So much noise, so much goddamn noise. Always. Every time. Music playing, laugh tracks; sometimes it was the microwave, but always there was something.
His eyebrows scrunched up. Most of those tracks were recorded in the fifties, he thought. All those people laughing are probably dead by now. Nails poked up in strange places. Here he was lying spread-eagle on the floor, television static making the insides of his eyelids white. The time was something with three digits. Green, probably, and what's more was he felt better than he had in a long long time.
The machine was coughing. His knife hand twitched without his approval; he really needed to crush something. Even though every last one of his muscles ached, it took no effort at all for him to stand up and a little less for him to start walking, his eyes still closed. He was in one place with world spinning beneath him-- until he crashed into a wall.
What was he doing here?
-
It had been days since Johnny C had undone the straps around someone's waist and wrists and legs and the guy had fallen to the floor, weak like a newborn deer. Johnny had tossed a knife at his feet and wordlessly pointed toward the door, one narrow arm straight out and a narrower finger following it. Edgar Vargas apparently didn't have to be told twice.
Something had broken, but it wasn't a bad kind of breaking. It was more like a gear had, without warning, miraculously slipped into place and started doing its long-neglected work. His insides ground, clicked, started whirring, and he lay down on the floor without thinking. He had stayed there for god knows how long, with only Beethoven as company.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
To be or not to be.
He really wanted a freezy.
He thought, disapprovingly, that in order to have a headache, one must first have a head. It seemed something of a prerequisite, but of course his own messed-up one decided to act independently. Honestly, he wouldn't have been surprised if it started craving Taco Hell and randomly walked away.
Nobody had spoken for a very long time.
From inside shells, from inside the layers, a voice spoke. "This is terrible."
-
Two more days passed. He killed, of course, in between spasms and crashing to his floor, to satisfy the wall. He removed a Mormon's organs, cut off his extremities and stuffed his ribcage with them. Crammed a dozen large Styrofoam cups down the throat of the brunette at a gas station who called him a fuck up. Stabbed simultaneous knives into an English man's ears, twisted, and pulled. Blinded someone with his own glasses. Hung someone with her own hair. Imitated his favorite magician and sawed a woman in half. They were the sorts of things he had enjoyed for a while, but his heart just wasn't in it.
-
A week. Good God, he was dead from the head down, there was no way things could get worse.
He looked at his own sleepless, almond-shaped eyes in the mirror and decided for once that he didn't want to do that stupid, soul-crushing other world thing.
Screw the other world.
Screw everything.
He high-kicked the mirror, his heavy boot sinking deep into his own stupid face. The voices hadn't talked in days.
There was a leech in him, he was sure of it. Aphids in his brains-- the underside of his skull itched. As he thought about Glasses Man, the aphids started to bite.
Sixteen days. Eight. The aphids had decided, rather unnecessarily, to lay thousands of fat, now-hatching larvae that wriggled under his skin. It had been such a long long time.
Three days. Now he made 'skettios on the stove top, which always made his living room smell like formaldehyde and tomato sauce.
Seventy. Everyone was spinning, not just him. Couldn't just be him.
So much noise, so much goddamn noise.
It was maybe five or six, and there was music leaping from the neighboring house, enough treble to drown the world. Twelve feet in front him, dead fifties laughter echoed eerily from his television set. There were machines all around him, inside him, all working, all whirring, and the air was electricity. He had never felt so alive, never thought he'd never move again. Never leave again. With resolve, Johnny lay face down on his red couch and tried his very best to completely stop his breathing.
-
Three weeks had gone by, and he dragged himself down the street, left foot, left foot, left, right, left. Left foot, left foot, left right left.
Left foot, left foot. Traffic zinged by.
Left right left. Middle-aged men in business suits power-walked.
Left foot, left foot. So much noise.
Left right left. So much goddamn noise.
Eventually, the urban reek around him parted and something holy befell his murky eyes: a gas station, diesel one-ninety-nine a gallon. As he walked in, gently swung open the door and heard the sweet little chime of a bell, he was greeted with cool air and a sight from the gods. Familiar rows of corn chips chirped to him merrily from their shelves. Sodas fizzed at him happily. Chocolate bars sung sweetly. The man behind the counter flipped through a porno magazine. Nostalgic, he rounded the corner into the back, the room where the coffee/freezy machines were held. He grabbed the stupid cup, filled it up-- that's it, right to the top-- with icy red gunk, humming Chopin and battling fiercely with a straw wrapper. Next to him, someone in green was getting a coffee, a cappuccino from what he could see in his limited peripheral. (Devi had told him once that all men have tunnel vision, and if she had her way there would be a woman in the White House and all men would be forced to live underground. It had been the full five seconds before she laughed that really got to him.)
All of a sudden, You.
Shaky anger like warm wires with the insulation cut away. There was one moment of eye contact. One moment of mutual surprise. Without another word, the man in green turned on his heel and left, gas-station coffee left forgotten on the counter.
For a long time after he got home, Johnny's head was buzzing like a freshly beaten beehive. So much for silence.
-
"I'd say too bad, but actually, I don't care," said Mister Fuck, floating lazily beside him. It had been a few days since the reappearance of Edgar Vargas, and the voices had not stopped talking since.
"I liked where I was before," Johnny muttered, in exactly the way an ice pick wouldn't, "it was strange, but I liked it."
"Then why," said Mister Fuck, "then why did you try to sink into your couch and die? You threw the" he grimaced "'skettios down the garbage disposal, ate nothing for days. Tried to suffocate yourself underneath that stupid pillow. You even put Seinfeld on, for God's sake! That's about as close to suicide as you can get without putting a gun to your head!!"
