Mprov fic number 2
Nov. 16th, 2005 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deathpixieThis one's for [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] who asked for Hellblazer and the words "piccolo, doorstop, flense".
Fandom: Hellblazer.
Rating: PG-13 for bad words and dead people.
Summary: Someone is trying to send John Constantine a message. Using wind instruments.
This one's technically a crossover, although I'm not sure if people will pick up where the other half comes from. ;)
***
There was a dead man on his doorstop.
John Constantine stiffened, then sighed and relaxed. No-one he knew, at least. And no obvious signs of demonic or angelic interference, either - at first glance it seemed the man was just another homeless bloke, dead of cold or illness or drink or maybe all three. A second glance was confirming the assumptions of the first when Constantine realised that underneath the heavy, dirty coat, the man was wearing evening dress. Snowy white shirt, crisp black pants and jacket, shiny shoes only a little scuffed. Not what you'd expect the homeless to be wearing, even in the East End. No wallet - that could have gone at any time - but in his jacket pocket was a slim leather case that revealed, when opened, a piccolo.
"Bollocks," Constantine said to himself. It was going to be one of the weird ones. Well, to hell with it - none of his business.
He went back inside to call the police. Anonymously, of course.
*
It was raining when he finally was able to go out. The police had been there for hours with their forensic types and the plods doing crowd control. They'd knocked on his door, asked the usual questions about seeing or hearing anything and he'd answered honestly - he hadn't heard or seen a thing. But the whole dog and pony show had blocked his front door for far too much time and in his fridge there was only a couple of cans of lager and some left over curry. From last Tuesday. So it was a more foul-tempered than usual Constantine that squelched his way to the pub, collar turned up against the wind.
There was a busker on the way, a sad and sorry man playing Irish folk tunes on a tin whistle. Constantine barely restrained the urge to kick over his hat.
"'Ere, John, heard you had a bit of excitement on your street this morning. That geezer from the London Symphony? Turning up dead? News says the old Bill is baffled."
Constantine grunted in response to the barman's chatter and slapped down five quid. "A pint, Terry." His tone pretty much covered the usual snipes about not being drawn into Terry's take on current events. Terry took the hint and drew the pint without further comment before going off to bend some other punter's ear. Taking himself to his usual corner, Constantine pulled the Observer out of his pocket and unfolded it, settling down for a quiet hour or two. Maybe more, if he did the crossword. He was just lifting the glass to his lips when someone jostled his elbow.
"Oi, watch it!" he protested, barely avoiding spilling beer all over himself. Then he realised the jostler was the same busker from outside and he wasn't jostling so much as slumping forward, face chalk-white... Constantine cursed as his arms were suddenly full of unconscious tin-whistle player and he lowered the man as gently as he could (which wasn't really since the the man outweighed him by several stones) and checked his pulse. Make that dead tin-whistle player.
"Get an ambulance," he called over to Terry, all the while trying to figure out how to slip away without drawing too much attention. Two bodies was a pattern and he was the common denominator. Even the worthies down at the local nick could put that together and decide to bring him in.
"Terry?" he called quietly as the barman finished making the call to the ambulance. "I've got things planned and this is really going to bollocks it up. How much to slip out the back and have been elsewhere when the plods show?"
*
A hundred quid. A hundred fucking quid. Constantine ground his teeth as he splashed through the rain-soaked back streets. Terry always had been a canny businessman and he knew a win-win situation when he saw it. But still, a hundred quid? Man needed reminding of his place in the world order, so he did.
He stopped in the shelter of a doorway to light up a smoke out of the rain. Looking up, he caught sight of a young girl in the lighted window of one of the flats. She was holding something up to her mouth, something that gleamed silver... As Constantine watched, the flute dropped from her hands as she clutched at her throat, struggling for breath. "Oh for fuck's sake..." he growled, casting aside the soggy cigarette. He was going to flense someone for this. "Oi, sunshine!" he shouted out to the surrounding darkness. "You want my fucking attention, you've bloody well got it!"
There was no reply but the dripping of rainwater, the sudden barking of a half-dozen bored dogs, and a drunken torrent of abuse. Over in the flat, an older couple had rushed in and were trying to help the girl, obviously their daughter. The man was on the phone, obviously to the ambulance. Even as he watched, Constantine could see his face crumple, looking down at his child.
Sod this. Constantine turned and headed down the alleyway.
