Disclaimer: I do not own Petshop of Horrors. The pre-eminent Matsuri Akino does. Not I.
Preliminary Notes: This story occurs just after the Donor episode in volume 7 of the manga. The first chapter only has Leon in it. Fans of Count D and Leon x Count D would have to wait for the next chapter. Oh, yes, and in case you didn't know, this is a YAOI fic. Just a warning to the homophobic.
Delirium
by spare
Chapter 1: The Crime Scene
"What the fuck happened in here?" Detective Leon Orcot asked aloud, stepping inside what had most probably been the tastefully designed interior of the victim's sprawling penthouse apartelle.
Emphasis on the past tense; the room, along with apparently every other nook and cranny of the apartment, was covered with an overgrowth of fern and moss. It was as if the place that had served as Sean Renaud's residence for two consecutive years had transformed into a gardener's hedge sculpture nightmare come true.
"Looks like the friggin' Kewpie Gardens gone haywire, doesn't it?" one of the other officers surveying the area drawled out conversationally from where he sat, hunched over a dark green, fuzzy shape that might just be the centerpiece to a tea table of indistinguishable make. The man had blonde hair a shade darker than Leon's, and looked to be the size and build of a football player. "Somebody should have gone easy on the fertilizer. Still, they've started to dry up --" he continued, using the black ballpoint pen he held in one hand to indicate patches of light brown in the foliage growing across the far wall and the sofa, "I'd say, two, three days ago." The man stood up. "You Officer Orcot?"
Leon nodded. "Yep, that's me. And you're--?"
"Officer Julian Gomez. Forensics," the man replied, smiling. "Jill's told me about you. You have the worst luck running into these sorts of cases, don't you?"
"Tell me about it," the blonde detective said. He almost told the other officer -- two years his junior from the looks of it, with deepset eyes, exactly Jill's type -- about how he had come to the conclusion that one person was to be held responsible for the bizarre deaths and disappearances which had occurred throughout the year. Unbidden, a familiar, willowy figure with jet black hair and mismatched eyes flitted through his mind's eye. /I'll get you yet, D/, he mentally vowed to himself for the umpteenth time since his first visit to the enigmatic petshop owner's abode in, of all places, Chinatown.
"This may look pretty bad, but this is just the icing to the cake," the man who had identified himself as Gomez and Jill's latest beau went on, oblivious to the slight detour Leon's thoughts had taken. "Now, the dead guy -- Sean Renaud -- /that's/ one heck of a piece of work."
Leon nodded. /D must be behind this./ Already he could feel the wheels clicking and turning like clockwork in his razor sharp detective's brain. "Let me see him."
Gomez shrugged. "I'll show you to his bedroom."
x x x
Sean Renaud lay on a queen-sized bed in the middle of a room even more overrun by vegetation than the one they'd previously occupied.
Or rather, the emaciated corpse that had once been Sean Renaud lay there on the bed. Its eyes were sunken and hollowed, its face made even more grotesque by the smile gracing the darkened strips of flesh that had been its lips. Skeletal arms and fingers cradled the slender, tendriled fronds of the ferns wrapped around the dead man's pajama-clad body in a loving embrace.
Turning his cobalt gaze from the corpse's face and venturing lower, Leon finally found the answer to the question he'd asked first off.
Part of it, anyway.
/Sean happened./
It was a scene straight out of those freak sci-fi magazines he used to read as a kid. Apparently, the ferns and mossy foliage covering the entire suite had originated from a single plant growing out of the thing that had once been Sean Renaud's stomach. It had sucked him dry, too. Not a trace of blood could be immediately seen on the plant or Renaud's clothes.
For the first time in too many years, Leon felt the urge to vomit. He swallowed it back down.
"The name Sean Renaud ring a bell to you?" Officer Gomez asked, walking in behind him.
He coughed. "Aside from it being this guy's name, uh, no. Should it?"
"Not really. How about Jacques Marcel?"
Leon gave him another blank look.
"He's the author of five romance novels, all of them national bestsellers," Gomez filled in, a sweatdrop trickling down the side of his head. "He even won awards for a couple. His latest work got rave reviews from romance magazines all across the country. Hollywood's filming a screen adaptation. Where have you been?" he finished, glaring.
