Chapter 6- Happy Nail Bunny
It had been a very exhausting two months what with Johnny's frequent (and becoming less and less frequent) trips into town, trying to get Wendy to spill something useful other than prattle, and Johnny struggling to get a hold of Oliver... whom, for some reason, was never home whenever Johnny knocked. Wendy babbled something about Oliver having a night job yet Johnny had to wonder why someone with a job would have such a... dilapidated wreck as a home. Unable to pull anything relatively interesting from, well, anything, Johnny had resigned himself to his own red-walled home.
Mmm... that red is irritating.. Johnny mused over his eightieth bowl of skettios. Maybe I should paint over it. Will I be staying here that long, though? Eh, considering how slowly this fucking investigation is going I might be here for years.
Johnny glanced over at the table beside him, the chair creaking ominously. His alias's file lay flat on the wooden thing, the pages littered with horrendous handwriting. Johnny didn't know why the filers refused to use computers. The last argument had been over something like 'traceable' or 'impersonal' but it was hard keeping track of every fight the agents had with the filers.
Johnny watched a cockroach skitter across the floor. Wait... there was a cockroach... in his house. Johnny growled. No fucking bug would make a mockery of him in his own home! Or suggest he was unsanitary in any way! (Johnny conveniently ignored the stacks of skettio's encrusted bowls sitting near the sink.) With new vigour, Johnny began the search for bug spray or any equally horrible chemical to kill the insect with.
CRACK!
"Fuck." Johnny pulled his head from the cupboard under the sink. "Ow... owowow... jeez." He rubbed his aching skull and hissed.
The search for painful insect melter had turned into a house-wide scavenger hunt. Nowhere, and Johnny had checked everywhere three times, could a single drop of any type of bug death stuff could be found. He had found that missing sock under the bed and a bottle of bleach in the bathroom but other than that, nothing.
Johnny glared as a cockroach skittered across the floor. He could have sworn it was the same insect from before. Mocking him. The bastard.
"I guess you have a 'get out of jail free' card." The cockroach paused, antennae waving. Johnny grinned. "At least until I go to the store." The insect twitched then skulked away to hide under the fridge.
If he had been in a less logical mood Johnny could have sworn the insect understood and had gone to sulk in a corner. But that was impossible so Johnny brushed the thought away. Now, however, Johnny had nothing to do and the sun had just reached the middle of the sky. Of course, being a soldier of sorts Johnny woke up quite a bit earlier than most people.
He returned to the table and sighed, flopping into a chair. Maybe he should paint the walls. After all, his alias was a painter and he had no paintings around. Kind of odd for a painter to have no paintings. Johnny always marvelled at the filers abilities to choose alias's that... fit agents. He hadn't thought anyone knew he painted in his spare time but apparently someone had figured it out.
With a smile on his face Johnny went into the hall. He was sure he had seen painting supplies in the hall closet.
Knockknock
...
Knockknockknockknock
...
KNOCKKNOCKKNOCKKNOCKKNOCK—
"WHAT?!"
"Hello! Lovely day to see a neighbour isn't it? Well, I thought so and decided to come over here to see you. Haven't been in lately; probably missed you moving in. Oooh, actually I have a teeny favour to ask: do you have lemons?
Johnny stared at the man before him, his clothing stained with paint. Some of the green on his hands had transferred to the door but Johnny could hardly care at the moment. Could hardly care because the man standing on his doormat was huge. He wasn't fat, nor muscular, he just took up a lot of space. Johnny knew he could easily kill the man yet the sheer size of him caused warning bells and he almost reached for a nonexistent gun.
"...Lemons?"
"Yes, lemons." The man wrung his hands. "You see, I wanted to make lemonade but had no lemons. I could have gone down to the store but all they have is instant lemonade which is never as good as real lemonade. Wendy didn't have any lemons and neither did Oliver, which is kind of odd considering he always has lemons but he told me he had just ran out because of some project he was doing—"
"Okay! Yes, I have lemons but I don't know where they are." Johnny's eyes flicked to his fridge. "Come in, take a seat and I'll look for them."
The man gave Johnny a watery smile and manoeuvred his bulk through the doorway. Johnny moved to the fridge and opened the thing, wincing at the blast of cold air. He swallowed when a chair groaned very, very loudly, indicating the man had sat down.
"So which house are you from?" Johnny moved the mustard out of the way.
"Oh, I'm from 778. The small one across the way? It's nice and cozy but I really wish the garage was bigger because my poor Hannah just can't get comfortable in such a space—"
"Hannah?"
"Hannah's my car. And such a lovely car. She's blue with black stripes and her seats are wonderfully comfortable. I don't know what I'd do without my Hannah—"
"Do you know Oliver well?"
"Oh my yes, known him from the time he moved in. He's odd and, before he lost his voice, Timothy just insisted he heard weird noises coming from the man's house. I think Oliver's a little off the deep end if you know what I mean but I've never had any trouble with him. He's always there to help me with my groceries—"
"Ah, here they are." Johnny pulled the lemons out of the fridge and closed the door. "How many do you need?"
"Oh just one or two. I'm the only one living in the house right now. Used to have a cat but it vanished one day. Oliver showed me its collar and said it had been run over by a car. Can you believe a cat can't walk around in such a neighbourhood without being squished by a vehicle? Oliver was so nice about it, even offered to kill the man for me. Don't know how he knew who did it but—"
Johnny handed over two lemons and tried to unobtrusively usher the man to the door. "Yes, yes that's fascinating." Finally the man was back outside, still babbling. "Uh, I'm Johnny C."
"Oh dear, how rude of me. I'm George. George Kinan. Haha, listen to me, sounding like James Bond. Next thing you know I'll be racing around with a slut on my arm and blowing things up. Thank you for the lemons, Johnny. Do you want to come over and drink some of the lemonade? I just made brownies- oh dear, the brownies!"
Johnny watched the man sprint towards his house and collapsed his thin frame against the doorway. Oh my god, what was with that man? He thought, trying to quell his confusion. With a deep, relieved sigh Johnny moved back into the living room. Paint covered the rug and had managed to splatter itself over several walls as well. This did not matter to the agent as, in the middle of the chaos sat an easel.
Johnny stared at his work for a while. It was of a baby bunny with a nail through its chest. It was in the first stages of decomposition and had a tiny ant crawling on one stiffened ear. Its eyes were closed, but a hint of glazed brown peeked around the edges of the right one. Its flesh had been chewed by various tiny animals and edges of yellow bone peeked through greying flesh. The nail was rusted (Johnny was proud he had found the exact color for that) and bent in odd angles. The background was a wooden wall with oddly colored stains. Johnny smiled.
"You're 'Nailbunny'." He told the painting. "Hmmm, what else? Oh, I know, 'fed once then nailed to a wall.' Yeah, that sounds good." He quickly did up a tiny signature in the corner, then scribbled the name of the painting and the caption on a piece of paper to get placed on a plaque later.
The doorbell rang.
Author's Notes: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA wasn't that chapter just hee-lair-ee-us?
Yeah... work and beta... stuff are(is?) going to slow down the production of this fanfic.
Finally! A chapter longer than fucking three hundred words! Curse you short chapter! CURSE YOU!
This metldown provided by the following sponsors:
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