Fic: Spring Chickens (gen) - PG13
Prompt: 25 - Little old lady hunters in a beat-up station wagon. Possibly, one of them is named Muriel and wears those littlecat-eyed glasses.
Author: corvidae9
Title: Spring Chickens
Main characters: Muriel and Aggie Morrison, cameo Winchesters
Rating: PG13-ish
Word Count: ~2300
Summary: Muriel and Aggie've been Hunting since before it was capitalized. This? Is old school.
Notes: merrycontrary made me do this (Riiight)(♥!). Also? >.> First! :D
"MURIEL!! YOU HURRY UP, MURIEL, I AM NO SPRING CHICKEN, GIRL!"
The thin, reedy cry carried on the wind along with the stench of something long dead and Muriel punched at the controls of the backhoe affectionately referred to as 'Bertha' with a fingernail that was more yellow than white under its chipped coat of shiny purple polish.
"I'm workin' on it, Aggie darlin'!" Muriel shouted, adjusting her glasses and peering out of the cab at the telltale thump of the metal claw striking and breaking wood. "Thank God for decomposition, that's what I say," she muttered, pulling Bertha back and shutting her off when the aged wood gave way. "Victoria Goff," she said, climbing carefully down. "You are a righteous old bitch and I am--" she grunted as she retrieved a ten-pound bag of rock salt from beside the seat, "--too damn old to be doin' this on account of--"
"MUUURIEL!!" came the reedy voice again.
"Woman, I am workin' as fast as I can!" Muriel shouted in the direction of the thin woman brandishing two giant-size 50 specially-made solid iron circular knitting needles nunchuk-style at a nasty spirit that was trapped very tenuously in an old-fashioned ghostnet. The salt poured easily from the pre-ripped bag, and Muriel went for the gasoline next, emptying the whole container out on account of the half-open coffin needing to go up whole. Lord knew she wasn't young enough to go climbing into graves anymore to get the box all the way ope--
"INCOMIN--OOF" came Aggie's voice once again and this time Muriel's eyes went wide, her hands scrabbling for the huge waterproof matches in the pocket of her coat.
A dark specter, the escaped spirit of Victoria Goff, swirled over Aggie now on the ground. Claws formed, pulling upward for a strike where there ought to be a hand the best one could reckon those things. Muriel struck a match with some measure of desperation and dropped it into the open grave, shouting, "Just die already, you ornery cow!"
The coffin went up just as the spectral claw came slashing down, dissolving around the prone Aggie. Muriel set a hand to her heart and rushed over, her orthopedic shoes steady on the uneven ground, utilitarian carpenter pants and henley not quite as mud-sploshed as Aggie's floral top and polyester pants.
"Don't you bother telling me you're hurt, Aggie May, don't you dare. Know for a fact you're just fine," she muttered loudly enough to be heard over the crackling flames. Muriel finally reached Aggie, and grabbed hold of her shoulder, crouching down as low as she could get to peer at her and inspect for open wounds and whatnot.
Aggie looked up, mud splashed on her clothes, her hat askew and blessedly intact and free from unholy slash marks of any kind. She brandished a knitting needle up at Muriel instead, a splot of mud clinging to her cheek like a huge, dark mole, and grumbled, "Next time, Miss Muriel, me and Bertha've got a date with dirt and you get to handle the ghost wrangling.
Muriel sighed in relief and extended a hand to help her 58-year old baby sister off of the ground, stopping only once she'd wrapped her own bony arms around her. "You've got it, Aggie May," she said, briskly patting her back, relishing the texture of the thick cable sweater under her fingers callused from years of mending and working and Hunting. "Bertha's always liked you best anyway."
###
Gilroy, California - 1973
"Aggie! Aggie!!"
Muriel shoved her glasses further up her nose and continued to bang on the door of the modest home that her baby sister shared with her husband of nearly a year, now gone eerily quiet. As though she hadn't called Muriel three minutes ago, hysterical over...well. Muriel didn't rightly know.
"Agatha May James nee Morrison, you answer this door this instant!"
Nothing. Muriel had never been so scared in her life.
