Song Without a Name
Part 16 Divided by 2
An Error in the System of
Lady Yate-xel
There were entirely too many long silences in this house. Edgar didn’t notice them when he was here alone; he’d talk to himself all day if need be. Now, after Johnny had been here making a mess and making Edgar laugh for a day and half, silences were rather frightening. He didn’t notice how much silence he had until Johnny had done his best to fill it. Silence is funny like that; the more you add to it, the less of it there is.
Maybe Johnny’s concept of himself was like that too.
Admittedly, it wasn’t totally silent; there were still strains of whatever Johnny had put into the stereo sneaking into the room from downstairs, but they weren’t loud enough to be considered helpful. There had still been a horrible misfire in communication or ideas or something, and Edgar was waiting to see if he or Johnny would feel the need to speak, or just cry, first. No amount of random background music was going to make it any less of a silence.
Johnny’s forehead was down against his knees again and Edgar noticed that he seemed to be randomly clenching his fists. In a way, it was almost refreshing to Edgar that Johnny was still so unstable in places. It helped him hold onto the idea that other Johnny was still affecting this one. And really, contrary to Johnny’s assumptions, Edgar didn’t want the old Johnny back; the old Johnny would have killed him on at least six different occasions this weekend alone. What he did want, though, was the old Johnny’s good memories. The ones that didn’t involve cutting anyone to ribbons, or slitting them nose to navel. The memories of Edgar should have been nice, actually. They had managed to be friends in some horridly twisted way, and Edgar really wanted Johnny to see he wasn’t making this ‘best friend’ business up.
“I want to go home. Go home and just…,” Johnny trailed off as he pressed his face against his knees a bit harder. He looked like he was trying to pull himself into a shell.
And here, Edgar suddenly felt conflicted. He really should be offering to help Johnny pack, and get him on his way back to the school. He should do that. What he wanted to do was simply let Johnny stay. They’d had a good time the day before, screaming or not. Edgar was even fairly sure they had run out of things to scream about. That could be the optimism talking though.
He sighed, took a look around the room, then settled his gaze on the book beside him.
Right.
“Nny… show me what you want to take home with you, I’ll help you pack.”
****
Twenty minutes later, everything that Johnny felt he couldn’t live without had been packed in the bag he had brought with him, and he was on his way out the door. As he stood on the porch, Edgar ran through a checklist of everything he thought Johnny may have forgotten. CD Player? Yes, of course. Boots? Yes. Cherry Fruit snacks? In the bag.
“Do you have my-?”
Johnny silently held up the key ring, Edgar’s house key between his thumb and index finger.
“Right, you do. Ok then. I’ll –uh, see you tomorrow then.”
Johnny pocketed the keys (as much as they could be with all the other things he’d shoved in his pockets) and turned away. Edgar watched him walk along the sidewalk until he disappeared from view, and smiled to himself.
Johnny still walked the same way.
Edgar retreated into his now empty house, and regarded the living room. A disaster. He flopped onto the couch and stared at the ceiling. For once, he really didn’t feel like cleaning.
****
The sun was shining, but the school was as dark and cold looking as usual when Johnny arrived home. There were some big trucks in front getting ready to leave, so he assumed who ever ran the fundraiser wasn’t quite finished with the choir room yet. He slipped out back instead. The playground for the elementary kids was just across the parking lot; he’d kill some time there.
He wove his way between the cars, noting the number of dents obviously from stray baseballs that escaped the fifth graders’ daily ‘boys versus girls’ battles, and walked over a small hill into the mulch of the playground. The swing set was attached to a slide, a jungle gym and some miscellaneous nets and bars for kids to injure themselves on.
Johnny threw his bag in a hollow near the bottom of the jungle gym and sat on a swing. He was a bit too tall for it, and it would have been too narrow and too tight on him had he not had such a tiny frame. No, he wasn’t too thin. Little kids were just getting fatter every day; they probably made these things huge now.
He sat for a few minutes before it got uncomfortable, and then decided he wanted a look at the world. He climbed the tower in the center using all the nets and such that he was sure had hanged a kid a few years back and sat cross legged on the top. It wasn’t much of a view, but it was something. The breeze was a little cooler up here, the rest of the world a little smaller. This spot had been more thrilling when he was younger. And not only because Jimmy had fallen off of it once, though that certainly helped; it was just easier to be awed when he was smaller.
