Is Billie Eilish the Devil? Discuss.
Peter
Peter’s heart skips a beat. It’s like the lyrics cut straight through to his soul. Hundreds of eyes seem to be burning into his forehead. Leia and Legolas edge deeper into the crowd, just in case Harley hasn’t noticed them. Hermione flashes him a sad sort of smile. Arya rolls her eyes, just as Billie sings, ‘man is such a fool, why are we saving him?’ Even the triceratops looks unimpressed (or maybe it just has a resting bitch face. Peter hasn’t met enough dinosaurs to know).
But before Peter has a chance to figure out how Harley planned that, or if Billie Ielish is secretly lurking behind the monster statue trying not to laugh into the microphone, Harley calls, ‘come out, come out, wherever you are.’ Party guests push and shove into Peter until he’s forced out of the crowd. Harley tuts at him. ‘Did you really think that mummy wouldn’t notice you? We don’t have that many teenagers here in red lycra catsuits. At least, I hope we don’t.’ She whispers to Stuart the stormtrooper, ‘the bouncers did ask for ID and evidence of at least three non-child killings, right?’ Stuart nods, staring at the ground and shifting his weight awkwardly. Harley seems satisfied (even if Peter isn’t). She waves at Legolas, Leia and Snow White.
Leia turns to run, but a group of fashionable vampires grab the three of them and kick them to the ground at the feet of Harley’s throne.
Harley’s face is glowing with delight. ‘You can’t run, my little piggies. I know you think that we’re all lovely and loathsome here, but babies, nobody here is more hated than you three. Spidey-Boy, I get that most of the villains in Marvel movies are super-forgettable, but there’s some guys here who sure as hell haven’t forgotten about you.’ Peter remembers the Chitauri he walked past, and how they feasted on that warlock who argued with them. Peter doesn’t want to become a champagne-and-radioactive-spider-blood spritzer. ‘Sue the Stormtrooper over there is deaf in one ear after Leia threw a hand-grenade on the Tantive IV.’ Sue the Stormtrooper waves from behind the drinks table, and taps her helmet. ‘It’s a good thing the Imperial Army has great disability accommodations, because she’s got five cats to feed.’ Leia is suddenly extremely interested in the patch of floor in front of her. Peter wishes he could hear the thoughts in her mind. ‘Legolas,’ Harley continues, ‘there’s an orc over there at the minion barbeque whose whole family you wiped out at the Battle of the Black Gate. His whole family! And he had, like, even more grandchildren than Kris Jenner.’ Does Legolas feel a twinge of guilt? Peter can’t tell. He glares at Harley with the same hatred as he’s always done. Harley turns to the last member of the group, who finishes smoothing out her hair, then folds her hands neatly behind her back. ‘And Snow White… I don’t know about you. I don’t even know why you’re still here, to be honest. But my point is that in this hive of scum and villainy, you three heroes’ – she practically gags at the word – ‘are the most wanted criminals of all. I bet when you first saw our stylish soiree you were all like ‘ew! How gross are these delinquents! How heinously morally depraved it is that they relentlessly pursue whatever the hell they want and kill whoever the hell gets in their way?’ Take a look in the mirror, sweeties. You’re no less different, just more deluded.’ She cackles that maniacal, hyena-like laugh again.
Peter knows that there are many things he should say to that. If Mr Stark were here instead, this would be the moment when he’d make some grand speech about the importance of standing up for what you believe in and never giving in and always winning against the enemy, then round it off with a quippy one-liner about street food or something. But as Peter scans the faces of stormtroopers and demons and tech billionaires, he realises that all these villains could just as easily copy and paste the same speech for themselves. When he runs after Mr Stark into battle, is it really any different from when Sue the Stormtrooper runs after Harley?
He pushes these thoughts out his mind. He needs to escape now, have a minor existential crisis later. While Harley is listing instructions to Stuart and Sue the stormtroopers, Peter shoots a web from his wrist. It sticks onto the platter with the wand and sword. Peter smiles, and tugs at the thread. But Harley notices and grips onto the tray. The web clings to her fingers, binding her hand, the platter, the wand and the sword together in one sticky webby mess. Peter pulls at the thread again, but Harley’s freaky strength anchors it in place. She flashes Peter a smile like an actress on a red carpet. ‘You didn’t think I’d figure out that you’d go for the wand? P-lease. The queen who plays me loves Harry Potter. It used to come up all the time on chat shows.’
