THE ONLY THING IN THE WORLD

 

Dark dreams about aliens, and six-armed monsters with Mel's face and Lucifer's laugh, and blond-haired boys that explode when he touches them.

He wakes up to his mother's usual machine-gun raps on the door, and manages to rummage through the junk on the side of the bed for something to throw without ever opening his eyes. He thinks it was a shoe, but as long as it clunks against his door and shuts Mom the hell up, it doesn't really matter. As soon as it connects, he lays back down on the bed and throws his arm over his face.

His bare shoulder is touching someone else's skin.

For a second, he's afraid to open his eyes. He thinks about the images in his dreams, Montgomery's eyes going blank, and how hot his blood had felt on Dark's face, and the skittering sound of the alien's little cockroach-like legs on his cotton sheets. But then he hears a quiet sigh, and he opens his eyes, and its just Montgomery there next to him, resting his head on his arm and smiling.

"H-hi," Montgomery whispers, that little stutter in his voice that Dark already loves.

"Hi," Dark says back. He turns over on his side, too, and smiles.

"Uh, is your mom gonna be mad that I'm here? Should I--leave?" Montgomery moves to get up, and Dark grabs his arm.

"No way. My mom is just, like, you know." He rolls his eyes. "Heinous bitch monster. She knows if she came in my room I'd have to disembowel her with a fork."

"Oh. Good." Montgomery looks mildly reassured.

"Um. Are you okay? Cause you were so, like, freaked out last night." He sort of wants to touch Montgomery, partly to make sure he's really there, but mostly just...because.

"I think so," Montgomery says. He lies back on the bed, and just looks at Dark until he lies down too. Montgomery turns his head so their faces are inches apart, looking right into each other's eyes. "Thanks for letting me crash here. I know it must have been kind of weird, having me show up at your window n-naked and talking about aliens." He blushes. "Its not like we even really know each other."

"No big," Dark says. "I mean, like, I'm glad you came. To me." He puts his hand on top of Montgomery's, and the other boy's skin is warm and soft and real beneath his own.

*

They go to the coffee shop for breakfast, and its overcrowded. Dark has to take Montgomery's hand to lead him to a table, and the other boy's fingers clutch him tightly as Dark shoves people out of the way.

Mel and Lucifer apparently made up after last night's party, and they're sitting together at their usual table. He's still holding Montgomery's hand, but he drops it as he sits down so he can open a fresh pack of cigs.

"Dark." Mel's eyes go soft, and she curls a hand over his while Lucifer's eyes spit fire. "Hi. I was gonna drop by your house, but...after last night..."

He takes his hand back, drawing a cigarette out of the pack. "Its cool. Last night was, like...it was really fucked up. But we're cool now."

Montgomery is just standing there, so Dark smiles at him to wipe that dejected look off his face. Montgomery smiles back, so bright that Dark could light his cigarette off it, and sits down next to him.

He uses a book of matches instead, and asks the girls, "So whats going on? Don't you guys have History of Fatal Epidemics class right now?"

"Nobody's in class right now. Haven't you heard yet?"

"What?"

Mel leans over the table, eyes wide with the gleam of one imparting juicy gossip. "You saw Alyssa's freako boyfriend beat the shit out of Handjob, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, he's in jail, obviously, and Handjob's dead."

"Shit," Dark says. Its fucked up, but all he can wonder is where he's going to get his drugs now.

"Thats not all," Mel says, and her eyes sparkle. "Egg killed herself."

"Shot herself in the face," Lucifer says, bumming one of Dark's cigarettes. "Like, splat. Brains all over the bedroom wall."

"Who's Egg?" Dark asks.

"That bulimic chick Dingbat and Alyssa always hang around."

"Duckie's little sister, dorkball." Mel hits him on the forehead playfully, but he doesn't feel like fucking around right now.