"So the boy's not exactly keen on breathing, there's nothing wrong with that," said D-boy, looking up from the cracks in the wall. "He's doing himself a favor in the long run."
"I said," Johnny interrupted, speaking to his knees, "that I liked where I was before."
"You don't know what you're talking about." Mister Fuck was floating dangerously close to the back of Johnny's head.
"I beg to differ, Mister Eff. The entire ordeal seemed to suit him quite well."
"Beg to differ? I think you're begging the question, Doughboy."
"Oh, go stuff yourself."
-
Jesus Christ.
He was at the library, face up underneath one of the tables, in his own little halo of musty sort of library dark. All around him, pale, diseased light filtered onto the worn green carpeting. Dawn light.
What are you doing here? Thin filaments of angry. You shouldn't be here.
A shoe nudged his right shoulder. Johnny twisted in on himself, covering his head and his neck, his important parts. No, wait, shouldn't he cover his hands? His lungs? His spine, probably, but his arms couldn't bend like that. He needed his legs to run. Maybe his shoulders or his waist.
It didn't even register when the man walked away, dark brown loafers silent on the tufted floor, the aphids going with him.
-
-
Three weeks. Seven weeks. What to do, what to do. Underneath him, the floor was quivering.
So much noise.
So much goddamn noise.
Machines slamming, people screaming, laughing, dying. Hysterics and death throes and the like. Above him, the television loomed like a god, rising staunchly from the dirty scratchy depths of his hardwood floor to stand three feet freely in the air (if you counted the cabinet). Inside it was a tiny happy world with bright colors and deaf people who would never, ever talk back to him no matter how many times he complimented their dresses.
The main two voices hadn't quit bickering even for a moment, even though Nailbunny screeched helplessly at odd intervals and several nameless, not-as-powerful things filled in the background void. The larvae were relentless.
It had been such a long long time. D-boy told him plaintively that there was no larvae, and Mister Eff added in that they were way too small anyway to be what was writhing underneath his dermis. In response, Johnny tried to choke himself again.
-
Once more at the library, because he just couldn't stay in one spot, and by this point, he had lost track of the days. Oh, he still killed people. A blonde girl with a tiny pink smile had been dipped into a vat of hungry rats. A man in a gray hoodie had fallen victim to the slicing room. A dog walker had been forced to eat the shit Sparky left in Johnny's yard. Nothing new. Nothing would ever change.
This is what makes heads in the first place, he thought, this and sugary cereal.
This time, Johnny was lying on top of a heavy wooden bookshelf, out of view of the orderlies who where just closing up. He planned to stay here all night, drowning out the headvoices with Pathetique and Adagio in G. Mindlessly, his thumb depressed the play button on the small blue Walkman beside him as a pair of automatic doors swung open to the tune of a string quartet. A man walked in. A man in round glasses and a stupid goatee.
From behind the cellos, Edgar Vargas the ant mouthed words to a kindly looking orderly in red lipstick. Johnny couldn't summon up the energy to swear as she nodded, shrugging on her heavy blue coat.
It flashed on Johnny that the guy was kind of tall, and would probably, if he bothered to travel this way at all, see one lonely boot peeking over the edge of the shelf called Feminism Through the Ages. Johnny tried his very best to sincerely wish he wasn't.
His skin itched all over and the minutes ticked by. All along, the ant man strolled calmly through the shelves, content, it seemed at first, just to browse. He ran a hand lightly over every spine, his fingers just barely brushing its title. "Into Thin Air," Johnny saw as he squinted, "The Crystal Bible," "Catch-22." The hands gently plucked them away. "Defining the English Language," one said. "Infinite Jest." "A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets." "Atlas Shrugged." Nearing Johnny, he had an entire stack held unsteadily against his chest, tipping to the right with every step he took.
Edgar Vargas dropped his books. Silence.
You look...very sick.
Faint, his voice was, and echoey; beneath a violin he slowly bent, picking up the volumes one by one. Johnny imagined Edgar Vargas peering up at him blankly, unnaturally, like a beetle from behind his glasses, and then sliding shakily into a brown leather chair.
God.
Removing his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose like they do. For no reason, this reminded Johnny: it had been a very long long time.
Slowly, the voices seemed to settle, like sand sinking to the bottom of a fish tank, and quietly he slid the headphones from his ears.
What the hell are you doing to yourself, Nny? Without warning, the already dim lights shut off completely, making what were once rather short, plastered ceilings seem to go on and on forever, like dark water. Like two mirrors lined up at an angle. From underneath, there was slight movement. By the sound of it, Edgar was arranging his books, muttering to them in the silence. So much noise, so much goddamn noise. Absently, Johnny spoke.
I'm surprised you remember my name.His voice was far too low, far too scratchy. There was a sharp sound, a click, and murky green light was being filtered weakly through the dark, just enough to vaguely make out Edgar's silhouette against heavy-burdened bookshelves.
Yes, well I suppose one doesn't easily forget the identity of one's captor, does he? His laugh sounded alien. Distrustful. But I'm not bitter.
About that--
Don't even think of it, Edgar said impatiently. I'm alive, aren't I? That's all I asked for, in the end.
Thank you, by the way, he continued, drawing a book from the top of his stack-- "Living With Advanced Schizophrenia--" and opening it neatly to the first page. Johnny's brain was vomit, but at least his skin had quieted down. I'm enjoying it very much.
I had hoped, also, to never see you again-- but I'll be alright. You're not a terrible person, you know. Like you said, it was just an unfortunate circumstance. Live and-- a bemused grin-- let live, as they say.
Hm. From the vomit, no voices arose. Instead, only Tchaikovsky, tinny and far away. Silence.
Silence.
For some reason, he thought he would be okay.