ISH - Overdrive -

I'm Still Here
Drop of Blood Number 8
Lady Yate-xel

Banshee stood in the rain, her shredded, too-small costume slowly clinging to her skin.

There were footprints where Tess had been standing, but nothing else. No footprints toward the spot, none away, just the shape of her boots in the soft mud. Devi and Tenna searched for prints that matched them in the surrounding area, but Banshee was sure they wouldn’t find any.

Johnny was trying to articulate what had scared Tess so badly and what had prompted his appearance from the inside of the van but was having little success, especially with Edgar’s panicked attempts at both soothing him and prying the knife from his hands.

Jimmy sat inside the van, his legs dangled outside to touch the mud with the toes of his boots. He stared into the gravel-filled muck on the road, a distant look in his eyes. Banshee assumed he had seen what transpired from the inside.

“Did you see anything?”

Devi’s voice startled her for a moment.

“She just vanished,” Banshee answered. “You aren’t going to find her.”

“It worries me to hear that from you,” Devi said. “It feels like hearing it from him.” She didn’t need to nod to Johnny, though she did it anyway.

Several cars drove by, and Banshee watched the scene around her temporarily illuminate with fluorescent light at the passing of each one. The lights gave everyone an eerie skin tone, if only for a moment. Devi had fallen silent, leaving only the sounds of Jimmy’s boot rhythmically scraping the ground and Johnny’s attempts at explanation to distract Banshee’s thoughts.

“She’s both of them,” Johnny told Edgar. He kept his voice low, apparently intending his words only for Edgar, though he didn’t bother with a whisper. “The thing from the wall and Tess.”

“What makes you so sure?” Edgar spoke quietly and calmly, but he didn’t have total mastery of masking fear.

“I can feel them. I know them both, and they’re both in there.”

“You’re sure it’s both?”

“Ye-es,” Johnny whined. He was still supporting his weight with the knife in the side of the van and his shoulders shuddered each time his breath managed to form words.

Jimmy crunched some rocks in the mud behind them, and looked up from his focus on the road.

“Johnny stabbed someone,” he said.

Devi and Tenna exchanged nervous looks and Edgar looked as though he had hoped no one else had noticed.

“It’s fine,” Banshee said quickly.

“People who aren’t Johnny don’t just come back to life, kiddo,” Tenna said softly.

“They weren’t alive, though. It’s really okay.”

Johnny seemed to realize that the others were talking about him again and echoed Banshee.

“It’s okay,” he insisted. “No one was hurt.”

“Nny, you stabbed that kid in the eye,” Edgar said.

“He’ll be fine. He wasn’t human.”

Human. Something about that word felt so different than ‘people.’

Edgar looked skeptical, so Johnny continued.

“Didn’t you see their eyes?” he asked.

“I was behind the seat.”

“They were black and they were all empty. Banshee saw them, too.” He looked at her expectantly, and she nodded enthusiastically. “See? Banshee agrees. Tenna and Devi, too.”

Tenna shivered, but nodded.

“They were…,” Devi said slowly. “They were really black.”

“I still think we should go looking for them,” Edgar said after a moment.

“No!” Banshee yelped. “No, don’t do that! They’ll think you’re inviting them in and then they’ll… well, they’ll come in.”

“And do what?” Edgar asked.

“I don’t know,” Banshee answered lamely. “Something.”

“So there’s a kid with his eye oozing out of his face a mile or two back, and we’re not going to go check on him?” Edgar sounded as though he didn’t expect his band mates to do something quite so bad.

“When this is what’s in his eye?” Johnny asked, removing the knife from the van. Traces of the black material that had seeped from the kid’s eye socket still clung to the blade. “It’s either some supernatural space goo or the guy’s a zombie and we need to find a mall to defend.”

Behind Johnny and the knife, Jimmy pulled his legs back into the van and muttered something to himself.

Edgar moved to touch the black on the knife, but Johnny pulled it from his reach.

“Don’t.”

Something clicked in Edgar then, and Banshee was sure she saw it. It flashed over his face and was as obvious to her as his face turning purple would have been. He hugged Johnny tightly for a moment, and some runny green make-up smeared near Johnny’s ear.

“I don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone.” Edgar spoke mostly to Johnny, but the sentiment extended, apparently, even to scary teenagers with black eyes.

“We’re fine.”

Banshee knew ‘anyone’ and ‘we’ were said, but she heard ‘you’ and ‘I’.

When Edgar backed away from Johnny, he seemed to realize it was raining. He scratched at a few of the stitches on his face while regarding the people around him. Banshee thought he lingered on her just a little bit, though she may have strained to see it.

Johnny looked like he would fall over, but Edgar steered him back into the van before he got the chance to drop to the pavement. Devi and Tenna followed and waved for Banshee to do the same. She hesitated at first. It wasn’t that she was particularly thrilled about standing in the rain, but she didn’t want to sit in the van where they would analyze everything to death or else pretend it hadn’t happened.

Minutes later she sat with the others, their clothes soaking the van’s seats, in silence. Tenna hadn’t even started the engine, though everyone was settled and Devi had gone as far to put on her seatbelt. Rain drummed on the roof and slid down the windows, and the van’s occupants simply stared at it.

“Johnny stabbed someone,” Jimmy said again. He’d repeated it to himself at least twice more since he’d first made mention of it. Banshee didn’t feel horror from him, but something much hotter. It lingered around him and either he or that hot feeling wouldn’t let go of the connection.

“We know,” Devi told him, though she was staring out of the front window.

“I want to go home,” Tenna said, flexing her hands over the wheel.

“We can’t do that,” Devi said.

“I know, just thought I’d throw that out there. How about hamburgers instead?”

Banshee worried about Tess while Devi argued about the alleged meat content of various fast food places. She thought she should have been worried about Johnny since she lived with him and they’d been friends before he started freaking out, but Tess had Banshee’s attention. Was she sick? Was she being possessed by the thing Johnny thought was after him? Was she lying about everything and really trying to hurt Johnny to get Edgar? Would that even work?

She didn’t want to admit to herself that she thought about it, so she told herself it was for science. Just in theory. Would getting Edgar’s attention be as simple as removing Johnny from the equation?

The gods never seemed to have two male parents.

“And when they do, it’s an accident,” she muttered aloud. No one asked her what she had said.

Johnny sat in the back, and appeared reasonably coherent. He was writing furiously on a tattered old notebook and making fierce underlines on occasion while Edgar looked over his shoulder. Edgar nodded a few times, and then Johnny continued on for the rest of the page before checking on Edgar’s reaction again.

The secret notebook sparked some kind of resentment in her and for a moment she wanted to tear it away from them. For all that Johnny was unsure and unclear out loud he seemed to be spilling words onto the page too fast for his hand to keep up with. Edgar’s expression betrayed nothing about the book’s contents or his feelings on them until one moment when he looked a little pained and took the pen from Johnny to write something of his own. Johnny stared at whatever Edgar had written for several seconds before holding out his hand to silently ask for the return of the pen. He wrote something slowly and deliberately when Edgar surrendered the pen, let Edgar see whatever it was, then closed the book and crammed it into the back of his seat. Edgar seemed quietly pleased with the whole thing.

“Hey, Banshee.” Johnny’s voice made her name sound strange, even though he’d been the one to give it to her. She looked away quickly to avoid looking like she’d been spying.

“Hey what?”

“Tell me what you know about Tess.”

“Nothing. I don’t know why you fell over. I’m sorry. I’m not telepathic.”

“What else?”

“I already said: ‘Nothing.’”

“She died in my house once,” Johnny said flatly.

“I know.”

“She doesn’t like me much.”

“I know that too.”

“You like her.”

Banshee said nothing at first. How much of a betrayal would admitting her fondness for Tess be? Would Edgar be as angry with her as he had been with Tess? Would Banshee be indirectly blamed for the state of Johnny’s brain? Would she have to be unflinchingly loyal to Johnny to ensure attachment to Edgar?

“So does Edgar,” she finally answered.

“Or I did, at least,” Edgar said. “After tonight… I don’t know. If she’s not in control, I can’t blame her, but-”

“She’s not in control?” Banshee turned to face Johnny and Edgar, unable to hide hope that Tess could be redeemed. Something in her flared up seeing how close they were, but it was suppressed quickly.

“I don’t think so,” Johnny said. “At least she wasn’t just now. When it’s the…thing, whatever it is, I can actually think over all the stuff it puts in my head, but when it’s her… With her, there’s nothing for me, and screaming for you.”

“The monster is easier to deal with than Tess?” Banshee asked, shrinking into her chair.

“Yeah.” Johnny nodded slightly and Edgar tightened his hold on Johnny’s shoulders.

“Soo…”

“So we need to turn this Tess chick into the monster and have Johnny slay her with the sword he pulled from the stone after he battles his evil uncle for the throne,” Tenna chimed in from the front.

“Wait, no, you can’t mean actually trying to kill her? You can’t.” Banshee passed panicked looks between Tenna and the pair in the back.

“Did I say that?” Johnny asked, making a face at Tenna.

Banshee breathed an audible sigh of relief.

“So what really happens then?” she asked.

“I’m going to see what I can find out,” Edgar explained. “See if she knows what’s in her, or if I’ve been talking to it this whole time. Johnny will probably go talk to Pepito.”

Johnny genuinely smiled for the first time in at least a few days and elbowed Edgar in the ribs.

“You can’t even say you weren’t thinking it,” Edgar said, laughing.

“Maybe,” Johnny answered, pretending to be deeply offended.

“Was she the monster at the concert? Was that why she didn’t bother you?” Banshee tried not to sound too enthusiastic.

“We can pretend that’s why, sure.” Johnny shrugged.

“Only pretend?”

“I really don’t know what happened; only that it came through you.”

Banshee flinched and wanted to blend into the seat.

“We’re all pretty sure you didn’t do it on purpose, don’t worry,” Edgar told her.

“Do you guys want to go?” Tenna called from the front.

“Sure.”

“He-”

“We know, Jimmy.”

The mood lightened considerably when Tenna started the van and got them on their way, though Jimmy remained a muttering reminder that things weren’t entirely right.

Banshee watched her reflection against the passing sky and felt only a vague connection to the face she saw. It wasn’t that it had changed so much, it was just clear that something had happened to the first reflection she ever saw to produce the face now plastered over the stars.

If the gods ever decided to put the Homicides in the stars, she hoped the colors would still be visible.

“I thought it was beautiful,” Jimmy said softly to himself.

“The fuck?” Devi turned to look at him, and saw him sitting on the floor behind her.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Whatever, Jimmy.”

In the back, Johnny was already in the middle of some sort of story. Edgar listened to it quietly and seemed remarkably relaxed for how much he’d been worried about Johnny’s stabbing before.

“…and the ending says, ‘And everyone laughed. Except Tyr.’”

Johnny and Edgar both laughed at the last line of Johnny’s story. She wasn’t sure how, but Banshee thought that Johnny attacking someone, even a demon-someone, had brought Edgar closer to Johnny that he had been before.

She found herself wondering how difficult it would be to stab someone.

****

Tess was possibly possessed by a demon, Banshee had been growing more and more rapidly and Johnny was more frightened of a woman with a crush on Edgar than the monster that had nearly engulfed them all when they watched the wrong channel on the television. The friend he thought he might have made was actively trying to kill, injure or mentally destroy the person Edgar loved most, and the girl that lived in his house had been giving him long stares.

The hotel offered him the opportunity to pretend none of it existed.

There was no television in the room, as they had requested, though they could see, just as they could everywhere else, the shape of where it had been on the wallpaper. Banshee and the others got their own rooms and as long as Tess couldn’t pass through walls four stories high, they were protected from the things that ate at Edgar’s mind.

At least that was what he wanted. Johnny was making it hard to pretend everything was sunshine and glee. He was standing in the room near a small table making vague gestures at nothing and muttering horrible things.

“I think she’s standing outside. I think she’s trying to find a way in. I bet she can just get in. I think she-”

Johnny was stopped when Edgar grabbed him into a hug.

“Stop. Please.”

“I’m going to fall apart,” Johnny said, letting his head roll back to stare, open-mouthed, at the ceiling. “Just collapse and my brain will boil in my skull and all the screws will come undone and I’ll just drop to the ground and it’ll crunch and then Banshee can pick up all the-” He gasped for air and coughed once as Edgar tightened his hold.

“Stop it. You’re going to be fine.”

“And Tess is harmless.”

“No. No, she’s not. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to die. You’ve done that already, and I’m not going to let it happen again until you or eighty years gives the okay.”

“I get a say in my own death, now?” Johnny asked, laughing. “How charitable of you, Edgar.”

“I’m serious!” Edgar shook Johnny until his head snapped back upright and he looked back at Edgar’s eyes. Johnny looked rattled and scared, but focused. “If you want to do that stuff, fine, but I’m not letting something happen to you because of something I can’t control again.”

“Control? I don’t think you’ve ever been in control of anything.”

“Then I’m going to change that.”

“Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Do you have to insult me when I’m worried about you?”

“Sorry,” Johnny said, his head falling onto Edgar’s shoulder.

“It scares me when you apologize so quickly, but thank you.”

“Sorry,” Johnny laughed into Edgar’s shirt.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Kill them all?” Johnny suggested cheerily.

“Can things just not end in dying for once?”

“No.”

Edgar stared at the shape of the television on the wall, Johnny still near-limp against his shoulder. When did things get this bad? So bad that televisions that he didn’t own scared him and people that should have been fans and friends were monsters and messengers of doom? Things were always tied up in these little dramas from Hell and he didn’t know why. He felt pretty sure he’d done nothing to deserve them, and even if Johnny had, it had been a lifetime ago.

“I really thought she would be okay,” Edgar said to the not-television.

“Tess?” Johnny lifted his head from Edgar’s shoulder long enough to say her name before flopping back down. “I told you stalkers were a stupid idea.”

“I know. I just thought it would be fun, you know?” Edgar tried to jerk his shoulder enough to get Johnny to stand up straight, but there was no response. “I thought it would be nice to have someone like that – someone who I was… unattainable for.”

“It is fun, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It’s why you keep Jimmy around, right?” Johnny made a noise that Edgar imagined accompanied a smile. Edgar waited for a response from Johnny before he asked outright, “Did I treat Tess like you treat Jimmy?”

Johnny snickered into Edgar’s shoulder.

“What?” Edgar asked, trying to see Johnny’s face.

“Nothing.”

“No, come on, what was it? You do this all the time, it’s not fair. You can’t do that to people.” Edgar shook Johnny’s shoulder gently to try to encourage fully standing again.

Johnny took his head off of Edgar’s shoulder and smiled deviously at him.

“Yes, I can,” he said. “But maybe I’ll tell you later.”

“Do you think I could have avoided all of this?”

“I did tell you not to go see her, in case you forgot.”

“No, I mean, for real.” Edgar looked pleadingly at Johnny, who seemed suddenly uneasy.

“I don’t know what’s unreal about what’s happening now,” Johnny said slowly.

“Do you think I should have known better? Do you think me talking to her made this mess worse with you? Did I have any clue in those notes that she sent me that she might have been possessed by something that tried to eat me once?”

“It’s not your fault, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Edgar backed away from Johnny and dropped to the side of the bed.

“I guess that’s what I’m asking, yeah.”

“Then no.”

“This is fucked up. I was talking to her to help you.”

“Welcome back to reality, Edgar.” Johnny hadn’t moved from where he stood.

“So what do we do?” Edgar asked. “I can’t just sit here waiting for things to keep happening.”

“We went over this already. You’re going to have to ignore it until you can talk to her alone again.”

“I didn’t want to wait for it to get worse. She’s got something going on with Banshee, too.”

“Banshee is the pure part of Tess’ soul,” Johnny said, waving his hands mockingly.

“If Banshee is the pure part, I am genuinely afraid for the rest of it.”

Edgar felt Johnny sit next to him a moment later.

“You know,” Johnny said, deeply interested in something on his knee, “Banshee gets bigger right around the time Tess does something to me.”

“What?”

“I think it’s me.”

“Do you think Tess knows that?”

“Are you not even going to question it?”

Edgar sighed, and looked away from Johnny for a moment before turning back to him. “No. Because at this point, I feel useless and I’m desperate for an answer. Tess making you crazy making Banshee bigger sounds just great to me.”