Not even the year she turned six, Aggie three, and their parents were killed in freak housefire, along with their baby sister Samantha. Not when she held little Aggie's hand as they were taken to Aunt Maureen, and not anytime in between.
Muriel kicked the door once, just the way you saw on the television, found that it hurt a lot more than they made it seem, and then kicked it again, shouting Aggie's name as she did. The door gave on the fourth kick with the flat of her foot, and there was... something holding her sister up off of the ground big ol' animal teeth on their way to her neck, and Muriel didn't think twice. She picked up the baseball bat she knew to be hidden in the umbrella stand and whacked it once hard across the shoulderblades. When it looked up, she clocked it across the side of the face. And when it dropped her sister, she just kept hitting it, calling it every swear word in the book until it twitched on the ground and she hit it and hit it until the bat cracked and then she stuck that bat right through that vampire's back because damned if that's not what it was. Not like the Dracula kind, maybe, but something akin to it.
The thing collapsed into a puddle of... well. Ladies shouldn't use words like the ones to describe it, but then, ladies didn't use words like 'cocksucking son of a bitch' either, and yet she'd just finished calling it that and worse while beating the tar out of it.
Aggie was weeping and rocking against the hearth. Muriel didn't want to turn her back on the goo, but she had a sister to look after, and as such, she rushed over, picked Aggie up off of the ground by the elbows and looked her in the eye.
"We're getting out of here - you alright?"
Aggie only threw her arms around Muriel's neck and sobbed, "Muriel. It was Dick. That was Dick you killed and he was trying--"
As in her husband, Dick, whose name had always suited, if not to this extent. Muriel frowned at what was beginning to evaporate into a puddle that looked more like blood, the edges slowly creeping inward.
"Well, damn. Get your purse."
###
Thirty four years ago, the police had arrived at the home of Dick and Aggie James of Gilroy, California, to find a broken bat, a forced door and some overturned furniture, while Aggie sat the very picture of a weepy mess at the station, clinging to her spinster sister for dear life. They declared Dick a Missing Persons case and Aggie a widow one full year later.
By then she'd been on the road with Muriel and her dog, Chief, for coming up on ten months.
###
Turned out the thing that turned Dick had been some sort of near-extinct variant of vampire roaming this green earth. Next time the Morrison sisters met up with their kind, they were far better prepared.
###
These days it took longer to get Bertha hitched up in her trailer. Still, they couldn't very well dig up graves on their own and so they weren't about to travel without her. Besides, once the old girl was situated, their souped-up, artfully dented wagon could handle hauling her around with ease. And she was like family.
They drove up the road a bit and stopped at the first greasy spoon they found, intent on a decent meal they could enjoy before heading back to the cheesy motel they were staying in, no doubt with leftovers in hand. Muriel was singing, "Down on the corner-- out in the street" under her breath, tapping the rhythm on the steering wheel along with CCR coming from the stereo --cd/mp3 player, don't you know-- while Aggie stared out the passenger side window.
"It ever occur to you that we're too damn old to be doing this?" asked Aggie as they pulled up and parked their car in the nearest truck/trailer spot, next to a classic Impala that was sweet to behold and reminded Muriel of their Aunt Maureen's first car.
"Hell yes. Everyday," said Muriel with a sigh cutting the ignition and slumping into her seat. She turned a smile that had been their ticket into a lot of places women would never have gone thirty years ago, reaching up to wipe errant mud from Aggie's cheek. "Then I remember there's a lot of shit out there that needs killin'. So I don't worry about it."
Aggie laughed and flipped the mirror down to examine her face. "Gonna come a day when these old bones ain't gonna cooperate."
"Bah," grumped Muriel, climbing out of the wagon and waiting for Aggie to do the same before setting the automatic lock. "We'll get us a couple of young, strong boys to do the dirty work for us. Bonus is we get to watch 'em bend over and dig."
Scandalized, Aggie smacked Muriel on the forearm as she rounded the front of the wagon.
"Muriel!"
"Don't you play the innocent with me, miss," said Muriel, taking her elbow. "Known you a long while."