*
Thank Christ for Chinese grocers - twenty years ago he would have had to wait for half this stuff to come in the mail, but these days he could nick down to Wong's and pick up any number of spell components. Of course, Wong sold this stuff as soup ingredients or aphrodisiacs, but that didn't matter. Crumbling the last of the dried frog into a chipped tea mug, he stirred the mixture around with his finger, muttering the requisite mumbo-jumbo. He'd cleared a space on the floor by kicking the empty pizza boxes and fag packets and lager cans into the corners, and now he used the space to sprinkle the contents of the cup into two circles. One for him and one for whichever bastard was trying to get his attention.
He hated resorting to these sort of dramatics but it wasn't like he'd been given a lot of choice.
"All right you bastard, let's see what needs my attention so badly," he muttered, before casting the summoning spell. It was just a string of bad Latin really, but it worked because he wanted it to work, like most of the rest of the stuff he did. Magic was a matter of front, after all.
Still, the flash and the bang and the puff of noisome smoke weren't usual. Or perhaps he should have expected it, given the day he'd had. Waving a hand in front of his face to dispel the fog, he looked into the circle for the pain in his arse.
It was a flute. A rather gaudy, tacky-looking flute in gold rather than the usual silver. It looked rather clunky, too thick to be a proper flute. Constantine blinked at it for a few moments, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
The flute blinked back.
Two eyes opened above the mouthpiece and a mouth, little more than a flap, opened below them.
"Hi, Johnny!" it chirped in a squeaky, high-pitched cartoon voice.
Constantine finally found his voice. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Oh, I don't really have a name. Most people call me the talking flute, but that's really more of a description." The thing sounded like Jimminy Cricket. "Sorry about the dramatics, but I really wanted to meet you, Johnny."
"All right, enough of the Johnny shite or I'll give you to that bloke who plays flute with his arse." Constantine found his hands already occupied with the act of lighting up a smoke without his conscious brain getting involved. "What did you think you'd get from me, that you had to kill three people to get my attention?"
"Four, actually, but the first one got taken away before you came home. You do know it's not good for you to stay up so late, don't you Johnny?" The flute continued to watch him with those beady little eyes. "And smoking kills."
"Not until the First Three figure out which of them gets my soul, it doesn't," Constantine replied, mind working furiously to figure out who the fourth might have been. It struck him he hadn't heard the brat down the hall playing on that bloody harmonica lately. "And you haven't answered my question, Sparky."
"Sparky! Ooh, I like that! Thank you, Johnny - not even little Jimmy gave me such a nice name," the flute burbled. Either it really had the intelligence of an American cheerleader with a lobotomy, or it was trying to wind him up. "I just know we're going to be the best of friends! We'll have adventures and meet all sorts of people..."
"And kill 'em?" Constantine replied, arching an eyebrow but noting the name 'Jimmy'. Talking flute, kid called Jimmy... it was ringing vague bells.
"Only if they deserve it!" the flute protested. "Or if you ask me to! Because there's some people that really deserve to die, don't they?"
"Like buskers and kids with no musical talent?"
The flute beamed. "Exactly! I just hate bad music, don't you? And witches. Witches are nasty. I don't like talking trees much either." A red gleam entered its eyes for a moment. "Oh, Johnny, we're going to have so much fun!"
All right, enough was enough. "Somehow I don't think so, Sparky. John Constantine doesn't do sidekicks and he certainly doesn't do chirpy little talking flutes with a homicidal streak. So, you're going to have to resurrect your kiddies tv glory days with someone else."
The flute was silent for a long moment. "Aw, gee Johnny, I'm really sorry to hear that, I really am. I really like you." That red gleam reappeared. "I hate that I'm going to have to kill you now."
"One problem, sunshine - binding circle. I can do whatever I like. Like send you back to whatever circle of hell spawned you in the first place." Constantine smirked and clicked his fingers. This time there was no flash of light or puff of smoke - one second the flute was there, the next it wasn't. Just a circle of mashed-up dried bits and pieces that he was going to clean up.
"I always did hate that fucking show," he muttered to himself.
***
And for those playing at home, guess the crossover. *eg* Dex and Lise, you're exempt 'cause I already told you. ;)
*hmms* Ending's a bit weak, but Hellblazer stories have a habit of turning Massive on me so I cut it off.
Fandom: Hellblazer.
Rating: PG-13 for bad words and dead people.
Summary: Someone is trying to send John Constantine a message. Using wind instruments.
