The lights are blue, then pink, the red, then red, then orange, then pink. Klaus is stuck staring at them, on a cot, next to a trash-can. That's not how the rainbow works.
Yeah. He's had it coming for a while.
This lifestyle he's kept up is a non-sustainable, non-renewable one — and the pollution! Nuclear waste!
God. Klaus doesn't know how he's lasted this long. Thirty-six is so damn impressive.
No wonder he was such a chewed-off, paper-skinny, pink-plush, odd-ball, fuck-hole at eighteen. A midlife crisis is in order. It fucked him constantly, like rabbits.
So the phallic scythe of Death is going to crawl up on him.
It'll slit his throat in big, fat whoosh.
It'll swallow him up and spit him out in Gehenna with textbook-told pleasure. He's looking forward to it. He's going to die and he's going to be high.
"Klaus, you idiot."
Oh. He didn't think that Satan in all its screen-projected glory would look so much like Diego. Knock on wood. Knock on the virgin's head — there's got to be one somewhere.
Diego, with all his veins and capillaries visible through his skin in purple curlicue rivers. Diego: dead, because: knives are nothing against the electric chair.
They're conductors, right? Are knives conductors of elec-trici-dad? Metal. Nice as fuck.
The fuzzy FBI thought he was a serial killer. Nah. He was just kind of Batman. No, Batman doesn't kill people. Klaus's vigilante-knowledge isn't up-to-date on the documents.
"Idiot?" Klaus thinks he's raising his head, but that's probably his fizzling imagination. "I'm not an idiot. In fact, as your elder, I am the wise-sage badass."
Diego snorts. All the blood-vessel-rivers seem to spark in an ironic fashion.
"Badass? My ass," goes Ben, arms crossed. He's the one who never popped up with vengeful-ghost scar marks on him. When he died, in the ripe old age of, like, early, angst-y-sci-fi teens — they couldn't find his body. It was crisped and barbecued. "You're going to die, and you're going to die with all your siblings hounding you."
It's routine. "Just like old times, my good dude." He's past the point of pain. Like, fuck, Klaus hasn't felt pain since he thirty. Wow, in the Wilson way. He had plenty of distractions. It's all in good fun. "What would have happened if we never met? If we never got pushed together?"
"You wouldn't have this problem them," says Allison. "Or not a problem. You just wouldn't have — this." There's a nasty-fancy bullet hole in her head. Assassins are a bitch. And bullet-proof sleek-limousine windows are useless once the door is open. She says it herself plenty. "We'd all be living normal lives. If we saw each other in the street, we wouldn't even consider it. We'd keep walking."
She was wearing such a nice dress that day. The casket was closed. Klaus still saw her face, though.
"Just a small town girl," says Klaus. "Living in a lonely world. She took the midnight train? Going anywhere, bitch."
"You're out of tune," says Vanya, grinning. Aw. Look at her, all happy. It's nice to see her happy. She got into a car accident, on the way to fucking Carnegie Hall. To play solos in horny Carnegie Hall. That's wild as child. If she was still physical, she'd probably be dragging Klaus's sorry ass out of this club. "But it's appreciated! Still a valiant effort."
"This," says Klaus, "is the most valiant effort of all." Top Ten Saddest Anime Deaths. Watch Mojo. Dot Com. And all its bleach-blue ensuing spin-offs.
Five laughs. Hearty-hearty. "You haven't made any sense since you were thirty-two." Turns out that wonky-tonky time-travel shit does acorn-up human brains. Five still has the rope tied around his neck. He's still lavender dilly-dilly up in his skin. He didn't mean it, though. He said he didn't, anyway. "Why don't you get off your dumb stupid dick? There's still time. There's always time. Don't throw it away. Don't waste what's given to you. You're young."
"I can't," says Klaus, "move, bro." Because yeah. Snorting shit and alcohol has that adverse effect.
"Can we make you move?" Luther got fucking roasted. Chemical burns aren't pretty. Monkey-monkey man. Especially if all those chemicals end up in the digestive system. It was quite the plastic sight. What a spherical story, too! Just like the beginning! He even donated his body to science — the folder-work med students must have freaking lost their fucking minds. "Come on."
That's what Klaus is going to do. He's going to give his limp skin to some highbrow Pokéballs. Maybe he can be an organ donor! Plenty of heroin munchies need kidneys. Plenty of cone-faced people want to breathe.
"I'm tired, dude," says Klaus, "of missing — y'all. You all. You know."
"You never miss us," says Ben. "We're always here."
"You're stuck with us until you die," Allison tells him. Is that a smile? Sis.
"Maybe even after," Five tells him.
Huh. "Boo-boo, bitch." Are these going to be Klaus's last words? Oh. Oh, Honey-Bunches iPad fuck. He needs something Aristotle-level. He needs to spit truth. "What's it like?"
Vanya raises her eyebrows. Wiggle-wiggle-worm. "What's what like?"
"Everything," Klaus wants to know. "Did it hurt when you fell from — like, I don't know."
Five shrugs. "I mean, I could say it's beautiful. I could say it's peaceful brooks and meadows and all that novel shit."
"We just see everything you see," says Allison.
"Damn," says Klaus. "I'm real sorry about that. That's fucking. Oof." He thinks about banana-split, and hand-sanitizer soap. And all the sexual encounters.
"Yeah," says Diego. "Oof." It sounds hella wrong, coming from him.
"Are you real?" says Klaus. "Or am I just hallucinating shit, like a donkey or something?"
"We're real," says Vanya. "I think I'm real. I don't know, actually."
Oh, fuck. Fuck. The phallic scythe of Death is approaching. Its dick-ish fingers extending far. He doesn't want to do anything. "Guys."
"What?" is said, times six.
"Did we do anything for the world? Did we change shit? Did we help people?" He knows they got a pretty fucking rad comic book out of this. But that shit gets ruined if fucking water's spilled over it. That shit gets fucked when it's given to a toddler.
But still.
Cricket. Cricket. Cricket. His siblings say nothing.
"You were yourself," says Ben.
"Bitch," says Klaus. Oh, shit. He needs some cool-ass last words, pronto. "Are you the only ones?"
"Are you disappointed?" says Allison.
Laugh-out-loud. On the floor. Rolling. "Were you scared?"
They share a communal huh, like a bathroom-stall shower.
"Yes," say Luther, and Diego, and Five.
"No," say Allison, and Vanya, and Ben.
Klaus needs a tie-breaker vote.
"Don't leave me," he says instead. Okay. That's fine. "Don't leave me, please. Don't disappear. I'll never do any shit again. I'll tear my own fucking foot off."
They all look at him. And look. And look.
Ah. Ah, he's done. How smelly and dry.
He's done now.
It would have been better if he wasn't.
He joins his family. Ben claps him on the shoulder, as if consolation, Diego punches him in the arm with the gingerness of a toothy comb, Allison puts her warm, chilly hands on his face, Five fixes his hair with the swoop of a small hand, Vanya lays her head on him for a shiny moment, and Luther wraps him in a two-second cup-hold bear hug. It looks like he's crying. They're all crying now, maybe. This isn't how they wanted to reunite, probably, but that's fine.
The lights: pink, pink, then green, the yellow, then blue, then blue, then red, then orange, then nothing at all.