Hi, people. Sorry that I haven't been able to be as active as I thought I would have been. I apologise. Um, I ish going to have to succumb to the abyss of slumber within then ext fifteen minutes so I ahve to make this speedy. Anyways, to answer my reviews:
Aoi Neko-Chan: A good chapter? Really? You-ish think so? ... I don't think so...I believe my writing skills could be alot better, especially in this chapter. But, your opinion, I have no say in your perspective... ooh! You actually think I'm keeping Nny in character? He seems really out of it in my point of view... oh well... critic, I guess, of my own work... Weeeee.... stay tuned for the next chapter and stuff!
bosie boo: Heh heh. Interesting username you picked there... heh heh, I'm probably going to go to school tomorrow, and all I am going to say is "Bosie Boo! Bosie Boo! Bosie Boo!" Yea, I really like the username. Nyah ha... thanks for the compliment! Like I said in the review for Aoi Neko-Chan, i think my writing skills could be a whole lot better than this... thanks for reviewing and stuff. Hope you all like it!
Winstin: Ooh... another anonymous reviewer person thingy! Anyways, thanks for the many compliments! And congratualtions! You are the fourth person in my lifetime that has even considered to stab/slit my throat/leg/abdomen! Good for you! You spelled intriguing wrong... sorry, but I had to say that really quickly. I don't mean to sound like a busy-body, or one of those perfectionists thingies, but yea... I just had to say it. Currently, I have no intention of making Felix into a Love Interest. In fact, I believe there will be some "Oh-I-Miss-Devi-So-Much" angst later on in the tenth or eleventh chapter... Yay! Another person who believes that I am skilled at keeping homicidal killers in character! This brings mild encouragement! I want a Twinkie to smoosh... You talk alot like me. Therefor, I give thee a biscuit.
piewolvesandsuch: Don't worry... for people like me (and you, apparently) blood vengeance has always made the twisted core of we blank vessels go "Whee!" I don't like it when it goes "Whee" though.. it hurts my chest. Anyways, thank you on the multiple compliments about the story... I think. Heh heh, kidding. But you have a pet tarantula!? Miss piewolvesandsuch, I envy you immensely!I want a tarantula, but my bloody cats would probably consume him before I even got to name it... anyways, if I ever got a tarantuala,it would probably name it Pez... I wuc those widdle candies... I like the candy dispensers even more... (plays with Jack Skellington Pez Dispenser) Nyah ha! Dear friend, thou hath madeth me feel special-eth! My work was actually GOOD enough to read aloud to a tarantula... and the arachnid enjoyed it! Ah... I feel so happy now. As a reward, you too, recieve a biscuit.
Here, poeple. Read the chapter, and have fun!
CHAPTER 4:Felix Meets Squee
Meanwhile...
It was much too early in the morning from Felix's point of view that morning... It seemed to seep pass her, and the tiny little ray of morning sunlight that peeped through a tiny crack of the boarded up windows didn't help her regain full consciousness at all.
At that cold morning... yes. It was actually cold outside. The uncharacteristically icy atmosphere was sending aero-messages to her exposed skin, affecting many chills down her spine. She was sat up in a proper sitting position on the flaky, flimsy couch, staring absent-mindedly at the floorboards. She was still so tired, she didn't even realize that there were crimson puddles caked smoothly on the floor, rust-flakes scabbed over tiny horrific metal instruments...
She blinked herself out of the daze as her head shot up suddenly in realization. It was much too quiet. Normally screams of triumph or agony were ringing around the walls at this hour... Yes, indeed, it was much too silent. She had been there long enough to know that something peculiar was up...
"Nny?" she called out, her voice crackling slightly from not being fully awake yet. "Nny?" she staggered to her feet, legs stiff from the crumpled position she had somehow found so comfortable the night before. "Johnny?"
