IMMORTALIZING THE MOMENT.

once johnny has what he asked for, squee relaxes just slightly — he tells himself that he has sufficiently done all that he can to help, so there’s no use in getting worked up over what the man might do after this point. he wishes he weren’t so empathetic that, despite the fact that his neighbor is explaining the events leading up to an act of murder, he manages to feel bad about johnny being in such visible pain. ( it’s strange how someone so deprived of kindness can still harbor it with this intensity, but his status as a child might be to blame, as well as the trauma-absorbent teddy bear which remains, smothered, beneath the covers on his bed. ) after lingering in place for a moment, the boy takes another step away from johnny, then sits down on the subjectively cheap carpet which makes up his bedroom floor. even though he isn’t a stranger to staying up late, he’s still seven years old, so exhaustion makes it harder to stand up like that no matter how horrified he might be.

❝ oh … this? ❞ todd tugs indicatively at the coarse, gray fabric, its baggy size managing to obscure him as he tucks his knees against his chest & holds them there with his little arms. he looks down, as if to inspect his own clothing, but he truly just doesn’t want to look right at johnny, & this time for more reasons than just the most obvious. ❝ uh … it was a gift from my cousins, but i guess they dunno what size i wear. daddy says it’s not polite to tell them it don’t fit, so i gotta wear it at night ’til i grow into it. ❞ it’s very doubtful that he will grow into it, considering his build, but his parents mostly don’t feel like going out & spending money on actual pajamas for their only son. todd doesn’t exactly want to … accept this, though. sometimes, it’s easier to act like he doesn’t know how to feel about them, because he’s actually managed to convince himself that they care. everything he knows about families comes from tv, so it’s actually pretty easy to dismiss those healthy dynamics as fiction & accept his own desolate life as the paradigm. ❝ … so, um, yeah. ❞

     HE DOESN’T look down at his hands as Squee talks. He finishes dressing his wounds while staring at the child, a spot in the back of his head itching in annoyance. Mr Casil is an utterly incompetent parent, and at this point Johnny doubts he’s unaware of his failures as parental figures. He looks like the kind of man who just doesn’t care. One side of Johnny is waiting patiently for the moment a bout of rage will deprive him of all common sense and guide his hand to crush Mr Casil’s skull against the bedpost or decapitate him with a window in his own house. However, another side - the one who listens to Nail Bunny - reasons that orphaning poor Squee wouldn’t do any good. This doesn’t mean the day Johnny’ll punish his father properly will never come.

     “Your father has very peculiar and fallacious ideas on upbringing, I see.” He applies the last plaster around his middle finger, then brushes the small slips of paper he peeled from the plasters off his lap. They fall on the floor in silence like artificial snowflakes. “Just like expected from him, really.” Johnny presses his hands on the windowsill, his legs still dangling on its edge. His silhouette, illuminated from behind by a lamppost, reminds of a crouched predator’s, ready to jump on whatever animal has the worst idea of walking past him - be it a deer or a fat lady that got lost in the forest and is yelling at her husband to come get me, Harold, YOU PIECE OF SHIT! Johnny narrows his eyebrows and taps his fingers on the corner of his mouth, suddenly pensive. All of a sudden, he jumps off the windowsill and kneels on the carpet in front of Squee, still examining his pajamas-like outfit as if both their lives depended on it. He pulls a knife out of his boot, as if it were nothing special. Thankfully the blade isn’t dripping blood. (There is blood on it, but it’s been there for months and it’s dry. Better than nothing!) “I can cut a piece off and make it shorter. Shouldn’t been too hard.” Not when the fabric looks already quite threadbare.

     Henry hadn’t been faring too well either with his decisions, green eyes darting here and there for a snack that can not only be filling…but also delicious to make up for the quantity. A hand reached up to scratch at his head before a voice sounded beside him, turning his gaze over with a twist of his lips. “Er…neither looks appetizing,” he thought wryly. “…I say Atomic Mexico? Dunno how they taste but that seems…good enough,” he replied after a moment, taking a bag with a more mundane flavor that was Limon. 

