Author's notes:

This is a crossover fanfic concerning Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and the Vision of Escaflowne. It is going to be a dark, twisting ride. It is not always going to make sense. I did not write this with the intention of it doing so. This fic takes place after the ending of the JTHM Director's Cut graphic novel and at some yet undetermined point during the Escaflowne storyline, but for both works there will be unavoidable spoilers.

Warnings: This fanfic contains violence, gore, offensive language, possible sexual content (definitely heavily implied). It is a yaoi fanfic, which means concerning romantic relationships between males. There are also flesh-eating penguins. I will indicate chapters containing explicit sexual content (if there ever are any) so that one can read the fic without reading the smut if one wants to do so. The violence and the language are going to be in every chapter. Talk to Nny about his language if you want to.

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is copyrighted and the brainchild of the brilliant Jhonen Vasquez. The Vision of Escaflowne is copyrighted and conjured by the brilliant Studio Sunrise. I did not create either show or their characters, nor do I claim any of them. None of them want to be claimed anyway. Except maybe Squee. He just needs a hug sometimes.

The naming of the chapters was taken from the method that Nine Inch Nails labels CDs. The title of the fanfic was also taken from a Nine Inch Nails song by the same name. The lyrics to "The Wretched" by NIN form the preface. I did not create them.

Welcome to the late night double feature picture show. Let's go up to the lab and see what's on the slab.

------

Just a reflection

Just a glimpse

Just a little reminder

Of all the what abouts

And all the might have

Could have beens

Another day

Some other way

But not another reason to continue

And now you're one of us

The wretched

The hopes and prays

The better days

The far aways

Forget it

It didn't turn out the way you wanted it to

It didn't turn out the way you wanted it, did it?

It didn't turn out the way you wanted it to

It didn't turn out the way you wanted it, did it?

Now you know

This is what it feels like

Now you know

This is what it feels like

The clouds will part and the sky cracks open

And god himself will reach his fucking arm

Through

Just to push you down

Just to hold you down

Stuck in this hole with the shit and the piss

And it's hard to believe it could come down to this

Back at the beginning

Sinking

Spinning

And in the end

We still pretend

The time we spend

Not knowing when

You're finally free

And you could be

But it didn't turn out the way you wanted it do

It didn't turn out quite the way that you wanted it

Now you know

This is what it feels like

Now you know

This is what it feels like

You can try to stop it but it keeps on coming

You can try to stop it but…

--"The Wretched", Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile

------------------------------------------------------------------

Halo 01: The Return of Nailbunny

Dear Die-ary,

The passions that drive us should be the ones we respect and admire. To feel contempt for one's motivations is a vulgar thing.

Too often, it seems, I've succumbed to less than admirable compulsions driven by this furiously reprehensible machine of mine.

So many things inside that I can do without--desires and urges and whatnot. So extraneous.

By the time I write in this book again, I hope to be as cold as the moon that lights this page.

---------

Johnny set his Die-ary beside him on the hood of his dilapidated car and allowed his hands to dangle loosely between his legs, shoulders slack, feet resting on top of the bumper. The car was still warm to the touch, radiating dark heat from the rusted engine, from having sputtered and grinded all the way up the mountain path--tailpipe rattling and everything, a stereotypical picture that sent Nny into fits of soliloquy about image and archetype when he was in more manic moods--to a small lookout point with a very evident "NO PARKING" sign. It was Johnny's defiant side, and he was well aware of it. At the moment, he didn't care.

His life had reached an all-time high level of aimlessness.

There was a view of the city below the outcrop, a map of lines and square masses made of pinpricks of gold, red, and blue lights, some pulsating, red lights in lines on the far mountain--the radio towers--grids of moving lines that were cars, people going places. Doing things.

There was one time when Johnny had called it a "beautiful illusion", the very same view, different people in different positions down below, of course; he was aware that people were doing other things at this very moment. The same people he had looked down upon that time had gone on with their lives, the same people, but in different locations.

"They are going somewhere and I am not. Oh, yes, I am going somewhere, but most of them have a vague idea of what exactly their 'somewhere' is, or at least they are under that delusion. Little ants running in loops and lines, around corners and back to start, back and forth in their incessant little lives. It sickens me."

