He back-kicked then back-flipped. He arrived at the row of makiwaras and punched each as he danced along the floor, sending them poinging back and forth like corn in a storm. And finally he danced upon the barres as if he were a tight-rope walker, leaping and back-flipping from one to the next, then jumped to the ground and broke each wooden barre with his forehead in not much more time than it takes a butterfly to hover before taking flight. It lasted nearly fifteen minutes in all.

  He stopped and bowed.

  She bowed in return.

  And then she echoed his every move, but many times faster. Since the barres were already broken, she concluded by punching forty-three holes in the concrete wall of the dojo with her bare fists. It took her no more than three minutes. And when she was finished her knuckles were bleeding but she ignored the pain.

  She bowed.

  He bowed in return.

  She shook her hands in the air, and blood splashed down on to the white mat. She saw his eyes narrow; he was watching her knuckles heal.

  He leaped at her and rained blows upon her. She blocked most of them. It was a flurry that lasted for nearly forty minutes. In the course of it he broke her skull with a hammer fist and her vision turned scarlet and she realised her eyes had become entirely bloodshot. But she fought on. Time slowed till it felt thick as tar: punch kick block duck was all she knew.

  Eventually she learned to read his movements and anticipate his flow. And for the last few minutes of the combat she blocked his every punch and kick without effort. Finally, bored and anxious for a break, she punched him on the jaw in a blink of an upwards movement and his eyes went blank and he fell to the ground. She looked down upon his stocky body, his white gi soaked with sweat, helplessly sprawled upon the blood-spattered dojo mat.

  ‘Oh, did I hurt you?’ she asked, mockingly.

  Sensei staggered to his feet. He looked at her blearily.

  She bowed to him, formally.

  He spat on the floor and walked out. She never saw him again.

  ‘Can you whistle?’ said Magnus.

  ‘I can whistle.’

  ‘Prove it.’

  Fillide put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. As a girl, and as a woman, this had been her universal signal for: Run like fuck, there’s trouble!

  ‘When it’s done, un-devil-gate the door, and whistle.’

  ‘Why can’t I telephone you upon my e-berry?’

  ‘They’ll search you. No weapons are allowed inside the flat. No surveillance devices either, and that includes phones and e-berries. Mickey never goes anywhere without sweeping for bugs.’

  ‘Even in Roy’s house?’

  ‘Even in Roy’s house.’

  ‘No weapons.’

  ‘Just your hands.’

  ‘But he’ll have weapons. Him and his bodyguard.’

  ‘They’ll have guns. They’ll shoot you. Get over it.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Fillide. She liked that phrase; it felt Italian. ‘Whatever.’ A word that meant nothing yet connoted scornful attitude.

  She was starting to talk in actual English now. Only occasionally did she babble in Italian and let the translation spell wreak its worst.

  ‘Show me your moves,’ said Magnus.

  ‘I don’t need to prove myself to you.’

  ‘Show me your moves.’

  Fillide struck. A knife hand strike to his throat, as fast as a snake’s venom spit.

  Magnus blocked it.

  She whirled, kicked his legs out from under him, double-hand-struck his head, leaped to the side and kicked him in the spine.

  His body wove around her blows and when she finished he was still standing and she had a black eye.

  ‘You hit me,’ she said accusingly.

  His fist lashed out and punched her in the mouth. She spat teeth. She’d not even begun to see it coming.

  ‘You’re faster than I am,’ she admitted.

  ‘I was a warrior,’ said Magnus, ‘when I was alive. That helps.’ And he grinned.

  Magnus was a Viking. Long dead, built like a barge, his once full beard shaven down to a pair of black handlebar moustaches and bushy sideburns. Fillide was wary of him.

  ‘Were you in the First Wave?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She was puzzled at his question. ‘I was resurrected a mere six months ago,’ she said. ‘So I’m a newcomer. But most of our kind came to London in the course of a single day, in the four Breaches, back in 2014. They were the First Wave. So were you -’

  ‘I’ve been here for twenty years, my sweet.’

  Fillide blinked. ‘Not possible.’

  ‘Possible.’

  She realised there was much she didn’t know about the coming of Hell to Earth.

  ‘Mickey’s okay,’ said Janice. ‘A prick of course, but polite. And he never hurts his girls. Just, you know. Light bondage. Golden showers. Nothing pervy.’

  ‘How long have you known him?’

  Janice shrugged. She had a variety of shrugs, and never stopped sucking on her incense ball, so even when silent her jaw was moving.

  ‘Couple of years. You?’

  ‘Just the once.’


  ‘He knew my mother. She was on the game too. At the respectable end I mean. Mickey looked after her.’

