20

Song Without A Name
The Last Verse
Sung by Lady Yate-xel

 

Devi felt it before Tenna did.

Jimmy felt it before Devi did.

It was only a few blocks to Edgar’s house, and they’d never considered it before, but there was no discussion at all about taking the van. Tenna didn’t even fully park before Devi and Jimmy frantically clawed out of their seats and stumbled across the sidewalk to Edgar’s door.

Devi didn’t think Tenna even closed the van’s doors, she appeared behind Devi so quickly. Jimmy threw the door open and scaled the staircase on all fours. Devi tried to run after him and tripped over her own boots on the first step. There was a pile of shattered ceramic bits near her leg, covered in dried blood. On the wall above them, an old bloody stain in the shape of a smiley face with ‘look edgar, no palms!’ scrawled beneath it. Devi got back to her feet and followed Jimmy up the stairs.

For a moment, she wondered how Jimmy knew where to go. Then she realized he was following the sobbing. Devi dreaded nearing the room and could not get there fast enough at the same time.

“and what will happen will I dream?
I am too scared to close my eyes”

She and Jimmy leaned into the doorway and saw Edgar’s back, hunched over and trembling, along with one of Johnny’s legs dangling over the side of the bed. As they drew closer, half-afraid, Johnny’s hand, lying open on the blanket in front of Edgar, came into view.

Jimmy had been “ohgodnononono”-ing since they’d left but only when Devi heard her voice echo his did she really notice it. Tenna stood behind her, biting her lip and trying not to let her keychain collection make any noise.

Edgar slowly looked up at them, his eyes swollen and his face both confirming what they’d all felt and begging them to tell him he was wrong.

“What did you do?!” Jimmy’s voice threatened to collapse in on itself.

“Nothing!” Edgar choked into a scream.

“What did you do to him?!” Jimmy lunged towards the lifeless Johnny, and Edgar pulled back away from him, clutching Johnny to his chest.

“Why the hell would I hurt him?!”

“Dear God, no,” Devi heard Tenna mutter behind her, as though everything had just hit her. Edgar and Jimmy screamed incoherently at each other, and Devi thought she smelled Lo Mein.

“Dear God,” Tenna said again.

“He’s not the one you should be concerned with.”

The man that had given Johnny his keys appeared in the far corner of the room. Devi hadn’t seen him in years, and he was so much more bizarre looking than she remembered.

“You,” Edgar said, his voice trembling.

“Me, indeed,” Pepito said with a slight bow. “I tried to warn you guys. I really did.” He smiled sweetly at Edgar, and shifted a few of the locks around his neck. When he finished the motion, Johnny’s body simply vanished.

Edgar made a smothered noise and grasped dumbly at the nothing in his arms. Jimmy tried to attack Pepito, but the discarded T-shirts that were strewn around the room wrapped around the soles of his boots, and he didn’t get the advantage of surprise. Pepito let him get within arm’s length before vanishing the way Johnny had.

Jimmy began swearing and screaming at the wall, pounding on any surface that wasn’t covered with pictures or posters. Devi felt Tenna’s arm against hers.

“Get out,” Edgar whispered.

“Huh?”

“GETOUTGETOUTGETOUT!” he screamed at Devi and Tenna who were just unfortunately closer, but the outburst was obviously meant for Jimmy, too. Devi took a step back, and Edgar took a step off the bed in response. She nodded hastily and beckoned to Jimmy, who left the room backwards, staring knives into Edgar.

*****

The world was darker than it had ever been. Johnny’s song had tangled its way into everything that Edgar was, everything he could imagine, everything he remembered and everything he thought was real and tangible. When Johnny died, the song retreated and left black trenches through everything it had touched.

Yes, Johnny, Edgar thought, I do know what it’s like when even the air turns black.

The worst pain he could ever imagine. The worst he could remember.

Pepito had been right.

“drown out the machinery in my head”

After he'd chased everyone out, Edgar stayed on his bed, screaming, sobbing, cursing, and writhing among the blankets. Everything smelled of Lo Mein, and a pathetic excuse for a monster attacked a woman on the television. He couldn't move the noodles, couldn't change the channel, couldn't get off the bed.

The last thing Johnny had touched, the last thing he'd watched, the last place he'd been.

Edgar felt a stabbing pain in his lungs when he realized the last song that Johnny had ever heard had been his own, but in Edgar's poor, lacking rendition.

Said he could die happy.

But he'd died in pain, flailing desperately and clawing at life, with absolutely nothing that Edgar could have done to help. There was no way Johnny could have choked on the noodles - he'd taken his last bite of them well before he took that vicious grip on Edgar's shirt. Edgar wanted to know what happened, needed to know, but was paralyzed with agony. He wanted to find Pepito and run him through with the knives in the kitchen and just curl up and sleep until he woke up and everything was fine again.

He tried to stand, but the room seemed to just swirl around him. Everything taunted him and everything was Johnny. The shirts Johnny had thrown on the floor, the pictures Johnny had hung upside down or made scary black marker additions to, the little knick knacks that they'd collected from yard sales over the summers that Johnny had arranged into having a giant war across the top of the dresser. Broken ceramic baby heads versus the fanciful unicorns had never failed to make Edgar laugh until now.

Edgar stumbled down the stairs, trying not to look at the pictures that hung along them. The bottom stair was still scattered with the ceramic mask thing that Johnny had shattered into his hands. Johnny's blood still on the wall. The smile and stupid message Johnny had traced with his fingers still in smeared dried brown across the wallpaper. Edgar grabbed his keys from the desk in the dining room, trying not to look at anything, and managed to make it to the door.

He locked it behind him.

“Got to
Save you from all of your
Demons that had to score
Every trick that you’ve pulled before
Here it comes again”

The blocks to Pepito's house looked strange. Children playing in parking lots were screaming and laughing. Teenage couples sat on porches, and people said things like 'please' and 'thank you' to each other. Cars stayed in their lanes and didn't run over random passersby. Everything mocking him.

When he rounded the corner to near the school, he stopped cold.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing there. Pepito's house wasn't just gone, there was not so much as an old foundation or a stay bit of brick - just a giant hole of black that Edgar couldn't see the bottom of. The school appeared untouched, as did the houses nearby.

"Horrible, isn't it?" Edgar jumped at the voice, and turned to see the Trenchcoat Guy standing beside him.

"Wha...?"

Dib. That had been Trenchcoat's name, right?

"It just disappeared this morning," Dib said. "I came to check on the readings, and there was nothing to check. Like the ground just sucked them in."

"Like Hell."

"I know, I know. It sounds ridiculous, but I'm willing to believe that we may have a-"

"Like Hell sucked them in," Edgar interrupted.

Dib looked like he wanted to refute that, or deliver some scientific reason as to why that was impossible, but said nothing about it. He looked Edgar up and down thoughtfully.

"What are you doing out here like that?” he asked, regarding Edgar's flannel pants and old T-shirt.

Edgar raised a hand to shove Dib into the black pit in front of them, to crack him in the back of the skull with his keys and send him spiraling to Hell the same way he wanted to do to the children he could still hear laughing, but was overcome with hatred for Pepito and a stabbing pain in his chest instead. He screamed something into the hole, though he didn't know what. Dib backed away from him, and knelt down to pick up some monitors he'd placed in Pepito's yard, keeping his eyes on Edgar as he moved.

Dib made some noise, like perhaps he'd discovered something important, but Edgar had already tuned him out, and was on his way to ... somewhere. He didn't know what he was doing, or where he was going, but everything in him was screaming, and if he stayed there too long, he'd throw himself in the hole without a second thought, and take Trenchcoat Guy with him.

He ended up back at home, though he hadn’t wanted to. Threw himself into the door only to remember he had locked it for the first time in years. He fumbled with the lock and collapsed into the small entry way in front of the stairs. The presence of Johnny in everything around him was even stronger from the floor. He couldn’t stand, couldn’t look at the things around him, so he crawled his way up the steps, partly sobbing, and partly cursing Pepito and Trenchcoat Guy.

*****

"when I close my eyes
it looks the same
as when I open them again"

Johnny saw black, and black. He blinked, and it was still black. He was lying on his back against something hard, something like porous stone. He sat up, and felt the ground around him. No walls or barriers. No definable features.

Something brushed his jaw. His hand shot up to swat the bug, or grab the hand, but he found neither. Instead, he touched leather. A high collared leather coat.
All clothes he didn't recognize the feel of. Stiff new boots, and a shirt that wasn't falling apart at the seams. Fingerless gloves on his hands. He was still wearing Hell's key around his neck on the old worn ribbon, but that was all that felt familiar. The back of his head even felt freshly shaved.

He tried to call out into the dark, but no sounds came out. His throat felt dry and stiff. Held a hand above his head and stood up slowly. Neither his head nor his hand hit any kind of ceiling.

If I just had some matches, he thought.

"You can do better than that," someone said. The voice echoed enough to give Johnny the idea that he was in something very large and very empty. Johnny felt something in his hand, and upon examining it with ungloved fingers, discovered it was a match book. He struggled with the matches, but even when he finally managed to get one lit, he saw nothing but black. Light reflected off of his coat and the buckles on his boots, but there was no sign of anything else in the space but him.

Okay. I have a flame thrower.

"No you don't," the voice answered.

A gas tank.

"Come on, now."

A fucking flashlight, he thought angrily.

The weight of the flashlight in his hand startled him. He expected to have to will batteries into existence too, but the light came on when Johnny's thumb hit the switch. The light traveled beyond where the matches could reach, and some of the texture of what he was now sure was some kind of lava rock came into view. He dropped the matchbook to the floor to mark his spot, and moved forward.

"This is still a little sad."

You wouldn't give me a flame thrower, Pepito.

Pepito appeared in front of him.

"I'd hoped to keep that up longer," he said. Johnny shined the flashlight in his eyes. "Hey, hey, easy!"

What is this? What have you done to me? Johnny refused to move the light from Pepito's eyes. Pepito stood unmoving, speaking with his eyes closed.

"I did absolutely nothing. Your boy did everything himself."

Edgar is not m-! Edgar. Where is he? What did you do to him?

"Would you like to see him?"

Of course I would!

"Are you suuuure?" Pepito's tone should have tipped Johnny off, but he wasn't feeling as inclined to care about his perceptions as usual.

Yes!

"Good," Pepito grinned. He snapped his fingers and Johnny saw the walls light up. Three walls. Three screens.

Devi on one.

Jimmy on the other.

Edgar on the last.

All of them seemingly going insane.

What the fuck?

"Welcome home," Pepito said sweetly. "I thought you'd appreciate seeing your friends deal with your death for a while. Let me know if there's anything I can do to make your stay here more enjoyable. If this becomes a little much for you, direct your attention to the floor, and take in the sights of Hell. I hear there's going to be a giant car accident today."

He vanished before Johnny could swear in his head at him.

Dead. It made more sense, at least.

The wall to his right showed Devi sitting with Tenna in her apartment, wrapped in a blanket and crying into a pillow in her lap. Tenna kept offering her hot chocolate and soup, and Devi alternated between sobbing and screaming 'FUCK' in response.

The wall behind him was Jimmy, who was tearing up everything he owned. He pulled whole chunks of drywall down and flung them to the floor, smashed figurines and plates and electronic equipment, even starting shredding his German dictionary. He was screaming some interesting combinations of words that Johnny felt almost flattered to have inspired.

Edgar's wall on Johnny's left. Johnny had been trying not to look.

It showed Edgar, sitting on a step, leaning against the wall alongside the stairs. His whole body heaved with every sob, and Johnny thought he might fall down the steps with the force of them. Edgar looked up occasionally, but it seemed everything he looked at made him even more upset. Johnny watched him crawl up the stairs and curl into a ball on his bed before he didn't want to see anymore.

The floor still felt like stone, and looked like stone, but was transparent. Johnny was suspended in something over the very center of hell. He found if he concentrated on one person, he could hear them speaking, and the things around them. He watched people moving around, going about daily things, and then screaming in agony over some tiny detail. Large portions of everything below him were completely devoid of 'life,' as though they just kept building the city to appease children who didn't want play with the old bits anymore.

Pepito had been right - there was a giant car accident today. Something was odd about the smoke.

Johnny thought while he stared at the people working below him. He tried to imagine how he would get out, how he could calm everyone if he could, how he could stab Pepito in the throat with his key.

Tried to speak, but still nothing came.

Johnny sat for hours. His friends screamed and cried around him, and the citizens of Hell wailed beneath him. He kept waiting for something to change, and nothing ever did.

Edgar’s wall made him a little ill – there was no change in it, ever. Devi was eventually able to fall asleep and wake up puffy-eyed and hungry but no longer hysterical. Once Jimmy had torn everything he had apart, he’d swallowed some little white tablets and slept for hours, then wandered blindly through the streets until he stopped threatening people. Edgar, however, never stopped sobbing. Day and night there was nothing but the sound of Edgar’s endless mourning.

The others tried to visit Edgar, and Johnny saw all their screens reflect the same scenes. Edgar screamed at them and refused to see them for weeks. When he finally felt up to letting the others in, Johnny had been dead for nearly a month. The time didn’t pass that way for Johnny himself, but he knew the duration regardless.

When the door to Edgar’s house opened, Devi launched into hugging Edgar and clung onto him for several minutes. Jimmy made very few movements at first, but then offered Edgar his hand.

“I’m sorry,” he said, when Edgar hesitantly took it. “I know it wasn’t your fault.”

Devi quietly asked Edgar if they could talk. She and Jimmy needed to hear whatever he knew about Johnny’s death, she said, because the media wasn’t buying the ‘sudden heart failure’ story she and Jimmy had fed them. She looked a little anxious, but without being right there, Johnny couldn’t tell for sure.

Edgar had everyone sit down and did his best to recount what had happened.

“So it ended up being you. You heard it,” Devi said softly when Edgar mentioned Johnny’s song.

“Yeah.”

“What was it like?”

Edgar was silent for several seconds. Johnny hated that he couldn’t feel whether or not an answer was coming.

“Incredible,” Edgar finally answered.

Johnny winced.

A week later, Jimmy, Devi, and Tenna had a sort of service for Johnny. It seemed odd to him that they’d bother when none of them had ever had any kind of religion. He felt bad that they did things like this, and felt bad that they were suffering, but had to feel a little triumphant at being able to witness his own funeral.

“I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad”

People he didn’t know were there. Little kids and a throng of teenagers, plus a large number of college kids showed up to hear what Jimmy and Devi had to say. Dib the Trenchcoat Guy had even made an appearance. The only person who wasn’t there was Edgar.

Edgar was still locked in his house, sitting on the pink recliner, with a pile of newspapers and letters around him.

“I’m sorry,” he said to a picture of Johnny that had been enclosed in one of the letters. “I can’t go. I know people will want to hear from me, but I just can’t do it.” He sighed and shuffled through a few more layers of newspaper until he came across another shot of Johnny.  “I can’t decide if you’d be angry at me for not going to your funeral or if you would tell me to fuck using my own pain to ease others’. You can only know a person so well, I guess.”

“Fuck them, Edgar,” Johnny said to the wall. His voice worked now.

Johnny turned to Devi’s wall where she was explaining why Edgar hadn’t shown up.

“He doesn’t talk to us much since it happened,” she explained to the group who had gathered in front of her. “I imagine he must be feeling at least double what we are. I’m sorry he’s not here, but I don’t think he’d have appreciated the questions anyway.”

“We still don’t have any more concrete information about what happened to Johnny,” Devi continued later. “Heart failure is the best we have still, I’m sorry.” She tried to laugh. “If we lived in any other world, you’d all be asking me where the body was, and how can I say he’s dead with no proof, but you can all tell his song is gone without ever having heard it just like I can. I always heard stories of people who felt it the moment their loved ones songs had clicked off, but I never thought I’d experience it, let alone with a song I couldn’t hear.”

