Pretty Dead City Dream: he's back in New Orleans and the little shop (little shop of horrors), and the dusty old proprietor is handing him a dusty old book, but this time he sees more than he actually did then: like how the book is bound in human skin (dead babies) and the dusty old proprietor is really the dead dusty old proprietor and his teeth are sharpened pegs and his skin is covered in twisting, moving, living tattoos.
"Wait," Chris says. "This wasn't here before."
"You're dreaming, idiot," JC says behind him.
Chris gasped and shook himself out of the dream. He tried to turn over and froze. Cold pavement under his back, pale light in his eyes, Justin pressed against his side, Justin's arm thrown casually over his side.
JC was standing a few yards down the street, looking small and skinny and far away. Chris rolled out from under Justin's heavy arm and got up.
He stood next to JC. He couldn't quite believe it himself, but he was afraid to speak. He'd never been afraid of JC before. Not in his life. JC was the sweetest guy on the planet. He couldn't hold a grudge if you stapled it to him.
This place was fucked up in some deep, fundamental way, and this only went to show.
"I can see things moving," JC said softly and Chris took two startled steps backward.
JC turned to him. He just looked tired, not angry.
"There are moving shadows here. You can see them if you just... It's like those things that become pictures if you squint at them in the right way."
Chris didn't tell him that he'd never been able to see those damn things. He tried squinting down the street. Nothing.
"They're people," JC said.
Chris squinted some more. The street was empty and the air was just as still as before.
"I think they're dead," JC said.
"Jesus. Morbid much?" Chris said. He wanted to raise his voice and tell JC to stop fucking with his head, but then he remembered why they were stuck here - how they got here - and he swallowed his irritability. He even closed his eyes and counted to ten.
When he opened them, he saw the pale grey shadow of a fat, bearded man walk right past him. He blinked, and the man was gone.
He shivered and JC looked at him with his tired eyes. "Don't," Chris said. "Don't you dare say you see dead people."
He saw it: JC forgetting for the fraction of a second and smiling. Chris wanted to hug him. Instead he flashed a quick grin and went back to sit on the ground by the wall. Justin moved in his sleep and Chris saw his eyes roll under his eyelids.
"You know something?" Lance said a while later, when they were all awake and sitting in a disheartened row on the curb.
"What?" Justin said with no great show of enthusiasm. He was fiddling with a hole in his jeans, poke, poke, poke, and Chris was irritated even though he was tapping his foot restlessly himself.
"I'm not hungry," Lance said, and Joey said,
"Oh yeah, me neither--" just as JC said,
"I haven't been hungry at all for like--" and Justin said,
"Wow. I've never been less hungry."
Chris was quiet. He wasn't hungry, either. He thought about pizza and lasagne and his grandmother's chicken pie, and even that didn't make him hungry. He figured he could walk by a three-star buffet and not feel moved to eat a single crumb.
"That's kinda weird," Lance said and Chris wanted to smack him for stating the obvious, but Lance looked pinched and scared, and his eyes looked stranger than usual; hollow and colourless and a little unfocused.
"Maybe we should get going," Joey said with forced cheer.
Chris felt his mouth twist into a sneer and couldn't stop himself from saying "Where?" It sounded vitriolic even to him, and Joey flinched.
Chris looked around and saw Justin's wide, scared eyes and Lance's surprised eyes and then JC's angry, angry eyes and got up and started walking down the street.
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