ISH -Games Without Frontiers-

I’m Still Here
The 6th gate
Lady Yate-xel

Edgar decided that there was little to gain from thinking too hard. He was fairly sure it was what had gotten him into the mess that had led up to Johnny’s temporary death, and he felt sure it was leading him down a similar path now. Thinking too hard in a universe where small children dropped into ditches from the sky and the Anti-Christ plotted to kill people at dramatically appropriate moments while feeding them cookies and information in the meantime just didn’t seem to be worth it. Unfortunately, it was a tough habit to break.

Lying on his bed, with blankets and sheets and pillows twisted around both of them, Edgar had Johnny beside him; curled around nothing and breathing oddly in his sleep. Some sheets and a pillow were tangled around Johnny’s ankle and he was using his own forearm instead of said pillow. Edgar often wondered why Johnny insisted on starting out every night in such a traditional manner as ‘head on pillow, body under blanket’ when he so infrequently met the morning that way. Johnny still didn’t particularly enjoy sleeping and frequently stayed up until Edgar dragged him, delirious and usually hungry, to bed.

When Johnny’s breathing evened out, Edgar felt comfortable enough to stare at the door that had just shown up weeks ago. They hadn’t opened it since Jimmy and Devi had seen it and remembered whatever it was that they were keeping to themselves. This was what Edgar had grown tired of thinking about, but his brain wouldn’t let him put it to rest. Not only had Jimmy and Devi remembered something that had burst from that room, but Johnny had too. And whatever it was, the man currently twisting the sheets tighter and tighter around his feet had plainly said he wasn’t interested in sharing.

Edgar remembered too. He remembered being released from a disturbed man’s house, leaving and finding his own house gone. The police couldn’t see him, and all roads had led back to the madman’s deteriorating shack. Resigned to the fact that he should have died anyway, and he was surely going to die if no one could see him, he had returned to the filthy house. That Johnny had been disappointed in Edgar.

“Thought you were smart enough not to come slithering back here.”

Some circular and smooth talking later and Edgar had been allowed back inside “for some cheese.”

Things continued in this slightly broken way for a time. Edgar remembered many instances of coming back to the house, and several times that he offered Freezies and movies in return for consideration for his life. One day, Johnny had joked with him upon opening the door and things relaxed after that. The person Edgar remembered and had been best friends with was the person who cracked that joke and was the same person who he begged to be able to make happy upon both of their deaths.

The same person lying next to him now.

The same person he had never once had feelings of love toward before this life started.

Whether his feelings were real in any way turned out to be as all-consuming as wondering what Johnny had remembered. Said feelings were deep, intense, and by this point, Edgar imagined, irreversible. He had few feelings he could compare them to, thinking that only ‘wish to continue breathing’ was close. He felt afraid that he’d just been given an extra store of potential feeling and he’d flooded the damn thing, or that the people upstairs had seen that he had the inclination to care and artificially amplified it to a level that would have been obsession if Edgar were the creepy type.

But it wasn’t obsession or stalker-y hero-worship, Edgar reasoned, gently touching Johnny’s hair when he flailed a little in his sleep. For the most part, the relationship was equal, so it wasn’t that Edgar was putting himself in a sick sort of serving position. Johnny loved him and viewed him as someone on the same level as himself. Edgar had had to glean this knowledge from context and from Johnny’s particular brand of ‘love by omission’ (“If I’m not running away, I still like you.”), but that Johnny loved him was certain. Abandoning Johnny logic and applying the type generally used by the rest of the population, they wouldn’t be in their current positions at all if Johnny didn’t feel something.

The core of Edgar’s feeling wasn’t sexual or predatory, either. An attraction was there, and Edgar even found Johnny to be kind of beautiful in the way he moved and how frightening he could be, but it was neither the reason all this had started nor why it continued. Edgar had just wanted to be close to someone he found amazing and fascinating and wished desperately to make that person happy.

About the most innocent, sappy, white light and fluffy love that Heaven had to offer to all of its citizens who tried to do something good for someone else, Edgar thought bitterly. Part of him felt horrified that he’d just been bitter about being in love with Johnny and he pulled Johnny closer to him in an attempt to negate it. Johnny twitched and said something about bees before falling silent again.

Despite all these feelings, despite that Johnny often reported that he felt them when Edgar kissed him, Johnny was keeping what he had remembered from Edgar, and had not so much as brought the door up again after Stephanie had asked her last question about it. Keeping secrets? Trying to play the martyr and not share something painful? Edgar smiled at the thought of that being sort of in-character for Johnny, wondered if that was the right brand of selfish for him, and tried to see it in Johnny’s face.

It was hard to see anything but someone catching up on sleep he kept insisting he didn’t need. Johnny often fell asleep on Edgar in strange places and at stranger times, but they were the few times that Edgar was sure Johnny slept. The act of actually going to bed always involved Edgar falling asleep first, and he felt almost certain that aside from a few instances like the one he was enjoying presently, Johnny did nothing like sleeping and just read or plotted things from his side of the mattress.

So there he was, sharing a bed with someone he carried a great amount of potentially artificial love for, and that person was blissfully carrying important secrets around with him and finding so few problems with keeping them that he was actually sleeping.

“Ow, what the fuck?”

Johnny’s voice startled Edgar, and he released what had been an ever increasingly tight hold on Johnny’s ribs.

“Sorry. You okay?”

“Yeah, you’ve probably punctured a lung, but I’m fine.” Johnny shifted his shoulders and tugged purposefully at some sheets he’d twisted beyond usefulness. He flailed around dramatically, getting stuck for a moment or two, but once he was through fussing with them, he settled back into his sleeping position as though he’d actually had a ‘degree of twisted’ preference and had satisfactorily adjusted it.

“Nny, do you ever think about that door?” Edgar asked. He knew it was coming from nowhere as far as Johnny would be concerned, but he thought maybe groggy was a good time to get Johnny to answer – he wouldn’t be thinking too far into the future.

“Mmm,” came the muffled reply.

“I- Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?”

“Uh-huh,” Johnny repeated, lifting his head so he could be understood. Edgar had actually expected elaboration and waited for it to come, but when it didn’t, he wasn’t terribly surprised.

“You remembered something from it, didn’t you?” Edgar asked as casually as he might about the location of his keys.

“Yes.”

“I did, too. It’s been bothering me.” Edgar tightened his arms around Johnny again, hopefully as comfort and persuasion. “Can you tell me about what you remembered?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Johnny yawned. “I don’t want to.”

Edgar thought he should have seen this coming. There wasn’t a single noble motivation around the entire thing at all - just that Johnny didn’t want to share. No martyr, no cause, not protecting - just standard selfish Johnny.

“Fine,” Edgar answered, surprising even himself. Perhaps he was sleepier than he’d thought. “Then, at least, I want to tell you what I remembered.”

“Okay. Wake me up when you’re done,” Johnny said, tucking a pillow under his elbow.

“Hey, I’m serious!” Edgar squeezed Johnny’s ribs to punctuate his outburst and the squeak Johnny let out didn’t bother him as much as it should have.

“I was joking, Edgar, jeez,” Johnny muttered, rubbing his side. “Tell me whatever stories you want. Put some rabbits in it or something, keep me awake.”

Edgar raised an eyebrow that he knew wouldn’t be seen and took a breath.

“I remembered things from how we used to be. From the life we lived before I asked for this one.” Johnny nodded against the sheet, eyes closed, and Edgar continued. “We were good friends. At least, as good as we could be when you were…”

“Fucking crazy,” Johnny supplied.

“All right, ‘fucking crazy’. Good. Anyway, I… I thought pretty well of you, you know? All things considered, anyway. But even when we died, even when I was asking for you to come with me and be happy and everything, I didn’t…,” he moved a hand from Johnny’s side to brush some hair out of his eyes, “I didn’t love you.”

“Okay,” Johnny replied, clearly waiting for more of the story.

“Thaaat’s it.”

“So?”

“So, I guess I’m worried. I came to this life knowing nothing but the exact same feelings I have now, and I have no idea where they came from, or what the reasoning is.” Edgar pressed his cheek against Johnny’s shoulder. “I think it might be fake.”

“Fake.”

Edgar was silent, trying to read Johnny’s tone, but without being able to see his expression, he was even harder to interpret than usual. Johnny picked Edgar’s arm off of him and turned over, firmly wiring his feet in the cluster of sheets at the base of the bed. He looked at Edgar, his face only inches away, and asked again.

“Fake?”

