X-Men #8
Written By Karl V.
Co-Plotted with Dave C.
She has control of her powers. Finally.
You and her can be together as you planned...physically...mentally...spiritually...
Screw the white picket fence, you know want the bayou to be your borders.
With her along your side, you finally manage to join the Assassins and Thieves Guild.
Then you realize, much like Charles Xavier's vision...
It is nothing but a dream. You realize too late that you've been duped by some mutant with mental powers giving you such a real vivid fantasy that you get caught up in it's splendor. You see a large fist streaking towards you...the only thing you can do is relax and pray that your body doesn't break from the brunt force of the blow.
"Good night Gracie." The so aptly named Impact, strong man of the supposed villainous NeoKnights team, swiped his hands as to indicate the cleansing of something foul from his person. His hands shrank back to their normal size and density, as he spoke.
"I helped you prick." The terse tone of Rapture's voice chastised the man to make him remember exactly who put the French Quarter mutant in the vivid dreaming state.
"So, does that mean you going pay up?" He responded with a lurid gaze at the skintight black and red costume that accentuated each of Rapture's curves.
"Shut up, and let's concentrate on getting our butts out of here before these big leaguers decide to hold a grudge." She started to head for the nearest exit when stopped by one of the X-men.
"It's a bit late for that one." The short but feral mutant with a tattered yellow and black costume growled at the pair. The fall of the Weapon X program, the little man with one eye getting out of the way of your unrequited love, the...
"That's quite enough of the little fantasy world darling." Wolverine quickly shook off the effects of the dream state, but did not have an opportunity to try to attack the woman responsible. Instead, he had to dodge a huge fist barreling toward him.
"I'll do you the favor and send you to la la land without the sweet dreams!" Impact roared. Rapture set herself up for another attempt on the X-Man to make him go into the dream state, but she knew the effect might be even briefer than the first. She knew the pompous Impact would be beaten once he let his fists go down in size. She looked across the room to find two women in a struggle for supremacy.
"Look Sugar, I don't want to have to hurt you. But, I'll take the gloves off if I have to." Rogue warned the green-garbed woman.
"I tire of your pathetic threats." Hela retorted.
Rogue took off her gloves and tossed them to the ground. "Oh this ain’t any threat sugar."
As Rogue stepped forward, Rapture jumped by Hela's side. "Dream!"
Unknown to Rapture, Rogue's mind was a myriad of other personalities that were forcibly transplanted into her mind. As Rapture's power accessed the jumbled mess, Rogue's mind could not help the overflow of several fanciful visions. Rogue's face expressed the torment of the pain caused by the attack rather than the blissful euphoria. Rapture watched as Rogue slumped to the ground.
"Did I?" She stammered and prayed the worst had not happened.
"She'll live." Hela turned around to see Impact lying on the floor.
"Well, I need your godly help to defeat him." Rapture pointed to Wolverine who all ready defeated Impact and Dynamo.
"I tire of this squabble. And, I do not like the fact that we were herded here by some mere speck who thinks they control our very moves."
"You're afraid, aren't you? For the first time in your life, you know you can be actually hurt in that human body." Rapture hoped that would push the Goddess' arrogant pride to the limits.
Hela sneered at Rapture. "I am not afraid. This is a ruse, a veritable charade. I only came so I could seek Moonstar's presence amongst the X-Men. I only fought to learn the limitations of this host body, and now that is done I have no need to remain."
Wolverine growled as he ran toward Hela pointed his bone claws directly at her. "Lady, I'll give you a need."
Hela smirked for a moment and twirled her Death Rake much like a baton. "Perhaps you will be more of a challenge than the others."
Wolverine roared and leaped at Hela, as she twisted away from the fury of his swiping claws. She parried with lightning speed. Wolverine howled in pain as the middle rake spoke ran right up his left arm. Hela furthered her opportunity with another strike straight to the chest of the mutant. A wide three stroke deep gash began to bleed into what little remained of Wolverine's upper half of his costume. Rapture quickly ran over by Impact's location to attempt to induce consciousness in her other teammates so they could quickly have the upper hand.
"Wake up." She smacked Impact in the face as hard as she could. Impact stirred as she promptly went over and shook Dynamo and Circuit Breaker as though one would shake a person to wake them up from a deep slumber. As the two finally began to move, she checked the status of the fight between Hela and Wolverine. All though they seemed equally matched in speed and endurance, Wolverine was scoring more hits by sheer experience. Rapture was quickly prompted by a horrid vision of bone claws sticking in her gut to redouble her efforts on getting her teammates back up.
----------------------------------
She came to an almost empty house. Ororo Munroe was asked by Cable to personally ask Cecelia Reyes to be part of his army of Twelve. Of course, that was not the complete reason for the visit. In her mind, Ororo knew that this was more of a test than an actual visit. The test was which commitment was stronger: the one to the X-Men's or the one to Cable. She quietly closed the door behind her as she walked her way to the Cerebro's chamber. She naturally tiptoed through the house and remained quieter than a pin dropping on the floor as she proceeded her way down to the main entrance to Cerebro. As soon as she reached the door, it opened to reveal a distressed Professor Xavier.
"Ororo, how can I help you?" The Professor seemed a little irritated at the interruption.
"Charles, I came to ask Cecelia to be part of Cable's Twelve." Her voice was clear and respectful. "But, I see that she has all ready left."
"She has gone away on a mission." The Professor wheeled past Ororo. "Please, follow me."
Ororo did not argue but instinctively followed the Professor's orders as though she never truly left. "What is it Charles?"
"There is someone else wishing to pay us a visit. But, I am getting some...interference." He simply stated.
"What could possibly interfere with your powers?" Ororo seemed perplexed.
Charles continued. "Perhaps interference is not the best word. It's more like someone has purposely dampened my abilities so I could not read their thoughts."
"Who would do such a thing?" Ororo prepared for any type of attack.
"That is exactly what we are going to find out." Charles stopped his hover chair short of the connecting hallway to the house and the tunnel leading to the lower levels of the X-Men's base. He quickly switched over to the wheelchair that was close to the main door at the end of the hallway. Ororo walked beside Charles as they made their way to the front door of the house. As soon as they reached the door, a loud rapping sound echoed through the house. Charles promptly opened the door, and upon recognition of the man's face he gave a stern look.
"Addison?" Charles gave a look of surprise and dismay at the man at the doorway.
The tall dirty blonde haired fellow wore a strapping three-piece suit and grimaced at his name.
"Charles, what the hell is going on? I was just fired for something you did over a year ago!"
For a moment, his statement perplexed the professor. Then, the Professor remembered something.
"Please Addison, let me explain."
"I hope it's a good explanation Charles. You came to my school and asked me to be part of your new dream. For a moment, I thought I might take you up on the offer. When I rescinded, you offered me a means to be two places at once. You stated that you had alien technology, which could replicate my powers and my body in a solid holographic form. That way I could remain at my school while you used that program for emergencies."
"Charles, is this Cerebro's creation?" Ororo stood prepared to use her elemental powers on the man.
Charles shook his head. "No, Ororo. He is the true Addison Falk. Cerebro augmented the holographic duplicate with further powers to more closely resemble the X-Men."
"How can we be so sure?"
"For one, he does not have the power of the Phoenix force...or any such similar levitation skills." The Professor hinted at Ororo. With the wisps of many winds, Addison was promptly lifted up in the air.
"Charles, what the hell are you doing? You know very well I can't fly!" Addison attempted to bark over the winds which stole his voice. Charles gave a slight nod, as Ororo stopped the winds. Addison promptly landed on his face.
"Damn it." He quickly got up as he began to use his powers on Ororo as well. Enough. A voice rang in Addison's head. As I stated, I will explain but you must be patient and allow me to do so. Otherwise, I will be forced to make you understand.
Addison instantly stopped the use of his dampening power. "Fine."
"I will deliver your message to Cecelia, Storm. Your duties to Cable and the Twelve will supercede those with the X-Men for now."
"Thank you Charles, but I do not need you making the choice for me. I will always be an X-Man at heart no matter where I go."
Charles simply smiled. "Good luck."
As Storm departed, Charles gave Addison a extremely dark look. "Now, on to the matters at hand."
Addison felt his anger replaced by a sudden sinking feeling that he was the pupil in the principle's office.
----------------------------------
Bobby began to regain his full vision after a minute. He found himself hugging Cecelia close to his side, as the Doctor promptly shoved him away.
"What the heck happened?" She queried while attempting to shake loose the after effects of the euphoric mind spell cast on her by Rapture.
"That gal zapped us with her power...and...we're in trouble..." Bobby stated as he saw the three teammates of Hela's began walking toward them.
Cecelia instinctively created her shield around her body. "Here we go again."
"I don't get it. They're a bunch of rookies, how could we have slipped so badly."
"I don't care!" Cecelia yelled at the top of her lungs. "Just do something!"
Bobby was perplexed at the audacity of it all. The X-Men had been through several emotional loops before and fought villains off without a hitch. Well, maybe a few hitches but he couldn't remember any situation where the X-Men were losing to a rookie team of villains. Bobby heard a grunt from Cecelia as she grabbed her head.
"The damn dream gave me a headache. It's not helping to keep my concentration."
Bobby fondly remembered the image of her eating ice cream too fast. "Well, at least it's not as bad as that vanilla headache you had." Divine inspiration hit Bobby with an idea.
"What is it?" Cecelia looked at the X-Man as he turned into a transparent humanoid ice form.
He smiled at the Doctor. "I'm gonna give them one heck of a brain freeze." With the a brilliant display he whipped up his infamous slide, Bobby swerved in between the trio much like a driver swerving between the cones to pass a test.
As they could only watch and attempt to think upon what the Iceman was doing each grabbed their head in an apparent pain and slumped over onto each other like falling dominoes.
The Doctor clapped in sarcastic appreciation as Bobby bowed at the applause.
She snorted at his ego, all though actually secretly admired his true skill with his mutant powers.
"Get over yourself Drake."
A weary thief startled the pair from behind.
"That was one cool reception you gave them Bobby.
Made their blood slow as molasses, no?"
Iceman smirked in all knowing confirmation, while Cecelia wished for the briefest instant that she had been dreaming again.
Meanwhile, Hela was beginning to tire of the repetitious healing of her host's body due to the attacks by Wolverine. "I grow weary of this. I have had enough!"
With one major swipe, Hela missed Wolverine. But, he didn't dodge completely as the Death Rake broke one of his protruding bone claws off. As he heard the bone crack, his feral rage disappeared into something else. An overwhelming sense of uselessness flooded his thoughts for the briefest of moments, enough to provide Hela an opportunity to exit without further harm. Wolverine stood and looked blankly at the piece of bone lying on the floor and could not help but contemplate the thought of his attempt to fight giant robots if he could not even stand up a regular mutant like himself.
"Logan." A ragged voice called out for assistance.
His thoughts were instantly swept away to a more important matter of tending to his fallen teammate. "Easy Jean, I'll be right there."
