Chapter Two:

A once-in-a-lifetime chance had just been handed to me. The lives of the people of the world were in my hands. I decided who stayed and who went without any penalty for mistakes.

The feeling of absolute power didn't last so long on Emma's side.

"Wow…tomorrow I get to go on a killing spree. That is so freakin' awesome…I feel like going to a nightclub. Who's with me?"

"Emma!"

"WHAT?!"

Johnny looked at her strangely and sighed. "Didn't you just turn fifteen?"

"Yeah, so?"

Johnny sighed again. "And don't you have school tomorrow?"

"…What's your point?"

"I'm not taking you."

Emma's lips formed into a pout. "Why not, Nny?" she whined. "This is supposed to be my night of freedom. And I wanna go to a nightclub!" She glared at him. "The only reason you have for not wanting to go is that you're afraid."

Johnny frowned darkly. "I am not afraid to go to a freaking nightclub."

"Then why don't we go?" Emma said, smiling devilishly. "I won't believe you unless I see you there with my own two eyes."

After a while of convincing, an aggravated Johnny finally consented. The sky outside was beginning to darken and the night air was cool. Johnny felt like walking, so he gave us coats to wear and we headed off.

The nearest club had a bouncer guarding the front who was the size of a mountain. He stood in front of the door, glancing menacingly at all who passed by; a large black flashlight held over his shoulder. I also might add that he was drooling and in need of quite a few emergency root canals.

Emma stepped up to him fearlessly. "Can you open the door for my friends and me?"

The bouncer's eyes narrowed into slits. "He can go in," he said, motioning to Johnny. "You two can't."

"Why not?"

"You're underage! Now get out of here!"

"I happen to be twenty years old," Emma said defensively.

The bouncer laughed, spraying spit all over a passerby who had foolishly gone too close. At this point, I was beginning to get annoyed – and evidently, so was Johnny.

"Twenty…hahaha – AAUGH!!" He stared down at the long piece of metal protruding from his chest. A spurt of blood poured from his mouth – not something I hadn't seen in movies before – and he dropped.

Johnny grinned. "He was aggravating me."

Simple as that. A man just doing his job, now dead without much reason. But what could be done about that? Nothing now.

The three of us entered the vaguely familiar nightclub. It was packed with teenagers dancing to various beats and antisocials sitting at tables, gazing at the rest of their species wistfully. And then I realized where we were.

I grabbed Emma's arm. "Emma! This is the club Eric always goes to!"

"…Holy shit! It is! OH MY GOD!" Emma shrieked in my ear. "HE'S SITTING RIGHT THERE!"

Emma earned herself a stare from Johnny. I detached myself from her arm.

"Well then…go talk to him."

"Should I?"

"Yes, go ahead."

Emma excitedly scampered over to her faux-vampire-fantasy-lover. I was left standing on the edge of the dance floor with a very bloody homicidal maniac.

"I've got to go wash all this blood off of me," he said sort of nervously. "I'll be right back."

I waited for him where I was, alone, looking out at all the people dancing. Emma was on the dance floor with Eric now. He had probably been so ecstatic because of the fact that someone wanted to dance with him. Dancing in that certain way…

"YOU PEOPLE NEED TO STOP DRY-FUCKING EACH OTHER IN PUBLIC!" I screamed, and felt a hand come down on my shoulder. Knowing it could have been some horny, grinding-obsessive gang member, I was reluctant to turn around. But I was not met with a knife to my throat. Instead, a voice whispered in my ear.

"You respect yourself, at least…it's a good thing."

My heard sped up.

Johnny looked much better now, with the blood washed off. His clothes still hadn't completely dried, and his hair looked like he had stuck it under the sink and shaken it out with his hands.

I tried my best not to melt…noticeably, anyway. Carefully, I removed his hand from my shoulder, hoping he wouldn't get offended. It was all too much excitement.

The rest of the time there was filled with dangling conversation, more awkward pauses than could be counted, and subtle glances over to Emma and Eric. Their dancing was disturbing us, yes, but we could not blame everything on that. Shared tendencies towards shyness held us back even further. With the headache that came from thinking hard for something to say and the sweat from the nervousness (or perhaps the body heat of other people), the event was actually physically painful.

We left after an hour of this hell. Emma was tired out and ready to go. I felt as if I were dying. Walking home was even more painful than trying to keep up a conversation with my vigilante. Emma attempted over and over again to recount her night with Eric to me, but her words fell on deaf ears.

If words ever came from my mouth again, it would be too soon.

"You can sleep here, in the living room. I don't really sleep much myself…so you can use my own pillows and blankets."

We were now back at Johnny's house, finding ourselves weak and tired out. It wasn't midnight quite yet, but it sure as hell felt like it. Johnny quickly supplied us with his own things to sleep on, and disappeared into the house as we settled down on the living room floor.

It was difficult to fall asleep, though that was nothing out of the ordinary for Emma and myself. Still, she managed to get to sleep by 12:30, leaving me staring blankly at the ceiling.

Sleep would not come. It never did, and I had by now stopped expecting it. But when the time rolled by quarter past one in the morning, I began to get fed up with a blank ceiling and darkness as my only companions. I have up on sleep and rose from the sorry excuse of a bed that I had fashioned on the floor. If a walk around this enormous house could not bring sleep, nothing could.

A few hallways down, I heard a noise coming from one of the nearby rooms. I thought that maybe Johnny was giving one of his "friends" a taste of pain, but when I stepped nearer and the words spoken became clear, I found this was not the case.

"Aren't you glad I brought them here, Nny? Don't you just want to thank me profusely for being such a genius?"

Johnny's voice was a low growl. "No. I'm not glad at all. I don't know how long they'll be here! I don't want two fucking teenage girls living in my house. I don't want to have this company every minute of the day! I have enough responsibility to deal with as it is. You know that!"

"Oh, Nny, I knew you'd be saying that at first. But really now, they're so much like you were at that age. And if things go well, and you accept their friendship or whatever they may have to offer – perhaps you could make yourself feel again. You know the feeling I'm talking about. The warm and squishy one."

I could only imagine the enraged look on Johnny's face as he shouted back to whoever this other person was.

"How many times must I tell you that I am done with all that? Those sorts of things bring only pain – that's it. I've had too much pain in my life already. It would be better to just not feel at all! Everything would be so much easier!"

The other voice came, taunting. "Oh, poor little Nny. Stop trying to deny your feelings because you're afraid."

"How dare you call me – "

"If something good happens to you, you will be happy. If you are cut, you will bleed and you will feel the pain. Just like any human being."

"FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU AND YOUR LIES, AND YOUR TRYING TO CHANGE ME! FUCK YOU, REVEREND MEAT!"

I swear my heart skipped a beat just then. This wasn't right. Reverend Meat was Johnny…he was the part of himself he wanted to escape from; channeled into a ridiculous plastic Burger Boy.

A voice in Johnny's head, and nothing more.

I should have only been able to hear one side of this conversation.

I jumped and almost screamed as the loud SLAM! of something being hurled into a wall shot through the air. I knew it must have been the Burger Boy – still intact, for there had been no shattering noise.

"Why won't you fucking break?"

Johnny's voice cracked, and I knew that if he started to cry, I would not have been able to bear it. Quietly, I walked back into the living room and curled up underneath his blankets. Sleep was no closer.

He was a schizophrenic, devoid of hope, and afraid to feel.

And I could hear the voice in his head.