Jones & Jones Funeral Services

"What do you mean he's not back yet?" Marcus frowned, brows knit in irritation. Salem should've been back from Hell hours ago, all fresh and shiny in a new body, sans gaping wound where his head should be. Marcus had tried waiting for him at the apartment, but after a few hours past their normal meeting time post-departure, he'd decided to go back and ask the ones who he'd last entrusted him with. Sometimes he felt like he was dealing with a small child.

Gene Jones, co-owner of Jones & Jones, showed his teeth in a manner that he'd like to think was a smile, though he might admit it wasn't filled with the utmost sincerity. "I mean, Mr. Crowley," he said with all the pleasantries of a Rottweiler, "That your reptilian paramour has yet to rematerialize from the fiery pits of the damned. Unfortunately for me, he's likely to be appearing in the morgue within the next half hour. If you'd like to wait, there are some magazines on the coffeetable over there." If anyone asked him, Gene would smugly inform them that tabloid journalism had been his idea--nothing was better than veritably stalking idols, then misinforming the public on their private business. Also littering the coffeetable was some rather tasteful tombstone catalogues and a flyer for repossessed coffins. They at Jones & Jones had an interesting sense of humor. "If you'll please go sit down," Gene reiterated, tone bordering on nasty. He pointed with a pencil that came alarmingly close to Marcus's face to an area occupied by some rather severe furniture.

The Joneses taste in interior decor was rather Victorian,and their home/workplace itself was built with the same thin, multi-storied design that was so popular in cities. The faded rugs and old, musty-smelling armchairs and sofa that were located in the sitting area were not the sort to be trifled with and insisted on being as uncomfortable as possible. The only other person (if you could call her that) was a demon that Marcus was vaguely aware of, in that an inkling in the back of his mind somewhere suggested she might be familiar. She was less sitting on one of the ratty leather chairs than occupying the space that was directly on top of it, perched in a way that implied she had been shown a picture of someone sitting, but had never experienced this show in the wild. In fact, coupled with the blank white mask (something that might've been reminiscent of a culture somewhere) Marcus might wonder if the dumber of human clients might assume she was some sort of artistic, albiet disconcerting, decoration.

He sat down in the seat next to her and picked up one of the catalogues, glancing down at the cover. After a moment's hesitation he got up and quickly moved to the seat next to that, putting some space between him and unmoving creature.

Marcus, meanwhile, was trying desperately to ignore his surroundings, bravely attempting to block out Gene's prattlings with the tombstone catalogue. He even had a chance to examine the glossy magazine while burying his head in it.

Some of them, he had to admit, were decently nice, but he was having trouble paying attention while his comrade (and by comrade I mean rather, someone who was also a demon--Marcus would like to classify himself as far away from Gene and Leslie if at all possible) explained his hobby in graphic detail.

"Now, your boy Salem's particularly interesting if you slice 'im up," Gene said conversationally, deviating from his earlier wish to talk to Marcus as little as possible. "First time I tried it I went out and got myself a snake to compare--s'really interesting, actually. I'd much rather spend time with him dead than alive." Marcus grimaced, not too keen on imagining anyone's insides, let alone someone he spent the majority of his time with.

"You, on the other hand," Gene said acerbically, "are completely boring. You meatsacks are all the same--just like humans on the inside." Marcus hoped that this meant his personal privacy (and internal organs) were left in peace more oft than not. "You have a particularly ugly appendix," he muttered half-heartedly, as if he'd run out of things that seemed insulting about rifling around in someone's entrails.

One of the nonnegotiable parts of getting Jones & Jones to dispose of your infernal remains was letting them play around with the bodies before they did so, and it was that (rather than the outrageous price or the cutting remarks) that made Marcus the most uncomfortable about using their services. Luckily for him, it wasn't often that either he or Salem did anything that might end in body-death.

"You know, I think it's the acidic blood that makes working with Salem so interesting," Gene said thoughtfully.

Marcus never though he would be so relieved to see Leslie hopping up the stairs from the basement. In a magical change of character, Gene's normally surly face lit up at the sight of the only person who didn't make him grind his teeth.

Beaming, he stooped slightly to give Leslie a peck on the cheek, not really bothering to make sure he hit an area that wasn't smeared with blood. "You look like you've been having fun," he said amicably, sharply contrasting his tone from scarcely a minute previous.

Marcus, feeling like he might gag, quickly showed himself to the morgue, relishing the immediate drop in temperature. At least he wasn't dealing with the lovey-dovey murder twins anymore.

"Eugh," he said, wiping some of the dust from the armchair off his shirt, "If I have to spend one more minute with either of them, I'll- Oh," he said, finally finding Salem in the dimly lit basement, "You don't look so good."

