John Dies at the End

John Dies at the End Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: John Dies at the End Read Online Free PDF
Author: David Wong
Tags: Humor, Fiction, Horror
jammed in its mouth. He went nuts, wouldn’t eat for weeks after that. He got to where he was having incidents every few days. They figured it was brain damage, you know, from the accident. But the doctors couldn’t do squat. Right?”
    “Yeah. That’s about it.”
    You skipped over the weirdest part, Arnie. What caused the accident in the first place. And what he saw in his car. . . .
    “And now,” said Arnie, “he’s cured.”
    “Is that what they say? Good for him, then. Good for Frank.”
    “And they swear that it was you and your friend who cured him.”
    “Me and John, yeah. We did what we could. But good for Frank. I’m glad to hear he’s okay.”
    A little smile played at Arnie’s lips. Acidic. Look at the crazy man with his incompetent, crazy-man haircut and his crazy little pill bottle and his crazy fucking story.
    How many decades of cynicism did it take to forge that smirk, Arnie? It makes me tired just looking at it.
    “Tell me about John.”
    “Like what? In his midtwenties. We went to school together. John isn’t his real name, either.”
    “Let me guess . . .”
    The images start to rush in again, the mass of humanity spreading across the globe over centuries like a time-lapse video of mold taking over an orange. Think of the boobs. Boobs. Boobs. Boobs.
    “. . . John is the most common first name in the world.”
    “That’s right,” I said. “And yet there’s not a single person named John Wong. I looked it up.”
    “You know, I work with a John Wong.”
    “Oh, really?”
    “Let’s move on,” Arnie said, probably making a mental note that this David Wong guy isn’t above just making shit up.
    Holy crap, Arnie, just wait until you hear the rest of the story. If your bullshit meter is that finely tuned, in a few minutes it’s liable to explode and take half a city block with it.
    “You guys already got a little bit of a following, don’t you?” he said, flipping back to a page in a little notebook already riddled with scribbles. “I found a couple of discussion boards on the Web devoted to you and your friend, your . . . hobby, I guess. So, you’re, what, sort of spiritualists? Exorcists? Something like that?”
    Okay, enough farting around.
    “You have eighty-three cents in your front pocket, Arnie,” I said quickly. “Three quarters, a nickel, three pennies. The three pennies are dated 1983, 1993 and 1999.”
    Arnie grinned the superior grin of the “I’m the smartest man in the room” skeptic, then scooped his coins out of his pocket. He examined the contents, confirmed I was right.
    He coughed out a laugh and brought his fist down on the table, my utensils clinking with the impact. “Well I’ll be damned! That’s a neat trick, Mr. Wong.”
    “If you flip the nickel ten times,” I continued, “you’ll get heads, heads, tails, heads, tails, tails, tails, heads, tails, tails.”
    “I’m not sure I want to take the time to—”
    For a brief moment, I considered taking it easy on Arnie. Then I remembered the grin. I unloaded.
    “Last night you had a dream, Arnie. You were being chased through a forest by your mother. She was lashing you with a whip made of knotted penises.”
    Arnie’s face fell, like an imploded building. As much as I hated the expression on his face a few minutes ago, I loved this one.
    That’s right, Arnie. Everything you know is wrong.
    “You got my attention, Mr. Wong.”
    “Oh, it gets better. A lot better.”
    Bullshit. What it gets is worse. A lot worse.
    “It started a few years ago,” I began. “We were just a couple of years out of high school. Just kids. So that friend of mine, John, he was at a party . . .”

    JOHN HAD A band back in those days. The party was happening Woodstock-style in a muddy field next to a lake in a town a few minutes outside of Undisclosed city limits. It was April of that year and the party was being put on by some guy, for his birthday or whatever. I don’t remember.
    John and I were there
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