“It’s like I didn’t even have a choice. And it’s not that I’m not happy with the choice, because I am, and I don’t want to change it, but it’s not a choice I made myself. They just put it on there. Like I’m giving you something cheap.”

“No. It doesn’t work like that.”

“But I… I have never felt any different than I do now. Even when we first met and you pinned me to that damn beanbag, I felt the same then as I do right now.” Edgar tried to express how much this distressed him without accidentally hinting, falsely, that he wanted out of the whole thing. “I feel more now if there’s any difference at all, but there’s never been a time when it wasn’t there.”

“You had a choice,” Johnny told him. He didn’t sound angry.

“How? You don’t get it, I-“

“You had a choice. I gave you plenty of choices.”

“But deciding to go be with you or whatever isn’t the same as developing feelings for you.”

“You had every fucking choice in the world, Edgar,” Johnny sounded a little groggy still, but more insistent. “I was cruel to you. I invaded your house and insulted you. I made you visible when you didn’t want to be and I sat and watched you while you were sitting in your own vomit. I compared you to Jimmy.” The tone on his last statement seemed to indicate he thought it to be the worst offense. “And you came back every time.”

“I don’t know…”

“And you think those guys who couldn’t even come up with some lame parents for you could make you feel something that stood up to that? If anything, you decided to do it, and then they kicked it into gear.”

“But then it’s still-“

“Do you know what I remembered?” Johnny asked, sounding a little foggy.

“What?”

“I loved you first,” he said, winding his fingers into the sheets next to Edgar’s neck. “The me before loved the you before. They sent you here with all that because you asked to make him happy,” Johnny’s speech was faltering, “and he’s happy with it.”

“‘Is’? Present?”

“I remember being someone who wanted you to notice that he felt. I’m happy. He’s happy.” Johnny let go of the sheet and curled against Edgar. “You had plenty of choices.”

He said nothing else for the remainder of the night, except something in his sleep about ‘the god damned bees.’

****

Stephanie wasn’t sure she liked sleeping in Uncle Jimmy’s house. He was always super nice to her and told her she was the likely to be the ‘damn smartest kid in the whole town’, but his house was not as friendly at night. She’d long ago gotten over wanting to sleep with someone, especially after Johnny had thrown a fit when she snuck in to sleep next to Edgar during her first week in his house. She was too old for that now anyway, but still, Jimmy’s house creaked and sounded like it would fall apart if the wind was too strong at night.

What she wanted were Johnny’s keys. Johnny could go anywhere when he had those, and if Stephanie had them, she could leave the house, and go to the school. She could stay in the old choir room and sleep in the beanbags. Edgar had told her that he used to sleep there when he and Johnny were younger. The idea was fascinating and alluring, as much as Stephanie loved having her own room, and her own bed.

Or almost her own. Lately, she didn’t feel terribly welcome. Everyone was making a fuss over being or not being parents, and how much she apparently looked like Johnny. Stephanie didn’t see the resemblance at all. Maybe they had similar skin and now they both had crazy hair, but they had to see how that wasn’t enough. She was a girl, for fuck’s sake.

Edgar normally asked her not to talk like that. Uncle Jimmy and Johnny always thought it was hilarious. She thought the word felt therapeutic, but always held it in for Edgar, even if she often caught him using the same word.

She sighed and looked around the room. Uncle Jimmy’s living room was always full of weird things, and his couch was a little lumpy but still comfortable. He had posters on his wall, most of them of his own band. He kept all the ones that showed him and Johnny in the front or close together. Stephanie knew how creepy even she found that, and Aunt Devi had mentioned it being really disturbing to her as well. Jimmy had said that at least he wasn’t lurking in windows anymore and the issue was quickly dropped.

In a way, though, she felt bad. Uncle Jimmy really wasn’t so bad. He was a bit dirtier than Edgar, in all sorts of ways, but so was Aunt Devi. Uncle Jimmy wanted something he couldn’t have, and Stephanie wondered if she had something in common with him on that level. Hers just wasn’t as creepy.

Edgar had kicked her out again. Because Johnny said so. Asked so. Demanded so. Johnny really could do everything.

She stared at the ceiling, part of which she thought had been repaired recently only because it looked cleaner than the rest, and wished she could see the sky. She wanted to sleep in the van again, to be everyone’s in the van again, and fall asleep watching the stars out the back window instead of the water stains on the ceiling. It was less comfortable physically than being in her own room, but on some kind of emotional level she was sure kids her age weren’t supposed to be pondering, the van was the most comfortable place in the world.

*****

Aunt Devi picked her up in the morning, leaving only after arguing about why she should be returning Stephanie rather than Uncle Jimmy. Stephanie didn’t understand what the fuss was about, but she found she didn’t care enough to try to find out.

Johnny answered the door to Edgar’s house and seemed surprised to see people there.

“Oh, it’s you.”

“Nice to see you, too, Nny. Brought her back reasonably improved. You guys owe me for the glasses.”

They exchanged a look for a flash of a moment, and then laughed at something. Stephanie didn’t know what. She usually paid more attention than this, but felt like she wanted a closet to sit in for hours rather than pay attention to anything at all. She slipped by Johnny, who was still laughing over the weird something with Aunt Devi, and tried to sneak upstairs unseen.

Edgar saw her anyway.

“Hey, those look pretty good!”

The glasses. Everyone was making such a damn fuss about them one way or another that she was growing annoyed. She tore the glasses off and did her best glaring face in Edgar’s direction. He responded with an uncomfortable expression.

“Does this look like someone to you?” she asked angrily, pointing to her glasses-less face.

“It’s a convincing Pepito,” Edgar answered.

She made a frustrated noise and continued her way up the stairs, tripping over one part-way up. When Edgar made a move to help her, she scaled the stairs on all fours, calling that she’d meant to fall and she was fine.

*****

Devi had decided to stay, and was sitting in the living room enjoying some tea in a flavor that Edgar had forgotten he had.

“What’s wrong with her?” Edgar asked, nodding toward the stairs as he reentered the room.

“I’m not sure,” Devi answered, distracted by the smell of her tea.

“She seems so angry.” Edgar thought if he just kept supplying hints, perhaps Devi would cave in.

“I think she’s having some kind of identity crisis.” Devi took a long sip from the cup. Johnny sat nearby in the pink chair, but remained silent. It was just Edgar on the couch while Devi sat on a folding chair and it made him feel a little off balance.

“Identity crisis? She’s a little girl. If what Nny keeps telling me is true, she’s only been around a few months! What’s there to be worried about so early?”

“I think you just spelled it out,” Devi replied. “She came into being like the goddesses she reads about; just popped out of the sky one day. She has no family, no parents, no friends, yet feels as old as she looks. And with how she looks, of course she’s going crazy.”

“I had no part in that haircut,” Edgar defended.

“That’s not what I mean,” Devi said quickly.

“You can’t say things like that and not tell me.”

“Does she look odd to you?” Devi asked, leaning forward in her chair, eyeing Edgar suspiciously.

“No, not at all! She asked me the same thing when she came in, what’s going on?”

“Okay, look,” Devi set down her teacup. “Let me say that it is not what it looks like, and that I might as well show you, because you’re going to see it anyway.” She glanced apologetically at Johnny, whose posture suddenly took on the air of bracing for something and took Edgar upstairs.

“You’ve got a picture of her by now, I imagine?” Devi asked as they climbed the stairs and rounded the corner into Edgar’s room.

“Um, yeah, right after we bleached her hair,” Edgar answered. He was still unsure what was happening, but went for the picture anyway.

“I thought you had nothing to do with the hair.”

“Mostly,” he said, holding the photo out for her to take. Devi glanced at it for only a moment, and then flipped the picture around in Edgar’s hand so that he was now looking at the image. In the same motion, she held up a picture he hadn’t seen before of a much younger Johnny with an uncomfortable looking Jimmy beside him. Both photos hit him at once.

“Oh my god.”

“You see now?” Devi lowered her arm and pocketed the photo of Johnny quickly. “Now don’t freak out about it, okay? Like I said, it’s nothing like what it looks like even though it looks insane. I asked him about it and everything. It’s weird to him, but it’s nothing.”

“I think I’m concerned about how hard you’re trying to convince me of this,” Edgar muttered, staring at Devi’s pocket, the image on the photo burned into his memory. “I mean, if she’s not some weird sibling of his, then-”

“I’m trying because I know you’re going to analyze it to death, just like you did when Johnny – before.”

“I’ll be fine,” Edgar told her. He was fairly certain he was lying to her, but he wasn’t going to let on. It was a terrible suspicion, but Devi wasn’t going to get rid of it so easily. He’d try his luck with Johnny and hope he could read a lie if he heard one.

