AN: Once again, my apologies to the shortness of the last chapter, this should be at least a little longer. I'm trying! I'll make Johnny less buddy buddy. Thank you for you're answer. :-D Its is greatly appreciated. I knew something was amiss but could not place exactly what.
Thanks,
The Management
Summer Colors:
ChApTeR fIvE: The Way I Feel Today:
And he finally hit a landing. To what floor, he had no idea. It felt like he'd just fallen five thousand feet down a steep, rocky, jagged mountain.
It was black, and he couldn't see. Or maybe he'd just been knocked out. Maybe, if he was lucky enough, back into his own dimension, but nothing was ever that good for him. Slowly, lights and colors began to reappear. He was looking into someones...Red eyes? Green face? What the hell happened?
"Shut the hell up, human worm baby. He looks fairly like the other idiot in the corner. The one who freaked out, screaming "BUT ITS FRIDAY! THE UFO'S AREN'T SUPPOSED TO COME YET! ITS THE WRONG DAY OF THE WEEK!"...Weird Earthlings."
"I don't know. YOU probably created it with your alien mind-control powers."
Jhonen knew those voices too well. Way too well. DAMN THOSE INFERNAL SIDE-PROJECTS!
"Ok, Fate...I got the message...I'll go home, and sleep if thats what you REALLY want."
Sleep. That started this whole thing. Sleep was pure evil.
"Ok then..." The short, pastey, black-haired one said, raising an eyebrow.
Jhonen opened his eyes to blurry vision. Slowly but surely, he groggily got up, rubbing his head. His glasses were still in tact, much to his amazement. The fall he took would make one think they'd be nothing but bent up frames and shattered tiny shards scattered across the floor and on various steps of the staircase. His face was a gashed-up, dusty, blood-smeared mess, and so were his arms. By the time this was over it would look like he got mugged or something of that nature.
"I'm-" Zim started, but Jhonen cut him off, hunched over, and holding his lower back, as it felt like it was on fire, and supporting himself with the other hand on his knee. He was going to be covered in those disgusting, discolored, purplish-greenish-yellowish-brown bruises for weeks.
"Invader Zim, from the planet Irk." he said in a strained, exhausted monotone, "And you're Dib. I know all about it. Don't repeat it to me. I made you. And you too, missy." he said, looking over his shoulder to where Gaz and Nny were trying to terrorize one another and rip each other to bits.
"They make a cute couple. Too bad that's illegal. Unless you're R. Kelly." he muttered, and Gaz immediately gave him the glare of death, but he waved the hand that was on his knee at her, he walked over to a rickety table and hopped on, resting for a moment.
Johnny walked over to him, stepping over Gaz completely.
"What happened to you?"
Jhonen glared out of the corner of one eye. "I fell down a very long flight of stairs...And busted my ass...As you can imagine..." he groaned, picking up a peice of chipped broken mirror that sat convienently next to him to investigate his facial wounds.
"Hey. Did you fall down the stairs?" Dib asked.
"You're an asshole." Jhonen said, glaring at the little person.
"You're the asshole who made me."
"You know that?"
"Yeah. That scary guy said so."
"And you just believe him?"
"Yeah, why not. I mean, we just kind of appeared down here. You'd kind of figure he'd at least know something."
Jhonen sighed, "I swear to God, I gave them SOME common sense..." he muttered.
"HEY." a sharp, deep, angry voice sounded from his side. He looked down.
"Yes?" he asked.
"Where are we?" she asked, her anger and irritation becoming apparent as she glared at him with one eye.
"To answer that question would be to have some stable idea of where I am," he said, "However, I'm not quite sure where the hell I am or what's going on so...Just...I don't know. Shut up." he said, his voice saturated in aggravation, irritation, and what sounded like dulled, mild anger. He nudged the small, purple haired girl away from him with his foot. After all, she did only come up to about the mid-point of his calf.
Anger...Not only directed towards me, but at the people around you, now, too?
