"Must Have Been Some Kind of Mistake"
For the fic-war prompt: "Jimmy vs Nny if you're up to it." (with some other addendums that I won't spoil just yet). Love to Stomiidae who prompted it. You go baby girl.
There must have been some misunderstanding-
There must have been some kind of mistake-
I was standing in the rain for hours
And you were late
-Genesis
-X-
Mmy wipes off the flat of his knife on his black pants. There's a bunch of stiff spots on the fabric because he keeps forgetting to do laundry and he also keeps wiping off his knives on his pants and you can see how that might turn out a little messy. He's just killing time (eheh) (heh) until 4:00, when Edgar gets off work.
Edgar works in a big building off fourth street, and apparently he tells elderly people to turn off their electronics and then turn them back on for a living. He used to work as a receptionist, he told Mmy once, but apparently he didn't have the breasts for that line of work.
Mmy looks up at the clock above the stove, there the little paw-shaped pointer bits are telling him it's 3:45. Cat themed clocks, Jesus fuck, why can't you kill a person twice?
He drops whatherface's slightly mutilated corpse into the chair. He does a halfassed print-wipe and then gives up, because seriously fuck that shit. Let the Man come after him, they'll see who's got the real balls in this town. This is his goddamn gauntlet and he's throwing the fuck down. Badass homicidal motherfuckers don't pansy around wiping prints, do they? He's never seen Nny clear a crimescene even once in his long and thorough stalking career.
Besides, he wants to catch Edgar before he gets to the subway.
Mmy gathers up his backpack, shoves a couple loose knives around, and strolls out the front door whistling. Whatherface's house is only a couple blocks from the bus station where he met Edgar for the first time, but he wants to get there early to scope the place out. Can't have any tittering sets of tits ruining the mood for him. Today's special, and he's gonna get the mood right if he's gotta kill fifty wheezing pensioners and kitten to do it. Everything has to be perfect.
He met Edgar a couple of months ago, heading home from a long day of stalking Nny through the city. He'd been waiting at the bus stop when Edgar came walking by on his way home from work, reading and navigating traffic simultaneously, hardly even looking up as he took a wrong step off the edge of a curb and nearly toppled sideways into the sewer drain. At that point Mmy had only recently seen the dark (like, when you see the light, only it was blood and murder and stuff, so, dark, right?) (get it?) and he was still experimenting with his own style. Johnny, as far as a guy could tell from looking through shop windows and eavesdropping in alleys, usually killed obnoxious losers and like, yeah, Jimmy respected that.
Fuck those guys, you know?
So when Edgar came by with his nose in a book, Jimmy thought to himself, why not take a stab at this guy?
He looked down just long enough to make sure he was carrying his full set, for precision work, and the next thing he knew he was trying to catch his balance as he went down in a heap on the concrete. Someone landed on top of him.
"Oh, for—I'm really sorry."
Edgar had one hand on his shoulder for balance, and one knee on either side of him, and he looked as embarrassed as Jimmy had felt that one time in tenth grade when the football captain had pantsed him in Home Ec. and the eggs had—
Anyway. Edgar looked down at him, and suddenly it was like the oceans had broken open and blood had flowed in the streets and the sky had rained fire and basically it was love at first sight. Edgar helped him up. Edgar asked him if he was okay, and Edgar sat with him for half an hour until the bus came. They talked about spaceships and explosives and all the things he hadn't had time to think about since Nny had come blades-first bursting into his life. When Edgar stood up to go, he put his hand on Jimmy's knee and the joint didn't work right for an hour afterward.
Since then, Jimmy has developed a habit of being between Edgar's office and the downtown subway at 4:00 on weekday afternoons.
Edgar only sees him maybe twice a week, but he sees Edgar at least five times. By now he knows the name of Edgar's cat (Ponce), what he keeps in his medicine cabinet (band-aids, rubbing alcohol and regular alcohol), and what his ex-girlfriend looks like (beheaded and buried in a shallow grave).
Somebody a long time ago once said that when you love a person, you go slow. Somebody important. Somebody wise, and caring, who took care of Jimmy when he was young and alone, and came on screen reliably every day at weekdays 5 PM, 6 PM central. Anyhow, Jimmy took that advice to heart. He really thinks this guy is the one. He's not like those bitches in high school who laughed at him and called him pizza face, and made fun of his notebooks because Edgar is a guy you can really count on, and besides which Mmy thinks his face is starting to clear up—it must be all the exercise and bloodshed, it's really doing wonders for his health.
