Small warning: this chapter touches briefly on some of the events from Jhonen's spin-off works, "I Feel Sick" (featuring Devi) and Squee's "Book of Unspeakable Horrors." I don't really think it's enough to constitute as spoilers. This fic just takes place in a universe where those stories have happened. Just wanted to let folks know about the context. Carry on!

Chapter 20

"And the words you said tore through my head
Like bullets from a gun.
I should have just shown up and said,
'Get in this car, let's run.'
These years have seen so many imitations turning green
Each like the last, they go right past, like credits on a screen
But your memory blazes through me
Burning everything like gasoline."

The first thing Edgar's mind decided was that this was a dream. A nightmare, rather. He was going to wake up, the day after the perfectly normal birthday party, and roll out of bed and walk into the living room and tell Gaz and Johnny (who would be watching cartoons and eating frozen waffles by that point in the day) about this very odd dream he had had. And then they would laugh at him and he'd admit "Yes, I suppose it was kind of surreally funny," and then he'd make his coffee and -

"Edgar! Get away from the fucking door!"

Edgar was yanked unceremoniously back until he was the one farthest into the room. Johnny had touched him more in the past twenty minutes than he'd touched him in the six months previously. He was constantly trying to shove him this way and that, into safety, away from the door and what smashed and snarled behind it...

Edgar couldn't bring his mind to say "monster" or "thing" or "it." Gaz was on the other side of that door. His Gaz, his daughter, fine, whatever, specific language wasn't important anymore. Something had gone dreadfully, horribly wrong, but he just -

He knew her. Maybe he could reverse it, whatever dark magic was at work here. He wanted to fix her, put her back, make it better, soothe the hurt. She had to hurt; no unpained child, monster or no, would scream like that -

Edgar found himself wandering toward the door again, but Devi put an arm out to stop him.

"Where's Moopy?" she asked him, sounding tired. Edgar didn't understand why on earth she would sound like this was something she'd been through before, but he lifted a shaking hand to point toward Gaz's bed.

"She...uhm...she had a fight with him, before-" he said weakly. And indeed, the stuffed animal was propped up neatly on her pillow, gazing at all of them with uncaring button eyes as the panic in the room grew.

Johnny stalked over and grabbed the toy by its long, scrawny neck. The instant his fingers closed around it, there came a snarling roar from the other side of the door. It shook and splintered in its frame as Gaz smashed herself against it for the third or fourth time. She did not like him touching her things.

"Please, let me go out and try to talk to her," Edgar pleaded. This nonsense with the stuffed toy was getting bizarre. He didn't understand why everyone was suddenly so fixated on this, or why the seemingly sane Devi and Todd were going along with it when his daughter clearly needed help.

"It's not Gaz," Johnny snapped, as he inspected the toy, refusing to look at him. "Not right now."

"Then what -"

"We're going to find out."

Holding up a palm, Johnny silenced him. He silenced everyone, save for Todd's panicked breathing and Tenna's incessant whistling. The toy flopped around in his hands as he yanked on each little stuffed limb, at the tag, at the mane made of dirty brown yarn, and Edgar felt his mind starting to uncurl at the pain and insanity of all this because not a single cell in his control-obsessed brain understood one iota of what was going -

In a sudden spasm of motion, Johnny heaved Moopy above his head and smashed it into the ground, garnering a choked and agonized sound from Gaz out in the hallway. The assault on the door ceased briefly and Edgar nearly dry-heaved.

"Come on, you fucking linty demon! We've figured out that you're the one behind all of this. Tell me what the fuck is going on!"

Johnny roared at the toy, and out of the corner of his eye Edgar saw Devi nod approvingly.

"Step on it. I've got a lighter in my pocket if you think we'll need it," she ordered, and to Edgar's surprise, Johnny obeyed. Johnny never obeyed anyone, but he reared up his boot and brought it smashing down on the stuffed toy.

Instead of squeaking or releasing a little puff of lint, the toy groaned. It was difficult to hear amidst the sound of nightmare Gaz screeching beyond the door, but definitely audible.

