Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

A chunk of snow slips off the branch and shatters to pieces beside Kenny’s head, just barely missing the steadily growing pool of blood.

Kenny groans. Tears gather in the corner of his eyes and he blinks wildly, fighting the blur. His mother’s voice echoes through his aching skull.

Keep your head low, Kenny. You don’t want them takin’ you away from home now, do you?

Kenny snorts, but it morphs into a violent cough that makes him see stars. It meant to be a fun weekend camping trip with the bros in the snowy mountains bracketing South Park; Even Butters was invited, and he’d been ecstatic when his parents allowed him to go, albeit Cartman only invited him so someone would buy and carry all his snacks. Why on earth Kenny’s friends wanted to voluntarily experience a weekend in a poorly insulated contraption with no heating or running water was beyond him, but hypothermia was one he hadn’t done in a while so he thought: “Well, Hell,” and Hell sure came.

He should’ve known better. He does know better. Death causes are drawn to him like flies to shit. Why does he keep getting himself in these situations?

Keep your head low, Kenny. Duly, his head could not be any lower than the ground.

At least it isn’t hypothermia, though. He made sure of it; wrapping his body in all layers he found in his closet and forced himself to at least try and have a good time. He made it through one whole night of camping before he slipped on invisible ice up on the hill and crashed his head against the next tree in his path, which is arguably the worst way it could have come. Impressed that it didn’t kill him immediately, he waited for Death’s face to show so he could laugh at it, but the warm sensation of blood seeping into his hair reminded him he needn’t be cocky. If a bear had torn him apart, at least his friends would’ve had time to run off into safety and he could feel like it served a purpose. Now it’s been an hour, or six, and they’re still nowhere to be seen.

The trees bustle.

Suddenly wide awake, Kenny summons every ounce of energy left in his limbs to push himself to his elbows. “Kyle?” He lacks the strength to procure another sound. Stan? Cartman?

A deer hops out from between the pines. It blinks once and perks its ears with a quick scan of the hill behind him, gauging the broken twigs and spatters of blood he left in the fall.

The animal takes one more look at him, then pounces off where it came from.

Dumb thing. Kenny drops back into the muddy snow, exhausted. The deer doesn’t have anything to worry about. The only hunter in the area is Kenny’s personal Grim Reaper, and she’s not out to mess with anyone else but him.

Maybe his friends have already forgotten he came along.

The frosty branches cut through the white sky above. Far away, a faint voice calls his name.

Sorry, Karen. Kenny closes his eyes. You’ll have to be sad for a day or two.

The voice calls again, closer this time. It’s not Karen. Kenny shuts his eyes tighter, annoyed. He’s not in the mood for Death’s funny mind games.

“Kenny! Oh, Hamburgers!”

Kenny’s eyes snap open. Somewhere in the swimmy blur of his eyes a teal streak shoots towards him, and Kenny can’t contain the disappointment rolling through his chest.

“Fellas! Fellas, I found him!” Butters calls. And sure enough, more figures shoot out of the trees. Kenny’s sharp vision is long gone, but the rhythms of their movements give them away; Kyle’s impressively practiced maneuver through three feet of snow, probably from all the skiing trips he’s gone on. Stan’s equally practiced, but less determined motions trail behind. And then there’s Cartman, bulldozing his way through with a string of curses, because how dare the snow and scraggly bushes not part for him like the ocean did for Moses.

“Shit, look at all that blood,” Stan says— as usual, sounding like he’s barely holding in a surge of vomit. And then their faces swarm his vision, matching horrified expressions like friendship bracelets. Kenny giggles at the thought, and— Oh, okay. It’s kicking in.

“Fuck, we’re losing him,” Kyle confirms. Are those tears in his eyes? Maybe it's just the cold. Kyle does sometimes cry when he dies. Not always, and never enough to be embarrassing or noticeable, but Kenny appreciates the gesture.

Not like Butters though, whose face is already puffy and red with snot glistening on the skin above his mouth. “Oh God, oh Jesus, Mary, Peter— Kenny, oh no—”

“Let me see.” Cartman shoves Butters and Stan aside to get where Kyle cradles Kenny in his lap. Poor Kyle. Kenny is probably bleeding all over his new ski pants.

“No way, dude, you’re gonna kill him,” says Stan.

“Relax, fag. I took a first aid course. I’m essentially the only one here qualified enough to help him.”

“Mr. Mackey’s course in fifth grade doesn’t count, you fucking degenerate,” says Kyle.

“There, there, Ken’,” Butters chokes out, squeezing Kenny’s hand and giving him a watery smile. “You’re gonna be okay, I promise—”

“Shut up, Butters,” says Cartman. “Okay, let me see… Yup, uh-huh. That's pretty bad bleeding right there.”

“Wow,” Kyle says. “Thank God you’re here.”

“I could call my parents,” says Stan. “Maybe they can request a helicopter from the hospital.”

“Yeah and where are you gonna find a spot with enough signal, huh? Kinny’ll bleed out before you can even place a call, dickhead.”

Butter makes some strangled noise and his grip tightens around Kenny’s hand. Kenny faintly wishes he’d simply broken his neck to save Butters the embarrassment; his theatrics are making everyone more uncomfortable than Kenny’s smashed-in head. “No, no, you’re not bleedin’ out, y’hear me? Just hold on a little longer, alright? Just— just a little—”

“Well, what do you suggest, Cartman?” says Stan.

“Get a rock and make it quick.”

“No!” they all yell in unison, and Kenny snickers. Cartman’s suggestion is actually pretty sweet. Not that any of them could be convinced of this. Even Cartman, for all he acts uncaring and cool, wouldn’t actually muster up the balls to hit his head hard enough and end his suffering.

“Woah guys,“ Kenny says, theatrically reaching up with one hand and making a show of glassy eyes stuck to the sky. “I can see a light.”

Kyle quickly grabs his other hand, saying words Kenny can’t hear, soothing like he often does at Kenny’s hospital bed. Cartman looks bored, almost pissed off, as though Kenny ruined his perfectly good weekend and can’t wait to have this over with to sit on the couch at home with a bag of Cheetos. Stan keeps darting his eyes away as though he can’t stand to see him for longer than three seconds.

Then the haze wraps around him, and Kenny finally drifts off.

1: Reset.

No better way to go than surrounded by his friends, a show of mild hysteria he doesn’t get to see often. He’s been all by himself frequently enough, like an old, crippled dog dragging himself into a quiet place to pass away unseen. True, those times are easier. He’d spare his friends the temporary horror of watching him die, and he doesn’t indulge in fantasies of them remembering.

