This Is a Low [Heather]

[Deleted]

The needle danced around the worn track of the record, skipping through the grooves afforded by a lifetime of drunken popularity. More than one pair of feet shuffled in time with irregular steps, attempting to dance along to the distorted tune of The Clash’s 1982 hit single – Rock the Casbah. With a glass pressed tightly against his forehead, the remains of its ice tickling the rim, the dull rhythms of the song were little but a distant distortion to John Constantine, a buzz that sat in the nip of his ear. In London he owned, had owned, this album: Combat Rock, along with most of their other work. It had sat back in his flat, on a shelf, with all of his other beloved collected items of British punk. The thought bounced around his head like a sharpened pinball until one of the dancing figures saddled themselves away from the juke box machine and threw themselves against the counter. She was prettier than he thought she’d be, prettier than anyone in a place like this had right to be. Her partner followed, a big man who leaned close and whispered something down the nape of her neck. When he ordered his next drink the smell of cheap liquor fell from his lips with each slur.


John threw his head back and the last of the whiskey down his throat, placing the now empty glass onto a crumpled beer mat, its lettering long since faded, the image of a brewery a shadow of its former self. From the folds of his tan trench coat he produced a note of some denomination, the whole currency exchange was one he was still learning. “Give me the most expensive thing I can buy with this.” The wall of a man behind the bar stepped forward and took the money, pulling an unlabeled bottle from the collection on the far counter. Lifting it to the glass, he filled the container to the brim with the vaguely urine coloured liquid before corking it and resorting it to its original spot without so much as a word. Picking it from the table with his thumb and forefinger, John lifted it closer to his eye, gazing through its viscous swirl of mystery. “Here’s to Gotham, a City that would make Gomorrah blush.” He downed it in one and the World pressed its boot on his chest making a thousand promises of pain to come. The couple glanced at him, likely amused by his accent distinct accent.  “Alright I’m going to the little boy’s room, when I come back I want that full again.”


Somehow Constantine found his way to a cubicle, amazed that his legs didn’t give way when he took to his feet. He wasn’t quite as surprised that the flush on the toilet didn’t work. A row of empty sinks boarded the far wall of the bathroom, each with a mirror cracked to a different intensity. What water fell on his hands felt like sweat that he’d just rubbed from his brow. He hated this room. He hated this bar. He hated this City. Like visiting Vegas, a weekend stay will always fun but anything longer and you start seeing the creases, the cracks, the faded looks from the people who have to live here. Fate had made him a citizen, a prisoner who held the key to his door in the palm of his hand. He looked into the mirror, the reflection split into three separate warped images. “Stop thinking. Go back in there, sit down and drink. Even you can do that.”


He dried his hands on a roughly folded towel that had been draped over a cold radiator. Pushing the door on its hinges, John realized that he’d bet his continued existence on there being another drink waiting for him. Thank God there hadn’t been a bartender who had let him down yet.

[Heather Glass]

Two young women walked into the bar, drawing some attention to themselves if only because they were talking and laughing quite loudly. They didn't seem to really notice, however, and instead they continued their conversation as they headed toward the bar.

"Yeah, do you remember Mike? He was kind of dumb, let's be honest."

"Yeah... Cute though! Whatever happened to him?"

"Let's just say he chose video games over me one too many times..."

"Fair enough, good call."

They were almost at the bar when the sound of a vibrating phone interrupted the conversation. The brunette with a vivid pink streak in her hair pulled a smartphone out of her purse, swiped at the screen for a moment, then sighed, "Oh no..."

"What?" asked the other young woman, as she shifted to try to get her own look at the screen. Her hair was dyed a bright red-orange, which definitely made her stand out a bit more than her companion.

"It's work - Lizzie called in sick for tomorrow and they're asking if I can take the morning shift."

"Well, say no. You're like the only other person who's even free tonight."

"But I really could use the money... Sorry, babe! We'll have to do this another time - I need to get home and get some sleep if I'm getting up early."

Quite obviously frustrated, but knowing that she wasn't going to be able to talk her friend out of it by begging, the orange-haired woman seemed to grapple with that mentally for a moment before she gave a heavy sigh and said, "Fine, but you owe me next time."

"You go it!" said the brunette, pulling the reluctant other woman into a parting hug before she went to leave. "Catch you later!" she called over her shoulder as she departed.

