Eternity in a Pickle Jar

"Love can change a person the way that a parent can change a baby: awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess."

-Lemony Snicket


On the curve of organic screen, Edgar watched the image of a sky fade to black, the stars sucked into an abyss and dissolved into nothingness. Although he had no proof, he suspected that it was not the universe that was disappearing, but rather the Earth dissolving out of the universe.

Nonetheless, darkness encroached across the planet, converging from all directions on a single location: one unassuming shack of a house, number 777 on an otherwise uninteresting street.

As the shadow crept in over the lumpy, unkempt lawn, the projection x-rayed into the house, turning its focus on a dying man with a gunshot wound gaping in his forehead. The man dipped a finger in his own blood and began to write with trembling fingers a lengthy sentiment, filled with a burst of enlightenment, before curling into himself and awaiting death.

"Oh, Johnny," Edgar sighed, "I do believe it's time for a taste of your own medicine."

He watched in growing dismay as a supernatural drama unfolded before him, complete with escaping wall-monsters, escaping torture victims and escaping Pillsbury doughboys. The entire affair was so surreal that if he hadn't been in one of the lower rooms himself, just before he died, he would have been convinced the entire thing was an elaborate hoax.

Finally, the last of reality faded out, sucking the Moose and its concluding victim into nothingness. He shifted his feet uncomfortably. There was a strange emptiness in his chest, he realized, as if the dissolution of his former home had dissolved something within himself as well.

Edgar stepped back from the floating eye and tapped it once, grimacing at the jelly-like feel. He still hadn't gotten used to that, even after these past months.

"Al, I think that's enough," he said aloud, with a glance at the nearest rooftop.

"Huh? Wha?" The eye always had trouble drawing itself out of a trance. "Eh, right. So what just happened? I thought you told me he couldn't die?"

"No, I told you that he told me that he couldn't die. And from what we've seen, I assumed it was true. It certainly made sense, in an outlandish sort of way. Did you see that suicide contraption he rigged up? It's just a theory, but what if he could only be killed by an unmanned weapon? Anyway, it's all history now. He'll be here pretty soon."

The eye spun its pupil in a gesture of annoyance. It had seen plenty enough to know that where Johnny C went, chaos was soon to follow.

"I know," agreed Edgar in a soothing tone, "But at least people will stop looking at you."

"There is that," Al hummed. "How about you? You going to meet him at the gate?"

The dead man laughed. "Oh, heavens no. Johnny probably doesn't even remember me, and I really don't want to introduce myself again after what happened last time. That would be rather uncomfortable."

It was a shame, because Johnny had been such an interesting puzzle. But the deep-seated fear of awkwardness was stronger than curiosity, so no dice. Edgar would do without, and perhaps be annoyed with himself later.

So he hid.

It was more than a day (well, a light-to-dark-to-light transition, anyways) before he stepped back out of the shadows, a while still before he felt the coast was truly clear. He'd spied snips of Johnny's adventure, enough to figure out what had happened. Sort of. He had left for good when Johnny came just a little too close to his hiding place for comfort, yelling at the Lint Woman.

As he'd been in the underworld during what ghoulish unpredictable period passed for night here in Hell, his recreated body had decided that it was as good a time as any to catch up on some unnecessary sleep in the dark corner of a movie theator. Now, awake again and the sky a bright white, and with a good night of sleep under his belt, Edgar strolled down the streets of Hell whistling happily. Ah, old questions answered, a chance to see his murderer again, what else can you ask for in a day?

Tennis shoes scuffed along the glittering asphalt as the dead man contemplated the things he'd learned. So Johnny had collected psychological waste, something like the slime trails left by humanity's less savory emotions. Hm. Edgar wondered if it collected inside of him (that brought on the both hilarious and disturbing image of Johnny blown up like a large balloon), or if it passed through him into somewhere else. A holding cell? Senor Diablo had been annoyingly vague. Maybe it was connected to the Moose, somehow? It seemed an odd coincidence that the strange details would both show up at the same time.

The whole situation was out of his league- he had ought to file it away for future pondering and let things happen as they happen. Too bad that sort of thing had never been his strong point.

The dead man strode down the street, turning theories over in his head like pancakes on a griddle. He was so absorbed in trying to change mental channels that the road in front of him was neglected. Half way off a curb, he bumped shoulders with one of Hell's less tolerable denizens.

"Watch it, fag!" screeched the woman with an absolutely terrible dye-job, clutching at her disarray of shopping bags.

Great. That was the fifth person to call him a fag since he'd gotten to Hell. Who were these people, and why did they all seem to think he was gay?

"Ma'am," he replied, picking up the last tissue-stuffed Bathory's Secret bag, "with all due respect, I am not a fag."

"Psh," she snapped, snatching the bag back by its fraying handles, "of course you are. Only fags talk like that—my boyfriend told me so. And you're so skinny! HA!" the woman's laugh sounded like a dying wolverine.

Grimacing, Edgar looked down and noticed that he was indeed quite skinny. He'd always worn baggy clothes in life—something he'd been forced to grow out of while in Hell—so he supposed that might account for why people hadn't noticed before. Actually, now that he thought about it, practically every man down here was some variation of obese, possibly a result of the dead not needing to eat and yet still eating.

"Oh. Yeah. I am. But how does that make me gay?" asked the murdered man, raising a brow.

"It… you… oh, go cry to your boyfriend, whiner!" -And she dashed off into an alley.

