Things Fall Apart

17. The Witch

"Alright, Children

The lights are out and the party's over

It's time for me : Doctor D

To start running and say goodbye for a little while.

And I know you're gonna miss me

So I'll leave you with this:

You know that big ball of radiation we call the sun?

Well it'll burst you into flames

If you stay in one place too long

That is if the static don't get you first.

So remember, even if you're dusted

You may be gone

But our here in the desert

Your shadow lives on without you.

This is Doctor Death Defying,

Signing off"

The old American hymn started playing over the Radio. She shut it down with her crooked bony fingers before the end of it.

She didn't care much about nations, about sides, about Good and Evil, the Witch.

All she cared about was the dead.

She was by the Postbox Shrine, collecting up the masks of the day in her old trolley. Fun Ghoul wasn't here today, and she knew what it meant.

And how they all thought he was crazy.

And how it was all because of her.

She made almost Everything happen. Almost. But not quite.

Everything happened for a reason, and, even though she helped destiny, sometimes, some things happened on their own.

They had gone to their last fight without a mask, the Fabulous Killjoys.

They had slipped them four into the Postbox shrine's slot the day before.

She didn't make that happen.

Collecting them up, she collected the soul and memory of their previous owners.

First came Jet Star.

Ray Toro.

He had a heart bigger than his life. And he never shared anything much. What he knew, he concealed. His entire life had been selfless.

And he remembered and knew what he had once been taught: the mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

Yet he gave up his life for his friends.

Because his heart was bigger than his life.

Because he knew that in the Wasteland, even when you're dead and gone, your shadow lives on without you.

Because he knew that Killjoys Never Die.

Then came Fun Ghoul.

Frank Iero.

They all thought he was crazy. He would come around the Postbox everyday, and the Witch and him would have a friendly chat. He would ask about his wife, his children, draw them pictures with sticks in the sand for her to get back to them. How much he missed them. How much did his heart ache. They all thought he was crazy. He was talking to himself, scratching with sticks in the sand, dying of Homesickness.

Then came Party Poison.

Gerard Way.

When he was 12 and Mikey 8, they moved into a new house. And they both slept in their own bedrooms, now. And Mikey always cried at night.

So, one day, Gerard went up to his brother's ceiling with cans of paint, white for the clouds, blue for the sky, silver for the jets, and brushes, and painted it blue like the sky, with drifting clouds and tiny whizzing jet planes with white trails that crisscrossed in the clouds. And he hung from up there, swinging from a rope clumsily tied from the door to the window like on a dangerous swing, painting silver jets on the blue bedroom sky. Mikey had thought of what would happen, if the rope snapped. His brother dropping like a dark star out of the sky he had painted. But it didn't. And he never cried at night anymore. By then, he had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men.

Last came Kobra Kid.

Mikey Way.

And Mikey had seen it all. He had seen they were all but puppets led by the Witch's master hand. He knew this was all but a story. But Mikey didn't know that, by seeing It All, he had made himself Destiny. By Knowing, he had turned himself into an instrument of their own deaths.

And Mikey knew this was nothing but a story, and that a story had to end somewhere, even if it would be carried on in other people's hand, through other people's tongues, behind other people's eyes, even if it could be started all over again anytime.

He knew nothing ever ended poetically. It ended and some people turned it into poetry. And all that blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.

He would have known the end was now.

The Witch put the four masks down inside her trolley, smiling lightly, then floated away, keeping her blistered feet up above the sand.

Somewhere in the Wasteland, a little girl with a timebomb kept warm inside of her who had lost her family and ran away from Home was wandering around, waiting for her time to explode.

Somewhere in the Wasteland, the rusted remains of Destroya the fallen God were awaiting for that Girl to wake them up.

Somewhere in the Wasteland, a fragile little bird nested inside the bleeding hole in a boy's chest, climbed through his veins into his eyes and made itself at home, laughing softly at its own temerity with deep dimples and bright offending eyes. And she knew the boy would never heal quite right.

She knew, because she was the Wasteland.

She knew the end was now.