#hellmuse

Johanna Constantine had learned to read the patterns of supernatural distress in the way something felt wrong about certain buildings, and how everything seemed to recoil from places where natural order had been violated. The house in Bloomsbury literally made her teeth ache. Something was off here, something deeply wrong, yet dressed in academic respectability.

Richard Madoc’s sudden burst of literary genius had coincided too neatly with all the hallmarks of supernatural imprisonment that were so familiar to her.

Johanna had tracked his movements meticulously over the past few days and knew he wouldn’t be at home. She made her way through the front door—not a hard lock to pick, it didn’t even take her 10 seconds. What a twat…

As she began to move through the downstairs rooms, all she initially found were books scattered across surfaces, their spines cracked open. Creative obsession everywhere, even in the coffee rings left on manuscripts.

Her hands traced the edges of a few papers, and there was something predatory in how the rooms felt, like things being drawn out and consumed.

The pull upward began as a tightening in her throat, growing more insistent until she could no longer ignore it. It wasn't just curiosity that drew her to the staircase; there was suffering here, suffering that called to the part of her that had always been fascinated by darkness.

Funnily enough, each ascending step on the staircase felt like a descent into deep water, but she kept on climbing.

One of the many doors immediately caught her eye. Not because it was a door, but because there were so many locks on it. It was obvious someone was hiding something here, but the point wasn’t that no one could get in. The point was that whoever was on the inside could not get out. Johanna’s fingers followed the wood grain around the locks. Most of them were simple bolts, but the main one would require some work. A bit more complex than the one downstairs, which would seem weird to anyone. She began to pick the lock. When the final tumbler fell into place, Johanna immediately felt that some doors, once opened, could never truly be closed again. But she moved the remaining bolts regardless…

Once stepped inside, it was all there: The taste of pennies left too long on the tongue, things that turned rancid in the mouth from being swallowed back too many times. The aftertaste of hope curdled into resignation, like traces of ash and the cremated remains of stories never told by choice, harvested rather than offered. She hadn’t gagged at stuff like that for a long time, but this one, she really had to fight down.

A particular mustiness clings to spaces where time moves differently, where each day stretches into an eternity. And this room smelled like exactly that: skin that had forgotten the touch of sunlight, hair that hadn’t been mussed up by wind for far too long.

And then she saw her.

Beautiful in the way that ruins are beautiful, with a spirit that had been systematically hollowed out and refilled with—

Johanna had to take a deep breath because her anger wanted to make an appearance far too quickly. But this was neither the time nor the place.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Calliope said without looking up, and her voice carried the mechanical precision of someone who had learned that resistance only brought pain.

“Neither are you.” Johanna had broken enough bindings to recognise the particular malevolence of this one. Not just imprisonment, but violent theft. The slow, systematic extraction of essence until nothing remained but “usefulness”. It made something protective and wild snarl inside of her.

“He’s not here,” Calliope stated, finally raising her eyes to meet hers. There was no surprise in that gaze, no hope.

This would be far more complex than a simple rescue.

“I know.” Johanna crouched down to meet Calliope at eye level. “He’s at his publisher’s, celebrating his latest release. Thought that would give us some time.”

She couldn’t help but keep her eyes fixed on Calliope's, and there was something in there that reminded her of the way some souls were both essential and expendable. And it hurt. She quickly reminded herself why she was here…

Calliope’s binding was old magic, rooted in traditions of summoning and service. But it was also refined, efficient, and designed for the long run. Johanna had seen similar workings countless times, mostly in places where power met greed.

“You can’t break it,” Calliope said. “It’s bound by covenant. By… consent.”

Johanna’s jaw tightened at the cruelty that transformed victimhood into complicity, and it made her blood boil. “Forced consent isn’t consent. Old magic has rules about that, too.”

Johanna began to work, trying to read the texture of the compact that held Calliope. A bit like Braille really, hard to explain to anyone who had never experienced these things. Her mind finally found knots to latch on to. It was difficult to stay focused enough not to slip off them, and she could feel the siphoning: the way Calliope's essence was drawn out and transformed into someone else's legacy. Johanna had to refocus and find the spaces where doubt could be inserted while whispering her counter-invocations. Not to break the binding herself, no. That would have been impossible. Rather to reintroduce the concept of choice, to give back to Calliope what had been taken from her over and over.

She pressed the heel of her palm against the air just above Calliope's heart, because that was where she had to get in, where the severance of agency lay that made the binding possible in the first place. That kind of work was intimate and dangerous, and Johanna could feel the resistance. But she had spent what felt like a lifetime navigating these spaces, and she moved through the compact's defences like water through stone: persistent and ultimately irresistible. The binding still held, but now it held differently, with little hairline fractures here and there. But they were fractures regardless.

“Why are you here?” Calliope asked flatly.

Johanna paused and looked directly into her eyes.

“Because I know what it’s like to have your choices taken away from you.” She resumed her careful work, and she could feel the hairline fractures turn into cracks. “Because you asked for help, even if you couldn’t say the words out loud. And I’m here to help. Simple as that. Now get up, love.” Johanna outstretched her hand, but Calliope didn’t take it. Instead, she stood up as if to test the reality of movement that belonged to her alone. Her legs trembled, but Johanna could tell it wasn’t weakness. It was autonomy returning.

— — —

The house had been her world for so long that the sunlight felt harsh on her skin. Calliope pressed herself against the stone wall of the alleyway, watching cigarette smoke trailing off Johanna like incense for the damned.

