Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back
Title: Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back
Author:
jendavis
Fandom/Pairing: The Fabulous Killjoys. Party Poison/Fun Ghoul
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: Written for
hc_bingo prompt "Arachnophobia."
Warnings: If you actually have a firm grasp of what's going on in the Killjoy's storyline, this may not jive at all. The details, as I know them, were pulled from 5 minutes on google and the videos for Na Na Na and Sing. Oh, and while I'm being all helpful and stuff, here's the boys. You know. Just so you can ogle them know who I'm talking about.
---
We're still alive, and we're coming for you. Just hang on and keep your mask close.
---
It's quiet, these days. Not just the wide space between the signal on the airwaves, but the street noise. You can hear someone coming for miles, out here.
But that's the thing. Anyone hears anything, they freeze silent and listen. Because everything's important, even if we don't know why. Hell. Maybe because of it.
Sometimes it's a shout. Sometimes it's a transmission. Sometimes it's the difference between breath and dust.
---
Dr. Deathdefying speaks when he can and says what he shouldn't. He's going to save us all.
We just have to get there. Follow the signals as they come and put them together, try to roadmap our way to wherever he is, warily dialing through the static, edging around Better Living towards, well. A better living. We hope.
Some days I'm not so sure, and I know Kid half-believes that Dr. Deathdefying is a BL Industries plant, but he makes too much sense, sometimes. He explained, once, out to the airwaves, how some of us had known what was coming. How some of us had once prepared ourselves for the inevitable, and wound up saving everything but ourselves. How maybe that might still be enough to save everyone.
---
Everyone's known about the EMP and the radiation for years, now. Radiation doesn't stop making you sick just because you forget it's there. But people forget anyway. They get lost on the edges of the gouge zones, they take shortcuts and don't come out the other side.
"Who were you, when it happened?" Is the worst joke anyone's ever lived. We've been trying to figure that out for nine years, now. And it's not the point, anyhow.
Right?
Because what the Doctor says fits.
Hell, did you know that before the Doctor starting creeping out of speakers, we used to think that it was some sort of psychological reaction? That the entire human race, no matter who or where they were, all managed to undergo something so horrible that their brains wiped out all traces of their pasts, just to survive?
We believed that. We really did. That was before we knew that some viruses could survive radiation, that some thrived on it. That BL/IND created us in their image.
---
I don't remember anything before that first blink, the water glass sweating in my hand and the unevenly opened blinds in the diner window. Nothing interesting, until I turned my head to see four strangers, seated at my table, all looking as if they were trying to remember something.
I didn't know who they were, not then, but this is how I know the Doctor tells enough truths to get killed by.
The one with the curly hair spoke first.
"Who are you?" It hadn't mattered, which of us he'd been talking to, we all tried to answer.
None of us could.
---
BL/IND can't control what they didn't create. They were meticulous, making sure to kill off only the parts of us they didn't like and couldn't use.
They hadn't expected you.
---
You weren't even born yet, but did you know that your first neuron fired the moment the shockwave passed invisibly through you? That your mother probably didn't even realize it until she looked at your father and had no idea who he was? I didn't know, not until Deathdefying's late transmission yesterday, when he heard about the dustup, that you were gone.
I never even thought about it, and you never talked about your mom.
---
We emptied our pockets, contents piling in between the plates and the napkins and the sticky rings on the table. Rounded triangles of plastic, three lighters, two packs of cigarettes, a handful of electronic devices that searched for signals, found none, and went dark. Keys. A rubber band and a handful of markers.
And each of us had a sealed envelope. Mine had "In Case You Forget" written across the back, and the letter inside didn't tell me much of anything. Apparently I hadn't thought it worth the trouble.
---
Hey there, Party Poison-
The world's changed, you're not who you'd like to remember being any more. If it's gotten to the point where you need to read this, than it's too late to worry about it. The ident bomb's already blown, and I'm writing this while waiting for the fallout. Literally. There's no good way to sum up everything you need, but I'm running low on time. Here's what you need to know.
