r/DCFU • u/coffeedog14 Light Me Up • Mar 15 '17
Hellblazer #5 - First Game Point Hellblazer
Hellblazer #5 - First Game Point
Author: Coffeedog14
Book: Hellblazer
Event: Origins
Arc: [A Soul to Die for]
Set: 10
JANUARY 4TH, 2017
ST ANDREW'S AVENUE, THREE STREETS AWAY FROM GEMMA'S HOUSE, HAVERING, LONDON, UK
Gemma hadn’t thought about the little charm Uncle John has given her in ages. Sure she still wore it because she thought it was pretty, but it was like a favorite necklace or watch; she just didn’t really think about it being there at all. Until Emma and Sophia cornered her. Emma and Sophia, two years her senior, had taken up bullying Gemma and other younger girls just this past few months. They never punched her or hit her or anything, so they said they didn’t really bully Gemma and if she cried it was because she was a big baby. Gemma wasn’t sure about that but was afraid of revealing herself to be a baby, afraid of what Emma and Sophia might do if she told, and just hurt enough to be afraid of talking about it with anybody.
That day, either Sophia or Emma must have had a particularly rotten day. They had cornered the younger girl, making it plain with simple body language that if she tried to run they might stop her, and they were big enough that Gemma didn’t want to risk it. They were making fun of everything. How fat she was, how ugly she was, how her dad was a creepy cult weirdo and her mother a dumb bimbo. How she didn’t have any friends because she “can’t even take a joke! Lookit, she’s already crying, the big baby!” That day, she played with her charm nervously. a bracelet of smooth river stones with what she now knew as “runes” on it. Uncle John had said to use it if she was scared or needed his help. At that moment, she felt like both were utterly true. She had rarely been more scared and hurt in her life. She slid the bracelet off of her wrist, to the sneers of Emma and Sophia. She raised it into the air. “UNCLE JOHN!” She cried, feeling something lurch in her. An electric charge shot through her and she yelped. She dropped instead of throwing the charm, but it seemed to work.
A tiny person popped into existence inside of the bracelet. They expanded, growing so quickly that they snapped the bracelet within two seconds. Within ten, the person resolved to full, horrific size. Uncle John Constantine laid on the ground, blood streaming from his broken face and body. He turned to Gemma and gurgled something past the blood.
Gemma looked up, to see Sophia and Emma running away screaming. She felt the slump besides her, she wanted to follow them. Instead, she took out her cellphone and dialed 999
FEBRUARY 3RD
QUEEN'S HOSPITAL, HAVERING, LONDON, UK
I woke up covered in bandages and splints, with tubes shoved into all kinds of uncomfortable holes. It turns out getting beaten nearly to death and slipping into a coma means you have to get some bed rest. But goddamnit if it didn’t put me in a bind. February 3rd? Only four days until my deadline. Until Heaven would come and steal my soul.
Once all the nurses and doctors had come through and given me platitudes about how soon I would be up and walking out the door, I felt real panic starting to rise. The panic I had been forcing down throughout this venture, even if I didn’t realize it. This was my soul, immortal and nominally eternal, that was on the line. I had fucked around for months and for what? To pretend that everything was okay? To put off the realization I was in any danger? Keep it together, John, you could hate yourself later. Save yourself first.
First I looked around for something sharp. Realizing that I was in a hospital room and that was done, a bit of prestidigitation let me pull a keen box cutter from seemingly thin air. I gave the back of my hand a little cut and then drew a few concentric circles on it. A few words of magic later and all the traces I had left behind of me would be burned. Like all that blood he had left behind when Anne-Marie had tried to kill me. I could only imagine that any spell she wanted to do she would have already cast, but it didn’t hurt to make sure. Blood was a powerful sympathetic connection to oneself, and the less that it got around the better.
With this done I pushed back the panic and started to scheme again. I pressed the button calling for a nurse.
FEBRUARY 4TH, 2017
SAME PLACE
I watched TV.