"What happened? Is everyone okay?" She asked as she was assisted to her feet.
Logan was unsure of everyone's status. "We'll find out real quick." Logan turned and caught a quick glimpse of a recovering Gambit. "Cajun checks out."
"I see Iceman and the Doctor next to him." Jean noticed the pair rather close to each other, but both waited a moment before they waved at Jean to signal they were okay. Wolverine walked over to Rogue, who had labored breathing.
"She doesn't look too good." He shouted over to Jean.
With out even a word, Cecelia raced over to her location. She immediately wrapped a piece of loose cloth around her fingers and checked her pulse. "I don't know what's going on...She's babbling like she has multiple personalities."
"It's because she does. But, not the manner that your thinking Doc." Wolverine stated.
"Well, what manner is it?"
"Her absorbing powers are just that. They absorb everything including personalities."
As Gambit managed to make his way over to Rogue's side, she began to awaken. "I swear she should have never tried to absorb that Prime Sentinel. Now, look at the mess she got herself into."
"Enough!" Jean stepped in between the Logan and Gambit before matters got worse. "We have to figure out what to do with these mutants and the Prime Sentinel."
I'm afraid that you must do nothing. A voice interrupted all of the X-Men's thoughts on the situation.
My X-Men, it seems that we have made a grievous error. And, Bobby's tape has proof that the woman did not kill the soldier. Rather, it was an elaborate ruse by some unknown source. Return home, my X-Men. There has been enough honor lost for today.
"I heard what you said Remy." The garbled words of the recovering Rogue confirmed the Professor's words. "And, I ain't taking it no more. You have to remember you actually betrayed us, but I have yet to do the same. And, you still accusing me of something I might do. But, I guess you’re right. Look at me. I tried to absorb a Prime Sentinel knowing full well what it might do. I can’t be trusted anymore. Not by you, not by anyone."
"Cher.."
"I’m just like you Remy. A bad seed waiting to sprout and betray anyone at a moments notice because I absorbed part of a Prime Sentinel personality. When is my mutant massacre going to be? When will someone tap that jumbled mess inside and use that Sentinel mentality against the X-Men? I’ll never know, but I’m not waiting for the leaves to fall off the branch."
"You don’t mean any of this." Gambit denied what was coming from Rogue’s bitter words, and stepped toward her in an attempt to console her. As Rogue pushed herself up and away from the approaching Gambit, she gave Wolverine an apologetic yet thankful look.
He only gave her a slight nod. "It's okay kid. Clear up that head of yours and come back when you can."
The X-Men watched helplessly as Rogue departed from their sight. Wolverine turned to Gambit, but Jean interceded once more.
"Enough, now is not the time. It is time we went home."
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Wisdom #2 - Teenage FBI
Ayesha lit the black, scented candle, her hands shaking slightly as she did.
"By the rites of fire and Wormwood, I summon you unto us. Abhoth, bless us your humble servants with your presence."
Silence filled the room, the flame of the candle flickering slightly.
"It's not working." Emily hissed.
"Shut up!" Ayesha snapped.
The water in the bath began to ripple, faster and faster, draining clockwise. Without warning, a tentacle burst out of the drain, reaching out into the air.
"Mary, mother of God." Kerry whispered in fear.
"Bind unto us the man we seek. Bring him to us upon his hands and knees." Ayesha screeched. "Abhoth, give us this what we speak, I command you!"
The tentacle shattered the bath, dripping filth into the remaining water and then slowly it retracted. The flame of the candle went out and when the turned the light on once more, nothing was left but the bath's shattered, enamel shell.
"It is done." Ayesha smiled darkly. "Soon Abhoth will bring us that which we have prayed for."
Emily looked uncertainly at her friend and then slowly the two remaining girls agreed, voices hesitant and shaking.
"It is done."
WISDOM: MU: TF ISSUE #2
"TEENAGE FBI"
WRITTEN BY JACOB MILNESTEIN
Based on concepts and characters created by Warren Ellis
"It happened on the fourteenth day...something infinitely evil and slimy was pushing its way from inside me. I realised I had been wrong to think of the parasites as separate beings. They were one with IT. An immense jelly like octopus whose tentacles are separate form its body and come about like individuals..." - Colin Wilson The Mind Parasites
"(...And this being is none other than the ancient slug Abhoth the Dark, also known as Abhoth the Unclean)..." - William S. Burroughs, The Voracious Aliens
***
Pete Wisdom sat in the uncomfortable chair, fingers twitching and head throbbing. He turned the cigarette packet over in his hands. He could still taste the Scotch of the previous night burning at the back of his throat.
The walls were shades of beige and orange, oppressive sentinels of mediocre decorated only by the occasional memo from one teacher to another or the odd newspaper clipping concerning the relative victory of the school football or netball teams.
He had never liked school, especially not the dull eyed fashion zombies that walked the corridors, faces drawn in the same expression, uniforms of Adidas trousers and jackets that looked like they could keep even the fattest bastard afloat at sea.
They all seemed so dead inside, so devoid of meaning and that meant a lot coming from him, who, whilst attending school, had occupied the highly coveted position of prince of apathy.
But even he had been emotional about something, even the prince of apathy managed to give a toss about the things that mattered to him.
These kids were driven only by aggression. There wasn't a focus, just an animal drive to fight and fight and fuck and die. It was if the whole sodding generation had backslid down the evolutionary ladder.
He smiled to himself, remembering the time Tucker Swinburne and himself had smashed the shit out of the headmaster's new car and defecated through the broken glass and onto the leather upholstery. That had been a good laugh, seeing old Mister Coupland standing there, face red and veins bulging out of his head whilst both Swinburne and himself had sneered in the way London had taught them and fastened and unfastened the safety-pins that held their clothes together.
The door in the corner of the room opened and a familiar face, slightly older than when Wisdom had last seen, beamed at him from the sanctuary of the headmaster's office.
"Hello, Mister Wisdom, so glad you could make it."
Wisdom rose from the uncomfortable chair and returned the cigarette to his coat pocket.
"Morning, Mister Coupland." He uttered uncomfortably.
"Well don't just stand there, Wisdom, you look like a nervous student." He said, gesturing for him to step into his office.
"Funny that." Wisdom smirked and crossed the threshold.
***
Ayesha Swanson looked aimlessly out of the empty window, the sun touching it at a certain angle and blinding her to the outside world.
Just like education itself, she reflected. A system by which to blind you to the truths that inhabited the world outside. Effective as well.
The teacher's voice droned on and on.
Yeats and Keats and other poets ending in 'eats'.
Not effective enough.
In her mind she liked to imagine the English teacher, Mister Burroughs, his leathery old bastard's skin torn and gaping with false mouths, crimson seeping from within as he pleaded and pleaded and slowly she would raise the small, light metal of the handgun, her fingers would squeeze around the trigger and his head would erupt in a indelicate stain upon the blackboard.
Fucking marvellous.
"Miss Swanson, if you could please tear yourself away from whatever riveting exercise of the mind currently engages you."
She heard his voice but didn't register it at first. It was slow, so otherworldly, the words like a trail of slime stretched upon the fragile membrane of her consciousness.
The empty space that Johnny Baker had left was hardly noticeable. The chair remained, albeit not titled back on its metal legs, and the desk was the same, still wearing its scar of JB 15/3/99 with pride.
All was as it had been the previous Friday, except of course that Johnny Baker no longer sat in the chair. No, Johnny Baker sat in Heaven now, his rotting earthly vessel folded in upon itself and buried in the thick grass and loam at the end of the school football field.
Ayesha smiled as she remembered the way he had screamed in those final moments of ecstasy.
She was brought back to the dull, monochrome reality of the classroom with the slapping sound of old Burroughs' favourite plastic ruler shattering against the charred wood of her desk.
"Miss Swanson, see me after class!" The gargoyle shouted, face a ruddy red from too many late nights with the old boys from Cambridge. Red wine and a bleeding from the tight, leather skin of his arsehole. Oh yes, Mister Burroughs was one of the 'old boys' all right.
She looked up at him, smiling innocently.
"Yes, Mister Burroughs. Of course, Mister Burroughs." She said, her voice dangerously low.
The old gargoyle backed of a little, like a wounded dog sensing her animosity. He snorted once, pert nostrils flaring in the centre of his face and then turned back to his desk, voice droning on and on and on.
In her seat, Ayesha Swanson closed her eyes and dreamt of murder.
***
Wisdom leant out of the window, lit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. On the school field, a class kicked a football unhappily through the churned grass as the rotund Welsh PE teacher bellowed insults in a manner that for all purposes and intent could have been German.
"You haven't changed a bit, have you, Peter?" Coupland reflected, nostrils objecting to the stench of Wisdom's cigarettes.
"Tried me best, sir." Wisdom responded venomously. He turned, leaning against the window frame and looking at the old bastard's withered vulture face. "Is there any reason for me actually being here or is this to be viewed as catching up on some old community service, then?"
Coupland looked decidedly uncomfortable.
"One of our students is missing." He finally admitted.
"Not a dinosaur then?" Wisdom smirked. "Did you ever see that flick? Lots of old women driving around with a sodding dinosaur skeleton on the back of this big bloody truck. Brilliant film."
"To involve the police in such a matter would be detrimental to the school's image. You can imagine the scandal if the papers got hold of a story like this." Coupland continued.
"Then why didn't you call Jeff Randall? I hear he specialises in this kind of bollocks."
"Because," Coupland said, a little sadly. "We didn't want someone who doesn't know the, ah, special attention we pay to students specialising in drama at this school."
"So you thought you'd bring back old bastard Pete Wisdom, everyone's favourite punching bag because, after all, no one else is low enough down the food chain to be ignored like I am." Wisdom spat back.
Coupland lowered his eyes.
"Something like that, yes."
Wisdom leant in closer, exhaling smoke through his nostrils.
"This is going to cost you a shitload of money." He snarled.
"The school is quite aware of that and prepared to pay you whatever sum you may chose." Coupland said, voice drawn and embarrassed.
"Good." Wisdom said straightening up. He took a final drag on his cigarette and tossed onto the old headmaster's desk where it smouldered between reviews the school production of Twelfth Night and the minutes from the previous PTA meeting. "I'll call you when I'm done."
***
Emily Singleton nervously cupped her hand around the cigarette and inhaled. She coughed quietly for a moment, smoke seeping through her nostrils making her look not entirely unlike a dragon.
First cigarette of the day, between English and RE and the taste rippling over her tongue and going down into her where it lingered about her insides, filling them with its own, personal government sanctioned death. Still, anything to make life more interesting - anything to make life shorter. She tugged at her blouse, undoing the top button to prevent choking and allowing a shade of the T-shirt slogan to at last become visible.
Carefully she peered over the top of the hedge to make sure no teachers were on their way to apprehend her. Her eyes drifted to the outside wall of the school and the phrase scrawled upon it;
'There's too much concrete for us to breathe, we are kept down because we hate.'
