Title: Parasite
Summary: Kenny finds his way back to that town, and keeps hearing "the world is a milieu built of only gods and suckers." In delusions and dreams, the past is eternal, and the obsession alive. [Multi-chapter fic; Kyle centric.]
AN: :D I have nothing to say here. (That's a first.) You'd think there would be some law against the use of a drugged-up Kenny, but he's the most prone to self-destructive behavior, and easily within range of drugs. D: I don't know if it is a cliché or a trademark of normalcy, which is, in some respects, truly terrible for his character.
. . . All disclaimers are acknowledged. Oh, and the chapter starts out with a flashback some two years prior.
The car, black as midnight, rippled up the pavement and shuddered to silence around him. Back alleys in front of the abandoned bar writhed in his near-drunken stupor, witness to his isolation, as the driver's shades-- their dark surface bending moonlight-- whispered of style and tinted glass. The doors cracked open, timeless rock and roll waxing their praises in a hymn of slurring language and lyric. He was the foreigner, representative of the wealthy and lost on their broken streets, its lamp light strangled with age and close to death. His suit was open at the collar, completing the forgotten image with a soft, rounded face and a mane of cheerful brown hair. The eyes, sharp and pervasive, glistened inky black beneath the shadow, and pictures whirled in and out of focus while the memories burned red beneath a poor man's puzzled stare.
His situation must have been pitiful: he was thrown from his man-made sanctuary--- holistic in that it was haunted by whispers of cynicism and the scent of alcohol, but he returned to it all the same-- to the dust and concrete, left to rot in a pile of limbs. Each blurred corner slowly hazed to clarity, the customary, urban decay a painful echo of failed edicts and vows not to fuck up. "Kenny?" The voice was ancient; not in its tone or years, but nostalgia, "I didn't expect to see you. Come on, get in-- it's not like you've seen anything like this before. Trust me, you'll love it." The dirt was his villain, kept at bay in the midst of childhood pride: 'be clean, and you are no ones mirror. No fathers here.' Forever the cosmic joke, Kenny McCormick was a spoiled man these days.
He managed to stand, and replaced his too-old, weary mask with a Cheshire grin. Kindness was a welcome escape, thus he gathered himself from hell's rose path, and melted into the perfect, unfamiliar gray of would-be Edens.
Porch lights darted in the afar, trapped in evening dark like forgotten stars; their owners came into focus, cookie-cutter houses dressed in crisp paint with bronze numbers tacked to their walls, but no personality. Dirty blond spilled past his face and barely brushed his shoulders, a natural impassivity in his hazy blue-gray stare as he dug his hands into his black leather jacket. Snow dripped from the gutters, its white dusted earthy brown, and whimpered beneath his boots as he made his way across the street and abandoned the safety of the lamplight. His target was an olive two-story on the far side of their would-be avenue, standing still and unchanged, as if stolen from a photograph.
He sifted through his coat pockets, the cigarettes heavy against his waist, and pulled the Camels free in a fit of nerves. His finger found the lighter—a vestige of his youth, colored orange and crimson— and he clicked it in a gauche chain before the fire waltzed up.
". . . Shit," he muttered darkly, tentative and in no hurry to find his way to the door bell. ''No time like the present' my ass.' It sang somewhere inside, Kenny spectator to a series of jarring, high-pitched croaks followed by intense silence.
'. . . Maybe I missed him.' He shivered as the lock clicked into place, shadows trembling behind the frosted windows, and recognized that some part of him wanted to run.
"—Yeah?" The sensation of a changing world forced him to take another drag, long and profound. He remembered all the blurred lines of adolescence, and only saw him as soft and rose-colored, caught in the midst of growth. Kenny understood that they weren't fifteen anymore, but he didn't have an imagination near colorful enough to mimic reality. Kyle's face was sharp, the features distinct as if cut from marble, with a mop of auburn curls tumbling past his neck and jaw line. He was taller than him by a well-rounded two inches or so, dressed in jeans, some olivine hoodie, and a gray t-shirt. He carried an over-hanging sense of lethargy, but he had the same stinging clarity in his eyes, colored electric brown with amber sparking at the capillary zone.
"God, it has been awhile," it was said to no one, Kyle arching an eyebrow, ". . . Man."
"Ah, great—" his cynicism was cut short, Kenny exhaling another cloud's worth of smoke.
"I'm Kenny," the validation rolled awkwardly off his tongue; he'd never expected to see South Park, let alone Kyle, again.
He was slow to process that an old friend was in his doorway, and examined him critically before deeming his claim legitimate, ". . . Hey, if you say so. No one would lie about being a McCormick." Kenny forced a weak smile, and Kyle, his discomfort obvious, motioned for him to come in. It was ethereal, the furniture scattered in new places and colored an array of different shades—turquoise blue seemed to be the focal point, splashed everywhere in bursts. He slumped against the wall, slipping to the floor in broken resignation, and knew that he didn't have the heart to acknowledge all the forgotten history they had.
"Sorry for coming unannounced," he let his eyes glass over, thinking of the empty room somewhere up the stairs and to the right.
"Believe me. This is the least of my problems," Kyle growled, closing him off from the rest of the world, "Damn, I let the heat out. What's up?"
"I don't know," he drawled sardonically, "Being a shithead. And yourself?"
He was exasperated, and dropped into a spacious, cushioned couch, "A ten-year disappearing act is low, Kenny. If you have something to tell me, I'm willing to hear."
