Yeah, yeah, kinda predictable, (you'll know what I mean when you get to it,) but I needed an excuse for Nny to interact with the other nut jobs. It's surprisingly hard to find reasons for all this, since a lot of the characters are loners by nature. But it's fun, oh-so-fun! And here's the chapter where I show blatant favoritism, yay! By the way, I used to have mice, and they WILL crawl up your sleeve like that if you let them.

I own your soul, but not these characters.

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Another day, another sunrise, another morning. In the early light, figures lurking in the kitchen seemed paler and darker. Joe-Bob sat at the table, an ice pack to his forehead, suffering from the mother of all hangovers. In the shadows behind him crept Nny, who had been spending a lot more time with the other boarders than he'd normally be inclined to, on the grounds that he really didn't want to be in his room. The reasons for this weren't yet clear to anyone, but most decided it was none of their damn business anyway.

Leaning against the counter, coffee mug in one hand, was Bobby-Jo, chipper as a Disney character. And standing uncomfortably close to her was Edgler Foreman Vess. He made one or two attempts to flirt with her, until Joe-Bob angrily shouted, "Leave her the hell alone!" That is, in his mind he angrily shouted "Leave her the hell alone!" In reality, he said "Leave her the hell alone!" in a whispery rasp. Still, ten out of ten for effort, because Edgler stopped on his command. Though he did give Joe-Bob a look that made him fear for his life.

Bobby-Jo, however, was capable of repelling him on her own. "I thought you were after Carrie, Edgler." She said with cold sarcasm. "Did she manage to resist your otherworldly charm?" The question was rhetorical and designed to embarrass. Everyone had seen, over the past few days, Carrie thwart, divert, and generally beat the crap out of Edgler with her spooooky powers.

Edgler chuckled, fingering a nasty cut by his ear. "That girl certainly has spirit," he remarked, "I can't imagine how she got so strong."

"Strong my ass, " Joe-Bob sneered, anger overriding fear, "she gave you a telekinetic whuppin'. Her mind's just stronger than yours is."

"Why don't you go eat some more pills, pill head?" Edgler snapped, coming to life like a feral beast. Joe-Bob shrank back as Bobby-Jo raised an eyebrow in confusion.

Nny's interest was piqued. "What do you mean?" He asked, raising his head out of the shadows.

Edgler rolled his eyes. "Whatever our drugged-up friend here *thinks* he sees," Edgler
indicated Joe-Bob, who pretended to be fascinated with the bottom of his coffee cup." There is no such thing as telekinesis. I can't believe I actually have to say that." He made a sweeping gesture with his hand to indicate finality.

Nny raised an eyebrow. You don't spend years as a homicidal maniac without getting a feel for when someone's afraid of something. "You can't think it's even possible?" he prodded. "Are you really so narrow-minded?"

Edgler forced air through his lips. "Oh please!" He said. "Telekinesis is as much a fairytale as demons, zombies and UFOs. I would expect this sort of thing from someone as unbalanced as you, Johnny." Edgler grinned, hoping that using Nny's full name would provoke an attack. But rather than holding anger, Nny's wide eyes were accompanied by a manic smile that eventually unsettled everyone in the room, Edgler and Bobby-Jo included.

It wasn't until later, up in his room, that Nny really got his thoughts on the subject together. His room was as unfurnished as it was when he first moved in, save the addition of an overstuffed grey couch he had pulled off the curb. The walls had changed considerably, however. They were covered in pictures, doodles and assorted ravings done in mostly in black and red paint. It was probably red paint. Right? Right?

He sat against the wall, away from said couch, scribbling in a dog-eared journal:

"Dear Die-ary," he wrote, "I have discovered the thorn in my side, and it has a human face. Surprisingly this face is not my own, but that of another. His name is Edgler Foreman Vess, and I long to rid the earth of his poisoning existence. However, I can't seem to kill him. He's physically stronger than I am, and unlike most of his kind he isn't scared off by steel.

