"You uh, know anybody named… uh, Michael?" Wade's dulcet question bounced off the back of Ron's head.
The name felt uncomfortable to Wade as it hung in-between them, like a too-tight pair of new underwear. At first Ron appeared to not have heard the words at all.
"…Michael?" At last the silence broke. "Michael, Michael… hmmm." The older man chewed on the name, ruminating.
Ron was running his hands along the wall of his small front porch, apparently hunting for something. By this point in their association, it was beyond Wade to question what exactly Ron was searching for. Probably for aliens. Or pillbugs. Or microphones, or carbon monoxide or maybe his probably dead ex-wife. Wade had no idea, though Ronald appeared to be operating as a man with a mission. It was high noon in Sandy Shores, and the bucket hat Ron was currently sporting had dropped a dark blue shadow beneath the brim across his face. He looked as focused as he had ever been.
The middle aged man fumbled in his pocket for a screwdriver. "Why do you ask? You got business with this guy?"
Wade sat in a lawn chair by the door. "Aww, just somethin' Trevor said."
"Trevor?" The name was spit out with more intensity than the average word. After, Ron became flustered for a few moments, his head shaking back and forth as if he were making checks on a mental grocery list.
"Oh, THAT Michael. I see now. He's dead."
The juggalo looked up. Dim-witted shock painted his face more clearly than the ICP makeup smeared there in juvenile patterns.
"Dead?" he queried, with all the innocence of a sweet young school marm. "Wadda ya mean, dead?"
"I mean not alive." The shuffling man clarified. He paused to run his hands suspiciously up the outer frame of his front door, then brought his screwdriver up to pry the molding away by a few centimeters. He peered behind it with narrowed eyes.
"...Michael. Michael Torning, or, or… T-something. Trevor's best friend, from years ago."
The sour look on Ron's face as the words 'Trevor's best friend' passed through his lips made his feelings on the subject plain. The fact that they were discussing a dead person did little to ebb away the obvious jealousy there.
Wade stared with wide, unblinking eyes. Finally looking away, his vision melted into the distance as he attempted to piece together the jigsaw puzzle's worth of evidence he'd gathered from over the years. It was a difficult task, all things considered. Wade knew fuckall about Trevor's past except that he came from up north, and honestly, even if he did know more, it would hardly be helpful. Between the enigma of Trevor Philips and the low-capacity wattage of Wade Hebert's basic brain functions, not a lot could be scraped into place. Wade frowned.
"You gotta take a shit? What's your problem?" the edge of Ron's face peered back at the kid from over a preoccupied shoulder.
"Huh? Nuh-uh! I was just thinkin'…"
"Uh-oh!" Ron joked, not unlovingly. Wade's frown tugged up into a little grin.
"I was thinkin', and… uh, well, what happened to that fella? That Michael? How'd he die? I ain't never heard Trevor talk about him much except, uh…" his grin vanished. "…once or twice."
Ron shrugged, turning fully back to his task at hand. "Who knows? I think he… got shot? Way I understand it, they weren't on great terms anyway, when that guy kicked it. Something about a fight over a stripper. Who cares? You know Trevor can get like that when he's riled up. Just forget about it."
"Dang! Well, was it Trevor that had shot hi-?"
"RON! BRING ME SOME COFFEE RIGHT NOW BEFORE I FUCK A NEW EYEHOLE INTO THE SIDE OF YOUR CHEEK!"
The startled jump Ronald made at the sound of Trevor's unexpected bellow was violent enough to send his screwdriver scratching across his trailer's siding. A long white line marked the surface, forgotten immediately as the man whipped around.
"C-COMING, TREVOR!" he shouted, and dropped the screwdriver like it was hot iron. One last glance at Wade announced the end of their conversation. "Just forget about it. It's not important!" he repeated again, before turning on a heel and jogging off.
Wade continued to frown as he watched Ronald beating a hasty retreat. Across the yard, he saw that Trevor had lumbered out onto his porch, sweaty and shirtless like some hulking, snarling animal freshly risen from a deep hibernation. Oddly, this wasn't too far from the actual truth, considering how hard and long the criminal tended to sleep after going on a nasty bender. Wade's asshole twinged involuntarily a moment later, when the sound of Trevor's fist slamming into his front door echoed across the lot. When he punched the door again, apparently for no reason, the young man looked uncomfortably away, already beginning to feel the first prickles of fear in the pit of his stomach.
"WADE." The voice cut across him with a violent sharpness, like a crack across the face. Trevor had always been able to instinctively sense his fear. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING JUST SITTING THERE? GO MAKE ME SOME MONEY! WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS, EH? SOME KIND OF GODDAMN SPA RESORT? GET THE FUCK UP!"
