Sublime Awakenings

Sublime Awakenings: Chapter 47

Chubby hands tightened on the steering wheel of his brand new red sports car as Chunk turned into the driveway of a decrepit house that seemed as if it was probably being held up by accumulated dust alone. “Are you sure about this, Purple?”

“My name is Gaz. And yes, I'm sure. I'm telling you, Chunk, this guy has the best legal mind in the city. He'll know what you should do to get out of this mess.”

“Then...why does he live in this dump?” He gave the surrounding houses a quick glance, noting that, though they were a bit on the shabby side, most of them looker bigger and newer than the one they were parked in front of...not that that was saying much. It was almost as if the town had been built around this one house, but he figured that was just the illusion that disrepair gave out.

“He got tried of the corruption, so he doesn't work anymore. But he still gives advice sometimes.” She grunted lowly to herself. “How do you think my crazy brother is still on the streets after all that property damage that he and Zim always cause...er...caused?”

“Yeah, that pointy-haired freak should have been locked away a long time ago. Uh, heh...” He mellowed some under her glare. “So, he gives advice sometimes?”

“Well, the thing is, you've got to be completely honest with him. He can read people, see, and if he thinks you're lying, he'll call the cops and tell them you broke in.”

“Like that would be a big deal after what I'm already being accused of.”

“Accused of?” Gaz raised a brow. “I was at that party, you know.”

“Hey, I didn't do anything!”

“Exactly.” She smirked subtly. “You just stood there and watched, didn't you?”

“Y-you...you saw.... You're not going to tell are you?”

“If I was going to tell, would I be helping you out right now?”

“Why-”

“I still need you...to be popular. That would be impossible if you go to jail. And since Zim is...gone...there's no reason for you to date me...unless....”

“Unless you blackmail me. Yeah, okay, you can be my bitch for a while longer...as long as this guy's advice is good.”

There was a pause as Gaz took a deep breath to gather her strength, and then Chunk went flying out of the car. She smirked when she saw his face hit the loose soil a few feet away before throwing his crutches out to land on the heap that was his grunting body. “Oh, it'll be good.”


There was a terrible screaming raking against his brain. He could see the instrument in his mind, sharp and rusted and moving of its own accord to drag along the terrain of his headmeats, removing dirt and decaying tree parts and leaving behind bloody trails that ached with the sheer gut wrenching pain of consciousness. Consciousness, it was closing in! He knew, and lived in constant dread of, that feeling, but he found the physical sensations that accompanied it quite unfamiliar. Soft. It was too soft, and gave way more easily than a floor, a sidewalk, or even his couch, while somehow still keeping him contained from all sides.

All of the nerves in his skinny frame tightened in ready for whatever he might see, whatever horrible situation he might find himself in. Slowly, he blinked, hating the confusion that flooded his thinking when he was meet with some kind of white film. The film was thin and allowed light to pass through, making an indiscernible pattern visible from what appeared to be a second layer. His eyes felt strange as well. They didn't hurt, didn't cry out for moisture in the sordid air like they should have.

He forced his limbs to move, breaking the rigger mortis-like paralysis that made them feel as though they weighed as much as that fat, psychic woman that had lived in Devi's old apartment building. A crooked smile formed on his face at the memories of stalking her there, half fond and half bemoaning.

Ah, Devi, the one that got away. The one who somehow kept getting away, kept eluding him and refusing the inconsistent apologies that he would attempt every so often when certain moods would strike him. As he had no real sense of time, he couldn't be sure how often, exactly. Most of the time, when he remember her, he knew it was best to stay away, but he didn't seem to be capable of stopping himself from becoming irredeemably hopeful and idealistic on rare occasions...very rare occasions. Other times he just felt obsessive, fascinated by the existence of a human being who wasn't complete shit, of a human being who had actually liked him once.

Whatever had happened to her, he wasn't sure. Her last move had been a bad one...or a good one from her perspective, he figured...a tricky one in any event.

His thoughts were cut off as the screaming, which was easy enough to ignore when you were so used to it being background noise, was replaced with knocking. He groaned into the film, then tensed again when something rustled beside him, something small that rubbed against his leg as it moved, seeming to borrow into the covers in an attempt to hide from the sound. Something clicked in his mind: covers! He was in BED! The situation was recognized because of its popularity on the TV. There were a lot of late night infomercials on mattresses, after all.