Constantine’s eyes rested on her. “Bit of a rough day, eh?”

And Calliope laughed! A sound like breaking glass, yet beautiful enough to make Johanna’s mouth quirk up in turn.

Calliope had forgotten that laughter could be a choice. Joy had been something she didn’t want or even could share with him, not to mention she had not experienced any for so long. It would have been another resource to be harvested, refined, transformed into one of his “masterpieces”. The binding had been invisible but absolute, forged from the ashes of her sacred scroll, from the moment Erasmus Fry had committed that first act of arson and then had passed whatever cinders of her powers remained to more than eager hands.

“I had forgotten what laughing feels like,” Calliope admitted, her voice cracking like ice in spring after having been frozen into something that hadn’t truly belonged to her for so long.

Johanna lit another cigarette. “Sounds like you remember.”

And she did. The memory unfurled inside of her like wings learning to spread after years of being forced to fold:

She was the ocean, not the vessel. The storm, not the shelter. The song itself, not merely the instrument through which others played their melodies.

A moment of recognition passed between them until Calliope flinched at a noise across the street. “He’s not there, love.”

“The binding…” she began, then stopped. How could she explain that she didn’t trust her freedom yet?

“I know about bindings,” Johanna replied. “Know about that one, too. Burnt scrolls, power passed between hands like currency. Always the same in a roundabout way.” Calliope cast down her eyes. “Sorry, didn’t mean to imply you’re just a statistic…” Johanna moved closer. “You can walk away. Right now. He’ll come back to an empty house. Whatever hold he thinks he has over you is gone.”

Calliope swallowed hard. What remained of the binding was only dead weight, the gravity of believing, for so long, she had no alternative, no escape. But here stood this… mortal woman who basically told her that freedom was not just granted but claimed.

Johanna outstretched her hand for the second time today. “Haven’t introduced myself yet. Johanna Constantine.”

And this time, Calliope took the offered hand, and her fingers found warmth, calluses and the steady pulse of someone who had probably chosen survival over surrender too many times to count.

“I know. My name,” she said as they walked away from the place that had contained her for so long, “is Calliope.”

Not “muse”. Not “mine”. Only the name that had been hers before and still was hers after.

“I know that, too,” Johanna grinned.

— — —

The space was cluttered with the debris of a life lived entirely on one’s own terms. Calliope sat at the small kitchen table, her fingers wrapped around a mug of coffee that had gone cold while it began to sink in that she was truly free.

She watched her from the corner of her eye: Johanna rummaged through her space with unconscious familiarity, but Calliope couldn’t help but notice that something about the way she moved also hinted at a freedom claimed inch by bloody inch. Perhaps not quite in the way she had lost and refound hers, but recognisable regardless.

“It’s different,” Calliope said quietly, “when the moments are meant to be yours again.”

Johanna stopped doing whatever it was she did. “How so?”

Calliope traced the rim of her mug. “When I was… kept, things flowed through me like water. It was effortless and… terrible at the same time. And none of it was truly mine.” She looked up. “Sitting here, choosing to stay, choosing to speak, feels like… learning to breathe again?”

Johanna’s hands found the familiar ritual of lighting another cigarette. But Calliope noticed that this time, she didn’t do it with the efficiency of someone managing a crisis. There was a calmness to it, like someone consciously creating space.

Calliope took the opportunity before the moment could pass. “Tell me about the hells you’ve walked through. I want to understand how you… survived.”

Something shifted in Johanna’s expression. Surprise, perhaps, or recognition of the intimacy she had just been offered. Most likely both. Calliope couldn’t help but see that this was a woman who had spent years carrying her damage like armour. A woman who very likely let others see sharp edges while keeping the tender places hidden. But there was something in Johanna’s eyes that suggested she understood the difference between questions asked out of genuine care rather than mere curiosity or even voyeurism, and that she didn’t hold the question against her.

“Most people don’t ask. They just…” She exhaled smoke that caught the lamplight. “…look away.”

“I am not most people,” came the simple reply…

— — —

Over the next week, Calliope’s found-again laughter began to transform the rock hard structures Johanna had built around herself. She was a Constantine, and the horrors and contradictions ingrained in that very fact would have shattered a lesser spirit. Calliope, however, inhabited her own pain with a grace that was defining. And somewhat contagious.

The stories they shared emerged slowly, but they did:

Family curses and chosen solitude, learning to love one’s own company enough for fear of sharing it.

Exploring and excavating wants that had been buried beneath decades of forced service.

Things as small as choosing to sit closer to each other on the sofa, or deciding whether to answer questions or let them rest in comfortable silence, or reaching for something without waiting for permission or invitation.

The kiss, when it came, felt inevitable. Soft and searching, tasting of closeness chosen rather than commanded. Johanna’s breath caught almost imperceptibly as she felt herself fracture and reform in the space of a heartbeat. It was a small surrender, but a surrender no less, that spoke of walls carefully maintained but occasionally, daringly, lowered. Like now.

“That’s dangerous territory,” she muttered.

“I’m learning to appreciate danger,” Calliope whispered, and Johanna could feel her lips quirk up. “When it is my choice to enter it.”

When they broke apart, Johanna simply asked, “What now?”

“I want to write my own story for once. And I choose to make you a part of it. If you wish it so.”

Johanna’s smile was reminiscent of lightning splitting the sky, illuminating things that had been hidden in darkness for far too long.

When she pulled Calliope in again, her words were a supplication and a challenge combined: