John Dies at the End

with John thought he would help end the world somehow.

Once, in chemistry class, John “accidentally” made a Bunsen burner explode. I mean it actually shattered a window. He got suspended for ten days for that and if they could have proven it wasn’t an accident he’d have been expelled, as I was a year later.

He was kicked out of art class for submitting very, very detailed charcoal nudes of himself, only with about six inches added to his genitalia. He broke his wrist after a fall while trying to ride a friend’s van like a surfboard. He has burn scars on the back of his thighs from what he told me was a mishap with homemade fireworks, but what I believe was the result of his and some friends’ attempt to make a jet pack. He told me a year ago he wanted to go into politics some day, even though he didn’t have even one minute of college. A month ago he told me he wanted to go into the adult film industry instead.

CHAPTER 2

The Thing in John’s Apartment

DARKNESS AND WARMTH. And then, an all-beep rendition of “La Cucaracha.”

My cell phone. I peeled my eyes open. Bedroom. Nighttime. My floor looked like a Laundromat explosion. Magazines here and there, overflowing trash can. Just as I had left it.

Beepbeepbeep BEEP, BEEP. Beepbeepbeep BEEP, BEEP. BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP—

My hand managed to knock over every single object on my nightstand before it found the cell phone. I squinted at my clock, now lying helpless on the floor. Quarter after 5 A.M. I had to be at work in less than two hours.

“Hello?”

“David? It’s John. Where are you?”

Voice scratchy, breathing heavier than he should be. Like a man just after a fistfight.

“I’m in bed. Where am I supposed to be?”

Long pause.

“Is this the first time I’ve called tonight?”

I sat straight up, fully awake now.

“John? What’s going on?”

“I can’t get out of my apartment, Dave.”

“What?”

“I’m scared, man. I mean it.”

“What are you scared of?”

“It can’t be real, Dave. It can’t. The way it moves, the way it’s made . . . this is not a product of any kind of evolution or anything. It’s not real. No. But it still managed to bite me.”

What?!?

“What?”

“Can you come over?”

One time, John wound up in the hospital after he blacked out behind the wheel of his car. He wasn’t moving at the time, thank God, but was in line at a Wendy’s drive-through. This was after five sleepless and foodless days of vodka and some combination of household chemicals he was using for speed. I didn’t know about it until a week later because he didn’t tell me, knowing I would have kicked his ass right there in the hospital.

But I told him if he ever got into that kind of trouble again without telling me I would not only kick his ass, but would in fact beat him until he died, then pursue him into the afterlife and beat his eternal soul. So John being spaced out on crank or crack or skank tonight wasn’t reason to declare a national holiday, but at least he came to me this time.

I said, “I’ll be there in twelve minutes.”

I hung up, pulled on some clothes I found draped over a chair, almost killed myself tripping over Molly the dog curled up in the doorway. I went out the front door with the dog in tow. It was raining again now, fat drops of April ice water that tingled down the back of my shirt as I ducked into my car. I was halfway to his building when my phone sang again. John’s number popped up on the glowing display.

“Yeah, John. You okay?”

“Dave, I’m sorry to wake you up. I got a problem and I need you to listen—”

“John, I’m on my way over. You called me five minutes ago, remember?”

“What? No, David. Stay away. There’s somethin’ in here with me. I can’t explain it. I don’t think it’ll kill me, it seems to just want to keep me here. Now, I need you to go to Las Vegas. Contact a man named—”

“John, just calm down. You’re not making sense. I want you to sit down somewhere, try to chill out. Nothin’ you’re seeing is real.”

A pause, then John asked, “How do I know this is really you?”

“You’ll know in just a few minutes. I’m comin’ up on your block now. Just chill, like I said. John?”

Nobody there. I sped up, rain drumming the windshield and boiling up into puddles on the passing pavement.

I was pounding on the door to John’s apartment seven minutes later, still pounding on it five minutes after that. I considered going down and waking up his landlord when I tried the knob and realized the door had been unlocked the whole time.

It was dark. No use looking for a switch—John’s only light was a floor lamp across the room and far be it from John to do something as rational as putting the light source where you could reach it from the door. Memory told me at least two pieces of furniture and probably twenty empty beer bottles stood between me and the lamp.

“John?”

Nothing. I tried a tentative step into his apartment, my shoe kicking over a stack of magazines. I tried to step over them, cracked something glass or porcelain on the other side.

“John? Can you hear me? I’m going to call the—ooomfff!!!”

I was hammered by either a flying body tackle or an unnecessarily aggressive hug. My assailant and I landed hard on the carpet, pounding the breath from my lungs.

“It almost killed you!” John screamed, inches from my face. “You’re an idiot, you know that? You’re an idiot for coming here. We’re both gonna die now. You could have brought help but now we’re both gonna die in this room.”

He sat up off me and in the darkness I could detect his head whipping back and forth, as if searching for a sniper. He put one finger up to my face.

“Shhhhhh. I don’t see it. When I say ‘go,’ we’re goin’ to the other side of the room as fast as physically possible. You can clear it in three steps, dive at the end. Move like the Devil himself were after you. Ready?”

“John, listen to me.” I paused, forced air into my lungs and tried to think. “You can’t miss any more days at work. If you let me take you to the hospital, we’ll tell them you’ve been poisoned or something. I don’t think they’ll go to the cops. We can get a note from the doctor there. If we’ve got a note I could talk Jeff into keeping you on.”

“Go!”

John pushed himself to his feet, sprinted across the room and flung himself over an overturned sofa next to the wall. He sailed over it, arms flopping about like a rag doll, smacking into the wall behind it with a heavy thud.

I calmly stood up, walked to my right and turned up the floor lamp. I looked over to see John peer over the overturned sofa. Next to it was an armchair, on the other side a capsized coffee table. The man had built a furniture fort on that side of the room.

“John . . .”

He stood up, eyes wide. He put his hands out to me, fingers splayed.

“Dave, do not move.” He spoke flat, low and dead serious.

“What?”

“I’m begging you,” he said, almost whispering now. “I know you don’t believe me. But when you turn around, you will. But do—not—scream. If you do, you’re dead. Now. Very slowly, turn