The silken swish and slosh of jostling water gently lulled the boy out of a graciously-silent sleep. He nestled his head even more into whatever he was laying against, greedy for its soothing heat and languid softness, his sticky eyes opening with a serene slowness that was enjoyably lazy. He laid there, most of his brain still asleep, staring uncomprehendingly at the expanse of brown that presently filled his vision. There was a small black dot in the middle of it—uneven, dark, and slightly-split by a miniscule fold in the flesh.

He blinked a couple times, and let his gunked-up eyes swivel up the skin, his curiosity rewarded with the sight of sable hair, mussed and gleaming, partially-draped over a rounded ear. He stared at it for a whole two minutes, savoring Where he was and diligently ignoring the Why, his entire mind preoccupied with the heat pressed against the side of his head and encircling his upper torso. He wanted to fall asleep here, right now, for hours and hours and hours, but he also wanted to just sit here and stare, and stare and stare and stare.

Not now, the Manager said carefully. Not yet. Gotta get up. Gotta get out of here.

True that, Jimmy thought as he blew a small stream of air at the ear, watching the goosebumps rise there as the hair trembled.

Bethany craned her head around with all the curiosity of a bird that’s just been goosed, her face already glowing a chocolate-cherry red as she blinked down at the bloodied boy that was clinging to her. Her eyes seemed especially vibrant as Jimmy stared at them, so lost in their grassland greenness that he didn’t even notice his face slipping into a soft smile. When he saw her reply in kind, though, it turned into a crinkle-eyed grin, followed by faint laughter, echoing quietly out of the back of his dried-out throat. Neither of them knew what he was laughing at, but both children were deeply grateful for the merry sound.

“…I’m probably all sticky and nasty an’ shit, huh?” he said with a grimace after a few minutes spent in smiling silence.

“Um, yeah,” Bethany said, looking slightly nervous as she glanced around the reddened room, and then back at him. “Just a bit.”

“Sorry,” he said, smiling ruefully. “I made a bit of a mess.”

“It alright,” she said reassuringly, though he could detect a hint of strain. “At least you got ‘im.”

“And boy did I,” he muttered, glancing around at the mayhem with a wry and drowsy eye. “It was pretty fucking crazy.”

“I can imagine,” Bethany said, though Jimmy was absolutely sure she really couldn’t, and hoped she never would. “Oh!” she said, as the slosh of water made itself heard once again. “Ixi brought you some water…though it’s a bit more water than I had expected…”

The boy blinked, and reluctantly raised his head off the girl’s shoulder. The vibrant little Ichorian stood next to them, hefting a yellow-and-orange-striped fuzzy bucket in both arms, her smile beaming out at them from behind it.

“I hope it’s enough,” she said brightly, holding it out to him, a bit of water slipping out of it and splattering noisily against the floor.

Jimmy stared at it for a second, then slowly slipped out of Bethany’s embrace, and reached out with both hands—

“Jimmy—“ Bethany said sharply, her eyes wide.

“Huh?” he said, looking at her blearily as his hands clasped the bucket. “I can handle it, it’s not that big.”

“But—your arm—” she said, pointing at his lefthand limb, and he stared at it, as well, for the first time since the Monkeyarm had been squeezed back into it. It was slightly pale, having not seen sunlight for a couple days, and there was blood trickling from his shoulder…and from the tips of his fingers.

“Yeah…it’s fine now. Long story. Tell you later.” He lifted the bucket out of Ixi’s hands before anyone could say anything, gave it a measuring glance, and promptly upturned it right over his head. He barely heard Bethany’s skittish yelp as she drew away from the sudden deluge, his ears blanketed by liquid and filled with the jovial splash of cold, pure, cleansing water. The sudden inundation of his overheated body in frigid fluid brought a shuddering gasp from his scream-strained throat, leaving him blinking widely and sucking in huge desperate mouthfuls of air. He leaned his head back so far that it rolled limply on his shoulders as he stared wordlessly at the darkened ceiling, panting—and then grinning, his eyes closing as he felt much of the blood washing away, trickling off his body in diluted streamlets. He didn’t have to look down to know it still clung to him in a lot of places; he could feel it coagulating in his pores and dripping from his fingers and squirming like liquid worms across his skin. But for the moment, he didn’t really care, because the blood’s persistant warmth had been doused, which made it feel far less alive.

But I bet it’s still grinning in my veins, his mind whispered, and he flinched and shuddered. He was quick to turn the action into a canine water-whipping motion (he didn’t have to see Bethany to know she was opening her mouth to inquire in concern). He only really managed to barely dry his bedraggled hair, some of the more unruly locks dropping unceremoniously into his eyes. He idly wondered when he’d last had a haircut (and was vaguely happy to focus on this bit of meaningless minutiae) as he turned back around to look at Ixi and Bethany. Both girls (but could you really call Ixi a girl? She just sorta looked like one. Did Ichorians really have genders? Did they just have two?) were looking at him with such tense interest that he almost wanted to laugh, if only to break the tension.

Instead, he huffed his hair out of his eyes, looking as amused as he could manage under the circumstances. “Thanks,” he said, handing Ixi back her bucket. She took it, the object melding back into her body with flawless fluidity, but the whole while she was staring worriedly at him, her golden eyes unwavering.

“I’ll be okay,” he said awkwardly, dragging one leg up into a kneeling position, and using that leg to shove himself back onto his feet. Bloody water lapped at his sneakers, splashing noisily as he stumbled, his indecisive equilibrium making his hollowed-out head feel uneven. He wobbled even though his footing was solid, his upper torso wavering before his perception of the room returned to reality. He stood there unevenly, staring blankly around as he waited to make sure his balance had finally made up his mind.

“Jimmy…?” the girl said from just behind him, nearly startling him: he hadn’t heard her get so close. “Do you need some help?”

She wants to touch me, he realized, glancing at her from over her shoulder, peering at her wringing hands. She wants to touch me but she’s afraid to.