"Good call," said Tenna.

"Thanks." Devi pulled the aforementioned lighter out of her jeans and forced it into Johnny's hands, who was still totally fixated on Moopy's deflated form splayed out on the floor.

"This is your last chance, demon-fluff," Johnny warned. "I know your kind don't like fire."

He flicked the lighter on, rewarded with a tiny flash of flame.

An instant later, the toy on the floor flashed as well. The same black-shadow-flash that Gaz had done ten minutes ago. The same black-shadow-flash as when she'd broken that burglar's legs a month ago. It crowded Edgar's mind with sick foreboding and dread but they were too deep in by now.

Moopy, of its own volition, sat up and turned its tiny head and stared at Johnny.

"Are you seeing this?" Edgar whispered to Tenna, who seemed to be the only one in the room not expecting this. Even she was only mildly surprised.

"Yeah. Dev says this happens sometimes. Has to do with exposure to the forces of darkness."

"HA!" This voice wasn't familiar. It rasped deeply in Edgar's chest and emanated from the room around them and yet he knew, with absolute certainty, that Moopy was the source. It did not give him much time to ruminate on this horror.

"I would expect humans like you to grossly oversimplify the complexities involved in our corrupting system. Case in point: the fact that you think I'm at all attached to this pathetic physical body."

Moopy did not move, but the condescension in its voice was thick. Edgar tried to keep his brain from vomiting out of his ears over the fact that his daughter's favorite toy was speaking. Fortunately, Johnny handled this much better than he (which was a first).

"I knew it! I fucking knew it," Johnny snarled, yanking at his hair and sounding more enraged than self-satisfied. "Your fucking kind just can't leave me alone, can you?! What did you do!? WHAT DID YOU DO TO GAZ!?"

The voice laughed again, as patronizing as before, but finally answered: "What did I do? Hardly anything. I was merely a funnel, my boy. It was you and your delightful roommate who provided the ammunition, so to speak."

"Explain," Edgar said, his voice squeaky but no longer lost.

"Hm. I see that Vargas can, indeed, speak. Well done. Your next project is to say things that actually mean something, instead of spouting heartfelt fortune-cookie sentiments all the time. How the girl tolerated it I'll never know. She even seemed to like it, the fool."

Edgar felt a pang, and was glad for Johnny and his resilience.

"Stop fucking around and do like he said. Explain."

For a few seconds the thing deliberated, amidst the silence of the little group and the heaving-hissing growl of Gaz beyond the door.

"I suppose things are far enough along that there's no harm in informing. Your Gaz belongs to us now. It really was a remarkable opportunity, to corrupt someone so young. To have such complete control. Normally we must settle for influence and suggestion, as was the case with you, damned Devi. Or you, mad Johnny."

Johnny and Devi shifted and shuddered at being named by this demon-toy, barely restraining the urge to jump forward and rip the thing apart.

"Heh. You fuckers are still mad that I fought back, aren't you?" Devi said.

"If anything, we're mad that you haven't improved your vocabulary. No, Devi, it may shock you to know that the loss of one mediocre artist did not upend things at the office very much. We still have Johnny, wandering through the world and spreading darkness to everything he touches."

Several gazes in the room snapped to Nny, who'd hunched himself down and was changing a gamut of colors. His wide, wet eyes were fixated on the carpet a few inches to Moopy's left. A catatonic state looked imminent. Either that or a bodily voiding.

"What's it talking about?" Edgar asked, trying Johnny first, getting no answer, and then looking over to Devi. She seemed hardly any better adjusted, but at least made eye contact with him. Before staring down at her hands with a surprising meekness, that is.

"I don't know the intimate details of the system, but...Johnny's got some weird aura about him. Lets the darkness from another plane in to our world or some shit. I never would have believed in all of that mumbo-jumbo, except that -"

"Devi had a painting that talked to her! It wanted to eat her brain!" yelped Tenna, nodding emphatically and making Devi smash a palm across her forehead.