Walking like a robot ((A/N: For all who have seen Invader Zim, she's mimicking the famous "Zim walk.")) to the entrance of the corridor, she felt her top teeth clamp down on her bottom lip in growing nervousity. The corridors that morning seemed unusually long, and the vague golden rays of sunlight were casting ominous shadows in every corner were not making her exploration any more comfortable. Swallowing, she rounded around the corner speedily, half-expecting something horrifying to appear like in the clichéd horror movies. She blinked in surprise and even sighed solemnly in mild disappointment. It seemed that Johnny wasn't in the household at the moment, and was still out being all... Johnny-ish.
She was moving to wheel around towards the kitchen to make some toast, when her brown eyes caught something of immense interest; one of the doors at the far end of the hall, to her great curiosity, was creaked open slightly. Deciding that toast could wait a little while longer, she seized the opportunity for examination and crept cat-like down the corridor. Caution was still pricking at her nerves, though; she was constantly on her guard in case in Johnny leapt out of nowhere with some sort of large weapon as a sick joke.
That happened a lot.
She continued to edge down the hallways towards the entrance of the chamber, and ceased all movement at the doorframe. It was stained, she noted. She peered a little closer, to discover the flaws were a crusty brown-reddish hue, or perhaps even scarlet. Paint? She though to herself, leaning in to observe it more clearly. No. Johnny didn't paint. Berries? Wait a moment, Felix; they used berries for painting in the days of the Native Americans. Johnny isn't a Native American, now is he? But, now that one really thinks about it, it looks like bloo- Her heart skipped a beat and she quickly shoved her fist in her mouth to stifle a scream when it suddenly dawned on her; 'twas lifeblood tainting the wooden doorframe.
Perhaps Johnny had quite a bit more to him that Felix first suspected. But... she slid her trembling fingers down the doorframe, half-aware that her ebony finger nails were chiseling away at the crusty reddish-brown scab that was splattered on the wood. She shook her head violently, swiftly withdrawing her hand from it. No. No, it was impossible. Johnny couldn't be a homicidal serial killer... he couldn't be! It was much too surreal! Perhaps Johnny wasn't even a murderer! Maybe there was an accident, and he forgot to clean it up afterwards or something or... paint! Perhaps Johnny really is a painter! A brilliant artiste gifted with the ability of many red hues!
But, conceivably, though, Johnny was a bit on the wacky side... perhaps Johnny was indeed inexplicably insane. The other night when she was returning from her sojourn to the bathroom, she had heard him arguing with himself softly, as if debating with someone that she couldn't see, perhaps someone she didn't want to see. But, if he wasn't crazy, who was he always conversing with? He was bickering with someone, constantly reminding the other being he wasn't enslaved to some things dubbed, "Mr. Eff and D-Boy."
Perhaps, they were other creatures that allowed Johnny's enigmatic little mind to visualize.
Felix was neutrally astonished to feel the corners of her drab lips turn down in a frown, as her gaze flickered back to the ajar barrier. Had she been smiling? What was so funny about an insane man whom she resided with that has probably murdered more than twice?
Worse yet, what had she been dreaming about the previous night? She knew she didn't like it; in fact, something had scared the hell out of her, but her conscience had refused to have woken into reality. She had forgotten all the events that had occurred in her reverie, she had lost memory to why she was in such a tight fetal position... just another nightmare, she supposed.
Sighing, she stroked her index finger against her thumb like a match to lose all of the crusty lifeblood beneath her fingernails. It was never healthy to have gore embedded in your finger orifices, now was it? Directing her full attention once more on the messy door, she allowed her gentle pale hand to shove it wide open. Her eyes widened, and she had to grit her teeth with all of her might to muffle a yelp of horror.
She tentatively edged on in to the chamber, her steel-toe boots clunking as she rested her foot on the wooden floorboard. Dried blood was splattered all over the wooden floorboards, miscellaneous horrific weapons were littered here and there... mutilated little animals, unclassified destroyed stuffed animals, permanent markers, paper, crates collecting dust in uncanny, dark corners—
It was more frightening than a Fun House.
Everything made sense now... Johnny, the man whom she just so happened to live in the same household with, was a homicidal maniac. ((A/N I would bet you anything that half of the people who are reading this are probably saying, "No shit, Sherlock.)) She was thunderstruck with herself when she realized that she was not as horrified as she expected herself to be.
