JTHM: A CONTINUATION, TAKE 2
Author's Very Important Moment of Glorious Rambling:
Hello, reader! Or person who came here by mistake! That I don't really know. As you can tell, this is a sequel to a previous story by me. If you just start reading this, you will become very confused, your brain will turn into a mushroom, and parts of your body will begin to sprout unusual fungus. I warn you! Read "JtHM: A Continuation" before reading the second Part! It is only logical! *nods*
Flashback
Chapter One, Part One: What To Do?
o-o-o
" Devi's lost her memory!" Johnny raved. " Oh, this is both blessed and terrible news!"
Squee stared at him blankly.
" She's looking for revenge. Don't you get it, Squee? If she remembers, she's going to want to kill me!" Johnny looked oddly satisfied. " Just like that, we're enemies."
" Maybe she wants revenge against Ian." Squee offered.
" Oh, yeah, okay." Johnny muttered sarcastically. " There's an idea. What I did to her was worse. Much worse."
" Sorry." Squee whimpered. " I was just trying to help a little."
" But!" Johnny grinned devilishly, ignoring Squee. " There is a way to make her be on my side. Simply, I just choose to make her believe that I'm her friend. And I am. I love her. I really do." He paced the room. " I'll explain that she wants revenge on society, on how everyone she's ever known screwed her over. I'll make her want to stand by my side, be my Queen of Evil."
" Nny, that's bad! You'd be lying to her!" Squee shouted.
" I'll tell her, of course, that I tried to kill her. I won't hide that. I'll explain to her about her boyfriend. But I'll leave some stuff out. You know, twist it even more to my favor." Johnny said. " I'll give her a taste of her past, but I can't let her know much."
" Oh." Squee looked downcast. " But why can't you just help her back to normal?"
" Then I'd lose her forever." Johnny said. " This is my last chance to make her be mine!"
Squee shivered. " You shouldn't lie to her."
" I won't. I'll be selectively truthful." Johnny laughed to himself. " Yes, I'll explain the past to her. But I'll make her want revenge on others. Expulse her fury on those that drove her to her mental corruption. Yes, she'd be just like me. She can even be the next flusher."
" Flusher?" Squee whispered. " Like the one on the toilet?"
" No, no!" Johnny exclaimed. " Someone who's here only to get rid of assholes. Sort of nature's way to even the tides. And she's the next one, and what better way can she be about it than from an ex-flusher?"
Squee didn't seem to understand, but he nodded anyway.
" And you, Squee." Johnny sighed. " You'll be holding us back. Yes, chances are, you'll really hold us back at times. But we'll manage, you know? You'll get used to us. We'll be good to you. Who knows, you're probably destined to be a flusher anyway. What with your childhood and all."
Squee felt the hairs on his neck rise in fear. " I don't want to be one, though!"
Johnny grinned. " Ah, but its fate. This is all coming together marvelously." He paced frantically. " Yes, I can see it now. Devi and I, both fed up with society, killing brutally, happy together. And to think that a few weeks ago I wished to kill her to relieve myself of emotion. What a fool I was. Emotion is what drives us all, it's what makes us do these things. If I were free of emotion, I would lose the desire to kill in the first place."
" I… I guess that makes sense." Squee concurred.
Johnny grinned. " To think that I could ever be satisfied in such a way."
" So you're happy?" Squee wondered.
" I'm happy." Johnny looked out the window thoughtfully. " Dreadfully happy. It all came together in the end, didn't it? It all makes sense. The flusher order… we'll be a Flusher Family, all of us, together!"
Squee looked frightened. " But I don't want to be part of your family!"
" You'll get used to it. Life throws you lemons, but eventually you'll stop throwing them back. You'll make lemonade." Johnny threw his hands up into the air and laughed. " Yes, this not an ending! This is a beginning! An awful, horrid, bloodthirsty beginning!"
