Jeeves and the Creature of the Night

[fulselden]

Ok, so. I guess I just wrote a SUBSTANTIAL AMOUNT of PG Wodehouse comment fic? THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU EXPECT WHEN YOU GO TO WRITE ON A HORROR COMMENT MEME. Which is over here at sharp_teeth, by the way, and is awesome: go, write spine-chilling stuff!

Anyway, in his fantastic pastiche comic book series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore once wrote a Wodehouse fic by the deathless name of What Ho! Gods of the Abyss, in which Bertie and co ENCOUNTER CTHULHU.

And it was pretty fabulous, as the title suggests! Since I alas no longer have any grounds on which to criticise the finer points of Moore's attempt at Wodehousian diction (that stuff is finely calibrated, y'all), I'll confine myself to one moan, which is that Aunt Dahlia was subjected to some objectionable indignities! I like Aunt Dahlia and do not believe she would ever allow herself to become a brainwashed servant of the Great Old Ones.

She is an AUNT, Alan Moore! DO YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS???


So, when I saw the following most excellent prompt from pandarus, I knew I had an opportunity to rectify this parlous situation:

Jeeves and Wooster

Bertie is bitten by a vampire, as he toddles home from the Drones Club one jolly evening, a trifle the worse for wear. Since recoiling away from the first blush of rosy-fingered Dawn is perfectly normal for any chap who's spent the best part of the night imbibing unspeakable amounts of gin, he does not immediately perceive the change which has come upon him...

AT THE EXPENSE OF JEEVES, HOWEVER, dude I am so sorry! As also for calling him dude, Jeeves would not approve.

Characters: Jeeves, Wooster, Gussie Fink-Nottle
Rating: T
Warnings: character death. Decapitation. Newts. Takes a while to get properly horrific.

ETA: now podficced FABULOUSLY by pandarus : you owe it to yourself to check this out, for the closing music alone! Not to mention an absolutely spiffing rendition of Jeeves and Bertie. In mp3 or m4b.

 

Rummy as it seems, speaking after the fact, it was only after Gussie Fink-Nottle turned a peculiar shade of puce and started to emit noises more appropriate to a strangled Pekinese, that I began to wonder whether last night’s escapades at the annual Drones Club dinner had left me with something besides a mouth resembling the inner reaches of the Sahara, a head full of Albanians in heavy footwear dancing the Mazurka, and a stomach that felt as if someone had been at it with a heavy-duty suction pump.

This was after Jeeves had shimmied in with the customary remedy, you understand, and de-shimmied, all without blinking an eyelid, which, taking into account the circumstances, just goes to show what a steady diet of Spinoza and fish oil can do for a man.

But, as I was saying, it was only once Fink-Nottle, he of the newts and the voice like air escaping from a balloon, burst in, Jeeves looking pained in the general vicinity of his left shoulder, that the extent of my predicament became clear.

Not immediately, mind you, due to the aforementioned Mazurka-dancing and suction-pump sensations, and the fact that Gussie, never spruce, looked like a man who’d spent the night enjoying the hospitality of one of her Majesty’s less salubrious lock-ups.

“Bertie!” he said.

“Gussie,” I replied, with a great deal less vim.

At this point, my mind was largely occupied the problem of getting myself outside of Jeeves’ remedy, always a moment of, as Harry the fifth would say – what would he say, Jeeves? – ah, yes. A moment of ‘once more unto the breach, dear friends’. I had very little patience for misplaced Fink-Nottles, and this may have come across in my manner. Stiff, I should imagine. A touch of the old hauteur.

“Bertie!” said the Nottle, once again. “There’s a policeman on your bed!”

“A what?”

“A policeman. Or,” said Gussie, “in your beastly terminology, a rozzer or something.”

Now, it is only fair to report that in this detail Gussie was entirely correct. There was indeed a large specimen of the genus making his presence felt, face down, just beyond my toes.