They're not people. They're cartoons. Pictures. Just like Kaz.
I thought you liked Kaz.
I WOULD like her if she was real.
Are we really going to get into whether your cartoons have feelings? You created someone. Thats like being a father.
HA! Haha! Heh...Oh..Me. A father. That is hilarious. I didn't know you had a sense of humor.
C'mon, say it...'Nny, I am your father.' You can even add the hissy, wheezy, deep raspy voice.
Shut up.
More anger.
More comments from an imbecile.
More remarks.
More stupidity.
More proving me right.
...I...
What?
I...You...
No comment?
Shut up! Why can't you just leave me alone!
Because you'll never make it out of this without me, just listen.
KISS MY ASS! AAAAAAAK! What the HELL could you possibly want from me! You're just a voice in a head! When I die you'll just move on to some other poor victim. You're nothing but a bitter product of some guy out there whose mortality caught up with him. You're nothing but a ghost.
Don't-
No, listen to me, you're absolutely nothing. Nothing but a mere lost, confused personality looking for a way to make other people miserable.
No. You're absolutely nothing.
No response. Stopped talking. That was a relief.
Johnny gave him a suspicious look. Jhonen sounded hebetated. Well, that seemed to be expected, since he had just tumbled down what was quite possibly the worlds longest flight of stairs. Nny didn't care much. But he had a weird gut feeling that if this Jhonen character died, there would be a problem that affected his own life.
Wait.
When had he become so selfish?
Maybe he'd always been like that. Not caring about anyone else, believing that everyone in the world was pure venomous filth, and skipping over the good completely. He'd even killed a good when he was under the vile manipulation of the Doughboys. Said good was that man, Edgar Vargas. He'd exchanged names with him and everything, the guy was smart, and pretty decent.
"Who on God's, green, moldy planet do you think YOU'RE TALKING TO!" Gaz roared.
"Gaz, please. I'm not in the mood for this."
"Jesus Christ, you're scary." Zim said, one eye narrowing into a slit.
She just glared.
"ENOUGH!" Jhonen bellowed.
For such a thin man, he had quite the roar when he was angry.
Angry?
When did he get angry? Usually only mild irritation occured. That was his 'angry', not screaming so loud his body contorted into uncouth positions, as though he were preforming some weird tribal ritual in an effort to jumpstart some sort of explusion of some evil spirit. He realized he was on his knees.
"I can't take this. This is...This is..." he realized exactly what was going on, "This is insanity. I shouldn't be here."
"What?" Dib asked, as Nny stood, waiting for something to happen.
"I can't take this...I can't do this...I can't...I can't..." he said, his hands falling into his lap.
"What?" Johnny said with a monotone.
"I can't do th-"
"Yeah, I heard that part. Twice. What can't you do? Nothing bad has happened to you." Johnny said, leaning against the wall.
Zim, who had remained fairly quite throughout the whole thing, along with Dib and Gaz backed up considerably, feeling trapped between the two lunatics.
"Nothing BAD has happened to me! I'm stuck in a dimension that isn't mine, with characters that I DREW, and...And..." he started laughing, almost hysterically, "And you guy's are in the wrong show." he said, pointing to the three kids in between them.
"We noticed." Zim said. This guy was cracking up. What kind of random fact is that, in the middle of a psychotic break?
Jhonen laughed more, putting his glasses on the top of his head momentarily, and rubbed his face and the bridge of his nose. The blood was beginning to dry and clot.
"This is not my life. This isn't what I'm going through." he said, his smile fading.
"This is too great. You spend your life working on my emotions and problems when you don't even have yours figured out." Johnny said, "Now let me ask you something."
Jhonen looked at a blurry version of Johnny. "What else do I have to lose? Shoot, ask." he said, swallowing. Somehow he got the feeling this would not end well.
