Author's Note: Beware the Chemically Imbalanced crabs. I mean it.
Chapter 5, Part 1: A Need To Kill
Johnny stumbled out into the dark night, craving to kill. He didn't even understand that compelling drive within him. Perhaps it was a sort of self-actualization, to show that he did determine himself as something of importance in the world. Yet, as he walked down the sidewalk, his hands shoved into his pockets, his eyes roving the area, he couldn't help but wonder why.
Why was a poisonous word, it meant doubt and fear. This one word made him wonder about his true feelings for Devi. It made him consider options that would involve abandoning his own beliefs. Johnny's eyes fell upon a ritzy club called Playa del Sol – Beach of the Sun. It was pretty funny because it was a popular disco hangout for all the preppy teens in the area. It was also dark inside, the lights muted, and filled with clouds from the joints that they smoked.
He could smell all the food and drinks inside too. The alcohol flowing freely, illegal to minors; the invigorating smell of fresh ground coffee. Johnny stepped inside and took a nervous look around. The entire place was packed more than a can of sardines. The second he walked inside, two people bumped into him.
It was a terrific mistake to do.
The girl spun around and laughed in his face. " Did you just feel me up?"
Johnny blinked and took a step backwards so that he was standing in the doorway. " No." He said, finally.
" Oh, come on!" The girl turned to the man standing beside her – obviously her boyfriend – and said: " I could actually feel his hard-on when he bumped into me. Can you believe that?"
Johnny's neck prickled as he could feel what had to be a blush coming upon him. He felt angrier now, too, and in no way felt that this girl deserved to live on, only to annoy others with her horribly nasal voice.
He pulled aside his trenchcoat and showed her the knife resting in his belt. " I think this is what you felt."
The girl took a step back. " Brandon?" She whispered to her boyfriend. " Tell me that's not a gun."
Brandon replied: " Sweet Lord, he's got a knife!"
The party stopped for a second, everyone staring. Then, suddenly, everyone started singing and chanting: " He's got a knife! He's got a knife!" Everyone had a great time doing a dance along with it, too – sort of a creepy jabbing motion with their hands.
" Seems your friends are too stupid, or even to shallow, to distinguish true danger from a party atmosphere." Johnny said, darkly, unsheathing the knife and pointing it at Brandon.
The girl gasped. " Kill me! Don't kill him! He just got his teeth bleached!"
Brandon grinned his pearly-whites.
Johnny's eyes flashed violently as he jabbed the knife into the girl's throat. It didn't press in far, just enough to draw a little bit of blood from a nice slit. The girl shrieked.
" Don't hurt Maria!" Brandon said, lamely, taking a step backwards. " Yeah, uh… she's my girl, dude."
" You've probably cheated on her. You're in no mood to stick up to her." Johnny pressed the knife in further. Maria was screaming now.
Brandon looked embarrassed. " Maria, don't take it personally. The other ones, they were nothing to me!"
Maria blinked uncertainly. " Free me, you dope!" She shouted through her tears.
Brandon took another step backwards. " Uh… I was meaning to break up, Maria. Uh…" Brandon looked around and shouted: " Uh - - I gotta go!" He ran off into the dark corners of the disco.
Johnny laughed. " Now that you really need them, you see how shallow your friends and loved ones are. Yet you chose to associate with them. No – you actually followed them blindly, doing everything you could to rip the hearts of others into shreds."
" You're sick!" Maria wept.
" Let us evaluate who's sick here. Nobody's even paying attention to you. Your own boyfriend is pretending that he didn't see this happen." Johnny jabbed the knife in fully and watched her shrieking in pain. " You're the one who's sick. I AM NOT SICK." He pulled the knife out and stared at the girl. He waited for the wash of self-satisfaction to come over him. He wanted, more than anything, to feel that good pat-on-the-back feeling that he often got. Yet, nothing – not even the slightest hint of pleasure from the kill.
The other members of the club had by now settled down from their happiness and saw him standing over Maria's body. " Maria's drunk again." Some girl laughed.
Johnny ran out of the disco club and ran up the street. He felt sickened, disheartened, and above all, completely depressed. What had been an attempt to raise his spirits ended up a cruel trick on his own heart. He couldn't enjoy the thrill of the hunt anymore. He felt no euphoria. It didn't give him any satisfaction. All he could feel was this hollow pain, as if there was something he should be doing instead.
Reverend Meat's words were strong in his ears. They will catch you soon. You're not a flusher anymore. The police can, and will, find you if you keep killing. Subside to your emotions. Become a slave!
Suddenly, Johnny's heart thumped loudly. Reverend Meat was using reverse psychology on him. But of course! Reverend Meat was trying to threaten him into killing. He kept saying that if Johnny were to actually start evaluating his own true feelings, Johnny would be a 'slave'. It was all presented in a horribly negative image.
Johnny couldn't believe it. In the end, he was being manipulated into doing Reverend Meat's will just by disobeying what Reverend Meat advised. It was so simple, yet so painful to hear. Johnny could feel the horrible shattering pain bursting through him. He was spent of his energy, emotionally worn out, and caked in blood.
