The boy squinted.
"Decapitation?" he asked, in a voice like a power drill boring through bone, "Isn't that messy?"
Very true; Johnny peered over his laced fingers.
"Yes, but effective. Much preferable to the alternative."
"Huh." Shifting his cardboard box onto one arm, the boy scratched at his hairline -- it moved oddly, wiglike. "Squishing's better for that, or exploding." His eyes lit up. "Or replacing their organs with THINGS!"
Organ replacing was definitely out. It was digusting enough to handle slippery human-bits, to watch them drift in hazy formaldehyde or lay gelatinous on the floor, never mind putting a body back together. And exploding got boring after the first few hundred times, predictable as it was.
"Squishing, hmm." Johnny stared out over the guard rail, at all the little winking lights of the city. "I guess I could find a steamroller somewhere. Wouldn't that be fun? All that human sewage squelching under the weight of the roller, slowly, so every bone cracks and grinds to powder. They'd have the time to think and remember, and regret every detail of their horrible, hateful lives." He flashed a grin to the boy. "And then I could go through the drive-thru for curly fries!"
"Yeah, sure." The boy looked back to Johnny, and adjusted his grip on the box -- it looked heavy. "Well, I have to go, things to do, plans to unleash, but--" and he grinned suddenly, glass-jagged, "You're not that bad for a human."
Oh, the child had no idea what he was talking about, no idea of humanity at its ugliest, Johnny had rotted through just like everyone else. So he just stared as the boy chattered something about being a human as well, and kept staring as the boy strode off around the car, into the night. What was his name? Zim? That was a good name.
Johnny looked back to the stars. They were wonderfully bright tonight, this clear and cloudless night, cool like the first stirrings of autumn. Squishing and curly fries; he began to smile a little. There were his plans for the night, all wrapped up neatly. How clever Zim was, and how helpful -- maybe he could be a new friend.