        ( ❝☠ ) – Each passing moment brought with it excruciating pain, excruciating thoughts, excruciating dwindling of ‘existence’. In the cacophony of bones crunching, flesh tearing, his own hoarse cries of pain, and the deafening roar of his own mushy-gushy brains starting to seep out from battered head, he couldn’t decide if he wanted to hang on and fight back or to let go and just die for a while. Neither sounded pleasant. He HATED unpleasant things even more than he hated pain. Awful, awful, awful. He deserved it. He deserved it, and that’s why he hated it. He knew he would have to pay his dues eventually, knew it like he knew his own face and his own devilish lies. But his pride– such a narcissistic and fragile thing –simply couldn’t handle the idea of a murderous little rat stealing his carefully crafted body and shadowy identity from him; not after he’d worked so hard and ruined so many other perfectly good lives just to get it. He wouldn’t let this happen. He wouldn’t. He refused.

         With wheezing breath and between clenched teeth, what remained of Xenon’s voice seethed out in a harsh, guttural hiss, “Fuck’s sake, this’s nearly ‘nough t’ make me cry.” And true to form, a few blackened tears had managed to drip from swollen eyes, though the moment they touched anything solid, eruptions of static burst from them and crackled in the air. Thick gooey blood that had painted Xenon’s deathbed tar black began to bubble and evaporate, releasing both a stench of acidic deterioration and of sweet sulfur. The body Johnny continue to beat and flay jumped and spasmed as if seizure suddenly gripped what nerves inside Xenon still could properly function. His mouth opened wide, but nothing came out. He only continued to seize and contort, to evict every single part of his conscious that he possibly could, all the while internally cursing this HOMICIDAL MANIAC for so easily destroying what he’d taken so long to build. 

         damn you. damn you. damn you. DAMN YOU.                you won’t escape me for long——–

         Bloodshot eyes rolled back into a bloody skull, lower jaw fell slack, and with a loud electric whine, Xenon’s body fell to pieces beneath the next hard blow. Limbs disconnected and melted to a puddle of liquid static on the ground, torso completely shattered, and head began to disintegrate into purplish ash that reeked like the aftermath of a blazing fire. In those last few seconds, all the inky tattoos roiled across rapidly graying skin, lifted high into the air like an insomniac’s sleepless mirage– and then, nothing. Nothing but what remained of the gory, brutalized corpse of an egomaniac who’d insulted the wrong man. 

          How long ago had Johnny silenced Xenon? Who knew. It didn’t particularly matter. Nobody would feel the need to look for Xenon, at least not until months had passed without so much as a peep from him. For Johnny, surely that ill-mannered man had already melted far into the white noise of his mind. Stranger things had happened, and stranger things had yet to come. On this dreary night, it would appear that a said stranger thing would come to call without invitation and without warning. 

          “….hey…..” 

          A hoarse voice leered in back of Johnny’s mind, much more callous and detached from the man’s usual auditory hallucinations. It pulsated and pressed against his skull, like a thought trying to take form and break free of its confines. For a while, it fell silent. And then again–

         “Hey, ya bloody bastard. Wakey wakey. I’ve got a tight schedule t’ keep, and your little temper tantrum ain’t gonna ruin it.” 

           A jolt would then run through Johnny’s body and cause him to become stiff and utterly incapable of motion. With great effort, his left arm lifted without any conscious command, and only came to a halt when Johnny’s fingers pried themselves open to reveal an inky tattoo of an eye staining his palm– an eye with a horrifically familiar violet iris.        “–BOO.”

     ALL IT took was one last blow. The head of the hammer was covered in black tar, and where Xenon’s acid tears had fallen metal hissed and melted, small holes now studding it. Some tears fell on Johnny’s hands too, but his fingers holding the instrument tight screamed in pain so loud that he didn’t notice a different kind of pain being sprinkled on his skin. He was almost in a trance - connected to the world only enough to carry out this punishment - all the rest was out. Even Xenon’s whisper escaped his notice and ears. This man might be hating him for treating him like this, but Johnny’s hate was STRONGER and LOUDER. He violated others’ bodies as violently as they had invaded his personal space, hurt him metaphorically (with their words) or physically (with their shoves and kicks). He never violated them sexually, though - NO, NEVER, the mere thought of touching someone at all made him feel sick to the core. What he had left were knives, hammers, death machines once covered in dust and now covered in brownish stains. They deserved it. They deserved it all.