Gussie popping up looking like the business end of a scrubbing brush before I had risen from my bed of rest had, however, put me on my mettle. I waved an airy hand, my nonchalance impeded somewhat by my having omitted to set down my glass of Jeeves’ remedy.

Mopping Worcestershire sauce and egg whites off my immediate surroundings, I fixed Gussie with what the motion pictures like to call a steely glare.

“What if there is, Gussie? What if there is? Is it for me to prevent the constabulary from carrying out their duties wherever they see fit?”

Faced with this rebuke, Gussie made some more Pekinese noises. Then he pulled himself together, as much as is possible for a man who on his best day resembles a stuffed trout.

“Bertie. It’s about that young lady.”

“What?”

“The young lady you were seen escorting into a car last night, outside the Drones.”

“What?”

Despite my quickfire rebuttals, however, the general outline of the beazel in question was coming back to me. There hadn’t been a awful lot of her, from what I could remember, she being one of those girls built along sylphlike lines, rather like a fleeting gnu – what? – oh, very well, Jeeves. Like a fleeting antelope. But what there was of her was rather the pip, and when she had fleeted her way into cadging a lift with me in the wee hours of the night, I had pretty much stood back and let her fleet right on in.

As to what had happened, post-fleeting, however, I was drawing a blank. How I had managed to detach this specimen of modern girlhood and replace her with a six-footer from the metropolitan police force, for instance, was a mystery, as they say, for the ages.

I was pondering these matters when I became aware that Gussie was dangling what looked to be a portion of desiccated material, closely resembling the kind of thing they feed to boy scouts, in front of me. I recoiled, naturally, and he thankfully secreted it once more somewhere about his person.

“I have followed that woman,” he declared, sounding more than usually like something being squeezed, “all the way from Lincolnshire. Bertie,” he said, “You see what she did to my newts!”

I was about to return that I saw no such thing, when Jeeves intervened.

“If I may, sir? The animal in question appears to have been decapitated.”

“And not just Percy here, Jeeves,” said Gussie, fishing again for what I realised was not only the mortal remains of a newt, but, going on current evidence, the remains of a newt by the name of Percy. “All of them! Every tank a massacre! All their little heads...” And he sat down on the tail end of the policeman, to all appearances a broken man.

Now, to fully understand the magnitude of this announcement, you must grasp that Fink-Nottle was not merely a newt-fancier. In school, perhaps, when his interest in the little blighters was confined to one tank whose contents were only readily distinguishable from pea soup by the way that they tended to move of their own accord, he might have merited this low-key sob – sob – Jeeves? Thank you, Jeeves. Sobriquet. But in his later years, unfettered by any restraining influence other than a maiden aunt in Folkestone with a reported dislike of amphibians, Gussie had made the newt his idol. From what I gleaned from scattered reports of his Lincolnshire domicile, the place was practically festooned in newts. You could not leave your shoes unguarded overnight if you did not want to find Gussie’s little friends nestling in the toes of a morning.

So Gussie lurking outside the Drones in pursuit of a newt-guillotiner was not, however sordid, outside the bounds of possibility. There was, however, a problem with the aforementioned scenario, one I proceeded to put to the assembly.

“But, Gussie. What would that girl want to go around chopping the heads off newts for? Didn’t seem her sort of thing at all, from what I remember.”

Gussie made a sound like a stuffed trout being sat on. Now, I may harbour mixed feelings about chaps who come into my bedroom at ungodly hours and wave headless newts in my face, but never let it be said that the Woosters cannot reach out a hand to a fellow man in need. It was the work of a moment for me to extricate myself from the bedclothes and lay a calming hand on his shoulder.

“Gussie, Gussie,” I said. I leaned closer, my gastric juices feeling more and more as if someone had been at my middle section with an ice-cream scoop. I was conscious of a rummy feeling in my front teeth, as well, reminiscent of nothing so much as the aftermath of an unfortunate meeting with a speeding pavement one Boat Race night.

