Tachenda (JTHM x Reader part II)

V

The sun has fully set and the night air stung my skin as I paced in the parking lot of some junk fast food place. It had been only a couple of hours since the revelation of Johnnys supposed resurrection and I couldn't get it out of my head. Jimmy sat watching from my car, both the inside light and the headlights illuminating the radius around us. He chewed on his crappy burger quietly and nonchalantly, but I could barely stomach mine. Thankfully it was a quiet part of town, so my ranting went mostly unnoticed.

"It's been 5 years! I only get 5 years without him, and he has to crawl back like some sort of cockroach!" I paced while holding my torso, staring at the ground in front of me. "How the fuck did this even happen?! I mean yeah, sure, I came back, but it didn't take years! And for multiple people too? I can't be the only one freaking out here!" I stopped in my tracks in front of the open window and looked in at Jimmy, my eyes wide.

"I told you we should've dug him up!" Jimmy said in between bites before wiping his mouth with his sleeve and swallowing. "I mean, who knows if he actually is even alive?! We haven't seen him, have we? Hehe, maybe it's like that movie with Arnold..S- uhh, whatever. Point is, even if he is alive it's not like he's gonna know where you are! I mean I only did because I've been alive all these years, and-" he laughs to himself, staring off into the distance as if he was recalling a fond memory, "-when you have someone hostage in your apartment for a couple months you don't just stop keeping tabs on them cause their boyfriend came back and was gonna kill ya', right??"

I stared at him for a moment, my mouth slightly agape and my eyebrows furrowed until I shook my head and looked away. "Okay, uhm, I'm not even gonna begin to unpack whatever the fuck you just said, but maybe you have a point.." I sighed, leaning against the side of the car while staring into the darkness. "Even if he is alive then who's to say that he even wants anything to do with me, right? I mean sure, I did shoot him just a little, but in my defence, he'd already killed me before AND if I spent another moment in that house I think I'd go insane!" I laughed, holding my head.

It was silent between us for a while, mostly because I tuned out whatever Jimmy was talking about until I got the point, but eventually, I decided it was time to go home. Thankfully the roads were silent due to the time, however, it didn't help the looming feeling that grew in the back of my mind. Once I had dropped Jimmy off it just made things worse, the nagging threat that something was off growing more and more the closer I reached to my apartment.

I stood in front of my door for a minute or so, breathing heavily as my hand hovered over the doorknob. The thought that Johnny could be hiding behind any door, just waiting for his moment to pounce terrified me, but eventually I took a deep breath and finally pushed the door open. When I got inside and flicked the light on, my eyes scanned the room, trying to find anything that may have been out of place, but... nothing. Or at least nothing discernible. I did that for every room in the apartment multiple times over just to make sure he wasn't in some dark shadow, but nope.

With a sigh I flopped back onto my bed, just staring at the ceiling. Shapes in the darkness swirled and contorted as I became lost in my thoughts. If people are coming back then it must be for a reason, right? But why now? Was it some Y2K, end-of-the-world shit? Am I actually crazy and the past 5ish years were some drug-filled hallucination that was slowly unravelling? ... okay, perhaps not that one, but it didn't make sense.

At some point in my internal rambling- I don't know when- my eyes closed and I drifted off to sleep. There were slivers of dreams, lights colours and the likes, none of which was of importance enough to remember. The nightmares I thought would come were however cut off before they could, as my eyes shot open, now acutely aware of all of my surroundings.

There was an uneasy still in my room. Even before I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, everything just felt ever so slightly off. The room seemed a little too dark, it was slightly too quiet, and although there wasn't a specific scent, it just didn't smell right. I pushed myself up into my elbows, and with squinted eyes I attempted to look around the room, only aided by the very small amount of light from the streetlights that seemed to leak its way through the window. Of course, as predicted, there wasn't anything discernible that screamed that anything was wrong. Everything was exactly where it should be, but I just knew it wasn't right.