Kobra Kid is your brother. Light hair, glasses, allergic to peanuts. Best at picking the signal from the noise. Jet Star is your friend. Dark frizzy hair, lost his eye fighting scarecrows, but won our allies the battle. Fun Ghoul is your lover. Dark hair and tattoos. Hopefully he'll remember how to build a bomb. Hopefully he'll love you back.
This is your family. There's nobody else in the world that you need, and you should watch who you trust. BL/IND has already gone this far, and they'll kill you if you let them. They're looking for you now. Don't go into Battery City.
Signed,
Someone you used to be.
PS. There's a doctor that's working on a cure, find him. His name is Montano.
PPS. The key marked with the black X opens your car- a white Trans-Am. Point it west and change the plates when you can.
PPPS. I really hope the bomb didn't wipe out your ability to read. Or drive. Or shoot a gun.
---
I never showed anyone else this note, not even Kid, and the closest I've come to seeing anyone else's is when Ghoul read me a line from his, once.
I guess we're in each other's pockets enough as it is. Stupid and vague as it is, it's literally the 245 words that've made me who I am. I don't even know if it's the framework or the core of me.
The paper's green and the folds are fuzzy, it's already worn itself into two.
I'll show it to you sometime. The others would too, if you asked, I'm sure.
Especially Jet. He could never deny you anything.
And we owe you everything.
---
We all know a lot of things without knowing how we know them, and for the most part, we work with it. Sometimes we forget that we've forgotten.
Kid asked me once if I remembered our parents. I ground my teeth and managed not to say that I didn't remember him.
---
Transmissions are dangerous because once they're made, they can't be controlled. Anyone can dial in, pick them up, and pick you off.
So I'm sending this one out like a prayer, and don't know if I'm hoping you can hear it, or hoping that you can't. I just want to beam this into your brain, have it appear like something you've always known and can't remember learning.
---
Me and Fun Ghoul. I think we might've always loved each other, we just kind of forgot. The bomb didn't stop it. Ain't like there's proof to the contrary, yet. Just. I wish I remember his name sometimes, you know? His real one, not the ones we think we gave ourselves because we knew the biggest identity theft in the history of the world was riding the wind and coming our way.
Even back then, there weren't vending machines in Zone 6. Too far out for resupply. They tried, for a while, but the scarecrows got scared. So while Ghoul and Kid were bent over an old charging pack, trying to get enough juice up to dial in the stray waves, Jet and me were setting the scorch on fire, cooking up our dog food dinners almost by accident.
"So," he said. "Our names. They really ours?"
"I think we chose them. Otherwise at least one of us would be named something like John or Mike or something."
"Why do you think we bothered? They want our bones for dust anyway."
"I don't know."
---
I still don't. Only troubling thing is that it might be better that way.
---
All of us have the same birthday, now, and if the calendars are right, it's been four years of this. It's the only anniversary any of us have that we don't just hazard. The rest of them we celebrate when we want to.
It's more honest that way.
Besides, I don't think the calendars are right, any more. Maybe Battery City and Zone 2 were always like that, but the old calendar we found in the garage on our last raid said that Christmas only came once a year, and when Jet looked it up in the book Show Pony scammed us, it didn't say anything about minimum gift value obligations or fines.
But yeah. A few years ago, in the middle of this bad long stretch of firefights, and Draculoid dustups, we ground to a halt and dug ourselves in, laying low 'cause Kid was sick and the burn on Jet's leg was making sitting in the car total death.
I was tired, worried, and Ghoul was agitated. None of us liked staying in one place, but he was fire mad for it. You've got to see. Yeah, we all wanted to figure out who we were, get our pasts back, but he was fervent. It all came to a head and we got into it, me and him. He shouted that I was giving up and in, and I know I'd decided he cared more about the ghosts of us than us. Both of us were tired of worrying, mostly.
Most of the time, it's fine, it's great but it creeps in around the edges and slinks sideways. Some days you know what you're feeling is real. Some days you don't.
What would happen if we got ourselves back, found that everything we thought we wanted, every feeling we had, was totally wrong? If we'd just jokingly written each other into each other's lives? What if we'd lied to ourselves, separately and alone?
What if Fun Ghoul had been counting on it?
When he grabbed the keys and decided that he'd head out and scout up ahead, I let him, if only because if I was convinced that if I followed him, I'd dust him myself.