"I've been high for who knows how long," Kyle managed an indolent turn of the head, and Kenny traced patterns in the tile, "It'd be a miracle if I remembered."
"No qualms with the past, present, or future," he countered morosely, "I'd love to be you."
"No, you wouldn't," he said warmly, Kyle smirking at their shared antipathy—it was familiar.
"Doing drugs was a choice," he finished coolly, spreading himself out on the loveseat like a cat, "I told you back then: 'if this is what you want, I won't be stopping you'."
"'Forty days won't break a man'," Kenny spoke to the linoleum, his voice empty, "'it was the bullet in his head'. It gave me a job, and a second fucked up family-- an escape."
"Addiction is a benign prison," Kyle's honesty could have left him bleeding on his doorstep, and Kenny watched soullessly as he drifted in and out of sympathy, ". . . Why did you believe in that fucker Kevin?"
Kenny turned his head away, the movement uncomfortable albeit brief, and knew himself a victim of circumstance and the misplaced calumniations of society, ". . . He paid my fee. Got my drugs." He listened to the wind whistle tunes in the low grass behind the windows, unnerved as their dead conversation festered and became a thing worthy of disgust. Kyle had memories of how he fell apart in high school, barely above reproach as an active associate of the suburban drug trade addicted to his own "business". Kenny recalled that, at some time in his sophomore year, he'd stopped coming completely and readily gave up all claims to a clean slate. Maybe, he mused, there was sympathy enough to let him go quietly—or, simpler still, that nothing was in their childhood world of four by then.
He strained to see beyond the harsh white walls, and wished he'd took Kevin's, "don't play with the merchandise" more seriously; as a dealer, he should have known that all real bosses have their partners tied to them in more ways then one. 'If they are stupid enough to refuse their bread, then let them have coke—they'll come back faster and with tribute to pay. It's a sin to leave a sucker with his money, and every man is a loser in disguise, even our own.' Kenny thought of it as a doctrine for the greedy.
". . . I . . ." Kyle couldn't invent any condolences, and Kenny took it as reaffirmation that personalities change very little over the years. 'Trust me; I don't deserve your understanding.' The shame alone was enough to make him choke on Kyle's words.
"Don't waste your breath on me," he said stiffly, unable to meet his eyes, "I had a hell of a time getting back here, but, like you said, druggies don't just 'drop in'. Besides, we can't say if I would've been worth much or not, you know."
He was quiet for a moment, and then managed an immaculately understanding, "Yeah." Having seen many ironies of the human condition both opted to believe that you can't tell a man how to live out his tragedies. There was beauty in letting certain things die, and Kenny wondered if either of them knew just how much. "The past's long dead."
". . . It's about your bro," Kyle's face twitched below the façade, and Kenny knew enough to realize that freshly buried emotions were resurfacing. Regretting the past indeed. He searched for the strength in his guilt, a numbed sense of obligation stringing the words together, "He's—I ran into him a while back; the kid was hanging around in Denver."
"Oh," was Kyle's transitory reply, pained even in its attempt at disregard.
"He looked messed up," he murmured to the floor, his voice brusque despite his efforts to be gentle, "I didn't know he was the same guy at first." Kyle's response was his echo, the syllables bounding from corner to crevice, but Kenny felt his stare burrow deep into his skin.
His pulse quickened, and he stifled his anxiety, "So I offered to let him stay with me. I knew what it was like to be a runaway—I couldn't forgive myself if I left him on the streets. Not like that."
Kyle finally whirled on him, his glare burning, and Kenny shrunk back from his anger, "You asshole! Why the hell didn't you fucking call us then?! My ma's in therapy because of—!"
"I hadn't spoken to you in years, man! I figured he'd go back on his own— that he was just having an off month or something!" Disgusted with himself, Kenny couldn't admit that he'd been too afraid to wander back to any ghost towns from ten years prior.
"Goddamnit!" He sneered, pacing the floorboards, and, in Kenny's opinion, keeping admirable control of his anger, "Where is he now?!"
His throat hitched, but he had no mind to force-feed him a sugar coated reply, ". . . He—sort of came with me." The lie was there despite his good intentions.
"What the fuck kind of answer is that?" He spat venom, tone harsh and staccato; Kenny stirred uneasily and felt the weight of every possible evil, his mutters of self-hatred constant reminders. These were the instances he missed being a coward completely immersed in his graven images.
"When I went back to get my fill, Ike—" Kenny began cautiously, "I was still knee-deep in shit then."
The implications registered in quick succession, his expression as lively as falling dominos; Kyle moved through dead shock, shadows of fear, and then found himself lost in something like utter repulsion. Kenny couldn't tell if his assumption was built of reflections of himself or honest-to-god reality.
"I think that," Kenny's voice was quaky, because there were no 'maybes' outside of his fantasies, "he got caught up in it."
AN: Moral of the story: Druggies have absolutely horrible judgment.
. . . Well, yes and no. ;;D: In regards to Kenny, I can't decide or I should laugh or cry for the poor thing. (If I were in Kyle's position, I would be pissed too. But alas, I am an author, and therefore a sadist unable to indulge in sympathy.) On the note of his preoccupation with cleanliness, I always found myself wondering why exactly he's the only well-kept one in his family. :D;
Reviews are greatly appreciated! (Truth be told, I'm a bit nervous as to how the content was handled. D: I could use some feedback.)