Hemoglobine
A tall man, clothes in dark colours and black steel-tipped boots, sat in his kitchen, cleaning his knives. It might have looked normal, just a man washing the kitchen knives, if it weren't for the red bodily fluid colouring the dish water. The man was humming The 1812 Ouverture. Those who knew him called him Johnny, to those who didn't he was known as 'that skinny-ass faggot', 'that wacky-looking guy', and 'goth-kinda weirdo', and lots of other, more or less unpleasant things. Johnny carefully dried each knife, putting much thought in the tiny patterns the drying-cloth created on the wet metal. Suddenly, a tortured scream echoed through the house.
"Shit. The doorbell", Johnny muttered as he got up to open the door. The horrid screams filled the house once again, followed by a childish giggle.
"Yes? Who are you and why the hell are you here?" It was a habit of Johnnny's to shout before even looking at the person who had rung the doorbell. Why bother? People have never been much to look at anyway... He realized that a young girl stood before him, and he opened the door a tiny bit more, revealing slightly more of his face than his left eye.
"Sir, my name is Gengi and I don't believe in Hell. Or Heaven, for the matter. So don't try any theological cursewords with me, it won't work." The girl was around twelve, maybe thirteen, wore oval-shaped glasses, a red backpack, a black leather jacket and buckled boots, everything tattered and quite weird-looking on such a young child.
"Well, forget about the hell-thing, then. What was so immensely funny that you had to laugh at it? Was it, perhaps, my house?" Johnny made a bold gesture at his run-down house. "Was it my personal appearance? Wait, you laughed before I opened the door, so forget that one...Was it the fact that my house's number is 777? What? Tell me!"
"Er... I'm sorry if I offended you, sir, but I just laughed at your doorbell. I find it amusing. Some say I have a twisted sense of humour, but actually, it's kinda refreshing to hear a scream instead of the usual ding-a-ling."
"Okay, so the reason you came here was to laugh at my doorbell?" Johnny was getting a bit annoyed at the girl, but also curious.
"No, sir, I came here to ask if you might have a spare room for me to use. I'm dead broke, but I could do the cleaning or something to pay back. But, judging from the nature of our conversation, you don't have a spare room, or you don't want to give it to an obnoxious kid like me. Which one is it?"
"Oh. So you're homeless, then?" Johnny, the self-declared king of witty comments, was actually unprepared for the biting cynism in her reply. That's why he only was able to utter these two horribly lame sentences (I'm not a lazy writer. Noooo, not at all... Hee hee).
"Yes, I guess you could say so." Gengi smirked.
"Well, if you actually are a homeless kid and not a horrid being from beyond our plane of existance, I might actually let you inside my house. But first, one more question: Why in h- I mean why on Earth, sorry, did you choose my house? I mean, there are plenty of houses in this neighbourhood that could house a young girl, most of them more appropriate than this."
"I guess you might think so, but actually, this house fits me to a T. If you don't mind, sir, I think I would fit in more in a rather strange house than in a normal house, since I'm not what people tend to think of as normal. Also, the people in all the other houses in this block have either made the sign of the cross upon he sight of me, shouted 'Trailer trash!' or slammed the door in my face."
"Well, pardon my rudeness. I actually haven't told you my name, which is Johnny", he said in a spooky Dracula-like voice. "Do come in."
"Perhaps... Perhaps not", Gengi replied, in a uncannily exact imitation of Bela Lugosi, complete with the accent and the hand gestures.
"What?! Make up your mind, goddammit, I'm not inviting people to my house for nothing", Johnny snapped.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Johnny. I thought you liked Dracula, so I quoted Bela."
"I do, but quit fooling around and get inside." Johnny slammed the front door open in a very violent fashion, causing the doorknob to make a crater in the wall and then bounce back shut again. "Quick! People aren't allowed to see the insides of this house unless I want them to!" He dragged her inside, just milliseconds before the slamming door would have cut of her hand. "Sorry about the door, it has a tendency for cutting off hands when slamming", Johnny explained, an apologetic frown across his face that looked horribly misplaced.
"Wait. Can I just start living here or are you going to send me on some impossible quest, like 'Disembowel three chickens and then paint The Mona Lisa with their blood and organs', or 'Find me a shrubbery'?"
"No, but that chicken thing was a great idea, maybe something to use the next time I invite a friend over", Johnny said, a big grin spread across his face, the sort of grin that looked more like "I'mma-gonna-kill-ya" than the "Let's-drink-tea-and-eat-muffins"-grin most people used.
