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The shop was one of the anchors of Crossroads Interparadigm
Mall--it had been there nearly as long as the mall itself, and
carried a bit of age and mustiness and the scent and feel of old
high-quality wood, sensations as rare in this mall as in any
other.
Perhaps in part due to its very venerability and tradition,
there was a timelessness about its wares. It had gone by many
names, but as media began to consolidate and the old stories
appear and re-appear in ever-morphing tangled forms, it began to
take on names it could be called in general parlance. Lately it
had taken to being rather more open and descriptive than usual:
Bram's of Carpathia: The Very Finest in Sinister Menswear.
It was still a beautiful place, and definitely still quite
exclusive: the innocent-eyed, the sneer-impaired and hissless,
the guileless and self-sacrificing and unflinchingly noble, felt
as unwelcome as ever and avoided the place as they always had.
Maybe the kids didn't like cardboard villains anymore, as some
were beginning to whisper, but the old niceties of who got to
dress well were still faithfully observed. Anarchy did not yet
prevail.
Nor had anybody's idea of new designer colours gained much
ground here. Although there was a section of deep blood crimson
and another of masculine military grays and greens and navies,
for the most part the shelves and racks of boots and suits and
cloaks and fedoras and Stetsons came in one colour: Sable. Jet.
Ebony. Raven. Grave Interior. Moonless Sky. The Void. Past the
Event Horizon. Brand-New Asphalt. You get the idea. And with
that limited but eloquent palette, in any fabric, Bram's tailors
could create the perfect eerie and yet elegant image for nearly
any suave evil-doer or black-hearted rogue.
The man who walked into the store this evening was tall and
imposing and dressed all in black, but who wasn't? Trying not to
catch too long a glimpse of his oily hair and aquiline beak, he
instead immersed himself in fondling long lines of finely sewn
robes in black gabardine, perfect against the damp winds of
Scotland. It was when he was starting to get really absorbed in
the beauty of a winter cloak lined in black fox fur that he
noticed in the corner of his eye the even taller stranger in a
hooded black cloak, who had chosen a patch of dark carpet a bit
too close to his own to lurk in.
That wasn't unusual. The clientele of Bram's tended to
specialize in menacing, and it was no surprise they'd sometimes
try out their moves on each other, in what was traditionally a
neutral zone for the dark side. But this particular man had
reason to worry, as although he still affected the style--it
suited him well, and he knew no other--he had serious reasons to
doubt his sincere evilness. In his brooding heart, of course he
knew that what counted was that no one else doubted it--yet
uncertainty in his line of archetype could be fatal. So he
stiffened only briefly, and prepared to whirl about to face the
entity that was making his personal space unpleasantly chill and
clammy, even by his dungeon-dwelling standards. He caught a
whiff of the grave, but before he could take this into account
he felt a tug on his sleeve. Touching was verboten here. This
was serious.
And a cold, thin voice that made even this longtime traveler's
unshakeable spine quiver, the creature hissed, "Hhhhave you
ssssseeen Bagginsssss?"
The man furrowed his brow. His left forearm was not burning in
any way, not even slightly. Not one of his, then. "Who is this
Baggins? I don't know him and I don't know of him. Don't think
he was ever a student of mine."
The tall, rather regal creature sniffed the air. The man tried
to see his face, but only caught twin flickers of unhealthy
starlight from underneath his rough black hood. "Come to the
dressssssing room," it said, beckoning with an unnaturally long
finger in a black leather glove, tossing some cloakage over its
arm--or where its arm seemed to be.
The man hesitated, searching surreptitiously for the familiar
feel of his wand in an inner pocket of his own cloak. _What the
hell,_ he thought. _I might learn something. I don't think it's
allowed to hurt me_. He had another motivation even than that,
but he wasn't ready to admit it yet at this stage in the story.
At the very least, he could find out what this creature was, and
what its objectives were--aside from the two obvious ones that
is, only one of which did the man think he could help it with.