At the time, I remember wondering if he was actually going to come back. Just kept watch on the roads and replayed every shitty word I could remember ever saying to him. I didn't sleep for two days.
Kid tried to drag me out of the spiral, when he wasn't vomiting. It didn't work.
---
Just passed some dust angels, no flag, heading east to where their pills are cheap, no time to tell them about the barricade on the Five-Seven border.
I'm pretty sure that's where they're looking for us, did you know? That's where the trail was supposed to end. That's where Dr. Deathdefying should be.
So I'm sure it's where he isn't.
He's a hell of a lot closer, I almost feel it.
---
I was telling you about the fight with Fun Ghoul.
Turns out he ran into one of the caravans aiming for Zone 3, northeast of Battery City, only I didn't know it, not right away.
I don't know how he managed to keep it hidden- moving fast means packing light- but three eggshell-stepping weeks later he led me out over the hill from where we were camped and gave me this wooden statue. It was a bust of a woman.
"Her name's Doris Day, according to the zonehoppers I got it from."
I was a little worried where I was going to keep it. It was ridiculous, and odds were he traded supplies we couldn't afford to be without in order to get it.
"Two cases of water," he confirmed. "We're going to make it lakeside inside three days, and we've got enough." I must've been staring at the thing like I just didn't understand it, so he went on, explained it to me. "The motobaby who made it said Doris was dead a long time before the ident bomb. This girl, she's young. Wouldn't have known who she was anyway, except for some picture her older sister found."
"Yeah?"
"She only traded me that one because everything else she'd carved were of people she knew, things she cared about. She didn't give a damn about Doris Day." He shook his head, like that wasn't where he meant to be going. I think he was waiting for me to jump in and argue with him. "All that. It's someone else's history, now, and we've got four years of our own. And. You and me, I don't know how many years we had before the bomb, or who we were before it, but it's you, now, that I want, okay?"
I guess what I'm saying is that, yeah, the world's fucked. Broken. But it ain't all bad.
Doris was the most beautiful wooden head I've ever seen. She broke over some Drac's head a week later when Kid ran out of ammo.
---
You would've been too young to remember, and even if you hadn't been, you would've forgotten. But Lin and Bob, you remember them, right? They came after, took care of you until they couldn't, and made us promise that we'd keep you safe, get you to the Doctor. They said you were important.
Remember that, okay Girl? At least until we get you out of there?
---
You know, once, you asked me about the spider on the car? Wanted to know all about it? Think I started spelling it when the Dracs came, so here's the rerun of the lowdown.
Here's the thing, it's one of those flukes Kid's always writing down, the ones he hands off to Show Pony and sends off into the noise, in case it means something.
Back when we were all running together because our self-addressed-stamped-identities told us we'd get along swimmingly, but before we'd been convinced, we spent most of our time slamming head down into brick walls, sure that if we hit them hard enough, our memories would shake loose.
We tried everything. Became roadside hypnotherapists and stole every book on the brain we could find. Traded them for others when we were done, 'cause we weren't the only ones having these brilliantly failing ideas, all the zonehoppers were in on it. Word association, studying the sign of each dried out store and diner we passed, trying to pinpoint how they made us feel. It was exhausting.
It also never worked.
But for some reason, there was this one thing.
Fun Ghoul is terrified of spiders. Probably always was. And I've never been able to figure out how I know that, or why I knew that.
Because he didn't even know, apparently, until I mentioned it. We'd found a garage and I was in the office, looking through manuals and trying to figure the moves on changing a brake-pad, when Jet came in from outside, shaking his head.
"Don't think they were tarantulas, or anything, but there were three big furry monster fucking spiders crawling around in the trunk," he told me. "Got two of them flushed out, but think one of them went into Fun Ghoul's bag."
I wiped my hands on my jeans. The office was hotter than hell and the words melting off the page, and I really wasn't thinking about anything besides getting the hell out of there. Maybe the wind had picked up, outside. Blotting my face on my shirt sleeve, I said, "I've got it. He hates spiders."
"Huh?" Looking towards the door again, Ghoul was suddenly standing there, too, leaning around the doorway. "How'd you know that?"