His phone started ringing in the tower below him, but he chose to ignore it. He really wasn’t in the mood to insult one of Chet’s brain-dead relatives. He was surprised the phone lasted so long, really. Surely this Chet guy would have realized the phone had been hijacked by now and had the phone company shut it off. He continued his surveillance of the street, sky, and school to the tune of ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ watching the cars drive too quickly, the birds chirp too loudly, and the trucks load too slowly.
For a moment, he wondered about the amount of processing power it would take for someone to operate such a complicated game. A game where the NPC found out he was, in fact, the NPC.
He shifted his weight a little, and the keys clinked in his pocket. Perhaps he could visit the key guy, and see if he knew anything. Maybe he wasn’t quite as batty as Johnny had originally thought. After all this with books that write themselves and best friends with strange intentions, a man who wears an obscene amount of keys, locks and chains seemed to fit right in. He had said the locks were for security. Security.
From what?
If Heaven wanted to look at the keys and Johnny had got them from a guy claiming a need to secure something… That guy might actually be completely aware of what was happening. He also might fake it out of sheer insanity, but if Johnny ran the story by Devi, he was sure they could determine how much truth was in it.
He slid off the tower onto the net and jumped down to the mulch. He brushed a few stray pieces of bark from his palms, retrieved his bag, and tossed it over his shoulder. ‘Key Guy’ would provide him with some answers. Or at least entertainment.
As he neared the house, he noticed someone pacing around the front of it. A guy a few years older than Johnny (he’d graduated or dropped out or something a few years ago) wearing a long black coat, and sporting a strange spiked hair cut, was staring curiously at the front of the house as though he’d never seen a front door before.
Johnny walked up to his side, and stared at the house as well, trying to match the Trenchcoat Guy’s gaze in an effort to understand what was so odd. He stood there for some time, listening to ‘hmmm’ as the other guy continued to stare.
“So, what is it?” Johnny asked after a few minutes, tired of squinting at the house.
Trenchcoat Guy jumped, flailed his arms a bit, and nearly fell over. Johnny backed up a few steps, eyes wide, hoping to avoid getting hit. Trenchcoat Kid straightened his collar and cleared his throat.
“It’s nothing. I was just watching.”
Johnny raised an eyebrow and looked at the house, which, as far as he could tell, wasn’t doing any sort of jig, and then looked back at Mr. Trenchcoat. Why was it that the only people he could interact with were complete basket cases?
“Watching what?”
“Oh, you know, things. Just to see if they were… well, if they’d… Well, that’s enough of that!” he suddenly yelled as though hoping someone would overhear, “I’ll see you later, kid, there’s really something else I should be watching. For the good of man kind and…stuff.”
He looked around, as though making sure there was no one else around, then leaned down and whispered, “Be on guard, something’s not right with these two.” He made a small gesture towards the house, before attempting to spin dramatically away. When he failed and crashed into the sidewalk, he glanced over his shoulder to meet Johnny’s ‘what the fuck’ expression and shuffled away into the parking lot.
Johnny stared after him for some time. It took some time to completely process what had just happened, and how completely crazy that kid had been. No wonder he had left the school a few years ago, they probably sent him to the asylum he’d escaped from today.
Johnny adjusted his backpack, and took to the house’s creaky wooden stairs. They were sunken in the middle, and had warped significantly with the weather. The porch wasn’t much better off, and he wondered how Key Guy had ever trusted the stairs to hold his weight. He’d been sitting on the stairs when he first met Johnny and beckoned him over, and how he didn’t crash right through them two seconds later, Johnny had no idea.
There was a sound coming from the house, a kind of beeping. He poked the yellowed button for the doorbell, and waited for some sort of reaction from the person he assumed to be inside.
Nothing.
He pushed it again, harder this time, as though it would make a difference, and held it in. This time he heard some confused voices, then footsteps, and clinking of chains. Excellent.
The door opened, and Key Man looked ready to greet Johnny, but as soon as he made eye contact, slammed the door.
Johnny blinked for a second, stunned, before reacting.
“Hey! What the fuck?!” he screamed, bashing his hand against the door, “Open the door, dammit!”
