SPN FIC - Journey (prologue)
For those of you who like reading things in small, manageable chunks: here it is - my SPN novel, one bit at a time.
The whole thing is 114,000 words, so reading it is an undertaking, definitely. But I hope you'll give it a try. This section is the Prologue -- the PIP section. No Winchesters to be found, but it sets up the action. The language is rough. The situation is rough.
The story is finished, so if you'll bear with me over the course of a few days, I'll get the whole thing posted. As always, feedback is appreciated.
Music: "96 Tears," by ? and the Mysterians. The Big Bad likes oldies. Which brings me to the disclaimer: copyrights and trademarks belong to the respective talented people. This is a work of fanfic, and no profit is being made.
Hope you enjoy the trip.
JOURNEY
By Carol Davis
Prologue
“Down there? You sure?”
“I’m sure,” the guy said.
The kid heaved a shrug and took another long suck of the Maxi-Cola the guy had bought him at Tony’s Burger a few minutes ago. “Don’t make no difference to me,” he commented over his shoulder. “But there’s rats and shit in there, ya know.”
“I know.”
You’re so fulla shit, man. Where you seen a rat before? On the poison box?
Come to think of it, the guy had probably never even seen a box of rat poison, let alone an actual rat. Guy like that. Probably’d never ever been inside a store where they sold rat poison.
He’d looked at the guy’s hands back there at Tony’s, when he’d paid for the cola and the burger and fries. He had a manicure, for fuck’s sake. Not the first manicure the kid had ever seen on a guy, but down here in the ass end of Brooklyn, you didn’t get a lot of those fancy types.
What the hell you doin’ here, man? Go on back over the bridge, make a phone call and get yourself somethin’ pretty.
Somethin’…
The guy was smiling at him, and there was something in it that tickled a shiver up underneath the dribbles of sweat on the kid’s skinny back.
“Something wrong?” the guy asked.
Somebody just walked on my grave, said a voice in the kid’s head.
The suddenness of the thought made the kid gag on his mouthful of soda. It went spraying out onto the pavement, mixing in with the runoff from the overstuffed Dumpster leaning against the brick rear wall of Two Dragons. The kid went on coughing until his nose ran, then it started to subside. He took another sip of his drink to soothe his throat and streaked the back of his other hand across his nose to wipe away the snot. Something white appeared near his face, but he had to blink a couple of times to make his eyes stop watering enough to make it out: a handkerchief. The guy was holding it out as if the snot and the stink from the Dumpster and the puddle of piss-and-garbage the kid had missed stepping in by about six inches mattered to him not one bit.
Confused for no reason he could name, the kid stood there with the big damp yellow paper cup in his right hand and his left hand clenched and sticky with mucus. What the fuck, he thought tiredly. Go away, man. Keep your money. Just go away.
“You all right?” the guy asked mildly.
The kid blinked at him. I’m eight kinds of fuckin’ fabulous. Asshole. “Yuh,” he said.
Somebody turned on a radio or a boom box or something, kinda not far away, and some funky old song crept down the alley toward them. The guy, who had opened his mouth to say something, tilted his head and listened, and the smile that hadn’t left his face turned a little nostalgic and a little less creepy. “Question Mark and the Mysterians,” he said.
“What?”
“They were a - a band. Back in the day.”
The guy’s gaze zeroed in on the kid and stayed there for a minute. He seemed to make up his mind about something, then his hand dipped into his pocket and came back out with his wallet. The kid had had a good look at the wallet back at Tony’s, and in the dim, greasy light of the alley, got another good look now. It was full: more than a dozen chunks of plastic and a big wad of bills. Unless the bills were all small, the guy had some serious cash in there. Suddenly solemn, the guy fingered through the money until he found one particular bill, pulled it out and extended it to the kid.
“That’s a hundred bucks,” the kid said.
“I know.”
“You’re gonna give me a hundred bucks to blow you.”
The guy didn’t say anything, just stood there with the bill stuck between two fingers. The kid started to reach for it, then stopped.
“What’s the matter?” the guy asked.
“Nothin’,” the kid said, barely more than a whisper.
The voice in his head went shrill, and he felt high for a second, a kind of wild, just-jumped-off-a-cliff high, even though…had he? No, didn’t think so, hadn’t for a couple days now. Sunday? Yeah, maybe Sunday. You’re gonna pay me a hundred bucks to suck your dick, the voice squealed. You crazy motherfucker.
What’re you DOIN’ here??
