Johnny Nose Versus Charles Horse

[CaptainWacky]

HORSE

You're walking down the street. Even doing that takes some effort, making sure you don't walk funny. "Put one leg in front of the other and lean forward" you remember. That's how to walk. You can't remember what that's from.

Sometimes you don't feel like you're really in control of your legs, or any of your body. You feel like you're flooating. You start worrying about that now, the possibility that you're floating rather than walking. You always have to worry about something and even the most irrational thought will do. You're pretty sure you're not floating though. Pretty sure.

Oh fuck are those teenagers. Teenagers walking towards you. They look about the right size. Wait, don't stare at them for too long, you think. You can't look at teenagers for more than two seconds in case somebody notices. It hasn't happened yet, but you know it will one day. You could cross the road, but there's cars. It would probably look even more suspicious to dodge between cars to avoid them. There's no choice, you're going to have to walk by the teenagers.

You wish you were in a ship, wearing your mask. It's easier to walk by people then. They don't notice you at all. Sometims that's a bit deflating, but it's sure better than this, isn't it?

They look like pretty young teenagers, you notice. Maybe that's better. Less likely to be abusive? You remember that time some teens threw a bottle at you. Of course you were a teen yourself then. Have you been worried about them ever since then? Even though you're a middle aged man now? No, you're sure teenagers have laughed at your other times. Looked at you funny. You can almost remember specific examples...

Oh, you just walked right by them without incident. They didn't even look at you. It went fine. You're not floating, you got by the teenagers. Now you just need to plot a course for home. You've had enough excitement...exercise for one day.

Some guys did shout at you about ten years ago but they were probably early twenties, you remember.

You cross the road now. Head up a street. You can get home from here, easy. There's never really anyone around. You did it. Get home, get on the internet. Talk to your friends. Or...wait for them to come online. Read the latest comic book movie news. You like that, don't you? Well, it doesn't make you anxious anyone. That's the same as liking, isn't it? You think it must be. Anyway.

You're so close to home. You actually feel good. You see a figure in the distance, but it's fine. You'll just walk by him (it's definitely a him) like you did the teenagers. Doesn't matter, means nothing. He won't shout at you. He does seem to be looking at you, you notice, but it's okay. He's probably just...looking forward. And you're in the way. It's not someone you went to school with (is it?) That's one of your biggest fears, that somebody who used to know you will see you.

But nah, they all live in proper housers far away with their families and dogs and six-a-side football or whatever.

They woudn't even recognise you anyway.

No, it's fine. Why is he still looking at you? It's fine, it has to be fine. He does have kind of crazy eyes, you see now. Where have you seen eyes like that before? They give you a shudder. He wouldn't stab you, would he? You've never really worried that much about being stabbed. That would be a new thing to worry about.

You're too close to do anything now. You're going to have to pass him. You try to walk at a normal rate, whatever that is. Not too fast, not to slow. Just make it look like you're a normal person.

This really would be so much easier with a mask.

You try not to look at him, but you realise that it's normal to glance at people on the street sometimes. To make sure you don't walk into them, at the very least. You are very disturbed by the huge smile on his face when you look up. You look back down at the ground. But you can already hear him laughing.

"FUCKING..." he starts to say.

 

[CaptainWacky]

NOSE

Johnny Nose had gone for a long walk. He was far from home. He couldn't really hang around his old neighbourhood anymore, not after Claire's parents had called the cops on him. Talk about an overreaction. He'd only stolen her wheelchair so he could pimp it up for her! Sure, he'd taken some stuff from their fridge while he was in there and written "I FUCKED ALL YOUR SHOES" on the mirror with the mother's lipstick, but that had been a joke! Claire would have gottne it. He was sure she'd have eventually told him she forgave him, if only he was ever allowed to speak to her again.

Anyway, he had gone for a long walk in order to clear his head and find someone else to freak out. He'd given funny looks to several people so far, but nothing more than that. Maybe he was a bit uncomfortable in the unfamiliar surroundings. Maybe riding in a police car had scared him more than he'd wanted to admit to himself. He wasn't sure. But he didn't want to go home yet. He had to find somebody to at least confuse thoroughly. He was still Johnny Nose, damn it.