“If I might venture a suggestion, sir,” said Jeeves.

“There’s nothing to suggest, Jeeves,” Gussie informed his lap. “I found that fiend in human form thumbing a lift one evening in a country lane, and she inveigled me into offering her a bed for the night.”

Here, any red-blooded man might have hemmed and felt around his collar a little, but since Gussie ran on orange juice and newts, he ploughed right on.

“And in the morning, she was gone. And so - so were they. But I tracked her as far as the station and followed her to London on the milk train. I can feel her, Bertie. Feel her red handed, just round the corner.”

At this piece of manifest lunacy, a more level-headed man might have backed towards the door with a view of acquiring some accommodating medical gentlemen and a long-armed jacket tout de suite, as my Aunt Agatha would say. Gussie’s neck, however, was exercising a curious fascination, and I sat there rather as I imagine a mongoose tends to when confronted with a particularly succulent variety of cobra.

Jeeves ahemed. “Nevertheless, sir, I believe I can offer some small measure of elucidation. The young lady in question was, I fear, a species of supernatural creature which could well, I fear, stoop to preying on newts, in the absence of other victims. May I enquire, Mr Fink-Nottle, as to whether you have any form of Christian symbolism installed in your bedroom? A crucifix, perhaps?”

“My aunt gave me a sampler of the Easter rabbit,” said Gussie glumly. “It hangs above my bed.”

Jeeves raised an eyebrow a notch, as is his wont when surprised or alarmed.

“In that case, I would venture the opinion that it may well have simply been a question of personal taste on the part of the young lady.”

At this point, I felt I had to intervene.

“What rot, Jeeves. I can see why a spook of some description might prefer newts to Nottles, but that girl was a perfectly charming young sprig. Nothing off about her in the slightest.”

I would have continued, but I am loathe – loathe? – yes, loathe to report that I was hampered in expressing myself fully by having a mouthful of Gussie, who was thrashing rather feebly, like a cobra who has been on a milk-and-water diet. In my defence, I can only say that the policeman, as became apparent from later events, was already rather thoroughly drained. And Jeeves, the ever-ready, had shimmered over to a gap in the curtains, where he stood, as I believe the expression goes, limned in sunlight.

Creatures of the night like yours truly, it seems, come ready equipped with a kind of animal instinct as to what will do them no good. So, after casting Gussie aside and dabbing at myself rather ineffectually with a portion of eiderdown, I made no effort to start playing the soda-siphon with Jeeves.

“If I may continue, sir?” said Jeeves. “I took the liberty of dealing with the young lady when she attempted to exsanguinate me, late last night.”

“Good heavens, Jeeves. You lifted a hand against a lady?”

“No, sir. I lifted a length of wood. It is the only reliable method, other than decapitation, and I did not have the steak knife immediately to hand.”

Jeeves, no doubt observing my consternation at his apparent expertise in the matter of thumping adorable females with lengths of wood, elucidated.

“One must pierce the heart, sir. I myself have been associated in a freelance capacity with several groups of what are generally termed ‘vampire hunters’, and I am happy to say that my technique is quite precise.”

At this point, however, it became apparent that the policeman portion of the bedroom ensemble was finally stirring. And, I must admit, there is nothing quite so disconcerting as seeing a freckle-faced young officer of the law extending two piercing white fangs about the size of tent pegs in one’s general direction. I was excessively relieved when Jeeves, letting not ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’, spiked him right through the chest with a snapped-off chair leg. Most considerately, the policeman rapidly subsided into a neat mound of dust on the besplattered bed covers.

A nasty thought, however, occurred. “I say, Jeeves. Are you about to puncture me with that thing?”

“That depends, sir,” said Jeeves. “Are you about to puncture me?”

After a decent interval and an exchange of mutual assurances, I began to feel that all was not entirely lost. We were minus one inconvenient policeman, the Mazurka-dancing had stopped entirely following my regrettable snack, and Jeeves was apparently ready and willing to face the daylight world on my behalf.

