ALICE & THE DEVIL

Photo by Vitaliy Shevchenko on Unsplash

This is probably how it went down: God called his fallen security guard:

‘Lucifer, my man, how’ve you been? I know you’re still mad at me for intercepting the whole rebellion thing, but I have a fun project that could put you back in my good graces.’

‘If this is more three temptations nonsense that leaves me frustrated, I’m not interested.’

‘This is nothing like my son. There’s this prissy human on the water ball who’s grinding my gears. Born a Catholic – favourite fans next to the crazed Islamists – but she did the whole spiritual vegan number back in her teens. Normally I’d let it go, but I made sure she was married to a priest for Christ’s sake and even then, she went on to raise her kids as atheists.’  

‘I like her already.’

God, in a particularly cantankerous mood, went on to tell the Devil about Alice, who had spent the best part of her forties single, and had dedicated that time to raising her children without fear of judgement, especially not from a divine being with a following of millions.

‘She thinks she’s above the rules of the game. Gone and reinvented herself as a kind of self-sufficient Eve.’

‘She walks around naked in public eating all the apples she likes?’

‘Almost.’

‘I’m interested.’

‘Thought you might be. How am I going to get her to worship me if someone doesn’t go in there and destroy her?’

‘Still on the fence. It’s a 24/7 rave down here – sex on tap, barbecued meat etcetera. What makes her special?’

‘She doesn’t need saving.’

‘Megalomanic. I’ll do it.’

‘Have fun, but promise me one thing, by the end, she’ll be a wreck. I want her to lie in bed at night, begging for answers. I want her to wake up in the mornings, picture you and pray to forget.’

‘Dealt.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s stockbroker speak for “deal”. If I am going to do this, I might as well be someone who works in finance.’

The Devil came to town on one of those balmy June days that turn to night almost unnoticed. Alice’s seaside hideaway came alive in the summer months, with cocktails on the beach, fresh fish, sun-kissed bodies that breathed in and out with the tide. The time of the year when people seemed to cope better with hardships.

Halfway through her waitressing shift at a local hotspot, she went over to table where two gay guys were engrossed in conversation. It was endearing how they almost held hands across the table as they talked. Apologising for not seeing her there, one asked whether a side dish would make him fart and she burst out laughing at the unusual question. His eyes met hers and the boldness of his stare stopped her speech for a moment. He glowed with an irreverence that drew Alice in, a lack of propriety that spoke to her own and blocked out the surrounding noise. His smile, whenever she went over to check on them, seemed to say, “Hello me.” But when she’d last looked she wasn’t a flirtatious, out of shape gay guy.

Several hours later her kissed her, which was more than a little surprising. It happened when she threw him out at closing. He skulked outside by the bin alley, eager to prove that he was every inch the heterosexual.

‘My name’s Sebastian,’ he managed to say when their lips parted to inhale oxygen. ‘People call me, Seb.’

This was not something that happened to Alice. She was not a whirlwind woman, not anymore. Her idea of risky behaviour was ice cream before bed, but then he pulled her close and his pheromones made her unexpectedly ravenous.

Although it was hard to resist, she did not give in to his romantic overtures of, ‘I give really good head, let me just come back to your place and show you.’ She walked away, leaving him forlorn on a bench, proud of her self-restraint, and told him to call her.

During the years where couples grew to hate each other, Alice had dabbled in internet dating only to discover that she was a magnet for the insane. One man even told her he’d killed rebels in a distant land for murdering his wife on an excursion. With each encounter she concluded that the single life was by far the safest. A therapist called it, “avoidant attachment disorder”; Alice preferred: sensible.

Sensible ended eight hours later. Sitting cross-legged on the pebbles, she looked at his well-worn trainers, his threadbare socks and felt relief. Just another hapless man. Comforted by her judgement, she smiled indulgently and let him pitch her with the highlights of his life, his hopes, regrets. When, inevitably, he started on about his neurotic soon-to-be ex-wife, the hoped-for alarm bells went off. They were a little slow to get going on account of the humour that he swung like Thor’s hammer, but there they were, her favourite sound. He seemed to notice and quickly admitted fault. The bells went quiet.

They agreed to meet in London for another chat. Just a chat. Where was the harm in that? Surely, he would disappoint her this time and life could return to normal. Telling her kids not to throw a party in her absence, she applied a little blusher and boarded the train to London.

God called his adversary for an update:

‘The eyes are on, but the heart is shut down. She has zero radar. Thought Seb was gay until I hit her with maximum tongue action.’

‘Spare me the details.’

‘I’ve arranged to meet her tonight, and I’m thinking of giving Seb a dark back story.’

‘She’ll run a mile.’

‘No way. She’ll freak out at first but she’s not as perfect as she makes out. A little out-of-control sex combined with vulnerability, she’ll fold. The tightly wound ones are such fun to deconstruct.’