More voices inside. One sounded completely confused, the other doing a terrible job of covering something up. Johnny put his ear to the door. Music, beeping, and voices.
“… screaming?”
“Oh, nothing. Just some Mormons or something. I always hate telling them the truth, you know, we loose more religious nuts that way.”
“Mormons aren’t going to scream ‘fuck’ at the door…”
“It’s no one, really!”
There was some shuffling, some clinking and then the door opened again. This time a fairly normal looking guy. Johnny opened his mouth to say something when Normal Guy, instead of greeting Johnny and apologizing, turned to Key Guy and screamed.
“You’ve got to be KIDDING!”
“I TOLD YOU!” Key Guy defended.
“I didn’t think it would be THIS bad!” Normal Guy shrieked, motioning to Johnny, “This is INSANE!”
Key Guy moved in front of Normal Guy, and took a hold of the door knob.
“Excuse us a moment, won’t you?” he said, grinning and leaning down to Johnny’s eye level. A key dangling from his hair swayed in front of Johnny’s face for a moment, and then he shut the door, leaving Johnny on the porch staring open-mouthed at the door, listening to random panicked chatter.
“You gave them to HIM?” Normal Guy hissed.
“Listen, listen, he’s really got it. He understands; it is fine.”
“He left stacks of bodies in my basement last time! He killed people!”
They seemed to be attempting to whisper, but it wasn’t working so well.
“Shhhh! He’ll hear you! I have told you before that things will be different. I once said the end was near, and was I not painfully correct? Trust me, amigo.”
“‘Trust me’ and ‘Allow me to give this maniac the keys to-’”
“SHHHH!”
“… totally different things.” Normal Guy finished.
The tones finally dropped to a level Johnny could no longer hear through the door, but he continued to stand there on the porch.
Finally the door clicked and Key Guy appeared again. He pulled some chains that trailed after him out of the door frame and closed the door behind him as he stepped out onto the porch. He’d apparently fixed things with Normal Guy.
“I came to ask about these,” Johnny said, holding up his keys. He figured if Normal Guy had anything to say about it, time with Key Guy would be brief, so he made his case as quickly as possible.
“There is nothing to tell. Just a set of keys.”
“Don’t lie to me. I’m not so retarded as to not see some things on my own. A friend of mine has a book from some people who seem to think these are suspicious,” Johnny said, narrowing his eyes.
“Really, I can’t tell you anything. You have what you asked for; the keys to the school.”
“And?” Johnny prompted.
Key Guy was silent for a while.
“Just keep a good hold on those, kid. One of those keys is a little more valuable than the others,” he finally said, his tone suddenly softer.
“Johnny, not ‘kid.’” When he spoke his own name he felt a tug on the key ring, even though Key Guy hadn’t moved or touched any keys.
“I know your name,” Key Guy said, backing away a little. He looked over his shoulder at the window in the door and smiled.
“Want to come in? We have cookies.”
****
The house wasn’t very well lit, and looked to be in great need of updating. There were also boxes piled up along the walls, much like Edgar’s basement. Upon removing his boots, Johnny thought the floor seemed to be entirely too warm, although he wondered if that was just because he wasn’t used to shaggy brown and orange carpet. The carpet continued until the kitchen down the hall, where it was replaced with green linoleum. The refrigerator was a shade of puke green much like the floor.
Key Guy led Johnny into the living room, after an unsuccessful attempt to get him to put his bag down by the door. Normal Guy was sitting on the couch, lazily holding a video game controller, waiting for Johnny and Key Guy to get situated, although he looked a little nervous. A blinking light flashed over the room, and Johnny saw that the game Normal Guy was hooked up to was on pause. These freaks had actually been playing video games when Johnny rang the bell.
Key Guy motioned to a random chair and invited Johnny to sit down, while he took his spot on the couch, and retrieved his controller. The flashing stopped, the pause was undone, and Key and Normal went back to trying to blow each other’s spaceships up. Johnny sat with his bag in his lap, watching them. A coffee table in front of them did, in fact, have cookies on it.
There was some pounding music in the background, and Johnny really couldn’t tell if it was coming from the television or a stereo somewhere else in the house until he heard lyrics. Too complicated for the old game they were playing. Oddly enough, the song seemed to be about a game, though he didn’t catch the first few words.
