Author's Note: You will be probably caught very off guard by the ending of this chapter. You will revel in the delicious spookiness of what happens. My own powers of mind control and hypnotism will awaken through this drama-filled, less-funny chapter, and force you to send me all your money and credit cards. Stare deep into this small annoying font to become a mindless drone. Yes… that's it… keep reading… Mwa ha ha!

Chapter 9, Part 1: Welcome Home (sort of!), Squee!

Johnny glanced around his home with a sort of eerie fondness. He turned and gave Squee a spooky grin. " So, how did you sleep?"

Squee had been given a bed inside an old Christmas tree box, which Johnny tended to prefer when it came to disposing of people's bodies. Squee had, in fact, had an awful night. There was a huge crowd of ants in the box, but he killed one by accident and all the others rushed off for its funeral.

" It was okay." Squee lied. Johnny did go to some nice lengths to find an old rag for Squee to sleep on. " How about you?" Squee asked nervously, as it was the polite thing to do.

" I don't sleep. Waste of time, really." Johnny stood up and stretched. " I bet you're hungry. I can heat up some chicken noodle soup."

Squee's stomach grumbled in delight. " My mommy just made me lick up the jam spills when she was making sandwiches for work."

Johnny frowned at the thought. " You won't be licking anything off the floor here, okay?"

Squee looked down at the teddy bear in his hands. " Why'd you get Shmee for me?"

" I guess I didn't want you to be unhappy." Johnny replied. " Maybe it's time to make someone feel happy thanks to me, right?"

Squee blinked.

" Of course." Johnny snapped his fingers. " Maybe if I just do something towards Devi's favor, she'll…" He paused. " Damn it! What could be any more favorable than to save her life? And that obviously didn't do it."

Squee stared at him as Johnny paced back and forth.

" They can't get to me." Johnny chanted to himself softly, and then turned to Squee. " No, the voices are not going to be included in this brainstorming session."

" Oh." Squee whimpered, huddling into the corner of the room fearfully.

" Squee, what would you do? If you had someone hate you so much, and you've already tried everything you could to make them love you, or at least feel for you – something, anything – what would you do?" Johnny grinned brightly at the little boy.

" That's like Mommy and Daddy." Squee replied. " And nothing worked on them. They'll always hate me." His chin quivered.

" So I guess we have stuff in common, huh?" Johnny looked sad. They both stared at each other in an odd, melodramatic moment. " So… I guess I'll turn on the TV and see if the cops figured anything out." Johnny offered.

Squee looked worried. " Aren't you going to do what you said?"

" Turn on the TV. Yes. Perhaps that is why I just picked up the remote?" Johnny replied sarcastically.

" Make me some soup." Squee prompted.

" Didn't you cook on your own?" Johnny looked puzzled. " I can't recall whether anyone made me food when I was little. I don't really even remember being Squee-aged."

Squee looked really nervous. " I… I can make it. Eep!"

" Oh, no. You'll set yourself on fire or something. The stove does that. I lost a few shirts that way." Johnny nodded to himself. " Yeah, that's what we'll do then. I turn on the TV, real loud, and then go make food. You watch and tell me what's going on."

Johnny walked out. Squee stared at Channel 3 News.

Reporter Ernmor Denyou was talking. (Get it? Earn More Than You? Ahh… you people!). "There is more suspicion as we noticed a man stabbed on the way to a broken window. It seems that a little boy has broken out of the hospital, killed his own benefactor and doctor, and then broken out the window, stabbing another patient along the way. Research shows that there are no fingerprints available."

" I always wear gloves." Johnny said loudly from the kitchen. You could hear the stove range click on.

Squee's hair raised nervously. " I'm a bad guy!"

Johnny laughed grimly. " You like to have noodles in yours? This thing's worse than Ramen… there's nothing in here."

Squee buried his face in his hands, shivering in fear. " Pepito's Dad will come get me!" He whimpered repeatedly.

" Who's this Pepito?" Johnny asked. Pepito is, as you may all know, a very popular name for the little boy in all the Mexican jokes. Johnny was prepared to hear a funny little story, which would have certainly done him good.

" He's the devil!" Squee gasped out. " His house has the thing that isn't heaven in it!" Squee preferred not to swear. " And – and – and – toasty souls of the dead!"

Johnny coughed uncomfortably. " Uh… is that so?"

" He came to my class and blew up everyone's heads but me!" Squee continued, waving his hands in the air frantically. " Mommy called me a liar when I told her. But it's the truth! I saw it with my own eyes! And then I dreamed that buggy-buggies crawled out of the heads of all the dead kids and they wanted to eat me!"

