“What’s the matter, Marcel?” asked Mary, managing to suppress her laughter, “don’t you like the seaside photographer look? All the rage on Olympus this season, so I read.”
He gave her an angry look.
“It’s a crime against humanity. All of this stuff,” he fingered the fabric of the jacket as if it were dung, “nasty man-made filth. If that thing,” he indicated Geoffrey who was making the stain worse with some spittle, “makes contact with me we could both go up in flames. How did you people manage to create something that is both boiling hot and freezing cold? It hangs like a fat priest on a gibbet. Stripes! Who wears stripes, particularly in pink and orange? It’s revolting.”
“Why wear it then?” asked Justin.
“Like I have a choice. It’s just another Hell for me, isn’t it? Even when they offer a glimpse of escape from torment they tease me with this…this…polyester.”
The rant was truncated by the frantic gesturing of the TV crew, who were set up to film the opening game, and Geoffrey and Marcel crackled their way down the steps into the body of the chalet park, which for the purposes of this final battle had become an arena, albeit one populated at intervals with a series of tin huts.
“I’m Strand Crantum reporting from the mega-shoot-out in Everland. This is it! At last we are going to see the Devil and God locking horns, well one of them locking horns, if one person can lock horns, in the Rumble in the, er, whatever. The first game is called Alice in Blunderland, and here to tell us all about it is the creator of the structures we see around us, René “Maggsy” Magritte.”
The suspiciously tanned anchor turned to thrust his microphone into the non-committal face of the Belgian.
“So, Maggsy. Temperature above seasonal average. Whaddya think of that?”
Magritte stared at him. Crantum racked his brains for anything else he knew about.
“Can you explain this game for our viewers, Maggsy?”
Magritte cast an arm to the structures before him, the cameras panning to take in the view.
“Alice is one the great surreal characters, and we have taken this inspiration to provide a test of dexterity, imagination, and physical prowess. And, of course, idiocy and a willingness to appear ridiculous in public.”
“The set?”
“There is a kind of castle here. But not really a castle. The players are dressed in powder blue frocks and have to enter through the doors with bottles of liquid and empty them into a bucket in the rear.”
“Is that it? Really?”
“No. Most of the doors are not doors, they are an illusion. Some of the doors are doors but they are small and they will have to crawl through. Others are very large but behind them there is jeopardy, such as burning oil, trapdoors, tiger traps. It is a metaphor for the decisions we make in life, that we do not know the consequences of our choices.”
“Not just a sado-masochistic ploy, then, to impale unsuspecting players dressed as a young innocent girl on spikes, with all of the sexual implications that go with that?”
“Well,” said René, extemporising, “that too, now you come to mention it. But mainly the other thing.”
“And the weather?”
“Lovely.”
When Geoffrey blew the whistle to start the game, a roar went up the like of which hadn’t been heard since the Afterworld Cup. Most of the people there could see very little, and allegedly cared less, but firstly they had nothing else to do, and secondly the momentum of crowd behaviour should not be underestimated.
The Devil was acutely aware that many of the members of his team struggled in terms of attention span. Whoever identified ADHD didn’t meet many demons or gods of the Underworld. One moment they would be cheerfully trying to fit differently shaped blocks into a template, the next they would be up in flames. For this reason he front-loaded his team with those with a modicum of athletic prowess and a core disregard for rules and regulations. They were also the angriest and most combustible, but that was a risk he was prepared to take.
Purple gremlins, demons, and fallen angels stood in line in their blond wigs and baby blue dresses, awaiting their chance to carry bottles labelled ‘Drink Me’. When their turn came, Maggsy having done his work well, they charged madly into the walls, entirely unable to differentiate between the real doors and the fake ones. Or they possibly just liked the contact. They bounced back from the wooden edifice of the ‘castle’, dresses waving in the air, legs pumping, liquid belching onto their chests.