“…aze, next nothing new
got the pretty boy beat him up black and blue.
broke the sissy boy's teeny toy heart in two,
turned him into a video kid like you.
I know we're just pretending,
there's no window for escape.
I know you see right through me.
there's no promise left to break.”
The house felt too busy with so much happening. Music and clutter and dark and beeping and lights and cookies. Just… too much.
“shot the pretty boy killed him on the Commodore.
need a new game, need a new something more.
got a new face, got a new way to score.
got a voice like something I've heard before.
I know we're just pretending,
there's no window for escape.
I know you see right through me.
there's no promise left to break.”
The song continued with several ‘oh’s and finally faded out into something else. It almost felt like they were trying to cover something up with so many distractions in the house at once. Like maybe an alien landing pad upstairs or a bioengineering facility in the basement. That would explain the warm floors, at least.
The game finally ended with a blinding explosion on Key Guy’s side of the screen, and Normal Guy declaring victory. Thankfully, they didn’t start a new round. Key Guy turned to Johnny, and offered him a cookie with assurance that they weren’t poisoned.
“I’m just here to know what’s so special about these keys,” Johnny said, taking a cookie anyway. Ginger snaps.
“There is nothing, they are just keys. Have I introduced you?” he asked, motioning to Normal Guy. Normal Guy sank in his seat a little, and Johnny was less than amused at the blatant refusal to answer all of all his questions.
“That’s Squee.”
“Todd,” Normal Guy said.
“Todd? I like ‘Squee’ better,” Johnny half-muttered.
“And I,” Key Guy said, sitting up straighter “am the d-”
“Pepito,” Todd interrupted.
Key Guy/Pepito slumped against the couch.
“Yes. Pepito. Right.”
Johnny sighed, and rubbed his eyes a few times. He had a feeling this conversation was going to go absolutely nowhere.
“Look,” he said, “if you’re not going to tell me anything of use to me, then I’ll go and find it out on my own.” He stood up and swung his bag back onto his back. “So, you two can tell me now what is so important about these keys, and why ‘Squee’ here thinks I’ve killed people, or I’ll go and find these things out myself. It makes no difference to me. I have someone very close to home that I’m sure I can wring the answers from.”
Pepito smiled and stood up. He put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder and steered him towards the door.
“You go right ahead and try, kid. I can guarantee that he won’t tell you a thing, because our sides agree on that much; there’s nothing to be gained from you becoming what you were again…”
He’d managed to get Johnny onto the porch by this point, and handed him his boots. Pepito’s smile continued and Johnny caught sight of Todd looking concerned in the doorway.
Johnny found he could barely think let alone speak. Pepito said goodbye (“See you in a few years.”), and closed the door. Johnny found that a witty retort would simply not come to him. Pepito’s manner had changed quite drastically after Johnny’s last demand, and he seemed to know that Johnny meant to talk to Edgar. He had spoken of ‘sides,’ Squee seemed to think he was a mass murderer, and there was allegedly something special about one of his keys. Better yet, something in the keys had reacted to Johnny’s name.
Johnny sat on the porch and pulled the boots on. He checked his pockets; the keys were still there.
“Johnny,” he said. He felt the keys tug toward the house, then stop abruptly. Just peachy. As though he really needed the keys to be possessed too.
He slid off the porch, saw that the loading trucks were gone, and headed to toward the school. He wanted to just slip in, set his things down, and stick his head in the water fountain. Anything frustrating could be cured with a quick head in the fountain. Even if it wasn’t his head; it was just as therapeutic to see Jimmy sputtering around in the water as it was to feel the water himself.
Sadly, it was still Sunday. Devi and Jimmy wouldn’t be anywhere near the school now, and hell if he was going back to Edgar’s. He needed someone to talk to or something to pass time. No one who would keep information from him, no one who would slam doors on him, no one who would question him; just someone to vent on. He really didn’t want to be letting all these things stew for too long.
The back door unlocked and Johnny gave it that extra shove it always seemed to need before it would budge. The lights had been turned off when the fundraiser people left, and they had rearranged the rows of chairs. Johnny had just got them to looking like someone sat in them daily, to looking ‘lived in’, and these people had arranged them too precisely. Too stiff. It would take another few weeks to get the room to look properly used again. At least it would give him something to occupy his time with.
