The weight of the gun pulled on Veronica's trembling hands,
getting heavier by the nanosecond. She tried to look strong,
to not show the fear that coiled deep within the sinews of
her muscles but the tremor in her voice was a dead give away:
"Let's start by putting the bomb down on the ground."
It sounded good.
J.D. raised his eyebrows the way he always raised his eyebrows,
mockingly, knowingly, menacingly. He kicked at the bag that was
already lying near his feet. The bomb was on the ground.
Veronica glanced down nervously, "I knew that!" she yelped,
"I knew that . . . okay, now put your hands on your head."
J.D. squinted his narrow, black eyes. Veronica knew he could
see right through her, intelligent, psychotic bastard that he was.
"You didn't say Simon says," he purred, the blue light of the
high school boiler room melting over the pallor of his wicked face.
Veronica gaped at him, she had the gun; but he wasn't listening
to a goddamn thing she said! If anything, he looked mildly
amused at the attempt she was making to stop him.
Veronica's mind raced. Maybe she should just shoot him now?
But she didn't want to kill anymore-the plan was to bring
J.D. in to the proper authorities. Unfortunately he'd
probably blow himself up before he'd let that happen.
It was obvious to J.D. that Veronica had not planned anything
farther than the wonderful display she was putting on for
him at this very moment, so he decided to take over.
He lunged at her suddenly--knocking the gun from her
hands with ease-it clattered loudly to the concrete.
Panic took hold of Veronica as J.D. grabbed her face
harshly between his hands, and held her there for a
moment, as if deciding what to do with her. Veronica's
breath came hard, rasping from her throat. For a split
second she thought he was going to kill her. J.D. had
no remorse. He was ready to blow the school up with
everyone in it; there was no reason to spare her life
at this point in time. Besides, she had broken up with
him a few days earlier, he was bitter.
Veronica's heart pounded in her chest, and then J.D.
yanked her face downward, slamming her forehead into
his knee and throwing her back against the wall. Her
head crashed into the concrete and she collapsed to the
floor. Everything spun before her closed eyes; it
seemed as if her brain was about to explode. She heard
J.D. walk further into the boiler room, gun and bomb in
hand, but Veronica just couldn't bring herself to move.
The incessant stomping of feet above her head was probably
the only thing that kept her conscious. She thought of
the 250 students holding the pep-assembly directly above
where J.D. was planting the bomb. She couldn't let him kill
them all.
Slowly Veronica dragged herself to her feet. Her vision
blurred, and she could feel the warm, red wetness of blood
trickling down her cheek. Quietly she unhitched the fire
extinguisher from the wall and began to creep up on her
psychotic ex-boyfriend. J.D. was crouched down by the boiler.
He had already taped the lethal box to a metal pipe and was
in the midst of setting it. Veronica stifled her breathing
as she saw the timer begin its countdown: one minute, forty-
three seconds. There was no time. She had to stop him now
or they were all going to die.
With as much strength as she could muster she swung the
extinguisher at J.D. He heard her at the last second and
whirled around. The heavy, metal cylinder caught him in the
shoulder blade, knocking him to the ground. The gun went
skittering across the floor. Scrambling for it, her head
still dizzy with pain, Veronica lost her balance and stumbled.
J.D. caught her as she tried to regain her footing and tackled
her to the ground. Veronica cried out, trying to fight him,
but he was too strong. He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders
and yanked her to her feet, slamming her already-sore back
against the hulking boiler. For a brief moment Veronica froze
as her gaze met his. His black eyes sparked at her and then
his mouth closed over hers impulsively. Veronica struggled
fiercely against him, but he only fought her harder. She
heard fabric ripping. Once upon a time she had enjoyed his
kiss; he was too cool, too sexy to refuse; but that, she
realized, was all a lie. J.D. was sick; he was a murderer,
he was the goddamn Devil in disguise who, with only the
arch of an eyebrow, lured her into bed and then into
murder.
Veronica brought her knee up hard into his groin.
J.D. stumbled back sharply, doubling over in pain.
Something had finally worked on him. Veronica made a mad
dash for the gun that was lying next to the wall.
She seized it, and just as she did, J.D. threw himself into
the aisle next to the boiler. As he did so, he purposely
crashed into a stack of empty tar cans, sending the large,
metal barrels flying in Veronica's direction. She shielded
herself as a can grazed her shoulder. The noise was deafening,
but no one in the gym above could hear one decibel of
what was going on below.
Veronica made it to her feet, the gun just barely steady in her
hand. Suddenly everything was frighteningly quiet.
Where was J.D.? It was almost like he had vanished.
Veronica stole a quick, nervous glance at the bomb as she passed,
she had less than a minute. Her heart thudded painfully against
her chest. Where the hell was he?!? She checked slowly down all
three aisles, keeping the gun aimed in front of her. She had to be
cautious even now, otherwise it could all blow up in her face.
J.D. was nowhere. The panic had already set in. If she didn't
get him to stop the bomb now, everyone was going to die, she
and J.D. included. Veronica doubled back approaching the bomb
that was counting away the seconds of her life. 'Shit!' she thought.
'Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!'
She aimed the gun again down the aisle with the bomb, and her heart
jumped as a dark, lurking figure emerged from the shadows unexpectedly.
J.D. looked more nervous than pissed; his plan had gone sour on him,
and it was all her fault. He pulled a switch blade. The very glint
of it was menacing and Veronica flinched even though she held the gun.
"You think just because you started this thing you can end it?!" J.D.
shouted, his raspy voice like sandpaper on her ears.
"I'll kill you, I'll fucking kill you I swear to God," she cried, feeling
the few remaining seconds pressing down upon her like the dreaded weight
of J.D.'s body.
"How do I turn off the goddamn bomb asshole?!"
Anger flashed through J.D.'s soot-smeared face. "Fuck you!!" he cried,
flipping her his middle finger.
Veronica squeezed the trigger of the gun, aiming haphazardly at his
offending hand. She had to show him she was serious-there was no
time to fuck around.
To both their surprise the bullet severed J.D.'s finger clean off.
Blood started to stream everywhere, ribboning down both of his hands
as he tried to staunch the bleeding.
"Shit!!" he cried, slumping to the floor, pain searing its way into
his face.
"It's all over J.D.--help me stop it," Veronica stated, trying to
sound somewhat in control.
J.D. ignored her. His breathing had become heavy and enriched with pain.
He pulled a rag free from the burner and swathed his blood-gushing
hand in it.
"You want to clean the slate as much as I do," he panted, trying to get
a grip on the agony that had severed his nerve endings.
"Alright, so maybe I am killing everyone in the school-cause nobody
loves me! Let's face it alright? The only place different social
types can genuinely get along with each other is in Heaven!"
Veronica shot another glance at the bomb, urgency gripping every muscle
and brain cell in her body. "Which button do I press to turn it off?!?" she
snarled.
"Try the red one alright!?" J.D. retorted, getting to his knees.
Veronica cast her gaze at the little black box; all three of the buttons
were red.
"Seriously," J.D. continued, unaffected by the threat of explosion,
"People are gonna look at the ashes of Westerburg and say 'Now there's
a school that self-destructed not because society didn't care, but because
the school was society!'"
He took a moment to think this over, his eyes sparkling psychotically.
"That's pretty deep huh?"
"WHICH RED BUTTON!?!" Veronica cried.
J.D.'s eyes dimmed, something evil playing across his face.
"Press the middle one to turn it off, if that's what you really want."
Veronica glared at him. "You know what I want babe?"
"WHAT!?" J.D. barked, lunging at her with the knife.
Veronica barely had a chance to think about her reaction. She pulled the
trigger, and the gun exploded once. J.D. cried out. She couldn't really see
where the bullet had hit him, it was all happening too fast.
Still on his feet, he had lost control and plunged the switch blade directly
into the dynamite of the bomb itself. The timer started screaming a high
-pitched beeping sound, but the numbers themselves had stopped with only four
seconds remaining. In the same moment, Veronica fired again. J.D. fell back,
grappling for support of any kind. He stumbled against the boiler, but couldn't
keep himself standing. His legs gave way beneath him, and as he crumpled to the
ground he pulled some sort of lever down with him. Steam shot out everywhere
from the pipes with a deafening, snake-like hiss. Veronica watched,
the pressure on her heart releasing gradually with the steam from the boiler.
"Cool guys like you out of my life," she murmured.
The pep assembly was still going on as Veronica emerged from the hellish
depths of the boiler room alone, her hair matted, her face sooty and bleeding.
She never thought the site of her classmates could give her so much comfort.
It was uncanny, but at least they were safe-for now.
Her head was still spinning as she made her way quietly through the
hallways and out the main entrance of Westerburg High School. She started down
the red-carpeted stairs, and winced at the pain swirling around her sore body.
Thoughts of an ending to all this chaos had barely entered her head when she
heard the door open behind her.
"Color me impressed," he said.
Veronica's breath stifled in her lungs as she whirled to see J.D. slowly
making his way towards her. He looked just as bad as she did, with his
bruised face and the blood-soaked rag wrapped tightly around his 4-fingered
hand. He smirked at the sight of her horrified expression as he faced her on
the stairs. He was clutching his long, black coat around his wounded body
with his good hand, and Veronica could see he felt pain in every step.
She almost felt bad she had shot him. She had saved the school, maybe there
was still a chance for J.D.? It was a ridiculous idea, and she wondered why she
had thought it.
"You really fucked me up pretty bad, Veronica," J.D. said, his shallow
breathing spliced between his words.
"You got power, power I didn't think you had."
He almost looked humbled before her, as if she had won his respect on a
higher level. And then his devious eyes glittered knowingly, and he opened his
coat.
Veronica felt her hope sink like the Titanic. She winced deeply at the
sight of the bomb strapped to J.D.'s torso. He raised his eyebrows and smiled
at her:
"Slate is clean."
* * *
"Dear Diary,
It's not over. I stood on the steps of Westerburg High watching J.D. like
some sort of Christ figure, arms outstretched, as he embarked on his final
suicide mission. The constant beeping of the bomb strapped to his chest
was like some sort of derisive hallway chatter going on behind my back;
mocking me. I thought my two-week long trip to Hell had finally ended,
that I could finally get on with my life. I have to ask if protecting
my less-than-wonderful classmates was the only way to preserve myself,
in more ways than one?
"It's funny how J.D. turned himself into some sort of martyr, dying so I
could live, so everybody in that gymnasium could live. Was that his way of
cleaning the slate? I have to wonder. He didn't commit suicide to destroy
himself, I know that much. I stared into his black eyes and he grinned at me,
ready. For what? Heaven? Hell? Would the ghosts of those we killed, of
Heather, and Kurt, and Ram claw at his demented soul in some fiery pit under the
earth? Or was J.D. ready to spread his black wings and fly? From what he said
in those last few chaotic moments, I have to question if J.D. even believed in
death? From the very beginning he used death as an instrument; killing people
was like spring cleaning to him. He had an agenda, one he never let me in on.
"Yes, I watched him die. I stood there in his ashes after he exploded and
thought I could finally proclaim my freedom. Now I'm not so sure.
As in death as he was in life, J.D. is a predator on my mind. I can't get
him out of my head. To make matters worse, I loved him once. And I keep
thinking maybe there was another ending that neither one of us took advantage
of? Was J.D. beyond saving? He must have been. Even he knew that.
"No one at Westerburg knew quite how to handle what J.D. had done. I
mean, c'mon, Heather Chandler drank liquid-drainer, Kurt and Ram shot each
other, but J.D. exploded. That's not something the school could just glaze over
with some mushy cafeteria love-in. Most people looked for someone to blame.
'A nineteen year old boy just isn't capable of doing something so horrific on
his own' Ironically, because he was dead, J.D. was no longer the Devil in
disguise, he was the innocent victim. Then again, no one knew that J.D. was
a murderer, or that he had originally intended to blow up the school instead of
himself. I haven't said a word, I'm as much a part of this as he was, it's my
ass on the line too.
"Troubled youth. It's all such bullshit. Part of me thinks J.D. was
perfectly sane in his insanity. He had everything figured out to the Nth
degree. He knew what he was doing. Of all the funerals I've been to in the
last month, J.D.'s was the worst. Father Ripper presided, as usual, and J.D.
would have delighted to hear himself eulogized as an "innocent victim of
society's sins."
"I can't believe how they turned this whole thing on its head! J.D.
wasn't the victim! He was the mastermind behind this whole fucking nightmare!
This is exactly what J.D. wanted, I'm sure of it. This was the proof he needed
to tell me and the rest of the world that he was right. We're all fucked up.
We're all the sick children of "a society that degrades us," of a society that
nods its head at any horror we can think to commit.
"I keep envisioning J.D. in front of me, arms stretched out in victory,
waiting for the final moment. I thought that I was the winner then, ready to
light my cigarette with his pain. His eyes sparkled, more alive in those last
45 seconds than I had ever seen them. It was almost like he had been injected
with some divine sort of knowledge. I half expect him to pop up in the middle
of history class one day and tell me about it." --Veronica Sawyer
* * *
(Three weeks later.)
The timbre explosions of slamming lockers barely penetrated past the
membrane of Veronica's thoughts. She walked slowly through the crowded
hallways of Westerburg High School, her mind in some distant, faraway place.
She felt as if her life had entered the twilight zone. The unspoken truth
about J.D., Heather, Kurt, and Ram lay floating on the turbulent seas of her
conscience. Now that J.D. was gone, the cross was all hers to bear.
Every now and then Veronica could hear Heather Chandler's cold voice spiraling
somewhere in the cacophony of cafeteria noise. Sometimes, out of the corner
of her eye she would see the tail of J.D.'s long, black coat disappear around
some corner.
"It's like the school's haunted or something," someone said.
Veronica jumped at the words and looked around quickly. Heather McNamara
walked up to her wearing a red and black cheerleading outfit. Veronica stared
at her, her pale face shot through with horror.
"What do you mean?" she asked, feeling her heart flutter with guilt for
the umpteenth time this month.
Heather pulled her frail fingers through her thick fall of long, curly,
blond hair. She shrugged, "I don't know, the school just feels weird. So many
people have died this month, it's like everyone's walking around in a twilight
zone episode or something-especially you Veronica."
Veronica winced and looked down at the shiny, dark floor. Her distorted
reflection stared back
"Losing J.D. has really taken its toll on you," Heather continued, basking
in the bliss of ignorance.
"Yeah," Veronica whispered, barely able to supply sound to the word. She
felt her whole body churn with uneasiness. A locker door slammed next to her,
and she jumped with the noise.
"It's been rough."
A derisive, female voice wafted its way across the emptying hall and
Veronica looked up. Heather Duke, all dressed in red and surrounded by her new
entourage, stood grinning like the Cheshire Cat in Veronica's direction.
Veronica frowned, and Heather McNamara cringed like a guilty child.
"I gotta go, Veronica," she said sheepishly.
After all the hell Heather put Heather through, she still groveled her way
back into the coolest, albeit revised, clique in school. The beaming grin
on Heather Duke's face never failed to declare her victory over Heather
and over all the other gullible minds of the student body. Veronica
watched angrily as Heather went over to Heather. She half expected to see
Heather Duke strap a leash and collar around Heather McNamra's neck.
"Oh, hello Veronica," Heather Duke called disdainfully from across the
way. Her greeting was followed by a chorus of bitchy snickering, and Veronica
felt her annoyance flare. While Heather McNamara crawled back to Heather on her
hands and knees, Veronica had remained determined to stay as far away from her
as possible; hence, lessening her status in the school hierarchy and making her
the perfect food for ridicule. Despite everything that had happened, Veronica
found herself thinking that if J.D. were still alive, Heather Duke wouldn't be.
She probably would have committed "suicide" weeks ago.
Veronica watched the group saunter off towards the cafeteria, and
considered telling J.D. that he could blow the school up after all. She
snickered nervously at the thought.
* * *
Heather Duke had taken up almost all of Heather Chandler's old habits.
Veronica sat down at a table in the cafeteria and watched as Heather had one of
her lackeys forge some sort of note to give to a poor, unsuspecting soul as a
cruel and nasty joke. Way back when Heather Chandler was Queen, the prime
victim of such torment was Martha Dunstock, a quiet, 220 pound junior whom
everyone had dubbed "Martha Dumptruck" because of her excessive weight.
For her reign, Heather Duke had chosen the lowly Stuart Salinger, an
outcast freshman who was shaped like a scarecrow, and who looked like he had
stepped right out of some "Revenge of the Nerds" movie. The funny part was
that not even the nerds of the school liked Stuart; nobody did. Sometime in
mid-December he came to Westerburg a scrawny, middle-class geek, and was
trampled underfoot by everyone, the Heathers above all.
Veronica rested her head on her hand in mild boredom and watched through
her dark sunglasses as Heather McNamara ran to slip the phony note on to
Stuart's lunch tray. Veronica yawned. This had all been done before; the
whole day-to-day scenario of high school played like a broken record. She
had saved the school from certain death only a few weeks earlier; but it was
like nothing had ever happened. Sometimes she found herself wishing for another
rebel to come along in a long, black coat, riding a Harley Davidson and smoking
like a chimney. J.D. was a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon of nature. The Devil
sent him to take out the trash, and Veronica had chased him away before he even
had a chance to break out the vacuum cleaner. Now she sat in his old seat, in
the back corner of high-society cafeteria life, wishing she at least had a dust
buster.
Stuart slumped down at his lonely table with his carton of milk and tray
of slop and tatter tots. His limbs seemed to collapse inward from lack of
nutrition or something, and he slouched as if he were taking cover from unseen,
flying objects.
Veronica cast her gaze at Heather and her lackeys, who watched with
gleaming eyes as Stuart unfolded the mysterious note. His brown eyes widened
beneath his round-rimmed glasses and he nearly choked on his tater tot.
And then suddenly, his gaze crashed with the lenses of Veronica's black
sunglasses.
"Shit," Veronica muttered, hearing Heather laughing in the background.
Stuart looked from the note to Veronica and then back again.
"Goddamnit," she cursed as he feebly got up from his table and started
towards her. She held her head, and gave some thought to bolting for the door.
Heather was almost drooling at the pure perfection of it all. Undoubtedly she
had conjured up some sexually perverse fable about how Veronica was hot for
Stuart's muscle-denied body.
"Hhhh-hi Veronica," he stammered, pushing his glasses up the bridge of
his beak-like nose.
"Hi Stuart," she said, her voice a monotone, expectant, extension of her
bored thoughts.
Stuart handed her the note, which she took shamelessly to glance over.
Heather had no creativity.
"I didn't write this," Veronica stated, combing her fingers through her
dark hair, ignoring the death of hope in Stuart's face. His pale-sickly cheeks
flushed with embarrassment, and his eyes glazed over with horror.
"Heather Duke wrote it," Veronica said plainly, not wanting to give
Heather the satisfaction she craved. Poor Stuart had that old, familiar look of:
"I-just-totally-humiliated-myself-and-am-now-the-laughing-stock-of-the-whole-
school."
"Oh," was all he could say.
Veronica handed him back the note, and he hesitated briefly before
slinking back to his table. On the way there he became aware of Heather's
laughter, and his shoulders slumped even further inward until they disappeared
into the sides of his bony torso.
Veronica took a deep breath and lowered her sunglasses so she could glare
at Heather, whose green eyes sparked back at her. Veronica scowled. She
glanced at Stuart again, who seemed inches away from hiding under the table, and
then she glanced at some of the other familiar faces. Kieth and Courtney, a
pair of country-club snobs, gave her sly, knowing looks as though they were all
set to start circulating the rumors. Veronica's frown deepened, maybe she
wasn't a Heather anymore; but she wasn't going to serve as the brunt of the
jokes either.
"Oh that was hilarious, Heather," Veronica said, approaching the creature
in red who had once been her friend.
Heather flashed her a charming grin, "A total laugh riot," she replied.
"Was the joke on Stuart or on me?" Veronica asked knowingly. She hated
the way Heather and her clique all seemed to share the same line of telepathic
communication. They snickered in unison.
"What's your damage, Veronica?" Heather Duke retorted, hugging her disdain
to her like a member of the football team. "You should be used to the company
of losers, everyone knows you associate yourself with the scum of the school."
The clique found this funny. Even Heather McNamara laughed; it was either
play along, or be ousted and ridiculed. Veronica felt her anger flare. She
gritted her teeth and tried not to let it show that Heather could get to her.
"Face it, Veronica," Heather continued, "You totally fell off your
pedestal when Heather died. You started hanging around with Martha Dumptruck,
for godsakes. You're not cool anymore, you're a tragedy."
More laughing. Veronica swallowed hard and tried to control her rage.
She wanted to kill, and she chided herself for admitting it.
"And what makes you cool, Heather?" She snapped, "Is it your winning
personality? Or the fact that you're just a cheap imitation of Heather
Chandler?"
