Fallen Idol
Concept by The Tears of a Mad Man
Written by Sean Catlett and The Tears of a Mad Man

Chapter 3

It was raining that day…

Fucker.

The sound of footsteps on the sidewalk could be heard down the block, because Tails was slamming his feet down as hard as he could. The ground was still wet from the downpour and there were dying worms lying in puddles.

Asshole.

He was walking for a long before he noticed that he walked into the Boardwalk area of town.

Shit cock-sucker.

This was the part of town where everyone went to have a good time, or to escape the bad ones. To gain a moment of privacy, or to create a scene. Everywhere were abandoned buildings and bars and cat houses and warehouses and late hour bars to escape reality.

The last place Sonic would ever go.

Loser.

To the left were the docking yards where the sun could be seen setting low in the background of their shadows. It was getting a little late. Soon, individuals of the seedy kind would emerge and start the workings of their lifestyle. Looking for whatever.

And Tails looked amongst the buildings, looking for an answer to present itself.

Pop.

Fizz.

A bar, set on the docks and built out of old driftwood. It looked as though any fire lit inside would cause the entire place to be set ablaze.

At first, Tails was hesitant to walk in, because of the age thing. He was only a little kid, after all, and in addition to nobody taking you seriously was the law that you couldn’t drink if you were under age.

But, fuck, this was the Boardwalk. The seedy equivalent of New Orleans, if that’s even possible.

This was The Big NO.

The sun went down, and for a long time, Tails stood in the dark waiting for himself to move. To get the guts to take a leap of faith and walk in.

Then he had a quick flash of memory, a distorted view of Sonic’s face. Tails’ fists tightened.

And with that, Tails walked in, to the nearest bar he saw, sporting big red neon letters. To him, it was the best welcoming he’d ever seen.

The Hole Chuckler.

**********

“I thought I was his idol…”

Between the loud sobs and the sound of snot going through the couch cushions, were words of regret spoken by a bawling pile of blue, to nobody in particular. For once, no one was listening to him speak.

Well, unless you count the mob of reporters waiting outside the door, tape recorders in hand, cameras fired up, notepads close by, ready to pounce and get the scoop on Sonic’s emotions.

Title reads: Bullshit

Title reads: Fuck off

Title reads: I had Knuckle’s love child.

Strewn about the apartment were wet tissues and paper towels, signs that what was happening was indeed real.

Sonic lifted his head from his pillow and tried to calm down. Tried to stop the tears from flowing out. Tried to turn on the ‘stop caring’ attitude he learned from years and years of being a ‘superhero.’

“Calm down, hedgehog. Get your head out of the sand and get thinking…” And he would have started up the sob-fest again if not he heard a fowl-mouthed reporter on the other side of the door, talking a little too loudly.

“Man, what’s Sonic all riled up about that little shit for? It’s not like he needs him or anything.”

“Yeah, that sniveling little bitch has held him back too many times. I mean, just look at how the killer got away.”

“Exactly. Sonic would be better off without him.”

“Little cock hit me in the face…”

“Fucking brat…”

“Freak…”

“Retarded ass fox boy…”

And next to the couch, instead of a bawling, crying mass a blue, was Sonic, fist clenched, steaming mad and ready to knock the teeth out of the next person who asked him a stupid question, like how Rouge managed to fit herself into that tight suit she wears. Like he gave a shit.

“That’s it. I’ve had it.”

Gotta get on track.

Gotta solve the case.

Gotta find Tails…

With that, Sonic climbed out of his hotel window and down the fire escape.

It was with the sonic boom coming from down the street that the reporters finally realized that Sonic had given them the slip.

**********

100 bottles of beer on the wall.

See how many you can drink.

Tails, apprehensive at first, managed to down a couple of gulps of beer before he started to choke on the awful taste of the shit. The frothy fluid rolled out of Tails’ gaping mouth and onto the oak bar table.

The bartender laughed. The patrons laughed. Tails laughed.

Sitting on a stool, on two stacks of ten year old phone books, in the middle of the smoke-filled ‘chuckler hole’, Tails was uncomfortable, tired, hurting, and coughing from the solidified nicotine, but at least he was away from anybody who knew who he was. Or rather, who his partner was.

Tails fingered the bandage on his head, and started pulling it off.

Ouch. The headache was still there, and the feeling of dried fluid being ripped from his bare scalp did not help things any.

With the white, tapered, red stained remnants of tissue on the bar floor, not soaking up the spilled alcohol, only then did Tails remember the matter at hand.

The murderer at large.

Tails leaned forward on his perch and forced his brain to think. He ignored the still sour taste of beer and second hand smoke in his mouth.

The murderer…

Somehow, people were spontaneously exploding. And not in flames, but in blood. It was as if the body became liquid itself. Tails could not recall seeing any sort of internal organs or bones in the sloppy mess on the asphalt.

Outside, Tails could hear that it started to rain. Patrons came in with makeshift umbrellas since they were caught without them. Newspapers and the like.

Tails turned around and noticed for the first time the bar mirror hanging directly behind the bartender. He could see his head.

His half shaven head. Without his hair, his head looked weird, like he had the skin of a pig fetus. Light pink.

Pink, except for the large, black and blue bruise radiating around the scar on left side of his head.

Carefully, Tails felt the scar. Looked like he needed stitches. The small wires of the doctor’s work poked out, with small dried blood stains in various points.

Blood.

The mirror on the wall, although very dirty, was so surprisingly clear.

He put his hand down and tried to remember…

**********

Fu…

**********

“Shit.”

Nothing. He couldn’t remember shit.

Tails stopped trying so hard immediately, as it hurt his head too much to think.

He needed a drink.

A real drink.

He asked the bartender for a glass of water, and then went back to staring at his scar in the mirror.

He started to pick at it, asking himself to remember to ask the bartender for a shitload of napkins when he was finished with the drink.

**********

It was a good thing the hospital had sinks everywhere, or the coroner would have had to clean up Sonic’s vomit off the floor.

It was much worse than he had expected, and Sonic’s ‘not caring’ attitude hadn’t worked. For some reason, the combination of being in a hospital and being near gallons and gallons of blood was too much for him.

Sonic’s run had started of as going block to block, place to place, searching where Tails usually liked to go. The book store, the video game store, the bakery, the burger joint, insert random thing here, so on and so forth. Everywhere. Nowhere.

And eventually Sonic realized that he had arrived back at the scene of the crime.

Explodmania.

Even though the early morning rain had washed most of the blood away, as well as the evidence mop up, pun intended, the air still stank of mixed blood and water.

Sonic shuddered, and decided it was best that he get back on the case. He figured that Tails would be thinking the same thing.

Solve the case, save the city. The simplest job in the world.

Sonic headed down to the coroner’s office where he caught up with Jim, the man assigned to the bodies, or lack thereof.

Sonic pushed open the double doors to the room, finding the doc sleeping at a corner desk over a stack of papers. Rousing him, Sonic ignored the string of sleep talk and waited for a coherent sentence.

“Finally. I was waiting for one of you to show up. What can I do for you?”

The dark circles under the technician’s eyes showed not only a state of perpetual sleep, but perpetual darkness.

Sonic could relate. Slightly.

“I came to see if you found anything out about the cause of death.”

The coroner lowered his eyes. “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Okay… care to elaborate?”

Sonic began to notice that the coroner was shifting uncomfortably. “What I mean is… I can’t find out shit with what I have to work with.”

The blue hero looked around the sterile room and noticed there were no bodies lying on examination tables. “Did… did you even do the autopsy?”

The coroner just gave Sonic an odd stare, reached under his desk, and hefted a large plastic bag in front of him. The contents inside squished around sickeningly. “Tell me, Mr. Expert, how do you do an autopsy on something that’s pure liquid?”

…

“I can’t sort through shit like this! There must be at least twenty people in here, all inside this garbage bag that I had to get from Otto, our janitor!”

…

“The only thing I did find out is that these people aren’t “spontaneously exploding,” like the press says, but instead are just “spontaneously liquefying,” you see. There are absolutely no chunks of human flesh or organs that I could find in this mess.”