Huh?
What’re you…
“You’re hyperventilating,” the guy said.
The kid had a vague idea what that was, and maybe the guy was right, maybe it was too much oxygen that was making the world spin. And making the voice in his head argue with itself. The voice in his head that was the whole friggin’ reason things had gone bad with Ma and he was out here in the dark instead of…
Then, all of a sudden, the craziness stopped.
He caught his breath in a big hiccup and the alley was just an alley and the guy was just a guy, one of those nightcrawler guys who worked on the hundredth floor of some building over there at the other end of the bridge in Manhattan and had power lunches and lived in a condo that was all glass and cost a million bucks. Had a wife who’d had a nose job and a boob job and a couple kids and that Porsche he’d pulled up to Tony’s in and maybe a couple other cars and was banging his secretary on the side. Wasn’t a lot of those coming over here to the ass end of Brooklyn, but once in a while there was one, wanting to get dirty.
The kid’s hand shot out and caught the handkerchief and the hundred-dollar-bill in one grab.
The guy grinned at him, like he was proud. Like the pervert son-of-a-bitch wanted to pat him on the head.
“You a dancing man, Stan?” the guy inquired.
The kid’s eyes narrowed. “Jack. My name’s Jack.”
“Is it?”
Thoughts spun in the kid’s head. Do you know me? You been following me? How… Yeah - how would the guy know him? He’d been Jack, just Jack, for almost three years now. Stanley John Curtis was just words on a piece of paper.
The guy’s head moved a little, in time with the music. “It’s a classic,” he explained. “One of my favorites.”
“Yeah,” the kid said. “Whatever.”
“’…But watch out now,” the guy murmured. “’I’m gonna get there. We’ll be together, for just a little while…’” He stopped then and took a long look at the kid’s expression. “You want to get this over with. All right, then.” His hand came toward the kid, but with a shudder the kid avoided it and moved a step further on down the alley. Behind him, he could hear the guy go on singing, softly, just loud enough for the words to scratch at the back of the kid’s head.
…For just a little while
And then I’m gonna put you
Way down here
And you’ll start cryin’
Ninety-six tears…
Jack turned a little and looked back. Gettin’ like Babykay, he thought. Scared of every fuckin’ thing.
‘Cause if the guy wasn’t just a guy, then what was he? The boogeyman?
That made Jack snort softly to himself as he went on walking. Dude was just a guy, real soft-spoken. You had to watch out for that type sometimes, because sometimes they liked it a little rough - liked to give a little rough. But it was nothing Jack hadn’t dealt with before, and now that he had a meal in him, he could run if he needed to.
Might have to, because he sure didn’t need another set of teeth marks like he’d gotten from that guy a couple months ago, who said “doggie” but didn’t mean what Jack thought.
Soft-spoken. Yeah. Bunch of freaks, Jack thought and sighed.
The door to the right of the loading dock was unlocked, as Jack had known it would be. He held it open with his free hand and let the guy follow him in.
A couple years back, before the Torini Brothers had shut the place down, he’d spent some time standing on the far side of the parking lot, watching the big white refrigerated trucks load and unload their cargo. They’d seemed to do a pretty good business here, judging by the number of trucks that came and went, but a lot of companies that seemed to do okay at this end of town had been open and busy one day and abandoned the next. Nobody had moved into the building after the meat packers left, except for a bunch of homeless who holed up in here over the winter. Any kind of shelter, even where you had things crawling over you in the dark, was better than sleeping out in the cold during a Brooklyn winter, but after the weather turned even the homeless had moved on. In the faint grayish skim of light that fought its way in through the broken windows Jack could see the debris they’d left behind: wads of piss-stained blanket, chunks of cardboard, old newspapers, broken bottles. In the back, sitting in black shadows, he could see the Torinis’ old conveyor belt and above it the chain studded with rusted steel hooks.
Weird… The music seemed to be coming from somewhere in here now, not from back up the alley. But there was no electricity turned on in here, no place to plug in a boom box. It was kind of loud now, too, in ways that made Jack’s head start to ache.
Take his wallet, the voice in his head told him. Throw the cup in his face, grab his wallet, and run.
He looked: the wallet had disappeared back into the guy’s pocket. You can get it, the voice insisted.
The guy’s hand drifted toward his fly.
Fuck this, Jack thought. You got the hundred bucks. As if the voice belonged to somebody standing a couple steps away - somebody he didn’t particularly like - he jammed the money and the handkerchief into the frayed pocket of his jeans and looked the guy in the eye.
