David Wong - John Dies at the End

I saw something out of the corner of my eye that stopped me in midthought. I leaned back to see through the open door of my bedroom.

The drawer on my nightstand was open.

The drawer where I keep my gun.

My butt cheeks clenched so tightly that not even light could have escaped. I listened for burglar sounds. Dead quiet. I took a soft step forward, wondering if I could fake kung fu if I had to. I once saw Arnold Schwarzenegger kill a man in a movie by grabbing his head and twisting it until the neck broke. Was that difficult? Could a man do it without a lot of practice?

I keep the gun in a hollowed-out copy of the Koran that John got me for Christmas. And there the big book was, tossed on the bed, open and gunless. Nothing else disturbed. They actually checked my Koran to see if there was a gun inside . I knew I was dealing with a sick son of a bitch.

I stepped carefully and quietly through the bedroom doorway, glancing this way and that. Nobody here. I checked under the bed, the sheets still smelling faintly of girl even now, months after I’d spent my last naked night on them with Jen. Or maybe it was my imagination.

Either way, you should probably change those sheets …

Nothing under the bed. I checked the other rooms in the dark little house, stepping slowly across the carpet. Somebody had called, I noticed, the little red “new message” light on my answering machine blinking in the darkness like a time bomb.

Nobody here. I wandered toward the answering machine, my gut full of snakes. Snow melted in my hair, a droplet of ice water running into my ear. I reached up to brush it back-

And sucked in a shocked breath.

I had found the pistol.

It was in my motherfucking hand.

I dropped the gun like it was made of bees. It bounced onto the sofa and I stared stupidly at it, then stared even more stupidly at my empty palm, fingers pink from the cold. What the-

Now that you ask, it’s a whole ten-foot walk from your heated truck to your front door. Why does every inch of exposed skin feel windburned? Why do you seem to have a pint of snow in your hair?

There’s that feeling again, that fluttery feeling of mental weightlessness, like the times when you wake up in the dark, on the hood of a car, a bottle in your hand, no idea what day it is, some girl shouting at you in Arabic.

I tried to collect myself. Tired. Tired like a zombie. An overworked zombie, one who got hired as a salaried assistant manager at a zombie video store, only to find out “salaried” just means he doesn’t get paid for overtime. My skull pounded, my knees were ground glass. I sat heavily on the sofa and stared vacantly at the little beads of water standing on the sleek, chrome surface of the Smith. I glanced at my watch. Right after midnight.

Okay. You got off at eleven. You came straight home. It’s a twelve-minute drive, figure maybe twenty for the weather. You came right in. So where did the other half hour go, Dave? Did you maybe take a detour and shoot your boss?

No, if I’d shot Wally’s manager Jeff Wolflake, I wouldn’t have deprived myself by repressing the memory, would I?

I picked up the gun and ejected the magazine. Still heavy with bullets. I sighed with relief. If I had indeed stopped by Jeff’s house to murder him, I would have emptied the gun. I reinserted the magazine.

This was no way to start the weekend. I punched the “play” button on the machine, listened to the message. It was John. It finished, I hit “play” again, listened closer, then hit “play” again. By the fourth time I was pretty sure that John had said, “bag full of fat.”

I decided to try once more:

Beep .

“ Dave? It’s me. Amy’s missing and we got what looks like a bag full of fat here. It’s weird. And I mean ‘bad’ weird, not ‘clown’ weird. It’s almost midnight and-I guess you’re not home yet. Or maybe you’re in bed. You’re not in bed, are you? I know you haven’t been sleepin’. Are you there? Wake up, David . Wake up. Okay, so you’re not there. Call me when you get this, I don’t care how late. Oh, and when you come over, watch out for a jellyfish. See you.”

Beep .

Bag full of fat. I picked up the phone and dialed John on his cell. One ring, and then-

“I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE, VINNY!”

“John?”

“Oh, Dave. Sorry. I had been having a heated argument here on my phone and then I hung up in disgust. Then when the phone rang I just assumed, without checking, that it was the person I was having an argument with, so I just blindly shouted insults into the phone. How embarrassing.”

“I’m getting sick of that one, John.”

“Are you on your way over?”

“I, uh, got somethin’ going on here.”

“What’s your thing?”

“I’ve got a-”

I paused, made a decision.

“-batch of brownies in the oven. I don’t want them to burn, or else they get gummy.”

“Yeah, they’ll stick, too. Did you grease the pan?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Good. Anyway, Amy is missing and the scene is weird as shit. The situation has a real Lovecraft feel to it. Though, you know, if you come over it’ll be more of an Anne Rice situation. If you know what I mean.”

“Who’s-”

“Because you’re gay.”

“Who’s missing, John?”

“ Amy , Dave. A-M-Y. I think my signal’s breaking up-”

“I don’t know any-”

“Amy Sullivan? Big Jim’s sister?”

That stopped me.

Memories of an entire day spent locked in the back of a truck, sick with fear and boredom. A promise made to a dead man. I hadn’t thought of that day in months.

“Oh. You mean Cucumber.”

“Do you not feel the need to learn people’s real names, Dave?”

“We called her that in school. She was in that Special Ed class, always throwing up for some reason.”

A silent pause on John’s end.

“You know, like a sea cucumber? They’re these eels that-”

“Anyway, Dave, we’re at her house now. The cops, too. How soon can you be here?”

How about June?

Even that wasn’t going to be enough time to piece this together. I pictured Big Jim on his back, a crimson stain across his neck and the floor like a scarf. The dead man had circled back into my life somehow. I glanced at the gun, trying to make it all fit and failing.

“What’d you say on my machine? Bag full of-”

“I can’t hear you, you’re breaking up. Just get here as soon as you can, we gotta go deal with this flying jellyfish thing.”

A pause on my end now.

“What?”

“See you in a few-UNDER THE CABINET! NO, THE CABINET! THE-HERE, LET ME-”

Click. Doooooooooooooooo …

I disconnected and did what I usually do after hanging up with John: sat in dumbfounded silence and contemplated all of the poor choices in my life.

I shrugged out of my coat, pulled off my Wally’s shirt, smelled it, then hung it back in the bedroom closet.

As I pulled on a new shirt I grabbed a bottle of caffeine pills from my desk drawer. I washed down four of them with a warm, half-empty bottle of red Mountain Dew I found on the kitchen counter.

I pulled on the coat and, after a moment’s hesitation, dropped the Smith & Wesson in the pocket, the weight pulling the whole left side of the coat down on my shoulder. I felt like Bruce Willis.

Is it just me, or is the barrel slightly warm?

I pushed through my front door and plunged into the cold, but made it no farther than the doormat.

Footprints.

The thin blanket of white across my front lawn should have been clean, save for a single trail of prints from the driver’s side of my Bronco to the spot I was standing. Instead, there was a haphazard circle of tracks in loops around my front yard, then trailing off around the back of the house. The trail of prints emerged from the other side and eventually led to the front porch, where I was now.