"Not in so many words, I guess. I had a run-in with the forces of darkness a year or so ago. Before I sent those fuckers back where they belonged, they told me that getting close to Johnny the Emocidal Maniac here was what had caused it. Some kind of fucking demon STD." She jerked a thumb toward Nny, who had hunched himself down even smaller and was chewing at his lower lip.

Out in the hall, Gaz screamed and threw herself against the door again. Perhaps the insanity of the situation was getting to him, but Edgar could have sworn he heard his named whispered amidst her growling. A plaintive "Egar." He stamped down the urge to go tend to her, and tried instead to digest what he was being told.

"So, then..." Edgar rubbed at the bridge of his nose and tried to pretend like he wasn't speaking to a stuffed giraffe sitting on the floor. "By letting Johnny around Gaz, we've allowed her to become corrupted by some evil force? One that speaks to her in the form of a stuffed toy and lets her change shape into...into that?"

It didn't seem necessary to specify what he was talking about. Beside him, Johnny was making a soft whining sound and seemed to have checked out, judging by his dazed expression. Edgar waited for Moopy to answer him, and was eventually rewarded by a soft, soft laugh.

"Hehehe. It would be nice if it were that easy, wouldn't it, Vargas? If only you could blame everything on poor, insane Johnny. I'm afraid there's another variable involved here, however."

"And what variable would that be?" Edgar asked.

"I'm shocked that you hadn't already figured it out. Haven't you noticed other odd things, Edgar? Missing newspapers? Disappearing chairs? Did you think that was our doing?"

"I didn't think -"

"Clearly not. You're just as bad for little Gaz as Johnny is. You see, Edgar, you're supposed to be dead. The fact that you're here right now means that you're a glitch. And glitches corrupt programs, do they not?"

Johnny's whining intensified, becoming more high-pitched as he scratched at his face trying to cover it. The noise envied Todd on a bad day, and so Edgar waved Johnny down to silence him. No luck. Distractions weren't particularly welcome at the moment.

"That doesn't make any sense," he said, not nearly as strongly as he wanted to. "I'm clearly alive. Maybe I've had some close calls in the past, but nothing bad enough to -"

"Shut up!" Johnny screeched. He grabbed Edgar by the wrist and yanked him around so that they were staring face-to-face, Johnny's eyes all hollow and red-ringed and frightened. "Don't listen to it, Edgar! It's not true!"

"What isn't true?!"

"Oh, my. My my my. This is very touching. Johnny the murderer trying to protect one of his former victims. If only he'd had such decency about him a few years ago, am I right?" cooed Moopy, its voice echoing softly in the void of the room.

Edgar dragged his gaze back to Johnny. "What's it talking about, Nny?"

"I'm sorry," Johnny whined, his fingers clawing at Edgar's arms. "If I'd have known...if I'd have known how things were going to turn out, I never would have...and you have to understand, at the time, I didn't have a choice. I really didn't have a choice, Edgar, I didn't want to -"

"Tell me, Johnny. Please. I won't be angry."

"I killed you, Edgar. You were dead. Ripped to shreds. You fed the wall."

Deep in Edgar's mind, an engine sputtered and stopped before flickering to life again with an anemic growl. His aggressive rationalizations were faltering.

"No," Edgar said automatically. "You let me go. Remember? We talked about how not all people are bad, and you turned the machine off and..."

"Do you remember leaving?"

Slowly, Edgar's gaze slid to the floor. Moopy was laughing softly, Gaz was screeching, Todd was rasping and Tenna was squeaking that damned toy, and all the sounds pressed in on Edgar's focus like bands around his chest.

Of course he remembered. He remembered talking to Nny as that dreadful machine cut his breath off by inches. He remembered trying to argue philosophy in a mostly truthful fashion as spikes dug furrows painfully into his back. Johnny had been even more unstable then, even more erratic, and had thrown a fit not unlike the one he was throwing now, and then...

But, Nny must have let him go. He was here now, wasn't he? The memories became soft and unstable after that, and the nearest he could find to that incident was a recollection of sitting in his living room with his head between his knees and a pounding headache a day or so later.

