Anomie

The smell was the first thing Johnny noticed as he floated back to consciousness. As disturbing combination of blood, garbage, syrup, and rotten ground beef—a smell Johnny did not particularly care for in any possible way. The next sensation to hit him was pain, excruciating pain. It was like nothing Johnny had ever felt before, and it was centered on his eyeball. Or, as Johnny quickly discovered, his lack-there-of.

He raised a sore arm, reaching up to contact his face. Johnny felt the gory hole in the side of his head. Blood dripped, but was ice cold to the touch. Johnny pulled his hand away, and propelled his body upward, standing on unsteady feet.

Johnny stared at the world around him, finding both of his eyes in full function, despite missing one of them. The sight he beheld was odd to say the least. Freezie cups lined the ground, wrappers and used napkins complimenting the appearance of the cups laying there. Johnny scowled in disgust. This place, where ever it was, was just as gross as his city. The only thing which set this place apart was the clear blue sky and abundant fluffy clouds. Johnny, looking away from the yellow-tinged ground, stood in slight awe, having not seen such a crystalline sky since his youth.

Johnny started walking down what appeared to be a path, although with the state of the yellow dusty ground, it was hard to tell. The more Johnny walked the less sore his limbs felt. He reached a strange sign, looming over a shoddily paved path.

Heaven... Johnny groaned. He noticed the path was lined with fluorescent pink, plastic flowers, and there was an outhouse as well. An outhouse.

"This looks... interesting," Johnny stated, not wanting to touch anything, simply because it appeared that, if he did, it would leave his hand unpleasantly sticky and dirty.

A booth labelled ADMINISTRATION caught Johnny's attention. Continuing over to the wooden stand, Johnny noticed the man standing behind it, apparently tending to it. This man, catching sight of Johnny, asked: "And just who the hell are you?"

Johnny put a hand to his chin in a contemplative pose. He stared at this man's stringy hair and beard. "Well, if I'm really where the big sign says I am, shouldn't you know that?" Johnny paused, noticing this person's glasses were very clean. Too clean for the world around him. "I'm Nny." Another pause. "Your glasses are neat."

The man stared at Johnny for a moment, before ignoring the man's words and continuing with his own. "But we do have information on you. You aren't supposed to be here."

Morbid curiosity ran through Johnny's system. "I'm dead aren't I?" he asked, adopting a pondering pose.

"Well, according to this, you aren't the type to believe me no matter what I say."

Johnny agreed with the man, commenting on the appearance of his surroundings, earning a sarcastic quip as a response. A quick, sharp pain brought Johnny's thoughts back to his head wound. Ignoring the impulse to cry out, Johnny just asked, non-chaluantly, "Hmm... you're an angel, could you fix my head? It's a bit damaged."

"Mmm... well... here's a band-aid."

"Thanks."

The first thing Johnny noticed was that the band-aid was not in the proper package, but he shrugged it off. Johnny couldn't even believe he noticed something like that, as he had never really been one for cleanliness. Johnny felt around his forehead for a moment, before finding the part of the wound which was the worst.

Slapping the band-aid on the gash, Johnny felt a strange tingling in the right side of his head. It was as though his skin and flesh was stringing itself back together. The tingling escalated into sharp pulling and pain, but Johnny rode through it, a stoic expression on his face. And then there it was. His eye was back—even though Johnny had the ability to see the entire time, his could tell that his eye was in proper order. And even without probing his head with his fingers, Johnny knew the gunshot wound was almost healed as well.

"Uhh... Oh, dear God, NO..."

Johnny was brought back to reality, just in time to hear the man at the booth start screaming and vomiting hysterically.

"Umm... I'll just go over there." Johnny wandered past the booth and through what seemed to be gates—very unkempt gates, but they matched the rest of the place. That's when Johnny spotted one of the strangest things he'd seen in Heaven—a stout man sitting in an elevated puke yellow arm chair. Johnny's first perception of the man in the chair was that he looked an awful lot like a morbidly obese Happy Noodle Boy. He even had a strange antennae shaped curl of hair. After a moment, Johnny looked closer and noticed the letters printed on this man's robes: G O D.

"Oooohh... Oh, my god, it's... GOD!" Johnny clenched his fingers, a deranged expression crossing his features.

"Shhhh! Can't you see he's sleeping?" It took Johnny a moment to realize the voice was coming from the stand the chair was held up by—some sort of robot thing.

"I'll just be a second," Johnny reassured the robot. "Hey, God! Couldn't I ask you a few questions?" Johnny flailed his hand above his head, trying to get the napping God's attention.

