Chapter Text
Now, how exactly did the British rock band, Queen, end up having to do a cross-country road trip across the United States and beyond in a weird van? Well, it started while Queen was touring in the United States for the first time. Specifically, at where all the strange things happen, New Orleans. It was actually much before that, it’s not like they knew much at the time though.
Queen had just finished their first show in the actual US of A. And at last, they finally had some time to relax and get a chance to look around and to do some touristic stuff. Freddie had insisted that they go to an authentic New Orleans fortune teller.
“Oh, please Darlings! It will be fun, of course it’s not like we’re going to take it all seriously. How many times do you think we’ll ever be back to New Orleans in our lifetimes? It’s just one little shop!”
Some more reluctantly than others, eventually the other three agreed to go over to the small “fortune telling” shop that was next to where the four men were staying.
“What do they even do at this place anyway?” Roger asked Freddie, clearly still skeptical of the place as the four crossed the street to get to the shop.
“Steal Your money.” John replied, taking the place of answering for Freddie.
“Oh please, It’s just for fun! It’s not like We’re going to dedicate our whole lives to a random fortune we get. And to answer your question, Roger, they do many things. You just have to be more open-minded sometimes, Darling. Who knows, maybe you’ll be more into it than all of us.” Freddie said with a flourish of his hand and walked ahead of Roger, trying to act offended by the other men’s comments about the place.
“Well, I guess you never really know until you try.” Brian spoke from behind the rest of the group, trying to join along into the conversation.
“See! That’s the spirit. Roger, you could learn a thing or two from Brian, darling. He’s smart, and he’s trying to enjoy this time that we have here and not just commenting that this cozy little shop over here is a scam and a fraud.” Freddie stated, pointing towards the cute looking shop that was now a few metres away from the men. The guitarist slightly blushed from Freddie’s compliment, while Roger just did a counterproductive scowl. Freddie simply kept on his way heading closer towards the shop.
“Well, we’re here now, let’s just go in.” John muttered and opened the door for the others to come in. Their first look at the shop seemed to be a good one. It was definitely cute, and as some would describe as “aesthetic”. Even the look on Roger’s face showed that it did look quite nice in the early evening, it had small faerie lights that covered draped over the windows and many lines of bookshelves with such titles like “Curses: 101” and “How -Not- To Turn into Stone, For Beginners”. The whole place was covered in a collection of rugs, paintings, and roughly drawn diagrams of something that none of the men had a clue of what of. Though, when Roger turned a corner, he did see multiple skulls of some type of small animal and an ominous hallway leading to what looked to be a sinister room at the end.
“Seems more like an odd bookshop than what I was imagining. Or than whatever Rog said it would be like.”Brian said, still in his neutral about the shop that they had just entered.
“Freddie, this place is giving me the creeps.” Roger whispered towards Freddie, almost as if someone of the shop were to hear him, he would get some sort of nasty curse put on him.
“Roger Darling, it's fine really. Now quit being such a child and let's go over to get a real reading then we’ll be right out for you.” Freddie spoke confidently, pointing over towards that ominous hallway that Roger had seen. Roger was semi-terrified of the place, Brian was yet still neutral about it, Freddie was just excited to be in a new place, and John had “No Opinion” (whatever that means).
Despite the Drummer's hesitancy, the group went down, yes, That, ominous hallway to see the person that owned the shop as said by the old hand-written sign for where the readings were. As they went down the hallway, they noticed that they also had to go down a flight of stairs to get the reading, presumably into the basement.
“Okay so now we have to go down an even more sinister staircase to do this thing, and you all are still going along with this!? I feel like I’m going to get abducted down here!” Roger spoke, a bit louder this time.
“Please Roger can’t you just take off your bias for one minute!” The tallest man retorted, clearly tired of Roger at this point.
“Now why don’t you two stops bickering at each other and try to at least have some fun while we’re here, darling.”
“Oh, so now you're saying that we’re arguing!? I think you’re the one that needs to have some more fun, I’m just speaking my thoughts-!” Roger stamped mid-sentence as if he didn’t realize that they were already at the end of the stairs and proceeded to trip over on his own foot and nearly fall straight on the back of his head if it wasn’t for John that was in front of him, catching him before he got a deadly concussion.
“For fucks sake Roger, dear. You almost killed yourself if it wasn’t for Deaks.”
