Johnny Truant (angryjohnny) wrote in spindlesend, @ 2009-07-06 02:06:00 |
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Who: Johnny and Jeannie
What: Johnny feels like an ass.
When: Late night/early morning, Sunday/Monday
Where: Johnny's room, common room, then wherever.
Warnings: Language, violent imagery.
Even now, he wasn't sure why he'd written it. He hadn't left his room in days, it reeked of smoke and sweat and filth, but he was cowering in his bed, pressed against the wall, waiting yet again for the Echo just as he had waited for....how long had it been? He knew only that time had passed, long stretches and corridors of time, dark and cold and silent, too silent without the music of his Echo, and not even a distraction...the distraction, Tyler, and fuck he had meant to talk to him, to ask him about the book and about the stealing of it, but it had all happened so fast and then the Echo was no more and Tyler was away....escaped? And how could it be? But he had escaped and as far as Johnny knew he couldn't have been held in this place anyway, so what did it matter? And what had they expected? Tyler probably wasn't coming back, and really who could blame him?
He hadn't been sleeping, or he had but not with any true affect...the nightmares kept him from rest, the words that flew through his head had much the same effect, and when he awoke his throat was dry and raw with the screams. He stood before the shatterproof mirror, dark circles deeper, darker in the lamplight. It may have been the middle of the night, or the middle of the day, but the layers and layers of charcoal scribbles blocked the light and the shadows that it cast, thought the lamp only exacerbated all of it and in the end he was back at square one, and god damn those purple crescents below his eyes, god damn the hollow of his cheek and the way the nurses clucked about his weight. He was withering away to nothing again, limbs wiry and lean, stomach concave, every rib plainly seen, sometimes even through his shirt. When he coughed in the morning, it sometimes came up black, and the nurses talked of cutting him down to a pack a day but even emaciated, sickly, and tumbling down the steep edges of sanity, he could talk his way into just about anything.
And now...now he sat on his bed, and he wished that the comment about filth had been the ravings of a lunatic, but one look betrayed the truth. Johnny may have been a lunatic, but he knew filth when he saw it, and his room...
It had been fine until the night before. There were words whispered in his fingertips, itching in the veins beneath his skin, and he clawed at them but could not eradicate them nor their source, and he didn't remember ripping drawings off of the walls, didn't remember smashing his ashtray, too many cigarette butts flying through the room, the sticky cloud of ash the settled into his hair and eyelashes and everything that he owned. No, Johnny didn't recall the upturned mattress or the decimated desk, and he had no idea how the sooty red stain appeared on the mirror, nor how the lamp had broken but god damnit, he knew that this did nothing to build his case for sanity.
Not that he had been a particularly efficient builder, but he wasn't doing too well with walls these days regardless.
The note had been posted before he knew what he was doing, and enough begging and pleading had convinced an orderly to carry most of his replies. And of course it was Jeannie who replied first, of course she was concerned, and she wanted to help and wasn't that always their problem? She only wanted to grant his wishes, and he had no wishes that she could grant him. It was a conundrum. An impasse. And it was one that they would never overcome, and yet he was her master and using his final wish for something trite felt like a betrayal....an insult. He didn't want to insult Jeannie, didn't want to hurt her, but he knew that she must be tiring of his indecision. He would think of something soon...he had to, but right now she was replying to him and her words were wrapping around the synapses of his mind, causing them to misfire and he was left spouting nonsense and clutching at the strange words that wouldn't stop spinning in his head.
But it stopped, it all stopped, becuase she wanted to share and he knew in his moment how it would play out and that she would be destroyed and he tried to tell her but she never listened, and in the end he knew he was an ass and she wouldn't even let him say that he was sorry, and there he was, surrounded in filth and paper and drawings and everything else, all scars and tattoos and broken skin, ash clinging to the greasy strands of his hair and the tips of his eyelashes, and he trembled and sought the shower as though it would provide some absolution. And though the shower head opened with righteous indignation and made an attempt to swallow him whole, he was eventually clean and, though damp, fairly presentable. He had to make it up to her, had to try and find a wish but at least tonight he could apologize, at least tonight he could try to explain. He wasn't sure how far he could venture from his room, but he could try to find her...right?
He found jeans - ripped and faded but clean enough - and a plain black t-shirt. It was too warm for his usual long sleeves but he had checked, it was night, and Jeannie had seen his scars before. Hair still damp and hanging around his face (when did it get this long?), Johnny left his room, and in a fit of bravery, made his way all the way to the stairs, and it was all he could do to hold on because as he began his descent, the stairs began to crumble away, the bottom steps going first but no, fuck, it wasn't just the steps, it was the entire hospital and he heard someone shouting about a sink hole and he tried to grab onto the railing, tried to stop himself from hurtling down toward the quickly growing abyss but his hands were skidding down the rail, the skin of his palms peeling off and he was screaming and then he was falling and he wondered how far it would go, if he would be crushed or killed upon impact or left, trapped in that pit until he starved to death, and worse Jeannie would never know that he had been trying to get to her, in fact she must have already been dead, and he let out and anguished cry as he lost his grip, slippery with blood, and tumbled into the inky black...
But he wasn't tumbling at all, he was floating, quiet and soft like a feather, and it was warm and really quite comfortable, and he realized all at once that death would come soft and sweet as a spring breeze, and then his feet touched something solid and he realized that there had been no screams or pitch dark sink holes, that he had made it down the stairs and in fact in one piece...his hands weren't even bleeding. And he drew a shaking breath, willed one foot in front of the other, and walked on.
It wasn't long before he found her...a couch in the common room and he walked in, everything silvered and washed away in the moonlight but the circles beneath his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks were plain as day. "Jeannie?" he whispered, and he was stunned that his voice was such a sick rasp, that it lacked such substance. He kept walking, walked until he stood before her, and then he collapsed on the couch, back popping, scars turning to ethereal swirls of moonlight and shadow until the sight of them made him sick and he turned away and studied her face instead.
"I'm sorry. I'm terrible, I'm cruel, you should find a new master, Jeannie, really. I don't even know what to wish for, even now I don't know, and you don't want to share the world with me, not my world or your world or their world or any world, Jeannie, you don't want to share anything with me, even if you think you do, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I'll just..." he sighed, tried to pull out his cigarettes and realized that they were in his room. "I'll...you should forget me. Just forget me becuase you'll be better and....and you don't deserve....this madness. You don't deserve this hell."