It reminded him of what Devi had said that time: "It's so pretty when you're looking down on it." Away and detached from all of the filth and the slime, just seeing the beautiful lights, pinnacles of human ingenuity. Seeing only what would be the result if humans worked only with efficiency and without all of the junk clogging their minds. Emotions. Urges.

The lights where cold and beautiful. Efficient.

Johnny propped his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on folded hands. Another hell of a long night with nothing to distract him but his own mind, churning and churning and churning and churning…

Once again, Johnny wanted to shut himself down and clear out his head. The broken thoughts and corrupted delusions, self-loathing and spiraling down, down, down…

"Fuck. Here it goes again. Once again going over the garden of broken delusion in my head, reaping what I sew in the most painful way possible. But unlike those damned farmers that made up that saying I reap again and again. The plants keep growing back and becoming more virulent with every turn of season. Seasons last a short time in my head." He looked up. "I wonder if that is relativity."

A second voice responded next to Johnny's ear: "I believe that theory was originally created for the nucleus of an atom."

Johnny sat up straight. "N-Nailbunny! You're back?!"

"Yes, well, you're beginning to show some signs of semi-logical thought as of late." The severed bunny head floating next to Johnny's own head looked grim, but then again, his expression never changed. He was logic itself.

Johnny crossed his legs and gripped his ankles. He watched Nailbunny out of the corners of his eyes. "Well, you took your sweet time in coming back. Christ! I've been dealing with shit from the Doughboys and Reverend MEAT and there's been no logical end to my internal conversations to balance me out. I need that logic."

"You don't need to tell me that. And I did aid you at one point, if you do recall."

"Oh yeah…"

Johnny sighed. At least his rambling thoughts could have some form of a response now. It was an internal response, technically, but more and more it seemed that Nailbunny, like Mr. Eff and Psychodoughboy, were becoming self-aware. This was not a good thing.

"Are you splitting from me, Bunny?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Are you becoming just another one of my delusions, some inner demon that plagues me and takes on its own awareness to torment me?"

"Are you asking if I am becoming a separate entity with my own mind?"

"Basically, yeah. But that entails a hell of a lot more shit than you would think. You're my logic, Nailbunny. If you separate from me, I'll have none of that left and only my paranoid delusions to plague me and make up my perception of 'reality' will remain."

"Well, let's look at it this way, Johnny. If I am one of your delusions, I only exist within your mind, within your plane of 'reality'. I would be entirely a product of your own mind, even if you perceive me as an external force. Hence, you would create me. You might not be conscious of it, but my voice would be your voice. Your logical side arguing with yourself."

"I know that. And that is why I am asking if you are a separate entity. Some supernatural floating bunny head that happens to be the head of a rabbit I nailed to my wall."

"Well, if I answer that I am, in fact, separate from you, it may be your own delusion answering. So you would believe that I was a separate entity when, in fact, I am still your own delusion that you fabricate to be a separate, external entity."

"Hmmm."

Johnny looked down at the city. Peripheral vision was starting to hurt his eyes.

"But didn't you leave me before?"

"Once again, it may have been a product of your own delusion. You believed that I left you."

"Right…You know, I've always liked your voice. It's really raspy. Sort of like wind or Darth Vader or something."

Nailbunny's expression did not change, but one could tell that he was taken off guard.

"Darth Vader?"

"Well, not nearly as deep but with that whole rasping breathing thing."

"Yes, I know. I have seen Star Wars with you no less than 57 times."

"You counted?"

"I am logic, am I not? Is not logistics the entailment of concrete operations of a practical nature?"

"You've been at my Jungian psychology books again."

"They're fascinating. And I try to find any sort of feasible answer as to why you are the way you are. You fit the definition of multiple personality disorders and degrees of insanity, but there is no one clean way to pinpoint what makes you tick. You did not have a particularly traumatic childhood, and you do deal with the harassment and general rejection of society but there are multiple individuals who have faced that very same situation and still remain relatively sane. For example, most of them do not go on killing rampages."

"But that's the fuck of it, isn't it, Nailbunny? I can't discern the ones that have hurt me from the decent individuals in society. I have blurry aim. I have reached the point where I hate all of humanity. I desperately search for somebody that would make me happy, somebody that does not send me into fits of projectile vomiting at the sight of them, but I believe that not such a person exists anymore."

"You did at one time. And you almost killed her. That was your fault."