Death washes over him, and eventually it’s morning, as it usually is. His head throbs from the crash and he feels the ghost of warm blood stuck to his hair and clothes. Kenny would throw up at its iron smell if he had anything in his stomach to get rid of.

Blood. Rotten flesh. Rats and their shit. The smell of death. Washing it off is pointless, it never goes away even if he scrubs himself to the bone.

Another death, another day.

Reset, resume, repeat.

Kenny might never find out if he ruined their camping trip. Probably not, but there is no known rule to how long their grief lasts after he dies— if there is any at all. He likes to think that occasionally, they have funerals for him. He hangs out at the graveyard sometimes, but if there’s ever been a headstone with his name on it, it vanishes along with everyone’s memories.

There is no set rule for how long he stays gone either. He can never tell how long it’s been— time works differently in the realm of the dead— and it has ranged from a day to several months. When he was younger and didn’t have a phone, he often asked his friends for the date like some chronically high idiot, but since that’s how they viewed him anyways they never batted an eye. Today, however, he wakes up to his phone dead and unresponsive on his cardboard nightstand, his charger either in Karen’s room or at Kyle’s. Looks like he’ll have to resort to old methods.

The first step is to figure out whether it’s a weekday or not, which he can usually count on Karen to know. She’s already up, defiantly grinning at him from the breakfast table and boasts that she got up before he could wake her. He says well that’s unfair, he just came back from the dead, and she rolls her eyes like he just told a joke that isn’t funny. The blotchy grocery tote she chooses to use as a schoolbag these days sits packed and ready on the plastic chair next to her.

Weekday it is.

His head hurts like someone split his skull with a brick. He’d much rather spend the day huddled under his sheets until he stops feeling like throwing up at the barest noise and smell, but he forces himself into a decent set of clothes and follows Karen to the bus stop.

Keep your head low, Kenny, his mother said to him when he was ten. He’d spent two weeks home skipping school because he couldn’t bring himself to leave the house after a train crushed him to pulp. His teachers had called home to check where he’d been, and that was how his mother found out. You don’t want the cops findin’ reasons to take mommy and daddy away again, do you?

Kenny isn’t sure when he stopped keeping his head low for mommy and daddy and when it simply blurred into a habit. Kenny needs to keep his head low because he’s passed sixteen, and if he’s taken far away, mommy and daddy would have to raise Karen without Kenny. He needs to keep his head low because Kevin already fucked that up and landed himself a rent-free stay in jail for the next two years. He keeps his head low because if he doesn’t, he’ll go up in flames with everyone else, and Karen will have no one left to cling to without burning herself.

Karen, who now runs ahead, not waiting for his slow steps to catch up. He has to hold back the urge to call and tell her to be careful not to slip on the ice. The icy snow crunches under his sneakers, and Kenny has to tighten his parka hood until he can barely breathe. The sound is awfully similar to that of bones crushing.

Karen always says he forgets she isn’t six anymore. And it’s true, she’s almost double his own age when he learned that his parents were no good raising her. She doesn’t need him to take her to school, most days even opting for a seat in the bus as far from him as possible to ignore her big brother who can’t seem to realize that she’s fourteen and doesn’t need him nagging her about brushing her teeth anymore.

Today is no different. When she reaches the bus stop, she maintains a respectable distance from Cartman, Kyle and Stan, who are already there, as always. But the sense of normalcy bursts when Kenny walks up to them and Stan says: “Oh, hey dude. Thought you’d skip longer.”

Kenny blinks. “What?”

“Like it was only a day,” says Stan as if that’s a completely normal thing to be aware of. “Thought maybe you’d want to skip art class today too.”

Art class. So it’s Tuesday. Thank god, he’d hate to miss his evening shift at City Wok’s. Kenny died last Saturday on the Camping trip, meaning he was gone for little more than a two days. Not his best, honestly. That doesn’t explain why Stan noticed his absence, but maybe memory is more complicated than Kenny realizes and people often tell themselves stories to make sense of his absence when they can’t ignore it.

“Yeah, whatever,” he says, not feeling any particular desire to come up with an answer for Stan’s question. “Did the teachers mark me absent?”

“Yeah Butters that black asshole made sure of it,” says Cartman. “Going on and on about how you’re not there, like he wanted to draw attention to the fact that you’re skipping. I told him I’d kick his ass for it by the way, so you’re welcome.”

“Butters?” This day is only getting weirder. So people forgot he died but they noticed his absence? Since when does that happen?

Cartman laughs. “Yeah dude, that fag totally wants to lick your balls.”

“Shut up Cartman,” says Kyle, not looking up from his phone.

“What? It’s true. He was all swooning over Kinny here yesterday.”

“Yeah, he really was,” says Stan.

Kyle looks up to throw Stan a bewildered look. “Oh, so you’re taking his side?”

“Come on, dude.”

They get into a threeway bicker like dogs barking at each other from across a fence, so Kenny pulls up his hood and tunes them out. Soon the conversation has no longer anything to do with Kenny or Butters’ weird behavior, and everything is back to normal.

Reset, resume, repeat. The tape rolls, the same old film ready for playback.

The bus honks as it stops by, and they’re transported to South Park High where everything is normal too. People barely acknowledge him and the few that do greet him— Tweek— don’t make any comment about his absence the day prior. But it’s Tweek, so Kenny can’t be sure if he had also been forced to skip school to work at the coffee shop, or if the weird attention his absence suddenly got is really over. Either way, it was probably just a temporary glitch in whatever usually makes people forget about his disappearance immediately. Henrietta passes him in the hallway and studiously ignores him, which is also normal, even if it guts him a little. But he’s been crushed by pianos, had his muscles decay among other things, so he reminds himself he can take it.

So he sits down in art class and feels hungover-adjacent (others would describe this feeling as ‘like they’ve been hit by a truck,’ but since he’s been there done that, Kenny can quite confidently say it isn’t the same) and pulls out the textbook from his plastic bag that he uses for all his classes. Ms. Foster comes into the classroom and starts the worst lesson since Mr. Mackey’s Sex Ed, and Butters stares at him in horror from across the room and Kenny rests his eyes because God forbid he passes up the chance for a nap in art class, and everything is normal.

Reel that back. Pause.

Butters stares at him in horror. That is not normal.

Butters seems to realize that Kenny has been staring back for at least three minutes and he quickly turns his face to the board, although his eyes stay wide and he doesn’t take a single note throughout the whole period.

Now, Kenny doesn’t mean to sound arrogant, but he knows what people look like when they have a weird sexual fascination with him, and that isn’t it.

The bell rings and despite Kenny’s mission to talk to him first thing, Butters is up immediately. He snatches his things, crams them into his bag and bolts out the classroom before Kenny can even finish his post-nap stretch. Half of Butters’ colored pencils clatter on the floor.

