1. Where Your Eyes Don't Go

John Linnell might not be the best house sitter.

 

With one set of fingers iced to the handrail and the other cradled to his chest, John Sid Linnell teetered over John Flansburgh’s new balcony. Stories below him, cars lazed like beetles on a log as the Fort Greene night life went through its cycle. John Sid's hair swept into his eyes and he twitched it away, still staring, but at nothing.

(this won’t work i told him)

(and what he said then he said what’s wrong with you Linnell?)

His feet were getting numb. He gave the street one last fleeting look, and John Sid slid from the edge. Brushing off chips of rust, he shouldered his way back through the window, being careful not to knock his cast around too much.

The new apartment was a blockade of dark, save for the VCR’s confusion between noon and midnight. They stared at John Sid as he stood alone in the dark, as he smoothed his hair between his knobby fingers. Light had been winking out rapidly that week. Sid had barely been outside for twenty minutes when the sun began rearing behind the City’s skyline; not that he minded. He was fine where he stood, brooding. He sighed and stumbled into the gloom of the room, using the broken VCR as his propelling point.

Glass tinkled as his bandaged arm brushed up against something hard.

John Sid fingered for the light switch with his good hand, when he felt a sudden clench in his bowels.

(coffee too much sugar)

John Sid Linnell flicked on the light.

The room was empty.

“You’re joking,” he murmured, quickly flipping off the light again.

The air was thicker and harder to swallow. He pulled the switch up once more, and breathing seemed out of the question too. Cupboard doors had apparently flung themselves open, missing boxes left stippled blank spots on the once over-crowded floor and Flansburgh’s guitar-stand stood empty and odd like a courtesan without her arms around a lover.

The prominent veins in John Sid’s arms quivered as he shot out to hold on to something, anything because the blood in his legs was draining, dividing its ample supply between his thudding arms and his lead toes…

(i’m going down)

John Sid landed heavily against the kitchenette counter, jilting his broken wrist and hitting his temple sharply on the corner of the cupboard.

 

“LIN-NELL.”

The nerve endings in his cheeks seared as a resounding clap threw his face to forcefully meet his shoulder.

“Fuuuck—”

“Get up, just—get up.”

John Sid was dragged to his feet, the scenery swimming around him. The light was much too bright, the enclosure much too small. The pain in his wrist was surreal. Andy Warhol could have printed the picture before his eyes.

“Did you see the m***********s who did this, John?”

And suddenly, unforgivably, it all rushed into focus.

John Flansburgh was standing in front of him, his sharp eyes now hard, narrowed, condemning.

Swiftly, John Sid’s eyes spun in their shallow sockets as they grasped that the world was once again horizontal. He lifted his head off the linoleum floor meekly, only to have it shoved down again by fierce gravity into an overstuffed cushion.

“Here, sit up, man…”

Flansburgh’s solid frame hunched over him as he pulled at John Sid’s arms, prodding him to sit on the edge of the busted futon. John Sid felt the blood begin to rush out of his head again, and he placed it firmly between his knees. Staring at the once scuffless floor was sending more pain to brain’s core, so he squeezed his eyes shut; his only sense left being that of Flans now rushing back and forth between the collective three rooms he had just started paying for.

“Okay, they didn’t take much, okay, so far the four-track and the drum machine are unaccounted for, but we can live without ‘em, r-right? God, John, where the hell were you?”

John Sid shook his head weakly, rubbing his tousled hair against his knees.

Everything, everything was ruined now. How could they possibly ever recover from this?

“Wait, were you attacked or something, man?” Flans took Linnell by his scrawny shoulders, his eyes softening now with unfamiliar worry.

“I, I—No,” John Sid groaned. He could actually feel his eyes protesting with a concussion. “Flans, they took your effing guitar.”

Flans’s eyes darted to the guitar stand, cowering in the corner. John Flansburgh’s hands fell limp to his sides, giving up on accentuating his every word.

For once John Flansburgh was rocked speechless.

“I…” Sid began, but didn’t know what he could possibly say. A custom-made left-handed guitar was quietly stealthed away on his watch. What could he say?

“What are we going to do, John?” Flansburgh croaked.

John Sid had been staring at his feet, but now his eyes shot up towards his friend who faced away from him. Guiltily, he looked back down again. Was Flans actually crying?

“What could we possibly f*****g do now? I mean, this was the big plan, wasn’t it, John? Was all that too good to be true, or something? Are we really not, like, meant to do this?”

“Flansy,” Linnell said quietly. “You’re asking really tough questions.”

Flansburgh wiped the hollows of his eyes roughly with his palms. He sat down heavily next to Linnell.

“Whadda we do now? Like, call the cops or something?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right…”

Flansburgh groaned.

“You need someone to stay with you?”

“Nah, you can go back to the apartment if you want to, Sid.”

“No, I mean, you can come with me if you want,” Linnell gave a nervous laugh. “Y-You shouldn’t be alone after all this, y-y’know?”

“Yeh. Right.” John Flansburgh clapped a balmy hand onto John Sid Linnell’s shoulder. “Thanks, man.”