Well, you had to take in to consideration, he had just come back from the dead and coughed up half his lung. It was all subjective.

"Spiderman. Spiderman. Does whatever a spider can. Spins a web anytime. Doo dee doo. Spiderman..."

Warren hummed merrily to himself as his claws traced little gouges in the cement of the rooftop, and what a lovely rooftop it was, fully of concrete and steampipes that bellowed forth the evaporated water from the heater inside and birds that let their bowels loose all about the area, their white excrement staining the grey of the roof, but nevermind that. It didn't matter to Warren that the roof was covered in bird crap. After all, he was busy climbing about, and who needed to be concerned with bird crap while climbing about?

A single solitary light showed the wet pavement of the street before him, issuing its luminescence just below Warren's feet. It made glaring patterns on the rainwater puddles that had been slicked with oil, sending cascades of color into the eyes of the watcher, which was Warren. It was like a momentary dive from a tall building for him, a rush of adrenaline and euphoric feeling that he often associated with illicit substances that humans often considered unusable by their kind.

But what was this? This lonely light was being punctuated by shadows, changing the lighting on the road and thus changing the euphoria that Warren was experiencing. A most foul bit of visual play, that. Warren gave a harumph that he had once learned to do from his great uncle Martlestorts, who was a cactus in Arizona currently. "A moment's memory of Uncle Storty, who often taught me that the best moments are those which one approaches with a great harumph. Onward!"

Thus, he crouched, which he so often did, peering over the edge of the eave, dropping it, one might say, in upon the peoples inside. "Spiderman. Spiderman," he sang as he put a claw to the glass, attempting to silently carve a hole in the plate for him to crawl through, which of course made a horrendous squealing noise that Warren ignored. "Look out, here comes Spiderman!~"

In this world, there are those that kill, and those who are killed. This division holds true even among demons. However, the entities designated as killers are far more difficult to define than they are to label. They cannot be reduced and generalised to savages who, in their mindless fury, tragically fail in leaving their fellows alive. They are not simple.

Some mortals choose to believe that killing is a mental condition, a disease. A convenient, naive, mind-easing falsity. And yet, it can be truth. Killing is a thought, a motivation, a will – one that roots itself into the psyche, and festers in the mind more potently and persistently than poison will ever plague the flesh. It is in that exact moment that a killer is born. The act that inevitably follows is not worth mentioning. A human, and life in general, is an almost humorously fragile thing. Cut it down, it dies. Smash the head, it dies. Strangle the neck, it dies. Sever the limbs, it dies. Rip out the guts, it dies. Killing is an act that is virtually uniform among all of the world’s planes. At most, demons are a fraction more creative.

Even the reasons for killing have much in common – ‘reasons’ for demons, oftentimes ‘justifications’ for mortals. There are those who kill by accident. There are those who kill by design. There are those who kill out of convenience. There are those who kill out of necessity. There are those who kill for justice – or revenge, for the two are often one and the same. There are those who kill and never deign to think about it. There are those who kill to savour the despair of the dying. And then there are those who kill, simply because spilled blood and mutilated meat sates the hungering of their soul.

Ferre, the Scythe-Bearer, belonged to this last group.

It was, she suspected, part of the reason why she consistently gravitated towards the Joneses’ funeral home. She cared nothing for pained cries, thought nothing of prayers for mercy, but oh so loved to watch Eugene work his nimble fingers, directing sharp instruments through the flesh of his subjects, cutting and carving, cleaving and chopping. Murder and mutilation put her fragmented mind at peace – it was as if she had returned to a time her body remembered how to sigh, yawn, and truly lay at rest. A time when her husk of silk and cloth encased more than a pitch-black murk, when her darkness contained more than a ceaseless craving for even further darkness.

Soon, none of it would matter. The advent of mending had never been out of her control – the die had been cast long before she had a purpose for it. It was a mere matter of timing now, timing and preparations. She needed souls. Slowly, agonizingly slow for anyone who entertained primitive things like muscles, Ferre rose from her chair. Dust scattered from her clothes - she had sat there for a month, deaf and blind to everything around her. The demon had turned into herself, conversed with her darkness, and came out having learned a lot.

Carefully moving the massive weight compacted into her lithe form, she blindly took her first steps. Heavy, metallic echoes resounded through the building. Her senses had yet to regain full functioning, but next to the sound of her own stumps upon stone, she registered a shrill screech that she had previously discarded as background noise. Now, she discarded it as plain irrelevant noise. It was midnight – time to leave. The demon detached her mask, thrust a hand into the now-accessible void, and reached for the snath of her weapon. The scythe gently curved out from her hood, whistling through the air, its blade forever sharp beyond imagination. Ferre lifted her immensely heavy arm with effortless ease – as if it were, indeed, a limb.