And then he saw him. Some weird guy. There was nothing particularly unusual about him at first, Johnny noted. He had a face with two eyes, a nose, a mouth. He was average height. He was walking. But...there was something about him. He had a face, sure, eyes and a nose and all that, but it wasn't a normal face. There was nothing abnormal about it, exactly, but it was like no face Johnny Nose had ever seen before. A face with no personality, he decided quickly. And the weird guy kept slowing down and speeding up his walking, while trying not to look at Johnny. This delighted Johnny Nose and he smiled broadly. Time to get busy.

"FUCKING..." he started to say, not really sure what would come next. Weird guy staggered back. Then tried to just start walking again.

"Hi! I'm Johnny Nose, who are you?" asked Johnny, stepping in front of him. There was a long pause. Johnny watched the normal yet weird non-face with all the components of a face of weird guy as he tried to think of what to say.

"Charles Horse," said Charles Horse.

"HAHAHAHAHAHA, that's perfect! That's FUCKING PERFECT!" said Johnny. This day could not get any better. "Charles Horse, great to meet you. Want to get high?"

"No," said the scared Horse quickly. What was happening behind that disconcerting face, Johnny wondered.

"Good, because I don't have any drugs," said Johnny. "Wait, do YOU have any drugs?"

"I don't," said Horse. He took a half step...a quarter step really forward. Johnny wasn't going to let him go yet though.

"That's a shame, we could have been drug bros," said Johnny. He reached out his arm to put it around Charles Horse's shoulder, but Horse actually jumped to the side to avoid it. Autistic then, Johnny realised suddenly. Interesting. "It's okay, I just wanted to touch you intimately!" said Johnny.

"No thank you," said Horse. Johnny actually felt bad for him in that moment.

"Look, I'm not going to hurt you," said Johnny. "I'm lonely and I need a friend. I just lost my best friend after stealing her wheelchair. I get the feeling you probably don't have any friends either. So. What do you say? Want to be friends?"

"I...I don't..." started Horse. He was actually thinking about it!

"We could build a robot together!" said Johnny.

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[Dr Dave]

Oh my god that was fucking brilliant!

 

[CaptainWacky]

HORSE

"We could build a robot together!" he says to you. Of everything he's said so far this shocks you the most. Who is this person? Is he going to hurt you? That was your initial thought, naturally. When he started the conversation with "FUCKING..." you just wanted to get out of there. Pretend it wasn't happening. Walk far enough away and surely you'd come across some other people. Maybe he'd act crazy around them too. Then he'd kept talking, and it had been weird. Your brain couldn't work fast enough to keep up with it. He'd tried to touch you at one point, and that had been the low point. But now he was suggesting the two of you build a robot together and you were back to trying to figure out what the fuck was going on.

"I'm okay, thanks," you say. Yeah, that would get rid of him! You just couldn't think. You wondered briefly how anyone deals with situations like this. It was bad enough talking to normal people you knew. But this guy? He was looking you straight in the eyes. You looked down again, then quickly back up to see if he was still doing it. He was, and smiling broadly.

"Come on, you look like you could use a friend. Don't you want a friend? Doesn't everyone? I had a friend once..." He was expecting you to say something.

"Oh?" was all you could get out.

"What happened, you say? I killed her!" Okay, you had to get away from him. You start walking fast but he walks along beside you. There has to be someone else around. You look around widely. It does't help that your heart has started racing in your chest.

"I didn't really kill her!" he says, jumping in front of you, stopping you in your tracks. You can't just walk into somebody, that would be rude.

"That's nice," you say. What the fuck? It was so pathethic. Johnny Nose starts laughing uncontrollably. You feel so ashamed, so STUPID. You feel the soggy cardboard forming around your brain.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he says. He sounds normal, sometimes. "It was just funny, that's all. You're a funny guy, Charles Horse. Yeah, it's definitely good that I didn't kill her. I didn't even put her in the wheelchair! She came out of her mother that way. Christ, that must have hurt! Imagine how much she had to stretch to get a wheelchair out!"

"...yeah," you say. You were imagining a woman giving birth to a wheelchair now. Stop that.

"Let's go back to your place and have a packet of crisps!" he says. "You look like a crisp eater." How did he know?

"Umm," you say. You can feel the cardboard closing around your brain now, sinking into it. Engulfing you.

"Come on, it'll be fun! The lads together! Crisps! I won't pretend to be peeing when I ask to use your bathroom but secretly I'm masturbating! What do you say?"