This one's technically a crossover, although I'm not sure if people will pick up where the other half comes from. ;)
***
There was a dead man on his doorstop.
John Constantine stiffened, then sighed and relaxed. No-one he knew, at least. And no obvious signs of demonic or angelic interference, either - at first glance it seemed the man was just another homeless bloke, dead of cold or illness or drink or maybe all three. A second glance was confirming the assumptions of the first when Constantine realised that underneath the heavy, dirty coat, the man was wearing evening dress. Snowy white shirt, crisp black pants and jacket, shiny shoes only a little scuffed. Not what you'd expect the homeless to be wearing, even in the East End. No wallet - that could have gone at any time - but in his jacket pocket was a slim leather case that revealed, when opened, a piccolo.
"Bollocks," Constantine said to himself. It was going to be one of the weird ones. Well, to hell with it - none of his business.
He went back inside to call the police. Anonymously, of course.
*
It was raining when he finally was able to go out. The police had been there for hours with their forensic types and the plods doing crowd control. They'd knocked on his door, asked the usual questions about seeing or hearing anything and he'd answered honestly - he hadn't heard or seen a thing. But the whole dog and pony show had blocked his front door for far too much time and in his fridge there was only a couple of cans of lager and some left over curry. From last Tuesday. So it was a more foul-tempered than usual Constantine that squelched his way to the pub, collar turned up against the wind.
There was a busker on the way, a sad and sorry man playing Irish folk tunes on a tin whistle. Constantine barely restrained the urge to kick over his hat.
"'Ere, John, heard you had a bit of excitement on your street this morning. That geezer from the London Symphony? Turning up dead? News says the old Bill is baffled."
Constantine grunted in response to the barman's chatter and slapped down five quid. "A pint, Terry." His tone pretty much covered the usual snipes about not being drawn into Terry's take on current events. Terry took the hint and drew the pint without further comment before going off to bend some other punter's ear. Taking himself to his usual corner, Constantine pulled the Observer out of his pocket and unfolded it, settling down for a quiet hour or two. Maybe more, if he did the crossword. He was just lifting the glass to his lips when someone jostled his elbow.
"Oi, watch it!" he protested, barely avoiding spilling beer all over himself. Then he realised the jostler was the same busker from outside and he wasn't jostling so much as slumping forward, face chalk-white... Constantine cursed as his arms were suddenly full of unconscious tin-whistle player and he lowered the man as gently as he could (which wasn't really since the the man outweighed him by several stones) and checked his pulse. Make that dead tin-whistle player.
"Get an ambulance," he called over to Terry, all the while trying to figure out how to slip away without drawing too much attention. Two bodies was a pattern and he was the common denominator. Even the worthies down at the local nick could put that together and decide to bring him in.
"Terry?" he called quietly as the barman finished making the call to the ambulance. "I've got things planned and this is really going to bollocks it up. How much to slip out the back and have been elsewhere when the plods show?"
*
A hundred quid. A hundred fucking quid. Constantine ground his teeth as he splashed through the rain-soaked back streets. Terry always had been a canny businessman and he knew a win-win situation when he saw it. But still, a hundred quid? Man needed reminding of his place in the world order, so he did.
He stopped in the shelter of a doorway to light up a smoke out of the rain. Looking up, he caught sight of a young girl in the lighted window of one of the flats. She was holding something up to her mouth, something that gleamed silver... As Constantine watched, the flute dropped from her hands as she clutched at her throat, struggling for breath. "Oh for fuck's sake..." he growled, casting aside the soggy cigarette. He was going to flense someone for this. "Oi, sunshine!" he shouted out to the surrounding darkness. "You want my fucking attention, you've bloody well got it!"
There was no reply but the dripping of rainwater, the sudden barking of a half-dozen bored dogs, and a drunken torrent of abuse. Over in the flat, an older couple had rushed in and were trying to help the girl, obviously their daughter. The man was on the phone, obviously to the ambulance. Even as he watched, Constantine could see his face crumple, looking down at his child.
Sod this. Constantine turned and headed down the alleyway.
*
Thank Christ for Chinese grocers - twenty years ago he would have had to wait for half this stuff to come in the mail, but these days he could nick down to Wong's and pick up any number of spell components. Of course, Wong sold this stuff as soup ingredients or aphrodisiacs, but that didn't matter. Crumbling the last of the dried frog into a chipped tea mug, he stirred the mixture around with his finger, muttering the requisite mumbo-jumbo. He'd cleared a space on the floor by kicking the empty pizza boxes and fag packets and lager cans into the corners, and now he used the space to sprinkle the contents of the cup into two circles. One for him and one for whichever bastard was trying to get his attention.