"I may however, have found the proverbial flaw in this sick and abrasive ointment: He, like so many others, fears what he doesn't understand. The objective is clear, overload his narrow mind with the supernatural. If only a source can be found here..."

Nny looked around grimly at the shadows that surrounded him. Aside from the window, the only light in the room came from an exposed, hanging light bulb which still left most of the room in darkness. Musing, he turned to an earlier entry in his die-ary, one he had written a few days ago:

"Dear Die-ary... Removing the influence the house had on me may have been a backwards step. Whether a result of the people living here or the ancient native american burial grounds the brochure said this boarding house was built over, I can feel dark unrest seeping in every crevice. At risk of being cliched, I sense eeevil spirits in the house."

He paused and shook his head. A vague feeling of uneasiness and fear apparently held only by him didn't much count as supernatural. He shivered a little involuntarily. There had to be something more concrete he could find here...

Feeling chilly, Johnny?

A familiar voice filled his mind and snapped him out of his thoughts. He looked across the room at the little ceramic burger boy statue propped against the wall. "Shut up, meat-man, I'm brooding." He replied.

You think that by destroying someone who lives for external sensations that you'll somehow save yourself? By transference? You're smarter than that

"You want me to kill again, don't you? Well, that's what I'm doing."

I want you to give in to your desires. If killing is among them, so be it. You know that if you aren't a slave to them you'll only be enslaved by the desire to be rid of them. So why fight it? Be reasonable.

Nny looked down, then determinedly up. "You know? You're right. I think I'll give in to the next impulse that hits me." Without further hesitation, he stamped across the room, picked up Reverend Meat in one hand, and threw him out the window, breaking the pane as he did so.

"Oh no!" Came Bobby-Jo's voice from below his window. "We're being invaded by little ceramic men from space! Wait... that's stupid, never mind."

Nny looked around and rubbed his shoulders. Without Meat, the room suddenly seemed even more menacing, and he swore he could hear whispers behind the walls. "I don't want to be alone right now." He said quietly.

Meanwhile, outside, Bobby-Jo examined Reverend Meat, who now had a large crack in his head. She rummaged in a bag she happened to have with her that was full of scraps of material, and placed a pointy felt cap on him. Then she wrapped a large green scarf around him like a jacket, and placed a stone squirrel next to his foot. A few minutes of tweaking and adjusting later, Reverend Meat began his fulfilling career as a lawn gnome.

After all that exhaustive dressing up ceramic burger boys, Bobby-Jo was in the mood for a cool, refreshing glass of lemonade. And since she did not know how to suck lemonade out of aluminum siding, she had to go inside for it. She went in through the main entrance and turned right to enter the kitchen, but something caught her eye in the den and she turned. She was just in time to see Carrie, -who was reading on the sofa visible through the den door- jump as a knife sailed across the room, lodging itself in the wall inches from her head.

A few chairs wobbled and some pictures rattled against the walls as she yelled, "Nobody thinks you're funny!"

Nny suddenly came into both Carrie and Bobby-Jo's field of vision. "I saw a bug." He explained.

"Oh, sorry," Carrie said, setting down her copy of 'Thinner,' "I thought you were Renfield." She paused a moment, as if thinking: *He threw a knife at me, and I'm apologizing to him? Something isn't right here...* But she let it go. "He's been trying to get back at Willard ever since yesterday, but mostly he just gets the rest of us. It's so annoying." Carrie explained.

Nny nodded understanding as he pried his bowie knife out of the wall, using his foot for leverage. "Ha! Got it!" he cried, as he noticed the neatly bisected corpse of a wasp fall off the tip. Carrie smiled a little at the tone of Nny's voice. He looked at her. "Say," he said, "Maybe you can help me..." Bobby-Jo turned back towards the kitchen, not wanting to be nosey. On the way there, she was startled as a rat dashed across her feet, providing segue to Willard, who was in his room.