The sudden brush of a hand against her neck brought her reverie to an unscheduled end. She jumped, shivering at the contact with the other's flesh - just as she had done the night Johnny Baker had died.
"Jesus Christ, Emily," Ayesha snapped. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"N-Nothing." Emily stammered, relived to see her classmate instead of whatever-it-was she originally had imagined.
A damp glistening caught her eye, a trail amongst the compost. It was a slug, a fat one at that, slithering its way from the compost and down onto the path below. She was barely able to conceal her sickness, bile and vomit almost spilling over from the pit of her insides and staining the compost a new shade of yellow.
"Will you be ready tonight?" Ayesha demanded, calling from a far off place. Emily allowed the cigarette to fall from her hand, grinding it out with the heel of her shoe.
"What for?" She asked.
A sudden slap across the back of her head alerted her to Ayesha's annoyance.
"For the fucking ceremony of course!" The other girl hissed. "What did you bloody think?"
"I-I don't know." Emily whispered. "Maybe we could go out, down Covent Garden perhaps? I mean we don't have to stay in every night do we?"
She looked pleadingly at her friend but there was no hint of mercy there. Slowly the other girl leant in closer and snatched a handful of her hair, yanking her closer till they were face to face.
"Abhoth demands his sacrifices, Emily and we're responsible for him." She whispered dangerously. "If you don't sort yourself out you may find yourself next on the menu." She yanked her hair once more, harder this time. "Understand?"
"I-I understand." Emily whimpered.
"Good." Ayesha smiled, her smug grin returning and she loosed her grip on the other's hair.
"I'll see you in Maths. Don't be late."
And with that she left, leaving Emily alone with only the compost, and its hideous, slithering guardians for company.
***
The sixth form common room stunk of hastily discarded cigarettes, the horrendous sound of some god awful chart record blaring from the speakers.
All eyes turned towards Wisdom, left hand in his jacket pocket and the other nursing a half-smoked cigarette. He motioned towards the tape recorder, screaming its mantra of one word repeated to infinitum and irritating, get stuck in your head for the next week and a half drum machine accompanied only by the same plinking of two keys on a sodding Casio over and over again.
'Christ,' he thought. 'Even the bloody New Romantics were easier on the ears than this.' A pause and then the other half of his mind, the more rational side perhaps piped up with: 'You're getting old, Wisdom, time to give up the game.'
"Do you mind turning that bloody racket off?" He motioned with his cigarette.
An obliging sixth former, suit and NHS glasses looked nervously over to one of his fellow students, who nodded. Slowly Mister NHS flicked the 'stop' button and the room lapsed into silence. Wisdom nodded obliging and retrieved his driving license. He flicked it open, just like he'd seen on The X-Files and then snapped it shut again.
"Detective Inspector Wisdom," He announced himself. "I have a few questions for you 'orrible lot."
They looked nervously about at one another until the lanky bastard who Mister NHS had looked to for reassurance slowly rose from his seat, smiling.
"What can we do for you, Inspector Wisdom?" He cooed, his voice far too middle class for Wisdom's tastes.
"One of the kids in the year below, Johnny Walker - "
"Baker." The student corrected.
"Johnny Baker." Wisdom said, pronouncing the name in Queen's English, mimicking the younger man's accent. "Anyway, this kid's vanished without a trace and I wondered if any of you lot would be able to spread some light on the matter."
"I'm afraid, Inspector Wisdom," The younger man said, rising from his seat and trailing a hand across the desk. "That we're the last people you'd want to ask about such a crime. We don't socialise with the lower classes you see."
"I bet you don't," Wisdom snorted. "Too busy driving your bloody BMWs around Kensington whilst the poor sods that make bloody Rovers in Birmingham are fired en masse because some relative of yours decided he could do it cheaper if he sold out to BMW. Twat." The younger man looked at him blankly for a moment and then chuckled quietly.
"Really, Inspector Wisdom, I don't see." Wisdom snatched his lapels and hauled him from the ground.
"Listen here, you conniving, little wanker, I want to know exactly what happened to this kid and I think you know what's going on."
The younger man's face contorted in fear as gradually, he filled with his underwear with the ripest turd he had let slip since the first time his mother had get bored of waiting for her husband to stop screwing his secretary and had taken to spanking him to get herself him off. She hadn't expected her son to reciprocate in shit, of course but after the first few times she began to like the smell, the texture of it on the palms of her hands. The young man was eighteen now and his mother, on occasion, still ate out of his arsehole now and then. The smell permeated the room, overpowering the smouldering cigarette butts thrown outside open window and dragging the standard of the common room down to a lower state of squalor than even Wisdom could have imagined. He released the young man and allowed him to fall. Warm lumps of shit attempted to crawl their way back up his arse as his buttocks slammed against the floor.
"That's going to leave a stain." Wisdom commented off hand.
"Sir." A quiet voice spoke up. Wisdom looked up as Mister NHS waiting expectantly behind his fellow student.
"Johnny Baker's dead, sir." He announced.
"Is that so?" Wisdom arched his eyebrows. "I think you better sit down and tell us all a little story."
NHS nodded obligingly and sat back down.
***
Kerry Redmond looked nervously at the doorbell, her right hand twitching nervously in mid air - half- drawn towards the small black domino and half wishing to return to her side. She wanted to turn and run, to leave all this behind and pretend it never happened, she wanted better than this - she wanted her old life back, the life before all this had set in. But she knew that could never be. So many bridges to her past had been burnt by this one act of summoning and now there could be no return. She closed her eyes and bravely pressed down the white button on the black doorbell. It rang for what felt like an eternity, the tune filtering through the air until finally there was movement behind the door concluding eventually in its opening.
"You're late." Ayesha scowled from her place in the doorway.
"I know, I'm really sorry." Kerry replied.
The older girl leaned out of the doorway and looked up and down the street.
"Come in, its nearly time for the ritual."
Kerry nodded once and followed her friend over the threshold.
***
Night had fallen by the time Wisdom had made his way out past the football fields. In his right hand he carried a smouldering cigarette whilst in his left, slung carefully over his shoulder, was a shovel he had pilfered from the caretaker's shed. Owls whispered to one another in the cold night air and rodents scurried across the uncut grass beyond the school field. The school itself was located just outside of London, not close enough to Watford to be claimed with the boundaries of Hertfordshire, the shitehole, but distant enough for the struggling comprehensive and its ailing headmaster to try and proclaim it as a grammar school. And what a load of bollocks that had turned out to be. He turned, casually throwing the cigarette down onto the damp grass, and eyed the group of sixth formers that had previously occupied the common room. With a sadistic smile he threw the shovel up in the air, watching as it pirouetted for a moment before landing at the feet of the boy with the NHS spectacles.
"Alright, you little sods," He beamed. "Time to start digging."
***
George Coupland swirled the brandy round in his glass, eyes unfocused and looking out into the space beyond his comfortable living room. In the seat adjacent to him sat Henry Burroughs, the school's Head of English.
"This Wisdom character," Burroughs ventured, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "Are you sure he's kosher?"
"About as kosher as a bleeding pig." Coupland snorted derisively. "Of course he's not bloody kosher, Henry, he's also not bright enough to work out what's going on. I know his type, never amount to anything. At best he'll trouble us for a week and a half, after that he'll most likely get bored and end up at the bottom of a bottle or something. Not the brightest spark, our Peter Wisdom."
Burroughs nodded uncertainly, looking down at his brandy.
"I hope you're right, George, I really do." He whispered.
***
The shovel hit something, sending shudders reverberating up his arms. He tried to wriggle it free but it was no use, the shovel was stuck fast.
"Mister Wisdom, sir," The boy with the NHS glasses stuttered. "I think I found something."
Wisdom nodded, flicked his cigarette stub into the tall grass about them and bent down, digging with his hands around the shovel. The first few times they came away brown with soil and then increasingly changed to the dark red of congealing blood. Wisdom moved the dirt aside, revealing a young boy's face, agape with horror.
"Pete meet Johnny, Johnny this is Pete." He whispered grimly to himself.
***
The candle was already alight when Kerry entered the room. Emily stood uncomfortably in the corner of the room, shuffling her robe on over her school uniform. Ayesha nodded for Kerry to do the same, which she did, and once more the three young girls gathered about the black candle, a dead raven carcass laying beneath it and the empty grime of the Swanson family bathtub.
"By the rites of fire and Wormwood, I summon you unto us. Abhoth, bless us your humble servants with your presence." Ayesha whispered in that strange sing-song voice she acquired during these ceremonies.
Silence filled the room, the flame of the candle flickering slightly. Once more, the water in the bath rippled as something dark began to push from underneath the plug.
"Bind unto us the man we seek. Bring him to us upon his hands and knees." Ayesha screeched. "Abhoth, give us this what we speak, I command you!"
The tentacle pushed its way up through the plug hole once more, tenderly feeling the inside of the shattered bath. On her knees, Ayesha bent down and kissed the slithering flesh. It shuddered once before retracting slightly.
"Bring us this man," She whispered, dropping a Polaroid photograph of Mister Burroughs into the water beneath, just within reach of the slithering tentacle. "Bring us this man tonight, and let our will be done."
***
Pete Wisdom palmed the fifty pence piece into the payphone and dialled the number. It rang for several moments before finally being picked up on the other end. The tired voice of his sister whispered down the line:
"Hallo?"
"Alright, Romany," Wisdom grinned. "Listen, sorry I missed you earlier. I've got tied up here for a while, might be some time."
"The school?" Romany questioned, he could almost picture her frown. "Pete, why the hell are you still there?"
"We just found a corpse." He smiled, child like delight infecting his voice.
***
Henry Burroughs fumbled with his keys. Brandy swished about the inside of his head and belly, clouding his vision as he tried to force the keys into the paint-work of the old Ford's door. If he hadn't been so inebriated, he would have sworn that the lock was moving.
A sickening shudder filled his stomach and he felt his bladder hollering to loose itself. Sighing loudly, he resigned himself to fate and shambled off into the bushes. Holding his manhood in his right hand, he began to let loose a stream of acrid, pungent smelling urine. It burnt a little, the remaining sign of his cystitis and Burroughs found himself wincing uncontrollably. The piss spattered against the leaves beneath his feet, occasionally veering too close to his patent leather shoes before he managed to redirect his aim. Beneath him a slug slithered through the rivers of his urine, oblivious to the burning sensation the liquid carried through Burroughs' own slug.
A sudden noise caused him to jump, loosing his grip on himself, urine drenched his left leg and soaked through his shoes.
"Jesus Christ." He muttered, cursing his ill fortune.
Another moment before he turned back to the art of relieving himself and as he did, his face became pale, draining of blood. A fleshy tentacle unwound itself from the darkness and lashed out at him. He screamed once and this pseudopod slapped against the exposed flesh of his buttocks and then slithered its way inside of him. His face contorted in burning rage and humiliation and then he saw the gleaming Cyclops eye that governed the serpent and his mouth opened in screams and screams and screams.
