The thing about this thing is that...

See, Cheshire does something called the Wasting. At least, that's what he's done to Emma. Or...Kathleen. Whatever. The Wasting isn't really anything special in and of itself, or it wouldn't be, if it wasn't for the Hunger. The Wasting usually doesn't kill, unless its creator wills it to. The Wasting turns you into, yeah, basically a living corpse. Not quite a zombie, but you look like one. It starts with your hair. Then teeth. Your skin starts to sag and become gray and clammy, and in the final stage boils erupt on your body, which burn, hurt at touch, and are actually maggots. In your skin. Yeah, it's not fun. If you can still walk after that, it won't kill you. Otherwise, you're probably going to die, unless someone stops or removes the Wasting completely.

The Wasting is something the Hunger does. Or at least, that's what it did to me, and that's why I have to...become other people. It chases me around, and anyone I...become ends up the same way, unless I change again, and fast. That's why I don't like using living people. They don't deserve this shit. Well, maybe they do, but fuck if I know, and fuck more if I care.

It's not hard to see if the Wasting is going to kill its victim or not, as long as the one looking isn't the victim. So I dunno about myself. But Emma's is going to kill her if something isn't done about it. Sort of a failsafe Cheshire snuck in there so she'd end up dying if he wasn't around to finish the job personally. But luckily, I can fix it. I can't remove it, so by the end of August she'll have progressed to the...final stage, and that won't be pretty, but she won't die from it afterwards. I can't...I can't guarantee she'll be in perfect condition, but the important thing is to stop it from killing her. The details are both uninteresting and not something I need to tell you; anyway, I don't want to jinx it. It's possible that Cheshire will show up and try to interrupt what I'm doing, but it won't take more than, what, five minutes? And Sir Thighpiece left a certain something that I can't talk about because I don't know anything about it except how to operate it with Emma when he left after rescuing her from Cheshire. As far as I can tell it's a smoke alarm, but he promises it's more than what it appears. All I have to do is bolt it up over the front doorway.

The eye is closed. Let's get down to business.

Oh, God, not this again.

The one thing I think that hasn't changed in all my life is that I've been damn paranoid. Have I said that before? It's really fun being paranoid. You get to wear tinfoil hats and when you're - like me, that can get real interesting, real fast. But there's only so many freaks at this circus.

I'm not even bothered with looking for hoodies or threatening graffiti or masks or anything anymore. The dangerous ones are smart enough not to do anything of the sort. The dangerous ones are the ones I hate, because the dangerous ones are the ones that know just how to get you to relax your guard before they try to get at you.

They say it's a sin to kill a mockingbird, and we all know where sinners go when they die. I watched one of the little feathered guys bash its head into a glass sliding door over and over and over again. It wasn't just that it couldn't understand that there was a wall there. The thing was trying to commit suicide. You know, just like a depressed suicidal teenager. It wouldn't die, either. The bird damn near killed itself, sure, but it just fell to the ground, eventually, too beat up to remember how to fly. I nursed it back to health. OK, OK - I brought it to a vet and the vet nursed it back to health, but I paid for its care. Took a while, but it grew healthy enough to survive outside of the vet's office. I took it home, and I let it fly around, and then it got eaten by the neighbor's cat. The Hunger set in again that night, and I buried the cat in the neighbor's garden out back of the building.

Keeping it together. More or less.

It's helpful to have a totem. A lifeline. Inception got one thing right. When I'm sitting there battling the Hunger, shooting off nukes in my brain, that's when I can pull out my coin and I can get over it. On one side is a feather, and on the other is a cat's eye, or a dragon's eye, or a demon's eye. A demon's eye. Probably that. When that demon eye is closed I'm safe. When it opens, I'm fucked. That feather is all that keeps me sane. The coin is my token and the feather is my totem. My lifeline. My life.

And I want to get rid of the Hunger. Maybe it'll stop me from switching bodies. Maybe it'll kill me. Or maybe I'll have broken the contract and be signed away to ten thousand years of punishment - hello, Sisyphus! How are you, Tantalus? Lookin' good, Adolf. Brosama! What's up?

Or maybe it'll give me peace, and I can go about my life lives happily.

I'm always Killjay, true. But right now I'm also a poor sap named Gary.