But WHY would he be in BED? Carefully, he gripped the covers with rail-like fingers, pulling them down to reveal a small, furry beaver curled up beside him, its back pressed against his thigh for warmth. Instantly, he felt the urge to flatten it in a hot waffle iron and was reminded of the thing's name: Waffles.

It stirred again when the knocking got louder, this time apparently abandoning its attempts at sleep. Instead, it stood on two tiny paws, looking at him in mild irritation. “That's rather annoying, you know. Before, I wouldn't have minded so much, but now...now that I've got this body to look after, I need the sleep as much as you do. And yes, you do need it, Nny. But you appear to have had enough for the time being.”

“Ugh!” Johnny's hand seemed to move on its on, doing his bidding before he could tell it to. It shot out, knocking the beaver off of the bed and into a corner of the room, where it let out a small squeak before returning his glare.

“What was that for!”

“For existing, that's what! And what the HELL is that RACKET!”

“Someone's at the door, morning glory. Well, in your case, I guess someone's at the deteriorating plywood board that's barely attached to the rotten wood of this shack.”

“The...the door?” The sound of Damned Elize's voice coming from his other, right, side made Johnny's throat feel dry, his voice coming out in a wheezy, frantic tone, which only got worse when he turned his head to look at her.

From her half-reclining position on the bed, which she had decked out with new, and most importantly clean, dressings, the dead woman smirked at his horrified continence. She angled her body a bit more toward his, though he was under the covers and she was on top of them, bending one knee to show off the red leggings that matched the lacy teddy she was wearing as her hand came to rest on his chest. “That's right. It's surprising you don't belong to Mensa.”

As soon as his mind and body were capable of response, which was much longer than he would have liked, Johnny curled his legs up under the covers, attempting to kick her off the bed like he had Waffles. Instead, his limbs and the covers seemed to go right through her, having the infuriating effect of making her giggle. With a frustrated huff, he threw the blankets from his person and heaved himself out of the evil, possessive clutches of the bed. He staggered into the sparse living room, holding his temples as the knocking got louder. “Stupid motherfuckers can't take a goddamn hint! How LONG have they been there!”

“Only about five minutes,” Elize informed with a roll of her eyes as she followed behind him.

The sound of high hills clinking on the wood below annoyed him more with every step, and he rounded on her. “Do you SEE what sleep DOES to me! That felt more like a fucking hour! And WHY are you dressed like that? It's revolting! I can see your...your...secession glads through that...that THING!”

“That's kinda the point, lover.” She winked at him, trying hard to keep her smile seductive instead of humorous.

“Don't call me that! Unlike you, I refuse to be a prisoner to those defective, greedy human genes that only want to form our minds in order to use our bodies to spread themselves all over the planet and beyond like conspiring, manipulative bacteria growing on the corpse of its host and looking for anything warm and moist enough to bend to its destructive and unfathomable purposes!” He paused to take a deep breath before turning back to the door. “I'm coming! Fuck!”

Elize frowned, changing back into her usual outfit with a small shift in consciousness. “We're all a slave to something...just...some of us more than others and some of us to different things.”

“What HELL can I do for you?”

Chunk looked the man up and down. He was so skinny that he just had to be some kind of faggot-butt! And his hair was so...weird and uneven! But he looked familiar from somewhere. “Hey, don't you work at Hot Dog on a Stick?” He looked back to the car with a questioning expression before the man's voice drew him back in.

“No, I don't work there! And even if I did, I wouldn't sale the shit out of my house, now would I! Is that what you've been banging on my home for the last hour about!”

“Dude, it's been, like, five minutes...”

“Well, I was asleep!”

“Uh, sorry, but it's already noon, and I've-”

“Do you know how confusing it can be to wake from a sleep?”

“...No.... Look, I'm just gonna go....” This guy was bat-shit-crazy! He probably shouldn't have expected anything else from Dib's little sister, though.

“Oh, no! No, you're going to tell me what the hell was so important in the first place, and then! Then, maybe I will spare your pathetic little life!”

“Whoa! Calm down, man! I...it's just...this girl that I know said that you could help me out with this, uh, problem that I have.”

“And what problem, pray tell, would that be?”

“Aren't you gonna ask me in? It's not really the kinda thing I wanna talk about in public.”

“Very...well.” Johnny's eyes narrowed as he stepped aside. “Do come inside.”