Willard's room was furnished efficiently, comfortable but depressing. Willard himself was lying on a small red sofa, looking up at Socrates, who was climbing over his hands. Aside from the two of them and a few other pieces of furniture, the room was empty. He had managed to convince the rats they'd be happier living in the cellar for a while. Willard felt a little guilty about that, since the cellar wasn't exactly his to rent out, but he needed a respite from the endless scratching and scuffling. There were bite marks on just about everything in his room. But he had managed, after a few hours, to sweep up every last tiny black ball of rat droppings, which made a distinct improvement. He sighed a little as he spoke to his furry amigo.

"Maybe it was a mistake to come here..." Willard said quietly. Socrates responded by sniffing Willard's thumb. "I don't want anything bad to happen again. But I don't think we have anywhere else to go." He knew they would have likely torn his house down by now. He didn't even like to think of the home he had grown up in lying in rubble, to go back and risk seeing it was unthinkable.

As Willard came dangerously close to angst, a plot device exploded outside his door, distracting him. He jumped up, Socrates scampered into and up his sleeve, his tiny white head reappearing outside Willard's collar. Cautiously, totally unaware of how adorable he looked with Socrates peeping out of his shirt, Willard walked over to the door, opening it a crack and peering out, unseen.

In the hallway, Nny and Carrie worked in near-silence, unaware and uninterested in Willard's observation. "No, no," Nny instructed, "Pour the gasoline *over* the styrofoam, like this. Nice and even, that's the only way to make napalm. Good, now I'll stash this under the floorboards. When I give the signal, just apply a little mental friction to the match heads."

Carrie nodded, biting her lip in trepidation. She didn't like Edgler, of course, but she didn't like a whole lot of people, that didn't mean she went around setting them on fi- wait, yes she did. But she still was a little hesitant. "You must really hate this guy, huh?"

Nny considered that for a moment. Did he really hate? "More than life itself." He said finally. Carrie giggled.

Willard closed the door and sighed heavily. "Nobody likes us, do they Socrates?" he asked. Socrates nibbled his coat affectionately. "And I'm running out of coats..."

It was much later in the day before Willard ventured out of his room to use the upstairs
bathroom. The downstairs one was curiously locked, otherwise he wouldn't set foot on the second floor. He was having a very bad day. And nothing puts a bad day in perspective like someone whacking you in the spine with a broken table leg. Willard was knocked to the ground, but scrambled away before Renfield could land another blow on him. "Why are you doing this to me?!" Willard shouted, "I never did anything to you!"

"Don't patronize me!" Renfield was apparently made angrier by Willard's words, "You stupid, stupid man!"

Renfield advanced on Willard menacingly, and Willard's face shifted in fear. Suddenly, the sound of scuffling was all around him. He knew what that meant. Not even needing to look at the ground for confirmation, he pointed at his assailant and hissed, "Shoes! Tear it!"

Renfield screamed, more in fear than pain, as countless rats swarmed around him in a blurred brown mass. Tiny yellow fangs tore at his shoes, shredding them, and once or twice drawing a little blood from his feet. He dropped the table leg and screamed, spinning and hopping to dislodge the swarm in a bizarre dance.

Willard gave a relieved chuckle at first, but his expression changed when Renfield fell to the ground and the rats didn't relent. "No." he said, softly at first, then louder. "No! Don't kill him! Don't-" He looked around frantically, his eyes landing, unsurprisingly, on Ben. "Ben! Tell them to stop!" Ben simply stared back at Willard. "Tell them Ben! They'll listen to you! Tell..." He picked Ben up roughly. "What's the matter with you?!" he cried. "Ow!" he added as Ben bit his finger, drawing blood. He dropped the rat who fell to the ground with a loud *thud* that would make anyone wince.

One could practically feel the tension in the room shift. Suddenly quite a few of the rats halted, and more came out of the walls. One by one, they turned to Willard. "Okay. I..." Willard began, attempting to back out of the room. Quite suddenly both men were on the ground, fighting off the furry horde.