On their second date, he told her he had a confession. Could it be worse than the murderer from Hampshire? Or the Dom from Finsbury Park, who liked to play the drums for her after a gentle flogging?

‘I’ve had an addiction to sex workers for the last two years. But that’s all over now.’

Seb’s words were contrite, a tale of a lost soul seeking refuge from marital loneliness combined with too much patriarchal responsibility. He was unquestionably sorry for his actions. However, “sex workers” – that anodyne label for the abuse of fellow humans. No child ever dreamt that one day they would grow up to have a ‘career’ selling their body to pay the bills. She was looking at an escapist with the morals of Donald Trump. She pushed her chair back and opened her mouth to wish him well, but it was closed by another befuddling kiss.

Two days later, after countless messages of encouragement and interest, Alice locked her moral code in the drawer where she kept the kids’ passports, demanded he get tested for every STI known to man and told herself she would just have another chat with him one day, possibly naked, but nothing more.

As all good love stories with the Devil goes, they soon embarked on a summer that stripped normality’s bones one hot moment at a time. Why have banal conversation, when physical greeting spoke volumes. Alice ignored the inner voice that squealed, ‘You do realise you’ve just replaced the prostitutes?’ This voice could be quickly silenced with a cocktail or two. She forgave him his past with astounding ease. This might have had something to do with the orgasms and laughter that got muscles working she hadn’t properly used since the early 2000’s.

Seb’s visits often involved tokens of amour: lingerie, sex toys, biscuits in embossed metal tins. He also cooked, which Alice normally found dull, but in his hands, it tasted like alchemy. He met her children – something she never allowed in her lovers. Alice soon forgot she liked a quiet life, felt a power source draining somewhere inside her but refused to investigate the leak.

Frequently staying in Seb’s flat, she slept in in the mornings while he went to work suited and booted. She would wear his T-shirt after he left and received texts in the evenings saying he was wearing it because it smelt of her. This could either be the best romance since Love Actually, or a cheap knock-off version of Pretty Woman, where Julia Roberts is replaced by a middle-aged mum rubbing oestrogen gel into her inner thighs after the bubble bath scene.

Then came the introduction to his friends. The kind of people who would make Jilly Cooper pause at the typewriter and ponder, ‘Is this too much?’. Where the women were called Flossy and the drugs popped into mouths like so many after-dinner mints.

Alice had had the lid on her life for so long, that when she lifted it to join these brightly coloured, twittering creatures she flew – as far from her reality as she could. Seb had opened the door to her twenties and invited her to go back through it. A place of picnics and sunshine, long grass, heady nights, music and sensation. It was a far cry from ironing school uniforms, groaning over loan agreements, rising bills, rotas and emptying bins. Alice told herself she could flit between the two worlds but was increasingly impatient to drop everything and sit in the dream world with him and his Wonderland friends, who, in the right light, had nervous, twitching spikes on their exoskeletons that she found fascinating.

Alice was not proud of herself and vowed to step away. She was about to on the night Seb declared, ‘You feel like home.’ She was home to someone who didn’t need her to top up his lunch money, who didn’t need a lift to a friend’s house, someone who wanted to cook her cauliflower cheese simply because she liked it.

The Devil checked in with his ex-employer:

‘I am a little confused. Thought you wanted me to undo her, but it might be the other way around.’

‘Don’t go getting soft on me. You love destroying women, it’s your revenge narrative. Mummy didn’t love me enough as a child, blah, blah.’

‘Normally, yes. But I hit her with, “I love you,” and she looked genuinely worried, like I had told her she was the second coming and she didn’t want the job. I was off my face on MDMA when I said it, which is a half decent excuse for the slip, but I might have meant it. She genuinely doesn’t trust anyone with her heart. I wake up in the mornings and she’s the first thing I think about. Weird. A few weeks ago, she tried to dump me. Can you imagine? Said something about maybe I needed time alone to figure out who I am. The Devil! Can I stop now? She’s all-in.’

‘You have a mission, arsehole!’

‘Speaking of arseholes, she’s introduced me to my prostate.’

‘Jesus wept! Or he will when I tell him. Listen, hang on in there a few more months. Blow her mind with a holiday somewhere. She’s not had fun in a while, all that child rearing and workaholic biz. Take her away from it all and then start to pull away. She won’t know what to do with herself. Up the drug taking. That will freak her right out. Then tell her you want to travel the world with her but quickly follow it with something like, “I don’t like to diarise.” Oh, and start mentioning you feel you need to “find your centre” – knock her off hers.’

‘Are you sure we’re not in the wrong jobs? I am getting worried about you.’

