Beta: Incothe
Thanks to: tasty cheez, Lady-Yatexel, BarkingPup, and smilefortyeight for paying attention this past week. :D
A note: I was asked how many chapters AS is going to be. Currently I"m working on chapter nineteen currently, in which the eighth (and hopefully last) character I'm using is introduced. From the feel of what's left in my head, I expect this to be no more than twenty-five chapters, and that's if I stretch it. And afterwards I'll be posting all of AS as the epic one-shot it was originally planned to be, but maybe only on ff because of the sheer ginormousness of it.
Srsly, it's waaaay big.
Aegri Somnia: A Sick Man's Dreams: Chapter Seven: Subatomic
Todd gasped, dropping theplate in his hands into the soapy water. A muted clunk reached his ears as it collided with other dishes hiding beneath the oily scum, shifting everything madly, and there was a dull crack that suggested the death of something ceramic. Many years of drilled-in experience were the only thing thatkept him from screaming. That voice, oh god, that voice. Didn't dare turn around until he'd gotten control of his face. Still, he couldn't help the blood pounding in his ears as he swiveled to witness the late-night visitor that always managed to instill absolute fear without even being remotely aware of it.
An embarrassed smile plastered itself lamely across Todd's face, but he kept his hands soaking in the sink, fingers slowly groping for something sharp, a piece of broken plate, a goddamned butter knife, anything. Just in case. He wouldn't stand a chance against Johnny if it came down to a real fight—time and again he had seen what his neighbor was capable of and the mere memories were enough to send sweat pouring down his sides and bile churning in his stomach. But then again, if it came down to a fight, he would have surprise on his side.
After all, Johnny trusted him to a fault.
"Nny!" Todd cried, bending the smile into something less plastic by sheer force of will. "Jesus, you surprised me." A soft, reassuring laugh. An I'm-not-afraid-at-all-and-I'm-happy-to-see-you champagne laugh. Inside, however, he was screaming. He could feel it slinking up his throat and forced it down again, but he wasn't sure how long he could play this one out. Wasn't sure at all.
"I-I didn't hear the door. Did you use a window?" He hoped it didn't sound as accusing to Johnny's ears as it did to his own.
Softly, hesitantly, and with more than a trace of some kind of fear of his own, "The tunnel."
With a knowing smile he dragged one hand out of the rapidly cooling water to rest it wetly against his hip. "Ah, of course. Smart of you. It's raining pretty hard outside."
"Is it?" Johnny was surprised, casting his sunken eyes towards the kitchen window Todd himself had gazed out no more than twenty minutes before. This was probably his first sight of the outside world in days. "... Oh." Another pause. "It's loud."
"Does it bother you?"
"No. But... It hides the stars."
He kept his face smooth. "Yeah. But it's pretty nice, otherwise. Cleans the air and the ground. Cleans out everything." Bit his tongue. Shit.
A cold stare burned into Todd from across the kitchen. "Not all of it."
"N-no, I guess you're right." It was obvious what Johnny alluded too, even if Johnny himself might not have known. The basement. No amount of broiling runoff could ever purge the death from that hellhole, and it was time to switch subjects again, if only slightly. "You, ah, you haven't come by in ages. Where've you been this time?"
"... Around." It was likely the details of his last excursion were already fading from Johnny's conscious memory. Within a few days Todd knew all but the vaguest colors, perhaps a few strong sensations, would be left of several months of existence. He also knew that somewhere in the upper levels of 777 lay an old journal with as much of these latest travels written inside as was remembered at the time of writing, ugly lettering gouging their home deep into the paper.
"It's been pretty noisy over at your place. You usually drop by the first night you get back but... you..." Turned the faucet off, and the silence rushed in, a vacuum of awkward fear. "Maybe I was hearing some dumb teens or something. You just get home?"
"No. I came back..." Johnny trailed off, and the near fleshless forehead creased because already that little detail had drowned in the vast ocean of sewage masquerading as his mind.
"Oh." As he turned to fully face the other, he decided he couldn't control his eyes anymore without the strain showing. A sad smile as he angled his head in a slight upward diagonal. His glasses flashed white in the hard fluorescents, hiding the horror flooding in his eyes from he who horrified. "So, how was your trip? Any luck with your projects?"
"Of course not." Hate burning in Johnny's thorny voice. "It won't let me. It likes... likes to see me struggle."
Todd felt a muscle in his neck clench involuntarily as a wave of tangled emotions twisted in disjointed swells, hidden in the air's subatomic makeup. Electricity crackled invisibly, and the small hairs on the back of his neck rose, goose bumps hardening almost painfully on his limbs. If he really wanted to see the chains stitched into Johnny's every cell, see the wires and locks trailing down to the floor, out across the living room and down the basement stairs, through the tunnel connecting 779 and 777, all the way to the Wall, all it would take was the removal of his glasses and a few seconds of focus. But, he didn't want to see. It hurt to see. Quickly, again it was time to change the subject, to pacify the Wall a little longer.
"Well I wish you'd dropped by a little earlier. I was watching old movies with Pepito. Um—" Put off by the blank expression staring back at him. "You've met him a couple times." Nothing. "He might've called himself Pepe? Joseph? ...The Alter Boy of Doom?"
"Horns."
"Er-"
"He has... horns."
"Oh. Yeah. He does." Relief briefly trickled through Todd, grateful it wasn't necessary to explain how he'd ended up with the Antichrist as both his best friend and lover. Again. It had been awkward the first half dozen times, and after that it had just gotten kind of sad. "We, uh, were just hanging out. Another person would have made it more fun."
That was a bit of a blurred lie. Sure, it would have been fun having a few more people to have heated arguments over various movie plots—or lack thereof—but not Johnny. It was difficult to have any symptom of fun with a fatalistic mass murderer going on and on about his wretched life and threatening suicide while twitching at your elbow. "So, when's the last time you had anything substantial to eat?"
"I tried... about an hour ago, I think."
"Did it work?"
"... Not really."
"You hungry?"
"A little."
Which, in Johnny-speak, meant he probably hadn't eaten in a week.
"Let's fix that, shall we?" A convincing smile, and Johnny tried to return it the best he could.
But for Todd, it was starting to hurt, keeping these pleasantries in place, masking his fear, tying down his almost uncontrollable urge to punch Johnny as hard as he could and then run like a madman—no pun intended. But, he couldn't do that. He simply couldn't. So he removed his hands from the now icy swill, dried them on a spare dishtowel, and walked to the fridge. "How about I warm up some pizza, okay Nny?"
"I..." He seemed incapable of responding to this kindness.
"Sit down, at the table, Nny. Relax a minute. You know nothing's gonna hurt you here."
It's tense and it's awkward and Nny is pitiful and Todd is some lonely housewife (all my beta's words) and oh my Jesus when I post this in segments the plot does not EXIST. alhgalshglshglaghsdlghs.
Cough.
See you in a week. A.N.
