Pushing Daises

A/N: Hello, first things first, if you're looking for slutty Kenny, I'm sorry, he's not here, but I'm sure you can find him somewhere else. For anyone who has read my other story, Addict, you might know what to expect from my Kenny. If not, you'll find out.
Anyway, I always just like to say hi and annoy you guys with author's notes that I'm sure some people skip. But anyway, a few important things. The first...third?...of this chapter is in first-person, but after that it will mainly be in third, but Kenny is the main character. I'm doing the cliche defenitions thing.
Warnings: I get angsty, I like the word 'fuck,' this will get philosophical at times (all the time?), I'm just as preachy as Matt and Trey, and Christophe is in this lots. And, oh, death.
Pairings: Kenny/Butters and maybe some other stuff for people who read between the lines.

Chapter One: Virgin

vir·gin – noun.
1. A person who has never had sexual intercourse.
2. Any person who is uninitiated, uninformed, or the like.
3. Pure; unsullied; undefiled.
4. Without experience of; not previously exposed to.
5. Being a mixed drink resembling a specific cocktail but made without any alcoholic ingredient.

My story starts while I'm trying not to exist, it starts with hypocrisy and it starts with impending death. It ends that way too and – damn – I've spoiled it, haven't I? That's alright though, because there's a lot in-between the beginning and the end. There's a lot that changes and even though those three things will happen, always, no matter what, no exceptions, there are differences and there are a lot of them and there are a lot of people to blame for that. I think that if I blamed everyone without blaming myself though, I would be a hypocrite.

I already am, we all are. You can walk through life and pretend you've never done it, that you've never said something contradictory to what you've done in your lifetime. Bullshit, everyone you see is a walking contradiction. The worst are activists, the protestors, the people who say they stand for one thing and one thing only but do the opposite every single day.

Pro-Life douche bags, walking around like they've earned their way into Heaven with their righteous pleas for life. Going home later and eating cows and chickens and other things that, by their standards, should have had life. When asked if they got raped, would they keep the child? They answer they would have it, but they would give it away. It's the same thing as abortion. Either way it's not going to matter to you, you won't be a part of the kid's life. You might as well have killed it, for all that baby is going to affect you.

I can't stand people like that, I can't stand myself. I think it gets to a point where you hate everyone and everything, because you've seen the bad side of everything, and the next step seems to obviously be that you should hate yourself. So you do and it doesn't make much sense – you choose your attitude, your beliefs, your values and your reactions, so you made the choice to be this person you hate so much. The funny part is, life is all about making everyone else like you.

Think about it, every day, for most people, without even realizing it, is a race to make everyone like you in one way or another. Whether you're going to be nice to everyone so everyone is nice to you or you're going to be harsh to everyone so they have no choice but to respect you – that's life. It's a race to the graveyard and for what?

So that when some girl you dated in ninth grade walks by on the way to her grandparents graves, she'll see yours, stop and think 'you know, I always liked him'? Most people would lie and say, no, that doesn't matter. But the truth is, if they could, the people in Heaven and Hell would have a little counter, just to see how many people go to their graves, because as far as I'm concerned that's all life is and ever will be. A popularity contest. Some people are contestants and most people are in the crowd, wishing they were up on stage and then some of us?

Some of us never even knew it was going on, and now we're sitting outside, while everyone else is inside watching. We're secondary characters, we're that person everyone kind of wishes they were. Not like the people who are front-runners in the contest. Everyone wants to be them, everyone is dying to be there, most people won't admit it, but everyone feels that way. But, as for us, everyone wants to be us in a different way, because we have nothing at all.

Having nothing is – well, it's good and bad. A person who doesn't have a lot of friends doesn't obsess over having any more. They're content with what they have because it's all they ever had. Once you get a lot friends, one, two, three, four, five, eight hundred and thirty-seven, you want more, more, more. And that sucks, because everyone wants more. So you're living in this society that wants more of everything, that can never stop wanting more, and then you see us.

Sitting outside at lunch while you're at the table with all your football fuck buddies. Walking alone through the halls while you're trying to impress every girl you see with stories about the pass you intercepted Friday night. Not giving a fuck in class while you pay attention, if only to keep your manly self on the team for the rest of the season. And you see us, and some part of your mind – in the very back, so that sometimes you don't even notice it – realizes that you want that. You want to not want more, you want to be able to drop the façade and just not care.

That's where the hypocrisy starts.

Because everyone cares, even the kids who act like they don't. Everyone wants more, even the people that swear they're fine with what they have. We're a needy, greedy, conniving group of beings, we humans and we're all alike. No matter who you see, no matter who you talk to, they are always thinking about what they can do to have more than you. To go to a better college than you. To score more chicks than you. To get through life and win, eventually, when more people visit their grave. Face it, more than anything you want people to care about what happens to you.

