THE END
"Don't know where it goes, but it's home to me and I walk alone."
Boulevard of Broken Dreams
The sun was setting and the time they had was dwindling down. He and the girl stood in front of the fence by the crooked house. She pulled out a cigarette and lit it, trying to calm her frantic nerves. They stood still, thinking, shoving aside irrelevant thoughts and narrowing in on the ones that wouldn't move. They knew that they had to get going, but something was holding them back. Maybe it was fear, maybe it was something else, but the one thing they knew for sure was that they had to find Jimmy.
She blew out a puff of smoke. He watched it dwindle in the air then float away to only disappear into the setting sun.
He began to walk just for the sake of walking. His feet traveled across the decrepit sidewalk towards an unknown destination. There was something out there, maybe something beyond the sunset that he was trying to find and understand. He didn't know if it were Jimmy, or why Tunny did what he did, or something completely different, but he did know that he was after something.
"What are we doing here?" the girl asked.
He stopped walking and snapped out of the daze that overtook him. He was staring at a faded green one-floor house with dying grass and already dead bushes. It was where Tunny lived with two other guys he couldn't remember the names of.
The boy turned around and watched her flick ash onto the ground.
"Do you think Jimmy's here?"
"No…" He didn't know why he was there, but the rage he felt earlier was swelling and building in his gut.
Then he noticed how quiet it was. Turning around, he watched the girl drop her cigarette and put it out. His stomach churned when he noticed that she was barely hanging on by a thread. He turned away and looked back at the house. It was hard looking at her, especially now. Realizing that she was human was almost as painful as trying to forget her.
"Why is it so quiet?" he whispered as if he was afraid to break the silence.
The girl watched his frame begin to disappear into the shadows. It made her want to touch him, hold him and tell him that she was sorry, but she knew she couldn't. It wasn't what he wanted to hear.
"Does that seem weird to you?" he said.
It did. The house always had some sort noise coming from it. Whether it was a TV, a radio, laughing or yelling, there was at least something. Now, it was completely silent and not just any silence, but the type of silence that builds the suspense so that when the killer jumps out, a heart will skip a beat. Through the windows, she saw the yellow light. Someone was clearly home, but there was no sound. The front door was opened.
She watched him walk towards the house, slowly, timidly. She didn't want to go in and see what was inside. She was too afraid of what might be in there.
He gingerly stepped up towards the front door and pushed it open with bated breath. Papers and shattered bottles were scattered across the floor. A coffee table was turned over and the cushions on the sofa were in the other side of the room. He looked towards the kitchen and there he saw it.
Lying in a bloody heap was Tunny. A pool of blood was growing around him, engulfing him into its crimson abyss. He stepped back and down the steps in horror, refusing to believe that what he just was reality. The boy noticed he was shaking when he met her at the end of the driveway. She handed him a cigarette and lit it for him. He took it out and looked back at the house and wrestled with what he had to do and what he should do.
"Tunny's dead, isn't he?" she asked.
Her ESP always surprised him.
"We should call the police," he noticed her voice was flat.
They weren't on the same page.
"Jimmy did it," he muttered.
She nodded her head.
"You find him. I'll call the police," she said.
"But what about Jimmy? He'd be put away for the rest of his life," he looked into her eyes for the first time since they were at Andy's.
With her eyes, she wordlessly gave him an answer. His gut sank. She was right.
Jimmy just might already be dead.