But, in a way, this situation does sort of suck. If she got Johnny pissed off, she was more-than-likely to be screwed. And Felix doubted that Nny would ever be careless enough to just leave a few of his own torture instruments out for her to obtain and use for defensive reasons... her gaze shifted uneasily around the room at all the metal defense mechanisms skittered about on the floor, and chuckled nervously. But, even after that, the part that ultimately sucked was the half of the situation where she recalled that she had nowhere else to go, and living in a cardboard box at the end of the streets is not exactly the satisfying life style she was aiming for.
Grumbling at the outcome, she was daring enough to sidestep even further into the room towards the very center of it. After all, knowing Nny, he probably wouldn't return until noon. It was sort of a Johnny thing, she knew too well. After slinking to the base of the bloody room, she allowed herself to kneel down and study a few burgundy-blemished objects. After a great deal of time studying her habitat, she soon realized that the chamber was littered with what were unmistakably rag dolls. Many of the rag dolls were mutilated, of course. Some were chopped up in cotton-like fragments, others were dissected like happy evil frogs, and others with their face burned off, others strapped down by black and white yarn with their fluffy limbs missing. She swallowed down bile as her gaze hesitantly floated up towards the ceiling, her vision revealing the presence of a rag doll dangling directly above her head in rusty manacles.
Despite the immense horrific aura displayed around it, she couldn't help but chortle slightly as she observed its swaying in an invisible wind... the angle at how it just hung from the ceiling so bluntly, was sort of amusing. She couldn't help though but to swallow once again, and allow her eyes to drift back down to the other mutilated little animals. Across the room, there lay a different rag doll. To her immense surprise, it seemed... holy. Untouched, practically.
Tilting her head in curiosity, Felix allowed herself to fall onto all fours, and crawl cautiously in its direction. There had to be something wrong with it... it looked much too innocent. There had to be something morbid about its seemingly innocent smirk...
Once at the flank of the toy she ceased all movement, and bent over its tiny body for further examination. The toy seemed thoroughly normal... Her eyes narrowed suddenly in newborn suspicion. There was a miniscule drop of red on the pearly-white skin of the doll... With trembling fingers, she flicked a loose flap of doll-skin away, and somehow managed to fight bile down with her weedy throat muscles.
She suppressed a gasp, as she absent-mindedly leaned forward to observe her discovery more keenly. The gut of the doll was stuffed with what grotesquely resembled something like slimy bloodworms from South Texas, ((A/N: Nyah ha... That ish where I live... can't you tell by me supreme knowledge of wormy creatures of South soil? Nyah ha... why are you reading this? Get back to the story)) Bexar County, each string of slime not twitching and gleaming disgustingly in the timid lamplight. Once she was sure that she would not vomit and leave traces that she had began snooping about, she leaned even closer at the doll's guts. Her brown eyes narrowed in realization. The "worms" were too thick to be actual maggots, so they must have been...
"Rat tails?" She mused curiously, wonder filling her rather than disgust. She blinked and looked back up to the humoring doll that was swinging slightly from the top of the ceiling.
This was so horrific, so Michael Myers-ish... it was much too morbid for her likings, yet her curiosity was strangely immense. She shuddered slightly, at the wet slapping sound with the moist cloth sticking to the rat tail's as she flicked the flap back over the exposed orifice. She swallowed back another rally of throw up, and felt a chill tingle up her spine once again, as she stated quite plainly but sickly:
"Johnny, you sick bastard."
As you can imagine, after seeing all of these horrors just lying about as if an aspect of a daily routine, she did not want toast as badly as she did before.
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Ten minutes later, a deeply disturbed Felix had side-stepped out onto the front porch of House 777, hand on hips, happy pleasant grin extended over her face, and her brown-flavored right eye twitched occasionally.
Despite this obvious display of cheeriness, the teenager was ultimately scarred for life. Well, looking around the house a bit earlier, she had lost and regained half of her sanity, causing the cold, hard world to appear more beautiful and promising.
Oh, what a deceit that is.