***
The night covered their movements. The three girls, hair tucked between the cowls of their robes moved out through the council estate and made their way onto the underground, empty platforms and abandoned carriages.
Ahead lay their destination, the place where their 'education' had been carried out upon a daily basis and now, it would prove to be the graveyard of another of their enemies.
Ahead lay the palace of Abhoth.
***
George Coupland looked tired as he stood in the cold, his overcoat pulled tightly and looked down at the blue, rotting (and recently deceased) body of Johnny Baker.
"Poor sod." Coupland offered his faux commiseration. "Not this nicest way to end up, still you solved the mystery, old boy. Congratulations." He slapped Wisdom on the back, silently seething and looking at the collection of sixth-formers around the makeshift grave.
"I don't think I have." Wisdom announced loudly, puffing smoke through his nostrils. "Poor old Johnny Baker here looks like he's been sacrificed." He turned and looked accusingly up at Coupland. "I always knew you were an eltist old bastard, Coupland but I didn't think you'd take it this far."
"W-We didn't do this." The boy with the NHS spectacles stuttered, almost an admission of guilt. "The drama society."
"Shut up, Matheson!" Coupland hissed.
"Drama society, eh?" Wisdom sneered. "Really Coupland, old boy, using black magic to raise the standard of a poxy school play, it's a bit sad, innit?"
"You always were a little bastard, Wisdom." Coupland hissed venomously.
"Haven't changed much, 'ave I?" Wisdom smiled.
None of the group noticed as the light grew from behind him. Bellowing loudly, Coupland threw a punch at his former student.
"You little wanker, I'll bloody kill you. I'LL BLOODY KILL YOU!" The headmaster screamed.
Wisdom ducked effortlessly, flicked his cigarette and floored the old bastard. He spluttered once and fell, gracelessly, on his arse. By now the increasing light had managed to attract the attention of some of the group of students.
"Inspector Wisdom.?" One of them whispered nervously.
Wisdom turned and faced the school building as it lit up in flames. Slithering across the carcass of the school was the great form of Abhoth, Lord of Deceit and standing before the huge slug were three young ladies, dressed in robes of midnight dark.
"Oh Jesus, attack of the Sabrinas. That's all I bloody need." He muttered.
"Aren't you going to do anything, sir?" NHS questioned desperately. Wisdom shrugged.
"No, I don't think so." He smiled, lit another cigarette and turned his back. "I never looked this bloody school anyway."
He smiled, flicked ash on the ground and disappeared off into the night leaving the small circle of sixth- former standing alone with the corpse of Johnny Baker on the school field, the great, flaming building illuminating the night. The looked to one another and slowly, nervous laughs began to erupt.
"I guess this means no Hamlet this year." The boy in the NHS specs smiled.
"Guess not." Another replied.
Silently the school continued to burn.
"By the rites of fire and Wormwood, I summon you unto us. Abhoth, bless us your humble servants with your presence."
Silence filled the room, the flame of the candle flickering slightly.
"It's not working." Emily hissed.
"Shut up!" Ayesha snapped.
The water in the bath began to ripple, faster and faster, draining clockwise. Without warning, a tentacle burst out of the drain, reaching out into the air.
"Mary, mother of God." Kerry whispered in fear.
"Bind unto us the man we seek. Bring him to us upon his hands and knees." Ayesha screeched. "Abhoth, give us this what we speak, I command you!"
The tentacle shattered the bath, dripping filth into the remaining water and then slowly it retracted. The flame of the candle went out and when the turned the light on once more, nothing was left but the bath's shattered, enamel shell.
"It is done." Ayesha smiled darkly. "Soon Abhoth will bring us that which we have prayed for."
Emily looked uncertainly at her friend and then slowly the two remaining girls agreed, voices hesitant and shaking.
"It is done."
WISDOM: MU: TF ISSUE #2
"TEENAGE FBI"
WRITTEN BY JACOB MILNESTEIN
Based on concepts and characters created by Warren Ellis
"It happened on the fourteenth day...something infinitely evil and slimy was pushing its way from inside me. I realised I had been wrong to think of the parasites as separate beings. They were one with IT. An immense jelly like octopus whose tentacles are separate form its body and come about like individuals..." - Colin Wilson The Mind Parasites
"(...And this being is none other than the ancient slug Abhoth the Dark, also known as Abhoth the Unclean)..." - William S. Burroughs, The Voracious Aliens
***
Pete Wisdom sat in the uncomfortable chair, fingers twitching and head throbbing. He turned the cigarette packet over in his hands. He could still taste the Scotch of the previous night burning at the back of his throat.
The walls were shades of beige and orange, oppressive sentinels of mediocre decorated only by the occasional memo from one teacher to another or the odd newspaper clipping concerning the relative victory of the school football or netball teams.
He had never liked school, especially not the dull eyed fashion zombies that walked the corridors, faces drawn in the same expression, uniforms of Adidas trousers and jackets that looked like they could keep even the fattest bastard afloat at sea.
They all seemed so dead inside, so devoid of meaning and that meant a lot coming from him, who, whilst attending school, had occupied the highly coveted position of prince of apathy.
But even he had been emotional about something, even the prince of apathy managed to give a toss about the things that mattered to him.
These kids were driven only by aggression. There wasn't a focus, just an animal drive to fight and fight and fuck and die. It was if the whole sodding generation had backslid down the evolutionary ladder.
He smiled to himself, remembering the time Tucker Swinburne and himself had smashed the shit out of the headmaster's new car and defecated through the broken glass and onto the leather upholstery. That had been a good laugh, seeing old Mister Coupland standing there, face red and veins bulging out of his head whilst both Swinburne and himself had sneered in the way London had taught them and fastened and unfastened the safety-pins that held their clothes together.
The door in the corner of the room opened and a familiar face, slightly older than when Wisdom had last seen, beamed at him from the sanctuary of the headmaster's office.
"Hello, Mister Wisdom, so glad you could make it."
Wisdom rose from the uncomfortable chair and returned the cigarette to his coat pocket.
"Morning, Mister Coupland." He uttered uncomfortably.
"Well don't just stand there, Wisdom, you look like a nervous student." He said, gesturing for him to step into his office.
"Funny that." Wisdom smirked and crossed the threshold.
***
Ayesha Swanson looked aimlessly out of the empty window, the sun touching it at a certain angle and blinding her to the outside world.
Just like education itself, she reflected. A system by which to blind you to the truths that inhabited the world outside. Effective as well.
The teacher's voice droned on and on.
Yeats and Keats and other poets ending in 'eats'.
Not effective enough.
In her mind she liked to imagine the English teacher, Mister Burroughs, his leathery old bastard's skin torn and gaping with false mouths, crimson seeping from within as he pleaded and pleaded and slowly she would raise the small, light metal of the handgun, her fingers would squeeze around the trigger and his head would erupt in a indelicate stain upon the blackboard.
Fucking marvellous.
"Miss Swanson, if you could please tear yourself away from whatever riveting exercise of the mind currently engages you."
She heard his voice but didn't register it at first. It was slow, so otherworldly, the words like a trail of slime stretched upon the fragile membrane of her consciousness.
The empty space that Johnny Baker had left was hardly noticeable. The chair remained, albeit not titled back on its metal legs, and the desk was the same, still wearing its scar of JB 15/3/99 with pride.
All was as it had been the previous Friday, except of course that Johnny Baker no longer sat in the chair. No, Johnny Baker sat in Heaven now, his rotting earthly vessel folded in upon itself and buried in the thick grass and loam at the end of the school football field.
Ayesha smiled as she remembered the way he had screamed in those final moments of ecstasy.
She was brought back to the dull, monochrome reality of the classroom with the slapping sound of old Burroughs' favourite plastic ruler shattering against the charred wood of her desk.
"Miss Swanson, see me after class!" The gargoyle shouted, face a ruddy red from too many late nights with the old boys from Cambridge. Red wine and a bleeding from the tight, leather skin of his arsehole. Oh yes, Mister Burroughs was one of the 'old boys' all right.
She looked up at him, smiling innocently.
"Yes, Mister Burroughs. Of course, Mister Burroughs." She said, her voice dangerously low.
The old gargoyle backed of a little, like a wounded dog sensing her animosity. He snorted once, pert nostrils flaring in the centre of his face and then turned back to his desk, voice droning on and on and on.
In her seat, Ayesha Swanson closed her eyes and dreamt of murder.
***
Wisdom leant out of the window, lit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. On the school field, a class kicked a football unhappily through the churned grass as the rotund Welsh PE teacher bellowed insults in a manner that for all purposes and intent could have been German.
"You haven't changed a bit, have you, Peter?" Coupland reflected, nostrils objecting to the stench of Wisdom's cigarettes.
"Tried me best, sir." Wisdom responded venomously. He turned, leaning against the window frame and looking at the old bastard's withered vulture face. "Is there any reason for me actually being here or is this to be viewed as catching up on some old community service, then?"
Coupland looked decidedly uncomfortable.
"One of our students is missing." He finally admitted.
"Not a dinosaur then?" Wisdom smirked. "Did you ever see that flick? Lots of old women driving around with a sodding dinosaur skeleton on the back of this big bloody truck. Brilliant film."
"To involve the police in such a matter would be detrimental to the school's image. You can imagine the scandal if the papers got hold of a story like this." Coupland continued.
"Then why didn't you call Jeff Randall? I hear he specialises in this kind of bollocks."
"Because," Coupland said, a little sadly. "We didn't want someone who doesn't know the, ah, special attention we pay to students specialising in drama at this school."
"So you thought you'd bring back old bastard Pete Wisdom, everyone's favourite punching bag because, after all, no one else is low enough down the food chain to be ignored like I am." Wisdom spat back.
Coupland lowered his eyes.
"Something like that, yes."
Wisdom leant in closer, exhaling smoke through his nostrils.
"This is going to cost you a shitload of money." He snarled.
"The school is quite aware of that and prepared to pay you whatever sum you may chose." Coupland said, voice drawn and embarrassed.
"Good." Wisdom said straightening up. He took a final drag on his cigarette and tossed onto the old headmaster's desk where it smouldered between reviews the school production of Twelfth Night and the minutes from the previous PTA meeting. "I'll call you when I'm done."
***
Emily Singleton nervously cupped her hand around the cigarette and inhaled. She coughed quietly for a moment, smoke seeping through her nostrils making her look not entirely unlike a dragon.
First cigarette of the day, between English and RE and the taste rippling over her tongue and going down into her where it lingered about her insides, filling them with its own, personal government sanctioned death. Still, anything to make life more interesting - anything to make life shorter. She tugged at her blouse, undoing the top button to prevent choking and allowing a shade of the T-shirt slogan to at last become visible.
Carefully she peered over the top of the hedge to make sure no teachers were on their way to apprehend her. Her eyes drifted to the outside wall of the school and the phrase scrawled upon it;
'There's too much concrete for us to breathe, we are kept down because we hate.'