There was no joy in it all anymore.
What did he have left?
Johnny! I loved you! Why are you doing this to me???
Devi's screams filled his ears. He leaned against the alley wall and couldn't help but let the tears flow out, like a continuous river of pain.
o-o-o
Happy Noodle Boy
o-o-o
Happy Noodle Boy was sitting Indian-style on the floor of his bedroom. He had a little aluminum foil hat on his head. He leaned out the window of his bedroom and began to shout at his neighbor.
" YOU! You, the fat pig assaulting his lawn mower! Suckle my grass seeds of doom!"
Happy Noodle Boy then jumped right out the window and latched himself on the leg of the lawn-mowing guy. " Throttle me into euphoric joy! Hey, look, Batman's neck can move!"
The lawn-mowing guy replied, finally: " You're insane."
Happy Noodle Boy gasped in horror. " Egads spells Sdage backwards! You must face my wrath, cookie-dough roller! Take that!" Happy Noodle Boy struck randomly into the air with his hands.
" Press here to call leetle keek!" Happy Noodle Boy added, striking himself squarely in the forehead. He hit too hard and his whole head caved in.
Now Happy Noodle Boy was lying on the ground, bleeding severely from his head. The lawn-mowing guy sort of mowed a bit of a stick figure around him and then tapped Noodle Boy's shoulder. "Uh… Mr. Psychotic screaming thing, you can go back home now?"
Happy Noodle Boy was seeing his life flash before his eyes. " Don't touch me, Daddy! I'm not ripe yet!" He shrieked, and then banged his head against the lawn-mower guy's knee. Guts and brains splashed everywhere.
" Go on! Kill yourself!" Lawn Mower man shouted. " I'm sick of you scaring my children and torturing my wife! You set her on fire, you freak! She didn't smile at me for days now! The last time she showed any facial expression was when she was choking on a bagel!"
" I believe she did scream when she had that bat stuck in her hair net." Happy Noodle Boy said. "You must fly to El Dorado now, my little sparrow! Fly or I'll kick your ass!"
Lawn Mower man nodded and kicked Happy Noodle Boy towards his side of the lawn. "AND STAY THERE, YOU WEIRDO!" The Lawn Mower man shouted.
" You only think you are Mega Plasma man! I am the real Split Banana!" Noodle Boy mumbled before passing out. Too much loss of blood, I guess. What I guess should never be taken as medical advice. Put DOWN the stapler, Toby! Put it down! PUT IT DOWN!
Author's Note: I do not, and have never known, a stapler-wielding man named Toby. Perhaps Poncho Gustafo, the man who lives in my head, would know him though.
o-o-o
Chapter Five, Part 2: Emotional Probe
Devi picked at the hole in her pants. It was small, on the back of her knee. She could stick her finger through it. She had amused herself for two hours, sticking her finger through the hole and then poking it out the other side, like some alien bolt growing out of her leg. Then, she would realize just how bored and unhappy she was and give up her tirade.
" Johnny." She whispered. " Are you there?"
" Yes." Johnny was sitting on the other side of the door, his back up against the wood. She was sitting propped up against the door as well. Their backs were touching through the wood.
" Why?" Devi asked, finally. " Why me? Didn't you have any other girls? Or did you kill them all too?" She didn't sound sarcastic. She had no wit or sarcasm left. She was tired and ready to die.
She heard a sniffle, and then a stifled cry. " There wasn't anyone." Johnny said, finally.
" Johnny?" Devi exclaimed. She felt triumphant. If she could make him cry, guilt him and milk him for all the emotions he's worth of, he might let her go. " Johnny, you're a good person inside. I know you are. I felt that - - that good guy aura from you. I think this is all just a bit of a mistake. I bet you were in a bad mood." Inside, she kept thinking: You let me out, and I'll have the cops at your door in seconds.
" Devi, I love you." He said.
Devi felt her heart pounding so hard she could feel it vibrating in her throat and her voice as she replied: " What do you mean?"
" I have to kill you because I love you." He whispered. " It's such a long story. And I don't know what's true and what's fake anymore in my life. There's these voices, and there's all these sides to me, and they come out and I'm not sure what me, the real ME, would want to do."
Devi couldn't help but be intrigued by this. " Tell me more?" She requested.
" It's too depressing." Johnny said, finally. " I don't want you to have yet another thing worry you."
" What does it matter? You'll kill me anyway!" She shouted. She didn't mean to raise her voice, so when she heard it come out, she lowered it greatly and said, in a soothing tone: " Tell me so that I don't feel at fault."
Johnny looked out the window at the starry night. " I don't even remember my past, you know?"
She was quiet.
" All I remember is that something bad happened to my parents. I was little, maybe Squee's age. I guess that's why I figured he needed to have good parents… when I was his age, I'd have done anything to have my parents back. Then… I just don't remember. It's like I was a couple different people at the same time. The voices seemed to remember…"
" What voices?" Devi demanded.
