Marta and the Demons Read online

sugarface, the chattering chessman, the strangling saint, and Carly.

  Super-smart, funny, gritty, femme, sweet, kind, kinda aggressively normal but can’t fool me. In my dreams, Carly is a demon too. But she’s like the good or at least neutral shopkeeper demon.

  She keeps the stall in the middle of hell that sells you all the stuff.

  You run through hell and you pick up tales of brave job-hunting, and then you visit Carly, and she checks your stars, gives you food, and a roof over your head and okay fine love, love, love.

   

  §

   

  Come Monday morning, Marta called in sick at work (‘I am sick baby doll,’ she confided in me, ‘I am sick of dee-mons’) and laced up her trainers.

  By Monday evening, Carly had discovered a genuine healthy human from her office – ooh, aah! – this nice American called Zoe, who said she’d take Marta’s phone/pedometer for a cool fifteen miles.

  ‘I’ve walked a dog,’ Zoe joked. ‘I’ve never walked a phone.’

  We laughed and laughed and laughed.

  It wasn’t so simple. As I suspected, Monetrize was smart enough to make Burn to Run bump up its difficulty. As we neared Marta’s target, the density of virtual demons intensified. This thing really didn’t want to give Marta her money back.

  I got nervous this woman Zoe wouldn’t know how to deal with demons. I bit my thumb so hard I broke the skin.

  ‘Carly baby, did you explain to Zoe the Secret Weapon about –’

  ‘Please stop asking, Myeong.’

  ‘What exactly did you tell her?’ I said miserably. ‘Did you explain centaurs are bad? Most people wouldn’t know that. Did you say the difference between footstrike cambions and –’

  ‘I also have my relationships with my colleagues to consider,’ said Carly firmly.

  Zoe arrived at Marta’s flat slicked with sweat. ‘I’m so pooped I had to get a cab here,’ she said. ‘I did a good fifteen miles at the gym.’

  I screamed.

  Zoe grinned. ‘Gotcha!’

  Disaster struck later that night when Stephen came down with mansprained ankle.

  ‘Like manflu and like mansplain,’ I explained to him. ‘Look, never mind.’

  ‘Manful?’ said Stephen.

  There was a huge angry controversy over where it would be safe to keep running in one-woman shifts throughout Monday night. It got really ugly and off topic and out-of-control, and I still don’t know why.

  We got one break: the deadline really did seem to be midnight on Tuesday.

  As luck would have it, I got the final leg of the relay. Just three more miles. They were worth £500. But by now it was more an honour thing.

  Everyone made a finishing tape of Stephen’s ties, mostly covered in cartoon animals.

  We were exhausted. We laughed, we kissed, we danced. We had the new energy of amorphous freedom.

   

  §

   

  It came that same night. The idea.

  ‘Who do people go for that?’ I fumed to Carly, limping down our cul-de-sac, lit up by streetlamps. ‘What’s in it for them?’

  Carly was fishing around for keys. ‘You used to have an app that switched off the internet for you.’

  ‘Such a random thing to bring up.’

  ‘And deleted files if you cheated.’

  ‘I worked a way around that app,’ I muttered. ‘In the end I defeated it.’

  ‘Yeah. You saved your net addiction from near certain doom.’

  ‘Oh my God. Why are you being so aggressive?’

  ‘It was a joke?’

  We climbed the stairs in silence. She put the key in the lock. We stepped into our little flat and she put on the light.

  ‘Carly, I’ve had an idea.’

  ‘Is this going to be another snarky comment, Myeong?’

  ‘What if we set up our own version of Monetrize, only no evil? No evil like actually no evil, not like Google no evil. So . . . we don’t keep the extra money. Instead . . .’

  ‘It goes to charity?’

  I had that good feeling of big chunky thoughts appearing, like unopened mail.

  ‘Instead,’ I said, ‘the extra money gets distributed among users who exceed their targets!’

  Carly wrinkled her brow. ‘Is this a snarky attack on me? Because if it is –’

  ‘It’s not just running, remember. It can be any app, any activity.’

  A giddy excitement was rising in me which – because of how my feelings had been trained recently – felt a bit like Asmodeus, Prince with Power over War and Devastation, was pounding pavement across our darkling kitchenette.

  ‘Just let me think,’ I said rapidly. ‘People couldn’t just set absolute targets, obviously. Also . . . you can’t map the rewards to “the most improved” either. People would game that too easily. But there is a way.’