The smile fell off of Heather's alabaster face. Veronica watched semi-
delighted as Heather's cheeks flushed with fury.
"Veronica, can you only defend yourself by taking blows below the belt?
How sorry is that?"
"The only thing sorry here, Heather, is you," Veronica snarled.
For a moment Heather looked genuinely enraged, and then her expression
changed totally, and she laughed.
"God, Veronica, how lame you've become! At least when J.D. was alive
there was still hope for you."
The very mention of J.D.'s name sparked an inferno of anger. She could
feel the hate for Heather churning inside of her fiery body, turning itself,
over and over like a pig on a skewer.
"And what do you mean by that, Heather?" Veronica growled, no longer able
to suppress the flames from moving into her face.
"Did I hit a nerve, Veronica?" Heather bantered, "J.D. was too cool for
you, you couldn't handle him; everyone knows that. It's a pity you drove him to
his suicide."
Veronica felt her head start to spin violently as she realized that this
was the popular opinion of the school. No one here knew what J.D. had really
planned to do; they all thought the extravagance of his suicide was just part of
his rebellious nature, that deep down he was just lovesick, and she was at
fault.
"I drove him to suicide?!?" Veronica hissed, feeling a dull ache throb its
way into her head. She knew her mouth had dropped open, but she was so goddamn
angry she couldn't even feel her body. There was actually a red tint to
everything she saw, as if some cheesy B-movie director were orchestrating her
life at the moment. Heather looked so triumphant, and all Veronica could think
of was killing her. A vision of Heather Chandler lying in her satin coffin
flashed across Veronica's eyes, and then she heard him.
At first it was just a whisper, like a memory echoing off the walls from
weeks before, and then his voice was against her ear, feathered and sarcastic,
as if he had never blown himself up to begin with:
"Wish you had that gun right about now, don't you darling?" he said.
Veronica's spinning, red, world came to a crash landing at the sound of
his voice. His VOICE!! His raspy, wicked, maniacal voice! Where the hell did
it come from?! 'Get a grip girl,' Veronica thought, glancing around, and then
pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. She was getting too
excited, some chemical imbalance must have been kicking in.
Heather was still beaming. "The truth hurts, doesn't it, Veronica?" she
said, "Poor J.D., what a waste."
"Oh the humanity," sneered one of the others.
But Veronica had gone deaf to Heather's remarks; reality had just gotten
terribly weird. She kept thinking to herself: 'calm down, you're hearing
things.'
And then he spoke again, as if he were right next to her:
"Don't kid yourself, dearest, your hearing is perfectly fine."
Veronica gasped sharply; she tore off her sunglasses and scanned the room
in a near panic. It occurred to her that someone was doing an impression of
J.D. just to torment her. But no one looked like the guilty party. Dread and
horror ignited inside of Veronica's body. She was losing her mind in the middle
of the caf!
On the opposite side of her his voice came again: "Don't you think this
school is in need of another suicide? It's been three weeks!"
Veronica whirled around, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Heather
Duke grimaced as if Veronica were a mental patient who had been let out by
mistake. Veronica was beginning to wonder if that was the case. Either that,
or she had just fallen into the twilight zone.
"Veronica!" Heather snapped, annoyed at being ignored.
Veronica came back to reality long enough to see the irritated expression
chiseled into Heather's white flesh. And then her gaze drifted beyond Heather,
and settled over a figure in black leaning against the "feed the world" table.
It seemed as if Veronica had to manually focus her vision before it came in
clear enough to see every detail right down to the eyebrows.
J.D. grinned, and gave a casual wave.
Veronica's breath slipped out of her lungs and failed to return. Her eyes
grew bowling-ball huge, at the sight of the apparition before her.
"Greetings and salutations," he sneered, raising his wicked eyebrows.
"God, Veronica, what's wrong with you?!" Heather demanded, as Veronica
watched J.D. nonchalantly light a cigarette. Peter, who was preaching to no one
in particular about giving away their extra tater tots, coughed when he inhaled
J.D.'s smoke; but as far as seeing J.D. directly in front of him-Peter seemed
clueless.
Heather frowned even deeper, "You look like you've just seen a ghost or
something."
J.D. laughed at the irony and drew in a lungful of smoke.
"You gotta love her!" he remarked in delight.
Veronica felt her head grow light as the rest of her body sunk into a
nauseous, sickening stupor. She couldn't tear her eyes away from where J.D. was
slouching. He should have disappeared or something, the way the ghosts of a
guilty conscience were supposed to do. But he didn't. Instead he flicked his
ashes in Peter's direction, and smirked all-knowingly. Heather followed
Veronica's gaze to see what she was gawking at, but J.D. shook his head.
"She can't see me Veronica," he purred, "I'm here for your eyes only."
"Get a grip girl," Heather growled, echoing Veronica's thoughts, "What
little reputation you have left is plummeting rapidly."
Veronica managed to pull her eyes off of J.D. long enough to see Heather's
disgust, and feel her own utter horror welling up in her throat.
"Oh my god," Veronica choked from somewhere deep in her gut. She had to
get out of the room before she collapsed and died of shock on the floor.
This wasn't happening.
She whipped around and forced her legs into motion, vaguely hearing
Heather's bitch-queen protests as she tumbled out of the caf and into the hall.
Veronica's head was doing somersaults on her shoulders as she scampered down the
empty hallways of Westerburg. The main entrance was too far away, so Veronica
hoisted herself up the stairs and burst into the girl's room. Luckily, it too,
was empty.
She practically fell into the sink, splashing her beet-red face with cold
water. The sudden, icy temperature against her feverish flesh made her insides
churn, and, feeling violently ill, she stumbled into the stall to retch up the
emptiness in her stomach. Her whole life seemed to flash before her eyes as she
hugged the john. And then logic began to creep its way into her head,
threatening to rationalize everything she had just seen in the caf.
Veronica tried to collect herself. She had just gone mental in front of
her worst enemies, and had probably ruined her reputation more in that moment
than Heather could have done in a week!
"Oh God," she muttered, both horrified and stupefied by her own behavior.
She could have sworn she heard Heather Chandler's voice like a distant ringing
in the outside hall:
"Transfer to Washington, transfer to Jefferson, no one at Westerburg's
gonna let you play their reindeer games."
It took Veronica some time to catch her breath before she managed to pick
herself off the less-than-spotless bathroom floor. She felt trembly and dizzy,
and decided right then to cut out of school early and go back to bed. Her blue
stockings had been smudged with some form of girls' room grime, and there was a
fresh run disappearing up into the shadows of her new skirt. Definitely time to
go home.
"Shit," she groaned, stepping wearily out of the stall and over to the
sink. Her face still felt like fire had been set to it. She turned on the
water and started to wash the sickness away when she heard the bathroom door
open. With her luck at the moment it was probably Heather and her lackeys come
to watch the rest of the show.
The pungent aroma of cigarette smoke coiled around her as she bent to cup
the cool water to her lips. It tasted like rust.
"That was a true Kodak moment, Veronica!" he barked, "Pity I didn't have a
camera!"
His voice was as raspy and dramatic as ever. Veronica's heart thudded
against her rib cage, but she didn't lift her head. Instead she stared at the
water as it spiraled down the drain, and wondered if that was her life going
with it.
"You're not really here," she said uneasily, dreading to hear an answer
of any kind.
J.D. snickered. "Quite the contrary darling, I am very much here."
"You're dead," Veronica insisted, the strength in her voice pushing into
the lipstick-smudged porcelain of the sink.
"Of course!" J.D. sneered, "That's the beauty of it!"
Veronica looked up and stared into the mirror her face now a sickly,
horrified white. J.D.'s reflection appeared behind her own. He looked the
same-well, almost. His handsome, chiseled face was the color of alabaster, his
narrow eyes as deep black as pure, polished obsidian, and together, his features
looked just a tad more supernatural than they should have, had he been alive.
But everything else was the same, long, black coat and all. He took a long drag
on the cigarette and the end glowed orange.
"You're a figment of my imagination!" Veronica cried, whirling around to
face him. "You blew yourself up! You killed yourself! You're dead! D-E-A-D,
dead!"
J.D.'s linear lips curled into a wry smirk. "Well, it's a comfort to know
you can still spell at a time like this; however darling--" he paused, stared
at Veronica with the slits that served for his eyes, and exhaled smoke into her
face. She coughed and turned away.
"How can you be so sure?" he finished, meeting her incensed gaze
steadily.
"You are NOT here!!!" she screamed, thrashing at him with her fists,
trying to chase his ghost, or his memory, or whatever the hell he was away.
"Get the fuck away from me! You are not here!!"
J.D. let the smoking cigarette hang limply from his lips as he grabbed
Veronica's flailing arms. She froze when he touched her; his grip was so icy,
so chilling. For a moment she just stared, horrified, into his black eyes.
"If I weren't here Veronica, could I do this? Hmm?" J.D. asked,
tightening his grip on her wrists painfully. Veronica gaped at him a moment
longer before she began struggling and pulling away, screaming over and over
again at the top of her lungs: "Let go of me!!"
J.D. let her squirm awhile before he released her as an amused cat would
its prey. Veronica stumbled back against the clammy, tiled wall; her breath
coming in hard, short gasps. She glowered hard at J.D.-he raised his eyebrows.
"What are you doing here?" she moaned, raking her hands back through her
shoulder-length hair.
A small, unfamiliar voice answered her from behind J.D.: "Umm, I have to
go-to the bathroom?"
J.D. snickered and moved aside so that Veronica could see the short, oval-
shaped freshmen that had just entered the room. Her eyes were wide and stunned
behind her thick-lensed glasses, she looked completely befuddled. Veronica's
mouth dropped open as she exchanged mortified looks with the girl.
"Now who looks psychotic?" J.D. sneered, "She can't see me, Veronica,
you're the one ranting and raving like a lunatic all by yourself in a high
school bathroom!" He laughed, "It's perfecto!"
"You know what," the girl said, crinkling her nose, "I'll come back
later."
She opened the door and slipped out quickly, undoubtedly fleeing for cover
to some nearby classroom.
Veronica slid down the wall to sit on the cold floor. She pressed her
hands to her throbbing temples. "God!" she moaned, "I've gone completely
insane!"
J.D. lit another cigarette with the end of his first one. He threw the
butt down and sparks scattered outward as it hit the ground. Veronica
watched listlessly as the cigarette bounced under the door of a stall and rolled
out of view.
J.D. leaned over the sink to stare in the spotty mirror. He had a
reflection. He wasn't some mythological vampire or anything like that, and
unfortunately he probably couldn't be repelled with sunlight, or holy water, or
something easy.
"I'm playing with a new look, Veronica," he said matter-of-factly. "Tell
me what you think."
Veronica glanced up, still holding her head. Her pretty face twisted
upward, utterly perturbed. The whole room was spinning and there was J.D., a
walking dead man, talking about a new look? Oh the humanity.
J.D. pulled his fingers, all ten of them, back through his choppy, black
hair, and as he did so, the hair lengthened until it fell past his shoulders.
Veronica squinted in confusion. It was all too weird. J.D. turned to her,
long, black hair now framing his china-white face. "Well? Is it me?"
"I didn't know fashion was an issue in Hell," she muttered.
J.D. scoffed at her and puffed on his cigarette.
"Why are you haunting me?" Veronica whimpered, "I mean, are you haunting
me? Or have I lost my fucking mind?"
J.D. brushed a couple of wisps to the left, and then to the right,
ignoring her.
"Goddamnit J.D.! Why are you here!?" Veronica shouted.
"Because I can be," he answered, still studying his new hair. "I like
it!" he declared, turning to her and grinning devilishly; "It'll go great with
the horns."
* * *
"Dear Diary,
"My ex-boyfriend has come back from Hell to make my life a living one.
I don't know what to do. I've made a complete ass out of myself in front of the
whole school, and now everyone thinks I'm a total nutcase. J.D.'s everywhere I
go. He won't leave me alone. He's not just some grotesque product of my guilt-
ridden mind; yet at the same time, I'm the only one who sees him! Is he a
ghost? A demon? Satan himself? He won't tell me, he won't tell me one goddamn
thing! This is all a big joke to him. He sits next to me in class and
ridicules everything and everyone with that demonic wit he always had-and then I
burst out laughing-at nothing-in the middle of class. The whole student body
agrees that I should be attending Cleavesburg Mental Institution instead of
Westerburg High. I walk through the hallways, and people part like the Red Sea.
I've become the walking plague, and J.D. is reveling in it all.
"He's sitting there now telling me how history class is so much more
interesting when you don't have to pay attention to it. I'm not crazy. You
have to believe me. J.D. is haunting me from beyond the grave, I can't get rid
of him. I killed the sonofabitch once-I can't do it again, he's already dead!
I ask him over and over again why he's here. He says "The future's not ours to
see." What future?! Ours? Or mine? He shouldn't have a future anyway-he's
dead!
"Heather is having a field day. J.D. may have dug the grave for my less-
than-flawless reputation, but I put myself in it. I try to ignore J.D.'s
harping presence, but he always shows up when I least want him to. Stuart
Salinger walked up to me the other day. He was wearing a long black trench coat
similar to J.D.'s, and he had gotten his ear pierced like J.D., although it had
gotten all infected and was covered in band-aids.
"I wanted to crawl into a corner and die. The whole school thinks I'm a
baskethead, and on top of that Stuart Salinger is trying to force-feed me his
scrawny, little heart!
"J.D. was amused. In fact, he was downright delighted that Stuart was
copying him to win my attention. And then Stuart asked me to the prom. I
wanted to scream. I said: "Stuart, I'm not going to the prom."
"Stuart looked upset-I wish he would just find someone else to bother,
someone who is not being tormented by her dead ex-boyfriend. J.D., who was
present, as usual, clapped his hand over his heart in mock devastation.
"Oh, God, Veronica," he cried in that Jack Nicholson twang of his, "Can't you
see what you're doing to this little guy?! He gave me that wise-ass smirk and
pinched Stuart's gaunt cheeks like some overly affectionate grandmother.
"You're chewing up his heart and spitting it back into his face!" Stuart only
scratched at J.D.'s spectral touch as if it were a bug bite. Of course he was
completely unaware that J.D. was even there to begin with, so when I screamed
"I'm not going to the prom," at J.D., Stuart thought I was screaming at him.
And I wasn't!
J.D. is making me a fucking lunatic! I tried to tell Stuart I was sorry.
His face was blood red with embarrassment. He looked like he was going to hide
in his oversized coat as he attempted to explain to me why he had just asked me
out. J.D., of course, stood behind him, making all of these mock-sympathetic
expressions that I couldn't help but snicker at, and once again Stuart got the
wrong impression. I told him that I was sorry. That I wasn't snickering at him
as he was telling me his sad life-story; but I think it was beyond saving at
that point. That poor kid. He should just steer clear of me; it would do his
self-esteem a great favor." -Veronica Sawyer
* * *
"Veronica's not going to the prom, are you Veronica?"
"How can she? Her boyfriend committed suicide."
"And because of her too, she can't go with anyone else, it would be
immoral."
Veronica sneered at the girls as she sat on the floor against her gym
locker. They all snickered. The whole junior class was alive with talk of the
prom. It was this Friday, and all day long, all Veronica could hear was 'What
are you wearing? Who are you going with? Who's in your limo?'
"I can give a shit less that that bastard is dead," Veronica retorted.
"I'm not going to the prom so I don't have to deal with you."
Courtney and the others exchanged glances and burst out laughing.
Veronica rolled her eyes in disgust, ignoring the usual locker room commotion
going on around her. The steam from the showers poured down the aisles as
scantily-clad girls milled aimlessly about.
"Sweet Jesus!" J.D. barked, "Is this what I've been missing?!"
Veronica dropped her head into her lap to try and drown him out.
"Control your hormones, dickhead," she murmured, "Have you no couth?"
J.D. raised his eyebrows, dragging on his cigarette as a pair of girls
walked by in towels.
"There are advantages to being dead, my dear," he proclaimed. "Waltzing
right into the girls locker room is one of them!"
Veronica shook her head, pulling her fingers back through her thick fall
of chestnut hair. "God, you can be so immature."
J.D. grinned wickedly as Courtney and the others continued their gossip.
He knew Veronica hated it when everyone sympathized with him. And she knew he
was gloating because that's exactly what was going through his head at the
moment.
"They only care because you're dead," Veronica mumbled, trying not to make
it too obvious that she was talking to herself. "If I were dead, you would be
the bad guy."
J.D. crouched down, his eyebrows arching wildly over his narrow, black
eyes. "That could be arranged dearest."
Veronica glared at him.
"Veronica, I heard Stuart Salinger asked you to go to the prom with him,"
Courtney said in that perky, preppy voice that was about as pleasant as
fingernails on chalkboard.
"Yeah, and?"
They laughed again.
"C'mon, Veronica, face it," J.D. interjected, "I was right! This school
is as hopeless as the society that surrounds it! You want them dead as much as
I do!"
Veronica grimaced, glaring at Courtney in her country-club cardigan.
"And what if I do want them dead?" she growled, answering J.D. loudly
enough so that the others could hear.
"Excuse me Veronica?" Courtney asked.
"What if I do want them dead," Veronica repeated, raising her own
eyebrows, and giving Courtney her best I-am-a-psychotic-bitch look. Courtney
and the others chose to ignore her, and walked away in a huff.
"Then that, too, can be arranged," J.D. purred, wrapping his arms around
Veronica and pulling her close. She grimaced and watched as he exhaled a cloud
of smoke that snaked into the air and merged with the shower steam.
* * *
Veronica sat in the back of the caf, half-sprawled across the table, her
head resting on the paper bag coverings of her text books. She stared sideways
at the kids who milled around and wondered how many of them would actually
survive adolescence. Would she be one of them?
Her mind started to drift, and everything seemed to get quiet, as though
it were all a dream spinning in slow motion. Veronica remembered an exercise
Miss Pauline Flemming had taught her in health class: "Imagine your entire body
is filling up with a warm, orange fluid," Ms. Phlegm had said. "Just filling
every nook and cranny all the way up to your head. And then all the bad
thoughts and feelings start to float in the orange fluid; they're just floating
around there like all the debris we pour into our oceans. And then imagine that
someone pokes a hole in the bottom of your foot, and all the warm, orange fluid
starts to drain away, and it takes all those nasty little feelings with it
. . ." What a flake Ms. Phlegm was.
Veronica closed her eyes and started to imagine the orange fluid. But she
couldn't see orange, she could only see red.
"This is ridiculous," she murmured, opening her eyes.
She heard Heather Duke laughing at something; but didn't really care what
it was. Someone dropped a lunch tray, someone else started yelling obscenities;
Veronica didn't budge. Instead she watched as J.D. emerged from the crowd on
the lunch line and started towards her. Against a backdrop of living people, he
didn't really look human. He was back to his short hair again (the length of
his hair seemed to fluctuate with the day) and his face looked even more pallid
than usual.
"You're a walking corpse," Veronica simpered while J.D. was still out of
earshot. "A walking dead guy who smokes like a chimney."
His coat seemed to flow behind him. It sometimes looked like night
itself, like a black whole that could swallow up anyone who got too close.
"You blew yourself up, but you're still here to make my life miserable,"
she continued in a sing-song voice.
"Veronica, who are you talking to?" Betty Finn asked cautiously.
The girl who had been best friends with Veronica before the Heathers came
on the scene, stood clutching her books to her chest. Veronica turned her head
to look up at Betty. The light from the window filtered over the girl, bathing
her in a yellow glow which made her almost look angelic.
"Oh," Veronica replied, "Nobody." She tossed a quick glance around-J.D.
had vanished.
Betty sat down. "I'm really worried about you Ronnie," she said. "Martha
tells me you haven't been feeling well."
Veronica smiled, "That's one way of putting it."
Betty fingered the unopened can of Diet Coke sitting in the middle of the
table.
"Is it because of J.D.?" she asked, trying, Veronica could tell, to
phrase the question as delicately as she possibly could; as if the mention of
J.D.'s death was going to send Veronica into a frenzy of weeping or something.
Veronica laughed at the thought.
"Let's just say he's haunting me," she replied.
Betty averted her eyes to the table, "Well, you know," she started
quietly, "It wasn't your fault he did what he did. He must have been really
depressed or something."
Veronica smiled sweetly at her one true friend left in life; probably the
truest friend she had ever had. Veronica had ditched Betty awhile ago to become
a "Heather," to be part of the coolest clique in school. And after all was said
and done, Betty was still around to help her now.
"You know men," Veronica said light-heartedly, "they blow up over every
little thing that doesn't go their way."
Betty couldn't help but snicker. "Ronnie," she chided.
Veronica shook her head. "I'll be alright," she lied. "Thanks for
caring."