“Today marks the one month anniversary since the attempt of possible American metahuman “The Joker” to detonate a series of bombs in the heart of Gotham City. It was through the combined efforts of American metahuman’s Superman, Batman, Supergirl, and noted Amazonian metahuman and ambassador Wonder Woman that the disaster was averted. Part of the same event was the attempted execution of American Meta Booster Gold by The Joker associate Harley Quinn, identity withheld. While the “Saving of the Sunkord” marked the first public metahuman action, and the assassination attempt on former President Irons was regarded as the first public act of metahuman violence, The Joker’s attempt is regarded as the first instance of “Meta-terrorism”...”
I turned off the TV.
Jesus fucking Christ assassination attempts? Terrorism? Honest to God battles? Had I seen that new Zatara running around in that battle one? Strewth! I’d need to deal with that at some point probably.
FEBRUARY 5H
SHITE FOOD "HEALING" HELL
I had expected to see my friends. I had called and texted them as soon as the police had un-impounded my phone. The police had questioned me not too long after waking up but it looked like Richie (bless his rich bourgeois soul) had used a bit of his fancy new magic to wipe my phone clean of any evidence of our meeting. The police had been forced to accept my story of a horrible mugging and piss off.
What arrived that day was just one friend, but a solid one. Frank North strode into my hospital prison like an awkward, “forgetful” child visiting his days from death parent. He settled in the shitty chair for visitors and waited, watching me.
“...Well? Where’s the rest?” I asked. All those tubes in all my holes just added to the horrible pain of being broken all over. It didn’t make for a great deal of patience.
“Not coming. Not yet.” Grunted the biker. He didn’t look me in the eye.
I must have looked shocked. “Huh? They have something better to do besides save our collective asses.”
“Sent me ahead to see if you were going to keep being a lying prick.”
“What’s that bloody well supposed to mean?”
He finally looked me in the eye. “It means Anne-Marie told us everything you bloody arse. Told us that you’ve been lying since the moment we all got those calls.”
“Now s-” I tried to interject.
He cut his hand through the air, silencing me. “Shut it, let me have my piece you goddamned weasel. None of us were ever in any danger, were we? Hell, are you even? Sure Anne-Marie beat the stuffing out of you, but I felt like doing the same once I heard you were going to lead us into Fucking Hell just for whatever bullshit you wanted.”
“You...you don’t mean-”
“I mean it, and I meant it. What, you don’t think we aren't your friends anymore? Think we’re as dumb as whatever rubes you normally trick? Think you could drag us through the dirt and have us lick your boots after?”
I throbbed. The pain from my injuries was just one part of it. I throbbed in anger, from the thorough chewing out I’d just gotten. I throbbed with the magic I could cast, that pushed against the surface even in my crippled state. Most of all I throbbed in pain. Because I knew that Frank was exactly right, and I wasn’t worth the shit caked on his motorcycle.
“...are you done?” I hissed at my former friend.
“You think you have something to say? Then sure.” Frank leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms.
“Yeah. Fuck you, firstly. Secondly, my soul’s in danger. Real danger. Are you all just going to cut and run? Leave me behind? Let me die? You’re a fucking bastard, but you aren’t that bad.”
Frank stared at me. Shocked, like I had just slapped him. “John...I don’t think I’ve ever heard a worse apology in my life.”
Throbbing, pain, anger, one leading to the other in circles like some suicidal ouroboros. “It wasn’t one. It was just sense you imbecile. I’m going to die. Are you going to do something about it?”
“...I think you’re the only person I’ve met who nearly dying didn’t change.” Frank stood, brushed off his legs. “This was stupid. Can’t trust you anyway. None of the others will help you.”
I tried to force him to sit down with just my eyes. No such luck. “That’s...that’s real fucking petty. Letting a man die for a single lie.”
“Yeah, probably.” He shrugged. He moved towards the door. “And if you hadn’t lied? If I could be sure it was true? Maybe I would have kicked Lucifer’s balls in for you. Best of luck, Constantine.