A string of disgust and self-loathing crawled over his heart as he swallowed. “Naw, I should be fine. I just need a fucking shower.” He took a wobbly step forward, trying to make a wide turn back towards the staircase, moving like a wounded bus. He kept his eyes on the floor, watching clouds of blood swirl in the water amongst glass shard islands; he did so partly because he wanted to make sure his feet were still doing what he told them to—and partly because having to look up would mean having to look at the perforated corpse of the Monkey. Its dead stench stung at his nostrils, tempting him to look at it, teasing at him with the aroma of his barren victory.

He grunted low in his throat and managed not to turn his head in that direction as he hobbled over to the foot of the staircase, his balance upset all the more by his soaked clothes, which now felt like they’d been woven with lead. He only looked up from the floor when he was sure that the body was behind him, his eyes steadfastly sticking themselves to the stairs, following them all the way up to the second floor as his feet began to do the same.

He wavered on the first step, tilting back dangerously, but he managed to right himself just before Bethany arrived at his side. Her hand gently clasped his shoulder, causing his shoulders to jolt a little as he looked back at her round and worried face. There was a large smear of blood on the border between her neck and cheek that was slowly dribbling down into her sweater—which was far more worse for wear. He grimaced at the long, torso-shaped scarlet stain on the periwinkle wool, and gave the girl a pained and sheepish expression. “Sorry about that.”

Bethany, who was still a curious color, glanced down at herself. “Oh,” she said. “Didn’t even notice.” She bit her lip, her shade deepening as she glanced nervously away. “And I left my suitcase back in the Truck, too…”

“I’ll get it!” Ixi called out from the middle of the room, her voice tapering in volume as she bounded away, carefully avoiding blood and glass alike with an agility that Bethany wasn’t aware she had.

“Thanks…” the girl said to the Ichorian’s bespiked back, before turning back to Jimmy. “C’mon,” she said, tugging at him gently. “Let’s find you a shower…”

The boy hesitated for a moment, then nodded and began to precariously ascend, his stability maintained only by the hand on his shoulder and the care in her eyes. “Second floor,” he muttered. “Couple doors down the lefthand hall. Don’t know what I’m going to do for clothes, though,” he said, shaking his head, and immediately regretting it as a wave of dizziness poured over him. He stopped, stumbled, and gripped the banister to keep his traitorous knees from sending him tumbling back the way he came, his body twisting—bringing the Monkey into the periphery of his vision.

Temptation tugged, and his eyes swiveled, permenantly imprinting the image of the fallen atrocity’s nearly-decapitated body on the boy’s brain. The creature’s head was lying at such an extreme angle that Jimmy could see the black bones of its thorned spine, glistening with fresh blood—and that was all that the boy would let himself register before forcing his gaze back to the stairs.

“At least he’s dead,” Bethany said firmly, staring far longer than Jimmy had, her eyes slowly drinking in the mayhem’s murderous aftermath with a cold and vengeful eye that made itself known in the tone of her voice. “At least he can’t hurt you anymore.”

It was the only time he’d heard such a thing in her voice in the short time that he’d known her, and it shocked him more than the water had. It was beyond horrifying, to him: he wanted to hug her and hide from her all at the same time, and the heat seeping out of her hand felt almost acidic to him, chewing daintily away at what was left of his composure. He wanted to grab it and grip it and hold onto it for dear life until sweet sleep claimed him and secreted his brain away from his pain—but he also wanted to grab it and shove it away and run off into the house and drown himself in the destruction of the grand palace of fury that he had so insidiously and involuntarily inherited.

Having the energy for neither, he just nodded his head vaguely in response to the girl and headed up the stairs again, this time moving so quickly and forcefully that his shoulder slipped out of her grip. Some of his panic faded, but his despair’s long shadow merely lengthened—

—and then he heard her pound up the steps, rejoining him even as he tried to escape her, her touch returning to him, even though he flinched. One hand clasped his waist and the other rested on his shoulder, tilting his torso out of its hunched position as she helped him up the last few stairs and onto the second floor.

He didn’t look back at her as they made their way down the hall one slow and sticky step at a time, but he somehow managed to smile softly to himself through the gloom.

Ixi hopped back into the half-broken house with the suitcase impeccably balanced atop her head—and blinked as she realized there wasn’t anyone left in the room anymore. She gave the Monkey’s body a cursory glance (and was thankful that she didn’t have a nose at the moment) before spotting her bestest friends shuffling around a corner on the second floor. She cocked an ear as she noticed them talking softly to one another, and hoped they were discussing happy things, ‘cause it was supposed to be a happy time, a victory time, but it seemed like she was the only one who was happy about it.

Wood crunched on concrete, and Ixi looked behind her, tilting her head as she stared back out the front door, at the cold night that was made all the darker and colder by the now-torrential rain. At first she couldn’t discern what had made the sound—and then she saw the bits of green and flashes of white that hung in the darkness like scattered kaleidoscope shapes, and soft lightning flashed, outlining the twisted length of the tattered top hat.

“Oh there you are!” she said, smiling at Renkle even though she couldn’t see his eyes in the darkness. “Whatcha doin’ out there?” she inquired suddenly, blinking. “I thought you were somewhere inside.”

“I was,” Renkle muttermurmured, slipping a little more into view, little plpsand drps following his movements as his soaked apparel dripped onto the wood flooring. “I was chust scouting th’ buildin’, makin’ suhre no one ehlse was hehre.”

“Are we safe?” Ixi asked, looking nervous now, her ears ticking in one direction or another, hunting for danger.

“As safe as weh can beh,” the green man grunted, a single eye peering around the dreadful disarray of the entrance hall. “Go on,” he muttered after a few silent moments, waving an enormous hand at the smaller Ichorian. “Catch up with yehr friends, help ‘em out. The sooneh weh get th’fuck outtah hehre, the betteh.”