Immediately Wade jumped up to follow the command, jogging quickly across the yard to where a row of ATV's had been parked in a line. Wordlessly, he glanced over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of Trevor's agitated face, but paused at what he saw instead. The balding man had slumped down onto the couch on the porch, his tough hands circling the nape of his neck as he cradled his skull between his arms.
In his head, Wade involuntarily ran through the moment he couldn't forget, one more time. The desperate hands, the clenched teeth. That look of pain, as if it were a cap to everything else, a seal on the pit in which the cesspool of Trevor's emotions churned in angry tidal waves. The casing on a bomb.
'Michael.'
Wade clambered up onto an ATV and quickly fled the area.
/
Michael Townley did NOT suck cock.
It was below him. Or, was that above him? He HAD always been an arrogant, self-important shit stain, too absorbed in his own storybook fantasies to look around and take notice of his place in life, surrounded by garbage and living in a dump like all the rest of them were. Whatever. He just…
Did. Not. Suck. Cock. He didn't do it.
But his decidedly patchy morals were thinner in other areas. Enjoyably filthier areas, Trevor's slurred memories reminded him. He pumped his erection with a furious determination, and recalled the feeling of Michael's tight, wet hole clamping uncomfortably around the tip of his index finger. It was moments like these that Trevor allowed himself free-reign to imagine what he liked, taking the opportunity to work Michael's perfect, fat belly with his engorged erection, imagining rutting against his meaty ribs, smelling the smell of his sweat, his armpits, his balls, the backs of his ears. To see in his mind's eye the lurid fantasy he found himself constantly focused on, of Michael's narrow frown wrapped with purpose around his cock, his own hand shoved down the front of his pants. Trevor groaned, and swept a hand down over his balls, pushing the pressure forward and up until he felt sure he would burst like a rotten fruit. They never kissed, but imagining that they had was the last thought to tip him over the edge. Thinking of Michael's thin lips on his own, Trevor came with an angry snarl in hot, thick ropes across his naked chest. For long moments after, he laid in his bed, panting in staggered breaths like a dog in the sun. He was hungry. Ravenous, even. But somehow, never for food.
The room felt utterly empty then, and an unexpected surge of fear and panic jolted through Trevor's prone body like a bolt of lightning. He sat up with a gasp, his shortness of breath causing his heart to make a raucous cacophony inside the cage of his chest.
Michael Townley was gone.
Michael Townley was gone. It still hurt. Michael Townley was fucking dead, and somehow despite all this, all Trevor could ever manage to do was savagely beat off to the bastardized memory of his missing friend, the greatest man he had ever known. Where was the fucking respect? With a disgusted grunt, Trevor scraped his fingers across his chest and flicked his jizz-coated hand out over the grimy floor. Where was the proper dignity which should have been allotted to Michael's memory? Hadn't they been brothers? And they way they had parted for the last time… a nauseous wave passed over Trevor with a forceful finality. A few drunken fumbles in the dark twelve years ago were not a carte-blanche to cum all over Townley's memory whenever Trevor felt so inclined. It was sick. It was disrespectful, and it was wrong.
That gut feeling of being 'wrong' in every conceivable sense of the word spurred Trevor to his feet. He angrily wiped the rest of the cum off his body, rubbed his hand across his already-crusty sweatpants, and stormed out into the living room.
Ron sat casually on the couch, reading a discarded issue of 'Barely Legal Girls' with distant interest. When Trevor came into view, he shoved the issue beneath one thigh and looked up attentively. "Trevor! I was just, uhh-"
"-Shut up, Ron, I'm thinking."
"Oh! Sure, sure, you're thinking." Ron fumbled. "Fine, sure."
Michael Townley deserved respect. He was a fucking prick, but he had been a warrior, too. The real deal. At his core, he had been a true three bit gangster. A fucking king. He had stirred Trevor in ways he hadn't thought were still possible. Watching Townley work had always been like staring into a bright sunrise. Or something better. It had been the same elation that flying always brought on. It had tasted like freedom, like opportunity. Like the dry-sweet air you breathed in when flying over the tops of icy mountains, too light and heady and beautiful to ever truly be any good for you.
And yes, there was a lingering sense of arousal. But, hell, Trevor got hard-ons all the fucking time. He got a hard-on yesterday just from watching his ancient neighbor stuffing a bag of garbage down into her trashcan. That was beside the point. The point was…
The point was? The sweaty man repeated the same concerns mentally back to himself, glaring Ron down.
The point was that sacred Michael Townley deserved fucking better than any of this. Better than anything in this trash heap of an existence.