“Good, good,” Devi sighed, obviously relieved. “I’ll get going then, I just didn’t want you to freak out.”

“Of course not.”

When she shut the door, he wanted nothing more than to freak out.

*****

“I can’t believe you told him, Devi.”

“He was going to figure it out, he’s not retarded.”

“But you were so bitchy about getting her glasses that obstructed it, and now-”

“I don’t know. I just wanted to.”

“Just so we know it’s not my fault when he wigs out.”

“Fuck you, Tenna.”

****

Edgar rehearsed things in his head. He had weeks of action planned out from single point in time in a myriad of directions. This could all spiral down hill and, from his planning, he knew just what valley it would settle in. Similarly, it could be fine, and he knew just how to keep it up.

She looked like Johnny. Eerily so. Edgar thought that aside from the glasses and the lacking of a certain chromosome, she could be Johnny. She was proving to be just as moody as Johnny and just as weird, if only more restrained about it.

He thought about the odds of such things momentarily, but remembered that the odds of anything that had happened to him since the whole Anti-Christ fiasco were painfully small. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible. Considering what Devi had told him when they went shopping with Stephanie, it seemed to line up.

Johnny appeared oblivious, but Edgar knew better than to assume by this point.

“So those photos were pretty weird,” Edgar said, dropping onto a couch cushion.

“She showed you, too?”

“Yes. And she seemed awfully convinced she needed to steer me away from certain conclusions.”

Johnny turned his head to look at Edgar. His expression said he suspected exactly what Edgar was getting at, but he was still surprised by it. “You’re not even…”

“And if I am? What are the odds that we find some kid who looks just like you on the side of the road? And you, of all people in the van, are all, ‘Oh hey, guys, let’s keep her! It’ll be fun and I can totally handle this and not take any kind of responsibility for it because I’m Johnny and you all love me!’ What is that?! That’s suspicious! That’s weird!”

“That’s wrong,” Johnny growled in response.

“And I’m thinking Devi, because with those details, it’s like this all just lines up in a-!”

“Those details? Lines up?!” Johnny rose from his seat and stood in front of Edgar. “So, you somehow missed Devi getting gigantic; OR, some six years ago, this girl happened and we left her in a ditch where she miraculously survived for us to just stumble upon later?! What the fuck, Edgar?”

“Can you blame me? Have you seen? I-”

“Since this seems to what your logic is based in, let’s look at her, hmm?” Johnny gestured toward the stairs, and Edgar’s heart jumped for a moment, thinking Stephanie was sitting there overhearing this whole thing. Thankfully, she was nowhere to be seen and Johnny appeared to be simply referencing the last place he’d seen her.

“You look and until a while ago, she was six. Six. Which would have made Devi fourteen or something!” Edgar tried to protest, but Johnny continued, leaning onto the couch cushion to talk in Edgar’s face. “And even if she was really only a few hours old when we found her, guess where I was for those few hours?”

“I didn’t- It’s not like that’s impossib-”

“With you.” Johnny looked disgusted. Had Johnny been anyone else, had his relationship with Edgar been any different, Edgar felt sure Johnny would have spit in his face.

“All right, all right, fine. It just… I didn’t think about the logic behind it quite enough. With the kinds of things that happen anymore, I didn’t even think it needed more thought than I gave it.” He had a hard time making eye contact. “I’m used to supernatural shit just dropping in on us, I thought - god, I thought phantom children were pretty routine.” Edgar tried not to laugh too hard, in case the situation was still serious, but let a trace of humor leak through.

Johnny moved from his previous threatening position and twisted into the cushion next to Edgar. “Devi told you?”

“She showed me the picture of you and Jimmy.”

“Not that.”

“Oh.” Edgar let out a breath, then shook his head. “That doesn’t bother me. It’s strange, but it’s not something I wouldn’t expect from you two.”

Johnny raised an eyebrow.

“Because it’s strange, I mean,” Edgar added. “Not… yeah, that didn’t come out right.”

“You’ve got quite a habit of doing that.”

“I think it’s just you that does it to me.”

“Why?”

“You’ve always made me act a little weird. It’s just you.”

“Thanks, I guess.”

“Can I ask where you think she’s from, then?”

Johnny sighed. “That wouldn’t mean confirming it, you know.”

“I know, but you’d have a better idea than me.”

“Would I?”

“This is just your territory, you know?”

“Crazy shit? Maybe. But you know it just as well. Where do you think she’s from, Edgar?”

Edgar’s turn to sigh. “Pepito,” he answered reluctantly.

“That’s what I would have said,” Johnny replied, “had I not talked to Devi.”

“What?”

“Devi got the glasses from Pepito, but he doesn’t know where she’s from. He told Devi he got the glasses from ‘upstairs’.”

“What, she’s like a gift from the people who sent the book?”

Johnny shrugged, but didn’t say anything. Edgar continued to ask as though just asking the right question the right way would open up an answer.

“What’s there to watch now, though? You’re not slated to fall down dead at the drop of happiness anymore, and I’m not … are they watching me for something now? Is it Hell watching?”

“You doing something worth watching?” Johnny asked jokingly.

Something pinged in Edgar’s chest. Was visiting Tess something worth watching him for? She did have the potential to be some kind of agent from Hell, or even to be unknowingly connected to it like Johnny had been. She also knew things about Johnny’s wall monster, or at least claimed to.

“I don’t think so,” Edgar lied, with a dismissive wave. “It’s probably something dumb like putting my shoe on my left foot first or something.”

“Maybe Banshee is some kinda test for you.”

“Is there some reason no one up there is ever up front about this shit? ‘Hey, Edgar, we’re just gonna send you a small child that looks like Nny, issat cool?’”

“‘Word.’”

“Shut up, you know what I mean. The voice was for effect.”

Johnny crossed his arms and appeared to be concentrating intensely on the conversation.

“We also have no idea why she’s growing like she is,” he said.

“Maybe whoever sent her wants her to be big enough to do whatever she was sent for.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that. So if we’re going for the ‘Banshee was sent to us instead of the book’ theory, maybe we can try to narrow it to ‘why’ if not ‘by who’.” Johnny poked at a loose thread on Edgar’s shoulder as he as spoke.

“It wasn’t to see if I could teach a small child anything, since she came pre-equipped with that, and you’re clearly better at it, decent lessons or not.”

“I think I’d be really weirded out if they were testing to see how well you dealt with children, honestly.”

“What, you mean checking how I play out on the ‘Dad-O-Meter’ somewhere or something?”

Johnny made a face like he’d suddenly tasted something very bitter.

“Sorry,” Edgar said.

“You’ve figured that out by now, right?” Johnny rested the side of his head on Edgar’s arm and stared across the room into the fireplace.

“That Ban-,” Edgar shook his head, “Stephanie is starting to see me like that? Yeah, I get it.”

“And?”

“And what? What do I do?”

“You decide how you’re going to respond to that. The earlier the better.”

“Preferences?”

“Do mine matter?”

“Of course they do.”

“I don’t think so. Not in this case.”

Edgar wished then that he had been recording everything and could share it with Tess. He’d report it to her later, of course, but along with every other positive thing Johnny had ever done, Tess wouldn’t even consider it possible, or she’d counter with four other ‘bad’ things Johnny had done to negate it.

“So why else, then?” Johnny asked. “Why send some weird kid to us specifically?”

“It’s sounding more plausible all the time that it’s just to fuck with us.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, really. Pissed, yes. Surprised, not so much.”

“What I don’t understand, obviously by now, is why she looks like you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You do see it, don’t you? The resemblance?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

“It makes me wonder if she’s supposed to be some kind of effigy for someone to burn later instead of me.”

“Why would people want to attack you?”

“Why not?”

“Then why wouldn’t they do it forwardly? Why make a little girl-shaped scapegoat instead? They were so okay with killing you before.”

“No idea.”

“She’s really not related to you? Not some reincarnated niece or anything?”

“I can only remember what the last versions of me remembered. They weren’t stable enough to process more than a few people at a time as far as I can figure. If I had relatives – if he had relatives, he didn’t know about them.”

“Can we ask her?”

“What, ‘Hey Banshee, are you Johnny’s mystical twin sister from the past’?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“You’re serious.”

“Yeah, actually.”

Johnny laughed, but, as was becoming more common lately, the laugh wasn’t truly aimed at Edgar.

“Go ahead, if you want to risk throwing her into a blinding rage.”

“Why would she be angry?”

“I would be.”

