My Boyfriend Beelzebub

CHAPTER 1

I was seven when I first came face-to-face with Beelzebub. It was after dark on a school night, and I couldn’t sleep. I had pulled the covers over my head, trying to distract myself from the blackness that was my window, which made up an entire wall. During the day, the window showed thick bush of mānuka and a neighbour’s house on stilts. Come night, the view was a never-ending black. So dark, I could see my reflection – a round-faced, fat-nosed girl with a wide mouth that said things it shouldn’t. Like how we shared forty to sixty percent of genes with fruit flies. And how I wished to be an entomologist when I grew up.

Why would anyone admit that?

I heard a tapping on the window. I didn’t dare look.

‘Go away,’ I whispered. The tapping stopped. I crawled out from under the covers and turned to look at whatever was on the other side of the glass.

I froze. Floating outside was a giant fly, at least as large as my bed, and black with red bulging compound eyes. Yuck! But I couldn’t help feeling drawn to the ocellar triangle on the fly’s head, between the eyes. It was something I had read about in National Geographic magazine – Grandad was a subscriber and always kept the latest copy in his car for me to read. The triangle held the ocelli, a cluster of extra eyes used for navigation. You hardly noticed them on the average housefly. But on this giant fly, I could see the eyes clearly. And they were fixed on me.

I didn’t move. Not because I was afraid. I wasn’t afraid. But I kept very still. Then the fly transformed. It was gradual, like I was watching a magician trick me into believing nothing was happening. But something was happening. The fly was changing.

I crawled back under the duvet and watched the fly’s bulging red eyes sink into its face and become a pair of smaller – but still large – brown ones. Where the ocelli had been was a smooth, bronze forehead. The fly had transformed into a slender, dark man.

We stared.

The man waved for me to come to the window, and I went, although I wasn’t sure why. I was thinking it was safer to remain in bed. Other kids had treehouses and hideouts. I had my bed. My safe haven to ward off anything I didn’t wish to face. I watched him place both hands on the glass, and the glass melted away. He stepped into the room and I now noticed he wore what looked like hundreds and hundreds of swarming flies. And yet, if I didn’t focus too hard on the – dress?

It looked like a black ballgown.

‘Clio Blakewell.’ He knew my name? ‘I wanted to give you this,’ he said, pointing towards my small pink hands. He slipped a signet ring on the fourth finger of my left hand. ‘Keep it. I will come for you in your eighteenth year.’

‘Who?’

‘Beelzebub.’

I blinked and he was gone.

I didn’t see him again until the summer of my final school year.

#

I was at a friend’s eighteenth birthday party – a friend; I used that word lightly – she invited everyone in our year. Mum made me go because, and I quote, “I might enjoy it.” I was eager to prove otherwise.

Daya Brown inhabited a house on Kakapo Drive, Kerikeri, half an hour from where I lived on Bushbeaten Road. Her house was, like many houses around here, enormous; built of wood, and perched, isolated – along with its inhabitants – on a treeless hill.

It was concentrated, claustrophobic chaos inside. One hundred bodies crammed into an open-plan living room. The music roared. It rattled. It raved; like waves against cliffs, we clashed.

The sweat. The squeals. The thumping.

I collided with a girl holding a bowl of salt-and-vinegar chips before escaping out the glass sliding doors onto the balcony. The sound reduced to muffled beats and I could hear myself think.

Finally.

I breathed and exhaled slowly. The evergreen shrubs bristled with wasps and bees, typical of a summer afternoon in Kerikeri.

I leant over the hardwood balcony, and watched a wild rabbit disappear into a hydrangea bush, blooming with small lilac flowers. The doors opened and slid shut behind me.

‘You okay?’

I turned around. It was Daya’s mother, Sheryl. She was short, thin and leggy, like a stick-insect, but blonde – an aged version of Daya.

‘I’m fine, thank you,’ I replied. ‘Noise just gives me headaches.’

‘Do you want anything to drink?’ She smiled and her skin stretched with it. Could that be Daya in twenty-years’ time?

‘No thank you,’ I said, hoping she would disappear, but Sheryl’s staring blue eyes travelled to the ring on my left hand – the one Beelzebub had given me. It was a perfect fit, just like it had been ten years ago, as if the ring had grown with me. Feeling self-conscious, I touched it. It was abnormally warm.

‘An interesting ring you have. You do know that’s your ring finger? Careful now. Someone might think you’re engaged.’

‘Thanks.’ I smiled tightly. The joke was so old now. I considered fabricating an arranged marriage with an imaginary third cousin. But Sheryl slipped back inside, legs first.

