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Ghoul had never been smart.
He knew this fact about himself, and in a time he had accepted it with maturity. The smart didn’t survive where he was from, only the reckless. When he was a child, he ate handfuls of sand and stole clothes and food from farzone runners. Back when he was that age he would sleep under the harsh, unyielding radiation of the sky without cover, burning off layers of skin for the sake of status. He still had the scars, faded and rough, hidden under layers of poorly scrawled ink embedded into his battered skin by a sputtering needle. He still remembered the pain of applying them himself, little doodles over his thighs in a child’s blind scrawl. Some of them still remained. Some had been covered by scars. Some had faded with time.
Back when he first left the farthest zone, he thought he was being smart. He was just a stupid kid with a tiny truck full of stolen weapons and welded trinkets, little symbols of his homeland that people rarely purchased farther in. Back then he had money in mind, ways to pay for stupid things he once thought were sophisticated and intellectual. Back then, the fanciest thing he could think of was a bundle of blankets on the floor.
He was still that kid, in a sense. Stupid.
He was stupid for thinking he was smart, to any extent. He was reckless, a little monster with irradiated mush in the place of a brain. His heart was old and battered now, like a dead bird laid helplessly in the filth of an old cage. He had lost a lot of friends.
The Trans Am was empty.
Ghoul drove one handed down the further stretches of Route Angeles. His right hand laid numb against his thigh, occasionally twitching under the layer of dried blood he had yet to wipe from his callused skin. The car rattled with an empty echo, haunted. The back of the car was completely empty, the only remaining things being trinkets of the dead. The box beside the driver’s seat was still stuffed to the brim with old CDs and bottles of honey-lemon. Party Poison’s can of spray paint rolled along the floor with every tremble that ran through the car. The bright thread of one of Jet’s hand-woven decorative tassels swung from the rearview mirror. The clay beads that hung from the end of each braid clacked against each other like bones, a connection Ghoul had never once made before.
If he thought any further, he’d have to acknowledge the hand-stitched pillow in the back seat, the one Kobra always tried to hide. Ghoul wondered if he ever used a blanket when he slept in the trans-am. Maybe he never slept at all. He had always seemed very tired, Ghoul never asked if he wanted to talk.
It was too late now. It was far, far too late.
Ghoul’s eyes were dry of tears. He wanted to cry, but nothing came. Murderers didn’t deserve to cry. And what had he done? He had gotten his friends killed. He had pushed each and every one of his closest friends into the fire and watched them burn, only to end up alive on the other side. Witch-worshiping, clear-headed Killjoys didn’t do that… Monsters did that. Ghouls did that.
His last Phoenix Witch charm had been left with the girl for that reason. She was the only good one among them.
The horizon clouded with green, the familiar green of home. After long, Ghoul pulled off of Route Angeles and began to drive down the edge of the beach. He remembered driving along this beach, up north, with Manic Panic in the passenger’s seat. She always talked absently when they drove, and she had always said the beach felt haunted.
Ghoul agreed with her, mentally, because she was not there to see his shame. He let his boot sink into the thin layer of sand that sat atop the old concrete of LA’s ruins and began to trudge toward the old shack he had parked beside. It was a ruined ranger station, a little house of wood lined with boarded windows and a dark interior. He opened the door with a hearty kick that sent dust cascading into the dark. He switched on the lights. The electricity still worked… a sign of promise.
The next few weeks passed slowly, and soon Ghoul had built himself a little home. It was a monster’s cave, a little house on the beach filled with trinkets and metaphorical gravestones, little collections of haunted items from the people he had lost. Jet Star’s memorial sat on the high shelf inside of the office, a shelf of CDs taken from the car place beside that mirror charm, which Ghoul had hung from the ceiling. Party Poison’s memorial was scattered across the old radio equipment, old show posters and emptied hair dye bottles atop stereo systems and control boards. Kobra Kid’s memorial was simple, simply the old pillowcase hung up from the ceiling like a tattered flag after war. Kobra wouldn’t have wanted anything else.
Ghoul was an older man now. Months had passed, at this point. The clutter of his shed grew to include scraps from passing BL/ind caravans. The bulletin board had been stripped of all of the papers from before the great fires, how daunting and blank.
He was hunched over the old radio system. His injured hand trembled like wavering electricity at the end of an open wire. He could barely feel the cold metal of the radio dials through that hand, all he felt were little blotches of unknown sensation he couldn’t parse. His fingertips could only send two signals now, they had lost all nuance to injury.
The stereo system beside him sputtered to life, and the familiar melodies of WKIL 109 began to sing through the speakers. Ghoul straightened up and listened, eyes glued blankly to the equipment that buffered to the beat of the music.
Dr Death Defying spoke, and Ghoul almost sobbed.
“This is Dr D with another traffic report. The time just hit 11:00, and that means we’re in Drac-Cloud matin’ time, so stay inside if you can help it.” The doctor’s voice was different now, strained. Or maybe Ghoul was just jaded. “Remember to stay clear of the Old Hotel Outpost, since it went belly up to BL/ind two weeks back. The static’s still heavy in that direction, stay off Route Guano.” Ghoul breathed slowly. “Before we get to our songs, I’m gonna read off our dusted. Remember to skate by Cemetery Drive when the sun hides. Killjoys never die, the only way we can keep that true is if we remember the dusted like they’re brothers. The pigs won’t stop, and neither should we.” There was a brief pause, and a shutter of papers. “Track Attack, Toss-up Terror, Linolium Fires, Static Stain, Nevermore, Walk-in, Flash Color, Oops, and–”
Ghoul tuned the radio to static and hid his eyes from the room around him.
Killjoys never die. That was new. He had never heard that phrase before. Did they make that? Did he and the killjoys create that in their ruin? Was that what inspired zones, now? Their memories didn’t deserve that. All the Killjoys were was a group of masked kids looking for a way to feel less terrified. What had they done to deserve that recognition? All they had done was gotten themselves killed.
Against his greater judgment, he tuned the radio WKIL 117.
He realized his mistake after a moment, but her voice was already clear.
“Hey Killjoys,” Manic spoke, miles away. Her voice sounded just as distant, broken in a way Ghoul couldn’t describe with words. She must’ve been talking to the greater zones, but it felt like she was talking to him. “This is Manic Panic of the Kids Today, offering you scared joys a place of safety. If you’re scared right now it’s okay, we all are. We’ve lost a lot of people,” Ghoul sobbed. He sobbed for the first time in months, head pressed against the speaker like it was a person, like Manic was real. “They’re all dusted, and though their memory lives on we still can’t help but miss them. That’s okay. We have music and each other. The Killjoys ain’t on the air anymore but we got ourselves, so join me if you’re looking for a way to live on.” Ghoul couldn’t. This message wasn’t for him. He was already dead, gone, dusted. He was that empty memory in the open air she discussed so fondly. He wanted nothing more than to hold her by her waist and sob, tell her he didn’t deserve that memory.
The love in her voice burned like acid. All Ghoul could do was sob.
He loved her, he realized. He loved how much she spoke, and how her voice always lifted with a hope he had never once heard before. But he had never pushed to pursue her, all he had done was vent and use his friends like they were outlets. He was never happy, he was never smart, and now he was gone from the eyes of all the people he loved. He was gone from the eyes of the woman he only now realized he was in love with.
And here Manic Panic was, still on the radio. She wasn’t a coward. She wasn’t a coward like him, she used her life to bring people together. All Ghoul had done was kill himself.
The radio sang on into the night, in horrible harmony with Ghoul’s empty cries.
Manic Panic disappeared a week later.