Chapter 24: You Eat Meat Don't You, Mary Sue

‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ said Harrison Ford. ‘It must have been awful.’ Before today, I really had almost managed to convince myself that that Angels and Demons were warring for the fate of the world, that I was the ‘Chosen One’ who would play a crucial role in their final battle and that I was under the protection of such ‘Angels’ as Johnny Depp and Ewan McGregor. But now Harrison Ford had shown me a video in which Depp and McGregor said I should be killed, and they’d happily do it themselves. ‘They’re not your friends, Mary Sue,’ said Harrison gently. ‘You mean nothing to them.’ I knew nothing any more. I mechanically raised my fork to my mouth, concentrating on the action.

Harrison Ford’s lovely assistant Demeter had dressed me in a beautiful blue and gold dress, but dinner had not been formal. It was just me, Harrison, a fat man in a brown wig, and a nondescript black woman of about my age. They all seemed extremely nice, and my steak was delicious. I hated every moment of it, because my whole self was stripping apart, tatters swirling around a black plughole, the other side of which was … I didn’t know. Maybe on the other side was nothing, so there wouldn’t be a me anymore at all, which would mean this was the plughole of madness. Or maybe waste-disposal-unit was a better image, since I was being shredded. Or maybe it was just a life transition, I would still be there on the other side, but a different, reconstituted me.

‘But they didn’t kill me,’ I protested, quietly.

‘They hadn’t killed you yet, but they would have.’

‘Why hadn’t they killed me if they were going to kill me?’ There was no answer. ‘Ewan McGregor and Vanessa Paradis died trying to protect me.’ At the thought of Vanessa, who had been so sweet, I started crying.

‘There, there, Mary Sue,’ said the black woman, putting her hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s good you can cry. But they weren’t trying to protect you. They were just trying to stop us getting hold of you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because…’

‘Why did they change their mind?’ I asked. ‘When was that video taken?’

‘It was last week, when…’

‘Stop!’ I gulped, trying to get my thoughts straight. ‘Wait. They said that if you and The Master got hold of me, we might be able to open the Gates of Hell.’

‘Yes,’ said the fat man. ‘It’s going to be brilliant!’ He looked at the others. ‘Oh,’ he said, abashed. ‘Darn, I shouldn’t have said that. I remember. Softly, softly.’

‘You’re an idiot, Norville,’ said the black woman. ‘He’s an idiot. Once we explain, you’ll understand why…’

‘No,’ I said, and all the bits of my self started coalescing again, on this side of the plughole, forming a shape that was still me, and which would never fit through to the other side. ‘No way. You ARE the Demons. You sent Gavin to marry me, and he shagged Cathy on our wedding day, and she’s another Demon. That’s not something the goodies would do. And the others were protecting me because it’s the right thing to do, even though it was dangerous. It must be because the Teacher told them to, because…’

‘No,’ said Harrison Ford. ‘I’m sorry. The Teacher would have kept you alive for a while, because the Angels have such bleeding hearts, but when it came to it, when he realised that it is your destiny to join us, he would have killed you himself.’

It was horribly plausible. The Teacher, Miss Smallbone, was a little plump woman who gave off a frightening air of capability. She would regret doing bad things, but she’d do them. But David Tennant told me trust her, so I said, more defiant than convinced, ‘That’s not true! I KNOW the Teacher.’

‘You’ve seen the Teacher!’ blurted Norville. ‘Who is he?’ He turned to the others. ‘She’s seen him. We can find out what he looks like. We can kill him, and this will all be over. Do you want me to torture her?’ His piggy eyes bore on me eagerly. The black woman sighed deeply, and he said, ‘What? She knows… Oh shoot. I’ve done it again! I’m such a doofus. Softly, softly. Er, Mary Sue, when I said “torture”, I was speaking metaphorically. It’s our word for … er … making you a cookie, which is American for biscuit!’ He looked at the others hopefully, and then he said, ‘Ok. I’ll go. Sorry guys.’ He went.

‘In one way,’ said Harrison Ford, ‘Norville’s right. This is all just words. The Master. The Teacher. Angels and Demons. You have a value system which means one side sounds more attractive, but that’s because the Angels, so called, are more devious than we are. They’re weaklings. They don’t want to become Gods, which we were always meant to be, which we were before we ended up on this pathetic little planet. You are one of us, Mary Sue. Once you recognise that, everything else is simple.’

‘The Gates of Hell,’ I said.

Harrison Ford said, ‘the Gates of Hell is more mere words. Hell is not a place. All it means is that we will finally have access to the world we lost seventy million years ago. It’s our destiny.’
‘What will happen to the world, to all the people in it?’

‘People?’ said Harrison Ford. ‘These aren’t really people. You are further above them than they are above the cow we’ve just been eating. Once you realise that, everything else is simple. You eat meat, don’t you, Mary Sue?’