Keys jangled as they hit the oak-finished table, sliding to a stop across the slick surface of the wood.  With a sigh released from her lips as she walked through the hall, a light jacket slung over her arm that had been discarded once the morning’s biting chill had subsided, Marjorie clicked on the kitchen light in her Brixton flat.  Bills pulled from the mailbox made their way round-filed into the bin, envelopes marked “final notice” ignored.  She could barely make her rent, let alone make the credit card payments to the collection agencies nipping at her heels at seemingly every waking hour.

Marj was an aged hipster, a flower goddess faded from glory and adventures long forgotten.  Her daughter had long abandoned her for the light and free sex of Paris, leaving her a lonely independent woman that had let a dead husband and a lost love mark her like a scarlet letter.  Marj had sold out, given up her nomadic ways for a monthly rent check and a nightly routine of reality television.

It had been eighteen years since she last saw John Constantine.

Marj gasped when she finished her rifle through of the mail, the last being a postcard emblazoned with an image of the Eiffel Tower.  Had her daughter Mercury finally forgiven her for the imagined trespass against her near seven years prior?  Was she finally coming home to save her poor mother from her slow suicide of a life?

Quickly she turned over the postcard, heart beating near out of her chest.  On the back, instead of the words she so longed to hear (words like “I love you, Mom” or “I’m coming home, Mom”), were three bold letters.

RUN.

As if on cue, the kitchen light blinked off, blanketing the house in a cloak of midnight darkness.  Marj gasped as the postcard fell from her hand, a chill running up her spine like a razor blade.  She still had nightmares about the Fear Machine and the demon that John and Mercury had fought on that cold Glastonbury night.  This wasn’t a dream, she realized, and groped around in the darkness for the closest weapon.

Her fingers wrapped around the handle of a dirty bread-knife in the sink, slicing the air as she pulled it close to her chest defensively.  “You don’t frighten me,” she challenged the darkness, though the quiver in her voice betrayed her.  “Come the frig on!”

She stepped into the hallway, the light from the street lamp outside providing an unearthly glow through the small windows framing her front door.  The black night moved, wrapping around her like a cloak or a coiled hissing snake.  She swiped once, twice with the bread-knife to no result.  She stopped when she felt the sticky wetness on her neck.

“Your love is my weapon,” a voice whispered into her ear.

Marj fell forward, blood rupturing from the wound to her throat.  “John,” she breathed with her last breath.  The attacker stood behind her, smiling a row of razors.

“Don’t fret, Marj,” it said, “you’ll soon have lots of company…”


Children of the Grave: Part One

"A Kiss Before Dying"
Hellblazer #11 November, Year One Written by Chris Munn


“So this your stop then, mate?”

Chas Chandler applied pressure to the brake of his hackney cab, skidding to a stop on the soggy London street side.  The hand brake was engaged, but no motion was made toward the fare meter on his dash.  The occupant had never – and would never – pay for a ride.  It was one of the many favors owed him by Chas, something the occupant had never – and would never – let him forget.  “That’ll be twenty quid,” he ordered with a wry smirk.

“Extortion’s my game, Chas,” the occupant replied, “stick with what you’re good at, shagging grandmas and being an all around wet-noodled git.”

“Ah, flash your soddin’ ash outside,” Chandler commented as his best mate opened the door to exit the taxi.

John Constantine, all smoke and sorcery, stepped onto the curb and waved his partner farewell.  Chas was a good man despite himself, but tonight wasn’t for him.  No, tonight was for the real bastards. As much as he sometimes wished otherwise, that was an apt description for Constantine, a man that had always been more than willing to throw his friends under the bus to save his own skin.  Somehow, Chas had survived the minefield that was John Constantine’s life, but why press his luck when he didn’t have to?

“One is the loneliest fucking number.”

Constantine paused at the door to the Southampton apartment block, taking the time to spark up a Silk Cut before making his entrance.  Magic was 80% appearance, and the smoky mystique he’d worked hard to establish was still solid as granite.  Still, it wouldn’t do for him to look nervous when he walked in; no, he needed to be boss, the king fuck of swagger.  These tossers deserved nothing less.

“Evenin’ squire,” John said as he entered the 111A flat, his fingers flicking ash onto the newly-installed Persian carpet trodden by his feet.  The skinny Birkenstock sitting on the couch, hookah gripped in his hands, let loose with an irrepressible fit of coughs from the surprise.

 “Con-Constantine…!” he choked out, fighting back the tears in his eyes.  “What kin I do for ya, man?”