"Where have /you/ been?" The detective glared back.
The younger officer's face broke out in a sheepish grin. "Pretty much the same place you were. Jill reads him."
Leon snorted. "What's this guy have to do with Renaud, anyway?"
"Renaud's mother's maiden name was Marcel."
"Oh."
Rubbing the left side of his neck lazily, Gomez began reading off a xerox copy of his report draft. "Sean Marcel Renaud: Age 27, Caucasian male, French creole descent. Freelance writer for the literary folio /The Column/, full-time romance novelist under the /nom de plume/ Jacques Marcel. Found dead by his agent exactly three and a half hours ago, but our stiff's been in this state at least three days earlier than that. Poor gal's all hysterical when we got here. She's managed to calm down some at the station." He shook his head. "Wait till the tabloids get wind of this. Renaud's case will go right up there in the Top 5 Freak Deaths of the Century."
Leon approached the corpse. "Do you mind?" he asked, allowing a brief sideward glance in the other officer's direction.
The younger man gave him a nod. "Be my guest."
A closer look at Renaud's remains revealed that the plant had, indeed, quite literally sucked him dry. Leon had seen a mummy in one of the local museums once, the kind divested of its bandages, and its skin, a cross of texture between tanned leather and wax stretched taut over the cadaver's bones, closely approximated the deceased novelist's own condition. Renaud didn't look or smell like any other week-old corpse the detective had come across, that was for sure. The other guys were black-faced, bloated, and smelled of rotting meat. This guy was... preserved.
/Like strips of salted beef jerky left out in the sun./
/Like long-forgotten flowers pressed between the pages of an old gradeschool notebook./
/Dehydrated./ The word bubbled up in Leon's mind as he continued his inspection of the corpse and the plant /thing/ using its midriff as both soil and flower pot.
The plant was a deep, healthy shade of green, its stems thick where they emerged from Renaud's dismembered stomach. Its delicate fronds resembled fingers, long, thin and claw-like, spreading, curling outwards. A loose, lace-like pattern seemed to trace itself through each individual leaf. /Veins,/ the detective thought, and knelt down. There were small, bulbous protrusions growing near the bottom of the base stems, and the veins seemed to originate from them. They were lighter in color than the rest of the plant, with hints of pink appearing where the bulge was widest. Were these where all of Renaud's fluids went? Leon wondered idly. If he pinched a bulb between his fingers, would blood -- the victim's blood -- ooze out of its shattered skin?
Acting entirely on impulse, he tentatively held out a hand to one of the bulbs.
Its skin broke the instant it came in contact with the detective's fingers. A nearby bulb immediately erupted a split second later in apparent response to its sibling's demise. Another followed. And another. Not three seconds elapsed before all thirteen bulbs of the original plant burst open in rapid succession. Leon barely had the time to blink before a cloud of yellowish dust discharged themselves from the ruptured sacs, the particles drifting straight towards his face.
"Goddammit!" The blonde detective swore, jerking backwards. Too late. Coughing, he took a step back, flapping both hands in front of his face wildly to dispel the remainder of the powdery yellow substance that had launched itself at him.
"Jesus, Orcot!" Gomez swore along with him. The younger man made as if to approach him, but Leon waved him away.
"I'm OK!"
"Are you sure--"
"I'm alright," the detective repeated, dropping his hands.
It seemed to take a moment for the other officer to process the fact. His eyes had left Leon's face, settling just a little beyond the elder man's shoulders. Finally, Gomez whistled, looking back at the detective. "Glad to hear you're fine," he said. "But that thing behind you sure isn't."
Frowning, Leon turned around, following the direction of the younger cop's gaze. Upon doing so, his expression eventually mirrored the look on Gomez's face.
The plant, the one that had made fertilizer of Sean Renaud's body for who knows how many days, had, in the span of less than sixty seconds, effected a complete transformation. No longer was it green. No longer was it healthy. No longer was it alive.
The plant was now brown, withered, and, in all other respects not needing further mention, dead.
x x x
Author's Rants: I dedicate this fic to Elana-chan (na itago na lang natin sa pangalang Jedi), who introduced me to the manga. Yes, this is my first PSoH ficcie. Reviews, cinnamon rolls and Volume 7 of Shizuru Seino's Girl Got Game would be very much appreciated.
