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Chapter 4: Family Reunion

The monsters all began to move apart as Johnny walked towards the stage. His chest was pounding, and he could hear Eve in his mind running around the Diner Of The Mind, laughing and clapping. “You did it! I can’t believe you did it, but you really did it!”

Johnny nodded to himself, and secretly to Eve, as he walked up the steps of the stage and walked over to the gremlin holding his brother’s shackles. “I’d like them off, if you don’t.”

“Oh not at all sir! This is your prize, and if you wish for the man to be free, all you had to do was ask.” The gremlin held up his hand, a purple haze forming above it that began to twist and harden until it took the form of a key. He held the purple key for a few seconds, whispering. “I never dreamed a day would come where we set him free. In a way I am glad this chapter of our story is over.” It then placed the key into a lock near Jimmy’s feet, and all of the shackles around his body began to shift around and morph, turning into a pair of jeans and a button-up shirt on Jimmy’s body. “We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

Johnny frowned, wrapping his arm around his brother. “Yea, well at least this is over, right? Can you show us back to the entrance though?”

“Of course sirs, right this way…”

The road back didn’t seem like the same as the one into the establishment, and when Johnny asked about this the gremlin creature couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yes sir, this place changes quite a bit, but the map is always in our minds. All those silly riders outside who come in, wondering what this lace is, become lost and, depending on who finds that person, they either end up back in your world with no memory of it, with the memory intact, or…well, clearly some of those missing people reports around the world have to be a bit diabolic, do they not? But do not worry, I’m one of the more friendly creatures. I was created specifically to help, and I was never given a list of who I should and should not help. But now it is time for you to go, and for the auction of this year to officially end. I hope you received everything you needed, although I am certain this is the case.”

“Very much so, thank you.” Johnny smiled, whispering. “It’s ok Jimmy, you’re free now. We’ll get you back to full health, and this will all be behind us.”

In his mind, he could see Eve sit down at one of the tables, folding her arms. “Thank God this is over, and I can figure out what next to do with my life. Maybe work at a real diner? Just sort of clock out and then recede back into the Diner of the Mind every night? Or I could maybe put a TV in here and use you two to see what it’s like to get addicted to a show! Or…huh?”

Johnny frowned, stepping out of the auction house and back into the Brockton Pits. While the sight in front of him was normal, and the building behind him just a normal shack again, inside of the Diner of the Mind a man had just entered the establishment. Jimmy, in a business suit of all things, shook his head as he sat down across from Eve in the fictional diner. “It’s not over you guys…you just rescued me. Dad’s gonna be angry, and I don’t know what he’s like when he’s truly angry. You rescued me Johnny, but you may have just ended everything else, Now come on, there’s still one way to make this all work out, but we need to get to your car now!”

All around the world, monsters of every kind could feel a strange force. At first it began as a wave of dysphoria, a sense of something wrong with the whole of reality. It grew more and more, until each and every monster began to feel wrong in their own right. They knew it could only mean one thing, and the message that filled their heads and clouded all of their other thoughts confirmed it.

“COME BACK TO ME.”

And then, all around the world, the monsters began to simply fade away. The ones in the hidden spaces, the wrong places like the Auction House, were lucky. They could feel the impeding doom and say their final goodbyes, while the others around the planet were already gone. They could feel their time coming soon, and as they sat in the main bidding room, the gremlin creature sighed, standing at the podium on the stage. “Well, my friends, it seems the time to be one has come at last. Our dear ole creator wishes for us to be part of him yet again, and I do feel a bit apprehensive about it. I do believe I speak for all of us when I say we all lived fun, fulfilling lives. If this is truly an end to us, then I for one am grateful we sold the young man back to his brother. Being remembered…I hope we truly are in the future, and the bid was not in vain. Who knows what the future holds, my friends…”

A warm smile grew across his face as glasses filled with varying liquids began to appear all around the room, in front of each and every monster in attendance. As they all grabbed the glasses in unison, the gremlin looked at his free hand and watched it start to fade away. “My dear creatures, I propose a toast! To the memory of us, and for the future!”

And with that, one by one, each monster in the room took a drink, faded away, and became part of the creator once again.

While the monsters were fading one after another, the two Summers brothers were formulating a plan as they ran towards Johnny’s car. It was a long shot, but Jimmy could feel it in his gut that it would all work out. That had always been his gift, in a way. He always held hope, no matter what the circumstances were, and they always seemed to work out in the long run. His brother had just rescued him, and now he was awaiting for the inevitable.