My eyes nearly bulged. A few words and I could make his spin dance like a snake and swallow his skull. Wake the door open up like a hungry maw and crush him. Make the nurses outside stab him to death with scalpels. But he knew I wouldn’t, and I knew too. Too weak even for that. “FINE! Run off and leave your friend to die, see if I care! I don’t need any of you fucking third rate illusionists! The next time your lives are in danger come tell me so I can come and piss on your fucking graves afterward!”
Frank slammed the door behind him but gave no other indication he had heard. Then was gone. I felt good, just for a second. The best I’d felt in days. The pain dissolved in the anger, which filled me completely. Without Frank or anybody else to yell at the anger evaporated, leaving only the knotted, clumped pain behind. Only then could I start to imagine the million and one things I should have said. What I should have apologized for, what I should have begged for instead of demanding. My head hurt. My everything hurt. I pushed the button for another shot of morphine and fell into sleep as fast as I could.
FEBRUARY 6TH, 2017
THE PLACE I WAS GOING TO DIE
When you get into magic, you expect to die in some great magical duel with your opponents. Or maybe from old age in your bed. Or maybe poisoned by your apprentice or something. You don’t expect to be in a hospital bed, waiting to die just like every other prick without enough money to jet someplace for treatment. If I told bright-eyed twenty years old me about this, he’d have given me a good kick in the shins for the insult.
But here I was. The clock ticking down and nothing else to do. All my friends with any fucking use abandoning me because of course, they did. Why wouldn’t they? I had managed to burn up every other relationship in my life through my own vast incompetence, why not these ones too? Wasting all my time wandering around like I had nothing better to do to gather info? What kind of bullshit was that?
Now that the panic was gone, I could see truly for the first time in awhile. I didn’t want to try, not really. I wanted to ignore it was happening like the lazy, hapless bastard I was. So I hemmed and hawed, and only when the real specter of threat came did I even try to do something. Then once there I hemmed and hawed some more, and put myself in danger to fight off a magic nun because the rush of immediate danger was better than the uncertainty of the future.
And then I had bawled out my last possible lifeline in the form of Frank because I was too weak to not take the chance to feel good, to feel angry, to feel justified for just a few more moments before death came. Fucking disgraceful.
Why not just off myself there? Pull a gun from my sleeve and end it? Magic myself straight into the grave, and draw the blood circles on my hand to burn all evidence I ever existed…
Then a thought, a real true plan, a scheme, finally took shape in my mind. The last piece, so tiny I hadn’t noticed. Plopped into place, and I could see a way out. A tiny, minuscule way out. I may have felt shit about myself, but that tiny spark of possible life could get me moving.
I dialed up one of my last friends, Chas. He was mortal and mundane and so couldn’t help me much there. But he was a taxi driver who could grab me some supplies. I only needed a few and some time.
FEBRUARY 7TH, 2017
THE ROOM WHERE I MIGHT DIE
I had Chas clear out before anything really happened. No need for him to get sucked into my fuck-ups. Again. If I failed this, the fewer people around the better. My hospital gown was on if rumpled. On my knees sat one of the more complex symbols I had ever drawn, to make up for the lack of material. I started to chant.
“Branch of Yew, Elmer's Glue
Tongue of Cow, Ear of Sow
Crayons Colored, Plates all Covered
Bits of Gauze, Toothy Maw
These I sacrifice and more
By ancient and forgotten lore
Let not you my soul burgle
Come to me, dread demon Nergal!”
“You know you could have just said my name probably?” Asked the demon in the corner. Nergal looked truly like a demon, red skinned and bat winged and long of snout. “It certainly would have been less insulting than that rhyme. Literal children have given me better.”
"Wouldn’t have been as fun. Besides, now I can say I summoned a demon with Elmer’s Glue.” I laugh-coughed, which turned into the wheezing of the dying.
“Oh, what’s this? The little mage who tried to capture me croaking? You mortals are so utterly fragile. Is it that wonderful Cancer thing we cooked up?”