Suddenly, all of Johnny’s comparisons of himself to Stephanie and back again made sense.

“She’s not- You don’t think she really is you, do you?”

“Banshee’s a girl, Edgar.”

“But I mean, some aspect of you?”

“It kind of pisses me off that I can’t write that off as total shit,” Johnny grumbled.

“So that’s weirdly plausible, then.”

“Anything we’ve said is plausible. She could turn out to be a hologram girl and in reality be a small pink poodle.”

“It just feels more solid when you think so too.”

Johnny made a frustrated noise and a motion that he stopped before Edgar could really say what it was going to be.

“Jeez, would you stop with the – I am not the guru of fucked up knowledge, okay? You know exactly as much as I do about this girl, if not more. You experienced just as much crazy shit, what with the book and the me dying on you. You’re no less qualified. Something about you deferring to me for all your rampant bat-shit speculation just – no.” Johnny concluded his mini outburst with an irritated puff of breath.

“I think I’ve just gotten used to it,” Edgar said, shrugging. “For so long, your speculations were more valid than mine, since you’d been around the supernatural block a few more times.”

“You’ve caught up now. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s been a while since you were the new guy. Even Jimmy doesn’t bitch about you like that anymore.”

“I think that I remember things more strongly from the last lives than the rest of you – and more normal things – keeps me feeling apart. I remember when people didn’t play songs at me when I went out for groceries. I remember when I didn’t play songs at other people. You were already immersed in this, so your thoughts on Pepito just felt more logical.”

“Pepito and logical do not live in the same plane of existence.”

“Are we still going to talk to him soon?”

“Maybe to badger more about the glasses out of him,” Johnny offered, watching a dust ball drift over the floor near the couch. “Though, in direct contrast to everything I just told you, I’d be more effective at talking to him.”

“Since he owes you for that whole Hell business.”

“Right.”

At that moment, something occurred to Edgar that he felt Johnny could not have overlooked.

“Nny, do you ever think about your ‘dying early’ scheme?”

“Not nearly as often as you, apparently.”

“It’s a legitimate concern.”

Johnny shrugged, so Edgar continued.

“Did you ever think that by killing yourself, you’d be putting yourself into the same position that Pepito put you in?”

“Oh? How so?”

“I was led to believe suicides were something they sort of frowned on in the higher places.”

“You were led wrong.”

“You sure?”

“I was in charge of the damn place, wasn’t I?”

“So then what are you aiming for? Heaven?”

“I’m thinking I’d like to be some kind of time god,” Johnny said, reclining back into the couch as though demonstrating how he’d handle his throne.

“Because you can just decide that.”

“Of course I can.”

“I think we live in the wrong mythology for that.”

“Nonsense.”

“Johnny, seriously, I don’t think you’ve thought this through.”

“Which is why I’m not dead yet, yeah.”

“Okay, okay, so assuming that this dying is really something you want to do, why did you even bother coming back?”

Johnny looked surprised at the question, and for a moment, Edgar thought he’d have another great example of ‘my boyfriend is not a total asshole’ to report to Tess. The expression on Johnny’s face faltered and he appeared to be weighing his answers.

“It wasn’t my decision,” Johnny finally answered. “I didn’t decide when and where and who with or without, so it wasn’t good enough.”

“I think I almost heard a compliment in there.”

“I’d have to be a considerably worse human being than I already am to not let you be even a small deciding factor in the whole thing.”

“My god, I’m even a small factor now,” Edgar joked. “Please don’t strain yourself trying to say that I matter.”

“Keep it up and I throw myself on some knives in front of Banshee.”

“Do you want me to dull them on the driveway for you first?”

“Save me some trouble, yes.”

There was a short silence then. More ‘Oh, you do care!’ humor just felt forced and Edgar thought that maybe he and Johnny would both appreciate the silence more than witty banter about impaling Johnny on kitchen utensils.

“I don’t think that you’ll ever really get it,” Johnny said after a moment.

“Get what?”

“You should talk to Banshee soon.”

“Wait, get what?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it. Let me know if you want to come along for the ride to Pepito’s later.”

On that note, Johnny strolled out of the room and took to the stairs. Edgar heard a door close and tried to untangle Johnny’s last few sentences with only marginal success.

****

“Johnny likes me again, right?”

“He never stopped liking you, but yes.”

“That’s good. How come he didn’t kick me out?”

They stood together in the kitchen, Edgar trying to combine cans of random beans and the contents of the refrigerator while Stephanie fought with eating a raw square of ramen noodles.

“He wants me to be happy,” Edgar said, fighting with their rusty can opener.

“Happy? You like having me here?”

“Of course I do.”

The can opener stuck a third of the way into the lid of the can.

“It makes you happy, really?”

“Yes, really.”

Stephanie suddenly seemed too full of energy, and looked as though she didn’t know what to do with herself. Several bits of her ramen broke off and scattered on the floor.

“Then… then why won’t you be my father?”

The can in Edgar’s can opener crashed into the sink.

“What?”

“You don’t want to. You like me, and I make you happy, but you don’t want me. You like Nny more and you want to send me to a fish market when I stop making you happy.” She spoke bitterly, stray bits of noodles spraying from her lips.

“Whoa, whoa. I never said anything about any of this.”

“But you’re thinking it.”

Here was another weird trait of Stephanie’s that Edgar was sure could be blamed on Johnny. Why were all of his most important conversations dragged out of him by other people?

“You have to understand there is a lot more to relating one person to another than just saying it. I know you-”

“Did you do something special to be with Nny? Some special dance or something?”

“Not exactly, but-”

“What’s the difference?!”

Introducing his face to the water in the sink began looking quite appealing to Edgar the more Stephanie protested.

“There’s a considerably larger commitment involved in being someone’s father than someone’s lover,” he managed.

“People commit to each other! It’s in wedding rituals all over the world!”

“Banshee, I’m not married!”

They were silent then, staring at each other. Stephanie, who Edgar had inexplicably called ‘Banshee’, looked about to cry. When Edgar twitched his arm to apologize for something he couldn’t explain, the girl turned and ran from the room.

“I’m really starting to hate being abandoned in the damn kitchen,” Edgar said to no one.

****

“Nny, why is Edgar here?”

“Say what?”

The commercials ended and the mindless television show that had been placed around them resumed. Banshee had herself buried in a cushion to Johnny’s left and hadn’t touched much of her macaroni.

“He’s here because he likes you, right?”

“He’s here because he lives here.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I live here?”

“No!” she yelled, throwing the cushion she’d burrowed under to the floor. “No, that’s not what I mean!”

“Then say what you mean and don’t throw shit!”

“You know what I mean!”

“No I fucking don’t! I don’t read goddamn minds!”

“Yes you do!” she shrieked, jumping to her feet. “Edgar says you do!”

“He’s exaggerating! Now quit screaming or you’re living with Jimmy!”

“FINE!”

With that, she stomped out of the room and up to her room, where she made an attempt at a threatening door slam. A few moments later, Johnny felt Edgar standing beside the couch.

“What the hell were you two doing?”

“Talking,” Johnny answered.

****

Stephanie made no mention of the prior argument when she showed up for dinner, and Johnny said nothing of it either. Edgar kept waiting for the inevitable backlash of ‘he said, she said’, but nothing happened.

When she finished her food, Stephanie shuffled back to her room without a word.

“She’s so angry at everything lately,” Edgar said, staring up at the stairs after her.

“Well, if she’s my space clone twin, she comes by it honestly.” Johnny had reassumed his spot on the couch and was gazing blankly at the television.

“What did you say to her before?”

“Why is it automatically my fault that she’s pissed?”

“It wasn’t?” Edgar asked honestly.

“No. She just exploded all on her own.”

“What about?”

“Something about why I’m here or whatever. She was angry that I couldn’t read her mind because you told her I could.”

Edgar flinched. “I did?”

“S’what she said.”

“I’m sure I thought she’d pick up on a joke when she heard one.”

“It’s Banshee,” Johnny muttered, shrugging, “the wonders never cease.”

“She seems to think I hate her because I’m not her dad.”

“That’s unique.”

“Or that you live here, something like that.” He dropped onto the cushion Stephanie had thrown earlier now that it was back on the furniture. “Her issues are getting too weird for me to keep up with.”

“Just wait till she’s sixteen,” Johnny replied, flipping mindlessly through channels. “Do you remember how spastic everyone was at sixteen?”

“Think we’ll have her that long?”

“Edgar, at the rate she’s going, that’ll be by Thursday.”

“I’m just not sure I’ll be able to handle the next thing she throws at me.”