Peter feels his heart sink so much that it’s probably plummeted through the floor, and the lava lake, and the castle’s foundations, and into the earth’s core. Legolas nods at him with encouragement. ‘Well then, carry out your plan.’
‘That was the plan,’ Peter admits, ‘to get the wand to Hermione, so she can teleport us out of here.’
‘Splendid,’ Leia hisses. Saliva sprays Peter’s face. ‘You were right. That was a really stupid plan.’
Harley uses her non-webbed hand to grab a cocktail and raise a toast. ‘Here’s to you! It’s always nice at parties to have some live entertainment. And some unalive entertainment. Your deaths will be such a fun surprise.’
There are many words Peter might use to describe his own death. Terrifying? Inevitable? Dusty? But ‘fun’ definitely isn’t one of them.
Hermione leans forward as much as the chains reach. ‘You can’t kill them for entertainment at your silly party. That’s totally barbaric. You shouldn’t be killing them at all!’
Harley pats her head. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be dying too.’
‘What,’ Arya shrieks, ‘no we will not!’
‘Ooh, yes you will. I was going to get it done later anyway, and we can’t have any more gate crashers coming to rescue you,’ Harley explains, ‘this party is by invite only. A very strict guestlist. Do you know how hard it was to persuade President Snow and Mark Zuckerburg to be bouncers? I had to kill, like, a gazillion ex-tributes and TikTok shareholders. Plus, my benevolent benefactor will be so hyped that you’re all finally dead and out the way.’
Stuart, Sue, and their stormtrooper friends (do they all have names beginning with S?) set down their drinks and march towards them.
‘I guess it is a bit of a shame…’ Harley muses
‘To have the deaths of five heroes plus Snow White on your hands?’ Peter guesses hopefully.
‘No, to waste those bikinis. Mr J will be so disappointed he couldn’t make it in time.’ Harley looks fearful for a moment, but then her face stretches into a smile as over the top as clown face paint. ‘Never mind! There are plenty more gold spangly bikinis back there, and plenty more hot girls. I’m pretty sure I saw Poison Ivy over by the cocktail bar.’ She perks up a bit at that name.
Stuart and Sue grab Peter and handcuff him. The metal digs into his wrists. Hermione and Arya are dragged away from Harley’s throne. Arya manages to shove a stormtrooper into a table, knocking hummus and severed fingers onto the floor. Two more soldiers grab her arms and raise her off the ground, her legs kicking and flailing. Leia hurls insults at the stormtroopers who handcuff her, attacking their chickpea-sized brains, car-vent helmets, and terrible aim.
Harley slides off her throne, the tray still webbed to her hand. She shouts something at her party guests, and the mob of villains parts to make a kind of pathway. Peter and his five friends are paraded through the crowd, who boo them and shout enough things to fill a whole swear jar. Darth Maul, like, the actual Star Wars villain, gives them the finger. Is Peter going mad(der), or is that Elon Musk glancing up from Twitter to wink at him? Peter pictures hamsters hiding under sawdust in a pet shop, with hordes of sticky children pointing and prodding the plastic screen and pestering their parents to let them take one.
That metal racetrack looms above the ground. Peter realises where they’re headed, and what’s going to happen to their heads. The track is suspended from the roof on massive chains and ropes, hanging about five metres from the ground. Harley signals for them to stop walking underneath a chequered finish line. Terrific. Their deaths are going to be the grand finale to the go-kart race from hell.
It takes one ladder, ten stormtroopers, and a whole load of tears from Snow White to get all six of them onto the track. The metal shudders and shakes at the weight of them all. Peter dreads to think what will happen when a dozen go-karts slam onto it.
Stuart and Sue knock Peter down, forcing him to lie down across the track. His forehead bangs against an aluminium sheet. The chains clip onto hooks and nails. Whoever bolted this thing together out of scrap metal left potential for live executions. Lovely. Peter lifts his head as much as he can, and glimpses his friends being tied to the track in the same way. Harley’s spaced them out in a row, so that they’ll be killed one after the other, as a countdown to the finish line. Snow White will be steamrolled first, then Arya, Legolas, Hermione, Leia and Peter. That’s assuming they don’t get hit by exploding turtle shells or turbo rockets or some other crazy death device before them. Why did Harley pick that order? Why is Peter last?
Hermione screams some kind of incantation, but nothing happens. With her bronze-coloured curls, the gold bikini and the blood-red train spilling over the road, she looks like she’s already melting into the metal. ‘This is the worst rescue ever,’ she sobs.