As Jimmy shoved the small ornate box into the back pocket of the jean’s, pulling the shirt he now wore over the pants as well as he could. “We just need to hope that monster we call our father doesn’t come soon, it needs to be a perfect sneak attack, it needs to…”

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll have to wait too long Jimmy. After all, I’m done pulling myself together, so let’s be polite about this, shall we?”

The Summers boys both turned around instantly, staring back at the Pits they had just come from. A tanned man, wearing a black business suit and a red tie, walked over and smiled. He had a scar across his right cheek, and he couldn’t help but chuckle a bit. When he spoke, his voice seemed to fluctuate, never truly taking any one accent or any one pitch. “Well, isn’t this a nice little family reunion? Hello boys, how are you?”

As Johnny stared at the man, he couldn’t help but feel disgusted. Everything wrong with the world seemed to resonate off of him, and all he wanted to do was throw up. “Let me guess, you’re our dad?”

“Ahh, guilty as charged! Although…hold on, let me just…” He cleared his throat a bit, and began to straighten his tie. When he spoke next, what came out of his throat was just a natural voice, with no real accent to speak of. It was an average voice. but Johnny could feel like it was molded off of all the ways he thought his characters would sound in any of his stories. “There we go! Sorry about that, I was kind of…let’s say I was putting the pets down! But enough about me, how are you two doing?! Or I guess I should know what Jimmy here is gonna say, ‘Oh Dad, how could you, oh it hurt so much daddy’ and blah blah blah! So Johnny…how are you? I heard you were quite the little wordsmith from your dear ole mom before I…well let’s just say she’s not gonna be joining our family reunion! Sorry about that, but she forced my hand!”

Jimmy’s eyes widened as he heard those words come out of their dad’s mouth, and screamed. “You bastard! Who do you think you are?!” Pulling the box from out of his back pocket, Jimmy ran forward. In turn, their father held up his hand, and a shadowy tendril shot out, wrapping around Jimmy’s neck.

“Now now son, that isn’t very nice! We aren’t going to be using THAT blade today, oh no we aren’t!” Another tendril split apart from the original, slithering down Jimmy’s body and wrapping around the ornate box. “See, this is the end of line boys. This is the end of a story that started before your race could even properly think!” He sighed, slicking back his hair with his free hand, and pointed at Johnny. “Don’t try anything. Not like you even could, Johnny boy, seeing that your brother is the one with the Blade right now. Him, the fighter…but you? You’re the kid who loves creating worlds. Bending reality to his will, one page at a time!” He chuckled, sitting on the metal bar of the Pits gate, and the tendril around Jimmy’s neck tightened. “I’m going to tell you a tale, and you’re gonna sit right here next to me. You move, and the tendril around your brother’s neck makes him go from breathing lightly to…well, not breathing at all. You’re staring at the last page of a book that you opened on the last five pages. Let me tell you about the rest of the book real quick, so you know why you were born in the first place.”

Johnny could feel his body move on it’s own. He could hear Eve in his head, screaming about the plan. They had to follow it, and his dad was right. This was the end. But morbid curiosity made his body sit down next to his dad on the metal gate, and he looked over. “Ok, so tell me this story of yours.”

“Well Johnny, once upon there was an ancient race. Now I know that’s a cliche start to a story, but it’s true. There was a race before humanity, walking around on this planet we all call home. We didn’t really have a name, because we were the only humanoid race that existed at that point! Now your species seems to have some sort of historical collective conscious, which means you remember much about our society even after destroying it!

Now, you have to understand Johnny, certain details are lost far beyond what I can reach in my mind. Even something like me can’t remember all things in this world, so bear with me. Now, I remember having a mom and dad, just like you. Loving parents, who I got to watch die in the hands of filthy little monkeys that were popping up here and there! The start of your race…and what an interesting race it is! You passed down our names from generation to generation, making them the basis of your myths and stories as if they were yours to own! But I digress…

So one day, long ago, when our races existed together, a meteor fell to the sky. Be it some otherworldly material or something from Beyond, a member of your race found it. And with it…they crafted a weapon. See, our race is special Johnny. We didn’t breed like you, we just…WERE. Like gods, we each had our own special thing that made us US, and one of your kind created a weapon that hindered those special things. Made us VULNERABLE. Our population was limited to begin with, but with that weapon? You lot dropped our population down, bit by bit, to one. One final being that you figured you would see as a monster…and so, that’s what I became! Your species wanted a villain so badly that I decided to give it one it would NEVER forget.”