“What, you mean the whole damn sofa next time?”

****

Stephanie calmed down by sometime the next afternoon, though still nothing was said of her outburst. Instead, she tailed Edgar around the house quizzing him on various aspects of his life. She was particularly relentless when Edgar focused on the sticky keys on his old keyboard.

“Why doesn’t anyone like Uncle Jimmy?” Stephanie asked, repeatedly poking the very highest note.

Plink. Plink. Plink.

“That’s not true,” Edgar answered, trying to check for crumbs. “I like him just fine.”

“You’re not everyone.”

Plink. Plink. Plink.

“Everyone else likes him too.”

“Nny doesn’t.”

Plink. Plink. Plink.

“Yes he does.”

“Does he do that to everyone he likes?”

Plink. Plink. Plink.

“Pretty much.”

“Even you?”

Plink. Plink.

“I don’t know.”

“Edgar, why aren’t you married?”

Plink.

“Because I’m not.”

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Stephanie said.

“Why not?” Edgar sat away from the keys to look at Stephanie directly.

“Because you live here! Because you love Nny! Don’t you?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean-”

“Oh, wow, no, wait,” she said, her voice suddenly calm and thoughtful. “No wonder you don’t want to be my father. That’d be all out of order.” She nodded to herself as though this explained everything.

“Stephanie, I think maybe we need to have you reading something else.”

“Banshee.”

“Huh?”

“I’ve decided. I’m going to be Banshee.”

“Oh, okay. Not just Johnny calling you that now, then?”

“Yeah, everyone is going to. It’s official.”

There was probably a lesson in how she could say ‘this is my name’ and it was so, but couldn’t say ‘you are my father’ and get the same result, Edgar just didn’t know where.

“So when are you going to?” Banshee asked.

“To get married? I’m not.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m not,” Edgar replied firmly. “It’s not the end of the world, and it doesn’t mean anything for you, I promise. And even if I did, you know it wouldn’t change how Johnny relates to you, right?”

“I guess so. I just thought everyone did that at some point.”

“No, not everyone. Some people do fine without all the fuss and institution.”

“You’re just scared you’d have to wear the dress,” Banshee joked.

Edgar proudly maintained that he was bigger than Johnny and thus was exempt of dress duty, even when Banshee pointed out that Johnny could slip out of everything. When Johnny walked by a few moments later, he demanded to know why Banshee and Edgar were laughing at him, but only got the words ‘satin and lace’ as an answer.

*****

Edgar never would have picked the smoky café as a meeting place, but it was Tess’ turn to choose and she claimed the hazy place was one of her favorites despite that it mostly sold coffee that neither of them ever ordered. The food was fine, from what Edgar could tell, but he couldn’t shake the idea that he was eating the yellow tobacco color on the walls every time he had a sandwich there.

Tess had come this time with what she called ‘visual aids’. According to her story, she’d been stopped earlier in the week by a canvassing rep for a battered women’s shelter who had handed her some cards to help her determine if she was in an abusive relationship. After checking them over, Tess decided they’d be perfect for Edgar and brought them to lunch. The gesture was almost thoughtful, but mostly creepy.

The first card depicted ‘Mr. Right’, a smiling green figure, and all his prominent features listed in a long column at his side. The list included ‘cheerful’, ‘supportive’ ‘does his share of the housework’ and ‘is a responsible and equal parent.’

“Tess, I think I feel a little insulted.” Edgar held the card at a distance, as though it were covered in something he was afraid to drip on his shirt.

“Bear with me and turn it over,” she said.

Edgar did as she asked and was greeted with the bright red frowning face of ‘Mr. Wrong’ who had such glowing characteristics as, ‘shouts’, ‘sulks’, ‘glares’, ‘smashes things’, ‘won’t admit he is wrong’, and ‘never does his share of the housework.’ If they didn’t have the stamp of a local shelter on the bottom, Edgar would have suspected Tess of writing the card herself. Mr.Wrong did look like his hair had been scribbled on with a blue crayon.

“Tess.”

“It just sounded familiar to me,” she said dismissively. “You can keep it and think about it.”

“Sure,” Edgar said, pocketing the cards. “Can you tell me something, though?”

“Of course.”

“Why are you still doing this?”

“Because he’s-”

“For real.”

“For real.”

“Yes.”

“Because I want to.”

“You want to break us up?” Edgar offered, leaning over his plate.

“Not in those words, exactly.”

“Tess, Stephanie asked me why I wasn’t married yesterday.”

“Oh? What did you tell her?”

“That I’m just not.”

“So…” Tess pulled her cup of tea close to her chest in what almost looked like self defense.

“So why is it that Banshee thinks I should be getting married, and you think I should be running as far away as my legs can carry me?”

“She’s a little girl?”

“If it wouldn’t eat Johnny’s brain, I think I’d like you two to switch places sometime, just so you could see.”

“Eat his brain, huh?” Tess’ expression betrayed a hint of a smirk.

In that second, Edgar realized he’d gotten a little too comfortable.

“Figuratively speaking,” Edgar said quickly, “Unless you got into cannibalism since I last saw you?”

“I don’t think so,” Tess said, thoughtfully tapping her chin. “We can check though; gimme your arm.”

“Because I’ll just hand it over.”

“A hand would be fine too.”

“Okay, I deserved that.”

“Indeed you did.” She grinned and set her tea back on the table.

As nice as joking was instead of arguing, something felt off and Edgar decided that he needed to start cashing in on his part of this odd deal-turned-friendship should something go from just feeling weird to actually being weird.

“Tess, can I give you a phone number?” he asked, though he was already writing it down on an extra napkin. Tess, thankfully, was used to abrupt transitions.

“I already have your- oh. Devi?”

“Yeah. I’ll let her know you’ll be calling.” He held the napkin out and shook it once to encourage her to take it. She accepted it slowly and looked at the number for a long time.

“Is she going to convince me?” Tess asked.

“I don’t know what she’s going to do. It just seems like a good idea.”

“Maybe one of these days,” Tess said slowly, “I’ll talk to Johnny himself.”

The expression on her face scared Edgar for a moment, and he hoped he imagined it.

“Can you tell me more about your issue with him?”

Tess laughed and settled more comfortably into her seat, flailing her spoon dramatically.

“Edgar, you usually come here looking to get away from that.”

“Then let me rephrase it: What do you remember about him?”

“He killed my asshole boyfriend?”

“Yeah, I know that, and we’ve both said it was a good call, but what else was there?”

Tess sighed, and hugged her arms to herself for a moment. The grey linoleum floors held her attention for several seconds before she took a breath to answer.

“He was loose. Something was not good in there.” She poked her temple to illustrate ‘there.’

“I know that already. And I know that you came after me because you think he’s attacking me or something. But he didn’t kill you – the thing that’s after him did. Why does that make him your target?”

“It wasn’t killing him, exactly.”

“You know something else about it?” Edgar leaned across the table and tried to establish a firm eye contact. “You agreed to help with that, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

“He was a destructive and horrible person. Brilliant in there somewhere, I bet, or at least not retarded, but really fucked up. I think he’d need to go through five or six reincarnations to ever filter all that out.”

“That’s not your job to police.”

“But he’s famous now, and even though I was victim of the same damn system, Edgar, I was invisible even to you!” She looked pained when she gestured toward him.

“That’s it? You just want to be famous?” He had a sudden bitter taste in mouth unrelated to his hot chocolate.

“No! He was-!” She let her head fall into her hands and mumbled to herself. “You’re not going to understand it anyway.”

“Why focus on me?” Edgar asked quietly. “Haven’t you seen Jimmy?”

“Jimmy isn’t quite as involved.”

“He’s still fostering a giant crush slash lust thing on Johnny, even though Johnny is awful to him. How could that not spark some kind of red flag to you? That’s not ‘involved?’”

“Jimmy doesn’t share a house with someone who is awful to him.”

“Johnny isn’t awful to me.”

“You want to know?” Tess asked softly, eyeing her reflection on the table between them.

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

A long, deep breath.

“It’s you,” Tess said, attempting eye contact.

“Me?”

“It didn’t start out that way, for sure.” She brushed some hair aside, despite it being too short to bother her eyes, and tried to laugh, but she sounded strained. “At first, it was justice, and then just a rescue, but the longer I watched you…”

“Oh. So all this lunch stuff…?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like wish-fulfillment dates or anything.”

“Tess, I’m flattered, but, it really can’t - I’m sorry.”

Suddenly, Edgar was faced with a confession from a woman he shouldn’t have even been seeing at all, let alone as often as he did.