"Hmmm? Whuh... ugh... Mmmwhat? What do you want?" The voice coming out of the large man was gravely, as if this man had not spoken for a very long time.

"Well, maybe you could tell me what's been going on—with me I mean. When did things start going bad?" Johnny paused to take a breath. "I've been talking to dead rabbits and feeding bloody walls. I've done horrifying things with salad tongs. It's really eaten into my social life."

The God sitting on the pedestal sipped from a cup of soda. "Could you, maybe, come back another time? I'm tired." His voice was less rough this time and flowed more.

Johnny's mood darkened at this clear dismissal. Still, he tried to be polite. "Please? Just some simple answers"

"Naaah... I don't wanna."

"What the hell's your problem, God?" Johnny shouted, as he saw red. It wasn't like he was asking for much—just a few answers. The edges of Johnny's vision began to go black and fuzzy. Strange colors flashed before his eyes.

"I just created the universe, I need some down time."

At this, Johnny felt the familiar motions of passing out, although he never felt his body fall—it was just another anger flash, like the one in the cafe all that time ago.

"...—od?" Johnny awoke to the sound of his own voice asking something.

He took in his surroundings, noticing this black out didn't last very long as he hadn't moved much. He also noticed that this God was asleep again. Grumbling to himself, Johnny wandered off once more. The people in Heaven were certainly not engaging conversationalists; that was for sure.

Johnny was only alone for mere moments before a woman in a power suit appeared beside him. He surveyed her for only a moment, noting she looked almost as skinny as he was. Odd. It made her seem as though she did not belong here.

"Johnny C. I am Damned Elize and I will be showing you around during your stay. Just because you don't belong here doesn't mean you can't benefit from a visit." She placed a "guest" tag on his chest before continuing on. "You should know that the squalor out front is more a reminder of what is being left behind. Though, as the vomiting angel told you, the appearances are trivial things here." Her voice was nasally and bored—like she had a bad head cold and much better things to do.

They followed a path marked by signs directing them towards "Bliss." Damned Elize spoke up again, "Once behind the gate, things will look much more sanitary."

Johnny nodded, following the strange woman through the strange tunnel, which was apparently called a gate. Once on the other side, it did indeed look much cleaner, but there was definitely something wrong.

"Um," Johnny started, "what the hell is this? This is life after death? No one's doing anything!" Johnny shouted into the abyss of seated people. Damned Elize watched him with well concealed interest. Johnny approached one of the patrons of this strange place. He, the man who Johnny advanced on, paid no mind.

"Of course not, this is Heaven. They're not bored as you may think. There is no need to do anything. No vices to feed, no urges to succumb to—Freedom from need, and no need to desire. In life, the only desire of these people was the desire to be content," Damned Elize explained, a condescending tone staining her voice; she was speaking to Johnny as though he was a child.

Johnny knocked on the head of the man he'd come within reach of. "So, why don't I feel this contentment?"

"Because you do not belong here, you are merely visiting." More of the patronizing tone.

Johnny tapped the seated man's head a few more times before following Damned Elize through the maze of people and chairs. Johnny glanced up at the sky and noticed it was just as beautiful as he'd seen before, although it had plenty of floating chairs, which, even in Johnny's book, was rather strange. He shrugged it off, then a sudden thought came to him. "So why aren't you like them?"

"Because I'm in Hell. Most of the service people here are from Hell— cleaning up, guiding tours, working the registers.

"Contentment just wasn't my thing. Desire on the other hand... I feel none of the peacefulness here so I've plenty of other time to think about other things." There was genuine investment in the words coming out of Damned Elize's mouth at this point, and somehow this made Johnny less interested in the conversation. Less involved.

"Like what?" he asked, out of polite obligation.

Damned Elize smirked, perversely. "Like stripping your clothes off with my teeth and finding contentment some other way."

Johnny flinched at the very human and carnal reply. "Oh." The nature of Damned Elize's reply caused Johnny to pay even less attention, not really hearing her next block of speech. He merely commented at the end something barely relevant.

She continued explaining whatever she was talking about, Johnny now just studying the people around him. He spun around in all directions, making jerking motions, looking past people, staring off into the distance. Johnny noticed that the land here seemed to go on forever. There was no range of visibility like there was on Earth—it simply continued until one's eyes hurt from staring so hard.

"—you do have some of these kinds of powers. You are here by some form of mistake, so I ask you to be very careful."

This sentence drew some of Johnny's attention back to Damned Elize, although he was still staring around at the people close to him. "What kind of powers?" he asked, lightly. Something shiny to his right side caught Johnny's eye.