The sudden brush of a hand against her neck brought her reverie to an unscheduled end. She jumped, shivering at the contact with the other's flesh - just as she had done the night Johnny Baker had died.
"Jesus Christ, Emily," Ayesha snapped. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"N-Nothing." Emily stammered, relived to see her classmate instead of whatever-it-was she originally had imagined.
A damp glistening caught her eye, a trail amongst the compost. It was a slug, a fat one at that, slithering its way from the compost and down onto the path below. She was barely able to conceal her sickness, bile and vomit almost spilling over from the pit of her insides and staining the compost a new shade of yellow.
"Will you be ready tonight?" Ayesha demanded, calling from a far off place. Emily allowed the cigarette to fall from her hand, grinding it out with the heel of her shoe.
"What for?" She asked.
A sudden slap across the back of her head alerted her to Ayesha's annoyance.
"For the fucking ceremony of course!" The other girl hissed. "What did you bloody think?"
"I-I don't know." Emily whispered. "Maybe we could go out, down Covent Garden perhaps? I mean we don't have to stay in every night do we?"
She looked pleadingly at her friend but there was no hint of mercy there. Slowly the other girl leant in closer and snatched a handful of her hair, yanking her closer till they were face to face.
"Abhoth demands his sacrifices, Emily and we're responsible for him." She whispered dangerously. "If you don't sort yourself out you may find yourself next on the menu." She yanked her hair once more, harder this time. "Understand?"
"I-I understand." Emily whimpered.
"Good." Ayesha smiled, her smug grin returning and she loosed her grip on the other's hair.
"I'll see you in Maths. Don't be late."
And with that she left, leaving Emily alone with only the compost, and its hideous, slithering guardians for company.
***
The sixth form common room stunk of hastily discarded cigarettes, the horrendous sound of some god awful chart record blaring from the speakers.
All eyes turned towards Wisdom, left hand in his jacket pocket and the other nursing a half-smoked cigarette. He motioned towards the tape recorder, screaming its mantra of one word repeated to infinitum and irritating, get stuck in your head for the next week and a half drum machine accompanied only by the same plinking of two keys on a sodding Casio over and over again.
'Christ,' he thought. 'Even the bloody New Romantics were easier on the ears than this.' A pause and then the other half of his mind, the more rational side perhaps piped up with: 'You're getting old, Wisdom, time to give up the game.'
"Do you mind turning that bloody racket off?" He motioned with his cigarette.
An obliging sixth former, suit and NHS glasses looked nervously over to one of his fellow students, who nodded. Slowly Mister NHS flicked the 'stop' button and the room lapsed into silence. Wisdom nodded obliging and retrieved his driving license. He flicked it open, just like he'd seen on The X-Files and then snapped it shut again.
"Detective Inspector Wisdom," He announced himself. "I have a few questions for you 'orrible lot."
They looked nervously about at one another until the lanky bastard who Mister NHS had looked to for reassurance slowly rose from his seat, smiling.
"What can we do for you, Inspector Wisdom?" He cooed, his voice far too middle class for Wisdom's tastes.
"One of the kids in the year below, Johnny Walker - "
"Baker." The student corrected.
"Johnny Baker." Wisdom said, pronouncing the name in Queen's English, mimicking the younger man's accent. "Anyway, this kid's vanished without a trace and I wondered if any of you lot would be able to spread some light on the matter."
"I'm afraid, Inspector Wisdom," The younger man said, rising from his seat and trailing a hand across the desk. "That we're the last people you'd want to ask about such a crime. We don't socialise with the lower classes you see."
"I bet you don't," Wisdom snorted. "Too busy driving your bloody BMWs around Kensington whilst the poor sods that make bloody Rovers in Birmingham are fired en masse because some relative of yours decided he could do it cheaper if he sold out to BMW. Twat." The younger man looked at him blankly for a moment and then chuckled quietly.
"Really, Inspector Wisdom, I don't see." Wisdom snatched his lapels and hauled him from the ground.
"Listen here, you conniving, little wanker, I want to know exactly what happened to this kid and I think you know what's going on."
The younger man's face contorted in fear as gradually, he filled with his underwear with the ripest turd he had let slip since the first time his mother had get bored of waiting for her husband to stop screwing his secretary and had taken to spanking him to get herself him off. She hadn't expected her son to reciprocate in shit, of course but after the first few times she began to like the smell, the texture of it on the palms of her hands. The young man was eighteen now and his mother, on occasion, still ate out of his arsehole now and then. The smell permeated the room, overpowering the smouldering cigarette butts thrown outside open window and dragging the standard of the common room down to a lower state of squalor than even Wisdom could have imagined. He released the young man and allowed him to fall. Warm lumps of shit attempted to crawl their way back up his arse as his buttocks slammed against the floor.
"That's going to leave a stain." Wisdom commented off hand.
"Sir." A quiet voice spoke up. Wisdom looked up as Mister NHS waiting expectantly behind his fellow student.
"Johnny Baker's dead, sir." He announced.
"Is that so?" Wisdom arched his eyebrows. "I think you better sit down and tell us all a little story."
NHS nodded obligingly and sat back down.
***
Kerry Redmond looked nervously at the doorbell, her right hand twitching nervously in mid air - half- drawn towards the small black domino and half wishing to return to her side. She wanted to turn and run, to leave all this behind and pretend it never happened, she wanted better than this - she wanted her old life back, the life before all this had set in. But she knew that could never be. So many bridges to her past had been burnt by this one act of summoning and now there could be no return. She closed her eyes and bravely pressed down the white button on the black doorbell. It rang for what felt like an eternity, the tune filtering through the air until finally there was movement behind the door concluding eventually in its opening.
"You're late." Ayesha scowled from her place in the doorway.
"I know, I'm really sorry." Kerry replied.
The older girl leaned out of the doorway and looked up and down the street.
"Come in, its nearly time for the ritual."
Kerry nodded once and followed her friend over the threshold.
***
Night had fallen by the time Wisdom had made his way out past the football fields. In his right hand he carried a smouldering cigarette whilst in his left, slung carefully over his shoulder, was a shovel he had pilfered from the caretaker's shed. Owls whispered to one another in the cold night air and rodents scurried across the uncut grass beyond the school field. The school itself was located just outside of London, not close enough to Watford to be claimed with the boundaries of Hertfordshire, the shitehole, but distant enough for the struggling comprehensive and its ailing headmaster to try and proclaim it as a grammar school. And what a load of bollocks that had turned out to be. He turned, casually throwing the cigarette down onto the damp grass, and eyed the group of sixth formers that had previously occupied the common room. With a sadistic smile he threw the shovel up in the air, watching as it pirouetted for a moment before landing at the feet of the boy with the NHS spectacles.
"Alright, you little sods," He beamed. "Time to start digging."
***
George Coupland swirled the brandy round in his glass, eyes unfocused and looking out into the space beyond his comfortable living room. In the seat adjacent to him sat Henry Burroughs, the school's Head of English.
"This Wisdom character," Burroughs ventured, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. "Are you sure he's kosher?"
"About as kosher as a bleeding pig." Coupland snorted derisively. "Of course he's not bloody kosher, Henry, he's also not bright enough to work out what's going on. I know his type, never amount to anything. At best he'll trouble us for a week and a half, after that he'll most likely get bored and end up at the bottom of a bottle or something. Not the brightest spark, our Peter Wisdom."
Burroughs nodded uncertainly, looking down at his brandy.
"I hope you're right, George, I really do." He whispered.
***
The shovel hit something, sending shudders reverberating up his arms. He tried to wriggle it free but it was no use, the shovel was stuck fast.
"Mister Wisdom, sir," The boy with the NHS glasses stuttered. "I think I found something."
Wisdom nodded, flicked his cigarette stub into the tall grass about them and bent down, digging with his hands around the shovel. The first few times they came away brown with soil and then increasingly changed to the dark red of congealing blood. Wisdom moved the dirt aside, revealing a young boy's face, agape with horror.
"Pete meet Johnny, Johnny this is Pete." He whispered grimly to himself.
***
The candle was already alight when Kerry entered the room. Emily stood uncomfortably in the corner of the room, shuffling her robe on over her school uniform. Ayesha nodded for Kerry to do the same, which she did, and once more the three young girls gathered about the black candle, a dead raven carcass laying beneath it and the empty grime of the Swanson family bathtub.
"By the rites of fire and Wormwood, I summon you unto us. Abhoth, bless us your humble servants with your presence." Ayesha whispered in that strange sing-song voice she acquired during these ceremonies.
Silence filled the room, the flame of the candle flickering slightly. Once more, the water in the bath rippled as something dark began to push from underneath the plug.
"Bind unto us the man we seek. Bring him to us upon his hands and knees." Ayesha screeched. "Abhoth, give us this what we speak, I command you!"
The tentacle pushed its way up through the plug hole once more, tenderly feeling the inside of the shattered bath. On her knees, Ayesha bent down and kissed the slithering flesh. It shuddered once before retracting slightly.
"Bring us this man," She whispered, dropping a Polaroid photograph of Mister Burroughs into the water beneath, just within reach of the slithering tentacle. "Bring us this man tonight, and let our will be done."
***
Pete Wisdom palmed the fifty pence piece into the payphone and dialled the number. It rang for several moments before finally being picked up on the other end. The tired voice of his sister whispered down the line:
"Hallo?"
"Alright, Romany," Wisdom grinned. "Listen, sorry I missed you earlier. I've got tied up here for a while, might be some time."
"The school?" Romany questioned, he could almost picture her frown. "Pete, why the hell are you still there?"
"We just found a corpse." He smiled, child like delight infecting his voice.
***
Henry Burroughs fumbled with his keys. Brandy swished about the inside of his head and belly, clouding his vision as he tried to force the keys into the paint-work of the old Ford's door. If he hadn't been so inebriated, he would have sworn that the lock was moving.
A sickening shudder filled his stomach and he felt his bladder hollering to loose itself. Sighing loudly, he resigned himself to fate and shambled off into the bushes. Holding his manhood in his right hand, he began to let loose a stream of acrid, pungent smelling urine. It burnt a little, the remaining sign of his cystitis and Burroughs found himself wincing uncontrollably. The piss spattered against the leaves beneath his feet, occasionally veering too close to his patent leather shoes before he managed to redirect his aim. Beneath him a slug slithered through the rivers of his urine, oblivious to the burning sensation the liquid carried through Burroughs' own slug.
A sudden noise caused him to jump, loosing his grip on himself, urine drenched his left leg and soaked through his shoes.
"Jesus Christ." He muttered, cursing his ill fortune.
Another moment before he turned back to the art of relieving himself and as he did, his face became pale, draining of blood. A fleshy tentacle unwound itself from the darkness and lashed out at him. He screamed once and this pseudopod slapped against the exposed flesh of his buttocks and then slithered its way inside of him. His face contorted in burning rage and humiliation and then he saw the gleaming Cyclops eye that governed the serpent and his mouth opened in screams and screams and screams.