  ‘He was a cop, right?’

  ‘Yeah, well he moonlighted.’

  Janice was twenty-five years old. She had long black hair that framed a face as oval as a tear drop, and she had a trick of staring into the eyes of the person she was talking to without blinking. Fillide liked her.

  ‘Shall we put on a show for him?’ Fillide suggested.

  ‘Why not? I trained as an actor you know. I can use my Stanislavskian emotional memory technique to like, fake a lesbian orgasm.’ And Janice laughed. It was a beguiling laugh.

  ‘You don’t have a problem doing it with me? The fact I’m -’

  ‘The fact you’re dead? Hell no. Doesn’t bother me. It’s all make-believe, right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Fillide really did like Janice. That would make it harder for her.

  The cab stopped and Fillide paid the fare. As always she didn’t leave a tip, but said, ‘Thank you, good sir,’ and stroked the cabbie’s hand as she passed the money over. A gift of sensuality far more precious than an extra fiver, in her opinion.

  Mickey Dolan’s gaff was the top floor of an apartment block in Bloomsbury. He owned the entire building, and used the other flats as offices for his various business ventures. Fillide and Janice had to sign in at reception. The receptionist, Fillide noticed, was armed, and there were security cameras everywhere.

  They got into a very old lift with metal sliding grilles and a tall mirror inside, and went up to the sixth floor. Janice made faces in front of the mirror all the way up, like a little kid. Fillide could barely force a smile.

  Two bodyguards were waiting in the lobby area of the sixth floor. They were patted down and body scanned. They weren’t carrying weapons of course, but it took the bodyguards a while to search the big sports bag Janice was carrying. Eventually they stopped grinning at the whips and handcuffs and love eggs and suchlike. Men!

  Finally the search was done, and they went into the flat.

  It was dimly lit. Mickey was wearing a gold and red silk brocade kaftan. He was even older than Fillide remembered. Old and weathered and tired, and barely charming any more.

  ‘Delighted to meet you again,’ he told Fillide, but his tone was weary and the flattery fell flat.

  ‘Wotcha Mickey,’ said Janice.

  ‘I’m not feeling so good,’ he complained.

  Janice beamed. ‘We thought we’d put on a show for you. Girl on girl. How does that appeal, eh?’

  He shrugged, as if she’d suggested they should all boil Brussels sprouts together.

  ‘My fucking haemorrhoids. You’d think, with all this fucking money –’

  ‘We got some dressing up stuff. We know you like that.’ A wink from Janice; she nudged the sports bag with her foot. She glanced at Fillide, appealing for erotic foreplay assistance, but Fillide wasn’t playing.

  ‘It’s the arse,’ said Mickey, forlornly. ‘The fucking arse. Always the fucking arse! Ted, get the girls some drinks.’

  Ted, Fillide knew, was the indoors bodyguard. She’d read his biog. He was a fit young guy with SAS experience and a startling jet black monobrow. He came out of the kitchen in shirt sleeves, wearing a gun in a shoulder holster. He smiled at the sight of the two sexy whores: hoping, no doubt, for some sloppy seconds.

  This was Fillide’s moment.

  She moved with dazzling speed; yet even so, Mickey surprised her with his reflexes.

  She killed the bodyguard with one punch and grabbed his gun as he was falling and threw it into the kitchen area, and then she side-leaped with knife hands raised in order to kill Mickey. But by that point he’d already drawn his own gun and was firing at her.

  The bullets hit her and knocked her off course, and thus she failed to land a killer neck strike.

  In fact it took her fifteen laborious minutes to batter Mickey to death. And all the while Janice squealed and whined from a huddle in the floor.

  In total, Mickey had put six silver bullets into Fillide’s body during her mid-air leap. And the magic in the silver had weakened her considerably, which is why it took her so long to kill him. But eventually she prevailed and the old man died in an ocean of his own puke and blood.

  Janice was still weeping. And Fillide was in a bad way from the cursèd bullets in her body.

  ‘Honey,’ Fillide said. ‘You need to help me.’

  Janice got up, wiping tears off her face.

  ‘Don’t hurt me,’ she pleaded.

  ‘You need to open the door.’

  ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

  ‘But before you open the door, wipe the salt away. Erase the devil gate.’

  ‘Please don’t hurt me.’

  ‘For fuck’s –’

  Fillide couldn’t speak for pain. The bullets were thrice-anointed by warlocks with potty mouths, and they were eating her soul from the inside out. Her corporeal body was disintegrating in the most painful of ways. She had no persuasive rhetoric left in her.

  ‘Please,’ she wept, pathetically.

