Meat and Fluids (JTHM Fanfiction) (Nny x Me)

Chapter 25

(Roy's POV)

I think it's over.

I had no idea how Nny managed to get this much gasoline, but he was pouring out the last gallon onto his porch as screams came from inside. Some plead for their lives... most swore and screamed calling us monsters.

Where hey wrong?

I could hear them too. The doughboys. The deep voice that didn't seem to be able to leave the house, yelling at us. It called us useless. Pathetic. Depressed, incurable, corrupted, hated-

"Do you have the Zippo?" There were other voices too, and Johnny seemed relieved I could hear them too. I could hear the other one telling us that burning it would ruin everything, but not explaining why... and bunny. Nailbunny, I mean. A soft voice, almost too quiet to hear above it all.

It's eyeless sockets looked past my soul and its lips didn't move as it spoke.

"Thank you," was all it said, eyeing me through the window as the lighter hit the trail and the front room was engulfed in flames.

"You okay?" I finally managed to ask Johnny. I had no idea how he could possibly be taking this. I couldn't even try to comprehend how his mind dealt with this.

"It's gone."

"... Yeah." I took a step back from the fire and sat down on his front lawn, looking up at the smoke as the last of the voices died out. He crouched next to me but didn't sit.

"No, no, IT'S gone. There was a presence, a buzzing, a part where I-I could hear them. Their voices. What they said, but more clearly... and i-it, it's gone. I can't hear it."

"Is that good?" I asked, not knowing what else to say.

"I don't know."

"How do you feel?"

"... I don't know."

"Are... YOU in control now?"

"Yes." it was a simple answer and he knew it.

"Now what?" But we didn't have an answer. He could stay at my house but I didn't know for how long. And I didn't know where he could go after.

"No fucking idea," he stated, staring down at the bloodstains on my shirt as he finally sat down next to me. I had been the one to drag Jimmy's body inside while Nny gathered supplies. Clothes mostly, a few snacks, loading them into the back of my truck. Anything he didn't want burning, but there wasn't much.

I fell back, looking at the sky as the stars were slowly covered in a layer of smog. Nny soon followed, finally speaking as the streets fell silent. "Is this what control feels like?"

"What do you mean?"

"To feel... in power, yet powerless at the same time. To know you have a choice in what you choose, but not knowing in the slightest what to do because nothing is presented to you as an option. To be... afraid you'll make the wrong decisions, thinking they're the right ones. Only to figure out you've made the wrong choice too late... or is it worse to not know at all?" The fire was too close for comfort, but the heat coming off of it was oddly welcoming.

"Wouldn't it be better not to know? It'd make you feel better."

"But if you don't know, how can you prevent it from happening again?"

"I... have no idea." I really didn't. My hands rested by my sides, while his rested on top of his chest. Or... they did last time I checked. "Do you have things you've done... that you wish you could have prevented from happening now?"

"... Yes"

"Like what?"

"Some of the people I've killed. Like Edger. Or... scaring people away that I had... LIKED! Like Devi. Like Squee." He looked over to his neighbor's house that now had a for sale sign on it, and seemed completely empty. "Probably you."

"I'm not running away yet, am I?"

"No. But you will, it always happens."

"... Let's change that." The sky was a swirl of colors and smoke, the world silent, yet every small noise seemed to echo on forever towards the stars. That's probably why I jumped when I hadn't even noticed Nny's movement until his hand touched mine.

I wanna say something romantic like 'I could feel my heart in my throat,' but in all honesty I was trying not to vomit up my entire cardiac system out of fear and anxiety. I squeezed his hand back, not letting him pull away, "What's this for?" I asked, gesturing towards his hand by holding it tighter for a moment.

His arm twitched at the question, but he didn't let go.

"For not running yet." The surrounding air smelled like rotting pork and burning. And copper. The smoke was worse, now that the gasoline had burned through, and the fire was dying down.

Each time he spoke today... every word felt certain. He didn't question what he was thinking. Not even when he opened the door and the voices screamed. In the air, through the walls, from his HEAD so loud that even 'I' could hear it.

I threw up in his living room. I mean, I apologized for it, but... My god the smell alone, topped off with the smoothy of organs strewn about thought the small room and up the wall. The wall that looked normal, but somehow coated in visibly less blood than the rest of the room.

"Hey guess what?" I spoke out of nowhere, in a way that would have startled normal people, but Johnny was still staring straight at the blurring sky.

"What?"

"I saw a human brain today."

"Don't they look weird?"

"Exactly." He didn't look at me, but I could still see his weird little smile creep onto his face.

And this was how we spent the rest of the night. Until the fire stopped. Until the sun started to come up... until the sirens in the distance were getting too close for coincidence. But before all that, we were just... two people. Two people who finally weren't alone in a world this fucked up.

Finally not alone, because we had each other.

And that was fine.

It was all we needed.