He didn't understand. He didn't fucking understand anything. Nobody could. And he was willing to bet that nobody gave a damn, anyway. These feelings were overriding his mind. He'd given in just once, just that one goddamned time, and now look what had happened. Johnny was a mess. A nonsensical, emotional mess.
But the stranger had no part in that. None whatsoever, and he reveled in the delicious irony. All along he'd been pushing Nny, and when the finally push had not been his own, or Nny's, for that matter, it delighted him to no end. So there were no insidious observations on the stranger's part, because he was too busy relishing each moment.
Johnny was going home. Seeing that decaying corpse had made him realize something. He was going to end up like that corpse, dead and forgotten, and still he would not understand shit about what it means to be empty, to be cold, to live. He could travel up and down the Earth and still, he would not know, and he would be alone.
So he was on that same godforsaken highway, but headed in the opposite direction, towards a dark, misty sky that seemed to mock him with every passing second. And he cursed himself for his weakness, but all the while, he knew there was nothing he could do but drive. But rather than driving towards an uncertain future, as he had done for the past months, he forced himself onward in shame and defeat. Not that it mattered. Not that any of the shit he was put through mattered at all. And Stranger could feel the anger seething all around him. He thought it was funny.
"Is there something wrong, Johnny-poo?" he said, taking pleasure in each syllable's effect on Nny.
"You're getting more real. You've got your own voice now." Johnny didn't have that sense of loneliness anymore. He despised every moment he spent attached to that parasite. It was growing inside him, gaining strength.
"So you've noticed. I no longer need to depend on the others anymore. And I may even outgrow you as well."
"Then where are they? What happened to all those others I had floating around inside me?"
"They're no longer real."
"What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"
"I've become too strong. Let's face it, Johnny, none of them were ever truly powerful. They had their cute little mind games, of course, their tricks and their bribery. But I have the potential to be something more."
"I don't believe you." A stray cat hissed at Johnny's speeding vehicle from the side of the road. He resisted the temptation to get out and do far more to the animal. "The doughboys alone had more power than you. You can't even get yourself out of my head."
"Oh, they're still here, and they're still fighting, but it can hardly be called a battle. I've taken from them what you seem to think I lack."
"You can materialize now?"
"Any time I want to. But I'm quite content here in your mind. I don't think there'll be any need for me to exit my current form unless you slip up again." Stranger's new voice was condescending and felt like an injection to Johnny. He muttered a curse through clenched teeth. He didn't need to know this. He didn't need to know any of this crap, but he wouldn't stop asking these stupid questions.
"Just shut up. Can you do that for me, stranger? For the rest of the way back, just shut your damn mouth."
"If I shut up, then you'll start remembering that girl again. And that'll feel much worse, won't it?"
"By the by, would you care to stop doing that, too?"
"It's not me doing any of those things, Johnny. You're the one who can't let go of her. Your figments aren't the only one in here; she's been with you ever since you left."
"LEAVE ME ALONE." It was true, though. They had only been together for a short time, but she still haunted him. Her face, so close to his, almost but not yet touching. What they had been, what they had almost become, before he had tried to kill her. It tortured Johnny to no end. In order to preserve the beauty of the start he had wrenched it from the roots. A precious melody cut short by an imprudent expulsion of stinky air.
"So what do you plan to do when you get home, Johnny?"
"Why do you continue to not shut the hell up?"
"It's a simple question with a simple answer. You don't have to be so rude."
"Cease your noisemaking, parasite." He saw fume-belching smokestacks in the far-off distance. Civilization. The outskirts of a town that, while Nny was not very fond of, he had come to call home.
"Is it something embarrassing? Are you going to go rescue the damsel in distress and fuck her and buy a quaint little home in the suburbs and have piles of mangy dirt children?" Johnny could feel it rising inside him already. All the people, their energy, he could feel it. He wanted to kill them all so very badly.
"No, I'm going to go home and find some way to get rid of you and go on with my life."
If Nny had been more observant and less annoyed at that moment, he may have noticed the die-ary that he had not moved from his truck lying in the back seat. He may also have noticed the cover flutter, very slightly, as if disturbed by a quiet breeze.
"The birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees..." the stranger sang, causing Johnny to grind his teeth harder.