Edgar ground his teeth. Whatever. She'd end up as a hooker soon enough.

"At least," he muttered to the street, "I haven't met anyone I used to know. On the other hand, I didn't know many people to begin with."

He'd always kept more or less to himself, and like he'd told Johnny... he didn't really have friends or family. Not anymore.

Edgar trailed off as a startling BANG resounded around the block ahead. Several incomprehensible shouts and a shriek of 'FUCKERS' followed, drawing closer and closer to the dead man. Quickly, he pulled himself into an alleyway and waited. The people of Hell could get irrational at the drop of a hat, and who knew? Maybe the poor guy they were chasing needed help.

Around the corner came a screaming whirl of spiky hair with a bag in hand, fleeing from an unseen mob, possibly with torches.

Just as the figure same level with Edgar's hiding place, the brown-haired man reached out and grabbed him by the neck of his shirt, yanking them both back into the darkness and out of sight. The mob's pounding feet rushed by their hiding place and faded down the road.

Edgar ran through a quick appraisal of the boy's appearance—he'd probably been about collage age when he died—simply curious. Baggy black pants tucked into buckled boots; striped shirt, spiky black hair, a spattering of acne and some freckles… fairly normal as far as teenagers went, he supposed, though there was something eerily familiar about him. Something almost like deja vu...

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" the teen demanded, unnecessarily smoothing his unruly hair. Edgar smiled at the classic sign of anxiety.

"Saving you from a mob, probably," Edgar answered, quite seriously.

"I had it under control! They were right where I wanted them. I was gonna… do… something," the younger man ended lamely.

"I'm sure you were. Nonetheless, I felt I ought to give you a hand."

"I don't buy it. Nobody's nice down here. What's your game?" and he added as an afterthought: "Fuck you."

"I'm not really from around here," Edgar answered, drawing his guest tag out of his pocket with a minimum of difficulty. "Care to fill me in on why half of Hell was chasing you?"

The spiky-haired fugitive narrowed his eyes and seated himself on a conveniently placed cardboard box. He looked like he was weighing his options.

"I snatched some booze," he said at last, clearly expecting his audience to be impressed.

Instead, his audience raised an eyebrow. "Is that all?"

"No! …yes… Why do you care?" the thief pointed an accusatory finger.

Edgar noticed something at that point, an irrelevant detail that blotted out everything else. His mind had a tendency to drift off into tangents at inopportune times, a curse he'd dealt with before in meetings and Sunday services. Now was such a time, he realized, as he noticed that his grudging companion wore fishnet gloves.

Now, the man had (especially as one who had taken grief for his nose and goatee over the years) always tried very hard not to profile people by their physical appearance, and certainly not make any character assumptions based on it. He'd known enough spirited Goths and depressed cheerleaders to realize the stupidity of relying on clothing to describe an individual. But the second he saw those gloves, his gay-dar went off like a smoke alarm in a middle school girls' bathroom.

And as much as he tried to shut it up, it went on and on, drawing a well of guilt from one half of his brain and curiosity from the other.

"Just curious," he murmured, still trying to shut off the warning bells. "Couldn't you have just bought it? People down here love to spend money."

"Well maybe I don't! Maybe I'm actually disgusted by these assholes, you ever think of that, Mr. Tourist? You ever think that maybe I don't belong here with these idiots? That I can actually see past the end of my nose?! I mean, GOD, these jerks are so self-centered and those stupid hang-ups that…"

The rest of the kid's monologue faded into a faint buzzing noise as Edgar realized who he looked like. The dead boy looked like a copy of Nny spit out of a Xerox with no toner.

This was insane. Of all the people in Hell, he'd saved the one who not only-probably-knew his murderer, but also clearly emulated him.

Of course there was always the chance of a coincidence, but Edgar had never believed in those. He wondered if this admirer was like Johnny in terms of insanity too.

"-And that one chick, what is up with the lint? She says she's self aware, but she can't even hold back a fucking insult! Did you ever think of that?" the thief demanded, cutting off Edgar's mental monologue.

"Yes, actually," he answered—she was pretty terrible, no argument there.

"Well, that's because you—" he stopped short. "Wait. You have?"

"Mhmm." Edgar was quite good at projecting a sort of serene passivity. It calmed... people. "It's nearly impossible to miss, unless you're a complete ignoramus. Which, you might've noticed, most people are."

"Uh… yeah…" the kid was clearly thrown. It would seem that an intelligent audience was unusual, perhaps entirely new to him. "Oh… um… I'm Jimmy, but you seem okay, so you can call me M—"

Jimmy cut himself off with a look of badly concealed chagrin. Come to think of it, hadn't that been about the same way Johnny had introduced himself?

"I'm Johnny, but seeing as we're sharing this intimate moment, you may call me Nny."

"Huh. ...Well, I gotta go. Booze to drink and so on, you know." Jimmy's mood swung easily to a slightly mocking cheerfulness. As he stood, he gave Edgar a once over. Apparently, he saw something that amused him.

"Smell ya later, faggot!" the boy with the fishnet gloves called over his shoulder, dashing out of the alley.

Well, that was one more person to add to the ever-growing We-Think-Edgar-Is-Gay list. Joy unbounded. Edgar was left stunned, finding only one thing to say, long after Jimmy had fled.

"My name's Edgar," he sighed. "Edgar Vargas."

TBC