Aegri Somnia: A Sick Man's Dreams: Chapter Twenty-One: Attention
Water dripped down somewhere nearby. Plick plick plick, hitting the concrete so loud in the silences between words. Metallic water, cold water, real water plick splash. A puddle formed more quickly than it should have in such a square little room, and he kept thinking he'd move too far to the left and stick his hand in it and not feel anything.
"Devi, you need to calm down."
Stuck.
"Fuck off!"
They were stuck.
"The door will come back eventually."
In a room.
"After it's too late!"
Without any doors.
"Devi—"
Or ventilation.
"Edgar, don't you get it? This is it! This is the fucking end. Nny is going to die and he's gonna stay dead! He's all alone and we're stuck in a fucking hole in the ground when we should be with him and—and this isn't right, goddamn it!"
Or lights.
"I know. I know. Don't think I'm blind to that, to this. But there's no way you're going to get to him now. You could beat at the wall for as long as you like and you wouldn't even scratch the mold."
Except for all these boxes.
"Nnngh fuck."
Filled with tangled ropes.
"Whoa!"
Of Christmas lights.
"Why did you remind me?"
That probably didn't work.
"Because—because we still have to be rational in this."
And now was probably a bad time.
"Let go."
But he really didn't do well.
"You fell on me."
In the dark.
"G-guys?"
A sigh. So easy to picture Edgar gently push Devi from his arms and adjust his glasses, and prepare for the next onslaught of "oh-god-that-really-just-happened-didn't-it" panic to strike at their little group. Wait for it, wait for it.
Clack. There, the sound of metal rims squeaking on their hinges, a million years past warranty.
Fuck, how long had it been since his lungs last worked?
"Did you find an outlet Jimmy?"
If he had still been alive, he probably would have suffocated to death years ago.
"No."
Or killed himself.
"Hey. Your voice is shaking. Where are you?"
Or been eaten by the Wall.
"H-here. Over here."
Which was really the same thing, when you thought about it.
Soft-soled footsteps moving in Jimmy's direction. Close closer closest and Edgar's square-fingered hand reached out and found his chest where at least once Johnny had ripped him open with hooks as big as his fist and smashed his ribcage in with a mallet. Now there was nothing, not even his shirt was torn, and Jimmy was okay with this.
As if he had a choice in being okay about Johnny or not.
"Hey, you're shivering."
He could scarcely remember these things anymore, and he had died more times than anybody in the room. Maybe these things were connected. Then again, maybe he just didn't pay enough attention.
"I am?"
Somewhere footsteps thundered past and Edgar's hand moved to his shoulder and squeezed.
"Shit, the dark."
Devi got it. Devi remembered.
"What—? Oh."
Edgar couldn't. He had more important things to worry about than Twitching Jimmy's lapses in coherency, real or fabricated for the attention. Jimmy knew that, but even he wasn't quite sure of the difference anymore. He'd stopped paying attention ages ago.
Jimmy knew Edgar had to keep Nny on the proverbial wagon for as long as he could. Every time Nny killed himself, the whole universe broke and it was so much harder than just restarting a computer. Easier to have Nny hate Edgar than to fall into the abyss outside the front door. Easier to be the emotional punching bag when things went wrong. Easier to convince Nny that killing people was better for everyone in the long run, because even though the first few months after offing himself were fine and dandy, reality always dropped a bomb on Nny and proved how much worse the whole ordeal had made him.
People weren't meant to come back from the dead.
People weren't meant to flush so much human negativity.
People weren't meant to flush for so long.
People weren't meant to kill other people.
That's why Nny wasn't people anymore.
And that's why Edgar had to work so hard for as long as he could, and Edgar had been lucky often. Without Edgar, Nny would have collapsed a long, long time ago and the world would probably have been the worse for it. They all knew it. Jimmy—Devi too, no doubt—sometimes really hated Edgar. But glimpses of the alternative were seen whenever Nny succeeded in offing himself, and it was clear to all of them that this was the lesser of two evils.
"Jimmy."