Kenny frowns. Should he have kept up his parka hood? Maybe he looks especially close to death today, but no one else has commented on his face so far so maybe that’s not it either. What did Cartman say? Butters had been going on about his absence yesterday? Does Butters think he caught Super-AIDS or something and shouldn’t be in school so as not to infect anyone? Kenny thinks he heard Butters talking about Super-AIDS at some point. Maybe Stephen Stotch warned him about it when he heard Kenny was also going on that camping trip.

Well. Kenny collects the colored pencils from the floor around Butters’ desk. He’s going to find Butters at his locker and tell him to rest assured. No, he doesn’t have Super-AIDS, and even if he did you can’t contract it from skin-to-skin contact or breathing the same air, so cool your balls. Wanna sit with us at lunch? Maybe Butters could use some positive social interaction. At the very least his presence could piss Cartman off.

He finds Butters’ locker pretty quickly. He still seems distraught, slamming books in with shaky hands and muttering to himself as they tumble back out due to the inconsiderate sorting. “Don’t worry, lunatic, loo loo loo, they’re gonna stick you in the loony bin, loo loo loo…”

Pity strikes, and Kenny opts for the easier part of the conversation first. When he gets next to Butters, he holds out his hand with the pencils. “Hey, you dropped your—”

“WUUAARGHHHH!” Butters drops the rest of his textbooks and shields his head with his arms, eyes shut tight. “Go away! You aren’t real!”

Well. Okay. That is really strange. Fortunately, Kenny is friends-ish with Eric Cartman and he’s thus endured much worse insults than to be offended at such an accusation. “Dude, it’s just me.”

“No!” Butters refuses to open his eyes. He just shakes his head and backs against the locker with a clang. “I saw you die! You’re dead, Kenny! Don’t follow me ‘round, else I’ll be grounded for seein’ ghosts again!”

Kenny, with his hand around the colored pencils still outstretched, stares at him.

Pause, indeed.

What the fuck?

“Now, go find somebody else to haunt, ‘cause I ain’t got the nerve. Stupid fuckin’ ghost.” Butters scrambles to collect his dropped books and shoves them into his locker. He slams the door shut before they have any chance of falling back out— a fact that’ll come bite him in the ass next time he opens it— and storms off. He shoves through a group of freshmen girls passing through the hallway who, along with a bunch of other onlookers, follow him with irritated stares. Not once does he take a look back at Kenny, who is still frozen next to his locker with Butters’ colored pencils in his hand.

Alright, so back up. There are laws to this universe, and Kenny has them figured out. No one ever remembers seeing him die. Kenny is invisible. Nothing ever changes.

So how come Butters Stotch, paranoid rule-follower, just nullified laws even Satan can’t bend?

Nothing makes Kenny happier than free food. Especially if it’s chicken wings from KFC, but the mediocre school cafeteria food usually does the trick too, no matter how mushy the peas in the rice are. Today, however, Kenny stares at his full plate without seeing it, raging white-trash-kid hunger replaced by a rollercoaster of thoughts. His mouth hangs open as the hive of high schoolers bustle around him and after half an hour of marathon thinking it still doesn’t make any sense.

“You gonna eat that muffin, Kinny?”

Yeah, Cartman can have his muffin. In fact, Cartman can have all the free muffins Kenny will ever get from the cafeteria, and if by some miracle someone buys Kenny a hot wings bucket today, Cartman can eat all the skin of his chicken and Kenny won’t give a shit because nothing makes sense anymore so why would it matter?

“Hey, Kenny?” says Kyle. “Wanna tell me what’s up with Butters trying to convince me that you’re dead earlier in World History?”

Kenny’s gaze snaps up. “He said that?”

“Yeah he’s gone completely nuts. He’s like, a hundred percent convinced that you bashed your head on a tree last Saturday on our camping trip and that’s why you weren’t in class yesterday. He said that he saw your ghost today.” Kyle stops, then glares at Cartman. “Wait, is this your doing?”

Cartman stops mid muffin-chew and throws Kyle a chocolate-smeared frown. “What?”

“Did you convince Butters that Kenny’s dead?”

“The fuck? How is this my fault? Butters says crazy shit all the time.”

“True, but I mean,” says Stan, “remember that time you convinced Butters that you were a ghost?”

Cartman scoffs and throws the muffin onto his tray. “Of course you’d take Kahl’s side, fag ass.”

“What is it with you guys and sides?”

Kenny tunes them back out. Any shred of doubt that it was real dissolves into thin air.

Butters remembers him dying.

Butters remembers. Kenny dying.

But how? And why Butters? Stan, Kyle and Cartman were right there next to him, they’ve been watching him die his whole life. What happened that Butters remembered and they still don’t?

Kenny glances at his three friends squabbling across the table. Kyle, who treats him like a mental health case when Kenny tries to tell him of his curse. Stan, who doesn’t remember running out of the hospital when Kenny was sick and chained to that bed. Cartman— he’s not getting started on Cartman.

Could other people remember too?

“Hey, Kyle?” he says, and Kyle stops bickering with Cartman to throw him a surprised look as if he forgot Kenny was still there. “What did you tell Butters?”

“Oh, uh. Just that you were with us on the bus this morning so you’re definitely not dead.”

“Thanks.” Kenny picks up his tray and swings out of the bench. “See you later, guys.”

“You didn’t finish your food, dude,” says Stan.

Kenny clasps the plate of rice and mushy veggies onto Cartman’s tray who lets out an “Ey!” in protest. “There. Don’t let it go to waste, fatass.”

“Like hell I’m eating any more of this crap!”

Kyle breaks out in another lecture about how the cafeteria staff’s work should be valued because they’re underpaid, and Kenny dips into the thickening crowd before he can hear Cartman’s response. He’ll probably regret not having eaten tonight when he pops open their food cabinet to find nothing but a near empty box of Pop Tarts, but right now he has to find out where Butters’ next class is before recess is over.

He doesn’t find Butters, so he is forced to spend all of math wondering what the hell what the hell whatd the hell until the bell puts him out of his misery and he storms out. He searches the halls, and is lucky enough to find that Butters needed to pay his locker another visit.

Students pass by and snicker at Butters as he stands in front of a cluster of books, papers, textbooks and various magazines Kenny doubts belong in a school locker, all predictably tumbled out upon having opened it. Butters sighs and crouches, dejectedly gathering his locker’s spilled contents, and Kenny’s old sense for pity kicks in. He walks up and squats next to him, and when Butters looks up, Kenny expects him to jump back again in fear. Instead, Butters’ surprised look is replaced with one of shame, and he avoids Kenny’s eyes as he says: “Ah. Hey, Kenny.”

