Just so you know, I was traveling. And yes, this an excuse that I forgot to post in on of my earlier chapters, even though I miraculously remembered to post the warning on Fiction Press. . .

So yeash . . .Please don't come to my house and kill me, I'm delicate.

Sissy was unusually giddy.

Like Christmas cheer giddy.

The kind of giddy an over-emotional girl her age would have kind of giddy.

The fact that she was able to hide any physical features of this giddiness with the exception of her consistent chewing of her long fringe on the sides of her forehead with nervousness and the fresh and bright pink hue that took up her usual placid cheeks, starting from her belly and rising its way up in different correlations was remarkable.

But that giddiness was subdued.

With reality and the strong ominous scent in the air. The baffling fact that it had been just that easy to find Johnny. That what had happened for five years, what made Porkbelly dull with lack of nuclear accidents and dramatic claims of 'not seeing that coming', was a fact still unknown. The giddiness was killed with the harshness of that situation and numbing fact that Sissy realized.

It had been a week since Sissy had found Johnny and Dukey in that blizzard, and yet she only had the faintest recollection of unruly and haphazardly cut light blond and crimson red locks of hair and a pale tall and muscled body only approximately 3 inches taller than she was.

Dukey had made himself at home in her large apartment, using her coffee maker, taking long hot water bathes, and if he was in the mood; which was every moment possible, taking long gazes at the sun from her porch window if the snow letting up would let him. His large tan fingers would touch the window pane as if he wanted to actually touch it.

He looked as if it was the first time he had seen the sun.

Which is what he was doing at the moment with one of her spare towels around his neck and sweats on his body. Sissy felt uncomfortable interrupting the forlorn look of longing and hesitant calmness from the canine-teen, but her curiosity was getting the best of her.

She also had a hard time wrapping her head around what had actually happened to Johnny and Dukey. The whole thing sounded like it was pulled out from a horribly directed sci-fi film in which she would watch with boredom and promptly laugh at when something unbearably corny happened. The gut- crunching, loud, hilarity inducing laughter was not in the least involved with this current situation.

This was raw, horrifying, and if she went by Dukey's descriptions', each and everyone highly detailed one, it was bloody as well as vomit inducing.

Her heart went out to them.

But her mind was skeptical.

Just as it was uneasy to digest the fact that two seemingly nice yet horribly smart teenage girls who were notorious for testing ridiculous experiments on their brother to the whole town with the disturbing exception of their parents, had taking things too far and had instead of repenting and owning up to the heinous thing they had done, they had the gall to be afraid of what they themselves had created and locked them up. Johnny had suffered; he hadn't breathed fresh air, looked at the sky, and eaten natural food, for an unbearable and lagging five years.

He suffered through some undistinguishable anguish that Dukey had refused to dwell within, claiming Johnny himself had to tell her. He had to learn how to deal with it to the point where he wouldn't be mentally dangerous, had to apply it to his unstable humanity and under all of that, had barely survived.

He hadn't seen her for five years.

He hadn't seen the sun for five years.

"A penny for your thought's."

Sissy's head snapped up, her eyes wide with surprise as she was snapped out of her depressing thoughts and unfriendly demeanor. She turned to see Dukey, well the human version of Dukey towering over her small form with her knees hugged up to her chest and her arms wrapped around her legs as she was on her couch. She still wore the same clothes as she had a week ago when she had found them, the striped long sleeved shirt and blue jeans. She had bags under her eye lids.

"Depends, do you even have a penny?"

Shrugging, Dukey sat down next to her looking absolutely ridiculous in her hot pink sweats and big white t-shirt; it barely covered his mid-drift.

Looking at him she asked, "Why don't you wear the clothes that you came in, I washed them and they're probably dry by now."

Dukey looked away, by not in annoyance but because he eyes began to linger to the door in which Johnny was behind, the room Johnny himself had not left.

"I burned mine."

Sissy sat up in a hurry, almost worried before Dukey calmed her down, "No, no, not in your place."

Sitting back down, Sissy was still wary.

"I took it out back where the furnace was behind the apartment complex were they burn unmentionables, I threw it in and watched it burn."

"Why?"

"I wore that damned clothing for five years isolated from the world. Why wouldn't I?"

Sissy didn't respond. She went back to her thoughts. Her early giddiness had died out to a snuffed flame only leaving depression and a horrible curiosity in its wake.

Dueky left the room and went to where Johnny was.

Sissy wished she could do the same.

XXX

Day's had gone by as Mary did her best to find Johnny, but despite not being on public human grounds for quite a while, he was efficient at hiding and keeping away from the public eye.