     All it took was one last blow - not very different from the previous ones, only the last straw. Xenon’s body fell apart in a mixture of static, crackles, and ash. It happened all the same time, giving Johnny little time to see flesh and bones turning into materials a human body wasn’t supposed to turn into when death occurred (trust him, he was an expert in that field). He grabbed the hammer with both hands and stared at the other’s body decomposing in an alien way. He was so focused on the pool of ashes and fluids on the floor that he didn’t notice the black lines rising into the air and then disappearing. The rings of the chains rattled, suddenly freed from the additional weight. The neon light buzzed, then it all went silent. Even the prisoners tuck away in the other rooms on that floor stopped cursing and begging, as if their instinct had told them something greater than they could ever imagine had just happened. After a good minute, Johnny lowered the hammer and kicked the pool of liquid static lapping at his boots. “Hey?” He kept kicking it, but nothing happened. Whomever he had just hammered to death was gone for good. He let go of the hammer, which fell on the floor with a heavy thud. Johnny lowered on his knees and dipped his finger inside the pool. Static immediately ran up it and he pulled it away, yelling. “Ouch! What the FUCK!” He shook his hand and got back on his feet, yet his gaze remained on the pool. He’d come back later to analyze it properly. Now his hands were hurting because of the acid, and he felt like a shower would be appropriate. The alien bastard’s remains wouldn’t go anywhere.

     The hammer was put back inside the black bag, which was then put on the only table inside the room. Johnny’s fingers found the switch as he left the room, and darkness replaced neon light. The door was slammed closed, and silence fell again.

     Actually, Johnny didn’t do much with the pool in his basement. He was interested in it, but new events overlapped (the new issue of Happy Noodle Boy; a clear night spent on top of the hill to watch the stars; a football team whose hands were severed with an old and rusty boat propeller) and he forgot to check on it. Hadn’t it been for the surreal circumstances of his death, Johnny’d have dismissed the memory of the tattooed man and tossed it into the pile of oxygen-stealing sentient beings that had crossed his path at the wrong moment. Unfortunately for him, he wouldn’t have forgotten him anytime soon.

     That night, he fell asleep. He did as much as possible to stay awake (which included drinking four cherry-flavored Brainfreezy and watching commercials and cartoons till he felt his brain melting out of his ear), but eventually, his eyes slipped shut and he drifted off. For once, though, he wouldn’t wake up yelling at the betrayal of his body and mind. The voice merged with his dreams at first, and Johnny became aware of it only when the back of his head started hurting, as if something was pushing from the inside to free itself. It didn’t sound like the Doughboys or Nail Bunny - nor like the fetus on the shelf in the kitchen that would yell random nonsense from time to time. Groaning, Johnny opened his eyes a smidgen, trying to make a sense out of what he was hearing. Then came the realization. Did I FUCKING FALL ASLEEP A-

The first answer is a grunt. Then she sits up. Laying down is too much comfortable and nice and warm. If she plans on conversing with Johnny, avoiding anything soft is a requirement. Easing into coziness will get out nothing but half-assed sentences, which aren’t the best course to follow when dealing with the edge Johnny exudes.      Judging by the silence that follows his very few but clear words, Salice realizes that she will require baby steps, and consequently, that she’ll likely lose her entire coveted night of sleep. Tomorrow she does have a day off, it’s truly not that big of a deal—she can sleep in to make up for the lost hours—but even realizing this she can’t help her annoyance. Johnny is a selfish and inconsiderate bastard: one she can’t say no to when he willingly opens up to chat. It’s weird, really. The tiniest bit infuriating too, but mostly weird.      “… that so.” what is she supposed to say? “Me too”? She hasn’t been thinking because she was drifting into sleep until he decided to call. And to be frank she avoids thinking as much as possible when she’s out of her office. Most of the time Salice acts upon calculation and reasoning out of obligation (“what kind of lawyer doesn’t stick to the law?”)—but the moment she knows nobody is looking or judging her actions’ genuine lack of reasonableness, Salice doesn’t think twice about letting herself go. The amount of bar fights she’s been in, along with her generally riskly nightlife, is solid proof to that.