“That would be a particular death, wouldn’t it.” The Bassist jokes, helping pull Roger back to his proper stepping.
“Thanks, Deaks.” Roger mumbled, slightly embarrassed that he almost just took himself out like that.
“Well, aren't Yous’ a particular bunch?” All four of the men instantly popped up from the sound of the unfamiliar voice. They then all noticed a middle-aged woman smiling sweetly from a deep purple ottoman at the corner from where the Brits were coming down from.
“Well, why don’t ‘y'all come on down, I don’t bite!” The woman said kindly.
“Hello there! My name is Freddie, Freddie Mercury. As you can tell we’re definitely not from around here, we just figured that we must step by this cute shop and see what there is to offer.”
“Why aren't you sweet, my name is Mrs. Graham. I assume you are here for a telling, don’t worry I ‘aint never no cheating or fraud, everthin’ here guaranteed.”
The band members (Well, Most) all seemed to be less tense as they heard the woman speak and headed down to where the woman was sitting. Nothing at the shop where the woman was seemed any intimidating. They all squeezed themselves onto the couch that was in front of the ottoman where Mrs. Graham was sitting.
“Now who wants to go first? Don’t worry I give this one to ‘y'all for free, but if you come runnin back I don’t do this for free Y’know. Now how about you, young man with the blond hair, you go first.” Mrs. Graham then pointed directly towards Roger. Roger wanted to instinctively look away and get out of there, yet he resisted the urge as much as he could and just continued to look directly at Mrs. Graham.
The other three men just seemed to give out a smug grin.
“What should I…”
“All yous’ gotta do is give me your hand, I take it from there.”
Roger gave the woman his hand, he actually did for two reasons. One, he saw the look on Feddie’s face and knew that he had no choice in this. And two, he might've just been a little bit scared of the woman that was in front of him, like he would ever admit that though.
As soon as the woman got a grip of the drummer's hand the soft look on her face instantly turned to shock with a tint of fear.
“Is there something wrong?” John asked, being the first person to notice the change in the womans expression.
“Oh, yes, young man. You’ve got a danger on you. And you.” She looked over towards John. “Yous’ are facing this too, both of y'all auras' show a great danger of somethin’ on Yous’. '' Mrs. Graham said all her words with such seriousness in her tone, and her expressions and emotions seemed pretty legit. Then again it might just be a ploy to get her more business. Yet, her face looked to show a true sense of concern and fear that if she was just doing this as a ploy and actually was a fraud, it would be a pretty damn good ploy and fraud.
“Mrs. Graham, I mean you no disrespect at all. But what does it mean that I have ‘great danger’ on me?” The bassist asked, trying to figure out what exactly she was talking about. I mean whatever it was, it couldn’t be that bad. This was all a business ploy, right?
“Y’all gotta get a move on, or else you go gone. I know I must like some crazy lady trying to pull off a business ploy or some fraud, or whatever. But trust me I am no liar. Young man, with blond hair, come here, I’ll show you what I mean.” She gestured for Roger to come up to her as she stood up, the rest of the Brits just looked up intrigued about what was about to happen, all watching like little children.
As Roger stood up next to Mrs. Graham, it looked like she was putting all her energy into holding Roger’s arm up. The others stared in pure and utter shock and horror, as they physically watched a part of Roger’s hand seemingly fade away into actual fucking nothingness.
At that point Roger just wanted to faint on the ground at the sight of his part of his own hand simply disappearing, somewhere? (I mean, who wouldn’t?) Instead of fainting Roger just let out a short scream of disbelief.
“You see this young man? If you don’t do something about this danger of yours, this could happen to all the of your body. That goes for you too.” She glared down at John.
“I wouldn’t be able to play! What would happen to the band?!” Roger asked, as that the band was more important than his own physical life.
“Your Literal life is in danger and you're worried about the band? Mrs. Graham, dear please, how exactly do we prevent my friends from disappearing into the fucking abys? Excuse my language, but really?” Freddie asked with a high concern in his body that he managed to hide away as much as he humanly could from seeing with his own two eyes that part of someone fade away, literally.