Johnny had always imagined he’d feel better about hearing a bunch of strangers singing his praises. Instead, he just felt bad about Edgar. Edgar, who had been the only one who did hear the song disappear.

There was no way out of the space he was in. He searched for a crack or a seam or a trapdoor of some type for days, but there was nothing. Despite this, after a considerable amount of time, people started appearing in front of him, looking lost and panicked.

“What are you doing here?!” he’d yelled at the first one. He’d been expecting some sort of answer, some sort of ‘I crawled in from this very obvious heating vent’ explanation that would lead to him and the spineless loser in front of him escaping into the black and perhaps digging their way to life again.
Instead, he got a confession.

“Back in the beginning to lift the mental fog
Each and every person created their own god”

“I never meant to hurt her!” the person, who he assumed had been a man once, shrieked at him. “I didn’t mean it! She just asked for it! Why do they always ask for it?!”

Johnny backed up, alarmed. The man continued.

“I can change! She’d just have to think for once! It’s not my fault!" Johnny watched the man twitch in front of him. He looked nervously around him, and avoided looking at Johnny entirely.

“You’re disgusting,” Johnny told him. The man’s entire body seemed to flinch.

“No! No! No!” he screamed. He took a step toward Johnny and Johnny took one back from him, grabbing the key at his neck. When his fingers closed around it, the floor below the screaming man opened up, and he crashed through one of the skyscrapers in the scene below.

An hour later, another soul appeared.  Johnny was friendly at first, and the person was rather receptive to him as well. Only when Johnny echoed his question to the first man did the person in front of him get hysterical and try to run from him.  Johnny clutched the key and watched them disappear.

“What are you doing here?” All it took.

The answers were always excuses and pleadings as to why they didn’t belong in Hell, but every response damned them. As much as he hated the suffering of the people on the walls around him, he delighted in sending these ‘people’ through the floor. They came in a regular stream, but not nearly as often as Johnny imagined people who deserved Hell were dying. For some reason, he wasn’t getting all of them.

Anytime Johnny enjoyed giving some mass of filth what they deserved, he’d hear Edgar talking idly to him though some photograph, or to the empty half of his bed, or even to the little bloody smiley face on the wall and he’d go back to aching over the pain Edgar was experiencing and feeling burning rage for Pepito.

“I was born to stare
at who stares back at me”

Maybe they’d be doing this forever. As often as Johnny screamed in frustration at Edgar’s wall for Edgar to wake up, or to go outside, or to do something other than sob, Johnny really wasn’t the type to want to be forgotten or gotten over.  He just wished Edgar would heal.

Over time, Devi’s wall faded out. She’d healed enough with Tenna to be there with her that her mourning was no longer going to torment Johnny, and he assumed Pepito had it turned off. The same happened with Jimmy, or maybe it was more pronounced. His lust turned hero-worship turned lusting-after-hero became something closer to improving himself, and in the last scene Johnny saw of him before the wall faded he closed the door on his still decimated apartment, guitar in one hand, pages of a German dictionary in the other.

Edgar just wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t let things gloss over. Johnny grew concerned that maybe it was because he didn’t really want him to. He knew it was selfish, and could see how wrong it was looking at Edgar, but he still didn’t want Edgar going about life like nothing was missing.

He just didn’t want Edgar to go about life like everything was missing.

*****

Edgar stopped caring about anything. He was occasionally dragged out to make some appearance and refute accusations of murder, but he was rarely in a state to be seen by other people. He spent most of his time talking to photos of Johnny or the empty places where Johnny should have been.

“I don’t understand what went wrong,” he told the cushion on the couch one day. “I looked for what must have been years, finally found you, finally got close to you, found what I wanted, thought I gave you something you wanted and … and I just lost you again.” He buried his face in a pillow.  “How many times do we have to do this?”

“Did me hearing your song kill you?” he asked of the empty side of his bed another day. “What made it show up then? It’s all I want to hear and all I hear is…”
He hummed his own song and choked on the chorus.

“‘Immortal until I find happy,’” he quoted mockingly. “Then I hope someone breaks in here with a gun and lets me follow you.”

Weeks later, Edgar was analyzing everything, and starting to make himself feel as responsible as Jimmy had thought he was when it first happened.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked the ceiling. “Maybe when he imagined himself with me, he had something else in mind. I failed at some aspect of being his and those guys who gave me the book took him from me. Wasn’t close enough to him. Was too close. It was too deep or too much or too blasphemous or…”

He’d checked the book then, but ‘Johnny C’ was no where to be found in the listings of items in the house.

“We can supply anything
that your heart desires
but the consequences
will surely be dire”

“And maybe I loved him too intensely?” he said, glaring at the book. “You can’t accuse me of too little, you can’t. There’s nothing in me but what I felt for him.”

Edgar dreamed that it was a game. Dreamed that Pepito would bring Johnny back relatively unharmed, save for maybe a scar or two, and everything would be perfect. Edgar would have Johnny back and they’d be happy, and they’d lie around tangled in each other and Johnny would joke about the shape of the scar above his eye.

“Look at this,” Johnny would say gleefully, “I could be some kind of magical prince guy now. I’ve got the mark. Someone market me! I’m the ruler of a lost civilization! I’m the chosen one! Write books about me!”

And for some reason, this would be irresistible to Edgar and he’d just melt against Johnny and right into the cushions or the sheets or the dining room table or wherever his brain took them. And there would be jokes and passion and probably a bloody shoulder torn by fingernails in the midst of amazing things.

And Edgar would wake up, and find nothing beside him – nothing but empty and the smell of Lo Mein, no matter how often he washed the sheets. The smell made him want to vomit, but there was so little in him that his body just shuddered and heaved until Edgar either caved into exhaustion or got himself a sandwich.

And then he’d throw up the sandwich.

“this chaos is killing me”

Devi called him on occasion, trying to keep him within the boundaries of sane. On one such occasion, she asked if she could see him.

“Out somewhere,” she replied when he asked where she wanted to meet. “Just to get some fresh air, maybe.” Edgar agreed half-heartedly. He rarely wanted to leave the house, but knew somewhere deep down that it probably wasn’t healthy for him.

They met in front of the library, which was just a block from the school. The school and anything related to it was still pretty painful for all of them, so they avoided it in favor of reasonably nearby landmarks. Devi sat outside on the railing, her hands deep in the pockets of her long coat.  She stood up when she saw Edgar, and smiled as warmly as Edgar imagined she was able.

“It’s good to see you outside,” she said.

“I think it’s good to be outside, but I’m not sure.”

She laughed quietly and then led Edgar to the steps and invited him to sit down.

“I don’t exactly know what to say about these,” she started, fishing into one of her pockets and pulling out a fat envelope, “but, I thought maybe you’d need them.”

“Devi, if it’s more letters or newspaper clippings, I don’t thin-”

“No, no, it’s not that. I’ve had these since before he… well, since before.” She opened the envelope and Edgar saw the sheen of photographs. He bit his lip.
“Just hear me out, okay?” Devi said, pulling the stack out. She flipped through several of the top photos, which looked to be just pictures of her apartment and Tenna doing stupid things with a plunger.

“Sorry about those,” she said, looking uncomfortable. “I just needed to finish the roll.”

Edgar shook his head and watched Devi continue examining the photos. When it appeared that she found what she wanted, she tilted them away from Edgar’s view.

“So, I took these the week before everything happened,” she explained. “They’re nice, and they’re fun, you know? They sort of hurt to look at, but they’re nice.” She handed Edgar a trio of photos featuring himself along with Jimmy, Johnny and Tenna. They were all posing dramatically for the camera with dumb props they’d found in the auditorium they were going to play in that night. Johnny had found a gigantic feather boa and was doing his best ‘serious old man face' to go with it.  She handed him several more, lots that were just generic smiling for the camera, but some that were candid shots. One of Johnny and Tenna laughing was particularly enjoyable.

Edgar started to say something, but Devi cut him off.

“So they’re all like that, you know? The pictures you have of him. He’s posing for some picture, or looking crazy for some camera.” Devi looked a little nervous, and kept glancing at the next photo that she wouldn’t let Edgar see.

“I guess they are,” Edgar said. “I don’t really … analyze them.”

“I thought maybe you’d want one that was a little different,” Devi said softly, handing Edgar a single photo.

The photo was dark, like Devi had forgotten the flash, but he and Johnny were still visible at the verge of a kiss in the back of the van. He remembered the moment exactly, but had never known there was a picture.

“I didn’t really plan on it,” Devi explained hurriedly when Edgar sent her a confused look. “I just looked back, and, really, I thought it would make good blackmail later. I thought he wouldn’t want to be seen like that by the legions of screaming fans, and maybe I could get him to buy me tea for a month or something… So I’m sorry, I mean, for taking it without you guys knowing.”

“It’s…”

“But I thought maybe you’d need a picture that wasn’t strictly Homicides Johnny, and was maybe just Johnny Who Loved Edgar.”

The picture made Edgar’s insides clench, and he found his breath had to be forced into his lungs.

“Thank you,” he managed.

“You’re welcome. I think I’m just glad you’re not mad at me.”

“I don’t think I could be.”

“I will hear my heartbeat
over the thunder”

“We never know with you anymore, but it’s a real relief to finally give it to you. I’m sorry it took as long as it did.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

When Edgar returned home, he tucked the picture under a pillow on his bed. He still spoke mostly to the images of Johnny looking right at the camera, but when he didn’t feel like talking, even to nothing, the picture was almost comforting. Sometimes, he dreamed that he could restart life from the moment captured in it, and he’d live for years after it with a very alive Johnny, who did indeed have to buy Devi tea for a month every so often to keep the picture within her possession.

*****

Pepito made an appearance weeks later. Johnny had grown accustomed to sending everyone who materialized before him down the chute to a long and unhappy afterlife, and was fully prepared to try it on Pepito, but he proved immune to whatever effect the key had on the damned.

“Sorry, it doesn’t work that way,” Pepito said, strolling casually in Johnny’s direction. “You’ll be glad to know it doesn’t work on you either, though,” he added.

“What do you want?” Johnny asked, letting go of the key.

“To see how you’re doing, and see if you’re ready for the rest of them. I’ll get to abandon everything down here soon with the progress you’re making.”
Johnny almost growled at him.

“So this one is the only one left, hmm?” Pepito said, looking fondly at Edgar’s image on the wall. “I thought he would be.”

“I can’t stand you.”

“You and most of the human race, yes.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“And you don’t want to even ask me why you’re here.”

“Do I need to ask?”

“I think you’ll be surprised,” Pepito said, smiling. He conjured something in the air with a key dangling from his wrist. Johnny squinted at it and recognized an unhealthy looking version of himself lying on nothing but white, with what looked like tin foil in the background.

Johnny watched, intrigued. A likewise less-healthy looking Edgar appeared and seemed horrified to see the other Johnny lying on the not-ground. Edgar spoke to something Johnny couldn’t see, and Pepito waved his hand. The picture sped up, and then Pepito clenched a fist and it resumed normal time.

“Let me go and try to make him happy,” portal Edgar said.

Pepito grinned, showing teeth that were closer to being fangs.

Johnny shook his head. “I don’t, I don’t see.”

“Yes, you do,” he said, pausing the little show entirely to go back to the wall showing current Edgar. He motioned for Johnny to look with him, and as much as Johnny was not inclined to do so, he wasn’t going to let Pepito fuck with him or see any kind of weakness, so he followed and stood near the wall.

“Tell me,” Pepito said, looking fondly at the image of Edgar sobbing to himself, “when did you decide to ignore me entirely?”

“When you stopped making any fucking sense, and when Edgar was more important than you.”

“I kept trying to warn you.  It looked awfully familiar, the way he looked at you. I thought it could only get worse, and,” he paused, smiling at the image of Edgar, “could only end in tears.”

Johnny folded his arms over his chest, and rubbed his arms. He felt cold, and he felt the tendrils of something he thought he was going to regret. As much as the dead could regret. That was what made people haunt, wasn’t it?

“I would rather have had you live out your life, really,” Pepito continued when Johnny didn’t reply. “You were coming here no matter what happened, so it would have been nice for you to do whatever you wanted for as long as you could. You wouldn’t have left all those people distraught over their favorite band, at least.” As he spoke, he and Johnny watched Edgar turn on the television and look more and more devastated with every channel. Johnny didn’t have to see the screen to know his picture was on each one.

“As it was, though, you and Edgar here decided to end your life early.”

“Just fucking tell me whatever mystical bullshit you have in mind, I’m tired of your voice.”

“Did you like him, Johnny?”

“Yes, of course I did.” He looked away from the Edgar scene, wave of anger creeping over him.

“And he made you happy?”

“You’re sick.”

“Answer the question.”

“Yes. Yes he did,” Johnny answered grudgingly.

“So there you go.”

“The fuck?”

“You didn’t listen did you?” Pepito poked the frozen image of Johnny and Edgar between lives.

“Let me go and try to make him happy,” Pre-Edgar said again.

Johnny actually felt his face drop when it clicked.

“It was decided from then,” Pepito said, still smiling. “You’d been slated to die the moment Edgar made you happiest from day one. I was trying to spare him the pain of having you die when I told you not to get so close.”

For the first time in his li- no, that wasn’t totally accurate anymore, but still - Johnny wanted to be sick, actually wanted to throw up. Fortunately, he really didn’t have a body to vomit anything from, and so thankfully showed no sign to Pepito, but the feeling was still there.

“And you knew,” Johnny said.

“Of course I knew,” Pepito said. “They asked me if I wouldn’t mind giving you up for another lifetime to see how Edgar dealt with you.”

“You did this.”

“Yes, I did.”

“How can you do this to people?”

Pepito posed. “I’m the son of Satan.”

“And I even said- God, I hate you.” Johnny kept shaking his head, wondering if the tears he felt coming ever would, and hoping they wouldn’t.

“Ha, you’re right, you did. ‘I could probably die happy now.’ How quaint.”

Johnny looked up and at Pepito. Fuck this.

“You supply the rumors
And I'll provide the wrath”

“So, how’s Squee?”

Pepito looked a little thrown by the quick change of topic, but answered.

“He’s fine. Holding up the fort while I’m gone.”

“And how long will that be for?” Johnny asked, looking into the image of Edgar suffering.

“As long as it needs to be. He’s good at waiting.”

“You do this to him often?”

Pepito tapped his foot. “What are you getting at?”

“Nothing,” Johnny said. “So no chance you can send me back there, huh?”

“No.”

“Can I haunt people?”

“Only people who’ve done you wrong.”

“Really?” Johnny asked, trying not sound as interested as he was. “What about their family members?”

“If they live in the same house, I think, is the rule. Have someone you need to vent on?”

“I think I might. I used to know a guy who was pretty terrified of everything, and for good reason. He’s practically married to someone who had done me a rather large amount of wrong.” Johnny smiled, touching the image of Edgar in front of him. “I think I’d like to visit him.”

“Sounds like you’ll enjoy yourself.”

“Can I hurt them?” Johnny asked.

“Sure, if that’s what you want to do,” Pepito said cheerfully. “You can’t interact with them, though. You’d need to throw things or drop stuff. Only inanimate objects.”

“Does something happen if I touch them? The person, I mean.”

“No, that’s just it. You can’t do any sort of haunting unless they feel like you’re there, so you’ve got to use…,” Pepito looked around, as though he thought the airless environment would produce the word he wanted.  “…props.”

“Sounds great,” Johnny said. “I think I’ll just be on my way, then.”

Pepito folded his arms in front of his chest and smiled. “You adjust well,” he said.

“Sometimes, you need to learn to do these things,” Johnny said, eyeing the lock hanging from Pepito’s neck. “Adjust well, I mean.”

Johnny felt Pepito grow a little wary, for just a moment.

“Where are you…?” Pepito began.

“I’m going to see Squee,” Johnny said. “I can’t think of anyone who has wronged me more than his other half. Shall I tell him you sent me?” With that, Johnny actually felt himself vanish.