Betty shrugged sheepishly. "If you ever need anything-" she stressed.
Veronica nodded, knowing that there really was nothing Betty Finn could do to
help her out of her predicament.
Betty got up to go back to her own table. Veronica watched.
"I can't believe this is my life," she muttered.
"Well, believe it dearest," J.D. rasped, pulling up a seat next to her and
sitting down on it backwards. Veronica wondered vaguely if anyone else in the
caf saw the chair move.
"I haven't seen you since yesterday," Veronica mumbled, "Where have you
been?"
J.D. raised his eyebrows knowingly; "How nice of you to care."
"Don't flatter yourself," Veronica retorted.
J.D. shook his head, amused, expecting that. Veronica watched as his
devious gaze then settled over Betty Finn. Something dangerous moved in his
face. Veronica frowned.
"Whatever your sick little mind is thinking, stop it," she warned, opening
the Diet Coke and taking a gulp of the semi-sweet poison. J.D. had no response.
Veronica put the can down and stared at him accusingly. He met her gaze.
"You're plotting something," she asserted. "I can almost see that
godamned little light bulb going on over your head."
J.D. squinted in puzzled, mock-innocence. A loud crash across the caf
broke the tension between them and they both turned to look. Stuart Salinger
had bumped into one of the football players, the new Quarterback who had taken
over after Kurt Kelly had allegedly "committed suicide." Or rather, after J.D.
had chased him down in the woods behind Westerburg and had Veronica shoot him
under false pretenses.
The hulking Quarterback started screaming at Stuart:
"You stupid, cock-sucking dweeb!! Look what you did to my jacket!!
There's shit all over it!!"
Stuart cringed as the football player made a motion to pummel him. J.D.
shook his head. Veronica couldn't tell if he was amused or disgusted.
"You see?" He declared in his gravelly voice. "This is just another
example of a typical jock-asshole expressing the need to display his
testosterone level to the entire fucking world! Pick on the lowliest schmuck in
the building-now that's original."
J.D. grinned. "They all deserve to die."
Veronica knitted her brow, frowning deeply. "No they do not!" She
retorted emphatically. "No one deserves to die just because they're an asshole.
This whole world is filled with assholes-J.D. grow up! You don't kill people
because they're assholes, you kill because you enjoy it-because you're fucking
psychotic!"
A couple of kids turned to stare at her, but Veronica ignored them. She
didn't care what they thought anymore. It made no difference that she was
practically shouting at an empty chair. Whether or not they saw J.D. sitting
there was trivial; he was there, and he was dangerous.
J.D. squinted, he looked angry.
"Don't you see!?!" he hissed. "Are you fucking blind, Veronica?!? You're
not saving anybody up there on your soap box! Look around you! There's no
innocence in this room! Mother Teresa wouldn't touch this building with a ten-
foot pole for Chrissakes!!"
J.D. jumped out of his seat--sending it crashing to the floor. He looked
positively evil, and Veronica felt herself cringing inside.
"It's a long, hard road out of Hell Veronica," he growled, "but it's a
cinch to get in! There is not one shred of human flesh in this room worth
saving, because if they're not corrupted now-they will be!!"
J.D.'s face was completely animated with malevolence. This was the J.D.
she had fought in the boiler room-the preacher of society's faults.
Veronica felt her heart pound with dread. J.D. swooped around her table
to a kid sitting opposite her-totally oblivious. The monster in the black coat
wrapped his suffocating arms around the kid and said: "You see this one?!"
The kid seemed a little uncomfortable-as if he could feel the pressure of J.D.'s
harsh embrace.
"He raped his date at last year's junior prom!"
J.D. let the kid go, and flew like a deranged bat over to some stoner
chick in sun glasses. He cupped her face roughly from above-she was too high to
notice anything.
"She's been selling crack to elementary school kids!" J.D. roared in his
raspy voice. "Is this worth saving!? Huh Veronica!?"
Veronica winced, trying to block out J.D.'s carping tone, his scary
revelations. He pulled a girl by the hair who seemed to genuinely feel him.
"She's slept with so many guys she's lost count already-and she's
fifteen!"
"And this beauty," J.D. continued, leaning like a gargoyle over a guy who
was sleeping on top of his table. "He's going to o.d. pretty fucking soon."
"SHUT UP!! Veronica screamed, covering her ears. "Just shut up!!"
The entire caf turned in unison to look at her as she screamed at J.D.
He panted hard with excitement, delighted to cause such chaos. His black eyes
sparked at Veronica who pressed her hands tightly to her head as a hushed murmur
spread like wild fire over the students. And J.D. stood there like Satan in the
center of Hell, reveling in it all.
"Ignorance is bliss isn't it Veronica?" he sneered triumphantly.
* * *
"Dear Diary,
"J.D.'s here because of unfinished business-I know that now. He wants to
destroy the world-society-but he's gotta do it one step at a time and he's
starting with my school. That thing he pulled on me in the caf this afternoon
was all the proof I needed to see what he really wanted. But if he thinks I'm
going to help him he's dead wrong. He tricked me into murder twice before, I'm
on a one-way ticket to Hell as it is; but he's going to have to find some other
lackey to do his dirty work because I'm through with him!! I don't care if he
haunts me until my last shred of sanity drains out the hole in my foot with the
orange-red fluid. I'M NOT GOING TO KILL FOR HIM!!!
"He can't do it himself, I'm almost positive. He needs me, that's why he
won't leave me alone. I'm the only one in Sherwood Ohio that knows what a
fucking bastard he is! I'm the only one that was stupid enough to fall for his
evil charms. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice." --Veronica Sawyer
* * *
Veronica closed the diary and took the monocle out of her eye. The school
parking lot was practically empty and the sun was beginning to go down. She sat
alone on the very steps where she had watched J.D. explode four weeks earlier
and had foolishly thought that that was the end to all of her problems. In fact
there was still a layer of soot on the far wall of the building, covering those
atrocious silhouettes stenciled on the tan cement. There was even a crater at
the foot of the staircase with a yellow 'caution' ribbon around it. Veronica
stared at the hole. J.D. should have fallen right down that hole to Hell-but
the fucker was still here.
Veronica half laughed, half moaned. It occurred to her again and again
that she had really gone crazy. That somehow, something had snapped and all
this shit with J.D. coming back from the dead had been conjured up from the
depths of her own personal psychosis. That's what Ms. Phlegm thought. After
that little incident in the caf, Ms. Phlegm swooped over to her, and escorted
her out of the room to her cheery hell of an office. She kept Veronica till
almost the end of the day, talking in that flaky way of hers about dealing with
the grief-about dealing with the loss of her "very bestest friends" and of her
lover. Although Ms. Phlegm-who sunk her counselor claws into J.D. the minute he
whipped out the gun during his first day at Westerburg-was convinced that J.D.
was some sort of "troubled Romeo" who had it rough because he was never in one
place for too long. He wasn't able to "connect" to anyone special. More likely
than not J.D. fed Ms. Phlegm everything she wanted to hear, until her profile of
him was just the way he wanted it.
Veronica let most of what Ms. Phlegm said pass in one ear and out the
other. She sat on the couch, surrounded by fluffy things like Care Bear
pillows, and wondered if J.D. was actually going to say anything to make her
look more insane, or if he was just going to sit there and listen. He lit his
cigarettes one after the other and said nothing throughout the entire session.
And then in the middle of Ms. Phlegmn's speech about the wrongs of suicide-he
got up and casually walked out the door. Ms. Phlegm thought it was just the
hallway breeze.
Veronica watched listlessly as a few meandering students crossed the
asphalt lot to their cars. Earlier on she had come out of school and had seen
Stuart Salinger standing awkwardly next to a wimpy motor scooter looking as
though he had just lost his dog. He was mumbling to himself, or so it seemed,
and she couldn't' help but watch him in his long, black coat with his gaudy
diamond-stud earring; a poor substitute for the small hoop J.D. wore in his own
ear. On top of that, Stuart had recently dyed his sandy-brown hair black and
had gotten a new haircut.
Veronica shook her head. If Stuart was doing all of this to impress her
it wasn't going to work. For one thing, he had taken the look that J.D. had
used so easily to seduce her into bed with and completely ruined it. Even J.D.
thought so, though it still amused him to be copied. Secondly, she absolutely
was not attracted to Stuart Salinger, no matter who he tried to be.
When he saw her watching he immediately produced a cigarette and a lighter
and tried his best to look like the chain smoker J.D. was. But Stuart didn't
smoke. He fumbled with the lighter, nearly burned his face off, and when he
finally did drag on the cigarette the smoke overwhelmed him and he doubled over
coughing. Veronica had to suppress the laughter because he was just trying so
hard. She put her shades on and pretended not to see him.
When Stuart finally gave up he got on his motor scooter, a pathetic
substitute for J.D.'s Harley, and buzzed slowly away, shoulders slumping. Sure
Veronica felt bad, but it wasn't something she lost sleep over.
It had gotten chilly out since then, and the last golden rays of the sun
were fading quickly over the horizon. Veronica watched, feeling peaceful and
serene in the sea of loneliness she was swimming in. It was just her and the
building for awhile-and of course-the crater at the foot of the stairs. The
junior prom was tonight, and as fast as they had gone, the students would return
in their limos and fancy clothing. The gymnasium had already been decorated for
whatever theme Heather Duke and the prom committee had chosen for the rest of
the school. Ironically Big Fun was not going to play the prom-their
representatives never heard of offering to do so in return for a petition. It
made Heather look like a fool-and she blamed J.D. for it. After all, it was his
idea. All in all though, Veronica was glad she wasn't going to the prom. It
would be hell if she were.
Time sauntered off, and Veronica dozed with her eyes open. Everything was
just so thankfully quiet, this was how it should always be.
When she snapped out of it a long while later he was there; leaning
silently against his hulking motorcycle, his long, black coat draped around him
like a shadow. His hair was long again, falling sensually around his pale,
handsome face. From a distance she couldn't see whatever look was haunting his
sinister, black eyes.
Veronica rested her head on her hand and stared at him quietly. J.D. made
no motion to disturb her. He just waited patiently at the bottom of the long
staircase, the shadows of twilight playing over his haunting figure making him
look as supernatural as he was.
Veronica sighed. It was a pity she still found him attractive. If he
hadn't gone mental they'd probably be going to prom together. Que sera sera.
J.D. lit a cigarette, and Veronica had a flash of him standing there with
the bomb strapped to his chest. She shook the vision from her eyes, and watched
the gray tendrils of smoke slither through the air as he exhaled them. The sky
was a strange color, a sort of in-between-worlds color with an eerie red hue.
Veronica thought of Ms. Phlegm's fluid trick and wondered if the earth was using
it.
J.D. breathed smoke from his nose, and pulled his fingers back through his
long hair. Veronica just watched him, and then she stood up and started down
the stairs, the spring breeze sweeping around her small frame and whipping her
hair over her shoulder. J.D. greeted her humbly. No eyebrows, no wise-ass
remarks and Veronica folded her arms across her chest and said nothing. J.D.
kicked at the cracked asphalt and then met her unyielding gaze.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice smooth and captivating.
Veronica raised her eyebrows in mild surprise. She felt her animosity
beginning to melt, and knew that this was exactly what she swore she wouldn't
do-fall for his charms.
J.D. smiled in that sexy way of his; little boy cuteness wrought and
twisted with rebellious allure. A long wisp of black hair fell across his face,
and Veronica's heart thudded against her chest. "Shit!" she thought, "He's got
me."
"You uh, you look kinda stranded out here," he purred, averting his gaze
to the ground and then grinning slyly up at her.
"Charms," she thought, "Damn his charms."
"I was going to walk," she muttered.
"I can give you a lift," he breathed almost sheepishly.
Veronica found herself smiling, and wished she had the control to smack
herself across the face. Instead she was flirting with her dead, psychotic, ex-
boyfriend.
"Is this like your broom or something?" she teased, motioning to the
Harley.
J.D. snickered: "Something like that."
Veronica found her whole body warming. This was how it used to be; before
Heather Chandler downed the cup of liquid Drain-, before Kurt and Ram succumbed
to J.D.'s "ich luge" bullets, before the boiler room and the bomb. This was how
it should have been. Somehow the incident in the caf earlier today seemed to
dissipate into thin air, and Veronica took a deep breath before climbing onto
the Harley, and Wrapping her arms around J.D.'s waist.
* * *
"If you're dead, then why can I hear your heart beating?" she asked in
that drunk-with-pleasure-after-sex voice.
"You hear what you expect to hear," J.D. purred, "Whatever pleases you."
Veronica smiled up at him and in the same moment she chided herself for
ignoring her own warning. They were lying in her bed together, swathed in
shadows and tangled sheets, still flushed and breathing hard from their little
necromantic episode. Somehow, as impossible as she had believed it to be,
Veronica had allowed J.D. to seduce her back into bed. She denied that she had
lost control from the first kiss to the last. At the same time, however, she
found herself snuggled against J.D.'s body (a body that was supposed to be
spread half-way across Ohio state, mind you) with her head pressed to his chest
and her arms wrapped around him. J.D. pulled her closer and she marveled at how
warm his skin felt.
"Damn you," she murmured, "I swore to myself that I would have nothing to
do with you, living or dead."
J.D. raised his eyebrows, and captured her lips in his own. "Guess that
makes you a liar then doesn't it?" he rasped.
Veronica pouted, and let him kiss her. "What am I doing?" she thought.
"I'm acting like a schoolgirl-I've totally lost my mind!"
She lay her head against J.D.'s bare, white chest and tried to pretend
that this wasn't happening.
"If you're dead, and I'm crazy, then is this some sick, demented,
masturbation fantasy I'm having?" she asked, drawing designs on his flesh with
her finger.
J.D. laughed. He looked so devious when he laughed, like such a little
monster. "Oooooo--that sounds exciting," he crooned mischievously, "I could be up for that!"
Veronica frowned and kicked him in the shin with her polished toe nails.
J.D. jumped in plain amusement and Veronica settled back into the crook of his
long neck..
"I'm seriously sleeping with my dead ex-boyfriend," she muttered, "I must
be a fucking lunatic."
"I'm insulted," J.D. professed. "After all this, you still consider me
your ex?"
Veronica frowned, toying with the ends of his long, black hair. "Shut
up," she laughed, "I still consider you a walking corpse."
J.D.'s mouth dropped open in mock-surprise. "Oh that hurts," he retorted,
pulling her half on top of him and locking her in a kiss. She struggled
playfully, her thick hair spilling over his alabaster flesh.
"Take thy beak from out my heart!" J.D. yelped as Veronica pulled away,
and hovered over him. He stared up at her as innocently as he could, his black
hair fanning out around his pale face.
"What is really going on?" she asked suddenly, utter seriousness creeping
into her doe-eyed countenance.
J.D. squinted, his eyebrows arching. He hesitated as if deciding what to
tell her, as if deciding how much he could reveal. Veronica waited, her mind
reeling with speculation. And then he grinned: "Nothing!"
Veronica frowned deeply and smacked him on the chest. "You jerk!" she
cried, flailing her arms. "You stupid, arrogant jerk!!"
J.D. saw this as a chance to wrestle, one of his favorite past times when
it came to her.
"Tell me what the fuck is going on!" Veronica screamed as he grabbed her
arms and struggled with her until she was pinned on the bed beneath him. She
was still cursing and flailing when he kissed her hard and deep. Veronica
stiffened, loosing her lips in his. J.D. gathered her in his impulsive arms,
trapping her there, and Veronica was too stuck to struggle. She made a motion
to wrap her arms around his back, and then restrained herself, and tried to push
him away.
"Tell me!" she screamed , her voice muffled in between kisses. "Tell me
you bastard!"
J.D. ignored her, and then suddenly there was a loud banging on the
bedroom door.
"Veronica?" her mother cried. "Veronica are you okay?!"
J.D. and Veronica jumped apart, and Veronica fell out of his arms and onto
the floor with a loud thump. J.D. found this funny, sitting up on his side, the
sheets falling away over his bare hip. Veronica half-scrambled under her bed to
find her white slip as her mother called again.
"I'm coming!" Veronica yelled, "I'll be right there!"
She pulled the slip over her head, trying to adjust it in place over her
naked body. She knew she looked like a tramp that had just crawled out of a
lover's bed, and J.D. was thrilled at the notion; his face said it all.
Veronica pulled on a robe inside out and ran for the door.
"Veronica, what are you doing in there?" her mother called with an upper-
class twang.
"Nothing, mom!" Veronica shouted, fumbling with the lock.
"You're not hanging yourself again are you Veronica? That was completely
inappropriate behavior."
Veronica turned to J.D. who was taking it all in stride.
"Hide!" she hissed, without recalling the obvious situation.
He laughed, raising his eyebrows. "If it makes you feel better."
Veronica yanked the door open, trying to control her breathing and hoping
her lipstick wasn't too smudged. Her mother stared at her in total
bewilderment.
"Young lady, what is going on?" she inquired accusingly.
Veronica's eyes bulged with guilt-"Nothing mom, I was just-uh-umm-having a
nervous breakdown, yeah."
J.D. howled with laughter. Her mother had no idea he was there.
"What?" she asked, simply appalled by the idea. Inappropriate behavior.
"Yeah, mom," Veronica lied, "Ms. Phlegm-ing said that it would really be
good for me to let all of my emotions out-that I've been too grief stricken
after Heather and that guy, Jason Dean, killed themselves. It's been too-uhm-
hard."
Her mother's face softened. "Hmph," she muttered, folding her hands in
front of her, "Jason Dean, yes, that boy that said he was afraid for you. Poor
thing, you should've reached out to him Veronica-maybe he would have handled it
better."
Veronica felt her breath lodge in her throat. She heard him behind her.
"Even your mother is on my side!" he rasped in delight, "It's perfecto!"
Veronica tried to ignore him. "I wish I did mom," she muttered, "Maybe
then he could have died more neatly."
Her mother frowned.
"I have to get back to my emotional out-pouring now, mom. Ms. Phlegm's
orders." Delicately Veronica closed the door as her mother still stood there
disapprovingly. She locked it behind her, and looked for the nearest thing to
throw at J.D. "Oh God, the humanity!!" she cried.
"You missed your calling dearest," J.D. sneered sarcastically, "You
should've been an actress!"
He was no longer the naked lover in her bed. Fully dressed, he leaned
against her window and lit a cigarette. The darkness of his wardrobe easily
blended into the black of night outside.
Veronica breathed deeply and flounced down onto her bed, curling up
tightly in the middle of it with her back to J.D.
"Jesus Veronica!" he barked, "You can't go to sleep now!"
"Why not?" she grumbled.
"Because we'll be late!"
Veronica furrowed her brow in confusion. "Late for what?"
J.D. crawled onto the bed next to her, his crooked eyebrows raising
sharply like Jack Nicholson's. "Why for the prom of course!"
Veronica sat up and gave him a disgusted look.
"I am NOT going to the prom!" she retorted.
"You are too!" he protested.
"I am NOT!"
"Are too!"
Veronica felt a serious case of deja vu coming on.
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
This went on for a while.
"You are not going to miss your prom," J.D. stated resolutely. "This
could be the last big night of your life! You never know what tomorrow brings!"
* * *
The sky was even more red than it had been at twilight. It looked like
crimson belly-dancer veils rippling in the May breeze against a backdrop of
black smoke. Veronica stood bewildered at the foot of the main staircase
outside of Westerburg. In fact she was standing in J.D.'s crater. The red
carpet that rolled down the stairs was like a stream of blood, and ironically it
matched the hue of her gown. Veronica stared at the garment. She didn't know
where it had come from. J.D. had magically pulled it out of her closet like a
rabbit out of a hat.
"I shouldn't be here," Veronica murmured, looking up at the dreaded
entrance of the school. Loud, rambunctious music was pouring out of every
orifice of the building, wafting away like waves off the Night's Plutonian
shore. It was a far cry from Big Fun.
"Why am I here?" she demanded loudly; but there was nobody to answer her.
Veronica picked up the hem of her red dress, and started up the stairs.
This was ridiculous, she was supposed to be home in bed-or watching movies with
Martha-she wasn't supposed to be going to the stupid prom. So why wasn't she
turning around?
The red carpet rolled all the way in through the doors and down the
hallway. Veronica followed it angrily, ready to scream at the first person she
saw. She didn't even know how she had gotten to the school in the first place.
And where the hell was J.D.?!
The crimson path led around the corner to the gym where the music was the
loudest. Veronica winced at the screaming female voice that poured out of the
speakers and wrapped around her pulsing eardrums. "I wanna go home," she
thought.
"Ah ha! There you are!" he cried.
Veronica turned to see J.D. run up to her from down the hall.
"Thought I lost you for a moment there," he rasped, raising his eyebrows
and grinning like the Devil. Veronica grimaced at him as he linked his arm with
hers.