There are two groups of people, on the simplest of levels – which is an absurd statement, seeing as nothing in life is simple – there are the consumers and there are the consumed. It's different than you might think, in the grand scheme of life. In high school the 'nerds,' if you will, spend most of their time in the Chemistry lab and at Debate Club, sitting home on the computer studying quantum psychics. And they aren't, well, cool, I guess, they don't go on dates and the only time you notice them is when you're laughing at their sweater vest. Those kids, they're the consumers.

Your stereotypical jock? Running around the football field, blowing off his homework to have his hand up some chick's skirt, getting drunk at every party he possibly can. Oh, sure, he's got four years of that, he thinks he should be on the top of everyone's list and maybe he is. Then reality comes crashing down and he figures out that, statistically, he's blown it. Maybe one out of a hundred of these douche bags are going to make it to a pro sports job, and the rest of them?

Well, we've all seen the middle aged manager of the grocery store, haven't we? He's the consumed and the consumer, the dorky kid with the pocket protector who never partied hard or saw a girl naked outside of an accidental search on Google images, well, he's in his mansion, talking business deals on his phone, while his supermodel girlfriend – okay, maybe that's a little farfetched.

What I mean is, high school doesn't define you forever.

But for those four years? Fuck, they ought to make a dictionary for that shit, because everything about you, everything about everyone is always and always will be defined by others. It's a sad but true fact.

My story, though, begins before I knew any of this. It begins in Intro to Philosophy class and it begins now.

Kenny McCormick is a good driver. In fact, it's kind of his back-up plan, if school doesn't work out, he'll move to New York City and become a taxi driver. That is all he can think about in Intro to Philosophy class on Tuesday morning and that, while sounding innocent, is not a good place to be thinking of such things. Especially while he is trying to not exist.

It's his last hour of the day, he's already itching with the anticipation of getting out of school. Not that he has anywhere to go, just that he won't have to be in school once the final bell rings and no one can stop him from leaving then. But Intro to Philosophy is not a class that goes by fast, it's a gruelling why-did-I-take-this lesson in being sorely mistaken in the idea that this was a perfect blow-off class for senior year. Seeing as class only started a week ago not much has gotten done, except for introducing the theory that, well, nothing really exists.

Needless to say Kenny is not excited by this idea. It actually makes him want to throw up. Who does René Descartes think he is to say that we're all just making this up, anyway? It makes Kenny sick because Kenny McCormick is a creature of reason, despite what many would think. He likes to find reason in everything, he questions things and, mostly, he keeps to himself in this respect. To everyone else Kenny is, for lack of a better word, a bit of a pervert. Sexually-driven at the very least and most would assume that he is experienced, at least from the way he talks.

He isn't, he's a virgin in the sense of the word that most understand it to mean. The thing about Kenny is that he's content with this. He can sit in Intro to Philosophy and try to pretend not to exist and feel fine with the fact that, if it did work, if he really ceased to exist, he would have never had sex in his lifetime. Sex, while something that Kenny can admit to liking as much as the average teenage boy, is not what life is about. Although it certainly ranks somewhere in the top ten, below breathing and above alcohol.

All Kenny can think about is being a taxi driver in New York City, but he isn't supposed to be thinking about anything. The room is completely silent, it registers in Kenny's mind that he's probably the only one thinking about absurd things like taxi driving and he dispels the thought on the principal belief that most people his age have – anything to not stand out. At that very moment everyone else in the entire class might not be existing, he doesn't want to be the only one left.

Kenny is wrong, actually, he is one of a small number of people in the class actually taking the excercise seriously. Eric Cartman is sitting behind him, his breathing low and even as his mind drifts between dreams that feel real and dreams he wishes were real. In a sense Cartman, as most people call him, is the only one who has reached the level of not existing. Butters Stotch sits to Cartman's left and is currently scared that he will be grounded if he succeeds in not existing and also scared that he will be grounded if his parents find out he's not actually participating fully in class.

Butters Stotch is a complicated individual, one who has never fully grown up. It may be because of his parents. After all, environment is everything. One look at Eric Cartman can explain that – Kyle Broflovski once theorized that, had Cartman's mother not been so desperate to please her son, the large boy would be drastically different. As for Butters it has always been a matter of him pleasing his parents and the fact that they never seem to be pleased. Butters is a person who thrives on the acceptance of others, but so rarely gets it.