Johnny laughed. " I had head-explody once. Oh man…" His eyes shone with recollection. He scooped some soup out of the pan with a ladle. " The carrots look the same as the peas – gray – since the can was a bit old. Some bum gave it to me in exchange for a Noodle Boy comic."

Squee stared at the television as it flashed to a scene with Devi on it. The Reporter continued: "Here we meet up with a young girl who says she's been the girlfriend of the psychologist – now passed away – Ian."

Devi's trembling voice replied: " I'm not going to jump to any conclusions just yet - - okay, Nny? - - but I hope you hear this and realize that you're a freak! A FREAK!"

Johnny sighed melodramatically in the kitchen. " Squee, sounds like we have explaining to do."

Squee shuddered. " We?"

" Well, I don't think it's advisable for me to try to contact Devi." Johnny said.

" Devi? The girl on T.V.?" Squee asked.

" Yeah." Johnny brought Squee a bowl of soup. " Now, listen, she's really a nice girl. She wouldn't turn away a little boy from her doorstep, okay?"

" Can I go live with her?" Squee exclaimed.

" Maybe." Johnny said. " If you do this right, and she likes you, and she likes me again, then maybe you can."

Squee realized how hopeless it would be for Devi to like Johnny. He nodded anyway, being the already emotionally-worn boy he was; he was used to being the puppet of warped minds. " What am I supposed to do?" Squee asked softly.

" You have to go to her and explain to her about Ian. Explain what he did to you." Johnny said. "And how I saved you twice… maybe add some other stuff, take the blame for the stabbed crazy in the hallway. Fill it with good praise of me and all that."

" B-b-but…" Squee's chin quivered. " Wouldn't I be lying?"

" No." Johnny replied. " You'll just be casting a very positive light on me."

" But that wouldn't be you." Squee said.

Johnny thought about it. " How would you know, Squee?" Johnny asked. " If I never knew who I was, and I had so many voices in me that I couldn't discern a true one from the false ones, then how would I know which one's me and which one isn't?"

Squee shrugged and began to eat his soup. " Please don't hurt me." Squee whimpered into the bowl. " I'll talk to the lady if you want, but I won't lie. I'll tell what you did."

Johnny nodded. " But mention that Ian stole his girlfriend's paintings. Remember to mention that. Emphasize it, you hear me?"

" Okay." Squee sighed.

" There's a good kid." Johnny replied, reclining against the wall. " If you're quiet enough and can clean up after yourself, maybe I can get used to you. Obviously you'll sort of hold me back. I couldn't possibly bring home all the screaming, bloody victims if a little boy was here. Maybe just the occasional irritant…"

Squee suddenly didn't feel hungry any more.

Johnny's laughter echoed off the walls of house 777, beneath the pale eggshell blue sky.

o-o-o

Meanwhile… Ian's Funeral

o-o-o

The priest cleared his throat and began to read some prayer thing over the fresh grave of Ian, prospectful psychologist, respected friend, and good boyfriend. Devi couldn't believe that she'd assisted in Ian's death. She stood there, wringing the funeral booklet until it was just a soggy rag in her hands, her fingers cold and trembling.

Just as they began to throw rose petals on the grave, Devi blurted out: " Wait!"

Ian's mother gave her an angry look.

Devi looked around. Everybody was giving her a strange look.

" I… I want to say something. If it's alright." Devi said.

Ian's mother nodded her approval.

Devi began: " Ian, he… he was so smart, such a brilliant man, and he saw just about as many movies as I have in my lifetime. He and I had a lot of common ground, but beneath all that, we were horribly, horribly different. I didn't truly appreciate him for all he was, while he worshipped everything my hands touched. Especially his extra-tender handling of my paintings as I told him to clear them out of my room. Even though they were heading for the trash heap, he handled them as if they were gorgeous Rembrandts. I think that's what makes him such a great man – everything was something wonderful, everyone was a private little discovery."

Everyone clapped.

Devi let her withered bouquet of flowers fall on the grave. She turned away, her face pale, her lips trembling. Once again, Johnny was on her mind. " Damn it." She whimpered at the graying sky, addressing it as if it were Johnny. " You ruined everything in my life. Repeatedly. And when I was so sick of life that I would have willingly died, you saved me. Just to make me live on in misery. You're a fuckhead, a real fuckhead."

She looked up and realized that everyone was listening still, thinking it was some addition to her previous speech. Ian's mother fainted.

" Uh… I was just talking to myself, that's all!" Devi tried, lamely.

" Get away, you treacherous wench! I knew you were a bad influence on my son! You were the death of him!" Ian's father shrieked at her.

