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Chapter 8 - The Burn Box

Behold the zombie apocalypse. Just one zombie. He's walking through the pre-dawn quiet of his own life, but he's not in it anymore. The industrial park, the abandoned car, the spray-painted promise of a midnight race—they were all behind him now. He was a ghost haunting the scenes of a movie he'd already seen the ending of. And spoiler alert: everybody dies. Metaphorically speaking. Mostly.

The walk home was five miles of cold, clear, existential dread. He moved with a steady, rhythmic pace, his mind a silent, empty vessel. As the sky bruised from black to a soft, hazy purple, the town began to yawn and stretch around him. The first newspaper thudded onto a lawn. A garage door rumbled open, revealing a groggy-looking man in a suit fumbling with a briefcase. A yellow school bus wheezed past, its windows dark and empty. He watched it all with the detached curiosity of a visiting alien. These were the rituals of a life that no longer had anything to do with him.

He reached his own house just as the first rays of sunlight touched the roof. He slipped his key into the lock with a newfound stealth, turning it so slowly it made no sound. The door opened onto the familiar dimness of his home. He was an intruder now, moving through halls that held no comfort, only the faint echoes of a person he used to be. He glided up the stairs and into his bedroom, closing the door behind him with a soft, final click.

His room was a museum of a dead relationship. He began the purge immediately. There was no rage, no tearful hesitation. He moved with the chilling precision of a surgeon excising a tumor. He started with the walls. The corkboard, peppered with photos of him and Emma laughing at the beach, at school dances, at last year's Fourth of July—he pulled each tack out carefully, stacking the pictures face down on his desk. The framed eight-by-ten on his nightstand, the one from Lookout Point just last week, he removed from its frame and added to the pile.

He pulled an empty cardboard box from his closet. The burn box. Into it went the photos, followed by every gift, every trinket, every accumulated piece of their shared history. The goofy stuffed bear she'd won for him at the state fair. The mix CDs she'd made him, with their ridiculously earnest titles written in Sharpie. The worn copy of her favorite book she'd insisted he read. He went to his desk, turned on his old, humming computer, and clicked through folders, his movements economical and swift. Ctrl+A. Delete. Are you sure you want to permanently delete these items? Yes. He was sure. He went to her social media profile, her smiling face looking out from the screen. He clicked the three little dots. Block Emma. A pop-up asked for confirmation. He clicked it without pause. Then he searched for Marcus Thorne and did the same. The clicks were tiny, digital executions.

His eyes scanned the room, searching for any last remnants. He saw it on his bookshelf. A small, smooth, grey stone, shaped vaguely like a heart. They had found it on the bank of the creek when they were nine, the summer after the treehouse pact, and had declared it the official seal of Team J&E. The very last vestige of Little Johnny and Little Emma. He picked it up. For a single, fleeting second, he felt its weight, its history. Then he dropped it into the box on top of everything else.

He carried the box through the still-sleeping house and out into the backyard. The air was cool and smelled of damp earth. Next to the garage stood a rusty, dented metal burn barrel, used for incinerating leaves and sensitive mail. He tipped the box over, emptying its contents into the barrel. The history of his heart lay in a jumbled pile of paper and plastic. He grabbed the can of lighter fluid from the garage, doused the pile until it was soaked, and struck a match. He dropped it in.

The whoosh of the ignition was a sharp, satisfying sound. Flames erupted, hungry and orange, climbing the walls of the barrel. He watched, his face impassive.

Some people get therapy. Some people get drunk. Johnny gets pyromaniacal. Can't say I blame him. You can't be haunted by ghosts if you salt the earth and burn the bones. This isn't just a fire; it's a baptism.

The photos of their smiling faces curled, blackened, and turned to ash. The plastic bear's face melted into a grotesque, grinning lump before being consumed. He watched until it was all just a glowing, shifting bed of embers. He caught his reflection in the dark glass of the kitchen window—a thin, strange figure illuminated by the dying flames. An internal vow solidified in his mind, hard and cold as diamond. Never again. Never again would he be that weak. Never again would he allow an emotion for another person to hold that kind of power over him. From this moment on, the only things that mattered were things he could control. Speed. Money. Victory.

He turned his back on the fire and went inside. From a magazine rack in the den, he pulled out his dad's pristine, barely-read copy of the local Auto Trader. He sat down at the kitchen table, flipped it open to the classifieds, and began to circle ads with a red pen. Honda Civic Si. Acura Integra GSR. Nissan 240SX. Cheap, fast, easily modified. Project cars. He wasn't just looking for a vehicle. He was drafting a business plan.

And that's a wrap on Johnny the Boy. The ashes are still warm, and he's already shopping for a new soul. Or at least, a new transmission. In his new world, they're pretty much the same thing.

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