All you sinners...
Gotham isn't a city to talk to. Probably what made Constantine anxious about taking residence there. London you could talk to. It was a proper kind of horrible, a warm, friendly kind of piss-take. Havin' a bad night, mate? Here, have a miserable dribble of rain down your back. It was a mean bugger of a town but once it'd had a few it was happy to talk with you and help you break a window or two. Sometimes it got a feeling like it should clean up its act and get respectable but even then you could usually talk it down.
John Constantine didn't realize how much he missed that.
The American port city, by contrast, wasn't a big, working-class bloke mourning a lost youth. It was, under its veneer of concrete, glass and hypodermic needles, covered in chitin, clicking away its inscrutible machine-insect sounds to itself while it snapped itself into new shapes. The smoke was a stranger kind of greasy and the bricks cracked in patterns that were tantalizingly close to language that Constantine kept wanting to just dive into them and see what the alien presence was on about. But he knew he'd never understand it.
He was a part of London, after all. The pus that festered in its acne, gathering up all the grease and pushing it out of the system. Gotham just made royal jelly and gave birth to bats and faceless things that lurked in alleys.
Steeped in this much Gotham--generation after generation, if memory served--small wonder that rich wanker became like Gotham itself. Though, the magician grudgingly admitted, the better part of it. Covered in a hard shell and almost mindlessly driven, attributes usually belonging to ants applied to humans.
He'd studied with a magician who said that insects, if they ever understood just what the whole world was like, would long ago have taken it over.
Here was where one of the ghosts should have jumped in. Chimed in with something ugly in the back of his head. Driving guilt like a spike into his spine and walked him around like a bloody show dog. The quiet under the surface was deafening.
He wanted to go find Zee. She new Gotham better than he did, even if she was smart enough to live in a town like San Francisco, where you could understand what was going on underneath.
Wanted to, but for all they'd at least started working things out, he had to wonder what it meant.
How long it was going to last.
He pulled his hand back from the maze of cracks in the bricks behind his new favourite Gotham dive and looked up at the looming Gotham buildings, like the walls of a Venus flytrap ready to close in on everyone inside, an impossible insect-resin machine built for unfathomable reasons, and he lit up another cigarette, biting back the mad, desperate, cleansing laughter in the back of his throat with the taste of smoke, mortality and self-destruction. Better way to center yourself. Drew loads less attention.
He wondered if he should talk to Wayne. See how the kid was doing. But that might be a bit close to revealing a secret identity and besides, he didn't think the bus lines went out that far. And even outside of Gotham proper, he had a vague notion that a place like stately Wayne Manor might be just more insect resin and click-click-clicking.
A park. He needed to find a park. Something with water and maybe some bloody ducks. Everything in this bloody town was turning into bug-feet under his eyelids and he could swear that homeless guy had been on the other side of the street when last he looked.
He dropped a bill the guy's way. He was a part of The System, after all. Part of Gotham in a way he'd never be and it was a stupid magician, indeed, who didn't leave a small offering now and again to the local gods or their avatars.
"S'cuse us, mate," he said, dropping to a crouch as the man tucked the bill into the layers and layers of clothes he was wearing to fend off the cold that was surely coming.
"Yeh?"
"Lookin' for a park or someplace to sit down. You know anything?"
"Yeh," repeated the man, gesturing to the left, "That way four blocks, take a right and you'll see it."
"Cheers," said Constantine, holding his mostly-full pack of Silk Cut out to the man. "Smoke?"
"Thanks," the man said, "Got a light?"
John nodded handed the man one of his lighters. The man thanked him again and John headed off to the left.
And when he arrived, the park felt alien, too.
But at least there were ducks.
John Constantine didn't realize how much he missed that.
The American port city, by contrast, wasn't a big, working-class bloke mourning a lost youth. It was, under its veneer of concrete, glass and hypodermic needles, covered in chitin, clicking away its inscrutible machine-insect sounds to itself while it snapped itself into new shapes. The smoke was a stranger kind of greasy and the bricks cracked in patterns that were tantalizingly close to language that Constantine kept wanting to just dive into them and see what the alien presence was on about. But he knew he'd never understand it.
He was a part of London, after all. The pus that festered in its acne, gathering up all the grease and pushing it out of the system. Gotham just made royal jelly and gave birth to bats and faceless things that lurked in alleys.
Steeped in this much Gotham--generation after generation, if memory served--small wonder that rich wanker became like Gotham itself. Though, the magician grudgingly admitted, the better part of it. Covered in a hard shell and almost mindlessly driven, attributes usually belonging to ants applied to humans.
He'd studied with a magician who said that insects, if they ever understood just what the whole world was like, would long ago have taken it over.
Here was where one of the ghosts should have jumped in. Chimed in with something ugly in the back of his head. Driving guilt like a spike into his spine and walked him around like a bloody show dog. The quiet under the surface was deafening.
He wanted to go find Zee. She new Gotham better than he did, even if she was smart enough to live in a town like San Francisco, where you could understand what was going on underneath.
Wanted to, but for all they'd at least started working things out, he had to wonder what it meant.
How long it was going to last.
He pulled his hand back from the maze of cracks in the bricks behind his new favourite Gotham dive and looked up at the looming Gotham buildings, like the walls of a Venus flytrap ready to close in on everyone inside, an impossible insect-resin machine built for unfathomable reasons, and he lit up another cigarette, biting back the mad, desperate, cleansing laughter in the back of his throat with the taste of smoke, mortality and self-destruction. Better way to center yourself. Drew loads less attention.
He wondered if he should talk to Wayne. See how the kid was doing. But that might be a bit close to revealing a secret identity and besides, he didn't think the bus lines went out that far. And even outside of Gotham proper, he had a vague notion that a place like stately Wayne Manor might be just more insect resin and click-click-clicking.
A park. He needed to find a park. Something with water and maybe some bloody ducks. Everything in this bloody town was turning into bug-feet under his eyelids and he could swear that homeless guy had been on the other side of the street when last he looked.
He dropped a bill the guy's way. He was a part of The System, after all. Part of Gotham in a way he'd never be and it was a stupid magician, indeed, who didn't leave a small offering now and again to the local gods or their avatars.
"S'cuse us, mate," he said, dropping to a crouch as the man tucked the bill into the layers and layers of clothes he was wearing to fend off the cold that was surely coming.
"Yeh?"
"Lookin' for a park or someplace to sit down. You know anything?"
"Yeh," repeated the man, gesturing to the left, "That way four blocks, take a right and you'll see it."
"Cheers," said Constantine, holding his mostly-full pack of Silk Cut out to the man. "Smoke?"
"Thanks," the man said, "Got a light?"
John nodded handed the man one of his lighters. The man thanked him again and John headed off to the left.
And when he arrived, the park felt alien, too.
But at least there were ducks.