Ixi nodded eagerly, the suitcase nodding in tandem. “On it, Mister Green!” she said with a perky salute, turning ‘round on the spot and scampering over to the staircase, bounding along a wall to avoid the gory, glittery mess the floor had become.

An irritated Renkle watched her departure with a cocked head right up until she disappeared around the same corner her friends had.

Then his cold, mirthless gaze settled on the Monkey’s twisted corpse, and he began to walk towards it.

Jimmy let out a pained and awkward groan as Bethany lowered him onto the lid of the toilet, fresh aches letting themselves be known all through his legs and spine as his weight shifted. Bethany hesitated, looking at him worriedly, but he waved her on, shivering as she set him against the cold porcelain of the toilet. What had made him so sensitive? he wondered. Surely it must have been the battle, but probably also the application of the new scar-seal, which was still tingling with raw energy. Or maybe—

“Hrmf?” he muttered as he realized that Bethany was peeling off his shirt, a process that was made all the more discomfiting by the crimson glue that had pasted the garment to his skin. Thin tendrils of blood trailed from his flesh to the oversaturated cloth as it was drawn up his body; he raised his arms so as not to impede the process, the shirt making a bizarre shucking sound as it pulled his arms out of its short sleeves. He gave a nervous, involuntary giggle at this, doing so again when the same thing happened as Bethany pulled the shirt off of his neck. “Euch,” he groaned through a closed mouth as the garment passed over his head, streaking his already-slick face with even more blood. “This must be what a baby feels like,” he said, staring dismayedly at his bare torso, which was covered in a thin layer of blood.

Bethany stared at him, and he glanced up at her, staring back—and then both of them burst into anxious giggles, Jimmy laying there limply and laughing while Bethany tried to choke her snickers down behind a bloodied hand.

“I’m the Fetus Man,” Jimmy managed through his laughter, causing the girl to snicker even harder. “Doing what a fetus can,” he continued, his words dissolving into even more giggles, the two of them tittering madly, letting all their tension melt away into relief with the help of a terrible joke.

They were still chuckling when Ixi poked her head into the room, blinking curiously at the two of them and smiling to herself when neither of them managed to notice her because they were giggling too hard.

“Oh, Ixi,” Bethany said when she finally noticed the little Ichorian, about half a minute after her arrival. “There you are,” she snickered.

“Yup yup!” the creature said, brandishing the suitcase. “And I brought your stuff so you can change!”

This notion seemed to sober Bethany, who got very red again as she choked down the rest of her chuckles. “Right,” she said, daintily dropping Jimmy’s shirt in the tiny bathroom trash can; it landed with a sickly sound, flecks of blood flying every which way. She turned to the boy, concern overriding her pinkness. “Do you need anymore help…?” she asked, trailing off as she glanced at the half-naked boy.

Jimmy swallowed hard, and shook his head. “No, but thanks…I think I can manage it from here…”

Bethany nodded, looking scarletly relieved. “I’ll get you some clothes, then.”

“Ugh, dunno how successful you’re going to be at that,” he grunted, grimacing. “Fucker destroyed most of my stuff. There might still be a few things left, though, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“So what do we do if I can’t find anything?” Bethany asked, looking tense.

“I’unno,” Jimmy said, shrugging. “Wear your clothes?”

Bethany’s incredulous stare was almost answer enough. “I don’t know how well that would work,” she managed, looking awkward.

“Oh, c’mon,” Jimmy said earnestly. “I’d look great in a pink sweater.”

They stared at each other again, and this time the snickers was even more simultaneous. “It’d look more like a dress on you,” she giggled as she stumbled over to the sink to wash the blood off her hands (she managed to mash the soap dispenser repeatedly, because, despite being caught up in her chortling, she swore she could feel the blood squirming on her skin). “And you’d never be able to fit in my pants.”

“We might not have any other option,” Jimmy said, his snickers slowly fading.

“I could make up some clothes if y’need me to,” Ixi piped in. “I’m good at making stuff,” she asserted, nodding sagely.

“Yes you are,” Bethany said kindly, chuckling even as she struggled to scrape blood out from under her fingernails. “We’ll see what we can do. You get cleaned up, and we’ll take care of your clothes.” She paused, blinking, and glanced around, her lips pursed. “…what happened to your suitcase?”

Jimmy stared at her, not comprehending initially. Then a grin slowly sank onto his face.

“I threw it at him,” he said, leaning his head fully back, so that it rested atop the toilet tank. “I threw it right at his fucking face,” he said, laughing now. “Got him right in the forehead, bam.” He snickered, and grinned dazedly at his compatriots. “So it’s probably still in my room somewhere. Hopefully it’s fine.”

“Well, if Ixi made it, it should be just fine,” Bethany said, snickering under her breath at the mental image of Tom getting luggaged in the face. “We’ll be back, but if you need us, yell, okay?”

“Alright,” Jimmy said, nodding vaguely, having neither the energy nor the heart that his voice was probably too hoarse to do much more than carry on a conversation. “Good luck, guys.”

Ixi waved her thanks as she slid back out of the bathroom, and Bethany did the same, giving Jimmy a small, shy smile as she closed the door behind her, her redly-radiant face disappearing behind the snapclick of the latch.

The boy returned that smile, and it hung on his face for nearly a minute after both of them were gone, brightening his countenance as his eyes slid closed, serenity slipping itself around him like a blanket woven out of soft bliss.

He drifted in its cozy confines for three minutes—three whole, unbroken minutes of peace, unshaken by his awkward position on the toilet or the blood that caked his body or the sheer unshakeable despair that had clutched him since he had come out of the other end of the bloodtunnel.

Three minutes where nothing mattered but the stillness of his body and the remaining rhythm of his heart.

And a smile, he reminded himself. And words not yet spoken.