One crawled through a tiny door hidden inside a larger one only to be sliced in half by an enormous playing card (6 of clubs); another marched with utter confidence through a door painted two feet tall but actually normal height only to find itself on a never ending Escherian staircase. It was brutal, far more so than the gentle goddesses had envisaged, and the thousands watched on in bewilderment.
God’s team didn’t move. For those who had never seen an Archangel picking his nails, this was the chance, although most had their eyes on creatures with tails in blue frocks falling into pits of thinly-padded spikes. When the time came, the so-called ‘good guys’ walked through the doors that turned out to be doors, stepped across the wounded bodies of their foes and emptied the liquid from their flagons into the measuring cylinders at the far end of the course.
“Just a touch cynical, do you think?” asked Strand of Archangel Raphael.
“It’s a man’s game, Strand.”
“Well, it isn’t is it? It’s gods and demons.”
“It’s a gods and demons game, Strand, and we’re approaching it in a professional fashion. We’ve been doing this a long time, you know, whether or not you think we exist, and we’re bringing all of that experience to bear.”
“Great win in that game Raphael. Just on a personal note, many of the main religions; Judaism, Islam, don’t really recognise you as an Archangel. How do you feel about that?”
Raphael jerked his head to one side. A young woman with a clipboard looked at him, crestfallen.
“I said no personal questions.” He stared back at Crantum. “Didn’t I say no personal questions?”
‘Sure, sure.” Said Crantum soothingly. “What’s your favourite fog?”
The actual Jeux Sans Frontières, It’s a Knockout, American Almost Anything Goes featured a number of teams, a number of games, and the joy of a mini-marathon. It was in the nature of the sheer ludicrousness of the concept that by the time the viewer had in any way grasped the objective of a particular game, the whistle blew and it was over. This was old stuff. No pause, rewind. The chance to marvel at the achievements of goose-pimpled men in singlets was gone. Not so with the mini-marathon, a segment of the show in which teams, between the individual contests, took it in turns to play the same game.
The upside of the repetition in the min-marathon was that the viewer could actually figure out the objective, so that by the time the third contestant (usually some pasty overweight Belgian) emerged wearing a bloated chicken suit, it was clear that he had better get up the ramp and lay an egg whilst being attacked by other Europeans in fox suits. For this particular, life-changing version of the show, the repeating theme was The Twelve Labours of Hercules.
“Ok, ok, ok.” chuckled Strand, staring slightly to the left of the camera where a bored youth was holding up his cue cards, “here’s the mini-marathon! As many of you will know, and some don’t, Hairkyewls slaughtered his wife and family. Nice guy. Gun law, eh? He was given twelve tasks to complete to make up for this, guess the death penalty wasn’t around then or something.”
His glances to the cues became increasingly desperate, the narrative somewhat testing for a man who had built the slight career he had on announcing pollen levels, “Well, we ain’t gonna do all twelve, but here’s the first one.”
There was little sense in it really. The Devil’s team went first. Tartarus, an underworld god playing for the dark side, had to run around a circular stage in a massive foam suit slightly resembling the Nemean Lion slain by Hercule
s. A figure in another suit supposed to look like the eponymous hero was attached to a bungee rope and had to launch itself towards the blundering lion and attempt to knock it off track into a pit filled with foam.
Tartarus set off at a decent lick, but half way round the semi-circular track was sideswiped by God’s team and hurled into the foam as the crowd cheered. It was a failure of epic proportions, and the referees made themselves ready to announce the result only to find themselves confronted with an appeal from the Satanic faction.
Crantum stuck his microphone into the face of Geoffrey, who literally had egg on his face, and asked what the problem was.
“It’s a bit odd, Strand. It’s to do with one of the figures dressed as Hercules.” said Geoffrey.
“What is it in particular?” asked Strand.
“Well, it’s actually Hercules.”
“So that’s not a suit?” Crantum looked across, taking in the enormous muscle definition.
“Fraid not. All real.”
Strand turned the mic to Marcel, who looked as if he was trying to avoid contact with anything he was wearing.
“Is that serious, Marcel?”
The Frenchman looked at him as if he were the biggest idiot he had ever met.