Johnny glared sideways at Nailbunny. "I was SCARED, all right?! You're damn aware of it. There is always a lovely first impression, an illusion, some little saying or common interest that makes you think that you have something in common or that you connect in someway, but disappointment always ensues! The person is NEVER who you thought in the first place. Never! And then you realize even more vividly that you are in fact alone in the world, an island, without a fellow soul that sees things as you do! Somebody that violates your core values in the most sickening ways! Never expect anything but nasty irritation from anybody you didn't create."

"No person is completely understood in this world. There are parts of all of us that nobody will understand or see clearly. And if you create people, do they not take on your values in your desperation to have a friend or a soulmate that is perfect for you? That will not make you hurt or bleed?"

Johnny looked down at his hands, still clenching his ankles. "…yeah. You're right, of course. But isn't that what makes fiction so appealing? That you can interject your own core values into characters to make them your best friends or soulmates? Even if you're different in surface things, even if your souls disagree, they are still your perfect friends?"

"And what about the characters you do not do that to? The ones you leave be and assume would irritate you?"

"They seem so much less irritating behind the fabric of fiction. As if they are more 'real' and 'human' and likable than they would be in real life. The fabric is a safety shield."

"And if you are so delusional that you believe that your current concrete reality is an illusion why do you not treat it with as much favor as you do fiction?"

"…harsh."

"True."

Johnny sighed. "My head fucking hurts."

"Maybe you need an aspirin. Do you have a fever?"

"No. It's this normal tension headache shit. My head gets full of thoughts churning and churning and churning…"

"More analogy of the broken machine ahead?"

"You know damn well it's true. And I've been thinking…"

"This is concerning."

"Shut up. It feels much better to get it off my chest. If all humans are machines, and the machines themselves are corrupt, does being what is technically a 'broken' machine make me the only sane one? The only good one? It seems that the only people to which I have remotely related are on psychological medications or are suicidal or have serious personality disorder problems. They seem like the only sane ones."

"Well, somebody to which you would relate would be insane because you are insane."

"….so, there's no way of knowing if we're all the best form of the machine that the other 'normal' machines try to alter into what they believe is a perfect, balanced machine. It's all percentages and statistics."

Nailbunny sighed. This was going to be a long night. Maybe he could get Johnny off brooding and to go do something…

"Sure. It makes sense. But do remember that most of those people are unhappy, Johnny…"

"Ignorance is bliss! To be aware of one's ignorance is more painful than knowing the TRUTH! The only blissful ones are the ones that believe that the enlightened are insane and that they are the ones knowing all!"

"Well, if what you call 'enlightenment' is horribly paranoid delusions then I am sorry to say that most people are not enlightened, Johnny. And there is something I have been wanting to talk to you about."

"This is concerning."

"It should be. Have you ever noticed that you have the tendency to think that all events occurring around you are, indirectly or not, a result of your presence? That you have some astral power that draws events into place?"

"Well, yeah." Johnny narrowed his eyes. "I'm a waste lock."

"According to whom, Johnny? Another illusionary person?"

"No, Senor Satan. And the theory makes a hell of a lot of sense. All my life I've put up with nothing but shit from people. It's as if I draw unfortunate events into place and to me, and wherever I go they follow. I am fated to bear misfortune."

"You've just had a bad run for it, and you are looking for an excuse to make yourself feel more tragic and interesting--give yourself some validation for all of the horrible things you do to other people."

Johnny glowered.

"And whatever happened to living without emotions or delusions?" Nailbunny continued. "To become as cold as the moon? That would be a lovely change of pace for on--"

Johnny seized the floating decapitated bunny head and violently twisted both hands in opposite directions. The head wrenched in half, the brain half squeezed out through Nailbunny's ears by the force of Johnny's grip. Had there been eyes, they would be artfully popping out as well.

Nailbunny went silent.

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!!" Johnny clenched the head by the ears, roaring into its face. The lower half of the head dangled pitifully, held to its top half by only a few strands of tissue. He shook the head. The bottom half swayed dangerously. A few strands snapped. "I CAN'T! I'VE TRIED EVERYTHING, AND NO MATTER WHAT I DO, IT WON'T STOP! I JUST KEEP THINKING AND THINKING AND PROGRAMMING AND PROGRAMMING, CLUTTERING MY HEAD WITH JUNK! FILTH! THERE IS NO WAY TO ESCAPE MYSELF! THAT WOULD BE WHAT IT WOULD TAKE TO STOP THIS SHIT. I AM CORRUPT, DO YOU HEAR ME?! JOHNNY IS CORRUPT! I DID NOT ASK TO BE BORN A FEELING CREATURE, BUT I WAS!"