“Augen Auf, ich komme!”

He readjusted in the kitchen of Pepito’s house. He felt like he had stood up too fast, but otherwise didn’t feel particularly odd. Not dead, anyway. The will to haunt was apparently all he’d needed to get out of his cave for a while. He reached out to take one of the many boxes on the table. He could still touch things. He crunched a roll of crackers in his hand, and glanced around for something sharp. It wasn’t going to take long for Pepito to follow him, so he needed to get this done as quickly as possible.

Johnny found a knife that was being used to cut a plate-sized cookie, and regarded it for a moment. At least he’d lived a whole life without killing someone. And he was definitely part of Hell, now, so this was either going to work in his favor, or do utterly nothing.

He found Squee, or maybe Todd was more appropriate, given the circumstances, playing a game by himself in the other room. The game was still on the mode designed for two players, and Todd sat, bored, talking to the other side of the screen half-heartedly.

“You need to stop hiding there, Pepito,” he said sadly as he shot the character on the left side of the screen. “I’m going to find you every time at this rate.”

Johnny actually wanted this to work. Either way, really. He tossed the knife once, and caught the handle as it came back down to get Todd’s attention.

“Gaaaah!” Todd stood up, and dropped his controller. He didn’t run, which was going to make this much easier. “Pepito?” he asked, looking around. “Pepito, that’s really not- You could have just said you were back!”

Johnny moved forward as fast as he could while still not impaling Todd. He didn’t quite want to do that, at least not yet. Todd scrambled onto a couch against the far wall, and stood against the wall, nearly climbing onto the back of the couch. He felt around the wall behind him desperately. For something to shield himself with, Johnny figured.

Johnny himself hopped onto the couch, standing in front of Todd, knife gently against his neck. Johnny thought he’d have a serious issue with personal space here were he not dead.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” Johnny said to Todd, applying some pressure, “but I feel bad that this has to be you of all people. Unfortunately,” he said, pressing ever slightly more, “this is the only way to get to him.”

Todd mouthed Johnny’s name.

“And you knew, too. Maybe I don’t feel bad about this after all.”

“use your evil
when you want”

Todd made some flailing motion across the wall, and tried to speak.

“Let him go.” Pepito’s voice filled the room before he appeared behind Johnny.

“No, I don’t think I will,” Johnny said, keeping his back to Pepito, and his everything focused on holding the blade in place.

“What do you think this will do?” Pepito asked. Johnny felt him trying to mask something. He really hoped it was fear.

“This will give you what you deserve,” Johnny said. “Since Edgar losing someone seems so hilarious to you, I thought you needed to be there first hand.”
“I can destroy you,” Pepito threatened.

“Can you now? Seems I’m the guy with the key, and I can go between here and Hell as long as I can find someone who was less than nice to me in the past.” Johnny gripped the knife tighter. He turned around to look at Pepito, knife still forcing Todd against the wall. With his free hand, he pointed at Pepito.

“You sent me there. You did this to me. You decided you couldn’t handle holding onto a key, and didn’t want to do Daddy’s business anymore. You gave it to me. You thought it was funny, and you wouldn’t tell me a god damned thing when I asked for it.”

“I couldn’t, I-” Pepito started.

“I DON’T CARE!” Johnny yelled. On his last syllable he drew blood from Todd, and was sure he could feel him shaking.

“You pretended to give a damn, you even wanted to warn me about Edgar, but you didn’t care. All you wanted was to sit at home with Squee here and play games.” Johnny regarded Todd as though sizing him up. “Yes,” he said, “I think I understand you.”

Pepito took a step forward.

“However!” Johnny continued, “I would have liked to stay home and watch some infomercials, and, look! I’m not ruining anyone’s life over it! Oh wait!” he said, in mock discovery, “I guess I am.”

“Stop, stop, wait,” Pepito said quickly, “Let me-”

“No,” Johnny said. “I don’t care.”

“You can go, you can go. Give me the key, and you can go.”

“Go and haunt poor Edgar, who is probably at home killing himself anyway? No thanks.”

“No! No!” Pepito yelled, moving quickly towards Johnny. “Don’t hurt him, and I’ll let you go.”

“Swear it, or Squee’s neck stains your wallpaper.”

Pepito said something that Johnny couldn’t understand, and the lock on Pepito’s neck fell to the floor.

“Done,” he said. “Now let him down.”

Todd had been shaking for several minutes, and when Johnny released his hold on him, he crumpled into a ball on the couch. Pepito rushed to his side, and held a pillow to the bleeding on his neck. He alternately told Todd something in Spanish and glared at Johnny.

“Get out,” Pepito growled when Todd’s shaking finally lessened.

“I’m supposed to just poof myself alive, am I?” Johnny asked, snapping the ribbon around his neck and dropping the key and knife to the floor.

“Just go,” Pepito said, with not so much as a glance in Johnny’s direction. “Go make sure he’s not killing himself, and you’ll be back in the morning.”

Johnny wasn’t sure if making sure Edgar wasn’t committing suicide was a prerequisite for being ‘back in the morning’, but hell if he wasn’t going to go anyway.

For half a block, he ran on the sidewalks, and then something dawned on him. He ran straight through houses – through kitchens and televisions and mothers screaming at children. He almost regretted when he finally drifted though the kitchen of Edgar’s house that he’d never be able to do that again.

None of the lights were on. The kitchen had pots and plates and other things Johnny wasn’t sure even belonged in there all over the counters and the floor.

Johnny was happy he’d never notice stepping on the glass.

CD’s were scattered on the floor in the dining room and out into the living room, with a small walkway cleared away in front of the stairs. Edgar was lying on the couch, with the television on, but his face was buried in a cushion. Johnny couldn’t touch him, but found something to knock off the wall to try to startle him. Edgar sat up and looked around for a moment, then flopped back onto the cushions.

He was miserable and he looked awful. Johnny felt responsible or guilty, like he’d died on purpose. Looking around the room, it was no wonder Edgar wanted to bury his face in something and never look out again. Pictures of Johnny or even just the Homicides as a group were on everything; newspapers, magazines, and every channel on the television. The channels were just cycling for some reason and Johnny thought he’d try to stop it, but couldn’t find the remote. He suspected Edgar was lying on it.

He thought he’d try getting Edgar’s attention and write something, but every noise Johnny made was met with a moan of pain. Edgar was not particularly receptive to anything.

There were letters on the floor from people saying they would miss Johnny, and could they please have something of his, that would be great.  Others accused Edgar of murder. Still others had written things like, “I M glud u eelopd with him,” and “UR LUV IS SO TRU.” Johnny worried about the education system sometimes.

So, with hours left until it would be morning, Johnny went to read everything, watch everything.

A magazine detailed an interview with Edgar and the others over the phone.

They were all saying things like, ‘We miss him, but we’re coping,' and 'No, we’re not sure what to do with the band yet.’  Except Edgar. Johnny discovered this to be a trend in everything he looked through – Edgar would say nothing but the standard hello, and would rarely answer anything more than yes or no questions.

‘I can’t stand you people,’ Johnny read in the one instance Edgar had spoken out of turn. ‘You lost one face from the media. I lost everything- my lover and my best friend, and you still shove his image in my face all the time. You’re disgusting.’

He’d said something similar on some talk show, as well, apparently. Only then did it occur to Johnny that he was going to come back from the dead, and that changed things for more people than him.

More letters than Johnny could handle.

He could only read crazed accusations against Edgar for so long before he had to put them down and do something else. How was he going to explain what had happened to him? He thought ‘publicity stunt’ at first, but then thought maybe that was trivializing what Edgar had been through. He’d have to ask him later.
He watched for the rest of the night. Watched Edgar realize he’d been sleeping on the remote and throw it at the television. Watched Edgar decide to go upstairs. Watched him fight with sleeping in any bed up there.  Watched him collapse into his own, the one Johnny had died on, and listened to him talk himself to sleep.

Johnny couldn’t sleep.

Not that he didn’t want to, he was just dead, and that wasn’t something you did once you crossed over.

He decided Edgar would be as fine as Edgar could be, given the circumstances, and he walked through more buildings. He stared at people sleeping. He visited Devi, who was wrapped around Tenna on her sofa bed. Jimmy had torn apart his apartment and never looked back, apparently, as there was no sign of him. The wallpaper was shredded, shelves broken, and there was evidence that many drinks had been flung against the appliances, but Jimmy himself was nowhere. Todd was no longer alone in his house, and Pepito sat there with him, looking rather distraught. Pepito had wised up and put something on Todd’s neck, and was sitting nervously while Todd slept on the couch by his side.

Good, Johnny thought. Stew in it for a while.

Coming back in the morning could be interpreted several different ways, so Johnny tried showing up at home at ten to midnight, thinking midnight would count as morning.

No.

Sunrise then, he thought.

Sort of.

He couldn’t see completely through his fingers and elbows anymore, but he was sure that if Edgar woke up now and could actually visualize Johnny, he’d look right through his chest and to the other side of the room. He entertained the idea of how awesome it would be to be just random visual body parts, but then he thought Edgar had been through enough and would likely die if he caught sight of it, and he didn’t want to risk becoming solid in some stranger's house to be able to pull the prank on them. Worse still, he thought, would be getting stuck half-solid in some old lady’s wall.

He felt mostly solid at about 6:15 in the morning, but he had no idea how to tell if he was alive. Breathing was hard to figure out – he’d been going through the motions of breathing ever since he died, despite not needing to. He wasn’t sure he’d pick up the difference when breathing starting doing something. Poking himself with something sharp was an option, but it didn’t appeal to him much.

It was nearly an hour later when he felt the difference between breathing and going through the motions. Johnny choked on the air at first; he hadn’t been expecting it. He coughed several times, and then took one giant gasp, and felt everything go back to normal. He had weight even when he didn’t think about exerting force, and his senses did something close to rebooting.

Edgar flailed a little in his sleep, and fumbled around for something in the dark, muttering to himself. Edgar’s arm brushed Johnny’s hand, and Edgar latched on to it a second later. He made no other sounds or movements, but smiled and continued sleeping. Johnny couldn’t decide whether or not to wake him.  From what he’d seen from Pepito’s little game, Edgar had not slept peacefully for weeks on end, and this would be so nice for him. However, it wasn’t like Johnny hadn’t wanted to see Edgar too.

Just when Johnny raised a hand to wake him, he thought he should maybe not scare Edgar to death and have them with the same ‘one of us is dead’ problem again. From what he’d seen of Edgar’s state, Johnny truly believed that Edgar would react in the worst possible way to being pushed into something, or startled, especially if it involved Johnny.

So he waited. And he felt tired. He was surprised at how quickly he’d forgotten what being tired felt like, but he experienced it as though he was feeling it for the first time. As such, it was hard not to give into.

Johnny woke up to Edgar talking.

“…and now I even see you when my eyes are open. People keep telling me this is going to get better.”

And then there was nothing. He suddenly felt like he'd just been doing something important, but couldn't place it. He was also in someone’s bed, with little to no idea who the man was or how he’d gotten there.

The scruffy looking man screamed and fell off the bed when Johnny went to ask where he was.

“Edgar?” The name just came out when Johnny sat up to see if he was okay. Johnny hoped that was really the guy’s name.

“Oh, god, Nny, holy shit. I’m hallucinating or you’re haunting me.” The man’s face suddenly changed from panicked to desperate as he crawled back onto the bed. “I’ll take haunting. Haunting is fine. Please, by all means. Are you really there?”

“I thiiiink so,” Johnny answered, patting his stomach to check his ‘there’-ness. “But I don’t think I’m haunting anyone.”

“God, what happened? Are you really-? How did you?” The Edgar guy was getting awfully close.

“Look, can we talk more about what I’m doing here?” Johnny asked, backing away. “Because this is freaking me out.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what I’m doing here, and I’ve got no idea who you are or why I am suddenly in your bed.”

Edgar-guy looked sick. More than his unshaven face and uncombed hair and dark rings around his eyes already made him look.

“You don’t…?” Edgar choked.  Johnny shook his head.

“Nope. No idea. And if I find out you’ve raped me in my sleep, I will make every attempt to tear you apart.”

“Johnny, seriously. Stop it. You have to be kidding.”

“Okay,” Johnny said, stepping off the bed, and backing close to the wall, “we’ve established that we sort of know each other in that I know your name and you know mine. This is promising, I’ll give you that, but I really have no fucking clue what’s going on.”

“Oh god,” Edgar whispered, burying his face in his hands. “They’re trying to torture me. Giving him back and taking him away, and giving back and taking...”

Apparently, Edgar was insane. This would sort of excuse some kind of date rape, but not entirely. When Johnny really considered it, the fact that he couldn’t recall anything even months prior to the hypothetical act of dubious consent might have meant he was a little crazy, too. He was also going home with random guys, for some reason.

It took him a while to notice that the noise he was hearing was Edgar weeping.

*****

Todd woke up hours later. His bleeding had stopped, and nothing even hurt, really. He had something wrapped around his neck, but it didn’t even feel constricting.

“Hey.” Pepito’s voice. “Feeling better now?”

“…Yes.”

“Good. I was worried about you.”

“Pepito…,” Todd said wearily, sitting up. “I’m starting to think that I should have just run and never come back when you told me you were going to follow me through high school.”

“…with Satan himself by my side!”

“Ah, but we got out of that just fine, didn’t we?”

“No,” Todd answered, “you did. I had my old insane neighbor come after me again, because you wouldn’t listen to me!”

Pepito sighed. “I know. I wanted to talk to you about that.”

This had the potential to be good.

“I am sorry,” Pepito started. “I didn’t mean it to happen this way. I never thought they’d…”

“Never thought that out of five people who could only see each other, that some of them would fall for each other? Pepito, your foresight is astounding.”

“I know, I know. This never should have happened to them. I just wanted to get out of this. I love the power, and the title, but I would have been happier just staying here playing that game with you.”

“You deleted those kids last time, when you wanted to spare anyone affected by the lock system. To give them a better chance. I stayed because I thought you were trying to improve things.”

Pepito gave him an odd look.

“As much as the son of Satan could, I mean,” Todd added. “Then, when you gave him the key… He used to be my insane neighbor, I was terrified of him as kid, and I thought there was no one worse to give it to, and we were all doomed, and I wanted them to just die or disappear somewhere.”

“And-” Pepito started.

“But then I saw Edgar,” Todd continued. “And I felt bad for them.”

“You knew?”

“Yes.”

Pepito touched Todd’s hair. “Miiaa…” Not really a word. “I really deserved this, didn’t I?”

“I think so,” Todd answered.

“I am sorry, amigo. I really am. I made it right in the end, though. Or I tried to.”

“I had to be threatened for you to do it, Pepito! Why is just doing what you got yourself into only considered when I have a dead maniac with a knife at my neck?!”

“It’s hard to want to lose the freedom from it. I don’t have that now. Johnny died, like he was supposed to, and took the key with him, so the key knows what it is now, and someone in charge has to take care of it.” Pepito picked the key up from the spot where Johnny had dropped it. He threaded it onto an extra stretch of material on his belt.

“If you want, Sq- Todd, I’d like to do what I should have done in the first place.”

Todd looked warily at the key, but said nothing.

“I know you see right through me.
There's no promise left to break.”

“I can’t stay here all the time,” Pepito continued. “I need to be down there. If you’d come with me, and we could keep a hold on this thing together...,” Pepito held the lock that had fallen from his neck in his other hand, “well, I’d be grateful.”

“You want me to take Johnny’s place, then,” Todd said, looking at his hands.

“No,” Pepito said. “I want you to keep me from doing something stupid again.” He draped the key around Todd’s neck. “You’re good at that, yeah?”
“Doesn’t mean I want to do it,” Todd answered.

“Please?  I think I’d miss you.”

“You only think?”

“You’re trying to make me sound desperate,” Pepito said.

“One of us has a scary neck wound and he’s being asked to spend his life living in Hell,” Todd answered.