“Hey.” Kenny opts for the magazines first, hiding them under a textbook before any more students pass by and throw looks. He’s impressed at the collection, the variety of sports and female underwear models, some of them celebrities, and other magazines that are a little more incriminating. Next to him, Butters’ face goes crimson.

“Huh— hahh, thanks.” He quickly grabs the stack from Kenny’s hands and holds them to his chest as if that might somehow make Kenny unsee them. “Listen, Ken’, I owe you an apology.”

Kenny shrugs as he hands him another magazine— one with Jennifer Lopez’ face on the front— before he moves to sweep together a bunch of scattered colorful post-its. “Don’t worry about it, dude.”

“No, I do.” Butters tucks the magazine under his textbooks. “What I said about you bein’ dead and all, well, that wasn’t nice and you didn’t deserve that, I was just sayin’ things and Kyle earlier said— well, I talked to him and I s’ppose I— Ah, I don’t know what’s gotten into me.”

“Wait but—” A surge of panic shoots through Kenny and he momentarily stops stacking post-its. “You did see me die though, right?” Do you remember that? Please say you still remember that.

Butters grimaces, and shovels the rest of his things into a massive pile without looking at him. “Better forget I said all that. I, uh, I have a very active little brain and sometimes my mind plays tricks on me and makes me think it’s real. Something about trauma from a tragic event. I’m gonna have to tell my parents—” His eyes widen. “Oh gee. They’re gonna be awful mad that I’m makin’ things up again. Maybe they’re gonna have me do another testing probe… Aw man, I hate those…”

Kenny has no idea what he’s talking about, but Butters has stopped tidying up in favor of rubbing his knuckles against one another as he stares ahead in terror. Kenny puts a hand on his forearm. “Butters, hey, it’s okay.”

Butters’ gaze immediately snaps to the touch, like it burns him.

Kenny quickly retracts his hand, feeling suddenly awkward. How the hell is he supposed to comfort someone scarred from seeing him die?

“Listen, uh.” Kenny rifles his brain for a sane way to approach this, when he decides there is none. “This is gonna sound weird, but can I, like… buy you a soda and we go hang out somewhere? Like, right now?”

Butters looks at him like Kenny suddenly started speaking German. “Buy me a soda?”

“You’re not… crazy,” Kenny says, because that's the first thing no one would ever tell him if he mentioned anything about his deaths. “There’s some stuff you should know. But this is gonna take a while to explain, and if you can hang out, I can tell you everything.”

“Oh.” Butters looks disappointed for some reason. He stands up, stacking the sorted books and textbooks (and magazines) back into his locker without meeting Kenny’s eyes. “That’s nice, really, and I’d love to hang out with you but my parents want me home to study and I don’t wanna get grounded again. I just got out last week.”

Of course this is gonna be harder than Kenny thought. Why’d he think he’d get handouts from Butters more than from anyone else? Maybe Kenny should just leave him be, Butters might even forget again within the next few days, and then things will go back to normal, as they’ve always been, and Kenny can stop idiotically dreaming that there’s a way his friends might remember—

He grabs Butters’ upper arm before he can think better of it. “Please, Butters.”

Butters blinks. He looks at Kenny’s grip on his arm and then assesses Kenny’s face for a moment, as if trying to figure out whether Kenny is joking. Kenny wants to let go and duck away from his gaze, but he forces himself to look back, steady. Anything to figure out what the fuck is going on.

“Well, all right then,” says Butters, and Kenny can feel himself turn so light he could start floating. “But if I get grounded—”

“I’ll make it up to you,” Kenny promises, although he has no idea what the fuck he could do for Butters to do so. He’ll think of something. He’ll do anything if Butters helps him with this. Butters has already made everyone notice his absence; What else can he make others do?

“Yeah, well.” Butters shuts his locker and picks up his bag to follow Kenny along the hall to the exit. “I’ll get grounded anyway for makin’ things up, so what the heck.”

“You don’t have to tell your parents,” Kenny tells him, bewildered he even has to.

“No, I already did.” Butters hugs his bag, looking sullen. “I just need to tell ‘em: ‘Remember when I said my friend Kenny died up in that mountain? Yeah, false alarm. He’s alive, I’m just completely insane. You know how it is.’”

Oh. “I promise you, they’re not even gonna remember you told them that.”

“Of course they will. It ain’t like a friend’s death should be taken lightly.”

“Trust me,” Kenny says solemnly, as they push open the door and walk into the blinding white overcast light of the afternoon, “they won’t remember this.”

“Crush Strawberry, then?”

Butters smiles and nods cheerily as if Kenny had just offered to buy him a bottle of the finest champagne shipped directly from France. “Yes, please!”

Kenny picks the pink can up from the shelf and turns out the aisle to the checkout, thinking how most kids at school would classify Crush Strawberry as a faggy girl drink. But apparently it’s Butters’ favorite, and Kenny offered to buy him whatever he wanted, and he appreciates that Butters can’t give two flying fucks about getting a drink classified as faggy. He thinks of the pervy magazines Butters stacks in his school locker. Maybe they have more in common than Kenny anticipated. “Alright, let’s go.”

“Hey, wait.” Butters yanks Kenny back by the sleeve of his parka. “You’re not buyin’ yourself anything?”

Kenny doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he’d planned to spend the rest of his money on a can of beans or something so he could make Karen a better dinner than crappy toaster pastry for the next few days, so he says: “It’s okay, I don't need one.”

“No way, I can’t let you buy me somethin’ while you go thirsty.” Butters turns, and grabs a can from the top shelf. “You like Pineapple and Grapefruit Fanta, right?”

Kenny stares dumbly, wondering how the hell Butters knows this. “You really don’t have to—”

“Aw, c’mon.” Butters pulls him to the checkout before Kenny can utter another protest. “You buy me a drink and I buy you one, that’s just fair.”

Kenny can’t even blink away his confusion. “But what’s the point if we both spend money?”

“Well, we‘re givin’ each other gifts, that’s the point!”

Butters’ smile is too bright for Kenny to argue with him, so they pay for each other’s drinks and swap cans once they’re out the store.

“Where to, then?” says Butters.

Kenny envisioned the playground or park for a comfortable sitting option, but this time of day those will be full of joggers or toddlers and their parents. He’s not exactly keen on talking about his numerous deaths in front of anyone who might either call an ambulance or the cops on him for scaring their child.

