Pretty Dead City Instead of doing what he probably should do, he turned around, back to JC. JC had dropped his hands from his face. The bloody rag he'd had over his eyes lay on the floor in front of his eyes like a dead slug.
"Are you okay?" Chris said. His voice hurt his throat but sounded soft and whispery coming out, not raw and harsh like it should.
JC stared at him with red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes and didn't say anything.
"You think Joey and Lance are okay?" Chris said. "Do you think--"
"SHUT UP!" JC hissed. "Are you crazy?"
Yeah, Chris thought. JC looked cold. "Are you cold? Put the shirt back on."
"I'm not COLD!" JC said. His voice wasn't soft; it sounded like a growl.
"Oh, good," Chris said. He shifted weight from one foot to the other. Behind him, nothing was happening. Maybe there was nothing there. Just darkness, or maybe a bottomless pit of hell. Or a green field with scattered poppies or tulips or some other harmless and beautiful and useless flower. Hell, maybe a host of angels about to burst into joyous declarations of the grooviness, greatness and all-round good-guy-ness of God. That would be cool.
Justin had worn wings before, he remembered even though he had no desire to remember anything about Justin. Fluttery, sparkly, diaphanous wings made of cobwebs or silk strands.
He turned around. The wings were just clothes, he saw. They were spread around him, black with the blood. There was more blood than boy. There was more blood than anything.
"JC," he said. "JC, are you okay?" He didn't know why he kept asking. Stupid to ask. It wasn't JC who had all his blood on the outside. All his blood and.
"Goddamn," he muttered and turned away, back to JC. "We have to."
JC didn't move. Chris wasn't sure if he was staring at. That. Or something else, something only visible to JC.
"I don't think it's real," he said. Who the hell was he trying to convince? "It's not real. We can fix him."
JC blinked slowly, owlishly.
Chris had his back turned and it felt unreal, definitely unreal. That shit couldn't be real. He took a few steps and caught JC, hugged his unresisting body and stroked his dirty hair. Oh, JC was real. A little chilly, but alive. Chris put his hand on JC's chest, and felt his heart beat fluttery, nervous beats under the tight, damp skin.
"Come on," he said and tugged JC along. A wide detour around the still-spreading pool, and into the fuzzy shadowy spot where Joey and Lance sat.
"Hey, guys."
"Hey," Joey said in the wavery voice of a little boy lost.
"Hmmm," Lance said, distractedly. He had let go of Joey and was hugging himself. His eyes were distant and unfocused.
Time to do something. Anything. Anything at all, before everyone just sat down and zoned out forever and ever to eternity, amen. Before they all died of sadness.
I didn't just think that, he thought.
"Okay," he said, making his voice loud and strong. "This is not constructive."
"Don't see you being constructive," Lance said gently without looking at him. Behind Chris, JC moved restlessly.
Ignore, ignore, ignore. "I think something is yanking our chains here. This is just so much bullshit. Loops and freaky horror nightmares and every cliché in the book."
"They cut him up," JC whispered in his ear. "We were fucking around, we didn't know what we were doing, and who knows. Maybe I killed him. Maybe you did. Maybe you stuck your sword through his stomach and twisted until everything just fell out. Maybe you did it. Maybe you did it, maybe you did it, maybe--"
Ignore only went so far. Chris twisted around and slapped JC in the face. No punching. Just a friendly slap to get him back down from whatever insane trip he was out cruising. A friendly slap and a hand over his mouth.
Maybe I did kill him.
That didn't really sink in. He looked past JC, looked at Justin for real this time. He lay still and pale in the pool of crimson. He didn't look like he was sleeping. He looked like an animal carcass with a human face.
Chris hadn't eaten in a long time, and it was actually a little annoying. Throwing up would be a good distraction. Hello, content of stomach. Good to know it's there, because that would mean the stomach was still there and not lying like an abandoned shopping bag three feet from his body.
Oh, God.
Anything, people. Anything.
Anything. He let JC go and looked down at the floor, his bare feet and filthy pants. His hands. His palms were grimy with drying blood and the wound Lance cut in it looked like it might be infected. It itched, a deep, nagging itch that he couldn't scratch because he couldn't touch that mess of jagged edges and torn flesh.
His eyes wandered without asking him, and he saw Justin's hand, palm up on the floor, his long fingers slightly curled. The wound was there, a bloodless gash, a little blue-tinted. All of him was blue-tinted. His eyes were wide open, but unfocused. That was really what gave the game away. Not the hollow ruin that was his chest; just the fact that his eyes looked in different directions.
Shuffling and movement behind him, and Lance's voice: "We need to find someone."
"Yeah," Chris said.
"How did you make them go away?"
"They weren't really there. We just realised that and they disappeared."
"How did-- How did that happen, then?" Just the mention and he realised he'd been staring at Justin's face. The horrible eyes and the blue lips. He thought, I've seen this in my nightmares.
"I think I did it," he said. His arms remembered cutting into things over and over. Flesh and bone and blood that wasn't real. How would he know the difference if at one time, it was real?
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