The now-abandoned woman sighed heavily in frustration again, abruptly turning around and plopping herself down onto a free barstool without really paying any attention to anyone else at the bar. The bartender looked over in her direction, trying to gauge whether or not the young woman would want to be disturbed by the offer of a drink, but that was hard for anyone to tell - she was clearly sulking.

[Deleted]

Before taking the dive into his next drink, John took a moment to stare down into the obscurity of its swirl, expecting a distorted and sickened reflection of himself to gaze back. What he saw gripped his chest, shooting a sudden coldness into the back of his throat. It was not his face that glared from the surface. It was grotesque, mocking, familiar. It lingered long enough to etch itself in his mind, laughing at his apparent misfortune. Throwing his arm forward, John pushed the glass away, slightly spilling its liquid onto the rarely varnished wood of the bar. He glanced around, catching his breath in small frenzied moments to not draw attention to himself. This City already had a surplus of weird without him throwing his hat into the ring. The stream of music had lulled while the machine’s arm reloaded records, folding away the Clash while pulling another from its limited collection of yester-year sounds. The needle dropped and a distorted crumple sound followed as it bounced freely on the track before settling after a few moments into something painfully blue grass. A rough fiddle of strings began to feed through the warped set of speakers, failing to stir any of the other disenchanted patrons from their indifferent stupors.


John turned his back from the stereo, the pull in his chest lessening with each beat as the world phased its way back into its original sordid normality. Through the ambient hum of music he heard two girls speaking, unsure whether he’d ignored them or if they’d just entered – he certainly hadn’t felt a breath of fresh air roll in through an open door. One of them took a phone from their pocket, burying their nose into the illumination of the screen before parting ways with her companion. Folding his head into his hands to nudge some sense of spatial awareness into himself, John watched her approach the bar and park herself onto an empty stool. There was something about her hair that made him smirk a half smirk, perhaps some lass he used to know back on the Mersey who was in a band he liked. He couldn’t remember.


Narrowing his eyes at the half full glass before him, Constantine shrugged to himself and reached forward. With one finger he pushed it over towards the fiery haired girl. “Here, take a swig of that would ya? Not sure but I think our lad here’s serving but it kicks like a mule.” He briefly looked at the drink, wondering if she’d see anything or if it was just another of his own personal demons playing tricks. The fewer the gambits he had to take these days the better and he was vaguely sure she’d be fine, it was a cheap illusion after all and one that wasn’t likely to last. He knew who it was intended for and he got the message.

[Heather Glass]

There was a certain set of rules that a young woman was supposed to follow when she was out on the town, especially in a city like Gotham. Most of them were simply basic precautions to take when interacting with people who you don't know very well and who might have bad intentions. And one rule that was definitely near the very top of that list is that you don't take a drink from anyone except a staff member of the place you're at, or one that has left your sight since it was given to you.

But this was one young woman who didn't necessarily pay much attention to rules. She didn't completely disregard all of them, but the ones that were more a matter of risk management just never seemed to be that important to her. So when a drink was pushed into view, right when she was feeling frustrated and a bit upset, she immediately picked it up and downed it in one without asking any questions. Anyone taking an idle interest in their exchange, including the bartender, knew that the drink was fine, but she didn't - and she didn't really care anyway at this moment.

If there was anything to be seen within the depths of the drink, whether or not she saw it wouldn't necessarily be clear - she didn't even really look at it before she swallowed it down. And her reaction to the drink itself proved that she was no stranger to those that 'kick like a mule' - she simply gave a heavy sigh and put the empty glass back down, and it was unclear how much of the sigh was about the drink and how much of it was about her own brooding thoughts.

"Thanks," she offered, finally looking over at the guy who offered it, "I needed that." She looked at him for an overly long moment before she added, "You're not from around here, are you?" Though if she was guessing as much from his accent, the very observant might accuse her of the same. Gotham is large enough that its various corners have their own accents, but native Gothamites who fail to pick up one of those usually have the broader New England accent. Which is very similar to but not exactly the same as the Midwestern accent, which was more or less considered to be the default accent in the United States. She had a Midwestern accent. Not that she was a recent transplant, but the local accent still hadn't rubbed off on her.

She did look the part of a local though, if only because the local trend was to dare to be unique and she was running around with fiery orange hair. And this evening she'd grabbed a black Led Zeppelin T-shirt and trendy jeans for what was supposed to be a fun night out with a friend.