He sat in the chair closest to his office. One by one, then.
****
“I told you you’d lose faith in me.”
“Pepito! He’s a maniac!”
“Was a maniac, amigo.”
“I’m still not sure if you should have trusted him…Something’s not…”
“Hey, who better for the job, right? There is no one else; he’s perfect.”
“And if it happens again…?”
“Then you can reset me.”
****
The water was cold.
Streams of water and soap dripped from his elbows and flowed into the little square channels on the tile floor. It seeped out into the locker room, and merged into a foamy river as it was sucked down the drain.
He sat, legs tangled together, on the floor of the tiled shower watching the water and soap swirl around him as it slid off naked skin. After a while, he wasn’t even bothered by the temperature. His nightly ritual usually consisted of warmer water, but for whatever reason he was convinced the warmth would lull him to sleep and he’d either drown or be found naked down here in the morning, so had opted for straight cold.
The locker room showers weren’t used anymore, so he’d often unlock the janitors’ closet, take out all the cleaning supplies and bleach and sterilize a section of the showers until he was secure in its level of clean. After a few weeks of living at the school, one particular section of the showers was looking a little too clean, so he’d started moving to a different spot every night as to not arouse any sort of suspicion. He knew that he went unnoticed or completely invisible to most of the school, but he wasn’t sure if he could be seen by exorcists or Voodoo priestesses and really didn’t want to take the chance.
He always liked to use the shower as somewhere to think, but it was difficult at times with sports events every night and gym classes during the day. Sure, no one used the shower, but they would certainly hear it running. Plus, no matter how invisible, the prospect of being naked around a bunch of rowdy baseball players was not an idea he looked on with any sort of fondness. Thus, most of his thinking had happened on the weekends. This weekend had been a waste for thinking thus far; he’d done more to get closer to insanity than think deep thoughts about himself and the world while at Edgar’s.
Edgar wasn’t bad, really. Johnny had had fun with him, tearing his house apart and everything. Edgar wasn’t an idiot, and he didn’t seem to be driven purely by insanity or hormones, both of which were a nice change. He had given Johnny a whole room to himself, had tolerated his music, had attempted to react to the gifts from Heaven in a way he thought Johnny would approve of, and had generally been great to be with. Johnny would certainly go back on the weekends; he would just hijack Edgar’s shower for thinking.
And his washer and dryer. Yeah.
Cram a weekend’s worth of thinking into one shower. He could do it. He turned the hot water on fully and tilted his head back and let the spray of the shower sting his face, then leaned forward and out of the way of the stream. This thinking called for a wider river.
****
The morning bell rang, and Johnny picked himself up off of the beanbag. He had a terrible ache in his shoulder from sleeping there, although he really couldn’t remember why he’d slept on the beanbag to begin with. He rubbed his shoulder a few times, and glanced around the room. He’d found nice homes for all the things he’d received at Edgar’s; they just made the office look more and more like home.
The door clicked, and Devi’s head popped in. She’d worn her hair down today; must be some sort of occasion.
“Nny? Are you alright?”
He shook the last clouds of sleep from his vision, and nodded.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“We didn’t see you all weekend,” Devi said, tone dripping with a ‘Where were you?’ subtext.
He sat up and let his feet touch the floor. He’d put the socks with holes back on last night, thankfully. He didn’t need to be explaining what he was doing with new socks quite yet.
“I stayed with Edgar. You know, the accident-prone kid from the other day.”
A cry of ‘WHAT?!’ echoed from the choir room, and Jimmy appeared from behind Devi who groaned at the sound of his voice.
“What were you doing with him?!” Jimmy demanded.
“Nothing,” Johnny answered flatly.
“You could have stayed with m- US. You just met that kid; you’re too good for him. What if he tried to-“
“Tried to what? Get me to sleep with him? You mean like you, Mr. “I have but one bed, and my trailer has no heat woe is me keep me warm please”?” Johnny asked, grinning. “I think I would have dealt with it quite well. You’ve given me a lot of practice.”
Jimmy crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.