"Well... it seems to vary from person to person. No matter what though any damage done is immediately reversed. So you must refrain from the thought of such things, 'lest you explode someone's head." Johnny's attention was fully captured by this concept. No time to think about the distracting thing from before.

Johnny squealed. Instantly, his hands went to his head and he focused on the man he was watching previously. The man's head exploded, with a commercialized blast-sound, bits of skull, blood, eyeballs, and brain flew in all directions. The arteries sticking out of the man's neck spurted blood. Almost as quickly as it had happened, a buzzing, magnetic sound was heard, and the man's head fused back into one piece.

"Please don't do that," the man requested.

Johnny giggled, his entire being emitting mirth. Then, he promptly blew the man's head up once more. Cackling like a madman, Johnny threw his arms into the air in glee. He watched as the man's head reformed again.

"Quit it." This time, the man was far less polite. More demanding.

BOOM—the man's head was gone again.

"No! No! Stop! STOP! You'll ruin everything!" Damned Elize shouted, panic in her tone.

Johnny was shaking in happiness. He flung himself off the ground in a happy jump. "My god! Are you kidding! I've always dreamed of having super powers! This is just too much to resist! I have head-explody!" Johnny exclaimed, joy coursing through his veins.

Behind Johnny, the man's head was properly back on his shoulders and he was seething. "Now look! I'm all agitated!" He was now standing and glaring as hard as he could at the side of Johnny's half turned head.

In the moment that Johnny didn't apologize, his fate was sealed. The man concentrated as hard as he could, and Johnny's head exploded, just as his had. Though, as soon as Johnny's head was back to normal, Johnny retaliated by blasting the man's head off—again. This was met with regeneration and Johnny's head being scattered in several directions.

When Johnny's head was restored, he was thrown off balance and stumbled backward. "Shit," he mumbled under his breath. As Johnny staggered backward, the back of his foot hit something and he fell flat onto the dusty ground.

A light groan escaped Johnny's throat as he pulled himself off the ground. He glared at the offending object that had tripped him—someone's shoe. He followed the shoe to the leg, and the leg to the torso, and the torso to the face. Johnny stared blankly at this face, noting just how shiny the glasses were, that were on the face.

"I'm sorry. Are you all right?" the man asked Johnny, reaching a hand down, clearly offering to pull him up.

Johnny's eyes narrowed. He took a quick glance over at Damned Elize, who looked like she was trying to calm down the man Johnny had been "fighting" with before and a female who had joined the fight. He stared back at the man seated before him, before slapping the hand away and standing up himself.

"Why the hell did you trip me?" Johnny demanded.

Confusion with a dash of nervousness crossed the man's features. "Well, it certainly wasn't on purpose," he replied, calmly, rationally.

The tenor of the voice sounded so familiar. Johnny stood in front of this man, studying him, wanting to know why in the world he would meet someone he'd known in Heaven. No one he knew—or killed—would have ever had a chance of getting in here, so why did this man seem so familiar?

More confusion caused the man's eyebrows to furrow. He was silent as Johnny watched him, slowly realizing who Johnny was at the same time.

"Do I know you?" Johnny asked, bluntly. He'd changed slightly since coming to Heaven—even if Damned Elize made it clear he was only visiting. This change, though, made it much easier for Johnny to just ask when he didn't know something.

The man seated before him stared at Johnny for a moment longer. "I'm not sure." The reply was short, but full of contemplation.

Johnny watched this man move around. He reached out, and before he could realize what he was doing, Johnny was about to touch this man's goatee. The man flinched, pressing his chin to his chest. Johnny snapped out of whatever trance he was in and pulled back as though his hand was burnt.

Then he blew this man's head up.

When the man's head was rejuvenated, he stared at Johnny with a look of mild annoyance and badly hidden amusement. "Please reconsider doing that again," this man requested, politely.

Johnny frowned at this—not out of irritation, but recognition. Reconsider... please reconsider... the words bounced around Johnny's head until a sentence formed on his lips.

"I ask you once again to please reconsider this... You can let me go and I..." the words trailed out of Johnny's mouth softly, and before his brain could process them. They were so familiar, and had come from nowhere.

Scrunching his eyebrows together, the man sitting opened his mouth and started talking. "I have nothing to fear. Still," he replied in the same quiet voice that Johnny had used.

Johnny took a long, intent look at the man before the name on the tip of his tongue rolled off of it. With a grim smirk Johnny simply said, "Edgar. Edgar Vargas."

Golly, people, Earth is a place. Capitalize it.
So is Heaven and Hell in this universe. Thus it's capitalization in some parts.
Others were general curses.

Ugh. This was a lot more work than I planned. I used too much of the actual comic.
But I had to. It's where the story starts. And continues.

-Taryn