[Deleted]

Before John could arch his eyebrows in suspense the girl had swept the drink from the table, downing it in one fluid motion, leaving him with a slightly bemused look upon his face. There was something about the thoughtless consumption of alcohol that had yet to get old. As of yet, the level of character the City had thrown across his path was less than sparkling, with it having led to the introduction of a couple of half-wits and more than a fair share of ne’er-do-wells. These were the kind of people that had put Gotham on the map, so much so that even from his dingy Lambeth flat he’d heard mention of the toxin-wielding clowns and talking crocodiles that plagued the roof tops. During the first night of his recent internment, John even had the pleasure of glimpsing up through bleaching battery acid rain to be met with a blurred but still impressive look at the Bat symbol hanging on a cover of clouds. Really warmed his heart it did. Vigilante iconography and adulation aside, it was hard to take a step here without seeing more than a dabble of villainy reminding you to keep a steady walking pace. Even getting out of the taxi that had brought him to the bar, John passed a figure shaking a plastic cup of coins and when he threw him a dime from the folds of his pockets it struck him what the odds of this person being some former D-Lister were. A henchman that couldn't hold his ray gun straight after the Bat twisted his wrist somewhere it wasn't made to reach. This place was nothing but its stories. 

After a beat and with no obvious change in her demeanour John released an internal sigh that had built in his chest. The drink wasn’t the first distraction that had been posed to Constantine during the short time he’d lodged in Gotham. If this was to be his exile, weighted by a sense of purgatory littered with dimly filled bars and piss drenched alleys, then it would be one he’d be willing to endure through idle curiosity. After one has actually set eyes on the River Styx, you’d imagine that there’d be few sights left to draw breath but so far Gotham had lived up its reputation for unspoken insanity. Each glance had afforded a new sordid sight, enough to make Dante gasp in horror at the twisted essence of the City’s living terror. It was the mangle of its buildings lit by the bloodied sunset, the blindness that washes over the feigned innocence of the many, the indifference held for the army of monsters that battle through the streets at night. Gotham was a nexus of the bizarre and now it had one of the world’s greatest magicians walking its sodden pavement.


A slight chuckled slipped from him at the thought of her question. “Thank God no, don’t reckon being a citizen of Gotham would do much for a guy with a cheery disposition like me. I used to call Liverpool home, then London. Just here on an extended ‘business trip’, how about you?” The accent had born more lingering looks than he’d have liked, a few amusing smirks from Yankee’s with a fondness for quaint Brits. If someone had it in them to mention Downton bleedin Abbey he swore he’d burn the City to the ground. Even in London he’d felt like an outsider thanks to his distinct dialect. It had certainly smoothed over time, a shadow of its former Northern self but to most listeners it was alien enough that he might as well have been speaking another language.

[Heather Glass]

Though her expression had been passive at first, at the laugh a smile quickly came to her face - good, she'd found someone who might not be a total bore. And she wasn't one to make easy cracks about where someone was from - she'd been the victim of that herself enough times to find it lame, so she simply nodded as he mentioned cities in England, not surprised given the accent. She wasn't familiar enough with English accents to identify it with any more precision than to know it wasn't local, however.

"Me? Oh, I'm from Kansas. Originally, I mean. I moved here, like... five years ago?" she answered easily, "That was a good move - dumpy small town, it's way better here." She waved a hand dismissively at the mere thought of her hometown. "I came here for college and got a job right off the bat after that, so I never left," she explained, her smile getting even bigger as she added, "Not that I ever wanted to leave - I mean, it's great here."

She paused for a moment, noted that the bartender was nearby, and said, "Yo! Can I get nachos and a cosmo?" But her request was immediately answered with an outstretched hand. She sighed quietly, pulling her ID out of her purse and handing it to him so that he could check it. Being on the shorter side she'd already almost totally resigned herself to the fact that she'd be carded every time until she had visible wrinkles by even the most relaxed bartender, but that didn't mean that she liked it.

When she got her ID back she turned back and added, "Seriously, though - Gotham isn't that bad. There's plenty of 'cheery' places - you just need to know where to find them. ...And where to not find them. It's a big city - it has bad parts and good parts." At least in her own experience, anyways. She'd been told before she moved that it was a dangerous city and that she would need to be extremely careful all the time, but after five years of nothing really happening to indicate that the city lived up to its reputation she shrugged it off as hearsay at this point.

