I'm Still Here
By Lady Yate-xel
Things started so innocently that he didn’t notice they’d started.
Upon a return from a television appearance, Edgar had lost a few items. Johnny told him he failed at luggage and had probably left them in the hotel. Edgar shrugged it off, figuring Johnny had to be right, though he didn’t even remember packing the items he’d lost and still felt a bit uneasy about it even after replacing them.
So when articles of clothing and a sheet or two disappeared in addition to Edgar’s razor and the washcloth he was sure he’d left on the sink, he felt something was up. Johnny maintained he wasn’t messing with Edgar’s head, but Edgar had no other explanation. His suspicion of Johnny continued until Johnny complained that he had lost the scissors he most often used to butcher his hair.
“Where did you last see them?” Edgar asked, looking under a few towels.
“The place I looked for them! Come on, what kind of question is that?” Johnny waved his arms as he spoke, and Edgar expertly avoided being hit in the head. Over the years of knowing him, Edgar seemed to have developed a very keen sense of where Johnny was in relation to himself at all times.
Johnny continued raving while Edgar took everything out of the medicine cabinet.
“That’s like, ‘Well, it’s always in the last place you look!’” Johnny shrieked. “Well, yeah, dumbass! How many years of schooling did you need for that little revelation?”
“Nny, it’s not the end of the civilized world, let it go,” Edgar said to the bottles of pills he’d never used. He filed them back into the cabinet when he found no scissors hidden inside it. “Old lady wisdom won’t hurt you anymore. I’ll go find the other scissors.”
On his way downstairs, Edgar caught movement in the living room window out of the corner of his eye. He stopped nervously for a moment, then assumed it was Pepito and continued about his business. For a moment, as he dug through the desk drawer in the dining room, he reflected on how he was not scared of the Anti-Christ, but had stopped in (if only momentary) fear at the thought of a burglar.
Scissors in hand, Edgar swung by the door to see if Pepito was ready to come inside. When there was no one on the door step, he stepped out into the yard and checked the roof, shielding his eyes from the sun. No one resting on the shingles and no one hanging from the chimney. He shook his head, and turned to go back inside when he noticed that he had mail.
He and Johnny didn’t really get mail. The last time had been when Johnny died and whatever invisibility from the postal system the house had inherited from its occupants went on a several month long hiatus. Since Johnny had climbed his way out of Hell, the mail had trickled to a stop, and Edgar hadn’t seen envelopes in that box for weeks upon weeks.
It had no address or stamp or anything more than his name, written in some nice cursive. This had suspicious written all over it, and (since it could only grow to be more so,) he took the scissors and sliced the top of the envelope open. The paper inside was flimsy and had a coffee stain in the middle. The letter addressed only him, and it wasn’t about Johnny. He had to admit he was surprised.
“Edgar-
I’d like to help.
Meet me at the library after it closes?”
No signature, front or back.
He sighed, disappointed at the lack of creativity in the only admirer that had ever sent a letter to the house addressed to him. Still, it was a milestone, movie cliché or not.
“Johnny!” Edgar called up the stairs as he re-entered the house. “I got my first stalker!”
“Did you get scissors?” Johnny yelled, leaning out over the top of the stair case. Edgar almost threw the scissors out of reflex.
“Oh, shit, sorry,” he said when Johnny flinched. “I’ll bring them up. You have to see my stalker letter, too.”
“Do they want to take your clothes off with their teeth?” Johnny asked smugly, citing the best stalker letter he’d gotten since his return from Hell. Edgar shook his head as he reached the top of the stairs.
“No, but give me some time. It took a while for you to get the real wackos, yeah?” He passed the scissors to Johnny, who didn’t even seem bothered with what or where he was cutting his hair, and turned the letter over in his hands.
“They want to meet you in some magical location where all your dreams will come true?” Johnny asked, slicing through a long patch of hair.
“The library,” Edgar answered, though he was presently trying to will the letter to say ‘Ferris Wheel’ or something a little more freakish.
“Laaame,” Johnny punctuated his disapproval with a snip of the scissors.
“Hey, I’ll get my ‘hot sex in a space ship’ letter eventually.”
“That one was pretty good,” Johnny said with a smirk.
“What should I do with it?”
Johnny raised an eyebrow, “Put it on the fridge with the other ones?”
“No, I mean, should I go?”
“What, and get mugged?” Johnny asked, setting the scissors down.
“By who?” Edgar challenged, waving the envelope in Johnny’s face. “The teenage girl with the lovely cursive handwriting?”
“You know,” Johnny said, unimpressed, “I hear Devi has nice handwriting.”
“Point.”
Edgar regarded the note for a moment. “Do you want to go with me, then?”
“As you’re fond of pointing out, what help is a hundred some odd pounds of bony guy going to be?”
“You just don’t want me to go.”
“Of course I don’t. It’s stupid.”
“Only because it’s my stalker letter.”
“Hey, did I go have hot sex in a space ship?”
“No, but you went to that parking lot.”
Johnny crossed his arms. “It’s a bad idea, but if you want to go, take Devi with you or something.”
“You’re not coming? I think I’d feel better with you than with Devi.”
“And I’d feel better not going. Take Devi.”
