Chapter Three: Familiarity
By: Johnny C. (Hi there!)
Many strange things will happen to you at any one moment once in a while during you life, no matter how normal, abnormal, crazy, or generic you may be. You will find that some of these very busy moments will be very happy for you and that you will enjoy them immensely, others, you will find, are not very happy at all and that you would rather be bleeding from your eye sockets rather than be a part of such a moment. It seems every time I see Devi anymore, this is exactly how I feel. I suppose that is my own fault though, after all, I did try to kill her.
At a particularly busy moment in my life, Devi happened to reappear for the first time in months. After the whole, you know, killing/getting my butt kicked by the only woman that was anything but disgusting to me… thing, I had decided to give her some space. I tried calling her once to apologize, she didn't really say anything, though I don't think she was listening either, and when I was finished pouring my heart out there was a moment of uncomfortable silence.
"Devi?" I asked, trying to assure myself that she was still there, that she had heard me, because I knew I couldn't go through the trauma of trying to tell her again for a while. The only thing that responded was the click of the phone being placed back on the receiver.
I could have been hurt by this, but I decided not to be. I could have been angry with her for not listening to me, but I decided not to do that either. I could have cried out in anguish or raced over to her apartment to kill her for certain this time or I could have just stared at the phone in my hand for several hours, thinking about her and wondering what would have happened if I had ducked when she had gone to kick me in the head. I decided to do the last thing, seeing as the other things all seemed to be a little crazy. I think I came to the conclusion that I would have managed to get one of my knives into her torso and she would have bled to death. Suddenly, I realized several things: First, that Devi was not just afraid, she was also very angry with me. Second, that, even though I wanted to see her more than anything in the world and set everything right again, I was not going to get that chance anytime soon. And third, that I had left the skettieo's on the stove again and my kitchen was one fire. How very unpleasant.
In the months that followed that horrible, one-sided phone conversation, I went on with the rest of my life. I wrote in my Die-ary, I visited the little neighbor kid Squee, and I killed people, painted my basement wall with their blood, hacked up their bodies and buried them in my back yard. Everything was normal; it just wasn't as pleasant with the gnawing knowledge that Devi hated me.
I suppose nothing of this kind should have been vastly surprising. Have you been to the cemetery outside of town? I only went there once to see how ceremonious normal people are with their dead. Do you know what I found? A bizarre headstone that said something like lost loves were as good as dead. It was so powerful that I admit that I went home and cried.
I went into the bookstore where she worked every once in a while, but instead of her there was this new clerk, some gay guy with a funny accent that would hit on me every time I tried to ask about Devi. He didn't work there for very long. A gunman in a mask came in and blew his head off while holding the bookstore up. I was there, I could have stopped him, but I decided the guy with the gun was the lesser of two very annoying evils in my life at the moment. It was funny.
I considered the idea of going to see her and determined this was not the smartest thing to do. I also toyed with the thought of seeing her without letting her see me, i.e. stalking her, but that's just creepy and I decided against it despite what she may believe. I may be a bi-polar manic-depressant with overbearingly homicidal tendencies, but I know how to respect a person's space.
On a night when my work in the basement had been most productive, I made up my mind that four days without food was long enough. I grabbed my coat and jumped out my back window and walked to the 24/7 for a brainfreezy. If you don't know what a brainfreezy is you are either under privileged and I'm sorry, or you are a moron who needs a few less-than-sane lessons in life through a bendy straw and a hammer. Sorry, I don't know where that came from, probably the same place everything else in my head comes from, wherever that may be. Heh, I am funny.
Anyway, brainfreezy in one hand and knife-soaked-in-store-clerk's-blood in the other, I wandered in the sick red glow of the setting sun. Someone once told me that a sunrise is the most beautiful thing you will ever see in your life, but sunrises are depressing, they mean you survived another night when a perfectly good handgun sat staring at you from the coffee table all night. Stoopid. But lucky for me and anyone who might have crossed me in a state of unaccommodating angst at being alive, it was not a sunrise and there was still hope for the evening. I wound up in the park near the old library down town. I visited the park all the time, either to pass out new copies of Happy Noodle Boy to my hobo friends or to pick up Squee after his parents left him there again. I swear, if the child had any sense at all he wouldn't be so thankful for the gesture. But any help I lend delays the last cord of his sanity's slipping, which, I believe, is something he will never be aware enough of to thank me for.
But, again, anyway, I was familiar to the park, but not too much of the surrounding area. Even at night the streets of the inner city were full of assholes that I would have to come in contact with in order to explore. I didn't want to know the city well at such a high price.