There'd definitely been a few... interesting situations she'd gotten into during her years in the city, but it wasn't like she'd ever been in fear of her life or anything. Then again, she did report the news so she did know all about what was going on in the city generally, including some of the more interesting recent developments on the criminal front, but as each day passes with none of it really affecting her it seemed like a rare and unusual problem that most people probably didn't need to worry about.

[Deleted]

While the girl began to settle into the stream of her conversation John lifted his hand forward to signal the Bartender’s attention, lightly tapping the nearest beer tap with two fingers to acknowledged his order once he’d finished dealing with hers. It just so happened that the keg attached to this particular tap held Guinness, or at least what passed for the stout lager this side of the Atlantic. John mused to himself that with the considerable amount of Irish immigrants that had sailed from their homeland to these shores that at least one or two would have remembered the taste of a decent pint.


Lifting from his stool, its thin pencil legs stuttering on the spot while he shuffled, Constantine dug a palm down into his rear trouser pocket fishing for his wallet. “Yeah, ‘bout as far from Kansas as you can get, I reckon.” After a moment of searching he found it, placing it down on the bench for a true estimation of its contents. Opening the worn leather binding, a few loose scrapings of coin sat in a pouch, though none of them were American. One of them was stamped with a seal he could only guess was from the fabled City of Xanadu, or could have been a Deutchmark, the dull throbbing from the lights that lined the ceiling above his head didn’t offer much support for his bleary vision. Continuing to thin his fingers through the loosely stacked main compartment, John first found himself eyeing one of his old business cards, an embossed number written for a phone in a City he’d never return to. Next came a folded dirt stained note with an address he didn’t recognize no matter how many times he ran a thumb over its name and then finally a picture of a female magician, smile grinning, stood in a pose with one hand placed on her hip and the other angled skywards with a top hat floating beyond the reach of her fingers. Constantine gazed into the photo for a moment, long enough that if you’d seen it you’d question whether the image of the woman had shimmered from its stillness into an altogether different stance. The photo was returned to the wallet as quickly as it was found before John quickly tugged free one of his remaining dollars and placed it back into the folds of his coat.


There was an energy to her, a liveliness that felt suspicious at best in a dive like this. He’d looked into her while she chatted idly away, determining that rather than being hopped up on something that she was just one of those extroverts he’d heard so much about on MTV. “What did you study at Uni? I did a few weeks course in some ‘liberal’ arts at a college back home for a week or two when I was a lad. Bloody hated it, but the lass running it had some legs, and well, I was just a lad.” School had held little significance for the young Magician, although for a time he enjoyed it as a place that simply wasn’t home. A six hour daily excuse to be somewhere where his Father wasn’t. Scratching his jawline with the rub of his thumb, he smirked at her description of Gotham, acknowledging its lurid underbelly in tandem with the decent touches here and there. Someone her age, he could understand the feeling. Constantine had never known a life beyond the confines of a City, that crushing feeling of grey drudgery that made him feel all warm inside. “Bad places, eh? Well the night is young.”

[Heather Glass]

When he pointed out that she'd picked a place to move to that was so far away from where she grew up, she smirked and said, "Exactly! Not while staying stateside, anyway, and I don't think I was ready to try something foreign at 18."

She took an idle interest when he started fishing around in his wallet - not enough to be accused of staring, but if she happened to notice things while he was going through it right next to her then that wasn't her fault. Though she really only gathered that he was obviously someone who got around - she didn't know foreign currency enough to identify it on the fly, but she knew the one he found first wasn't American and she was pretty sure it wasn't English either - didn't they have the queen on theirs?

Most of the other things he sifted through had no meaning to her, but she did notice the picture he paused on. If she'd known anything about him she would have pried about it, but she didn't normally assume that people she ran into actually knew magicians so she assumed it was some sort of memento of a show he'd gone to. And besides, she didn't have time to think about it anyways because the bartender handed her the nachos she ordered.

Though she was grateful that the food came quick, the faster the nachos are the less likely they are to be good nachos. She popped one into her mouth immediately and frowned just slightly - it wasn't that it was bad, per se, but whoever came up with the recipe for the cheese sauce had apparently decided to skimp on the actual flavor of cheese but tried to make up for it with spice. So it was strictly in the category of 'edible'.