Edgar is the one. He just knows it. Edgar makes him feel like he could kill a dozen bus drivers just to spend a couple more minutes sitting beside him, listening to him talk. Killing bus drivers is hard work, but Edgar is worth it.
Mmy's been feeling him out for weeks now, asking about his stance on recreational murder and capital punishment and also his relationship status—single, even though Mmy had been all geared up and ready to off some floozy bitch at the first word. Single, like it was (like they were) meant to be.
Today he's gonna pop the question.
He's been thinking about how he'll do it, and although bringing Edgar the severed head of his cornflower-tie-wearing boss would be a big romantic statement for sure, this is capital-L love and so he's taking it slow. Dinner and a movie. Edgar will like that. Somebody's gonna have to get mugged to pay for it, but hey, people do all kinds of crazy things for love and Mmy is a broke-ass recent high school dropout.
The bus stop is less than a block away and Mmy forces himself to walk a little slower as he comes around the corner. Hands in pockets, slouch a little. Play it cool. You kill people for fun, try to be a little goddamn cool.
Someday, maybe they can kill people together. He imagines some evening in the future, moonlight, music, cutting out some girl's tongue while Edgar holds her still, and is suddenly really glad nobody is close enough to notice him absolutely definitely not reacting to that thought in any sort of physical way (ow why are these pants so tight).
Nobody's at the bus stop. No Edgar in sight. Perfect. He has as much time as he needs to set the stage and practice his lines.
He's got this tendency to ramble when he gets excited, and he's trying to work on that, really he is, but the best he can do right now is try to make sure that the words he wants to say are somewhere in the verbal dam burst that's bound to come pouring out. "Edgar," he wants to say, "you probably haven't thought about it yet, but if you'll just hear me out, I think you're gonna realize you and me could make one hell of a team."
And then he'll put his hands on Edgar's hips and lean in and tell him how they're perfect for each other and how much fun they'll have, and he'll try not to mention how he's masturbated while thinking about Edgar because he learned the hard way that most people don't take that as a compliment like you'd think they would. Heck, if Edgar said he'd jerked off to anything even remotely involving Mmy, there would be—well there would be goddamn boners all over the place, that's what there would be.
But he won't do that. He's got a sales pitch. You like cats, I like cats. You hate mimes, I hate mimes. You've got a dick, I've got a lot of experience touching at least one dick and I don't think they're very different probably.
He's certain that Edgar will see his point. Edgar is such a smart guy, how can he not?
He sits down at the bus stop, and he grins, and he waits.
And he waits.
And he… waits…
At five o'clock, it becomes clear that there's been some kind of misunderstanding. Shit. He knew he should have followed Edgar from work just in case something went sideways on him. Maybe Edgar got off work early today, or switched shifts with some coworker who should have had the common decency to not get sick on Jimmy's big day.
He waits another hour, just in case. No one shows, except the usual parade of streetside freakshows now parading over his exposed nerves.
Alright, fine. He'll just do it tomorrow, it's okay, really. No big deal. He's been waiting this long, what's another day? He just hopes that Edgar isn't sick or anything. Edgar doesn't even know that Mmy knows where he lives, so it'll be kinda hard to drop off soup or whatever without some awkward questions.
There's four Edgar Vargases in the phone book and he really doesn't want to explain how he found the right one.
Maybe he can just skip by quietly and check on him, like a guardian devil. Leave a thermos in his mailbox or something. Yes! He likes that idea. Maybe he'll put together a care package even, with like… vitamins and porn and beer. Health stuff.
He thinks about this on the subway, heading out of downtown towards the edge of the suburbs where Edgar's apartment complex sits. Maybe he'll call, if Edgar doesn't show up tomorrow either. Being sick is so boring. You never get company, even if you do have friends, and nothing is ever on TV. Maybe. Maybe he'll offer to come over some time, once he has an excuse to know where the apartment is. He'll bring a movie.
He thinks about that as he's walking down the street to the apartment complex, backpack over one shoulder. Mid-way through Flesh Cannibals 3, reaching out to lace his fingers between Edgar's, Edgar confused but pleased, slowly returning the motion. He's never gotten to hold any of his crushes' hands before, but he thinks maybe Edgar would let him.
