A.N.: I hope I personified Johnny well. I want his crazed anger, yes, but I'm trying to focus less on the filler randomness crap and his outbursts and more on his serious side. Gotta remember, she caught him in a weak moment. If that counts for anything.
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|Chapter Two – Angry Silence|
Jenny pulled the car around the back of the house. It looked like it was pitch black inside. And even though she told Andy she'd be coming in through the back door, he hadn't been kind enough to keep the back porch light turned on. So, just like before, she would have to fumble with the unconscious mass of a person in the darkness. She would have called Andy to help her bring them in, but it's not as if he would come. He hated being outside.
She popped the trunk and was relieved that he was still out cold. He must have never brought a knife to a gunfight before. As she pulled out his limp form, she decided he must have been a more… traditional serial killer. Using the now-uncommon art of stabbing people to death instead of shooting them. If she didn't hate the unpleasantries of blades being incredibly personal, she would have liked them. The ones that didn't belong to murderers. Like combat knives or pocketknives or something. She pushed the back door open and heaved him inside. She liked kitchen knives the best.
"Jenny? Is that you?" Andy's voice rang out from the darkness of the house.
"Yeah, it is. Come help me, will you?" She could hear him coming up behind her without any hindrance in the darkness. Sometimes she wondered if his pupils opened enough to black out the whites of his eyes. "Here, I'll take the legs, you take the arms." She handed the top portion of the person to Andy, and she moved back out the door to grab his legs. They worked in unison, and managed to cart the body to the living room at the front of the house. A single lamp on a coffee table lit up the immediate vicinity just enough that, when they tossed him on a wooden chair pulled from the kitchen, they could see his features clearly.
His skin was tan, a sort of olive color. He wasn't as pale as she was, and definitely not as pale as Andy. He was naturally tan though: she didn't think he went out during the day much. His skin was probably pale in comparison to people who had his tone and did wander out in the sun for extended periods of time. His hair wasn't quite black; it had a bluish hue to it. And most of it was shaved off, save for two antennae-like strands in the front that bent to hang in his face at ninety degree angles and curled at the end. He seemed to like hair gel. His body was thin and angular, but lithe enough to prove he was a successful killer. With a blade or other melee weapon. She assumed he wasn't too good at punching people, or even kicking. He didn't try once in their fight to slam his fist in her face. In a sense, it was chivalrous.
He wore a gray sleeved shirt with striped arm warmers and black leather gloves. The kind that had the fingers cut. For pants, he had on black, cut-at-the-knee, frayed jeans, striped leggings, and below-the-knee high black boots with silver buckles lining the fronts. The toes were the most interesting. They were steel, and designed to look like hooves. Like a goat's. His trench coat was still in her car. She felt curious how it would look in the light.
Andy bent close to him, looking at his wounds with a professional air, "Jenny, the rope's already here, so run upstairs and grab our first aid kit. And that sewing kit you got yesterday."
"Ok, will you be ok around this guy? I don't want-"
"I'll be fine, I promise."
She nodded, a look of worry on her face, and turned, sprinting to the entrance hall and up the stairs. Of course, Andy's room was at the very end of the hall, so she stopped by her room first. She could have easily gone to his room, then her own, but it's not like it mattered how she did it anyways.
Her door was wide open; it always was. She trotted inside and turned to her closet, pulling the door open and meeting a pile of laundry she had yet to fold and hang. Annoyed by her own procrastination, she clambered over the shirts and jeans and ran a blind hand over the top shelf, accidentally knocking over magazines and junk as she felt for the sewing kit. A littler further back…. And bingo! Her hand grabbed hold of the handle and swung the kit down.
"Oh! Get a matchbox too, while you're at it."
Andy's voice floated up from the living room as she ran down the hall and opened his door. For some reason, his room felt darker than the house or the woods outside. The only light source was the white glow of a laptop screen on his bed, and she stumbled over a chair and a stack of newspapers as she ran to his bathroom. She didn't have to flick the light on to find the first aid kit. It was already on the bathroom counter. She snatched it up and left his room, trying not to mess up anything else in his domain.
Jenny climbed down the stairs by twos, and alighted in the entrance hall, turning to see Andy waiting for her. Their target was already as bound as he could possibly be to the chair. The ropes covered almost every inch of him, save for his hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees and feet. Of course, and his bum-arm too. Before, if they had been holding any other murderer hostage, she would have wondered if it was sane to wrap him up so tight. But for some reason, she silently agreed that he needed to be as bound as possible. She handed him the first aid kit and the sewing kit, and he sat on another wooden chair, staring hard into the bullet wounds again.
Time to operate.
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His eyes opened slowly, already sensing the heat and light of a lamp. When he came to consciousness, he was still thinking about that trench coat he had left behind. Maybe he was back in heaven. If he was, he'd ask that angel, Saint Peter, for some band aids. Those bullet wounds still stung. Goddamn guns.
His eyes focused. No, he wasn't in heaven.
"What the fuck is going on? Where am I?"
A female voice rang out from the darkness the lamp's light couldn't reach, "Home. Or, my home, to be precise."
It was that bitch, the blonde one. He remembered her trying to sneak up on him with that damned gun. The muscles in his eye twitched. He couldn't see her just yet, the light was still blinding, but he knew she was there. Mocking him, "Oh as soon as I stand up blood will be spilled and heads will roll god damnit!"
"Well that's going to take quite a while; those ropes are as tight as I could make them without suffocating you."