“I hear you have a relic of interesting pedigree, Shocka,” John answered, taking a moment to run his fingertips across the African fertility god statue that stood with pride, massive cock and all, on the mantle.  “Something about a haunted piece of paraphernalia, right?”

Shocka Smythe was an expatriated witch doctor from New Orleans, born of a bizarre mix of French and Prussian blood.  The mutt had been making his name in London over the past six months, selling items nicked from his voudon instructors back in ‘Nawlins’.  This was the first time he’d met John Constantine, but any mage worth his salt, from dabbler up through magus, knew the name.

They knew and feared the name.

“Sure, yeah, sure,” Smythe scrambled from the couch to the nearby bureau, digging hastily through the top drawer.  What he produced was a needle black from blood dried inside, a spoon that looked as if it had been forged in a blast furnace, and a piece of rubber tubing notched with arcane symbols.  “I couldn’t believe the find; I mean, it’s the actual needle Jim Morrison used to shoot demon piss into his optic nerves!  JKF used it to inject Marilyn with the semen of a Rape Master for Christ’s sake!”

“You used it yet?” John asked, taking the artifacts in hand for inspection.

“Well, you can’t just shoot bloody heroin with it, right?” Shocka replied.  “I had a line on some virgin’s tears peddled down in Whitechapel, but turned out to be bollocks.”

“Right, then,” Constantine offered in response, “I’ll just be taking this meself, ‘less you got something to offer in trade.  Sorry ‘bout yer luck, mate.”
Smythe’s fear turned to anger in the span of a heartbeat, his hand moved to intercept John’s as he placed the instruments inside his coat pocket.  “Wait, c’mon now!  We can make a deal or something, right?”

John scowled at the hand placed upon his wrist.  “Welcome to the free market, Shocka.  Move the hand or bloody well lose it.”

“But, Constantine…” Smythe stammered, “what if I told you about this bitch, up in Brixton, right?  Bloody well had her friggin’ head ripped off I heard!  What if I gave you the line on shit like that, on a regular basis like?  She was hexed, I swear, before she got done in!”

“Sounds like a right stunner,” John said as he turned to leave, “I’ll drink to the bird’s honor tonight.  Be good, Shocka.”

Smythe slumped onto his patent leather couch, weighed down by the world shitting on him yet again.  To the victor goes the spoils, John thought as he started up the street toward Longshanks, ready for a piss up that would make the angels take notice. Still, the hexed girl was filed away in his mind; never knew when such things would come in handy.


Her name was Mercury, and she was running for her life.

Eighteen years ago, she and her mother met a man named John Constantine in the wilds of Glastonbury Tor.  Merc was nine years old then, her psychic power blossoming into something beyond her control.  She was a spooky kid, the kind that made cats hiss and adults squirm, but John had taken to her right away.  It wasn’t long after that they destroyed the so-called “Fear Machine”, her and John and the strange woman named Zed.  John left them afterward, and as she grew older she heard the odd rumor or story about him.  She’d heard about the cancer and the trick played on Hell, about the little girl dragged down to the place of devils, and finally she heard he’d died in an American prison a couple of years ago.

Mercury was twenty-seven years old now, and she’d never forgotten her “Uncle John”.  She’d always known his “death” was anything but, the psychic link established with him in her childhood still lingering as a feint echo on an astral map.  She’d kept herself plugged in to the nasty shit, the dark life hidden beneath the sunshine, and it was while in Paris that all the horror finally caught up to her.

She’d tried to warn her mother, but knew that she’d been too late.  Now, as she stepped off the train in Paddington Station, Merc hoped that she’d find John sooner rather than later.  The lives of countless women rested on her – and his – shoulders, even if it was too late for her mom.  She was just the first of many, and only Constantine would know the names of the next targets.

Mercury’s blonde hair, stiff like straw, stuck to her face as the rain poured down on her.  She looked over her shoulder as she walked out of the station, and for a moment swore she saw the familiar olive trenchcoat and cigarette on the corner.  She blinked and the vision was gone. The fleeting glimpse had made her spirit soar, not realizing just how happy it would make her to finally see him again.

And that made her wonder if she herself would end up a target.


“Come off it, Constantine,” Chas said after pounding back the last drops of the pint, his fifth for the night (but who was counting?  Certainly not him.).  “You were just as bloody scared as I was, admit it.”