“Well, Jeeves,” I said. “What jolly ho, and all that. All’s well that ends well, I suppose you could say.” It was not without a pang, however, that I continued. “I think, after all that, that you deserve a snifter. After all, it’s not as though I’ll be broaching the decanter any time soon, will I?”

Jeeves shimmied a little in place. “I am most appreciative of the suggestion, sir. But may I advise departing sooner, rather than later? The Paris boat leaves at six this evening, I believe.”

We creatures of the night are, you may be aware, red in tooth and claw. So it was without further ado that I put my foot down.

“Nonsense, Jeeves. We will invest in some heavy duty curtains and stay put. I see no reason why my ceasing to number amongst the living should alter our arrangements in the slightest. Or, at least, not so much as to send me scurrying off across the channel.”

Jeeves looked grave.

“In that case, sir, I feel it is my duty to inform you that both your Aunt Agatha and your Aunt Dahlia are well regarded in local vampire-hunting circles, although I must admit that they subscribe to rather different philosophies on the question of technique. I can assure you that no amount of subterfuge will serve to conceal your new identity from them. They are both redoubtable ladies.”

This, you may well imagine, put a whole new complexion on things. My Aunt Agatha has always given the impression of being prone to hew foes limb from limb at the drop of a hat, while my Aunt Dahlia, while generally speaking a jolly sort, spent her youth hallooing over hill and vale with the Quorn and Pytchley, apparently in pursuit of both foxes and fearsome vampires.

I straightened my pyjamas.

“Jeeves,” I said, “acquire a well padded coffin and pack up my effects with all due haste. I think a trip to the continent is in order.”

“Very good, sir.” Jeeves looked down at the bed, with its complement of powdered policeman and belly-up Gussie. “Do you wish me to lay Mr Fink-Nottle to rest, sir?”

Now, I’ve said before that we Woosters like to extend the helping hand to our fellow man. Naturally, also, I felt some pangs over having shuffled off Gussie’s mortal coil without so much as a by-your-leave. So it was with the very best of intentions that I held up a restraining hand.

“Leave Gussie to me, Jeeves,” I said.

Now, this moment of allegiance to the old school tie was pretty clearly a mistake. Gussie, you understand, had been a queer fish at the best of times. But as a fish on a slab, so to speak, he grew, rather like Alice, queerier and queerier. It was the newts, I think: he never really got over them.

He did, though, compensate by experimenting, in general, with things in tanks. It appears that, given a lot of messing about with pumps and tubes, you can keep portions of the general populace twitching around for a surprising length of time, allowing for regular infusions of the old red stuff from Gussie or myself. You can only imagine my feelings when I returned one morning to find Jeeves’ head in one such tank, noticeably absent the rest of him.

Unfortunately for the both of us, Gussie is rather secretive when it comes to his pumping and tubing arrangements, or he would have become as crispy as one of his long-lost newts quite a while ago. Nevertheless, Jeeves is scarcely less invaluable, being, naturally, still in full possession of his brains, for a mere iota of which many a professor of such-and-such or so-and-so would be willing to give up an arm and a leg at the least.

And Gussie has, I must admit, become very inventive with his creations. He really is admirable when it comes to not discriminating by sex or creed, and although I tend to remove the tongues after a while, it is clear that Jeeves is not the only recipient of his attentions to retain his original faculties.

All in all, joy may not cometh in the mornings, these days, but a juicy blonde in a subway tunnel is a pretty decent substitute, if I say so myself.

As a matter of fact, the night calls, as Jack London or one of those tough American birds probably said.

What ho, Jeeves. I’ll change your water in the morning.