"It's true, isn't it?"
Ghoul shrugged, hand going up to wrap over the tattoo on his neck like it helped him think. "Yeah, but…"
"So. I got it."
"Aces," he said. But how'd you know? Who told you?" he glanced sidelong at Jet. "Totally not a big deal, but…"
I couldn't remember how I knew. It wasn't not a big deal. It was this one stupid detail, this useless, tiny fucking thing, and honestly, I hate that I ever hit on it, because if something so dumb could shake itself loose, maybe there was a chance for something useful to come through.
But. You know how I was telling you before about how we'd just been hanging together because we'd told ourselves to? After I flung the spider onto the gravel on the side of the road, Ghoul looked at me with this grin on his face, like I'd just saved the world, and. Yeah. I was done in, then and there. The rest is kind of anticlimactic.
Two sunspins later, when he and Kid came over, notebook in one hand and a bucket of paint in the other, and said they wanted to paint a giant spider on the hood of my car, but they'd let me design it. I couldn't really refuse them, even though I had no idea if I could draw.
"Fuck it, man. Spiders are creepy." Ghoul explained, that smile coming out bright enough to have Kid suddenly staring at the gas pumps out front. "Giant spiders are terrifying."
It turns out I did okay, and the fact that Kid and Ghoul had known that I would had me hyped, hoping and seasick, up until Kid shrugged, frowned, and patted his pocket.
"It was in my note," he told me. "That you liked to draw. That's all."
Ain't like he meant anything by it, but I was blasted over onto evil for a tick there, and if it hadn't been for Fun Ghoul coming over and grabbing-
Never mind. But the wind was blowing hot then, too, sharper sand then you get out in Zone Four, and we couldn't leave or masks off for long, but.
See. I'm no Doctor, I don't have the answers or solutions for a better living, no chicken soup pills, but when you're older, sometime, make sure you get the chance to kiss someone when your mask's off, 'cause the next sandstorm's always only two minutes out.
---
Hang in there, Girl. The 1138th Street Tunnel's just up ahead and we're crashing in hot.
See you in a little while.
---
Author:
jendavis
Fandom/Pairing: The Fabulous Killjoys. Party Poison/Fun Ghoul
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, don't take this too seriously.
Summary: Written for
hc_bingo prompt "Arachnophobia."
Warnings: If you actually have a firm grasp of what's going on in the Killjoy's storyline, this may not jive at all. The details, as I know them, were pulled from 5 minutes on google and the videos for Na Na Na and Sing. Oh, and while I'm being all helpful and stuff, here's the boys. You know. Just so you can ogle them know who I'm talking about.
---
We're still alive, and we're coming for you. Just hang on and keep your mask close.
---
It's quiet, these days. Not just the wide space between the signal on the airwaves, but the street noise. You can hear someone coming for miles, out here.
But that's the thing. Anyone hears anything, they freeze silent and listen. Because everything's important, even if we don't know why. Hell. Maybe because of it.
Sometimes it's a shout. Sometimes it's a transmission. Sometimes it's the difference between breath and dust.
---
Dr. Deathdefying speaks when he can and says what he shouldn't. He's going to save us all.
We just have to get there. Follow the signals as they come and put them together, try to roadmap our way to wherever he is, warily dialing through the static, edging around Better Living towards, well. A better living. We hope.
Some days I'm not so sure, and I know Kid half-believes that Dr. Deathdefying is a BL Industries plant, but he makes too much sense, sometimes. He explained, once, out to the airwaves, how some of us had known what was coming. How some of us had once prepared ourselves for the inevitable, and wound up saving everything but ourselves. How maybe that might still be enough to save everyone.
---
Everyone's known about the EMP and the radiation for years, now. Radiation doesn't stop making you sick just because you forget it's there. But people forget anyway. They get lost on the edges of the gouge zones, they take shortcuts and don't come out the other side.
"Who were you, when it happened?" Is the worst joke anyone's ever lived. We've been trying to figure that out for nine years, now. And it's not the point, anyhow.
Right?
Because what the Doctor says fits.