…

“I double checked that, too, and the cleanup crew didn’t report picking up any thing other than huge amounts of blood. Speaking of which, this fluid, from what I could gather, is a mixture of different parts of the human body…” Jim reached his gloved hand into the bag and pulled it back out, showing with his fingers the coloration. “See? Also, you can kind of smell the difference from normal blood, but only an experienced physician would be able to tell…”

“Stop…”

“So, back to the coloration. You see, it’s darker than normal, meaning that it’s blood mixed with skin, livers, organs, food, lungs, brain matter, bones, and anything else that was in the body at the time of liquification…”

“Please…”

“Including fecal matter and urine…”

“God… fuck…”

“This further proved my theory that nobody was really exploding, just changing states of matter. How this is even medically possible, I have no idea, but… you okay?”

And here we are, at the sink, listening to Sonic heave and moan and say “Oh fuck” in between spurts of vomit.

“Oh fuck!”

“Well, at least I don’t have to mop up your nasty ass vomit, man, that shit grosses me out.”

**********

“That mother fucking bastard,” Tails mumbled under his breath.

In the past ten minutes, it seemed like his anger was just growing even more for Sonic’s attitude as he sat on the bar stool, seething.

Tails took another sip of water and slammed the glass down on the bar table. As much as he tried to focus on the case, he couldn’t. It’s impossible to when a mirror version of yourself stared back at you with a pig fetus head with small amounts of blood seeping out of a stitched up head wound.

“His fault…” those words just kept repeating over and over in Tails’ mind. Stopping the words were like trying to stop a bullet train with a pellet gun. So they kept repeating.

The words kept repeating when he ripped another stitch out.

The words kept repeating when he accidentally knocked over his empty glass, and shattered it on the floor next to the feet of a bar patron.

Kept repeating when he turned around to apologize…

His fault.

His fault.

Their eyes met.

‘His fault.

‘His fault.’

“His fault.”

“HIS FAULT!”

Tails’ voice carried across the entire bar room, and the man in the thick gray over coat, hands unmoving this time, but shaking nervously and looking from corner to corner, avoiding Tails’ accusing gaze.

Then he made a break for it.

Great.

Just perfect.

“Here we go again, mother fucker.”

**********

Sonic left the hospital shortly afterward and decided to check up on the witnesses, see if he could find out anything useful. After checking on the list at the police station and handling a few congratulated handshakes, he was off to the first name on the list.

At the first house, he had to give an autograph.

At the second, a signed photo.

At the third, a signed boob.

At the forth, a signed videogame and t-shirt, followed by a group photograph.

And finally, at the fifth witnesses house, he got somewhere.

“I’m sorry for waking you, Mrs. Kurtsweil, but I need information.”

“Come in, sonny…” The old, decrepit woman of about eighty years answered the door and let Sonic in. She walked with a limp and leaned heavily on her cane. She wore pajamas. Inside her old Victorian style house were faded red flower embroidered carpets and small crystalline figures of famous television characters. The old lady must have been some sort of a collector.

Sonic knew that the old lady’s name was Charlotte from the police reports but had not as of yet said his own name, because he figured she already knew it.

Charlotte walked into the living room and sat down with difficulty on the giant red chair. She let out a breath of air in a huff. Sonic chose to stay standing.

“Want anything sonny? A glass of water?”

“No thank you, ma’m.”

“Suit yourself.”

Sonic paused before continuing. “So, what can you tell me about yesterday?”

The lady smiled.

“Tell you? Let’s see… it’s hard to remember anything these days. I saw all those people, exploding right in front of me, and I was very afraid. I remember feeling… pain. Like I was going to start crying right there. Then… it stopped suddenly. And then I noticed this…”

The old lady outstretched her arm and pulled her sleeve up to her shoulder very quickly. She bit her lip, and tears welled up in her eyes.

If Sonic could still throw up, he would have, but he managed to hold it in until he got outside.

The old lady’s arm was full of large holes that went all the way through to the other side. Perfect, round holes the size of silver dollars. The light from the windows on the other side shone through.

**********

Splash, splash, splash.

The sound of pounding footfalls echoed throughout the empty warehouse that the suspect and Tails had ran into. Trailing close behind the human, the fox started to twirl his tails and levitated into the air. His legs stopped moving his legs and instead of running he was flying.