The argument went around for the better part of an hour, before Edgar agreed to take Devi or Jimmy with him instead of Johnny. Edgar wasn’t sure, in truth, how much better suited Jimmy would have been for dealing with muggers than Johnny, but then thought maybe Johnny just wanted to give the muggers a target not Edgar while of course preserving himself in the process. Typical.
Later that evening, when the library was about to close, Edgar told Johnny he was going to get Devi. Johnny wished him luck not dying, and Edgar grabbed a coat before opening the door.
It was getting dark already, and it was drizzling. Edgar turned to find the umbrella they’d almost broken on Jimmy’s head during the tour before Johnny died. When he turned back to the door, unfurling the umbrella as he did, he saw something move near the windows.
“Pepito?” he asked the bushes.
There was nothing from the bushes, but there was a string of cursing from the room behind him.
“Holy shit, fuck, fuck, Edgar get back in here!”
He turned, confused, but listened and stepped back into the house, “What? What’s wrong?”
“You’re not going.”
“Hey, what the fuck? You’re not my mother, Nny.”
“You’re not going.” He looked pointedly at Edgar and his eyes seemed to convey all of ‘put that down, take off the coat, and don’t move for the next hour.’ And because Johnny had moments like this, moments in which something only he could feel was of utmost importance, Edgar put everything down, and dropped himself on the couch.
*****
“What was wrong this time?” Edgar asked twenty minutes later when the rain outside picked up.
“You didn’t feel it.”
Johnny sat in the pink chair, knees up to his chin.
“No,” Edgar answered, though it hadn’t been a question. “No, I didn’t.”
“It’s better that you don’t.”
“Nny, you can’t keep things like this a ‘Magical Johnny Secret’ this time, okay? Last time you had weird feelings of semi-irrational panic, you died shortly afterwards.”
“That woman. The one with the wall. No, she doesn’t have the wall. But that one. She knows we’re here.”
“And she’s sending me notes?” Edgar found the suggestion laughable. He was more than comfortable with Johnny getting the weird supernatural attention; Johnny was far more equipped for it anyway.
“You’re still not going.”
“Nny, I’m already not wen- goin- I’m still here.” Fuck.
“Already not went?” Johnny snorted a small laugh into his arm.
“Not a word.”
When Johnny’s assessment of Edgar’s grammar failure was finished, they spent the remainder of the night mocking an old game show and shouting suggestions at the contestants, even though the people on the screen had made their choices, and gotten their prizes, and spent their money years before either Edgar or Johnny had even existed.
*****
Edgar felt disappointed that his only stalker letter hadn’t resulted in a grand adventure. For days, he surreptitiously checked the mailbox, giving Johnny weird excuses about seeing someone move or checking for squirrels if he asked any questions.
The box remained empty, and Edgar continued to look stupid every time he returned from checking it. The day something finally did show up, it was a flyer for a taco place. Their slogan left quite a bit to be desired.
“‘We Cheat You Less’?” Johnny read from the flyer. “Less than what?”
“Beats me.”
“We should try it some time.”
“Do you remember how the adventure to ‘The World’s Worst Apple Pie’ turned out?”
“You can’t tell me that wasn’t fun.”
It had been fun, truthfully.
The restaurant had been visible from the side of the highway, and as soon as Johnny caught a glimpse of the sign, he ordered Tenna to take the next exit possible. The group had first argued about why it was a dumb idea, and then over what about ‘The World’s Worst Apple Pie’ would make it the worst. Crust or filling?
The parking lot had been mostly empty, but the cars that were parked in it looked like they were comfortable there. Likely the staff, but Johnny had made something up about people cursed to eat the pie until they died from it that the group decided to take as the true reason. The staff would clearly be bound to the restaurant by Hell, after all. They didn’t need cars.
Under the buzzing of the flashing neon sign identifying the establishment as simply “Restaurant,” and through the old door, they’d found themselves in a small smoke-filled dining room. Booths lined the walls, all of them yellowed-from-too-much-varnish wood with worn red leather cushions. The ‘Please Seat Yourself… Whereever” sign in the entrance had been enough to convince Johnny that this was going to be the world’s best experience with purposely eating awful food, but Devi and Tenna were not swayed and had argued about whether or not the sign was grammatically sound. Edgar had just wondered aloud why he felt like he was breathing grease.
The waitress had had a lazy eye. She’d brought menus, but never placed them on the table, favoring instead to lean over and sniff Jimmy.
“Here fer pie, ‘es?” she’d rasped as though Jimmy had smelled of wanting pie.
“Yes?” Devi had answered shakily. The woman had then shrieked at Jimmy for not answering when she spoke to him. Her lazy eye, Johnny pointed out after she returned to the kitchen in a huff, had been looking at Devi. Had he had any hunger when he came in, Edgar had been sure it was gone by that point.
The pie looked like pie. Jimmy had expressed disappointment that there were no limbs in the pie, and then he and Johnny had hummed something together, snickering occasionally through the song. Tenna took out a stop watch in the middle of the song and placed it firmly in the middle of the table. When it stuck standing straight up, Devi picked her elbows off the table and vowed to never touch another restaurant table again.
“Okay,” Tenna said, holding her finger on one of the watch’s buttons, “when this goes off, we all take a bite of this. Let’s see who gets spit on first.”
Edgar had had no way of pinpointing why the pie was so bad, but everything up to the stuff that would no longer classify this concoction as pie had failed in every way possible. There was no part of him that had not responded with a wave of revulsion.