John allowed a slight smile to crack his steely façade as Chas expressively recounted the story to Dave and Mattie, two drivers from Chas’ station invited down for drinks by their elder statesman.  “What was it called again, Chas?” John asked with a wink toward Mattie, a brunette with tits that wouldn’t quit and a twinkle to her green eyes.  “Blessed if I can’t remember.”

“Too right you can’t remember,” Chas said with soaring pride of a master storyteller, “who wouldn’t try to repress a bloody fuckpig?”

John couldn’t stifle his laughter for long.  Yes, he admitted that allowing Chas to tell a bunch of relative strangers the inner workings of their mystical adventures could lead to danger down the lane, but what little Chas knew about things would only lead listeners to the logical solution of him being a complete mental case.  It was a good story that hindsight had allowed them to get some laughs from, and that was all that mattered.  It was a good reminder of just how much he and Chas had been through over the years when all of his other friends had either died or left with tails tucked firmly between legs.

John hadn’t realized how much he needed friends until the day they’d all disappeared.

“So, John,” Mattie said as she leaned closer, letting her breasts fall over the table in such an obviousness that he couldn’t help but admire, “how much shite is Chandler talking?  Did this thing really have a wanger the size of his arm?”

Constantine smirked and finished his gin and tonic before answering.  “Keep in mind, luv, that in comparison to his own a swizzle-stick is the epitome of girth.”

“Ah, it’s bleedin’ last call,” Chas announced, “best be getting’ home to Renee and all.  John, you need a ride?”

Constantine exchanged glances with Mattie.  “Think I’ll walk tonight, Chas.  I’ll ring you tomorrow, got work needs done.”

“Cheers,” Chas said as he and Dave stood from the table.  Smiling, he turned toward Mattie.  “Best spray yerself with bug killer ‘fore dropping yer knickers in front of this bastard, girl. He’s bloody well infested, he is.”

“Sod off,” John said with a laugh, two fingers rose to Chas’ back as the two men left the table.

“So,” Mattie said while twirling a strand of hair around her finger, “about those knickers…?”


Trembling fingers, unsure and less than steady, lifted the cigarette to putrid lips.  It inhaled the smoke, still marveling at how good it felt to smoke after so long without, while the smoke filtered out through the holes in its neck.  Sure he wasn’t alive, not technically, but he was still able to enjoy the smaller pleasures that came along with breathing life.

“We’re going to regret this,” his accomplice stated.  She smelled of incense and cinnamon.

“Come on, luv,” he answered, “this whole wide game always called for his inclusion, didn’t it?  We’re just moving it up ahead of schedule, that’s all.”
“Aren’t we tipping our hand a bit early, though?”

He smiled his row of razors, gleaming in the moonlight.  “Doll, the chase is what makes all this murder worth it, don’t you think?  Yes, the power will be nice and all, but seeing the bastard’s face when we twist the knife in, that’s the great bloody satisfaction for me.”

She sighed before nodding in agreement.  “Yes, yes, of course.  I just don’t want to think dragging you out of Hell was a mistake.  If you cost this for us, I’ll send you back on a fucking pike. “

“There’s nothing more, in this world or the next, that I want more than the death of John sodding Constantine,” he replied, his cheery façade crackling into sobering horror, “trust me, luv.”


“Ohhhhh, Johnny,” Mattie crooned as she lay writhing beneath the sheets, her legs spread in invitation.  Constantine had disappeared beneath the covers, applying his trade on his newest conquest.  He didn’t love her, of course; don’t be bloody stupid.  Didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy himself.
Finally emerging from below, John couldn’t hide the smile on his face.  “I got a surprise for you, darlin’,” he whispered as he came face to face with the girl that was easily half of his age.

“Oh, is it me birthday already?” she asked in play.

John thrust with his hips, penetrating deep while Mattie screamed in ecstasy.  “Better than a spanking, right?”

Two hours later, Constantine sat on the edge of the bed while Mattie’s fingers danced lightly on his back.  “You here with me?” she asked.

John exhaled a cloud of smoke, refusing to look at the girl he’d just bedded.  “Million miles away, luv,” he answered, “The closest I get, I’m afraid.”
Before things could get more awkward, if possible mind, a knock sounded at the door.  “It’s three in the sodding ante meridian!” John exclaimed as he pulled his pants about his waist.  “If that’s Chas come to check up I’ll bash the blood out his ears!”