“Besides,” Johnny said, grabbing his boots from the corner and pulling them on, “he didn’t do anything. We had a good time, for the most part. I think you two’ll like him. He’s not nearly as wimpy as he looked.”
“There’s a relief,” Devi remarked. “I was worried we’d need to peel him off of the floor every time you looked at him…”
“Speaking of that,” Johnny said, “where’s … uh, Tanya or whoever?”
Devi raised an eyebrow at him, seemingly unsure of the connection between the two thoughts, but answered anyway.
“Tenna? She’s out in the commons area. Said she wanted to check something out. You never know with her. I think she tried to order Chinese again.” Devi shrugged and sat down in an old worn chair, propping her legs up on the wooden desk beside it.
“Again?” Jimmy asked, falling into the beanbag Johnny had just been sleeping in, “She could at least order pizza or something…”
“Tacos wouldn’t be bad, actually,” Johnny said, taking a seat on the desk.
“Tenna just likes noodles,” Devi said, staring at the ceiling. “There’s no refusing that girl her noodles. Especially spicy ones.”
Jimmy had sunk considerably in the bean bag, and appeared quite comfortable; his eyes closed. “Why is she ordering food at 7:30 in the morning, anyway?” he asked.
Johnny and Devi shrugged.
It felt good to not have to worry about matters of cosmic fate anymore. For at least a morning, Johnny could just sit in this room and be. No haunted books and keys, no magic boxes, just what was here in this room. Just these people, this room, this furniture, this feeling. Just home. Home and this ache in his shoulder. He rubbed it again.
A few moments later, Johnny heard Tenna’s voice excitedly talking about something, he assumed noodles, and she soon appeared at the door. She wasn’t carrying any noodles, but she was holding Edgar’s hand. He waved sheepishly, grinning nervously, from behind her.
“Found him, Devi! Sorta cute in a lame sorta way, isn’t he? I think we could trade him for lots of noodles.”
Tenna was grinning madly, while everyone else stared at her, entirely unsure of which question was most important to ask first.
“Uh, Tenna?” Devi was the first to speak, “We’re not trading him for food.”
“Really?” Tenna stuck out her lower lip in disappointment, “He would’ve made for some really great Lo Mein… Anyway, I found him for you!” She pulled him forward and shoved him into the center of the room, still smiling broadly.
Johnny tilted his head to one side as he looked from Devi and Tenna to Edgar and back again. Edgar had started rubbing his arm. A habit of his, Johnny had noticed.
“Why were you looking for him?” Johnny questioned.
“Oh, well, when we didn’t see you all weekend, conversation turned to him, and I mentioned to Tenna that we should find him and memorize all his vital stats like where he lives and his blood type and stuff.” She glared at Tenna. “And someone didn’t understand that I was joking.”
“Well, now you can ask!” Tenna defended.
Devi said something about Tenna taking her jokes too seriously; Tenna insisted that she get out more. This was an argument Johnny had heard at least a dozen times before, even before he cared about Tenna’s name. Edgar was still looking uncomfortable in the center of the room, and Jimmy had taken to glaring at him.
Johnny leaned back behind the desk and felt around for the old office chair. He remembered there had a been a slightly unsteady, but fairly lightweight one stashed back there when he’d ‘moved in.’ When he located it and managed a good grip he picked it up over his head, fought with it somewhat clumsily, and set it down in front of the desk.
“Edgar, here,” he said, grinning, “sit down. We’re all friends here, right?”
“I suppose so,” Edgar replied, getting comfortable in the chair, “I’m not sure if everyone quite agrees, though.” He glanced over at Jimmy, who did his best to look menacing.
Johnny looked over the room, and for a second felt very detached from everything. Devi and Tenna half-argued at the door, while Jimmy seemed to be trying to will Edgar to be struck by lightning. Everyone else there wanted the same things he did. Everyone wanted to know, to remember. He could start talking about keys and books and Pepito now. He could ask Edgar why ‘Squee’ thought that Johnny had killed people. But after spending so much time going into the nature of this remembering, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to do it, much less suffer all over again when the others had no holes, no cosmically assured emptiness. While they remembered everything, since Heaven hadn’t decided that they were dangerous, he’d be left with his empty places, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to give them so much.
And although he often complained about the way they were, a deep part of him was afraid they’d change.