It's nearly six when Mmy reaches the apartment, and he sneaks up the tree at the window and swings his legs over the balcony ledge. It's just a little balcony, big enough for a person and a chair, but sometimes Edgar comes and sits out here with his dinner and watches the sun set down the hill behind the city, and sometimes Mmy sits on the stairwell of the building across the street and watches him until he goes inside for the evening.
Mmy grins a little stupidly down at the concrete ledge. Someday it's gonna be the two of them sitting out here, instead of a street between them.
No lights in the apartment. That's weird. Doesn't look like anything's been moved around. Mmy frowns and pushes the sliding glass door—still locked. That's weird too. Either Edgar came right home and collapsed before he could open the place up, or he never came home. The possibility of collapse takes over Mmy's brain, spawning a plethora of scenarios each more unpleasant than the last, until he can feel his heart rate ratcheting up to an uncertain pounding.
Jesus, what'll he do if it's something like that? Keeping people alive isn't really his forte.
He goes to work on the sliding door, managing to break the locking mechanism rather than busting the whole thing out—he doesn't think Edgar would have appreciated that much, medical emergency or no. The apartment is quiet, though, from end to end. He slips a sneakily as he can in and out of the small rooms, but the floors lie empty. He sits down on the kitchen counter and props his head up in his hands.
Okay, so, no emergencies. That's good. He figures he'll just hang around here until Edgar finally gets home, maybe snoop a little bit while he's already got the lock busted and everything. If Edgar gets home while he's in the middle of looking around, he'll just hide somewhere. He's got lots of practice hiding in people's houses.
While he's flipping through photo albums—he's already scoured the bedroom for anything of interest—the phone starts to ring. He glances over at it.
Could pick it up. Could just let it ring. On the one hand, it's not like he can just take a note down for Edgar. On the other hand, he's feeling pretty nosy today.
Oh, what the hell, he thinks, I already broke the door.
He picks up the phone.
"Uh. Hello? Vargas… um… apartment."
"Hello," a sharp female voice says, "who have I reached?"
"…Edgar?"
"I'm afraid that's not possible," the voice replies, unamused. "This is the police department. According to the identification we've recovered off the… body, Edgar Vargas is not going to be answering any phones ever again."
The receiver slips out of Jimmy's hands, and he has to scramble to get it back up to his ear.
"What?" he says, "What are you talking about?"
"Mr. Vargas's remains were dumped at the station about thirty minutes ago. Well. Mostly. We think some pieces were lost during the transition."
Mmy licks his lips, heartbeat stuttering in his ribcage. "Are you sure it's him?"
"Picture ID in his wallet matches—the face is still intact, at least. Still has cash too, actually, you'd think somebody would have snagged that already. If not the killer then at least somebody in the CSI unit, you know, the paychecks around here aren't exactly rolling in. You ask me, sticking a hand in some poor sod's lukewarm guts isn't too bad for a couple spare twenties when the bills role around—"
"Do you know who did it?" Mmy cuts in, hardly hearing the ooze of chatter over the sound of his discordant ribcage.
"Well—" the voice sounds a little spitty, like the mouth it's coming from is chewing a pen, "—some street witnesses tell us he was a roughly 5'10 male, possibly Hispanic, dark clothing—"
"Crazy hair? Boots? Specifically described as 'wacky'?"
"Yeah, actually. How'd you know?"
Mmy clutches the receiver hard enough that the tiny knuckles in his fingers pop. "Oh," he says, "he's a friend of mine."
"What—sir, do you—"
But the receiver is already swaying unsteadily from its hook on the wall before she can finish her question, and Mmy is already snatching on his jacket.
His Edgar, killed by Nny. His face is hot and his eyes hurt, and he feels like someone peeled his chest open and smashed his heart with a hammer. Deflated, kind of destroyed. This was going to be the big day, a good day, and instead his friend is dead and laying in a heap in some city morgue and he's never coming home and he's never going to sit on the balcony again and Jimmy's never going to hold his hand unless he breaks into the morgue and digs the stiff, cold thing out of the pile himself.
But Nny is—Nny doesn't just kill people who don't deserve it. He would never. He's Jimmy's hero, he's an artist, and—
Maybe Edgar did something, maybe he wasn't as perfect as Jimmy thought. Maybe he was rude, maybe he said something insulting, maybe… But that just isn't Edgar. He would never.
