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[corroded-crown.livejournal.com]

Date: June 25, 2000
Setting: London
Status: Public
Summary: Pollution sets up shop.

It was a propertly dark and stormy night, as one would expect. Rain lashed at closed and boarded up windows, thunder crashed and echoed against the decrepate buildings. In between two of these buildings, was a wide ally way in which whores of both sexes, desperate for a bit of money, gathered without any real hope for work. Not on a night like this.A man sat huddled over himself to try and keep warm as he sat on the ground. The only one on the street who didn't seem to be bothered by the cold was a young man in a dirty white jacket. Any passerby and all the inhabitents of the ally would assume the boy was high, from the way, though his eyes watched the street, was unfocused, as though he was not all there.

Either he was high or insane, they thought. And gave it no other thought. The boy was well know in this seedy part of London. The drugs he sold were cheep and of a good quality. And, though perhaps it was just rumors, but no one who bought from him had ever gotten busted. With his drugs, that is.

The boy was known as White, because of his jacket. White liked selling these pollutants. Humans were so eager for them.

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[go-all-fishies.livejournal.com]

The man sitting on the ground shuddered. It was cold where he was, dark, lonely, and he felt sure something was chasing him.

The girl with tattered clothes and brightly colored hair, who suddenly crouched next to him, grimaced and leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

"I don't like that one. What about the one with the big cuddly furry cats and their big, um, smiley teeth whatsits... let's have that one," murmured Delirium, giving his unconscious a gentle push towards warmer, more pleasant delusions, but nonetheless delusions.

[corroded-crown.livejournal.com]

White blinked at Delirium, watching her. He wasn't sure if he wanted her messing with the man. He was one of his customers; when he he had the money, that is.

[go-all-fishies.livejournal.com]

Delirium hummed tunelessly to herself and rocked. She waited until she felt her influence take place, until she knew that a feverish smile had spread across the man's face.

Then she looked up, delibrately locking her mismatched gaze with the other personification and merrily stuck her tongue out.

[corroded-crown.livejournal.com]

Pollution sat back, startled at such a show. "Do I know you?" he asked, voice sliding out of his mouth like sludge. His head tilted. "I'm sure I'd remember you," he mused. "But I don't... You're familar." She felt familar too.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

Pollution wasn't the only creature who seemed oddly at home in the dark places of London on a stormy night.

At the end of the alley a cigarette lighter flared, casting flickers of light over a cynical face lined with care and sleeplessness. The trenchcoated figure to whom both belonged made his way without fear or disgust past the sodden figures huddled there toward the pale youth.

"Sorry luv, not tonight," he murmured to a wretched thing who moved hopefully into his path, pressing a few wadded bills inconspicuously into her hand. "Go find a dry room, all right?"

"Well, shit. Figures it'd be you. Might've saved myself the trip," John said wryly when he stopped near his quarry, recognizing the dealer by his general otherworldly feel and by process of elimination. There were only so many Horsemen, after all, and only one he hadn't met and who seemed perfectly suited to the setting. "Eliminating the middle man and going straight to the masses, eh? Now that's craftsmanship."

[corroded-crown.livejournal.com]

"I like to get involved," White said, tilting his head towards John without looking at him. Pale fingers fiddled with the zipper on his jacket, pondering if he should zip it or not. He finally decided that a human, even a high human, would want a zipped jacket against this storm. Only then did he look up at John. "Did you want something?" A stupid question. Of course he did. No one came to him unless they wanted something.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John tilted his head to one side, eyeing the Horseman speculatively. He hadn't been too happy about coming out here in the first place, and discovering one of these Apocalyptic agents had been operating openly in his town (and in fact, almost under his nose) didn't make him any happier. Still, he reckoned for what he was after, he wouldn't find a more direct source, and everybody he'd talked to had said the stuff the kid sold was pure and potent. Made sense, he supposed.