He woke slowly, the sensation akin to rising out of water at just the right temperature. He glanced around, expecting no one, and found just that. He lurched up off the toilet, stumbling a bit as his feet tried to compensate for his disrupted equilibrium. They caught up quickly enough, and he made it to the door without any trouble, locking it with a fumble of his thumb. He stood there for a moment, blinking slowly at the door, his brain blanked by the viscous soup of fatigue and sleep that was coagulating along his neurons, gucking up his thoughts.

He inhaled sharply, clutching the breath in his chest, and glanced around, dazedly. Oh right, he thought. I’m here, and stuff. He turned himself around, and half-limped, half-waddled his way over to the shower. Gotta get cleaned the hell up.

He leaned down and twisted the water on, and—

Oof, he thought, wobbling a bit, his hand tightening around the water knob as he felt his balance keel over on its side. Shitshit. He leaned up a bit, breathing deeply while he carefully turned the water up to the desired temperature, letting it warm up, the mumbling roar of running water singing softly to him. He focused on its senseless melody until stability returned, then pulled the shower lever simultaneous to slowly standing upright again, keeping his nausea at arm’s length.

Maintaining that distance while taking off the rest of his clothes was a feat unto itself, but with a bit of kicking and the use of a handy wall, he manged to squirm out of them with only a hint of queasiness clawing at him.

Revulsion sprung at him, though, as he glanced down at his bare body, caked and dripping with blood that felt like it was squirming into his pores even as he stood there. Bile building up in the back of his throat, Jimmy quickly drew himself into the shower, ignoring the nausea that tugged at his spinal cord in his rush to get the excruciatingly execrable sludge off of his quivering body. The cleansing torrent of water struck him with a refreshing sharpness, each drop cutting through the gruesome grime with the potency of acid and the warm, soothing relief of the womb.

Jimmy stood there for a couple minutes, basking in the comforting cascade.

Then he grabbed the half-gone bar of soap and began to wash up, starting with his hands.

Bethany strolled around Jimmy’s room in a daze, glass crunching beneath her feet, paper crinkling under her heels. Occasionally she’d step on a chunk of black plastic, shattering it with a brittle popping sound that burst on her eardrums like a gunshot—but she reacted to it about as much as she would have had she crushed a stray packing peanut. She held Jimmy’s open Ixicase in her hands (having retrieved it from the ruins of his bed; one corner of it was stained red-orange by a spastic splotch of blood), but had yet to put anything in it. She had yet to pick up anything at all, to be honest, because she hadn’t yet found anything that was still in enough pieces to be worth salvaging: everything was either eviscerated beyond usefulness or too blood-splattered to even touch—or, usually, both.

So she kept pacing the room, nudging at things with her shoes, brushing swathes of debris aside, peeking into piles of splinters and paper, hunting for anything, anything at all, big or small, trivial or significant. Occasionally she’d try to nudge something aside with a push of wind, sending trails of paper and sprays of sawdust wafting through the air. Eventually she just resorted to picking up the bigger, cleaner pieces of paper and carefully slipping them into the suitcase; she desperately didn’t want to have to give it back to Jimmy empty.

At least Ixi’s doing good, she thought with a barely-constrained sigh, glancing over at the little creature, who was busily picking apart the shattered skeleton of Jimmy’s dresser. Much of it was nothing more than shredded cotton strung together by oak splinters, but the Ichorian was proving herself surprisingly adept at picking it all apart and carefully extracting the unmauled survivors of the destruction. She had even managed to clear a bare space on the floor to put piles of neatly-folded-and-organized clothes—and another pile for an increasingly-tall pile of debris that was beginning to resemble the Eiffel Tower constructed out of hurricane scrap. Bethany kept her distance, even though she figured the little thing probably wouldn’t forget to keep it from toppling. Probably.

A scrap of an explosion. A strip of battle. A shred of green energy. A crumpled fist wrapped in a black gauntlet. An ace of spades glowing with pink energy. Half a page of panels of blue skies and red capes.

Bethany paused at this one, examining it for a few moments, a small and unsummoned smile slipping onto her face. I have this one. I brought it with me. She bit her lip, then slid the scrap into the suitcase. I’ll let him have my copy.

“I think that’s pretty much it…” Ixi said, glancing between her pile of clothes, her tower of debris, and the blank spot where the ruined corpse of the dresser had once been. She peeked over her shoulder as Bethany strolled up behind her, and tilted her head at the girl’s expression. “How’d you do?”

“Not very well, honestly…” Bethany sighed, glancing unhappily into the suitcase, at the small stack of paper shreds that lay there. “It’s just about impossible to find anything in this mess…” she said as she kneeled down next to the Ichorian and laid the Ixicase down on the floor, and started loading the clothes into it. “That bastard destroyed pretty much everything Jimmy probably would’ve wanted to take with him.”

“Yeah…” Ixi said, casting her pout across the ravaged room, the golden glimmer of her eyes dulling momentarily as she drank in the devestation. “At least he’s gone now, though!” she added cheerily, as if she’d forgotten and only just now remembered. “Well, I mean, he’s not gone-gone, ‘cause his bodything is still downstairs an’ stuff, but it’s like his-house-is-still-there-but-nobody’s-home sort of thing, you know?”

Bethany chuckled drily and nodded as she set the last stack of shirts into the suitcase. “Yeah, that’s been the high point of this crazy freaking week. This pile is for Jimmy to wear once he gets out of the shower, right?” she said, pointing. “Okay, good, now, let’s see if we can find anything else in this mess…”

Jimmy wasn’t sure how long he spent in that shower, desperately scrubbing away at his skin with blind fervor, but it never seemed like enough. He scratched and scratched and scratched at himself with a washtowel that was so saturated with blood that it had gone from pale green to a muddied brown-purple. Eventually he had to give up on that and traded it in for toilet paper, taking big clumps of it and scooping thick ribbons of half-dried blood off his flesh, making him feel like he was trying to peel himself out of an enormous Jimmy-shaped fruit.