You are gone now. The you who could think. There was no more choice in the matter. Free will was gone. Perhaps you never really had it. You only ever seemed to think of things in hindsight. Maybe that was the only time you existed, if you ever truly did. All you were was hindsight. You weren't just encased in the cardboard, you had become it.

"Okay," you say.

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[CaptainWacky]

NOSE

Johnny Nose could not believe his luck. Not only that he'd found someone like Charles Horse, but that he'd actually got Horse to agree to take him back to his home. Sure, it was probably because Horse was autistic and couldn't say no. It did make Johnny feel bad, for a moment, thinking of the internal struggle that must have been going on in Horse's mind. But only for a moment. Life had been harsh on Johnny Nose, so why should he care about anyone else?

Actually, that was a lie, wansn't it? Just a story he told himself. LIfe hadn't been particularly hard on Johnny Nose, not really. He'd had a relatively comfortable life. It's just that it had always seemed wrong. And it should have felt right. Life wasn't right for Johnny Nose, so he had his fun the only way he knew how.

"GREAT!" he said. He didn't try to put his arm around Charles Horse this time. He didn't want to be too mean to his new best friend. "Do you have all the component parts of a robot there?"

"I don't think so...no," said Charles Horse. Johnny stifled a laugh. What a guy.

"Well, at least you've got crisps. I can tell you've got crisps! Hey, do you like the actress Brie Larson?"

"Y...yes?"

"Good!" They kept walking. Johnny loved randomly asking people about Brie Larson. This was going great. He noted that Charles was slowing down a bit. Looking around. Was he trying to get out of this? "You trying to get out of this?"

"No...no..." said Horse. He looked really nervous again. Had the Brie Larson question confused him too much?

"How far is it to your place anyway?" asked Johnny. "I need to go eat a huge chicken dish in an hour, SO IT BETTER BE CLOSE." Maybe if he let Horse think this would be over in under an hour it would ease his panic.

"It's a little far," said Horse, who then glanced up at a nearby flat. Obviously his flat.

"Ha!" said Johnny. "You obviously live there! Come on, let's eat some crisps together. That's NOT a sex thing, by the way. Unless you want it to be, wink wink! Or should I say, wank wank!"

They went inside the hallway. They started up the stairs. Horse was still looking around, searching for one of his neighbours to rescue him. How sweet. They reached the door. "THIS IS IT," said Horse, loudly. Johnny just laughed out loud this time.

"Don't worry, I'm really not going to murder you. I just want...your crisps. I mean, your friendship. FriendCHIPS. Like that shitty Doritos advert, remember!"

"Yeah," said Charles. He unlocked the front door, with some effort. HIs hands were shaking. Johnny sigh.

"Come on, it won't be that bad," he said. They went inside.

Johnny shut the door when Charles didn't.

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[CaptainWacky]

HORSE

You hoped someone would rescue you all the way home. You'd been unable to turn down Johnny Nose, unable to simply say he couldn't come home with you. But maybe someone would see, recognise you were in a hostage situation. Or maybe you'd just shout for help. You could do that, right? That man was clearly crazy, this Johnny Nose. He could do anything. You couldn't let him in. You had to say something.

You saw some people walking on the other side of the road and thought about thinking, but there was some mental block there. The cardboard around you grew more rigid. You couldn't shout to them. They'd think you were crazy. You are crazy. They'd just laugh at you.

You had to see someone you knew, but there was little chance of that as you hardly knew anyone.

You tried to slow down, to increase the likelihood of coming across somebody you knew. He randomly asked you about Brie Larson, confusing you for a moment. You slowed down even more.

"You trying to get out of this?" Johnny Nose asked. OF COURSE he could see through you. Everyone could. You were the worst human being ever. You were so close to home now, despite your attempts to stall. He saw you looking up at your flat. He knew. There was no choice.

Maybe the woman across from you would notice as you walked up the stairs. She always took note of your activities. If she saw you with someone unusual, she'd surely try to start a conversation. Stick her nose in, try to find out who Johnny Nose was. But you didn't see her. You didn't see anybody. You unlocked the door with shaking hands as Johnny Nose rambled on about crisps.

You let him in and he shut the door.

"Wow this place is fully carpeted, nice!" says Johnny Nose. "Now I'll have to lay down plastic when I murder you."

"You said you wouldn't," you say. You THINK he's joking, but you can't be sure.