“How can you call any of this serious?” he asked.
The Gods were disqualified for playing an actual mythical figure (Rule 14.2.1), and the points awarded to the saturated lion.
It continued. Filthy incubi dressed as women with long braided hair walked across greasy poles as angels tried to hit them with bean bags fired from catapults; obscure Shinto Gods bounced on trampolines to stick magnetic plaques on a wall, which if joined in the right place would make up the face of Charles Aznavour. Inevitably, Maggsy’s designs added a frisson of jeopardy, the poles suddenly turning out to actually not be poles at all, but planks, or simply not there; the wall giving way to fresh air, or its flatness disguising a sharp outcrop. The stretcher-bearers were the busiest people on the entire field. Hercules marched up and down, grumbling at his disbarment from his own game, watching foam rubber hydra, boars and hinds stumbling in an ungainly fashion around the perimeter as insulting simulacra blundered blindly in their general direction.
Rule 14.2.1, so rarely invoked, found itself in the spotlight once again when the Devil’s team was found to have used the actual Lernaean Hydra instead of some oaf in a costume, said contestant actually slaying the unfortunate cherub in the Hercules outfit by clouding it in poisonous breath.
Lucky Obie’s sold out of large rubber hands with an extended finger and ‘Go Devil’ printed on them. Goodtime’s beer was probably the most popular thing since the end of the Inquisition. For those behind Everland, it should have felt like a triumph.
They sat on the terrace, Ron and Ethel, Mary and Justin, Maggsy, and Thomas, in the sinking rays of the sun. The Reaper wafted his black robes, cool air providing welcome ventilation. Welcome to him, that is. The evening was closing in, the last game was in progress. Representatives of the two teams were swathed in ridiculous suits and massive heads with even more disproportionate noses. They lumbered down a track and snorted something from a pile of white powder, then turned and lumbered back to eject the powder into a measuring gauge.
“What the fuck is this supposed to be? It’s like a London nightclub in the seventies.” Justin stared aghast at the field.
“Language!” said Ron, placing his hands protectively over his wife’s ears.
“I’m sorry, Ron. This whole thing is just nonsense. And they’ve got those two idiots doing the refereeing. It should’ve been me. I’m much more telegenic.”
“‘Course you are Justin,” Mary said, “and warm and identifiable to viewers, too.”
“Yeah. I could’ve been on TV, if I hadn’t chosen a career in Information Technology.”
Mary held her glass of beer between her knees, looking down to the decking.
“Justin?”
“Yip?”
“Can you list the things you know about Information Technology?”
Justin looked up, squinting into the setting sun. He set his hand across his forehead, but it didn’t mask the glare.
“Here’s the score, Mary. I could, but we both know it wouldn’t take long. That’s irrelevant. It isn’t about what I know, but what I am. You’ll know more than me if I’m here until the end of the world.” He looked down at the chalet park, where Strand was warming up to announce the scores, “Which could be tomorrow. So what? Who cares what you know? I hire you to know what I don’t. It’s the way it goes. Richard Branson knows how to run a train? Fuck off.”
“Language.”
“Sorry. Gates couldn’t program a computer now. You’d take fashion tips from Philip Green? That’s the way it is. And this is a nightmarish version of it. You don’t see the Devil and God out there scaling oily walls, do you? Oh no, they’re off in the background hoping that they’ve actually picked someone competent.”
“I never realised you were quite so bitter, Justin.” Mary said.
Marchant harrumphed.
“I’ll tell you what I’m bitter about. That I’m here at all. That these idiots, and that idiot in particular,” he indicated The Reaper, who was holding a tinfoil tray beneath his ghostly white chin to maximize his tan, “think they have the right to take us out of our lives and bring us here.”
“Bitterness won’t get you anywhere Justin.” Ethel, holding her husband’s hand gently, looked at the erstwhile entrepreneur, whose face radiated tension, “Who would have thought me and Ron would be wiped out by some drunken young lads? It wasn’t our fault. But as it happens, we’re here, together. I don’t know, was there someone you wish, well, not that they’re dead, but was here with you?”