Have you ever been to a park before? Just to sit there? It's nice. It's peaceful because the crazy homeless people of the city scare away the fainthearted jerks that might otherwise ruin a perfectly enjoyable evening.
Why do I keep rambling? I dunno. Maybe Bob knows. Probably. Elm! That's right, I climbed a tree on a whim to see more of the park. Random, I know, but we call upon silly whims to make choices for us every day, right? … I'm getting the feeling that you're starting to look at this story funny… it displeases me. Just remember that.
The view from the tree was not vastly better than on the ground, but that didn't matter, I had a brainfreezy and hours to kill before I went home to attempt killing myself again. I think that Senor Diablo was getting annoyed with seeing me so much lately.
I was, for a brief moment, content, sucking my "cherry doom" and staring up at the tainted sky. Then that annoying squirrel showed up. And its pet hobo. I tried to ignore them, which was easy considering I had taken this particular hobo's incoherent rants before. He was one of the more critical readers of Happy Noodle Boy but he always had great suggestions for future issues. Just to bug him I quoted one of Noodle Boy's simpler statements, "Meow." This further angered both hobo and squirrel and for a moment I thought they both might try jumping me, but they're crazy, not evil, even though there is this one hobo that is always thirsty for corn, likes to steal people (reference: IZ, I hear Jhonen won an award for that!), and has this thing about pig demons. Hmm, yeah, I'm fairly sure he's crazy.
More rambling! From only yards away there came a loud clang of a trashcan being tipped over, but not usual sound of one being tipped over so a hobo could rummage through it, just tipped/fallen over. I looked up of course. It was Devi… Even to think about that statement is still chilling to me. I must have said her name aloud, because she bolted like she was the maddened one, again, funny. I don't remember speaking her name; actually, I don't remember much of anything until I reached the library steps. I know I didn't try to stop her, and I know I didn't pull out any weapons on her… But other than that, I don't recall anything about the chase.
I remember tripping into the library but Devi was nowhere to be seen. The maze of books seemed to have swallowed her up right in from of me.
The space was vast and utterly silent. I couldn't even hear Devi's footsteps as she still likely ran through the library. I looked around at the marble floor, hoping to see footprints in the thin layer of dust on the floor, but once again, the ones I perused were lost among others, mine and one other pair that crossed this way and that over and over again. They had to be the librarian's because no one else ever came to the library. Maybe the literature dictator of this forgotten realm had seen Devi.
I turned and walked backwards every few steps, just in case Devi tried to surprise me. I didn't want to hurt her, but I was in a library, it would be rude to yell that out, not that she would believe me. I came to the librarian's desk and leaned over it, making sure no one was behind it, then rang the small cobweb covered gold bell on the desk. It gave a sharp "bing" that reverberated through the huge building. There was no answer. I hit the bell again, to dispel the creepy quiet of the place. Again, nothing happened. So I took to hitting the bell repeatedly until the individual rings became lost in a loud stream that echoed on and on in the immense emptiness. It was kinda fun!
"Can I help you?" A collected voice asked in my ears. I halted my hand above the bell, letting the noise die away to see if the voice had been real or if I was just hearing move voices than usual. "I say again, can I help you?"
The voice was real. I spun to find a dust-smeared woman looking down at me from the second floor balcony. She was nothing like the woman I was looking for. She was only medium height and build with blonde hair and gray eyes that matched the dust that pocketed her unusual clothes, which looked like a femme version of early 1800's male dress, especially the floor length split tail coat. I only mention all this because it made me want one.
I must have looked surprised because the librarian raised an eyebrow at me before heading for the stairs to come down, brushing off some of the dust as she went. "I'm sorry to be found in such a condition, but I'm afraid that I only just reopened the library and things are not all as they should be. But I am here to be of aid to those who seek. Now," she said as she stood behind the desk with her hands behind her back. "What is it that you are seeking?"
(A.N.- Chase scenes are annoying and hard to write. The black out in Johnny's memory is and example of a technique that Jhonen uses when there's nothing to fill the space, it's called LAZY WRITING! It doesn't do much for the story but it's two AM and the coffee is wearing off… sleepy…)
Betas Note: Well it is school time and I am supposed to be doing work, but me and my not so very good grades don't really give a flying eff. Decided to edit a story and see what people will do when they read about Johnny & Co. while sneaking peaks at my computer. 9:13am and I NEED COFFEE!