Squee backed up against the wall, looking afraid. He picked up his Shmee doll and hugged it. Squee knew a few things already about life, though. Johnny and Devi were driven by fury inside of them, but they wouldn't harm someone they truly loved. Johnny's feelings had ripened and had been cultivated to the point where he couldn't kill Devi, no matter how hard he tried. Devi's feelings for Johnny had disintegrated from pure hate to mild dislike, and after losing her memory, she'd learn to even love him in return.
Chapter One, Part 2
Where Johnny Tells Devi Things
Devi had never felt so frightened in her life.
So far, things have been going seriously downhill. She didn't know what it was like before, before she just freakishly lost her memory, but she felt pretty freaked out anyway.
" I swear, I don't know where I live!" She cried out to the policeman hovering beside her car door.
" Look, lady, I've heard excuses before, but that's just lame." The cop cried out. " This is a school road. You're driving seventy miles an hour!"
" That's absurd! I've only been on the road for five minutes!" Devi cried out. " An hour…" She muttered.
" You could at least try to talk me out of it. Flash your tits or something." The police man continued. " I could settle for that. You don't have to lie."
" So this is the society I grew up in." Devi sighed. " The society that ripened my mind. Well, no wonder I lost my memory."
" Ho ho ho! Lost your memory, right?" The policeman tilted his cap to her. " That's gotta be the damn worst excuse I've heard in ages. Look, just give me a house address so I can note this."
Devi blinked uncertainly and her mind spewed forth an address: " 777 North Swamp Terrace."
" Way out in the slums, huh?" The cop flipped his notebook closed. " You get yourself home and lay down. I think you're a bit, er, melted in the head."
" Thanks. I…" She slammed the car door on the cop's fingers. " … Will!" She smashed her foot against the pedal and raced forwards. The sound of the cop's flesh tearing filled her ears. She turned and saw him in a heap on the ground, his fingers clipped clear off.
She sped down the road, back to house 777. It was the only thing her mind seemed to register clearly. And the creepy Johnny that lived there, the only person she could remember clearly, and the little Squee boy living with him.
Devi wondered about what had just happened.
Was I murderer? Is this just a convenient little thing my mind came up with? Just… erasing my memory? Erasing my guilt? Or was I a victim of some serious trauma?
She knew that whatever had happened to her, it was bad.
A few minutes later, she was pulling to a stop in front of House 777. She climbed out of her car again and knocked loudly.
The door flew open. There he was again, Johnny.
" Couldn't remember my way home." Devi whimpered, and burst into tears. " I'm so scared!" She shrieked, thumping her fist down on his chest. She pounded at him for a minute or two before he backed away. Far, far away, until his back was up against the opposite wall.
" Yeah, nice to see you too." Johnny replied, his eyes wide in surprise. " So this is all you can remember?"
" Yes. It's funny, isn't it?" Devi sobbed, stumbling into the house. She cleared some rubble off a cardboard box and plopped herself down on it. " Tell me! You know! Fuck my pride! Just tell me everything! I want to fix whatever's wrong with me!"
" Tell you everything?" Johnny asked nervously, tapping his fingers against the battered-looking wall. " Everything? Are you sure?"
" Yes. And tell me who the fuck you are to me. Honestly." She whispered.
" Well, I'm not related to you. I hope." He laughed nervously, saw her pissed expression, and continued awkwardly: " I was sort of your boyfriend. But then I tried to kill you."
" What are you, some kind of funny guy?" She spat. " Get serious here!"
" I'm serious. I pulled out two knives and suggested that we kill one another. Sort of to preserve the moment." He twiddled with a button on his pants. " I thought it was romantic."
Devi was considering leaving very quickly. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the door was wide open. But where would she go? She had no place to go. This was the only place she knew, the only place where the people knew her.
" But, you see, you beat the shit out of me. So, in turn, I suppose you tried to kill me as well. So we're even."
" So I guess we're both psychos."