Johnny chucked the head over the mountain ledge. The head ripped into two halves in midair with the centripetal force and flew off in opposite directions. There was a soft rustle of something hitting leaves.

Johnny watched the head fall, panting, crouched in an aggressive, defensive position. His eyes were wide.

He was scared.

"Christ's sake, he's part of ME, isn't he? Then why the fuck am I so bothered by HIM?"

Johnny slowed his breathing and straightened out his spine. He ran his fingers through his hair. There were still two long, evident antennae of hair that made him look even more like a skinny insect than before, but there was the bristle of regrowing hair across his scalp. The trip to hell had done little for his hairstyle.

"I killed my own voice of reason because he answered what I feared was true about my own delusionary worldview—addressed the fear that I am in fact a pathetic person of no substance looking for some excuse for my antisocial behavior. The same way that people quell their own voices of reason out of guilt. Shit."

There was no voice to answer him back. Johnny sighed. Nailbunny had survived being nailed to the wall and having his head ripped off; he should be back. After all, he was supernatural, was he not? Johnny only hoped that Nailbunny would not abandon him out of contempt. Then again, if Nailbunny was a part of Johnny…

Johnny sighed. He needed a brainfreezy.

Johnny got in the car, pushed the key into the ignition and turned the car on. The engine stalled.

"Oh, don't EVEN start this now, you piece of shit! Come ON!"

Johnny turned the key. The car sputtered. Black smoke poured out of the tailpipe.

"WORK, DAMN YOU!!" Johnny kicked the undercarriage of the engine and turned the key again. "COME ON!"

The engine sputtered, jerked, and settled into a vibrating hum. The digital display in the front control panel of the car read '3:02 AM' in glowing, electric blue light. It was the most luminous thing in the dark car.

"Good."

Johnny put the car in reverse, looked over his shoulder at the adjoining road, saw that he was clear, and backed around onto the mountain highway. He put the car in gear and started driving forward. It was on the downhill incline, much easier on the poor car than the uphill trek.

"Now…the question is, where do I go? I just need to get the hell out of this town. Anywhere but here. I am not under delusion that anyplace else will be any better, but…"

Johnny swerved around a wide corner. His few possessions that he had packed cardboard boxes slammed into the opposite side of the trunk. There was a concerning crash.

"Shit. Damned centripetal force again. I knew I shouldn't have packed the Christmas decorations and the torture instruments in the same box. Next time I'm using bubble wrap. Popping the bubbles is therapeutic anyway."

Johnny looked at his gas meter. He was almost empty.

"Perfect." He thought for a moment. "I guess I can afford one more visit to the 24-7 in my neighborhood for old times' sake. They'd better have the damned machines on this time… Let's have some music."

Johnny turned on the radio. Loud, static-shot rock music started blasting out of the old speakers.

"OOH! Implement! I love this song!"

The car swerved around and down the mountain into the city, one rattling, speeding blur of offensive, loud music and noise, the only moving thing on the mountain. Johnny left the evergreen area and barreled down the residential streets. The mountain was close to his old neighborhood, so it did not take long to pull in to a parking space at the old 24-7 where he had once killed a clerk on another late-night brainfreezy craving attack.

"Here in this hopeless fucking hole we call LA
The only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
Any fucking time. Any fucking day.
Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay…"

"Ooh… Arizona. Maybe I should go to Arizona. But there are so many people from Southern California anyway. I might as well not leave."

Johnny stopped the rattling car and pulled the key out of the ignition. The music stopped in the middle of a stanza. Johnny got out, slammed the door, and ran into the building. A tone responded above his head as he opened the door.

The clerk was asleep at the front counter, a book open next to her, resting on its pages' faces. Johnny ran past her to the brainfreezy machine. Mercifully, it was on this evening. The girl must have forgotten to turn the machine off. Her forgetfulness saved her life.

Johnny set his prize down on the counter. The light from the overhead fluorescent fixtures refracted oddly off of the clear, domed top of the flimsy paper cup. He could see that the book was entitled Demon Diary and was illustrated in that odd Japanese manga style. He had never really gotten into it himself.

