Author's Note: Jhonen Vasquez is the magical space-ship wielding comic book artist of doom, all hail his work, none of which I own.

Chapter Three

Never Again

Dear Die-ary,

Why was it so easy for me to accept that Squee was dead before, and yet now it plagues me that he'd been locked in that institution? Was death a friendlier fate for the tortured youngster?

I saw Her yesterday. I have no words.

*-.,.-*-.,.-*-.,.-*

He had dragged the limp body of Squee through the night, all the way to House 777, and then stared at the sleeping little boy until the bleak hours of dawn. There was little for Johnny to do but to keep watch over Squee, because if little Todd were to wake, he would most certainly be overwrought with fear and suspicion. He was in a new environment, after all.

Johnny wondered what children ate. He could vaguely remember the joy of cereal in the mornings – Dinosaur Pops, or something. There was the faint knowledge in him of waiting for a few minutes each time he had cereal just to see his milk turn green.

Now he wondered if Squee was hungry, and if so, how often. Was there some regular feeding time for little worm children? Johnny's puzzlement wasn't unusual; he was, after all, new to the fatherhood scene.

Squee cried out in his sleep just then, " No! Silly Shmee… put the matches down…"

Johnny smiled and looked around the room for something of substance that he could cover Squee with. It must have been cold for the little boy, lying on the foam mattress in the center of one of the torture basements. And yet, all Johnny had within reach were gauzy window coverings, which he liked to cover the windows with, so a color-frosted light filled the room. There was not much else, except the fuzzy head of Nail Bunny – and that was just too traumatizing for a little boy to wake up next to.

It was too late to make Squee comfy in bed though – Squee jerked awake and found himself face to face with Johnny.

" Again?" Squee whimpered softly, " I'm having that same dream again?"

" You're not dreaming, Squee. It would be much simpler if we all were," Johnny replied.

Squee stared at Johnny in surprise.

Johnny thought hard of the promise he had made himself. He had killed two average junior-high bullies, who were just a bit less than half his age, and why? There was so little to justify the murder now… they had bullied another child, yes, but there was something that flowed through Johnny's mind at that time that forced him to it. Johnny had some sort of flashback, some awful memory that triggered him into doing it.

Normally he would have balked and ran off, trying to avoid the extermination of younger teens, but here he had no remorse. He had killed them, and gruesomely too. And what was this flashback he had experienced? He couldn't remember. All he could think about was the faces of the children in death.

And he hated himself so deeply for it.

A flashback was a flashback; and through it madness took his mind. And now he forgot his driving cause. All he saw before him was Squee, an innocent kid, a second chance to perhaps right the wrongs he had committed.

Johnny smiled sadly and asked, " Are you hungry? I can make us something to eat."

Squee shook his head and looked around, his hair rising on his head, " I'm in your house," Squee whimpered, and got woozy from the shot and passed out again.

" Well, I tried," Johnny murmured serenely, and stretched his long thin limbs.

*-.,.-*-.,.-*-.,.-*

He had locked every basement door on the way up and out the door, making sure that Squee wouldn't escape, to make sure that nobody would notice that Squee was living in his house. If the neighbors saw him harboring a child in his home, he'd certainly be reported. Then again, the idea of ever being caught was laughable to Johnny.

Johnny was a flusher, his actions towards humanity were justifiable in a sense. His own guilt and pain were the only forces that could punish him. Nobody forced him to do the things he did, but nobody stopped him either.

Johnny had decided to leave his house to buy some food before Squee would wake. After locking the doors and securing the windows, Nny walked towards the neighborhood discount shop. It was sort of like a White Hen Pantry, except the quality of the food was much worse.

It was a small place, they had replaced the store clerk dozens of times and many of those times were, of course, because of Johnny's murderous habit; now there was a black girl running the store. She leaned on the counter and thumbed through the Slim John beef jerky display thoughtfully, her eyes avoiding the Playboy magazine rack.

Johnny walked into the store, the jingling of the store bells sending shivers down his spine. He turned around and stared at the door, the abruptness of the noise catching him off guard.

" Don't worry, the cops aren't after you," The girl at the counter grinned.

Johnny's stomach churned. Did she know, he wondered, or is she just being a wise-ass?

The girl's nameplate read Tenna. Johnny knew he remembered the name from somewhere, but he didn't quite know where it was from. He went through the Crapbell soup display and saw a soup that had KIDS LOVE THIS written in flashy, glittery-gold letters. He picked it up. It was Tofu and Broccoli Surprise, and even the kid on the can looked like he was trying to stifle an urge to vomit. Yet Johnny double-checked the KIDS LOVE THIS label, shrugged, and dumped it into a shopping cart.

" Need any help?" Tenna asked.

" I need food that a kid will eat," Johnny admitted.

" Are you baby-sitting?" Tenna said with a sigh, " I had to ditch my babysitting job when my friend from this store called in sick. I'm doing him a big favor."

