Just Couldn't Help Myself

A/N: Well, hi there, readers! I’m Crowe, and I’m new here to the AFF community. Now, this is my first shot at original fiction, and I hope you all enjoy it! I’ve got NO IDEA where this story is going, so if you’ve got any input of your own, I’m more than willing to hear it and try to work it into the story. So, please, read on, and when you’re finished, tell me what you think! Thanks so much in advance!

NOTE: I didn’t add any codes to this one because I just don’t know yet. I’ll code chapter by chapter.

Also, if you’d like to be added to the mailing list, feel free to email me at: crowe.in.flight@gmail.com

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POV: Johnny
CODE: language


Do you have any idea what it’s like to feel like you’ve gone insane? I’m not talking a little blurry around the edges insane, either. I mean completely, totally insane. Batshit crazy. Fully off the deep end nuts. Do you? I didn’t think so. I do. And let me tell you, buddy, it’s not fucking pleasant. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty scary.

It happens all at once. None of this slow build up bullshit. Oh no, not me. One minute I’m minding my own business, living my life, being myself. And the next minute here I am, elbow deep in psychosis and wondering how the fuck I got this goddamned crazy. When did this moment occur, you ask? I‘ll tell you all about it.

I was walking home from the bookstore, where I worked the closing shift at the time. I was just minding my own business, head down, hands in the pockets of my gray hooded sweatshirt, watching my scuffed up sneakers as they carried me to my tiny, lonely apartment eleven blocks north of my workplace. Everything was fine; I was thinking about what I was going to have for dinner when I got home, and looking forward to the leftover mushroom and bacon pizza I had in the fridge. Then, as I passed the darkened mouth of an alley on my left, I heard a quiet but clear voice say my name. I stopped walking, turned my head, and stared blankly at the man leaning against the brick wall of the taller building that bracketed the alley.

He was tall, really tall, and thin as a scarecrow. He had long, slightly tangled hair the color of wheat and the brightest, coldest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. His nose was long and thin, his mouth a hard, sharp line, his cheekbones high. He wore a black knee length jacket and a pair of blue jeans that were grease stained, the left knee ripped. I watched him tucked an unfiltered cigarette between his lips and light it with a battered silver Zippo. Though his hand covered it, I knew that Zippo had a big scrollwork J on it. The J stood for Jonathan.

That Zippo was currently in my pocket. But it was also in my hand. The man leaning against the brick wall was me.

The hair was longer; I kept mine short and spiky, and the eyes were totally different; mine were brownish gray. But there was absolutely no question about the fact that I was looking at myself. My eyes caught sight of the long, thin scar on the back of the hand that came up to take the cigarette out of his/my mouth; it was bright white against his/my skin; I’d gotten it from my crazy ex girlfriend in college. She’d gone after me with a letter opener.

I opened my mouth, and the other me in the alley raised one eyebrow. I expected to start screaming; that would’ve been the logical thing to do, right? Instead, what came out was a low, gurgling sound, sort of like I was moaning through a mouthful of Jell-o. The other me laughed low in his/my throat and looked down at his feet.

“He’s surprised.” he/I said, and my eyes moved down as well. There was a cat sitting beside his feet; a huge cat, the biggest cat I’ve ever seen. It was a dull, smoky gray color, and one it’s ears looked like it’d been chewed off a long time ago. It’s tail swished, and I saw that it’s tailed was split at the end, so it looked forked. The cat regarded me with huge, lime green eyes, it’s whiskers twitching slightly.

Then the cat said, “Well I’m not. This should’ve been better planned.”

I did scream then, and I kept screaming until the other me took two steps forward and slapped me in the face as hard as he could. My head snapped to the side, my neck creaking with the force of the blow, and my scream cut off like someone had turned my vocal cords off.

“Don’t do that.” he/I said. “Johnny, you need to listen to me.”

“We don’t have a lot of time.” the cat said, and I looked at the other me. Up close I could see that we were different ages; there were lines around his/my eyes, tiny ones, and a streak of white through his/my hair above his/my left temple. “You have to hurry, Jay.”

