Here is chapter 2, written in Nny's POV. It's strange going from a cute little girl to manic serial killer the next (two halves of my internal personality), but you will see the vast difference in their headspaces.
Molly's cute to write for, but her vocabulary is pretty limited since she's only six, which is why I don't use many synonyms for words like sad, happy, or angry, so it may get repetitive. But Nny's like a living, breathing thesaurus. I can have fun with him...
I hope you enjoy.
Johnny twirled the blade around in his hand, relishing the swift whooshing sound it made as it spun through the air.
Then he made it stop, catching it by the handle as he released a long, melancholy sigh. Such a dull, dreary day. Even though it was 70F outside, Johnny was cold inside.
He'd been cold for a long time now. It had been his ultimate goal to attain cold, unfeeling intellect like Mr. Samsa, but it shouldn't be this hard.
Johnny shouldn't still feel. Desire, companionship, hunger... He'd let all that go three years ago, just after he'd finally been freed from the life of a flusher.
He was no longer a slave to anyone but basic instincts. No ghoulish Styrofoam figures governed his world anymore.
The only voice he heard now was that of Reverend Meat, and a squirrel he'd hung on the wall by a nail after running it over on the road.
Rising from his top step, he moved away from the stinky bowels of his basement, not even having the heart to torture his victims.
He still kidnapped victims from time to time. His days of wanton killing are long gone now, but there were still too many assholes for Nny's liking walking this disease-ridden planet called earth, and he had to do something about all the surplus humans.
Six billion people and still counting. The very thought made him want to vomit. Breeding and mutating like viruses, every new generation getting sicker than the last.
Humanity really was sick. It always has been and forever will be.
Despite the alarming rate modern sapiens were growing, Nny was still alone. He still had nobody to call on as he snarled, throwing his knife at a nearby wall.
Fuck. Why was it so hard? Why couldn't he just cut his head open and remove all the happy centres of his brain? The hypothalamus was the root cause; it was responsible for all the serotine and dopamine coursing through his bloodstream in moments of desire, giving him brief glimpse of happiness before stealing it away again.
Happiness was fleeting, they say, but so was murder.
What hormones were responsible for feelings of murder?
Not for the first time, he thought about turning himself in at the psyche ward where they could help decipher what was wrong with him; they had all kinds of meds and doctors after all, and he wondered vaguely if they still performed shock treatment.
Anything to numb the pain.
Maybe they'd perform a lobotomy too, and Nny could finally switch his brain off. It wouldn't function at the level he would like it to anymore, but it had to be better than living in a world of brief happiness.
No. Nny wouldn't go down that path again. No mental wards and no doctors. Apart from the sleep study he'd participated in a few years back, he had no more interest in hospitals.
And the last doctor he had seen had been a complete disappointment in the end. That was an individual who had no place determining the sickness of others.
No place indeed.
When would the feelings go away? It was a never-ending battle. Nny's emotions continued to rage war inside his head, even after three long years, and before he knew it, they would destroy him from the inside, slowly eating away at his innards like a cancer.
Fuck happiness, and fuck emotions. No want, no hate, no love, just cold, empty nothingness.
Where had these new, strong feelings come from all of a sudden? He hadn't had emotions this intense for a good few years now.
It all started with the little girl next door—Molly.
Whereas Nny was as cold as the moon that lights the night sky, Molly was as bright and warm as the sun, and they truly were opposites.
It made sense; she still retained the innocence of childhood. It would be some years until she finally experienced the misery of adulthood—a world where she has to pay bills, attend a day job she despised, all just so she can exist in a disease-ridden world full of rotten people, and it made Nny sad.
In Molly's current reality of the world, Santa Claus still delivered her presents at Christmas, and the Easter Bunny gave her chocolate at Easter.
Oh, to be a child again. Not that Nny remembered much of his own childhood.
Voices stirred inside his head. He was getting better at tuning them out, but it was mostly Reverend Meat and the squirrel fighting for precedence these days, but at least they were his voices now.
Reverend Meat wanted him to experience all of life's thrills, while the rodent reminded him of the misery of trivial emotion.
Same old, same old...
Yet when Nny spied Molly's little face the other night inside her bedroom window, he'd felt something that he hadn't felt in a long while.
Hope.
And that in itself brought its own dangers.
Maybe it was just nostalgia at play; for a moment, she'd looked like a blond, female version of Squee, his old little friend, and he just needed to seek out that old familiarity.
She wasn't at all like Squee. While young and understandably wary of Nny at first, she had a bit more backbone than Squee ever had, and she'd even stuck up to him when he told her she had cooties.
