He stepped into the carrion house whistling a tune and clicking his fingers. He wore a lighting smile against the vomit-stained walls of the house and gently danced through the corridors, twirling his thin coat around him as often as opportunity would allow. It was new, which was unusual, and clean, which was equally bizarre, and his favourite colour, a resounding vibrant black. He adored his work; it was his and his alone. His box of treats for the Halloween children, his old father Time to the world and a half, his nothing when something wouldn’t do. It was necessary and without his work, he would be nothing. Whistling atop the stairs to the eleventh floor, he was so ecstatic he should have been impossible.
He burst through the doors, a trumpet to mouth and tooting a terrific solo before gasping for breathe and making strange, unidentifiable noises of wonderment. He breezed through the room with a tap routine he’d studied at his prime and stopped above Siren’s body, trumpet aimed squarely at her ears until he realised it’d have been wasted on her. So he sat down and stroked her dirty, tangled hair before peeling off the useless plaster and seeing her scratches had healed. He lifted her shirt just enough – enough to protect her privacy, John the Musical Universe isn’t some sick pervert who gawps at unconscious women – and saw that she still had that significant hole in her stomach. Her intestines were starting to leak and explore out and smell something vicious.
‘D’you like me top hat? ‘tis something fancy, no miss? “No luxuries!” my missus would cork and bound down the walls ‘til I drowned in noise but I passet’ed it and thought “there ain’t no such resisting of such beauty”, eh? I reckon that’s what your fancy man said to himself when he first glimpsed you. Still, gotta know when to shut the hell up, right? I’m jus’ here to wake your button nose up and nick your possessions ‘cause I got needs’n’all, like. Like this here ‘rrific top hat!
‘But you’res is a ‘ceptionally crazy one ‘cause someone blew this great big hole in you. Then you thought your mate was blown to stuff ‘cause you’re crazy! Crazier than self standing right here and that’s a big ball o’ crazy, I can warrant that! But you’re crazy and it’s real so we gotta be really careful with you.
‘But I know that X bloke, one of your people ain’t he? One without a proper Secret. I got a proper Secret, it’s John the Musical Universe! Pretty uncanny, no? My sweet amama gave me that and some foods afore she sent me off to start digging for my supper but I founds a trumpet and I been an assassin like almost everybody else ‘round here!… nah, I’m jus’ knocking your boots in a non-sexual way, I am. I ain’t no assassin, ain’t got the patience for that kinda rubbish. Jus’ a crazy musician. Anyways, I don’t get why your folk don’t choose no proper Secret. D’ya not wanna pay ya taxes or summi? Hehe, only jessin’ wit’ ya.’
It took a while for John the Musical Universe to realise that Siren, being unconscious, was not listening much. But he was right, she was crazy and just crazy enough to hear through nothing. He was loud enough. So he kept talking and she kept listening and he patched her up properly, readjusted the clock to display the correct time, which is of little importance, even washed her hair and said the word “eleven” eleven times because he was superstitious. Hopefully, because John the Musical Universe would have been a medical genius if he actually knew what he was doing or where he was, Siren would wake in eleven minutes – by which time, he would have introduced the magic of jazz to everybody else in the building and escaped – and she did.
Siren woke, her hair was clean and tangle-free but her hands hurt and there was this annoyingly large hole in her stomach. She tried to stand but her intestines felt unsteady so she swallowed her sense of fashion and tucked it further up to check her organs in check. She still had her gun but no magazine, still had her clothes but no wallet, still had her senses but no idea where she was. And, possibly most of all, she had lost the item she was sent to retrieve in exchange for Vixen VS’ location.
‘All this for nothing? Jesus Christ, for God’s sake!’