Willard didn't scream, he simply made pained, gasping sounds as a thousand little claws and teeth raced over him. Flailing his arms, he tried to beat them off but more were coming every second. He reached blindly for something to defend himself with and his hand closed around Renfield's discarded table leg. As he fought his way up from under the pile of rodents, he kneeled, preparing for another onslaught and holding the table leg like a bat. To his surprise, the rats were dispersing. He felt pretty good about himself for exactly 0.02 seconds, when he realized why the rats were dispersing.

Sitting in the center of a few rat carcasses, dead to the world but with a blissful expression on his face was Renfield. His mouth was covered in blood. "Oh... G...God..." Willard collapsed against the wall, trying not to vomit.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Edgler strolled around the boarding house with easy confidence. He was feeling aimless at the moment, looking for something to divert his attention. He didn't have to look long. As he turned and entered the downstairs hallway, he noticed that the lamp at the end of it was out, cloaking a few feet of it in shadow. Standing in those shadows, looking otherworldly and terrifying was Nny. He wore a glare that clashed with his manic grin, in an expression of pure madness that would have sent most people scampering up trees. Edgler just smiled pleasantly, anticipating a source of entertainment, and maybe even a little masochistic fun.

Nny didn't intend to entertain Edgler, and while causing pain appealed to him right then, there would be no point if Edgler was going to enjoy it. He had other plans for where this encounter would go. He looked up at Edgler. "Have you ever seen Hell?"

Three seconds later, Edgler was running in terror, flames fanning off his clothes. Screaming, he jumped through the windowpane, lodging glass in various parts of his body.

"My goodness!" Bobby-Jo said, standing in the den, "What on earth is going on?"

Carrie came out of the bathroom in which she'd been hiding. "It was great, as soon as he mentioned Hell," she gestured to Nny, who was still in the hallway, looking pleased. "Flames just *shot* out of the cracks in the floorboards. You should have seen the look on his face, he was scared shitless!"

"I'll... just go call an ambulance..." Bobby-Jo said, ignoring how many things were wrong with the sentence she'd just heard.

For the first time in a long time, Norman came out of his room. Joe-Bob was out buying groceries and Donnie had gone for another walk. "What's going on?" Norman said, "I heard screaming upstairs... and down here... why is that man twitching on the front lawn?"

On cue, Willard shambled down the steps, incredibly shaky. His voice was choked with conflicting emotions as he spoke. "Everything's fine upstairs." He said to Norman. Without further comment, he shuffled into his room, an aura of unexpressed tension trailing behind him.

He entered his place of residence, where Socrates had apparently been during the whole ordeal. Unfortunately, Socrates wasn't the only one in that room who walked on four feet.

"Ben?!" Willard cried in surprise, bracing himself and scanning the room for more. He waited several beats, but nothing happened. "Just you, then?" Willard asked. Ben stared at him. From the top of a nearby cabinet, Socrates climbed onto Willard's shoulder. "What?" Willard asked, as Ben continued to stare. "I didn't ask him to do it. You know that." More staring. "You know, if anything, I should be mad at *you!* what was that back there? I thought we were friends." Ben chewed his paw innocently. "Don't give me that." Staring. "Fine. The cellar's a better place for you anyway, it'll keep us both from having problems with the owners."

Outside Willard's room, the front door opened. "Hi honey. Did you have a good time shopping?" Bobby-Jo asked.

"You know it!" Joe-Bob said, considerably cheered and relieved by a few hours away from the house. "I bought a ton of pickled beets. Just let me put them in the cellar and I'll bring the rest of the groceries around." He walked off.

The scream that came from the cellar seconds later was deafening.

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Wait! Run! Hide! Save the children! It's Rev. MEAT all dolled up as a lawn gnome, in full eeevil color! Boy, he looks pissed:

And here's a better looking one in black and white, the way God, (Jhonen Vasquez) intended it: