Chapter four of my insanity! More Zane OOC-ness! And hell, I probably screwed up Chazz's character with my incompetence as well! I suppose the only thing that will keep you all reading is my oh so excellent style of writing –looks confusedly at reviewers who say I'm a good writer-.
I'm listening to some KoRn. It was my birthday last week Tuesday… I'm fourteen! I got an I-Pod. I was like 'Yay'… and then I tried to put songs on it. My speech steadily deteriorated into foul, Zane-like language, and at the end of six hours, I had two System of A Down songs and three Killswitch songs. T.T rapture.
School is boring. My new subjects suck. Is there surprise in this development?
I realized that I really like the song 'Mr. Rogers'. And then I was like 'Oh, this song is appropriate for my fic.' I'm hoping you all are reading between the lines as to whose all fucked up in the story and why. I think I'm making it obvious. The 'Poor Chazz' reviewer, I think they know what's going on. You all can guess in your reviews… but by now I honestly think it is rather obvious as to why people are how they are.
Disclaimer: The only thing I own are my rotting brain cells… you know, the ones that the teachers keep killing every time they walk in the classroom. As for the Bible quotes… do you have to disclaim for those? I mean, the Bible is mankind's…
To Zoe… I am the dominant one. The End.
Love thy neighbor as thyself
-Somewhere in the Bible That I Just Can't Remember Right Now
The time has come to realize
What you are, what you've done to me
The time has come; we'll have something to talk about
I will too
Looking back and now I realize
How much you really liked him, this child's mind you terrorized
You came to him; he really didn't know your lies
Now his innocence gone
He's that child you terrorized
This fucking pain that I feel, you gave to me then you
This fucking pain that I feel because of you
My childhood is gone because I loved you
Be my neighbor
Looking back and now I realize
How much you really loved him, this child's mind you've hypnotized
You came to him; you really didn't know your lies
And now his innocence gone
I'm that child you terrorized
This fucking pain that I feel, you gave to me then you
This fucking pain that I feel because of you
My childhood is gone because I loved you
Be my neighbor…
I thought you told me everybody was my neighbor
They took advantage of me like they took their turns holding me
I wish I would have never watched you
But look at in the ending they made my childhood a failure
What fucking neighbor
I hate you
I will too
Be my neighbor
This fucking pain that I feel…
My childhood is gone…
I will too…
Zane cursed and rubbed his eyes as he heard knocking on the door.
The room smelled of cigar smoke. After his second confrontation with the infamous Slade Princeton, he had gone to his favorite tobacco store. He then saw it fit to graduate to cigars… why? Because he could. He had sat in his boxers in the apartment the rest of the day, smoked, cried, bitched to Mary about Syrus, and watched a Star Wars marathon. By twelve, his eyes were considerably red. By twelve-thirty, they were closed, and visions of Syrus were plaguing Zane's mind behind them.
He stumbled off the couch (which he had dubbed 'Bed of The Fuck-Up Father Zane). He had a bad headache. He tried to remember why some phone call or the other from his secretary hadn't woken him up when he realized he had pulled the phone from its outlet yesterday so he could rant and rave and smoke in peace.
Is it just me, Zane thought, rubbing the five o'clock shadow growing on his face as he paced to the door, or is it every time I meet Slade, I feel this dire urge for cigarettes?
Zane felt a torrent of bad language waiting to come out of his mouth as he opened the door to see his landlord with his big, fat orange cat standing at the door. Damn it, how could he have forgotten to pay his rent?
"Hello, Zane," the man said amiably, stroking his cat, Pharaoh. He paid no heed to his tenant's condition, but looked around Zane's apartment as though it as the most pleasant thing on earth. His eyes fell on the disconnected phone, and he frowned momentarily.
"Hello, Lyman," Zane said guiltily, and he let his eyes go to the floor. He scowled as Mary brushed past him and began to playfully pull at the hem of Lyman's pants.
Oh, so the bitch can be playful with every one except me, Zane scowled. And as though Mary had heard him, she turned her head to him and said scathingly, I'm not a bitch. I'm a cat. Goddamn it, Zane, go shave. It looks like someone shit on your face.
"Come here, you little rat," Zane growled.
Banner, on the other hand, had stooped to Mary and began to pat her affably. "Oh, I see you've joined the club as well, Zane."
Zane flushed. The only reason he had bought Mary was so she could get it on with Pharaoh. Then, Mary would have some cute little Satan kitties, he and Banner would become buddy-buddies, and he wouldn't have to pay his constantly overdue rent.
Or, at least, that was the way it went over in his head. Mary, in real life, was glaring hatefully at Pharaoh, who hat batted her playfully with his paw. Banner, unawares, was stoking her thick, dark fur.
"Uh, yes…" Zane responded in a far off tone of voice.
Lyman looked up at him, smiled, and then rose.
"Don't let Vellian see her when he comes back from his tour in Curacao… you know how he doesn't like cats. And it may spoil the wonderful relationship that you two have."
There was a tone of good-natured sarcasm in Banner's voice, but Zane shuddered nonetheless. Vellian Crowler was his fruity, fashion designer of a neighbor. It was also his hatred for cats that had caused Zane to purchase Mary. For the year that Zane had moved from the monastery and lived in his penthouse apartment, Vellian had made it widely known his… attraction for Zane. There were the loud solo sing-alongs to Marc Anthony and Ricky Martin in which 'she' and 'her' were replaced with 'Zane' and 'his', and the winks and the statements choc full of double entendre as they passed in the hallway.
"When… when is he coming back?" Zane managed, scooping Mary up in his arms. He had to bite back a few choice swear words as Mary dug her claws into his forearm. He had a lot of respect for Banner, and even more, he owed Banner a lot of money, and he planned to have a couth, civilized conversation with him.
"Oh, in the next few hours," Lyman said smilingly, as though it was the best fucking thing in the world. Zane's would have let his mouth fall open if at the last moment he hadn't realized that he didn't brush his teeth. He settled for letting his eyes widen in fear. Banner laughed good-naturedly.
The two men stood awkwardly in the doorway, and then two different statements flew out of their mouths at the same moment. It was Banner's words that brought out an odd reaction from Zane.
"Lyman, I'll pay the rent, just give me two weeks… you know, the campaign and everything-"
"Zane, I honesty am sorry to hear about your secretary, if there's anything I can do-"
Zane forgot that he didn't brush his teeth this morning. His mouth fell open.
"What happened to my secretary?" Zane asked, alarmed. He didn't like the look in Banner's eyes now. Usually a smiling man with kind words for everyone, even when he was bringing people to evict you, he had taken on an expression of sad solemnity that was incredibly unnerving.
Mary, as though sensing the seriousness of the situation, stopped her incessant clawing and pushing at Zane's arms and just hung limply, pressed to his firm chest by his arms.
Pharaoh meowed. Zane knew that his secretary had had asthma, but it was not anything severe…
"Her house… it burned down last night… they didn't get her out in time."
Zane looked at Banner in horror. His secretary was a bitch, but his secretary was a nice bitch, and she was the only one in the constant bitchiness of his life that he felt that he had any sort of connection to anymore. It was not the fact that he had become so absorbed in his campaign but because that it was always trying to take him over and it had been his only company (he didn't count his gay fellow clergy members as company), and seeing as she had been the driving force behind everything, it felt as though the fifty-something year old woman was some what in charge of his life. She was pleasant, robust, and a bit nagging. Bit she was his pleasant, robust, nagging bitch. She had been there from the beginning to the end, reminding him every morning or so how much he was down in the polls, or always telling him to put away those goddamn cigarettes because it wasn't good for her asthma or the image of his campaign, always bringing across casserole that tasted completely horrible on days that they would meet in his apartment to discuss strategies…
It was a business relationship, but it was a business relationship he had a sort of fondness for, like the way you got over the way your grandmother's house smelled bad and began to enjoy her frail and elderly company.
"Do… do they know…" Zane said slowly, his mouth forming the words slowly as though English was not his mother tongue.
"The fire department was not able to determine the cause of the fire, Zane," Banner said sadly, absently scratching the space between Pharaoh's eyes. They had closed, and he purred contentedly in his master's arms. Zane stood there for a few moments, and put Mary down on the ground because he felt it was the only thing he was capable of doing in a situation like this. Mary looked at the hem of Banner's pants again as though seriously debating it, but sensing the severity of the situation, retreated into the apartment so she could go and shit in a loafer or something.
Zane bit his lip.
This is a shitty way to start of a shitty day, he thought, and then hurriedly slapped his hand to his mouth as a giggle nearly came out.
Hey… that rhymes! It's a good campaign slogan… Zane For Senator: The End of Shitty Ways That Start Off Your Shitty Days.
Banner looked at him in mild concern as Pharaoh's indolent purrs broke what would have been an incredibly awkward silence. Zane felt his smile melt into his ever-present scowl behind the palm of his hand: for a campaign slogan, he needed a secretary… which brought it all back to the fact that his secretary was dead.
"Zane…" Banner began uncertainly, "I came because I know that you can get a bit out of tune with things-"
Zane hadn't moved his hand, so Lyman didn't hear the controlled snicker behind it. 'A bit out of tune with things'? Haha, what a riot. Zane was suddenly seeing the hilarity in everything: the horrible plaid of his boxers, that one of Pharaoh's eyes seemed to be slightly higher than the other, that Banner's hair wasn't combed and that there as still crusted spittle at the corner of his mouth and that he probably hadn't brushed his teeth either-
"-so I figured I should have dropped by and… and let you know how things were."
Zane's hidden mouth seemed slightly bipolar: it was know flexing with the scrupulous ease of a spider's movements into a smile again. He didn't know why or what…
My secretary is dead… my secretary is dead…
It went on and on in his head, clanging constantly like a funeral bell rung by idiot hands. After a millisecond or so, it espoused a singsong-ness, the same way Slade's voice had gotten in the church while he mocked Zane's job, Zane's beliefs, everything Zane stood for-
But then the song stopped, and something hit him very hard in the face.
'You don't believe in God, either, Father, so stop pretending…'
And once more, the manic and crazed grin pressed to the soft palm of his hand dissolved into a frown.
One Princeton is already fucking with your head, Zane, don't let the actually crazy one start, or else there'll be no end to the shit-
And all of a sudden, the 'slogan' began to blare in his head, almost on cue with the word 'shit', and again, his frown had turned upside down. Banner was watching him with a somewhat patient anxiety.
Zane decided that he would dub the song 'Ode To The Dead Secretary'. And he moved his hand, finally, and tried to smother the giggle that badly wanted to come forth for the song's 'catchy' title.
Forcing calm into his clipped tones, he said, "And may God and His angels guide her soul to the heavens."
Banner, looking retarded for a brief moment in his shock, let a timid smile grace his handsome face.
"Ah, yes… may her soul rest in peace."
A pithy pause, then-
"But… how did you know, Lyman?"
Banner's smile had suddenly become wan and thin and he said it in a happy voice that paled in comparison to his tone of voice when genuinely glad, "What, besides it being all over the news? Well, your new secretary was trying to get onto you, and apparently you had disconnected your phone-"
Comprehension dawned upon Zane.
So that's why he was looking around my apartment when he knocked…
"-so he ended up calling me, your landlord, because your mobile phone is almost always off, as demonstrated this morning when he tried to contact you. So I just came to tell you that he wants you to meet him at Huffington's, and he wanted me to ask if you knew where it was-"
Zane's frown was occupying more and more space on his face as more and more words came from Lyman Banner's mouth.
"Of course I know where Huffington's is, I used to carry Syrus there… we used to sneak in… back when he was-"
He cut his sentence short.
'Still alive', Zane? Are those the words you're going for? 'Still alive'? It was a gay bar, and you carried you gay little brother to meet his gay boyfriend back when he was gaily 'still alive'?
"Ah, yes," Banner awkwardly said, mercifully understanding the point.
"My new secretary is a… he?" Zane said, trying to steer the topic back to its original point from the masochistically self-destructive thoughts of his dead little brother.
There was a crash behind them, and Zane turned his head to his kitchen. Mary, who hadn't been fed since Zane had purchased her, was apparently fed up and foraging for something to eat. Well, that wasn't his problem right now. Let her do whatever the fuck she wanted to the place.
"You know, it's an odd stereo-type, the assumption that all secretaries must be female." Some vigor and happiness had returned to Lyman's eyes, as they always did when he was talking about the queer little oddities of the world, "But yes, you're secretary is a he. He sounded rather foreign, actually… heavy British accent… I think he'll be shocked to find out that Huffington's is a gay bar, he didn't really seem to know-"
"Did you catch his name?" Zane said, cutting Banner's musings short. Pharaoh meowed.
"Why yes," Lyman said jovially, giving Pharaoh a little squeeze, "His name is Bastion. Bastion Misawa."
-!I!I!I!I!I!I!I!-
Chazz was moodily looking around what he liked to call his 'jail cell'.
Of course, it was quite the opposite: the room was lavished in the most expensive furniture the hospital had to give, and yesterday, after that crackpot priest had come in, they had installed a TV in the corner with cable. It was that hot, sexy nurse, Alexis. She said it was the least she could have done after that horrible man came in and psychologically traumatized him like that. Chazz tried to hit on her. She looked at him as though startled, and then laughed dismissively and airily and left the room, saying something about having much more patients to attend to.
"Yeah, well it's the least you could have done to at least flirt back, you know," he said to no one in particular. He looked at the newspaper and made a gesture as if to pick it up, and then stopped when his hands reached the cover page. He had already read everything. Well, everything except the comics and his horoscopes. He didn't deal in nonsense like that.
He settled for talking to himself some more. If he was crazy, then he thought it he was entitled to act like it. It made a hell of a good pastime, and he liked the sound of his own voice.
"She's just not ready for the sexiness of The Chazz," Chazz said self-assuringly, pacing to the reflective glass of his room.
People thought he was erroneous and his actions possessed the irregularity of lunacy, but sometimes he thought that if he concentrated very hard, he could see beyond the glass, see the nurses and doctors and patients' families bustling up and down the ward.
But of course, everyone thought he was crazy, so he didn't bother to voice his opinions aloud. Why should he tell anyone that he could see beyond the reflective glass? That he heard voices in his head? That his brother was molesting him?
His ignorance was why his therapy sessions with Doctor Atticus were always so inconclusive. Atticus subtly insisted that he was crazy and needed help. Chazz not so subtly demanded that he should be let out and placed in a foster home until he turned eighteen.
And then it would end up with the same question, every time.
'"Why don't you want to go back to your brothers? Why do you want to go to a foster home?"'
Simple, he had wanted to say, Because Jagger makes me play a stupid game which makes me think I really am crazy where he touches me everywhere, and then when I tell Slade, he says that I deserve it, every single bit of it, and that if I tell a soul, he'll send me here, and no body will believe me-
And he told souls. He told many souls, and not one believed him, just like big brother Slade had said. Every time after Jagger had touched him, or even while he was doing it, he would drug Chazz. Chazz would babble incoherently for a while, and sometimes he would forget, sometimes he would remember. There were big black, swallowing epochs of time in his conscience where he simply could not remember anything, and there were times as though his recollections had the lucidity of things seen in a high fever: Jagger taking off his pants, Jagger running his hands through Chazz's thick hair in an action that went far past brotherliness. Jagger telling Chazz that if he told any one about their 'little game', he would kill him. Jagger this, Jagger that.
… Jagger, Jagger, Jagger…
But he had told people: his friends, his teachers. All of them would look at Chazz concernedly, and they always had to call big brother Slade or big brother Jagger. They could never just take his word for it.
Jagger seemed a bit insincere to his promise: he didn't murder Chazz as he had insisted he would do dozens of times as he let his hands wander freely above and below Chazz's midriff, but when called in school or to a friend's house, he would give a charming smile or say something funny or compliment someone's hair style or say something nice about the room or say 'Oh, wow, that's a nice scent you have on there, madam.'
And it would all go to hell from there. It would go to a hell where his two fucking favorite people in the world, Jagger and Slade, made him out to be a garbled, confounded little liar. Yes, they were sorry to say that they had found packets of LSD and marijuana and heroine under Chazz's bed, and they were sorry to say that the drug problem sometimes affected the oh so good people like them, and that they were so sorry to say that good ol' Chazz was just plain ol' crazy.
But there was one person that sounded like he believed him, and that was Father Zane. Father Zane had sounded scared, sounded a bit off guard, but he sounded as though he had believed him. Most of the conversation was blurred with the anesthetized, comatose effect of the drug, but when Zane had walked in yesterday and demanded a reason as to why Chazz had called him the morning before, Chazz began to cling to Zane like a savior. Of course, the cleric didn't know that. But then again, Zane had failed to mention what Chazz had called him for. It could have been anything, and the way Chazz's mindset was, he had immediately jumped to Jagger.
Slade sent him here now because of his campaign. He knew if anyone heard from Chazz that his brother Jagger was inappropriately touching him, and they believed Chazz to be sane, they would begin to link names… Chazz was Jagger's brother most obviously. Jagger was Slade's brother… so Chazz was Slade's brother. And that little bit of information would not bode well for Slade's campaign at all… why, he was condoning molestation in that thirty-roomed house of his in upper-class Domino? No, there wouldn't be any votes for Slade. They would all go to that bastard, Zane.
But as Slade drove Chazz over to the hospital a few days ago, he said that it was easier to make a campaign mascot out of a brother affected by the drug abuse of society and the inevitable mental illness it brought on (even if the abuse and mental illness was all a scam) then to make a campaign mascot out of a brother who had gone through molestation that he had pardoned and let occur in his own house.
"We'll drug you until you die, Chazz," he had said with manic cheer, his eyes bulging out of his head and his hands clasping around the steering wheel of the car. "We'll drug you until you die, Chazz, and if I see you talking to that fucker, Truesdale, ever again, I swear to his little finger-fucking God, I will kill you. You are not ruining my run for office." His mouth had pulled back in a sneer, and his eyes widened more, and he hunched over the steering wheel with a strange and dangerous fanaticism. He had let out an insane little giggle while Chazz screamed in the back seat, Jagger pinning him down. "No, siree, I'll kill you before you ruin this…I'll do anything it takes to win…"
Chazz shook his head as he found his fingers skimming through the newspaper. That memory had seemed so vivid, so unequivocal in his reminiscence… but he was so drugged. Everything that night seemed so much like a dream.
Chazz gasped as he touched a shiny burn near his hip. No, that was still there… Jagger had thrown hot water from a teapot on him when Chazz started to scream. And Jagger was laughing and making him sing 'I'm A Little Teapot' while he licked the still tender burn as Chazz writhed and screamed in pain, screaming the song at the top of his lungs, his voice diminishing in age until he sounded like a sobbing, lost six year old. He found that when Jagger touched him, something in his mind would suck him in and years would rapidly peel away from him… one minute he felt like he was fourteen, next minute he felt like he was four.
