Constantine - The Novelization - Whoa is (Not)

"You know," Constantine said, pondering the chair, "in the nineteenth century they thought ofelectricity as clean - it was hyped as a nicer way to kill something. Funny, eh? Considering howit fried people. Smell of burning flesh. Brains cooking alive. Thomas Edison started it - 1887, Ithink it was. Edison electrocuted dogs and cats and once even a fucking circus elephant todemonstrate how deadly AC was-""You're stalling," Midnite interrupted. "You want this or not? I haven't got all night."Constantine winced. Midnite was right. He was stalling.He walked over and sat in the chair. Feeling a shock of sheer eeriness at the contact - hispsychic sensitivity picking up residual emotions seeped into the very wood and metal of thedevice. Terror. Despair. A cry for help that no one would hear - all emanating from the chair ashe sat in it, like a miasma of layered smells in a slaughterhouse.He sighed and took off his shoes and socks."How many years since you surfed?" Midnite asked."Like riding a bike," Constantine said, feeling not a tenth the confidence he pretended to have."No. Not really," Midnite said.The voodoo magician moved to a utility sink, filling a bowl with water.He glanced at Constantine as he filled the bowl. "Tell me this isn't about the girl,Constantine.""Definitely mostly not about the girl."Midnite laughed. For a moment they almost felt the friendship they'd once shared, like achildhood memory stirred by a scent.He shrugged, came to Constantine, poured the water at his bare feet. It puddled on theconcrete floor."Cold," Constantine said. Mostly meaning the water. But also wondering how fast his bodywould get cold after he died - if this thing got out of control. The electricity would be modulatedby Midnite's magic, and the spell on the chair, but who was to say it wouldn't kill him anyway?Midnite grabbed a bottle of gin, already open, from a nearby shelf. Constantine took a swig -almost ritually - and handed the bottle back. It burned down into him; melted his icy nervessome."A little flavor," Midnite said. He swigged from the gin bottle, splashed the gin three times, inthree directions. Set it down with a thump and stepped to a shadeless table lamp near the chair -plugged in for this reason? - and switched it on. He took hold of the base of the lamp andsmashed the bulb on the table's edge. Sparks flew, and he held up the filament, still alive withelectrical power."You sure about this?" he asked."No," Constantine said. No use lying to Midnite. He could smell fear through a steel wall.Midnite shrugged and knelt, touched the puddle around Constantine's feet with the livefilament of the broken lamp.And Constantine was instantly electrocuted.FIFTEENPater de caelis, Deus, miserere nobis," Midnite intoned.Constantine heard the words distantly, from a world away, as the electricity coursedthrough him. His body had gone rigid; his teeth ground on one another; the electricity snakedthrough him like a lash snapping along his nerve pathways. He smelled his hair beginning toburn.