“Alright, alright, I’m desperate. I’d miss you.”

“That’s what I thought.”

*****

Edgar made some decisions in the next few minutes that were selfish, wrong, and probably cruel to someone on some level. That didn’t bother him as much as the fact that he didn’t care how wrong they were. Standing in the bathroom, he examined his face. He thought of trying to fix it up, but worried he’d cut himself in the process given how jittery he was. Still, it was an excuse to get away and think.

From what Edgar understood, Johnny remembered that he knew people called Edgar, Devi and Jimmy, and even Tenna, though he’d called her Tonja or something like that at first, but didn’t know how he knew them, or who they were. Edgar had explained that they were all friends and tried to elaborate on the Homicides and how Johnny should be gone and numerous other things that were too fast and too much. Johnny didn’t want to hear them all so quickly.

Edgar walked back into the room where Johnny was casually strolling around the room, looking at the decorations on the walls, arms folded.

“So, these other people,” Johnny said, checking out some action figures that had been taped to the wall, “should we go see them?”

“No,” Edgar answered, surprising even himself. “No, it would really bother them to see you like this, I think. We’ll just wait until everything comes back.” He would keep Johnny to himself. The others still thought Johnny was dead, and perhaps would think the same of Edgar in a month or two, if this took so long. If Johnny didn’t remember that he had died, he’d have no reason to go tell the others that he wasn’t dead, right?

“Fair enough,” Johnny replied with a shrug. “So, I live here?”

“Yes.”

“With you?”

“Yes.”  Edgar struggled with explaining everything. He didn’t want to overwhelm Johnny with strange new information, especially about their relationship since he’d reacted so strongly to Edgar even drawing near, but he also wanted to hold him and smell his hair and tell him how desperately he’d been missed.

“Well, this is sorta fucked up, but okay,” Johnny said cheerily. “I hope you’re not lying to me.”

“I’m not, I promise.” He left the room but only got a few feet before he realized that he wasn’t being followed.  “What are you doing?” he asked, leaning back through the door.

“Standing here,” Johnny answered.

“Um.”

“I don’t remember living here, or you and whatever cues you’re throwing at me. Am I supposed to follow you or something?”

“Oh, right. Yeah, come on, I’ll…,” Edgar flinched and paused a moment. “I’ll show you around.”

Edgar toured Johnny around the house that he'd lived in for years, and Johnny took it all in enthusiastically. He was excited by all the food he seemed to remember enjoying, and thrilled at the sight of Edgar's keyboard.

"Edgar, do you play?!"

"...Yes. But not as much as I used to."

Johnny was disappointed only at his own bedroom.

"This is it?" he asked, unimpressed. "It looks like no one's lived in here for ages." Edgar tried to ignore the little wave of pain that came over him.

"I had it cleaned?" Edgar tried.

"And what, did you sell all my shit, too?"

"No, it's all in my room." Johnny didn't even need to give Edgar the raised eyebrow before Edgar hit his forehead. Edgar: 0 Creepy Roommate: 1

“So where have I been?” Johnny asked later as he regarded the living room. “It looks kind of like a war zone in here.”

“The implication that you were the one who did any kind of cleaning is really rather humorous. Were the situation different, I’d be laughing right now.”

“Well, you obviously didn’t do any.”

“You were… gone.”

“Then how did I end up in your bed?” Johnny asked.

“I don’t really know. You were taken from here several months ago. I was just as surprised to see you.”

“Taken?” Johnny echoed, looking up from his inspection of some of the blood on wall near the stairs. “Like, kidnapped or something? Abducted by aliens?”

“A bit like that.”

As they made their rounds through the house, Edgar began disconnecting the cords in the telephones in every room, and he locked the front door. He was still partially horrified by his own behavior, but he wasn’t going to have anyone find out that Johnny was here even if it meant acting a little extreme. He had a chance to get everything he loved back, and no one was going to taint it.

*****

The busy signal again.

Devi held the phone near her jaw, and nervously chewed the antenna a bit. Edgar hadn’t picked up his phone since she’d met him to share the photos, and that had been … weeks ago? Devi wasn’t sure of how much time passed anymore. Everything had been so erratic since Johnny died that she hadn’t bothered to keep track.  Still, Edgar had ignored the phone for weeks on end, and now it wasn’t ringing, but giving a busy signal. 

Talking to someone? But who? Edgar wasn’t the type to go and find some sort of comfort fling at a bar somewhere, so Devi knew he wasn’t leeching pity off of some one night stand. She also felt pretty sure that Edgar was the type who was never going to find anyone else after a loss like the one he’d suffered. She panicked then, dropping the phone.

“God, maybe he’s dead,” she said. “He just disconnected everything and he’s killed himself in the bathtub. Holy fucking shit, Nny would never forgive me if I let Edgar kill himself. He’d fucking haunt me.”

“Devi, are you talking to Edgar or yourself?” Tenna called from the other room.

“Just the voices in my head,” Devi called back. “No one important!”

“Still not picking up, huh?” Tenna walked into the room, wiping her hands on a towel tucked into one of her pockets.

“No. I can’t get anything. I think we might need to go see him. I’m getting worried.”

“You really think he’d kill himself?”

“Ten, okay, think. I’m dead, all right?”

“No, that’s actually not all right at all.”

Devi frowned. “Humor me.”

“Oookaay…”

“Okay, so I’m dead,” Devi said, using her hands to place the situation out in the air. “And this is upsetting to you.”

“Just a little.”

“And you wig out, a lot. You have no one to sit with you all day, and no deep personal issues to resolve.”

“Is Johnny still dead in this hypothetical ‘dropping like flies universe’ we’ve got going on here?” Tenna asked, sitting down. 

“Rrrg, Tenna, sure, yes, he’s dead. Anyway, you’ve got fucking nothing. What do you do?”

“Cry until I feel better? Have a nice funeral and then try to channel my suffering into something productive?”

Devi stuck her lower lip out. “Okay, you’re obviously not getting in the mindset here. You’re Edgar.”

“But then I’m not upset if you’re dead.”

“TENNA.”

“Okay, okay, I’m Edgar, and Johnny is dead,” Tenna said thoughtfully. “I waste away to nothing, I think.”

“Fuck. Gee, thanks.”

“Make up your mind!” Tenna yelled, throwing her arms in the air. “I’m going to finish this thing. Tell me if you want a ride over there. I bet I can drive right through the front of his house.” Tenna left the room without another word.

Devi sighed and held her head in hands. The busy signal beeped at her from the floor.

*****

When there were knocks on his door two days after finding Johnny alive in his bed, Edgar had told Johnny to go find something in the basement for him. Something he knew wasn’t in the basement. Johnny had agreed with no protest at all and disappeared down the stairs, humming something to himself.

Edgar pressed himself against the door, and realized that it was Devi on the other side. He felt instantly guilty, and tried to think of how best to get rid of her. Just let her knock until she couldn’t anymore? Tell her to go away? Better she thought he was alive so she didn’t have Tenna drive a car through his window, he thought.

“I’m fine, leave me alone,” he called through the door.

“Edgar! Edgar, come on, open up! You won’t pick up your phone!”

“The media calls a lot. I’m just done with it. Please go home. I’m fine, don’t worry about it.”

“Edgar!” Devi pounded harder on the door, and Edgar winced, hoping Johnny wouldn’t hear it.

“Devi, please! Come back later!”

“If he knew you were acting like this, he’d fucking kill you!” she screamed. Edgar heard her gasp and then footsteps as she ran away. A door opened and closed on some vehicle not the van and Edgar listened to them drive away. He sighed, closing his eyes.

It’s okay. She wouldn’t have been able to handle seeing him like this anyway. It’s better like this.

As if to ease his fears, and make all of his justifying valid, Johnny appeared in the doorway to the dining room.

“Edgar,” he asked, “does the house still watch me?”

*****

Everything was bullshit. Devi was utterly and absolutely sure of it.  Johnny would have killed Edgar if he saw him acting like a selfish prick all the time, even if it had been in really horrible taste to say it.

Tenna was just driving. She took the wrong way when they turned off of Edgar’s road and didn’t bother to alter her course for home. Devi didn’t say anything about it. She hadn’t been saying anything about what Tenna did lately.

They had slept curled together on the sofa bed lately, though Devi hadn’t remembered when it started. Tenna made her things and rarely made a big deal about it. Devi let Tenna braid her hair, or experiment with it while they watched their broken television, and said nothing about it at all.

“What is all this, Tenna?”  They were still driving into nowhere.

“This is cow country, Devi.”

“Not that.”

“I don’t know, maybe you should tell me.”

“You started it.”

“But you’re letting it continue.”

Devi decided right then that she couldn’t afford to take anything or anyone for granted. Tenna could launch them both off of a cliff, and she’d never have gotten to see what Tenna wanted to offer. She’d already lost Johnny, already assumed he’d be there forever – he had had Hell’s key, how could he not be?  Tenna was more mortal than Johnny had ever been, but Devi realized as Tenna turned the car around that this did not mean she was less valuable.

*****

Edgar explained as much as he thought he was able to without ruining Johnny’s chances of truly remembering real information and not just regurgitating ‘remembrances’ like children who spout out the stories they’ve been told of how things were. There comes a point when you hear stories so often that you think you remember them, and as much as Edgar was hoarding Johnny to himself and trying to keep him from everyone else, he didn’t want to cultivate his own Johnny from select memories. Only the real thing.

 The real thing that he was starting to doubt he’d ever see again. Johnny remembered little things, but the things that had really made Johnny himself weren’t there. This Johnny didn’t remember ever having to be strange and intriguing as a teenager to lure other invisible people into doing his bidding. He didn’t remember living in the house he’d called home for years, so he still acted as though he was a guest there. He didn’t remember being close to Edgar so he didn’t joke quite as much at first.

Only a few days elapsed before Johnny seemed to consider Edgar his friend, or, at least not a rapist. He didn’t really know why, but the more this Johnny formed conclusions or opinions on his own, Edgar worried more and more that he’d never find the Johnny he lost.

This Johnny made macaroni for himself and for Edgar, rather than making a bowl and wandering into the living room twenty minutes later with it telling Edgar there wasn’t any left. Logically, Edgar thought, he should have been more attracted to this Johnny, to someone who could probably learn the kind of love they had in the movies on the women’s television network, but he wanted his hypocritical bastard back, and a Johnny who felt bad about not knowing what was going on just made him ache.

Still, they were comfortable. Johnny quickly picked up on Edgar being used to teasing and employed it often.

“Do you know what I did with the remote?” Edgar asked one day.

“OH GOD, I DON’T REMEMBER, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME? WERE WE FRIENDS?” Johnny screamed in mock-terror.

“Fuck you.”

Somewhere on the blank slate of Johnny, someone hadn’t totally erased Nny.  It gave Edgar hope and crushed something inside of him every time it showed.

Johnny found out that he had been dead when he caught Edgar with a newspaper. Edgar was surprised that his reaction wasn’t stronger.

“I just died?”

“Yeah.”

“What the fuck happened? How did I get back here?”

Edgar shook his head, setting the newspaper aside. “I don’t know. I heard your song, and then-”

“So I have one?” Johnny’s face flashed the same desperate expression Edgar had seen when the song first floated into his head. The topic of death had disappeared instantly.

“Yes, you do.”

“I was worried,” Johnny said. “I can hear yours all the time. It just plays at me, but I hear nothing from me at all.”

Edgar’s chest tightened. “Sorry.”

“About what?”

“About my song. It’s come after you like that before.”

“It’s okay, it’s not like it’s a bad thing.”  Edgar tried to nod. “Or even a bad song,” Johnny added after a moment. “Just means you’re reacting strongly to me.”

“Oh?” Had Johnny held on to his ability to process songs?

“Sure, people’s songs react to other people. If you really hate that fucker at the post office, your song probably blares over everything he thinks, and most of your speech, too. I think the same happens when you have a strong attraction to someone, but it’s less malicious usually.”

“Only usually?”

“It depends on the strength of both people involved and a lot of other complicated shit that I don’t think I ever knew, missing memory or not.” Johnny poked at some loose threads on the pillow beside him.

“So, how are you supposed to get close to someone who’s being deafened by a song all the time?”  Edgar didn’t feel as guilty asking indirectly about personal events in his and Johnny’s lives as he thought he would.

“Apparently, when they accept you, or your song, or something equally shitty holiday card, it evens out.”

“And what causes a song to just… come out?”

“Out?” Johnny asked. “Like, bust out of people’s rib cages or something?”

“No, I mean, um, develop. Appear, maybe?”

“Oh. Most people always have theirs, you know? So I don’t know how that works, since I… don’t. Yeah.”

“I mean more like… to other people,” Edgar said quietly.

“What you need to ask, instead,” Johnny said, with the faintest air of the arrogant kid who’d invited himself into Edgar’s house on a weekend years ago, “is what’s holding a person’s song back.”

“What’s…?”

“I don’t know. It’s different for everyone.”

“But then what about you?”

Johnny shrugged. “Don’t know. I’m a big mystery to both of us now.”

******

Johnny dropped carelessly onto Edgar's bed, fully intending to tie his sheets in knots or generally make an ass of himself for no reason other than afternoon amusement. He’d gotten used to the idea of living in Edgar’s house in only a few days. The decorations clearly had had some of his influence, even if he couldn’t remember making them. The paintings of little girls modified to be demons that lined the wall by the staircase pleased him the most.

While crawling across the bed to find something on the side of the room to tuck into Edgar’s blankets, Johnny heard something that sounded like crunching paper, and began rooting amongst the covers for the source. Under the pillow, his palm touched something sleek, and he pulled out a slightly bent photograph.

Dark, like whoever had taken it had forgotten to turn on the flash, but the figures were still visible, wrapped around each other, half a moment from a kiss. Johnny kept staring into the faces on the photo, trying desperately to believe what he was seeing.

Himself and Edgar.

Edgar walked in the room just then, not even glancing at Johnny, making his way directly to the dressers and book cases in the room.

"Johnny, have you seen my-"

"You didn't tell me."

"Hu-?" Johnny thrust the photo into Edgar's face. "Oh."

"Is it real?" Johnny asked.

"Yes.”

Johnny pulled the photo back down and stared at it, while something inside him hurt.

"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked.

"Say what? ‘Hi, nice to meet you again, hey, by the way, you used to my boyfriend?!’ Would you have wanted to hear that?" Edgar’s voice shook when he spoke.

"Maybe if I'd known it made you this happy."

"What?"

"We look happy," Johnny said, aching more and more the longer he looked at the image.

"I like to think we were."

"How long?"

"Depends."

"Well, this explains a lot." All of his things in Edgar's room, his mostly unused room, Edgar’s pained expressions. "How the hell have you dealt with me being here?"

"I manage," Edgar said, indicating that he really hadn't been.

"Do you want it back?"

"Of course I do."

"So-"

"But after what I went through the first time, I just don't know if I can."

"'Went through?'" Johnny echoed.

"It took a long time, and it was rather painful. I looked for you, and tried to get close to you and wanted to be nearer still for years." He sighed, and closed his eyes. "I don't know how many more times I can lose you before I'm sure that I'm cursed."

"You don't look like this anymore." Johnny said, gazing into the photograph.

"We are in make-up in that one. For-"

"That's not what I mean. You haven't looked like this... Do you have any others?"

"Pictures?"

"Yes."

Edgar bit his lip, then nodded, and led Johnny to the other unused bedroom. He took a book from the shelf, and opened the back cover. A small stack of photos spilled out onto the desk in front of them. Johnny reached out to touch them, just to make sure he was really seeing them, and then spread them out on the desktop.

Johnny and Edgar in the middle of a crowd. Johnny was smiling deviously, and Edgar was just laughing. Johnny's arms were around Edgar's neck.

Johnny and Edgar being held cheek to cheek by Devi, who was making a hideous kissy face at the camera. Johnny and Edgar both looked rather annoyed, despite clasped hands.