"You're not dressed!" she cried over the music, eyeing J.D.'s normal
attire: black jeans, black coat, black tank with its low neckline, and a red
shirt open at all of its buttons.
"Of course I'm dressed!" he hollered over the noise. "Do I look naked to
you?"
Veronica shook her head in confusion as they walked up to the gym. She
could see the crowds of people dancing and milling about. Above the door was a
banner that proclaimed the theme:
"A Night In Hell: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here."
Veronica's mouth dropped open in utter bewilderment, she looked to J.D..
"Nice," he snickered, nodding in devious approval.
Veronica winced and glanced around as they entered. It almost looked like
a normal prom with the exception of the lives flames dancing up the walls, and
the caged, skinless bodies hanging from the ceiling. Veronica jerked back-her
mouth dropping to the floor in horror.
"C'mon," J.D. urged, pulling on her arm. "It's not that bad, they had a
low budget this year."
"Are you fucking crazy!?" she cried, resisting him. J.D. raised his
eyebrows, pulling his long hair away from his face to reveal the distinct
widow's peak on his forehead.
"According to you I am," he retorted wickedly.
"Veronica!" Heather McNamara called from across the way. Veronica spun
around as J.D. lit a cigarette with some of the flames crawling up a nearby
wall. Heather ran up to them looking like a sugar plum fairy in her sparkling,
yellow gown. She seemed completely oblivious to the hellish décor.
"Veronica," she breathed, "we all thought you weren't coming!"
"Yeah, well . . ." Veronica stammered, still dreadfully confused.
"J.D. swore he'd get you here," Heather went on nonchalantly. "I mean,
what would the prom be without you?"
Veronica just stood there in shocked silence. Heather turned to J.D.,
batting her eyes. "I like your hair," she said sheepishly.
Veronica shot J.D. a sharp look and then whipped her head back to Heather.
"Ah! Thank you!" J.D. rasped in emphatic delight. He grinned like the
Devil at Veronica, and Heather blushed as he took her hand.
"May I?" he purred.
"Sure!" Heather replied in her feathery voice, "Just please, don't kill
me."
J.D. turned to Veronica, who looked as though she had just swallowed a
fly. "Excuse us darling," he said, "we'll be right back."
Veronica watched as J.D. and Heather disappeared into the dancing crowd.
It took her a long few moments before she actually decided to move again.
"This isn't happening," she groaned, looking around for the nearest empty
corner. She started making her way through the clusters of familiar people and
saw Betty Finn standing by the punch bowl, looking very out of place. Veronica
hurried over to her.
"Betty!" she cried, "God, am I glad to see you!"
Betty smiled broadly, pushing her round-rimmed glasses up her nose.
"Veronica, thank God you're here, I feel like such an idiot. I didn't
even bring a date. How pathetic is that?"
Veronica laughed, "Betty, please, that should be the last of your
problems! God, look at this place!"
Betty shrugged, "Looks like hell, doesn't it," she sighed, "They didn't
have the best prom committee this year. Heather Duke and her friends were more
concerned with their gowns than with decorating."
Veronica winced, and glanced around at the dangling bodies. She looked
back to Betty who was staring dreamily into the gyrating mob.
"Betty, are you alright?"
Betty blinked, innocently. "I'm just so bored with my life, Veronica,"
she sighed. "I always seem to be on the outside looking in."
Veronica laughed awkwardly. "I always seem to be on the inside trying to
get out."
The two girls remained silent for a few moments as the music blasted, and
then Betty said: "J.D. looks great."
Veronica's breath caught in her throat.
"I'm so glad you two got back together. He seemed so unstable without
you, Veronica, trying to blow up the school and all."
Veronica shook her head. "Betty, J.D. is dead," she declared.
"Aren't we all, Veronica?" remarked an-all-too-familiar voice. Veronica
whirled around quickly: Heather Chandler was standing behind her, as regal as
ever in a huge red gown that looked as though it had just stepped from the
Elizabethan Age.
Veronica's eyes grew wide, and Heather smiled knowingly, her chiseled face
glowing with wicked intentions.
"Have a drink, Veronica," she offered in her devious, commanding tone.
Veronica watched as Heather bent to spoon her some punch that was as blue
as the Hull Clean J.D. had given Heather four weeks ago. Veronica felt her
stomach churn with dread.
"I think I'll pass," she said warily.
Heather shrugged, a nasty smile playing over her luscious, red lips:
"Pity."
Veronica scowled nervously, and looked around for someone, anyone, to save
her from Heather. Much to her dismay she saw Kurt and Ram emerge from the crowd
of flailing people. They were both in their socks and underwear, their purple-
blue bodies bare and corpse like, with their fatal bullet wounds fully exposed.
Veronica shrank back against the buffet table as the two dead jocks approached
nonchalantly. Heather Chandler grinned like the Cheshire Cat.
"Hi Veronica," Ram said in his deep, moronic voice.
Veronica swallowed hard, her face draining of all its color. She looked
from Kurt, to Ram, to Heather and wished she could just disappear. They all
seemed to loom over her as though they were the judge and jury of her fate.
"Ah! Punch!" Ram cried, happily diving for the bowl. He thrust his cup
in, splashing the unappetizing blue stuff all over the table, and then guzzled
it greedily. Veronica watched in horror as most of the liquid drizzled out of
the open bullet wound in Ram's neck. It trickled down his muscular chest,
rolled all the way down his stomach, and stained the cotton fabric of his white
briefs.
Veronica's heart pounded in her throat. She looked to Kurt, who was
scrutinizing her coldly, and then to Heather, who was reveling in the guilt
Veronica was drowning in, and decided that she had to get away from them before
they lynched her. Without an explanation Veronica bolted off into the crowd,
pushing desperately past dancing people.
"What's wrong, Veronica?" Heather taunted after her, her voice fading as
Veronica delved further and further into the swarm of students.
Where the hell was J.D.?
It seemed like an eternity before Veronica broke into another clearing
where the music seemed to die down and the sneering voices of nearby kids faded
in. Veronica stopped short to survey the scene before her. Heather Duke,
Courtney, and a slew of others were gathered beneath one of the dangling cages
In their hands they held flaming torches and great, long, pointy spears. They
were shouting out strange, derogatory things as they jabbed, and burned at the
cage. Someone inside was screaming at them to stop.
Veronica squinted hard; trying to see who it was Heather and her little
demons were tormenting. She could see someone's skinny arms waving helplessly
through the charred, metal bars. And as she watched more closely, she could see
the whole person cramped inside, and fighting to break free.
It was Stuart Salinger.
Veronica gasped. She tried to scream at Heather to stop; but she couldn't
even hear herself over the chaos. And then Principal Gowan took the podium,
turning on the microphone which screeched loudly through the membrane of the
speakers.
"And now," he announced grandly, "the moment you've all been waiting
for!"
Veronica turned away from the torture of poor Stuart. She could vaguely
make out the figure of the principal on stage.
"It's time to announce the prom King and Queen!"
An uproar took hold of the entire gym. Veronica felt some sort of dread
unfurl deep within her gut.
"The envelope please, Ms. Phlegm," Gowan said. Veronica glanced around.
Heather Duke had stopped jabbing Stuart with her spear to listen excitedly, and
somewhere across the gym Heather Chandler stood expectantly, flanked by Kurt and
Ram, still in their underwear. Principal Gowan ripped open the envelope and
grinned broadly. He leaned close to the microphone and a hush swept over the
crowd wrought with anticipation.
"I now present Westerburg's King and Queen," he cried flamboyantly:
"Jason Dean and Veronica Sawyer!"
* * *
Veronica bolted upright in bed, sweat pouring down her face, her heart
pounding violently against her breast bone. She was completely tangled in her
soaked sheets, and her bathrobe was strangling her. She tried to catch her
breath, turning her nightmare over and over again in her head.
The prom from Hell.
"Oh, God," Veronica moaned, looking around her bedroom. It was morning.
The sun filtered through her open window, lending an air of comfort to all of
her surroundings. A fresh breeze swirled around her flustered figure.
Slowly Veronica unwound herself from her bed and got up. She was alone.
Completely and utterly alone.
"A dream!" she gasped, "It was all a dream."
She felt queasy, as if her head had just stepped backwards off an upside-
down roller coaster. She tired to block out the spinning images of Kurt, Ram,
Heather and Stuart Salinger roasting over and open fire. But it was slightly
difficult.
Prom from Hell.
Veronica scoffed at the thought and crossed her room to get dressed. She
could still smell the faint aroma of cigarette smoke and she stepped on a
Marlboro butt on her way to the closet.
"Shit," she muttered, "shit."
* * *
"Dear Diary,
It's Monday morning and everybody looks as though they're permanently hung
over. Apparently the prom was a great success, though I've heard varying
stories. The prom I went to was hell; but that's typical of nightmares,
especially ones wrought with J.D.'s twisted sense of humor. Speaking of whom, I
haven't seen him since Friday night. I'm beginning to wonder if all he wanted
to do was take me to the prom-wouldn't it be nice if it were that simple?
"I bumped into Betty Finn on the way to school this morning. She said the
prom she went to was for cool kids only, or at least that was the way it seemed.
According to her Stuart Salinger was there. Betty crinkled her nose and said:
"He's trying to be J.D. isn't he?"
"I rolled my eyes, she said not to take it to heart, that he only has a
huge crush on me. Gee, thanks Betty.
"Poor Stuart, though. Betty said that Heather and her minions picked up
on Stuart's fixation with J.D. and used it to ridicule him. He was totally
devastated. They tormented him about everything, his coat, his hair, his face,
me. They made him feel like shit. They said he could never be J.D. no matter
what he did. According to Betty, Stuart ran from the prom crying." -Veronica
Sawyer.
* * *
Veronica dragged herself towards the cafeteria half asleep behind her
sunglasses. It did bother her that she hadn't seen J.D. since Friday night,
though it had been a peaceful weekend. The early morning sunlight flooded the
main hallway of Westerburg, bouncing off the shiny floor and ricocheting off the
dark lockers. Veronica squinted, and entered the caf. Everyone was sleep
walking. It was the last week of class and finals pressure was on.
"I should've stayed home," Veronica grumbled, sitting down at an empty
table, and searching her bag for an Aspirin.
Stuart Salinger walked in moments later. Even after what had happened at
the prom, Stuart refused to shed his long, black coat. Those who had been
present on Friday night snickered derisively as he walked by; but his back was
ironically straighter than usual. Veronica watched with mild interest as
Stuart purposefully sat down at Heather Duke's table, unoccupied by Heather at
that moment.
"What's he up to?" Veronica wondered.
She watched as Stuart shuffled through his black school bag and then
glanced up in her direction. They locked gazes for a moment, and then Heather
Duke walked in with Courtney and a few others. Even at this ungodly hour in the
morning they were loud and obnoxious.
Veronica took off her sunglasses and held her head. She considered
getting up and leaving; but Heather's snobby voice grabbed her interest:
"Oh look who suddenly thinks he's cool," she quipped.
"Stuart, why are you at our table?" Courtney sneered, "losers sit in the
back."
Veronica raised her eyebrow, Stuart wasn't moving. In fact, he looked
quite relaxed staring up defiantly at the group of monsters.
"Finally decide to grow some balls?" one of them mocked.
"No, he still thinks he's J.D.," another jeered.
Stuart frowned, his lips quavering.
"Are you going to cry again Stuart?" Heather teased.
The clique laughed, Veronica shook her head in disgust.
"J.D. you can blow up the school now," she whispered half-jokingly.
Trembling almost violently now, Stuart stood up and pulled a long revolver
from his coat pocket.
"Shit!" Veronica thought. Of course! Stuart had everything else of
J.D.'s, why not the gun as well?!
"Damnit Stuart, what the hell are you doing?!" Heather growled. Stuart
didn't hear her, he cocked the gun. Heather started to panic.
"Stuart put the gun down!" she screamed. But Stuart didn't listen. He
aimed the gun directly at Heather. Veronica jumped up from her table:
"Stuart stop!" she cried; but it was too late. He pulled the trigger.
The bullet crashed through Heather's cranium, taking some of her brains with it
out the other end. Blood spattered all over Courtney and the others, who were
too shocked to do anything. For a moment that seemed like an eternity
everything and everyone was silent. Heather collapsed to the floor in slow
motion, her red blood invisible on her red clothing.
Veronica stared in horror at Stuart, who took a moment to stare back
before he aimed the gun at Courtney. Courtney's eyes widened in terror: "Not
me!!!" she screamed. "Not me!!!"
Boom.
And then all hell broke loose. People started flying for the doors.
Everyone was screaming and shouting; but Stuart remained calm, and
systematically began to pick off other members of Heather's clique before they
could reach the exits. They sprawled to the ground in mid-stride, heads and
torsos exploding with the impact of bullets. Pools of blood crawled along the
floor, collecting around the legs of tables and chairs.
"Oh God!!" someone was screaming, "Oh God!!"
Veronica froze in total disbelief. This couldn't be happening, not after
all she went through to save this lousy school from the last psychotic killer!
Stuart just continued shooting, he wounded the Quarterback of the football
team, he shot Betty Finn in the arm. She screamed and dove under the table, her
glasses skittering across the floor.
"Betty!" Veronica cried, finding the strength at last to move. She
started pushing past the fleeing students, trying to get to Betty when she
collided head on with Stuart. Her horrified eyes met his cool ones and she
stumbled back.
"Stuart, no!" she shrieked as he turned the gun on her.
For a moment he looked sad, he looked like he was going to stop, but then
his face hardened and he cocked the gun.
"Stuart, please," Veronica moaned, "Stop!"
A tear slipped from his brown eye, and then Veronica heard two loud
explosions. For a split second she remembered shooting J.D. in the boiler room.
She remembered how he left a bloody handprint on the pipes before he collapsed
to the ground. And then the searing pain ripped through Veronica's abdomen,
ravaging her insides. She felt herself falter; but her eyes never left
Stuart's.
"Damn you," she murmured, her legs giving way beneath her. The cold
ground came up to meet her, and then the world began to spin to a stop.
Everything went silent, and Stuart stepped over her.
Veronica felt her warm blood gushing out of her body and flooding the
floor around her. From her vantage point on the ground she could count maybe
eight bodies. She closed her eyes as her breathing slowed.
"Damn," she thought, "I knew I should've stayed home today."
* * *
Veronica stood there, as much as ghost as her late boyfriend, and looked
around completely astonished. Blood and dead bodies were splattered all over
the caf. It was as if she were standing in the middle of one of those chopper
flicks, swamped in gore. Hell, her own body was lying at her feet!
Veronica looked down.
"Oh, my God!" she cried, "I'm dead! I can't believe it! I'm fucking
dead!"
She dropped to her knees but she couldn't bring herself to touch her own
corpse lying there like and broken, bleeding doll.
"Stuart put the gun down," she heard Betty Finn sob from across the room.
"You've done enough, just put the gun down."
Veronica looked up. Betty was sitting on the floor holding her bloody
arm, tears streaming down her face; yet she looked as though she were in total
control. A complete hero of an emergency situation, something Veronica had been
only a few weeks earlier. There was a group of kids that Stuart had trapped,
all huddled in the corner.
"Put the gun down, Stuart," Betty continued. "Please put the gun down."
Stuart faltered, and then looked around. It seemed to dawn on him what he
had done. His eyes settled over Veronica's body and his mouth dropped open.
Slowly his fingers unclenched their grip on the gun. It fell and clattered
loudly to the ground.
Veronica furrowed her brow in anger: "You stupid fuck!" she screamed.
Stuart couldn't hear her.
"NOW, you're SORRY!!? I'm already dead you asshole!!! Why couldn't you
be fucking sorry BEFORE you pulled the trigger!?!?"
Stuart collapsed in a chair, blood smeared all over his skinny face. The
kids in the corner ran screaming out the door. Betty stood up cautiously,
gripping her arm as blood streamed from the wound. She was covered in red.
Seconds later the cops burst in.
"Holy shit!" Officer McCord cried.
"Jesus Christ!" Officer Milner yelped.
Their eyes simultaneously narrowed in on Stuart and they pulled their guns
clumsily. Stuart paid them no heed; he just sat there in a daze, completely
dumbfounded at the whole thing. Veronica fumed.
"I'm DEAD!!!" she roared, wishing she could beat the shit out of Stuart
Salinger even though she couldn't. "I'm fucking dead!!!"
Officers Milner and McCord pounced on Stuart as though they were the
heroes. They fumbled all the way as they tried to latch the handcuffs around
his bony wrists. Stuart didn't resist, although the police acted as if he were
fighting them tooth and nail.
"It's a fucking blood bath!" McCord shrieked when he realized he was
getting blood all over his shoes. He jumped out of the puddle as though it had
bit him, and tried to wipe his foot off on the seat next to Heather Duke's dead
body.
"My God why??" Milner implored, looking around in total disbelief. He
scratched under his cap, his face twisted in utter bewilderment.
Stuart made no response.
"You're in big trouble, mister!" Milner cried. "Very Big Trouble! McCord
call for back-up!"
McCord got on his radio. Veronica gaped at the two officers.
"Take him in!!" she shouted. "The son of a bitch killed me, throw his ass
in jail!!"
Milner shook his head. "The Devil made him do it, that has to be it!
He's only a fucking kid! The Devil had to have made him do it!"
Veronica frowned even deeper as she stared at the mess and listened to the
cops make excuses for a mass murderer.
"This didn't just happen!" she moaned, "I can't be dead!"
"Well at least you didn't spread yourself half-way across the state!"
J.D. announced from somewhere else in the room.
Veronica whirled around and saw him sitting in the back of the caf with
his feet casually up on one of the tables.
"Quite a show though, wasn't it?" he grinned, pulling his fingers back
through his short, black hair.
Veronica's mouth fell open. She gaped at him as everything came swirling
into focus for the first time-J.D. raised his eyebrows.
"YOU!!!!" she shrieked.
J.D. got out of his seat and took a bow. He started towards her, viewing
the lovely array of dead bodies with pleasure as he did so. Veronica realized
with horror that this had been the plan all along. Everything in between was
just a distraction so he could get away with it. Unfinished business.
"Now you see, Veronica," J.D. declared, "The way I would have done it, it
would have just incinerated everyone; but what Stuart did," J.D. bent over
Heather's corpse, "Look at this! It's perfecto!!"
He grinned up at Veronica, his black eyes dancing wildly. "I couldn't
have done it better myself!"
"That's where you've been all weekend!" Veronica cried. "You've been with
Stuart! He can see you too, can't he?! You put him up to this! Didn't you!"
J.D. shrugged. "I do what I can."
"Godamnit J.D.!" Veronica yelled. "You had him kill me you son of a
bitch!!"
"Oh Veronica!" J.D. rasped dramatically, as if she were ruining his
moment. He stepped over Heather's body and left no footprints in the puddles of
Heather's blood.
"I didn't make him kill you, I merely suggested it!"
Veronica glared at him hard, seething with anger. "Why?" she demanded.
J.D. grinned. "Color me bitter, darling," he replied with delight as he
reached around her waist and pulled her close. Veronica tried to resist him,
but J.D. forced her into a slow, victory dance amidst the corpses of their
slaughtered classmates.
"Dance floor's a little crowded here," he mused, clasping her cold hand
with his own.
Veronica scowled at him. "You fucking bastard," she cursed. "You think
you've won? You haven't won!"
J.D. furrowed his brow inquisitively. "Of course I win!" he cried,
"You're dead! Everybody's dead! Now all this school has left is Betty Finn for
Chrissakes!"
Veronica cast a glance at Betty, who was crouching down by Veronica's body
crying. Betty the next Heather?
"The ship's gonna sail, Veronica," J.D. stated, holding her tightly in his
arms, and rocking her to inaudible music. "It's just a question of who's at
the helm."
"It was the Devil!" Officer Milner cried, as he walked in a stupor around
the cafeteria. "Godamnit!"
Veronica exchanged glances with J.D., he grinned.
"What's in a name?" he mused, "The important thing is-I win!"
"You do not!" Veronica shouted, still dancing with him.
"I do too!"
"Do not!"
"Do too!"
"You do not, you fucking asshole!" she cried.
J.D. laughed. "We argue as if we're married already! Jesus, Veronica,
this could be romantic if you'd just shut up!"
Veronica grimaced. "Fuck you J.D., I may be dead; but there's no way in
hell I'm going to spend my eternity with you!"
J.D. smiled knowingly and nuzzled her dark hair. Veronica didn't pull
away, she felt so lost-unfortunately J.D. was the only familiar territory
around. He rocked her and raised his eyebrows.
"Que sera sera," he purred. "Whatever will be, will be."