What the…
It was a trick of the light. Had to be. A trick of the just-enough-to-see-your-hands-in-front-of-your-face, gray, greasy light.
What…
All of a sudden there was somebody standing beside him, a couple paces away. Jack swung in that direction, staring hard into the shadows. And found no one. When he jerked his head back to look at the guy, he could still see…
His eyes are…
Jeeeee…sus…
“I -” he wheezed. “I don’wanna -”
“Are you afraid, Stanley? Oh, that’s right - you prefer ‘Jack.’ It’s ‘Jack’ to your friends, right?”
Hot liquid dribbled down the inside of Jack’s left thigh.
Somehow, without moving, the guy was closer to him, less than arm’s reach. His hand came up and brushed gently, lightly, against Jack’s cheek. “It’s going to be all right, Jack,” the guy said softly. “You can keep the hundred dollars, for what little it matters. And you don’t need to ‘do the deed,’ as they used to say. Or do they still? I lose track sometimes.”
Jack’s teeth clamped down on his lower lip and went right through. He barely felt the blood begin to dribble down over his chin.
“Your mother’s waiting for you, Jack. Did you know that?”
“My -”
“It won’t hurt for very long. And then you’ll be with her. No more hustling. No more digging around for food, like a dog.”
Tears overflowed both of Jack’s eyes.
“Nooooo,” he whispered.
“Oh, now, Jack,” the guy crooned. “I make you an offer that’s better than anything you’ve been offered in a very long time, and you turn me down? You can give up this life, Jack. You can give up this body that you’ve mistreated so diligently.” The guy’s finger hooked in the neck of Jack’s t-shirt and tugged it down far enough to reveal the edges of the tattoo that bloomed over his collarbone. “This shell, this temple you’ve abused six ways to Sunday since the night your mother sliced her wrists open and drowned herself in the bathtub. I’m offering you the chance to rewind things, my boy, and go back to the beginning. Sit down with your beloved mother and discuss the many, many ways the two of you screwed things up.”
“Leggo,” Jack whined. “Leggo me.”
Instead, the guy’s fingers knotted in Jack’s t-shirt and somehow used it to lift him up so that his sneakered feet dangled uselessly six inches above the concrete floor.
“Or would you rather sink down onto your knees and take my cock into your throat? Would you? Is that a life, Jack? Is it?”
“Le -”
Tears and blood and snot were oozing together on Jack’s chin and dripping off onto his shirt and the cuff of the guy’s fancy jacket. Abruptly the guy disengaged his hand and let Jack drop into a mewling heap on the floor. “Come on, Jack,” he taunted. “Is this your choice?” His hand found Jack’s collar again and yanked him up, pulled him close, so that the kid’s face was pressed against his groin.
With a small burst of strength Jack snapped himself free and scrabbled backwards on the concrete. “You’re crazy,” he squealed. “You…go…”
“No, Jack,” said the guy. “You go.”
Once more he grabbed hold of the boy, hoisted him into the air, and strode across the floor to the conveyor belt.
“Think clearly, Jack,” he instructed.
Jack stared at him, unable to breathe, unable to blink.
“Think. I want this to be very clear in your mind. Tell yourself: I have fucked this up.”
The rusty hooks dangling in a long row over the conveyor belt were a good couple of feet beyond the guy’s reach. But somehow, in a way Jack would not have been unable to explain even if he had been able to think clearly, the guy’s reach got longer, and with a small oof of an exhale, he lifted Jack another few inches and impaled him through the torso on one of the hooks.
Jack let out a small squeak that was really more surprise than pain and looked down at the point of the hook protruding from his chest.
“What did you say?” the guy asked.
“Enh,” Jack whimpered.
He could still hear the music. It seemed to grow louder. It seemed to grow alive.
The guy tipped his head and smiled, humming along for a few bars. “’Ninety-six tears,’” he whispered.
The music became an enormous thing, filling the black, abandoned loading dock of Torini Brothers Wholesale Meats and spilling out into the alley, down past the Chinese restaurant, out into the street toward the parking lot of Tony’s Burger, where ten minutes ago the former Stanley John Curtis had polished off a cheeseburger and fries.
Jack’s lips formed one more word as the music pounded at his eardrums. “Nooooo,” he murmured.
The echo of the music, there in the darkness, lasted for three or four seconds after he died.
Chapter 1 is here: http://ficwriter1966.livejournal.com/10020.html#cutid1