"Aren't you gonna comment about my weird imagination or something? Most people do that", Gengi said, with a strange little smirk-frowning. (Yes. Very strange. Very strange indeed...)She slumped onto the springy couch, throwing her backpack on the floor before thinking better of it. Ka-thud-krrink! The landing backpack sounded like somebody throwing three dictionaries against the wall and a teacup dropped on the floor in horror, all mixed together.
"Fuck! What the hell was I... Jävla skithelvete! How the fuck could I ever..?" Gengi ran to her backpack, nervously skimming it through to check that nothing was broken. To Johnny's surprise, a squeal of joy escaped her. "Fuck yeah! They're still here! They survived it! Yeah!" Gengi triumphantly held up a bundle of CDs, one with the cover of a shirtless man holding a vinyl record in front of his face.
"Aren't you gonna explain where a young girl like you learnt such horrid language? And what's so precious about those discs?" Johnny asked, his face alternating between disgust, fascination and curiosity.
"They're Bauhaus discs", Gengi exclaimed, awe on her face as she looked at the bundle of discs. "If you don't know what Bauhaus is, I'm afraid that I have to leave immediatly. People without knowledge of good music annoy me to the point of self-ignition."
"Don't be silly, of course I know what Bauhaus is. I'm not completely unaware about the world, although somtimes, I wish I was..." Johnny's expression became rather strange, depressed but yet filled with wisdom.
They sat like that for a while, Johnny on a kitchen chair, Gengi in the couch, dead quiet both of them. There was no need to say anything. Melancholy and sadness filled the room like a wet blanket, pressing over everything, threatening to suffocate them.
Suddenly, Gengi broke the silence.
"Um, Johnny... Where's my room?"
"Oh... Your room? Follow me", Johnny said. He lead her through a long corridor. Left, right, straight forward, right... There were many doors in the corridor, and they all looked the same. "Here we are. This is the spare room, enjoy." He opened a red door in a rather dramatic fashion. It was a rather small room, a cast-iron bed in one corner and an old bookshelf, filled with old pocket books the whole furnishing. "Remember, the blue door's to the living room. Call out if you need anything." With that, he left the room and left Gengi with her own thoughts.
Johnny. Have you grown compassionate? Why did you take that homeless girl into your house? I mean, you used to hate hobos before. What's happened?
Johnny smiled a little at the familliar voice in his head. Nailbunny.
"Oh, hi, Nailbunny. I thought you disappeared with the Doughboys." It was a rather casual conversation between a man and his dead rabbit.
No, Nny. I didn't. It was Reverend M.E.A.T. who forced me to be quiet. But now that both the Doughboys and the Reverend's gone, I can finally speak without their interruptions. So, what's the deal with the girl?
"I don't know why I picked her up. She just seemed... reasonable, a bit like Squee. And she... I don't know, Nailbunny, I don't know. Eveything's still just as strange as it was when I came back from my vacation." Johnny sighed.
Oh, it feels so good to talk to you again. Actually, I've missed you. But tell me one thing: Are you going to kill her?
"Well, I'm not sure. I mean, she's just a kid and I don't kill kids. Besides, does The Thing Beyond The Wall still need blood? Did it disappear or something when I was away?"
You know I cannot answer that, Nny. I'm not connected to it at all, not like your other voices. It might be there, but it might just as well be gone. Nailbunny made a sad little sound and then continued, I hope it's dead! That... thing's been controlling you for too long, Nny! May it die of starvation!
"Nailbunny, are you OK? I mean, it's not very much like you to sound so angry. I think that--" Their conversation was interrupted by a scream, coming from the corridor.
"AARRGGHH!!! I'm trying so hard, but you... Cursed be this... this disease! I curse this... addiction! LEAVE ME ALONE!"
Johnny rushed to Gengi's room, wanting to know what was wrong with her. He found her curled up to a ball, hiding under the blanket. She was trembling, and Johnny carefully lifted the blanket to see her face.
"Gengi? Is something wrong? I might not be able to help you, but please, tell me what's bothering you", he said in a gentle tone, very much unlike the normal way he speaked.
She turned her face up and looked into his worried eyes.
"You see, the thing is... I have a disease", she said, her voice hoarse.
"Oh, a disease. What disease is it?"
"It makes me... need a thing, and if I can't get it, I start to feel horrible. Everything starts to ache. Light, sound, everything hurts me. And I..."
"Wait. Please, don't tell me you're a chem-head. I have no drugs. If you want dope, you're gonna buy it yourself. Got it?"
"I'm... not addicted to drugs. But I know that you have my drug, the thing I need. I... Shit, am I going insane?"