Johnny raised an eyebrow.

“‘Great’ here not actually meaning ‘awesome’,” Edgar added, falling back onto the crisp hotel comforter. He stared blankly at the ceiling for a while before Johnny spoke again.

“I don’t think Tess knows. Her intents seem to be to drive me insane and then hop in bed with you as a reward. Banshee doesn’t even enter her equation. Unless she wants to be a mom or she’s got future lesbian vision and she’s trying to age Banshee to-”

“Do you want me to lock you out of here?”

“Just making sure you’re paying attention.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You get all stupid when we talk about Banshee.”

“I do not. Fuck you.”

“Do too. I say one thing about that girl and then you act like the protective parent you keep saying you aren’t. You’ll have to pick one soon before she’s a real teenager and doesn’t want you around anymore.”

“You mean after she’s done with her magical crush on me? Because Tess isn’t enough?”

Johnny leaned back against the mattress, propping himself up with his hands. His mocking expression matched his tone.

“Yeah, what’s up with that? I think the real mystery here is how you’re so damn attractive all of a sudden. Hell with this ‘Tess is evil and I’m going crazy while Banshee hits puberty’ business. We have a surprise heart throb on our hands!”

“I think I hate you a little bit right now.”

“You can afford to, right? Since they’re breaking down the doors to get to you, an’ all.”

Edgar tried to glare, he really did, but sudden realization interrupted him. He propped himself up on his elbows and stared at Johnny.

“You’re just… th-that’s-” he stuttered.

“What?” Johnny looked upset that Edgar wasn’t enjoying the game.

“Defense mechanism,” Edgar said.

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“You make jokes, usually at me, as a defense mechanism. You’ve done this since … pretty much forever. You don’t like – you think Tess is actually a threat.”

“She’s possessed by a nightmare blob, yeah.”

“Not that.” Edgar sat up to look at Johnny, who looked a little worried. “You think I might actually leave.”

“I think you’re on crack.”

Edgar found that Johnny’s subtle expression – one of ‘I’ve been found out’ - made him smile.

“You’re afraid to lose me,” he said with some satisfaction.

“Competition seems to be fierce. I’ve got to contend with a mad woman and some kind of freak teenager.”

Edgar touched a finger to Johnny’s jaw, steering his gaze away from the floor. “Stop joking for a minute.”

Johnny looked at Edgar, but said nothing.

“Okay, now really,” Edgar said firmly. "This stuff actually scares you.”

“My brain has been under attack by the same woman you snuck out to meet. That’s a little alarming.”

“Is this that hard for you?” Edgar asked, brushing the back of his fingers on Johnny’s cheek. “Is it that hard to be direct about it?”

Johnny flinched at the contact.

“You’re presuming a lot,” he said.

“But I’m right.”

“Maybe.”

Edgar leaned away from Johnny, a little disappointed. He was sure he was right, but it still would have felt better to hear confirmation.

“What, not going reassure me or anything?” Johnny asked. The defense mechanism that never truly went away was back full force.

“You apparently don’t need it.” Edgar turned to occupy himself with untying his shoe, mostly as an excuse to look away.

“I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” Johnny said, “but it’s crossed my mind. Sort of have to wonder how long before what Tess tells you sinks in.”

“Sinks in?” Edgar asked, turning back from removing his shoes. “It doesn’t need to sink in because it’s full of shit.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“You weren’t even sure you authentically loved me a while back, and now you’re sure Tess is wrong?”

“She says you brainwashed me.”

“Okay.” Johnny shrugged.

“Which you didn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“You tell me.”

“I didn’t.”

“There.”

“And you believe me.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I know you, and she doesn’t.”

“Edgar?”

“What?”

“I want to destroy her before she destroys me.”

“Um…”

“I think she wants to take you from me. Syrupy as that sounds, I don’t intend to let her.”

Edgar saw Johnny struggling with what he was attempting to convey. He felt guilty that he enjoyed it, even if just a little.

“I’m staying where I am,” Edgar said. He was about to add ‘Don’t worry’, but thought that Johnny was probably not worried at all.

“Because someone brainwashed you into it?”

“Because I want to.”

“So what happens to your coffee partner?” Johnny asked, glancing at a wall.

“Well, I have to meet her at least once more, just to see what this all is. But if she turns out to be irredeemably evil or something, then… I’m not sure. It’s not like we can kill her and it turns out restraining orders can only be filed by people who are completely tangible.”

“I could try to summon Pepito from a phonebook again,” Johnny offered.

“I’d rather try to separate the Tess from the Wall Thing.”

“Pepito could do that, I bet.”

Edgar raised his arms, prepared to tear at his hair like he’d seen in so many of Johnny’s bad old movies, but the urge to theatrically pull his own hair out really wasn’t there. He gestured dramatically at Johnny instead.

“What is with you and Pepito?!”

Johnny looked surprised, but didn’t answer.

“Why haven’t you gone to see him?” Edgar asked. “I gave you plenty of opportunities with all the not-cheating I was doing.”

“I thought we’d go together,” Johnny answered with a shrug. “In observance of our traditional “Pepito, Fix This Shit” Pilgrimage.”

“How many times have I expressed not wanting to go?”

“A few.”

“And yet… you still think I’m going to wait around to go.”

“Not really. I’d just rather you come with me.”

Johnny’s answer stirred in Edgar the strangest of reactions. He suspected they were from bad late night movies, or from extended bouts of making fun of greeting cards, but hearing that Johnny had ascribed ‘traditional thing I do with Edgar’ to anything, even if it was visiting the Anti-Christ, made him want to hug Johnny until one of them passed out. He made the move to, but Johnny backed away from him.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” Johnny looked genuinely alarmed.

“I was going to hug you, but-”

“God, I thought you were going to bite me.” Johnny relaxed and leaned back into hugging range.

“What? Why?”

“You just looked like you were going to,” Johnny said defensively.

“That wasn’t the plan, no, but it could be modified.”

Johnny laughed. “I’m good, thanks.”

“Perhaps later then,” Edgar said, smiling. “We can get me some fangs and make a music video out of it.” A few inches away from his intended punctuation, Edgar’s plan to bite Johnny’s ear for effect was derailed by Johnny’s excitement about a vampire video.

“Shit, that would be great! We could do this whole huge thing with movie monsters, where instead of the vampire guy – Jimmy, definitely – it’s the weird Franken-zombie guy that gets… whoever.” Johnny paused and muttered a few things about damsels.

“I don’t think any of us have the required heaving bosom to do a vampire-themed anything,” Edgar said dryly.

“You always were the boring one.”

“Can I ask you something?” Edgar looked intently at Johnny, and hoped Johnny wouldn’t take his usual kind of cue and say ‘no.’

“Okay.”

“Do you really just not notice? I mean, I thought I was being pretty un-subtle, but I’ve been wrong before.”

When Johnny didn’t provide answer quickly enough, Edgar continued.

“I know you see things other people don’t. I know you read people better than anyone else we know, and probably better than anyone we don’t know. You know me better than anyone, and I like to think that I have a fighting chance against Jimmy and Devi in Johnny Trivia. So how are you not seeing…?”

“I see it,” Johnny said flatly, slumping his shoulders.

“So you’re baiting me or something.”

“Maybe.”

Edgar grabbed Johnny’s elbow with a clear idea of what he was going to say or do, but lost said idea when Johnny jumped.

“Do I scare you or something?” Edgar asked. “Did I do something? Is this ‘pretending to be with Edgar’ version two?”

“No.”

Edgar pulled Johnny close to him and practically into his lap. Johnny didn’t fight against him and in fact seemed content to settle where he was tugged.

“Then what is it? Why not just say ‘stop it’ instead of ignoring me?”

Johnny was quiet save for steady breathing. He moved very little but when he did it was to grip Edgar’s arm tightly, or to wind the fabric of Edgar’s shirt into his fingers.

“Johnny,” Edgar said with a sigh, “don’t just fall asleep to get out of answering me.”

“I’m awake,” Johnny told him.

“And?”

“I’ll tell you later, you’ll understand. Things are shaky.”

“Nny, seriously.”