Mmy clutches his head, fingers tugging at the greasy strands. Nothing makes sense. How could Nny do this to him, they're supposed to be brothers of the mind, aren't they?
He hasn't felt this betrayed since his mother ran over his dog and lied to him about it. And that was almost ten years ago. He had trusted Nny, never mind that they'd never formally met and Nny didn't actually know he existed yet, he'd still trusted him. Trusted him to maintain the integrity of serial murder. And this, how could he do this?
How dare he do this?
Jimmy storms through the hall and down the stairs into the fading sunlight, making black lace patterns through the trees behind the apartment. He fumbles in his pockets for a lighter, for a moment intent on burning the whole damn building to the ground, before he considers that the rooms on the second floor will be the only things left of Edgar Vargas on the face of the planet once they bury his mutilated corpse.
How could Johnny do this? An hour ago, everything had finally been perfect.
Jimmy digs the heel of his palm into his eye, teeth gritted. Well, fine. He can't change what's already happened, but he's not going to take this bullshit lying down.
Johnny's the one who finally convinced him to stand up for himself, and Johnny's the one who's going to see exactly what that means.
-X-
It's in the middle of the street, in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of town that Jimmy finally spots his tarnished idol—after days of chasing down addresses in phone books and staking out restaurants, after wandering neighborhoods in frustrated circles passing the same houses over and over, ultimately it's Johnny who finds him.
He's sitting on the curb in front of the building where Edgar works—worked—scraping hash marks into the asphalt with the half-shaped blade he never had a chance to finish, when a pedestrian behind him clears his throat.
"Excuse me," the pedestrian says, "you wouldn't happen to know if the building behind us has a telemarketing sector, would you?"
"Sure," Jimmy answers, barely listening. "Top floor. They have a great coffee machine."
"Wonderful. I keep getting these calls and I did swear if one more person tried to sell me double glazing I'd kill somebody, and I try to keep my word when I can remember it. Thanks for the help!"
"Sure," Jimmy grunts, slashing a vicious diagonal into the street. He'd been on the top floor when—
Wait.
Wait.
Swearing, Jimmy scrambles to his feet just in time to make out the flash of an unmistakable buckled boot disappearing into the lobby.
Shit. Holy shit.
Jimmy shoves his way across the sidewalk, toppling businessmen, and races into the lobby with his knife tucked into the back of his jeans. There, the elevator. The button cracks along its plastic casing when he punches it.
An instrumental soft jazz version of Heart's "Barracuda" plays merrily in the 4x4 upward-grinding cubical.
Ding, and Jimmy tears out of that thing like a wild animal clawing out of a box, down the rows of men and women yawning into headsets, looking for something like—shouting, muffled, down that hall. Perfect. He ducks down that way, into a dimly lit staircase just beyond the plain white door, where the walls rattle with clanging footsteps and enraged echoes.
Jimmy pulls his knife free, takes a deep breath, and starts up the steps.
The exit opens up onto the roof, gray cement under a grungy yellow sky. At the far end, Johnny is dangling a terrified telemarketer by her company approved lapels from the edge of the building. His skeletal arms hardly twitch under the strain.
Funny, Jimmy thinks with an unconscious swallow, I always thought he'd be taller.
Across the roof, Johnny breaks into a smile. "Nah," he says to the girl, swinging her back around over solid round, "Just kidding with you. I'm not gonna drop you."
The girl's feet touch down and she lets out a whopping loud breath, clutching at her chest like she's trying to make sure all the bits are still there.
"I'm just gonna stab you."
And then he shoves a cleaver-sided blade through her fluttering windpipe—wide sprays and thick bubbling trails of dark red come gushing out, and a thin flecking like gory freckles splatters across the dark man's face. He wipes idly at them.
Wow. Jimmy's chest flares painfully—god, Nny is still as good as he remembers.
He realizes too late that he never stopped being in awe of this blood splattered powerhouse, not even in the rage or the bitterness or the betrayal. Johnny still makes his mouth go dry.
He stands there, uncertain, knife hanging loose in his hand, until Johnny finally looks up and blinks at him.
"I'm sorry," he says, "did you need her? I don't think she'll be answering any phones any time soon, but if there's something in particular you're looking for you might want to try digging through her pockets."