Two young men emerged from the diner headed in their direction, and Muriel grinned again, patting her braided and bunned hair. "Boys like those'd do, I suspect."
Aggie laughed again. "I will never prevail upon your lack of decency." But Muriel was listening carefully to their murmured conversation.
"No you won't," she said with an exasperated sigh, pausing to look at Aggie for no good reason, a shift of her eyes explaining why, and after thirty four years, Aggie caught it easily. Muriel fussed with the collar of Aggie's sweater for another minute or so, muttering, "Honestly," for effect before breaking into a wide grin, apparently having heard exactly what she was waiting for.
"Boys," she called out to the two men speaking in urgent stage whispers over the hood of the Impala. As one they turned to face her and Aggie.
The boy with the shorter hair at the driver's side door immediately snapped to and said, "Ma'am?"
"Don't you worry about the Dark Lady of Chesterton. Aggie and I took care of her just now."
The boys looked at each other and then back, and Muriel could feel Aggie giggling against her shoulder.
"'Msorry?" said the driverside boy. Muriel adjusted her glasses calmly and repeated herself.
"You heard me. Victoria Goff. Salted and burned her wrinkly ass ten miles down the road at the Chesterton Penitents Cemetary, plot 147. And if you don't want locals thinking you're touched in the head, y'may want to keep it down next time you're plotting a Hunt in a parking lot."
The taller boy snorted a laugh and looked down, the driverside boy looked as though someone'd grabbed his ass and called him Nancy. Tell the truth if she hadn't been busy eavesdropping, Muriel might've tried it when he'd passed her by. He nodded, looking as though disbelief and respect for his elders were fighting an impossible war in his head and Muriel approved. Somebody'd raised that boy right.
"Um. Appreciate that, ma'am," he finally said with a single grave nod. "We'll keep that in mind."
"You do that, boy. And tell Ellen the Morrison sisters send their regards the next time you see her, you hear?"
"You know Ellen?" the taller boy finally spoke up.
"Hell yes," said Muriel with her own decisive nod. "Knew her back when she was a little thing fresh offa hanging from her mama's gunbelt. Couldn't have been older than you boys."
Both boys grinned at that. Little Ellen was gonna have her head for that, no doubt.
"You go on now, get," she said with a shooing motion. "Hear talk of a Wendigo two counties over and Aggie and me're too old for traipsin' through the woods with flamethrowers. Over Littleboro way. Check in at the hardware store and tell Evie that you're there about the rodent problem. She'll fill you in. Pretty girl, too. You treat her right."
The shorthaired boy finally gave in to the impulse to stare open-mouthed, and the taller boy flashed a grin that was well nigh blinding. Good lord, what Muriel wouldn't give to be thirty years younger.
"Yes ma'am," he said. "Evie at the hardware store. Thanks."
Muriel offered up a little wave. "Good luck boys. You take care." Aggie did the same, echoing Muriel's sentiment.
The old car purred to life as Muriel held the door open for her sister, the gravel crunching under her tires by the time Aggie's head suddenly shot up.
"Those boys remind you of anyone?"
Both women grinned and said simultaneously, "Johnny boy," and both giggled like schoolgirls as they took a seat.
"Hasn't been that bad a life all told," mused Muriel as she inspected the menu handed to her by a waitress with more rings in her face than in her ears. Kids.
"Not at all," agreed Aggie, flipping the page.
"You serious about retiring?" asked Muriel over her menu, adjusting her glasses yet again. "We can. Long past due, if that's what you wanted."
Aggie sighed and set her menu down. "Lord no, Muriel. I'd die of boredom the first week in. What would we do, garden? Play bingo?"
"Hell no," Muriel laughed and closed her hand around Aggie's, squeezing with strong, wiry fingers. The waitress walked up and asked if they were ready.
"Don't forget your pie, Murray," grinned Aggie, using the nickname she'd used for her sister since before the day Muriel pulled her from a burning house.
"Harpy," grumbled Muriel.