"I don't know. Maybe you are. What exactly do you need? If it's here, I'll bring it to you." He carefully folded the blanked away and gasped at what he saw. There were cuts all over her body. Some was healed, some was still bleeding, all of them running down her legs and arms.
"Who... Who did this to you!? I'm gonna kill that asshole, kids shouldn't have to... That fucker's gonna die!" He was infuriated. What sick bastard would cut up a young girl like this?
"I... I did it myself. I was so... so thirsty, but it didn't solve a thing. I had to do it, or I would have died."
"What?! You cut yourself? But... Why?" Suddenly, the possible truth hit him right in the face. "Oooh, shit! Was it a styrofoam figure who made you do it? One named Mr. Eff? That asshole... So this is what he's been up to? Making kids kill themselves?"
"Um... No. I did it for the... Thirst. I needed it very badly, so I cut myself and drank it. Oh, please, Johnny, turn the lights off! It hurts..." Johnny obeyed without questions and turned off the lights in the room.
"Now, tell me. What is it that you need?" Johnny was very confused. What was the matter with this girl?
"Blood." A single whisper escaped her mouth, and she began to breathe much faster.
"Blood? You need blood? But why?"
"I-I don't k-know", she sobbed. "I just n-need it..."
"Nailbunny! Are those buckets of blood I used to paint The Wall with still fresh?"
Wait a minute, I'm checking... No. One of them is completely clotted, the other one has a nasty surface of... some icky, darkish goo on top. There are some whitish spots in it, too...
"Wait here, Gengi, I'm gonna get you something to make you better." With that, he ran off, leaving Gengi confused with his conversation with an unheard voice.
"Nailbunny, are you OK with this? I mean, it's for a good sake..."
Sure, go nuts. The smiley knives are in the bookshelf, on top of The Pit and the Pendulum.
"Why the hell did I put the knifes in a bookshelf? There are lots of better places to put things...", he muttered as he skimmed through the bookshelf in search of his beloved knives. Eventually, he found the knives. "Nailbunny, did you clean out the basement while I was on vacation?"
No, I didn't.
"That's great, thanks", Johnny called out as he skipped down the stairs to his basement, knives in hands, whistling The Moonlight Sonata. He kicked open the door to a familliar room, a room where he'd spent a lot of time before. Before his vacation. Although he didn't want to admit it, he enjoyed this part of it. He enjoyed all of it. The room was filled with people. Like a forest, he thought to himself. A forest of scum. People everywhere, hanging upside-down from the ceiling, all dressed up in straightjackets.
"Shit! You again! If I weren't hanging from the ceiling and wearing this straight-jacket, I'd beat ya blue and green before ya even had the chance to blink! I'd kill ya! You'd DIE!!" The angry yell reached Johnny's ears, making him spin around to face the source of the sound.
"Oooh, a cocky one. This'll be fun", Johnny said, a grin spreading across his face. The man who'd yelled at him was bald, and with three face-piercings. Johnny untied the knots at the rope and unlocked the chains holding him, the result being that the man fell onto the floor. "OK", Johnny said, "I don't really remember what you did to me, but you deserve to be here. Anyway, what's your name?"
The bald man interrupted his string of profanities to raise one eyebrow and look at Johnny, then mumble "Kevin Haroldson", and continued cursing Johnny with words involving "fag", "your mom", and "fucker".
"Shut up. I don't need to hear your goddamn cursing all the time. Do you have a burning need to fill out the blanks in your speech where your brain shuts down?" Johnny glowered at the man. Kevin stopped talking immediatly. "Now, it's time for some fun. You like having fun, don't you?" Johnny begun strapping the man in one of the intricate torture devices scattered inside his basement.
"Wait, I forgot something. A bottle... Yeah, that's right. A bottle." He then chained the man to the ceiling again and ran up the stairs to the kitchen.
Why the kitchen, Nny? Nailbunny sounded mildly interested in Johnny's opinion on the subject.
"Because that's the most likely place to find a bottle", Johnny replied.
Johnny, you know you have a habit for leaving things lying around...
"Yes, but that doesn't exclude the possibility that it's in the kitchen. It only adds the alternative that it might not be there."
Whatever. A mild irritation managed to sneak into Nailbunny's voice.
Johnny rummaged through his kitchen, not finding any bottles. Why the fuck isn't there any bottles in this whole goddamn kitchen?! At last, he found one. A bottle of Sugary Mind Control soda, long since emptied.
"All right, this'll do", he mumbled as he ripped off the label.
Wait, Nny. Don't you know how many icky, little crawling bacteria that could live and breed in a single drop of blood?
