"In the end I'll be the one who's killing me.

It's killing me. It's killing me. It's killing me."

-The Cleansing, BUTCHER BABIES

January 2017

Kenny pulled up to the bus stop in a cloud of ice and dirt with a blue pickup truck that had a squealing belt and a rusting hood. The thing was old and ugly; smelled of McDonald's, sex, and weed (not even the "black ice" air freshener could save it) but it was reliable and that was all he needed. Taking girls out was different though. He tried to clean it up when that happened, but as soon they saw that monstrosity from 1995, it became instantly evident that all he needed, at the most, was fifteen minutes of their time. And those minutes contained no eye contact or kissing.

They were suspicious of him. His mind was always somewhere else. With someone else.

Girls: they know everything, he mused with a half-smile, staring at the only boy at the bus stop who hadn't noticed that someone had pulled up. His headphones were in and his face was craned over his phone. Dressed in all black- the Phantogram hoodie, basketball shorts, decrepit Adidas; except for his hat. The hat was red and blue, as always, it had stretched out with his head. This morning was especially stingingly cold and bitter, but he didn't so much as shiver.

Kenny rolled down his window and yelled: "Hey!"

Startled, Stan fell back a little. Realizing who it was, he took out his headphones.

"Hey, Kenny!" he grinned, "Long time, no see."

"Yeah… How are you?"

"I'm great, doing great." A lie. "How are you?"

"Good!" Another lie. "Where's your mensch on a bench?"

Stan laughed while wrapping the earbuds around his phone, "I'm gonna start calling him that now, thanks. Kyle's sick."

"Oh, that sucks," Kenny tried not to sound overly concerned, "I heard that the flu is making the rounds."

"It's not-" Stan started to say, shoving his phone in his back pocket, "It's not the flu."

Kenny shrugged, "Well, okay. Whatever. You wanna ride to school or something?"

"Um, sure. If it's okay with you."

"I wouldn't have asked if it wasn't. Get in."

"Okay. Thanks, Ken."

"Sure," he watched as Stan crossed over the front of the truck and opened the passenger door. "Don't worry about the stuff on the floor."

The black flooring was covered in old receipts, pop bottles, gas station coffee cups and various other kinds of wadded up trash that no one would care to know about.

"Oh, it's okay," Stan hoisted himself up into the seat, went to put his backpack on the floor, hesitated, then elected to keep it on his lap.

"So…" said Kenny, shifting gears while Stan fumbled with the seatbelt, "What's with the fuckboy outfit?"

"Huh?"

"A hoodie with basketball shorts? That's fuckboy culture right there. Stop stealing my culture"

Stan laughed, "Oops."

"I'm serious," but he was laughing too, doing his best to drive around the larger potholes. The last thing he needed was to have another tire pop off.

"You're gonna have to take that up with Kyle, these are his shorts."

"No wonder they look so long on you."

"Shut up, I pulled them up as much as I could."

He looked out the window at the passing cornfields, wondering how lost he could get if he walked through them long enough. Maybe he could lay down there. Maybe no one would come looking for him if he went missing. The hissing static of Kenny's radio interrupted the intrusive thought: "(Don't Fear) The Reaper."

All our times have come

Here but now they're gone

Seasons don't fear the reaper

Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain, we can be like they are

Come on baby, don't fear the reaper…

Repeatedly, Kenny brought his palm down on the dashboard to clear the static. As if he had the power to. After swerving around another pothole, it cleared into crisp sound and Kenny placed his hand back on the wheel.

He cleared his throat, "So, what's wrong with Kyle?"

Stan took a deep breath but said nothing for a few seconds. Kenny wondered at what point Stan would finally just admit that he knew. Admit that he knew and punch him square in the face, spit on him, call him a homewrecker or a dick or whatever and demand that he never so much as look at Kyle again. Instead, Stan wrapped his arms around his backpack and sighed.

"If I tell you, you can't tell anyone else," he said.

"Stan, I don't know anyone else. Just you guys. And I barely see you."

"I just don't want to embarrass Kyle. He's going through a lot."

"Anything I can do to help?" He swerved around another pothole, spraying gravel all behind him.

"Not really… It's just… his anxiety is so bad right now. Like, his chest pains are almost unbearable and he can't sleep. I was up with him pretty much all night."

"Christ, that sounds like a nightmare."

"He's been getting those, too."

"Any idea why?"

"Well, he's got anxiety already, but it's like, amplified because he's trying to quit smoking and I can see how much pain he's in… it just sucks."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay… it just feels like I'm dating a completely different person. He's been so… angry."

