Again, mostly just some dialogue between Nny and the stranger. I think I just I love writing it so much because they both find each other so annoying.

Thanks 'gain to teh review-monger insane vegetarian.

------silec

"You're sick, Johnny." "Shut up." He tried to sound defiant, but his voice was weak and quivered like an airborne feather. Dark lines encircled his bloodshot eyes, and he looked even more pale and bony than usual.

"Come now, Nny, you look dreadful. You need to eat something. Or at least excrete something you've already ingested through some method other than forceful regurgitation." The car was at a standstill. Johnny had stopped the car suddenly, unable to focus on driving any further. Now he was slumped the wheel, staring at an uncertain spot in the sky. His hands lay limply at his sides.

"I won't eat...I won't sleep. You don't control me." He tried to laugh at the stranger. A splintered, damp wheezing escaped through his nose.

"It's over. Your mission is done Nny. Listen to me, go home, kill a cheerleader on the way if you so please. Go home and revive yourself, then release your pent-up emotions and teach this undeserving a world a much- needed lesson! There's fire in your soul, Johnny! Set it free and let it burn!" A gaunt arm shot out of the door, and grabbed the frame of the door. He pushed himself out of the car. Stumbling, he left the car behind and began walking.

"Oh, this looks interesting. Tell me, Nny, do you expect that you can escape your problems any faster by walking the length of this highway?" He ignored the stranger, and instead tried to keep his legs moving without collapsing headfirst into the asphalt. "I'm not running from any problems," he said in between staggered footsteps.

"Johnny, you know that I'm right. You're stubborn, but you know that what I'm saying is the truth. You can't keep doing this forever. You have to go home eventually." The stranger's voice was filled with malicious, self-satisfied glee. It sounded not unlike Johnny did, standing before one of his victims in the not-too-distant past.

"I won't go home," Johnny breathed. His eyes narrowed and a vein rose on his neck. "There's nothing there for me, anyway."

"What about Devi? Don't you think she misses you? And Squee? And all those people you left in your basement? They all need to be dealt with." Devi. He could see her again, walking alongside him. A sweet scent filled Johnny's nose, causing him to stop. Just for a fraction second. But the stranger could sense it, and he kept up his assault.

"She cried, you know. When they couldn't find you. You made her cry, Nny." He was so tired. He needed to stop. He hung from his waist and let his fingers dangle across the loose gravel. "What is it that makes you want me to go back home so badly?"

"I only want for you to be yourself." Johnny could remember what that was like. Always a slave to feelings or consciences or walls. He had had no control over anything. "I am myself. The other me, the one you seem to be so desperate for me to become, stranger, that was the shadow. Now I have nothing, I need nothing. I'm standing in the light." He stood with arms outstretched, eyes closed, basking in the dim, cloudy sunshine. "The light will consume you, Johnny."

"I don't have to listen to this." He started walking again. The stranger pulled at him from the inside. "It's not so bad, being a slave, Johnny. Really. You can believe that you're in control. You can let yourself go. You can do whatever makes you happy."

"Yeah? Well, what if I don't want to?" He felt the familiar painful acidity in his stomach, but nothing came up this time. There was nothing left to come up. "That's not an option. It never was. You believe that you're making progress, but all you're doing is becoming an annoyance." Johnny sighted a parking lot in the distance. It would be good to rest, once he got there, he noted.

"An annoyance? To whom?"

"To all of us. Myself included, but Mr. Eff is especially displeased with you, Johnny. He expected much more of you." He was closer now. It was a run- down looking place, but they had chairs, it seemed, which was a start.

"Mr. Fuck's in there with you?"

"Absolutely. You're quite a crowded individual, Johnny. There are others like you, of course. Those who can't solve their own dilemmas then create extras within themselves to help them out. Sometimes, though, these extras can become something extra. They develop minds of their own. You, Johnny, are exceptionally screwed up, and now your separate consciousnesses have developed physical characteristics, personalities, even opinions."

"And you? You seem different than the others. Older, more real, in a way. But I don't think I've ever seen you in a physical form."

"That's because there's been no need. You'd been a good little boy, until you got those crazy ideas in your head from Mr. Samsa, and I had to drag myself out of the Id." Johnny pondered this new information for a moment. He had made it to the parking lot, and slowed his step a bit to delay the inevitable human interaction that lay ahead. "Are you Reverend Meat?" he offered. "I've heard you use his voice more than a few times. Along with the others'."

It chuckled. Johnny could feel an ulcer burrowing into his skin. "No, although he did bring up some interesting notions, Nny. You should have listened to him when you had the chance." He had his hand on the silver handle of the door. He had paused, but not because of what the stranger had said. A foul aroma lay on the other side of that door. He stepped back a few feet and traced his eyes around the exterior to confirm his beliefs.

"This...this is the same store, isn't it? I've been here before. This is where I killed that clerk."

"Indeed, it is."

"Shit."

"Mmm."

"You say you want me to go home?"

"That's right."

"Huh."

"Indeed."