As soon as the front door closed behind him, Chunk regretted insisting on entering the run-down place. The only light in the living room that he now stood in came from small cracks between boards that covered the windows, and by it he could barely see a ragged couch, an ancient TV set and a lot of dust. But the worst of it was the smell: like an abandoned slaughter house.

Several long seconds passed in stiff silence before he finally forced himself to start speaking. “It's a, uh, legal problem. It's like this. I was at this party, and I didn' do anything, but I watched something happen to somebody. And I didn' tell anybody about it. But the cops got a, uh, confession from me later...well, from somebody that said they were me, and now I'm gonna be in trouble if I don't testify in court about what I saw. The problem is that the people that did it, they're pretty popular and they're my friends. If I blow on them, then everybody at skool will hate me, and I'll still end up with probation!”

“I see. Protecting the popular people, eh? The football jocks and the cheerleaders? And why, exactly, are you telling this to me of all people?”

“Because I need you to tell me how to get out of it! Look, I have some money, and, by the looks of this place, you could use it. All I'm askin' is what's the best way for me to get out of all this without telling or gettin' in trouble? I was thinking maybe insanity...but then I would be unpopular for sure...unless my parents were mysteriously killed my an even crazier teacher or something.” He ended on a begrudging note.

Johnny felt a smile coming on, one that wasn't nice at all. “Alright, I've got it! The perfect plan!”

“Yeah?”

“All you have to do is DIE!”

“What!”

“As far as I know, once you're dead, you're exempted from every legal action besides taxes! Almost no one hates dead people! Except for me.” His eyes darted to where Elize leaned against the far right wall, unseen by his visitor in her invisible state, before returning to the teenager. “And you'll be more popular than ever because other people will want to pretend that your leaving behind that hideously bulging hush of a body causes them pain to get more attention for themselves in a miserable attempt to boost their egos, all the time secretly trying to make up for what they lack on the inside with superficial input from others!”

“Umm, yeah, but I don't wanna die. That's almost as bad as being unpopular! Isn't there some other way?”

“Almost as bad? No,” Johnny said with resolution, “I don't think that there is.”

“Argh! Well, thanks for nothing, asshole! This whole thing's been a giant waste of my time!”

“You're entire LIFE has been nothing but a waste of your precious time! Nothing but an ever expanding WASTE in every sense of the word! And I would know because I have to COLLECT it!”

“Huh?” After a few dazed moments, Chuck looked down at his rounded waist, then back up, mustering up more anger to cover the hurt. “Yeah, well, at least I ain't a poor, rail-thin Noodle-boy lookin' pillow-bittin' he-bitch!”

Johnny's left eye twitched. “You wait right there, and I'll be back to give you something that will solve your problem.” He stomped into the kitchen, opening random drawers until he found a long knife. By now he was used to them disappearing from his person to be hidden by the damned woman whenever he changed clothes or fell asleep. Running his finger along the edge to test its sharpness, he decided that it was dull enough to cause unnecessary pain. Good.

When he turned back around to see to his guest, the beaver was floating there in his path. “Move the fuck out of the way, vermin.”

“No, Nny! There's no reason to overact to that child! He is just looking for attention, reaching out desperately because he is unloved!”

“Bullshit! He's just like all the other filth trying to make themselves feel better by putting others down! And no 'child' should have such massive...mass!”

“I agree that the things he said to you were out of line, and that his girth is quite unappealing, but if you'd just see reason-”

“I can't see reason! It's an abstract human idea, like law and order! There is nothing concert or objective about it! It has no direct baring on my life!”

“That's hardly the point. You don't want to kill him.”

“Yes, I think I would very much like to kill him.”

“No. Not deep down. I can see you, Nny. I can see your past and your secret inner desires. I can see the longing that you've tried so hard to suppress for so long, the longing to find someone who understands, to fit in with at least a few of your own species. But this isn't the way. If you'd just stop killing them long enough to see them, to really see them, you might find that they're not as bad as you claim if you stop threatening to take their lives.

“You-You're saying I just need to learn to make a better first impression?” Johnny's hand shook until he dropped the knife into the empty sink, then fell to the counter to hold on tight to the space between the flat surface and where it dipped into the sink. After everything that he had tried to gain peace over the years, it was so simple. It was preposterous, really, but maybe that meant there was something to it. Just maybe....

End Ch!

I'm so sorry for the huge delay!

Notes:

--"Morning glory" is slang for the morning erections that men tend to get. http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/m.htm