***
The night covered their movements. The three girls, hair tucked between the cowls of their robes moved out through the council estate and made their way onto the underground, empty platforms and abandoned carriages.
Ahead lay their destination, the place where their 'education' had been carried out upon a daily basis and now, it would prove to be the graveyard of another of their enemies.
Ahead lay the palace of Abhoth.
***
George Coupland looked tired as he stood in the cold, his overcoat pulled tightly and looked down at the blue, rotting (and recently deceased) body of Johnny Baker.
"Poor sod." Coupland offered his faux commiseration. "Not this nicest way to end up, still you solved the mystery, old boy. Congratulations." He slapped Wisdom on the back, silently seething and looking at the collection of sixth-formers around the makeshift grave.
"I don't think I have." Wisdom announced loudly, puffing smoke through his nostrils. "Poor old Johnny Baker here looks like he's been sacrificed." He turned and looked accusingly up at Coupland. "I always knew you were an eltist old bastard, Coupland but I didn't think you'd take it this far."
"W-We didn't do this." The boy with the NHS spectacles stuttered, almost an admission of guilt. "The drama society."
"Shut up, Matheson!" Coupland hissed.
"Drama society, eh?" Wisdom sneered. "Really Coupland, old boy, using black magic to raise the standard of a poxy school play, it's a bit sad, innit?"
"You always were a little bastard, Wisdom." Coupland hissed venomously.
"Haven't changed much, 'ave I?" Wisdom smiled.
None of the group noticed as the light grew from behind him. Bellowing loudly, Coupland threw a punch at his former student.
"You little wanker, I'll bloody kill you. I'LL BLOODY KILL YOU!" The headmaster screamed.
Wisdom ducked effortlessly, flicked his cigarette and floored the old bastard. He spluttered once and fell, gracelessly, on his arse. By now the increasing light had managed to attract the attention of some of the group of students.
"Inspector Wisdom.?" One of them whispered nervously.
Wisdom turned and faced the school building as it lit up in flames. Slithering across the carcass of the school was the great form of Abhoth, Lord of Deceit and standing before the huge slug were three young ladies, dressed in robes of midnight dark.
"Oh Jesus, attack of the Sabrinas. That's all I bloody need." He muttered.
"Aren't you going to do anything, sir?" NHS questioned desperately. Wisdom shrugged.
"No, I don't think so." He smiled, lit another cigarette and turned his back. "I never looked this bloody school anyway."
He smiled, flicked ash on the ground and disappeared off into the night leaving the small circle of sixth- former standing alone with the corpse of Johnny Baker on the school field, the great, flaming building illuminating the night. The looked to one another and slowly, nervous laughs began to erupt.
"I guess this means no Hamlet this year." The boy in the NHS specs smiled.
"Guess not." Another replied.
Silently the school continued to burn.
Wisdom #3 - Everybody Knows
Joanna was pale and shaken when the bastards finally got sick of his outbursts.
She had looked up, surprised to see that he had got this far or even remembered who she was and surprised further by the bunch of crumpled flowers in his arms and the cigarette still hanging lopsided from the corner of his mouth.
It had been good many years since Joanna Travis and Pete Wisdom had been a couple.
He had changed, in varying degrees since then.
Gone were the ripped T-shirt and stupid haircuts, though, she noted with wonder, the cigarettes still remained.
The two of them had met at school. Before Wisdom's expulsion, she had been in the year below him, all Bay City Rollers records and braces until he had introduced her to the glory of fucking, not love make mind, no, just pure adolescent fucking, behind the back of the bike-sheds, illicit drug taking and the methadone stutters of Punk rock.
Quietly she removed her headphones, the distant whispers of Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen filling the air between them.
"Hallo, Pete." She whispered, her voice suddenly and unexpectedly dry.
"I heard you were ill." Pete said, stumbling to find the right words. "I wasn't sure if you wanted company or not so I figured I'd drop these off while you were sleeping. Some sodding plan, eh?"
She smiled sadly.
"What? With all that racket you made outside I suspect you woke half the bleeding ward."
He shrugged in a non-committal fashion.
"It were worth it." He replied.
Calmly, he leant over and placed the flowers on her bedside table then stood uncomfortably looking out across the night streets of his home, his one and only true love, London.
"You shouldn't have come here, Pete." Joanna said, shaking her head slightly. "You can't change anything, can you? I mean, what's done is done."
He was quiet for a moment, as if in a different place, ash from the tip of his cigarette falling onto the sterile white windowsill.
"I can put things right." He answered, that old determination still present in his voice. "And I bloody well will put 'em right, you just wait and see."
"It's too late, Pete." She answered, holding back her tears. "It's already started. No one can stop it now, not even bloody minded Pete Wisdom."
"You just watch me." He reiterated.
Silence came between them.
"How's Romany?" Joanna said, desperately trying to break the silence.
"Romany's good." Wisdom answered, without really saying too much.
"And the latest squeeze, who is it this time, Pete?"
"Someone and no one." He replied. "To be honest, I don't think even she knows where we stand at the moment."
"Oh dear, Pete, I am sorry." Joanna said in her heart felt and honest way. She smiled quietly to herself, her mind desperately trying to change the subject. "Tucker Swinburne visited me last week. He hasn't changed at all."
"Too bloody right." Wisdom snorted. "He always was pissed off with me for getting into your knickers first."
They shared an understanding smile, the kind of smile that only former lovers can ever share.
"Do you ever.?" She began.
"Yes." He replied. "Yes, I do. Sometimes, I lie awake and think about and sometimes when I'm with someone, I roll over in the middle of the night and I'm still surprised to find that they're not you."
"I used to feel the same way about my husband, before the divorce I mean." She smiled and tried to lighten the conversation. "Did you ever think that you'd responsible, without even lifting a finger, for the break up of my marriage?"
"No." Wisdom responded. "No, I thought we'd always be together." He looked at her, eyes clouded with sadness. "I really thought you were the one, Joanna. Together forever and all that."
"Yeah, me too." She replied.
The silence crept back between them.
"Jesus Christ," Wisdom snarled angrily. "Haven't these fucks got any idea what the bloody hell is wrong with you?"
"No." Joanna replied. "They've been fucking impolite actually. One bastard had the audacity to tell me I was making the whole bloody thing up."
"Fucker." Wisdom snarled. "What was his name?"
"You're not going to do anything stupid are you, Pete?" She asked, worriedly, wishing she'd never said anything about.
"Course not. I'm just going to file an 'official complaint' is all."
She chose not to hear his sarcasm and, knowing exactly what he planned to do, she said:
"Feenan. Doctor Steven Feenan, or so his badge said."
"Right." Wisdom said, making his mind up. "Do go anywhere, I'm going to diagnose this bastard's head as being stuck up his own arsehole."
Her former lover disappeared behind the tired yellow of the faded NHS curtain before she could say anything.
Footsteps followed and then she heard the yelp of surprise.
Quietly she smiled to herself and idly picked the petals from the flowers he had left.
It was good to have him back, even if she couldn't stay for long.
***
WISDOM: MU: TF ISSUE #3
"EVERYBODY KNOWS"
WRITTEN BY JACOB MILNESTEIN
Based on concepts and characters created by Warren Ellis
"Physician, heal thyself!" - Luke 4:23.15
***
The stench of illicit cigarette smoke and chocolate filled the air as Niall 'Tucker' Swinburne stepped out of the lift and onto the hospital's third floor.
As a rule, he hated hospitals, and avoided them like he avoided illness itself, carefully manoeuvring beyond the midis touch of the afflicted whilst politely wishing them a swift recovery.
This particular hospital he had seen one too many times over the past few weeks to allow him to be truly comfortable.
He made his way down the corridor and past the nurse's station, which seemed strangely empty.
Well, it was half three on a Monday morning, perhaps, and given the state of the NHS and that idiot Blair, they were short staffed or the nurse had simply been called away elsewhere.
He shrugged, thinking nothing of it and poked his head around the curtain behind which Joanna rested.
She didn't look up.
"I'm surprised they let you back in." She said, still her back to him.
"No one seemed to be on duty." Niall replied, a little puzzled.
She turned, surprised slightly to see him standing there, box of chocolates in one hand and his suit smelling of cigarette smoke.
"Niall!" She said.
She tried to stand up but didn't have the strength.
He rushed over to her, placing his arms around her slim waist and steadying her.
"Don't push yourself, love." He said, charmingly. "You're never going to get better if you keep doing that."
"I'm never going to get better, full stop, Niall." She said quietly.
He decided to let the comment slid, choosing not to let her dwell on the subject of her own melancholy.
"So who were you expecting? A knight in shining armour?" He asked with a smile.
"Pete's here." She proclaimed excitedly, indicating the flowers. "He came here after all."
Niall frowned slightly.
Pete bloody Wisdom. Christ, there was a name that took him back.
"Erm, where is he then?" Niall asked, his frown increasingly.
"He's just gone to see a doctor." Her voice trailed off for a moment.
"Oh shit." Joanna whispered, as the fact of the missing nurse fell into place.
"Back in a minute." Niall smiled politely and vanished behind the curtain just as Wisdom had done moments before.
She sat there for a moment, partly in shock that her former boyfriend had gone not only to employ harsh language against the public healthcare system but his fists as well and then a smile brook out across her face.
"Pete Wisdom, you daft old sod, you." She smiled to herself.
***
Feenan's nose was broken and bloodied, his clean white shirt and his Scrooge McDuck tie stained with the splattering of blood and spit.
"I wouldn't worry about it, mate." Wisdom smiled sarcastically as he towered over the doctor, who had fallen to his knees, sobbing like a baby after Wisdom's first punch had been thrown. "You see the pain, right, the pain is all in your bloody head, isn't it? Nothing really to worry about."
He administered another swift kick to the doctor's gut and he fell like lead to the tiled floor, crawling into a foetal position and sobbed remorsefully.
The nurse stood dumbstruck to his left, watching Wisdom as he flicked open his packet of cigarettes and lit another with the previous dog-end before kicking the poor bastard again, this time in his bollocks.
A man roughly the same age as him came skidding around the corner, the heels of his shoes screeching upon the polished floor, in time to witness Wisdom kick the doctor under the chin and send him sliding across the floor, leaving twin trails of blood from his nostrils behind him.
"Jesus Christ." The other man whispered.
Wisdom turned, startled, the worrying glint of cold anger in his eye.
He looked at the man for a moment, sizing him up as a possible threat.
"Pete, it's me. It's Tucker." The other man said holding his hands up.
"Tucker never had a receding hairline." Wisdom snarled in a voice that didn't quite sound like his own.
"Never did you, you daft bugger." Swinburne protested. "We grew up, remember, Pete? Jesus fuck, you could have just smashed his car up and shat on it, you didn't beat the living shit out of him as well!"
Recognition dawned on Wisdom's face as he remembered Coupland's car, windscreen smashed to pieces and a huge, steaming pile of shit on its driver's seat.