The aforementioned Kyle Broflovski sits across the classroom, his best friend Stan Marsh is sleeping behind him, but Kyle, like Kenny, is one of the few doing everything he can to try and follow the teacher's orders. Kyle is a strange breed of consumer and consumed. You wouldn't know he was the school's star basketball player unless you really squinted and even then the best you could probably do would be to say "He does kind of look like the point guard." He was known by name as one of the smartest kids in the senior class, though this was hardly his doing. Kyle would much rather hang out with his friends – something he does, at best, once a week – but his mother has been an advocate of keeping his GPA at 4.0, ever since he nearly failed eighth grade.

Stanley Marsh is dreaming. The dream involves a long hallway, twenty-one doors and no way out. It would make quite the horror movie, but he won't remember it when Kyle wakes him up at the end of class like he always does. Stan is a fallen sports hero, his archenemy is asthma, and though he was well on his way to starting in Varsity football through his first two years of high school, he can't even run half a mile now without having an asthma attack. There are a few reasons for this, especially seeing as though Stan has always had asthma it only became a real problem in his junior year.

The few things that have caused Stan to become an asthma attack waiting to happen can all be attributed to two people and the stress that stems from dealing with the two of them. Those two people being the redhead currently sitting in front of him as he dreams about opening up one of the twenty-one doors to find the second person, Wendy Testaburger, his on-again-off-again girlfriend. Kyle and Wendy, who never seemed to have much of a problem with each other through elementary and middle school, have been constantly fighting about who should rightfully spend more time with Stan.

Stan kind of wishes they would give him a choice, but even then he's not sure who he would choose.

Next to our sleeping Stan there is an empty desk and next to the empty desk there is an extremely worried raven-haired boy who hasn't been listening to anything all day. Craig Nommel is not a worrier in the least, except when it comes to Tweek Tweak, the twitchy blond who's desk is unoccupied at the moment. Craig is all talk – or possibly all middle finger – and though he gets angry easily and lashes out verbally he very rarely will assault someone physically. This is one of those rare times, when he's so worried and high-strung by a simple empty desk, that no one would put it past him to do what he was going to do when class was over.

Across the room a certain blond has succeeded in not existing, although it isn't entirely an uncommon practice for him.

Kenny likes Hell. Not because all the most interesting people are there – they are, but that's not why. Kenny likes Hell because Hell is easy to figure out. It's different from what he learned in Bible Studies and it's not as hot as most people seemed to imagine. Nevertheless after dying at least once a month for over ten years Kenny was pretty sure in the fact that Hell didn't change much, that there was a schedule and that, unlike most schedules, this one made some amount of sense. Surprising, really, when you consider who is in charge.

Kenny has a kind of bypass. Most people, upon showing up in Hell, are gathered into one of the more gruesome areas of Hell – where you can't see the apartment complexes and luau parties, basically – and get the standard Satan Speech. Kenny has heard it enough that Satan has essentially told him it isn't a big deal if he skips out on it, he is always back on Earth within, at the most, 24 hours, anyway.

So while the huge crowd of recent mortalities are getting the speech Kenny is trying to find a familiar face. There are a lot of people in Hell that he knows. Some just by reputation, like Hitler, Gandhi and Jon Benet Ramsey. Still, it is a rarity that he ever sees the same person after two deaths in a row. With the exception – because there's always an exception to everything – of Christophe DeLorne.

Christophe looks like he is fourteen. That is something else Kenny likes about Hell. You don't age, you don't gain weight and you definitely don't keep any scars or bruises you acquire in the afterlife. Conversely, of course, you don't get any younger, you don't lose weight and you definitely have to keep any scars or bruises you have acquired before death. You simple don't change. Kenny uses this to his advantage, eating about twice his weight in food every other trip to Hell, because Kenny has an appetite to rival Eric Cartman's, it's just that no one knows it.

Christophe hates Hell. Of course, he likes it far better than he would have liked Heaven, because if asthma is Stan Marsh's archenemy, then God is the French boy's. Still, Kenny sees Christophe every time he dies and every time he is still amused by the fact that Christophe is an nineteen year-old stuck in a fourteen year-old's body.

Chances are that if you asked someone to describe Christophe DeLorne in one word they would they would ask if you were joking. Chances are you would be joking, because it is a well-known fact that the French boy simply cannot be described in one word. Not because he's a complex and interesting person – he is a little, but that's not it – rather because most people would need a few expletives to get out just exactly what kind of a person he was. And chances are Christophe does not mind this fact very much.

What he does mind is looking fourteen. Being a mercenery is never a job that your counselor will suggest to you. There are no classes at the college you attend that teach you how to avoid being caught by guard dogs. And, certainly, most people would never even consider it as a career path. Christophe is not most people, and he was a mercenary. Was, in the sense that no one really has jobs, per se, in Hell. It is in a constant state of chaos, or at least a slightly constant one, after all. Point being, Christophe died at fourteen and no one was really quite sure how or why.