Constantine staggered to the door, leaving Mattie alone in bed while he found himself regretting the nine pints he’d guzzled at Longshanks.  He wasn’t sick of course, but he could have done with a better sense of balance at the moment.  “Coming, coming, shit,” he yelled as the pounding against the door became sharper, more frantic.  He opened to find a young woman standing before him, shivering from a walk through the rain.

“John?” she asked, noting that he hadn’t changed a bit in eighteen years.

“Look, I got one bird in the bed already,” Constantine said in annoyance, “how ‘bout you come back ‘round this time in a fortnight, I may have an opening then.”

“You don’t recognize me, then?” she asked, biting her lower lip to keep back the hurt in her heart.

“Should I, then?” he inquired, stepping further into the doorway.

“Well, you fucked me mam once upon a time,” she answered, “and helped me kill a demon. Though I suppose that kind of thing happens all the time to the great John Constantine, right?”

John’s eyes widened in realization of the girl’s identity.  “Christ, it can’t be, can it?  Mercury?”

“I need your help, Uncle John,” she admitted, fighting back her desire to collapse in his arms from exhaustion, “or everyone you’ve ever loved will die.”
Constantine stood mute from shock (something that admittedly was a rare sight indeed for a man such as him), staring at the girl for several moments before he finally snapped back to reality.  Closing the door to the flat behind him, he pushed Merc back into the hallway.  “Let’s step aside and talk about this, shall we?”

“Can’t I come inside?” she asked, trying to peer over his shoulder as he pulled the door together.

“Well, you happened to catch me post coitus, luv,” he admitted sheepishly, trying to think of Mercury as an adult instead of the pre-adolescent he’d last seen, “and she’s not in the game, so to speak.”

“Oh,” was Mercury’s only reply.

An uncomfortable silence fell between them as Constantine lit a cigarette.  He offered her one out of habit, not expecting her to actually accept it.  There the two stood in the lamp-lit hallway, fags in hand and an immeasurable emotional distance between them.  “So,” he began, “what’s this about murdering me loved ones?”


Mattie Marsters stretched and let out a yawn as she wrapped herself up in her man’s sheets, trying in vein to cut short the bitter chill of the November London night.  She remarked to herself on how a girl such as she had wound up in the bed of a man she’d only just met (though she couldn’t deny, especially to herself, that this was the first time such an incident had occurred in her life), and smiled as thoughts of romance and candlelit nights danced through her head.

Thereby, as they say, hangs a tale.

The daughter of a Westminster politico, Mattie had skipped out on the Oxford education that her daddy had paid so much money for in his hasty attempt to “secure her future”.  In reality, he simply didn’t want to suffer the indignity of having a daughter attending a less than reputable institute of knowledge.  So, ever the independent soul borne of rebellion for rebellion’s sake, Mattie kissed her mother goodbye on her nineteenth birthday and left to find her way in the bright and shiny London she’d imagined during her years of listening to the Clash and contemporaries.

Rebellion didn’t necessarily equal stupidity in her case.  Adept at mathematics and equations, she fell in with the unnecessarily mysterious “cabbie clique” of Northampton Arms and immediately found what she felt to be her calling.  At the age of twenty-three she graduated to the honor of her own hackney cab, spending her first week on the street under the wing of one Chas Chandler.

That should just about have us caught up then, aye?

She heard the click of the lighter from the bedroom’s door, causing her to crack her eyes open just a hair.  Seeing the flame lighting the end of the cigarette, Mattie suppressed a girlish giggle.  “Come to bed, Johnny,” she pleaded, removing the sheet oh-so-discreetly to reveal an exposed breast, “come to bed and ravish me.”

He said nothing as he moved closer, and though she tried she was unable to catch a clear look at him, as if the darkness of the room was moving around to envelop and obscure him from her sight.  She dismissed it as nonsense once his hand touched her bare thigh, moving up slowly to her private palace.  It naturally came as a shock when she felt the nails digging into her flesh.

“Your love is my weapon,” he hissed, the breath on her face smelling of sulfur and Silk Cut.

And then she screamed.


“Jesus Christ,” Constantine swore, “you mean to tell me Marj is dead? How’d it happen?”

Mercury wrapped her arms around her waist, causing John to kick himself as he instinctually made a mental note of how full her breasts became over her folded arms.  “Always thinking with your bleedin’ dick, aren’t you Constantine?” he mumbled, too low for her to hear.

“They killed her because of her link to you,” Mercury explained, “because she had once been in love with you.”

“Bollocks,” John responded, “if someone were targeting me, why go after a bird I hadn’t spoken to in near twenty years?  It just doesn’t add up, I’m afraid.”