“No, I really will.” Johnny made forceful eye contact to prove his intent or his truthfulness or maybe just to catch Edgar off guard. “Maybe when you guess it. You should be able to.”

“But, I shouldn’t have t-”

Edgar’s incoming protest died when Johnny kissed him. It was very possible the kiss was offered only to shut Edgar up, but by that point, Edgar didn’t care how they’d gotten there, just that they were and that Johnny wasn’t going to twist his way out of it. He tightened his hold on Johnny, even without signs of Johnny trying to flee the scene, though he did twitch a little when he felt Edgar’s grip.

“So,” Edgar said moments later, his breathing a little shaky, “can I guess?”

“If that’s what you want, sure.” Johnny brushed his cheek against Edgar’s and remained with his face near Edgar’s shoulder while Edgar guessed at what Johnny’s issues were this time.

“You’re leaving me for Devi,” he said, his face against Johnny’s neck.

“No.”

“You’ve realized this was all a horrible mistake and you want out.” Trailed his lips briefly along Johnny’s jaw before Johnny twitched again.

“No.”

“You’re trading me for Jimmy?” he asked into Johnny’s ear. Edgar felt Johnny’s fingers tighten on his shoulders.

“No, that’s the same as the other two,” he answered, leaning slightly away from Edgar’s affection.

“Will you actually tell me if I guess correctly?”

“You won’t guess correctly until you guess seriously.”

“I think I’ll wait,” Edgar said, running his hand down Johnny’s spine. “Besides, it really might be that Pepito told you I was going to steal your place as king of the underworld, and if I guessed normal shit, I’d never know.”

Johnny smiled, and arched his back. “Couldn’t hurt to check.”

While kneading his fingers into Johnny’s lower back, Edgar asked if Johnny had suddenly had a religious epiphany and was going to go be Pepito’s maid. He honestly had no idea if it was the sensation or the idea of being a maid that made Johnny laugh. Edgar asked if the twenty-four hour zombie channel had lost funding. Johnny tried to bite his head.

“Have they stopped making Skettios?” Nearly biting Johnny’s neck.

“Oh, yeah, you got it,” Johnny said, stretching his neck. “‘Oh god, they’ve stopped making canned pasta; don’t touch me.’”

“Freezies cause cancer?” Breathing down Johnny’s shirt.

“Then shoot them into my veins, I’m going all out.” Deep breaths.

“Todd and Pepito are getting married?” His hands under Johnny’s shirt and tracing shapes of nothing on his stomach.

“No, and if they are, I’m going long enough to burn the building down.”

Edgar snickered against Johnny’s collar bone and felt Johnny’s arms across his shoulders.

“I know what it is,” Edgar said, suddenly serious.

Johnny looked doubtful, but attentive. “Oh?”

“I don’t know how I missed it before,” Edgar said, hugging Johnny to his chest.

“Um, are you sure?” Johnny sounded concerned and tried to pull back to look at Edgar, but Edgar refused to ease his hold on Johnny’s ribcage.

“Yeah, there’s no mistake,” Edgar breathed into Johnny’s ear. “Clearly, you’re pregnant.”

“AH, FUCK, I’m going to kill you!” Johnny screamed, flailing to escape Edgar’s hold on him. “Jesus, Edgar!”

“Oh no, wait!” Edgar exclaimed gleefully, squeezing Johnny tighter despite repeated blows to the head. “It’s that Banshee has told you that we’re really brothers!”

“Oh god, you sick fuck! Let me go!” Though probably genuinely disgusted, Johnny was laughing. Edgar released him, still laughing himself. Johnny scrambled off of Edgar’s lap and nearly pushed him to the floor in the same motion. Edgar continued laughing until the muscles in his stomach hurt so much that they stopped hurting. Johnny pulled him back up to a sitting position, though they were both still gasping at the air.

“Fuck, Edgar, what is wrong with you?”

“Me?” Edgar asked, still half-laughing and short on breath. “You do this to me all the time.”

“Pregnant? I’ve never stooped that low.”

“Banshee is your ass-baby from the future.”

“This relationship is over five minutes ago.”

“Oh, good,” Edgar said, casually brushing some hair from his forehead. “I was thinking I’d be good at the Deadbeat Dad thing. Lemme grab some clothes, stop shaving, and start drinking and then I’ll go spend Banshee’s college fund on hookers and gambling. Where’s Tess?”

“Tess is a hooker?”

“In the land of ass-babies, we’re all hookers.”

“Yeah, now I’m really glad I retroactively broke up with you.”

“So,” Edgar said with a long breath, “you going to tell me what was wrong now?”

“No. No, I’m not.”

“Do I have to resort to mentioning Jimmy next time? Because I can.”

“Just wait, jeez.” Johnny blew some hair out of his face and seemed to finally be getting his breath back. “Why do I even keep you around?”

“I keep your mind open to the glorious possibilities that may lie in the future?”

Johnny looked disgusted and leaned away from Edgar. “Did you just put ‘glorious’ and ‘ass’ in the same category?”

“I wouldn’t be the first if I had.”

“I’m sure you could talk to Jimmy about it.”

“I’d rather not. I think I’ll keep the horror for just you.”

“Charming, thank you.”

Edgar leaned in and pressed his forehead to Johnny’s temple, still smiling, even though things didn’t go anything like he’d planned them to.

“You love me,” he said.

Johnny pushed back against Edgar’s forehead, and Edgar pulled away, disappointed that the joking hadn’t gained him a pass for random affection for very long. Johnny looked at him and stared at him and appeared to be trying to bore holes through him until Edgar wondered if there was something gross on his face.

“What?” he asked, trying not to compulsively lick his teeth.

“I really do,” Johnny said, though he looked a little scared of his own words.

“A-”

“I really, really do.”

There was a distinct feeling in Edgar that this kiss would go the way he’d intended the original to go. Edgar figured that one day he would discover what made Johnny afraid of being bitten one moment and content to be kissed the next, but for now, reason still unclear, Johnny responded to every motion Edgar made. If it wasn’t the mirror, it was the direct compliment. As infrequently as Johnny allowed any kind of intimacy, he had a bizarrely keen sense of timing it all. Expressions of affection were rarely awkward once Johnny permitted them and most often felt as though they had been choreographed in advance so that Johnny magically knew every possible location of Edgar’s elbow at any given point in time. It hadn’t been lost on Edgar that perhaps he was being manipulated to do things Johnny preferred rather than Johnny following what Edgar did, but Edgar liked to believe it was give and take. Johnny had probably never said the words “I love you” directly or without sarcasm, but Edgar knew they were there.

The simple intimacy aspect was most important. The things the media and Jimmy’s porn told him were key relationship ingredients were really side notes that were often ignored. Sometimes there was an ache to go that far, to do something he was afraid would be filmed later or witnessed by a small girl needing a freak haircut or new clothes, but he would trade it for closeness. His original aches hadn’t been to pound Johnny into a mattress in a sub-par hotel; they were just to be there and be close and to be not only allowed there, but wanted there. Johnny was not terribly fond of going beyond simple intimacy and seemed to appreciate Edgar’s sentimental view of things.

They were close enough, had been around each other long enough, that the shape of Johnny’s body was a very familiar thing. The way Johnny moved, what bones stuck out of him where and when, and how he carried himself were comfortable things. Edgar remembered the first time he’d noticed that Johnny was his default when Devi had hugged him after a particularly loud performance. Edgar had been surprised at how strange she felt, and the surprise remained later when he was given a ‘manly joking hug’ from Jimmy, and a ‘desperately hoping this is significant hug’ from Tess. Their shapes, their weights, where their muscles reacted most – all of it reminding him how much he concentrated on what Johnny felt like. Jimmy, he thought, would have felt similar, but Jimmy was just as foreign, if not more so, than Devi. There was something in the world, he thought, some knowledge he was lacking, that he made up for by knowing every bony angle of Johnny.

He could see the bones move in Johnny’s back, could almost see where muscle was attached. When they were alone like this, he could see how all of the movements that looked so intriguing covered in rags were still just as fascinating as bare skin. Johnny had scars and marks on him that Edgar could never keep track of, and that Johnny swore just appeared and shuffled every few days. With his nails still painted black and the stage make-up he only ever made a vague attempt at removing still on the thin, shiny skin around his eyes, he looked unsettling and kind of malnourished. Johnny’s clothing hid so many of his bonier features that the makeup and nails only made him look appropriately scary on a parody level on stage – here, they scared Edgar just enough to make it a little exciting.