It wasn't much of a conversationalist. "Where issssss
Bagginsssssss?" it demanded.
"Well, I'm not hiding him in my robes!" the man snarled, trying
to fend off the skeletal, clutching hands. He couldn't help but
notice that every part of him it touched went slightly cold and
numb, which was so much the opposite of the usual intended
effect he was starting to find it fascinating. "Who are you? Is
that your huge, heavily armoured black horse outside?"
The creature bent the space where its neck should be. Was that
a crown sparkling under the hood? "Yesssssss. And you?"
"I flew here on a broomstick, if you must know."
"That issssssss rather poncssssssy."
"I'm not the one groping strangers in a dressing room."
"Yeesssssss, you are......nowwwww."
He yanked his hands away. "Who are you?" He drew himself up to
his full height, but he was still shorter than the...thing. Oh
well. "I am Severus Snape, Potions Master at Hogwarts School of
Witchcraft and Wizardry." No, that didn't sound as ominous as
he'd hoped.
"I was once the Witch-King of Angmar...now I am the Lord of
Nothingness, and I serve only one Masssster."
Oh, this one was good. "Well, I won't tread on your Master's
turf, then. I think your problem's nothing that a Corporeality
Potion combined with a pinch of Speaker's Ease Speech Impediment
Potion couldn't cure, but I'll be going now...."
"Waaaaaaiiit," the creature breathed, and Severus found himself
slammed against the wall of the dressing room as the lights went
dim (which the other shoppers were completely used to.) "I
wiissssssh to know you further. My Massssster sssseeess all, and
he demandssss it. If you wissssh to ssseeee me-"
Severus looked into bottomless darkness between the glowing
eyes, and glanced down at the extended glove that was not the
one that held him pinned like a moth. In the palm there was a-
"You mussssst wear thisssss ring."
"N-no," Snape stammered. "I'm not ready for a commitment."
Yet the ring was quite a lovely thing, beckoning with a
deceptively wholesome golden light, although Severus had no
doubt the black stone had the depth hidden within it to contain
a stolen soul, and he wondered what the hell he was doing
accepting anything from a personage that resembled in any way an
unusually charismatic Dementor.
And before he knew it, it was on his finger. Had he put it on?
He couldn't remember.
And he looked up at the proud creature that was now glowing
with a pale funguslike light--square jawed and skeletal,
handsome somehow and yet fell and unclean, cold as bones and yet
somehow heating a hidden flicker of monstrous desire within him,
and it was smirking, and intent, and unfastening his robes.
"What-what happened to you?" Severus gasped, as his skin shrank
away from the cold breath on his neck.
"It wasssss the ring, mortal fool," hissed the tall beast as
its hand moved downward. Now Snape could see and feel it clearly
as he swooned in the twilight between the worlds of the living
and the dead. He wanted now to force it from his hand before it
was too late, and realized in another sense it already was. By
psychic pressure and physical, the Witch-King--oh great, was it
hermaphroditic too?, was pushing him to his knees. He only
whimpered a little, but what he was thinking was that it had
been a long time since he had sucked any undead cock, and now
that he was a man and tired of the boyish horndog slumming that
had gotten him into the Death Eaters in the first place, he
hoped this would at least be new and different somehow.
He tried to register a formal protest, "Actually, I'm rather a
top myself, normally..."
"I am the King of the Nazzzgul, and you a weak mortal man,
doomed to death."
"Well, I am a wizard...."
The King of the Nazgul spat ectoplasm on the floor. "No
wizzzzard can withssstand the full force of the Nine."
He meant inches, Severus surmised as the black
chain-mail-covered trousers before him were opened. And took a
deep breath.