“Fuck,” he muttered, building up another fistful of froth as he ground the now-miniscule slab of soap against a bare patch of skin. He then used the suds to claw at the last patch of blood on his shoulderblades, pushing his arm far, far back as he broke up gunk with his fingernails, scale-like chunks of it dropping into the tub with thick, sloppy plrnks. “Gyahhhrgh,” he grunted, swiping desperately at the stuff as he put his back to the water, letting the rough spray push the rest of the blood off his skin. As it squirmed down his back in snaking trails, he could feel it—definitely, this time, without a doubt—trying to push its way back up to his shoulders, twitching defiantly against his skin.

Disgust rushing through his body in cold rivers, he leaned further into the water, forcing the blood off him in waves. He watched it drip off his body and into the tub with a hawk’s hateful glare, and took great pleasure in noticing that it darkened a few seconds after it hit the porcelain.

He kicked it further down the length of the tub, watching it swirl down the drain, growing all the more maroon as it spun out of sight.

Yeah, fuck you too, he thought, smirking slightly as he peeled at the ring of coagulated blood that had formed along his waistline, the whole thing coming off in one piece and dangling in his hand like a dead snake.

Then it twitched, and coiled, and Jimmy roared and slung it away, the scarlet pseudoserpent slamming against the drain at the opposite end of the tub with a dense shthuck, ragged clumps of it splashing in every direction. It shuddered there for a moment, twining in upon itself—and then it froze, and the color started to sink out of it.

Jimmy stared at it as it began to slump and wither into the drain, his fright and fury evident in the nauseated curl of his lip and the vague tremble of his shoulders.

“Motherfucker,” he muttered as he turned away, energy flashing amongst the malformed coils of the bloodpeel, rupturing it and charring it, a burst of hissing steam snaking up into the spray. He ignored the sound of it bubbling and churning as the residual heat of the lightburst boiled the blood, and he paid no mind to the sickening stench it left in the air, lingering in the steam long after the old blood had been washed away and new blood had swept in to replace it.

He just washed, and washed, and washed, and wished he could do the same to the inside of his every vein.

Knck-knck!

Jimmy blinked, then winced as suds slipped into his eyes, stinging at the sclera in a misguided attempt to cleanse his eyesocket. Wiping irritatedly at the offended eye while shading the other from further incursions, he peeked his froth-laden head out from behind the shower curtain. “Bethany?”

“No, Glinda, the Good Witch,” was the half-muffled response.

Jimmy cocked an amused eyebrow. “Well, I hope you brought me more than slippers.”

“No, I brought you a dress, too,” Bethany said, giggling slightly. “I hope you like purple.”

“I don’t remember finding a dress…” said a smaller, poutier, more far-off voice.

“Ixi, don’t you know a joke when you see one?” the girl chided playfully.

“…you can see ‘em?” Ixi said, her voice hushed with wonder, and both children found themselves snickering simultaneously.

“She actually can, probably, if she tried,” Jimmy said, grinning even as he ground at his eye with a finger. “Gyah, fucking thing,” he muttered.

“Probably,” Bethany said, smiling on the other side of the door. “Is it safe for me to put these in there? We managed to find a bunch of clothes.”

Jimmy swallowed and glanced at the shower curtain, which was a burgundy red in color and completely opaque. “Sure.” He slipped back behind the curtain as Bethany began to twist the doorknob, quickly tugging the vinyl back into place so it fully concealed him. “Good timing, too,” he said, sticking his head right in the spray and shutting his eyes tight, letting blood and suds spill out of his hair and into the tub. “I think I’m just about done, it’s just tough to get this shit out of my hair.”

A very pink Bethany nodded as she quickly sat a neatly-folded stack of clothes onto the countertop. “They’re here by the sink when you need them,” she said, some of the words rushing together. “We’ll be outside while you finish up, alright?”

“Alright,” Jimmy called out over the roar of the water. “Shouldn’t be too much longer!”

“Good,” the girl murmured, stepping back towards the open door. Halfway there, she paused, her hand on the door, ready to close it behind her; she glanced back at the shower, and smiled a little. “Hey Jimmy?”

The boy paused, his fingernails digging into his scalp, bubbles running down the backs of his hands. “Yeah?” he said, blinking.

“Congratulations,” she said, soft warmth suffusing the syllables.

“…for what?” Jimmy said, silently bracing himself, a grimace growing on his face.

“For finally getting rid of him.”

He winced, his hands going limp atop his head as his shoulders slumped. He opened his mouth to tell her she was wrong, to let her know that what had seemed so simple had gone so immensely fucking awry that he still hadn’t quite processed it, to tell her how much of an empty, soul-sucking shell his triumph had been, to tell her just how far, far away she should get from him if she wanted to be safe and happy and innocent—all of this built up on the back of his tongue like impending vomiting, burning at his tastebuds with ominous eagerness—

He shut his mouth, and swallowed, and let new words—fake words, crafted out of plastic—form on his tongue in neat little lines.

“Thanks,” he said, his voice neutral in spite of his attempts to infuse it with something vaguely resembling joy. “I’m glad it’s finally over.”

“Me too,” she said, and he could hear the smile that shaped her words, which stung at his ears for minutes after she’d left the room, the door gently closed behind her.

Jimmy stood there in the shower, his arms hanging limp at his sides, staring wordlessly at a chip in the tile.

What am I going to do with myself?

Ixi was humming the theme to Jurassic Park and busily constructing an effigy of a butterscotch cookie out of rubble and glass when the door to the bathroom finally opened again. Her hums immediately dissolved into an inquisitive “Hm?” as she twisted ‘round to stare at Jimmy, who was leaning against the frame of the door, blinking dazedly at his surroundings. “Oh!” she said, spinning fully around and rushing to the boy, hugging his leg. “He’s read-yyyy!” she called out, yelling over the noisome collapse of her instantly-forgotten art project.