Johnny pointing enthusiastically at the horizon, covered in tattered rags, and dark circles around his eyes.

There weren't many, and Johnny thought maybe he would not have wanted a lot of pictures taken of him being close to Edgar, thus why so few had been collected.

"Holy shit," Johnny said finally. "We really were..."

"Yes."

"God, look how happy you are in all of these...," Johnny marveled, flipping photo after photo out of his hands. "I died and took all this with me."

"You don't have to remind me."

"No, I don't mean it like that. I mean, I'm sorry. I didn't know I had been this special to you. Even the way you look at me is different now."

"How so?"

"It's the same look," Johnny said, holding a photo close-up of himself and Edgar next to Edgar's cheek, "but it looks like it hurts now."

"So it really is you in there," Edgar said, with only the slightest hint of humor.

Johnny grinned and took the photo away from Edgar's face.

"So what now?" he asked.

"Nothing," Edgar answered. "I can't just say 'this is how it used to be, so this is how it will continue to be' when you don't even regard me as your best friend anymore."

"Best is pretty relative," Johnny said. Edgar flinched. "I mean, we might not be this close, but I'm closer to you than Devi or the other two. I haven’t even talked to them." Edgar felt a pang of guilt, but tried to continue normally.

"But I think we're both in agreement that that's not enough to get to any of this again." Edgar gestured at the pile of photos.

"So come closer."

"What?"

"Come closer, get closer. These are all what you want, aren't they?"

"Yes, but you-"

"ME? Are you even looking at these?" Johnny squeaked. "For fuck's sake, look at me! I look elated in all of these! Like I'm on some kinda high." He stopped for a moment, and stared into another photo. "I want to remember this. I want you to show me this stuff."

"I don't think-"

"Show me, it's okay."

"You can't say things like that," Edgar mumbled. "It's hard enough to hold back without-"

"So don't! You want to hang on to me or something?" He held his arms out to his sides and spun in a circle once. "Okay, do it. Maybe it'll help me remember."

"I do want to. Desperately. But not while it's not what you want."

"I just said it was, didn't I? I want to remember. I want to be this happy again." He held the original offending picture in front of Edgar's nose. Edgar looked away, and took a step back.

"I can't," he said. "I just can't. I courted you and chased you for months, maybe years if I really admit to myself, I can't just-"

"Then I'll do it."

"You'll... what?"

"I'll chase you."

"That's... really not necessary."

"I think it is. I think we've been robbed." Johnny took a step forward.

"Johnny, it's okay, really," Edgar said, backing away again.

"What's the hang up, hmm? From the look of these - no, from what you've just told me, even - you really want this back. You want me back."

"It's not quite the same," Edgar replied slowly.

"I'm still the guy in these pictures! I just don't remember being him!"

Edgar stared at Johnny for a moment, then shook his head.

"A long time ago," he said, "you told me just the opposite."

Johnny squinted back at him.

"You told me that a person is made by the memories they have,” Edgar said quietly. “I know you to look at you, to hear your voice, even by the way you move, and the way you look at things, but I'm not sure that you're the person I lost."

"But, I-"

"I don't think I want to keep talking about this right now."

"So you'll talk about it later, then."

"I- Alright. If that's what you want."

"Yes."

******

 

Later turned out to be that evening, in front of an infomercial that Johnny was studying intently.

"I think I've seen this one before," Johnny said. "Don't they unclog sinks at a mall or something?"

"Yeah, that's it. I think there's that woman who gets disproportionately excited near the end, too."

"Yes!" Johnny dropped the bowl of Skettios in his outburst and he and Edgar just watched the orange goo ooze into the floor.

"So is it later yet?" Johnny asked.

"I guess so."

"So, we're going to go somewhere," Johnny said to the Skettios.

"We are?"

"Yeah, you're going to go somewhere with me."

"Johnny, I don't want to sound like a total dick here, but, do you even remember places to go?"

"Trust me."

Edgar's heart hurt. "Okay."

"Should we clean this up?"

"I'll get it."

*****

He was running through the rain with Johnny dragging him by the wrist. The touch was familiar, the movements when he ran were familiar, but something about the person behind both wasn't. Every so often, Nny would crop up in the blank slate of a man that Edgar had living in his house, but for the most part, he was just Johnny.

Johnny took them to the school, which Edgar hadn't been in for years.

"Johnny, wait," he said, when Johnny flung open a door that he'd unlocked with no trouble at all. "I don't think I want to do this."

"I asked you to come with me," Johnny said, putting on his mock-hurt voice. "You'd bail out on me now?" A flash of Nny again.

"No." Never. Even if I wanted to.

They ran down the hall, past doors and rooms and closets and hallways that had been home for Johnny years ago. Johnny unlocked a door that had long ago become familiar and haunting to Edgar.

The roof.


Johnny opened his mouth to say something dramatic when they stepped out onto the gravel covered surface, but Edgar interrupted him before he could even think not to.

"You knew all of those locks."

"...yeah."

"But you don't remember me."

Johnny was quiet.

"I can't control what I remember," he said softly, after a moment of silence. "I've already told you I want to remember you. I want to remember those pictures."

"And the roof is good for this how?"

"Don't tell me I have fake memories in there, too," Johnny replied with a crooked smile. "I know I brought you up here before."

"You did. A long time ago."

"Good," he said, hoisting himself up on the ledge around the roof. He slid back until he was on the very edge of the concrete blocks. "So what can you tell me?"

"Tell you?" Edgar felt nervous just looking at Johnny sitting on the wet blocks, but tried not to show any obvious twitches.

"Tell me about what you want me to remember. About what you want. About what you had."

"Johnny..."

"About me. I want to remember."

"I don't think this is quite the way to go about it."

"That's fine. I can just lean back here and never be seen aga-!"

"DEAR GOD, NNY, DON'T YOU DARE!" Arms around him before he realized he had moved. Fuck. Years later, and he still fell for that. Johnny laughed at him.

"I thought so," he said. "No, it's okay, don't let go."

Edgar made an irritated noise, and climbed up onto the ledge beside Johnny. He replaced his arms when Johnny gave him the eyebrow face.

"So maybe I'll ask you things instead," Johnny said when Edgar had gotten situated. "I'm interested in what you called me."

"What I-? Oh." Edgar tried to laugh. "'Nny.'"

"You called me that?"

"We all did."

"Who came up with it?"

"I don't know," Edgar said, resting his head against Johnny's shoulder. "I wasn't there for it. Maybe Devi, maybe you. You told me to call you Nny from the first time we met."

"So you should keep doing it."

"It's more of a habit, really," Edgar replied, shaking his head. "I'm not sure that Johnny and Nny are the same person."

"We're going to argue about this until I remember everything, aren't we?"

"Do you think you will?"

"Do you think I will? You might know my track record better than I do."

"I don't know,” Edgar sighed. “Considering my luck, I'd say no, but considering your tendency to have even the weirdest shit you want come true, it's possible."

"Hey, I think I needed to be told about that earlier," Johnny said, sitting up straighter. "Do you think there's some place around here we can hit with a meteor?"

"It's not God powers."

"Oh, fuck that. You know, I've heard he's pretty lame." He stuck his lower lip out for a moment. "Now that I'm thinking about it, I don't know where I've heard that, but I know I've heard it."

"Satan's son isn't much better."

"Oh, shit."

"What?"

"He lives around here, doesn't he?" Johnny stood up abruptly, nearly knocking Edgar off of the roof.

"What the hell?"

"Do you know which house is his?"

Edgar slipped off of the ledge, and sank to a sitting position on the gravel base of the roof. Safe there.

"There shouldn't even be a house there anymo- Yeah, wait a minute." Despite that he'd just sat down, Edgar climbed to his feet and went to point out Pepito's house. Still there, with no hint of a black hole, was the house in question. The lights were on and Edgar could see shadows of movement.

"That's the one," Edgar said, pointing. Johnny was already staring at it.

"I think I remember starting out there."

"Starting when, now?"

"This whole remembering nothing thing. I started at that house."

"You came from Pepito?" Edgar's head throbbed a little. "I wonder if he just decided to give you back."

"Back?" Johnny asked, turning only barely toward Edgar, as though he thought he needed to keep strict watch on the house.

"He disappeared with you when you died. From that day, until today, I can't remember the house being there."

"Let's go see them," Johnny said, and he turned for the door.

"No!" Edgar grabbed Johnny's wrist, and pulled him back. "He's not a nice person, really. And he'll just manipulate you with some false truths and it'll really be going backwards." False truths, huh?

"Way to have faith in me."

"Johnny, you can't remember anything!" Edgar stressed his outburst by tugging sharply on Johnny's arm. "How will you know the difference when he says that he's going to help you and does something irreversible?"

"And if it's a good irreversible?"

"It won't be. He's the son of fucking Satan."

"I wonder what happened to Satan Version One," Johnny asked, staring into the sky above him.

"That is really the last of your concerns, I'd think."

"Do we know, though?"

"No."

"Damn. Well, fine. We won't go." Johnny sat on the ledge again, pulling himself from Edgar's grip easily. "What do I know?"

Edgar looked at his hand, which really should have still been holding Johnny's wrist, as far as he was concerned, and then shook his head. Maybe Nny really was still in there.

"Things you know..." Edgar said thoughtfully, drumming his fingers on the ledge of the roof. "You know that Pepito is Satan's son, and that he seems to be perpetually chasing a relationship with Squee. You know everything about songs, whether they come from people or not. You know every key to every lock in this building and you know all the words to about 50 infomercials and several horrible old movies."

"Horrible movies?"

"Horrible."

"I detect a bias."

"Horrible."

"Go on."

"I don't know, I'm having a hard time saying, 'You know this,' when I'm wondering if really it's 'he knew this.'"

Johnny shrugged. "So tell me about 'him' instead."

"That's not the sort of stuff you'd want to hear, I imagine."

"I asked for it, didn't I?"

Edgar thought, for a moment, that maybe it was possible that this person really was the one he'd lost, coming back gradually. If he came back from Pepito, especially. Maybe Pepito was holding the memories ransom?

"Sure, you asked," Edgar answered, "but it doesn't mean you'll enjoy it."

"I've been enjoying this whole fucked up ride, really. You think you can sappy-talk me into jumping off the roof?"

"Can we stay away from the jumping off the roof in all forms?"

"Only if you talk," Johnny joked, leaning back and dangling his arms off the edge.

"You're still a manipulative bastard, but okay."

"I like the implication that you were in love with a manipulative bastard."

Edgar shrugged. "We can't all be perfect."

"So okay, stop stalling," Johnny said, hitting Edgar's arm. "Talk. Fill me in on all of this."

Edgar struggled with his pronouns for a few moments. 'He'? 'You'? Which was more appropriate? Finally, rather than worry about them and their usage, he just ignored them completely.

"Knew things about people that they didn't even know. Felt people's feelings and songs so much stronger than tactile sensations, I think. Could slip out of absolutely everything. Knew when things 'just were.'" Edgar stopped to judge Johnny's reaction, but saw nothing he could really use. Johnny just regarded him quietly, arms folded over knees he had drawn up to his chest.

"Often sat just like that," Edgar continued, looking back out into the lights of the houses below. "Once wore a ring for weeks on end until people suspected some kind of engagement and then announced it had just been found in the drain. Drove an entire flock of fundamentalists out of their convenience store with only a Freezie and some slink."

"Some slink?" Johnny asked, smirking. "Are we talking black dress here? I think we could modify the coat."

"I'm taking back what I said before and I'm going to push you off."

"Can I slink off?"

"You can jus-" Edgar stopped. 'Die', 'fuck off' and 'go to hell' were all vastly wrong in this situation.

"Yeah, that's awkward," Johnny said, scratching at something behind his ear. "I'm done with slink now, go ahead."

"I don't know that I want-" Edgar started before Johnny leaned back over the ledge, his head and shoulders over the side. "Okay, okay! Just stop doing that!"

Johnny laughed and folded himself back into his prior position. Edgar sighed and debated using the silent treatment. Against better judgment, he went on.

"My best friend. Everything I could really fathom wanting to be around. The source of everything that was awesome in our world and everything fucked up at the same time. Manipulative and odd. Had a very keen understanding of people, despite claiming not to. Everything I'd ever been conscious of wanting, I think. And everything I wasn't conscious of, too."

"What do you think we should do, then?" Johnny asked.

"Do?"

"To make me remember."

Edgar almost answered 'Ask Pepito.' Instead, he tried to honestly think about it. Would triggering a memory of the start of the relationship spark it?

"Maybe if we mimed it at you," Edgar said into his hands. "Or perhaps a puppet show."

"You don't want me to remember anything."

"No, tha-"

"You don't," Johnny said, pulling Edgar's hand from his face. "I'm ruining your martyrdom here, aren't I? Am I ruining your memory of me? Tarnishing it with some guy who doesn't know every little quirk, every little in and out of what happened with you and the others?" He pulled Edgar's hand enough that Edgar made eye contact. "A guy who can't slink?"

"Oh, believe me, you can," Edgar replied. "Really."

Johnny dropped Edgar's arm in disgust.

"I don't know what the hell to do with you," he muttered. "I come back from the dead, maybe a little altered, yet you float around between being clearly thrilled and indifferent."

"I can't help it," Edgar said, rubbing his wrist. "I lost someone amazingly important to me, who is arguably you, and arguably not you. I can't not feel both ways."

"You don't seem to want to help me remember anything."

"I don't want to train you, or have you playing a part. I can tell you everything, and eventually, you'll think you remember it. That's not what I want."

“What difference would it make?”

“All the difference in the world.”

*****

After the night on the roof, Johnny was true to his word that he would chase Edgar. It was in tiny ways, really, and Edgar would have been disturbed if even this Johnny had gone any bigger than making food or taking Edgar to places that he remembered being significant.  There was one trip to a hill top that Edgar had not even known existed, let alone been on it with Johnny before. Johnny had grinned and said, “Ooooh, spoilers. Maybe I had this in mind for something once. Will we ever know? Tune in next week!”

And one day, Edgar had an idea. It seemed unlikely and probably would end in Edgar being laughed at, but he was angry at himself for not considering it earlier, and he wanted to try it.

“Johnny,” he said, staring at the old keyboard against the wall, “can I show you something?”

Johnny, who was absorbed in some news report about aliens, didn’t answer.

“Johnny?”

“Don’t we know this guy?”

Trenchcoat Guy was on the screen, telling the spunky reporter that he had real proof of alien life, if they’d just give him a few moments. They often didn’t let him finish his sentences, and the more he protested, the more they patted him on the head or grinned vacantly into the camera as though they couldn’t even hear him.

“Yeah,” Edgar answered. “That’s Dib. I don’t really know where he came from, or why we know him, exactly. He says his dad is the guy who invented Super Toast.”

“No shit?”

“We’re not sure if we believe him.” Edgar stood up and motioned toward the keyboard. “Can you come with me for a second?”

Johnny shrugged and followed. He looked disappointed when it wasn’t a fieldtrip longer than a few feet, but sat down in the bench in front of the keyboard beside Edgar with no complaints.

“I’m going to try something,” Edgar explained, poking a few buttons. “I don’t know how well it will work, because I don’t know if remember it well enough, but I want you to listen to this for me.”

“O…kay.”

Edgar stared at the keys for a few moments. There was no way he even had the right synthesized instruments on the keyboard. Violins might have been close, but were still not close enough. He eventually just settled on the default and explained that this would be the reduced quality version.

“I don’t think I’ll notice,” Johnny replied.

“I will,” Edgar said, touching a single key. “I’m going to have to try to hum this other part of it, and I’m not sure I’ll even get it all and-”

“What the fuck is it?”

“That’d be cheating. Just listen, okay?”

And he played. He played every scrap of Johnny’s song that he could remember. When pieces overlapped, he hummed, and when he lost the tune or forgot he improvised until it came floating back to him. When he found he was comfortable playing this sad imitation of the song, he glanced at Johnny, who seemed fascinated not by the song, but by the movements of Edgar’s fingers. Edgar slumped a little when he realized the effort hadn’t worked, and his notes faltered. Johnny jumped and shot him an accusing glare and Edgar quickly straightened his back and continued.