No, Edgar realized. He couldn't remember leaving.

"That can't be possible," Edgar tried. "If you killed me, how can I be here? People don't just come back from the dead."

"Yeah, actually. They can. I did," Johnny said, sounding embarrassed.

"Ugh, it is taking you all far too long to put the pieces together. Let me assist, for Edgar the King of Denial will be here all day trying to logic his way into this place which has never thrived on logic. Our boy Johnny here botched his job as a waste-lock, and as a result, the world was reset a couple of years back."

"I knew it!" screamed Devi, shaking everyone's focus out a few feet. She blinked shyly as they stared at her. "Sorry. There was this day a few Novembers ago where I woke up and found that all my tapes had been erased, and I mentioned it to Tenna, and she was all -"

"I remember that!" Tenna nodded vigorously. "And I said, 'oh man, I bet there was some shift in reality!' and Spooky agreed, but you said -"

Edgar gave a forceful sigh. "Guys, I'm sorry. I'm having a bit of an existential crisis at the moment. Do you think we could discuss this later?"

"Sure," they echoed, and Edgar and Johnny returned their attention to Moopy's furry corporeal body.

"As I was saying," Moopy continued. "The world was reset. They've got a backup disk somewhere for just such an occasion, in much the same way you'd re-install an operating system after a particularly nasty virus. In this case, our virus was Johnny. And you, Edgar, were one of the default settings that was so inconsequential and unimportant and rarely used that it never occurred to anyone to reset you, too, back where you belonged. Dead, that is."

"So I got brought back because...?"

Moopy's voice became soft, gentle, and deceptively sane. "Because you didn't matter. We'd hardly overlook a dead president or a lost Nobel Laureat, but unloved, alone Edgar Vargas? He hardly exists at all."

Bringing a hand to his chest, Edgar felt where his heart ought to be. It beat thickly beneath his fingers but was most certainly there, and his ribs jerked when he let out a little mirthless laugh. The only reason he was here now - the only reason he was still alive - was, apparently, because he didn't matter. Not to anyone.

"Why not take me now, then? If I'm a glitch and fucking people up - people I care about - then why don't you just let me drop dead right now?" he couldn't avoid asking. In the grainy, collapsing world, these questions became important.

"Hmph. You're too important now. That stupid girl and this stupid murderer and these friends of yours all like you. You're more permanent now than you used to be, Vargas. Consider yourself lucky. But not that lucky."

In emphasis, Gaz smashed against the door again, raining splinters in on them from around the frame. The shadows of her raptor-feet flitted back and forth beneath the doorjam, and Edgar was nauseated. These explanations did not make Gaz's horrifying and painful transformation any easier to tolerate, just more logical (and even that only barely). He wanted -

"That's enough," Johnny said.

There was a still and serious steadiness in Johnny's voice that Edgar had rarely heard before. Johnny closed a boney hand around his shoulder, just nails digging slightly into his upper arm as if he needed help balancing, and shook off the last remnants of his earlier fit. When he looked back up to Moopy, his eyes were narrowed and laser focused and Edgar felt an itch of discomfort at being so near to him when he wore that expression.

"Enough? Enough of what? You think you can give me orders, Johnny? You were a slave of ours not so long ago!"

"I'm not anymore. And I'm saying 'stop.' Fix Gaz and leave."

Nny did not often give orders, but when he did, it was with a finality that suggested he was not accustomed to being disobeyed. His gaze was locked sniper-like on Moopy's tiny form on the floor and Edgar had never been so glad not to be in Johnny's focus, although the hand on his shoulder was beginning to tighten painfully.

"Ha! And on what plane of existence do you think you have the authority to enforce that command? All of this is mere entertainment until Gaz breaks through that door and wastes all of you. Which she will, to feed us, and all of your and Edgar's careful love and parenting will be wasted. Your little Gaz is gone."