The father sighed, first looking up at Jimmy, and then at Johnny. “So, I want you to understand why what you almost did was such a big mistake to even THINK about. See, my species is special, as I have stated already. Do you really think killing something like us doesn’t have consequences? We were this planet’s true children, and with each death we gave you something to remember. The first time that weapon stabbed the heart of one of us, the being that was very much like a father to me, his body lifted up into the sky. It grew and grew and then it came crashing back down with such a force that it almost wiped everything away. That damned weapon survived, and a few of your race did too. And once again you bred, while my species survived the blast and got picked off slowly and surely. One of us exploded, and their blood multiplied to an almost unlimited amount that created this thing you call an ocean. One of the more recent deaths happened in…let’s see…I believe, if my memory is still correct, it was somewhere in your 14th century? One of our kind, the last besides myself, walked right down a street while trying to live amongst the humans. She was stabbed, and her body just evaporated in front of the man’s eyes. Every cell of her body became a bacteria that spread across your Europe and parts of your Asia, causing death all around! And now there’s me, and I’m all sorts of fun! I was always a fan of the theatrics, and of the infinite possibilities that came from both destroying and creating life. I’ve been feeding on your fears for so many centuries, maybe even millennia! Even if you don’t stab me, tonight is the end of the world as we know it!”

Johnny’s dad smiled, looking up at the sky as he chuckled. “See, I’m going to blot out this world. I’ve seen my whole race go, so I feel it’s humanity’s turn to do the same. This silly universe doesn’t deserve it…I’m such a god now that I can blot out reality with my darkness. And that’s the plan Johnny boy, to make an infinite darkness that is mine to rule!”

Johnny couldn’t help but look at his struggling brother, and the box that the shadowy tendril was wrapped around. “And if I were to kill you?”

“If…if you were to…” Johnny’s father loudly, and Johnny could feel his skin crawl as the man did. “Sure, let’s say you SOMEHOW got that box! Let’s say you somehow open it, get the knife, and stab me with it! you know what happens next?! All of the darkness in me, this physical buildup of raw energy, still gets unleashed! And I’ll make sure my death rockets out before coming back here. I want you and Jimmy here to be the last…actually, you know what? I just want YOU to be the last person alive. I want you to watch, and think in your head how much of a great story this was, and how much of a WASTE it is that nobody will ever hear it, as the darkness consumes you! THAT’S what happens when you stab me with that knife! But it doesn’t matter, because it’s right here!”

As his father laughed again, Johnny nodded. “Your right Dad. This was a great story. A great world, where everything was interesting. The problem is, all good stories these days of that last minute twist in them, don’t they? The point where the villain or hero can’t help but go ‘But oh look, there’s one thing you forgot about. Here’s how all the pieces get put together, but now flip the picture upside down and stare real close.’ And why would this situation be any different?”

Johnny tried not to shiver as his father instantly stopped laughing, staring at him. “This isn’t that story. THIS, my child, is the story where my plan works, no matter what. Either you win or I win, but either way the darkness comes. And I’m getting all the victory points, as the knife is in my possession. Now, let’s bring on the darkness! But first…”

Before Johnny could react, the tendril around Jimmy’s neck tightened instantly, and a snap rang out in the air. His dad then began to ripple as darkness seemed to explode out of him in all directions, shooting into the ground and into the sky. Johnny’s skin began to crawl as he looked spat the sky, watching it as it became darker and darker. His father was going to win, no matter what…but even then, he wasn’t getting a total victory.

Reaching into his back pocket as fast as he could, Johnny pulled out the blade of light and lunged it into his father’s chest. “Like I said, this is the point of the story with the twist. That final act pause that makes you wonder ‘But wait, that’s not how this works. Jimmy was the heroic type!’” Pulling the blade out, he heard his father gasp before his body dissolved, all the power in him having already been unleashed onto the darkening universe. “So…I got to be the hero of my own story in the end…” Hoping off of the metal gate, the sky growing darker and darker, Johnny walked over to his brother’s corpse and knelt down next to it. “I’m sorry Jimmy…I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it all work Eve, if you’re still in there…and I’m sorry Mom…” He held the knife tight, watching it’s light begin to fade away as the darkness came closer and closer. It was only a matter of seconds, and he closed his eyes to embrace the end. “This was an ok story, but I hope there’s a sequel that’s better…”

Description

Chapter 4: Family Reunion

The monsters all began to move apart as Johnny walked towards the stage. His chest was pounding, and he could hear Eve in his mind running around the Diner Of The Mind, laughing and clapping. “You did it! I can’t believe you did it, but you really did it!”