It didn't seem to affect her energy level, though, because as soon as she was done chewing she answered, "I got my bachelors in journalism. It was pretty alright. But I know what you mean - because some of my professors..." She pretended to fan herself for a moment before adding, "Not all of them, though. Which was a good thing, I guess, because I don't think I could have focused if it'd been all of them." She smiled at that, grabbed another nacho, and asked, "Want some nachos?" She'd have considered hoarding them all to herself if they'd been tastier, but as it was she didn't feel the need to keep them all to herself.

Only a moment later the bartender handed her the cosmopolitan she'd ordered with them, and she immediately took a healthy sip. The fruity drink was much easier on the tastebuds than whatever it was he'd given her when she sat down, which she preferred - just because she could handle the strong stuff all by itself didn't mean that she thought it was the best way to drink alcohol. She set it down back down and asked, "Oh? What are your plans for the evening, then?"

[Deleted]

John allowed himself a brief chuckle at her exaggerated call back to the joys of education, further relaxing back into his chair as she spoke. There was something about her presence that he found a tad becalming, maybe it was just the normality of conversation that he’d so recently avoided. He’d never been a conversationalist, not in any polite sense of the word, careful to mingle with anything likely to break out of a fear well learned from his years in London.

To their credit, the nachos that were eventually carted out and placed on the bar actually looked somewhat edible. John had faced his fair shares of peril in his time, but little had marked him so decidedly as a dodgy dive into a kebab shop after a night of hard drinking. For whatever reason a combination of quickly thrown together food and cheap alcohol never seemed to do him right, one of life’s little mysteries he supposed. But in this instance his better judgement wasn’t making the calls so when the girl offered he thought it only fair to snatch a chip from the pool of melted cheese. He had forced a dubious drink on her after all, least he could do was run the gauntlet of dive bar appetisers. “Don’t mind if I do.” It didn’t taste half as bad as he imagined it might, shrugging his indifference as way of a rating. “I’ve had worse. So you write for a newspaper then? Or are you part of the new age media I’m always hearing about, writing some blog about yogurts?”

While munching on the now softened piece of nacho, its structure quickly crumbling from the hefty amount of cheese he picked free from the pile, John’s drink arrived. Her cosmopolitan was produced first, followed by his heartier pint of Guinness. The disparity between the noticeable head of white froth and swirl of black beneath warranted a raised eyebrow of concern, likely over the shoddy hands that had pulled the drink. Constantine’s first sip was a cautious one, and as with the food his expected fears were at least dulled. “Well, my plan was to order another one of these and here it is so now I’m at a loss. Who knows, I might treat myself and get another. But there’s plenty of bars in Gotham. How about you? Looked like your mate ditched you.” When finished speaking, he began to clean his fingers from the remaining sauce with a napkin from a nearby dispenser.

[Heather Glass]

When he tried the nachos, she laughed lightly at his assessment. She was pretty sure that this was her first time at this particular bar, but she knew what kind of a risk that she'd been taking when she ordered food. It wasn't much different from the risk of ordering the drinks, actually. But she knew that she always felt better if she didn't drink on an empty stomach, so she was in the habit of eating while she drank. Not that she couldn't handle a lot of drinks, but a small woman like herself needed every assist that she could get.

Though it was easy enough to distract herself from the failings of the nachos by the conversation. "No. Radio, actually," she answered, her smile proving that she liked her job as she elaborated, "I host a news commentary call-in show in the evenings. It's not completely old-school because the station puts out the recordings as podcasts, but people obviously can't call into that. It's gotten kind of popular, actually..." In fact, a part of her smile at the moment was the realization that he'd almost certainly never heard of it.

If she loudly introduced herself as VerMillion to the bar at large she'd probably find more than a few fans among the various drunks present who simply didn't recognize her because they'd only heard her voice (and that thought tempted her to try and see if she was right, but she refrained), but her celebrity status was very local. Like the hot weather girl on Channel 5, a huge chunk of Gotham's residents knew who she was, but she didn't tend to have fans outside of the circle of people who cared about what was happening in Gotham.

When he explained his 'plans', her smile shifted more into a smirk. "Really? That was your entire plan?" she asked, then added, "My plan was that my friend and I were going to get a couple of drinks, and then I was going to talk her into going to a club or something 'cause she'd be easier to convince at that point. Now? I dunno, man - a party of one isn't much of a party. And I already checked if any of my other friends wanted to do something tonight, but they either said no or they didn't get back to me." Thinking of which, she pulled out her phone and checked her messages to see if anyone actually did get back to her since the last time she looked, but no such luck. She frowned at that, but then coped with her disappointment by eating another nacho.