“One sec!” Bethany yelled back, and even in his daze, Jimmy could hear the fluster in her voice. He inhaled sharply as Ixi cuddled his leg a little closer, heat blossoming in his bones, clarity blooming in his brain; he petted her head thankfully as he looked around, confusion settling on his face as he realized the girl was actually nowhere to be seen.

“Where’d she go?” he asked, glancing down at the croconic creature with an expression of concerned puzzlement.

“I’m right here, actually,” Bethany said as she rounded a nearby corner, looking nearly as red as the crimson wool in the sweater she was skittishly tugging at. “Finally got around to changing,” she explained, pulling the garment as far down as she could; it eventually settled about mid-way down to her hips. “Took me a while to dig through everything in my suitcase.”

Jimmy tilted his head at the sweater, nearly causing Bethany to squirm in place. “…snowmen?” he said, grinning as he pointed at the blocky, white, top-hatted blobs that ringed her sweater, traipsing through a background of red and green. “Isn’t it a bit early for Christmas?”

“Well, yeah,” Bethany said, perking up a bit as she looked down at the woolly little Frostys. “But it’s something of a happy occasion, so I figured I’d be festive. Besides,” she added, grinning, “it’s never too early for Christmas.”

“…y’know, that’s the biggest I’ve ever seen you smile,” Jimmy said, smiling himself, a pleased chuckle drifting out of his mouth of its own accord as he stared admiringly at her exultant expression.

Bethany’s color finally fully matched her sweater as she bit her lip, her emerald eyes twinkling and her eggshell smile shining despite her shyness. “Well,” she said, the words coming with unexpected surety and softness, “I really love Christmas.”

Jimmy shook his head, though the hint of a smile remained on his face. “I haven’t had a Christmas worth mentioning in a long time. I’ve had a bunch of bad ones, actually, and I think it took all the magic out of it for me.”

“Well, then,” Bethany said, and here her words stammered, but only slightly. “We’ll just have to make sure you have better ones in the future, right?”

The boy looked at her, his smile freezing at the corners but remaining warm and hopeful at its core. “We’ll certainly have to try,” he conceded, giving the floor a dubious glance so that Bethany couldn’t see the grim guilt growing in his eyes. “But for now, we should really get the fuck out of here.”

“Seconded,” Bethany said, giving their shredded surroundings a meek glance as she handed Jimmy his Ixicase and plucked her own off the ground. “I’m half-afraid this place is gonna collapse on us.” She paused, glancing at the doors. “Or eat us.”

Jimmy glanced at her as he started walking down the hall, Ixi in tow. “I doubt that’ll happen,” he said, even as he gave the building a stern, don’t-you-dare-start-now glare. “Turned out I was wrong about the actual building being truly dangerous.”

“Thank God.”

“Yeah, amen to that.”

Their return to the entrance hall was greeted with the rancid fetor of fresh death, making both children balk and groan, the two of them stepping back a few feet, their hands clasped over their noses and mouths as they gagged and half-retched on the stench.

“Fuck, it’s worse than before,” Jimmy croaked, grimacing and spitting a mouthful of stink-tainted saliva into a hole in a nearby wall. “Motherfucker rots fast.”

“Gyauuuuugh…” was all that Bethany could muster, followed by a series of rough, rib-rattling coughs. She eventually managed to choke those down, but as she did so, her eyes widened. “Jim—hauk­­—my—”

“What?” Jimmy said, breathing deeply to keep himself from vomiting outright.

“The body’s gone.”

Jimmy froze, then took a couple steps closer to the entrance hall, searching what he could see of that apocalyptic battleground for signs of crimson skin and black spikes—but all he could see was blood, splattered everywhere in a shape reminiscent of a star scrawled by a child. Stunned, the boy held his breath and moved even closer to the staircase, scanning the shadows for the body—but he could see nothing, nothing at all, not even a trail of blood leading away from the noxious pool of Technicolor gruel that dominated the room, chandelier bulbs reflected in its surface like faded stars on red plastic.

Did it just get the hell up and walk away? His eyes darted spastically around the room, straining to catch sight of some sort of explanation, but the oddly-lit room hid the corners from him, stealing away its secrets under ink curtains.

A hiss rose into the air, and then a sharp sizzle as a miniscule bolt of blue-white lightning sparked into existence ten feet above the sundered chandelier. It stretched and curled upon itself, growing longer and more spastic as it wound into a sphere of electricity that blinked and brightened in strobe-like flickers until star-white energy coalesced into existence at its core, spreading to fill the globe of lightning. It bulged in one direction and then the other, growing bigger and bigger until it lit the entire entrance hall with its vivid effervescence, erasing the shadows and canceling out the paltry glow of the chandelier.

Jimmy, who had backed away so he could get another lungful of fresh air, rushed back to the top of the stairs, his eyes frantically hunting for freaks even before he could see the hall as a whole. His mind was clenched tight around the pseudoelectric orb, ready to fling it in the face of whatever might spring out of the unknown and give it a good dose of dazzling death.

But there was nothing in the room except more glass, more blood, more splinters, and more rubble, mixing together into a bizarre goulash of grime. If the Monkey had somehow crawled out, it hadn’t left the slug-like trail of blood and scrapes that Jimmy would have expected it to.

Okay, he thought numbly as he pulled back to where Ixi and Bethany were, feeling woozy as panic finally sunk into his brain. The fuck, did it teleport out? Jesus Christ.

“See anything?” Bethany whispered from behind the bowl-shaped fuzzy yellow gas mask she was pressing to her face.

“No, nothing, nothing at all, what the fuck,” Jimmy whispered back, shaking his head as he accepted a gas mask of his own from Ixi, who was wearing hers on her head like an army helmet. “It’s just gone. It doesn’t even look like it got up and left. Coulda teleported, coulda fallen into some other dimension or something. All I know is it isn’t down there.”