Chazz continued shaking his head. That may have been really happened, but had that episode with the atypical Slade really occurred? Because Slade said he would kill him if he ever found Zane talking to him again, and there he was, in all his glory yesterday… talking to Zane again.
Alexis had dropped in earlier. She said that Jagger and Slade we're coming to visit.
"Well, I suppose we'll find out if they're really going to kill me," Chazz said nonchalantly as he found himself, for once, reading the comic strips. He could not see the humor in a situation that blatantly lacked mirth. After all, he wasn't Zane.
And even though he didn't believe in God, and he didn't think his strange mini-redeemer believed in God either, he had become somewhat transfixed with the thought of the priest as a divine figure in his hopeless situation. After all, he was assisting in assuring Chazz in memories that he hoped were really memories and not just lurid, bad hallucinations, right? Isn't that what Gods do? Help their followers? Clarify the doubts that plague their lives?
Gods usually helped their adherents (that was as much as Chazz could grasp about religion. It was after that when the good old Atheism came in), and Chazz had an idea that Zane, who was beginning to look more and more like an idol to him, had the perfect way to help him. Chazz had a plan, and all he had to do was get to a phone. After all, Alexis had said that soon, he was going on temporary leave from the hospital, and he got to spend two days with whomever he wanted…
Last part was bland, huh? Yeah, I thought so. I had started the sort of Chazz POV when a friend called me on my stupid, stupid cell phone. We ended up blabbing about stuff for about an hour, and when I sat down again, I was like, 'Oh, well, I'm not really in my zone anymore, am I?'
Are any of you all even wondering if the burning down of Zane's secretary's house wasn't an accident?
I'm so sorry you all had to wait so long for this chapter. The only way I managed to produce this piece of shit is because we have a holiday, and I feel like I'm in a more relaxed frame of mind. School sucks, and it's fucking with my brain. You saw my disclaimer. I have to do good because I have a life changing exam come June, and I have to pick subjects at the end of Form Three, yada yada yada…
I'll try to do things on Wednesdays when my aunt and my cousin aren't home so I wont have anyone here to bug me and take me out of my zone. I'll even switch off my cell phone for you guys.
I have some tragic news… you all will have to wait for your chapters… and I'm talking about, like… long waits. I just have a lot of work to do in school. I'll try for bimonthly updates, but I ain't making no promises.
I had intended for this chapter to be longer, to actually have Slade and Jagger come in and confront Chazz, but I decided to leave it for next chapter. You know, give you all something to look forward to… because we all know confrontations with Slade in it are so interesting…
And yes, you all finally see what I was talking about in my foreword and why I've been choosing the songs I've been choosing… Chazz is getting molested! .
Ooh, and looky what I did with Bastion! Well, I didn't know where to stick him in, so I decided to knock off Zane's useless secretary and make Bastion his secretary. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, Chumley is running a gay bar. Why? Because I don't have a life, and I thought it was funny.
Any way, next chapter should be very, very eventful! I mean, look at what Chazz has in mind to save himself from his damnation of sorts…
Next two or three chapters, expect great ChazzZane buttsecks! –cringes at my enthusiasm in that statement-. I'll warn you all before I post the chapter containing the lemon so you don't have to read it if you don't want to. Actually, I'll make the lemon an actual chapter so you can just skip over it.
But let's talk about it when the time comes… hell, judging from the irregularity of my writing, there may not even be a lemon!
I'm hyper… I've had lime juice. Tee-hee and omg, that sounds so wrong. Anyways, I'll leave you here in what I hope to be suspense, even if this chapter was a bit lame. Tell me what you want to happen in chapter five to compensate for the lameness of my past couple chapters. In PMs, but preferably in reviews… you know, it tends to look nice in reviews. That, and I'm just so vain.
Later, peeps.
Ki-chan/Evanescent Whisper/ Kenny/ Sunshine/ Keena/ Keens/ Goth Girl #1 (-sweatdrops- I'm gonna kill CrAaIiIiIGgGg…)
