Sucks. A lot!

STOP--if you want to read this crap, you have to read the first part which is considerably less crappy.
You can tell by the title that it isn't a very happy story. Ayup.




Music is optional, but if you do listen, I found that if you're somewhere around 3:14 in the song when John is holding her the second time, it makes me seem like a half-way decent writer :v

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John saw somebody running past the apartments. There was already a commotion going on inside; people were looking out windows and pointing at the figure that was now tearing across the street. Yelling things he didn’t care about.



She wasn’t going to be here. She was probably at the deli. Buying him cigarettes.

Please, let her be buying cigarettes.
Please, let her have been arrested.
Anything but hurt. Please please please.

He stood by the creek and looked around wildly in the darkness. Those dumb clouds kept on flying past the moon, made it hard to see.

He was starting to turn to the apartments when he heard faint splashes irregular from the creek’s quiet laughter. Clouds skirted away.



There was somebody half-way in the creek.



John didn’t even know he was running again.

That is not her that is not her that cannot possibly be her please let her be arrested please let that be somebody else.

It’s a funny thing how you never get what you want.

John didn’t even know he was screaming. Crying.


The runner had shot her two times. He could see a darkening patch of red on her chest, staining the water that swirled in confusion around her body. A window had been blasted into her skull. He tried not to look at it. It didn’t even seem like it was a part of her anymore.

She was face-up in the water, her legs on the bank. Her mouth was working at the shapes of his name while her fingers stroked the water around her.

John John John John she was saying it like a metronome. Devoid of emotion. He couldn’t stand it.


“Can it, Emmy! Please just can it!” He heard himself screaming at her from far away. He felt his arms go around her from far away.

She felt so cold.



Emmy laughed and her legs began to twitch, trying to mimic movement. Her eyes were staring at the moon. “John, help me up. I fell down again. I'm such a klutz!” That laugh again, then she blinked slowly and frowned a little bit.
“I fell down and ruined my dress I don’t think the guys will notice your flask if you let me stash it.”

She moved her head a little bit and her eyes went wide.
“This will be great forever bourbon doesn’t mix the kids already asleep, Chrissy.”

He crushed her against him. Her entire body shook with his sobs.
John had seen dying men before. He’d seen dead men before. Flattened by trucks, blown apart by bombs, ripped by knives. Some had been his own doing, and no single time had he felt anything for them; there wasn't a single drop of compassion in his body for the other bootleggers, the gangsters, the pimps.


But nothing compared to this.
Seeing her like this.



This was unnatural. This shouldn’t have happened, and he knew she’d done it for him. He knew she had been trying to make a deal behind his back. He hated whoever it was that had gotten to her, but John couldn’t possibly leave to find them. Not now.


She was quiet for a while as he held her under that empty moon, by those screaming apartments where the people now saw them both and were crying with him, calling for ambulances, the police, the firemen. Somebody, anybody, he heard some of them saying.

Emmy suddenly began to tremble and then spasm. He screamed something and let go out of fear. This ruined body couldn’t be hers. Never had he seen her make those movements, make those sounds, make those strange far-away faces. Couldn’t be her..

She continued her writhing in the water, splashing him a little with that pink water that was now turning more and more red with her blood.

That should be my blood.




With that thought, John suddenly knew that it was her and that he didn’t have long. He had to say something. He was going to say everything as he knelt in the water and scooped her out.

Still shaking. He was, too.

“Emmy! Emmy, I was going to save you from all this!” John didn’t even know he was making her bleed more by forcing her ruined head to turn to his face. Still her eyes watched the moon, or maybe something past it.
“I never wanted you to do any of this! I was always so worried something would happen to you, that you were gunna end up in the South as some Moll with a Daddy who wasn’t gunna treat you right.”



He never saw her mouth telling him to stop.



“I wanted to be the guy that was there for you! I was going to marry you, Emmy!” He was destroying her in his embrace.
“We were gunna move to the country, we were going to have a family, no more Juice Joints, no more of this shit, not for us. There was a good, decent life waiting for us, and I wanted to share it with you!”



Emmy saw two golden lights coming towards her. She told John to look at them. He didn’t hear her over his words. He probably didn’t want to hear her.
They were so strange, so beautiful.


"Emmy, I loved you! I never stopped since the day you moved here!" The words were strangled from the sobs that swelled out of his control.







Johnny.. Her hand looked impossibly small and pale in the moonlight as it reached up to his face.I knew it, Johnny. I knew it. Don't cry. I'll make it home okay, you'll see.



Her hand dropped as the lights that only she could see came closer.



She exhaled slowly and then she didn’t hurt anymore.

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at least I didn't have him yell NOOOOOOOOOOOOO at the sky. that would have been a lot more lame.