Author's Note: Yay! I'm updating! My life is slowly becoming fulfilled.
Chapter Seven
The Hard Place
Dear Die-ary,
I must say goodbye to Squee, to clear away any misunderstandings. That's all that's left for me to do. I hope Devi treats him well. Maybe someday they won't remember me entirely as a bad person but more of as someone that stumbled into the villain role.
*-.,.-*-.,.-*-.,.-*
Johnny disliked the few lingering moments before dawn and night, wherein the approaching pour of light was never certain. He paused and looked around before crossing the street. Once on the other side, he looked up at the sky again. There were a few narrow slivers of pink and orange in the far horizon. He would make it to Devi's house right in time for morning.
He walked quickly, his eyes stopping at the passerby's faces, wondering where they were going. The old grandmother, probably to market, to buy chile powder, to make dinner for her family.
Family, Johnny realized, something I don't remember and I won't be able to recollect ever again. Does that make me sad?
He tried to explore the feeling in him, and Reverend Meat answered instead, No, it doesn't make you sad, you were a slave of that sadness. You don't want this emotion, you want to go for the kill. Soon we'll reawaken the Doughboys, they brought out the inner you, didn't they?
I don't want to bring them back, Johnny rationalized, I really don't.
Reverend Meat would have none of that pie, though, and chided him, you say that because you feel emotionally drawn to these annoying people in your life, Devi and Squee. You're simply scaring them out of their wits. Why care for them? They'd do anything to dispose of you from their lives. You frighten them.
But I'd do anything to make it the other way around, Johnny persisted, I'm willing to change.
They wouldn't change for you, wouldn't accept you. Why change for them? Reverend Meat asked.
Johnny struggled with the answer, but finally made it out, they're all I have left to love. If I lose them, then I'm going to be truly and fully alone.
Reverend Meat laughed, isn't that what you want?
Johnny didn't know the answer any longer. I don't know what I want anymore, he admitted, I know what you want me to do. I know what Nail Bunny would want me to do, what the Doughboys would want me to do. What about what I want to do?
Nobody answered this time. Reverend Meat receded into some place inside his mind for now.
" I'm saying goodbye to them," Johnny said aloud to the wind, " I won't endanger them with my presence anymore. I walked out here to say goodbye and that's what I'll do."
They're all I have left. Do you want to say goodbye? Johnny, you aren't happy this way, you'll remain unhappy, you won't rid yourself of these emotions. Don't try, just realize you need these people, they keep you away from the preying of the other voices, the thoughtful voice of Nail Bunny said finally. It had been so long since he had heard the gentle, soft-spoken advisor!
" Nail Bunny," Johnny whispered.
The old lady walking past him gave him a very mysterious glare and then dashed away on her chubby old lady legs. Johnny felt his ears redden in embarrassment.
Johnny talked to Nail Bunny again, what do you want me to do then?
I'm afraid you do endanger Devi and Squee, in the state you are, Nail Bunny said, As long as you have the voices in you, and as long as you can't decide your own fate, nobody else will decide it either.
Are you saying I should… leave? Johnny inquired mentally.
No, Nail Bunny said finally, You can't leave if you haven't yet fully arrived. Find yourself and what you want to do first. That means staying away from the sphere of influence that Devi, Squee, Meat, the Doughboys, or even I cast on you.
How do I isolate myself? Johnny wondered.
Devi had voices, Nail Bunny said, I felt them because all voices are siblings in a way. Devi fought hers off brilliantly because she caught them early enough and she was strong enough. Your voices went away, its still early, they are still coming back. Return to your art and pour out your emotions into your art, like you used to. Slowly recede into your old life style, ignore the voices, just be what you always wanted to be.
What if what I want involves Devi and Squee? Johnny asked, bravely.
Nail Bunny was silent too though.
Johnny felt some dark urge to return to Reverend Meat inside his head, but suddenly it felt like it wasn't urgent. His mind had a few shelves to it, like most minds do, sorting our immediate things from secondary things, when it comes to importance and having to deal with them. Immediate were feelings, nerves, outwards stimuli. Second were thoughts and memories, and voices if you will, things you succumbed to more willingly. And Johnny, for the first time, felt that he could rearrange what went onto which shelf.
I'm free?
*-.,.-*-.,.-*-.,.-*
The letter was hanging halfway out of her mail slot when she took it out. Her hands trembled when she recognized the familiar scrawl of handwriting across it. She let the letter flutter open and read, trying to squash any dark intuitions,
Dear Devi,
It's been a while since I've written to a person. The Die-Ary I wrote to seems to have become a controlling force as well, another voice I poured myself into, just waiting to emerge and haunt me. The voice of the past.
And when I reevaluate the past that I recollect, I realize I haven't been what I had originally wanted to be. Life, and the world I lived in, was not what I wanted it to be. My priorities, my thought process, everything had been skewed into a dark and unfair portrait of what a ruthless killer should be.
I know you won't believe this too readily, Devi, but I'm not as much a villain as just… cast into the role? Pushed into it? I couldn't fight the voices and forces like you have. I didn't have the strength, the character, the will power. Maybe I wanted to have something resolve all my problems and think for me, so that I could function like a codependent, feeding off of their decisions.
Then I realized that the only dependent I need is myself. And so I've decided to stop endangering you and Squee (take care of him!) until I could figure out, on my own, what I want my life to be like. And I think I should find the artist in me again. I used to be able to handle all my frustrations through painting, and my only weapons were my brushes. I need to go back to that. I forgot what that's like, I just remember that I did it.
Until the day that I can sort it all out, forgive me, and please know that I was you, just weaker…
I'm sorry Devi, and I'm sorry, Squee, for everything I've done. I know you want me out of your life and I'll do my best to comply until I'm certain I won't harm you.
Even then, I won't be too sure.
One thing's for certain – I forgot who I was and I need myself, not the voices, to figure it out. Until then, so long.
Johnny
Devi touched her cheek. She hadn't realized it before, but it was moist with tears.
" I hope you find what you're looking for, Nny," She whispered thoughtfully, and then returned inside, feeling as if she'd somehow done her job.
*-.,.-*-.,.-*-.,.-*
Author's Note: It took a long, okay, a VERY long and annoying time for me to get this last chapter written. Happy endings are just too generic and common in this genre, I like it this way. Besides… MWA HA HA!… this was a, ahem, serious story. That's right. You know what's a good song? Rasputina's "Hunter's Kiss".