this is getting nowhere im sorry to everyone reading i took waaaay too long to update.
"Strange, isn't it?" Sickness started. "That we all have that connection to Johnny boy."
They had been walking for two days now, and whenever silence fell, Sickness would try to strike up a conversation. It was a habit that irritated the doughboys, but short answers usually worked to shut her down.
"What's strange is that you don't seem to shut up. Is silence really that hard?" D-boy hissed at her.
Sickness growled, irked. She was talkative but had never considered herself annoying.
"Actually," Eff chimed in, "It is kinda interesting, almost disgusting. But I don't think our walls are down."
"As if the walls could talk anymore," she retorted.
"You knew about that?" Eff asked, intrigued.
She glanced away, choosing to ignore him, her attention now on Reverend, who had fallen behind. He was too busy fiddling with his roach pendant to notice that he was lagging or even bumping into things.
"Hey, catch up!" Sickness barked at him.
Reverend hurried to catch up, though this was becoming a pattern. He struggled to maintain the same pace as the rest of them. The cold winter storm had passed, and though it was no longer snowing, a light fog lingered through the forest, with rivers thick with ice. It had been a while since any of them felt actual cold; more than cold, it felt like an emptiness. But even though they didn't feel discomfort, they still had to look after their bodies. They needed to be good to them.
The fire crackled in the stillness of the night. D-boy sat by it, chipping away at a stick he had found. It would take a long time on foot to reach Maine, and even when he got there, he wondered what he would do with the others. He was certain he could die without Eff. He enjoyed the silence of being alone. But if the rest of them wanted to stay with him, what would he do?
D-boy sighed. It would be tough to kill all three of them, but it might be worth it just to be at least alone, or maybe to be killed in the process. They didn't belong in this world anyway. They had no masters, no purpose. They were unhinged beings, existing on their own terms. It was unsettling.
Breaking the stick in half, he tossed it into the fire and hugged his knees, watching the flames consume it. Reverend, having finished gathering firewood, finally sat down beside him.
"It's weird, isn't it? How we all ended up together?" Reverend remarked, almost as if he was talking to himself.
D-boy didn't answer. He had no interest in engaging with such a loathsome creature, and whatever the Reverend had to say was far from important in his mind.
"I always wanted to be real," Reverend continued, "in some form. It didn't matter which. But my time was cut short, and I'm surprised I'm even here now, alive and real. How do you think that happened?"
D-boy didn't look up from the fire. He didn't speak. He simply shrugged, raising his brow.
Eff, suddenly awake from a nap, chimed in. "What does the 'why' even matter? We're here now, aren't we?"
Internally screaming in frustration, D-boy already knew their conversation would soon become insufferable. He scooted further away from Eff, ensuring they wouldn't touch.
Reverend gave D-boy a puzzled look. "I mean, if we don't figure out why we're here, how will we know what loophole brought us back?"
Eff shrugged. "Think about it. First, it was Nailbunny, then me and D-boy. I assume Sickness came next because Nny spread it, and then you, though I'm not exactly sure how."
Reverend sighed softly, his eyes drifting to the stars above. "When Nny was dating that girl, she gave me to him as a gift. She thought it was funny, a kind of poke at his skinny appearance. Surprisingly, he wasn't upset by it. He liked her too much to care. At one point, I started absorbing all the feelings he suppressed because he didn't know how to handle them. But it all stopped when he pulled those knives on her. Their desire could've been stronger, I tell ya."
Eff seemed to follow along. "So, after Nny died and came back, you were reborn as his voice, while D-boy and I stayed silent after the Wall's business. But why you? Why not Nailbunny or nobody?"
Reverend nodded. "Nny was a confused kid. He needed guidance from a voice he hadn't heard in a long time—since his parents died. He could deny himself any pleasure like some puritanical bastard, but he couldn't kill the feelings entirely. Eventually, he silenced me too." Reverend paused, staring into the fire. "I think once I stopped talking to him, he threw me away, and that's when I woke up in the landfill."
D-boy sighed loudly. The sun was already creeping up on the horizon, and they were still talking. He stood up and walked over to where Sickness was sleeping, shaking her awake.
She groaned, rubbing her eyes. "What the hell now?"
Sitting cross-legged in front of her, D-boy asked, "Have you ever seen or heard strange things?"
Sickness raised an eyebrow and rubbed her neck. "No, just you."
He didn't expect much of an answer, so he said nothing further and walked away to a new spot, far from the others.
If it came down to it, he would rather kill them all or be killed by them than listen to their endless, narcissistic chatter. He thought of Nny, of what he had gone through with Devi, and how all of it could have been avoided if Nny had simply ignored his feelings. Then none of these other voices would have been born.
Scratching the scar on his face, D-boy looked up at the fading stars as the morning twilight began to brighten the sky. Despite his lack of contentment, he could always appreciate the beauty of the night sky.
Somewhere, far away, a silhouette stood atop a hill, outlined against the twilight. A woman looked through a telescope. Standing on her balcony, she observed the fire of the stars and planets unreachable. She sighed at the thought of traveling from one planet to the next, through clouds of dreamy dust and gas. But of course, that would never be true.