"Cow," Aggie retorted, shutting her menu and sliding out of the booth. "Whatever she orders, give me the same, no onions. I need to powder my nose."
They were definitely ready.
Author: corvidae9
Title: Spring Chickens
Main characters: Muriel and Aggie Morrison, cameo Winchesters
Rating: PG13-ish
Word Count: ~2300
Summary: Muriel and Aggie've been Hunting since before it was capitalized. This? Is old school.
Notes: merrycontrary made me do this (Riiight)(♥!). Also? >.> First! :D
"MURIEL!! YOU HURRY UP, MURIEL, I AM NO SPRING CHICKEN, GIRL!"
The thin, reedy cry carried on the wind along with the stench of something long dead and Muriel punched at the controls of the backhoe affectionately referred to as 'Bertha' with a fingernail that was more yellow than white under its chipped coat of shiny purple polish.
"I'm workin' on it, Aggie darlin'!" Muriel shouted, adjusting her glasses and peering out of the cab at the telltale thump of the metal claw striking and breaking wood. "Thank God for decomposition, that's what I say," she muttered, pulling Bertha back and shutting her off when the aged wood gave way. "Victoria Goff," she said, climbing carefully down. "You are a righteous old bitch and I am--" she grunted as she retrieved a ten-pound bag of rock salt from beside the seat, "--too damn old to be doin' this on account of--"
"MUUURIEL!!" came the reedy voice again.
"Woman, I am workin' as fast as I can!" Muriel shouted in the direction of the thin woman brandishing two giant-size 50 specially-made solid iron circular knitting needles nunchuk-style at a nasty spirit that was trapped very tenuously in an old-fashioned ghostnet. The salt poured easily from the pre-ripped bag, and Muriel went for the gasoline next, emptying the whole container out on account of the half-open coffin needing to go up whole. Lord knew she wasn't young enough to go climbing into graves anymore to get the box all the way ope--
"INCOMIN--OOF" came Aggie's voice once again and this time Muriel's eyes went wide, her hands scrabbling for the huge waterproof matches in the pocket of her coat.
A dark specter, the escaped spirit of Victoria Goff, swirled over Aggie now on the ground. Claws formed, pulling upward for a strike where there ought to be a hand the best one could reckon those things. Muriel struck a match with some measure of desperation and dropped it into the open grave, shouting, "Just die already, you ornery cow!"
The coffin went up just as the spectral claw came slashing down, dissolving around the prone Aggie. Muriel set a hand to her heart and rushed over, her orthopedic shoes steady on the uneven ground, utilitarian carpenter pants and henley not quite as mud-sploshed as Aggie's floral top and polyester pants.
"Don't you bother telling me you're hurt, Aggie May, don't you dare. Know for a fact you're just fine," she muttered loudly enough to be heard over the crackling flames. Muriel finally reached Aggie, and grabbed hold of her shoulder, crouching down as low as she could get to peer at her and inspect for open wounds and whatnot.
Aggie looked up, mud splashed on her clothes, her hat askew and blessedly intact and free from unholy slash marks of any kind. She brandished a knitting needle up at Muriel instead, a splot of mud clinging to her cheek like a huge, dark mole, and grumbled, "Next time, Miss Muriel, me and Bertha've got a date with dirt and you get to handle the ghost wrangling.
Muriel sighed in relief and extended a hand to help her 58-year old baby sister off of the ground, stopping only once she'd wrapped her own bony arms around her. "You've got it, Aggie May," she said, briskly patting her back, relishing the texture of the thick cable sweater under her fingers callused from years of mending and working and Hunting. "Bertha's always liked you best anyway."
###
Gilroy, California - 1973
"Aggie! Aggie!!"
Muriel shoved her glasses further up her nose and continued to bang on the door of the modest home that her baby sister shared with her husband of nearly a year, now gone eerily quiet. As though she hadn't called Muriel three minutes ago, hysterical over...well. Muriel didn't rightly know.
"Agatha May James nee Morrison, you answer this door this instant!"
Nothing. Muriel had never been so scared in her life.