Edgar had been lucky, yes. In that, they agreed. His luck had run out though, and now everything was falling apart and could not be repaired.
This was their last night in the basement. Jimmy could feel it. He knew. Here, they were trapped in the dark as far away from Nny as the basement could manage, and because he was dead, Jimmy couldn't tell if it was just the dark crawling all over him or if, maybe, bugs were involved.
Crazy people always thought they had bugs on them, right?
Was this being crazy or was he just begging for attention again?
"Hey, come on."
Dead people couldn't go crazy. If you were sane when you were alive, you were sane when you woke up and found yourself a ghost. Crazy ghosts taking revenge on the living was the shit horror movies were made of. Real ghosts couldn't bother a person. You couldn't touch couldn't hear couldn't see something that wasn't there, and ghosts weren't there in cold columns of air or funny splotches of light on a photograph. Ghosts just stood around all day and wondered what the fucking point was.
"Stop that Jimmy."
There was no unfinished business. A ghost was just a misfile, a hiccup in the grand scheme of things, whatever that was. End of story. And just as ghosts couldn't affect the world, so the world couldn't affect ghosts.
Jimmy started to feel better.
"Jimmy?" Edgar asked. It was clear from the tone of his voice that that wasn't the first time he'd said his name.
He shoved Edgar's hand away. "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Devi's fingers groped blindly against his arm and went through a box behind him. "Fucking dammit."
"Footsteps. There were footsteps."
"Where? I didn't hear anything."
"You guys were fighting."
Neither of them said anything. They listened instead, giving Jimmy his time on the soapbox.
There was nothing now beyond the usual creaking and groaning.
"Are you sure you heard something, Jimmy?" Edgar asked.
He swallowed, and the spit sliding down his throat felt as real and tangible as it had been the day he'd knocked on Nny's front door to prove just how worthy he was of Nny's attention.
Okay. First lesson.
"I swear! Somebody ran by, really close."
First lesson.
"There's nobody here but Johnny and an ass-load of dead people."
Be a better judge of character.
He flinched. "No, I—"
Edgar's hand on his shoulder again and Jimmy fought the urge to punch him. Fuck, would he stop with all the touching? "If you need a minute or two it's okay. Devi and I can manage."
He clenched his fists and bared his teeth, but he wouldn't fight Edgar over this. Either he had heard someone or he hadn't, and the basement would prove it eventually either way. He forced himself to relax. "Fine," he muttered, shrugging Edgar off. He settled in a wedge of knocked-over boxes, the tiny glass bulbs and twisted green wires unharmed by the heavy tread of his boots. "I'm fine, just leave me alone."
Someone walked away. Someone stayed a moment longer. He felt eyes on his neck, his jaw. He curled himself tighter and scowled. If he was still alive, he'd probably be blushing or some shit like that. He couldn't tell which of them was standing there, and told himself he didn't care.
The second someone followed the first, and Devi and Edgar's voices floated over from the opposite side of the room. They sounded so normal, like a couple of survivors trying to make it through a shitty turn of events, like an earthquake or something. If he pretended hard enough, the two of them could almost pass for living to his ears.
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"What was that?"
Jimmy was already on his feet, clinging to a stack of moldy cardboard boxes, unable to feel the dampness, unable to tear the material under his white-knuckled grip. "I told you, somebody's here!"
"Who would want to come here?"
He didn't reply. What could he say? Devi's disbelieving tone wasn't unfounded. No one had lived on Nny's street in years. Even the teenagers who once upon a time used to break in on dares had long since grown up. They'd had children of their own, become grandparents, and some no doubt lived long enough to see themselves become great-grandparents before dying of shock after looking in the mirror one day and not recognizing the wrinkled old thing staring back.
Jimmy shook his head. If there had been a brain inside, no doubt it would be aching now. His thoughts kept rushing at him, incoherent and simple one moment, long and rambling and curiously disjointed the next. It was like being alive again.
He hadn't felt like this in forever.