"Heard there was a bloke dealing down this way who skinned one hell of a good spliff, for a reasonable price," he said, smiling a bit sourly. Christ, he hated this. Not that he gave a rat's arse about the moral, legal or medical ramifications; it just disgusted him that his own anxiety had got the better of him to the point that he felt a need to be here.

[corroded-crown.livejournal.com]

Pollution shrugged. "A high price doesn't make sense to me. I'm not here to make money," he muttered, brushing greasy hair out of his eyes. "What do you want? What do you want to feel? That's more important than the drug, you know." Pollution suddenly looked away from John to watch a woman enter a car with a man. "He convinces her not to wear a condom and pays her more for it," Pollution whispered. "She'll die in two years. Complications due to AIDS..." He turned his glazed eyes back to John.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John'e eyes narrowed slightly. He decided in that moment that Pollution was going to be one of those few Manor residents (and Horsepersons) he virulently disliked. With War or Pestilence, it was at least possible to maintain a polite fiction that they were something other than what they were, punches and sneezes notwithstanding; but this one's work struck just a little too close to home. Brendan, Brian, his father, Cheryl, and John himself, among others, all owed a good bit of the misery and dysfunction in their lives (and for some, deaths) to substances under Pollution's direct authority.

Still, it was no use pretending: he was an addictive personality, always had been, and he'd come out here tonight for a reason. "See, though, that's the ringer," he replied, "it does matter. Because what I want to feel is that wonderful sense of relaxation I get when I've just smoked a really good joint, knowing there's nothing in it I haven't dealt with before and can't handle. Look, don't play games with me, eh? You and your lot have already had your pound of flesh and then some." (Literally. He'd spat at least that much lung tissue into the sink or the bog when the cancer had fully taken hold, and that wasn't counting what Lucifer had burned away.) "I'm just looking to score a little pot. That's it."

He was wet, cold, hadn't slept decently in days, was getting decidedly cranky, and would go elsewhere if he had to; that option was looking better by the moment, in fact. Pollution might be the ultimate drug dealer, but he was scarcely the only one in London.

[corroded-crown.livejournal.com]

Pollution wasn't bothered by John's distaste. It was nothing new, even many of his customers hated him on a subconscious level. Humans were a lot more animal then they would like to admit and most could tell that this man was not good for them, or their world. He was dangerous. Pollution rather liked that, to be honest. He wasn't what you would call a people person.

When John told him all he wanted was "a little pot", White could not help being very dissapointed. He had honestly expected more from this man. Oh well, it wasn't like this little drug couldn't kill you just as dead as the next one, couldn't slowly rot and stain your insides the way oil stains cloth, and nuclear pollution stains everything. Pollution tossed a small bag at John and told him the (very reasonable) price.

No, he was not the only drug dealer in London, but he was The Drug Dealer. The best. It was one thing Pollution did not mind being known for.

[dangeroushabits.livejournal.com]

John caught the bag and paid the Horseman, feeling vaguely dirty in a way that had nothing to do with either the illicit nature of the exchange or, really, with Pollution himself, when you came right down to it. He wasn't quite sure why. Shady dealings of various sorts had been part of his life for damn near as long as he could remember, and indulging his own vices had never particularly bothered him either. Even when they'd come close to killing him.

Maybe it was the pathetic souls scattered around the alley, fellow human beings who lacked the knowledge, the good luck or the sheer ornery stubborness that had kept him more or less in one piece all these years. If there was one thing John hated, it was being reminded how many perfectly decent people had fallen by the wayside while he'd somehow managed to carry on. It wasn't fair, and fuck if he had any idea what to do about it.

"I'd wish you a good night," he muttered, looking around at the miserable huddled wretches with no particular expression, "but it looks like that'd be redundant. See you around the Manor."

He turned on his heel and left, hoping he was wrong about that. The irony of lighting another cigarette as he exited the alley was hardly lost on him, but what could you do? He could leave Pollution standing there, but like everybody else on this mudball, he'd never really be rid of him. Born of humanity's most visceral fears and self-perpetuated plagues, there was a little bit of each Horseman in everyone.