Comments

(secret identity of bookelfe on LJ here)

[skygiants]

Oh man, this is HILARIOUS. As soon as I read the sentence "Is it for me to prevent the constabulary from carrying out their duties wherever they see fit?" I knew that this was going to be a work of pure Bertie gold, and INDEED IT WAS. And Fink-Nottle and the sampler of the Easter rabbit! And the aunts! Although, poor Jeeves . . . (Jeeves being Jeeves, though, I retain a glimmer of hope that becoming a disembodied head in a jar was part of his master plan all along.)

Re: (secret identity of bookelfe on LJ here)

[fulselden]

Thank you! Especially for trekking over to DW to tell me you enjoyed! (Man, I keep wondering if I should turn the comments on over at LJ. It feels so unfriendly! But ... I only have so much internet-energy! Problems, problems).

But, ANYWAY. I am very glad you had fun! And, yes, JEEVES. P-perhaps he has always wanted to be a head in a jar??? You know, deep underneath it all???

If it hadn't been very specifically a HORROR meme I would have left him as a fearless vampire hunter. But I feel he is nothing if not adaptable! He will figure out a way not to spend the rest of his post-life as a newt-substitute!

[cofax7]

What ho, Jeeves. I’ll change your water in the morning.

Oh. My. God. That's FANTASTIC.

::flails at you::

And of COURSE Aunt Agatha is a vampire-hunter!

[fulselden]

Thank you! I am happy you enjoyed! IT WAS PRETTY FUN TO WRITE.

And yes, AUNT AGATHA. The handle of her favourite vampire-spiking umbrella, it has many a notch!

[petra]

This is top hole from the Slayer Aunts to Gussie's newt-nature. Jeeves' deployment of the curtain is absolutely spiffing!

[fulselden]

Why thank you!

And, yes, vampirism - and indeed vampire hunting - is simply one of those little quirks of the topper-and-spats-wearing class with which the resourceful gentleman's gentleman must be conversant!

[pandarus]

I have to say, I enjoyed this every bit as much as the Alan Moore story. And have now committed said podfic - it should be uploaded to the archive within the day, insh'allah, courtesy of the lovely Cybel. She always manages to beat me to coming & giving a link, for she is awesomely conscientious - so there should be a link coming along shortly.

I am SO GLAD that you were inspired by my prompt, for this is a thing of awesome.

&hearts

[fulselden]

Oh, wow! I am so thrilled by:

a) PODFIC, omg EXCITEMENT, thank you!

b) you know the Black Dossier story (in which, it now occurs to me, they don't encounter Cthulhu as such, but, ah well. They totally should have).

c) you thought this was as fun as Moore's fic! Because while NOTHING CAN TOP THAT TITLE, really, it was definitely good times all through and one of his most sparkly pastiches.

In short: *___*

[cybel]

http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/jeeves-and-creature-of-night
http://audiofic.jinjurly.com/jeeves-and-creature-of-night-audiobook

:-)

[fulselden]

Oh, wow, thank you so much! Excitement!

[stultiloquentia]

*whoops*

*pulls up 2010 quotables file*

[fulselden]

Wodehouse lives (rather awkwardly) alongside Raymond Chandler as one of my favourite providers of quote-y goodness. So I am tickled pink that you think I managed to replicate the effect!

[my_daroga]

This is adorable and hilarious. I mean horrific! Horrific! I was won straight off, and you did not disappoint.

[fulselden]

Bertie is, I must admit, the most adorable of vampires! I realised half-way through that if I was going to make it anything other than a touching tale of how entering the realms of the undead is a trifle disconcerting at first and just the thing to make a chap appreciate his gentleman's gentleman, I needed to resort to EXTREME MEASURES. Hence, Jeeves-in-a-jar.

But anyway, thank you! I am pleased you enjoyed!

[sara]

Um, EW and YAY and also poor Jeeves!

[fulselden]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed - and, yes, EW indeed. Oh, Jeeves, I am so so sorry!

[oxoniensis]

Ha, perfectly gruesome, and hilarious.

[fulselden]

Why thank you! We endeavour to provide satisfaction, as Jeeves is wont to say.