Hell, did you know that before the Doctor starting creeping out of speakers, we used to think that it was some sort of psychological reaction? That the entire human race, no matter who or where they were, all managed to undergo something so horrible that their brains wiped out all traces of their pasts, just to survive?
We believed that. We really did. That was before we knew that some viruses could survive radiation, that some thrived on it. That BL/IND created us in their image.
---
I don't remember anything before that first blink, the water glass sweating in my hand and the unevenly opened blinds in the diner window. Nothing interesting, until I turned my head to see four strangers, seated at my table, all looking as if they were trying to remember something.
I didn't know who they were, not then, but this is how I know the Doctor tells enough truths to get killed by.
The one with the curly hair spoke first.
"Who are you?" It hadn't mattered, which of us he'd been talking to, we all tried to answer.
None of us could.
---
BL/IND can't control what they didn't create. They were meticulous, making sure to kill off only the parts of us they didn't like and couldn't use.
They hadn't expected you.
---
You weren't even born yet, but did you know that your first neuron fired the moment the shockwave passed invisibly through you? That your mother probably didn't even realize it until she looked at your father and had no idea who he was? I didn't know, not until Deathdefying's late transmission yesterday, when he heard about the dustup, that you were gone.
I never even thought about it, and you never talked about your mom.
---
We emptied our pockets, contents piling in between the plates and the napkins and the sticky rings on the table. Rounded triangles of plastic, three lighters, two packs of cigarettes, a handful of electronic devices that searched for signals, found none, and went dark. Keys. A rubber band and a handful of markers.
And each of us had a sealed envelope. Mine had "In Case You Forget" written across the back, and the letter inside didn't tell me much of anything. Apparently I hadn't thought it worth the trouble.
---
Hey there, Party Poison-
The world's changed, you're not who you'd like to remember being any more. If it's gotten to the point where you need to read this, than it's too late to worry about it. The ident bomb's already blown, and I'm writing this while waiting for the fallout. Literally. There's no good way to sum up everything you need, but I'm running low on time. Here's what you need to know.
Kobra Kid is your brother. Light hair, glasses, allergic to peanuts. Best at picking the signal from the noise. Jet Star is your friend. Dark frizzy hair, lost his eye fighting scarecrows, but won our allies the battle. Fun Ghoul is your lover. Dark hair and tattoos. Hopefully he'll remember how to build a bomb. Hopefully he'll love you back.
This is your family. There's nobody else in the world that you need, and you should watch who you trust. BL/IND has already gone this far, and they'll kill you if you let them. They're looking for you now. Don't go into Battery City.
Signed,
Someone you used to be.
PS. There's a doctor that's working on a cure, find him. His name is Montano.
PPS. The key marked with the black X opens your car- a white Trans-Am. Point it west and change the plates when you can.
PPPS. I really hope the bomb didn't wipe out your ability to read. Or drive. Or shoot a gun.
---
I never showed anyone else this note, not even Kid, and the closest I've come to seeing anyone else's is when Ghoul read me a line from his, once.
I guess we're in each other's pockets enough as it is. Stupid and vague as it is, it's literally the 245 words that've made me who I am. I don't even know if it's the framework or the core of me.
The paper's green and the folds are fuzzy, it's already worn itself into two.
I'll show it to you sometime. The others would too, if you asked, I'm sure.
Especially Jet. He could never deny you anything.
And we owe you everything.
---
We all know a lot of things without knowing how we know them, and for the most part, we work with it. Sometimes we forget that we've forgotten.
Kid asked me once if I remembered our parents. I ground my teeth and managed not to say that I didn't remember him.
---
Transmissions are dangerous because once they're made, they can't be controlled. Anyone can dial in, pick them up, and pick you off.
So I'm sending this one out like a prayer, and don't know if I'm hoping you can hear it, or hoping that you can't. I just want to beam this into your brain, have it appear like something you've always known and can't remember learning.
---
Me and Fun Ghoul. I think we might've always loved each other, we just kind of forgot. The bomb didn't stop it. Ain't like there's proof to the contrary, yet. Just. I wish I remember his name sometimes, you know? His real one, not the ones we think we gave ourselves because we knew the biggest identity theft in the history of the world was riding the wind and coming our way.