“You don’t understand,” Merc continued, “Mom was just the first.  This person is targeting them all, one by one.”

“All…you mean…?” John began.  His question was cut off by the screams coming from his flat down the hall.  He exchanged momentary looks with Mercury before he broke into a run toward his door.

“It’s too late for that one,” he heard Mercury comment as he exploded through his front door, sliding to a stop on the wooden floor of the flat when he reached the bedroom. What awaited him in his bed would have caused a normal man, a less experienced man, to vomit uncontrollably.  As it was, John barely kept his stomach in check.

“Her name was Mattie,” John said as Mercury came up behind him, seemingly unfazed by what had happened to the young woman.  Blood had pooled below her exposed groin, a gaping wound having replaced her vagina.  Teeth marks were evident on the skin of her thighs and abdomen, the murderer having chewed his way through to his prize.

“He ate her womb,” Mercury helpfully clarified.

John slid down the wall, onto the floor, and stabbed a cigarette into his mouth.  “Alright, luv,” he said while trembling hands attempted to spark his lighter, “Let’s say I believe you now.”

To Be Continued…


Voices From Beyond

So here it finally is: the first issue of a series I’ve been attempting to write for, oh, maybe about five or six years now?  Curt Fernlund, having taken a break from his excellent run on the series, has graciously allowed me to step in and tell my tales of Constantine while he collects his thoughts before returning.  Don’t be shocked by the fact that my interpretation of Con-Job and his world is different from Curt’s (whose, in turn, was different than previous writer Mike Franzoni’s).  That’s one of the best qualities of the character, in my opinion, that he can take on the aspects of the writer – or, in reverse, the writer becomes John Constantine, for all the good or ill that may entail.

Below, you’re going to see a few continuity markers and character biographies to catch new readers up to speed.  Before that, though, you’re going to see some snippets of reader reactions to the issue you’ve just read via some advance copies I circulated a few weeks before it was posted.  To everyone who read it and commented, I thank you whole-heartedly.

Ian Astheimer

Oh, man.

Oh, wow.

Oh, fuck.

What an ending.

What a twisted ending.

When's the next issue coming?

Thomas Moses

Damn sir you've outdone yourself there.  That ending was graphic as I should've expected, and yet it still took me by surprise!  Excellent opening, excellent tale, and excellent prose.  Your Hellblazer, seriously rocks.

Tony Thornley

In a word: Wow.

Of all the people in the "HEROES Community" Chris Munn is probably the one of us who is most associated with the dark corners of our world. He's written werewolves, vampires, demons, murderers, sociopaths and talking ducks, but there's one corner of the dark side of things that he's never written before this past week. It's the corner reserved for one Mister John Constantine. Now that he's diving into it, it makes me wonder why the hell didn't he think of this sooner?

I'm not going to spoil the story here because it's going to be a little while before most people see it (at JLU 2001 I understand), but let me tell you, it's simple but executed so well that you don't care. Munn's Constantine is a lovable asshole, and his voice is captured so perfectly that you simply want more. Chas is also written well here, as are the other few supporting characters introduced.

Just about the most exciting and professional bit of fic I've read in a long time, and 100% recommended.

Dare I say it- 4.9999 of 5 punches thrown. Just that close to perfect.

Josh Reynolds

Hooooo. That was good. Womb-eating killers? Nice. Revenge-scheme? Also good. Maybe you need to do like Mike Carey and just take your unpublished Hellblazer plots and change the names and make a book out of them, man...

Again, thanks mates.  I’ll have more reactions to this issue in next month’s letter column, and please write me if you want to see your comments or questions or hell even complaints show up here.  I welcome all comers!

And as promised, here’s a bit of continuity porn:

    - This series broke away from the established Hellblazer continuity at the conclusion of Brian Azzarello’s run in Hellblazer # 174, meaning the stories by Mike Carey, Denise Mina, and Andy Diggle are not part of this book’s canon history.

    - Mercury and Marj were characters introduced during Jamie Delano’s run on the series, specifically in Hellblazer # 14.  They stuck around through the entirety of “The Fear Machine” story-arc and popped up again at the conclusion of Delano’s run.  Neither of them have been seen since.

    - Chas’ story of the “fuckpig” actually happened, as chronicled in Garth Ennis’ “Son of Man” story-arc in Hellblazer # 129-133.

Hope to see you all here next time, first round will be on me!


Chris Munn
10/18/08

Story © 2008 Chris Munn and may not be reproduced without permission.