Preliminary Notes: This story occurs just after the Donor episode in volume 7 of the manga. The first chapter only has Leon in it. Fans of Count D and Leon x Count D would have to wait for the next chapter. Oh, yes, and in case you didn't know, this is a YAOI fic. Just a warning to the homophobic.
Delirium
by spare
Chapter 1: The Crime Scene
"What the fuck happened in here?" Detective Leon Orcot asked aloud, stepping inside what had most probably been the tastefully designed interior of the victim's sprawling penthouse apartelle.
Emphasis on the past tense; the room, along with apparently every other nook and cranny of the apartment, was covered with an overgrowth of fern and moss. It was as if the place that had served as Sean Renaud's residence for two consecutive years had transformed into a gardener's hedge sculpture nightmare come true.
"Looks like the friggin' Kewpie Gardens gone haywire, doesn't it?" one of the other officers surveying the area drawled out conversationally from where he sat, hunched over a dark green, fuzzy shape that might just be the centerpiece to a tea table of indistinguishable make. The man had blonde hair a shade darker than Leon's, and looked to be the size and build of a football player. "Somebody should have gone easy on the fertilizer. Still, they've started to dry up --" he continued, using the black ballpoint pen he held in one hand to indicate patches of light brown in the foliage growing across the far wall and the sofa, "I'd say, two, three days ago." The man stood up. "You Officer Orcot?"
Leon nodded. "Yep, that's me. And you're--?"
"Officer Julian Gomez. Forensics," the man replied, smiling. "Jill's told me about you. You have the worst luck running into these sorts of cases, don't you?"
"Tell me about it," the blonde detective said. He almost told the other officer -- two years his junior from the looks of it, with deepset eyes, exactly Jill's type -- about how he had come to the conclusion that one person was to be held responsible for the bizarre deaths and disappearances which had occurred throughout the year. Unbidden, a familiar, willowy figure with jet black hair and mismatched eyes flitted through his mind's eye. /I'll get you yet, D/, he mentally vowed to himself for the umpteenth time since his first visit to the enigmatic petshop owner's abode in, of all places, Chinatown.
"This may look pretty bad, but this is just the icing to the cake," the man who had identified himself as Gomez and Jill's latest beau went on, oblivious to the slight detour Leon's thoughts had taken. "Now, the dead guy -- Sean Renaud -- /that's/ one heck of a piece of work."
Leon nodded. /D must be behind this./ Already he could feel the wheels clicking and turning like clockwork in his razor sharp detective's brain. "Let me see him."
Gomez shrugged. "I'll show you to his bedroom."
x x x
Sean Renaud lay on a queen-sized bed in the middle of a room even more overrun by vegetation than the one they'd previously occupied.
Or rather, the emaciated corpse that had once been Sean Renaud lay there on the bed. Its eyes were sunken and hollowed, its face made even more grotesque by the smile gracing the darkened strips of flesh that had been its lips. Skeletal arms and fingers cradled the slender, tendriled fronds of the ferns wrapped around the dead man's pajama-clad body in a loving embrace.
Turning his cobalt gaze from the corpse's face and venturing lower, Leon finally found the answer to the question he'd asked first off.
Part of it, anyway.
/Sean happened./
It was a scene straight out of those freak sci-fi magazines he used to read as a kid. Apparently, the ferns and mossy foliage covering the entire suite had originated from a single plant growing out of the thing that had once been Sean Renaud's stomach. It had sucked him dry, too. Not a trace of blood could be immediately seen on the plant or Renaud's clothes.
For the first time in too many years, Leon felt the urge to vomit. He swallowed it back down.
"The name Sean Renaud ring a bell to you?" Officer Gomez asked, walking in behind him.
He coughed. "Aside from it being this guy's name, uh, no. Should it?"
"Not really. How about Jacques Marcel?"
Leon gave him another blank look.
"He's the author of five romance novels, all of them national bestsellers," Gomez filled in, a sweatdrop trickling down the side of his head. "He even won awards for a couple. His latest work got rave reviews from romance magazines all across the country. Hollywood's filming a screen adaptation. Where have you been?" he finished, glaring.
"Where have /you/ been?" The detective glared back.