The demon swung. Though any other weapon of comparable size would have lodged itself in either floor or ceiling, the Scythe of Souls cleaved something else entirely. Reality. Using one of her few surviving Curse-Bearers as an anchor point, Ferre crafted a pathway, a neat, crimson-lined tear in the fabric of the world, ignoring trivial concepts such as ‘distance’. The demon ripped it open further, and then, carefully, stepped through it.

The soft snoring of an elderly woman filled the bedroom, blissfully ignorant of what had entered her house. Ferre knew where she had arrived. Owinn, the town beneath the ancient castle of Angarhyelm, from whence came man-slaying abominations. Her harvest – souls that held an absence of both good and evil – would be bountiful here. Youthful, powerful souls, with that particularly neutral mix of innocence and cruelty she required.

Now where was that orphanage?

Eugene winced at the disorderly conduct conducting itself in his lobby. Normally, Jones & Jones could be considered still as the grave (as it were), with nary a peep, other than the occasional strangled scream from downstairs. Now, with Warren entering and Ferre leaving and his trying to have a civil conversation, and the tearful reunion in the basement, the funeral home was bordering on chaotic. Grimacing at the squeal of Warren's piercing attempts at entry, he made his way over to the window.

At least, he thought, Ferre had left. He generally regarded her as a piece of furniture, but he didn't want to have too many unnecessary demons cluttering up the already tight space of the front lobby. (Having furniture for silly things like customer convenience was bad enough.) Truth be told, however, he'd take thirty violent psychopaths in exchange for Warren nearly any day. He particularly disliked his tongue. In fact, he particularly disliked almost everything about him. And that was hardly even considering the fact that Warren was one of the lucky few who seemed entirely immune to he and Leslie's caustic company.

He scowled, rapping on the glass to catch the whimsical demon's attention. "I hope you're intending on paying for that," he said nastily, glaring at the window as it hastily worked to correct itself (he had made sure that everything in the home, sentient or not, was afraid of him.) Eugene grumbled as he made his way to the wooden door, opening it and turning his attentions back to Warren. "Look, we do have a front door, you know. No need to go ruining anybody's windows." He muttered something under his breath, which might've sounded something suspiciously like, 'how would you like it if I went and scratched up your windows?' but it is, of course, far too ridiculous for him to have said that, seeing how petty and childish such a comment would be. "Where is this?" he asked, squinting as he examined the pleasantly clean streets, well-lit despite the late hour. "Rasmorya? Looks like Rasmorya."

MEANWHILE, in the morgue...

Ahem. Anyway.

Downstairs, Marcus leaned conversationally against one of the slabs in the mortuary, taking a glance to make sure he wasn't actually touching its inhabitant who was ever-so carefully wrapped in a clinical not-green-but-not-blue shroud. He laughed. "Trouble? The Joneses? Don't be ridiculous, Salem." He frowned for a moment, considering how much he disliked both of them. "Besides," he said jokingly, "If either of 'em tried anything I wouldn't take it. I'd make sure to show them who's b- augh, god!" His poor attempt at humor was cut short when he caught glimpse of Leslie's latest piece of artwork. Occupying the next slab over, the cadaver looked young, probably a man of no more than twenty-four. Marcus found his stomach churning as he processed the carefully laid out design, raw and red against the victim's pale skin. Tearing his vision away almost reluctantly, Marcus shuddered.

"Hells Below, if they don't give me the creeps." Suddenly eager to leave, he slapped down a neatly folded bundle of laundry. "I brought you some clothes." It was Marcus's favorite of his ties, too. Salem, unlike Marcus, wore colors that consisted of more than red, grey, and black, and this one was a nice shade of green. Marcus thought it brought out his personality, whatever that meant.

While he was waiting for him to get dressed, Marcus looked around the room. Normally in a death-induced haze and in no mood for observation, he found it interesting now to view the morgue in a new light. Finishing his visual rounds, he returned to the immediate and grimaced as his gaze fell to the floor (and subsequently, the mess Salem made). With a flick of a wrist (and a look of abject disgust), he sent it somewhere to the depths of Hell. He could only hope it landed on the head of some unsuspecting imp or, really, anyone who wouldn't bother to come after him. "I didn't realize it was common for reptiles to cough hairballs," he said, a bit of a smirk hinted at the corners of his mouth. "Got a bit of volcano in the lung, eh?"

Hardly waiting for Salem to finish tying his shoes, Marcus ushered him up the stairs, careful to make sure his weary partner didn't do anything ridiculous. Really he had only fainted that one time, but it wasn't like Marcus to ever let him live it down.