"Tucker Swinburne." He smiled, calmly. "Jesus. What the bloody hell are you doing here?"
"Same thing you are, Pete, same thing you are." Niall answered. "Look, security's going to be up here any minute, you better get going."
"I've got a better idea." Wisdom smiled sadistically.
Purposefully he strode over to the cowering doctor and opened the supply cupboard.
"Go on, shitface, get in." He snarled.
The doctor, still whimpering, began crawling towards the cupboard and received a kick up the arse for his effort.
He yelped once more as Wisdom bent down and tore the badge from his bloodied shirt and the keys from his pocket.
"And you an' all, princess." He motioned to the middle age nurse on duty.
She opened her mouth in protest and Wisdom raised his fist.
Meekly, she followed the doctor into the darkness of the utility cupboard.
Wisdom slammed the door shut on them, locked it and attached the badge to his jacket.
"Got to go the khazi." Wisdom smiled, dangling the keys in front of Tucker's face. "Back in five minutes."
***
Joanna looked at the box of chocolates Niall had abandoned on her bedside table.
They were for her, she guessed, well, he was hardly going to be buying Milk Tray for himself, now was he?
"All because the lady loves Milk Tray." She muttered beneath her breath, turning the box over in her hands before placing it down again.
Niall had been one of the few people she had retained contact with from her old school days.
After the messy divorce, she had called a few friends, who in turned had called a few of their friends, all in a last ditch effort to find out whatever had happened to Pete Wisdom.
In those days she couldn't imagine what he would have looked like, all she could remember was the gangly, out of place boy in the Richard Hell and the Voidoids T-shirt and the torn, tartan trousers yet when Wisdom had walked back into her life, mere moments ago, despite the difference in his appearance, he somehow felt authentic.
This was the real Pete Wisdom all right.
She smiled wondering whether the doctor would take to heal whatever wounds her ex-boyfriend had inflicted upon him.
Despite the conflicting feelings, it was good to see him again.
All this time and now here he was, large as life and as if he'd never gone away.
Well, one of them would have to go away now, God forbid that she might actually be happy!
She cursed the illness that laboured inside of her, tears forming in her eyes.
The doctors had told her she didn't even have a month at best to live.
Joanna Travis knew better.
She knew that she would die tonight.
***
Wisdom flushed the chain, watching the keys circle round in the toilet pan and disappear down the bend.
"Enough fucking good deeds for the day." He smirked before waving the keys goodbye and leaving the toilets.
Outside Tucker seemed to be engaged in a difficult situation with two security gorillas.
They turned and looked at him, eyes first glancing at the blood stained shirt then finally up at the badge.
"Ah, Doctor Feenan, is it?" The shorter gorilla said in a Scottish brogue.
"Hallo," Wisdom smiled. "What can I do for you?"
The Scottish gorilla looked at him, confused slightly.
"I thought you were Irish, Doctor Feenan." He said finally."
"Oh aye." Wisdom replied in what was possibly the world's worst Irish accent. "Where's me pot o' gold?"
"Yes. Indeed." The gorilla agreed for no reason in particular. "This gentleman says he knows you, is that so."
"Aye." Wisdom nodded.
"You don't sound Irish." The gorilla said.
"What because I don't speak like Gerry Adams, I'm suddenly a fucking liar, is that it?"
"No sir, I meant no offence, its just that." The gorilla stuttered.
"Piss off, you flaming monkey and do your bloody job." Wisdom snarled.
The two gorillas looked uncertainly at each other and then backed off.
"Right you are, sir." The Scottish one muttered as they retreated.
Swinburne waited for a moment before turning to Wisdom, glowering and remarking:
"You're mad as a bloody hatter, you are."
Wisdom shrugged and took a drag on his still lit cigarette.
***
The two of them sat on the edge of Joanna's bed, Swinburne in particular watching the rise and fall of her breasts with every breath she took.
"And so that's how it happened." She said slightly sadly. "One minute I'm standing up straight, the next fuck knows. They thought it was electricity in the brain, like my head was tuned to the wrong signal or something but I don't know anymore and I'm not sure I care."
"Christ, Joanna, love, I'm sorry." Swinburne said, taking her hand in his. "I wish there were more we could do."
"There is." Joanna said after a moment's hesitation, her voice quiet and dark. "You can get me out of here." She turned and looked at them with pleading eyes. "I don't want to die in this god awful place."
"But." Niall protested.
"No buts." She shook her head, smiling weakly. "I don't want this, Niall."
Wisdom remained quiet, rising and looking out at his city beyond the edge of the window.
"When did it all start, Joanna?" He asked, his voice emotionless and unreadable.
"February, I think." She said hesitantly.
"What's your job, love?" He asked.
"I-I'm a.was." She corrected herself. "A secretary.Look, Pete, I don't know."
"And you work in central London, yeah, go past Nelson's column everyday, do you?" He continued on regardless.
"Well.yes." She answered.
He tightened his fists to the knuckles turned white.
February.Nelson's column.Wraith.
"Fuck's sake." He cursed.
"What is it?" Swinburne asked anxiously.
"Mind your own fucking business." Wisdom snapped.
"Pete, if this has something to do with me, then I think I should know." Joanna said carefully.
"Get your car, Tucker," Wisdom said, turning to look at him. "You do have a car yeah?"
He nodded mutely.
"I'll tell you on the way." He promised.
***
The night air stung her face and brought tears to her eyes.
Pete had smashed the window of an offie in order to purloin several bottles of whiskey (along with a few bags of salted peanuts) and now they all sat around, beneath Nelson's column, passing the bottle between them and becoming increasingly more inebriated.
Dawn rolled around, the first fingers of grey light reached down from the heavens and touching the city with their divine presence and still the traffic rolled on about them.
As he held Joanna's head in his hands, Wisdom began to feel ill, bile rising in his throat and tears running down his cheeks.
She smiled at him and they kissed and all along he knew that this was his fault.
The cube from the Kennedy simulacra's chest had caused this, too much exposure to the occult periodic table - this was his fault.
As Joanna Travis closed her eyes on life and slipped away and Niall Swinburne sobbed quietly into his bottle of whiskey, Peter Wisdom felt the bitter hatred rise up within him.
All this pain, all this hurt - all because he had been so fucking quick to jump on the bandwagon and bury every single sodding daemon that so much as looked his way.
How many others like Joanna? How long till he himself, or God forbid, even Romany, contracted the disease? How many people had he killed?
London was dying, it had been dying for centuries, and now he had just rammed the last stake through its heart.
How long would it take?
He turned away from Joanna's cold, lifeless body and lit a cigarette, eyes closed against the rain as nightmares played themselves out across the surface of his mind.
All across London, people were beginning to die because he had made a fucking mistake.
All across London, they were dropping like flies.
He cursed himself and for the first time in his life, prayed to a God he never believed in.
Single handily he had killed his own true love, single handily he had consigned his own beloved city to its death.
And all across London, they were dropping like flies.
***
FINIS
She had looked up, surprised to see that he had got this far or even remembered who she was and surprised further by the bunch of crumpled flowers in his arms and the cigarette still hanging lopsided from the corner of his mouth.
It had been good many years since Joanna Travis and Pete Wisdom had been a couple.
He had changed, in varying degrees since then.
Gone were the ripped T-shirt and stupid haircuts, though, she noted with wonder, the cigarettes still remained.
The two of them had met at school. Before Wisdom's expulsion, she had been in the year below him, all Bay City Rollers records and braces until he had introduced her to the glory of fucking, not love make mind, no, just pure adolescent fucking, behind the back of the bike-sheds, illicit drug taking and the methadone stutters of Punk rock.
Quietly she removed her headphones, the distant whispers of Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen filling the air between them.
"Hallo, Pete." She whispered, her voice suddenly and unexpectedly dry.
"I heard you were ill." Pete said, stumbling to find the right words. "I wasn't sure if you wanted company or not so I figured I'd drop these off while you were sleeping. Some sodding plan, eh?"
She smiled sadly.
"What? With all that racket you made outside I suspect you woke half the bleeding ward."
He shrugged in a non-committal fashion.
"It were worth it." He replied.
Calmly, he leant over and placed the flowers on her bedside table then stood uncomfortably looking out across the night streets of his home, his one and only true love, London.
"You shouldn't have come here, Pete." Joanna said, shaking her head slightly. "You can't change anything, can you? I mean, what's done is done."
He was quiet for a moment, as if in a different place, ash from the tip of his cigarette falling onto the sterile white windowsill.
"I can put things right." He answered, that old determination still present in his voice. "And I bloody well will put 'em right, you just wait and see."
"It's too late, Pete." She answered, holding back her tears. "It's already started. No one can stop it now, not even bloody minded Pete Wisdom."
"You just watch me." He reiterated.
Silence came between them.
"How's Romany?" Joanna said, desperately trying to break the silence.
"Romany's good." Wisdom answered, without really saying too much.
"And the latest squeeze, who is it this time, Pete?"
"Someone and no one." He replied. "To be honest, I don't think even she knows where we stand at the moment."
"Oh dear, Pete, I am sorry." Joanna said in her heart felt and honest way. She smiled quietly to herself, her mind desperately trying to change the subject. "Tucker Swinburne visited me last week. He hasn't changed at all."
"Too bloody right." Wisdom snorted. "He always was pissed off with me for getting into your knickers first."
They shared an understanding smile, the kind of smile that only former lovers can ever share.
"Do you ever.?" She began.
"Yes." He replied. "Yes, I do. Sometimes, I lie awake and think about and sometimes when I'm with someone, I roll over in the middle of the night and I'm still surprised to find that they're not you."
"I used to feel the same way about my husband, before the divorce I mean." She smiled and tried to lighten the conversation. "Did you ever think that you'd responsible, without even lifting a finger, for the break up of my marriage?"
"No." Wisdom responded. "No, I thought we'd always be together." He looked at her, eyes clouded with sadness. "I really thought you were the one, Joanna. Together forever and all that."
"Yeah, me too." She replied.
The silence crept back between them.
"Jesus Christ," Wisdom snarled angrily. "Haven't these fucks got any idea what the bloody hell is wrong with you?"
"No." Joanna replied. "They've been fucking impolite actually. One bastard had the audacity to tell me I was making the whole bloody thing up."
"Fucker." Wisdom snarled. "What was his name?"
"You're not going to do anything stupid are you, Pete?" She asked, worriedly, wishing she'd never said anything about.
"Course not. I'm just going to file an 'official complaint' is all."
She chose not to hear his sarcasm and, knowing exactly what he planned to do, she said:
"Feenan. Doctor Steven Feenan, or so his badge said."
"Right." Wisdom said, making his mind up. "Do go anywhere, I'm going to diagnose this bastard's head as being stuck up his own arsehole."
Her former lover disappeared behind the tired yellow of the faded NHS curtain before she could say anything.
Footsteps followed and then she heard the yelp of surprise.
Quietly she smiled to herself and idly picked the petals from the flowers he had left.