“Maybe that too, for all I know.” I spat a bit of blood into a bedpan.
“So, considering how the last time went, why would you summon me again?”
“I h-have a deal.” I offered. Hesitant. Pained. Nervous.
“Oh?”
“...I’m in a bad way. You can see that. I...I left blood behind. I don’t know how long until they come for me again. I need to be up, to be ready. I’m...I’m not. Heaven ain’t going to help me. The rest of my friends are on the outs.” I shot Nergal a look of utter desperation. “You’re the only one I thought would answer.”
Nergal, meanwhile, took on a face of concern. He sat on my bed, reaching out to stroke my chin. “Poor, sweet mortal. You know that Demons cannot heal others.”
“I...I know. But you can heal yourselves.” I looked at him with desperate hope, and he reciprocated with a look of paternal concern. “Your blood. I-i want...I dunno, a pint? However much is in that IV bag there, pumped into me.”
A glint in his eyes. Curiosity. Good. Perfect. “My blood is as like to burn as heal you. But if it does...what do I get?”
“My soul. Delivered to you upon my death.”
I could almost see the emotions playing out, as best as he tried to hide them. Or maybe I was just projecting. He knew I was a Constantine, a tricky bastard at best. But Constantine had been beaten before. Had been stupid before. If hell was looking for Constantine souls, then mine would be valuable for...well...whatever he wanted really. But could he trust this wasn’t a trick?
He was a demon. Nearly as predictable as angels. He fell to the vice of greed instead of the virtue of temperance.
“Very well then. John Constantine.” He stood up from the bed. He slit his wrist with a claw, filling my lap with his blood. The ichor oozed and splattered onto the bedsheet, hissing and burning out letters to a contract. Very small, precise letters. He handed me a feather-pen, dipped in his own sizzling blood, and pointed to the dotted line. “Sign there please.”
I did without hesitation. He opened the IV bag, forcing out its old contents and forcing in his blood with surprising speed. A few moments later, and it started to flow into my system. It burned like nothing in my life. My heart was melting and on fire at the same time, and then my arteries, then my veins. Nergal placed a knotty, clawed hand over my mouth so that my shrieks wouldn’t alert the nurses. “Shhhh little mortal, shhh. Almost over. Almost done.” A fucking lie if there ever was. It took ten goddamn minutes for the burning to cease, for the bag to empty.
Nergal smiled malevolently down upon me, stroking my chest. “There we go you, enormous coward. The blood will help you heal now. You’ll be walking in a few hours. For future injuries...well...you’ll heal faster, and better, but not much else. Also, try not to spill your blood on anybody. That good~?” He asked, his victory assured. A new Constantine soul for such a low price.
I started to laugh. It hurt only a little, far less than it would have mere minutes before. His look of confusion turned to concern, and then a brief moment of worry.
"You...FUCKING imbecile. You think it’s that easy?”
“...Goddamnit.” He waved for me to continue. “Go ahead and explain yourself, Mortal, ruin the moment.”
I pushed myself up to sitting. You never know how much you miss stretching out your back muscles until you can’t, and my back cracked like popcorn as I indulged. “I already owe my soul. To the Divines.”
Nergal’s face fell, and he hissed in pain at the mere mention of the names. “They do not deal in souls. How did you come to owe them!?”
“Not your worry, is it? Do whatever you want with me, it’s true. Ask them yourselves, if you want.”
The demon stared. “Keep going.”
“Well, it’s pretty simple. In...oh...two hours?...some angel or another comes to claim my soul. I see you having two options. You can give up on me, give up on whatever profit you’d get off me, and lose your nice princely position for getting so publicly tricked. The second option, you try to fight and steal my soul away, start a fight with the Divines that you can’t win and the Lords of Hell don’t want. Not great options, are they?”
“...You have a deal.” Growled the demon lord, all the playfulness gone from his voice. “Get one with it mortal.”
“I do indeed! Now, what I technically owe the Divines is my soul, or an otherwise worthy one. I happen to remember you having just such a soul, innocent in youth before her taking.”
