Pretty Dead City They sat on the curb in a morose row, Chris keeping Justin - and some safe distance - between himself and JC.
He was trying very hard not to think at all. It was tricky, though, because what else was there to do here? The city looked the same and he didn't think that would change anytime this millennium. He hadn't seen any more ratcreatures, and somehow, he didn't think they'd be any help even if they came up to eat from his hand.
He tried to count back to see how long they'd been here, but he kept losing count. The days and nights didn't have any characteristics he could hold on to. He remembered things happening, mostly painful things, but it was hard to say when exactly they'd happened. Maybe they were all happening right now, in an endless loop. Maybe they were sitting in a bubble in the space-time continuum. Maybe they were brains in a vat, maybe this was his own nightmare that he'd soon wake up from.
He looked around and caught JC staring at him past Justin.
Chris suppressed an urge to snap, "You lookin' at me?" Instead, he tried to remember his real life. The good old days. He tried to count the times he'd seen JC really angry. There were a couple of big, juicy fights with Bobbie, but those mostly involved Bobbie slapping JC silly and calling him a dick with no balls and JC just taking it with bovine patience.
JC sometimes yelled at Justin and he sometimes yelled at Chris, but he'd never gotten really angry that Chris could remember. Never. Definitely wouldn't hurt a fly.
Chris rubbed his aching throat gingerly and glanced over at JC, who was still staring at him.
"Do you feel different?" Chris asked.
"Yes," JC said.
"I want to go home," Justin whispered and leaned his head on Chris' shoulder. "I'm tired all the time and I feel like. Like." He lifted his hand slowly to touch his own face. "Like I'm not in here anymore."
"How come?" Chris asked, mainly out of morbid curiosity. Justin looked like shit; hollow-eyed and his skin seemed too small for his face, stretched tight over the bones. His lips were blue-tinted, Chris realised. Justin looked like he was dying.
"It's like a nightmare where half of you is out flying over the rooftops and the rest is trapped inside you or something, I don't know. It makes me tired." He crept even closer and rubbed his face against Chris' neck. Chris winced but let him, put an arm around him and remembered a time when Justin had more energy than him.
"I know," he said. He did.
"I keep having these fucked up dreams, too. Nightmares inside this other nightmare," and he giggled a little nervously, a sharp, shrill titter. Chris saw JC turn his head to the sound, cock it like a bird. He'd been talking softly to Joey, some kind of comforting little ramble that Chris hadn't thought this new JC could manage anymore.
Joey was looking better, though, so maybe it was just Chris who thought JC had changed.
"What's in your dreams, baby?" he asked Justin, and it was a testament to Justin's fucked up state that he didn't even slap Chris for the 'baby'.
"Stuff," he said, and his voice broke a little. "People turn into monsters. I turn into a monster. It's stupid, I guess, but."
"I know," Chris said again. And he did.
Chris saw him coming long before he bothered telling anyone. He looked down the street and there he was, a shimmering outline in the haze. It looked a little like he was on fire, white, blinding fire, but that was just a trick of the light.
After some time, he said, "Lance is back."
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