Mary had lost count of the amount of times she had received strange and mocking, withered looks from people as she asked if they had seen a flame haired kid. It had been strangely unsettling how much she was used to asking that question as a young teen, whenever one of their shenanigans had gone out of control. She was used to being giving answers pointing to a troubled Johnny and Dukey doing whatever they might do to cause her and her twin mental anguish.

Instead of that she was left standing in the street like a fool.

For the twelfth time that day she had not only been told to back off, but also to get a life, step off loser, go away crazy bitch, and other harsh un-pleasantries. And for the twelfth time that day Mary felt lower than dirt because she was so easily thrown to the side, she could vaguely remember a time. . .

"Excuse me!"

She heard the words but her actions were to slow to react in time so she fell to the ground with a resounding 'oomph' as she hit the ground and was on her palms and knees looking even more foolish than she though she could. She looked behind her in annoyance with her green eyes narrowed dangerously behind her cat eyed glasses before she saw that the person who had bumped into her was in fact on the ground looked just a disgruntled, with bags of groceries littered on the gravel sidewalk while she was on her own behind painfully seated on the floor.

She wanted to for once be the person to snap at another, and though she knew no one was really in the wrong, her frustration which rarely showed itself wanted to have a chance to give a verbal beating instead of taking them.

Her eyes opened with acid in their green pools of emerald sparks. Her mouth was prepared to give out longs insulting lists of words one would only find within the yearly SAT test. Her cheeks flared with barely restrained and righteous anger.

But that soon died within her as she saw exactly whom she bumped into.

"Sissy?" her voice, which was about to come out in snapped rivulets, came out to barely match a whisper. Her eyes widen considerably as she stared into the face of the female childhood enemy of her little brother.

But the girl from then and the girl now were two different entities from separate dimensions.

While Sissy as a twelve year old, was smart mouthed and was a considerable show off with a mainstream yet unique sense of punkish style, this Sissy was considerably sharper with her shoulders broad and un-quivering despite her small build. Her long hair that resembled Johnny's was now a short unruly bob with natural and dyed red streaks. And her eyes had the faintest sign of purplish bags under them.

'Sissy' ignored the whisper saying her name as she begin to pick up the objects that fell out of the two large paper bags she held in her hands. Food that consists of both meats and vegetables with some comfort food like Twix bars and two one pound bags of almonds. A plastic bag she reached for was already open and two oranges began to roll away.

Mary caught them as she gestured her orange filled hands to Sissy, with an attempt at a smile on her face and a struggling voice that tried to sound nonchalant, "Hello Sissy, it's been a long time."

Mary wanted to make contact with somebody from her teen years. She had closed herself from the world and everyone in it including her parents letting herself tear her mind apart and creating mental defenses just to tear them down again. The way of hurting herself was a vicious cycle. But she had just a spark of hope in her eyes as she saw that this was a person who knew nothing of what she had done.

Who wouldn't ask her why did she leave.

Who knew nothing about Johnny.

The hope began to build up higher and higher and was about to overflow as it bubbled to the surface of her mouth; her mind already coming up with was she would say twenty sentences later after she initiated the conversation.

Sissy, with her bangs covering her eyes, snatched the oranges from her hands and stuffed them into her bag. Taking the two large paper bags, as she cradled them within the safety of her arms, she walked away. Mary, who still was in some state of unaltered shock watched as Sissy turned from the direction she was walking.

That hope flared up once more.

Sissy gave her the most cold-hearted glare her eyes could manage, her bangs on her forehead and sides shaping her heart shaped face giving her a cold regal look. The pale skin unwavering. The purple bags under her eyes helping the Ice blue of her pupils give a more than effective stare as she turned back around and began walking again with out a word.

The icicles that began to stab through Mary's heart stabbed the hope.

XXX

Whenever Sissy was in a pissy mood, nobody could really tell if she was. Her pissed off mood was no different from her normal mood. The snappy comeback and insults, the withering glares, and the punch that made one want to rub their right shoulder, as they would begin to think about it.

So when Sissy came home from her five minute encounter with Mary Test, poor Dukey, who had changed from his human body that was sprawled all over the couch and was in his four legged furry companion body, really did not see it coming.

Walking through the front door, Sissy didn't even notice the change as she kicked the pantry open and began to put the dry products away. Then put things in the freezer, then fridge. Her eyes were focused solely on was her newfound task at the moment.

Keep herself from killing Mary Test.

To go straight to the house where she would go to annoy Johnny on the weekends and strangle the life out of her until the last drop of life left her soul.