“Holy shit,” Johnny had managed seconds later, sounding choked on too-dry crust, “This is amazing.”
Devi’s expression was something like disgust squared – both at Johnny and the pie. Thankfully, Johnny clarified a few moments later, after inhaling most of the pitcher of water they’d been given.
“Do you know what this means?” Johnny had asked the others. They were, for a variety of reasons, mostly unable to respond, but Johnny didn't sound like he had even been waiting for acknowledgement, “Someone sat down one day and said, ‘This is so god awful that I need to make it again.’ This is my new favorite restaurant.”
Waitress Lazy-Eye had been given a giant tip that night.
“That was fun. Disgusting, but fun,” Edgar admitted, glancing at the back of the flyer at the questionable menu.
Johnny gave Edgar a pleased “see?” face and stashed the flyer for the taco place near the phone.
As if on cue, the day that Edgar decided not to purposely check the mail, he caught sight of a slip of paper that was flattened against the window of the door. He was thrilled to think it was another invite to nowhere but found it to be only a coupon for a coffee shop.
“Athene’s Coffee
Bring a friend and get one free* drink!
*Free here being entirely at the discretion of the barista
who will be sure you pay more for your double froth bullshit if you are an asshole.”
There was entirely more disclaimer on the coupon than anything of value. There was no reason for Edgar to have been given this specifically, so he tossed it up to being a grand opening tactic that everyone on the block had received and flicked the coupon on the table in the dining room on his way to the kitchen.
In the middle of his orange juice, Johnny came into the room and asked Edgar why he’d etched his name in the coupon.
“I what now?” Edgar asked, lowering the glass.
“Your name is on this,” Johnny said again, waving the coupon, “Were you trying the secret message thing?”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Look, come on, it’s right here,” Johnny pushed. He turned the coupon over and showed Edgar the back. There, among scribbling of graphite, was ‘EDGAR’ in white. Someone had written his name on another paper and transferred it with just the pressure.
“That wasn’t colored on when I got it,” Edgar said, squinting at the letters in the shiny pencil.
“Yeah, I did that.”
“Any… particular reason?”
“Just a feeling,” Johnny shrugged.
“Well,” Edgar drank the last gulp of his juice, “maybe I should go check it out, then. It won’t even cost me anything.”
“Or it won’t cost Devi anything.”
“Devi?”
“If you’re doing stalker shit, you should be taking her with you.”
“I don’t need a body guard, come on.”
“Do you really need to see the stalker either?” Johnny asked, leaning against the wall behind him. Edgar hadn’t noticed that he’d walked in with a pretzel, but Johnny punctuated his sentence with a crunch on the end of it.
“It’s kind of a novelty for me, maybe? It’s not me they come to see, you know. So if even one is… well, it’s appealing.”
“And you don’t see this ending with all of your organs spilled on the floor and your body being used to smuggle crack into other countries?” Johnny sounded neither angry nor amused, but only curious.
“I have you if I need my organs spilled on the floor, actually.”
“Ooo, I think I’m just going to go in the other room and regress now. Feeling the crazy creeping in as we speak,” Johnny rolled his eyes but smiled. “If you want to go be worshipped by the masses, I won’t stop you.”
“It’s not masses, it’s one girl.”
Johnny snorted.
“What?”
“And with your luck,” Johnny said, grinning, “it will be a massive girl.”
“You’re a terrible person,” Edgar muttered, narrowing his eyes.
“I know,” Johnny replied through a grin. “And just think, what we have on the coupon may be missing the hearts and the ‘Mrs. Vargas’ notes on the side.”
“Oh, god, you think so?”
“It’s very possible,” Johnny said, tapping the coupon with the remaining pretzel rod. “You could be falling right into her trap of fangirls.” He widened his eyes and covered his mouth in mock-fright, “Oh no, mass marriage in a drive-through!”
“Don’t you have to consent to that sort of thing?”
“Not in Vegas.”
“Bullshit.”
“Swear.”
“They’d still need to catch me. You know, get me in the car,” Edgar pointed out.
Johnny clicked his tongue.
“They have crow bars and drugs for that, Edgar, come on, keep up.”
“When did these stop being teenage girls and start being large men on motorcycles?”
“They can be both,” Johnny answered, sitting on the table.
“So, I’m going to be captured by bearded girls on bikes with nice handwriting at a coffee shop, then, is that it?” Edgar found he was enjoying the game, as ridiculous as it had gotten.
“Mmhmm. Or, you would have.”
“Would have?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said, slipping off the table and taking the slip of paper from Edgar’s hand, “Your coupon expired four days ago.” He tossed the paper over his shoulder as he strolled into the next room, and Edgar watched his second chance at discovering whoever wanted to ‘help’ him flutter to meet the linoleum.
*****
With Johnny having been the death of both of Edgar’s attempts to see whoever had been leaving him things, Edgar resolved to hold onto everything that came into the house after that. When he got something good, he reasoned, he’d break out under cover of needing tortilla chips. If he was lucky, Johnny’s ‘Edgar is full of lies’ sensor wouldn’t go off until Edgar was well on his way.
So of course, nothing came.
Weeks went by, suddenly annoying and frustrating obligations to be stitched up in front of cameras drew nearer, and Johnny remained unhelpful.