Her face was so gentle, so concerned, Justin almost had to remind himself of his affected persona. In fact, he wanted to bow his head into the scented plenty of her bosom, throw his arms around her shoulders and feel hers around him, and silently sob. But where would that leave him? He rapidly shook his head as if to clear it of such thoughts.
“No. No-one.”
“So,” Ethel innately sensed she needed to tread carefully, “you’re actually better off here, aren’t you? With Mary and Geoffrey and Marcel? Friends?”
“You should thank me.” The Reaper didn’t open his eyes, face illuminated from below.
Justin would have responded, and most likely in a none-too positive manner, had the sound system not crackled, a microphone been tapped, and the attention cut to the two referees, spotlit in the middle of the arena, Crantum ready to seek their input for the watching billions. Beyond them, minor deities and expendable demons were lying on their sides in oversized suits, their legs wiggling, awaiting rescue. There was no indication it was about to arrive.
“So,” Crantum stared wide-eyed into the camera, “we have our very favourite referees, here, Murssel and Jif. How did that last game go, guys?”
Cut to the referees, each with their own hand mics. Geoffrey is looking with incredulity at the front of his blazer, which appears to have become home to a family of woodlice feeding on the stains. Marcel has the demeanour of a man who cares little. Heavenly creatures could run around in front of him snorting powder through prosthetic noses, shriek with laughter and collapse with exhaustion and he would still be bored. Which is exactly what had just happened.
“It was rubbish.” he said.
“They seem to like the soup.” said Geoffrey.
“Ha ha. Rilly great input from the guys keeping this all together. So, at the end of the first day let’s go over to the old scoreboard!”
Despite all of the advances the world has seen, the scoreboard was still basically a blackboard with some words stuck on it. Someone who looked like Carol Voordeman (but obviously wasn’t), stood gurning at the camera with a piece of chalk in her hand. She nodded gamely as she waited for her cue, as if there was a satellite delay. As if there was a satellite!
“Well Strump.” she said, finally, “
Satan’s team just did a great job there on the Chemin de Cocaine, and took maximum points!” She scrawled numbers on the board. “So, y’know String, at the end of the first day, the teams are plumb level, with 10 points each.”
“Strand. And what about the mini-marathon? That could be a decider tomorrow?”
“Strand.” she said, thinking that this was some kind of handover code. “Well, Strum, the marathon is really tight. The best runs so far have both been disqualified, and the referees are going to be really keeping a close eye on that.” The picture cut to the referees, who were inspecting their clothing and looking bored. Their attention to the infraction of rules did not seem guaranteed.
“So who’s in front on that, Saffron?”
“It’s all in the melter, Strep. There’s been a disqualification in every round due to the involvement of mythical figures, excessive violence, and even bungee abuse. You just can’t trust these guys.”
“Satan’s team?” asked Strand.
“Any of ‘em.” Saffron said. “They’re all motherfuckers.” Which encapsulated the reasons why Saffron’s career in TV had been cut so cruelly short. That and falling into a sinkhole in Smoking Falls, Wichita.
26
A thin wispy mist floated in an unearthly band a few feet above the ground, the first glint of the sun rising that day, perversely, in the north. Ron and Ethel strolled hand in hand around the perimeter of Everland, picking their way between shelters and awnings, the grey and black remnants of fires, some still smouldering, the debris of living. In places, people began to emerge from their sleep, hair wild, eyes clogged with sleep, stretching fists to the lightening sky. The adults were sneaking into the day, but children, probably not their children, already swerved and eddied in a murmuration across the fields, their invented game, whatever it was, in flow. They were black, white, blond Scandinavians, squat and dark Amerindians, stringy loose-limbed antipodeans, porcine and pink North Americans. They had no commonality of communication other than the sheer joy of running wild in some secret internal connection, swarming and squealing as they swooped and curved.
The Complete Afternet: All 3 Volumes In One Place (The Afternet) Page 85