“Is it somewhere else in the house, then?” Bethany murmured, her green eyes doing an edgy dance in their sockets as she shifted uncomfortably where she stood. “Or outside? What if it’s outside?”

“Then we’ll have to go out one of the back doors or side doors. There are a lot of ways out of the building.”
“But how will we know which ones are safe? And where’s Renkle? Have either of you guys seen him?”

“I saw ‘im!” Ixi whispered, looking thoughtful. “He was at the door when I got in with your suitcase, Bethany. Told me to go on ahead.”

“What about you, Jimmy? …Jimmy?”

“Hold on…” Jimmy said as he leaned up against the wall, his eyes glazing as he stared at the floor. “I figured out how to do this thing…it’s kinda like a radar for evil people…it helped warn me last time. I can get it to detect really far-out, too, so if he’s nearby, we’ll know. Gimme a sec…opening it up…”

He was immediately grateful that he’d had the foresight to lean against the wall, because the sensation of unlocking his sixth sense was disconcerting enough to make his knees wobble as his head swam. He took a moment to get his bearings back, his grip on the sphere back in the entrance hall wavering a bit as he sought to sort out manipulating both powers at once; it was tricky, like trying to juggle two bowling pins and a chainsaw in one go, but after a minute of fumbling, he finally managed it.

“Okay,” he said, breathing deep. “Widening to ten feet…”

Nothing.

“Fifteen…”

Nothing.

“Twenty…”

Nothing.

“…twenty-five…” he said, giving his companions a cocked eyebrow: this is totally weird, it said.

“Thirty…thirty-five…forty…forty-five…fifty…sixty…seventy…”

Nothing.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” He grinned, his smile so wide and relieved it was almost goofy. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

They walked out from beneath the overhang and into a wall of rain so dense that Jimmy had to laugh: he might as well have stepped out here and danced on the driveway, showering in the soaking rain, laughing madly to himself all the while. He let out a frantic laugh anyway, a sound that quickly transformed itself into one of desperate, madcap relief as he strode into the downpour, a jaunt shaping itself in his stride. Behind him, Bethany was watching with delighted alarm as her gas mask reshaped itself into an orange-spotted umbrella in her hand; it had no handle, and instead floated obediently over the girl’s head, spinning slowly like some quirky excuse for a UFO. Ixi had one, too, but seemed to prefer to ride it like a levitating chair, gripping the edges of it and spinning it by hand, every twirl accompanied by a childish, tinkling giggle that seemed to meld with the wet clatter of the rain.

Jimmy walked to the middle of the driveway, standing there in the rain, lit only by the faint light from the rain (he’d decided against bringing the orb out into the downpour, unsure if it would electrocute his companions or not). His laughter drifted, and his grin faded away, and he stood there, soaking both in the rain and in the knowledge of what was ahead—and what he was leaving behind.

And what’s coming with me, he thought, shuddering; even though he knew it had been caged, and suppressed, and sealed away, he thought he could still feel it, sliding around the inside of his cranial cavity like a squirming lichen or a mobile mold. Can’t think about that right now, he asserted, wavering on the spot. Can’t. Gotta focus on the good stuff, or I’ll crack, I can feel it, I can totally feel it. Focus, focus.

Then suddenly it wasn’t raining anymore—or, at least, not on him. Blinking, he glanced up to see Bethany’s umbrella hovering over him, its fuzzy yellow shape stretching and expanding to accommodate two.

Smiling softly, he lowered his gaze to his left, filling his view with the girl’s rainslick black hair; her brown, rounded face, decorated with raindrops that glistened on her skin like drifting rhinestones; her clear green eyes, rich and glittering faintly in the darkness; and her smile, which matched his own as the two of them stood there in the rain, under the happy sun-shape of the twirling umbrella.

They were enveloped in the white noise of the rain, with no one but a very purposefully-inattentive Ixi to see or hear them, but neither knew what to say any better than they had before Jimmy had gone into the mansion. Both could feel the other trying their hardest to come up with something as they stood there, listening to one another’s breathing, the percussive dance of rain against the umbrella filling in the blank spaces where their voices should’ve been.

They spent what seemed like minutes caught in that unsure silence—and then Bethany’s smile widened, and her eyes seemed to shine with more than light, and Jimmy smiled right back, chuckling low in his throat. He let himself forget his troubles for this moment so he could truly savor the good in it, and the girl seemed to pick up on this, for her smile spread into a full grin, her bright white teeth beaming at him in the darkness as his own (slightly-yellowed) grinned back at her.

Neither of them knew how much time passed as they stared at each other, sinking into one another’s smiles while Ixi wooshed through the rain in the background, but it seemed the world around them might as well not have mattered, for neither of them noticed the Truck had rolled up in front of them until its headlights klunked on, the beams cutting sharply through darkness. Both of them jumped slightly at its sudden presence, but their guards were quick to drop again as they realized it was just their number-one all-time favorite sentient automobile, here to pick them up after a long night of Pure Insanity. The cabin light flicked on to reveal an empty, scarlet interior as the Truck’s thick, heavy doors popped open of their own accord, the hinges squawking a strained invitation to the trio.

Jimmy looked at the machine, his smile becoming thin and drawn. “So here we go, I guess,” he said, turning to Bethany, his eyes filled with trepidation framed by grim determination.

The girl seemed to falter for a moment, her own smile disappearing entirely as she stared at the Truck, its diesel rumble filling both their ears, drowning out the relaxing rhythm of the rain. “Yeah,” she said, swallowing, her grip tightening on the handle of her suitcase, the fingers drumming against the fuzzy plastic. “Here we go.”

Jimmy glanced at the Truck, and then back at Bethany, his expression softening further. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Bethany looked at him with a sobriety that startled Jimmy. “Are you?” she asked, her voice heavy but faint at the edges.

