WARNINGS: Implied slash, violence, one-shot, cursing, Edgarbation.

NOTES: For all you not coming in from CherryDoom: this fic focuses on Edgar Vargas, aka the guy Nny ripped to strips in "Goblins". The lovely and talented Zarla kicked off the NnyEdgar craze in her epic masterpiece Vargas, which, while not necessary to understand this story, is definitely worth reading/worshipping/breathing.

This turned almost entirely AU by the last draft. Sort of a "what-if" scenario – what if Edgar's and Nny's paths crossed earlier than in canon? Edgar meets Nny when he's on the downslope toward total insanity (but not quite there yet – hence why he's all sketchy about stabbing the guy). In the resulting timeline Edgar avoids being caught and hacked up, and instead goes a little crazy himself.

Anyway, enjoy!

brain FREEZE

He's seen a man get knifed through the tendon linking neck to shoulder. He has seen the way the blade just slides through, like the flesh was already rotting, like a fingernail pushing into an overripe peach. He wonders if he should have felt something other than that lighter-flick somewhere at the bottom of his gut – nausea at least, or horror. But no: just that quick grind and strike, the failed spark. Then the rush later when he lies on his bed, flat on his back, staring at the curve where the ceiling meets the wall – outdated architecture – and wedges his right hand under one ass-cheek so it doesn't wander down the front of his boxers.

unCLOUDED

That's how he'd probably put it, if asked. Edgar Vargas was unclouded. Or maybe "uncluttered". Immaculate like his cubicle, all speckled grey carpet walls, pen-mug and a black plastic stack of paper trays, a computer tower warm and humming against his right foot. No framed photos of Ma and Pa Vargas, five and six years gone now – long enough for the sting to dull. The numbers under the address-tab of his dayplanner were for the optometrist and one Starbucks barista he'd lacked the motivation to call.

His headset pressed at his ears; the microphone hovered by his lips, a black fuzzball dwarfed by his double-humped mountain range of nose. Edgar estimated five minutes before the next customer called, and used the time to sketch out a schedule for the weekend: Saturday bills and housekeeping, Sunday church – ask Father Norton if he still needed volunteers for verse-readings.

Overseeing everything in the cubicle was a small silver cross. Its chain looped around the top of the computer monitor so the emblem itself hung just above the screen, directly in his line of sight. Unclouded and uncomplicated. His faith a soothing background melody six days a week, volume nudged up a notch on Sundays, but always the same song and a single voice singing it. At night he would lace his fingers together, press his thumbnails to his forehead and touch base with the songwriter. Unless he fell asleep first. Or forgot.

The phone beeped at him.

"Cronus Software tech support, Edgar Vargas speaking, how may I help you?"

A James Earl Jones voice wanted to know why popups flooded his screen whenever he opened the Apol.1.0 browser – third call in a row with the same complaint. Edgar explained that it was a virus and therefore not Cronus's problem. Referred him to Microsoft, recommended a good antivirus.

He'd been working Tech Support for a week, had heard the after-call grumbles through the cubicle partitions on all sides. Idiot customers. Asshats. But as far as he could tell the callers were decent people – just confused. So what if one out of five called him "young man" in needle-spitting tones? At least once a day woman in the cubicle next to him listed the office supplies she'd like to shove up the last customer's ass; Edgar just fingered the silver chain draped over his monitor until his shoulders relaxed.

sometimes though: ARTIFICIAL CHERRY

Three years ago, during a bout of insomnia, Edgar had stood in line at a 24-7 at four in the morning with an armful of crackers and toilet paper. At the counter a man with a Bic-smooth head harassed the cashier for washroom-access. His huge hands smacked and squeaked against the glass over the scratch-and-win tickets as he bellowed.

"Bullshit! There are always staff washrooms in these places."

The cashier flinched and shook her head. "Not here, sir, I'm sorry."

"Bullshit! You have to piss somewhere!"