"Um…excuse me?"

The clerk remained asleep. Johnny poked her. "You alive?"

The clerk looked up groggily, blinked, rubbed her eyes, sat up, stretched. She looked at the overflowing cup on the counter.

"One extra super size cherry doom brainfreezy? Is this all?"

"Yeah." Johnny did not make eye contact, focusing on her collar. Her nametag read 'Kaity'. There was also a square button on her collar that depicted a manga-styled character pushing his glasses up his nose, smirking.

"Two ninety-nine." Johnny fished in his pockets and pulled out a wad of two bills and change. He counted out the coins and slid them across the counter.

"Thanks!" Johnny ran out the door. The tone sounded again.

Johnny got back in the car and started the engine, which mercifully idled with the first attempt. The radio started blasting in the middle of a Linkin Plaza song. Things were looking up.

Whistling, Johnny looked over his shoulder, pulled out of the parking lot, and sped off down the street. He took a sip from his brainfreezy with one hand. He was entering his old neighborhood.

"Aah, nostalgia value, even though I was just here two hours ago."

Johnny looked at the clock. It now read '3:35 AM', now definitely the most luminous thing inside the car. The moon had set, and all of the lights were off in the surrounding houses. His neighborhood had been peaceful, quiet, and law-abiding, not beautiful by any means or shiny and happy, but at least quiet at 3:35 AM so long as Johnny was not around to raise hell.

Johnny stopped in front of his old house and turned off the car. It was silent, dark, like the rest of the neighborhood, foreboding, and still a wreck.

"Why the hell am I here? I don't think I forgot anything."

Johnny looked next door at Squee's house. He had had a final goodbye talk with the little kid just a few hours ago before he had left. He knew well that Squee was terrified of him, and had every right to be, but there was something about the kid that made Johnny pity him. He merely enjoyed his company. There was some sort of comradeship in a penchant for the esoteric or in being an outsider. Besides that, the kid was smart, not in the academic way but in the way that mattered to Johnny. He wasn't a small-minded ass tick.

And there was the fact that Squee reminded Johnny of himself when he was that age.

"Good luck, Squee. Get out of this hellhole all right. Don't become broken and jaded like me. You're a good person. Shit. I never was good with goodbyes."

Johnny turned the key. The car stalled and stopped.

"NOT THIS SHIT AGAIN! WORK!!"

Johnny turned the key several more times. The car refused to start. It sputtered and died.

"Oh, unbelievable!" Johnny squeezed his brainfreezy so tightly that the domed cap popped loose and frozen, sticky drink oozed down his hand. "I end up stuck right where I started! Again! That's all that ever happens! I try to go somewhere and I end up making a circle, I try to change my life and I end up the emotional wreck that I always was! Circles and spirals and spirals and spirals! It never ends! Stuck in this deadlock of life with no way out! No way to the outside world!"

Johnny finally noticed that his hand was getting cold and sticky. He looked at the now half-gone freezy dripping down his arm.

"SHIT!!"

Johnny threw the cup at the windshield. The brainfreezy splattered across the glass and started to ooze down, leaving reddish trails. The cup settled to rest at the junction of the glass and the dashboard.

Johnny crossed his arms and sat back in his seat, seething, gritting his teeth, clenching and unclenching his fists. It was going to be a hell of a long night. Again.

-----------

Squee was having nightmares. Again.

Squee sat up in his bed, screaming. He still felt his own body being ripped in half at the stomach by the pyromaniac albino crazy man. It was not a pleasant feeling.

Squee finally calmed down enough to look for Shmee, his first instinct in these situations. Shmee had fallen onto the floor at some point during the night and was still lying there, on his head, back against the bed. Squee reached down and picked up his bear, then clenched him to his chest.

"I had a dream, Shmee."

"What else is new?"

Squee gulped. This was one of the times when he wondered if his bear's voice was the voice of some insane demon from the voids of hell. Something about the bear's tone clearly said that he was not in the mood to be comforting. A teddy bear that was dark enough to not want to be comforting was not what Squee wanted in his arms at the moment.

Pushed against his stomach where he had just been ripped…

Squee shuddered and buried his face against the top of Shmee's head. The brown fur smelled like Lysol.