I observed my ring, devoting close attention to the absence of a diamond: no diamond meant no engagement ring. At least according to Hollywood and Michael Hill.

So I couldn’t be promised to Beelzebub. Could I?

Something I had told myself over the past eleven years.

I stroked the ring’s thick etching, feeling the rough edges of the carvings under my thumbs. Grandad had suggested the ring was very old. He said it resembled a better-preserved version of something the Time Team might find.

Although, the ring was probably older than England.

I studied its markings: a fly with long, thin wings. If I stared long enough, the fly’s eyes would glow red…or so I imagined.

I headed back inside where an overwhelming shriek hit my hearing aids. My classmates swarmed around me, yelling, ‘Truth or dare?’

Panic smacked my chest. Shit. I would have loved to reply, ‘Neither,’ but several hands pushed me to the floor and, within seconds, I was sitting in a circle. Shit. A warning clouded my senses. What was happening? I appraised my classmates. Most of them had disappeared – I figured to get drinks. Around twenty, including Daya, were left.

I eyed them, recognising about half. Next to Daya was her boyfriend Daniel; he reeked of testosterone. Then there was Daniel’s friend Josh; I’d turned him down twice this year. Samantha – oh yes, the one who insisted she never studied but somehow got straight As and Tessa Hawkeye. I avoided her sharp silver eyes, digging into all my insecurities.

‘Clio, truth or dare?’ commanded Tessa. I stole a glance at her straight lips, tight crop top and skinny jeans. I smoothed out my summer dress, and checked to see the plastic hanger loops were tucked inside the sleeves that fluttered out like dragonfly wings. No visible loops. Phew. The way Tessa stared at me brought back memories of my first senior dance two years ago: I had donned a dress that sparkled like thousands of jewel beetles. I was so excited to attend my first dance. But you needed a partner to dance. I had waited all night, hovering by the door of the school gym, afraid to get too close to the thumping, pulsing noise my classmates called music.

Then Tessa had found me and spotted the loops dangling from my armpits like bugs’ legs – that’s what she said. What did that even mean? Which bugs? Then came her sniggers, their sniggers: the kids – Samantha, Daniel, Josh, everyone – that had gathered around.

I wasn’t going to be dancing that night.

I am waiting for someone.

No I wasn’t.

A tingle on my fourth finger knocked me back to the present. The ring had grown warm. It had done that a lot lately. I was back to Daya’s party. To Tessa.

Shit. Tessa and her stupid question.

‘I’m not playing,’ I said.

‘Truth then. Do you really find all boys ugly?’

‘Huh?’ Tessa loved to ask me this – particularly in public. Anything that would push my buttons, such as, did I like boys? Did boys require more than two legs and a pair of wings to attract my attention? Have I ever liked a boy?

If I have, I wouldn’t tell her.

But did I like someone? The memory of Beelzebub and his ballgown of flies flickered in my mind. Alarmed, I extinguished it. I’d been seven, for Christ’s sake.

From Tessa’s right, Samantha crawled over with her smart phone in hand. ‘Do you find this hot?’ She shoved a picture of a topless, ripped male celebrity in my face. It was an actor I recognised. Tom? Tim?

‘Don’t know him,’ I said. ‘If I talked to him, maybe…I don’t know. Otherwise, he’s meh.’

‘How do you not find this hot? What’s wrong with you?’ Samantha cried. Four other girls I didn’t recognise smirked. I sighed: the “what’s wrong with me” question. I’d been asking myself this since Tessa discovered my love for bugs in primary. Tessa. I was looking at her now, eyes calculating, a predator pinning me down with a single stare.

‘What about this, then?’ Tessa showed me another non-descript, half-dressed B-lister.

‘Gross,’ I said, and shuddered at a mental image of him all over me.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like boys. I did. And it wasn’t that I wouldn’t date one. I would – if the guys at school gave me a chance.

And if they weren’t Josh.

And if the guys at school were hot – and they weren’t. Because guys weren’t hot when they were sneering at your dangling loops in a crowded gym. I remembered yanking out my hearing aids to dull the pain of their scorn and the thumping, pounding, banging of the music.

Beelzebub wouldn’t have teased me. I brushed the thought away. How the heck would I know? He wasn’t here when Daya ditched me for Grace in Year 8? He wasn’t here when Tessa plagued me with questions about bugs, boys, boy-bugs, bug-boys. Where was he?

‘This one?’ Tessa shoved another picture in my face.

‘No.’

‘This?’

‘Truth or dare, someone?’ I asked, desperate to move on to something not me related.