He hated resorting to these sort of dramatics but it wasn't like he'd been given a lot of choice.
"All right you bastard, let's see what needs my attention so badly," he muttered, before casting the summoning spell. It was just a string of bad Latin really, but it worked because he wanted it to work, like most of the rest of the stuff he did. Magic was a matter of front, after all.
Still, the flash and the bang and the puff of noisome smoke weren't usual. Or perhaps he should have expected it, given the day he'd had. Waving a hand in front of his face to dispel the fog, he looked into the circle for the pain in his arse.
It was a flute. A rather gaudy, tacky-looking flute in gold rather than the usual silver. It looked rather clunky, too thick to be a proper flute. Constantine blinked at it for a few moments, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.
The flute blinked back.
Two eyes opened above the mouthpiece and a mouth, little more than a flap, opened below them.
"Hi, Johnny!" it chirped in a squeaky, high-pitched cartoon voice.
Constantine finally found his voice. "Who the fuck are you?"
"Oh, I don't really have a name. Most people call me the talking flute, but that's really more of a description." The thing sounded like Jimminy Cricket. "Sorry about the dramatics, but I really wanted to meet you, Johnny."
"All right, enough of the Johnny shite or I'll give you to that bloke who plays flute with his arse." Constantine found his hands already occupied with the act of lighting up a smoke without his conscious brain getting involved. "What did you think you'd get from me, that you had to kill three people to get my attention?"
"Four, actually, but the first one got taken away before you came home. You do know it's not good for you to stay up so late, don't you Johnny?" The flute continued to watch him with those beady little eyes. "And smoking kills."
"Not until the First Three figure out which of them gets my soul, it doesn't," Constantine replied, mind working furiously to figure out who the fourth might have been. It struck him he hadn't heard the brat down the hall playing on that bloody harmonica lately. "And you haven't answered my question, Sparky."
"Sparky! Ooh, I like that! Thank you, Johnny - not even little Jimmy gave me such a nice name," the flute burbled. Either it really had the intelligence of an American cheerleader with a lobotomy, or it was trying to wind him up. "I just know we're going to be the best of friends! We'll have adventures and meet all sorts of people..."
"And kill 'em?" Constantine replied, arching an eyebrow but noting the name 'Jimmy'. Talking flute, kid called Jimmy... it was ringing vague bells.
"Only if they deserve it!" the flute protested. "Or if you ask me to! Because there's some people that really deserve to die, don't they?"
"Like buskers and kids with no musical talent?"
The flute beamed. "Exactly! I just hate bad music, don't you? And witches. Witches are nasty. I don't like talking trees much either." A red gleam entered its eyes for a moment. "Oh, Johnny, we're going to have so much fun!"
All right, enough was enough. "Somehow I don't think so, Sparky. John Constantine doesn't do sidekicks and he certainly doesn't do chirpy little talking flutes with a homicidal streak. So, you're going to have to resurrect your kiddies tv glory days with someone else."
The flute was silent for a long moment. "Aw, gee Johnny, I'm really sorry to hear that, I really am. I really like you." That red gleam reappeared. "I hate that I'm going to have to kill you now."
"One problem, sunshine - binding circle. I can do whatever I like. Like send you back to whatever circle of hell spawned you in the first place." Constantine smirked and clicked his fingers. This time there was no flash of light or puff of smoke - one second the flute was there, the next it wasn't. Just a circle of mashed-up dried bits and pieces that he was going to clean up.
"I always did hate that fucking show," he muttered to himself.
***
And for those playing at home, guess the crossover. *eg* Dex and Lise, you're exempt 'cause I already told you. ;)
*hmms* Ending's a bit weak, but Hellblazer stories have a habit of turning Massive on me so I cut it off.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-11-16 10:06 pm (UTC)Crazy psychedlic ... ... whatevers! Dragon-man... things.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-16 10:32 pm (UTC)Marvelous, Rossi! I bow before your creative genius!
Aiiyaa-hee what a way to be introduced to the Hellblazer universe...
Date: 2005-11-16 11:06 pm (UTC)... Are ...
... Sick ...
And it's an honor to know 'ye.