Not even the year she turned six, Aggie three, and their parents were killed in freak housefire, along with their baby sister Samantha. Not when she held little Aggie's hand as they were taken to Aunt Maureen, and not anytime in between.
Muriel kicked the door once, just the way you saw on the television, found that it hurt a lot more than they made it seem, and then kicked it again, shouting Aggie's name as she did. The door gave on the fourth kick with the flat of her foot, and there was... something holding her sister up off of the ground big ol' animal teeth on their way to her neck, and Muriel didn't think twice. She picked up the baseball bat she knew to be hidden in the umbrella stand and whacked it once hard across the shoulderblades. When it looked up, she clocked it across the side of the face. And when it dropped her sister, she just kept hitting it, calling it every swear word in the book until it twitched on the ground and she hit it and hit it until the bat cracked and then she stuck that bat right through that vampire's back because damned if that's not what it was. Not like the Dracula kind, maybe, but something akin to it.
The thing collapsed into a puddle of... well. Ladies shouldn't use words like the ones to describe it, but then, ladies didn't use words like 'cocksucking son of a bitch' either, and yet she'd just finished calling it that and worse while beating the tar out of it.
Aggie was weeping and rocking against the hearth. Muriel didn't want to turn her back on the goo, but she had a sister to look after, and as such, she rushed over, picked Aggie up off of the ground by the elbows and looked her in the eye.
"We're getting out of here - you alright?"
Aggie only threw her arms around Muriel's neck and sobbed, "Muriel. It was Dick. That was Dick you killed and he was trying--"
As in her husband, Dick, whose name had always suited, if not to this extent. Muriel frowned at what was beginning to evaporate into a puddle that looked more like blood, the edges slowly creeping inward.
"Well, damn. Get your purse."
###
Thirty four years ago, the police had arrived at the home of Dick and Aggie James of Gilroy, California, to find a broken bat, a forced door and some overturned furniture, while Aggie sat the very picture of a weepy mess at the station, clinging to her spinster sister for dear life. They declared Dick a Missing Persons case and Aggie a widow one full year later.
By then she'd been on the road with Muriel and her dog, Chief, for coming up on ten months.
###
Turned out the thing that turned Dick had been some sort of near-extinct variant of vampire roaming this green earth. Next time the Morrison sisters met up with their kind, they were far better prepared.
###
These days it took longer to get Bertha hitched up in her trailer. Still, they couldn't very well dig up graves on their own and so they weren't about to travel without her. Besides, once the old girl was situated, their souped-up, artfully dented wagon could handle hauling her around with ease. And she was like family.
They drove up the road a bit and stopped at the first greasy spoon they found, intent on a decent meal they could enjoy before heading back to the cheesy motel they were staying in, no doubt with leftovers in hand. Muriel was singing, "Down on the corner-- out in the street" under her breath, tapping the rhythm on the steering wheel along with CCR coming from the stereo --cd/mp3 player, don't you know-- while Aggie stared out the passenger side window.
"It ever occur to you that we're too damn old to be doing this?" asked Aggie as they pulled up and parked their car in the nearest truck/trailer spot, next to a classic Impala that was sweet to behold and reminded Muriel of their Aunt Maureen's first car.
"Hell yes. Everyday," said Muriel with a sigh cutting the ignition and slumping into her seat. She turned a smile that had been their ticket into a lot of places women would never have gone thirty years ago, reaching up to wipe errant mud from Aggie's cheek. "Then I remember there's a lot of shit out there that needs killin'. So I don't worry about it."
Aggie laughed and flipped the mirror down to examine her face. "Gonna come a day when these old bones ain't gonna cooperate."
"Bah," grumped Muriel, climbing out of the wagon and waiting for Aggie to do the same before setting the automatic lock. "We'll get us a couple of young, strong boys to do the dirty work for us. Bonus is we get to watch 'em bend over and dig."
Scandalized, Aggie smacked Muriel on the forearm as she rounded the front of the wagon.
"Muriel!"
"Don't you play the innocent with me, miss," said Muriel, taking her elbow. "Known you a long while."