****

“I think it’s my fault, Ten.”

“It’s your fault Johnny has the crazy and a woman is stalking Edgar? I really need to hear the story behind this. Should I sit down? Popcorn maybe?”

“Don’t joke, I’m serious.”

“So I’m sitting then?”

“Tenna.”

Tenna flopped onto the hotel bed and sat cross-legged, a pillow hugged to her chest as though she was ready to hear scandalous secrets at a slumber party.

“You remember when she called me?” Devi asked from the other corner of the bed. “When she was telling me Edgar was brainwashed or being manipulated or whatever?”

“Yeah, you almost missed the Flying Dutchman Hour.”

“I told her to actually talk to Nny. I said, ‘Oh, you just have to know him!’ or whatever. And it’s true, Ten, you know it is, but I wasn’t even thinking when I told her that. The whole ‘she eats Johnny’s brain’ thing just slipped my mind.”

“You shouldn’t have had to expect her to be some kind of brain harpy, Devi.”

“Edgar told me she had problems with Nny. Or that he had problems with her. I don’t know why I didn’t think that ‘problems’ meant more than mild distaste when it involved him.” Devi sighed, trying to be preoccupied with undoing a hair style that she’d already successfully undone several minutes ago.

“You haven’t condemned anyone,” Tenna said, compressing her pillow. “If anything, Edgar needed to be a little more up front about the kind of ‘problems’ he meant.”

“So it’s his fault?” Devi asked, sending a wary gaze in Tenna’s direction.

Tenna shrugged in response.

“It feels better that way, doesn’t it?”

****

She would tell them she'd left a magazine or a snack in the van if anyone caught her sneaking back out, but what she wanted wasn't hers.

When she made it to the van, she had to fight with the door to get it to open properly and she was worried the noise would attract someone, but the wet hotel parking lot was silent and still well after the noise of the door. Banshee breathed a sigh of relief and climbed into the van, over Jimmy's usual seat and his snack cooler and to the rear of the van. She rifled through the junk stashed under the loose cushions on the back seat to find Johnny’s magical tattered notebook. Since she’d seen Johnny using it to send silent messages to Edgar, she had to know what was in it.

Several worn pages of Johnny’s doodles in, the page he’d written that night sat waiting for her. The page detailed Johnny’s ideas for what was going to happen, and how he felt and how he thought Tess felt, and even how he thought Banshee felt. It was mostly wrong and ridiculous, so Banshee assumed this was not part of his secret message exchange with Edgar. Some of his ranting was totally unrelated to Tess and the issues at hand, and Johnny’s already scratchy and erratic handwriting degraded violently into illegibility as it progressed down the page. In a few places, his underlines sliced through the paper and as the writing entered a second page, actually understanding what it said became impossible.

Near the middle of that page, apparently mid-sentence, Johnny’s sharp letters stopped and larger, loopier writing interrupted with simply ‘I love you.’ Johnny’s writing returned underneath it: ‘I know.’

Banshee angrily scratched and cursed at the page and then shoved the notebook as violently as she could back under the seat, grabbed one of the random paranormal tabloids that were stashed in the cup holders, kicked the snack cooler across the floor of the van, hopped out, and slammed the door. She didn't care who heard it this time.

****

He was reclined against the over-fluffed pillows the hotel had provided in various parts of his Homicides costume. He still had stitches and wax on his arms, along with various lengths of stray fabric and metal bits that Tenna and Johnny had tied to his wrists, though his pants had been ditched as soon as Johnny noticed the neon paint smearing onto the blankets they didn’t own. Johnny thought the neon would have improved the comforter, but Edgar didn’t want to pay for it, so tossed the shredded stage clothes aside. Johnny had accused him of just wanting to take his pants off.

“Still going to guess?” Johnny was still adorned with the last show’s jewelry, but missing the shredded neon-stained shirt (that Edgar had actually wanted to take off, neon aside). He was lying next to Edgar, mostly watching the ceiling, but showing very little in the way of jumpy or distantly crazy. There was no looping vague reference to Tess or any danger of passing out among the ugly hotel comforters. No one would have guessed he’d stabbed demon teenagers from his van a few hours ago. He was just Johnny in especially tattered pants.

By Edgar’s estimate, he and Johnny were wearing a whole (ugly) costume between them.

“No, I’d rather there not be any guessing involved at this point. I’m sure I’ll understand later.”

“That’s a lot of faith in me there.”

“You’ll tell me,” Edgar said, brushing his face near Johnny’s ear. “I’m not worried.”

“You trust me?” Johnny returned the motion, but laughed through it.

“Of course.”

“Even after I stabbed that thing in the fa-”

Edgar hadn’t meant to clamp his hand over Johnny’s mouth, but it had the same effect as the general shushing he’d had in mind.

“Sorry,” he said, taking his hand away when he realized he had a grip on Johnny’s face, “I just would rather not focus on it.”

“You don’t worry about this regressing me into oblivion and whatever else?” Johnny asked, pointedly ignoring Edgar’s awkward hushing and trying to retie a filthy shred of fabric to his wrist.

“Give me that.” Edgar motioned to Johnny’s wrist and tried to grab it while Johnny pulled it away protectively.

“No, fuck you. I like it.”

“I mean let me tie it.”

“Oh.” Johnny surrendered his wrist and Edgar wound the string securely. He paused only slightly when he saw the bones of Johnny’s wrist for what felt like the first time.

“I am a little worried about regressing, I guess,” Edgar confessed, tightening the knot. “It was kind of… not good? Seeing you stab something – someone.”

“They weren’t up to anything good.”

“You usually need a better excuse to stab people.”

“I told you,” Johnny said, pulling his wrist away, “they weren’t people.”

“I believe you. It’s kind of why I’m half-clothed in a hotel talking about cancer and ass-babies with you instead of having a nervous breakdown in a police station somewhere.”

“You’d turn me in?”

“Right in the eyes, Nny.” Edgar pointed at his own eye to drive the point home. “You stabbed him in the face.”

“So what, it’s okay if I stab him in the shoulder?”

“It takes a certain kind of fucked up to stab people in the face. Most people don’t.”

Johnny began a mocking mime using his hands as puppets. “‘When I stab, I always aim for the clavicle.’ ‘Really? I’m a stomach kind of guy, myself.’ And then they go out for coffee when they get out of the office.”

“Okay, out of people who stab regularly.”

“Is there a serial killer channel on TV I don’t know about?”

“Like I’d show it to you if there was.”

Johnny sighed and twisted the rag Edgar had just tied. “Psychologically, yeah, it does take a special kind of fucked up to stab someone in the face. Men do it more than women, but people don’t like doing it even if they’re fucked up enough to stab in the first place.”

“This is actually not making me feel better. Have you been watching a serial killer channel?”

“You said you believed me.”

“That doesn’t make ‘you stabbed someone in the face’ any nicer.”

“The eyes were the problem, so they had to go.” Johnny shrugged against the pillow underneath him. “It was just a logical solution.”

“What were they?” Edgar asked, trying to distract himself by tracing a pattern on the sheet underneath him. “The things, I mean, not the eyes.”

“They were just bad things.”

“I want to believe that’s it.”

“It’s all I know. I’m not gonna lie to you about stabbing some spooky fucker in the face. Banshee was freaking out too, you know; it wasn’t just me.”

“But this takes us back to ‘you stabbed him’.”

“So we didn’t die. It’s not hard to grasp. And what the hell, you said you didn’t want to focus on it.”

“I didn’t. This always just seems to happen anyway.”

“Pesky, those stabbings.”

“It’s fine. The focusing is done now,” Edgar said, rolling over to stare at the ceiling. “Just keep the stabbing down to supernatural shit that’s going to kill us, okay?”

“You act like I’m shooting up with distilled essence of stabbing. I got over the stabbing people thing last life; I think I’m good now.” He sighed, joining Edgar in ceiling-staring. “Besides, if I’d said, ‘We need to stab them in the eyes,’ who would’ve done it?”

“Some part of me thinks Banshee would have volunteered.”