"I'm joking, jerknose!" he says. "I don't care if your blood gets all over the carpet! Ha, that was a double joke. I'm not going to murder you. JUST EAT ONE OF YOUR LEGS."

"Ah," you say. Don't take anything he says seriously. Just say nothing and this will be over soon.

"So, where are they?" he asks.

"What?" you say, dumblr, releasing as you speak that he means the crisps. You start walking to the kitchen before he even answers.

"Crisps! BIG OLD CRISPS FULL OF FLAVOUR. You ever wonder how they make chicken crisps taste nothing like chicken? I don't. I don't care. JUST GET ME SOME CRISPS YOU BIG OSTRICH." He follows you into the kitchen. You know exactly what you're going to pull out as you open the crisp cupboard.

"Crisps," you say, pointing that massive bag of onion rings at him.

"Wow, Sainsbury's onion rings! BIg bag! Why'd you buy it?"

"I...I don't know. I just saw them and wanted them. They're...they're cheap and the flavour is too strong...but that's why I like them."

"That's beautiful, man. You deserve them. I can't take your crisps from you, you keep them."

"Oh, right," you say. Maybe he'll leave now.

"There's something else we can do instead. Something more fun."

"What's that..." you ask, axiously. Your stupid heart is beating so loud you wonder if he can hear it.

"Let's hire a hooker and pay her to tickle our feet!" says Johnny Nose. He then winks dramatically.

You wonder if you'll ever get rid of him.

TO BE CONTINUED

 

[CaptainWacky]

NOSE

Johnny had been thinking of just grabbing the crisps and running. He'd been feeling increasingly sorry for Charles Horse since he'd entered his flat. Not quite sorry enough to give up yet. Not quite sorry enough to completely cancel out the high of getting this guy to let Johnny into his home. But it was there and he knew he could get out of it by just taking the crisps from him. Just the act of taking something, anything from this man, it would probably be enough for Johnny. Enough to get him through another day.

And they were very nice cheap crisps.

But then Charles Horse had spoken about the crisps and Johnny couldn't even bring himself to steal them. Was he going soft? All the shit he'd done to Claire, his actual friend, and he couldn't even steal crisps from some weird guy? Maybe he was just getting too old. Maybe his brain had consumed all his chemicals. Even the high he'd just thought about was fading fast.

He said something random about hiring hookers to tickle their feet. Charlese Horse said nothing.

"You ever wonder why you can't tickle your own feet? I used to wonder it all the time when I was a kid. I'd try to tickle myself, for like ten minutes at a time. I'd try to surprise myself, sneak up with a tickle. It never felt like the real thing. It's because you know it's coming. No matter how fast you do it, your brain always knows where you're going to tickle your foot before you reach it. Of course it does, it's your brain! A tickle is meant to be a kind of threat detection system, I think I read. Like when we lived in trees or whatever, something would brush past our foot and we'd jump up, alert, ready to fight, because it could be a poisoned bug or a snake or Jared Leto or some other scary thing. So when you're doing it yourself, the brain knows there's no threat and you don't get that delightful tickle feeling. Well, I think it's delightful, some people hate it. Our brains are so smart, aren't they! Hey, did you know that some schizophrenics CAN tickle themselves? It's because their brain doesn't speak to their body in the right way. That's why they hear voices and stuff, same thing, they think it's someone else tickling them. So they think it's someone else tickling them. I do it now and again still, you know, try to tickle myself. It never works. That's how I know I'm not schizophrenic."

There was a long pause. Charles Horse looked like he wanted to say something. Johnny waited patiently.

"My life is a self tickle," said Charles Horse.

"What?"

"My life. It's like tickling yourself. You're doing the same motion that someone would do to tickle you. Everything's the same. The finger is moving up and down the foot. But you don't feel it. It's not the same. It's dulled. It's not exciting. And no matter how many times you try, how many times you move that finger up and down, it never gets any better."

"Marry me," said Johnny, instantly.

"I...no," said Charles Horse.

"You've got hidden depths, man."

"Thanks."

"Look, I'm not here to hurt you. I'm not even going to steal your crisps. I was just bored and I like to mess with people. We cool?"

"Okay." Horse probably didn't mean it, but it was good enough for Johnny.

"I need a new friend. No, not just a friend. I think you and I are very similar in a lot of ways. You're just shyer than me. I can help you with that. Join me."

"Join you?"

"Become my apprentice and together we'll freak out the galaxy!"

TO BE CONTINUED