Even back then, there weren't vending machines in Zone 6. Too far out for resupply. They tried, for a while, but the scarecrows got scared. So while Ghoul and Kid were bent over an old charging pack, trying to get enough juice up to dial in the stray waves, Jet and me were setting the scorch on fire, cooking up our dog food dinners almost by accident.
"So," he said. "Our names. They really ours?"
"I think we chose them. Otherwise at least one of us would be named something like John or Mike or something."
"Why do you think we bothered? They want our bones for dust anyway."
"I don't know."
---
I still don't. Only troubling thing is that it might be better that way.
---
All of us have the same birthday, now, and if the calendars are right, it's been four years of this. It's the only anniversary any of us have that we don't just hazard. The rest of them we celebrate when we want to.
It's more honest that way.
Besides, I don't think the calendars are right, any more. Maybe Battery City and Zone 2 were always like that, but the old calendar we found in the garage on our last raid said that Christmas only came once a year, and when Jet looked it up in the book Show Pony scammed us, it didn't say anything about minimum gift value obligations or fines.
But yeah. A few years ago, in the middle of this bad long stretch of firefights, and Draculoid dustups, we ground to a halt and dug ourselves in, laying low 'cause Kid was sick and the burn on Jet's leg was making sitting in the car total death.
I was tired, worried, and Ghoul was agitated. None of us liked staying in one place, but he was fire mad for it. You've got to see. Yeah, we all wanted to figure out who we were, get our pasts back, but he was fervent. It all came to a head and we got into it, me and him. He shouted that I was giving up and in, and I know I'd decided he cared more about the ghosts of us than us. Both of us were tired of worrying, mostly.
Most of the time, it's fine, it's great but it creeps in around the edges and slinks sideways. Some days you know what you're feeling is real. Some days you don't.
What would happen if we got ourselves back, found that everything we thought we wanted, every feeling we had, was totally wrong? If we'd just jokingly written each other into each other's lives? What if we'd lied to ourselves, separately and alone?
What if Fun Ghoul had been counting on it?
When he grabbed the keys and decided that he'd head out and scout up ahead, I let him, if only because if I was convinced that if I followed him, I'd dust him myself.
At the time, I remember wondering if he was actually going to come back. Just kept watch on the roads and replayed every shitty word I could remember ever saying to him. I didn't sleep for two days.
Kid tried to drag me out of the spiral, when he wasn't vomiting. It didn't work.
---
Just passed some dust angels, no flag, heading east to where their pills are cheap, no time to tell them about the barricade on the Five-Seven border.
I'm pretty sure that's where they're looking for us, did you know? That's where the trail was supposed to end. That's where Dr. Deathdefying should be.
So I'm sure it's where he isn't.
He's a hell of a lot closer, I almost feel it.
---
I was telling you about the fight with Fun Ghoul.
Turns out he ran into one of the caravans aiming for Zone 3, northeast of Battery City, only I didn't know it, not right away.
I don't know how he managed to keep it hidden- moving fast means packing light- but three eggshell-stepping weeks later he led me out over the hill from where we were camped and gave me this wooden statue. It was a bust of a woman.
"Her name's Doris Day, according to the zonehoppers I got it from."
I was a little worried where I was going to keep it. It was ridiculous, and odds were he traded supplies we couldn't afford to be without in order to get it.
"Two cases of water," he confirmed. "We're going to make it lakeside inside three days, and we've got enough." I must've been staring at the thing like I just didn't understand it, so he went on, explained it to me. "The motobaby who made it said Doris was dead a long time before the ident bomb. This girl, she's young. Wouldn't have known who she was anyway, except for some picture her older sister found."
"Yeah?"
"She only traded me that one because everything else she'd carved were of people she knew, things she cared about. She didn't give a damn about Doris Day." He shook his head, like that wasn't where he meant to be going. I think he was waiting for me to jump in and argue with him. "All that. It's someone else's history, now, and we've got four years of our own. And. You and me, I don't know how many years we had before the bomb, or who we were before it, but it's you, now, that I want, okay?"
I guess what I'm saying is that, yeah, the world's fucked. Broken. But it ain't all bad.
Doris was the most beautiful wooden head I've ever seen. She broke over some Drac's head a week later when Kid ran out of ammo.
