Evil Walks Ch. 4: Bad Reputation

Evil Walks

Chapter Four: Bad Reputation

“I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation

You're living in the past, it's a new generation

A girl can do what she wants to do

And that's what I'm gonna do

And I don't give a damn 'bout my bad reputation

Oh no, not me.”

• “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts

The smoke burning her throat as Deanna inhaled on her cigarette felt so damn good. Deanna Wesson knew well that nothing in life came without pain, and hey, pain was a sign that she was still alive. Still alive and out of Hell – for now. Then again, dealing with Johnny certainly made her life a living Hell.

She used to idolize Johnny. No shit, it's the truth. He was her big hero, the one she swore would always protect her and her baby brother from the demons coming after them. For years she looked up to him, tried to do everything he said and live up to his expectations, and ignored the way he fell apart after losing her mother. She also overlooked the fact that he called her “son” and pretended that she wasn't a girl, since anything feminine would remind him of him of his late wife.

Then Deanna hit puberty; and it became a lot harder for Johnny to ignore her growing femininity (AKA boobs), and it was a hell of a lot harder for Deanna to continue putting up with Johnny's bullshit as she grew increasingly disillusioned with her hero.

At age twelve, she got her period, and Johnny refused to buy her tampons. That was the last fucking straw. Deanna finally realized that she could never be Johnny's perfect little soldier and that she shouldn't have to be.

Blaring the Mötley Crüe cover of “Anarchy In The U.K.” so loudly that the neighbors complained, twelve-year-old Deanna locked herself in the bathroom, haphazardly chopped off her hair, and bleached the remains with hydrogen peroxide. Then she went out and used all of her allowance to buy a trenchcoat and to bribe an older kid to steal his dad's cigarettes for her. Deanna had cast off one hero to become just like her replacement hero from her Hellblazer comic books, John Constantine. All the while disregarding that she herself was just using another method of hiding her femininity, of course. Johnny fucking hated it, and that was felt glorious and exciting and rebellious and free.

Coming to terms with her femininity and her sexual orientation was a whole other set of obstacles to face.

Deanna honestly felt that fighting ghosts and monsters and the undead was a hell of a lot easier than coming out of the closet a few years later. She and Johnny fell into a vicious screaming match when he refused to acknowledge her as a lesbian, and once word got around town that Deanna was sleeping around with girls, she had to put up with sexual harassment galore from guys at her former high school and even creepy middle-aged men at the cafe where she worked part time. It's not uncommon for lesbians to face propositions from guys who “want in on the action” or think she just needs to know “what a real man is like,” and with Deanna's reputation as a slut, things got bad fast. Deanna's already sour and prickly disposition hardened like a shell, except around her younger brother.

Deanna had always taken better care of Jared than Johnny had taken care of them both, and though the siblings argued and bickered constantly, they relied on each other a lot. Despite that, after Johnny's less-than-warm reception of her announcement, Deanna hesitated to come out to Jared. With a cherry pie she bought from the supermarket, she took a tube of squeezable frosting and wrote out “D is for Dyke. I like girls.” over the top crust, since D was Jared's nickname for her (Well, D and Jerk.). Jared had taken one look at the pie and shrugged. “So is this dinner or what?” he said, unfazed. Deanna felt her heart swell with love for her brother, not that she'd ever admit it out loud, and she poured them each a shot of Bombay Sapphire.

Yeah, Deanna was also Jared's enabler. That was yet another fucking series of issues.

And sure, Deanna was screwed up in all kinds of other ways too. Their sibling bond didn't stop her from stealing three of Jared's girlfriends – and then dumping them after she got what she wanted. And giving Johnny the finger both figuratively and literally didn't stop her from secretly craving his approval. And everything she did, all the booze girls and cigarettes and even the escapism of comic books and music, didn't serve as anything beyond a momentary distraction from the looming promise that the Devil was coming for her soul.

There were times at church when she felt so uncomfortable in her own skin – and not just because of all the glares she got for being an evil lesbian with a nasty attitude and devil music. No, Deanna couldn't help but wonder if the demon had put a mark on her soul as part of claiming her for Hell. On two occasions, spirits she was hunting remarked that she had been touched by Hell.

Between that and the nightmares she suffered every night, it was no wonder Deanna tried so damn hard to be John Constantine, to be someone else, to be someone smooth and confident who could always get out of a bad situation and away from demons, to be anyone but her, the girl who nobody really loved except brother. And even he sometimes hated her.

Jared certainly seemed to hate her that night at dinner from his scowling expression, at least. His eyes were bloodshot, and his nose and lips chapped. He grabbed the cigarette from her very hand and pulled a drag.

“Hey!” Deanna cried as she snatched it back. She gestured to the open pizza box on the table. They'd been eating the leftovers for two days now. Johnny's grocery runs only ever involved whiskey and gin, not food, and none of them could cook. “Shut up and eat up, bitch,” she ordered.

“Whatever, D,” Jared sighed. He and Deanna ate the cold pizza sliced straight out of the box so that they wouldn't have to wash any dishes. Johnny had already grabbed his slice and a bottle of Crown Royal and was eating in his office off the adjoining hallway.

Taking a sip of gin straight from the blue bottle of Bombay Sapphire, Jared wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Aren't you supposed to be at work?” he slurred, referring to her part-time gig at the cafe.

Deanna peeled a thin strip of chipped black nail polish off her thumbnail before casually responding, “I'm over that place.”

“No shit. You got fired again?” It wasn't really a question, and Jared didn't even blink an eye in surprise.

With a self-righteous scoff and a volume much louder than necessary for just the two of them, Deanna explained, “The manager grabbed my ass. Obviously I had to break his wrist!” Her green eyes flickered to the hallway, where she knew Johnny was in earshot. “He might even press assault charges!”

There was no response, not even a grunt, from Johnny's office/living room.

“Attention whore,” Jared mumbled under his breath at her patheticness before sipping more gin. Deanna scowled at him and seized the bottle out of his hand in order to add more Bombay Sapphire to her gin and tonic.

While capping the bottle, she gave her brother a cold look. “So what's this I heard earlier about you cutting school again?” she asked hypocritically disapprovingly.

“Piss off, D.” Jared rolled his eyes. “You used to ditch class all the freaking time.”

“Yeah, for cigarettes, not for drugs.”

“Cigarettes are drugs, stupid.”

Deanna glanced toward Johnny's office again. No sound or sign that he'd heard or even cared. “Just knock the fuck off with the drugs,” she hissed.

Jared gave her a contemptuous glare. “Why?” he said bluntly. “We're just gonna die anyway in how many months now?”

Deanna didn't have anything to say to that and just sipped her gin and tonic.

Johnny didn't have anything to say to that either. He didn't speak a single word to them at all that night.