Story copyrights Elisa Higgins 1999 e-mail scarlett@li.net
getting heavier by the nanosecond. She tried to look strong,
to not show the fear that coiled deep within the sinews of
her muscles but the tremor in her voice was a dead give away:
"Let's start by putting the bomb down on the ground."
It sounded good.
J.D. raised his eyebrows the way he always raised his eyebrows,
mockingly, knowingly, menacingly. He kicked at the bag that was
already lying near his feet. The bomb was on the ground.
Veronica glanced down nervously, "I knew that!" she yelped,
"I knew that . . . okay, now put your hands on your head."
J.D. squinted his narrow, black eyes. Veronica knew he could
see right through her, intelligent, psychotic bastard that he was.
"You didn't say Simon says," he purred, the blue light of the
high school boiler room melting over the pallor of his wicked face.
Veronica gaped at him, she had the gun; but he wasn't listening
to a goddamn thing she said! If anything, he looked mildly
amused at the attempt she was making to stop him.
Veronica's mind raced. Maybe she should just shoot him now?
But she didn't want to kill anymore-the plan was to bring
J.D. in to the proper authorities. Unfortunately he'd
probably blow himself up before he'd let that happen.
It was obvious to J.D. that Veronica had not planned anything
farther than the wonderful display she was putting on for
him at this very moment, so he decided to take over.
He lunged at her suddenly--knocking the gun from her
hands with ease-it clattered loudly to the concrete.
Panic took hold of Veronica as J.D. grabbed her face
harshly between his hands, and held her there for a
moment, as if deciding what to do with her. Veronica's
breath came hard, rasping from her throat. For a split
second she thought he was going to kill her. J.D. had
no remorse. He was ready to blow the school up with
everyone in it; there was no reason to spare her life
at this point in time. Besides, she had broken up with
him a few days earlier, he was bitter.
Veronica's heart pounded in her chest, and then J.D.
yanked her face downward, slamming her forehead into
his knee and throwing her back against the wall. Her
head crashed into the concrete and she collapsed to the
floor. Everything spun before her closed eyes; it
seemed as if her brain was about to explode. She heard
J.D. walk further into the boiler room, gun and bomb in
hand, but Veronica just couldn't bring herself to move.
The incessant stomping of feet above her head was probably
the only thing that kept her conscious. She thought of
the 250 students holding the pep-assembly directly above
where J.D. was planting the bomb. She couldn't let him kill
them all.
Slowly Veronica dragged herself to her feet. Her vision
blurred, and she could feel the warm, red wetness of blood
trickling down her cheek. Quietly she unhitched the fire
extinguisher from the wall and began to creep up on her
psychotic ex-boyfriend. J.D. was crouched down by the boiler.
He had already taped the lethal box to a metal pipe and was
in the midst of setting it. Veronica stifled her breathing
as she saw the timer begin its countdown: one minute, forty-
three seconds. There was no time. She had to stop him now
or they were all going to die.
With as much strength as she could muster she swung the
extinguisher at J.D. He heard her at the last second and
whirled around. The heavy, metal cylinder caught him in the
shoulder blade, knocking him to the ground. The gun went
skittering across the floor. Scrambling for it, her head
still dizzy with pain, Veronica lost her balance and stumbled.
J.D. caught her as she tried to regain her footing and tackled
her to the ground. Veronica cried out, trying to fight him,
but he was too strong. He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders
and yanked her to her feet, slamming her already-sore back
against the hulking boiler. For a brief moment Veronica froze
as her gaze met his. His black eyes sparked at her and then
his mouth closed over hers impulsively. Veronica struggled
fiercely against him, but he only fought her harder. She
heard fabric ripping. Once upon a time she had enjoyed his
kiss; he was too cool, too sexy to refuse; but that, she
realized, was all a lie. J.D. was sick; he was a murderer,
he was the goddamn Devil in disguise who, with only the
arch of an eyebrow, lured her into bed and then into
murder.
Veronica brought her knee up hard into his groin.
J.D. stumbled back sharply, doubling over in pain.
Something had finally worked on him. Veronica made a mad
dash for the gun that was lying next to the wall.
She seized it, and just as she did, J.D. threw himself into
the aisle next to the boiler. As he did so, he purposely
crashed into a stack of empty tar cans, sending the large,
metal barrels flying in Veronica's direction. She shielded
herself as a can grazed her shoulder. The noise was deafening,
but no one in the gym above could hear one decibel of
what was going on below.
Veronica made it to her feet, the gun just barely steady in her
hand. Suddenly everything was frighteningly quiet.
Where was J.D.? It was almost like he had vanished.
Veronica stole a quick, nervous glance at the bomb as she passed,
she had less than a minute. Her heart thudded painfully against
her chest. Where the hell was he?!? She checked slowly down all
three aisles, keeping the gun aimed in front of her. She had to be
cautious even now, otherwise it could all blow up in her face.
J.D. was nowhere. The panic had already set in. If she didn't
get him to stop the bomb now, everyone was going to die, she
and J.D. included. Veronica doubled back approaching the bomb
that was counting away the seconds of her life. 'Shit!' she thought.
'Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!'
She aimed the gun again down the aisle with the bomb, and her heart
jumped as a dark, lurking figure emerged from the shadows unexpectedly.
J.D. looked more nervous than pissed; his plan had gone sour on him,
and it was all her fault. He pulled a switch blade. The very glint
of it was menacing and Veronica flinched even though she held the gun.
"You think just because you started this thing you can end it?!" J.D.
shouted, his raspy voice like sandpaper on her ears.
"I'll kill you, I'll fucking kill you I swear to God," she cried, feeling
the few remaining seconds pressing down upon her like the dreaded weight
of J.D.'s body.
"How do I turn off the goddamn bomb asshole?!"
Anger flashed through J.D.'s soot-smeared face. "Fuck you!!" he cried,
flipping her his middle finger.
Veronica squeezed the trigger of the gun, aiming haphazardly at his
offending hand. She had to show him she was serious-there was no
time to fuck around.
To both their surprise the bullet severed J.D.'s finger clean off.
Blood started to stream everywhere, ribboning down both of his hands
as he tried to staunch the bleeding.
"Shit!!" he cried, slumping to the floor, pain searing its way into
his face.
"It's all over J.D.--help me stop it," Veronica stated, trying to
sound somewhat in control.
J.D. ignored her. His breathing had become heavy and enriched with pain.
He pulled a rag free from the burner and swathed his blood-gushing
hand in it.
"You want to clean the slate as much as I do," he panted, trying to get
a grip on the agony that had severed his nerve endings.
"Alright, so maybe I am killing everyone in the school-cause nobody
loves me! Let's face it alright? The only place different social
types can genuinely get along with each other is in Heaven!"
Veronica shot another glance at the bomb, urgency gripping every muscle
and brain cell in her body. "Which button do I press to turn it off?!?" she
snarled.
"Try the red one alright!?" J.D. retorted, getting to his knees.
Veronica cast her gaze at the little black box; all three of the buttons
were red.
"Seriously," J.D. continued, unaffected by the threat of explosion,
"People are gonna look at the ashes of Westerburg and say 'Now there's
a school that self-destructed not because society didn't care, but because
the school was society!'"
He took a moment to think this over, his eyes sparkling psychotically.
"That's pretty deep huh?"
"WHICH RED BUTTON!?!" Veronica cried.
J.D.'s eyes dimmed, something evil playing across his face.
"Press the middle one to turn it off, if that's what you really want."
Veronica glared at him. "You know what I want babe?"
"WHAT!?" J.D. barked, lunging at her with the knife.
Veronica barely had a chance to think about her reaction. She pulled the
trigger, and the gun exploded once. J.D. cried out. She couldn't really see
where the bullet had hit him, it was all happening too fast.
Still on his feet, he had lost control and plunged the switch blade directly
into the dynamite of the bomb itself. The timer started screaming a high
-pitched beeping sound, but the numbers themselves had stopped with only four
seconds remaining. In the same moment, Veronica fired again. J.D. fell back,
grappling for support of any kind. He stumbled against the boiler, but couldn't
keep himself standing. His legs gave way beneath him, and as he crumpled to the
ground he pulled some sort of lever down with him. Steam shot out everywhere
from the pipes with a deafening, snake-like hiss. Veronica watched,
the pressure on her heart releasing gradually with the steam from the boiler.
"Cool guys like you out of my life," she murmured.
The pep assembly was still going on as Veronica emerged from the hellish
depths of the boiler room alone, her hair matted, her face sooty and bleeding.
She never thought the site of her classmates could give her so much comfort.
It was uncanny, but at least they were safe-for now.
Her head was still spinning as she made her way quietly through the
hallways and out the main entrance of Westerburg High School. She started down
the red-carpeted stairs, and winced at the pain swirling around her sore body.
Thoughts of an ending to all this chaos had barely entered her head when she
heard the door open behind her.
"Color me impressed," he said.
Veronica's breath stifled in her lungs as she whirled to see J.D. slowly
making his way towards her. He looked just as bad as she did, with his
bruised face and the blood-soaked rag wrapped tightly around his 4-fingered
hand. He smirked at the sight of her horrified expression as he faced her on
the stairs. He was clutching his long, black coat around his wounded body
with his good hand, and Veronica could see he felt pain in every step.
She almost felt bad she had shot him. She had saved the school, maybe there
was still a chance for J.D.? It was a ridiculous idea, and she wondered why she
had thought it.
"You really fucked me up pretty bad, Veronica," J.D. said, his shallow
breathing spliced between his words.
"You got power, power I didn't think you had."
He almost looked humbled before her, as if she had won his respect on a
higher level. And then his devious eyes glittered knowingly, and he opened his
coat.
Veronica felt her hope sink like the Titanic. She winced deeply at the
sight of the bomb strapped to J.D.'s torso. He raised his eyebrows and smiled
at her:
"Slate is clean."
* * *
"Dear Diary,
It's not over. I stood on the steps of Westerburg High watching J.D. like
some sort of Christ figure, arms outstretched, as he embarked on his final
suicide mission. The constant beeping of the bomb strapped to his chest
was like some sort of derisive hallway chatter going on behind my back;
mocking me. I thought my two-week long trip to Hell had finally ended,
that I could finally get on with my life. I have to ask if protecting
my less-than-wonderful classmates was the only way to preserve myself,
in more ways than one?
"It's funny how J.D. turned himself into some sort of martyr, dying so I
could live, so everybody in that gymnasium could live. Was that his way of
cleaning the slate? I have to wonder. He didn't commit suicide to destroy
himself, I know that much. I stared into his black eyes and he grinned at me,
ready. For what? Heaven? Hell? Would the ghosts of those we killed, of
Heather, and Kurt, and Ram claw at his demented soul in some fiery pit under the
earth? Or was J.D. ready to spread his black wings and fly? From what he said
in those last few chaotic moments, I have to question if J.D. even believed in
death? From the very beginning he used death as an instrument; killing people
was like spring cleaning to him. He had an agenda, one he never let me in on.
"Yes, I watched him die. I stood there in his ashes after he exploded and
thought I could finally proclaim my freedom. Now I'm not so sure.
As in death as he was in life, J.D. is a predator on my mind. I can't get
him out of my head. To make matters worse, I loved him once. And I keep
thinking maybe there was another ending that neither one of us took advantage
of? Was J.D. beyond saving? He must have been. Even he knew that.
"No one at Westerburg knew quite how to handle what J.D. had done. I
mean, c'mon, Heather Chandler drank liquid-drainer, Kurt and Ram shot each
other, but J.D. exploded. That's not something the school could just glaze over
with some mushy cafeteria love-in. Most people looked for someone to blame.
'A nineteen year old boy just isn't capable of doing something so horrific on
his own' Ironically, because he was dead, J.D. was no longer the Devil in
disguise, he was the innocent victim. Then again, no one knew that J.D. was
a murderer, or that he had originally intended to blow up the school instead of
himself. I haven't said a word, I'm as much a part of this as he was, it's my
ass on the line too.
"Troubled youth. It's all such bullshit. Part of me thinks J.D. was
perfectly sane in his insanity. He had everything figured out to the Nth
degree. He knew what he was doing. Of all the funerals I've been to in the
last month, J.D.'s was the worst. Father Ripper presided, as usual, and J.D.
would have delighted to hear himself eulogized as an "innocent victim of
society's sins."
"I can't believe how they turned this whole thing on its head! J.D.
wasn't the victim! He was the mastermind behind this whole fucking nightmare!
This is exactly what J.D. wanted, I'm sure of it. This was the proof he needed
to tell me and the rest of the world that he was right. We're all fucked up.
We're all the sick children of "a society that degrades us," of a society that
nods its head at any horror we can think to commit.
"I keep envisioning J.D. in front of me, arms stretched out in victory,
waiting for the final moment. I thought that I was the winner then, ready to
light my cigarette with his pain. His eyes sparkled, more alive in those last
45 seconds than I had ever seen them. It was almost like he had been injected
with some divine sort of knowledge. I half expect him to pop up in the middle
of history class one day and tell me about it." --Veronica Sawyer
* * *
(Three weeks later.)
The timbre explosions of slamming lockers barely penetrated past the
membrane of Veronica's thoughts. She walked slowly through the crowded
hallways of Westerburg High School, her mind in some distant, faraway place.
She felt as if her life had entered the twilight zone. The unspoken truth
about J.D., Heather, Kurt, and Ram lay floating on the turbulent seas of her
conscience. Now that J.D. was gone, the cross was all hers to bear.
Every now and then Veronica could hear Heather Chandler's cold voice spiraling
somewhere in the cacophony of cafeteria noise. Sometimes, out of the corner
of her eye she would see the tail of J.D.'s long, black coat disappear around
some corner.
"It's like the school's haunted or something," someone said.
Veronica jumped at the words and looked around quickly. Heather McNamara
walked up to her wearing a red and black cheerleading outfit. Veronica stared
at her, her pale face shot through with horror.
"What do you mean?" she asked, feeling her heart flutter with guilt for
the umpteenth time this month.
Heather pulled her frail fingers through her thick fall of long, curly,
blond hair. She shrugged, "I don't know, the school just feels weird. So many
people have died this month, it's like everyone's walking around in a twilight
zone episode or something-especially you Veronica."
Veronica winced and looked down at the shiny, dark floor. Her distorted
reflection stared back
"Losing J.D. has really taken its toll on you," Heather continued, basking
in the bliss of ignorance.
"Yeah," Veronica whispered, barely able to supply sound to the word. She
felt her whole body churn with uneasiness. A locker door slammed next to her,
and she jumped with the noise.
"It's been rough."
A derisive, female voice wafted its way across the emptying hall and
Veronica looked up. Heather Duke, all dressed in red and surrounded by her new
entourage, stood grinning like the Cheshire Cat in Veronica's direction.
Veronica frowned, and Heather McNamara cringed like a guilty child.
"I gotta go, Veronica," she said sheepishly.
After all the hell Heather put Heather through, she still groveled her way
back into the coolest, albeit revised, clique in school. The beaming grin
on Heather Duke's face never failed to declare her victory over Heather
and over all the other gullible minds of the student body. Veronica
watched angrily as Heather went over to Heather. She half expected to see
Heather Duke strap a leash and collar around Heather McNamra's neck.
"Oh, hello Veronica," Heather Duke called disdainfully from across the
way. Her greeting was followed by a chorus of bitchy snickering, and Veronica
felt her annoyance flare. While Heather McNamara crawled back to Heather on her
hands and knees, Veronica had remained determined to stay as far away from her
as possible; hence, lessening her status in the school hierarchy and making her
the perfect food for ridicule. Despite everything that had happened, Veronica
found herself thinking that if J.D. were still alive, Heather Duke wouldn't be.
She probably would have committed "suicide" weeks ago.
Veronica watched the group saunter off towards the cafeteria, and
considered telling J.D. that he could blow the school up after all. She
snickered nervously at the thought.
* * *
Heather Duke had taken up almost all of Heather Chandler's old habits.
Veronica sat down at a table in the cafeteria and watched as Heather had one of
her lackeys forge some sort of note to give to a poor, unsuspecting soul as a
cruel and nasty joke. Way back when Heather Chandler was Queen, the prime
victim of such torment was Martha Dunstock, a quiet, 220 pound junior whom
everyone had dubbed "Martha Dumptruck" because of her excessive weight.
For her reign, Heather Duke had chosen the lowly Stuart Salinger, an
outcast freshman who was shaped like a scarecrow, and who looked like he had
stepped right out of some "Revenge of the Nerds" movie. The funny part was
that not even the nerds of the school liked Stuart; nobody did. Sometime in
mid-December he came to Westerburg a scrawny, middle-class geek, and was
trampled underfoot by everyone, the Heathers above all.
Veronica rested her head on her hand in mild boredom and watched through
her dark sunglasses as Heather McNamara ran to slip the phony note on to
Stuart's lunch tray. Veronica yawned. This had all been done before; the
whole day-to-day scenario of high school played like a broken record. She
had saved the school from certain death only a few weeks earlier; but it was
like nothing had ever happened. Sometimes she found herself wishing for another
rebel to come along in a long, black coat, riding a Harley Davidson and smoking
like a chimney. J.D. was a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon of nature. The Devil
sent him to take out the trash, and Veronica had chased him away before he even
had a chance to break out the vacuum cleaner. Now she sat in his old seat, in
the back corner of high-society cafeteria life, wishing she at least had a dust
buster.
Stuart slumped down at his lonely table with his carton of milk and tray
of slop and tatter tots. His limbs seemed to collapse inward from lack of
nutrition or something, and he slouched as if he were taking cover from unseen,
flying objects.
Veronica cast her gaze at Heather and her lackeys, who watched with
gleaming eyes as Stuart unfolded the mysterious note. His brown eyes widened
beneath his round-rimmed glasses and he nearly choked on his tater tot.
And then suddenly, his gaze crashed with the lenses of Veronica's black
sunglasses.
"Shit," Veronica muttered, hearing Heather laughing in the background.
Stuart looked from the note to Veronica and then back again.
"Goddamnit," she cursed as he feebly got up from his table and started
towards her. She held her head, and gave some thought to bolting for the door.
Heather was almost drooling at the pure perfection of it all. Undoubtedly she
had conjured up some sexually perverse fable about how Veronica was hot for
Stuart's muscle-denied body.
"Hhhh-hi Veronica," he stammered, pushing his glasses up the bridge of
his beak-like nose.
"Hi Stuart," she said, her voice a monotone, expectant, extension of her
bored thoughts.
Stuart handed her the note, which she took shamelessly to glance over.
Heather had no creativity.
"I didn't write this," Veronica stated, combing her fingers through her
dark hair, ignoring the death of hope in Stuart's face. His pale-sickly cheeks
flushed with embarrassment, and his eyes glazed over with horror.
"Heather Duke wrote it," Veronica said plainly, not wanting to give
Heather the satisfaction she craved. Poor Stuart had that old, familiar look of:
"I-just-totally-humiliated-myself-and-am-now-the-laughing-stock-of-the-whole-
school."
"Oh," was all he could say.
Veronica handed him back the note, and he hesitated briefly before
slinking back to his table. On the way there he became aware of Heather's
laughter, and his shoulders slumped even further inward until they disappeared
into the sides of his bony torso.
Veronica took a deep breath and lowered her sunglasses so she could glare
at Heather, whose green eyes sparked back at her. Veronica scowled. She
glanced at Stuart again, who seemed inches away from hiding under the table, and
then she glanced at some of the other familiar faces. Kieth and Courtney, a
pair of country-club snobs, gave her sly, knowing looks as though they were all
set to start circulating the rumors. Veronica's frown deepened, maybe she
wasn't a Heather anymore; but she wasn't going to serve as the brunt of the
jokes either.
"Oh that was hilarious, Heather," Veronica said, approaching the creature
in red who had once been her friend.
Heather flashed her a charming grin, "A total laugh riot," she replied.
"Was the joke on Stuart or on me?" Veronica asked knowingly. She hated
the way Heather and her clique all seemed to share the same line of telepathic
communication. They snickered in unison.
"What's your damage, Veronica?" Heather Duke retorted, hugging her disdain
to her like a member of the football team. "You should be used to the company
of losers, everyone knows you associate yourself with the scum of the school."
The clique found this funny. Even Heather McNamara laughed; it was either
play along, or be ousted and ridiculed. Veronica felt her anger flare. She
gritted her teeth and tried not to let it show that Heather could get to her.
"Face it, Veronica," Heather continued, "You totally fell off your
pedestal when Heather died. You started hanging around with Martha Dumptruck,
for godsakes. You're not cool anymore, you're a tragedy."
More laughing. Veronica swallowed hard and tried to control her rage.
She wanted to kill, and she chided herself for admitting it.
"And what makes you cool, Heather?" She snapped, "Is it your winning
personality? Or the fact that you're just a cheap imitation of Heather
Chandler?"