“I should know this,” Johnny said, still watching Edgar’s fingers.

“Maybe something like it,” Edgar answered.

“How do I know this?”

“I don’t really know if you do, I just thought if anything could help, this song would.” Edgar sighed, still playing. “But I’m not even sure I’m doing it right.”

Johnny pulled his knees to his chest, and Edgar worried he’d topple off of the bench.

“I think I’d like to eat something,” Johnny said.

Edgar let the song stop, disappointed. It seemed to have had an effect on Johnny, but not the one he’d so sorely wished for. How much longer was he going to be able to convince Johnny that the others didn’t need to see him? How much longer could he justify this mess to himself?

Edgar set to work making some sandwiches, and Johnny actually volunteered to help him. Edgar had sort of hoped he wouldn’t.

They ate upstairs, on Edgar’s bed, in front of the television that had long since been covered in action figures, weird flyers, and postcards.  There was something on that wasn’t a monster movie or an infomercial, but was just as entertaining.  Edgar wasn’t really following it, but it was late and he wasn’t really expecting to. Before he went to ‘rest his eyes’ the last time, he thought of how nice it would be to fall asleep next to Johnny again.

He opened his eyes again when he felt something poke him in the ribs.

“Mmrmm?”

“Edgar, Edgar, Edgar. The song. Hum the song again.” Johnny sounded a bit frantic.

“Uh-wha? What’s wrong?”

“Song,” Johnny repeated. His eyes were wide and he looked like this was a matter of great importance. This meant it either was, or it was something dumb and trivial. 

Edgar played along and hummed as well as he thought he could, but was groggy and confused. A woman screamed on the television, and it was dark in the room but for the glow of the black and white film that only scared people a million years ago.

Johnny made no sounds for a while. He sat staring off at the wall, and Edgar was about to roll over and count ‘humming in the spot where Johnny had died’ in his collection of failed ways to make him remember when Johnny suddenly flopped onto his side from his sitting position, grabbed Edgar’s wrist and stared him in the face.

“Hi,” he said. He looked like he had a secret that he was dying to share.

“Hi?”

“I think it’s been a while.” Johnny slid his fingers down Edgar’s wrist and took his hand.

“Nny?” Edgar didn’t know if he was shaking, or if Johnny was.

“Hi.” 

“Oh god.”

And everything lurched. It was still dark, and the television still blared, but something had changed. Johnny had noticed it too, and sat up abruptly. Edgar’s hand burned.

“What was that?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You felt it too, right?”

“Yes.”

Edgar sat up and looked around the bedroom. Nothing looked strange or altered in any way, but something had settled. Something had stopped.

“Edgar,” Johnny said.  Edgar looked at him, waiting for the rest of the sentence. Johnny didn’t say anything, but put a hand to the side of his face. Edgar raised an eyebrow at him, but mimicked the motion himself. He was startled to feel the scratch of hair on his cheek.

“Whoa, didn’t I just…?”

“Yesterday, I think.”

“There’s no way it could have gotten that bad in a single day. It hasn’t been this bad since before you-” He felt the burn on his hand and stopped to stare at Johnny, who was clad, for some reason, in his black coat. Had he been wearing it before? “Nny?”

“Yes.”

“Oh god. Oh god, it’s you,” Edgar pulled Johnny into a tight hug. He thought surely his heart would shatter his lungs at any moment. “Is it really you? You remember? Oh god, I’m dreaming, or I’m going insane.”

“No, no, it’s me. You’re not dreaming. I’ll get back to you on insane.” Both shaking, Edgar discovered.

“Oh god, it’s you, it’s you, it’s you!” Edgar nearly smothered Johnny trying to hold onto him. “Are you staying like this? Can you stay? Oh God, please stay.”

“What, you think I’m just gonna forget again? Like I can do it at will?” Johnny was trying to joke, but something was shaking in his voice. Edgar had only ever heard that when Johnny was terrified.

“I don’t know what you’re capable of anymore. What if you remember and he comes and takes you again?” He brushed his nose near Johnny’s ear and felt Johnny try to pull away.

“It’s all right,” Johnny said shakily when Edgar backed off. “You just feel like sandpaper, you freak.”

“It really is you, isn’t it?”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Johnny asked through a smirk. “I’m sort of disappointed in you for not trying my song earlier, though. You’d think that would have been obvious.”

“You could be faking,” Edgar said seriously, gripping Johnny’s arm. “I need some kind of test.”

“You can’t fake awesome like this, I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s you.”

Johnny grinned and then laughed.

“Sorry it took so long,” Johnny said as Edgar hugged him again. “I think remembering is tricky like that.”

“I don’t care, it doesn’t matter.”

“Actually, speaking of remembering…” Johnny tried to pry Edgar away, but Edgar wouldn’t move.

“Don’t, please. I haven’t been able to get this close for so long.” Johnny stopped trying to tear away from Edgar and just sat. Edgar wondered momentarily if Johnny was actually shaken up enough to not dodge away from him this time. Edgar felt Johnny’s arms across his back and wanted to melt into him. Really him. Really Nny and not just Johnny. Really the lover he’d lost and not an empty coloring book version. Whatever had happened to them or to the room or to the house or to the world didn’t matter.

 

*****

 

Johnny remembered. Johnny remembered remembering and not remembering. Things had rushed back to him all at once, and his body was taking a while to catch up. At least three lives of memories had crammed suddenly into one too-thin shaking body. Johnny remembered things he wished he didn’t, and things he couldn’t believe he ever forgot.

Edgar had lied to him. And to Devi and the others.

Johnny had done something horrible to get here.

He didn’t know who had done worse.

“Edgar, I think I really need to tell you this,” Johnny said, pushing Edgar away enough to look him in the eye.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“I need to tell you about what happened. Why I’m here.”

“You’re here to kill me.”

“No, jeez! No, I just need to tell you about what happened.”

“Can it wait?” Edgar asked, burying his face in Johnny’s collarbone. “God, you even smell like you.”

“No, no, it really,” Johnny pried Edgar away yet again, “really can’t. Please, you’ve got to listen to me, just-” Johnny wasn’t sure how he wanted to end that sentence, so he didn’t bother with it.

Edgar looked near tears. “I’ve missed you so much. It wasn’t the same when we weren’t…”

Johnny gave up, if only for now. “I know,” he said quietly. “I saw. I missed you, too, even when I couldn’t remember it. I’m so sorry.”

“You could see me? Back when-?”

“Yeah, Pepito made sure I couldn’t not see you.”

“Pepito?” Edgar asked. “I hoped you wouldn’t have gone… Even if he did take you.”

“You have more faith in me than I do,” Johnny said, smiling.

Edgar looked like he would melt. “I didn’t think I’d ever see that again…”

Johnny laughed lightly. He felt pretty sure he’d smiled at Edgar while memory-less, but let it go. For all he knew, Edgar really saw a difference in the way a Johnny with memories smiled than one without. “I’m sorry, Edgar.” 

Edgar nuzzled the side of Johnny’s head and the phantom stubble scratched at Johnny’s skin. “Stop apologizing,” Edgar murmured to Johnny’s ear. “There’s nothing wrong. You’re home. Everything’s fine.”

Johnny tried to lean away from the attention again, as much as part of him did not want to. “Edgar, no, there is something wrong. Please, this is important.”

Edgar backed off, and looked at Johnny with an expression of clarity that Johnny hadn’t seen in some time. He brushed the back of a few curled fingers on Johnny’s cheek, but didn’t let it last long.

“I’m sorry,” Edgar said quietly. “Everything in my entire world just came back. Can you blame me?”

“Maybe,” Johnny said with a brief smirk, “but I’ll let it go. Can I tell you this now?”

Edgar nodded and clasped one of Johnny’s hands in his.

“Pepito told me about what you said back when you brought us both back from last time,” Johnny said. “That you wanted to make me happy.”

“Sure,” Edgar answered, nodding, “but I’ve told you that, even just recently. What does-?”

“Let me finish this, okay?” Johnny cut him off. “When I died, I told you I was happy. That I could die happy, right?”

Edgar flinched.

“They’d been planning on taking that all pretty literally since this whole thing started, apparently. I was going to die the moment you made me happiest.”

Johnny watched Edgar’s expression melt into horrified, and realized he needed to stop and clarify things before going on.

“Oh god, Nny, I didn’t know, I didn’t even- They never said! I didn’t-! Can it happen again? Will it-?” Edgar was shaking as he spoke.

“Edgar, no, no. Stop. It’s not you. You didn’t do anything. It’s not your fault. You made me happy for fuck’s sake - I’d need to be messed up to blame you for that.”

“God, Nny, I can’t… I mean, I did that to you?” He mumbled something about ‘horrible person’ but Johnny didn’t catch it.

“No. No, you didn’t. It was fucking Pepito, okay? I was slated to be with him in Hell when I died no matter how it happened before. You apparently made it more amusing for them. It was just once. He can’t do it again.”

“God, Nny, I am so sorry, I didn’t know. I thought… Why did-How did you…?” Edgar spoke as he processed things.

“Pepito knew,” Johnny continued, with some residual bitterness. “And I sat there, trapped and forced to look at you suffer, and he loved it, and I wanted to do something to him. He told me that I could haunt people, when I asked him if I could. So I went after Squee. You know, Todd.”

“Nny-”

“Wait. Just wait,” Johnny said, holding up his hand. “I’m not done.  I went there to kill him.” Johnny felt Edgar’s grip on his hand tighten, and saw something change in his eyes. “I didn’t,” he added quickly. “I think you know that by now. But I had a knife on him and everything. Pepito let me back here to spare him.”

Edgar was silent, but he didn’t release Johnny’s hand.

“tether me
 to next moment”

“He took the key, and responsibility for his own shit, and told me I’d be here again, alive, the next morning. He didn’t mention this funny little ‘with no memory’ bullshit.”

“You were going to kill for me?”

Johnny opened his mouth, not sure what the right answer to that was. Then he felt calm from Edgar and something just slowed.

“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” Edgar said, pressing his forehead to Johnny’s.

“Edgar…”

“I thought of following you so many times,” Edgar spoke just above a whisper, sounding almost amused. “Even while you were here not remembering, I thought about it. I came up with ways of doing it instead of eating. Which might have been a way of doing it, now that I’m thinking about it,” Edgar smiled, and shrugged. “But I didn’t, even when I had the intent. Even when I walked into a room not expecting to leave it ever again, I didn’t do it.”

Edgar tightened his hold on Johnny’s hand.

“It’s the same,” he said. “The intent was there, but it’s the action and actually doing it that will damn you. It’s okay. I’m glad you didn’t kill him.”

Johnny thought for sure this would have had a larger impression on Edgar. He worried that it meant one of them was a little crazy. Edgar’s behavior the prior two weeks were contributing to this hypothesis rather well, regardless.

“Glad you didn’t follow me,” Johnny answered. “You would have hated it.”

“That’s sort of what it’s there for, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Johnny said. “Why didn’t you? What stopped you?”

Edgar wrapped an arm around Johnny and pulled him as close as he could manage.

“I didn’t want to do it in front of you while you were here, memories or no. It would be just Pepito’s style to give you back to me as I bled to death on a carpet somewhere. That and I didn’t know where I would go,” Edgar answered. “I didn’t know what I deserved. And no matter what I deserved, I thought I wouldn’t be able to see you.”

Johnny tried to get away with just raising an eyebrow to get Edgar to continue, but Edgar’s eyes were closed.

“What do you mean?”

“I thought, if I was lucky, and deserved Heaven, then that would mean I should be with you.  I didn’t think you deserved Hell, but I got scared that you’d been sent there anyway. If I deserved to be with you, then I’d have to go to Hell, which I wouldn’t have deserved in that scenario. On the other hand,” Edgar said when he heard Johnny make a pondering sound, “if I was going to deserve Hell for killing myself, they wouldn’t have let me in because you’d be there.”

“You’d be a theological volleyball for eternity.”

“Yeah.”

“They’d have let you into Heaven.”

“Oh, you think so?”

Johnny nodded against Edgar’s neck. “Yeah. You’ve got their book still. I apparently went to Hell based solely on the key.”

“You didn’t deserve it.”

Johnny wanted to say ‘I know’ or ‘How do you know?’ or something else equally witty, but it all seemed wrong to him. Didn’t fit.

“What was it like, Nny?” Edgar asked softly.

“Like here. Just pettier and dumber.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Johnny said. “I didn’t spend much time down below. Pepito and I really just kept surveillance and I… let people in. It all looked familiar, though.”

“So, it’s really not anything like-?”

“Like Hell? No. From what I got, only really stupid people go there, anyway.”

“So it won’t be so bad, then,” Edgar said, leaning his head onto Johnny’s.

“You think you’re headed there?”

“Aren’t we both?”

“For what?”

Edgar tightened his hold on Johnny. “For this.”

Johnny laughed at him. “No. No we’re not. You haven’t really looked at Pepito, have you?”

“Pepito doesn’t strike me as sympathetic, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, he’s got Squee.”

“Nny.”

“Really!”

“Won’t he be taking Squee to the wrong place if he brings him to Hell with him when he dies, then? If we factor in gay not equaling Hell, I mean.”

“I like how you think that Pepito is going to let Squee die, ever.”

Edgar picked his head up. “Pepito can do that?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t make much sense to me either, really.”

******

Edgar refused to move very far from Johnny at all since he’d been convinced that Johnny was really the Johnny he had lost, so Johnny felt lucky that the bathroom was close enough that he could convince Edgar to actually fix his face – supernaturally altered or not, it was still unpleasant. Johnny remembered finding it a little strange when he first came back from Pepito’s that he was the one who had died, and it was Edgar who came out looking hellish.

Johnny had had to swear he wouldn’t call Pepito or spontaneously forget everything while Edgar wasn’t in the room. Edgar also kept trying to continue talking to him over running water. Johnny just yelled ‘okay’ every few minutes and hoped he wasn’t agreeing to anything he’d regret later.

Edgar reappeared after Johnny had rearranged everything he could find in the room, including the armies of broken ceramic babies making a tactical strike on the unicorns.

“Hey, it’s that guy I haven’t seen in forever,” Johnny joked.

“It wasn’t that bad, Nny, jeez.”

“Just keep telling yourself that.”

Disappointingly enough, Edgar didn’t even fight it. Johnny had been waiting for at least a ‘fuck you.’ He sighed, and put down whatever little knick knack he’d been plotting to hide and sat back on the corner of the bed.  Edgar was immediately as close to him as Johnny thought possible.

“I don’t want to tell them, Nny,” he said, resting his head on Johnny’s shoulder.

“What? Tell who?”

Edgar was silent for a while. He held Johnny a little tighter and let out a sigh.

“You know, the others. Devi, Jimmy.”

“Edgar.” He’d wondered when it would come up.

“I know, I know,” Edgar said, pressing his face against Johnny’s neck. Circumstances aside, Johnny was quite glad that that felt much less like steel wool now. “I know we have to, I know everyone has to know. I just want to keep it like this.  Eventually, people would forget about me, think I’d died like I kept saying I would, and we’d be the only people in the world.”

“I’m going to be a good person here and tell you that I am sort of repulsed by how attractive I find this idea,” Johnny answered. “But that I am also repulsed by the idea itself. Which makes it attractive, I think.”

“Hang on,” Edgar said, and Johnny felt him smile. “I bet I can think up another one.”

“Don’t,” Johnny told him. “I don’t need moral dilemmas cropping up at every turn for my first day back.”

“I’ll save it for later, then.”

“We have to tell them, Edgar. You already lied to them, and to me.”

Edgar sighed, and tightened his hold on Johnny again.