Tess flailed her hands to get something across, but she never managed a full sentence. “…tricking you…”

“I wish you would stop saying that,” Edgar sighed. “For all that you’ve told me you care about me and are worried for me, challenging the thing that really makes me happy doesn’t exactly speak for that claim.”

“It isn’t fair.” Tess talked mostly to Edgar’s knee or the sticky floor of the coffee shop. “This isn’t right.”

“I’m not even sure how right it is, okay? But it’s what I wanted, I swear.” Edgar tried to get her attention, or get her to look at him, but she seemed determined never to look him in the eye again. “I cared about him before I knew who he was. I liked him before he said a single word to me.”

“That’s highschooler talk, Edgar.”

“I was a highschooler.” He sighed and then tried to clarify. “He’s not poisoning my mind, I promise. I really am happy with him and I want things, mostly, the way they are.”

“He’d never know, you know, if you tried something else once.”

“You suggest that again, and I’m leaving,” Edgar threatened, gripping his cup of hot chocolate. “I’d never do that.”

“Sweet to a fucking fault,” Tess muttered. “How is it that I finally managed to pick one that’s not an asshole and he’s taken and gay?”

“I’m not, actually.”

“Edgar, I’m afraid ‘Johnny’ tends to be a man’s name. Hate to break it to you.”

Edgar put his elbows on the table between them and held his head in his hands, trying to will into existence both a clear way to express what he meant and a resistance to slamming his head on the tabletop.

“Look,” he said, gesturing emphatically with his hands, “I’m not- It’s just Nny. That’s it. The cashier kid is not attractive to me, and neither is that guy in the business suit. It’s the person, not-”

“And the women?” Tess cut him off. Edgar opened his mouth to counter, when he realized he didn’t really know what the answer was. He tried to evaluate the ones in the coffee shop honestly, from the college girl wearing a giant pink bow and a hoodie to the business woman in dangerous looking shoes and the skirt that shared a little too much with the audience.

“You know,” Edgar answered slowly, “I don’t think there’s anything there at all.”

“No one in here is pretty to you?”

“It’s not ‘pretty.’ That’s different than attraction. There are plenty of ‘pretty’ people around.” He regarded the people around him once again. “These people… none of them feel anything even close to how Johnny feels to me. I think perhaps I’m defining attraction differently than you are.”

“Not the ‘throw ‘em on the floor and get down to it’ type, huh?”

“Not so much.”

Tess sighed, and stirred her tea, though it had long since dissolved the sugar she’d put in it when it arrived. “Looks like it’s going to be battle to the death, Edgar.”

Edgar nearly choked on hot chocolate and coughed a few times before he was able to respond, “E-excuse me?”

“You either have to convince me, or I have to convince you,” she said, gesturing with her spoon. “There’s nothing either of us can say that would convince the other, so we need some other way.”

“I don’t know why you’ll see me as sincere in everything I say, but then as soon as it’s Johnny I’m talking about, I’m spouting the dirty water from my brainwashing.”

“It’s just…” She tapped the cup of tea with her spoon, thinking. “I remember someone who can’t possibly have the capacity to feel anything like what you’re saying you do. There’s no way he feels like you do.”

“I never said he did,” Edgar answered, shrugging. “I think I’d be disturbed if Johnny felt as intensely as I do. You’re right in a way, really; it’s not like him.”

“Then, why all the devotion? You’re comfortable with knowing it’s unequal?”

“I don’t see it that way, but I am comfortable. He’s the sort of person you run into once and then always. He doesn’t let go of people. Or people don’t let go of him, I guess.”

“This doesn’t sound like brainwashing to you?” Tess leaned back in her seat, looking over her glasses and the rim of her teacup.

“No, it doesn’t. It’s not his fault he’s so … whatever it is. Devi and Jimmy had the same thing happen to them, I just got a bit luckier.”

“Depending on your view.”

“Oh, woe is me,” Edgar mocked, “I got absolutely everything I’ve ever wanted! Quick, cut my wrists for me, I’m far too depressed to do it myself.”

“You even sound like him,” Tess said into her tea.

“He’s my best friend - of course there’s going to be some linguistic overlap when I live with him.”

“Best friends who make out on the couch?”

“Well, of course it’s not – Wait, what?” Tess suddenly had an intense interest in the bottom of her teacup and tried to hide her entire face while downing the drink. “Tess? I think maybe that level of stalker is passing the funny and ironic level and is actually freaking me out.”

“I didn’t see anything. Much. I didn’t see much.”

“So you – okay, so you can see things like that, even ‘not much’, and not be convinced of sincerity on my part? How can you see Johnny - who you have to know isn’t terribly into touch - and think he’d fake all that to keep me around when he could have Jimmy with no effort at all?”

Tess bit her lip and the word ‘envy’ flashed through Edgar’s mind.

“So that’s it, then?” Edgar slouched in his seat and almost felt his eyes glaze over. “This is all because you’re jealous.”

“No! No, it’s not like that!”

Edgar winced.

“If you say so, fine. We’ll leave it at that for now. Instead, tell me what you know about the thing that’s still after him.” Edgar wasn’t sure he believed her, but so far, their meetings had included almost nothing of the thing that was after Johnny. Since finding out about it was why he had agreed to meet Tess in the first place, Edgar felt it was about time he began benefiting from the relationship even if it meant giving up on changing Tess’ mind or figuring her out.

“It used to live in his house and it reset absolutely everything when it got out.”

“Which it’s not doing now.”

“It can’t quite do that yet.”

A sudden wave of unease washed over Edgar and if not for the hot mug, he would have shivered.

“How do you know, when you only met it before-?”

“Maybe that isn’t the only time I have.”

Edgar attempted to bury his fingers in the mug and tried to come up with an appropriate response, but nothing happened.

“I don’t think I can quite do this right now,” Tess said quickly, rising to her feet. “Later, I promise.”

She left the restaurant in a flurry leaving Edgar to field the glances of the waitresses and old women who all seemed to think he’d just been dramatically dumped.

****

Edgar wasn’t even sure how to eat pomegranate once he had a hold of one, but he’d been reading so much about them in the myths he’d been going over to keep up with Johnny and Banshee that he started to wonder how they could be good enough that you’d eat one even under threat of staying dead.

That, and it provided a welcome distraction from worrying about Tess, which had been consuming more and more of his time since her dramatic exit from the café.

It was purchased on a whim when he was sent on an emergency run to get a can of soup. There was a giant bin of them in the front of the store with a ‘how to eat pomegranate!’ sign hanging above them. After he was unable to shake ‘how to eat the fruit of the damned!’ from his head, he caved and bought one.

He almost forgot the can of soup.

He hadn’t even been able to cut it open before Banshee, who had been eating a sandwich behind him, pounced on the counter and tried to tear the fruit from Edgar’s hands.

“Stephanie, what are you doing?!” He still wasn’t used to the nickname enough for it to come out automatically.

“Don’t eat it, don’t eat it!” Though Edgar was holding her back with his arm, she still flailed desperately for the fruit in his other hand.

“It’s just a pomegranate!”

“I know! I don’t want a sister!”

“WHAT?”

“That’s what happens when you eat those! Don’t do it! That’ll be all out of order!”

“You can’t get pregnant from food!”

“Yuh-huh! It happens all the time!” Banshee was still insistent, and though she was trying a little less to grab the fruit in Edgar’s hand, she was still eyeing it as though Edgar just holding it was threatening to make her into an older sibling.

“Okay, even if- Ste-Banshee, come on. Get off the counter.”

The girl dropped to the floor, her too-long pant legs gathering around her ankles. She still appeared wary of the pomegranate and glared at it.

“Okay, look,” Edgar said, holding the offending fruit beyond Banshee’s reach, “even if fruit could somehow make people pregnant, I’d have to be a woman for that to work.”

“What about Zeus?” Banshee challenged.

“Wasn’t that a fly?”

“But she still grew! And then Athena just popped right out of him!” Banshee made wild flailing motions to emphasize ‘popping.’

Edgar winced.

“It doesn’t work that way. Those stories are very old – from before people knew how these things really worked. People don’t happen like that.”

“Then where did I come from?” She crossed her arms and glared a challenge at Edgar over the top of her glasses.

“We don’t know.”

“Then you don’t know! I coulda come from Nny’s forehead!”

“Whoa, hang on.”

“Or from Uncle Jimmy’s leg!”

“Wait-”

“Or maybe Aunt Devi cut off Uncle Jimmy’s bits and threw them in a ditch and then when it rained, I came out of-”

“That’s enough!”