---
You would've been too young to remember, and even if you hadn't been, you would've forgotten. But Lin and Bob, you remember them, right? They came after, took care of you until they couldn't, and made us promise that we'd keep you safe, get you to the Doctor. They said you were important.
Remember that, okay Girl? At least until we get you out of there?
---
You know, once, you asked me about the spider on the car? Wanted to know all about it? Think I started spelling it when the Dracs came, so here's the rerun of the lowdown.
Here's the thing, it's one of those flukes Kid's always writing down, the ones he hands off to Show Pony and sends off into the noise, in case it means something.
Back when we were all running together because our self-addressed-stamped-identities told us we'd get along swimmingly, but before we'd been convinced, we spent most of our time slamming head down into brick walls, sure that if we hit them hard enough, our memories would shake loose.
We tried everything. Became roadside hypnotherapists and stole every book on the brain we could find. Traded them for others when we were done, 'cause we weren't the only ones having these brilliantly failing ideas, all the zonehoppers were in on it. Word association, studying the sign of each dried out store and diner we passed, trying to pinpoint how they made us feel. It was exhausting.
It also never worked.
But for some reason, there was this one thing.
Fun Ghoul is terrified of spiders. Probably always was. And I've never been able to figure out how I know that, or why I knew that.
Because he didn't even know, apparently, until I mentioned it. We'd found a garage and I was in the office, looking through manuals and trying to figure the moves on changing a brake-pad, when Jet came in from outside, shaking his head.
"Don't think they were tarantulas, or anything, but there were three big furry monster fucking spiders crawling around in the trunk," he told me. "Got two of them flushed out, but think one of them went into Fun Ghoul's bag."
I wiped my hands on my jeans. The office was hotter than hell and the words melting off the page, and I really wasn't thinking about anything besides getting the hell out of there. Maybe the wind had picked up, outside. Blotting my face on my shirt sleeve, I said, "I've got it. He hates spiders."
"Huh?" Looking towards the door again, Ghoul was suddenly standing there, too, leaning around the doorway. "How'd you know that?"
"It's true, isn't it?"
Ghoul shrugged, hand going up to wrap over the tattoo on his neck like it helped him think. "Yeah, but…"
"So. I got it."
"Aces," he said. But how'd you know? Who told you?" he glanced sidelong at Jet. "Totally not a big deal, but…"
I couldn't remember how I knew. It wasn't not a big deal. It was this one stupid detail, this useless, tiny fucking thing, and honestly, I hate that I ever hit on it, because if something so dumb could shake itself loose, maybe there was a chance for something useful to come through.
But. You know how I was telling you before about how we'd just been hanging together because we'd told ourselves to? After I flung the spider onto the gravel on the side of the road, Ghoul looked at me with this grin on his face, like I'd just saved the world, and. Yeah. I was done in, then and there. The rest is kind of anticlimactic.
Two sunspins later, when he and Kid came over, notebook in one hand and a bucket of paint in the other, and said they wanted to paint a giant spider on the hood of my car, but they'd let me design it. I couldn't really refuse them, even though I had no idea if I could draw.
"Fuck it, man. Spiders are creepy." Ghoul explained, that smile coming out bright enough to have Kid suddenly staring at the gas pumps out front. "Giant spiders are terrifying."
It turns out I did okay, and the fact that Kid and Ghoul had known that I would had me hyped, hoping and seasick, up until Kid shrugged, frowned, and patted his pocket.
"It was in my note," he told me. "That you liked to draw. That's all."
Ain't like he meant anything by it, but I was blasted over onto evil for a tick there, and if it hadn't been for Fun Ghoul coming over and grabbing-
Never mind. But the wind was blowing hot then, too, sharper sand then you get out in Zone Four, and we couldn't leave or masks off for long, but.
See. I'm no Doctor, I don't have the answers or solutions for a better living, no chicken soup pills, but when you're older, sometime, make sure you get the chance to kiss someone when your mask's off, 'cause the next sandstorm's always only two minutes out.
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Hang in there, Girl. The 1138th Street Tunnel's just up ahead and we're crashing in hot.
See you in a little while.
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