A rail-thin man stood next in line, between Edgar and the Loud Man, an extra-large cherry-flavoured Brainfreezy drooling condensation over his hand. Inside the clear plastic the drink had separated; a layer of diluted red syrup floated over a chunk of ice. When Edgar had joined the line ten minutes ago the drink was blended, pristine. The Thin Man looked at his dripping Brainfreezy-cup like it had provided him years of loyal companionship, then died.

At the counter the cashier-girl wagged her imp-face and tugged at her own pudgy fingers. Loud Man yelled "Bullshit!" like it was a password. The sleeplessness that had propelled Edgar out of his apartment in the first place began to seep out through the soles of his feet and he wondered how well the toilet paper would pad his fall if he passed out on the spot. It would be nice of those two could wrap this up soon so he wouldn't have to find out. Maybe Loud Man would figure out that there was a gas station across the street that had a washroom, didn't have a scared babyfaced cashier or an inexplicable hissing sound that had been increasing in volume for the past few –

"Fffffuck"

The hiss balled into a curse and exploded from Thin Man's mouth, his voice grinding, like a tightening ratchet. He pulled his arm back – the loose black sleeve slipped down to the elbow, showed a meatless stick-arm – and whipped his 40oz. cup of red slush at Loud Man's head. Cherry syrup sloshed out and sketched the cup's path, drew a pinkish arc between the man's hand and Loud Man's nose. The drink connected with a heavy thunkand the man doubled over, blood and Brainfreezy running over his lips and chin.

"You wad!" Thin Man lunged; the electrical-taped headphones looped around his neck rattled. "You complete and utter hole. All I wanted was a cherry Brainfreezy, and instead you give me ten mind-raping minutes of idiocy. Of petty" he gripped Loud Man's t-shirt collar, "pointless," he reached into the messenger bag at his hip, "dialogue on where you can or can't piss!"

He pulled a short kitchen knife out of the bag, flicked off the cardboard sleeve and brought the blade down into the tendon linking Loud Man's neck and shoulder, slid easily into the flesh just above the collarbone. The man howled. Thin Man's shoulderblades poked at his shirt's flimsy black fabric as he yanked the knife back, buried it again just below Loud Man's collarbone, withdrew and shoved him to the floor.

Edgar clutched the eight-pack of toilet paper as if it anchored him to the earth, his entire body petrified with the nightmare certainty that if he even flinched, Thin Man would whirl on him. And Holy God, he just wasn't prepared to die over TP and crackers and washrooms, not in a four a.m. 24-7 between the racks of tortilla chips. The cashier girl was shrieking and flapping her hands; Thin Man stood over his groaning target, clenching and unclenching his hands, starting forward then pulling back like a runner false starting over and over. Edgar's body cranked up so tight his hands started to jitter and make crinkling sounds against the toilet paper's plastic wrapping. Thin Man stilled – Our Father and etcetera, this was the end of it, Edgar Vargas will die soaked in melted Brainfreezy, the cough syrup smell of artificial cherry.

Thin Man turned and booked it out into the night, the door giving a curt beep as he pushed through.

Some half-assed first aid; cashier girl hiccupped through a 9-11 call. Officer and ambulance and calm-voiced questions. By noon Edgar was back in his apartment, flat on his back in the semi-dark, light leaking into his bedroom around the edges of the drapes. He hadn't slept in twenty-eight hours but the adrenaline jitters and helium-feeling in his head wouldn't let him slip under.

Above him cream walls joined cream ceiling in a quarter-pipe curve. Edgar pictured the thin man, the nub-row of vertebrae running down the back of his neck. Ribs like ripples in beach-sand and the feel of his fingertips bumping over them. He threw an arm over his face and tried to work up some disapproval, some righteous anger. Loud Man was a jackass but he didn't deserve a knife in the chest. But all Edgar got was the lighter-flick: deadened metallic clicking.

When he finally did get a spark it went immediately south and prickled between his legs. Edgar gave up on sleep and went to see what was on TV.

Some days, after the fifth consecutive customer who was mysteriously unable to log online without their internet cable connected to anything other than the computer, Edgar craved a cherry Brainfreezy.

house 777

After the James Earl Jones voice a slowtalker called and gradually asked how to bookmark websites. Edgar guided her through and checked his computer clock – 5:27, last call of the day.