They began to pelt her with funeral booklets. Trust me, those little motherfuckers have sharp edges. Devi dodged them as she ran, blindly, into the freshly-falling rain, the mud splattering her clothing. Hurt, degraded, and devoid of any joy, she hoped to run home and kill herself. Perhaps death was the ultimate defeat – but it was no longer a dead-end to her, but simply a gateway out of the current hell and into the next one.

o-o-o

Chapter 9, Part 2: Squee's Turn!

o-o-o

Squee huddled into the doorway of Devi's apartment, cold in the too-large shirt Johnny offered him. He looked and saw the girl from TV – tall, thin, and very depressed-looking – stalk towards the door. She stopped dead and stared at Squee. " Uh… wrong house." She said, wearily.

Squee blinked sadly.

" That means move, little boy." Devi reached out and propped herself up against the doorway herself. She could feel the tears again, pressing against her eyelids, threatening to poke out like dangerous little daggers, to give her away as the cowardly scared little girl she was inside.

" I wanna talk to you." Squee began, finally, pulling on the old small-boy charm. It always worked on women. " Please?" He held out his little hand, all five fingers extended nicely.

" I…" Devi felt her voice catch in her throat. There was no way she could just push away this small child. Perhaps she was tired and angry with herself, but she didn't hate the world. Not as much as Johnny did. She wouldn't hurt anyone just out of her own deliberate hatred; she would need a very good reason. Something along the lines of self-defense; defending others; something heroic, maybe.

She took the little boy's hand and took him inside, leaving the door open so that either of them could turn and run if the time arrives. Squee took a deep breath and said: " I knew your boyfriend… ma'am."

Devi felt so old. She was only 23, but being called ma'am added a good twenty more years to her character. Yet she let it slide just because it took her aback to receive some beyond-the-grave news about her boyfriend.

" H-how do you know Ian?" Devi asked, lifting a coffee mug to her lips. The coffee mug had some very shaky, incredibly messy and jumpy letters on it, and it said: " If you can make these letters out, you've had enough coffee". Devi stopped, realizing her coffee mug was empty inside. It was simply a psychotic little instinct. (Oh, I know thee well, coffee instinct).

" He was my doctor." Squee said. " Sort of."

" Oh?" Devi looked a bit scared. She looked down at her ruffled skirt, trying to figure out whether she should be talking to a mentally ill kindergartner or not.

" Ian wasn't a really good doctor. He was sort of mean." Squee sat down on the chair. " My mommy and daddy - - uh - - they sort of left me at the psycho ward, because they didn't want me."

" That's awful!" Devi blanched. " What's this about Ian being a bad doctor?"

" He didn't really care about the feelings of people." Squee replied. " I have a history with anal probes now…" Squee whimpered.

Devi shivered in fear. " That's horrible!"

" And… and he had a girlfriend. I heard him tell his coworkers about her." Squee bit his lower lip nervously. " As he was strapping me onto a table so that I could be all alone for hours, thinking about Satan and how much I hate everyone, that is."

Devi was getting oddly intrigued. " What did he say about me?"

" He said that his lady-friend – you – was a painter." Squee thought hard. " He said he was cleaning out your place and he took all your paintings and he sold them. But he told you he was going to drive them to the dump. And then he got himself that really big sports car."

Devi banged the coffee cup down on the table, rattling the silverware that stood on it. " No way!" Devi spat. " There's - - no! That can't be!" She jumped to her feet. " You mean that Ian screwed me over? Just like every other guy in my life, he fucked with my head too? What is this?" She grabbed Squee and screamed into his face: " Does it say USE ME on my forehead? HUH? DOES IT!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!"

Squee blinked nervously. " Uh… no, ma'am…" He was sweating profusely, and trying to hold back his urine, for his bladder was ready to release out of fear at any given moment. " Can I just finish so I can go?"

" Go ahead." Devi whispered dryly.

" And he would always bring ladies into his office." Squee continued, blushing. " And he had so many of them. And they'd leave with their skirts flipped up and smelling like my Mommy after she had her Whiny-Cans." (Aww! He can't pronounce Heineken!)

Devi was getting more and more angry. She no longer wished to drag a steak knife across her wrists. Suddenly she was filled with utter and blinding rage, but above that, she was just severely disappointed. She wanted to curl up into a little ball and disappear. " I can't believe this." She told Squee. "Tell me more… just tell me now, before I go insane."

Squee looked worried. " Um… I have stuff to say about Mr. Nny-Evil-Neighbor-Colt-Sir."

" Colt. So that's what his last name is." Devi said to herself in a lackluster voice. She had filed police reports before, but the cops didn't even believe her story, since she couldn't even tell her boyfriend's name. Now she could sense the bitterness in the air, the way reality laughed in her face again.