How flustered she had been.
He chuckled at the memory, gazing at her window from inside his living room. She wasn't there today.
Nny hadn't spent much time around small girls, yet Molly ticked off all the boxes: Dainty, sweet, charming, and downright adorable, yet fearless too. She definitely had some inner strength when he'd looked into her bright blue eyes the other night, and she seemed wise for her years.
There came a groaning sound from the basement, and Nny's stomach gurgled. He didn't really feel like damning anyone today. The man with the crown of nails in his head would just have to wait until Nny was in the mood again (and maybe he should think twice the next time he cuts in front of Nny at the Drive-Thru at Taco Smell).
Why don't you go outside, Nny? It's a nice, sunny day. You're starting to look a little ghoulish. You're but a ghost of your former self...
Reverend Meat again.
He sighed. "I hate the sun. Hate the heat..."
It was too damn hot today. Nny couldn't wait until winter. Maybe he should consider moving to Canada where he could be as cold as the very snow that coated the ground.
The interior of his house was a sweatbox, but it's not as if it would be cooler outside. The tarmac on the road was starting to melt, and it truly was awful.
Stupid heat, stupid summer.
Winter couldn't come sooner.
There came a ringing sound outside next, and curiosity getting the better of him, Nny peered through the wooden slats of his window.
Hope rose inside his chest, tickling at the back of his throat when he spied his new little friend, Molly. She was riding her bike, and he couldn't help but roll his eyes.
Her bike was bright pink with a white wicker basket attached at the front, and she had the sparkly tassels hanging off the handlebars too.
Nny hated tassels. They reminded him of cheerleaders.
She rode past his house, singing a cheerful song to herself before glancing his way.
Their eyes met.
For a moment, fear tainted her face when she spied him inside the window of his house, and he must look pretty alarming right now to passers-by.
He bet he was just a pair of floating eyes...
Nny's eyes always had a habit of glowing in the dark, anyhow. It was a strange characteristic that came in handy when scaring his victims, but not when it came to his new friend Molly.
But then her dismayed expression vanished, and now she lifted her hand and waved, "Hi, Johnny!"
Her high-pitched, pealing voice touched something deep inside him, and he swore one of his organs switched back to life.
What was that? His heart? That old, black organ was only good for pumping blood and oxygen around his so-called organism, nothing more.
So why did it stir just now?
Unfortunately, Molly was too fixated on waving that she didn't even see the rock ahead. She rode over it, crashing and rolling several feet with a scrape of her flesh.
Her loud cry of "Ow!" echoed through the street next, and then the sound of her helpless wail.
"Shit," Nny cursed, wondering what he should do. Should he go outside and check on her? That is what a normal human would do, right?
What would a Boy Scout do? She was still crying after all and she must be hurt.
And why did he care? He normally liked it when people drew blood; it was more fun that way. But it was kind of his fault why she was injured. He had distracted her after all.
Stay in or go outside...
How he hated these moral dilemmas.
Opening the door at last, he stepped out into the blazing heat to investigate. Call it instinct, but something prompted him to check if she weren't dead. She was still an innocent and not deserving of his indifference.
Luckily, she'd had on a helmet. Unluckily, though, she'd scraped up her knees pretty bad, and for the first time in Nny's life, the sight of blood made him squirm.
His new little friend was bleeding, and it unnerved him.
The child peered up at him with wide, haunted eyes. Her lower lip wobbled, and tears spilled down her cheeks, but all Nny could do was stand and watch.
What does he do? He was more adept at causing injuries, not reducing them.
She started crying, gazing up at him with big, puppy dog eyes. "I... I hurt myself, Johnny..."
Nny scratched the back of his head. What else was he supposed to do but watch in morbid fascination?
A word echoed through his mind... Help. Should he help Molly? Was he even capable of extending such compassion?
He had never been concerned with the prevention of blood flow before. So this was strange territory for him.
Molly continued to whimper, the sound tugging on a set of foreign strings inside him, and he finally made up his mind, kneeling beside her.
"How deep is the cut?"
She regarded him several moments, reaching her knee out for him to investigate, and how trusting she was.
"Pretty bad. It's bleeding..."
It was true. Blood dripped from the gash, turning her fair skin scarlet. Nny actually winced at the sight, as if blood was something new and novel to him.
"That's a lot of blood for a small girl."
She nodded, squeezing her eyes in pain. "Yeah, I... I know. Please, make it stop, Johnny. I... I don't want to die..."
Her crying started again.
Nny knew it would take a really, really long time for her to fully bleed out (since he was not unfamiliar with draining the blood of his fellow humans), but he doubted the consequences would be that dire. At most, she would just have a scar.