" Yeah, baby-sitting," Johnny mumbled back, fishing deep into a barrel filled with marshmallow peeps and drawing out the peeps that were goopy with green frosting, " These are cute."

" Oh?" Tenna said nervously, " You do know that the ones at the bottom are the old ones, right?"

Johnny dropped the moldy peeps down again in disgust.

" I'd recommend Barney Oats," Tenna prompted.

" I've never heard of that."

" You need to get out more," Tenna sighed out, " I know a girl that needs to get out more, too. I can get you guys hooked up on a blind date."

" No thanks," Johnny said quickly, almost too quickly.

" Too shy, huh?" Tenna ventured on.

" Not looking," Johnny said darkly, dumping three boxes of Barney Oats into his shopping cart. He steered it up to the checkout desk, grabbed a gallon of milk from the refrigerator standing nearby, and then laid out everything on the conveyor belt.

" Tofu and Broccoli Surprise," Tenna said, staring at the soup can, " Is this some sort of vegetarian toddler you've got?"

" Not at all," Johnny replied.

" Get him something decent to eat!" Tenna laughed, " You might as well be feeding him polyester socks. God damn."

Johnny was getting frustrated already. His nerves were fried after years of driving himself nuts over how much he hated society. Now he just turned away from Tenna, grasped a loaf of soft white bread, and squeezed it mercilessly until the air hissed out from the holes his fingernails poked into the plastic. Then, breathing erratically, he turned back to Tenna and said, " I'll get this bread. How's that?"

" Uh… fine!" Tenna said with a superficial cheeriness. She rang off his purchases, bagged them, and then took the money from Johnny.

" Thank you," Johnny replied coolly and left, Tofu & Broccoli Surprise and all.

*-.,.-*-.,.-*-.,.-*

" I got food!" Johnny called out, entering through door after door, unlocking them all.

There came no reply.

" Squee?" Johnny asked loudly, looking around. He ran into the room he had locked him in and saw that Squee was just waking up.

" Mr. Scary Neighbor Man!" Squee gaped at Johnny for a few seconds then cried out, " Please, don't be mad at me and kill me and hang me upside down over a vat of oil like Daddy said the devil will do to me if I'm a bad boy!"

" Shh!" Johnny shushed him and then knelt down on the floor in front of Squee, " Now, do you want to eat or not? I expect you won't be needing anymore sleep for the rest of the decade?"

Squee blinked nervously, " Is it poisoned? Like Halloween candy sometimes is?"

" No," Johnny said, " Here, try it and you'll see."

" You try it first," Squee whimpered, hugging Shmee to his chest, " Shmee says not to trust you."

" Shmee might be wrong. Ever think of that?" Johnny asked, exasperated, " Can't you think for yourself?" Then he could hear the hypocrisy of his own statements – after all, Johnny had been plagued with voices for so long now! It was only recently that he had managed to push it all away. It was only recently when his life had spun around, where he just got so fed up with life that he decided to remove himself as far from humanity as possible. And in that decision he wanted to preserve one last hope of innocence.

" Try it," Squee gasped out, tears in his eyes. He was scared.

" Oh, alright," Johnny murmured, opening the smashed bread's container and pulling out a slice, which had been flattened to about a fourth of it's original stature, " I'll bite this, and if you see me fall over and grow stiff as a board, you can leave this house."

Squee nodded and stared at Johnny with large, suspicious eyes.

Johnny suddenly felt the panic and suspicion himself. How was he to know that the bread wasn't poisoned by some teens, messing around with store items? He had once heard of an old lady that bought a gallon of milk and died because someone had injected lethal poison into it.

" See? It's filled with evil buggy-buggy germs, and they want to take over your body!" Squee gasped, " And you wanted to make me eat it!"

Johnny pressed the bread against his lips and bit off a small bit. He chewed it. It was alright, rather bland. He had separated himself from the need to eat too often; he enjoyed Skettios and Prangle chips, but that was about it. Now the bland bread made its way down his esophagus and the invasion of taste was oddly welcome to his taste buds.

" See, I'm alive, sort of," Johnny said.

Squee nodded and began to eat.

Johnny grimaced. If it took that much to get a kid to eat, then he wasn't so sure if it would be a pure and innocent rode ahead after all.

Author's Note: That's right! I am a lazy, evil, cancerous toaster that spews only so much story to her readers that they'll keep coming back! And you know you'll come back! You'll return, or else the beaver will find you! And will Tenna tell Devi about the mysterious 'new guy' in the store? Will Devi try to check this 'new guy' out and be very, very frightened to see it's Nny? Will Nny and Devi have an encounter in the store? Will Squee learn to accept that Johnny's trying his hardest to change his ways?

Or is Johnny due for a psychotic, murderous relapse any time now, because as always, he is just too weak to hold the voices back for long?

Review and Find Out!