Honestly, we're still not quite sure how or why.

"Hey, 'Tophe," is all Kenny has to say to the perpetually fourteen year-old French boy, who growls in answer and flips the blond off in a very Craig Nommel-like manner. Kenny sighs in answer. "You want to know something funny?"

"Not really," Christophe answers, rolling the sleeves of his black sweater up past his elbows, exposing his pale arms. This is simple Christophe body language, which one can interpret to mean 'Yes, yes I would like to know something funny,' even if that's not exactly what he has just said.

"I don't know how I got here," Kenny explains, shrugging and reaching into the pocket of the orange hoodie he's wearing. What he is looking for isn't there, he freezes, mentally assessing the situation, has a tiny freak out internally and calms down, all in one brief second, during which Christophe is talking and doesn't notice a thing.

"You mean...zat you don't know 'ow you died?" the French boy asks, slowly, one fingerless gloved hand twitching for an invisible shovel, the one that is currently sitting in the garbage dump, the one that will stay there until it corrodes with rust, disappearing for eternity just as it's owner did five years ago. "Well, does not ze Cartman boy do zese sorts of zings to you quite often? McCormick, are you listening to me?"

"Huh?" Kenny says, smiling outwardly, frowning inwardly. "Yeah, yeah, it was probably Cartman...you're right. I did have dinner at his house last night."

Christophe probably is right. Eric Cartman has found it increasingly fun to, over the years, actually kill Kenny. Making him even more of a bastard than he was before. Kenny doesn't mind much. He wouldn't admit it to many people, but he is best friends with Cartman. Buried deep underneath all the dirty clothes on his bedroom floor is his half of their Best Friends Forever necklace, and it's on purpose that he has never gotten rid of it. Kenny also doesn't mind because if Cartman is busy thinking up ways to kill him, well, Cartman doesn't have any time to think up ways to kill anyone else.

"Zat iz probably ze explanation," Christophe decides. That's it, he has decided, Kenny does not fight back after Christophe has decided something. "'ow iz everyone doing?"

"Um."

Kenny is not sure how to answer this. Everyone is doing more or less mediocre and that would suffice, but when Christophe says 'everyone' he more than likely means 'Kyle Broflovski, Craig Nommel and Gregory Thorne.' Funny, really, since if Kenny was to guess who had killed Christophe it would be between those same three people. There was no question that Christophe had been killed, in Kenny's mind at least. They all had their own idea of what had happened, none of them agree completely and, really, none of them care much, with the exception of the three people that were most likely to have killed him.

"Good," Kenny decides to say. That's not it, though, because unlike Kenny, Christophe will fight back when the other one decides something.

"Good?" he says, incredulously. Good is never good enough for him, it appears. Christophe is a being made out of extremes. Either he doesn't speak at all or he doesn't shut up. Either he is angry at the world or he is angry at...the world. There is no in-between as far as the DeLorne boy is concerned, you feel one way or the other and you feel it with a verocity that has never before been matched. Sort of like the hate he is now displaying for the word 'good.'

"Yes, good," the blond affirms with a small nod. He retracts his hand from the pocket of his hoodie and stares at it, as if he is perplexed by the fact that it is empty. "I have to ask you a question. You're good at reading people, aren't you? I mean, if I give you a scenerio...you can tell me who was the most likely to have done it. You know that sort of stuff, right?"

"Oui," Christophe says, his eyes narrowing. "What iz et zat you want to know?"

"Who, out of all of us – " 'us' being the only friends Kenny has, half of whom aren't friends at all " – would take a notebook from me after I died?"

"Easy," the French brunet says, waving a hand in the air. "I was expecting a challenge, McCormick. Eizer Cartman or Nommel."

"You're sure?" Kenny asks, a queasy feeling in his stomach. He already knows what the answer is.

"Of course I am sure." Christophe is disgusted that the blond would even dare to doubt him. "Zey boz 'ave ze same mindset as moi. For Nommel it iz based more on ze emotions he feels, while Cartman just wants to benefit from everyzing 'e does, not matter 'oo 'e 'urts in ze process, devoid of remorse, you could say." He pauses as Kenny stares at the ground in horror. Not that it was a big schock, but having it confirmed, well, now there were a million possibilities racing through his mind. "Why iz a notebook of all zings so obviously important to you, McCormick?"