“I got an idea.” He turns down the street, and Butters tipples after him with spidery long legs, nervous anxiety about getting grounded and seeing dead people easily replaced by some sort of giddy joy. It fascinates Kenny how someone can switch from agony to humming merry melodies so quickly. Perhaps a lot of practice. Kenny certainly has a lot of practice recovering from the most violent of deaths, so much that he could brush them off with a laugh if someone were to mention them. He never thought it possible that anyone would, but another look at Butters tells him maybe it will be.

Kenny takes Butters to the old locomotive abandoned on the unusable rails near his house. It must’ve meant a lot to the town’s economy before cars and trucks became a thing. Kenny always wondered why he barely sees any kids playing train driver here, like he used to with Karen. Maybe the homeless guys and junkies in the nearby ruins of SoDoSoPa disturb the innocent child play vibe.

Butters seems to share this last thought, looking around nervously, possibly for drunks and drug addicts hiding in bushes, so Kenny nudges him with an elbow to the arm in an attempt to be comforting. Kenny is far from the burly and tall kind of guy you’d ask to walk you through a neighborhood like this, but Butters seems to relax a little at the touch anyway.

“Wuh, wait, are we climbin’ on top of that?” He points to the roof of the container behind the driver’s cabin when Kenny grabs the rusty glassless window bars and pulls himself up.

Sitting on the roof was the idea, but at Butters’ nervous face, Kenny says: “We can sit inside the driver’s cabin if you want.”

Butters does want that, so they do. Kenny drops his ass to the floor and cracks open his can, but Butters takes a few minutes to wipe off ten layers of dust and filth from the decrepit and flakey leather seat cushions. Upon spotting Kenny’s look, Butters says: “I don’t want my dad groundin’ me for coming home with dirty pants.”

Kenny isn’t sure whether to say ‘Fair enough’ or ‘What the fuck wouldn’t your dad ground you for?’ so he just clears his throat and awkwardly taps his fingers against the can. “So, uh. You remember seeing me die.”

Butters sits onto the edge of the cushion and makes a face like the memory makes him uneasy. “Well. Kinda.”

“Kinda?” Is he already forgetting?

“Well, not kinda, I remember it pretty well actually. Which is worse, because that means my brain is psychotic enough to think it was real.”

Kenny breathes out in relief. “You didn’t imagine it, though.”

Butters gives a hollow chuckle, fiddling around the Crush can. “Then how come no one else saw it?”

“They did.” Kenny swallows. Moment of truth. “They were all there. Cartman, Kyle and Stan. They just don’t remember.”

Butters frowns. “How wouldn’t they?”

Fucking beats me, Kenny thinks, but he chooses his next words carefully. He doesn’t know what he’d do if Butters doesn’t believe him just because Kenny sucks at talking.

“I don’t know,” he says, slowly, “but what’s even weirder is that you remember this time. That’s… never happened before.”

“Wait.” Butters’ fingers go stiff around the can, his stare wide. “So you’ve died and come back before?”

Kenny almost laughs at the question, but the nerves have such an iron grip on him, he couldn’t if he wanted to. “Yeah.”

Butters blinks at him. He looks confused, maybe not yet entirely sold, but at least he isn’t looking at Kenny like he’s crazy. Kenny doesn’t know what to expect when he opens his mouth and says: “Since when? When was the first time?”

It’s like the words unscrew a tap Kenny didn’t realize he had closed.

He was five, the first time. He fell into the lake near Ned and Jimbo’s house while playing with Stan, Kyle and Cartman by the side of the water, and none of them could yet swim. He barely had a grasp on what death meant back then, even less what it meant for him, and he remembers being terrified kicking and punching water as he failed to get to the shore. He remembers screaming and water splashing into his mouth, filling him up and blocking his breath. His friends screamed and yelled from the shore, torn between running away to get an adult or staying to help Kenny out of the water if he managed to get close enough to the shore. When Kenny ran out of energy to keep himself afloat, he went under, he burned inside out, and then woke up in his bed wrapped in his parka. He thought it must have been a dream, they never actually went to Jimbo’s to learn how to shoot guns and ditched to play at the lake instead. But in school they talked about the games they invented by the lake in great detail, just like Kenny remembered. The only thing that was different was that according to them, they all seemed to have gone home together afterwards. For a while Kenny thought he was just crazy until it happened again. And again. And again.

To Butters, he says: “I drowned when I was five. Y’know how kids can be careless.”

Butters’ eyes widen in shock and then he keeps asking questions, makes Kenny recount some notable other deaths, then how he’s tried getting people to remember and how he stopped trying when he was ten. Kenny forces himself to dig into memories long buried, and with the tap open, they flow like a waterfall. He tells Butters about the cult meetings his parents went to when his mom was pregnant with him, hoping Butters recalls their findings from their days of playing Superheroes.

Kenny doesn’t remember the last time he spoke so many sentences at once, uninterrupted, someone’s eyes on him throughout the whole thing. It should be awkward but somehow it’s exhilarating. Like Butters’ eyes are drilling right through to his core and seeing him from the inside, and it feels more dangerous than playing with explosives or balancing on top of City Hall. He gets the sudden need to pull the strings of his hood and make the opening to his face smaller.

“And well, you know what happened last Saturday,” Kenny finishes abruptly, cracking open his can to get away from Butters wide open gaze. “Which is… I don’t know why you do, but no one else does. Stan and Kyle still don’t.”

Butters is quiet for a while, Kenny doesn’t dare look up and check if he’s still staring at him, and the silence around them settles like maggots on a corpse. For a second, Kenny wonders if he misjudged Butters’ character and that he’ll decide he doesn’t believe him, will run away screaming, when Butters finally says: “Woah.”

Kenny clutches his teeth around the rim of the can. “So?”

“Well, geez, that’s horrible, Ken’. I’m sorry you have to go through that each time, that’s gotta be really lonely.”

The maggots scatter.

Out of all the reactions Kenny expected, this wasn’t one of them. Disbelief? Perhaps not, because this is Butters, but at least some level of suspicion. Fear? Sure, because it’s not every day you find out this guy you’ve known your whole life is an immortal creature resulting from cult rituals. Horror, above all. Kenny could deal with all those. What the hell is he supposed to do with this?

“It’s okay,” he says with a wave of his hand before he takes another gulp of his Fanta. “The question is why you suddenly remember, and why now. Maybe figuring this out could be the key for everyone else to do too.”

Butters’ face falls. “Aw heck, not the key again.”

“What?”

“This is just like when Imaginationland wanted me to save them all by myself. What if I can’t do it?”

Imaginationland? Kenny decides not to ask. “Relax,” he says. “I’m not gonna pressure you into anything.” Although Kenny doesn’t really want to say that. Butters remembering his death is the biggest deal since Kenny’s first BJ.