“What if Heaven is stalking me more traditionally, now?” Edgar asked one day. He was sorting through shirts and determining their likelihood to be worn for a show or if they were better left at home on the floor.
Johnny was untangling some mess of string and bracelets that had somehow fused sitting in a box on the floor of his room. “Traditional stalking? Like, ‘the ancient stalking of my people’?”
“No, I mean, less with the magic book and more with the weird notes.”
“No-tuh. Note. Singular.”
“You don’t have to be a dick about it.”
“Sure I do.”
Edgar had gone on to ask about why Johnny didn’t just cut the string that was wound so tightly around the bracelets, but Johnny reacted as through Edgar had suggested he slit a kitten’s throat. The string was fucking special, apparently, and Edgar was horrible for even suggesting cutting it. Edgar failed to grasp why such ‘special’ string was being kept in a dusty old box in a corner of a room Johnny never used, but decided to let it go.
*****
The van remained the same as always, though now Devi sometimes took over driving duty if the stretch of highway was particularly straight. Jimmy had said something about everyone learning to drive so the group could drive in shifts on one particularly long night trip. Tenna thanked some deity no one had ever heard of and Johnny punctuated his laughter with the toss of some cheese curls in Jimmy’s direction. There was no way, he said through a mouthful of the snack, that he would ever chauffeur the rest of the losers in the van around. Predictably, the argument degraded into Jimmy complaining about Edgar.
“Why don’t we just have people pay to see a Jimmy and Edgar cage match?” Tenna asked while she retrieved her can of juice from the machine at the truck stop. A stop had been mandatory when the bickering degraded into bloodshed. “I think it’d be more profitable than shows, and just think! I won’t have to make one of them look dead artificially!”
“When you can teach the dead to play guitar, Tenna, let me know,” Devi sipped her drink casually.
“You think Edgar would win?”
“He’s bigger.”
“Yeah, but Jimmy has something like five years of built up sexual frustration. That’s a lot of firepower.”
Devi tapped the edge of her cup against her chin in thought. “So this is like, the battle of the gay?” Tenna nodded sagely in response and Devi just let the idea run, “Wow, this has got to be like negative numbers or something,” she said, expression brightening. “Jimmy’s lack of action compared with Edgar’s positive… I think they’d implode.”
“Cancel each other out?” Tenna offered, trying to point with her juice bottle.
“Yeah, just,” Devi made a ‘poof’ing hand gesture, “gone.”
“We need to learn to bottle gay, Devi. I think we’re on to something.”
Edgar, who was standing at a first-aid box nearby and had grown tired of the conversation, piped up when he finally managed to get the bandage he’d been fighting with to stick to his skin.
“I’m not gay,” he grumbled. “Though I’m glad you think I’d win.”
“I do,” Tenna replied, grinning. “Maybe it’s Nny-sexual we need to be bottling instead?”
Edgar rolled his eyes, rubbing at the new bandage. Jimmy returned from sticking his face in the nearby water fountain moments later.
“You’re lucky I fell over,” he told Edgar. Their relationship had long ago stopped being hostile, so even with a gash on his face, Jimmy sported a wide smile.
“And thank Pepito I didn’t unleash my full terror,” Edgar shot back with his best imitation of arrogance, “You wouldn’t have a face left.”
Johnny, who’d been remarkably quiet for the entire scene, finally spoke up from the hood of the van, where he’d been sitting, waiting.
“Did you just imply that you worshipped Pepito, Edgar, or that Jimmy did?”
For some reason, a question that had been (Edgar assumed) meant to make some linguistic fun of Edgar bothered him for hours, and he found he pondered it long after the road signs stopped looking familiar.
*****
People wanted to know what had happened to Johnny. They flocked to shows and interviews to hear whatever story Johnny was offering to explain where he had been and how he’d come back. Johnny’s answers were never the same, but were never directly contradictory either. As it stood, months after his resurrection, no one attending the concerts was sure if they were seeing the same Johnny as before, or a cyborg-vampire-zombie replacement version.
Johnny liked the idea of people thinking he was a zombie only until Tenna wanted to paint him green.
Shows continued much the same as they always had, with the new addition of guest appearances by Johnny’s hell-coat. Stars remained a lasting theme, even though Jimmy had suggested skulls and rabbits being hit by trucks at some point after Johnny’s resurrection. They were supposedly symbolic of something, but as for what of, no one but Jimmy seemed to know. They’d gotten color-coded along the way, somehow, and even if the rest of the outfit had nothing to do with those colors, Johnny’s star stayed blue, Devi’s purple, Jimmy’s orange and Edgar’s green. Despite that no one usually saw her, Tenna often gave herself a gold one. She reflected often, and aloud, that she knew how sad it was, thanks.
What had changed about shows wasn’t tangible. There were discussions about it in the hotel rooms, convenience stores and van seats afterwards, but nothing could ever be nailed down. Johnny said cryptic things, perhaps indicating that he knew everything, perhaps trying to prevent everyone from learning that he knew nothing, but it got them nowhere. Whatever it was, it meant that the ends of shows now included lots of talking.