The anger she felt deep down on the inside scared her but also felt like a self righteous anger, with barely enough restraint to keep her carnal instincts down and calm as she pulled out a defrosted bag of chicken thighs and three cups of rice. She focused solely on the RIP as she tore the bag full of wet chicken out and the CHOP CHOP CHOP as she began to chop it into miniscule pieces that had pieces of fat and muscle on the blood pink squares.

She focused on the SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE of the seasoning she put in a separate bowl and the SPLASH! of water and teriyaki sauce she put into the bowl as she dropped each chicken piece into the bowl watching and listening to the silent PLOP's that she wished lasted a bit longer. Sissy did the best of her abilities to drown out the anger, the pain, and the indignant feeling of disgust as she remembered Mary Test's sun kissed skin and healthy glow and feeling of normalcy as she had to bit down her tongue at the feeling of expressing her thoughts and keep herself from responding.

Johnny's skin was the color of pale snow from years of no sun and artificial light.

Quickly looking for something else to focus her mind on, she grabbed the bag of rice and to the last milligram, measured it in a cup and emptied it into a pot as she watched it begin to boil with the two cups of water she had mixed into it.

"Hey."

Sissy's shoulder's hunched as she was struck with a harsh sense of surprise. It was Dukey. She still hadn't gotten rid of the soul suffocating anger.

Keeping herself as close to calm as she could, she replied, " Yeah?" she voice grated in her throat giving her voice a harsh impersonation.

Dukey's eyebrow's furrowed as he asked immediately after that struggle to reply, "What's wrong?" a deep concern in his voice, despite only meeting her for the first time in years after just a few days.

"Nothing" There, that was better. Cold, unfeeling, empty. A numbing coldness that blew away the fire that was building within Sissy's throat, wanting to scream, shriek, get the horrible feeling away form her.

"Really . . . and this wouldn't have anything to do with what happened between your time of absence and now. I mean, you can probably make popcorn chicken with what you just cut up. Makes me wonder what you could do with a knife in your hands . . ." he trailed off, baiting her.

"I went to get food, walked home. Simple." Getting out vegetables, she began to wash those and cut them as well.

"And then what?" Dukey continued to press on

"Nothing."

With a mocking smile and a hard seriousness in his eyes, Dukey got closer to her, over the counter where she was cutting things, and said, "I don't believe you."

Suddenly, a knife was in his face, very close to his eyes as they widened despite the fact that he didn't flinch or react in time to anticipate this peculiar action.

"Believe me, I'm fine." The coldness was gone in her eye, a begging, a plead for rest. For him to let it go. Let her suffer in her own silence until it was all over and she felt a bit more human.

Dukey was silent. Sissy was silent.

Then Dukey put a furry paw on the knife that was near his face and pushed it gently away, "No."

The chicken boiling within the broth in the pot was beginning to overflow with an overwhelming scent that came from the boiling steam around the kitchen. It smelled rotten. The rice in the pot began to burn to a disgusting looking pale brown as that smell reacted to the rotten scent already. The air in the room became unbearable to breathe in as Sissy suddenly cracked.

She threw the cutting board off the counter as she slammed the counter with her open faced hands itself leaving her palms a painful looking red. The vegetable all fell to the floor, the natural water inside of it draining into the linoleum floor as she then, with much aggressiveness, threw the two pots with the ruined food into the nearest sink ignoring and avoiding the water that splashed out of it was the steel got worse. A loud agonized scream left her as she stormed out of her small kitchen, her bare feet slapping on the messed up floor with thundering sounds, and her eyes showing unabashed anger.

Dukey, for the first tome shocked, got out of her way as Sissy left and walked to her room, and slammed the door. He expected one of the hinges to snap.

It did.

Looking at the newfound mess she had made, Dukey sighed as he poked a wet and soggy vegetable on the surface of the counter, already looked sad and pitiful.

"Looks like I'm going to have to clean up this mess."

XXX

Sissy's room was a plethora of simplicity and teenage caution.

There were dark and harsh colors that deeply contrasted to the room she had years ago that donned a sickening pink. The carpet was crimson and the walls were covered in wallpapers that had colors of gray and mainly black. All patterned to look depressing and as intimidating as possible.

Despite the morbid feeling of the room, the space was unexpectedly clean. There was a glass-surfaced desk in the corner without a trace of dust or grim on the surface and atop that laid a few textbooks and a MacBook Pro with the wires that made up the charger was wrapped up neatly beside it.