The human ahead heard the flap of the tails, and stopped running. He noticed a giant pipe on the ground and picked it up.

Tails grinned slightly. He went faster.

When the flying fox got close enough to hit, the human swung… and missed.

Furiously the killer swung in the air, missing Tails each time. It looked like a battle with a giant fly, trying to hit it with a swatter while it flew around in circles.

Because of the nonstop swinging, the human slowly started to lose his strength, and that is when Tails attacked. He flew straight at the human’s face and used his momentum to lay a powerful punch to the temple.

Predictably, the human fell, dazed. The pipe flew out of reach.

Tails landed and looked around the warehouse. Despite the dirty cardboard boxes and the layers of dust, there were lines of twine hanging from the ceiling and a folding chair sitting silently in the corner.

Convenient.

**********

“How does Tails do this everyday?”

Laying down on his couch in his apartment, Sonic decided to rest his brain for the night. It was easily eleven o’clock at night, and he was tired.

Sonic thought about all the times Tails had helped situations using his brain, instead of barreling ahead with no thought.

Sonic had tried to imitate Tails as best he could, but he failed.

“I’m too stupid. I can’t…”

He just put his head down on the pillow and tried to get some sleep. It was late…

**********

Tails hit the killer across the face, waking him.

“HEY! Wake up.”

There was some incoherent speech until the man noticed that he was tied tightly to a rusted steel folding chair.

“Oh… it’s you. What do you want?”

“You’re kidding, right? You’re only the prime suspect in the ‘exploding people case,’ as the press is calling it.”

“Really… I thought they were calling it ‘Sonic is solving another case.’”

Tails grabbed him by his collar. “Watch it!”

“Or what?!”

Tails grinned, then smacked the man across the face. His nose started bleeding.“That.”

The man spat.

“So… tell me who you are.”

“Call me Mr. Merrick, although that’s not my real name.”

“Fine. Fuck you if you don’t want to tell me. The cops can beat it out of you. Why have you been killing people?”

Merrick smiled. “Because I can. It’s an ability I’ve had ever since I was a kid…”

“You make me sick…”

“So, where is Sonic anyway? I really would like to-”

Merrick was interrupted by Tails’ hand coming across his face. “Shut up with that shit already! God, I’m so sick of this! Everyone worships Sonic like he’s some fucking deity without faults! He’s only mortal! God, so he runs fast, big deal! I can fly, for fuck’s sake! And even I’m not perfect! He should be the same.”

An uncomfortable silence.

“Geez, I hit a nerve. Somebody’s bitter.”

“…”

“Obviously you’ve got issues you need to work out.”

“Look who’s talking. Fucking freak.”

The smile suddenly faded from Merrick’s face. “What did you call me?”

“A… FUCKING… FREAK!” Tails got right up to the man’s face and yelled it. Small spit droplets landed in Merrick’s eyes.

Merrick blinked, then got a stone hard look of concentration on his face.

“What are you doing?” Tails asked, backing away a couple of steps. Merrick kept the stone hard stare leveled at Tails, obviously concentrating very hard.

“Stop that.”

He didn’t stop.

“STOP THAT!”

He didn’t stop. Tails suddenly felt… One, he felt his blood begin to boil and his skin crawl, Two, his eyes began to squint, Three, his throat began to dry…

Merrick smiled but kept his concentration.

Four, Tails got angry.

Five, Tails got very angry.

Six, Tails lost control.

Seven, Tails screamed as he jumped on top of Merrick and started beating his face to a pulp.

Eight, Tails felt his face contorted in rage and covered in blood.

Nine, Tails didn’t stop pounding for five minutes straight.

Ten, Tails finally walked away from the carnage and sat down at the opposite end of the warehouse.

Eleven, Tails realized he couldn’t tell if Merrick was dead or not.

Twelve, Tails realized that it was the best he’d ever felt in his life.

Thirteen, Tails started thinking about how great it would feel if he had done it to Sonic instead.

**********

Sonic, instead of having a nightmare about exploding in a shower of red confetti, was having a nightmare about beating up an old woman.

His waking scream was so loud that it woke the neighbors.