  Finally Janice nodded. She went to the door. She wiped away the salt with her hand. She went back to the kitchen and got a damp J cloth and erased the repelling sigils chalked on the wood of the door. Then she slipped the bolts.

  ‘There’s no one here. Just – oh.’

  Fillide could see the dead bodyguards lying outside the door of the flat. The walls, she noticed, were red with blood. ‘My friend is near,’ she whispered. ‘Whistle.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Whistle.’

  ‘I can’t whistle.’

  Fillide put her fingers in her mouth and tried to whistle. She couldn’t.

  ‘Magnus,’ she croaked.

  Magnus stepped in, tall and moustachioed and beaming, and spattered in blood. There were fourteen security guards and bodyguards in the apartment block. She assumed he’d killed them all.

  ‘Are you done?’ he asked cheerfully.

  Fillide was too weak to speak.

  Magnus strolled in further and saw the dead body of Mickey Dolan. ‘Right, you’re done. Time to clean up, my sweet little warrior.’ He looked at the cowering Janice as though she were a maggot in his meat.

  Fillide groaned. ‘No,’ she managed to say.

  ‘She’s hurt,’ began Janice, and Magnus moved in for the kill. Fillide hauled herself to her feet and screamed: ‘No!’

  Magnus paused.

  ‘Let her go,’ said Fillide.

  ‘You’re dying,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Let her go,’ said Fillide. She had just enough strength, she decided, for one last move.

  She planned it carefully. She would lunge forward and knock Magnus to the ground. Then she’d use the bodyguard’s gun to blow his head off and extirpate him. If she was quick, she might just do it.

  He could sense her deadly resolve, as was the way with their kind.

  ‘Okay, okay, I’ll let the bitch go. Bitch – go!’ said Magnus, and Janice fled.

  Fillide woke up six hours later in Magnus’s home.

  She was lying flat on her back in a wood-panelled room, wrapped in bandages from her throat to her ankles. A dead woman rotting from the inside, in a white healing shroud.

  Her skin ached agonisingly on both sides - outside, and inside. She couldn’t move and was glad of it, for she was confident that moving would make her hurt even more. She guessed that Magnus had cut the silver bullets out of her and that despite the pain, she was on the mend. Her throat was sore and she was achingly thirsty and ravenously hungry, and she also wanted to piss and shit. A ghastly combination. She looked around a little and saw she was lying on a couch in his den, upon plastic sheets. In a room with more oak than an ocean schooner, cluttered with stuffed stags and a mangy stuffed tiger, and animal horns mounted on the walls.

  A five foot high brown elk with multiply-forked antlers had pride of place; the yellow and black stuffed pythons were noteworthy too. Th
ere was dust and fluff visible upon the stripped oak floorboards, and empty beer cans were to be seen in odd corners. A guy place, without a doubt.

  Magnus entered and saw she was awake and grinned.

  ‘You beauty! You marvel! You look good enough to fuck. And indeed, I have done so whilst you slept.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ she protested.

  ‘Would I not?’ he goaded her, leeringly.

  ‘Nay, good sir, thou shouldst know that I keep a razor blade within my fanny, its blade uppermost, to protect my maidenhood most fair,’ she advised him, in her most formal Italian.

  He very nearly leaped in the air in dismay. ‘Hell’s teeth! I thought it stung somewhat!’ he groused. ‘That may explain why my piss now runs in several streams!’

  She laughed; she liked this guy.

  ‘You took the bullets out?’

  ‘I took a knife to you, and ripped you from bow to stern. You were not, I must tell you, looking your best.’

  ‘Will I live?’

  ‘You’ve healed prodigious fast; the worst is over.’

  ‘Then I thank you, sir.’

  ‘And I embrace your thanks, and claim that fuck another day, with thy willing consent, if you wouldst care to grant it.’

  ‘It’s granted.’

  Magnus beamed, like a child who has been told that the chocolate in the world will never ever run out.

  ‘What about Roy?’ she said.

  ‘I told him you were recuperating. He’s well pleased with you.’

  ‘And Mickey?’

  ‘I dumped the body. Well, all the bodies in fact. And I cleaned the place, there’s no trace of you, no fingerprints. You don’t shed skin. Nothing to link you to the death. Everyone will assume Mickey’s done another bunk, he’s got at least five contracts out on him from villains he’s sent to jail or cheated. He won’t be missed. A most satisfactory outcome all round.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, why? Why did I kill Mickey Dolan?’

  Magnus’s face was knitted in thought.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No.’ She pondered it. ‘But why –’

  ‘Another “why”? Life’s too short, my princess. Oh go on then. Why what?’

  ‘Why did you let the girl go? Janice, the whore? You had your orders. You’re a soldier. Why?’