Montgomery's face is pale and sick-looking, and when he stands up his hands hit the table with a loud smack. "I...have to go," he says. He looks like he's going to throw up or cry, and when he walks away from the table, Dark follows him.

"Hey," Dark says. Its so loud in here, and he puts one hand on Montgomery's should and the other on the back of his neck, so he can pull him close and talk directly in his ear. "Hey, are you okay?" His cigarette burns his fingers, and he drops it with a curse.

"Yeah. No," Montgomery says. "I just...have to go." He detaches himself from Dark's hands and turns away.

"Can I see you later?" Dark calls after him, feeling like a kicked puppy. Montgomery looks back at him and nods, but then he turns away and walks out the door.

Dark sits back down at the table and lights a cigarette. Mel looks frankly amazed, and Lucifer is smirking at him. "Finally get a taste for cock?" she asks. Her teeth look like knives, and her red, red lips look like they're covered with blood.

"Shut it, hag," he says, and looks away, drawing smoke deep into his lungs.

*

Mel offers to give him a ride home, but he decides to walk instead.

He finds Cowboy at the park, staring at his sneakers and picking idly at the skin on his wrist, leaving bright red spots. He doesn't even notice Dark until he sits down beside him. When he looks up, there are circles under his eyes, and he looks stunned, like someone hit him in the head with a rock.

"Dark," he says. "Hey, man." He sniffs, and then wipes his nose with his arm.

"Dude. What the fuck's going on around here? Handjob's dead, Duckie's little sister is dead..."

"Bart's dead," Cowboy says.

"What? Holy shit." Dark puts his hand on Cowboy's shoulder. The muscles are tense there, and he can feel the bones sticking up beneath Cowboy's skin, like hard little spikes. "Did he OD?"

"No." Cowboy smiles, but there's no humor in it. "I did what I said I was going to do. He was high, and I told him that if he didn't get clean, there was gonna be no more band, and no more us. And then he went home and put his head in the fucking oven."

"Oh, fuck." Dark just sits there, looking at the sky and then at Cowboy. He shakes his head. "L.A. is, like, fucked. Its just all fucked up."

"I'm glad Handjob's dead." Cowboy hunches further into himself, and there's, like, nothing on his face. No sadness, no rage, nothing. "I wish I'd killed him my fucking self."

Dark doesn't really want to keep touching him anymore, but Cowboy looks so empty, and Dark's afraid that if he stops touching him, he'll just disappear.

*

When he walks home from the park, he walks past the police station. Alyssa's sitting on a bench outside, and her asshole brother has his arms around her. His crazy slut of a girlfriend is sitting next to them, looking bored and painting her nails.

Dark walks up to them and nods at Alyssa, but when she catches his eyes, all she says is, "Everything is so fucked up." Her asshole brother slips his hand into her shirt and bites her earlobe. His crazy girlfriend sees it and laughs, this insane witches cackle, and the whole thing makes Dark feel so slimy and gross that he just walks away without saying a word.

*

He goes home for a little while, but the place is so empty and silent that he can't stand it. He even wishes his mom was home, screaming like a banshee and throwing shit at him, if only so he could have someone to yell back at.

He goes outside with his video camera and walks around for awhile. He films a toddler screaming alone in a locked car, a dead bird with its wing torn half off, an empty syringe. He goes back to the busstop and finds a burnt retainer, but he just chucks it in the trash. He hasn't seen an alien all day, so maybe they're gone. Fuck, maybe he and Montgomery are just crazy. Then he thinks about Handjob and Bart and Egg and thinks, no. He and Montgomery are totally normal. Its the rest of the world that's fucked.

He stops at WhataBurger and orders a Slop-o-Rama Bellybuster and a Cherry Slurpster, but he only eats about half of it before he chucks it in the trash. He has to piss, but the men's room is locked so he heads into the women's bathroom.