The words made Edgar want to heave or hide, but Johnny held him steady. Nny glanced over toward Devi for a split second, saw her slam her knuckles into one palm, and somehow instantly understood this. The wood of the door creaked warningly as non-Gaz started to force the hinges, screeching as she did so.

Nny, on the other hand, felt no fear. "You're controlling her. I know how this fucking system works. If you don't have a physical body to remote-control her, she'll go back to normal, won't she?"

"After a fashion. But it will hurt her very badly to be separated from me - I've been needling my tendrils into her for months now. And you can't stop it, not permanently. I'll find another form, or one of my friends will fill in for me. You and Edgar leak too much darkness to keep her safe for long."

"You know," Johnny said, sounding unconvinced, "Futility and lost causes never have discouraged me very much."

In a single swing, Nny bent down and ripped a knife out of his boot, before holding it aloft above Moopy's form. The blade pointed perfectly downward without the slightest quiver or shake, because Nny was never more self-assured than when he was holding a weapon. All the partygoers became breath-still, Moopy was silent in probable half-mocking interest, and Edgar decided he did not like a single thing about this situation.

"Nny, don't! You'll hurt her!" he begged, reaching out, only to have Johnny arc the knife around dangerously close to his face.

"You don't think she's already hurting?!"

Johnny's pointed teeth were bared and the knife in his hand was shaking now. Edgar let his brain flicker back to that horrific spectacle in the living room - to the way that Gaz had screamed as her body was taken away from her, to the fear he couldn't help - and he realized he had little to argue.

Instead, Edgar pulled back.

"You're a fool, Johnny. You're just prolonging the inevitable," Moopy hissed, fearless and mocking.

"Like I haven't heard that before."

The knife dropped, bringing Nny's whole body with it, and the blade smashed into Moopy's stuffed body. It tilted to the side ever so slightly as blood began gushing out of the wound, more than something so small could ever hold, and Johnny gave a cold, triumphant laugh. He stabbed again, ripping and tearing, releasing more blood and guts and clots of fluff. Massacring the little body and rooting out innards.

Out in the hallway, Gaz started screaming.

Not the rasping, wrong voice of her monster self; it was the real Gaz, really in agony, really hurt and frightened, really damaged by what Nny had done. The pounding on the door had finally ceased. Edgar felt the icy drop of dread wringing at his intestines. It hinted at shame and failure, at loss and weakness, the same way that it had fifteen years ago when he'd gotten that call.

He didn't care if it was a trap, he didn't care if it was fake, because his daughter needed help and he couldn't stand idly by any -

"Oomph!"

Edgar had barely taken a step toward the hall when Johnny leapt to his feet and shoved him to the side, not even bothering a backward glance. He stumbled and looked up just in time to see Nny ripping the bedroom door nearly off its hinges, smashing the doorknob into the wall behind, and revealing the hall.

There, curled up into a tiny, quivering ball on the floor, was Gaz. Bloody but normal-sized and breathing. Sobbing, it sounded like. She rolled her face up to look at them and her cheeks were streaked with blood and tears. If she'd ever cried or wailed like this before, then Edgar couldn't recall it.

He also couldn't ever recall seeing Johnny scoop Gaz up in his arms like that. Nny got to her before Edgar could, swinging her up into his shoulder, and for an instant Edgar was horrified that Johnny was going to smash her and finish the job.

Nny did not. He bundled her up and crushed her against his chest, holding her still as she sobbed into his shoulder. For a few seconds Gaz thrashed against him and then went limp with exhaustion. She turned her face away from Edgar, into the crook of Johnny's neck, and he slid slowly to the ground until he was settled cross-legged with her nestled safely in his lap.

Gaz did not cry and Johnny did not touch, but there were moments dark enough that could break both rules. This was one of them.

Lyrics at the top from the Airborne Toxic Event's "Gasoline."

Here it is! The exposition! Did I do alright? Did it make sense? Do you feel relieved to finally have an explanation? I know I do. But, sadly, the truth being out doesn't make things a lot easier for our heroes. A lot harder, really. More of that to come. For now, let's take some time to let the plot sink in a little. See you soon!