A male voice, older, more mature, floated up from the darkness as well. He could hear the tone of exhaustion. Probably of seeing too much hell in the world. Not like he cared. This guy deserved to have his heart sliced out just as much as the blonde girl did.
"You people don't know who you're dealing with…" He had lowered his head to block the harsh lamp light, and his fingers groped in his sleeves for the blades he kept hidden there. A grin formed on his face; they had no idea, he'd massacre them. Splash their grotesque blood all over their walls, rip their flesh from their bones. He'd break free of these damned ropes and launch himself on them like a wild, savage animal.
But, the blades weren't there.
Wait… the fucking blades weren't there.
"Where the fuck are my knives?!" He roared, and he heard the girl stifle a giggle. The blood rushed to his face and made him hot with anger.
She took a deep breath, to put her amusement on display, and said, "I took them. Every last one. Even the ones in your boots. Those ones were the hardest to take off."
"FUCKING HELL. You goddamn whore! What the fuck do you think you're getting yourself into?! Just because you ruined my goddamned night, I'll make sure to carve your fucking eyes out! And your asshole accomplice? I'll strip his skin off and stuff it full of your organs! I'll kill you both! And when you're dead, I'll kill you again!" He thrashed in his chair, and he heard them both step back, the girl's audible amusement silencing. They may have had him strung up, but he was sure he could use scare tactics to keep the fuckers off him until he got free. Yet to no avail, he heard one of them come closer. And soon enough, they stepped in the light.
The man was tall, muscular yet thin. Bleached blonde with green eyes, with enough hair to have bangs and a dark blonde goatee, but somehow not pretentious-looking. Not some overworked hack obsessed with steroids. More like a… swimmer or some sort of damned tri-athlete. He hated triathlons. Somehow, without fail, the city organized all of them to pass by his house. A stampede of wrinkly old flesh bags and so-buff-they'll-kill-themselves jocks. And stick skinny women with whorish makeup slathered on their faces and incredibly obese whales believing they can handle some iron man race. The thought of triathlons alone got him hating the guy in front of him. He decided he would break in his kneecaps.
"Your threats won't help you." He said stiffly, and he heard himself snort, looking up at the man. He sat in front of him on a wooden chair, staring hard at him. His stare gave him the chills. He hated direct eye contact. "You are a merciless killer. You have the blood of thousands of people on your hands. My sister and I know what you are. I can feel it; she can see it. Normally, I would have had her let you die, as trash like you don't deserve to live." He laughed aloud. Treating the blonde bitch as if she was some skilled justice assassin. How cute. "But you're valuable to us. And I can see that now."
"Valuable to bringing you one step closer to hell, you fuck." He spat, and the man sighed, an exhaustion that was reminiscent of listening to his neighbor's father berate the child. He hated those kinds of sighs.
"Valuable to help us with a problem of ours, actually." He leaned over, placing his elbows on his knees and clasping hands. "Jenny… yes, she can see the filth on you, but there's so much of it, she can't see the other parts. But I can sense it. Beneath all of that murder, there's something else. Something that proves you're different. Beneath that cold shell you have, I can feel the warmth of a person, and the sickly chills of suffering."
He wanted to laugh again, say this whole this was just some religious fuck's crazy preaching, but he stopped himself. The blonde girl could… 'see his filth'? What did this ass mean by seeing it? And sensing it? What the hell was this filth he was talking about anyways? The only thing he could come up with in comparison was the king of Hell himself saying people left behind an invisible sludge… No, these kooks couldn't be talking about that. The chances they knew were ridiculous. Absolutely fucking ridiculous.
"However, you're obviously not going to cooperate. Even though I patched you up," the man held up two small bloody metal bits. Bullets. He chanced a glance at his right arm, and saw the blood had been wiped away and the holes had been stitched closed. For some reason, this made him angry. "Fortunately, Jenny had been kind enough to be quick to get you in my care. You did lose a good amount of blood, but I'm positive you'll recover. I can tell you've handled worse."
"Fuck you and fuck that whore." He whipped back, and the man only smiled. Again. He hated smiles like that. That I'm-more-mature-than-you-are, smug look. As soon as he'd get a hand on his blades, he'd slice his lips off. "I don't cooperate with assholes."
A snort of amusement arose from the darkness. The blonde bitch. "That's like the pot calling the kettle black, mister." She stepped in the light, and he grimaced; not only did the man have that bleached, orange-ish blonde look, but the girl did as well. Bleach killed hair. They were idiots for doing so. "We know you're antisocial and quite whirled up from all of this. So, we are going to sleep, and you're welcome to sleep too. In that chair." The man stood up and the siblings simply turned away, stepping back in the darkness of the house. Except, he saw the girl's heel stop right before it was engulfed in blackness. "Would you like me to turn off the light?"
He growled to himself, grinding his teeth and staring hard at that heel, hoping it would spontaneously combust, "No. I don't sleep."
"How about I move it out of your precious face, then?" She teased, and he now hoped the heel would begin to melt off her bones.
"No. I'll keep this light in my fucking eyes, bitch."
"Ah, I see. I like your sarcasm. But we both know you'd prefer I stay as far away from you as possible." The heel began to move again, and now he was only staring at the hardwood flooring where it had once been. "Have a good night sitting there with that lamp in your eyes. Sounds like lots of fun."
He could hear her walk off and up creaking stairs. A distant door shut; he could tell it was slammed closed. After that, silence.
Complete silence.
Painstaking silence.
Angry silence.
Lonely silence.
… Fucking blonde bitch and her goddamn guns.