She crossed ((A/N: I'm extremely hyper right now as I type this particle of the chapter, so bear with me if it sucks like a Twinkie. I don't like Twinkies... I don't like food in general... can't you tell?)) her thin arms across her bony back though, and sat down on the porch steps, her happy expression immediately flipping over into a typical frown. ((Everybody seems to do that these days, don't they?)) She had gotten so used to the knowledge of company being nearby, even if they are a homicidal lunatic... where the fuck was Johnny!?!
Loneliness beginning to corrupt the better of her, she crossed and embraced both lanky knees to her chest, eyelids half-open in despair. She needed something to keep her entertained... Elanor, her white puppet, was "asleep" in a small black box in the deep abyss of her ebony bag, and she was much too comfortable to shift out of her comfortable position in the base of the face of the house to go fetch her. Maybe there was somebody outside who could keep her company...
Her vigilant eyes zoomed about the cul-de-sac, gaze trying to latch onto a subject to accompany her and... she finally found it. A little boy was perched on the front steps of his own cement porch in the house besides Johnny's (she might be living there, but she still respected Johnny much too much to actually call the house hers) house was clutching a well-loved teddy-bear to his little chest, gaping eyeballs watching her intently as if he had seen exactly what she had about twelve minutes before.
Furrowing her brow in confuzzlement, ((A/N: I like that word, and I am perfectly aware that it's not an actual word registered somewhere in the depth-ish pages of Webster's Bloody Dictionary! Sue me.)) She unlocked her arms from her knees and rocked back and forth on her heels in that little position of hers, and finally managed to rock gracefully onto her feet into a balanced stance. She tilted her head in a friendly manner and a smile stretched across her pale features, as she softly meandered herself down the sidewalk until she was merely two yards from the small boy.
"Hello," She greeted kindly, her gentle grin stretching a bit farther.
The boy's optics expanded even more, and to Felix's slight sadness, she observed how his fingers sunk in a couple of centimeters deeper into his teddy bear. Before she could question him of his condition, he did something that she did not expect:
"Squeeeee..." he squeaked in immense trepidation, using his little bear as a shield in front of his little face.
Felix tilted her head a little farther, and dared herself to creep a little bit closer to the fellow organism. But every small step she took, it seemed to intimidate him further and further into a feeble crouch on the concrete rung. She found her cranium tilted even a bit further, and passively crossed her arms behind her back. "Are you alright?" She asked gently, kneeling a little about a sidewalk square away, concern painted on her pale face.
"You live with the Scary Neighbor Man..." he whispered hoarsely, his already puny pupils somehow managing to decrease even more in size. "You live with the Scary Neighbor Man, don't you?"
"Scary Neighbor-?" she began, thoroughly confused. Then it hit her; of course! The little boy was of course talking about Johnny! But, this little boy had labeled him as... the Scary Neighbor man? Well, she had to admit, Nny was a little bit scary, which she had found out today... But, has Johnny psychologically scarred this little one as well? ((A/N: I use the word "little" very often in this paragraph...))
A helpless sigh escaped past her pale lips, and she propped an elbow on her knee, resting her head comfortably tilted head in her skeletal palm. "Yes," she responded, sounding almost regretful as her smile wilted slightly at the corners. "But, believe it or not, the Scary Neighbor Man is very nice, or... he is to me, anyways..." She blinked at her ranting, and randomly shot her gaze up towards the heavens, a wondering expression masking her features.
"Are you crazy, too?"
Her sky-cast gaze had abruptly plummeted like an anvil back into reality, back onto the little boy, his overly-large eyes still peering directly at her behind the teddy bear. It was not necessarily the question that had brought her back from her temporary reverie, but it was how out of place his frightened little voice seemed to be, especially on such a lovely afternoon. "pardon me?" She asked, ensuring that she had heard his inquiry crystal clear. ((A/N: Dyah, I despise that evil phrase...))
"Are you crazy?" the little boy asked once again, ignoring the fact that he had abandoned the word "too." That comforted Felix somehow. She wasn't too sure exactly how, but, in a weird way, it was comforting.