 “I know,” he said sadly. “I just feel like they don- God, that’s horrible, I can’t even believe I almost said that.” Johnny looked at the wall, and then up at the ceiling. Edgar picked his head up.

“You’re not going to ask me what it was?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“I know what it was.”

“I can’t help it,” Edgar said apologetically.

“It’s okay.” Johnny turned to look back at Edgar. Edgar averted his eyes almost immediately. It was rare for Edgar to not value eye contact.

“We don’t have to tell them,” Johnny said.  Edgar’s gaze snapped back up to meet Johnny’s eyes. 

“We-” Edgar started.

“Not today,” Johnny finished.

“Please don’t make me feel guilty about this later, I already know it was horrible, I just missed you so much, and I wanted-”

“What’s to feel guilty about? We’re the only people on the planet today.”

*****

For months he’d dreamed of things like this, and for months he’d convinced himself they were just silly fantasies. Now seeing Johnny truly restored to who he been before, memories and all, made Edgar feel like he hadn’t put enough faith in Johnny’s will to not be fucked around with.

“When you caught my eye
I saw everywhere I'd been”

Johnny was strolling around the house, taking everything in again. He told Edgar that he thought he remembered how it all was, but wasn’t sure which set of remembrances about the state of his home were the newest and most accurate.

“It’s strange to see my face on everything,” he said, picking up a stack of paper that had been sitting on the table. “I don’t remember taking half of these pictures. You didn’t show these to me before.”

“I sort of… looked at those while you were asleep. I didn’t even have Homicides Johnny anymore, let alone the Johnny I’d loved, and I missed them both. I had lots of fans send me things, and a few of them are from Devi.” He’d thank Devi for the borrowed words later.

“Devi?”

“Yeah,” Edgar nodded. “She had that camera the week before you…”

“Oh.  That makes these sort of creepy.” Johnny studied the images closely, then smiled. “This is awesome. I’m looking at the last pictures taken of me before I died.”

Edgar reached over and put his hand on the papers, suggesting that Johnny set them down. He took the hint.

“I’m sorry,” Edgar said. “I just don’t want to think about it.”

“Hey, it’s fine! I’m definitely here and I remember you! Look!” Johnny turned around in place once, with his arms out. “I even got a magic Hell Coat out of the deal!”

“It is nice, actually. Is it going to disappear as soon as you take it off now?”

“Way to ruin it.”

“Sorry. It just seems like the kind of thing Pepito would do.”

“Fucking bastard,” Johnny growled.

“Hey, he let you go, and you’re fine now. Don’t focus on it.”

“I’m not. You brought him up, not me.”

They were quiet for a minute or two. Edgar shifted his weight a few times and watched Johnny run a gloved hand over the back of a chair.

“It looks like they took good care of you.” Edgar said. “You were wearing that when you showed up in my bed. It’s all new isn’t it? Like they were playing some sort of fucked up dress up with you.”

“Yeah,” Johnny answered, nodding. “Even the socks were new. I don’t know what happened to whatever I was wearing before I woke up down there. I can’t figure out if I just don’t remember now, or if I didn’t remember before.” He looked up and sent a strange look at Edgar.

“What?” Edgar asked.

“What happened to me when I died?”

“I really don’t want to relive it. You’re home and you’re okay, and I was starting to feel better, why would I want to dwell on it?”

“I mean, did I get buried somewhere or something?” Johnny looked worried.

“No,” Edgar answered, shaking his head. “Pepito showed up and you just disappeared. Jimmy, Devi and Tenna saw it too. Just gone.”

“Whew, that’s good. I was worried I had two bodies now.”

“Ugh, can we not talk about this?”

“Sorry,” Johnny said, shrugging. “You don’t get to come back from the dead very often, though. It’s worth exploring.”

“I’d like you to never need to come back again, if that’s alright with you.”

“I’ll see what I can do. But only because I like you.”

Edgar’s chest still felt so tight. He watched Johnny inspect everything in the house, checking to see if it was where he thought it would be. The long coat swished around corners and trailed behind Johnny as he shuffled through the rooms. He stopped suddenly on one of his rounds through the entry way and sat down on the stairs to inspect the broken ceramic pieces that had been sitting on the stairs since the day before they’d last set out as the Homicides.

“You never picked this stuff up?” He said something to himself about why he hadn’t seen the pile there before.

“Of course not,” Edgar answered.

“You know,” Johnny said, turning some of the larger pieces over in his hands, “I was worried about you.”

“You say that like it should surprise me.”

“No, I just mean that it scared me a little that you let things get like it was.” Johnny looked around the room to his right. “This room was worse on the night I came back than the first few weekends I spent here, when I trashed it on purpose.”

“Your lack of sympathy is really starting to get to me.”

Johnny blinked up at him from the step where he was sitting, titled his head to one side and squinted.

“I’ve never been terribly good at that, Edgar,” he said, smiling.

Edgar didn’t really know what it was about what Johnny had said, or if it had even been that at all, but he fell to his knees on the stairs and wrapped his arms around Johnny’s shoulders.

“behind your face
behind your skin
behind your bones”

“My god, I know, I know. You’re terrible to people sometimes and I feel like this anyway.  I couldn’t clean anything, I couldn’t do anything.” He spoke mostly shuddering into the leather on Johnny’s shoulder. “I couldn’t think, I didn’t know what to do with myself, I didn’t think there was any reason for me to be doing anything, I didn’t, I just… Everything shut down. And then you were there and I just, just, I wanted-”

There was the scrape of ceramic being dropped to the rest of the pile, and then arms around him.

“I know. I saw, remember?”

“I just didn’t think I’d hear you joke again, or see you smile like that or-”

“Shh, I know, I know.”

Edgar sat back on the stair, in an effort not to sob all over the hell-coat.

“I sound like a broken record yet?” he asked, trying to laugh at himself. Johnny raised an eyebrow at him.

“No, but I could fix that for you.”

“With all that could imply, I think I’ll pass.”

“Am I really terrible to people?” Johnny asked, though he didn’t sound concerned about it if it were true. Edgar brushed his fingers along the side of Johnny’s face.

“Yes,” he said, smiling fondly, “you are.”

“What the hell is wrong with you, then?”

“You,” Edgar answered.

“Eh, happens to everyone,” Johnny said, smiling. He shrugged and leaned back against the steps, looking quite pleased with himself. Edgar was prepared to drown Johnny in the longest profession of love he could fathom, but shoved him instead.

“Hey, Mister Hades, you’re not ruling over the masses up here, remember?”

Johnny smiled and reached up to trace part of Edgar’s jaw.

“Says one of my loyal followers.”

“Okay, I lose.”

Johnny laughed, and Edgar had to hold onto him again.

“You have no idea how desperately I missed that,” he nearly whispered.

“No, I think I really do.”

“Fuck you.”

“Oh, there it is. I was wondering when it would start to feel like home.”

“I’d be rich.”

*****

“So we have some issues here.”

“Do we?” Edgar was fairly certain he was completely fine. It was the end of the day and he had what he wanted (Johnny) where he wanted (practically in his lap), and could find no issues at all.

“Yes. You kept me from everyone.”

“Oh. Those issues.” Shit.

“It feels weird to say this, but you actually took advantage of me. What the hell happened?”

“I… I don’t know. I was horrified myself when it all happened, but I couldn’t help myself.”

Johnny laughed. “You sound like some kind of predator. Do we need to send you to rehab?”

Edgar wasn’t sure if joking back was appropriate or not. Close as he was to Johnny, judging what was and wasn’t an Earth-shattering big deal to him was a little fuzzy at times.

“It’s okay,” Johnny said when Edgar didn’t reply. “I feel like I should be more upset about this, but I’m more disturbed than angry. How the hell does someone like you get that fucked up?”

“My entire world dies in my arms?”

“Oh.”

Edgar tried to smile. “Sorry?”

“No, don’t worry about it,” Johnny said dismissively. He bit his lip for a second, but a moment later, the look Edgar had wanted to decipher was gone. “So then our other issue…”

“I did something else?”

“No, no, the thing. The thing upstairs.”

“Oh, right, with the…” Edgar made some kind of conjuring hand gesture, even though what he’d felt upstairs before his facial hair regenerated was nothing like being conjured.

“Yeah, that,” Johnny nodded. “Something changed.”

“Do we need to go see Pepito again?” Edgar asked. “Because, really, I am so fucking sick of that guy, and I’d really rather his house had just stayed a black hole.”

Johnny smiled and raised an eyebrow at Edgar. “Damn, tell me how you really feel.” Edgar glared at him. “Okay, okay. In all seriousness, though, who else do we go to when shit is fucked up?”

Edgar sighed. “Do we have to go now? I was really enjoying pretending no one else existed. Besides, I’m worried I’m going to want to tear him apart.”

“You?” Johnny snorted, trying to hold in a laugh.

“Oh, come on,” Edgar shot back. “Like all hundred and twenty pounds of you would ever put a dent in him.”

“Hey, he put me in charge of Hell for a little while. I could be intimidating if I had to be. I bet I’m faster than he is, at any rate.”

“Except he’s got crazy poofing powers,” Edgar said, wiggling his fingers near his face to illustrate his point. “And horns.”

“Because those make a difference.”

“Horns, Nny.”

“Gimme some egg whites and we can give me some horns, too,” Johnny said, fiddling with the long strings of hair near his face.

“You’d look ridiculous.”

“And so does Pepito. There, problem solved.”

“So what, you’ll just look nicer than him and that will make everything better?”

“Yeah. Have I mentioned this coat?”

“Why no. Do go on.” Edgar rolled his eyes.

“Come on,” Johnny said, lifting himself off of Edgar. “Maybe if we go now, we can still come back at a reasonable time and eat something.”

“Fine,” Edgar answered bitterly. He really hated Pepito.

*****

The house felt hotter than Edgar had remembered. Johnny walked right up to the door and pounded on it, but Edgar had wanted to wait and think the whole thing through. Part of him was still terrified of having Johnny taken from him again.

Pepito answered the door casually and then took a sharp breath when he saw Johnny.

“What do you want?” Pepito spat.

“I want to know what the hell you did to us. And what kind of fucked up little game you think you were playing back there, taking my memory.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pepito replied angrily.

“I spent weeks not knowing who he was!” Johnny yelled, pointing at Edgar. “You think I spared Squee for that?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Fuck you, you liar.”

The stood and regarded each other for a few moments. Edgar tried to resist wrapping his arms around Johnny and just running away with him to save him from whatever was coming.

“How is Squee?” Johnny asked suddenly.

“Todd’s fine,” Pepito answered. “How nice of you to ask.  Looks like your other half survived all of my horrible behavior as well. Must be lovely for you.” He looked at Edgar, and Edgar hoped he wasn’t being marked for dead. Edgar had had delusions of being aggressive and terrifying at Pepito, but instead just felt like hiding behind Johnny, who was thinner and shorter than Edgar.

“And you know nothing about this?” Johnny prodded again.

“No, but you may want to ask his book,” Pepito said, nodding towards Edgar. “You can’t blame Hell for everything.”

“Swear you knew nothing,” Johnny demanded. At that moment, Todd walked by behind Pepito, on his way to the second floor. The key that had hung on Johnny’s neck for so long, Edgar noticed, was now on Todd’s. Pepito bowed away from the door and gestured dramatically to Todd on the stairs behind him.

“I knew nothing,” he said.

Johnny nodded, thanked Pepito for something, and grabbed Edgar’s hand as he turned to leave. Edgar followed, feeling completely useless, and largely confused.

Edgar was dragged back to his house, through the front door, and up the stairs to the extra bedroom. Johnny tore through the books on the shelf, and several pictures fluttered to the floor. When he pulled down the book in question, he hesitated opening the cover and then handed it to Edgar.

“Here,” he said, “you do it.”

“Me?”

Johnny nodded. “It’s your book.”

“You yelled at the son of Satan, but you won’t open a book?”

“You won’t even do that?”

Edgar admitted defeat and opened the cover. The same opening page describing Edgar as their experimental candidate greeted him, and he flipped through the pages for some sort of hint. He reached the back of the book and realized that it was full.

“It’s all written in,” he said quietly, staring at the last page.

“What’s the last thing listed in there?” Johnny asked.

“Umm…” Edgar flipped a page back to the list of items. “The red book that was beside this one.”

“Good,” Johnny said, and he snatched the book from the desk and began tearing the pages out of it.

“Nny, what the hell?!”

“What does it say?” Johnny snapped, nodding toward the book in Edgar’s hands. Edgar looked down at the page.

“Nothing. Nothing changed.”

“So the book stopped,” Johnny said, letting the gutted book fall to the floor. “Does this mean they stopped watching you?”

“Were they ever really watching me?” Edgar asked. “I mean, you’d think they’d have smote me the moment I got close to you.”

“You’ve really got to let that go, seriously.”

“Not just us, even that you were Pepito’s hope for a free ride out of being in charge of Hell all that time. Surely they knew, especially if they… if they sent us both here for all of this.”

“Can we go somewhere to find out? You think Squee is some sort of messenger from Heaven now?”

“Nny, he was wearing Hell’s key on his neck, and I’m fairly sure he sleeps with the Anti-Christ. He’s not an angel.”

“I said ‘messenger’,” Johnny stressed, as he left the room. “That’s not the same thing.”

Edgar leaned out of the room and saw Johnny head down the stairs. “Where now? I thought you and Pepito telepathically fixed everything or something.”

“Can’t hurt to break his windows and see if I can get a different response,” Johnny answered cheerily.

“Whoa, whoa!” Edgar dropped the Heaven book to the floor, forgetting entirely to tell Johnny about the last page. “Don’t start doing crazy shit, please!” He chased Johnny down the stairs, and into the entry way. Johnny opened the door just as Edgar grabbed his shoulder.

Outside, standing on the sidewalk, looking at nothing in particular, was a woman in black. A car drove by and the reflection from the headlights slid across her glasses.

Johnny let go of the doorknob and backed into Edgar, seemingly trying to plow him over.

“Nny, what are you-?”

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit, move, move, move, close the fucking door.”

Edgar leaned over Johnny to grab the door and the woman outside looked at him. She waved. Edgar felt a chill and happily closed the door on her. Johnny was shaking in front of him.

“Nny?”

“Never mind. Let’s just stay here.”

“Was she the-?”

“Yes. That’s it, end of story, goodbye. Not talking about this anymore.” He slipped around Edgar and went to fold himself up on the pink recliner. Edgar tried to follow him to say something, or offer some kind of joke to lighten things, but even he was disturbed that the woman had turned up again.

“The book said the experiment was over,” Edgar said several minutes later, sitting on the arm of the recliner.

“Do you get to die next? That would be hilarious and definitely just what we need.”

“It acknowledged the contribution of you by Pepito in the formation of my character,” Edgar said to his feet. “I guess they all really did want to just play with us.”

“You knew that a long time ago,” Johnny replied, still with his legs tucked tightly against him.

“I liked to think they were less fucked up than that. I knew they weren’t as good as I’d been led to think, but I thought maybe we weren’t pawns as much as we were.”

Johnny got a disgusted, yet somehow amused expression on his face. “‘I envy your-’”

“Please. Don’t.”

“I was going to change it.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“You’re getting better at that.”

Edgar slid into the chair next to Johnny. The fit wasn’t terribly tight, but it wouldn’t have bothered either of them if it had been. Johnny unfolded his legs and appeared less tense.

“It seems like a horrible thing to do,” Edgar said, staring at the wall across the room. “I mean, I don’t even know who to blame. Heaven and Hell collaborated to make us both miserable? What the hell do you even say to that?”

“‘Fuck you guys’?”

Edgar laughed. “I suppose so. I guess I just can’t imagine it. Some man appeals to you, begging for a chance to make someone else happy, and you come up with this?”

“Mm.”

“Just because I’d wanted to make you happy. It seems like such a horrible thing to do to people.”

“Mm.”

“And then they took you from me, and I thought, ‘What the hell I am here for now? What do I do? The only reason I was even born again was to find Johnny and make him happy and now they’ve taken my reason for being away.’”