"Ron," Trevor suddenly barked, knowing precisely what he wanted in the snap of a moment. "bring me Ashley Butler. Bring her to me right now, I don't give a shit what you tell her, just bring her to me. Bring her here and then get the FUCK OUT for three hours. You hear me? THREE HOURS."
"Sure, yeah! Ok, Trevor! I'll go- g-go get her! Right now!" The stammer forced itself out of his sweaty minion. Ron stood, arms stiff at his sides as he stared moistly at Trevor's face.
The taller man raised an eyebrow and waited a beat. "Well? …fucking NOW, RON! NOW."
Ron jumped again, and was gone from the trailer in less than a heartbeat.
Trevor shoved the thought aside that he was surrounded by idiots. (It was true, nothing for it.) Instead, he replaced it with the more productive thoughts of what he was about to do to Ashley Butler. Or more specifically, what he was about to do to a number of her orifices. If jerking off to the thought of a dead Michael Townley made him feel like he wanted to die, he would have to fuck the shit out of that dopey bitch until he couldn't think about anything at all. She seemed like the best option with Wade's pooper being out of commission... and honestly? At the moment? Trevor couldn't stand the thought of sticking his dick into anything that was going to cry right after. He wasn't a TOTAL monster.
He mulled it over, and rumbled quietly in plan seemed solid. Felt, solid, he realized after a hand ghosted down to briefly grip his half-reinvigorated erection. It would do. It would have to do. Michael Townley deserved respect, and fucking Ashley up the ass was the only way Trevor Philips could figure out how to show that.
"….You forget thousands of things every day…" he muttered to himself, and laid his palm over a bag of rock resting on the counter.
/
When he pulled back into the yard two hours later with a sack full of Sudafed slung over one shoulder, Wade instantly knew trouble was brewing. The very distinct sounds of Trevor violently fucking someone were, by this point, unfortunately known to Wade by heart. When the sound of a bottle breaking and a female yelp cut through the thin trailer walls, Wade immediately understood he would need to get his gun. Fucking Ashley Butler meant one thing; That messed up fella who had touched his thigh that one time after they'd all smoked together? Johnny? He would be making an appearance sometime in the not too distant future. But it was only when Ron came barreling into the yard not a moment later that Wade truly began to panic.
"-wuh, wuh what's-?! Now? Right now?" the Sudafed hit the ground, instantly forgotten.
"Don't do it, Johnny, it's not worth it, man! It's not worth it!" Ronald Jakowski shouted the jagged words out with a desperate tremor. The biker snorted a path behind him up the steps to the trailer, ignoring Ron's waving arms with the furious look of a raging bull. Johnny's face was beet red, almost cartoonish. Terrified visions flashed across Wade's mind as he ran towards the other men, though they mostly centered around the imminent fear that he would be forced to clean disemboweled biker guts off of the couch that Trevor would fuck Johnny to death on. Probably sometime in the next ten minutes.
The trailer door slammed open, seconds before the gaggle had reached the porch. Wade jumped about a foot, then fell away, somehow sensing the traffic about to blow backwards. Trevor stormed from the trailer, his face drained of all color. He seemed not to see them as he shoved his way out into the open, though as he brushed past Wade, the juggalo thought he heard him faintly mutter the words, "…thousands of things…"
A thousand things? What things? What now? Was it a game? The young man's fear was momentarily pushed away in favor of confusion.
"TREVOR!"
"STOP IT, JOHNNY!" Ashley skittered out onto the porch after Trevor's ominously silent exit. "Just LEAVE IT!"
"It's not worth it, Johnny! It's not worth it!"
Wade fell into the rush of the crowd, both flummoxed and panicky as he attempted to force dazed hands into some kind of action. He settled on a sort of full-body tremor which shoved everyone equally.
"We all get high! WE ALL GET HIGH! THAT DONT MAKE IT RIGHT!"
"Johnny, quit it man! I'm sorry Trevor, I'm sorry! I tried to stop him! I tried!"
"TREVOR!" the slippery surface of Johnny's leather jacket wormed itself out of Wade's balled fists. "TREVOR! I'M TALKING TO YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!"
Several paces down the road, Trevor finally came to a frightening stop. Wade glanced to a hand at his arm to see Ron silently shake his head once, before they both fell back.
"…Are you?" Trevor breathed the words towards Johnny at last in a hot gust. His voice was quiet, but even at a distance, the sound rolled across the dusty street and kissed Wade's ears with promises of pain. Always pain.
"Well, what are you saying?"