The smile fell off of Heather's alabaster face. Veronica watched semi-
delighted as Heather's cheeks flushed with fury.
"Veronica, can you only defend yourself by taking blows below the belt?
How sorry is that?"
"The only thing sorry here, Heather, is you," Veronica snarled.
For a moment Heather looked genuinely enraged, and then her expression
changed totally, and she laughed.
"God, Veronica, how lame you've become! At least when J.D. was alive
there was still hope for you."
The very mention of J.D.'s name sparked an inferno of anger. She could
feel the hate for Heather churning inside of her fiery body, turning itself,
over and over like a pig on a skewer.
"And what do you mean by that, Heather?" Veronica growled, no longer able
to suppress the flames from moving into her face.
"Did I hit a nerve, Veronica?" Heather bantered, "J.D. was too cool for
you, you couldn't handle him; everyone knows that. It's a pity you drove him to
his suicide."
Veronica felt her head start to spin violently as she realized that this
was the popular opinion of the school. No one here knew what J.D. had really
planned to do; they all thought the extravagance of his suicide was just part of
his rebellious nature, that deep down he was just lovesick, and she was at
fault.
"I drove him to suicide?!?" Veronica hissed, feeling a dull ache throb its
way into her head. She knew her mouth had dropped open, but she was so goddamn
angry she couldn't even feel her body. There was actually a red tint to
everything she saw, as if some cheesy B-movie director were orchestrating her
life at the moment. Heather looked so triumphant, and all Veronica could think
of was killing her. A vision of Heather Chandler lying in her satin coffin
flashed across Veronica's eyes, and then she heard him.
At first it was just a whisper, like a memory echoing off the walls from
weeks before, and then his voice was against her ear, feathered and sarcastic,
as if he had never blown himself up to begin with:
"Wish you had that gun right about now, don't you darling?" he said.
Veronica's spinning, red, world came to a crash landing at the sound of
his voice. His VOICE!! His raspy, wicked, maniacal voice! Where the hell did
it come from?! 'Get a grip girl,' Veronica thought, glancing around, and then
pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers. She was getting too
excited, some chemical imbalance must have been kicking in.
Heather was still beaming. "The truth hurts, doesn't it, Veronica?" she
said, "Poor J.D., what a waste."
"Oh the humanity," sneered one of the others.
But Veronica had gone deaf to Heather's remarks; reality had just gotten
terribly weird. She kept thinking to herself: 'calm down, you're hearing
things.'
And then he spoke again, as if he were right next to her:
"Don't kid yourself, dearest, your hearing is perfectly fine."
Veronica gasped sharply; she tore off her sunglasses and scanned the room
in a near panic. It occurred to her that someone was doing an impression of
J.D. just to torment her. But no one looked like the guilty party. Dread and
horror ignited inside of Veronica's body. She was losing her mind in the middle
of the caf!
On the opposite side of her his voice came again: "Don't you think this
school is in need of another suicide? It's been three weeks!"
Veronica whirled around, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Heather
Duke grimaced as if Veronica were a mental patient who had been let out by
mistake. Veronica was beginning to wonder if that was the case. Either that,
or she had just fallen into the twilight zone.
"Veronica!" Heather snapped, annoyed at being ignored.
Veronica came back to reality long enough to see the irritated expression
chiseled into Heather's white flesh. And then her gaze drifted beyond Heather,
and settled over a figure in black leaning against the "feed the world" table.
It seemed as if Veronica had to manually focus her vision before it came in
clear enough to see every detail right down to the eyebrows.
J.D. grinned, and gave a casual wave.
Veronica's breath slipped out of her lungs and failed to return. Her eyes
grew bowling-ball huge, at the sight of the apparition before her.
"Greetings and salutations," he sneered, raising his wicked eyebrows.
"God, Veronica, what's wrong with you?!" Heather demanded, as Veronica
watched J.D. nonchalantly light a cigarette. Peter, who was preaching to no one
in particular about giving away their extra tater tots, coughed when he inhaled
J.D.'s smoke; but as far as seeing J.D. directly in front of him-Peter seemed
clueless.
Heather frowned even deeper, "You look like you've just seen a ghost or
something."
J.D. laughed at the irony and drew in a lungful of smoke.
"You gotta love her!" he remarked in delight.
Veronica felt her head grow light as the rest of her body sunk into a
nauseous, sickening stupor. She couldn't tear her eyes away from where J.D. was
slouching. He should have disappeared or something, the way the ghosts of a
guilty conscience were supposed to do. But he didn't. Instead he flicked his
ashes in Peter's direction, and smirked all-knowingly. Heather followed
Veronica's gaze to see what she was gawking at, but J.D. shook his head.
"She can't see me Veronica," he purred, "I'm here for your eyes only."
"Get a grip girl," Heather growled, echoing Veronica's thoughts, "What
little reputation you have left is plummeting rapidly."
Veronica managed to pull her eyes off of J.D. long enough to see Heather's
disgust, and feel her own utter horror welling up in her throat.
"Oh my god," Veronica choked from somewhere deep in her gut. She had to
get out of the room before she collapsed and died of shock on the floor.
This wasn't happening.
She whipped around and forced her legs into motion, vaguely hearing
Heather's bitch-queen protests as she tumbled out of the caf and into the hall.
Veronica's head was doing somersaults on her shoulders as she scampered down the
empty hallways of Westerburg. The main entrance was too far away, so Veronica
hoisted herself up the stairs and burst into the girl's room. Luckily, it too,
was empty.
She practically fell into the sink, splashing her beet-red face with cold
water. The sudden, icy temperature against her feverish flesh made her insides
churn, and, feeling violently ill, she stumbled into the stall to retch up the
emptiness in her stomach. Her whole life seemed to flash before her eyes as she
hugged the john. And then logic began to creep its way into her head,
threatening to rationalize everything she had just seen in the caf.
Veronica tried to collect herself. She had just gone mental in front of
her worst enemies, and had probably ruined her reputation more in that moment
than Heather could have done in a week!
"Oh God," she muttered, both horrified and stupefied by her own behavior.
She could have sworn she heard Heather Chandler's voice like a distant ringing
in the outside hall:
"Transfer to Washington, transfer to Jefferson, no one at Westerburg's
gonna let you play their reindeer games."
It took Veronica some time to catch her breath before she managed to pick
herself off the less-than-spotless bathroom floor. She felt trembly and dizzy,
and decided right then to cut out of school early and go back to bed. Her blue
stockings had been smudged with some form of girls' room grime, and there was a
fresh run disappearing up into the shadows of her new skirt. Definitely time to
go home.
"Shit," she groaned, stepping wearily out of the stall and over to the
sink. Her face still felt like fire had been set to it. She turned on the
water and started to wash the sickness away when she heard the bathroom door
open. With her luck at the moment it was probably Heather and her lackeys come
to watch the rest of the show.
The pungent aroma of cigarette smoke coiled around her as she bent to cup
the cool water to her lips. It tasted like rust.
"That was a true Kodak moment, Veronica!" he barked, "Pity I didn't have a
camera!"
His voice was as raspy and dramatic as ever. Veronica's heart thudded
against her rib cage, but she didn't lift her head. Instead she stared at the
water as it spiraled down the drain, and wondered if that was her life going
with it.
"You're not really here," she said uneasily, dreading to hear an answer
of any kind.
J.D. snickered. "Quite the contrary darling, I am very much here."
"You're dead," Veronica insisted, the strength in her voice pushing into
the lipstick-smudged porcelain of the sink.
"Of course!" J.D. sneered, "That's the beauty of it!"
Veronica looked up and stared into the mirror her face now a sickly,
horrified white. J.D.'s reflection appeared behind her own. He looked the
same-well, almost. His handsome, chiseled face was the color of alabaster, his
narrow eyes as deep black as pure, polished obsidian, and together, his features
looked just a tad more supernatural than they should have, had he been alive.
But everything else was the same, long, black coat and all. He took a long drag
on the cigarette and the end glowed orange.
"You're a figment of my imagination!" Veronica cried, whirling around to
face him. "You blew yourself up! You killed yourself! You're dead! D-E-A-D,
dead!"
J.D.'s linear lips curled into a wry smirk. "Well, it's a comfort to know
you can still spell at a time like this; however darling--" he paused, stared
at Veronica with the slits that served for his eyes, and exhaled smoke into her
face. She coughed and turned away.
"How can you be so sure?" he finished, meeting her incensed gaze
steadily.
"You are NOT here!!!" she screamed, thrashing at him with her fists,
trying to chase his ghost, or his memory, or whatever the hell he was away.
"Get the fuck away from me! You are not here!!"
J.D. let the smoking cigarette hang limply from his lips as he grabbed
Veronica's flailing arms. She froze when he touched her; his grip was so icy,
so chilling. For a moment she just stared, horrified, into his black eyes.
"If I weren't here Veronica, could I do this? Hmm?" J.D. asked,
tightening his grip on her wrists painfully. Veronica gaped at him a moment
longer before she began struggling and pulling away, screaming over and over
again at the top of her lungs: "Let go of me!!"
J.D. let her squirm awhile before he released her as an amused cat would
its prey. Veronica stumbled back against the clammy, tiled wall; her breath
coming in hard, short gasps. She glowered hard at J.D.-he raised his eyebrows.
"What are you doing here?" she moaned, raking her hands back through her
shoulder-length hair.
A small, unfamiliar voice answered her from behind J.D.: "Umm, I have to
go-to the bathroom?"
J.D. snickered and moved aside so that Veronica could see the short, oval-
shaped freshmen that had just entered the room. Her eyes were wide and stunned
behind her thick-lensed glasses, she looked completely befuddled. Veronica's
mouth dropped open as she exchanged mortified looks with the girl.
"Now who looks psychotic?" J.D. sneered, "She can't see me, Veronica,
you're the one ranting and raving like a lunatic all by yourself in a high
school bathroom!" He laughed, "It's perfecto!"
"You know what," the girl said, crinkling her nose, "I'll come back
later."
She opened the door and slipped out quickly, undoubtedly fleeing for cover
to some nearby classroom.
Veronica slid down the wall to sit on the cold floor. She pressed her
hands to her throbbing temples. "God!" she moaned, "I've gone completely
insane!"
J.D. lit another cigarette with the end of his first one. He threw the
butt down and sparks scattered outward as it hit the ground. Veronica
watched listlessly as the cigarette bounced under the door of a stall and rolled
out of view.
J.D. leaned over the sink to stare in the spotty mirror. He had a
reflection. He wasn't some mythological vampire or anything like that, and
unfortunately he probably couldn't be repelled with sunlight, or holy water, or
something easy.
"I'm playing with a new look, Veronica," he said matter-of-factly. "Tell
me what you think."
Veronica glanced up, still holding her head. Her pretty face twisted
upward, utterly perturbed. The whole room was spinning and there was J.D., a
walking dead man, talking about a new look? Oh the humanity.
J.D. pulled his fingers, all ten of them, back through his choppy, black
hair, and as he did so, the hair lengthened until it fell past his shoulders.
Veronica squinted in confusion. It was all too weird. J.D. turned to her,
long, black hair now framing his china-white face. "Well? Is it me?"
"I didn't know fashion was an issue in Hell," she muttered.
J.D. scoffed at her and puffed on his cigarette.
"Why are you haunting me?" Veronica whimpered, "I mean, are you haunting
me? Or have I lost my fucking mind?"
J.D. brushed a couple of wisps to the left, and then to the right,
ignoring her.
"Goddamnit J.D.! Why are you here!?" Veronica shouted.
"Because I can be," he answered, still studying his new hair. "I like
it!" he declared, turning to her and grinning devilishly; "It'll go great with
the horns."
* * *
"Dear Diary,
"My ex-boyfriend has come back from Hell to make my life a living one.
I don't know what to do. I've made a complete ass out of myself in front of the
whole school, and now everyone thinks I'm a total nutcase. J.D.'s everywhere I
go. He won't leave me alone. He's not just some grotesque product of my guilt-
ridden mind; yet at the same time, I'm the only one who sees him! Is he a
ghost? A demon? Satan himself? He won't tell me, he won't tell me one goddamn
thing! This is all a big joke to him. He sits next to me in class and
ridicules everything and everyone with that demonic wit he always had-and then I
burst out laughing-at nothing-in the middle of class. The whole student body
agrees that I should be attending Cleavesburg Mental Institution instead of
Westerburg High. I walk through the hallways, and people part like the Red Sea.
I've become the walking plague, and J.D. is reveling in it all.
"He's sitting there now telling me how history class is so much more
interesting when you don't have to pay attention to it. I'm not crazy. You
have to believe me. J.D. is haunting me from beyond the grave, I can't get rid
of him. I killed the sonofabitch once-I can't do it again, he's already dead!
I ask him over and over again why he's here. He says "The future's not ours to
see." What future?! Ours? Or mine? He shouldn't have a future anyway-he's
dead!
"Heather is having a field day. J.D. may have dug the grave for my less-
than-flawless reputation, but I put myself in it. I try to ignore J.D.'s
harping presence, but he always shows up when I least want him to. Stuart
Salinger walked up to me the other day. He was wearing a long black trench coat
similar to J.D.'s, and he had gotten his ear pierced like J.D., although it had
gotten all infected and was covered in band-aids.
"I wanted to crawl into a corner and die. The whole school thinks I'm a
baskethead, and on top of that Stuart Salinger is trying to force-feed me his
scrawny, little heart!
"J.D. was amused. In fact, he was downright delighted that Stuart was
copying him to win my attention. And then Stuart asked me to the prom. I
wanted to scream. I said: "Stuart, I'm not going to the prom."
"Stuart looked upset-I wish he would just find someone else to bother,
someone who is not being tormented by her dead ex-boyfriend. J.D., who was
present, as usual, clapped his hand over his heart in mock devastation.
"Oh, God, Veronica," he cried in that Jack Nicholson twang of his, "Can't you
see what you're doing to this little guy?! He gave me that wise-ass smirk and
pinched Stuart's gaunt cheeks like some overly affectionate grandmother.
"You're chewing up his heart and spitting it back into his face!" Stuart only
scratched at J.D.'s spectral touch as if it were a bug bite. Of course he was
completely unaware that J.D. was even there to begin with, so when I screamed
"I'm not going to the prom," at J.D., Stuart thought I was screaming at him.
And I wasn't!
J.D. is making me a fucking lunatic! I tried to tell Stuart I was sorry.
His face was blood red with embarrassment. He looked like he was going to hide
in his oversized coat as he attempted to explain to me why he had just asked me
out. J.D., of course, stood behind him, making all of these mock-sympathetic
expressions that I couldn't help but snicker at, and once again Stuart got the
wrong impression. I told him that I was sorry. That I wasn't snickering at him
as he was telling me his sad life-story; but I think it was beyond saving at
that point. That poor kid. He should just steer clear of me; it would do his
self-esteem a great favor." -Veronica Sawyer
* * *
"Veronica's not going to the prom, are you Veronica?"
"How can she? Her boyfriend committed suicide."
"And because of her too, she can't go with anyone else, it would be
immoral."
Veronica sneered at the girls as she sat on the floor against her gym
locker. They all snickered. The whole junior class was alive with talk of the
prom. It was this Friday, and all day long, all Veronica could hear was 'What
are you wearing? Who are you going with? Who's in your limo?'
"I can give a shit less that that bastard is dead," Veronica retorted.
"I'm not going to the prom so I don't have to deal with you."
Courtney and the others exchanged glances and burst out laughing.
Veronica rolled her eyes in disgust, ignoring the usual locker room commotion
going on around her. The steam from the showers poured down the aisles as
scantily-clad girls milled aimlessly about.
"Sweet Jesus!" J.D. barked, "Is this what I've been missing?!"
Veronica dropped her head into her lap to try and drown him out.
"Control your hormones, dickhead," she murmured, "Have you no couth?"
J.D. raised his eyebrows, dragging on his cigarette as a pair of girls
walked by in towels.
"There are advantages to being dead, my dear," he proclaimed. "Waltzing
right into the girls locker room is one of them!"
Veronica shook her head, pulling her fingers back through her thick fall
of chestnut hair. "God, you can be so immature."
J.D. grinned wickedly as Courtney and the others continued their gossip.
He knew Veronica hated it when everyone sympathized with him. And she knew he
was gloating because that's exactly what was going through his head at the
moment.
"They only care because you're dead," Veronica mumbled, trying not to make
it too obvious that she was talking to herself. "If I were dead, you would be
the bad guy."
J.D. crouched down, his eyebrows arching wildly over his narrow, black
eyes. "That could be arranged dearest."
Veronica glared at him.
"Veronica, I heard Stuart Salinger asked you to go to the prom with him,"
Courtney said in that perky, preppy voice that was about as pleasant as
fingernails on chalkboard.
"Yeah, and?"
They laughed again.
"C'mon, Veronica, face it," J.D. interjected, "I was right! This school
is as hopeless as the society that surrounds it! You want them dead as much as
I do!"
Veronica grimaced, glaring at Courtney in her country-club cardigan.
"And what if I do want them dead?" she growled, answering J.D. loudly
enough so that the others could hear.
"Excuse me Veronica?" Courtney asked.
"What if I do want them dead," Veronica repeated, raising her own
eyebrows, and giving Courtney her best I-am-a-psychotic-bitch look. Courtney
and the others chose to ignore her, and walked away in a huff.
"Then that, too, can be arranged," J.D. purred, wrapping his arms around
Veronica and pulling her close. She grimaced and watched as he exhaled a cloud
of smoke that snaked into the air and merged with the shower steam.
* * *
Veronica sat in the back of the caf, half-sprawled across the table, her
head resting on the paper bag coverings of her text books. She stared sideways
at the kids who milled around and wondered how many of them would actually
survive adolescence. Would she be one of them?
Her mind started to drift, and everything seemed to get quiet, as though
it were all a dream spinning in slow motion. Veronica remembered an exercise
Miss Pauline Flemming had taught her in health class: "Imagine your entire body
is filling up with a warm, orange fluid," Ms. Phlegm had said. "Just filling
every nook and cranny all the way up to your head. And then all the bad
thoughts and feelings start to float in the orange fluid; they're just floating
around there like all the debris we pour into our oceans. And then imagine that
someone pokes a hole in the bottom of your foot, and all the warm, orange fluid
starts to drain away, and it takes all those nasty little feelings with it
. . ." What a flake Ms. Phlegm was.
Veronica closed her eyes and started to imagine the orange fluid. But she
couldn't see orange, she could only see red.
"This is ridiculous," she murmured, opening her eyes.
She heard Heather Duke laughing at something; but didn't really care what
it was. Someone dropped a lunch tray, someone else started yelling obscenities;
Veronica didn't budge. Instead she watched as J.D. emerged from the crowd on
the lunch line and started towards her. Against a backdrop of living people, he
didn't really look human. He was back to his short hair again (the length of
his hair seemed to fluctuate with the day) and his face looked even more pallid
than usual.
"You're a walking corpse," Veronica simpered while J.D. was still out of
earshot. "A walking dead guy who smokes like a chimney."
His coat seemed to flow behind him. It sometimes looked like night
itself, like a black whole that could swallow up anyone who got too close.
"You blew yourself up, but you're still here to make my life miserable,"
she continued in a sing-song voice.
"Veronica, who are you talking to?" Betty Finn asked cautiously.
The girl who had been best friends with Veronica before the Heathers came
on the scene, stood clutching her books to her chest. Veronica turned her head
to look up at Betty. The light from the window filtered over the girl, bathing
her in a yellow glow which made her almost look angelic.
"Oh," Veronica replied, "Nobody." She tossed a quick glance around-J.D.
had vanished.
Betty sat down. "I'm really worried about you Ronnie," she said. "Martha
tells me you haven't been feeling well."
Veronica smiled, "That's one way of putting it."
Betty fingered the unopened can of Diet Coke sitting in the middle of the
table.
"Is it because of J.D.?" she asked, trying, Veronica could tell, to
phrase the question as delicately as she possibly could; as if the mention of
J.D.'s death was going to send Veronica into a frenzy of weeping or something.
Veronica laughed at the thought.
"Let's just say he's haunting me," she replied.
Betty averted her eyes to the table, "Well, you know," she started
quietly, "It wasn't your fault he did what he did. He must have been really
depressed or something."
Veronica smiled sweetly at her one true friend left in life; probably the
truest friend she had ever had. Veronica had ditched Betty awhile ago to become
a "Heather," to be part of the coolest clique in school. And after all was said
and done, Betty was still around to help her now.
"You know men," Veronica said light-heartedly, "they blow up over every
little thing that doesn't go their way."
Betty couldn't help but snicker. "Ronnie," she chided.
Veronica shook her head. "I'll be alright," she lied. "Thanks for
caring."