Inside, the stall door is open and someone's puking into the toilet. For a minute, he's glad he didn't finish his burger--salmonella, bug droppings, who was in that shit--but then he realizes the the girl slumped over the toilet is Dingbat. She pulls back with a sigh and wipes her face with her arm.

"Dark," she says when she sees him. She doesn't even look surprised.

"Hey," he says, shifting uncomfortably. "Um. I have to piss."

"Piss away." She gestures grandly to the toilet and leans back against the inside wall of the stall. He stands next to her, uncomfortably aware that her eyeline is directly parallel to his cock, and that her leg is touching his. When he's done, he tucks himself back in and crouches down next to her.

"You okay?"

She shrugs. "Yeah. I just...this is the third time I did it today, and I think I went a little overboard."

"Oh." He leans against the wall across from her.

"Egg's dead," she says almost casually.

"Yeah."

"Duckie's doing a freak-out. Did you see him take a nosedive into the pool last night?"

"Yeah."

"He fucked me after that. It felt like touching a corpse." It sounds absurd coming from a girl wearing a kitty-cat shirt with puke on her chin, but he believes her. She sighs. "This whole world is fucked."

He sighs too, and looks at her. "Yeah."

Its the first time he's looked her directly in the eyes, and when he looks closely he sees that everything but the irises are bright red, like her eyes are swimming in blood.

*

He goes back home and tries to work on his video, but seeing Mel's tits on his TV just makes him tired. The sheets still smell sort of like Montgomery, so he lays down for a nap.

When he wakes up, the smell is even stronger, and when he opens his eyes, he sees its because Montgomery is there with him. He'd been stroking Dark's hair away from his face, but when Dark opens his eyes, Montgomery jerks his hand back like he's been burned.

"H-hi."

"Hey," Dark says, and his throat feels scorched and raw, like it does when he smokes too much. He burrows his head deeper into the pillow, closing his eyes tight, and then opening them again to look at Montgomery. "Why'd you run off earlier?"

Montgomery lays down next to him gingerly, like he's afraid he'll get kicked out or something. "Egg. I, I went to prom with her. Dingbat and Alyssa are f-friends of mine. And, like, I used to skateboard with her brother. So." He shuts his eyes and breathes in deep. "I went to her house. Duckie was the only one there. He, like, showed me. Where she killed herself. The police had been in there, but, like, there was still blood and brains all over the wall."

"The world is so fucked," Dark says. He just wants to go to sleep and forget that the world exists. L.A. is, like, this monster that sucks out your soul, or something. This vampire.

"Yeah," Montgomery says softly, and shivers. "And it reminded me of this dream I had last night. After I came in your room, and we lay down to go to sleep, and you k-kissed me. On the forehead. I, um, I started coughing and I couldn't stop. And then I was this alien and my skin, like, exploded, all over your wall. And it looked like Egg's blood."

Dark just looks at him for a minute, and then he shuts his eyes. He breathes in deep, sucking the already-familiar scent of Montgomery deep into his lungs, and when he opens his eyes again, Montgomery is still there. He looks like Dark, exhausted and sick and like L.A. is already sucking out his soul.

Dark kisses Montgomery, very slowly, on the forehead, and then on the cheek. His skin is as soft as Dark remembers, and just as warm. Dark thinks about how cold and hard Cowboy's shoulder had been, and how burning hot Mel's hand. He thinks about Alyssa being felt up by her brother, and about Dingbat fucking Duckie. He thinks about about all the different kinds of touch in the world, and he thinks he likes this one best.

Montgomery's eyes had been huge and scared, but when Dark kisses him, they go soft like melting ice cream. His skin is warm and real and human, alive. "You're not an alien," Dark says, and then he kisses Montgomery on the lips. Their mouths meet softly, and for once Dark doesn't feel like he's being devoured. Right now, the world doesn't feel like a monster that sucks our your soul. It feels like warm human skin and soft lips, and Dark thinks that maybe this is the one thing in the world that isn't totally, totally fucked.

 

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