"Shmee, there was an pyromaniac albino crazy man and a demon with wings and a metal claw and the crazy neighbor man was there and there was a big red robot that was shooting fire and claws and the place was on fire and Squee got ripped in half and he turned into lava and he said 'I am going to another world' or something and the flesh eating demons from the last few nights dreams were back and the pyro albino crazy man slapped me and the demon sucked out all my blood and replaced it with something I don't want to know what it is and the pyro albino crazy man was a child that was kidnapped and they did horrible experiments on him and made him crazy and the crazy neighbor man was there…"

"It was probably a premonition dream."

"A what?"

"A dream of what is to come. It's sort of like what the people on the psychic hotline do. Or like fortune cookies. Now go back to sleep."

Squee clutched Shmee closer and looked out his window at the dark street below. "Does that mean that the demon is going to come and do horrible things to Squee in a lab with test tubes make Squee crazy like the crazy neighbor man? Squee…"

The crazy neighbor man's car was parked outside of the next-door house.

"Squee~~!!"

"He probably will if you don't lie down and be quiet like a good boy."

"Why is the crazy neighbor man back? He said he was leaving."

"He probably changed his mind. Now let's get some sleep."

Squee thought for a moment, lowering his chin so that it touched his throat, clutching Shmee, trying to make himself feel more secure. He was failing miserably.

"Are you sure it's a pre…future dream?"

"Premonition, and no. It might be the nightmare world trying to merge into this world through the medium of your head."

Squee made a small noise.

Something very unexpected happened, not unexpected because it was odd, for odd things happened all the time around Squee, but unexpected because it was not horrific or grotesque at first glance: a high-powered beam of light shot down from heaven and engulfed the crazy neighbor man's car.

For some reason, that scared Squee more than any bone-marrow sucking demon hellspawn monster from the netherworld.

"SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"

-----

"I go in circles and I go nowhere. Just like one of those rats on a wheel. Expending so much energy to go anywhere, to get out of a cage, and yet I stay in the same place: inside the cage. I want to transcend. I want the hell out of this place."

Johnny had his knees drawn up to his chest, arms draped over the top of them. He was staring straight ahead. The brainfreezy had long since pooled at the junction of the dashboard and the windshield, running down through slits in the dashboard. There were red streaks across the glass.

He was really starting to miss Nailbunny.

"Just get me out of here. Where there are people I would like. Where there is just one person that would understand me. One person I don't want to kill. One reason to live."

Johnny looked sideways out the window. "Maybe I should go attack a cheerleader slumber party…"

White light blasted around the car. Every pore, every window in the car was filled with light. Johnny shielded his eyes and blinked.

"What the FUCK?!"

The loose rocks around the car began to levitate slightly. The car moved off the ground a little, hovering, repelled on a cap of air with the same effect of pushing the congruent sides of two magnets together. It was the same feeling, anyway.

The car was being sucked up.

Johnny took a moment to register this information.

"Oh. Man."

Johnny looked out the window. He could see nothing beyond the glare of the light. The ground below was clearly visible, shielded from the light by the car. The rocks and gravel were still hovering.

The car zoomed up.

Johnny's eyes widened. He clenched the steering wheel.

The car reached a peak and hovered for a split second, without gravity or force. The car dropped.

Johnny's stomach followed a few seconds after.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!"

As they were, Johnny's knuckles turned white with the force of clenching the wheel. The car rattled dangerously the entire way down…down…

SMASH.

The car slammed ground with a resounding jerk, bounced on its wheels several inches in the air and then bounced once more back to the ground. Johnny smashed his head into the dashboard. Several cases of metal instruments of various use crashed in the trunk. The empty brainfreezy cup flew off the dashboard and into the backseat; the pool of freezy left on the dashboard splattered across the windshield and Johnny.

One thing was for sure: the car was not driving anywhere anytime soon.

Johnny kept his shoulders drawn up to his ears, cringing, eyes screwed shut. He half expected something else to smash into the car.

It remained silent for a few moments. Johnny groaned and touched his forehead. The skin was tacky with blood, a few strands of hair plastered down with it. He followed the blood with his fingertips until he felt a wound where his forehead had hit the dashboard.

"Oww. Shit."

Of all of the things he had packed, he forgot bandages. Well, there was the fact that he had none in the first place. It was one reason he was always making midnight trips to Squee's house. Besides, he never got injured in any of his escapades anyway. The cause of injury was always something mundane, like a Spaghettios can.