“Heh. Maybe.”

“I’m afraid to look at the poor kid now,” Edgar said suddenly. “I’m constantly worried I’m going to look at her and trigger some kind of hormonal nightmare and she’ll develop weird pseudo-incestual Lolita fantasies.”

“Holy shit, I think I’ll be over here,” Johnny said, shuffling away from Edgar.

“With everyone saying, ‘Oh, Edgar she likes you!’ what am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to do? Why is it just me?”

“Are you actually asking me?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Banshee is in the entirely unenviable position of being like we were, but not in the same age bracket as everyone else…yet.” Johnny paused awkwardly to consider Banshee growing even more. Edgar buried his head under a pillow and tried to sing Jimmy’s song loud enough to drown out thoughts of Banshee getting that old before the weekend. Johnny continued when Edgar fumbled the words to the second verse.

“So, you’re a thirteen-year-old girl,” Johnny said.

“Am not, fuck you.”

“Aannd the things you apparently need are parents and a love interest,” Johnny finished with some irritation.

“Oh. Oh, we’re hypothetical-ing. Okay.” Edgar emerged from the pillow and sat up to listen to Johnny’s reasoning even though he knew he was going to dislike where it went.

“Banshee looks at me,” Johnny held up a finger apparently meant to represent himself, “and thinks, ‘Whee, let’s be friends,’ or whatever. She also tries me out for the parent and love interest role, because why not while she’s in the neighborhood, right? She runs into violently disinterested on both levels.”

“You were a total dick to her.”

“I know, but she’s not Lolita-ing over me, is she?” Johnny held up another finger to add to his story. “So then, she runs into Jimmy, who she labels ‘uncle.’ You can’t be a parent and an uncle at the same time to the same person. Usually.”

“This asks why she’s hit me with ‘dad’ and ‘love interest’, by that logic.”

“Just wait, I’m not done,” Johnny waved his hand in Edgar’s face, clearly more interested in delivering his speech than whatever Edgar was intended to get out of it. “So, Jimmy. Banshee goes to his house and goes, ‘Holy Mother of Ra’ or whoever she likes at the moment, ‘this is a lot of porn and scary images of Johnny despite that Uncle Jimmy is nice to me! He clearly cannot be my dad or my love interest!’”

“I am afraid to think of what we did to her by letting her stay over there,” Edgar said, picking at some wax on his arm.

“THEN she gets shuffled over to Devi and Tenna,” Johnny persisted, holding up two more fingers. “Devi, she notices, is a crazy bitch and doesn’t like to talk to people under a certain height. This does not a good parent make, and, unless Banshee is bisexual, the love interest thing doesn’t even enter the equation, especially when we look at Tenna, who is loopy as fuck and also makes Devi look sort of taken.”

“Nny, this doesn’t make sense.”

“She loops around to you,” Johnny said, extending his thumb, “and realizes she has run out of people who can see her and give any shred of a fuck. You are the one who read to her, and you’re the one who went and bought her clothes.”

Edgar flinched.

Johnny smiled devilishly. “Glad to see you’re paying attention. So you got to be ‘dad’ with no effort at all. In the meantime, she sees you with me.”

“Which doesn’t make sense if she decided against Devi because of Tenna.”

“It doesn’t matter; you’re the last hope now. She sees you with me, decides that either makes you a potential parent as someone attached to someone else, or decides that this is just showcasing that you can not fuck up interpersonal interaction.”

“You’re just making this up.”

“That’s possible, but you’re ‘desperate and want something to believe’ or whatever, right? So, now, rather than shut you out of either role, Banshee is just keeping both windows open and seeing which one you lean toward first since there’s no one else, in her mind, that can do what she needs them to do.”

Edgar stared at his knees for several moments. There were scars there from an adventure the others had taken him on during their first summer together. Devi and Johnny had tried to push him over a chain link fence, and managed to do so in the way that got the most broken links embedded in Edgar’s flesh as possible. Edgar wondered if he’d been ready, back then, to sway in multiple directions – Johnny as a friend, Johnny as someone he watched over, and Johnny as someone he fell for.

If he’d been asked while lying there on the sidewalk, blood flowing in long lines from his knees, which way he was leaning, ‘Johnny as someone he ran away from desperately’ would have been his first choice.

“So she’s waiting for me to pick something,” Edgar mumbled.

“I’d say so, yeah.”

“She can’t think I’d…”

“I’m assuming that’s why Tenna brought it up and not Banshee herself.”

“Does she need to see me firmly attached to your side or something? Do I have to molest you in public?”

“If you try, I’m stabbing you next.”

Edgar looked at Johnny, knowing it had been a joke, but still alarmed that the words had escaped Johnny’s lips at all. Johnny seemed to detect his unease.

“It was a joke, you know,” he said.

“I know. I know you wouldn’t.”

****

His hotel room was dark. The sheets crinkled underneath him when he shifted his weight and he was fairly sure the people in the next room were having headboard-banging sex against the wall behind him. The television was on, turned to a channel showing old horror films. He had it on mute because he liked the whine televisions made when turned on, but liked what was actually on televisions significantly less. He only wished he could mute the people behind him.

Jimmy wasn’t even sure when he got into the hotel. The last thing he clearly remembered was being in the van and watching a tiny drop of black twist through the air and into the van’s front window. Since that moment, all he’d been able to see was Johnny and the way he moved among bullets of rain, stretched over two people trying to sit in the front seat, still managing to do what was needed, perfectly and precisely.

He had beautiful wrists.

Watching everything from the floor had simultaneously slowed and accelerated the events of the evening. Jimmy saw every motion Johnny made, every twitch of every muscle, every moment that passed in which Jimmy was so focused on Johnny’s focus that neither of them blinked and yet he still felt like he’d been so slow that he’d missed it.

“never been hot enough”

Whatever ‘it’ was, it had been perfect, it had been genius, and it had been the art that Jimmy had screamed that Johnny possessed to the people who couldn’t hear him in the halls of their high school. It had been the thing that attracted Jimmy to Johnny in the first place.

He wondered if Edgar had felt this much fear when he remembered the first time he met Johnny. He wondered if Edgar experienced the same extreme version of bittersweet when he remembered himself and Johnny in whatever positions they’d occupied back then. He wondered if Edgar, like him, wanted both to be sick over the image and embrace it.

He remembered, though it was in pieces. The flash of a homemade killing kit. The rush of seeing a fleeting moment of artistry and the hopes that by imitating and following he’d draw the source of his obsession out of the infested woodwork. He remembered that in this long ago world Johnny was underwhelming in person; shorter, darker, balder, thinner, and less mythical than the beautiful and elegant thing that had decimated the taco stand.

In his current life, Johnny looked as Johnny was. Maybe it was because Jimmy had grown with him and was used to him, but he couldn’t imagine anything more perfect than the Johnny he had – small, sharp, selfish, manipulative and exactly elegant enough to have executed an artistic stab to a pitch black eye. What had previously been Jimmy’s ‘underwhelming’ was now Jimmy’s ‘absolutely perfect’.

‘ain’t never been hot enough’

He thought about going into the hall and doing something dramatic that absolutely no one would see. He thought about the people he was sure his mind was trying to prevent him from remembering he’d killed. He thought about the girl he’d done far worse to. Johnny had dealt with memories like these by retreating to Edgar or by beating Jimmy up. Jimmy had no one to hide him from it and no one to take it out on.

The girl who was not quite so small anymore crossed his mind, though he wasn’t sure why.

Jimmy’s thoughts were peppered with slow motion images of Johnny, arched over Banshee and Tenna, holding a knife that held the light around it for only a second before being driven into black. Thoughts of protecting Banshee had something like commercial breaks that only showed over and over how beautiful the entire act had been. Attempts to focus on music or on the pictures on the television were confronted with the shape of Johnny moving in abstract space.

He’d been worse than Johnny. Johnny did what he did, beautiful though it was, out of mental defect, out of collapse of himself. Jimmy’s mimicry was a mental illness, but the illness wasn’t schizophrenia, or even unspecified crazy; it was just teenage stupidity and a healthy dosage of bands that ‘spoke’ to him. Jimmy had done more than kill in the names of his heroes (a band he couldn’t remember the name of and, of course, Johnny); he’d violated. The rape had disgusted Johnny, and Jimmy had been so lost and confused that this man who was supposed to be his idol, his vampiric inspiration, was not only terribly un-vampire, but was sane enough to be drawing not just lines, but almost-moral ones.

