John Dies at the End

didn’t really see this—but the guy shrunk himself, made himself three feet tall. We all laughed our asses off, then he was back to normal again.”

“And you still tried that shit?”

“Are you kidding? How could I not?”

The phone sang its electronic ditty again.

“Did anybody else do it?”

“Are you gonna get that?”

“You avoid my question one more time and I will come over this table and punch you in the face. Look into my eyes. You know I mean it. I’m tired of your—”

“It’s not that easy, Dave. Everything’s mixed up, like if somebody made you watch ten movies at once and then made you write an essay on ’em. That stuff . . . Dave, I’m remembering things that haven’t happened ye—I mean, that didn’t happen. Even right now, all that stuff from Vegas. Did we go to Las Vegas? You and me?”

The phone chirped a third time. Or fourth, I lost count.

“No, John. We’ve never been in our lives, either one of us. Are you the only one who took the sauce?”

“I don’t know, that’s what I’m tryin’ to say. We went to Robert’s place, but Head and the guys didn’t come. I think they got nervous when they saw a needle come out. There were some kids around, the party kind of landed there, at Robert’s trailer. Now please, please, please get your phone or turn it off. That damned song you got in there is driving me up a wall.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You took something that scared Head? The guy who did the stuff that killed River Phoenix just to prove he was the better man?”

“Dave . . .”

“All right, all right.”

I pulled out the phone, flipped it open, slapped it to my head.

“Yeah.”

“David? It’s me.”

Ah, that feeling again. That chill of unreality, my belly full of coffee turning to liquid nitrogen.

The voice was John’s.

No question about it. The man who was sitting across from me, smoking quietly without a phone anywhere near his head, had called me.

I glanced at John, said into the phone, “Is this a recording?”

“What? No. I don’t know if we’ve talked tonight, but we don’t have much time. I think I called you and told you to come here. If so, don’t do it. If I haven’t called, then obviously you should still stay away regardless. Now, I need you to go to Las Vegas. There’s a guy there—”

“Who is this?”

John, in the booth there with me, gave me a look. On the phone: “It’s John. Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you and I can see you,” I said, a tremble in my voice. “You’re sitting right here next to me.”

“Well, just talk to me in person, then. Oh, wait. Do I look like I’m injured in any way?”

“What?”

“Fuck! Someone’s at the door.”

Click. He was gone.

I sat there, the phone still pressed to my ear, suddenly very, very tired.

IF I HAD been sitting with anyone else, I would have assumed I was being set up for some drunken practical joke. But I knew this wasn’t some elaborate prank of John’s for two reasons: one, John knows how I get when I’m pissed off and wouldn’t intentionally do it, and two, it wasn’t funny.

I was scared. Truly scared, maybe for the first time since I was a little kid. John looked pale and half dead. My feet were wet and cold, my contact lenses were itching, my brain aching from sleep deprivation. I wanted to burn that cell phone, go home and lock my doors and curl up under a blanket in the closet.

This is the breaking point in a human life, right here. But my whole life had been leading up to this, hadn’t it?

From day one it was like society was this violent, complicated dance and everybody had taken lessons but me. Knocked to the floor again and again, climbing to my feet each time, bloody and humiliated. Always met with disapproving faces, waiting for me to leave so I’d stop fucking up the party.

They wanted to push me outside, where the freaks huddled in the cold. Out there with the misfits, the broken, glazed-eye types who can only watch as the normals enjoy their shiny new cars and careers and marriages and vacations with the kids.

The freaks spend their lives shambling around, wondering how they got left out, mumbling about conspiracy theories and Bigfoot sightings. Their encounters with the world are marked by awkward conversations and stifled laughter, hidden smirks and rolled eyes. And worst of all, pity.

Sitting there on that night in April, I pictured myself getting shoved out there with them, the sound of doors locking behind me.

Welcome to freakdom, Dave. It’ll be time to start a Web site soon, where you’ll type out everything in one huge paragraph.

It was like dying.

“WAS THAT ME?” asked John. “That was me, wasn’t it?”

I looked down at my coffee and considered flinging it into John’s face.

“I’m sorry, Dave. I really am. For messin’ up your sleep cycle and for everything that’s about to happen, the people that are going to, uh, explode.”

I was already up, walking out. I guess John paid at the counter behind me, I don’t know. I pushed my way out the glass door, dug out my keys. I opened the driver’s door and Molly the dog immediately flung herself out onto the pavement, barking her head off, looking right at me. Then she trotted off across the empty lot, turned and barked some more, then trotted a few steps farther and barked again.

John said, “I think she wants us to follow her.”

She scampered off down the sidewalk, glancing back at us to make sure we were coming. I slid into the car.

I pulled out of the space and drove in completely the opposite direction of the dog. John seemed like he wanted to comment on this, but the look on my face probably warned him off. I vaguely heard the sound of the dog running and barking after us as I turned onto the street, but disregarded it. We drove in tense silence.

Finally, tentatively, he asked where we were going.

“We’re going to fucking work, John. It’s six o’clock and we’re opening the shop. There’s nobody there to cover for us.”

He didn’t reply to this. Instead, he leaned his seat back, turned and looked out the passenger window at the passing storefronts and the few early-morning joggers, not saying a word. I eventually asked him how he was doing, got no answer. I could see he was still breathing. That was good. Sleeping, that’s all. I guessed that was good, too.

If he gets sick and dies, Robert Marley, they’re gonna find you in a ditch somewhere.

I stopped at a red light, feeling foolish as always for stopping at an intersection at an hour when the streets are deserted, just because a colored lightbulb told me to. Society has got me so fucking trained. I rubbed my eyes and groaned and felt utterly alone in the world.

Thump!

Scratching, on the window.

Like claws.

I flinched, turned.

It was claws.

Molly’s. She was on her hind legs, her paws pressed against the window.

“Woof!”

“Go away!”