Or having his car sucked up hundreds of feet into the air and then dropped suddenly by a beam of light.

Johnny looked up slowly, still holding his wound. He did not like what he saw.

In the first place, the moonlight was pouring strongly through the stained windshield, casting light onto the derelict upholstery and dashboard. Johnny shielded his eyes with his unoccupied hand. He could have sworn that the moon had already set a while ago.

And, in the second place, superimposed over the moon was a second translucent disc. Another moon.

Johnny narrowed his eyes. The other cosmic body looked exactly like Earth. Blue ocean, dark land, swirling white clouds.

"Clone Earth? Second Earth? Am I still on Earth at all?" Johnny lowered his eyes to the surrounding landscape to see if there were red hills and Martians waiting with anal probes. He saw the fringe of a forest populated by deciduous trees. His car was resting on a brilliantly green meadow, shining in the moonlight.

It was very beautiful, but it was definitely not Southern California.

"Ooooh… What's this?"

Johnny opened his door and stepped out of the car. A cool, dry breeze ruffled his hair, cold across his thinly covered scalp and wound. It felt as if the blood on his forehead was having the moisture sucked out of it.

"Where the hell am I?" Johnny pivoted on his heels and looked in the opposite direction. There was the silhouette of a log fortress on a low rise in the land a distance away, where the grass gave way to dirt. He could see people patrolling the ramparts, some collecting around towers with pennants on the flagpoles.

"Huh…it looks like the laser tag place at Fun-a-Ride or one of those Renaissance fair things. Maybe they do historical reenactments or something." Johnny's eyebrows arched happily. "Or…OOH. I remember that one place where you could eat stew and watch knights go at it with poles. But it wasn't that fun because it was all show and playacting. No real violence. Maybe they have a phone."

Johnny opened the trunk of his car and started to fish around in the boxes. Many of them had come open and spilled their subversive contents across the carpeted floor. He found his flattened, empty backpack and opened it, stiffening out the bottom and setting it on the ground. He started to pile things in. He probably was not coming back to the car for a while.

Besides, his doors did not lock. They hadn't locked for years. He had never bothered to get the locks fixed.

CD player he set on top of the car…CD wallet 1…CD wallet 2…Die-ary and a pen, AA batteries, notebooks of torture designs, art sketchbook, graphite pencils, pencil sharpener, knife sharpener, erasers, change of clothes, toothbrush, hairbrush, toothpaste, antiperspirant, cologne, black eyeshadow and eyeliner for bad days, black gloves, favorite shirt with the ever-changing front and back, dental floss, rusty hooks, several novels and books of poetry, notebook of half-finished Happy Noodle Boy comics…

"Too bad I can't fit the chainsaw…" Johnny found his old copy of a guide to Chinese torture methods and pressure points and shoved it in the bag. "Wherever this is, as long as there are people here, I know that it is going to be hell. I am not so disillusioned that I think that just because of a location change people are going to be any different. Humanity does not change. It's disgusting wherever one goes. I hope Nailbunny can find me here…and that Reverend MEAT or the Doughboys can't…"

Johnny found his favorite pair of machetes and shoved them into his belt. He made one final inventory of the trunk and his backpack, decided that he had everything he needed, and slammed the lid of the trunk shut. The abused car bounced with the force.

"Poor thing…you've had a rough night." Johnny swung his backpack onto his shoulders. The contents clanked. He took his CD player off of the top of the car and placed the headphones on his ears. "Well…THAT'S WHAT YOU GET FOR BREAKING DOWN, ISN'T IT?! STUPID USELESS PIECE OF SHIT!"

Johnny kicked the bumper with a steel-toed boot. The bumper fell off.

"TRYING TO GET ME DOWN LIKE THE WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD, TRYING TO OPPRESS ME IN THAT HELLHOLE OF A PLACE! WELL, YOU KNOW WHAT?! FUCK YOU! I'M GOING!"

The car did not answer. Johnny glowered at it a while longer and pressed play on his CD player. Bach's Toccata and Fugue blasted around his ears.

He did not notice what a racket he was creating in the silent forest.

Johnny turned on his heels and started walking toward the fortress in the distance, whistling.

----

The lyrics Nny were singing were from the song Aenima by Tool. Not my creation.