Butters looks at the ground. “Ah, and you sure you’re tellin’ the truth and not just, I don’t know, telling me things to mess with my head, or somethin’?”

Ah, there it is. The suspicion. Although Kenny should have seen this coming too. He should’ve known Butters, no matter how gullible, wouldn’t get away unscathed from years of his weird friendship with Eric Cartman. Granted, Kenny’s story would sound batshit crazy to any mortal ears, but that doesn’t take away Kenny’s desire to shove his empty Fanta can down Cartman’s throat for ruining his chance at Butters trusting him without a doubt. Because finally having someone who both believed Kenny and remembered his death would’ve been too good to be true anyways.

“Wait no— Shucks, Kenny, I’m sorry.”

Kenny looks up, and there’s Butters, looking guilty. “What?”

“I shouldn’t have said it like that. I know you wouldn’t lie to me.”

“I— You do?”

“Sure do, you’re an honest soul. The thing is— There’s doctors who said I’m psy… psychotic, which is like, med-talk for crazy, y’know? I was on meds for Multiple Personality Disorder for a while, and well, what if this whole thing, all that you’re tellin’ me, is just in my imagination too? I could’ve finally snapped…”

Oh. Alright then, this is a different problem. Kenny didn’t expect to be dealing with someone who doesn’t even trust their own mind. How do you prove to someone that they’re not crazy? And how do you, by extent, prove to them that you’re not just part of the hallucination?

“Aw, crap.”

Kenny looks up, finding Butters knocking on his forehead with shut eyes, as if berating himself. “What is it?” Kenny asks.

“I made this about myself again. Don’t worry, Ken, of course I’ll help you. I’ll be your key or whatever you want me to be.”

“Wait, but—” Kenny fights the urge to look bewildered at Butters’ strange motion. “You’re not sure it’s real.”

“Well, I dunno. But real or not, you’re my friend, and I wanna help you, even if it gets me in trouble.”

“No,” Kenny says, surprising himself.

Butters’ face falls. “Wuh— No?”

“I’m gonna prove it to you first,” he says. “That you’re not crazy. That you’re not making shit up, and that you really saw me die back there, even if no one else remembers.”

Butters opens and closes his mouth several times with no sound coming out. “You don’t gotta do that for me.”

Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe Kenny could just take advantage of the fact that Butters will do anything for a little bit of approval, even if he isn’t sure it isn’t just some nut-brained hallucination. But this isn’t how he wants to do it. Kenny might be a cynical alleged whore who died too many times to care for life, but he isn’t Cartman. This might be the single most significant thing that’s happened in his many lifetimes, and he needs it to be real.

“I have a better idea,” he says. “Get out those colored pencils and some paper. We’ll figure out a plan.”

Butters and Kenny spend over an hour mulling over possible ways to prove something no one can remember, and when Butters reluctantly suggests Kenny ‘do a death’ while Butters films him to keep the footage, Kenny informs him that he’s tried that. He’s shot himself with a rifle while filming himself on a borrowed camera, he’s done it in a mall with cameras (and witnesses) all around. He’s died on TV. Somehow, any footage disappears once he’s back, as well as any other evidence that it ever happened. Blood, guts, even clothing articles shredded in the death disappear and revert to normal either in his closet or on his person. No duplicates. Like he gets catapulted into an alternate dimension, one in which he hasn’t died, but that theory no longer holds up with Butters remembering. He once had Kyle hold onto his parka before he threw himself off a bridge, and the next day woke up with it in his closet. Convinced it had to be a duplicate, Kenny asked Kyle for the parka back, and Kyle said “What do you mean? I gave it to you yesterday.”

Kenny is tempted to give up and throw his crushed Fanta to the side to go get a beer can instead, when Butters says: “All right, but there’s one thing you didn’t have all those times that you have now.”

“You?” Kenny says tiredly, and it’s meant to be a hopeless joke but Butters grins.

“Sure, me. But more like, my memory. And with yours, that makes two.”

—

Alright, so. Phase One: Record memories.

Kenny hasn’t mentioned much about his last death in Butters’ presence besides “Well, you know what happened last time” which gives them the opportunity to each write down their memories of the event to compare and prove their similarity. But—

“We need a witness,” Kenny suggests. “An impartial third party to read them out to you the first time you see my version, and confirm how similar they are. Someone you definitely wouldn’t hallucinate about.”

“Got it,” says Butters, noting down that part of the plan with the turquoise pencil in terrible cursive. Kenny thinks it’s the coolest handwriting he’s ever seen

Phase Two: Find a worthy Witness.

After his shift at City Wok’s, Kenny spends all night working on his memory essay of last Saturday’s events, then reworking it like it’s his Master’s thesis and not a simple means to disprove Butters’ insanity. The plan is absurd but he’s done far weirder things and if this is what it takes to start figuring out why the hell Butters remembers his death, then so be it.

The next day he and Butters huddle together at lunch over a list of possible witnesses at a separate table— to Stan, Kyle and Cartman’s bewilderment (“So, he is sucking your dick, Kinny?” “Why are you so obsessed with Butters sucking Kenny’s dick, fatass?” “Stan thinks so too.” “Leave me out of this, dude.”). Stan and Kyle are way up high on that list, followed by Tolkien, Jimmy and Scott Malkinson. Kenny briefly suggests considering adults, but when Butters eyes widen in horror at the possibility of his parents getting wind of his schemes, they discard it. Dumb teenagers from their grade it is, then.

“Tolkien is the least dramatic,” Kenny says. “He wouldn’t ask questions or be too weirded out. Jimmy is good at going along with any weird shit, but I don’t know if he’ll keep his mouth shut. Maybe Stan and Kyle are our safest options if we want someone we can trust.”

“Uh.” Butters is rubbing his fists together again. Kenny wonders if he should comment on the habit. Butters’ knuckles look really sore. “Right. Actually, I was thinking they wouldn’t be… the best option. Maybe.”

Intrigued, Kenny puts his chin in his hands and tilts his head. “Yeah? Why?”

“Well, they were there,” says Butters. “They’re more likely to appear in a… a hallucination, or be an image I made up in my mind than someone I barely ever talk with. And I don’t think Scott Malkinson likes me a whole lot, he’s still pissed off about all those times I wailed on him for bein’ a self-pityin’ diabetic.”

Hm. Someone trustworthy Butters barely ever talks with. Out of their list, Tolkien is probably the most level-headed to apply for trustworthy. But he’s close to Craig and Jimmy, and if they got wind of it all of South Park would know within the next week and both Kenny and Butters would be locked up in an asylum. Kenny could just kill himself to get out of it, but Butters doesn’t have that option. Most boys from their class are judgemental gossips, and all of them have history with one another, including Butters.