Before the last few songs, Johnny told the audience things. Sometimes, just little bits of fortune cookie wisdom, sometimes long rants that ended in confused applause. He’d respond to things he’d seen written about the group in general, and invite the others to throw in a comment here and there if he thought they’d help his case. Devi once got to explain in excruciating detail how much she delighted in the idea of stupid people being tortured to death. Johnny had looked incredibly proud of her (‘pleased’ was not really strong enough) and she even seemed to get a bit of a rush from it.
He told them stories, he steered people away from rumors he didn’t like and spread the ones he found amusing, and he gave people something they enjoyed, but weren’t really expecting. Edgar and the others often wondered if they were ever going to play the final song and go to bed for the night, but even they were entertained by Johnny’s little detours.
Edgar asked him why he did it on more than one occasion, but Johnny rarely got to the answer directly, if at all. Everything was approached from the sides and woven around. If Johnny was good at anything, it was steering his way out of things he didn’t want to deal with. Once, under cover of distracted make-up removal in yet another shitty hotel room, Edgar managed to get something reasonably concrete out of him.
“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing,” Edgar explained, pulling string and wax from his skin, “I’m just curious. Is this a souvenir from being dead?” He was sitting on an ugly grey couch, piling the wax and string on the table in front of him.
“I don’t think so. Not directly.”
Johnny was busy trying to shake flecks of glitter from his hair while walking around the room. Someone in the audience that night had brought bags and bags of the stuff and had asked other audience members to throw it at opportune moments. Johnny had thought it was hilarious before. “I’m never going to stop fucking sparkling now, shit. Look at this! It’s like shedding shiny head flakes!”
“You’ll get over looking fabulous for a day or two, don’t worry about it.”
“I think it’s even in my teeth,” Johnny muttered, staring into a decorative mirror on the wall by the doorway.
“You’re trying to distract me.”
“You’re getting better at picking that up.”
“So since you’re still not offering the information, I’m asking again: What are you doing with the long talks?”
Johnny shook his head and fell into a worn-looking old chair, a small cloud of glitter bursting from his hair and then settling on black clothes. “It’s just something there. It’s something I want to be doing. I think it’s important.”
“They were all a ‘teeming mass of morons’ to you, last I checked. What’s different now?” The stitches Tenna had molded across Edgar’s collar bone fought against being removed, and Edgar picked at the wax-y string mess through most of the conversation.
“None of those people are as bad as what I saw somewhere else?” Johnny sounded as though he hadn’t meant that to sound so unsure. He ran a hand over the back of his head, fluffing glitter into his face. “And I wonder if there’s anyone out there that I owe.”
Edgar stopped pulling string from his skin for a moment. “You think she’s watching somewhere?”
“She showed up in our yard, Edgar.”
“Have you felt her out there?”
“Have I had a – No. I haven’t,” Johnny answered, dusting some glitter from his arm. He spoke up again when he saw Edgar’s questioning expression. “I was going to say, ‘Have I had a gigantic freak out up there?’ but maybe the answer to that is different for different people.”
“It doesn’t look like anything more than you being you to us, so it’s not a problem, like I said before. We’re just curious.”
“Well, now you know.”
“You going to keep doing it?”
“You need to ask?”
“What do you think she wants?” With a frustrated tug on the string near his neck, Edgar gave up on removing the mess for the moment and leaned back into the couch.
“Probably to eat me. Use my organs to make sausage.”
“And your skull to hold punch?”
“Pretty much.”
“What gives you the impression that Ankh the Viking Maniac is after your organs, really?” Edgar spoke to, and gestured toward, the ceiling. Something he’d picked up from Johnny, he imagined. It only crossed his mind for a moment to correct it, and even then he decided against it.
“She makes me remember unpleasant things.”
“That’s not quite a reason to go after people in the night, though.”
“If she knows it happens, it is.”
“I don’t think she does.”
“Oh?” Johnny looked up from staring at the carpet just moments after Edgar glanced down from absorbing the pattern of cracks in the ceiling.
“You don’t think she’d have broken into the house by now if she knew she made your brain go crazy?”
“She’s trying to make me crazy with the threat of crazy.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I felt things collapse in there when she talked to me!” Johnny flailed his hands around his head briefly before settling into a cross-armed sigh. “She wants something horrible to happen to me.”
“Nny, this is going to surprise you, but I think you should be aware of it.”
“Mm?”
“The world does not revolve around you. Not everyone is stalking you.”
Johnny smiled, more at the table in the center of the room than at Edgar, but Edgar felt it was meant for him at the very least. “It’s not everyone, but it’s more than you’ve got.”
“One day, you’ll wish you only had one determined stalker, and not a million average ones.” Edgar tried to keep the tone high and mighty, but he suspected a smile gave him away.
“I already had one of those. He usually plays guitar these days.”
“You know,” Edgar said, scratching at some loose strings on the ugly couch, “I kind of wished she’d show up at one of these shows.”
“Your stalker?”
“Yeah, I just thought it’d be nice or something.”
“I think I just saw a trace of romanticizing madness in that expression and I’m thinking that Devi and Tenna’s room is looking more appealing with every second.” Johnny shrank slightly into his chair.
“It’s not like that,” Edgar told him, throwing a decorative pillow in Johnny’s direction. “It’s just this great idea to me that I could be the interesting one to someone. She’s probably harmless.”
“I don’t find you uninteresting.”
“But comparatively? Really? You get all the attention. And I’m okay with that, but a deviation isn’t unwelcome.”