The younger officer's face broke out in a sheepish grin. "Pretty much the same place you were. Jill reads him."
Leon snorted. "What's this guy have to do with Renaud, anyway?"
"Renaud's mother's maiden name was Marcel."
"Oh."
Rubbing the left side of his neck lazily, Gomez began reading off a xerox copy of his report draft. "Sean Marcel Renaud: Age 27, Caucasian male, French creole descent. Freelance writer for the literary folio /The Column/, full-time romance novelist under the /nom de plume/ Jacques Marcel. Found dead by his agent exactly three and a half hours ago, but our stiff's been in this state at least three days earlier than that. Poor gal's all hysterical when we got here. She's managed to calm down some at the station." He shook his head. "Wait till the tabloids get wind of this. Renaud's case will go right up there in the Top 5 Freak Deaths of the Century."
Leon approached the corpse. "Do you mind?" he asked, allowing a brief sideward glance in the other officer's direction.
The younger man gave him a nod. "Be my guest."
A closer look at Renaud's remains revealed that the plant had, indeed, quite literally sucked him dry. Leon had seen a mummy in one of the local museums once, the kind divested of its bandages, and its skin, a cross of texture between tanned leather and wax stretched taut over the cadaver's bones, closely approximated the deceased novelist's own condition. Renaud didn't look or smell like any other week-old corpse the detective had come across, that was for sure. The other guys were black-faced, bloated, and smelled of rotting meat. This guy was... preserved.
/Like strips of salted beef jerky left out in the sun./
/Like long-forgotten flowers pressed between the pages of an old gradeschool notebook./
/Dehydrated./ The word bubbled up in Leon's mind as he continued his inspection of the corpse and the plant /thing/ using its midriff as both soil and flower pot.
The plant was a deep, healthy shade of green, its stems thick where they emerged from Renaud's dismembered stomach. Its delicate fronds resembled fingers, long, thin and claw-like, spreading, curling outwards. A loose, lace-like pattern seemed to trace itself through each individual leaf. /Veins,/ the detective thought, and knelt down. There were small, bulbous protrusions growing near the bottom of the base stems, and the veins seemed to originate from them. They were lighter in color than the rest of the plant, with hints of pink appearing where the bulge was widest. Were these where all of Renaud's fluids went? Leon wondered idly. If he pinched a bulb between his fingers, would blood -- the victim's blood -- ooze out of its shattered skin?
Acting entirely on impulse, he tentatively held out a hand to one of the bulbs.
Its skin broke the instant it came in contact with the detective's fingers. A nearby bulb immediately erupted a split second later in apparent response to its sibling's demise. Another followed. And another. Not three seconds elapsed before all thirteen bulbs of the original plant burst open in rapid succession. Leon barely had the time to blink before a cloud of yellowish dust discharged themselves from the ruptured sacs, the particles drifting straight towards his face.
"Goddammit!" The blonde detective swore, jerking backwards. Too late. Coughing, he took a step back, flapping both hands in front of his face wildly to dispel the remainder of the powdery yellow substance that had launched itself at him.
"Jesus, Orcot!" Gomez swore along with him. The younger man made as if to approach him, but Leon waved him away.
"I'm OK!"
"Are you sure--"
"I'm alright," the detective repeated, dropping his hands.
It seemed to take a moment for the other officer to process the fact. His eyes had left Leon's face, settling just a little beyond the elder man's shoulders. Finally, Gomez whistled, looking back at the detective. "Glad to hear you're fine," he said. "But that thing behind you sure isn't."
Frowning, Leon turned around, following the direction of the younger cop's gaze. Upon doing so, his expression eventually mirrored the look on Gomez's face.
The plant, the one that had made fertilizer of Sean Renaud's body for who knows how many days, had, in the span of less than sixty seconds, effected a complete transformation. No longer was it green. No longer was it healthy. No longer was it alive.
The plant was now brown, withered, and, in all other respects not needing further mention, dead.
x x x
Author's Rants: I dedicate this fic to Elana-chan (na itago na lang natin sa pangalang Jedi), who introduced me to the manga. Yes, this is my first PSoH ficcie. Reviews, cinnamon rolls and Volume 7 of Shizuru Seino's Girl Got Game would be very much appreciated.