Banshee stuck her lower lip out in protest, but said nothing.

“Look,” Edgar said once more, holding the pomegranate at Banshee’s eye level, “you didn’t come from a pomegranate.”

“How do you know?”

Edgar sighed.

“I’ve never had one before.”

****

Something was wrong with his head lately.

It wasn’t his normal ‘wrong,’ which bothered him more than he had told anyone. There were things in there that hadn’t been before and he feared he didn’t have room for everything. Would he be pushed out in favor of the new stuff?

Johnny observed the world around him with a detachment that he hadn’t felt in a long time. It was similar to what he felt while walking the town as a dead man, but not exactly. It was equally like what it had felt like to remember things in the closet, but again, it wasn’t a precise match.

Still, people moved around him on autopilot with no decisions of their own, only serving whatever need owned them at the time. Had to eat, had to sleep, had to smoke, had to bathe, had to piss or vomit or fuck something or pay the bills. He watched them as though he’d never seen them before. There were few people left that looked at him that way.

The more of his old self that crept into him, the more he felt this kind of detachment was familiar. It was this kind of distant underwater camera view of the world that he had seen the others through. The blurry, filthy lens he’d decided to kill through, and the one he spared Edgar under. He’d planned to keep Edgar alive as long as it took for Edgar to really see, and then Edgar would die the way he was supposed to at their first meeting. Things were reset before Johnny got the chance, and now he and Edgar were stuck in some life, some kind of loop, that his prior incarnation would have recoiled from.

Still recoiled from. Parts of Johnny shuddered and shrank from the affections of the people he lived with, his chest tightening on itself to the point that he hoped it would just have mercy on him and implode. When he slept at night, the oldest parts of him demanded everything be as far from him as possible and demanded to be saved from sleeping in the first place. He wanted freedom and grounding at the same time and the pull in both directions tore at the current Johnny, who required neither. The person he’d been didn’t like the person he’d become and seemed to have decided to move in.

“Are you okay?” Edgar was concerned. Justified.

“Fine.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t either.” It had gotten harder to lie to Edgar lately. This seemed to bother Edgar more than the lies ever had.

“You’ve been acting sort of weird; I just wanted to see if I could help. With Ste-Banshee acting like she is, I don’t want to be the only one holding on to my head around here.”

“That sounds really selfish of you.” Maybe only half of it did, but still.

“I was just trying to lighten it.”

“My head hurts.”

“Did you take something?”

“It won’t help.” Something about taking medication for an ache you know the cause of seemed dumb. When it was a vague ache in the side, in the back, fine. When you stab yourself in the arm, no. When your old persona is eating your brain, no.

“Are you sure? What about some tea or something? I found some weird flavors when Devi was over.” Edgar tried hard to be convincing, or comforting, or tangible. Except he didn’t have to work to be tangible, so he wasn’t trying to have weight or mass, he was just – shut up.

“I won’t argue if you want to make some.”

“I’ll be back,” Edgar said, brushing Johnny’s shoulder. It was likely an unconscious motion on Edgar’s part, but Johnny’s skin both shriveled from and tried to reach out to meet Edgar’s fingers. He began to wonder if he was even in his own skin anymore.

The cup burned him on purpose.

“Nny,” Edgar began, watching the steam from his own cup thoughtfully, “you know that woman, the one who visited the show before you died? She’s-”

“Where you disappear to.” He wasn’t stupid. Come on, Edgar.

“I just wanted to make sure you knew. I don’t think I’m comfortable pretending to hide it anymore.”

“You were comfortable with that once?” What a disgusting thing to say. Johnny let out a small puff of air to stand in for a laugh anyway.

“Eh, maybe that was a bad word choice.”

“So you’re talking to the woman who destroys my brain on a regular basis?” The tea was still burning him. He was bigger than the tea, it would see.

“I guess so. Thing is, she knows about that thing that chased us out of the motel.”

“I bet she is it.”

“Nny.”

“Do you have any comparisons to make, hmm?”

“No, but she’s just a woman, really.” Edgar reclined back against the headboard. “She’s a little confused, but there’s nothing magical about her.”

“Would you have said that about us?”

“Us?”

“All of us. Me, Jimmy, Devi.”

“I think I would have, really. You, at least, felt sort of like something a little bit more than human.”

“So you don’t know. She isn’t just a woman. There’s something wrong with her.” He knew because he felt it when the columns of his rational thought collapsed all those times he saw her. Because no one else did that to him but Edgar, and Edgar did it unknowingly and differently.

“I’d like to keep talking to her. See what she is, if not what she knows.”

“I’m not stopping you. This tea is fucking hot.”

“So put it down.”

“We’ll see.” He held a few fingers away from the ceramic mug, revealing ‘World’s Best Secretary’ printed on the side of it. “So what has she told you so far?”

“That you’re bad for me, mostly.”

“I mean about the thing in the wall.”

Johnny felt Edgar falter, felt him grow unsure. Either going to lie or confess.

“Nothing yet.”

Confess.

“And you think she’s telling the truth?” Johnny asked honestly. He would never get close enough to Tess to know, so he had to rely on Edgar to judge.

“I have no reason to believe she isn’t,” Edgar said, taking a sip of the tea he’d made for himself. “She really does care about what happens to me, and I think she took our deal pretty seriously.”

“You’re bargaining with people now? What have I done to you?”

“It’s something that’s after you. I’d bargain with my soul if I had to.” Edgar shrugged and poked at his tea. “We just agreed to do something for each other, that’s all.”

“If I were the jealous type-”

“You are.”

“Am not.”

“If you say so. Either way, don’t worry about it. She’s apparently interested, but I told her there’s no chance.”

“Not even if I started really beating you?” The tea lost.

“You wouldn’t.” Johnny had killed him once, and yet Edgar was so sure that Johnny wouldn’t do even as much as abuse him a little.

“What would it take?”

“For you to beat me or for me to be driven dramatically into Tess’ arms?”

“Whichever.”

“I guess you’d have to become what you used to be.”

“I was your bestest friend then, in case you forgot your mission, Mr. Happiness.”

Edgar laughed, then looked up at Johnny from his tea. “I guess maybe the one before that, then. The one that killed me.”

“Then it would hardly matter.”

“I suppose so.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?”

“I don’t actually want to be killed, no.”

“I mean that that’s what it would take. If I attacked you -”

“I’d assume you’d been possessed.”

“And I’d hope you’d get the hell out anyway. I don’t really care what you were sent to do, or if you’re programmed to love the hell out of me or whatever. Being the company punching bag isn’t an enviable position.”

“As Jimmy would surely know.”

“I think she’s doing it on purpose.”

“Whoa, wait. Are we back to Tess?” Edgar coughed on his tea.

“That time with the phone. When you tried to go see her. She has to know what she’s doing.”

“I was a little worried about that. The last time I spoke to her, she gave me this look and I thought, ‘Do I need to be scared of her?’”

“Not a good sign.”

“I guess not. But if she’s the only one who knows…”

“I think I’d rather that thing eat me than ever have her in contact with me again. Maybe better if you don’t either.”

“Then how will we find out what that thing is?”

“Pepito?”

“He’s your answer to everything.”

“Why not?”

Edgar sighed. “Maybe if you saw her again. Maybe whatever she inspires in your brain will give you what you need and we can just never talk to her again.”

The idea was terrifying, even though Johnny imagined that he’d grab Tess’ arm and suck the knowledge right out of her, leaving her hollow. He knew he’d likely end up in a fetal position on the floor instead, but the victory idea lingered.

“It would be easier to be okay with trying that if I knew what she was doing to me and what the door was doing to me. As it is now, I think… I think it would break me.”

“It was just a suggestion. I can talk to her just fine.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“The door is still bothering you?”

“It’s not like it pokes me in the night or anything, but it’s very… present.”

“Have you opened it again?”

“Maybe.” He was getting bad at lying. The idea scared him.

“What happened?”

“I remembered, mostly.”

“Is it bad stuff, or what?”

“No, it’s all kind of neutral, really.”

“Can we try it again?”

“Why ask me? Do it yourself.”

“I feel better if it’s both of us.”

“Do what you want, I don’t care. Just let me put the tea down.” Don’t think you’ve won, tea.

Edgar opened the closet again. Johnny hadn’t expected Edgar to want anything to do with it after his problem with being reincarnated with too much feeling. He had expected even less that Edgar would open it the moment Johnny was away from the cup of tea.

The now familiar feeling of being engulfed in something that almost made sense washed over him.