" Nny, he…" Squee took a deep breath to keep his voice steady. " He came to save me. He was always my neighbor and stuff, and he'd sort of protect me in his own weird way. Like the evil bad man from the mall that took me into the alley. He sort of…" Squee did a hand-motion, a scooping-brains out of a head sort of motion with his hand. It was something too awful for a small boy to explain, that's for sure.

Devi remembered the police coverage of the event. They had never seen someone mangle a human brain quite like Nny had done. " Continue?" She breathed out.

" So then when he found out that Ian was so horrible to you, and he really likes you, by the way…" Squee added, in a horribly mundane voice, seeing as how it was Johnny's robot-like invisible arm commanding him to say this. " … well, he came and broke me out of there. And he got me back my teddy bear Shmee too." Squee lifted the teddy bear, which had so far been tucked under the gigantic shirt he was wearing. The shirt currently said I Am Not Naked. It morphed from time to time, just as all of Nny's shirts tended to do.

" And then he killed Ian?" Devi seethed. " Shit! I would have killed Ian too! Oh, God, I can't believe I'm saying this! Sweet angry Jeezus, I'm losing it!" She paced, tearing at her hair nervously. " And then he just killed Ian. But now, if I was him, I'd have probably done the same thing. And he saves toddler's lives. How about that?" She laughed nervously. " Heh! Hah ha he ha hah!"

" Uh…" Squee took a step towards the doorway. " I don't think I wanna live with you anymore."

Devi's face was covered by her hands, but when she lowered them, Squee could see that she was in tears. " And I actually thought I loved Ian. That bastard…" She shook her head and looked at Squee. "Nny sent you, dind't he?"

Squee nodded, his eyes wide. " Please don't sue me, lady-man-ma'am-sir!" He was trying every combination of polite talk that he could muster. " Please don't hurt me! I didn't do anything, I promise!"

" No, of course not." Devi sighed. " Johnny did everything, didn't he? And no matter what happens in my life, it always comes back to Johnny, doesn't it?"

" Um…" Squee was already wavering outside the door, ready to run for his life.

" Who knows? Maybe I'm going crazy, because suddenly I know how he feels." Devi said hollowly. " Just so screwed over by everyone around you until you don't know what's what. And then all these emotions flood over you, first affection, and then pity, and then full-out rage! Oh! And there's so many voices suddenly in me. Suddenly I want to kill myself, but I want to kill others in another part of me, and some parts of me just want to hide myself away like a hermit."

Squee's chin quivered. " So what do I say to Nny?"

" Tell him that I understand." Devi whispered. " Tell him that I must have crossed over the hill and into his little world again, because I completely and utterly understand all of a sudden." She laughed bitterly to herself. " Doesn't that beat all? Suddenly the only person that I feel I truly understand, the motives of whom I truly can understand, is Nny."

Squee nodded finally. " Okay. You're really, really scary. And your apartment smells really weird, like really old coffee stains. Daddy made me lick those off his ties when I was hungry sometimes." Squee looked around the apartment sadly and then ran.

Devi watched the little kid go. Then she lowered her head down on the table, pushed aside her coffee mug, and stared at the painting she set down beside the garbage can. The painting of the cliff, beneath which was the void of insanity, and there she was in it, teetering like a gorgeous damsel in distress above it. And, surprisingly enough, Nny in the background, experiencing it with her, but as a shadow of her, almost as if he'd gone through this before and was simply helping walk her through it as well.

And, in that blink of sudden and awesome pain and trauma, she lost her memory. Not all of it, but large segments of it. Her childhood became a blur, as if she were looking back at it through wax paper, just the smell of diapers or warm milk here and there. Her adolescence was replaced with bitter, carnal anger inside her. And then her adulthood – the only thing she could truly remember was Johnny, and that her intense, painful motivations – but not what caused them. But the anger, the voices she suddenly felt, they were all inside her.

And the painting at the wall suddenly changed, like something out of a science-fiction movie. Suddenly, Devi was engulfed in the dark void at the base of the cliff, Nny holding her protectively, both across some invisible fine line. And the only thing Devi could think of was that there was only one person that understood her.

That was the only memory that lingered to her.

It was Johnny.

Author's Note: OOH! Spooky! The same thing that happened to Johnny – the same symptoms – all evil primitive feelings, but none of that memory left – it's all being manifested in Devi! And of course, this is just another very intriguing chapter of weirdness and suspense… next chapter is quite possibly the end, with Devi seeking Johnny out. Ooh! Aren't you filled with fear at Devi's own mental malady? I always knew that somehow she'd end up just like Nny… so screwed over that she just blanked out. I heard of people who have had such awful experiences that they forgot everything completely. I am glad it is manifested in this story.