Kenny doesn't answer, he runs a hand through his blond hair and closes his eyes trying to remember who he's pissed off recently. He can't remember, he tends to piss people off without even knowing that he's doing it. It's part of the reason that he would make a perfect addition to New York City, especially to the taxi cab industry. "Fuck," is all he says, under his breath, opening his eyes to see Christophe raising an eyebrow in interest.

"What was in ze notebook?" Christophe doesn't seem to know when things are best left alone. Neither does Kenny.

"My life," he says, before walking away.

Kenny does not call it a journal. He doesn't write his daily thoughts in the notebook, because that's all it is, a notebook. A plain, run-of-the-mill, seventy-page, red notebook, with his name on the top in black permanent marker. There are American Government notes mixed in with things that the blond never wanted anyone to see. One glance at the notebook wouldn't make you think anything at all.

So why had Craig Nommel taken the notebook? It is best explained in a sequence of events that begin on the bus Tuesday morning.

The first thing that Craig does every morning is talk to Tweek Tweak. Because Tweek Tweak is his unofficial alarm clock, calling him at half past six, making sure the other boy didn't die in his sleep or fall on a patch of ice and get amnesia. Craig doesn't mind this, in fact it's one of the few things in the world Craig looks forward to, even if it does mean waking up well before he really needs to.

Tuesday morning Craig slept in until his mother woke up him up, ten minutes before school started no less. Tweek didn't call, Tweek wasn't on the bus, Tweek wasn't in second hour, Tweek wasn't at lunch and by the last hour of the day Craig wasn't talking to anyone because – you guessed it – Tweek wasn't there. Without Tweek, it is important to note, Craig is not exactly the nicest person in the world. Not that he is with Tweek either, but you have a much higher chance of finding a rather content Craig when he's around Tweek than you do when he is with anyone else.

After almost seven hours of school, during which Craig's thoughts had spiraled into a very Tweek-like state of assuming the worst for his best friend, it should be quite easy to come to the conclusion that he was not in the best mood. And when Kenny McCormick fell out of his desk, dead, for no apparent reason, Craig didn't have the reaction he should have.

In the case of most people's deaths the reaction you might have expected would be something akin to panic, maybe a little bit of fear and possibly someone who could hold their cool and alert someone that, well, there was a dead kid in class. In the case of Kenny McCormick's death the reaction you might have expected was a little sigh – wordlessly implying an annoyed "Again?" – and probably a look over to see what had happened this time, but nothing much else. They were in class with Butters, however, who never seemed to get over the fact that Kenny died repeatedly, and the blond had left out a muffled cry into the sleeve of his light blue dress shirt.

Craig, however, had laughed. And while they were all used to Kenny dying no one ever really laughed at it, so half the class yelled at him.

The teacher, in particular, had gotten pissed off, when he had made it a point to flip the entire class off, and sent him down to the principal's office. The principal was almost an old acquaintence by this point and their conversation was much like listening to your favorite song over and over again – you knew it by heart and even though it was familiar you tended to get sick of it.

"How many times this semester so far, Craig?"

"Only twice, well...maybe three times."

"Are you trying to get suspended?"

"No."

"Then why do you keep doing this?"

"I don't know."

"Well...school is ending in a few minutes anyway, just...go get your homework from that class."

"Alright."

"And, Craig?" Craig turns around to look at the only authority figure who has ever attempted to listen to him. "Just try and graduate, that's all I can ask."

Craig is not entirely the smartest kid in school, but he is also not the stupidest. He is like Cartman and Christophe in this way, none of them quite having a grasp on subjects like math and science, but understanding history and language arts with ease. But where Cartman is something like an evil genius and Christophe was a mercenary, Craig is just our average underacheiver. And although he's not going to do the homework the Intro to Philosophy teacher hands him, he is going to spend all night reading the red notebook that's on Kenny McCormick's desk, sitting there, untouched, a virgin read to everyone's eyes but the blond who wrote the words.

Craig is going to stay up until midnight, reading everything in-between the notes for various classes and half-assed homework assignments. He's going to close to notebook and think about what to do for a long time. He will call Tweek Tweak eight times until he finally tries Clyde Donovan's number and the phone is picked up after the first ring.

"You'll never believe what I just found out," he'll say.

Clyde will listen.

And the next week of Kenny McCormick's life will be – no pun intended – hell.

A/N: So. There it is. I'm not sure how long I'll be making this. I know this totally isn't obviously Kenny/Butters yet, in fact you're probably like 'wtf?' because there's essentially nothing linking the two of them together romantically...yet. Key word. Yet.
I would like some reviews, just because reviews make me write faster, hence faster updates, hence no waiting. But even if this gets, like, zero reviews, I'll probably still write it. Just because.
I love Kennerz. c:
Until next time, tweekers