Johnny nodded to himself, and secretly to Eve, as he walked up the steps of the stage and walked over to the gremlin holding his brother’s shackles. “I’d like them off, if you don’t.”

“Oh not at all sir! This is your prize, and if you wish for the man to be free, all you had to do was ask.” The gremlin held up his hand, a purple haze forming above it that began to twist and harden until it took the form of a key. He held the purple key for a few seconds, whispering. “I never dreamed a day would come where we set him free. In a way I am glad this chapter of our story is over.” It then placed the key into a lock near Jimmy’s feet, and all of the shackles around his body began to shift around and morph, turning into a pair of jeans and a button-up shirt on Jimmy’s body. “We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

Johnny frowned, wrapping his arm around his brother. “Yea, well at least this is over, right? Can you show us back to the entrance though?”

“Of course sirs, right this way…”

The road back didn’t seem like the same as the one into the establishment, and when Johnny asked about this the gremlin creature couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yes sir, this place changes quite a bit, but the map is always in our minds. All those silly riders outside who come in, wondering what this lace is, become lost and, depending on who finds that person, they either end up back in your world with no memory of it, with the memory intact, or…well, clearly some of those missing people reports around the world have to be a bit diabolic, do they not? But do not worry, I’m one of the more friendly creatures. I was created specifically to help, and I was never given a list of who I should and should not help. But now it is time for you to go, and for the auction of this year to officially end. I hope you received everything you needed, although I am certain this is the case.”

“Very much so, thank you.” Johnny smiled, whispering. “It’s ok Jimmy, you’re free now. We’ll get you back to full health, and this will all be behind us.”

In his mind, he could see Eve sit down at one of the tables, folding her arms. “Thank God this is over, and I can figure out what next to do with my life. Maybe work at a real diner? Just sort of clock out and then recede back into the Diner of the Mind every night? Or I could maybe put a TV in here and use you two to see what it’s like to get addicted to a show! Or…huh?”

Johnny frowned, stepping out of the auction house and back into the Brockton Pits. While the sight in front of him was normal, and the building behind him just a normal shack again, inside of the Diner of the Mind a man had just entered the establishment. Jimmy, in a business suit of all things, shook his head as he sat down across from Eve in the fictional diner. “It’s not over you guys…you just rescued me. Dad’s gonna be angry, and I don’t know what he’s like when he’s truly angry. You rescued me Johnny, but you may have just ended everything else, Now come on, there’s still one way to make this all work out, but we need to get to your car now!”

All around the world, monsters of every kind could feel a strange force. At first it began as a wave of dysphoria, a sense of something wrong with the whole of reality. It grew more and more, until each and every monster began to feel wrong in their own right. They knew it could only mean one thing, and the message that filled their heads and clouded all of their other thoughts confirmed it.

“COME BACK TO ME.”

And then, all around the world, the monsters began to simply fade away. The ones in the hidden spaces, the wrong places like the Auction House, were lucky. They could feel the impeding doom and say their final goodbyes, while the others around the planet were already gone. They could feel their time coming soon, and as they sat in the main bidding room, the gremlin creature sighed, standing at the podium on the stage. “Well, my friends, it seems the time to be one has come at last. Our dear ole creator wishes for us to be part of him yet again, and I do feel a bit apprehensive about it. I do believe I speak for all of us when I say we all lived fun, fulfilling lives. If this is truly an end to us, then I for one am grateful we sold the young man back to his brother. Being remembered…I hope we truly are in the future, and the bid was not in vain. Who knows what the future holds, my friends…”

A warm smile grew across his face as glasses filled with varying liquids began to appear all around the room, in front of each and every monster in attendance. As they all grabbed the glasses in unison, the gremlin looked at his free hand and watched it start to fade away. “My dear creatures, I propose a toast! To the memory of us, and for the future!”

And with that, one by one, each monster in the room took a drink, faded away, and became part of the creator once again.

While the monsters were fading one after another, the two Summers brothers were formulating a plan as they ran towards Johnny’s car. It was a long shot, but Jimmy could feel it in his gut that it would all work out. That had always been his gift, in a way. He always held hope, no matter what the circumstances were, and they always seemed to work out in the long run. His brother had just rescued him, and now he was awaiting for the inevitable.