It was madness and that was comforting when nothing else was. Edgar had freeze pops and television magazines with him this week. When he offered them to Johnny, when he reached out, he thought this would do it, this would be it. It never was. He kept waiting and Edgar kept not seeing.

“it’s a knockout

if looks could kill
they probably will”

Too close and he shrunk away in disgust, too far and he grew angry that he was being ignored. Too close and it was grounding, too far and things fell apart.

Edgar brought movies and snacks. He knew places that were open late on the other side of town, and he knew an old lady whose yard was the best spot in the city for watching fireworks, band performances, football games and other public events in the school’s field with the potential to at least injure someone.

He still wouldn’t see. Edgar still saw nothing, still did not understand. There was so much and it was so obvious and profound and so there, so why didn’t he see it? It sat in front of everything Johnny did, his actions filtered through it and yet Edgar was blind to whatever color it turned things.

Where it was heading he didn’t know. He could do something as soon as Edgar knew, but he was so fuzzy on what he would do when Edgar knew something that Johnny himself was not very clear on.

Not too close, not too far.

Passenger seat of the car, opposite side of the couch. Close enough to share headphones and have his skin want to crawl off as a response. Actually get glasses for the milk because they weren’t sharing the carton. One of them would fall asleep and then someone would have to know, surely.

But it never cleared up when eyes opened again. It was worse then. Voices still whistled at him and he was still unsure who had made them. Edgar still smiled and saw nothing and was still such a curious thing. A curious thing that was still there, still bringing snacks and food because he had nothing else and nowhere else.

Once, a fireworks display took the hand of one of the guys operating and he had laughed while Edgar looked uncomfortable and people in the bleachers near the accident were set ablaze. When the newspaper headline announced ‘Man Loses Hand In Firework Mishap That Kills Ten’, Edgar laughed and said it was the concept that was funny, not the event. Johnny didn’t understand why the event did not include the concept.

He didn’t remember when it happened, or how.

They hadn’t died badly.

“if looks could kill
they probably will”

He hadn’t died in Edgar’s arms, but the backfire from death put him there. The bedroom wasn’t decaying.

“Johnny, are you okay?” Concerned. Justified.

“Yeah.” He shook his head several times, trying to clear his mind. “I’m fine.”

“I could see so much more clearly this time,” Edgar said, staring into the room in front of them. “I saw for two people. I saw that he didn’t see what you were doing. He didn’t see you feeling like that.”

“Told you it was me first.”

“It feels like I dreamed it and it scares me knowing I didn’t.”

“No kidding.”

“It’s sort of sad. I’m sure that if he could have seen, he would have done something about it.”

“And then died for it,” Johnny said, sliding out of Edgar’s grasp and bracing himself on the bed.

“Died for it?”

“I forgot to tell you that part? That was the plan for Devi, too.”

“Oh.”

“If you want to be poetic about it, you can pretend it was self-sabotage that I was never obvious enough and I didn’t really want to kill you after all. In truth, I – or he, I guess – had no idea what he felt at all. You – he? – might have lived.”

“I guess it’s good I never noticed, or we wouldn’t be here.”

Johnny wanted to make some kind of remark about Edgar’s sentimentality, or joke about something, but he couldn’t conjure the energy to make it happen. When he felt his limbs among blankets he stopped feeling at all, at least for a while. He hadn’t slept in a long time, at least not properly.

Edgar talked to him while he slept and in his dreams he drained Tess dry after telling her she’d never take Edgar with all those tentacles spilling from her neck.

He was the jealous type.

The tea lost.

****

Her goals merged too closely with it. Edgar was so close to Johnny. Take Edgar away, get to Johnny. Take away Johnny, get Edgar. It lined up so well and she regretted it bitterly. She still believed – knew, even – that she was doing the right thing, but she wasn’t sure about it. Unfortunately, as it had been made clear to her, Johnny and his friends, and a small town deep in the middle of nowhere; it mattered very little what anyone thought of its desires.

****

She wasn’t allowed outside by herself very often. Edgar and Johnny seemed to think that everything was trying to eat her and only took her out with them. Tonight though, she just left on her own, right out the door behind the kitchen. Edgar was dealing with some kind of fit on Johnny’s part and Banshee had just decided she’d had enough of those.

It was cool, but she didn’t feel a need for a coat over her sweater. No clouds, no bugs, no loud cars, just outside. She thought of walking to the school and ruling the skyline from its roof or of going to the library and waiting for Edgar to meet her there instead of not-secret-anymore woman, but decided to limit her adventure to the backyard.

Spinning through the grass, the long weeds had only brief holds on her before she twisted away from them the way Johnny curled away from Edgar. Leaves stuck to her hair and the trees became whole worlds when she saw them blurring by her eyes. She fell back into the grass, and the stars jumped around her vision while she tried to refocus. Grass and leaves pricked at her neck.

There were sounds in everything. She heard children who had been here years before her, and pets that had lived and died here. The yard had been a savannah, an ocean, a lush garden, another planet, a pirate ship, a country where men died fighting for it, and the site of dozens of birthday parties. There was a cold breeze that grazed her stomach, even though her sweater had covered her stomach when she was standing.

“war without tears”

The voice of the grass almost surprised her.

“if looks could kill
they probably will
games without frontiers
war without tears”

She wondered if the other kids had heard the grass whistle or if the other kids were the whistle. Her sweater felt tight and made her neck itch. The other kids had worn itchy sweaters and dumb suits to their parties and donned pirate hats and flowers when they entertained other worlds.

“dressing up in costumes
playing silly games
hiding out in tree tops
shouting out rude names”

These kids had parents and friends and went to school. They didn’t know anything about Athena or Anubis or the Good People or Thor or the Mayan calendar and they didn’t mind. They saved the world on this grass anyway. Teachers were insulted here, moms were unfair here, little siblings were annoying here. Children who had died strange deaths years later once played Truth or Dare here.

“Whistling tunes we hide in the dunes by the seaside...”

The grass knew all their songs, and all their friends. The grass knew that the password to the 'Boys Only' tree house was ‘Captain Hook.’ The grass remembered Pepito. The grass remembered times when it only held old couples in lawn chairs, but it liked the games of their grandchildren better.

The grass was relentless against her neck and the itch kept coming back. However, the grass let her spend a long time almost close enough to touch what had been here before her, so she ignored the itch, afraid to shatter the fragile world being whistled to her. So many songs playing together sounded grating and enticing at once. They were all such excited songs. If hers was among them, she couldn’t find it.

A dog startled her as it burst into her world. It stuck its nose in her face, sniffed her a few times as she flailed in hopes of it leaving her alone, and then trotted off into the darkness in the next yard. She sat up and took a few deep breaths, thankful she hadn’t been licked, and then dropped her ears back to the yard. As much as she asked it to speak again, she heard nothing else from the grass.

Instead, she heard the sounds of gravel from the front of the house and picked herself up from the silent grass. Dusting a few stray blades and leaves from her sweater, she went to the front of the house to meet Edgar and was surprised when there was a woman standing in his place.

The woman looked just as shocked to see Banshee and seemed to contemplate running for a moment before she relaxed and waved.

“Hi there. Are you Stephanie?”

“No,” Banshee answered.

“‘Banshee’ then? Edgar was right, you do look a lot like Johnny.”

Not only was this woman snooping around her house, she had to bring Johnny up.

“What do you want? Are you meeting Edgar?”

“I think we’re done for the night,” the woman said, glancing into the lit dining room window beside her.

“You should probably go then.”

“You’re right. You know, Banshee, you’re a lot bigger than I imagined you.”

Banshee watched her walk to the street and disappear much the way the dog had. Her sweater suddenly felt entirely ineffective and she shivered. When she rounded the corner of the house to open the door, she reached for the handle and found it in a different spot than she’d left it. More of her reflection stared back at her from the door’s glass pane than ever had before and she saw that what she had thought had been leaves and grass poking her all evening had been her hair, growing from the butchered style that Johnny had given it and piling up around her neck. Even in the faint image in the glass she could see the dark roots overtaking the green dye.

She was afraid to open the door. Afraid to tell Edgar she needed more clothing even as the ones on her body were tightening. Johnny was moaning or crying or screaming inside the house and Edgar was saying he had no way of knowing if it had been Tess who did whatever was making Johnny upset.

The door clicked when she opened it and she stood in the entrance way, cold and dressed in clothing she thought she’d have to cut from her skin.

“I saw her,” she said, her voice quiet.

Though Johnny was clearly in pain, even he seemed to stop caring about himself long enough to stare.

06