“What have you been thinking about?” she asks. Soon she realizes how naive that sounds, and how broad it is. Salice isn’t in the mood for his endless spiels: she wants to minimize it as much as possible. Pre-damage damage control, attempting to fix an inevitable oncoming catastrophe—call it how you will. Though, it’s not the same concept as “better safe than sorry”; Salice knows she can’t escape this situation, but tries to run from it anyways.      “Tell me one thing that’s on your mind.” it’s a mere suggestion that comes out as a rough demand. Hopefully he’ll follow the guideline she traced for him; if he doesn’t… well, she can’t strangle him, so hanging up will have to do.

     JOHNNY IS here, but not completely here. As he waits for Salice’s reply, half his mind wanders somewhere else, in a far worse place than the one he’s currently in. He stares at the ceiling, barely noticing the dusty spiderwebs hanging in the corners and focusing mostly on the shadowy figures created by the dark and the light of the streetlamp outside his window. He stares and thinks. He thinks so hard that, had he any will to move, he’d walk into the kitchen and put his head into the garbage disposer (again) in the hope it’ll chop his brain off and make all that THINKING and FEELING stop. He grimaces and bits his lip. His muscles tense in angry desperation for a moment, then relax again. Even fighting the universe is too much tonight. Tonight the weight of his existence, of all the blood on his hands, of the hole he’s slowly sinking day after day is threatening to crush him again. 

     Salice’s words come from far away, but they manage to pull him a little closer to reality. Johnny’s barely aware of the roughness in her tone, and oddly enough he accepts it - simply because he doesn’t care too much about it. What have you been thinking about? Tell me one thing that’s on your mind. A slightly longer silence (how can he choose just one?), then an answer rolls out of his mouth. “I keep losing pieces of myself. My past is disappearing.” And not metaphorically. With every passing day more and more memories flow out of his mind through his ears. Johnny can almost see them, the colorful fluid of his life and talent dripping down his neck and on the floor to be absorbed by the scratched wooden floor. It’s frustrating. It’s horrifying. It’s sad. “I barely remember anything,” he adds after another pause. He remembers the blood on his shoes when he walked into the room where his parents had been murdered - but the rest? Lost in the fog, in the darkness, in an ocean where he can’t swim. Tears fill his eyes, and he lets them. Nail Bunny stares at him from the wall, respectfully quiet. 

         ::「⊘」:: ⊱ ━━ Hirahara took absolutely no notice of the coldness curdling in Johnny’s tone; he only continued to dig and dig until he was told to stop. He halted with such an abrupt twinge of his body that one would have to wonder if some hidden switch had been flipped, like a child hitting a power button on a motorized toy. A tremor shot down his spine, but he held that stock-still position as if his life depended on it, as if he knew what could become of him at the hands of the human man standing across from him. And perhaps he did. Perhaps he could sense and smell it the way he could smell all the scent of gore and sudden death settled into the winding oddity of a basement deep in the belly of this deathtrap of a house. Perhaps he could see the warnings of painful death shimmering in the dark, ugly aura shrouding Johnny’s visage. Perhaps–

          “Uh, I kinda can’t, ‘cause it’s my job,” he explained with a wide, predatory smile. Evidently, even if he could see all those warnings and smell all that death ( which he could; it was easy for one predator to spot another ), he had already decided not to heed any of it. Shhhck. His shovel struck into the soil again. “And I don’t know too much about it, just what I was told ‘n what I can smell! I promise I won’t be long. I just gotta dig up a soul that’s stuck in your yard. I’ll fix it up real nice afterwards, I promise!”

     FOR A moment it did look like this guy had listened to him. He stopped to dug abruptly, freezing in an almost comical position, as if he had been turned to stone on the spot. Johnny was relieved, but at the same time there was something in the other’s position that didn’t seem right. Something was wrong. Beneath them, beneath levels and levels of wood and torture, it moved behind its prison. This unexpected presence both excited and bothered it. Had it been free, it would have stretched its tentacles out - where thousands of eyes of various shapes and colors replaced suckers - grabbed him and tore him into pieces, making him the first victim of its destructive liberation. In fact, it had to wait still. It’d have to wait till the night his keeper accidentally died, unwillingly killed by the one he still loved. It was impatient, but it had to wait. Thus, Johnny had to deal with this unwanted stranger digging holes in his fucking backyard all on his own.