" I guess we are. Both." He liked the sound of that. Tying their names together in a very informal way with just one word. " Both".
" So what else do you know about me?" Devi asked.
" You had the worst jobs possible. You answered phones at a fast food joint; you worked in a bookstore; you babysat. Your life was a miserable, dreary mess." Johnny said thoughtfully. " All your previous boyfriends were losers. I witnessed one of them, actually. In the middle of a date with you, he jumped up and ran to the bathroom, screaming, Somebody put shit in my pants!"
" I kind of see where this is going." Devi rubbed her temples.
" You had bad luck with everything. Most recently you learned that some guy dated you, while cheating on you, and also took things from you and sold them to get more money." Johnny was seeing the effects the talk was having on Devi. She looked angry: her jaw set rigidly in a slant, as if she were ready to shriek and pummel something.
" And then I just lost it?" Devi asked.
" Well, things happened in between. Me killing your boyfriend among others." Johnny rattled out. " But yeah, in the end, you just lost it."
" But what about my childhood? My friends? Where I live?" Devi cried.
" I don't know." Johnny replied. " I never got around to stalking you home."
She sighed. " For once, I wish I had a stalker. Even though I HATE stalkers."
" Oh, unlike the rest of the world's love for stalkers?" Johnny exclaimed sarcastically.
She grinned wryly.
He sneered sarcastically right back.
Their eyes were locked.
" Mr. Scary Neighbor Man, your toilet's all plugged up. There's dookie on the floor and I'm scared!" Squee was shouting from the bathroom down the hallway.
Johnny blinked and shrugged. " Was that a romantic moment there? I don't really know."
Devi laughed uncertainly. " So I guess I'm stuck with you, then? Since you don't really know anything else about me."
" I guess. There must be some reason why you only remember me, right?" Johnny asked.
" Of course." Devi nodded.
" Excuse me while I, erm… help with stuff." Johnny jumped up in a jerky sort of motion and ran from the room to help Squee.
Devi crumpled the tissue in her hands and threw it across the room, where it landed on a dark mark on the floor that looked suspiciously like dried blood. If her only 'friend' as of now was a crazy anorexic-looking spaz, what's to say about her own life? She was probably as insane as him. Some sort of cult-loving, people-stabbing freak.
If that was so, then perhaps a budding partnership with Johnny wasn't such a bad idea. Perhaps trying to adjust to a life that she figured was like her previous one would let her remember the past. She'd kill to remember her past. Oddly enough, she'd be doing a lot of killing soon. Very soon. Aren't I an evil narrator? MWA HA HA!
Ooh! Peanuts!
o-o-o
Meanwhile… in the Author's Life… Don't You Miss ME?! DON'T YA?!
The author finds herself sitting in a room, with white-painted walls, face-to-face with a gigantic pickle tree. Why? Because she said so! And because she invented pickle trees! And marshmallow bushes! And many other glorious, if not legendary, inventions!
So the author is wondering if perhaps her latest sleepless night had finally taken its toll on her brain cells. Since she was one of the few girls in school that didn't really have an air pocket between her ears, she is incapable of screaming " Like, Oh my GAWD!" and passing out in fear. Instead, the author is seriously pissed.
What? She's pissed? The reader is thinking. She's got a pickle machine! I'd hang an old lady with a toddler's intestines for one of them things!
The author is upset though because she knows her first chapter of the sequel of her story is morbidly short compared to her previous chapters; and she knows she must finish typing it and add some senseless blather to make it all interesting.
Her cheeks are actually penetrating a vestige of a blush, which suggests that her starved little body is still filled with precious blood. She knows not what to do! Her magical elbow protector of purity is very far away at this moment, and all the muses in her head simply won't decide what to do!
Finally, one thing is clear: She realizes she has created 275 more words for her story and therefore reached her goal word count! And just through this one story! What else could she add?
Ooh! The answer rings clear, and she adds:
Review or Die! See you in the next Chapter!