On the other side of the room was an ebony bookshelf with three shelves, the first filled and stacked to the brim with fiction novels correlating from angst to drama to simple romance to classic and old English tragedies that were recommended for her age mate list of high school books to read, books she devoured and memorized from plot to plot and each and every twist and turn the writers themselves could think of.

The second shelf was half filled with old folder and notebooks from old schools yeas and the notes she had deemed useful incase of final exams or just the need to make sure she wasn't losing her touch in school. The other half had old CD's that had gone out of style seeing as though even one now had either their music stored on their computers, phones, IPod's, Mp3"s, etc. Old disks with tracks from good alternative rock bands that blocked the world out and filled Sissy's head with mixes of guitars matching the high a singer's voice could reach while hers - as she would try to sing along – could not. And the combination of the bass and guitars that numbed her from the inside out.

The third shelf was where Sissy looked at as her anger from before was still strong and at the center her mind. The third shelf was filled of maps and encyclopedias and atlas and even the cheap road maps she collected from drunken truckers in hopes of finding Johnny. Maps she had collected as she traveled from New York, to Charlotte North Carolina, to even the deepest corner of California. Walking by foot, hitch hiking, car jumping, riding on buses from six in the morning to midnight itself.

And it turns out Johnny was right there, right under her nose. In some unknown freaky-ass basement as an experiment gone wrong. If she counted the blocks from her old house to his place, it was a simple five-block walk. From her an apartment, it was a five mile one. But he had never left Porkbelly. The town that was dying from the inside out. That had died when he disappeared.

Grabbing everything, from the maps she had spent hours pouring herself over, to the books she had read as she memorized word for word. She went to her window that was right next to the balcony, and with a short and contrite heave, threw all of it out the window into the snow, watching the paper fall gently as it floated in the air and the books dropped with a heavy plop. The snow that was coming from the sky slowly began to cover it.

And as Sissy looked at it, something in her died as she felt the beginnings of tears come at the edges of her eyes. Rubbing furiously at them, she kept her lips from trembling. Her eyes from springing more tears. Her anger dissolving into something more dangerous.

Sadness.

An utter feeling of despair.

She soon fled onto the comforting surface of her bed, the pure white sheets and black cover pillows putting her in a somber mood as she let them fall, finally accepting her fall from grace with a bit more acceptance than how she handled it before.

But her eyes opened as she heard some shuffling noises as she sniffed from her nose the mucus that was her snot, and rubbed at her red and raw eyes. Her window, which she had slammed shut, was open. But she was sure she had closed it. And some of her books and road routes and traveling guides was back and on her shelf, more to her horror.

Then she froze as she double-checked to see if she was truly going mad.

She watch as a bundle of pages she had thrown out, as well as brochures and even the cheap maps, rose out of the snow and unwrinkled itself as the water from the snow was drained from it and with crisp finality, as Sissy followed the floating paper with her eyes, it set itself gently onto her shelf like she had never moved it. But she had not.

And with a sudden heaviness in her head, she felt the compelling urge to turn around as if she should – must – see what was there. At her doorway. Making her thrown away objects that filled her with sorrow come back to her as if she had never thrown them away. Her neck turned slowly, like she was moving it but also not moving it.

Her eyes were frantic beneath their azure glow but hesitant and wary on the surface.

And then it stopped.

For Sissy, if you said their was a such thing in life such as time stopping when some awe strikingly amazing or fear inducing horrible happened, she would first tell you that it was all considered to her bullshit though she seldom cursed that vulgarly, and second laugh in your face with such finality and harshness that it was cruel and made one feel foolish.

But Sissy felt it.

And her heart stopped.

Her nose stopped inhaling and exhaling.

Her fingers stopped twitching.

Her blood stopped moving.

Time stopped.

Time stopped as she stared into ice blue eyes that held the identical shape and intent she recognized from years ago. At the pale snow skin that used to be tan. At the long fiery blond hair that was crudely cut and messily spiked in the front and enviously long in the back.

She stared at the taller, almost lanky build that she would have to guess, now made him taller than her despite her having just a few inches over him as kids.

She stared at the ghost white lips and the hardened slender face and chin.

She stared at Johnny. And she stared at her.

Her voice came out in a pathetic and withering stutter, "J-John-ny . . ."

And everything was black.

Alright, writer's block is not an excuse, nor a reason not to update for such a long time. However, I'm trying my best to combat it, and to update more because I want this story to have more depth, and I'm lacking in the ability to provide that because of my frequent writer's block.

I'm really sorry, and I'll try my best to make my updates more frequent.