Johnny shrugged. “Everyone likes attention.”
“I suppose the person it’s coming from makes the difference, then.” Edgar knew it wasn't new, or even particularly deep information, but it came out anyway.
“The difference between you and Jimmy,” Johnny slid off the chair, a small puff of glitter settling on the cushion, and joined Edgar on the couch.
“You don’t need to say it like that,” Edgar said defensively. “He’s not all that bad. If I can enjoy his company, then- AH!” He was cut off by a sharp pain in his neck. When his vision returned to normal, he saw Johnny toss what had been the remaining wax and string onto the table in front of them.
“That was bothering me.”
“God, how about some warning next time?” He rubbed his neck and sent angry glares in Johnny’s direction.
“You’d never have let me do it.”
“Exactly!”
“You should be used to it already,” Johnny grumbled, dropping his head on Edgar’s shoulder.
“In case you missed it, I generally take that stuff off slowly.”
“Why not just take a hair dryer to it? Or hot water or something? Melt it off.”
“Something about wax and string getting all slimy and then sliding down m– ugh, no.” He shivered even thinking about it, and though Johnny laughed at him, he completely agreed.
Silence followed. There was no television here to stare at - though, to be fair, Johnny and Edgar had sworn off of hotel televisions no matter how clean the room - nothing to claim to be staring at, nothing to even pretend to occupy either of their attentions. Edgar relished it. Closeness almost just for the sake of closeness. ‘Almost’ because he was sure this would somehow end in a joke at his expense, but Johnny’s defense mechanism bothered him less and less as time went on. Jabs at Edgar’s worthiness as a person or at his grammar or resemblance to Jimmy were more often interpreted as Johnny’s twisted renditions of ‘I love you’ and Edgar found he not only began to enjoy them, but sometimes participated in them. Maybe making fun of himself meant ‘I love you, too,’ in Johnny-speak.
The tiniest bits of Johnny’s song drifted through Edgar’s mind when Johnny fell asleep where he sat. Though he knew the kind of hell his shoulder would be feeling later, Edgar sat and just listened. If he timed it just right, Edgar discovered his own song sounded a bit better with Johnny’s weaving through it.
*****
Tenna took a wrong turn somewhere after she’d slowed down the van so the group could stare at an accident on the road. Johnny assured her she wouldn’t even have to slow down on her own, since everyone slowed down near accidents, despite that all the people that had been hurt already were, in fact, hurt, and being hit by another car wouldn’t really worsen their situation. He’d been right, but he hadn’t been paying attention to where Tenna went when the accident was out of view.
“We just passed some stuff about a Safari Sam’s,” he said distantly, ignoring a request for directions or a map. “We could just turn around, get some pizza and raid the ball pits.”
“And what?” Devi asked angrily. “Tell them we’ve all got a glandular problem and we’re really nine years old?”
“Edgar looks a lot younger without the beard,” Tenna pointed out cheerily. “Does anyone else remember that?”
“I do,” Jimmy replied, nodding. He sat cross-legged on the floor behind Tenna, reading a trashy magazine and laughing at the rumors inside. “Devi, this one thinks you’re pregnant! This is hilarious!”
“What?” Devi reached around from the front seat and snatched the magazine from Jimmy’s grasp. She turned page after page with an increasing expression of disgust and confusion. “We’ve never even been to a beach together! Where would they get photos like this?”
Johnny leaned over the seat and peered into the magazine from over Devi’s shoulder. “It’s doctored, come on.” He pointed at a picture of the woman with Devi’s head and jabbed at it a few times, “You don’t have a mole on your thigh like that. It’s someone else.”
“What, not going to offer to clear it up for me at a show?”
“Not going to ask me to?” He rolled his eyes and switched to leaning on Tenna’s seat. “Pizza and a ballpit, Tenna?”
“You want us to crash a small child’s birthday party, Nny?” Her grip on the wheel tightened.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“I vote we go and leave Devi in the car so she doesn’t accidentally kill the baby,” Jimmy added from the back. Johnny ducked at precisely the right moment to avoid being hit by Devi’s boots as she tore out of the seat. With the scuffle and some shrieking as background noise, Johnny asked again.
“Pizza and ballpit?”
“Fuck you, Johnny,” Tenna grumbled as she veered onto the exit ramp. Johnny sat back, satisfied, and contented himself with watching Devi try to bite Jimmy’s wrists off while he tried to avoid being kneed between the legs.
“Whoa, whoa, out of bounds! Below the belt!” Edgar called from behind a seat. Devi and Jimmy ignored him, Devi because she was winning, Jimmy probably because his brain had been knocked offline. Tenna told them all they were going to Hell.
*****
The building had been around for a while. The atmosphere was dirty and actually smelled as though it had avoided more than a few lawsuits in its time. An animatronic band of animal mascots clanged in the background, and much of what had been the building’s color scheme had flaked away. The décor was supposed to be something like a jungle, but whatever budget they’d had for it ten years ago had never gone up and had probably decreased, as some of the vines were deflated, and the ones that weren’t had faded to an ugly grayish blue. The ones painted on the walls had pleasantries like ‘fuck’ and ‘AF was here’ chipped out of them.
Some poor teenager in a giant yellow monkey suit greeted Johnny and the others with exaggerated pantomime which Johnny mimicked back at him until the guy inside the suit realized the group didn’t have any kids with them.