"I'm—" Jimmy starts, but his voice cracks and he has to swallow down the syllable and try again. "I'm not here for her. I'm here for you."
"Oh?" Johnny says, looking mildly interested now. "Do I know you?"
"No, but," Jimmy replies, "I know you."
Johnny tilts his head, bright round eyes and blood-smeared face. He says nothing.
"I'm—I was a big fan. Of your work. I was hoping we could team up, someday, that you could teach me, you know, fashion me in your image."
"What work," Johnny says, "exactly?"
Jimmy sucks in a breath to explain—he's been vising and revising this speech in his head for months, and this is not at all how he pictured it going—but ends up just letting it hiss out like steam through his gritted teeth. Instead he points at the dead telemarketer. "That," he answers wretchedly, "but it doesn't matter now. You did something unforgivable, and now I have to get vengeance."
Johnny, who was looking pretty nonplussed up until that last line, lit up. "Is this about the flower vendor? I knew somebody was bound to notice."
"No this isn't about any flower vendor! This is about Edgar Vargas!"
"Who?"
Jimmy's mouth works soundlessly for a couple seconds. "You, you don't even remember?" he asks, hoarsely.
Johnny taps his forehead. "Recollection these days isn't so good, between you and me. Did I kill him? I kill an awful lot of people, you shouldn't take it personally. Most of 'em deserve it."
"Not Edgar!" Jimmy shouts, vaguely aware that he isn't doing a very good job of hiding his distress. "Edgar is smart and funny and polite and he's never a dick about going to church when you don't and he keeps whole packs of oreos in his desk at work and—"
Johnny waves him off. "Well, whatever he was like before he's dead now. You should move on, get a gerbil. Make a bird house."
"No!" Jimmy points his half blunted knife at the man in front of him. "No, you're going to pay for what you did to him. Even if you are incredibly talented and charismatic and also have excellent bone structure, you're still going to pay!"
"How so?"
Drawing himself up to his full height, now, Jimmy shifts into a new stance. "We're gonna fight."
The more experienced murderer grins, smears and flecks of blood on his peeling lips. "But I am only a simple serial killer," he says. "A humble stalker, if you will. How could I possibly fight you?"
Hm. Didn't consider that one actually. Come to think of it, Jimmy can't fight worth a damn either. He shrugs. They'll manage it.
"Wow," Johnny almost hums, "you're really serious aren't you? I gotta tell you, you're actually the first person to ever track me down like this. I was starting to think there was some kind of—heh, some kinda crazy hoodoo cloaking mechanism on me. Weird right?"
Jimmy thinks about all the things he wanted to say to this man, all the things he still wants to: to tell him how they're so much the same, to show him how much he's changed Jimmy just by existing. Well, Jimmy thinks, glancing down at the dull gray flat of his knife, he's sure gonna see it up close now.
Johnny steps closer, cloven steel boots clicking on the rooftop. "On the one hand," he says, offhandedly, "I respect your conviction. On the other hand, your sentimentality is kind of gross."
And then he's standing a few feet behind Jimmy, the sound of metal scraping concrete as he shifts his weight. Late afternoon sunlight flashes between rolling clouds.
"One last chance to walk away," Johnny offers, half-singsong.
"I can't do that."
"Well that's not really true, but alright, have it your way. I can make it the case for you."
This is it. The big moment. He still has time to change his mind, to lie or grovel or something and try to get in good and pick up where he left off chasing after Nny. There's so much he could learn. There's still so much the two of them could do together, side by side, so much blood and mayhem, and he's certain that if he just put down this blade and explained himself then Johnny would see—and he asks himself, is some dead guy with a drawer full of oreos really worth sacrificing his one real dream for?
He looks down.
He may not be what most people would call "moral" or "respectable" or """sane""", but he does know this: Edgar Vargas was a friend, and he's had damn precious few of those.
Jimmy turns, blade up, and charges the man who should have been his mentor.
In the lightening flash of a second, Johnny grins his lamprey grin and steps barely an inch to the side. The edge of the building comes rushing up under Jimmy's feet, and then empty air, and then a horizon of endless black pavement.
A few IT operators on the fourth floor look up at the faint sound of a splat below the window, and then go back to their work, disinterested.
At the top of the building, peering down over the ledge, Johnny C. sticks a pinky finger in his ear and wiggles it a bit.
"Shame," he remarks to no one, "he seemed like such a nice kid."
(End)