As Jimmy shoved the small ornate box into the back pocket of the jean’s, pulling the shirt he now wore over the pants as well as he could. “We just need to hope that monster we call our father doesn’t come soon, it needs to be a perfect sneak attack, it needs to…”

“Oh, I don’t think you’ll have to wait too long Jimmy. After all, I’m done pulling myself together, so let’s be polite about this, shall we?”

The Summers boys both turned around instantly, staring back at the Pits they had just come from. A tanned man, wearing a black business suit and a red tie, walked over and smiled. He had a scar across his right cheek, and he couldn’t help but chuckle a bit. When he spoke, his voice seemed to fluctuate, never truly taking any one accent or any one pitch. “Well, isn’t this a nice little family reunion? Hello boys, how are you?”

As Johnny stared at the man, he couldn’t help but feel disgusted. Everything wrong with the world seemed to resonate off of him, and all he wanted to do was throw up. “Let me guess, you’re our dad?”

“Ahh, guilty as charged! Although…hold on, let me just…” He cleared his throat a bit, and began to straighten his tie. When he spoke next, what came out of his throat was just a natural voice, with no real accent to speak of. It was an average voice. but Johnny could feel like it was molded off of all the ways he thought his characters would sound in any of his stories. “There we go! Sorry about that, I was kind of…let’s say I was putting the pets down! But enough about me, how are you two doing?! Or I guess I should know what Jimmy here is gonna say, ‘Oh Dad, how could you, oh it hurt so much daddy’ and blah blah blah! So Johnny…how are you? I heard you were quite the little wordsmith from your dear ole mom before I…well let’s just say she’s not gonna be joining our family reunion! Sorry about that, but she forced my hand!”

Jimmy’s eyes widened as he heard those words come out of their dad’s mouth, and screamed. “You bastard! Who do you think you are?!” Pulling the box from out of his back pocket, Jimmy ran forward. In turn, their father held up his hand, and a shadowy tendril shot out, wrapping around Jimmy’s neck.

“Now now son, that isn’t very nice! We aren’t going to be using THAT blade today, oh no we aren’t!” Another tendril split apart from the original, slithering down Jimmy’s body and wrapping around the ornate box. “See, this is the end of line boys. This is the end of a story that started before your race could even properly think!” He sighed, slicking back his hair with his free hand, and pointed at Johnny. “Don’t try anything. Not like you even could, Johnny boy, seeing that your brother is the one with the Blade right now. Him, the fighter…but you? You’re the kid who loves creating worlds. Bending reality to his will, one page at a time!” He chuckled, sitting on the metal bar of the Pits gate, and the tendril around Jimmy’s neck tightened. “I’m going to tell you a tale, and you’re gonna sit right here next to me. You move, and the tendril around your brother’s neck makes him go from breathing lightly to…well, not breathing at all. You’re staring at the last page of a book that you opened on the last five pages. Let me tell you about the rest of the book real quick, so you know why you were born in the first place.”

Johnny could feel his body move on it’s own. He could hear Eve in his head, screaming about the plan. They had to follow it, and his dad was right. This was the end. But morbid curiosity made his body sit down next to his dad on the metal gate, and he looked over. “Ok, so tell me this story of yours.”

“Well Johnny, once upon there was an ancient race. Now I know that’s a cliche start to a story, but it’s true. There was a race before humanity, walking around on this planet we all call home. We didn’t really have a name, because we were the only humanoid race that existed at that point! Now your species seems to have some sort of historical collective conscious, which means you remember much about our society even after destroying it!

Now, you have to understand Johnny, certain details are lost far beyond what I can reach in my mind. Even something like me can’t remember all things in this world, so bear with me. Now, I remember having a mom and dad, just like you. Loving parents, who I got to watch die in the hands of filthy little monkeys that were popping up here and there! The start of your race…and what an interesting race it is! You passed down our names from generation to generation, making them the basis of your myths and stories as if they were yours to own! But I digress…

So one day, long ago, when our races existed together, a meteor fell to the sky. Be it some otherworldly material or something from Beyond, a member of your race found it. And with it…they crafted a weapon. See, our race is special Johnny. We didn’t breed like you, we just…WERE. Like gods, we each had our own special thing that made us US, and one of your kind created a weapon that hindered those special things. Made us VULNERABLE. Our population was limited to begin with, but with that weapon? You lot dropped our population down, bit by bit, to one. One final being that you figured you would see as a monster…and so, that’s what I became! Your species wanted a villain so badly that I decided to give it one it would NEVER forget.”