The illusion shattered with his ribcage.

He wanted to cry, not out of pain, but out of frustration and anger at how he’d died. That he’d done it to himself, that he could have been spared living again and again if he’d just fixated on a poet or a one of those people who pretend to be statues on street corners instead of a man who disemboweled (however elegantly) the patrons of a greasy fast food place.

****

She was very much alone. Alone in her hotel room, alone in her concern about Tess, and alone as a young supernatural sideshow freak for a show already headlined by sideshow freaks.

Banshee heard Jimmy muttering in mantras to himself, opening and closing the door to his room, and narrating his own actions as though they needed explaining even to him. That feeling that had surged in him when he was in the van was still there, still refusing to let him go and Banshee felt a wave of it each time he ventured into the hallway.

Tenna and Devi had their own room and seemed to be capable of using warped girl-talk to clear their thoughts on anything. If either of them had felt guilt or fear about the guys with black eyes, it was likely gone and well-drowned in jokes about sex, noodles or bad literature.

And Johnny and Edgar got through everything. Edgar had been terrified of Johnny earlier this evening and was probably down the hall with his hands all over him now.

“Maybe violence gets him excited,” she said aloud. Thinking about what made Edgar excited both made her feel disgusted and wonder if she should be taking notes. Maybe she’d give them to Tess?

The fish market looked appealing at times like this.

“Just think,” she told the smoke detector on the ceiling, “I could know the differences between different kinds of salmon right now.”

She had nothing – no parents, no origin, no magical memories of a past life, no other half. It wasn’t that she was desperate for love and fairy tale princes. It wasn’t even that she was playing the sparkly-eyed orphan longing for parents, she was just bothered that she had nothing connecting her to anything or anyone but a resemblance to Johnny.

Of all of them, it had to be Johnny - the one who had been cruelest to her. She couldn’t look like Edgar, who actually worried about her (but still less than he worried about Johnny), or Devi, who cared when it mattered. No, it was Johnny, who cared only when it was convenient, suited him, and might make for a good story later.

The worst part was that she wanted him to care. As much as she wanted to be able to clear Tess’ name of Johnny-killing evil, Banshee wanted to be in Johnny’s circle. The depths of acceptance the others gave her meant nothing if Johnny didn’t see her as part of his equation. She wasn’t part of the Homicides, she wasn’t anyone’s family, she was just an extra.

The white closet hadn’t been a good sign. Her body randomly growing couldn’t have been a good sign. Edgar forming an even more tightly cemented bond to someone who’d just stabbed something alive probably wasn’t a good sign. Even though Banshee felt fine about the stabbings themselves, Edgar worried her.

Unfortunately, she was sure that no matter how old her body looked, she was too young to understand it. When she closed her eyes, the red star stared back at her.

****

“supersonic overdrive”

Tess was not seen again at a show, or the side of the road. Johnny gave some weaker performances than his usual, but he remained standing and conscious through the remaining weeks in neon paint. He did very little other than performing and eating individually-wrapped cheese slices and no one blamed him. Edgar expressed the occasional concern that Johnny was sleeping frequently, but he also told the others he had a hard time being too worried that Johnny was doing something that was actually healthy for him. Aside from the cheese.

Jimmy was straining against something, and he tried to play through it. Where Johnny was physically unable to give more to a Homicides show, Jimmy was emotionally required to channel himself through a guitar. At first, the others encouraged him, but three shows in, after he was once again unresponsive and incoherent in the face of praise, they left him to his German mutterings.

Devi and Tenna seemed fine. Devi gave the occasional passionate drumming, but little changed about her performance. She wasn’t losing any elegance or slowing down like Johnny and she wasn’t trying to turn the drums into her vocal cords either. Devi ordered take out, and Tenna made bad jokes and they got enough sleep and the others tried their hardest to find something wrong with both of them.

Banshee dreamed of Tess often and shared the things she saw with Edgar. When she talked about Tess, she always mentioned red stars. She tried to show Edgar a red star sitting in the sky one night, in order to make some poetic point. Johnny told her, without even looking at the sky, that it was Mars. Edgar sadly admitted that Johnny was right when Banshee looked at him to say otherwise and tried to convince her to go on with her story anyway, but she angrily told him to forget it. She made a point from that night on to look dramatically away from Mars when anyone saw her staring at the sky.

Edgar tried not to dwell on Tess, but knowing that both Johnny and Banshee were being affected by her simply existing didn’t make it easy.

****

The radio cracked and the talk show that had been previously about aliens turned to the generally unexplained.

“Thanks for the call, George,” the voice on the radio said. “That actually leads us to our next topic…”

“I still can’t believe we haven’t heard from Dib,” Tenna remarked from the front. “I thought he’d be all over the alien thing.”

“It is possible he’s not listening, Tenna,” Edgar said.

Despite the conversational attempts of Tenna and Edgar, it was quiet in the van save for the Dreaming Dan show. The end of touring around was near, and exhaustion taking a toll on them all. Johnny was on the fringe of sleep, and Jimmy seemed to be attempting to reach enlightenment. Banshee sulked more often than not, and Edgar was left feeling like Devi and Tenna were the only ones truly functioning on their own power and not on energy drinks and donuts.

“What’s you opinion on strange disappearances, Professor?” the radio host asked.

“Supporters of abduction claims typically cite their similarities to each other as proof that something bigger is happening. However, it is just as much a damning detail, after all, who would want to report an abduction that didn’t include a bright light or strange grey figures? In truth, images like this are extremely common in near-death or seizure situations. It is just as likely, if not more so, that these folks have been having stressful situations to trigger seizure-like symptoms.”

“And what of the ones who have not been recovered from their abductions?”

“It seems to be that these young people just don’t want to be found, and like to spread a little urban myth at the same time.”

“We’ve had calls all this evening from witnesses who say they were abducted. What do you have to say to them?”

“This kind of desire to be important – this attention seeking – it’s a common cause, but if they truly are experiencing these things, then perhaps a medical check-up should be in their near future. It is possible psychological issues are at work as well.”

“Sure, sure. Then, for the sake of argument, let me flip it around. How do you explain strange appearances? Or is it ‘re-appearances’?”

“Tenna, turn it up,” Johnny said, his face still buried in the seat he was attempting sleep on.

“Re-appearances, Dan?”

“Have you heard anything about the Homicides, Professor?”

“Holy shit,” Devi muttered, attempting to turn the volume up more than it was able.

“Murders are a might different from disappearing.”

“No, no, I mean, that group of kids who make music that doesn’t stay in.”

“Kids?” Edgar looked up from his tabloid. “Are we still kids?”

“I am,” Banshee said. Her breath fogged up the window near her seat and she rushed to wipe it off.

The ‘professor’ laughed. “Right, right. Well, you know, that kind of smoke and mirrors appearance isn’t exactly the same kind of thing as returning from an abduction, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Fuck you, Professor,” Jimmy muttered. Aside from yelling and singing along on stage, they were his first English words in days.

“I take it you’ve never seen them?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Can you hear this?”

The show’s host went silent for a few moments and then a snippet of a Homicides song played for several seconds. Devi leaned closer to the radio as though she thought she was going to miss something with the station at top volume. When the song stopped on the radio, a hushed continuation of the words and rhythm still murmured through the van.

“Well?” Dreaming Dan asked.

“Nothing. I didn’t hear anything.”

“Maybe we’ll open it up to calls about now. Call us at DREAM94 and tell us what you heard. This is Dreaming Dan, and we’ll see what you had to say in just a bit.”

Dreaming Dan was replaced by an ad for a local grocery store and its newest genetically modified produce. Devi turned the sound down and turned to look at the others.

“We’re on the same show as Big Foot,” she said.

“I’m almost flattered,” Edgar said, laughing. “Now Dib will love us for sure.”

“You didn’t think he was listening to this,” Tenna teased.

“I said you don’t know he’s listening. Not that he isn’t.”

The Dreaming Dan intro played and Devi jumped on the volume button. “Okay, okay, shut up, up!” She turned the knob as far as it would it go.

