Conversation with the devil

So I’m lying in bed and I’m watching Batman- the Jack Nicholson one, not the Heath ledger one- and the joker is characteristically tormenting his noble foe. It’s at the part when he asks Batman has he ever ‘Danced with the devil in the pale moonlight’, and I just jump up and scream at the TV that the bastard never quits dancing in my f^cking head. I’m screaming, ‘TELL HIM TO GO AWAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!’, but then I settle down again and I’m lying there calm, admiring Tim Burton’s directing capabilities, and then the devil starts to have one of his customary conversations with me.

“So what’s your favourite genre of dance music then old buddy?”

And then I’m like you already know the answer to this Mr. Lucifer, you devious little cretin, you. Sure didn’t I see you gallivanting between the crowds of the Planet Love festival last summer?


The devil then denies this, even though he knows I saw him.


‘Yes you were. Eddie Halliwell was on stage performing, the crowd were going mental, and I saw you creeping around the back of someone with an ugly smirk on your face.’

‘Why I’ve never been so offended in my life,’ he tells me.

‘I wouldn’t listen to any of that cheap, Techno-infused Trance crap. I’ll have you know that I’m more of a Minimal person. Allows me to take stock of everything. Gives credence to the more intergalactic spaciness of things’.

‘I thought you were a fan of Eddie Halliwell?’

‘Paaah’ he scoffs at me.

This is one of the more deplorable aspects of the devil’s personality- He can be so extremely sarcastic, he just belittles everything you say. Like he thinks he knows everything. I always get the urge to tell him there’s no need to be so arrogant, that it’s only God who knows everything, but then I always chicken out of saying it.

‘Eddie Halliwell is one of the foremost DJ’s of his generation.’ I tell him.

He’s looking at me with wiry raised eyebrows.

‘Come on Monsieur Lucifer. You can’t deny the sheer energy he puts into his performances. Have you ever met another DJ who could better build the crowd up into a frenzy?’

His eyebrows rise even higher. I f^cking hate when he’s so sarcastic.

‘A frenzy? A frenzy? You crack me up old buddy’ And now he’s laughing at me like I’m his pet cat who just did something stupid and amusing.

‘The crowd don’t know any different. They’re oblivious to his incessant cut-outs of the bass, the clusterf^ck of tracks he plays all at once, and the endless, boring loops he does. And the scratching. Do you need me to start on the scratching old buddy?’

‘Fair enough, I take your point on that one. He perhaps does indulge in too much of the ye old scratching at times.’

‘Ye old scratching? What the hell are you on old buddy? Are you back in the 17th century?’ And he’s laughing at me again, and I sort of chuckle along with him.

‘I’m on all sorts of things, Monsieur Lucifer. Chlorpromazine, Diazepam, Prozac, Lithium, some of my Mum’s strong painkillers…Can’t remember what the f^ck they’re called. None of them seem to be working since I’m lying here talking to you, eh?’

‘Ah, au contraire, my little Turd Burglar. You seem to be very much on the path to enlightenment.’

‘And au contraire back to you, Monsieur Lucifer. I’ll have you know I’ve never burgled a Turd in my life. It’s not really my thang’

He’s rolling around on the bed laughing uncontrollably, but then he gathers himself, fixing his eyebrows which were presumably crooked.

‘You really are an enigma old buddy. So what are you then, French or an ode to Lil’ Kim?’


‘I like saying Monsieur now as it rolls off the tongue more. Better than MISTER Lucifer. Is that okay with you Monsieur Luc-ee-fare? And the whole ‘thang’ comment was spur of the moment. On the whole it’s not really my thang to say thang.’

‘So you’d be content to stand up in a court of Law and deny that you’ve never burgled a turd?’

‘Oh absolutely. The case would immediately be thrown out through lack of evidence. I give all my turds to Gillian McKeith who kindly puts them in a lunchbox for me and sets them on her mantelpiece. She’s my idol.’

Furrows of anger form around the Devil’s forehead and his eyes light up with a mixture of fury and perverted sexual deviousness.

‘I’m gonna pay that f^cking bitch a visit later on. She supposedly extracted a turd from a morbidly obese man and I hear it defies biology. Her prized possession. I have reasons to suspect she would mentally crumble if I manage to burgle said turd’.

I go down the route of placating him for fear of his unpredictable tendencies.

‘You burgle that turd, my man. You burgle that turd like you’ve never burgled a turd before.’

‘You shut your sycophantic little mouth up or I’ll rip them lips off and use them for a labia.’

This scares me and I go back to watching my Batman film. The devil is sitting looking pensive, stroking his pubic beard, plotting his next move. But I avoid eye contact with him as I’m really petrified of having no lips. Worse still, having them surgically transplanted as an artificial labia.

So the film gets to the part where the Joker reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out this hilariously oversized hand-cannon of a Magnum, like the f^cking gun of a tank, and I burst out laughing and without thinking shout in the room, ‘HAHA DO YOU SEE THE F^CKING SIZE OF THAT GUN?’, but when I turn round, Monsieur Lucifer is gone.