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Apr. 7th, 2009 01:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sgt_majoretteI wrote this in response to the prompt Sirius Black isn't dead. He's living in New Jersey. Oxymoronic, I'd say, but don't get me wrong. Some of my best friends and closest relatives reside in the Garden State.
I never had intimate friends, and the few that came close are in New York. By which I mean they are dead, because that is where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives.
(Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores)
Sirius Black was a righteous soul at the base of it, so he did not go to New York. A curse to the heart from his demented cousin Bellatrix, a loss of footing and a fall through the Veil (even in death, which it seemed this was, Sirius would not concede a duel to anyone) overwhelmed his conscious mind.
The great black dog whimpered and stretched and shook himself after the impact, which was surprisingly minor considering the seeming eternity of the fall. The purgatorial gray of the surroundings resolved itself after a time into a thick but entirely natural fog over a marshy expanse of stinking wasteland.
"Hey! Who's there?"
"It's a dog, ya mook! Let's just do this thing and get the fuck outta here. I hate these friggin' dump jobs!"
The dog shivered and turned into a tall man with a ravaged but still-handsome face and black hair with a sprinkling of white. His first instinct was to look for his wand, but after a cursory glance around him proved fruitless, he lost interest in it and instead listened to the voices coming through the fog. He picked himself up off the damp ground and approached cautiously.
"Ah, beg pardon..."
One of the voices squeaked in a manner entirely incongruous to his substantial physical presence, and dropped his end of the canvas-wrapped bundle the two men were preparing to dump into a shallow pit which was rapidly filling with seepage. The other voice snickered. "Told ya it wasn't a dog." He turned to the stranger and said, "Listen, pal, nothin' personal, but..."
Sirius perked up when the man produced a weapon seemingly out of thin air. "Oh, I say! Is that a-a- oh, what d'you call it -- a gat? Could I see it? How does it work?"
The man with the "gat" was startled, but he was a professional. He did not fail to notice that the oddly dressed stranger had noted without interest the bagful of corpse and the makeshift grave. "You can hold it while we take care of a little business over here, but watch where you point it."
Sirius turned the weapon over in his hands, crowing with delight at all the metal fixings and findings. He found the trigger and fired a round into the damp earth; he jumped a little at a sound like Apparition, but it turned out that the weapon was equipped with an expertly crafted silencer. He went to the point of impact and dug up the spent round with his fingers, thinking how delighted Arthur Weasley would be, and betting with his baser self how long it would take Arthur to shoot himself.
Having finished their grim task, the two men ambled back to where Sirius stood grinning, holding out the gun. The bigger one was twirling a carved stick in his fingers. "Check this out! This yours, Houdini? They got Halloween all year round where you come from?"
"My wa-- ! I mean, yes, it's part of my costume..."
"Yeah, right. And you got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell me. Gimme my "gat"." They exchanged weapons. "Can you do any tricks with that thing?"
"I should, I suppose..." Sirius studied the (slightly) smaller man's clothing, and then pointed his wand at himself, Transfiguring his robes into a reasonable semblance of the other man's outfit. He breathed a sigh of relief, as he had been by no means certain that the familiar laws and principles of magic would hold in this alternate reality.
"Wicked!" Gat-man exclaimed. "Can you make this gun look like something else?"
Entering cheerfully into the spirit of the thing, Sirius pursed his lips and drew a squiggle in the air with his wand: suddenly, Gat-man was Violin-guy, carrying his instrument in a battered case.
"Holy shit! Just like a Cagney movie! Listen, Houdini, you headed anyplace special?"
"As a matter of fact, I was, but where I was headed doesn't seem to exist for some reason. I am therefore at your service, gentlemen..."
There was no response. Philistines. So I'm posting it on my LJ so I can enjoy it without opening up that gruesome Vista version of Word.
I never had intimate friends, and the few that came close are in New York. By which I mean they are dead, because that is where I suppose condemned souls go in order not to endure the truth of their past lives.
(Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores)
Sirius Black was a righteous soul at the base of it, so he did not go to New York. A curse to the heart from his demented cousin Bellatrix, a loss of footing and a fall through the Veil (even in death, which it seemed this was, Sirius would not concede a duel to anyone) overwhelmed his conscious mind.
The great black dog whimpered and stretched and shook himself after the impact, which was surprisingly minor considering the seeming eternity of the fall. The purgatorial gray of the surroundings resolved itself after a time into a thick but entirely natural fog over a marshy expanse of stinking wasteland.
"Hey! Who's there?"
"It's a dog, ya mook! Let's just do this thing and get the fuck outta here. I hate these friggin' dump jobs!"
The dog shivered and turned into a tall man with a ravaged but still-handsome face and black hair with a sprinkling of white. His first instinct was to look for his wand, but after a cursory glance around him proved fruitless, he lost interest in it and instead listened to the voices coming through the fog. He picked himself up off the damp ground and approached cautiously.
"Ah, beg pardon..."
One of the voices squeaked in a manner entirely incongruous to his substantial physical presence, and dropped his end of the canvas-wrapped bundle the two men were preparing to dump into a shallow pit which was rapidly filling with seepage. The other voice snickered. "Told ya it wasn't a dog." He turned to the stranger and said, "Listen, pal, nothin' personal, but..."
Sirius perked up when the man produced a weapon seemingly out of thin air. "Oh, I say! Is that a-a- oh, what d'you call it -- a gat? Could I see it? How does it work?"
The man with the "gat" was startled, but he was a professional. He did not fail to notice that the oddly dressed stranger had noted without interest the bagful of corpse and the makeshift grave. "You can hold it while we take care of a little business over here, but watch where you point it."
Sirius turned the weapon over in his hands, crowing with delight at all the metal fixings and findings. He found the trigger and fired a round into the damp earth; he jumped a little at a sound like Apparition, but it turned out that the weapon was equipped with an expertly crafted silencer. He went to the point of impact and dug up the spent round with his fingers, thinking how delighted Arthur Weasley would be, and betting with his baser self how long it would take Arthur to shoot himself.
Having finished their grim task, the two men ambled back to where Sirius stood grinning, holding out the gun. The bigger one was twirling a carved stick in his fingers. "Check this out! This yours, Houdini? They got Halloween all year round where you come from?"
"My wa-- ! I mean, yes, it's part of my costume..."
"Yeah, right. And you got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell me. Gimme my "gat"." They exchanged weapons. "Can you do any tricks with that thing?"
"I should, I suppose..." Sirius studied the (slightly) smaller man's clothing, and then pointed his wand at himself, Transfiguring his robes into a reasonable semblance of the other man's outfit. He breathed a sigh of relief, as he had been by no means certain that the familiar laws and principles of magic would hold in this alternate reality.
"Wicked!" Gat-man exclaimed. "Can you make this gun look like something else?"
Entering cheerfully into the spirit of the thing, Sirius pursed his lips and drew a squiggle in the air with his wand: suddenly, Gat-man was Violin-guy, carrying his instrument in a battered case.
"Holy shit! Just like a Cagney movie! Listen, Houdini, you headed anyplace special?"
"As a matter of fact, I was, but where I was headed doesn't seem to exist for some reason. I am therefore at your service, gentlemen..."
There was no response. Philistines. So I'm posting it on my LJ so I can enjoy it without opening up that gruesome Vista version of Word.