"Oh, you're right, blood, like all bodily fluids, is prone to carry diseases. But what should I do about it? I mean, I don't wanna poison her, but it's not like I have an endless supply of medicines for my... harvest..." Johnny stopped, lost in thoughts. "Wait. Wouldn't Bactine rid them of... Wait, forget it."
I suggest you take a notebook and start writing down their blood diseases and such. Don't you remember that Discovery show about mixing blood?
"Hmm... Yeah, I think so. Was that the one where those Satanist kids who drank each other's blood died horribly?"
Yeah, I guess so. Now, take a notebook and a pen and do your work!
"OK." Johnny skipped down the stairs, enjoying what would come. He stepped into the straight-jacket forest, choosing Kevin Haroldson again, and he strapped him in a nice little electrocutioning machine.
"All right, it's you again. Now, before you die, I'd like you to answer some questions."
"What? Fuck, I'm not gonna answer some fucking questions, faggot!" It was something very unwise to say. Unforynately, Kevin didn't know this. A glinter of metal, then a knife pressed against his neck.
"Oh, yes, you are. You are gonna answer these questions, because I'll rip out your vocal chord if you don't." A manical gleam was now visible in Johnnys eyes. "First question: What blood type do you have?"
"Eeeeh... A , I think..."
"Okiedokie", Johnny said and jotted it down in his notebook. "Any diseases in your blood?"
"What? How the fuck am I supposed to know?!"
"You do have a brain, right?" Johnny bended forward and tapped Kevin's forehead. "Use it. If you don't suffer from amnesia, which I highly doubt, you should be able to remember."
"Um... Er... Hepi-hepa-something B, I think."
"Mm-hmm." Johnny wrote Hepa-shit B in the notebook. "Anything else?"
"Uh... No, I don't think so..."
"Good", Johnny said and pushed the little red button. And we all know what a little red button means... Horrid screams escaped from the man, the sort of screams you scream when you have 30 000 volt ran through your body. Suddenly, he went limp.
"Next one!" Johnny looked at the forest of people. "Hmm... I'll pick... you." He pointed at a woman, her mascara running down her forehead. Johnny unlocked the chains and undid the knots holding her up. Then, he put her in another machine, this one combining a guillotine with an iron maiden.
"What's your bloodgroup?"
"I-it's AB-..." The woman wimpered, tears trickling down her cheeks. "Please, p-please don't kill me. I b-beg you! I'll be n-nice..."'
"I'm sorry, but making your boyfriend carve 'Freak' all over my car with his key weren't so very nice. Did you know how much it cost me to fix it? Of course, you and your goddamn boyfriend have no fucking empathy, so you can't care. I will kill you. If you answer these questions honestly, your death might be less painful." Johnny smirked, then continued. "Okay, any blood diseases?"
"N-no, the doctor said that my test was f-fine..."
"Isn't that great?" A huge grin cleaved his face, and he cut her neck artery open. Blood flowed out, like some horrible fountain. He collected the blood in the bottle, and then pressed the red button.
"Bye-bye, carver-idiot!" With that, he skipped up the stairs, humming The Fifth Symphony. Johnny was back in his right element: killing people. Not killing to feed an abomination from another dimension, just to make a little girl better. That wasn't at all related to slavery. Not at all... Or was it? He didn't know. All he knew was that this girl was a bit like Squee; weird, interesting to talk to, and small. As Johnny walked into the corridor, he heard a sound of something horribly wrong. It was the sound of an immense wish to hurt, to dismember, to behead, to disembowel, and yet, these growls and snarls came from a little girl. Gengi. Johnny ran through the corridor. What the fuck was she doing, tearing the walls down?
He kicked the door oped, and prepared for walls covered with blood, tentacled abominations with too many eyes covering the floor, one million dead mice, arranged to form patterns on the floor, anything.
He wasn't prepared for the sight of Gengi sitting on the floor, a strange gleam in her eyes, drawing in a sketchbook like the fate of the world depended on it.
"Er... Gengi?"
"What?" she muttered, without even looking up from her sketchbook.
"I have your blood", Johnny exclaimed and held out the bottle.
"Blood? You have blood?" She eradiated the deepest sceptism ever seen on the face of he earth. "Gimme!" She stretched out and grabbed the bottle, and drank from it. As soon as the blood flowed into her mouth, a deep ecstacy seemed to fill her. She closed her eyes in pleasure, drinking the scarlet liquid as if it was the richest and deepest wine ever to be made. Johnny couldn't do anything else but watch. It didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before ...or did it?
Author's notes: I hope you enjoy this story. Please, be gentle with your reviews since English isn't my native language.
Johnny C is the property of Jhonen Vasquez, not me. Gengi belongs to me, since she is me.