Betty shrugged sheepishly. "If you ever need anything-" she stressed.
Veronica nodded, knowing that there really was nothing Betty Finn could do to
help her out of her predicament.
Betty got up to go back to her own table. Veronica watched.
"I can't believe this is my life," she muttered.
"Well, believe it dearest," J.D. rasped, pulling up a seat next to her and
sitting down on it backwards. Veronica wondered vaguely if anyone else in the
caf saw the chair move.
"I haven't seen you since yesterday," Veronica mumbled, "Where have you
been?"
J.D. raised his eyebrows knowingly; "How nice of you to care."
"Don't flatter yourself," Veronica retorted.
J.D. shook his head, amused, expecting that. Veronica watched as his
devious gaze then settled over Betty Finn. Something dangerous moved in his
face. Veronica frowned.
"Whatever your sick little mind is thinking, stop it," she warned, opening
the Diet Coke and taking a gulp of the semi-sweet poison. J.D. had no response.
Veronica put the can down and stared at him accusingly. He met her gaze.
"You're plotting something," she asserted. "I can almost see that
godamned little light bulb going on over your head."
J.D. squinted in puzzled, mock-innocence. A loud crash across the caf
broke the tension between them and they both turned to look. Stuart Salinger
had bumped into one of the football players, the new Quarterback who had taken
over after Kurt Kelly had allegedly "committed suicide." Or rather, after J.D.
had chased him down in the woods behind Westerburg and had Veronica shoot him
under false pretenses.
The hulking Quarterback started screaming at Stuart:
"You stupid, cock-sucking dweeb!! Look what you did to my jacket!!
There's shit all over it!!"
Stuart cringed as the football player made a motion to pummel him. J.D.
shook his head. Veronica couldn't tell if he was amused or disgusted.
"You see?" He declared in his gravelly voice. "This is just another
example of a typical jock-asshole expressing the need to display his
testosterone level to the entire fucking world! Pick on the lowliest schmuck in
the building-now that's original."
J.D. grinned. "They all deserve to die."
Veronica knitted her brow, frowning deeply. "No they do not!" She
retorted emphatically. "No one deserves to die just because they're an asshole.
This whole world is filled with assholes-J.D. grow up! You don't kill people
because they're assholes, you kill because you enjoy it-because you're fucking
psychotic!"
A couple of kids turned to stare at her, but Veronica ignored them. She
didn't care what they thought anymore. It made no difference that she was
practically shouting at an empty chair. Whether or not they saw J.D. sitting
there was trivial; he was there, and he was dangerous.
J.D. squinted, he looked angry.
"Don't you see!?!" he hissed. "Are you fucking blind, Veronica?!? You're
not saving anybody up there on your soap box! Look around you! There's no
innocence in this room! Mother Teresa wouldn't touch this building with a ten-
foot pole for Chrissakes!!"
J.D. jumped out of his seat--sending it crashing to the floor. He looked
positively evil, and Veronica felt herself cringing inside.
"It's a long, hard road out of Hell Veronica," he growled, "but it's a
cinch to get in! There is not one shred of human flesh in this room worth
saving, because if they're not corrupted now-they will be!!"
J.D.'s face was completely animated with malevolence. This was the J.D.
she had fought in the boiler room-the preacher of society's faults.
Veronica felt her heart pound with dread. J.D. swooped around her table
to a kid sitting opposite her-totally oblivious. The monster in the black coat
wrapped his suffocating arms around the kid and said: "You see this one?!"
The kid seemed a little uncomfortable-as if he could feel the pressure of J.D.'s
harsh embrace.
"He raped his date at last year's junior prom!"
J.D. let the kid go, and flew like a deranged bat over to some stoner
chick in sun glasses. He cupped her face roughly from above-she was too high to
notice anything.
"She's been selling crack to elementary school kids!" J.D. roared in his
raspy voice. "Is this worth saving!? Huh Veronica!?"
Veronica winced, trying to block out J.D.'s carping tone, his scary
revelations. He pulled a girl by the hair who seemed to genuinely feel him.
"She's slept with so many guys she's lost count already-and she's
fifteen!"
"And this beauty," J.D. continued, leaning like a gargoyle over a guy who
was sleeping on top of his table. "He's going to o.d. pretty fucking soon."
"SHUT UP!! Veronica screamed, covering her ears. "Just shut up!!"
The entire caf turned in unison to look at her as she screamed at J.D.
He panted hard with excitement, delighted to cause such chaos. His black eyes
sparked at Veronica who pressed her hands tightly to her head as a hushed murmur
spread like wild fire over the students. And J.D. stood there like Satan in the
center of Hell, reveling in it all.
"Ignorance is bliss isn't it Veronica?" he sneered triumphantly.
* * *
"Dear Diary,
"J.D.'s here because of unfinished business-I know that now. He wants to
destroy the world-society-but he's gotta do it one step at a time and he's
starting with my school. That thing he pulled on me in the caf this afternoon
was all the proof I needed to see what he really wanted. But if he thinks I'm
going to help him he's dead wrong. He tricked me into murder twice before, I'm
on a one-way ticket to Hell as it is; but he's going to have to find some other
lackey to do his dirty work because I'm through with him!! I don't care if he
haunts me until my last shred of sanity drains out the hole in my foot with the
orange-red fluid. I'M NOT GOING TO KILL FOR HIM!!!
"He can't do it himself, I'm almost positive. He needs me, that's why he
won't leave me alone. I'm the only one in Sherwood Ohio that knows what a
fucking bastard he is! I'm the only one that was stupid enough to fall for his
evil charms. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice." --Veronica Sawyer
* * *
Veronica closed the diary and took the monocle out of her eye. The school
parking lot was practically empty and the sun was beginning to go down. She sat
alone on the very steps where she had watched J.D. explode four weeks earlier
and had foolishly thought that that was the end to all of her problems. In fact
there was still a layer of soot on the far wall of the building, covering those
atrocious silhouettes stenciled on the tan cement. There was even a crater at
the foot of the staircase with a yellow 'caution' ribbon around it. Veronica
stared at the hole. J.D. should have fallen right down that hole to Hell-but
the fucker was still here.
Veronica half laughed, half moaned. It occurred to her again and again
that she had really gone crazy. That somehow, something had snapped and all
this shit with J.D. coming back from the dead had been conjured up from the
depths of her own personal psychosis. That's what Ms. Phlegm thought. After
that little incident in the caf, Ms. Phlegm swooped over to her, and escorted
her out of the room to her cheery hell of an office. She kept Veronica till
almost the end of the day, talking in that flaky way of hers about dealing with
the grief-about dealing with the loss of her "very bestest friends" and of her
lover. Although Ms. Phlegm-who sunk her counselor claws into J.D. the minute he
whipped out the gun during his first day at Westerburg-was convinced that J.D.
was some sort of "troubled Romeo" who had it rough because he was never in one
place for too long. He wasn't able to "connect" to anyone special. More likely
than not J.D. fed Ms. Phlegm everything she wanted to hear, until her profile of
him was just the way he wanted it.
Veronica let most of what Ms. Phlegm said pass in one ear and out the
other. She sat on the couch, surrounded by fluffy things like Care Bear
pillows, and wondered if J.D. was actually going to say anything to make her
look more insane, or if he was just going to sit there and listen. He lit his
cigarettes one after the other and said nothing throughout the entire session.
And then in the middle of Ms. Phlegmn's speech about the wrongs of suicide-he
got up and casually walked out the door. Ms. Phlegm thought it was just the
hallway breeze.
Veronica watched listlessly as a few meandering students crossed the
asphalt lot to their cars. Earlier on she had come out of school and had seen
Stuart Salinger standing awkwardly next to a wimpy motor scooter looking as
though he had just lost his dog. He was mumbling to himself, or so it seemed,
and she couldn't' help but watch him in his long, black coat with his gaudy
diamond-stud earring; a poor substitute for the small hoop J.D. wore in his own
ear. On top of that, Stuart had recently dyed his sandy-brown hair black and
had gotten a new haircut.
Veronica shook her head. If Stuart was doing all of this to impress her
it wasn't going to work. For one thing, he had taken the look that J.D. had
used so easily to seduce her into bed with and completely ruined it. Even J.D.
thought so, though it still amused him to be copied. Secondly, she absolutely
was not attracted to Stuart Salinger, no matter who he tried to be.
When he saw her watching he immediately produced a cigarette and a lighter
and tried his best to look like the chain smoker J.D. was. But Stuart didn't
smoke. He fumbled with the lighter, nearly burned his face off, and when he
finally did drag on the cigarette the smoke overwhelmed him and he doubled over
coughing. Veronica had to suppress the laughter because he was just trying so
hard. She put her shades on and pretended not to see him.
When Stuart finally gave up he got on his motor scooter, a pathetic
substitute for J.D.'s Harley, and buzzed slowly away, shoulders slumping. Sure
Veronica felt bad, but it wasn't something she lost sleep over.
It had gotten chilly out since then, and the last golden rays of the sun
were fading quickly over the horizon. Veronica watched, feeling peaceful and
serene in the sea of loneliness she was swimming in. It was just her and the
building for awhile-and of course-the crater at the foot of the stairs. The
junior prom was tonight, and as fast as they had gone, the students would return
in their limos and fancy clothing. The gymnasium had already been decorated for
whatever theme Heather Duke and the prom committee had chosen for the rest of
the school. Ironically Big Fun was not going to play the prom-their
representatives never heard of offering to do so in return for a petition. It
made Heather look like a fool-and she blamed J.D. for it. After all, it was his
idea. All in all though, Veronica was glad she wasn't going to the prom. It
would be hell if she were.
Time sauntered off, and Veronica dozed with her eyes open. Everything was
just so thankfully quiet, this was how it should always be.
When she snapped out of it a long while later he was there; leaning
silently against his hulking motorcycle, his long, black coat draped around him
like a shadow. His hair was long again, falling sensually around his pale,
handsome face. From a distance she couldn't see whatever look was haunting his
sinister, black eyes.
Veronica rested her head on her hand and stared at him quietly. J.D. made
no motion to disturb her. He just waited patiently at the bottom of the long
staircase, the shadows of twilight playing over his haunting figure making him
look as supernatural as he was.
Veronica sighed. It was a pity she still found him attractive. If he
hadn't gone mental they'd probably be going to prom together. Que sera sera.
J.D. lit a cigarette, and Veronica had a flash of him standing there with
the bomb strapped to his chest. She shook the vision from her eyes, and watched
the gray tendrils of smoke slither through the air as he exhaled them. The sky
was a strange color, a sort of in-between-worlds color with an eerie red hue.
Veronica thought of Ms. Phlegm's fluid trick and wondered if the earth was using
it.
J.D. breathed smoke from his nose, and pulled his fingers back through his
long hair. Veronica just watched him, and then she stood up and started down
the stairs, the spring breeze sweeping around her small frame and whipping her
hair over her shoulder. J.D. greeted her humbly. No eyebrows, no wise-ass
remarks and Veronica folded her arms across her chest and said nothing. J.D.
kicked at the cracked asphalt and then met her unyielding gaze.
"I'm sorry," he said, his voice smooth and captivating.
Veronica raised her eyebrows in mild surprise. She felt her animosity
beginning to melt, and knew that this was exactly what she swore she wouldn't
do-fall for his charms.
J.D. smiled in that sexy way of his; little boy cuteness wrought and
twisted with rebellious allure. A long wisp of black hair fell across his face,
and Veronica's heart thudded against her chest. "Shit!" she thought, "He's got
me."
"You uh, you look kinda stranded out here," he purred, averting his gaze
to the ground and then grinning slyly up at her.
"Charms," she thought, "Damn his charms."
"I was going to walk," she muttered.
"I can give you a lift," he breathed almost sheepishly.
Veronica found herself smiling, and wished she had the control to smack
herself across the face. Instead she was flirting with her dead, psychotic, ex-
boyfriend.
"Is this like your broom or something?" she teased, motioning to the
Harley.
J.D. snickered: "Something like that."
Veronica found her whole body warming. This was how it used to be; before
Heather Chandler downed the cup of liquid Drain-, before Kurt and Ram succumbed
to J.D.'s "ich luge" bullets, before the boiler room and the bomb. This was how
it should have been. Somehow the incident in the caf earlier today seemed to
dissipate into thin air, and Veronica took a deep breath before climbing onto
the Harley, and Wrapping her arms around J.D.'s waist.
* * *
"If you're dead, then why can I hear your heart beating?" she asked in
that drunk-with-pleasure-after-sex voice.
"You hear what you expect to hear," J.D. purred, "Whatever pleases you."
Veronica smiled up at him and in the same moment she chided herself for
ignoring her own warning. They were lying in her bed together, swathed in
shadows and tangled sheets, still flushed and breathing hard from their little
necromantic episode. Somehow, as impossible as she had believed it to be,
Veronica had allowed J.D. to seduce her back into bed. She denied that she had
lost control from the first kiss to the last. At the same time, however, she
found herself snuggled against J.D.'s body (a body that was supposed to be
spread half-way across Ohio state, mind you) with her head pressed to his chest
and her arms wrapped around him. J.D. pulled her closer and she marveled at how
warm his skin felt.
"Damn you," she murmured, "I swore to myself that I would have nothing to
do with you, living or dead."
J.D. raised his eyebrows, and captured her lips in his own. "Guess that
makes you a liar then doesn't it?" he rasped.
Veronica pouted, and let him kiss her. "What am I doing?" she thought.
"I'm acting like a schoolgirl-I've totally lost my mind!"
She lay her head against J.D.'s bare, white chest and tried to pretend
that this wasn't happening.
"If you're dead, and I'm crazy, then is this some sick, demented,
masturbation fantasy I'm having?" she asked, drawing designs on his flesh with
her finger.
J.D. laughed. He looked so devious when he laughed, like such a little
monster. "Oooooo--that sounds exciting," he crooned mischievously, "I could be up for that!"
Veronica frowned and kicked him in the shin with her polished toe nails.
J.D. jumped in plain amusement and Veronica settled back into the crook of his
long neck..
"I'm seriously sleeping with my dead ex-boyfriend," she muttered, "I must
be a fucking lunatic."
"I'm insulted," J.D. professed. "After all this, you still consider me
your ex?"
Veronica frowned, toying with the ends of his long, black hair. "Shut
up," she laughed, "I still consider you a walking corpse."
J.D.'s mouth dropped open in mock-surprise. "Oh that hurts," he retorted,
pulling her half on top of him and locking her in a kiss. She struggled
playfully, her thick hair spilling over his alabaster flesh.
"Take thy beak from out my heart!" J.D. yelped as Veronica pulled away,
and hovered over him. He stared up at her as innocently as he could, his black
hair fanning out around his pale face.
"What is really going on?" she asked suddenly, utter seriousness creeping
into her doe-eyed countenance.
J.D. squinted, his eyebrows arching. He hesitated as if deciding what to
tell her, as if deciding how much he could reveal. Veronica waited, her mind
reeling with speculation. And then he grinned: "Nothing!"
Veronica frowned deeply and smacked him on the chest. "You jerk!" she
cried, flailing her arms. "You stupid, arrogant jerk!!"
J.D. saw this as a chance to wrestle, one of his favorite past times when
it came to her.
"Tell me what the fuck is going on!" Veronica screamed as he grabbed her
arms and struggled with her until she was pinned on the bed beneath him. She
was still cursing and flailing when he kissed her hard and deep. Veronica
stiffened, loosing her lips in his. J.D. gathered her in his impulsive arms,
trapping her there, and Veronica was too stuck to struggle. She made a motion
to wrap her arms around his back, and then restrained herself, and tried to push
him away.
"Tell me!" she screamed , her voice muffled in between kisses. "Tell me
you bastard!"
J.D. ignored her, and then suddenly there was a loud banging on the
bedroom door.
"Veronica?" her mother cried. "Veronica are you okay?!"
J.D. and Veronica jumped apart, and Veronica fell out of his arms and onto
the floor with a loud thump. J.D. found this funny, sitting up on his side, the
sheets falling away over his bare hip. Veronica half-scrambled under her bed to
find her white slip as her mother called again.
"I'm coming!" Veronica yelled, "I'll be right there!"
She pulled the slip over her head, trying to adjust it in place over her
naked body. She knew she looked like a tramp that had just crawled out of a
lover's bed, and J.D. was thrilled at the notion; his face said it all.
Veronica pulled on a robe inside out and ran for the door.
"Veronica, what are you doing in there?" her mother called with an upper-
class twang.
"Nothing, mom!" Veronica shouted, fumbling with the lock.
"You're not hanging yourself again are you Veronica? That was completely
inappropriate behavior."
Veronica turned to J.D. who was taking it all in stride.
"Hide!" she hissed, without recalling the obvious situation.
He laughed, raising his eyebrows. "If it makes you feel better."
Veronica yanked the door open, trying to control her breathing and hoping
her lipstick wasn't too smudged. Her mother stared at her in total
bewilderment.
"Young lady, what is going on?" she inquired accusingly.
Veronica's eyes bulged with guilt-"Nothing mom, I was just-uh-umm-having a
nervous breakdown, yeah."
J.D. howled with laughter. Her mother had no idea he was there.
"What?" she asked, simply appalled by the idea. Inappropriate behavior.
"Yeah, mom," Veronica lied, "Ms. Phlegm-ing said that it would really be
good for me to let all of my emotions out-that I've been too grief stricken
after Heather and that guy, Jason Dean, killed themselves. It's been too-uhm-
hard."
Her mother's face softened. "Hmph," she muttered, folding her hands in
front of her, "Jason Dean, yes, that boy that said he was afraid for you. Poor
thing, you should've reached out to him Veronica-maybe he would have handled it
better."
Veronica felt her breath lodge in her throat. She heard him behind her.
"Even your mother is on my side!" he rasped in delight, "It's perfecto!"
Veronica tried to ignore him. "I wish I did mom," she muttered, "Maybe
then he could have died more neatly."
Her mother frowned.
"I have to get back to my emotional out-pouring now, mom. Ms. Phlegm's
orders." Delicately Veronica closed the door as her mother still stood there
disapprovingly. She locked it behind her, and looked for the nearest thing to
throw at J.D. "Oh God, the humanity!!" she cried.
"You missed your calling dearest," J.D. sneered sarcastically, "You
should've been an actress!"
He was no longer the naked lover in her bed. Fully dressed, he leaned
against her window and lit a cigarette. The darkness of his wardrobe easily
blended into the black of night outside.
Veronica breathed deeply and flounced down onto her bed, curling up
tightly in the middle of it with her back to J.D.
"Jesus Veronica!" he barked, "You can't go to sleep now!"
"Why not?" she grumbled.
"Because we'll be late!"
Veronica furrowed her brow in confusion. "Late for what?"
J.D. crawled onto the bed next to her, his crooked eyebrows raising
sharply like Jack Nicholson's. "Why for the prom of course!"
Veronica sat up and gave him a disgusted look.
"I am NOT going to the prom!" she retorted.
"You are too!" he protested.
"I am NOT!"
"Are too!"
Veronica felt a serious case of deja vu coming on.
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
This went on for a while.
"You are not going to miss your prom," J.D. stated resolutely. "This
could be the last big night of your life! You never know what tomorrow brings!"
* * *
The sky was even more red than it had been at twilight. It looked like
crimson belly-dancer veils rippling in the May breeze against a backdrop of
black smoke. Veronica stood bewildered at the foot of the main staircase
outside of Westerburg. In fact she was standing in J.D.'s crater. The red
carpet that rolled down the stairs was like a stream of blood, and ironically it
matched the hue of her gown. Veronica stared at the garment. She didn't know
where it had come from. J.D. had magically pulled it out of her closet like a
rabbit out of a hat.
"I shouldn't be here," Veronica murmured, looking up at the dreaded
entrance of the school. Loud, rambunctious music was pouring out of every
orifice of the building, wafting away like waves off the Night's Plutonian
shore. It was a far cry from Big Fun.
"Why am I here?" she demanded loudly; but there was nobody to answer her.
Veronica picked up the hem of her red dress, and started up the stairs.
This was ridiculous, she was supposed to be home in bed-or watching movies with
Martha-she wasn't supposed to be going to the stupid prom. So why wasn't she
turning around?
The red carpet rolled all the way in through the doors and down the
hallway. Veronica followed it angrily, ready to scream at the first person she
saw. She didn't even know how she had gotten to the school in the first place.
And where the hell was J.D.?!
The crimson path led around the corner to the gym where the music was the
loudest. Veronica winced at the screaming female voice that poured out of the
speakers and wrapped around her pulsing eardrums. "I wanna go home," she
thought.
"Ah ha! There you are!" he cried.
Veronica turned to see J.D. run up to her from down the hall.
"Thought I lost you for a moment there," he rasped, raising his eyebrows
and grinning like the Devil. Veronica grimaced at him as he linked his arm with
hers.
