Juliet 2.0

It is never a good sign when your phone starts to ring in the middle of the night.  I reach out from under the duvet and fumble around on the nightstand, accidentally knocking the phone onto the floor in the process.  I mutter some choice words into my pillow and retrieve the phone, answering it while still face down.

“Hello?”

“Ty! It’s me, I need your help.”  It takes me a moment to recognise my cousin’s hushed voice.

“Jules?”

“You need to get over here,” she tells me. “Now.”

“What’s the matter?”

“There is some guy in our yard!”

“What?”

“He’s creeping me out. Can you come over?”

“Who is it? Do you know him?”

“Yeah…” I can practically hear her biting her lip. “I may have danced with him earlier tonight.  I thought he was cute, but that was before I realised he’s that psycho who’s had the hots for Rosie.  Real stalker material, you know?”

“And what exactly is he doing in your yard?”

Juliet sighs.

“I think he’s professing his love for me.”

“For you?”

“I know.  Rosie will be so relieved he’s not bothering her anymore.”

“Do you think he’s dangerous?”

“I don’t know. All the doors are locked, so he can’t get in.  But Dad’s away and Mum took one of her sleeping pills, so I’m all alone out here.  I think I’d feel much safer if you came over and told him to get lost.”

“Of course.” I stumble across the room in the dark, in search of my trousers. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.  Just shut the curtains and pretend you’re not home.”

“Thanks, Ty. I owe you one.”

“Don’t worry about it cuz.”  I hang up and pull on a shirt, before grabbing my car keys and heading out into the night.

~

Top 5... Villains in Fiction

Heroes are alright I suppose.  They get the job done, they fight the good fight.  But isn't it so often the case that the villain of the piece is the more interesting character?  Here are my top 5 fictional villains, ranking from bad seed at Five to evil incarnate at One.

5. Meursault
The Outsider by Albert Camus
Existentialists may wish to have me hanged for categorising Meursault as a villain, perhaps preferring to refer to him as an anti-hero or a damaged everyman.  But my reading of the character is as follows: a feckless bureaucrat loses his mummy but still has a job and a pretty new girlfriend to live for, then throws it all away by committing a senseless murder on the beach.

4. Bill
Kill Bill, Vol.2 by Quentin Tarantino
We don't properly meet the elusive target of The Bride's rage until the concluding instalment of this kung fu saga.  And when we finally do, we already know what he is capable of, after seeing him shoot his pregnant former lover in the head, leaving her in a coma and stealing her child.  Pretty darn twisted.  Even worse is his defense: Uma Thurman's character broke his heart, so he ordered the execution of her entire wedding party.  As overreactions go, it's what one might call a "biggie".

3. Mrs Coulter
Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
She is beautiful.  She is clever.  She has a vicious, golden monkey on her shoulder.  And SPOILERS, she is our heroine Lyra's mother.  Which makes her experiments on children and other wicked deeds all the more despicable.

2. Iago
Othello by William Shakespeare
He never tells the audience why he does what he does.  His actions cause the death of practically every character in the play, and yet at its finish, when it becomes clear that he is going to be tortured (potentially to death), he simply swears to never speak again.  "I am not what I am", he declares early on in the play, a reference to his deceitful nature and an inversion of God's words in the Bible: "I am what I am."  Are we to take this to mean that Iago is, in fact, the Devil?

1. Jadis
The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia are hardly the scariest or most challenging works of children's fiction.  But the otherworldly empress Jadis, rescued by Diggory and Polly from a dying world in The Magician's Assistant, provides genuine menace in an otherwise quite jolly tale.  Once the characters are transported to the shiny new land of Narnia, Jadis becomes temptation incarnate: she offers the enchanted fruit to Diggory when they are both within the walled garden (Allegory! Allegory!) before vanishing into the wilderness, reappearing years later as the White Witch, title character and main villain of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.  By this time, she has conquered Narnia and enslaved its many magical races.  She also seems to have no qualms when it comes to corrupting children and committing vile acts of cruelty to animals (poor, poor Aslan).  And anybody who has the power to make it always winter, and yet never Christmas, is pure evil in my mind.

Some other exceptionally nasty pieces of work: The Marquise de Meurtuil (Les Liaisons Dangereuses), The Man Jack (The Graveyard Book), and almost all of the boys in Lord of the Flies.