Kenny stops tapping at his chin.

All the boys.

He looks over to the girls’ table.

“Butters,” he says, and it’s like Butters can tell Kenny is about to say something super smart because he conspirationally grins before Kenny even finishes the thought. “I know who we can ask.”

Phase Three: Give Witness texts separately, and have them read them out together to compare.

Wendy looks like she’d rather be anywhere else than next to the dumpster behind the school, with two graphic essays of Kenny’s death in her hands written by two boys she probably considers lunatics. The only reason she probably agreed to this is because last week during social studies, Cartman called her out during her presentation on Fast Fashion in America, falsely interpreting a microaggression against low-income households. Apart from the fact that she didn’t do anything wrong (Cartman probably doesn’t even know the meaning of the word ‘microaggression’), Kenny couldn’t have been bothered to be offended if that was the case anyways. But Wendy Testaburger is nothing if not an upper middle class social justice warrior deathly afraid to say something classist. And now her feeling that she owes him something— although she really doesn’t— worked in his favor.

“‘Mr Mackey’s First Aid course doesn’t count, you fucking degenerate,’ Kyle said,” Wendy reads from Kenny’s text, and her face shows she her regret at having agreed to the ‘No questions’ part of their terms. “‘And then, I believe, Butters started praying to God, Jesus, Mary and Peter. And Cartman—’ and it says here ‘that asshole’ in parentheses— ‘told him to shut up and confirmed that my bleeding was pretty bad which, no shit.’”

“Oh boy, it really is the same,” Butters mumbles into his hand, staring at Wendy like he’s watching the cinematic masterpiece of the decade and not hearing a retelling of an event he already knows. Although Kenny had the same reaction upon hearing Butters’ paper. Earlier, they each separately gave Wendy their respective essays like people that sneak drugs and their payment in each other’s bags while the teacher isn’t looking, and she showed up with them behind the school, as reluctantly agreed to with Kenny. He made sure Butters had as little part in the mechanics of the plan as possible, to avoid him believing that he hallucinated an elaborate plan all by himself (“Like y’know, in that movie, ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ where he makes up a whole organization and complicated cases in a building an’ stuff.” “Sure, okay. I’ll take care of everything.”) But it is one thing knowing that Butters remembers his last death, and another hearing it written on paper, down to the last detail, that he really does. No wonder Butters was freaking out all Monday when no one else seemed to remember that Kenny was gone.

“‘Last thing I said was something about seeing a light, because it’s dramatic and entertaining to watch everyone’s reactions, as if by tomorrow they wouldn’t all have forgotten I perished from head trauma and blood loss in front of them. Oh yeah, and I remember Kyle and Stan were holding hands like the gaywads they are. Then the sweet embrace of death hauled me through the afterlife before I found myself back in bed. The end,’” Wendy finishes Kenny’s text off. She stares at it for a moment, then fixes Kenny with a look. “You know, Kenny, I think it would do you good to see the school psychologist.”

“Thanks, Wendy.” He passes her two papers. “If you could just sign here and here now, please.”

The two papers contain the same scripture in Kenny’s scrawly handwriting: ‘I, Wendy Testaburger, declared Witness and honorary Third Party to Butters Stotch and Kenny McCormick’s mission, hereby confirm that these things are true: I received these texts separately from Kenny and Butters each, so there is no way Butters wrote them both. I confirm the similarities in the separately recounted events. Kenny is an independent party in this mission and I talked to him separately with no input from Butters.’

She signs them with reluctant concern. Part of the terms and conditions were that she keep the texts and one of the signed papers in case Butters ever feels the need to go back to her and confirm the whole thing was indeed real, so she folds them up and puts them into her satchel. Then she gives Butters and Kenny another look, before shaking her head as if deciding she’d rather not want to know. “Sometimes I wonder if you boys ever matured beyond fourth grade.”

Kenny shrugs, because he’s done here and eager to start the real part of the investigation, but Butters seems to take her words to heart. “Of course we did. We just show it different.”

Wendy gives him a look that couldn’t more clearly say ‘Yeah you sure do’ before she bids them goodbye. Kenny waits until she’s gone before he turns to Butters and nudges the other signed paper in Butters’ hand. “So? Convinced you’re not crazy?”

A smile spreads on Butters’ face that lifts the fattest, nastiest weight from Kenny’s shoulders. “Yeah! Gosh darn, I guess my brain ain’t that psychotic after all, huh?”

Kenny isn’t sure whether to feel relieved or pity him. He opts for relieved. “Now we gotta figure out why you remember, and maybe get other people to do it too.” Like Stan and Kyle. Kenny wonders if it could be possible to get them to remember previous deaths too, but he doesn’t wanna get his hopes up too much.

“Huh.” Butters looks over the signed paper again. “Well, Kenny, why don’t we just tell people?”

Kenny snorts, but upon Butters’ puzzled look he realizes he was being serious. “I’ve tried that. They won’t believe it.”

“Yeah but now you have me,” he says, smiling brightly. “An’ we have two texts that prove we remember the same event without tellin’ each other. You’re not alone this time!”

Kenny doesn’t know how to tell him that, if Butters winds up telling people that Kenny is an immortal, even with supposed evidence, people would think Kenny is pranking him at best, and lock Butters up in a mental institution at worst. If it was, say, Stan or Craig, or Wendy, or even Kyle that happened to remember his death, people might think there’s something to it. But as luck would have it, out of all the people that could have remembered Kenny’s death, it had to be the most gullible, easily persuaded and prankable person imaginable, with a history of being taken advantage of because of it. The only worse scenario he could imagine is if it had been Tweek. There’s no way Butters can be of help to convince other people, but Kenny doesn’t have the heart to tell him ‘Butters, the truth is, people think you’re kind of stupid.’

He settles for: “I don’t know. I don’t think that’ll work.”

Butters’ face falls. “Oh. All right then, I guess we’ll try somethin’ else.”

There’s more to his sullen face, but if Butters doesn’t wanna say it Kenny won’t prod. “We’ll find another way,” Kenny says. “There’s got to be something you did or happened that made you remember when no one else has, and why now, suddenly. It can't be that hard to pinpoint.”

“Sure, yeah.” Butters’ finger taps against his lips, pondering. “Say, Kenny, before last Saturday, when was the last time you died?”

Kenny thinks about it for a moment. It was actually a longer streak. “About like three months ago, I got hit by a car that skidded onto the sidewalk and crushed me against the wall of Skeeter’s.”

“Huh. Geez.”