As summer nodded to autumn, Alice was invited on a trip that Hunter S Thompson would be impressed by – a long weekend in Ibiza organised by his friend. She was added to a group chat with women young enough to be her daughters. Their profile pictures included tiaras and pink feather boas. “Should I bring a coat?” asked one, “I only have a fur.”

She was delayed to the gathering because of that ugly word “work” and arrived at the villa late in the evening to a table strewn with a smorgasbord of drugs and five very screwed up but loveable people, each with baggage they would not be unpacking as long as they stayed high enough.

Seb, sun-kissed and smiling, welcomed her with a line of cocaine. Alice turned the volume down on her inner voice and threw herself into the experience. While she was grateful to the host for inviting a near stranger into this strange world, he would glance at her from time to time with something akin to pity, like he knew she was a temporary fixture, a plaything.

The final night of their stay they went to a ‘Divine Feminine’ boat party offshore, via a dinghy that took on water it was so overflowing with revellers. Looking down at the black liquid she had an unwelcome moment of clarity. Everyone onboard was going to sink at some point and she had willingly got in with them.

When they climbed up into the swaying boat and Seb introduced her as, “my friend,” the months of limbs wrapped around each other at dawn, the dinners with families, the whispered openness – they were all meaningless, a ruse. She was his unpaid prostitute, and now she was at sea for the duration of the night and possibly when back on land, a friend with very few benefits, except perhaps the lingerie and sex toys.

Alice lost him to the crowd almost instantly and had to survive the evening avoiding a predatory lesbian who followed her around telling her she liked her masculine energy.

‘Menopause,’ said Alice.

Back in England, with her serotonin levels at an all-time low, the Devil called God.

‘Right, I’ve done all you asked. I’ve corrupted and confused her, stripped her of boundaries. She is messed up now. Can I just dump her before I start saying stupid things like, “Here’s a key to my place,”? Shit, I’ve already done that. My bad, might have got a bit carried away with the role.’

‘Why?’

‘Dunno. She brings out the best in me.’

‘The what?’

‘Exactly. This has to stop.’

His birthday: a breath after Alice had handed him a gift, he announced they had “hit a wall.” He stated that they’d had a “very nice time”, and it had been “a lot of fun – mostly”, but it was over. He had a full schedule now, lots to do: his family had forgiven him for the whoring, and he had a shiny new job that required reinvention with no hangers-on. Alice was naked at the time. With a wolfish smile he asked her to dress, give back his key and leave his life.

‘You’ve been really great for me,’ he told her as he shut the door in her face.

She sat on a bench close by and gave herself five minutes to unravel, then stood, brushed down her skirt, locked up her convulsing heart and moved away.

The Devil called his nemesis.

‘I have deposited her back in her life with no idea where to turn. I have the feeling she’s quite resilient though and might stick to atheism.’

‘I feel sick.’

‘Not sure it was worth the experience. Didn’t like how it made me feel.’

‘Feel? That’s rich.’

‘Don’t think I don’t know what you were doing?’

“What?’

‘Punishing me again. This was never about her; this was about you getting even with me. Let me tell you, I am immovable. I have no sense of right or wrong and I intend to live out Purgatory as selfishly as possible.’

‘Ah well, it was worth a try.’

‘I’m going back to the raving and the escapism, surrounded by creatures I recognise.’

‘Dealt!’

Four months later Alice slid her weary bones into a bath and decided to check-in with God. Enough was enough with this pain in her solar plexus.

‘What the hell was that all about?’

God stopped filing her nails and smirked at the long awaited catch-up.

‘What, no niceties? First up, I’ve missed you. How’ve you been all these years?’

‘Absolutely fine, just living.’ Alice soaped her breasts and tried not to picture Seb’s mouth.

‘Just living… that sounds very dull, Alice. What happened to growing?’

‘Why can’t you leave me alone. There are millions of people who are willing to self-flagellate, can’t you let one go?’

‘You needed a wake-up call. You were far too comfortable just existing. Tick-tock and all that, darling.’

‘I thought we agreed, no more monsters?’

‘You’re all monsters. I was getting bored watching you waste your precious seasons on chores. You can’t pretend it wasn’t fun? He was the best I’ve got.’

‘You’re a bitch, you know that right?’

‘I know, but now you’re patched up, you do remember you have a heart, right?’

‘I didn’t even know him; it’s like I invented him.’

‘That’s because you did, darling.’

Alice stepped out of the bath, wrapped the towel around her slight frame and began flossing her teeth.

‘He was you, the parts you pretend don’t exist. And he got you to lighten up. Not a pretty end, but you can’t have everything. Remember him fondly, otherwise you will forget yourself.’

‘Maybe I want to.’

‘Maybe you shouldn’t. Not too many more seasons left, darling.’

‘How many?’

God, smiling to herself, hung up.