“Don’t be excused, dear. You seem pretty composed then How some would to witness this. To oversimplify this, you men need to bring your two friends to a specific spot, they each have a different. From here they just gotta spend a night at the exact coordinate and they should be clear from there. The whole point of why is some complicated stuff of the universe, there a part of you that somewhere where you aint. The universe wants you to be with that part of you, so what it takes is to pull you there, as you fade away you going there. But you don’t physically materialize there, so you just gone. That's pretty much the gist. And don’t worry ‘bout what I said before, you free to come in to my palace as much as you want for free, I really feel bad ‘bout it for Yous’ two cause y’all are so young. It don’t usually happen at this age, I should know it happened to me.” Roger slightly winced by the way she said ‘should’.
Everyone had a million questions that they wanted to ask Brian was the first to ask. All of Queen was in absolute terror at what just happened, now they all looked like they wanted to faint.
“So how do we know where to go?” Brian instantly inquired to the woman.
“Oh yes, of course. Come here you two, blondie first.”
Roger hesitantly came out back towards the table and sat down to where she had just pulled out a map and placed it down. Roger was really dreading if they would have to go to some random place like Wyoming or Saskatchewan , whatever those places were, Roger didn’t really know, he’s from Britan for fucks sake.
The Woman didn’t say anything for a few minutes as she seemed to be concentrating on doing whatever she was doing to find somewhere on part of the map. Roger also noticed that all the edges of the map seemed to have some weird-looking number system written on them, there were also some sort of coloured markings all around on the map. Mrs. Graham then instantaneously with a pink pen dotted down some markings on the map. And what do you know, the two markings are actually in Fucking Wyoming and Saskatchewan. Every band member in that room thought the same thing in unison: shit.
“There, young men, that is where y’all are gonna have to go. The one with the ‘B’ on it is the one for the blondie there, the one with no ‘B’ is for the other young man.”
“So, we have to go all the way there?! Bloody hell, don’t we have a whole fucking tour to do here?! How the fuck are we even going to get there, aren't we in, New Orleans?!”
Roger clearly felt some kind of way to this whole…predicament…that they had gotten themselves that they were in. Roger did have a point, how were these Brits in a band going to go across this foreign country for some reason that no one in their right mind would be able to believe. It wasn’t like they had much of a choice at this point, it was between life and death for Roger and John, they had seen it with their own two eyes anyway. That also goes for the life and death of the band if they don’t have a drummer or bassist.
“Excuse my dear friend now ma’am. But now, Mrs. Graham, How exactly are we going to get back to these obscure locations for our friends' sake? You see, me and my friends are actually in a band, on tour right now. We’re called Queen, just if you know us.” Freddie asked, from the glances of the other bandmates he could tell that now was not the time for the self-promotion. Everyone really was wondering, ‘how would they get there?’
“Well, I do have a friend with an ‘ol van car that I could lend to y'all. And to answer your question, Freddie, I don’t really listen to new music, so no, unfortunately I don’t know your band, but I’m sure Yous’ are good. It’s getting a bit late, it’s been a while in here so I gotta get a move on, here's my number when y'all need it. Oh, and my friends with the car too, I can tell them. Cause I tell you, y'all need to get a move on for your friend's safety and such, you can take the map with you. Now g’night, pleasure to meet y'all.” With that the woman got up and out of her chair and went into a door behind another thick wall of bookshelves, leaving the four men to discuss whatever shit had just happened to themselves. None of the foreigners at that point had a slight idea of what to do.
“So how are we going to tell the tour people about the situation here? Think we should just show them?” Brian cross-questioned to break the uncomfortable silence that was inflicted over the room after Mrs. Graham had left and everyone was left to reflect on all that just went on.
“I think the best idea for now would be just to get out of here and hope that none of this was real and it was all a hallucination.” John added on to the guitarist's comment.
“We can’t do that! I felt that a real physical part of my hand was bloody gone! I don’t want that to happen to my whole body, or to you Deaks! This isn’t something that I can just ignore like the rest of my inner problems!” Roger finally added to the conversation.
“I’ll have to admit, Roger is right. We’ve got to do something, but how are we going to tell our fans, the people running the tour, that for some reason we just have to go to Wyoming?” Freddie joined in at last.
“Should we just cancel the tour?” John finally asked the question that everyone in that room was too sacred to ask.
“How about this, let's just all get out of this woman's shop, and we’ll discuss this matter later, let's actually try to enjoy our time in New Orleans, Darling. For real this time.” Freddie said responding to John’s statement. The rest of the band members all seemed to silently agree to Freddie’s words as they got up and started heading their way out, surprisingly making a light talk. Mostly to try and ignore what on God greens earth was going on, in their current lives.