"Now that you're officially monolithic, now that it seems like there's some sort of vindictive anathema that has been placed upon you... Your own hopelessness and frustration has finally arisen, and all contempt you once held for anything has been shoved in your face. Now that the very facet of all the problems of your life has easily snuck up on you because you were too busy hating the world to notice anything else at all, now that you're caught in your own maelstrom of confusion instead of inflicting it on someone else," his eyes narrowed, darkly, "How does it feel?" Johnny asked, almost maliciously. As though seeing Jhonen like this, a mess, were his revenge for putting him through all of it.
Jhonen didn't know quite how to respond. He didn't expect that. But could you really ever expect anything at all with Johnny the Homocidal Maniac?
"I'm going to just leave you down here, to die, with these three mutants. You're going to bleed to death, anyway. Your wounds won't clot without help on some of those gashes." Johnny said, "And is that girl still in my house? I'll drive her back to her new home."
"Her new home?" Jhonen asked in a raspy voice.
"Yeah, the bottom of the nearest river, after I cut her into peices." he said, "I hate people in my house who don't belong in my house."
"You let Devi in your house."
"So? That was Devi. I actually liked Devi. I willingly let her in. As of now, I have five people inside my house that I don't want in my house. They will DIE!" Johnny yelled, and picked up a jar and threw it at the wall behind Jhonen, "They'll die. You brought this on, I was completely fine by myself! You have no idea how annoying the presence of the lot of you is! You...Tenacious little HOLE! FOOK! IN MY HOUSE!" he yelled as loud as he could. He began to leap up the stairs. He picked up a hook, an stumbled along the dirt floor, yelling a direction to the three to stay where they were.
"What the fuck do you want!" Nny screamed.
"What do I want! I want to live! And I want you to leave Kaz alone!" he said, losing his breath as he leapt up the stairs, trying desperately to keep up with Nny.
"Too bad! What is it that you like about this girl, Jhonen? I thought you said she was just another smudge of color in an endless sea of faces!" he laughed, mockingly, but at the same time maintained a certain, bone-chilling, seriousness about him.
Johnny.
He had that look.
Jhonen had invented that look, and knew exactly what was going to happen to that girl if he didn't catch up in time. He began skipping steps. He could see scrapes in the walls, either from victims, or maybe from him trying to prevent himself from falling. Which apparently failed miserably. Like most other things he'd been trying lately.
"Johnny! You leave her alone! God dammit!" Jhonen bound up the stairs.
Jhonen, you need to think for this.
Aduh.
Seriously, think. Ok? Now, again, you MADE Johnny. That would mean you know his weak points. What's going to piss him off beyond the point of words?
That's exactly the reason I'm going to lose this fight. I designed him to HAVE no weak points. Any weak points someone points out, well, they get ripped to strips. And he never gets caught. He was both protagonist and antagonist. Protagonist with Johnny C. VS. the Doughboys. In a twisted way, antagonist with his victims, he was doing the killing, but they brought it on themselves. Do you understand?
Yes, of course I understand. But I can't TELL you what to do, you're the one with the body. I would say fight him until he gives up or calms down.
There is no calm with Johnny.
Then kill him.
I can't kill him!
Why not! He's gonna go kill that girl you love so much.
WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO GET INTO THE LOVE vs. CONNECTION BATTLE RIGHT NOW! DON'T MAKE ME SCREAM!
You already are!
SH-
Ok, ok. That girl, that Kaz, who had a MIND OF HER OWN! Gasp! She's sweet, pretty. She didn't mind Johnny, and he's racing up the stairs to kill her. He want's to chop her up into peices and throw her in a RIVER!
THATS IT! If he can see that she liked him, too, then he might not kill her!
EXACTLY!
YES! I LOVE YOU!
...Ahem...
...Um...
That was never said.
No, no it wasn't.
He finally reached the landing, seconds after Johnny. He burst into the television room, and saw him standing over her sleeping form, butcher knife in one hand, drawn back, and ready to chop.
"NO!" Jhonen screamed breathlessly.
Kaz woke, and in screamed at the sight, scuttling to the farthest end of the of the couch.