“It’s okay,” Tenna said to the monkey-man as the rest of the group walked by him, “we’re with the band.” She gestured to the robotic monstrosities on the wall, patted his shoulder knowingly, and then strolled into the main room with the others.
They sent Edgar to the front desk to quiz the girl there about the sanitation levels of the giant tubes while the others snuck into the back corner of the building where the private parties were being held. Johnny charmed his way in to one easily, and with most of the kids locked on him and his blue hair, Jimmy shuffled pizza on plates out the door to Devi, who glared menacingly at any children who came too close.
Pizza secured, Tenna slipped into the jungle gym and shoved a few kids around while Devi snuck out with Jimmy in tow. Once Tenna had enough of the kids fighting and tearing at each other to cause a scene, she waved for Johnny to cut down on the charming and screamed something about a blood-bath to get the attention of the woman that Edgar had been distracting.
As they slinked away from the front desk and under some play equipment to eat their pizza in peace, Johnny heard the woman who’d been at the desk shriek that there was too much blood and he cackled into his pepperoni. Monkey-man, rather than ratting them out, took off his monkey head, held it over his heart, and bowed in their direction before meandering off to the Skee-Ball stations along the far wall, far away from the bleeding children.
“Okay,” Tenna said through a mouthful of pizza, “I take back everything I said about thinking this was retarded.”
“We haven’t even seen the best parts yet,” Johnny grinned at her.
They didn’t fit in a few of the tubes, which, after talking to the woman at the desk, Edgar declared no interest in going into anyway, so after trying out a few of the more dangerous toys and games, the group dove into the ball pits they came for.
With the kids still in a bloody birthday party uproar, a few stray ‘adults’ had no problems claiming the pit as their own. Jimmy cleared most of the children out by threatening to eat them in German and Johnny had a few of the larger kids swear allegiance to him and used them as sentinels to guard the mesh gates and the tubes leading into the pit. When anyone approached the entrances, Johnny’s guards beat them with the hardest shoes they could find on the shoe rack. Johnny expressed disappointment that women with stilettos were so rarely storing their shoes there. Jimmy and Edgar both sent him nervous glances.
Devi and Tenna managed to create a wall of the rainbow-colored plastic balls and took to lobbing balls (and some other things they found at the bottom of the pit) at Jimmy and Edgar. Edgar, proving to be surprisingly into the game, grabbed one of the sentinels from the front mesh and used him as a meat shield until Jimmy built a wall of balls, shoes and lost prizes. The boy was quickly tossed up to be a casualty of war and crawled back to his post, a little shaken.
Johnny watched from the sidelines, pleased with everything and just enjoying the view, until Jimmy unleashed a deadly weapon that destroyed both ball forts in mere moments.
A lost retainer.
Devi, usually not one to react drastically to disgusting things, got the offending mouth piece stuck her hair when Jimmy threw it. She yelled for Tenna to just chop the ponytail off, it wasn’t worth saving, while Jimmy and Edgar mocked her from the other corner.
“No, Tenna!” Jimmy gasped dramatically, pulling the back of his hand to his forehead and falling into Edgar’s lap. “Save yourself! Kill me now! I’ll be a tooth zombie within hours!”
Edgar shook Jimmy’s shoulders with one hand, while holding the other to his chest. “Never! True love will triumph over any misaligned roots in our way!”
“Fuck you both!” Devi hollered from the other end of the pit, trying to fight her way out of Tenna’s grip. In her frustration, she began throwing balls wildly, most of them hitting the mesh walls of the enclosure and falling flat with a dull click, but one managed to hit Johnny.
Once Johnny was in the game, all allegiances were broken. Devi hit Tenna with something that was neither retainer nor plastic ball and Jimmy cracked Edgar in the jaw with a pink size three sneaker. Footing was nearly impossible to get a hold of, even as people several feet taller than the usual Safari Sam’s patron. Johnny, who usually moved so fluidly, tripped on the hell-coat and his own feet more often than on the plastic mess that made up the floor. He was a decent shot if he stayed still, though it wasn’t hard to hit people in the tiny space.
Edgar preferred ducking under shots thrown at him and then striking when the others were unarmed. Jimmy told him it was horribly unsportsmanlike to attack an unarmed man before Devi smacked Jimmy in the temple with a red ball. He yelled something about her still being on Tenna’s team.
“Of course I am,” she said, smiling sweetly at Jimmy while nailing Johnny in the shoulder with a yellow ball, “I’m hitting you guys much harder.”
“Devi, I believe that sounds borderline sexist,” Edgar offered, ducking under the ball she threw at him and throwing something, it looked like a small stuffed animal, at Tenna.
“Do you think so?” She blocked a shoe from Jimmy.
“Oh, absolutely. I mean, really,” he dodged a ball from Johnny, “if you look at it, Tenna’s pretty solid, and Johnny,” dodged another, “could probably be broken right in half with one of these if you hit him on just the right spot.”
“Since if you’re offering this knowledge, Edgar,” Tenna said deviously, catching a ball that had come at her from parts unknown, “you want to share where that spot is?”
For once, Tenna attempts at flustering Edgar failed, and he only laughed at her, “I can’t tell you things like that, that’d be kind of horrible of me.” A stray ball bounced off of his shoulder.