Two young men emerged from the diner headed in their direction, and Muriel grinned again, patting her braided and bunned hair. "Boys like those'd do, I suspect."
Aggie laughed again. "I will never prevail upon your lack of decency." But Muriel was listening carefully to their murmured conversation.
"No you won't," she said with an exasperated sigh, pausing to look at Aggie for no good reason, a shift of her eyes explaining why, and after thirty four years, Aggie caught it easily. Muriel fussed with the collar of Aggie's sweater for another minute or so, muttering, "Honestly," for effect before breaking into a wide grin, apparently having heard exactly what she was waiting for.
"Boys," she called out to the two men speaking in urgent stage whispers over the hood of the Impala. As one they turned to face her and Aggie.
The boy with the shorter hair at the driver's side door immediately snapped to and said, "Ma'am?"
"Don't you worry about the Dark Lady of Chesterton. Aggie and I took care of her just now."
The boys looked at each other and then back, and Muriel could feel Aggie giggling against her shoulder.
"'Msorry?" said the driverside boy. Muriel adjusted her glasses calmly and repeated herself.
"You heard me. Victoria Goff. Salted and burned her wrinkly ass ten miles down the road at the Chesterton Penitents Cemetary, plot 147. And if you don't want locals thinking you're touched in the head, y'may want to keep it down next time you're plotting a Hunt in a parking lot."
The taller boy snorted a laugh and looked down, the driverside boy looked as though someone'd grabbed his ass and called him Nancy. Tell the truth if she hadn't been busy eavesdropping, Muriel might've tried it when he'd passed her by. He nodded, looking as though disbelief and respect for his elders were fighting an impossible war in his head and Muriel approved. Somebody'd raised that boy right.
"Um. Appreciate that, ma'am," he finally said with a single grave nod. "We'll keep that in mind."
"You do that, boy. And tell Ellen the Morrison sisters send their regards the next time you see her, you hear?"
"You know Ellen?" the taller boy finally spoke up.
"Hell yes," said Muriel with her own decisive nod. "Knew her back when she was a little thing fresh offa hanging from her mama's gunbelt. Couldn't have been older than you boys."
Both boys grinned at that. Little Ellen was gonna have her head for that, no doubt.
"You go on now, get," she said with a shooing motion. "Hear talk of a Wendigo two counties over and Aggie and me're too old for traipsin' through the woods with flamethrowers. Over Littleboro way. Check in at the hardware store and tell Evie that you're there about the rodent problem. She'll fill you in. Pretty girl, too. You treat her right."
The shorthaired boy finally gave in to the impulse to stare open-mouthed, and the taller boy flashed a grin that was well nigh blinding. Good lord, what Muriel wouldn't give to be thirty years younger.
"Yes ma'am," he said. "Evie at the hardware store. Thanks."
Muriel offered up a little wave. "Good luck boys. You take care." Aggie did the same, echoing Muriel's sentiment.
The old car purred to life as Muriel held the door open for her sister, the gravel crunching under her tires by the time Aggie's head suddenly shot up.
"Those boys remind you of anyone?"
Both women grinned and said simultaneously, "Johnny boy," and both giggled like schoolgirls as they took a seat.
"Hasn't been that bad a life all told," mused Muriel as she inspected the menu handed to her by a waitress with more rings in her face than in her ears. Kids.
"Not at all," agreed Aggie, flipping the page.
"You serious about retiring?" asked Muriel over her menu, adjusting her glasses yet again. "We can. Long past due, if that's what you wanted."
Aggie sighed and set her menu down. "Lord no, Muriel. I'd die of boredom the first week in. What would we do, garden? Play bingo?"
"Hell no," Muriel laughed and closed her hand around Aggie's, squeezing with strong, wiry fingers. The waitress walked up and asked if they were ready.
"Don't forget your pie, Murray," grinned Aggie, using the nickname she'd used for her sister since before the day Muriel pulled her from a burning house.
"Harpy," grumbled Muriel.
"Cow," Aggie retorted, shutting her menu and sliding out of the booth. "Whatever she orders, give me the same, no onions. I need to powder my nose."
They were definitely ready.