"What the hell do you want from me now!" Nny screamed.
"I want you to leave her ALONE." Jhonen said, hands on his knees, catching his breath.
"So many people have said things similar to that. 'Stop!' and 'No! Please, don't!' and other such phrases. I hear them several times a day, and will probably continue to. You MADE them, you made ME! And you want me to refrain from this? This is what I'm made for! This is how I was bred, its the way I am, and if I want to butcher her I will! And after I'm done, I want you to know that YOU caused her demise! You did so by making me! And her! And those three little THINGS downstairs!" he yelled.
"Ok, but before you do that, let me quote you: 'Violence; All perfectly natural in a society whose advances are limited to its technology. The basic behaivor of the modern human is hardly different from that of its primitive ancestors. The only noticeable changes are trends. Whether in a suit or in a loin cloth, people are ignorant little thorns, cutting into one another. They seem incapable of advancing beyond the violent tendencies which, at one time, were necessary for survival.'"
"Yes, and?" Johnny said, visibly beyond irritated.
"SO...You're violent. You haven't advanced. You're a waste. A waste of life. Nothing more than and effigy. You couldn't be civilized if you tried. I mean, look. She was nice to you, had no problem with you. And here you are, going to kill her for no reason." he said, heat radiating off of him, as he was quite angry, "The same went for Devi. She liked you a lot, and you tried to kill her!"
"I didn't want the rot to set in! The beauty would fade, like it always does with anything I do! I didn't want the aching disappointment that had held my soul every time I was denied something like love, or friendship!" he yelled, drawing back again to hack Kaz.
"What is wrong with you!" she yelled, and moved to get off the couch. Johnny stumbled forward and grabbed her by the face.
"Don't move!" he yelled, and threw her back on the couch, "This won't hurt a bit!"
"DON'T!" he yelled, as the knife came down on her shoulder. He ran forward and jumped on his back, bringing Johnny to the ground.
"YOU FUCKING KILLED HER! ASSHOLE!" he screamed, struggling with him to get the knife away, as he had lost the hook he picked up while running up the stairs, "I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE YOU!"
"J-Jhonen..." She whispered, clutching her shoulder that was barely hanging onto her body. He looked over his shoulder.
"You're not dead!" he said, shocked.
"No...But I will be soon." she said, "It's inevitable...Hskkk..."
Johnny stopped for a moment, and Jhonen sat, staring at her with saucer eyes.
You feel it, Jhonen.
Feel what?
Sadness.
She's dying and there's nothing I can do. What else would I be?
You're sad. You can feel tears ever-so-slightly pricking the backs of your eyes. You're sad.
And...?
She wasn't just a whisp in a crowd of faces.
...No...You're...You're right. She wasn't. Isn't. Never was.
I think it was fate. Fate caused you to fall asleep. Caused you to belong to his world. Caused you to meet this person. You'll remember this, Jhonen. You'll remember all of this.
His conscious spoke with a sound of...He couldn't put his finger on it. He sounded quiet, calm. Like he had just realized something.
...As odd as this is going to sound, I want to remember it. Remember it all. Everything.
And there it is.
There what is?
...Say it, Jhonen.
Say what?
You could've loved her, had you gotten to know her better. Had she been a real person. You could've grown from that spark, had you met her in your own dimension. You could have loved her. Just say it, Jhonen, and I'll be gone forever. That was my job. To become your voice of reason, to get you to admit you could get along with a choice few people, real or not. You could love if you really wanted to. If given the chance, and person, at least.
...I...
Jhonens eyes were glassy, and she began to speak.
"Jhonen, I want you to know...Hssk...You're one of the most decent guys I've ever..." she heezed, trying to breath deeply, "I've ever met...You too, Johnny. I like you both...Hssssk...Both...Both alot...Even if you did...Kill...Me..." she said, and tried to lean forward, and fell into Jhonens shoulder, "Give people...A chance...Ssss... Jhonen, try. Just try..."