It was good to have him back, even if she couldn't stay for long.
***
WISDOM: MU: TF ISSUE #3
"EVERYBODY KNOWS"
WRITTEN BY JACOB MILNESTEIN
Based on concepts and characters created by Warren Ellis
"Physician, heal thyself!" - Luke 4:23.15
***
The stench of illicit cigarette smoke and chocolate filled the air as Niall 'Tucker' Swinburne stepped out of the lift and onto the hospital's third floor.
As a rule, he hated hospitals, and avoided them like he avoided illness itself, carefully manoeuvring beyond the midis touch of the afflicted whilst politely wishing them a swift recovery.
This particular hospital he had seen one too many times over the past few weeks to allow him to be truly comfortable.
He made his way down the corridor and past the nurse's station, which seemed strangely empty.
Well, it was half three on a Monday morning, perhaps, and given the state of the NHS and that idiot Blair, they were short staffed or the nurse had simply been called away elsewhere.
He shrugged, thinking nothing of it and poked his head around the curtain behind which Joanna rested.
She didn't look up.
"I'm surprised they let you back in." She said, still her back to him.
"No one seemed to be on duty." Niall replied, a little puzzled.
She turned, surprised slightly to see him standing there, box of chocolates in one hand and his suit smelling of cigarette smoke.
"Niall!" She said.
She tried to stand up but didn't have the strength.
He rushed over to her, placing his arms around her slim waist and steadying her.
"Don't push yourself, love." He said, charmingly. "You're never going to get better if you keep doing that."
"I'm never going to get better, full stop, Niall." She said quietly.
He decided to let the comment slid, choosing not to let her dwell on the subject of her own melancholy.
"So who were you expecting? A knight in shining armour?" He asked with a smile.
"Pete's here." She proclaimed excitedly, indicating the flowers. "He came here after all."
Niall frowned slightly.
Pete bloody Wisdom. Christ, there was a name that took him back.
"Erm, where is he then?" Niall asked, his frown increasingly.
"He's just gone to see a doctor." Her voice trailed off for a moment.
"Oh shit." Joanna whispered, as the fact of the missing nurse fell into place.
"Back in a minute." Niall smiled politely and vanished behind the curtain just as Wisdom had done moments before.
She sat there for a moment, partly in shock that her former boyfriend had gone not only to employ harsh language against the public healthcare system but his fists as well and then a smile brook out across her face.
"Pete Wisdom, you daft old sod, you." She smiled to herself.
***
Feenan's nose was broken and bloodied, his clean white shirt and his Scrooge McDuck tie stained with the splattering of blood and spit.
"I wouldn't worry about it, mate." Wisdom smiled sarcastically as he towered over the doctor, who had fallen to his knees, sobbing like a baby after Wisdom's first punch had been thrown. "You see the pain, right, the pain is all in your bloody head, isn't it? Nothing really to worry about."
He administered another swift kick to the doctor's gut and he fell like lead to the tiled floor, crawling into a foetal position and sobbed remorsefully.
The nurse stood dumbstruck to his left, watching Wisdom as he flicked open his packet of cigarettes and lit another with the previous dog-end before kicking the poor bastard again, this time in his bollocks.
A man roughly the same age as him came skidding around the corner, the heels of his shoes screeching upon the polished floor, in time to witness Wisdom kick the doctor under the chin and send him sliding across the floor, leaving twin trails of blood from his nostrils behind him.
"Jesus Christ." The other man whispered.
Wisdom turned, startled, the worrying glint of cold anger in his eye.
He looked at the man for a moment, sizing him up as a possible threat.
"Pete, it's me. It's Tucker." The other man said holding his hands up.
"Tucker never had a receding hairline." Wisdom snarled in a voice that didn't quite sound like his own.
"Never did you, you daft bugger." Swinburne protested. "We grew up, remember, Pete? Jesus fuck, you could have just smashed his car up and shat on it, you didn't beat the living shit out of him as well!"
Recognition dawned on Wisdom's face as he remembered Coupland's car, windscreen smashed to pieces and a huge, steaming pile of shit on its driver's seat.
"Tucker Swinburne." He smiled, calmly. "Jesus. What the bloody hell are you doing here?"
"Same thing you are, Pete, same thing you are." Niall answered. "Look, security's going to be up here any minute, you better get going."
"I've got a better idea." Wisdom smiled sadistically.
Purposefully he strode over to the cowering doctor and opened the supply cupboard.
"Go on, shitface, get in." He snarled.
The doctor, still whimpering, began crawling towards the cupboard and received a kick up the arse for his effort.
He yelped once more as Wisdom bent down and tore the badge from his bloodied shirt and the keys from his pocket.
"And you an' all, princess." He motioned to the middle age nurse on duty.
She opened her mouth in protest and Wisdom raised his fist.
Meekly, she followed the doctor into the darkness of the utility cupboard.
Wisdom slammed the door shut on them, locked it and attached the badge to his jacket.
"Got to go the khazi." Wisdom smiled, dangling the keys in front of Tucker's face. "Back in five minutes."
***
Joanna looked at the box of chocolates Niall had abandoned on her bedside table.
They were for her, she guessed, well, he was hardly going to be buying Milk Tray for himself, now was he?
"All because the lady loves Milk Tray." She muttered beneath her breath, turning the box over in her hands before placing it down again.
Niall had been one of the few people she had retained contact with from her old school days.
After the messy divorce, she had called a few friends, who in turned had called a few of their friends, all in a last ditch effort to find out whatever had happened to Pete Wisdom.
In those days she couldn't imagine what he would have looked like, all she could remember was the gangly, out of place boy in the Richard Hell and the Voidoids T-shirt and the torn, tartan trousers yet when Wisdom had walked back into her life, mere moments ago, despite the difference in his appearance, he somehow felt authentic.
This was the real Pete Wisdom all right.
She smiled wondering whether the doctor would take to heal whatever wounds her ex-boyfriend had inflicted upon him.
Despite the conflicting feelings, it was good to see him again.
All this time and now here he was, large as life and as if he'd never gone away.
Well, one of them would have to go away now, God forbid that she might actually be happy!
She cursed the illness that laboured inside of her, tears forming in her eyes.
The doctors had told her she didn't even have a month at best to live.
Joanna Travis knew better.
She knew that she would die tonight.
***
Wisdom flushed the chain, watching the keys circle round in the toilet pan and disappear down the bend.
"Enough fucking good deeds for the day." He smirked before waving the keys goodbye and leaving the toilets.
Outside Tucker seemed to be engaged in a difficult situation with two security gorillas.
They turned and looked at him, eyes first glancing at the blood stained shirt then finally up at the badge.
"Ah, Doctor Feenan, is it?" The shorter gorilla said in a Scottish brogue.
"Hallo," Wisdom smiled. "What can I do for you?"
The Scottish gorilla looked at him, confused slightly.
"I thought you were Irish, Doctor Feenan." He said finally."
"Oh aye." Wisdom replied in what was possibly the world's worst Irish accent. "Where's me pot o' gold?"
"Yes. Indeed." The gorilla agreed for no reason in particular. "This gentleman says he knows you, is that so."
"Aye." Wisdom nodded.
"You don't sound Irish." The gorilla said.
"What because I don't speak like Gerry Adams, I'm suddenly a fucking liar, is that it?"
"No sir, I meant no offence, its just that." The gorilla stuttered.
"Piss off, you flaming monkey and do your bloody job." Wisdom snarled.
The two gorillas looked uncertainly at each other and then backed off.
"Right you are, sir." The Scottish one muttered as they retreated.
Swinburne waited for a moment before turning to Wisdom, glowering and remarking:
"You're mad as a bloody hatter, you are."
Wisdom shrugged and took a drag on his still lit cigarette.
***
The two of them sat on the edge of Joanna's bed, Swinburne in particular watching the rise and fall of her breasts with every breath she took.
"And so that's how it happened." She said slightly sadly. "One minute I'm standing up straight, the next fuck knows. They thought it was electricity in the brain, like my head was tuned to the wrong signal or something but I don't know anymore and I'm not sure I care."
"Christ, Joanna, love, I'm sorry." Swinburne said, taking her hand in his. "I wish there were more we could do."
"There is." Joanna said after a moment's hesitation, her voice quiet and dark. "You can get me out of here." She turned and looked at them with pleading eyes. "I don't want to die in this god awful place."
"But." Niall protested.
"No buts." She shook her head, smiling weakly. "I don't want this, Niall."
Wisdom remained quiet, rising and looking out at his city beyond the edge of the window.
"When did it all start, Joanna?" He asked, his voice emotionless and unreadable.
"February, I think." She said hesitantly.
"What's your job, love?" He asked.
"I-I'm a.was." She corrected herself. "A secretary.Look, Pete, I don't know."
"And you work in central London, yeah, go past Nelson's column everyday, do you?" He continued on regardless.
"Well.yes." She answered.
He tightened his fists to the knuckles turned white.
February.Nelson's column.Wraith.
"Fuck's sake." He cursed.
"What is it?" Swinburne asked anxiously.
"Mind your own fucking business." Wisdom snapped.
"Pete, if this has something to do with me, then I think I should know." Joanna said carefully.
"Get your car, Tucker," Wisdom said, turning to look at him. "You do have a car yeah?"
He nodded mutely.
"I'll tell you on the way." He promised.
***
The night air stung her face and brought tears to her eyes.
Pete had smashed the window of an offie in order to purloin several bottles of whiskey (along with a few bags of salted peanuts) and now they all sat around, beneath Nelson's column, passing the bottle between them and becoming increasingly more inebriated.
Dawn rolled around, the first fingers of grey light reached down from the heavens and touching the city with their divine presence and still the traffic rolled on about them.
As he held Joanna's head in his hands, Wisdom began to feel ill, bile rising in his throat and tears running down his cheeks.
She smiled at him and they kissed and all along he knew that this was his fault.
The cube from the Kennedy simulacra's chest had caused this, too much exposure to the occult periodic table - this was his fault.
As Joanna Travis closed her eyes on life and slipped away and Niall Swinburne sobbed quietly into his bottle of whiskey, Peter Wisdom felt the bitter hatred rise up within him.
All this pain, all this hurt - all because he had been so fucking quick to jump on the bandwagon and bury every single sodding daemon that so much as looked his way.
How many others like Joanna? How long till he himself, or God forbid, even Romany, contracted the disease? How many people had he killed?
London was dying, it had been dying for centuries, and now he had just rammed the last stake through its heart.
How long would it take?
He turned away from Joanna's cold, lifeless body and lit a cigarette, eyes closed against the rain as nightmares played themselves out across the surface of his mind.
All across London, people were beginning to die because he had made a fucking mistake.
All across London, they were dropping like flies.
He cursed himself and for the first time in his life, prayed to a God he never believed in.
Single handily he had killed his own true love, single handily he had consigned his own beloved city to its death.
And all across London, they were dropping like flies.
***
FINIS
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