The boy shrugged. “Fuck no. But it feels right. Feels like what I should be doing. I don’t like all of it, but…”

His words trailed off without his permission, leaving him staring blankly at the girl in silence, standing there awkwardly. She stared back at him, her eyes in constant, subtle movement as she slowly bit her lip, gnawing lightly at it, her anxiety evident in her shivering shoulders.

“Let’s just go,” she said, finally, her voice quavering. “Let’s just get in the Truck and get out of here while I still have the guts to do it.”

“Seconded,” Jimmy said, leading the way, keeping pace with the girl so he didn’t rush ahead of her as he jogged over to the Truck. “C’mon, Ixi!” he yelled over his shoulder as he tossed his suitcase into the cabin and hauled himself in after it, settling himself into the middle seat, a thin cloud of dust raising from the tattered fabric. He helped Bethany get into the Truck once he’d gotten himself situated, holding her own suitcase in his lap as he leant a hand in pulling her up onto the seat. She grinned at him shyly as she settled in next to him, their hands reluctantly untwining so she could take back her Ixicase, both of them looking in opposite directions.

Ixi herself zoomed into place beside Bethany with a prolonged “Wheeeeeeeeeee!”, trailing water and reabsorbing both of her umbrellas back into her tiny, surprisingly dry body as she landed. The passenger-side door slammed shut behind her as she pulled on her seatbelt, jauntily clicking it into place—then glancing down at the loose fabric of the belt with a curious pout. She tugged at it, and it automatically adjusted to her size, keeping her snug against the seat. “All set!” she announced.

“Yeah, we’re just missing Pruneface the Green, now,” Jimmy muttered, staring out the front windshield, trying to pierce the endless curtains of rain and mist that had overtaken the city while they’d been in the mansion. The thunderclouds had long obscured the glowing corpse of the moon, drowning everything in darkness and water, but lightning still lit the sky, illuminating the bloated, ash-colored clouds as if they were heaven’s ungodly flashbulbs. Their diluted light was faint, almost sickly, but it still managed to outline the details of the outside world in withered white while washing out all the other colors in the process. The mansion was rendered a dull, dark, bleak red, the color of old blood clots, and the leaves of all the trees and bushes looked dead and frigid, as if wrought with frost, and the windows flashed white, blinking like sightless eyes.

The boy waited for every flash for a sight of the hollow building, shock sneaking into his body every time it came into view. I’m leaving this, he thought, his skin squirming. I’m leaving this and everything else behind. Everything. All of it. All gone.

Jesus Christ, what am I doing?

Jimmy’s hand slipped down to the buckle of his seatbelt, his finger settling on its button—

KCHUNK.

All three of them jumped as the Truck wobbled on its wheels, rocked by the sudden slamming of its driver-side door. They all gave startled stares to the dripping, angular figure of Renkle, who didn’t seem to notice them at all as his body scrunched itself down to fit into the limited space of the cabin, his huge green hands completely enveloping the steering wheel as he peered at the various meters and dials of the dashboard, many of which either didn’t make sense to Jimmy’s eyes or contained so much information as to be wholly incomprehensible at first glance.

The green man tapped a dial or two, setting their arrows to twitching, and then, seemingly satisfied, he turned his monocular gaze to the children. “Everehone accountehd feh?” he asked, seemingly unaware of their jumpy discomfort. “Everehone readeh?” he said, his voice suddenly extra gravelly, his knife-sharp stare settling on Jimmy.

“…yeah, sure,” the blonde boy said, staring right back at the creature with a fierce and knowing look in his vivid eyes, his hands drifting back into his lap, cradling his Ixicase. “And where the hell were you?” he asked suddenly, shifting in his seat under that blank monochrome stare. “What happened to the Monkey’s body?”

At this the Ichorian let out a single grating chuckle that seemed to ooze out of throat and between the sharkteeth of his enormous gruesome grin, lightning flashing against those triangular whites. His eyes disappeared back beneath the brim of his hat as he shifted the Truck into reverse, his laugh still lingering in the children’s ears.

“Don’tcheh worreh yeh heahd about that, Chimmeh,” he crooned as he swung the vehicle around so fast that the other three occupants found themselves pressed against one another like toppled dominos. None of them had time to react before Renkle shifted gears again, the engine roaring like a dying machine god in their heads as the Truck peeled away from the House That Tom Built, fire and smoke flashing from its tires as it sped across the concrete. “Don’tcheh worreh one little bit.

“I took cahre of it.”

Then the green man seemed to lose all control of his cackles, his jaw distending—seeming to unlatch entirely—so that the children could see the multiple rows of masticaters gleaming whitely at them as he let out laugh after eardrum-rotting laugh. These brutal barks nearly distracted them from the ungodly acceleration the Truck was picking up, its wheels scorching pavement and ripping up chunks of charred grass and burnt sod as it sped across the property regardless of terrain. The world was rushing past them so fast that what little of it Jimmy could see was nothing but a rainslick blur, turned a jaundiced yellow-orange by the ancient headlights. The cacophonous mire of screaming engines and apocalyptic laughter was so dense that Jimmy could barely think, and his attempts to speak to his alarmed compatriots was nullified entirely as they rocketed across the landscape, branches snapping off trees and bushes in their wake.

“Hehre weh go,” Renkle cackled, still laughing as he pulled the stickshift all the way back, the Truck’s bellows descending into a hellish, guttural howl. The vehicle suddenly kicked forward, the speed plastering the children against the seat as the machine barreled right through the broken gate at the edge of the estate—

—and they all watched as the world in front of them distended like a sheet of cellophane, wrinkles and folds forming in the fabric of reality as Renkle throttled the engine, his foot stomping insistently on the gas. The wheels spun, and the children’s noses were struck by the stench of cooked rubber and baked asphalt—

—one of the children gripped the other’s hand; neither of them would remember who—

—the world came away in melted shreds in front of them, the squirming tatters noisily scraping the sides of the vehicle as it plunged on into the amorphous void—

—and then they were gone, and all that was left was the echo of one last brain-boiling laugh.