  Carly hung up the key carefully.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It sounds a bit like evil for evil’s sake. But – maybe you could try Khan Academy or something? They teach finance and economics and stuff. It’s pretty, uh – you know that thing where you get points and achievements –’

  I resisted rolling my eyes. ‘Yeah. Gamification. That’s what this is all about, sweetheart.’

  ‘Whatever. They might like to add like a “Monetary Incentive!” button.’

  ‘Okay, whatever, but I mean – I don’t see why it has to be just them? Finance and math isn’t the only thing in the world. We can email loads of places.’

  Secretly I was so proud that Carly hadn’t shut me down.

  She disappeared and reappeared without her handbag. ‘You know what your pronoun for yourself is? Your pronoun is we.’

  ‘Do you remember that poet in Brighton whose pronoun was the sound of breaking glass?’

  ‘I can’t – I’m not even sure what – I am busy, Myeong. I have a job.’

  My pride vanished. ‘Oh fuck you. I hadn’t noticed.’

  Carly disappeared and reappeared in polka dot pyjama bottoms with her phone in her hand.

  I felt myself blush. I was scared. I hadn’t meant that “fuck you” to come out the way it sounded – which was the way I really felt.

   

  §

   

  You know that expression ‘your ass is grass’? Okay, nowadays my relationship with Carly was grassroots politics. Specifically, that moment in grassroots politics, when someone’s called someone out on some stupid shit, and you’re trying to work out if the pile-on is proportionate or not, and suddenly you realise this is a situation where there’s no such thing as proportionate.

  There is too much suffering, too much unavenged and unrecognised and ungrieved for, and when the universe starts to flow into your own personal moment, nobody has any right to say “okay, stop nnnnnnow.”

  Nowadays me and Carly are like that. To anybody else, it might look like we have no idea of proportion, that we escalate the weirdest stuff for no reason, that we’re basically sane people but not with each other.

  But every snit has a context. Every small hurt has a right to its past. Proportion itself . . . it’s a disproportionate concept.

   

  §

   

  ‘Carly, can I say something? Don’t take this the wrong way. I love you, okay.’

  ‘What’s taking “I love you” the wrong way, Myeong?’ Carly was icily polite. ‘Is it taking it as meaning “fuck you”?’

  ‘Just let me finish.’

  ‘Let me finish.’

  ‘I thought you were.’

  ‘Now I am.’

  ‘Because – it’s like – and I know you love me. We’re supposed to see each other how we really are. Not how other people see us. But Carly, you act like I’m this geeky waster, and my ideas are all stupid. And I know you don’t really believe I’m a waster. Not deep down. But it’s like . . . nowadays you never care about looking deep down?’

  Her face was bent toward
s her phone, but she wasn’t really reading it.

  ‘It’s like there’s this myth out there,’ I continued, ‘and even though it’s about me, you’re happy to go with it. But Carly, Vikings didn’t wear pointy hats. The Middle Ages wasn’t all chastity belts and thinking the Earth was flat, and the Ancient Romans didn’t toss their cookies between courses, and Coca-Cola didn’t make Santa red, and people didn’t freak when they heard War of the Worlds on the wireless, and the line was never “Houston, we have a problem,” and nobody on Star Trek said, “Beam me up, Scotty,” and I’m pretty sure Neil Armstrong fluffed his line too. And newsflash, bumblebee flight can totally be modelled. The computer bumblebees carry the computer pollen into the computer air just fine, and meanwhile, newsflash, water doesn’t spiral the other way in the other hemisphere. And newsflash, when your fingerprints go fluffy in the shower, that’s not because they’ve soaked up the water, it’s because – it’s just some other thing. And thumbs – with gladiators and with the – it was thumbs up not thumbs down – and newsflash – contrary to popular belief – even if you think the truth spoils the fun – the truth – I’m not just “Carly’s geeky girlfriend.” I’m not! Even if I’m always forgetting it myself. Okay? Newsflash, newsflash, newsflash!’

  ‘That was a very cute speech,’ she said. She kissed my cheek and my mouth. ‘I’m going to bed. Do you think you’ll be long?’

  ‘Probably.’

  I went into the kitchen. My hands were shaking.

  But she was interested. She couldn’t hide it. She came in behind me and put her arms around me. She said, ‘I’m not sure I understand your idea. But . . . don’t just email people. Call them. You can’t delete a human voice.’

  ‘Maybe we could make an app for that too,’ I said.

   

  §

   

  I did it properly. I set up a company.

  Dispossession Ltd.

  ‘Naming a company is