" I wasn't always this way!" Johnny strained out.
" What voices?" Devi asked again.
" The Doughboys. Nail Bunny. Reverend Meat. All of them. They're just inanimate objects, I know that, but they have… have this reasoning power. I hear them. They use the arguments I feel inside me against me."
" Johnny…" Devi felt pain inside just hearing this. Johnny didn't seem like a bad person by nature. It seemed a lot like the voices were making him do this, whatever they were. " … were the Doughboys those things in the room, when I walked in? Where they the ones that wanted you to kill me?"
" They told me I'd never be happy. They said that if I don't stop and kill us both, the happy feeling would rage itself and ruin me. It'll go away and I'll be left unhappy again. It would be like sampling a drug and then left with the… the dysphoria." He sighed. " I don't know if that makes sense."
" They were wrong." Devi told him hardly. " I would have stayed with you. Well, maybe not… if you killed others, I might now have… but if you were just yourself, just the Johnny from the bookstore, just that personality, not the voices… that's the Johnny I loved. The one I'd have stayed with."
" But was that me?" Johnny asked. " There's so many voices. Which one was the real me? All the voices left me and they're all in different things. Whichever one I chose to follow, I'd just end up unhappy, or led into a dead end."
" Maybe because you're a combination of a few. Hell, I've had my own weird voices. But - - but I got over them. I found myself through staying busy." Devi laughed to herself. " It seems so silly to think back on all that, in fact. Just so weird to sit here and remember all those things that I heard… and how I realized that the voices weren't real. Once I just started ignoring them, confronting them, they went away."
" I don't know if I can do that." Johnny admitted. " They seem too real, too intuitive. They know too much about me."
" That's because they ARE you, damn it! They know this stuff because you created them with your mind!" Devi shouted. " Can't you see? You're just arguing with yourself for all this time. Pick the side that's the most pacific, the most peaceful."
" Nail Bunny, maybe. He's the most reasoning." Johnny said, softly.
" Yeah, whatever." Devi told him. " Whichever it is."
" I've been ignoring Nail Bunny." Something dawned on Johnny. " That's why… I've been ignoring Nail Bunny. Reverend Meat talked me into ignoring him… it was all just this sick reverse psychology."
Devi had no idea what Johnny was talking about. It seemed like Johnny was making strides though. " Yes, yes! That's it!" She said, faking glee.
Johnny jumped up and said: " I won't kill you. I'll ignore them!"
" Let me go?" Devi suggested. I'm going to call the cops on you. I think a few years in therapy will even you out. She was still frightened beyond belief by him. She also felt oddly intrigued, though.
" I can't let you go." Johnny said. " You'd know too much. You'd tell the cops."
" DAMN!" Devi sighed. " So you'll just keep me here? IS THAT LOVE? How can you even say you love me if you treat me like this? I wouldn't even treat my worst enemy like this!"
Johnny shrank away from the doorway. " I'm sorry." He said, finally. " It isn't you. It's me." It sounded like an echo from an old breakup line that he'd heard from way back in high school. Girls turned him down so much back then.
That one simple statement had brought back some sort of memory of the past.
Johnny grinned grimly. " I'll try that ignore-the-voices thing."
Good. Maybe you'll be normal enough to let me out, Devi thought. I don't know how much longer I can handle in here.
o-o-o
Meanwhile…
o-o-o
There was a small little bunny sitting in the middle of a field. There was a big sign behind him that read, "Rabbit Fields". He looked happy as he nibbled on a single clover in front of him. Then, you catch a sight of what is behind him – he is sitting on a foot-wide, foot-long patch of grass in the center of a huge parking lot, with Apartments all over, each with huge flashing letters: "Rabbit Fields".
The bunny sighed and looked up at the sky. " Sometimes, pollution is pretty upsetting. My left eye is clouding over. I can't breathe at night. My children had been killed after humans bulldozed through our house with… well, a bulldozer."
Very sad classical music is playing in the background.
The heart-wrenching bunny continues: " Then… you won't believe this, but… a horde of evil chemically imbalanced crabs attacked me, and now I no longer have nipples. I feel sick all the time. I hope that the green oozing thing on my forehead isn't some weird growing tumor."
A plane crashes in the distance. All these bloody people stumble out.
" ARRGGHHHH! AM ANGRY! Must kill!" A man shouted. He grabbed the bunny and smashed it with his club.
Bunny's eyes are just basically smushed out. The Bunny says, as the last word: " Hug a tree today!"
In the distance, people are torching trees.
Author Sez: Whoa… Screen growing distorted before my very eyes… and it's not even 1:00 am yet…
o-o-o
End Note: Yeah, I think that's enough for chapter 5. More later… I just bought myself a JtHM shirt. It's black with Nny on it, he's like a mummy and holding 2 knives, and there's hieroglyphics on the back (says NNY, THM in Egyptian). And… yeah, that's about it. Just thought I'd mention it. Another black outfit for me! YAY!