"Dude, quitting is hard. I can't say I blame him."

"I really can't either. He's finally sleeping now."

"What, did you give him melatonin or something?"

"No, but that's a good idea," Stan looked out the window again as they rode into town. He wasn't about to go into the gory details with Kenny about how he had to cup a hand over Kyle's mouth while he went down on him to keep him from being too loud. The Broflvoski's didn't know that the boys were in Kyle's room all night, and that wasn't the way they wanted to be found out. At one point he told Kyle to shut up and it only made him louder.

Kenny saw the look on Stan's face, secretively voyeuristic, and decided to leave it, "Nevermind, I don't wanna know."

Stan smirked at him.

After a moment of silence, driving past Tweek Bros. and the South Park Mall, Stan spoke up again: "I think he's stressed out about it being senior year, too. I mean, I understand the stress, but I really just want to get this the fuck over with. I'm sick of high school."

"You could just drop out like me!"

"Shit, I might."

Kenny laughed, "No, don't. You only have a few more months left. It'll go by fast."

"I hope so," Stan scratched at his knees, "And he really doesn't have anything to worry about. He's going to be successful in whatever he does…"

"What does he even want to do?"

"Well… he says he doesn't know. Everyone expects him to be a lawyer but I know he wants to be a scientist. Like, I've seen the applications."

"I'll admit, I thought Kyle was going to go to law school too."

"He doesn't want to be a lawyer because he thinks it made his dad scummy."

"Dude, his dad was probably already scummy before he even became a lawyer."

"Word."

The radio faded into a Carly Simon song and Kenny turned it up a little.

Stan cleared his throat, "So, anything new with you? Are you seeing anyone?"

"I can't really have a relationship right now."

"Oh."

Kenny shrugged, "No one's really worth my time. I'm too busy with the shop anyway."

"How's it going there?"

"It's insane," Kenny replied, "It's the same cars over and over again. Old cars. Old cars that aren't worth putting any more money into but people do it anyway. I replaced this guy's transmission last month and now I'm doing his fuel pump."

"Wow…"

"But it pays the bills, so I can't really complain. Sometimes Karen even works at the front desk after school. I mean, I don't actually make her work or anything. I make her do her homework. It's hard for her to concentrate at our house… it gets kinda loud there."

"Yeah…"

"But I really don't want to get into that… what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Kyle's going to college… what about you?"

"Oh. I haven't decided yet. I don't know what I really want to do yet."

They finally pulled up in front of Park County High School and Kenny shifted into park. "Well, you can always come work with me, Toolshed."

Reaching for the door handle, Stan laughed, "Okay, okay, I'll think about it."

"Oh, and, tell Kyle that I said hi."

"Why don't you text him and tell him yourself?"

"I doubt that he wants to hear from me."

"Of course he does. We miss you, dude." Stan leaned over and hugged a rigid Kenny, who patted Stan gingerly on the shoulder. "Okay, I gotta go. Thanks for the ride, Ken!"

"No problem. See you around."

Stan jumped out, slammed the door, and gave one last wave before bolting toward the double doors of the school. Kenny examined all his former classmates that were hanging around outside from the safety of his truck. They all seemed so foreign to him now, part of a world that he never felt like he belonged in. Some of them glanced up at him.

He opened the glove compartment and grabbed a joint, lighting it with one of several dozen lighters strewn across the chariot. It didn't take long for him to be surrounded by smoke.

A familiar blonde walked up and tapped on his window. He rolled the window down to see Bebe Stevens, hair askew in a messy bun, winged eyeliner, and striking red lipstick.

"You're just gonna hog all that for yourself?" she asked teasingly.

"You're right, sharing is caring," he said, passing it to her. He watched as her lips curled around it with the same face that Stan had when he was thinking about the way he put Kyle to sleep. "You don't really want to go to school today, do you?"

"Nah, not really."

"Cool," he took the joint back from her, "Get in."

…

Journal entry by Stan Marsh

(date unknown)

(Additional notes: bottom left corner saturated with blood stains. Presented to Private Investigator June 2017)

(Detective notes: This journal entry appears to be much more fragmented than Marsh's other entries. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but I'm curious to know if this is a reflection of his deteriorating mental state)

Breathe…

Blood on the concrete

Livid and shaking

Smash the lights

Forsaken and betrayed

Take me

A hand-less clock

Painted green

Brown broken bells

Clouds of tar

Mist to coal

Gravel sky

To take a doll and cut it down

The stuff was sewed up but fluff was all over the blue counter

Sometimes I ask my mind to bring the dream back