“Shut up.” he/I snapped at the cat. He/I studied me carefully, those alien blue eyes searching for something. “I need you to listen, and listen carefully. Whatever you do, please, stay away from him.” his/my face changed for a moment, showing something like fear and… desire? “No matter what, don’t you fucking touch him, do you understand me?”

I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and as I watched, the other me simply faded away. He/I just went transparent and was gone.

For a moment I stood there, staring at the place he/I had stood. Then, very slowly, I started walking. I found a bench about a block and a half away and sat down. I put my elbows on my knees and my head down, and I closed my eyes.

I don’t know how long I sat there, but I’d almost convinced myself that nothing odd had happened when the cat said from beside me, “Well, I hope you listen to yourself this time.”

I looked over at it, and it regarded me with those bright green eyes as though I was particularly stupid. “You’re a talking cat.”

It’s one good ear flattened at it bared it’s teeth at me. “I am most certainly not a talking cat.” it said, sounding offending. “At least, I’m not supposed to be.”

I laughed, sounding nothing like myself, and shook my head. “What are you supposed to be, then?”

“I’m supposed to be human.” it said stiffly.

“How’d you end up a cat, then?”

It looked away, and if a cat could scowl, it was doing so right then. “Never date a witch with trust issues.” it said, and I burst out laughing. I sat there, leaning back, legs outstretched and my hands over my stomach, and laughed for a long time. I laughed until my eyes were leaking, until my ribs ached my face hurt from grinning so wide, and eventually I stopped laughing and I started to cry. That felt a little better than the laughing, though, so I did that for a long time, too. Through the whole thing that fucking cat just sat there, watching the sky, as though I wasn’t having a nervous breakdown beside it.

Finally I stopped, and when my breathing was sort of normal, I said, “I’m insane.”

“Oh, yes.” it said with a tiny nod of it’s triangular head. “Most definitely, Johnny. But not nearly as crazy as you will be later, unless you do as you were told.”

“By myself.” I said, and the cat both shrugged and nodded. How the hell can a cat shrug? “Was that me from the future?” I asked.

“No.” the cat replied, standing and jumping down from the bench. “It was just a different you. Now come on, let’s get you home.”

“You want to come with me?” I asked the cat, standing.

It glared up at me. “Johnny, you and I have been together for two years.”

“No, we haven’t. That other me was with you.”

“Whether you’re Johnny, or Jay, or John, it makes no difference. You are you.”

“And you want to come stay with me.”

“Not want, will.” the cat started off, down the street towards my apartment. “Does this version of you have that blue and gray striped couch with the hole in the middle cushion?”

I started to giggle. I couldn’t help it. “Yea. How’d you know?”

“John had it.” the cat replied. “I liked that couch.”

We walked in silence for a while, and as we did, I thought about what was happening. My brain had mostly just shut down; I wasn’t feeling particular about anything, other than a vague sense of amusement about the whole thing. I realized most of me was convinced that the whole thing was just a really long, detailed dream, and I’d wake up and none of it would matter. Since it was a dream, I figured I’d go along with it.

As we rounded the corner onto my street, I asked, “How many me’s have you known?”

“Six.” the cat replied. “Jay, the one you met, was my favorite.” a pause here, then, “He had a black leather couch though.”

“What was wrong with his eyes?” I asked, and the cat didn’t answer me. We reached the door of my building and I unlocked it. “You’re lucky. My landlady loves cats.”

“I know.” it said, stepping into the building. “I was rather fond of Emily.”

“Was?”

“She’s dead, where I’m from.”

I stopped and turned to glare down at the cat. “That’s not funny.”

“No.” the cat agreed. “She didn’t think so either.” it turned with a swish of it’s forked tail and started up the stairs. “Come on, Johnny, I’m hungry.” it paused on the fifth stair and glanced back at me. “You’ll have to pick the mushrooms off my pizza though. I don’t like them, and I don’t have thumbs.”

On the third floor landing, I had to stop and clap my hands over my mouth to stifle another bout of hysterical laughter, but I didn’t cry this time, and it passed quickly. Once in my apartment on the sixth floor, I sat on the living room floor and picked mushrooms off of the cat’s slice of pizza before eating all of what was left. For a dream, I had a big appetite. Then I brushed my teeth and went into my room to lay down.

The cat followed, and curled up on the pillow beside mine. “What do I call you?” I asked it.