Running footsteps again. A crash, the groaning and thundering sounds of some ancient machine collapsing, a woman's scream. A moment of silence, the three of them unsure of the events happening out of sight, and then slowly the footsteps picked up speed again and faded out of hearing.
Devi made a stunned sort of noise. "Someone's really here."
"N-no shit." Jimmy bit his tongue.
She didn't retaliate, which was a surprise to all of them. "We need to get them out of here," she said.
"Good luck with that," Edgar replied. The tone of his voice made Jimmy wonder if Edgar was smiling.
"Fuck you. We have to try."
"What do you think our chances are of breaking through to them? About as likely as turning on the lights, don't you think?"
"Edgar—!"
Whatever Devi was going to scream at Edgar next was cut off by a sudden, thunderous shaking that gripped the basement. Boxes teetered and crashed, spilling their contents across the concrete. Distantly, Jimmy felt the tower of boxes he'd been clinging to fall through him. He hit the floor hard. No doubt it would have hurt if he had nerves beneath his skin, or even if he had skin at all. He couldn't help but gasp as wood and cardboard and wires punctured the places where internal organs once had rested.
The shaking stopped as suddenly as it began.
Someone somewhere groaned, cursed. Jimmy didn't recognize the voice and felt the first prickle of an unexplainable fear. The intruder, the living woman was among them. Swallowing, he closed his eyes and lay very still. Irrational, but instinctual, and he knew better than to fuck with instincts. You didn't ignore your instincts, and Jimmy's skin was crawling with imaginary bugs. He thought maybe he'd ended up in that puddle of water. His ear felt drippy, but he was probably just overreacting. Better to wait and see. Better to—
"Who's there?"
The new someone sounded just shy of a breakdown, her voice thick with emotion, or perhaps she had already fallen apart and was now trying to put herself back together. It didn't matter. She wasn't going to live long anyway. If Johnny couldn't kill her, the basement would get her in the end.
The woman called out again, her voice partially drowned out by the sounds she made digging her way through the piles of Christmas lights.
Devi swore on Jimmy's left.
The sound of shifting wires and tiny glass bulbs tinkling against themselves increased. Ragged breathing came from the mysterious woman. She was frightened. Well, at least she wasn't stupid then. "Oh God," the woman moaned, "oh God, oh God oh God please let me back let me out this is too much I can't do this oh God help me this I shouldn't even be here please—"
"Tess?"
The woman's breath hitched. A coincidence. It had to be. No way could she hear Edgar. Jimmy wondered why he had even bothered. He was always the one to point out how futile it all was, a smile always on his stupid face. Jimmy sneered, his face full of cardboard.
"H-hello?" the woman managed after a moment.
"Tess," Edgar said a second time, sounding certain.
"How do you k-know my name?" This woman, Tess apparently, asked, voicing Jimmy's own thoughts. "Oh fuck, you're another one of his voice-things, aren't you?"
"I… yes."
"No no no he can't have followed me I left him there on the floor screaming. No. I don't believe you this can't be happening."
"Johnny's not here, Tess. It's just us."
"Us? Who's us?"
"Edgar, explain whatever is happening right now or so help me," Devi growled, leaving the empty threat hanging. Tess screamed.
"Tess, it's okay!"
"No no no no OH GOD DON'T TOUCH ME!"
The sounds of a struggle, grunting from Edgar, incoherency from Tess. How the hell was Edgar doing that? How was he grabbing her?
Unless.
Jimmy stood up. At the same time, Edgar seemed to have gotten a strong enough hold on Tess to still her. "Edgar?" Jimmy asked weakly, eyes searching blindly through the dark. His not-skin crawled, and the pressure on his not-eyes made them feel as if they were close to bursting. His not-hands shook. "What…?"
"Meet Tess, guys," Edgar panted. "She's an old friend."
Apologies for the year of silence. Too many excuses to bother throwing down, so I just won't. The next chapter is roughly planned out to be Tess-centric. No guarantee on when you'll see it. Thanks for your patience and reading! Comments appreciated, critiques even more so.
-A.N.