He gently guided her wheezing form back on the couch. She looked at him, covered in blood, as more continued to pour out of the deep, deep gash in her shoulder. She finally took a last breath, letting out slowly, and her body relaxed, eyes fluttering closed, gently, and she went limp. It almost felt like her soul left her body, as cheesy as it sounded.
"...She's gone." he whispered, and stood.
I could've loved her.
...You're done.
...I...
You don't have to say anything to me, Jhonen. I'll always be here. I just won't answer.
...But...I could've loved her, had she been real.
I know.
Had she been REAL. Now, find a way to get back to your own dimension, and find someone, anyone, who is real, who you could love, who you could have a real, true, connection with.
I-
Goodbye, Jhonen.
And with that, the voice was gone. He tried summoning it a few more times, but nothing. He really was gone. He felt like he'd lost something. This voice had probably saved him from himself in so many ways, be they subtle or not. He had told that voice he hated it, because...
Because...
Why?
Because it was pointing out truths?
Even more...
Because it was right?
Had been all along, it knew. Everything. All along.
Had he really been such an ass?
The kind he disliked so intensely?
Never letting anyone ever get close enough...And in doing so, never letting the decent ones get close, at least so much as to BECOME real to him, to make a real impact on his life, people who probably could've played and important part in his life. Had he let them.
But instead, he blew them off. All of them.
"God..." he muttered, his face falling into his hands.
Johnny didn't know what to do. Suddenly, all the rage he had felt moments before, rage that had caused him to hack her arm almost completely off...Was gone.
"Jh-"
"Don't." he said, coldly.
He ignored him, "I'm sorry."
Jhonen snorted in disbelief. "NOW you're sorry?"
"...Take it with stride, I don't apologize for no reason."
"I know. I made you that way, remember?" he replied, in a monotone.
"I know."
"...Then don't make trite statements."
"What are we going to do with those three things downstairs?"
"...We? Your house, your problem." Jhonen said, and looked at the body of what was once Kaz.
"...We can bury her, if you'd like." he said.
"...Sure. Do what you will." he said, monotone still in effect.
Bury her? When did Nny start caring about what Jhonen thought? Why? Not that he was very selfish before...But...
Maybe he was.
Very selfish.
Thinking of it now, he wasn't much more than anyone he'd ever killed.
He looked back at Jhonen.
"...We'll never have all the answers to all of our why's," Jhonen said, "Every concept contradicts every other concept. Nothing is ever going to make perfect sense."
Was that a tear rolling down his cheek?
Somehow, Johnny didn't think he was crying over just Kaz. It was everything at once. It had finally come into perspective, and was quite overwhelming.
"Can love be hidden, dismissed, and even mocked in public, and still be love?" Jhonen asked, almost in a whisper, his voice raspy.
Johnny opened his mouth to say something, but Jhonen cut him off.
"I've got imperfections, but how could you collect them all and shove them in my face?" he asked.
"...I..." Johnny said.
This was a first. He was at a loss for words. There was nothing he could do to console him.
Jhonen walked into Johnnys bedroom, and flopped back on the mattress.
"Jhonen?"
"I'm going to sleep. I need rest."
"I thought you didn't sleep. If you're anything like me, then you hate sleep."
"I'm NOTHING like you." he said, harshly.
"...Sleep, though?"
"I think I need some. I'm not going to make a habit out of it." he said, "See you around."
Somehow, he didn't think he'd be seeing Johnny anytime soon. He crossed his arms over his chest. When did he get the chills? Goosebumps, all over his arms. It didn't matter. Swallowing, he blinked, his reddish eyes closed. For the first time in a long, long time, he'd go to sleep, completely of his own accoord. He somehow felt sleeping was the way to go.
"...Late summer evenings, I painted a scene," he choked, raspily, "Of the mountains afar, and the color of screams..." he whispered almost inaudiably.
His eyes slowly fluttered closed.
AN: I think that there might be one more chapter, two would be pushing it. I love the English language...