“He doesn’t know where it is, Tenna,” Devi yelled over Jimmy’s plastic war-cry, "or we’d have seen Johnny broken already!” A yellow ball from Edgar hit Devi’s ear and Jimmy crashed into the floor beside her in an explosion of colors.
“The next time I go to Hell,” Johnny yelled from a far corner of the pit, “I’m taking you all with me!”
“Aw, Nny, you’d take all of us?” Jimmy asked sweetly after a toy he threw hit Edgar’s neck.
“Yeah, you too,” Johnny said, stumbling closer to the others. “I think I’d use you as a footstool.”
“Maybe Johnny can find Jimmy’s breaking-in-half point, eh?” Tenna grinned and elbowed Devi suggestively, who responded by snapping a ball in Tenna’s face.
“God, was she always like this?” Edgar asked, getting Devi’s attention by tossing a shoe at her hip.
“Edgar, do not make me make a ‘balls’ joke. If you make me go there, I promise you go home with a squeak toy from the prize rack in your throat,” Devi dented the green ball in her hand to emphasize her threat.
“And yes,” Johnny added, answering Edgar’s question, “I think Tenna was always like this.”
“She knew you guys were happening before you were actually happening,” Jimmy bounced another toy off of Edgar’s head. “And she reminded us often.”
“I’m not sure I’m okay with the wording of that,” Edgar said.
He backed into the mesh wall and leaned against it for some vague sort of support while he threw whatever he had at the others. The collection of stuff being thrown had grown from the balls, toys and shoes provided for them, to objects found in pockets and a few things that no one would confess being the originator of. The little guards Johnny had set up had long since fled, and no new kids felt safe joining into a game involving large people in black swearing loudly and laughing gleefully at the mention of breaking each other.
The fight continued, banter and swearing included until it grew into pushing and tripping and the plastic rainbow around them became only an obstacle and a dunking opportunity. Teams were re-established, with Johnny as an outside force of his own again. He protested that it wasn’t fair for him to be alone since Jimmy was so much better at keeping his footing, but, for once, no one seemed to be listening to him.
Things blurred together in a mass of colors and yelling and children’s shoes. Despite what Johnny had yelled about, Jimmy fell over just as many times as he did, if not more. Tenna was not far behind. Edgar had amazing balance and control in the sea of plastic and faltered only once, when, in an attempt to work his way into a team, Johnny grabbed onto Edgar’s wrist and pinned it against the mesh walls. He twisted Edgar’s wrist until Edgar dropped whatever ammo he’d been armed with. Despite attacks from all sides, Johnny never moved and remained there pinning Edgar to the mesh until Edgar’s knees gave him up for dead. Edgar grabbed Johnny’s coat as he slid down the net, and Johnny simply laughed at him.
For some reason that the others and their plastic bullets couldn’t decipher, mocking Edgar and stealing a position on his team for a childish game of “Hit Other People” involved kissing him against the mesh net that held the entire game together.
It was then the sound effects of monkey screeches and lion roars were loudly interrupted on the loudspeaker.
“If the disgusting shenanigans in the ball pit could be put to a halt and its participants escorted out of the building-”
“Funny that she only mentions us back here when something looks gay,” Tenna grumped, crossing her arms. “We had to have screamed ‘fuck’ a good twenty times.”
The woman’s voice on the loudspeaker repeated her announcement until she, like the monkeys before her, was cut off. The music that replaced her almost sounded like it belonged in a children’s playground, but not quite.
“I don't get you …
I can't forget what you've forgotten”
“Don’t we know this one?” Edgar asked, still pinned between Johnny and the net-wall.
“Yeah…” Devi nodded. No one could see her feet specifically under the layer of rainbow plastic, but the way a few of them bobbed in time with the music showed she knew this song particularly well.
“Don't Cry Out…
Cease Fire…”
“Hey guys?” Johnny’s voice sounded smaller than usual. No one listened.
“Ten nine eight and I'm breaking away
I'm all dressed up and I'm ready to play
Seven six five four and I'm all over you
Counting three two one and I'm having fun...”
“Guys, we need to leave.” Again, he was met with nothing. Johnny let go of Edgar, who slid down the net and into the pit without the support. The noise seemed to be enough to get the others from staring at the speakers overhead. “Guys, really.”
“I needed you to notice…
That’s all I wanted…”
“Nny, what the hell? Since when are you bothered by people in uniform telling you to do something?” Even Jimmy wasn’t keen on listening.
“Okay,” Johnny said, gesturing to nothing at all, “do we all remember the thing in the hotel?”
“In a playground?!”
“Can we go now?”
A request. From Johnny.
“Don't Cry Out…
Cease Fire…”
Edgar pried himself off the floor and started shuffling toward the exit, pulling Johnny along with him. “I think we should go.”
The others followed, in various states of protest, trailing balls and toys and some general trash out of the enclosure with them. Devi threw the retainer at Johnny's back. Somewhere by the front desk, Johnny burst into gibberish, but no one saw what caused it. The only word they understood was ‘van,’ so, after bowing back to Monkey-man, they climbed back in, and Tenna took them to the road.
A few miles away, Johnny returned to normal, and lamented that they hadn’t stolen nearly enough pizza and that he never saw the bleeding kid. Tenna threatened to throw him in a ditch.