In the End

Schmaltz

He doesn't end the man.

He simply cannot do it. Just before Andy had shut his eyes, his body still shaking in pain, the doll had seen a flash of it. Just a glimpse, but it had been enough to sway his intentions in this very moment. It had only lasted one mere second, but it has left him starving for more. There is a sudden insatiable thirst burning inside him, and he tosses the knife from him and screams. He curls himself against the floor and beats it with small and frustrated fists.

He had seen Andy Barclay, pure and unscathed, in those eyes, just before he was cut off from it again. It is as if he has been wandering in a dark room and for a brief moment, could see an open door ahead of him, only to have it shut again just as he reached the frame.

Time can't have what I didn't give, time can't take away what is fucking mine, he can hear his anger erupting; he can feel the seething heat spreading inside him. Mine, mine mine, he is screaming.

Ashamedly, he is screaming it aloud in the otherwise mum apartment. Something is wrong with him.

Now, it is he who is laughing, on his knees and clutching his hair in a dazed and confused manner. "Fuck," he croaks, hoarse from his earlier unexplained tantrum. "I am so fucked, I am so, so very fucked..."

What is his, at any rate?

Andy?

Andy has never belonged to him, he knows this now. Suddenly, he comes to the epiphany that it is he who has belonged to Andy all along, and that is why he is still here, unable to end the man's life and rid himself of him for good. Suddenly, he realizes. But suddenly comes often too late. He has already done the damage now. Whether he killed Andy or not, he would never truly be rid of the boy. And that is the penance for his crime.

And while he suffers, Andy sleeps beside him, unaware and in a state of bliss.

He ought to kill him that very minute for the audacity. But he recalls that the only reason for Andy's comatose state is the fact that the man had overdosed and intoxicated himself just minutes before their reunion. So it is not entirely true that Andy is such a lucky state. Any minute he could wake again, retching and quivering on the floor, praying that the miserable effect of his poor choice will end soon. Ah, but if he'd beg for death. The doll could give it to him then, and then it would be the right sort of ending.

For now, however, he would let Andy sleep.

Now that his own life was not hanging on the line, and Andy was not a present threat, he had the time to contemplate just how he had arrived here. He had not thought of the boy for a long time now, although he had mentioned him many times to his ex-wife. During the days they had been together, in between the constant struggle and spat between them, he had told her of him, of the boy Andy Barclay, and how this small child had momentarily destroyed his life time and time again.

"Sounds a little more than momentarily to me." She'd given him lip, as she always did. "Sounds like you're still a little fucked up over it, to be bitching to me about it so much."

"Shut up," he'd growled at her, and she'd laughed. Then they'd kissed, and in the throes of passion, he had momentarily forgotten.

That was when he had thought he'd loved her. Momentarily, he could have seen himself with her for a lifetime. But, as had always been done before, they'd fallen into a rut. They would fight and separate, then run into each other again and try to work some sort of situation out between them, only to repeat it again. Each time, a disaster.

The very last time they'd fought, it had been about Andy.

"We have a family, Chucky, in case you hadn't fucking noticed," she had hissed at him. The kids were out in the backyard. He'd left her before, and he was back at her door again. This time he'd ruined the twins' birthday party by showing up as one of their presents. The son's, Glen's, in particular. "Your obsession with killing is too much for them. It's too much for me. How many times are you going to pick that over us?"