In his five years at Cronus he'd devised the shortest backstreet route from office to apartment. Cutting through a restaurant parking lot, he spotted a lank figure at the intersection he'd avoided. His arm spasmed and jerked the wheel; he narrowly avoided ploughing into a ticket dispenser, corrected, swung into a parking space.

Thin Man stood at the crosswalk, eyeing the walk/don't walk light. Under a ragged black and red striped shirt Edgar could have sworn he was even scrawnier than before; his toothpick form narrowed around the legs and disappeared into boots with more belt than Edgar's entire wardrobe. Walk. He strode across the white painted bars to the opposite sidewalk.

Goosebumps puckered Edgar's skin. He peeled his palms off the steering wheel and flung the door open. No why is he here? – no questioning the jail-time for knife-attacks. Later he'd realize he hadn't even locked the car door behind him – just sprinted across the lot to the intersection and ducked behind a mailbox until there was a good block and a half between him and Thin Man. Then he followed.

Thin Man's path wove through slick-walled two-foot-wide alleys Edgar had to inch down sideways, empty lots in the awkward stage between construction and destruction with gravel-lined holes gouged in their center, olive sludgewater pooled at the bottom. Dusk started to settle over the city. Edgar snagged his jacket climbing through a hole in a chainlink fence, swore softly, asked himself why he was doing this in the first place. No answer. A block away Thin Man's hectic blue-black hair bobbed along, and Edgar pressed on.

They ended in an urban-suburban neighbourhood seemingly tacked on the back of a block-long storage facility. Mobile homes alternated with boxy seventies-era huts – the kind with walls composed of pebbles and small glass shards – their lawns all yellow-patched at best. Thin Man disappeared into number 777: an oversized cinder block topped with a flat board-roof, mould stalactites dripping down the walls under the eaves. Boards had been nailed in haphazard crisscross over the paneless windows. Edgar stood on the sidewalk two houses down and asked himself again why he was following the maniac he'd seen knife a man in a 24-7. His body had picked up the same clench, shiver and sweat as it had back then, and now that he was closer to the man's home he was sure the rotten wood door would bang open; Thin Man would storm across the weed-acned dirt yard like an animated corpse and drive a knife into his gut. Edgar felt a twinge near his navel at the thought.

He scraped his foot over the sidewalk and the crackle exploded in the empty street. He flinched, froze. Eyed the black between the window-boards and waited for a gaunt face to peer out. The twinge at his navel began to trickle downward – when it reached the waistband of his boxers he broke the paralysis, and ran.

brain THAW

Edgar lies in bed, flat on his back, hands pinched between his ass and the mattress. He followed Thin Man home a month ago and since then has had trouble getting a word up to God each night. He falls asleep first more often. Or forgets.

He also finds himself walking that run-down block, watching number 777 from the opposite sidewalk. He only ever finds the place when he's trying to head somewhere else – to church, work, once the Laundromat. It never works if he actively looks for the route; he'll find himself knee-deep in vacant lot weeds or pacing a cookie-cutter suburban lane.

Tonight the sheets are sticky, with sweat or come or spilled Brainfreezy. Edgar couldn't say: his skull feels like a steam room, eyes fogged from the inside, inner and outer walls dripping. Thoughts muffle in the clouds of condensation.

Today a voice with Smarties up its nose took twenty minutes to confirm that he was not even using Cronus Inc.'s software. Not malicious, just incompetent; stupidity was hardly a sin. Love thy neighbour, Edgar; he had no right to judge. Our Father and etcetera and so on and so—

He throws the sheets back and leaves the room with walls the colour of teeth just starting to go yellow. Climbs into his clunky mid-nineties sedan and strikes out for the nearest 24-7. Twenty minutes later he's standing at the end of the cracked concrete path to house 777 with a head full of steam-billows and a raging erection. Behind the window-boards the rooms are black. Even across the yard Edgar smells spoiled meat, shit and bitter copper blood and under everything the sour of artificial cherry.