The father sighed, first looking up at Jimmy, and then at Johnny. “So, I want you to understand why what you almost did was such a big mistake to even THINK about. See, my species is special, as I have stated already. Do you really think killing something like us doesn’t have consequences? We were this planet’s true children, and with each death we gave you something to remember. The first time that weapon stabbed the heart of one of us, the being that was very much like a father to me, his body lifted up into the sky. It grew and grew and then it came crashing back down with such a force that it almost wiped everything away. That damned weapon survived, and a few of your race did too. And once again you bred, while my species survived the blast and got picked off slowly and surely. One of us exploded, and their blood multiplied to an almost unlimited amount that created this thing you call an ocean. One of the more recent deaths happened in…let’s see…I believe, if my memory is still correct, it was somewhere in your 14th century? One of our kind, the last besides myself, walked right down a street while trying to live amongst the humans. She was stabbed, and her body just evaporated in front of the man’s eyes. Every cell of her body became a bacteria that spread across your Europe and parts of your Asia, causing death all around! And now there’s me, and I’m all sorts of fun! I was always a fan of the theatrics, and of the infinite possibilities that came from both destroying and creating life. I’ve been feeding on your fears for so many centuries, maybe even millennia! Even if you don’t stab me, tonight is the end of the world as we know it!”

Johnny’s dad smiled, looking up at the sky as he chuckled. “See, I’m going to blot out this world. I’ve seen my whole race go, so I feel it’s humanity’s turn to do the same. This silly universe doesn’t deserve it…I’m such a god now that I can blot out reality with my darkness. And that’s the plan Johnny boy, to make an infinite darkness that is mine to rule!”

Johnny couldn’t help but look at his struggling brother, and the box that the shadowy tendril was wrapped around. “And if I were to kill you?”

“If…if you were to…” Johnny’s father loudly, and Johnny could feel his skin crawl as the man did. “Sure, let’s say you SOMEHOW got that box! Let’s say you somehow open it, get the knife, and stab me with it! you know what happens next?! All of the darkness in me, this physical buildup of raw energy, still gets unleashed! And I’ll make sure my death rockets out before coming back here. I want you and Jimmy here to be the last…actually, you know what? I just want YOU to be the last person alive. I want you to watch, and think in your head how much of a great story this was, and how much of a WASTE it is that nobody will ever hear it, as the darkness consumes you! THAT’S what happens when you stab me with that knife! But it doesn’t matter, because it’s right here!”

As his father laughed again, Johnny nodded. “Your right Dad. This was a great story. A great world, where everything was interesting. The problem is, all good stories these days of that last minute twist in them, don’t they? The point where the villain or hero can’t help but go ‘But oh look, there’s one thing you forgot about. Here’s how all the pieces get put together, but now flip the picture upside down and stare real close.’ And why would this situation be any different?”

Johnny tried not to shiver as his father instantly stopped laughing, staring at him. “This isn’t that story. THIS, my child, is the story where my plan works, no matter what. Either you win or I win, but either way the darkness comes. And I’m getting all the victory points, as the knife is in my possession. Now, let’s bring on the darkness! But first…”

Before Johnny could react, the tendril around Jimmy’s neck tightened instantly, and a snap rang out in the air. His dad then began to ripple as darkness seemed to explode out of him in all directions, shooting into the ground and into the sky. Johnny’s skin began to crawl as he looked spat the sky, watching it as it became darker and darker. His father was going to win, no matter what…but even then, he wasn’t getting a total victory.

Reaching into his back pocket as fast as he could, Johnny pulled out the blade of light and lunged it into his father’s chest. “Like I said, this is the point of the story with the twist. That final act pause that makes you wonder ‘But wait, that’s not how this works. Jimmy was the heroic type!’” Pulling the blade out, he heard his father gasp before his body dissolved, all the power in him having already been unleashed onto the darkening universe. “So…I got to be the hero of my own story in the end…” Hoping off of the metal gate, the sky growing darker and darker, Johnny walked over to his brother’s corpse and knelt down next to it. “I’m sorry Jimmy…I’m sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it all work Eve, if you’re still in there…and I’m sorry Mom…” He held the knife tight, watching it’s light begin to fade away as the darkness came closer and closer. It was only a matter of seconds, and he closed his eyes to embrace the end. “This was an ok story, but I hope there’s a sequel that’s better…”