David Wong - John Dies at the End

Arnie saw the look on my face and stopped talking.

“What?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer.

“What? Wong?”

“They-they called you ‘nigger’? Even though you’re white?”

“Is that some kind of joke? What are you… hey! What are you laughing at?”

I couldn’t answer. This time it was because laughter was choking off my air. Arnie was infuriated.

“What? Asshole, answer me!”

I couldn’t. It was the kind of laughter that’s so hard it doesn’t make sound, a spasm in the lungs. And the brain. I was bent with it. Arnie stomped over and grabbed my shirt, pushing me against the wall.

“What?”

I choked out, “Describe yourself to me, Arnie. Physically, tell me what you look like.”

Arnie stepped back. Horror blew all expression off his face. He knew exactly what I was asking.

He muttered, “No, no… You’re fucking with me.”

“Come on, Arnie. I got places to be.”

“No…”

“Because to me you’re not black, Arnie. To me you’re a chubby white guy with a gray mustache. A big, fat necktie tied in a huge Windsor knot.”

Arnie’s eyes went wide, then narrowed in disgust. He threw me against the wall one last time, then backed away.

“My first thought when I saw you, Arnie, was that you looked just like I imagined you. I actually said that to myself. I should have known. And now I’ve wasted my whole day.”

He sprayed something nasty under his breath, turned on his heels and stormed from the room. I sat there, seizures of suppressed laughter trembling through my gut. Gotta cut that out. Inappropriate laughter is the universal first sign of madness. I took a series of long breaths. My whole afternoon. Wasted. Slowly the ridiculousness of the situation suddenly stopped being funny and started pissing me off. If Arnie left in his car, I didn’t have a ride back. I climbed to my feet and followed the echoes of his footsteps through the mall.

I caught up to Arnie in the dark of the parking lot. He had his keys in his hand and was walking toward the rental car, then stopped. He was staring at the car, at a spot toward the rear. The trunk.

I walked up slowly, not sure what he would do next. You never know how people will react in this situation. The way he was looking at the trunk, he knew something. What would he do when he figured out the truth? What would you do in his shoes?

I stepped up, about ten feet behind him. I said, “You think there’s somethin’ in there, Arnie?”

He didn’t answer. He was studying his car keys.

“Come on Arnie. Open it. The sooner you do, the sooner we can move on.”

With shaking fingers, Arnie twisted the keys in the lock. He lifted the trunk lid, stared wordlessly at what was below him for probably a full minute. His keys fell from his hand and hit the gravel with a chink and for a moment, I was sure Arnie would faint. Was that even possible for somebody who was already dead? An interesting question.

I strode up behind Arnie. In the trunk was a thin, black man, probably in his early sixties. A graying afro that grew in a pattern-baldness horseshoe around a head that was splattered with blood.

The head was not attached to the body. It had been neatly sliced off, a job so quick and efficient that the bloodstained bow tie around the severed neck was still tied and straight. The man in the trunk could not have looked more different than the Arnie Blondestone I had known. But he was undoubtedly the real one.

I said, “I’m sorry, Arnie. I really am. I think I’m one of the few people in the world who can truly sympathize with you.”

Arnie wheeled on me like I was the Devil. He pointed a finger gun at me and said, “You did this! You killed me, you son of a bitch!”

“Look at your body, Arnie. The one in the trunk, I mean. Look at the dried blood. You’ve been dead for days. No, I think somebody got wind that you had contacted me and so they took you out. I’m really sorry about that. It’s sorta my fault, I guess.”

“ I’m not a fuckin’ ghost! This is bullshit! Bullshit! I drove you all around town! I can touch you!”

He reached out and grabbed my shirt to demonstrate. “What kind of trick are you playing, asshole? Is this some game you play, the way you made me see that thing in your truck? Did you drug me?”

I reached up and easily pulled Arnie’s hand off my shirt. I then reached out, put my hands under his armpits and lifted him into the air. He was about as heavy as a department store mannequin. I doubt you’ve ever lifted one of those but you can probably guess that they’re not very heavy.

Arnie’s eyes grew wide once again and I set him gently back down.

I said, “You’re an astral body. Do you know what that means, Arnie?”

Arnie didn’t hear. He clutched at his chest, looking at the world around him as if suddenly every stone and blade of grass held some new terror behind it. I said, “It’s a stage of manifestation between the physical and spiritual. A body that’s half there.”

Arnie ran. He sprinted to the driver’s side of the sedan and yanked open the door. He threw himself into the seat and went to get his car keys, realized he didn’t have them. He put his hands on his face and leaned over the steering wheel, eyes closed.

I walked up to his door and said through the window, “This is my fault, Arnie. Not just you gettin’ killed, but this, this half life you’ve got. I did this, I projected you. It’s the soy sauce, it’s one thing it lets me do. I’m thinkin’ you got killed right after we talked on the phone. You know how you talk to somebody and you imagine what they look like based on their voice? Well, when you got killed you immediately assumed the shape of-”

“This can’t be. It can’t. I don’t accept that. I-I got grandkids. I got a vacation comin’ this June, I’m goin’ to Atlantic City. I got tickets.”

“Yeah, you’re in the denial stage right now, Arnie. This is all normal. I gotta go, okay? I have to go call Amy and tell her she owes me five bucks.”

“Shut the fuck up, Wong. Right now. I refuse to believe that I’m only here because I popped outta your imagina-”

Arnie vanished. I said to the empty car, “I’m sorry, Arnie. I really am.”

I went around to the trunk of the car and almost closed it, but thought that maybe I shouldn’t have my fingerprints on a trunk containing a corpse. This also eliminated the idea of driving the car back to the restaurant. I looked up into the starless, overcast sky and hoped the rain would hold off until I got back to my truck.

I WALKED INTOthe night. I passed a weedy vacant lot, a Burger King, a church operating out of a building that used to be a bowling alley. I passed a rail-thin guy who looked homeless, and did a double take because he was wearing a stained white T-shirt that seemed to have my name on it. It had a yellow caricature of a bucktoothed Asian man that said MR. WONG under it. I thought I had seen that character before somewhere, and dismissed it.

Half a block later I saw two kids who looked maybe thirteen, smoking cigarettes and looking at me suspiciously. The kid on the left had a black concert shirt with a picture of some glam-rock band on it. Below that it said, THE DARKNESS. The other kid had on a flannel shirt, unbuttoned. Most of the T-shirt underneath was obscured, but between the flannel the words, IS HUNGRY peeked out.

I thought I could see a sentence forming there, which wouldn’t be all that strange in the context of my life. I passed an old lady coming out of a storefront craft store; her blouse didn’t say anything. I saw a busty girl with an olive T-shirt that said STAY OUT OF IRAQ and I thought that might apply.