“Why?” Kenny’s heart leaps. A lead? “Did something weird happen in the last three months?” Something supernatural, maybe? That could’ve altered Butters’ ability to see beyond the veil or some shit?

“Hm, no,” Butters says, but he’s frowning, not looking at Kenny and not seeming particularly convinced. “What was that cult your parents were in? The cult of Cthulhu?"

Kenny wants to shake him by the shoulders and say ‘Butters, this is kind of a big deal to me’ but the sheer idea of doing that feels like stripping naked, so he doesn’t. “Yeah, that.”

“You never looked more into that?”

“A little.” Most of what he knows about it he got from Henrietta, but Kenny would rather squeeze himself through a paper shredder before he talks to her again. “There’s this book they read from, the Necronomicon. But there's nothing really helpful in there and either way it’s not in the town library collection and I haven't found it online.” At least not the extensive original cult version that Henrietta owns, especially not for free, and not without risk of downloading a thousand viruses on his mom’s laptop upon opening obscure PDF links. He’s never considered wasting his money to actually buy one, but maybe he should, now that Butters… happened. Would he find something now he hadn't seen in there before?

“The Ne-cro— nomi-con,” Butters mutters, brows furrowing.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kenny says. “I’ll try to think of something else.” He looks over the school’s backyard, cigarette-butt littered cobblestone cracks cast in gray shadow from the sun lowered way behind town. It’s getting late anyways, he should check on Karen to make sure she’s home and has eaten. And it’s not like they didn’t accomplish anything today. Butters knowing for sure he isn’t elaborately crazy is a success, he tells himself. Even if it wasn’t among Kenny’s original plan. “Come on, let’s go home.”

They walk in silence, Butters swaying in his step and still caught up in his own head. Kenny’s used to smelling like dumpster among other things, but on their way to Butters’ house Butters sniffs his jacket several times like another nervous habit, muttering to himself “Oh, Hamburgers, mom’s gonna be sore.” Kenny would offer him something to cover it up, but he doesn’t carry deodorant around and his own jacket probably smells worse than whatever Butters could ever get to, so he says nothing. When they get to the Stotch residence, Kenny expects an easy goodbye so he can get home to his bed quickly and have some quiet time in his own head, but Butters stands there for a minute biting his lip.

“You okay?” Kenny asks.

Butters blinks like he’s been snapped out of a deep thought. “Ah, yeah. Just, my grandma’s home an’ I don’t really like her a whole lot. And— hah.” He scratches his head. “I know my parents are gonna be mad I spent another day not doin’ homework.”

Kenny, whose parents wouldn’t even notice if he wasn't home for a whole week, couldn’t relate less. Still, Butters looks awfully distressed, so Kenny pats the back of his shoulder. “It’s gonna be alright.”

“Yeah,” says Butters, unconvinced. He turns to Kenny and gives him a weak smile. “Thanks for everythin’, Ken. I know you wanted to figure out why I remember your… y’know, and I promise we’ll find a way and you’ll never have to die and feel alone with it again. But thanks for goin’ through all that to prove I’m not crazy, I appreciate it.”

“Ah.” Kenny didn't expect to be dunked through a whole speech just now, so he just shrugs dumbly. “Sure. No problem, dude, anytime.”

In the evening dark Kenny can see Butters bite his lip for another moment, and then he does something Kenny is even less prepared for. He hugs him.

Kenny is too stunned to react. His cheek is pressed to the front of Butters’ shoulder, and he doesn't know why Butters was worried about smelling like dumpster when he very clearly still smells like lavender detergent and something else Kenny can only classify as clean and warm home. Kenny’s arms hover awkwardly at his sides, debating whether he should return it, when Butters is already talking again.

“I’m so happy you're alive, Ken.” His arms tighten around him and Kenny feels Butters’ heart beat against his face. “It would’ve been awful goin’ to school without you there ever again.”

Kenny’s mouth hangs open within the next five seconds that Butters has his arms around him. Then he’s already off, saying “Well, see ya tomorrow!” and bounces up the steps to his house. Kenny must’ve vaguely responded with his own goodbye, but he isn’t sure. He feels dumber than he did when the teacher called him up in Calculus after he’d slept through the whole class and all he can think about on his way home is how he can’t remember the last time anyone hugged him that wasn’t Karen. Maybe he needs to make a point to hug his bros more often.

At home, his parents are yelling at each other again, throwing bottles through the kitchen. Karen’s drawing in her room and tells him she ate the last slices of toast before they started going at it, which is at least something. Kenny’s hungry, but he doubts they have more food he could eat even if he had free access to their kitchen cabinets without danger of being hit by a stray shard. He’d rather not die, in case Butters remembering his last death is a one time thing, a limited edition model of a subscription he can’t afford. Which is why, when he locks himself in his room, he doesn’t take the handgun from his underwear drawer to take a trip down to Hell and ask Satan if he knows why, all of a sudden, the universe has decided to torture him with a hope he’d long given up on.

Instead Kenny lays in his bed, staring at the ceiling, and tries to recount all the things he knows about Butters. He’s friends with Cartman. He’s gullible. Sometimes he gets randomly mad at everyone and starts yelling and insulting them for no apparent reason. He has a nervous habit of rubbing his knuckles together. His family has some weird connection to Hawaii Tourism culture. He keeps his jerk-off magazines in his school locker, probably because of his parents. He gets grounded a lot for stupid things because his parents are batshit crazy. He likes Crush Strawberry Soda. His mom tried to kill him once. What else?

Kenny frowns. You’d say that after eighteen years of living in the same town as someone and sharing classes and insane childhood adventures with them, you should know a person better. Kenny would say he knows Kyle, Stan and Cartman like the back of his hand. But what about Butters? Many things Butters does and says surprise him. He might have hung out with Butters a lot when they were kids, but whatever that was, it faded long before they started high school, when Stephen and Linda Stotch started having a problem with their precious son associating with someone with so many alleged STDs. Kenny McCormick was either the kid with the most sinful lifestyle in town or the Detached Loner Poor Kid destined to become a school shooter. Now Butters is more Cartman’s friend than anything, but Kenny’s sure if he asked him about Butters all he’d get would be something like “Why? You wanna get in his pants, Kinny?”

Kenny sits up.

He thinks of the sudden hug Butters seized him with. The little smiles Butters sends him whenever their eyes meet. It would’ve been awful goin’ to school without you there ever again.

That’s it. Of course. How the hell would Kenny know why Butters, of all people, remembers his death, if he’s never really tried to get to know him? Butters at least seems more than willing to be Kenny’s friend.

And if it helps him finally figure out the inner workings of his curse, Kenny is more than willing to seize that chance before it slips out of his hands.