Cold. Cold and rotten, a rancid, musty, swampily moist
lichsicle it was, and yet Severus Snape had always taken pride
in his iron stomach and impervious throat--how long could a
Potions Master survive without them? The chill glove at the back
of his head seemed, impossibly to be warming slightly as he
worked, with skilled but rusty lips and tongue. He reached up
his shaking hands-the ring always in the corner of his
half-closed eye-and took a handful of brittle pelvic bone. The
Witch-King leaned into it, fucking Severus's mouth with a
haughty gusto.
Then the hand clenched painfully in his hair, and Snape felt
himself yanked upward to gaze into that faded, glowing, lifeless
face. "The massssster wants to ssseee me fuck you."
Well, this is kinky, Severus thought through his half-faint.
And the Nazgul had certainly never asked for a safeword. But
that notion alone shot through his nervous system like an
electric jolt, and as the whole front half of his body hit the
wall he could not longer deny that he was rigor-mortis hard
himself. His last half-conscious thought was relief that the
Bram's staff was well aware of subtext and kept a discreet pot
of lube in every dressing room for just this purpose, frequent
as this use of the dressing room was. And sure enough, he felt
that bony finger enter him first, smeared with goo that was cold
but still warmer than the prick of the Nazgul.
As Snape was not-gently forced open and penetrated, he cried
out with a savage pain-pleasure blend that hopefully gave this
Masssster, wherever he was, an unholy boner of his own. The
Ringwraith rode him hard, sliding in and out with a wicked
deliberation that made Sev squirm and sob in the most obsequious
fashion. When he felt the hand enclose his own aching shaft, he
moaned, well aware the entire shop could hear. Could hear the
rattling of the dressing-room door with the force of the
creature's pounding, in fact. He was dimly aware that he was
chewing his own hand, the one that cushioned his face against
the wall, the one that wore the ring. If he wasn't tripping and
swooning he'd have been able to swear that the ring pulsated
slighly around his finger, expanding and contracting like an
enchanted gold sphincter itself.
Slowly, Snape and the Witch-King sank to the floor together. As
the cold insistence against his prostate and the rhythm of that
skeletal claw enclosing his prick tightly reached a fever pitch
of cruelty, Severus let out a horrid strangled cry and came
violently, shooting against the wall. The Ringwraith was right
behind him in all respects: he or it thrust once more cruelly,
straight to his core, and vibrated there like a brutal
tuning-fork. A long-drawn wail came down the wind, like the cry
of some evil and lonely creature. It rose and fell and ended on
a high piercing note.
Time hung suspended, and well-hung indeed it was: Severus was
paralyzed, caught in a back-arching moment, fading from within
from the deadly spurt of the Morgul-cock. Sensation left his
limbs, and his mind was growing dim....
Not your normal afterglow... no, dying, not now_, he thought as
he began the long slide into darkness as the Witch-King withdrew
and loomed over him. Desperately he groped amid the wreckage of
his robes that lay at the black-steel-booted feet. His shaking
hand closed around a reassuring length of wood. With the last of
his strength and consciousness, Severus groaned, "Ex-expecto
patronum."
Hanging on, he saw the silvery image of the godlike Brighton
lifeguard he had known at fourteen rise forward and swirl around
the Dark creature. The Ringwraith hissed and backed off, as the
ring rolled off Sev's limp hand. The ring appeared once again on
the black glove, and the creature disappeared.
Severus took a few seconds of rest in his partial faint before
shakily climbing to his feet and cleaning himself off as best he
could. Dressing and leaning on the door for a moment, he
staggered back into the shop. The Nazgul was still there. Snape
watched him glide up to a new tall stranger in black, this one
wearing a sort of bowl-cut helmet and mask and seeming to have
some kind of respiratory problem. He heard once again the hiss,
"Hhhhave you sssseeeen Bagginsssss?"
Zombie slut, he thought as he slipped out of the store.
Thinking he might be gettng old for this, he resolved to break
down and do a bit more of his shopping in Diagon Alley from now
on after all.
Far, far away, in a dark tower in another land, a giant red eye
halfway closed in a dreamy, satiated fashion.
END