“Lonnie.” it replied, tucking its chin against it’s paws. “When I was human, my name was Lawrence Edward Worthington. Lonnie was my lover’s pet name for me, before she turned me into a cat.”

“Oh.” I said, and sighed. “I wish I would wake up.”

The cat opened one eye and looked at me. “You have to sleep first.” it told me.

I rolled over, turning my back on it, and closed my eyes. Then I cried some more, and finally, I went to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I remembered everything, and the cat was still there. So I made coffee, and put some in a dish for Lonnie, who took it with cream, no sugar, which made me start laughing again. I ate toast and drank two cups of coffee, and then I called my insurance company and requested a list of therapists that my plan covered. I asked them to express mail to me, which made the woman on the other end laugh nervously, though she agreed that she would. I thanked her, hung up, and went back to bed.

A few hours later, Lonnie came in and sat beside me on the bed. “You’re taking this better than last time.” the cat told me. “Perhaps it’ll work this time. Perhaps no one will die.”

“Who was I talking about?” I asked the cat. “Who am I supposed to stay away from?”

The cat shook its head. “He’s different every time, Johnny.” it told me. “For Jay, his name was Marcus Peterson. For John, it was Terry Salt. Before that was Alex Quincy, and Fredrick McPherson. Harry Burns. The first one I ever met was Eric Lars.”

“How am I supposed to know who he is then?” I asked. “And why am I supposed to stay away from him?”

The cat sighed. “The tattoo is always the same.” it said. “Not always in the same place, or the same size, but it looks the same. A perfect circle of red, with a crescent inside in black.” it paused for a moment, then said, “He’s the devil, Johnny.”

“That’s stupid.” I said immediately. “I don’t believe in God.”

“So?”

“So I don’t believe in the devil, either.”

“Well, luckily for you, he’s not the Christian devil anyway.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” I ran a hand over my face. “You don’t make any sense. You’re a talking cat that can travel between… what, alternate realities?” when Lonnie said nothing, I sighed. “If you’ve been around, why haven’t you been able to stop me? I mean, what’s my relationship with this guy, anyway?”

“It’s always different. Your boss, a customer, once he’d married your cousin Rebecca.” Lonnie shifted, laying and down and curling its tail around its paws. “Oh, I hate this body. I get tired ever few hours. Cats are so lazy.”

“How long have you been a cat?” I asked.

“I was changed in the fall of 1864.”

I did the math in my head, frowning. “You’ve been a cat for a hundred and forty six years?”

“One hundred and forty five years, nine months, two weeks, and four days.” Lonnie corrected. “I was twenty two was I was turned.”

“Holy fucking shit. So you’re… immortal, like?”

“Something like that.” Lonnie said, and yawned. “I’d like to nap now.”

I stayed quiet for a while, thinking about everything. Finally, I asked if Lonnie was awake. He growled and asked me what I wanted. For a minute I didn’t answer, then finally asked, “What happens?” he said nothing, so I elaborated. “What happens if I don’t stay away from this guy with the tattoo?”

“Everyone dies.” Lonnie replied. “Everyone that matters.”

“Why?”

“I told you why. He’s the devil. Or a devil. Or maybe he’s a sorcerer. Who fucking cares why? It happens. Every time, you watch everyone you’ve ever cared about die.”

“He kills them?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then how do they die?”

He sighed. “It’s different every time. What does it matter?”

I closed my eyes. “I don’t want to be crazy.” I told the cat.

“Well, that’s not really up to you, now is it?” the cat told me, sounding disgruntled. “Can I nap now? Please?”

I stayed quiet, stayed still, and eventually Lonnie fell asleep. I stayed where I was, thinking about everything that I’d been told, everything that had happened. I decided to put it all out of my head until I could make an appointment with a therapist. There was no point, I decided, in scaring myself even worse. I was crazy, I knew I was crazy, but I had to stay calm. I had to go to the doctor and get fixed. That’s all.

I rolled onto my side and fell asleep.

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So… that’s it. That’s the beginning of the story. Like I said, I have NO IDEA what I’m trying to do with this story… I had a vague idea for something going on, and I have a few loose plans for the future, but nothing solid yet. What did you think?