Leia’s voice drifts from across the row. ‘Oh, believe me, I’ve had worse.’ Peter believes her. He’s one Obi-Wan Kenobi death away from doing an even worse job at rescuing imprisoned girls than Luke Skywalker did.
The stormtroopers have retreated back down the ladder, leaving Peter and the others to enjoy their deaths in relative peace. Feet stomp and scuffle and villains argue as the crowd compete to get a good view.
Peter thrashes against the chains. The screeching sound of the metal impales his ears. It’s no use resisting. Stuart and Sue clearly paid attention to their lectures on prisoners at the Imperial Academy. Peter can’t get out the chains without someone else unclipping them, and all the possible someone elses who could help him are handcuffed just like he is. Billie Eyelish is singing about burying her friends and how she thought that she’d be dead by now. Does that girl have a video camera set up inside Peter’s head? He would quite like to end and bury Billie Eyeleish at the moment.
There are some moments in life that are so downright weird that all you can do is take a step back and think, ‘how the hell did everything get to this point?’ Like when Peter stayed up until 5 AM in gluing green press-on nails to a cardboard plant leaf for his 9th grade photosynthesis project. Or that time when Mr Stark texted him ‘come to Berlin and fight some Avengers pls ;)’ and Peter genuinely thought it was a prank until a shiny black car pulled up on his street. Or that time last spring when Peter ended up on the roof of the school gym wearing just his underpants (long story), but he couldn’t just climb down as he was because it was sports day and the school was swarming with athletes and cheerleaders and parents, and his friends Ned and MJ spent two hours trying to throw sports kit up onto the roof, telling any passers-by that they were just practising for the javelin competition later (believe it or not, that was only his second-worst sports day).
So right now, when a demon clown barbie has tied him to a race track that looks like someone made a swing out of a disposable baking tray, waiting to be steamrolled into a Peter Parker Pancake by a mushroom in a go-kart for the entertainment of people he was 99.9% sure this time yesterday were all fictitious, listening to Billie bloody Ieleiesh, Peter thinks, ‘how the hell did everything get to this point?’ The quest and the Villain in the Dark all seem so much less important than, you know, his imminent doom.
Peter is half-aware of the other members of the quest tugging at their chains, screaming and sobbing. He closes his eyes. He’s watched enough friends die already. The metal track is vibrating, just like it did last time the racers came. And the vibration turns into quivering, then shaking, then rocking, until the whole track is wiggling from side to side like the annoying Ariana Grande song and the chains are screaming at the weight and the audience is shouting and hushing each other and calling out bets and cutting above all of that is the whirring of car engines, the screech of skidding tyres, the upbeat chiming that happens right before someone gets a new deadly missile to use, and of course more Billie wretched Eilish, which Peter realises is the correct way to spell it.
One E, two Is, no Ys.
If that’s Peter’s last thought before he dies, he honestly deserves death.
And the noise is so deafening that it would make a normal-brained person cover their ears but – curse that stupid spider – and whatever else was going on with Peter’s stupid brain before that anyway, to be honest – to Peter the noise is so painful that there’s a part of him that’s almost looking forward to whatever kart or bike or explosion will get him first and bring him quiet, and then breaks squeak and tyres thud and someone cries out, and then a familiar voice, small but certain, like the calm in the middle of a tornado, says, ‘did you miss me?’
Peter opens his eyes. A green kart has halted in front of Snow White. Someone waves over the steering wheel, their face hidden by a green turtle shell.
‘Who the hell are you,’ Leia demands, ‘aren’t you a little short for a racing driver?’
The driver lifts off the shell helmet, to reveal impressively winged eyeliner and a face he couldn’t wait to get rid of, but is now more relieved to see than any face he’s ever seen. ‘I’m a fangirl. I’m here to rescue you…’
‘Be quick about it then,’ Arya hisses.
‘…if you let me come with you,’ Fangirl finishes.
Peter knows there’s probably, like, a hundred health-and-safety reasons why they shouldn’t take a fragile human nerd with zero actual experience of quests or wars on an extremely perilous and potentially deadly mission. If there was a manual on heroic shenaniganing, DO NOT ADOPT A PET HUMAN would probably be in red underlined. But right now, when Peter is surrounded by enemies and chained to a road that’s about to see some real heavy traffic, Peter can’t think what those reasons are. ‘Yes. Three thousand times yes, please.’