"I think I'm actually pretty normal," She admitted honestly, a sincere smile taking its place once again. "But," She put her hand out to shake, but to her great discomfort the little squealing boy cringed from the gesture of the pleasant greeting. She blinked, not exactly too sure to be offended, amused, or guilty for reflecting such a reaction on such a young soul. Withdrawing her fingers back vaguely but allowing her slender hand to linger in the air, she continued, "My name's Felix. What might yours be?"
His eyeballs shrunk faintly but there was still a quivering wariness in his gaze. "My name's Todd," He replied almost inaudibly, watching her outstretched limb instrument with grand suspicion.
Seeing as the little boy, or, as said, "Todd", had no intention of shaking her hand, she sighed while biting back the mighty need to frown at his paranoia. She sighed again, and rested her arm on her knees besides the other limb. Her gaze was then locked onto the stuffed bear creature he seemed to rely on so much for his protection against society. She habitually tilted her head in a matter in which one might call casual. "Who's your little friend there?" She asked kindly, her friendly expression increasing once again at the corners of her mouth.
Felix noted how his eyes darted from her to the overly-loved teddy bear in his grasp for a couple of seconds, then he looked directly back to her; "Shme..."
"Hmmm?"
"Shem..."
"Hmmm?"
"Shmee!" he squeaked a tiny little bit louder, holding the teddy up a bit so she could see him a little better.
This time though, she chuckled. Todd's reactions were immensely amusing. "May I see Shmee?" She asked, careful not to lose the edge of her soft voice.
Her smile seemed completely honest and sincere, and her posture was not of a threat in which she could grab some sort of defense mechanism or something. Maybe this girl was not like the Scary Neighbor Man after all... Though something was whispering to him that she might not be exactly faultless as she was to the unwise eye... but, of course, it could just be his ever-growing paranoia.
Though somewhat reluctantly, he lifted his little bear titled Shmee a little further out for her to take. Smiling, Felix obtained him delicately as if Shmee was the only little bear of his kind. She studied the teddy bear, staring from the vaguely morbid stitches that were sewn into the middle of his too-happy expression on his bear-like face. She chortled and swayed slightly in her crouching position.
For a moment, Todd, or, as we Jhonen Vasquez fans know him, Squee was afraid that she might react the exact same way that Nny did in his first encounter. Screaming and cursing and cussing at the top of his lungs, he began accusing the bear of calling him critical names and labeling him insincerely.
But, she merely laughed softly as she had a couple of times before, and held Shmee out to Squee willingly. "He seems like a good little friend for you, Todd," She said She stated truthfully, taking her tilted head out of her palm. She sat back finally, her knees beginning to ache for being in such an uncomfortable position, outstretching her thin legs thankfully and propping her arms behind her to support her in sitting up.
Todd did not even realize it, but a faint smile cultivated on his little face, though unfortunately it wasn't visible behind the stuffed bear-bear. Maybe there was someone besides Shmee, Nny, and Pepito who could be classified as companionable.
Heh. That would be wonderful... Todd's iris swooped down to Shmee. Wouldn't it, Shmee?
Yes, yes people. i do realize that it sucked. Leave me and my terrible suckiness alone...
Anyways, before I depart, I must announce something:
I'm planning on doing a Thanksgiving one, starting on Saturday to Monday (perhaps Tuesday), so, yea. I hope you people will enjoy immensely.
Another thing: this story will only contain TWENTY CHAPTERS. Only twenty. Sorry, people, but already have ideas for the next Johnny fic. It'll be a SEQUEL! Nyah ha...
That is, if you people continue loving my story. Anyways, one more thing, then I am definetly through:
Today is my father's birthday, and I would just like to randomly throw biscuits and everybody who just so happens to read this and chuck burning candles at my bloody, stupid relatives living in Northern Texas. My dad is turning thirty five (35, for those people who cannot read. Why they would be on this website, I don't know, but anything can happen), and I ish so happy, and stuff... although it just means Death is ever nearer... nyeh, ignore me.
That's all. wait next time for the next chapter, or look out for my Thanksgiving Fic! See you all later!
.::.:.::AnathA::.:.::.