“Stop that.”

Edgar blinked. “What?”

“Stop saying that. Stop talking about it.”

“It’s the truth, though.”

“No it isn’t.”

“I-”

“No. It isn’t.” Johnny glared, and Edgar felt his breath leave him for a moment. “I don’t care if that’s what they sent you here for. They sent me here to die. That’s not why I exist. I did it, and it sucked, and I’m not doing it again.”

“Making you happy makes me happy,” Edgar said. “It’s really okay.”

“No it fucking isn’t.” Johnny wound his fingers into the fabric of Edgar’s shirt. “You spent a lifetime and a half trying to do this. A lifetime, Edgar, of trying to bring me some speck of happiness. And when you made me happiest, what then? They killed me. I fucking died.”

“Nny, I-“

“No!” He tugged hard on Edgar’s shirt, and pulled Edgar’s nose down to meet his. “No more. I’m tired of this bullshit. You’ve taken too much abuse for this. It’s your turn now.”

Edgar felt the skin below his ears burn.

“I’m going to make you happy now.”

Edgar swore he felt something brush his lips.  “Okay,” he breathed. He felt Johnny release his shirt, and only then realized his eyes had been closed. Thin arms around his neck, and breathing on his shoulder.

“What makes you happiest?”

“You.”

“Good.” Fingers in his hair. “That sounds easy. Maybe no one will die this time.”

*****

“Want to know something, Edgar?”

“Of course.”

“I have no idea what I’m going to tell everyone.”

“What?”

“And I dream that that woman comes through the walls. And that thing at the motel does come through walls, and I think it still knows me.” A pause.  “I’m terrified of them.”

“I-”

“Just thought you should know.”

*****

“Pepito?” Todd’s fingers wrapped around the key at his neck.

“Mm?”

“What did Johnny do?”

“What?”  Pepito looked up from the lock he was repairing to see Todd’s expression not as afraid, but more as concern. “What are you talking about?”

“Why did he go to the basement? What did he do?”

“He attacked you, remember?”

“But not before he died!” Todd argued. “What did he do that sent him there in the first place?”

“Nothing,” Pepito answered, resetting a loose screw. “Nothing in this life, anyway.”

“But he shouldn’t be damned for something he didn’t do.”

“He wasn’t being judged this time around. Really, he wasn’t even living except on borrowed time from me.”

“From you?”

“He was supposed to have come to Hell with me last time. His friend Edgar had better ideas. I let them borrow him, as long as I could have him back to take over for me afterwards. He could have been a saint, it made no difference.”

“And now?” Todd asked.

“Now I don’t know what they’re doing with him, but he’s none of mine anymore.”

“Wonder whose hands he’s better off in.”

“Hell if I know.”

 

*****

Johnny woke up the next morning to being shaken violently. He made some confused noises and blinked a few times to clear his vision. He was presented with Edgar staring intently at him.

“Edgar, what the fuck?”

He was promptly hauled into a sitting position and hugged tightly.

“I’m sorry. I was just worried you weren’t breathing or you wouldn’t know who I was.”

“This is going to need to stop if you want me back here tonight,” Johnny muttered.

“I’ll be fine,” Edgar said, releasing his hold on Johnny’s ribs. “I just worried it was one of those twenty-four hour kinds of blessings, and I was going to have to go through losing you in some form all over again.”

“Jeez, I’m not that much of an asshole. I’d have let you know.”

*****

The day’s mission was to bring Johnny to Devi and the others without getting noticed. Edgar said he also would have liked to not be seen, but concealing Johnny was the larger concern.

“We could dye my hair some outrageous color,” Johnny had joked.

“Because you don’t do that to it already.”

“No one would suspect green, Edgar. Seriously, though, we can’t just walk down the street under some kinda tarp and say it’s performance art?”

“I guess we could try that.”

“Or here’s an idea. Bring them here.”

“I don’t think I want them to see how bad it got in here,” Edgar said, looking around at the still-questionable room. “I used to keep it so spotless…”

“You should see Jimmy’s place.”

“Jimmy? You got to see him too?”

“Yeah, I got to watch all of you,” Johnny replied. “Lucky me.”

“What did Jimmy do to his house?”

“Tore it up. Down to the drywall. You looked fucking normal compared to him for a few days.” 

Edgar winced. “Only a few days?”

“Yeah, then he took some pills, passed out for a week and had some kind of epiphany and I never saw him again.”

“I haven’t talked to him for so long,” Edgar said. “Do you think Devi will be able to find him?”

Johnny shrugged. “You should call her and check.”

“But how are we going to get you-”

“I’ll work on it, just call her or we’ll sit here all day.”

When Devi picked up the phone, she didn’t even bother to hide her surprise.

“Edgar? Jesus Christ, what happened?! We’ve been trying to get to you for weeks! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so. Listen, I can’t talk long, but can I come over and see you guys?”

“Um, suuure. By ‘you guys,’ you mean…”

“All of you. Jimmy, too.”

“I’ll see if I can get him.”

“Thanks,” Edgar said, trying to maintain an even bland tone. “I’ll see you in, um…” He looked at Johnny and made an urgent face. Johnny mimed a two and a circle. “In twenty minutes?”

“Okay. Shit, we’ll be glad to see you.”

Edgar hung up and stared at the phone for a while.

“Wow, she was really happy to hear from me. Maybe I was a little worse than I thought.”

“It’s likely.”

“So how are we getting you down there?”

“I’m going to wear this coat,” Johnny said, fingertips against his chest and thus the coat, “and we’re going to duck through the alleys.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

Edgar sighed.

“Don’t worry,” Johnny said through a grin. “It’ll be fine.”

Which, of course, it was. Johnny and Edgar made it to Devi’s apartment with no trouble at all. Edgar steered clear of the Homicides’ van, which had been covered in flowers and t-shirts and whatever other offerings people had seen fit to give Johnny, but Johnny was drawn to it. Edgar caught his wrist when he strayed toward it.

“Please don’t,” he pleaded. “I know you’re okay, but it’s still not something I want to look at.”  Johnny looked disappointed, and gave one look at the van, but nodded and let Edgar lead him up the stairwells to Devi’s apartment.

Johnny slid off to the side of the door where he was sure not to be seen when it opened, and Edgar knocked.  Devi answered quickly, and hugged Edgar tightly.

“God, Edgar, we were so worried about you, we all thought you were just going to starve to death in your house and we’d never know.” She squeezed her eyes tight and stayed attached to him for a moment longer than either of them had expected.

“I needed to tell you something important,” Edgar said quietly.

“Come in, come on,” Devi said, ushering him inside. “You can tell us whatever you need to once you’ve sat down.”  She called to the others to clear a seat for him. Edgar ducked under her arm, and stepped back.

“I think it might be better out here.” He glanced to his right where Johnny was still pressed against the wall.

“Edgar, what-?”

“Boo,” Johnny whispered, leaning in front of her.

“HOLY FUCK!”  She slammed the door a moment later, and Edgar heard the others inside trying to calm her down. The door opened again, and Tenna and Jimmy leaned out.

Johnny waved at them.

Tenna screamed and Jimmy kept trying to tear the door knob from her hand. Edgar held out his arm to prevent another door slamming in his face.

“Guys, guys, it’s okay!”

“Shit, shit, shit, Jimmy, go find the vacuum cleaner,” Tenna said frantically.

“You’re going to suck me into a vacuum?” Johnny asked, amused.

“It worked in that movie!”

Johnny reached out and grabbed her arm. Jimmy made a small squeak.

“I’m not-” Johnny started.

“DEVI, HE ISN’T DEAD! OH GOD, HE’S NOT DEAD!”

“Yeah, that.”

Edgar was not sure what happened in the next few moments, but he was dragged into the room by what felt like a great many more people than three, along with Johnny who seemed to be thriving in the attention.

Questions fired at both of them all at once, and everyone had to take turns making sure Johnny was really Johnny, either by looking at his skin for scars they’d inflicted, or asking him secret questions.

“Yeah, that’s definitely the one,” Devi said, looking at a mark on the back of Johnny’s neck.

“First place you kicked me,” Jimmy quizzed. 

“Left hip,” Johnny answered. “You walked crooked for a week.”

“This key,” Tenna said, pointing to one of the five in her hand.

“Janitor’s closet, upstairs bathroom, this apartment, your van, and that one’s fake,” Johnny named each of them as she pointed.

Johnny looked uncomfortable with being hugged by so many people, but permitted it anyway. Edgar felt a tightening in his chest, but it was a different sort than he’d been feeling for the last few months.

“How long have you been here?” Devi asked Johnny.  Edgar felt the tightening threaten to cut off his breathing and squeeze his heart into his stomach.

“Actually…,” Edgar began nervously. “He-”

“Just today,” Johnny interrupted. Edgar took a sharp breath and looked up at Johnny, who caught his gaze out of the corner of his eye for only a moment. “Just today,” he repeated, “but living isn’t that hard to pick up again.”

Edgar watched in near silence as Johnny explained everything, congratulated Jimmy on a building well-trashed, and showed off the coat. Somewhere in the middle of Johnny’s mini-performance, Devi started crying into her hands.

“If we belong to each other
we belong”

“What the hell are we going to tell everyone?” Jimmy asked while Tenna patted Devi’s head. “ ‘Cause they’re not going to believe…”

“Whatever we want,” Johnny answered. He sounded so confident, even though he’d just relayed to Edgar the night before that he had no idea how he was going to orchestrate his resurrection with the cameras. Edgar found new appreciation for being allowed to see the parts of Johnny that didn’t always know the magical answers to everything.

“Aliens?” Devi offered through sniffles.

“Sounds sort of appealing. I almost wish it had been that instead.”

“Almost?” Edgar asked. Johnny missed a beat and contemplated Edgar for a moment.

“No, I think I definitely wish it had been that instead,” he said slowly, with that treasured eye contact. His gaze went back to the others. “Pepito almost counts, right?”

“Why can’t you just be the next Jesus?” Tenna asked.

“And now she’s a marketing genius,” Johnny laughed. “The wonders never cease.”

“It wouldn’t be that inaccurate,” Jimmy pointed out.

“It would also be great to dress Edgar up as a Roman soldier.”

“I don’t think I really want to be Jesus,” Johnny said. “I’ve heard he was even lamer than Pepito. Besides,” he added with a devious grin, “I think we can come up with something better than that.”

At that moment, for the first time in months, and the second time in his life, Edgar heard the faintest strains of Johnny’s song.

“and I hear violins”

*****

“Here is a song without a name
It comes to heal your pain”

They stood together in the room, for the first time in months, in their stars and dead make-up. Tenna had outdone herself in every sense, and the group felt more alive, and looked deader, than they ever had. Johnny had suggested they get Edgar some contacts that blacked out his eyes, but Edgar had wanted nothing to do with sticking things in his eye sockets.

“The phone is ringing but I'm gone”

The hum of the crowd in the room next to them grew with each passing minute. They’d gathered to hear something important about the future of the Homicides, and most were likely expecting to meet Johnny’s replacement, while the more devoted fans were calling for them to just break up if there was no Johnny.

Johnny had never looked more ready to tackle a stage. Edgar was just happy they didn’t actually have to perform. He felt sure that if he actually had to see Johnny looking this alive and screaming lyrics at a bunch of hysterical fans that any talent he had in regard to the keyboard would just cease to be.

“You take me higher than anything has before
You take me higher than anything has before”

Devi listened intently to the growing noise.

“I don’t know,” she said. “This could go downhill really fast.”

Jimmy cracked his knuckles. “I think we can take ‘em,” he said.

“How many you think you got?” Edgar asked him.

“Oh, two or three,” Jimmy answered.

“Hey, great, I think if we all team up, we could mess up maybe a whole six teenage girls,” Edgar said, clapping his hands together.

“Bring ‘em on,” Jimmy grinned.

“Girls listen to us?” Johnny asked in mock surprise.

“Oh, aren’t you clever.” Devi threw a wad of paper at his head.

The crowd continued to grow to a dull roar. Tenna leaned toward the sound.

“We’re going to need to go out there soon,” she said. “Sounds like they’re going to start chanting or throwing fruit at the stage any minute.”

Devi bit her lip apprehensively, and shot a look at Johnny. “You sure about this?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“That should have stopped worrying me a long time ago, but it still does.”

“I need to run away
From you, from me”

Edgar watched Johnny take in the faces of the people around him. People who’d gone through a little too much for him, but kept coming back for more of whatever strange sort of trials being near Johnny eventually unearthed. Despite that the swarms of people in the next room would all be able to see them, Johnny, Devi, Jimmy, Tenna and Edgar really were the only people in the world.

“You take me higher than anything has before
You take me higher than anything has before”

“Don’t worry,” Johnny said confidently. “It will be fine.”

“Will it?”

“Trust me.” The grin that meant he had it all figured out, but that he wasn’t going to share it with anyone else.

Tenna opened the door to the curtain, and stepped through the frame.

“Let’s go,” she whispered excitedly. Devi followed her, and then Jimmy. Edgar heard the crowd scream louder each time one of them stepped through the curtain in the next room.

“It’s different being last,” Johnny told Edgar as he left the room.

“Don’t worry,” Edgar said, holding out his hand. “This’ll be the only time.”

“There's no walls between us now
Except the ones we bring”

“I’m not worried,” Johnny replied with his usual grin. He took Edgar’s hand and closed the door to the small room behind him.

“I know you’re not, it’s just easier to pretend you’re like the rest of us.”

The light beyond the curtain was blinding, and noise echoed through Edgar’s head. People cheered exceptionally hard for him, perhaps out of sympathy, perhaps out of joy that he’d agreed to appear in public for the first time in months. Edgar didn't care either way, and absorbed the feeling of being where he was. It wasn’t really the stage, and it wasn’t the crowd, but it was that his hand still hadn’t come out from behind the curtain.

The crowd slowed when they noticed Edgar hadn’t entirely stepped out. Edgar smiled at them, and then glanced at his fellow dead people. They nodded.

“We waited hours for this
Now we watch it fade”

Edgar tugged on Johnny’s wrist and had him walk out from behind the curtain. Johnny squinted in the light, and shielded his eyes for a moment. Edgar let go of his hand and let Johnny walk to the edge of the stage. The crowd fell silent abruptly, and Johnny's boots against the wood made the only sounds for several seconds. The tightness in Edgar’s chest had returned, and he felt a bit of euphoria when Johnny turned on a microphone in a completely silent auditorium.

“Hi,” he said. “I thought I’d come back and tell you guys some stories about Hell.”

Everything exploded at the same moment – the crowd, the cameras, some speakers in the back, and, Edgar felt fairly sure, his heart.  Johnny laughed gleefully into the mic, and the noise only surged again.

Once again, something drifted into the back of Edgar’s mind. Something that wanted to weave into everything he was, and something that had its eye on everything that anyone was. Edgar looked over to see Jimmy and the others with their hands over their ears, expressions of wonder on their faces, trying to tune out what was all around them, except for the song with no words and its owner, who was still basking in the glow that Edgar felt sure everyone could see.

“You take me higher than anything has before”

The crowd grew quiet, waiting for Johnny to do something. He stood in silence, staring at the floor, for nearly a minute, and turned back to look at Edgar. When he spoke, it still echoed across the silent room, though it was really only directed in Edgar’s direction.

“It’s not bad for having no words.” 

“above all the silence
can you hear
can you hear
laughing”

Before Edgar could recover from the shock and come up with a witty response, Johnny’s mouth curled into a smile, and he laughed.  Edgar had never felt so incredible.

“You take me higher than anything has before”

 

As it has always been planned, the last song is VAST’s ‘Song Without A Name,’ though it sounds absolutely nothing like Johnny’s. It has words, after all.
Any other lyrics, as you’ve hopefully noticed, are the words for all the other songs I’ve ever featured here (those that had words, anyhow). 

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Thanks for sticking around.