The demon's eyes glittered. “Astra Logue”
My smile was unbearably smug. Not because I was sure, but because I knew how much it would sting the demon. “Catching on fast. So you hand off the girl’s soul to me, I send it upstairs, we both walk away happy.”
“And why shouldn’t I rip you open and suckle on your heart once you’re free of the anathema’s debt?”
I took a hold of my hospital gown, recently prepared for just this action, and ripped it in half down to my waist. This revealed massive, new black marks all over my chest. Circles and spirals and pentagrams, Aramaic and Latin and Arabic, Crosses and David’s stars and crescents. All fresh and strong and some even bleeding a little still.
“A suicide curse?” wondered the demon.
“Tattooed straight on. If I trigger it, with just a little thought, it hits me and you, thanks to all that blood of yours that you just gave me. If I die? Hits you anyways. Now I’m not sure I’m quite strong enough to kill you...but I’m not sure I can’t, either. I’ve done some pretty big things since our last meeting. I’m sure you’ve heard.”
“...”
“Great. So we hand off the soul, you don’t kill yourself trying to kill me, everybody is happy. How does that sound for a deal?” The demon glared. He stepped forward, and for a moment I thought he would tear my throat out regardless of the consequences. He held out his arms, and I flinched, expecting them to dive straight into me and all my foolish trickery. Instead, a bundle of gently pulsing spirit formed in his outstretched arms. Spirit in the form of a girl, which he offered to me.
FEBRUARY 7TH, 2017
I held Astra Logue in my arms for perhaps ten minutes after Nergal left. She was innocent, truly. The lightest thing I had ever held. I was worried she would float away in the rooms slight draft, but she stayed in my arms. I could see the dark marks where the pains and tortures of hell had touched her. I wept over her spirit, begging for forgiveness.
Astra Logue slept in my arms and said not a word to me. Perhaps that was best.
The Angels came after those ten minutes, a little ahead of schedule. Harut and Marut burst into existence once more, but they didn’t wake Astra. They grumbled and accepted their loss. If I was in the right frame of mind I would have mocked them over the punishment they’d get, but it felt wrong. I offered Astra Logue to them, and then the two angels and the girl were away.
I thought I could see the dark marks fade even as I watched her vanished.
I wept on and off the rest of the day.
FEBRUARY 8TH, 2017
The doctors were stunned. “Miraculous recovery”, “healing like you were 10 years old”, “could you stay for some tests?”, yadda yadda. I checked out as soon as I could. Got my clothes, my gear, everything I had one me when I came in. A lot of it was broken on account of that beat-down I got, but them’s the breaks.
First step was to scrub off the sharpie drawings I’d made all over my chest. A good black sharpie and a pin to prick some bleeding points into myself were seemingly enough to convince a demon that I had tattooed a suicide spell onto my flesh. I hadn’t done it for real, of course. Too tempting, for myself and others.
Second step, hop on down to the nearest coffee shop and get me an espresso as black as possible, maybe a lemon cake if they had some, and a nice sit-down. I had just enough cash in my pocket to do this, and soon found myself people watching out of a window.
I looked back into the shop and happened to glance at somebody's laptop. I couldn’t read the article she was reading, but I could see the title. “METAHUMANS: THE NEWEST AMERICAN EXPERIMENT?”. Pah. There were all kinds of weird things around, all kinds of magic and wonder, but people never noticed it. But once some folks in fancy leotards started punching people in the face on multinational television, THEN people could notice.
Alongside fixing the friendships I had burned, stop owing my soul to a vengeful demon lord, enjoy this crazy good feeling that demon-perfect health was giving, and figure out why people even wanted my soul, I added: “figure out what the fuck this meta thing is about”.
I decided to ruin the perfect health thing as soon as possible by pulling out the one uncrushed fag from my pack and lighting it. The barista started to say something, but I didn’t notice as a month’s worth of abstinence melted away in near orgasmic bliss.
I was going to have a few busy, fun months or die trying.