"You're not dressed!" she cried over the music, eyeing J.D.'s normal
attire: black jeans, black coat, black tank with its low neckline, and a red
shirt open at all of its buttons.
"Of course I'm dressed!" he hollered over the noise. "Do I look naked to
you?"
Veronica shook her head in confusion as they walked up to the gym. She
could see the crowds of people dancing and milling about. Above the door was a
banner that proclaimed the theme:
"A Night In Hell: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here."
Veronica's mouth dropped open in utter bewilderment, she looked to J.D..
"Nice," he snickered, nodding in devious approval.
Veronica winced and glanced around as they entered. It almost looked like
a normal prom with the exception of the lives flames dancing up the walls, and
the caged, skinless bodies hanging from the ceiling. Veronica jerked back-her
mouth dropping to the floor in horror.
"C'mon," J.D. urged, pulling on her arm. "It's not that bad, they had a
low budget this year."
"Are you fucking crazy!?" she cried, resisting him. J.D. raised his
eyebrows, pulling his long hair away from his face to reveal the distinct
widow's peak on his forehead.
"According to you I am," he retorted wickedly.
"Veronica!" Heather McNamara called from across the way. Veronica spun
around as J.D. lit a cigarette with some of the flames crawling up a nearby
wall. Heather ran up to them looking like a sugar plum fairy in her sparkling,
yellow gown. She seemed completely oblivious to the hellish décor.
"Veronica," she breathed, "we all thought you weren't coming!"
"Yeah, well . . ." Veronica stammered, still dreadfully confused.
"J.D. swore he'd get you here," Heather went on nonchalantly. "I mean,
what would the prom be without you?"
Veronica just stood there in shocked silence. Heather turned to J.D.,
batting her eyes. "I like your hair," she said sheepishly.
Veronica shot J.D. a sharp look and then whipped her head back to Heather.
"Ah! Thank you!" J.D. rasped in emphatic delight. He grinned like the
Devil at Veronica, and Heather blushed as he took her hand.
"May I?" he purred.
"Sure!" Heather replied in her feathery voice, "Just please, don't kill
me."
J.D. turned to Veronica, who looked as though she had just swallowed a
fly. "Excuse us darling," he said, "we'll be right back."
Veronica watched as J.D. and Heather disappeared into the dancing crowd.
It took her a long few moments before she actually decided to move again.
"This isn't happening," she groaned, looking around for the nearest empty
corner. She started making her way through the clusters of familiar people and
saw Betty Finn standing by the punch bowl, looking very out of place. Veronica
hurried over to her.
"Betty!" she cried, "God, am I glad to see you!"
Betty smiled broadly, pushing her round-rimmed glasses up her nose.
"Veronica, thank God you're here, I feel like such an idiot. I didn't
even bring a date. How pathetic is that?"
Veronica laughed, "Betty, please, that should be the last of your
problems! God, look at this place!"
Betty shrugged, "Looks like hell, doesn't it," she sighed, "They didn't
have the best prom committee this year. Heather Duke and her friends were more
concerned with their gowns than with decorating."
Veronica winced, and glanced around at the dangling bodies. She looked
back to Betty who was staring dreamily into the gyrating mob.
"Betty, are you alright?"
Betty blinked, innocently. "I'm just so bored with my life, Veronica,"
she sighed. "I always seem to be on the outside looking in."
Veronica laughed awkwardly. "I always seem to be on the inside trying to
get out."
The two girls remained silent for a few moments as the music blasted, and
then Betty said: "J.D. looks great."
Veronica's breath caught in her throat.
"I'm so glad you two got back together. He seemed so unstable without
you, Veronica, trying to blow up the school and all."
Veronica shook her head. "Betty, J.D. is dead," she declared.
"Aren't we all, Veronica?" remarked an-all-too-familiar voice. Veronica
whirled around quickly: Heather Chandler was standing behind her, as regal as
ever in a huge red gown that looked as though it had just stepped from the
Elizabethan Age.
Veronica's eyes grew wide, and Heather smiled knowingly, her chiseled face
glowing with wicked intentions.
"Have a drink, Veronica," she offered in her devious, commanding tone.
Veronica watched as Heather bent to spoon her some punch that was as blue
as the Hull Clean J.D. had given Heather four weeks ago. Veronica felt her
stomach churn with dread.
"I think I'll pass," she said warily.
Heather shrugged, a nasty smile playing over her luscious, red lips:
"Pity."
Veronica scowled nervously, and looked around for someone, anyone, to save
her from Heather. Much to her dismay she saw Kurt and Ram emerge from the crowd
of flailing people. They were both in their socks and underwear, their purple-
blue bodies bare and corpse like, with their fatal bullet wounds fully exposed.
Veronica shrank back against the buffet table as the two dead jocks approached
nonchalantly. Heather Chandler grinned like the Cheshire Cat.
"Hi Veronica," Ram said in his deep, moronic voice.
Veronica swallowed hard, her face draining of all its color. She looked
from Kurt, to Ram, to Heather and wished she could just disappear. They all
seemed to loom over her as though they were the judge and jury of her fate.
"Ah! Punch!" Ram cried, happily diving for the bowl. He thrust his cup
in, splashing the unappetizing blue stuff all over the table, and then guzzled
it greedily. Veronica watched in horror as most of the liquid drizzled out of
the open bullet wound in Ram's neck. It trickled down his muscular chest,
rolled all the way down his stomach, and stained the cotton fabric of his white
briefs.
Veronica's heart pounded in her throat. She looked to Kurt, who was
scrutinizing her coldly, and then to Heather, who was reveling in the guilt
Veronica was drowning in, and decided that she had to get away from them before
they lynched her. Without an explanation Veronica bolted off into the crowd,
pushing desperately past dancing people.
"What's wrong, Veronica?" Heather taunted after her, her voice fading as
Veronica delved further and further into the swarm of students.
Where the hell was J.D.?
It seemed like an eternity before Veronica broke into another clearing
where the music seemed to die down and the sneering voices of nearby kids faded
in. Veronica stopped short to survey the scene before her. Heather Duke,
Courtney, and a slew of others were gathered beneath one of the dangling cages
In their hands they held flaming torches and great, long, pointy spears. They
were shouting out strange, derogatory things as they jabbed, and burned at the
cage. Someone inside was screaming at them to stop.
Veronica squinted hard; trying to see who it was Heather and her little
demons were tormenting. She could see someone's skinny arms waving helplessly
through the charred, metal bars. And as she watched more closely, she could see
the whole person cramped inside, and fighting to break free.
It was Stuart Salinger.
Veronica gasped. She tried to scream at Heather to stop; but she couldn't
even hear herself over the chaos. And then Principal Gowan took the podium,
turning on the microphone which screeched loudly through the membrane of the
speakers.
"And now," he announced grandly, "the moment you've all been waiting
for!"
Veronica turned away from the torture of poor Stuart. She could vaguely
make out the figure of the principal on stage.
"It's time to announce the prom King and Queen!"
An uproar took hold of the entire gym. Veronica felt some sort of dread
unfurl deep within her gut.
"The envelope please, Ms. Phlegm," Gowan said. Veronica glanced around.
Heather Duke had stopped jabbing Stuart with her spear to listen excitedly, and
somewhere across the gym Heather Chandler stood expectantly, flanked by Kurt and
Ram, still in their underwear. Principal Gowan ripped open the envelope and
grinned broadly. He leaned close to the microphone and a hush swept over the
crowd wrought with anticipation.
"I now present Westerburg's King and Queen," he cried flamboyantly:
"Jason Dean and Veronica Sawyer!"
* * *
Veronica bolted upright in bed, sweat pouring down her face, her heart
pounding violently against her breast bone. She was completely tangled in her
soaked sheets, and her bathrobe was strangling her. She tried to catch her
breath, turning her nightmare over and over again in her head.
The prom from Hell.
"Oh, God," Veronica moaned, looking around her bedroom. It was morning.
The sun filtered through her open window, lending an air of comfort to all of
her surroundings. A fresh breeze swirled around her flustered figure.
Slowly Veronica unwound herself from her bed and got up. She was alone.
Completely and utterly alone.
"A dream!" she gasped, "It was all a dream."
She felt queasy, as if her head had just stepped backwards off an upside-
down roller coaster. She tired to block out the spinning images of Kurt, Ram,
Heather and Stuart Salinger roasting over and open fire. But it was slightly
difficult.
Prom from Hell.
Veronica scoffed at the thought and crossed her room to get dressed. She
could still smell the faint aroma of cigarette smoke and she stepped on a
Marlboro butt on her way to the closet.
"Shit," she muttered, "shit."
* * *
"Dear Diary,
It's Monday morning and everybody looks as though they're permanently hung
over. Apparently the prom was a great success, though I've heard varying
stories. The prom I went to was hell; but that's typical of nightmares,
especially ones wrought with J.D.'s twisted sense of humor. Speaking of whom, I
haven't seen him since Friday night. I'm beginning to wonder if all he wanted
to do was take me to the prom-wouldn't it be nice if it were that simple?
"I bumped into Betty Finn on the way to school this morning. She said the
prom she went to was for cool kids only, or at least that was the way it seemed.
According to her Stuart Salinger was there. Betty crinkled her nose and said:
"He's trying to be J.D. isn't he?"
"I rolled my eyes, she said not to take it to heart, that he only has a
huge crush on me. Gee, thanks Betty.
"Poor Stuart, though. Betty said that Heather and her minions picked up
on Stuart's fixation with J.D. and used it to ridicule him. He was totally
devastated. They tormented him about everything, his coat, his hair, his face,
me. They made him feel like shit. They said he could never be J.D. no matter
what he did. According to Betty, Stuart ran from the prom crying." -Veronica
Sawyer.
* * *
Veronica dragged herself towards the cafeteria half asleep behind her
sunglasses. It did bother her that she hadn't seen J.D. since Friday night,
though it had been a peaceful weekend. The early morning sunlight flooded the
main hallway of Westerburg, bouncing off the shiny floor and ricocheting off the
dark lockers. Veronica squinted, and entered the caf. Everyone was sleep
walking. It was the last week of class and finals pressure was on.
"I should've stayed home," Veronica grumbled, sitting down at an empty
table, and searching her bag for an Aspirin.
Stuart Salinger walked in moments later. Even after what had happened at
the prom, Stuart refused to shed his long, black coat. Those who had been
present on Friday night snickered derisively as he walked by; but his back was
ironically straighter than usual. Veronica watched with mild interest as
Stuart purposefully sat down at Heather Duke's table, unoccupied by Heather at
that moment.
"What's he up to?" Veronica wondered.
She watched as Stuart shuffled through his black school bag and then
glanced up in her direction. They locked gazes for a moment, and then Heather
Duke walked in with Courtney and a few others. Even at this ungodly hour in the
morning they were loud and obnoxious.
Veronica took off her sunglasses and held her head. She considered
getting up and leaving; but Heather's snobby voice grabbed her interest:
"Oh look who suddenly thinks he's cool," she quipped.
"Stuart, why are you at our table?" Courtney sneered, "losers sit in the
back."
Veronica raised her eyebrow, Stuart wasn't moving. In fact, he looked
quite relaxed staring up defiantly at the group of monsters.
"Finally decide to grow some balls?" one of them mocked.
"No, he still thinks he's J.D.," another jeered.
Stuart frowned, his lips quavering.
"Are you going to cry again Stuart?" Heather teased.
The clique laughed, Veronica shook her head in disgust.
"J.D. you can blow up the school now," she whispered half-jokingly.
Trembling almost violently now, Stuart stood up and pulled a long revolver
from his coat pocket.
"Shit!" Veronica thought. Of course! Stuart had everything else of
J.D.'s, why not the gun as well?!
"Damnit Stuart, what the hell are you doing?!" Heather growled. Stuart
didn't hear her, he cocked the gun. Heather started to panic.
"Stuart put the gun down!" she screamed. But Stuart didn't listen. He
aimed the gun directly at Heather. Veronica jumped up from her table:
"Stuart stop!" she cried; but it was too late. He pulled the trigger.
The bullet crashed through Heather's cranium, taking some of her brains with it
out the other end. Blood spattered all over Courtney and the others, who were
too shocked to do anything. For a moment that seemed like an eternity
everything and everyone was silent. Heather collapsed to the floor in slow
motion, her red blood invisible on her red clothing.
Veronica stared in horror at Stuart, who took a moment to stare back
before he aimed the gun at Courtney. Courtney's eyes widened in terror: "Not
me!!!" she screamed. "Not me!!!"
Boom.
And then all hell broke loose. People started flying for the doors.
Everyone was screaming and shouting; but Stuart remained calm, and
systematically began to pick off other members of Heather's clique before they
could reach the exits. They sprawled to the ground in mid-stride, heads and
torsos exploding with the impact of bullets. Pools of blood crawled along the
floor, collecting around the legs of tables and chairs.
"Oh God!!" someone was screaming, "Oh God!!"
Veronica froze in total disbelief. This couldn't be happening, not after
all she went through to save this lousy school from the last psychotic killer!
Stuart just continued shooting, he wounded the Quarterback of the football
team, he shot Betty Finn in the arm. She screamed and dove under the table, her
glasses skittering across the floor.
"Betty!" Veronica cried, finding the strength at last to move. She
started pushing past the fleeing students, trying to get to Betty when she
collided head on with Stuart. Her horrified eyes met his cool ones and she
stumbled back.
"Stuart, no!" she shrieked as he turned the gun on her.
For a moment he looked sad, he looked like he was going to stop, but then
his face hardened and he cocked the gun.
"Stuart, please," Veronica moaned, "Stop!"
A tear slipped from his brown eye, and then Veronica heard two loud
explosions. For a split second she remembered shooting J.D. in the boiler room.
She remembered how he left a bloody handprint on the pipes before he collapsed
to the ground. And then the searing pain ripped through Veronica's abdomen,
ravaging her insides. She felt herself falter; but her eyes never left
Stuart's.
"Damn you," she murmured, her legs giving way beneath her. The cold
ground came up to meet her, and then the world began to spin to a stop.
Everything went silent, and Stuart stepped over her.
Veronica felt her warm blood gushing out of her body and flooding the
floor around her. From her vantage point on the ground she could count maybe
eight bodies. She closed her eyes as her breathing slowed.
"Damn," she thought, "I knew I should've stayed home today."
* * *
Veronica stood there, as much as ghost as her late boyfriend, and looked
around completely astonished. Blood and dead bodies were splattered all over
the caf. It was as if she were standing in the middle of one of those chopper
flicks, swamped in gore. Hell, her own body was lying at her feet!
Veronica looked down.
"Oh, my God!" she cried, "I'm dead! I can't believe it! I'm fucking
dead!"
She dropped to her knees but she couldn't bring herself to touch her own
corpse lying there like and broken, bleeding doll.
"Stuart put the gun down," she heard Betty Finn sob from across the room.
"You've done enough, just put the gun down."
Veronica looked up. Betty was sitting on the floor holding her bloody
arm, tears streaming down her face; yet she looked as though she were in total
control. A complete hero of an emergency situation, something Veronica had been
only a few weeks earlier. There was a group of kids that Stuart had trapped,
all huddled in the corner.
"Put the gun down, Stuart," Betty continued. "Please put the gun down."
Stuart faltered, and then looked around. It seemed to dawn on him what he
had done. His eyes settled over Veronica's body and his mouth dropped open.
Slowly his fingers unclenched their grip on the gun. It fell and clattered
loudly to the ground.
Veronica furrowed her brow in anger: "You stupid fuck!" she screamed.
Stuart couldn't hear her.
"NOW, you're SORRY!!? I'm already dead you asshole!!! Why couldn't you
be fucking sorry BEFORE you pulled the trigger!?!?"
Stuart collapsed in a chair, blood smeared all over his skinny face. The
kids in the corner ran screaming out the door. Betty stood up cautiously,
gripping her arm as blood streamed from the wound. She was covered in red.
Seconds later the cops burst in.
"Holy shit!" Officer McCord cried.
"Jesus Christ!" Officer Milner yelped.
Their eyes simultaneously narrowed in on Stuart and they pulled their guns
clumsily. Stuart paid them no heed; he just sat there in a daze, completely
dumbfounded at the whole thing. Veronica fumed.
"I'm DEAD!!!" she roared, wishing she could beat the shit out of Stuart
Salinger even though she couldn't. "I'm fucking dead!!!"
Officers Milner and McCord pounced on Stuart as though they were the
heroes. They fumbled all the way as they tried to latch the handcuffs around
his bony wrists. Stuart didn't resist, although the police acted as if he were
fighting them tooth and nail.
"It's a fucking blood bath!" McCord shrieked when he realized he was
getting blood all over his shoes. He jumped out of the puddle as though it had
bit him, and tried to wipe his foot off on the seat next to Heather Duke's dead
body.
"My God why??" Milner implored, looking around in total disbelief. He
scratched under his cap, his face twisted in utter bewilderment.
Stuart made no response.
"You're in big trouble, mister!" Milner cried. "Very Big Trouble! McCord
call for back-up!"
McCord got on his radio. Veronica gaped at the two officers.
"Take him in!!" she shouted. "The son of a bitch killed me, throw his ass
in jail!!"
Milner shook his head. "The Devil made him do it, that has to be it!
He's only a fucking kid! The Devil had to have made him do it!"
Veronica frowned even deeper as she stared at the mess and listened to the
cops make excuses for a mass murderer.
"This didn't just happen!" she moaned, "I can't be dead!"
"Well at least you didn't spread yourself half-way across the state!"
J.D. announced from somewhere else in the room.
Veronica whirled around and saw him sitting in the back of the caf with
his feet casually up on one of the tables.
"Quite a show though, wasn't it?" he grinned, pulling his fingers back
through his short, black hair.
Veronica's mouth fell open. She gaped at him as everything came swirling
into focus for the first time-J.D. raised his eyebrows.
"YOU!!!!" she shrieked.
J.D. got out of his seat and took a bow. He started towards her, viewing
the lovely array of dead bodies with pleasure as he did so. Veronica realized
with horror that this had been the plan all along. Everything in between was
just a distraction so he could get away with it. Unfinished business.
"Now you see, Veronica," J.D. declared, "The way I would have done it, it
would have just incinerated everyone; but what Stuart did," J.D. bent over
Heather's corpse, "Look at this! It's perfecto!!"
He grinned up at Veronica, his black eyes dancing wildly. "I couldn't
have done it better myself!"
"That's where you've been all weekend!" Veronica cried. "You've been with
Stuart! He can see you too, can't he?! You put him up to this! Didn't you!"
J.D. shrugged. "I do what I can."
"Godamnit J.D.!" Veronica yelled. "You had him kill me you son of a
bitch!!"
"Oh Veronica!" J.D. rasped dramatically, as if she were ruining his
moment. He stepped over Heather's body and left no footprints in the puddles of
Heather's blood.
"I didn't make him kill you, I merely suggested it!"
Veronica glared at him hard, seething with anger. "Why?" she demanded.
J.D. grinned. "Color me bitter, darling," he replied with delight as he
reached around her waist and pulled her close. Veronica tried to resist him,
but J.D. forced her into a slow, victory dance amidst the corpses of their
slaughtered classmates.
"Dance floor's a little crowded here," he mused, clasping her cold hand
with his own.
Veronica scowled at him. "You fucking bastard," she cursed. "You think
you've won? You haven't won!"
J.D. furrowed his brow inquisitively. "Of course I win!" he cried,
"You're dead! Everybody's dead! Now all this school has left is Betty Finn for
Chrissakes!"
Veronica cast a glance at Betty, who was crouching down by Veronica's body
crying. Betty the next Heather?
"The ship's gonna sail, Veronica," J.D. stated, holding her tightly in his
arms, and rocking her to inaudible music. "It's just a question of who's at
the helm."
"It was the Devil!" Officer Milner cried, as he walked in a stupor around
the cafeteria. "Godamnit!"
Veronica exchanged glances with J.D., he grinned.
"What's in a name?" he mused, "The important thing is-I win!"
"You do not!" Veronica shouted, still dancing with him.
"I do too!"
"Do not!"
"Do too!"
"You do not, you fucking asshole!" she cried.
J.D. laughed. "We argue as if we're married already! Jesus, Veronica,
this could be romantic if you'd just shut up!"
Veronica grimaced. "Fuck you J.D., I may be dead; but there's no way in
hell I'm going to spend my eternity with you!"
J.D. smiled knowingly and nuzzled her dark hair. Veronica didn't pull
away, she felt so lost-unfortunately J.D. was the only familiar territory
around. He rocked her and raised his eyebrows.
"Que sera sera," he purred. "Whatever will be, will be."
Story copyrights Elisa Higgins 1999 e-mail scarlett@li.net