Ectoberweek 25: Forgotten Bones
Prompt: 1. Forest 2. He thinks about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried.
Characters: Johnny 13, Danny Phantom WC: 1145
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“I don’t know if I should tell them,” Phantom said, his head hung low and his elbows resting on his knees. It was easy to forget how small the kid was when he trampled around his haunt like some tyrannical overlord, squashing any trespassers before they could say ‘hello.’
Johnny 13 blew the cigarette smoke from his throat and watched it fizzle into the crisp air.
“I feel bad because there’s supposed to be no more secrets, you know? They said they accepted me, so I don’t know why…”
“I never told anyone,” Johnny said.
He might have felt amusement toward Phantom’s owlish reaction if he was in better humor. But then, Johnny was never one to talk about his past.
Most ghosts weren’t.
“Really?” Phantom asked.
“Yup.”
“Why?”
He mulled it over. “It was nobody’s business.”
It was unsurprising to see the kid’s unconvinced expression. Ghost intuition and all.
Because even Phantom knew that unresolved deaths don’t just resolve after a few years of being a ghost. That even if the memories get altered during ghost-formation, the pain never goes away.
The moment never disappears.
It was just his luck he’d get trapped in this situation. Dragged to the forest by a group of faceless, fuzzy men—he couldn’t remember what they looked like—and surrounded with guns drawn and flashlights pointed in his eyes, casting long shadows behind him.
“Please,” Johnny begged. “You have the wrong guys.”
“That’s not what I heard,” the leader said. Beside him, his thug pressed his gun into Kitty’s temple.
“The money or the girl. Your choice.”
“Nobody’s business,” Johnny reiterated, tapping the fresh ash from his cigarette.
The Boy Scout beside him was too out of it to make an annoying remark about littering or whatever the hell dumb thing he’d usually say.
“But Kitty knows, right?”
“She was there, moron.”
“Right, but…” Phantom turned away, sheepish. “Not everyone remembers.”
“Well, you’d have to ask her then. Not everyone was insane enough to—what did you do again?”
If anything, Phantom looked even smaller as he spoke, “...I buried it in the woods.”
“Right, exactly. Most of us don’t bury our own fucking corpses in the woods.”
“And yet, you and I are both in the same place.”
Johnny looked out at the dark sky, noting the speckles of stars that danced around each other. And it occurred to him that, well shit, maybe they were in the same place. Maybe they were both stuck leading an afterlife based off of forgotten skin, forgotten bones.
Forgotten bodies.
But no, they weren’t the same. “Even if I wanted to change it now, I couldn’t. There’s nobody to tell.”
Kitty’s terrified eyes met his, and Johnny nearly collapsed on the spot. The flashlights suddenly seemed too bright, too blinding.
“I’m telling you, it wasn’t us.”
“Really? You weren’t at Tony’s last Tuesday?”
Johnny took a step back, nearly tripping over a root. “No! No, that’s not—”
“You’re calling Tony a liar?”
“—No, please!”
“You could always tell the police. Lead them to your…”
Now that Johnny did chuckle at. “And what do you think would come out of that, kid? Surrender my bones over to the police—and for what, exactly? Justice? Revenge? Kid, I died forty years ago. Do you know what happens to bodies that stay in the dirt for forty years?”
“Well, I was going to say that it might give you some closure, but—”
“Then what’s stopping you?” Johnny said, stamping his cigarette out on the cement roof. “Maybe you should be less worried about me, a guy who’s living out his afterlife doing the thing he loves with the girl of his dreams, and more focused on yourself, who’s clearly so upset you had to come to me for advice.”
Phantom blushed green, and the brief spark of smug fire vanished from his eyes. “I didn’t come to you, you were just already here.”
“And? You’re still talking to me.”
Phantom grumbled but otherwise didn’t argue.
And thank goodness for that too, because Johnny hadn’t come to Earth for a therapy session. He didn’t want to relive that night. He didn’t want to think about what happened. He didn’t want to remember the feel of the brush scraping his legs, the dirt that stained his skin, the guns pressed against their backs as they were led further into the forest, closer and closer to The End.
The sound of Kitty’s voice. The tears on her face. The trembling in her voice.
“Please, sir, that’s not what he meant! We really don’t have anything, I promise!” Kitty cried. “Let us go, just let us go.”
The man pulled out his gun and pointed it at Johnny. Although Johnny couldn’t see—couldn’t remember—the man’s face, he would never forget the pure terror that races through his veins as the barrel pointed at his forehead. He would never forget his shaking limbs finally collapsing onto the dirt. He would never forget praying for one more day with Kitty so they could finally take that road trip they’d always talked about.
“You were there at Tony’s, and on your way out, you nicked from his cocaine supply. You either pay up the money you stole, or I’ll shoot you and your pretty lady myself.”
Johnny’s vision swam. “I—I don’t…”
The fuzzy form of the man stepped closer, casting his shadow over Johnny. “What’s that, princess?”
“I…don’t have it.”
“You should tell them, though,” Johnny said, breaking the silence between them.
Phantom gave him a quizzical look, and Johnny felt like a bug under a microscope. Damn, that kid could be a real pain in the ass sometimes.
Still, something compelled him to keep talking. So he turned his attention back to the sky and said in a detached voice, “You should tell them while you can. Because if you don’t do it now, you never will. You’ll keep putting it off, and putting it off until one day you’ll look around you and realize that there’s nobody left to tell. And you’ll spend the rest of your afterlife wondering if you should have told someone during any of those days you asked yourself and decided it wasn’t the right moment, it wasn’t the right day, that you would do it tomorrow. Because you only have tomorrow until you don’t. And you never know when that day will come, but it will, and it will come faster than you think.”
Phantom didn’t respond, but Johnny didn’t need him to. After all, they were both in the same place, and they weren’t. Johnny had no more tomorrows left, but Phantom still did.
He still had the chance to do what Johnny never could.
Johnny 13 thought about the corpse in the woods sometimes. Hard to forget where you are buried.
He heard Kitty let out a fresh sob in front of him.
“Well, that’s tough luck, kid.”
There was a crack.
Kitty screamed.
And then nothing.