“And welcome back to the Dreaming Dan show, I’m Dan and we’re here with Professor Greenwood, who has been talking with us about the possible science and psychology behind the supernatural. Thanks again for coming in, Professor.”

“My pleasure, Dan. Thanks for having me.”

Both their voices sounded hesitant and unsure. Edgar felt Johnny shift uneasily and watched Banshee turn her attention from the window for the first time in hours.

“This is Dreaming Dan, and you’re on D94, what’s your name?”

“This is Chris.”

“Thanks for callin’, Chris. Where you calling us from?”

“Aw, I’m on the road, headin’ back from work and heard you guys play part of that song.”

“You heard a song, Chris?”

“Sure did. That’s one of my favorites, man.”

“You’ve seen the Homicides before?”

“Three times. The first time is intense, man, you have to get that Professor out to see them. You givin’ out tickets or somthin’?”

“What did you see happen the first time?”

“They just came out of nowhere, you know. Like everyone says they do. Can’t hear a damn thing, and then suddenly they’re just there.”

“Thanks for calling D94, Chris. Marcy, you’re on the air.”

“Thanks, Dan. Love your show. First time caller. Big fan.”

“That’s great, Marcy. So what’d you hear tonight?”

“My daughter and I listen to your show all the time, and she got so excited when you played that bit earlier.”

“Could you hear a song, Marcy?”

“Oh, of course. I took my daughter to a show last summer. She and I just love J-”

“Okay, Marcy, thanks for your call. Gretchen, you’re on D94!”

“How long are they going to sit there and prove that professor wrong?” Tenna asked, though it was clear she was enjoying it.

Five more listeners called in to praise both Dreaming Dan and the Homicides, all while the Professor remained silent. One was a woman in her seventies, and Edgar thought for sure he’d met her in a grocery store once. Another call came in from a brother and sister who spent more time bickering over who would win in a fight between Johnny and Dreaming Dan than answering any of his questions. A college kid reported that he and his girlfriend had heard the song, and a lady at work in a diner said she and everyone eating at Joe’s that night had heard it.

“People actually ‘Eat at Joe’s’?” Johnny asked wearily. He was the only one who laughed at his own joke, though the sound only vaguely resembled laughter and leaned more toward the sound of drowning.

“So what do you think, Professor?” Dreaming Dan asked. The phones could still be heard ringing behind his voice.

“I think we’d need to look at where all those calls came from to know for sure. We have no evidence that the Homicides and their friends aren’t listening in as we speak, flooding the lines, though I’m not going to discredit this until I’m able to investigate further.”

Devi and the others laughed.

“Too bad Johnny doesn’t have the old cell phone anymore,” Tenna said.

“We’re going to take a few more callers, and then we’ve got a discussion about where your socks go when you put them in the dryer, and a woman who claims to have them all in her couch cushions. That’ll be at the top of the hour, but for now, Tess! You’re on Dreaming Dan!”

“You can’t be serious,” Johnny said, struggling to sit up.

“Hi there.”

“Hey, you have something to say about the Homicides? You know the song?”

“I know it. I know them. They tried to run me over a few weeks ago.”

“Sure they did. Thaaanks for calling. Dave! You’re on-”

“I’m not done.”

“Yeah, thanks Tess, we got it.”

“I’m going to break Johnny.”

“Devi turn it off, come on,” Edgar urged. He stole panicked glances at Johnny, who was moving, but almost too slow to be noticeable.

Dreaming Dan broke to a commercial, though Tess’ voice cracked through each one. Dan himself seemed to be panicked and kept threatening to call the police over advertisements for dog food and used cars.

“No, keep it on,” Johnny said. He rose to his feet and stumbled his way to the front of the van. “I need to see.” He looked back to Banshee, who was clinging to the door. “Do you know anything about this?” he asked her.

“No,” she said quickly, shaking her head.

“Tenna, I think you should pull over,” Devi said, reaching for the steering wheel.

“I can get it,” Tenna said, dragging the van into a hard stop.

Banshee’s eyes were wide, as she listened to the endless loop of commercials. Johnny sat in the front of the radio, ready for whatever Tess was prepared to do whenever she was prepared to do it. Edgar grabbed Banshee’s shoulder and shook her until she turned her attention away from Johnny.

“Banshee, if what Johnny thinks is right, you’re going to grow again.”

“He knows what causes it?”

“He thinks it’s related to Tess frying his brain. Just… brace yourself, okay?”

She looked at him, searching his face. “You’re just going to let him do it?”

“He wants to.”

Banshee’s expression didn’t improve. Her eyes caught the street lights outside and while Edgar saw tears, he tried to ignore them. “I wasn’t worried about him,” Banshee said softly.

Edgar pretended to be out of earshot.

Dreaming Dan flickered back when the commercials looped a third time, but he was yelling something at the tech guys and not hosting a radio show at all. His phones were still ringing persistently in the background and the voices of his lackeys betrayed panic in the studio. Over Dan’s own panic, Tess’ voice came in with a small fanfare of static.

“Hello. I’m sorry, but this is you or me, and it won’t be me.”

“It has her,” Johnny said.

The onslaught of sound Tess unleashed seconds later hurt even those it wasn’t intended for. She played clips of songs they knew, songs they had performed, songs Johnny liked, and songs Johnny hated all woven into each other with strands of Tess’ memory laced throughout.

“rollin’ back your eyes”
“don’t tell your parents you’re here”
“don’t cry out –in this world of a million religions - cease fire”
“freedom above”
“run -everyone prays the same way- away”
“searching for the error in the system on this star”

“You killed them.”

“when I get through this part, will the next one be the same?”
“augen auf -try honesty- ich komme”
“the lake it is said never gives up her dead”
“gonna move-cry agony-gonna fuck up your ego”

“Murdered mindlessly. I saw you torture them. I saw the news. I knew.”

“It wasn’t mindless,” Johnny defended, though he appeared to struggle with the words.

The voices in the songs skipped and sputtered in and out of each other. Tess’ voice remained clear over the sick weaving of noise behind it.

“this land is my land”
“I hear violins”
“how many times- ten, nine, eight and I’m breaking away –have I told you”
“not –I’m all dressed up and ready - to play with fire”
“you say the most beautiful things”

“You were a pawn to a wall.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Johnny spat, pointing accusingly at the numbers on the dashboard. Edgar tried to pull him away from the radio, and Devi, once so eager to filter the radio’s sounds directly to her brain, pawed desperately at the volume knob. Johnny gripped both their hands and attempted to throw them away from him.

“Why did you take her?” Johnny demanded of the digital read-out.

“Johnny, it’s a fucking radio!” Tenna yelled over the scraping music.

“this land is your land”
“pay then I sleep by your side”
“gonna strike like thunder”
‘it’s easy when you’re big in Japan”

“An ant playing for its queen.”

“Alarmstufe Rot”
“there is a song without a name”
“we all fall down”
“I was me, but now he’s gone”
“like toy soldiers”

“A tiny speck overtaken and consumed by the thing that you fed with others after it had already fed on you.”

“when you’ve got talent, everything is free”
“viel zu sch�n f�r den Tag”
“the truth is somewhere in between”
“R�veille-Toi”

“She doesn’t sound right,” Edgar observed while there was a lull in the volume.

“It’s just speaking through her!” Johnny screamed to the radio’s display. His own song fought against the sounds blasting through the van. “That isn’t even her! It can’t speak because it doesn’t have a mouth that I collected for it!”

Banshee made a soft cry in the seats behind Johnny and Edgar. Edgar watched her claw at the window and saw her face twisted from her stoic attempt not to show pain. Though Edgar wanted to go to her, to say something or help her in some way, Tess’ voice (whether it belonged to her or not) kept him there on the van floor next to Johnny and Jimmy.

“How long do you want to do this? You know they wanted you to die.”

Dreaming Dan’s voice crackled in and managed to announce fuzzily that there were technical difficulties, but he was quickly overpowered.

“They’ve already replaced you here. Stop playing and let me save you from being nothing.”

“I need a phone,” Johnny said. It wasn’t loud enough to carry over the music, but the others heard it.

Without missing a beat, Tenna hit the gas.

08