To most of the outside world, it was a reasonable, measured response. To Wade Hebert, the words sliced him with an icy bolt of fear. Something here was more than just 'a little off'. More than yesterday, or the day before, more than any other day. Face fucking Wade was one thing. (At least he got drugs out of the other end of that deal, even if it was a raw one.) This, though? THIS? This was exactly the kind of Bat Shit Scary Trevor that Wade would literally run miles to get away from. He squinted across the distance at Trevor's waxy pallor, at the way his hands shook with the a faint tremor… Hebert's second aunt by marriage, Miranda? Well, she had palsy AND Alzheimer's, and he remembered she sometimes had an expression a lot like this one… a kind of terrified fury, all sweat-drenched and shivering. If Wade didn't know any better, he would say that his friend looked like a burnt-out race horse. He was completely winded, and for some reason Johnny seemed not to be picking up on a single one of Trevor's cues. Was Trevor… scared? Petrified? No, not for himself. Angry? He had to be angry. He was always angry. Or… was he? Even after an eon's worth of days spent staring at the criminal's wrinkled face, Trevor Philips was still a hard man to read. Something was wrong, that much was obvious. It was obvious even to Wade's own admittedly basic functions. But the question of 'what?' lingered frustratingly unanswered. Ashley pushed roughly past them, though she at least seemed to sense the inherent danger in the words being exchanged, and lingered hesitantly on the periphery.
"I think..?" Wade whispered loudly, even as he edged farther back. "…that we…" a few more steps, "…should get some plastic bags!"
"He's fucked!" Ron whispered in return, "He's fucking fucked!"
Like waiting for a jack-in-the-box to finally blow open, the three of them stood like quivering pillars, and watched.
/
Michael.
"Fucking my girl, man! It's wrong!"
Fucking.
"Well, I gotta fuck someone! You want me to fuck you instead? Is that the problem here?"
Townley.
Trevor caressed his hand softly across Johnny's stomach, taking in the mixture of revulsion and apology being fed back to him with a grain of sand. "Come on, cowboy… lets fuck."
Michael Townley's face behind a pair of Trevor's aviators as they rocketed down the highway with all the windows open. Michael Townley's shoulders, broad and confident, as they hightailed it down a rain-soaked stretch of concrete. Michael Townley's laughter as he flirted with a 15 year old bubblegum snapping motel clerk.
"Take off… your pants."
Michael Townley pressed up against a sweating brick alley wall, his pants undone as a hooker with orange lipstick sucked him off. Michael Townley's flushed face turned slightly towards him at a dive bar, their fingers barely brushing underneath the table. Michael Townley opening the door to his trailer, half-naked and still smelling like pussy and cheap vodka.
"You think this is funny?"
Michael Townley's veins bulging in his sweaty forehead, each of them shouting the other down for the 50th time that week. Michael Townley's pregnant whore of a stripper girlfriend glaring at him from across the room. Michael Townley's condescending look after suggesting they go on a road trip together. Michael Townley's wedding ring.
"GET THEM OFF!"
Michael Townley's face so close to his own that he can smell the breath rolling across his face, and it smells so sweet, god, like warm beer and morning breath and deer musk, until in the distance a baby starts crying and that warmth is replaced with a cold emptiness.
Michael Townley telling him to 'just leave.'
Orange burned Trevor's vision, blinding him with the staggering weight of his own rage. His hands moved as they always had, roughly, and of their own accord. A bottle smashed, words ripped from his throat and exploded like molotov cocktails of anger and despair, and suddenly he was looking down at the pulpy mess of what had once been a normal human skull. Brain squished out from a series of snapped cavities, as if it was a meaty kind of toothpaste. (not that Trevor owned any toothpaste. He hadn't since 1989.) It didn't matter though. Nothing mattered. None of it was important, except for one thing. Somewhere in the distance a woman was howling with grief, but all it served as was becoming a backdrop to Trevor's recollections of a beloved movie quote being repeated on the news, then the numb buzz which filled his head immediately after hearing it.
"GET UP! GET UP! …NO? FUCK YOU, THEN!" He kicked Johnny's body one last time, feeling none of the pleasure he normally derived from the wet crunch of broken body parts.
Michael fucking Townley… Trevor faintly registered Ron and Wade scurrying after him as he dragged himself across the road and back towards where his Bodhi was parked in the hot sun.
Michael. Please, not Michael.
It couldn't be. It was too fucking cruel, even by Townley's standards. It was impossible. Not after all these years. All these wasted years of worshiping Michael's memory, of canonizing that tubby snake like he was some kind of glorious martyred war hero. All those nights he'd slept on the cold dirt next to that fucking tombstone like some piece of shit dog who had lost it's master, lost a brother, had lost, lost, lost so many things… It was unspeakable in it's inhumane reality.
Michael fucking Townley...
And yet he knew, undeniably, irrefutably, that it was true.
…Michael Townley was fucking ALIVE.