He breathed a sigh. "All right. I don't have a Band-Aid on me, but I'm sure we can think of something. We'll need disinfectant too."
He got up to go back into his house to look for bandages, but then she held her hand out and stopped him. "Wait! I have a Band-Aid in my basket."
Nny raised a brow, then approached her cute little basket, spying that first aid kit inside. Had her parents given it to her? How intuitive of them. Though he didn't appreciate their screaming and arguing last night, they definitely had the whole parenting thing right.
What a relief, because Squee's parents sucked at it.
He took out the small kit and got to work. There were gauze and bandages, cleansing wipes, and a box of adhesive medical strips.
Nny cleaned the blood away with a wipe, stopping only when she flinched. He didn't know why. Inflicting pain never bothered him before. If someone was hurt, then he just made them hurt more.
"S-sorry..." he muttered, sheepishly.
She winced, closing her eyes. "It's... okay... I know you don't mean to hurt me, Johnny."
He blinked in fascination. "No... I didn't..."
Odd. So unlike Nny.
Next, he applied a couple of pink Hello Kitty Band-Aids to her knee, and by the time he was finished, he'd worked up a sweat. His forehead dripped and cursed the stupid sun.
Curse him for being a warm-blooded mammal that could regulate its own body temperature.
"There, all done. I didn't do too badly in the end."
There was no denying the sense of achievement in his voice. He supposed it was a small achievement.
He'd only gone and helped someone. A good deed, but it's not as if Nny was concerned about returning to heaven any time soon.
Who needs Head Explody, anyway?
Molly glanced down at her knee impressed, and despite himself, Nny smiled. At least she'd stopped crying.
"You did it. You stopped the bleeding!"
Nny made an amused sound next, standing at full height. "Yeah, I did. There's a first time for everything, I suppose."
She beamed up at him, climbing up to her own feet. Her smile was so wide, it shone even brighter than the sun in the sky, and he just stared at her for a moment.
The little girl truly was short; she still had all her baby teeth, and luckily for her, her nasty fall hadn't ruined her youthful smile.
There was nothing fun about a chipped tooth.
"Thank you, Johnny!"
Before he could stop her, she rushed over and wrapped her arms around his waist, and Nny froze like a statue.
What in the...? A small child was touching him. Actually touching him. This has never happened to him before. What does he do?
Her head only reached his stomach, and how tiny was she? Nny wasn't even all that tall either, as his old copycat Mmy pointed out once.
She really was a midget.
Nny couldn't even remember being as small as her.
Before long, the warmth of her arms seeped into his clothes, and that weird stirring started up in his chest cavity again.
All he could hope for now was that no one drove past his house and saw him being hugged by the tiny child. It would ruin his reputation for sure.
He laughed nervously, patting her helmet, and when she stepped back, offering him that bright smile again, time ceased.
Seriously, what was coming over him? He thought he'd cast off his feelings long ago, but she'd been the first person to hug him in a long time. And the longer he gazed at her smiling face, the quicker the clouds cleared.
"Thank you, Johnny. You're the bestest best friend in the whole world!"
A wide smile came to his own face, and it wasn't even manic anymore. "You're welcome. And remember, Molly, it's NNY..."
"Oh, yeah, sorry. NNY..."
A silent pause. Then she finally picked up her bike, then took off in the direction of her house. Nny noticed she didn't even ride with stabilizers.
"I have to go now. My Mommy will want me back for diner soon."
Nny waved her off as she rode back to her house. "No problem. See you around, Molly!"
When she vanished into her house, he sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Cute kid. Just a shit judge of character."
How long would it be before her smiles turned into frowns? Surely, she had to have figured out that he was the villain here.
That was a face he always wanted smiling at him, so he'd hate to make it disappear, but it was inevitable.
Everyone always ended up fearing him eventually.
Putting it out of mind, he stalked back to his own house to finally condemn the man with the nails in his head.
Yep, nothing but a cruel villain.
Just why the hell were his clothes still warm where she hugged him?
Aw, Nny helped a smol child, and then she hugged him 😭
Writing for these two was so fun and sweet. Lord, Nny needed a friend like Molly. Squee was bloody adorable in the comics, but he was too scared of Nny and would never hug him in a million years. I wanted him to though...
You've probably noticed that I sometimes captialise Nny like NNY. I think that's how Jhonen generally prefers to write it, but my stupid SpaG conscious brain just can't bring myself to write it that way in normal writing. It either looks like an acronym or that I'm yelling. So I opted for the dialogue instead. It seems natural that way.
See you the next upload.