‘This?’ Tessa and Samantha chorused.

‘Or does your heart beat only for creepy crawlies?’ said Tessa.

I stared, mouth parted, embarrassment boiling my cheeks. Did she just go there? But Tessa always went there. Since the first day of primary when I had thought the housefly on my desk was dancing for me, and had declared my hypothesis to the class. I didn’t recall my teacher’s response, her name, or the class’s reaction. Just Tessa’s reply: ‘You’re creepy.’ Not the fly – the fly wasn’t creepy. I was creepy. Was that the reason no one had partnered with me at the senior dance? Because I was creepy?

What about this year’s senior ball – an actual ball? Was I too creepy for that too? I really wanted to go, to wear a real ballgown and be a princess for the night. But I needed a date. Any date. Josh would take me.

I’m not that desperate.

Then who?

Beelzebub.

What?

Something from within took over. ‘I’m taken!’

Everyone froze.

Silence fell over the room.

‘Uhm…’ I shocked myself at the sudden declaration. Time had ground to a halt, and a clear image of Beelzebub marked itself on my brain. I glanced at my ring. The fly’s eyes glowed.

‘Who?’ demanded Josh. ‘You have to tell us.’ Was that jealousy in his voice? My tongue felt dry. I had never fabricated a boyfriend before. I had never had a boyfriend before.

I was waiting for someone.

Beelzebub?

It was a feeling that had crept in over the years. Sneaking into my dreams, crawling into my thoughts. I hadn’t really noticed it was there. Until now. The ring prickled with heat.

‘Yeah, everyone in school is going to want to know,’ Tessa taunted. ‘I can’t believe you’ve said “yes” to someone!’

Tessa, Samantha, and the other girls clustered together. Tessa then declared, ‘I know, you must bring this…person…to the senior school ball!’

‘Okay.’ Shit. Why did I say that?

The girls squealed, then suffocated me in one tight hug, like robber flies sucking the air out of my lungs. I stiffened, and a rush of fear overwhelmed me. Shit!

#

The guests had left an hour ago. I’d been checking my watch. Mum was late, as usual, leaving me to suffer Daya’s pressing questions.

We sat on a grey sectional sofa that surrounded a glass coffee table. The deep orange glow from the light fixture above warmed my head to the point that it made me queasy.

‘Do I know him?’ Daya asked, running her fingers through her long blonde hair, then letting it fall around her waist. She reminded me of the beautiful greenhouse whitefly; her hair and skin just glowed.

‘Not sure,’ I said.

‘Does he go to a different school? Is he from Auckland?’ Daya lit up, her blue eyes fixed on mine.

My cheeks flared. I was talking about Beelzebub; a giant fly. Why him? Because I couldn’t think of anyone else. I couldn’t think of any other eligible boy in my life. Beelzebub had imprinted on my brain.

‘I’ve not seen him in a while. He probably won’t want –’

‘He’s from Auckland, isn’t he?’ Daya bounced, jiggling the sofa. I blinked twice. What was she so excited about?

‘No. No, he’s not.’

‘Oooh, American? Oh my God, please tell me he’s American. Cute accent?’

‘Uh, no. He’s a Philistine.’ I knew that from my Bible classes in primary school.

‘Clio!’ Daya hit me with a plain, white cushion and I caught a glimpse of us when we were younger, and Daya would invite me on sleepovers. We would stay up all night talking about our crushes: school crushes, celebrity crushes, Disney crushes, candy crushes, fruit crushes – we had covered them all.

And here we were, talking about my crush – theoretical crush. Like we were still friends.

‘Is that how you talk about all your boyfriends?’ she asked.

I shrugged. ‘It’s not an insult. They were misunderstood…anyway, er…’ Why did I say Philistine? They’re extinct…kind of. I remembered an article I had read recently. ‘He told me he’s uhm…related?’

‘To you?’

‘No. To the Philistines…’

‘No, really?’ Daya gasped. ‘Ahh, this is going to be so good for the school magazine. We’ve never featured anyone related to a basically extinct –’

‘Oh no, no, no.’ I jumped to my feet. When we’d shared our secrets, Daya wasn’t head of the school magazine committee. ‘No article. No nothing. Unless you’re determined to ruin my life.’

‘Hey, don’t be embarrassed. Oh, has he got tats or something? Oh, oh, he’s a gang member, isn’t he?’

‘No, it’s not that…’ I paused as I tried to conjure up a mental image of what it would be like to date a fly without literally dating a fly. ‘Uh…he’s annoying…’

‘Like how?’

‘If you met him, your first thought would be where’s the swat?’

The doorbell rang.