They Don't Love You Like I Love You

They Don’t Love You

Like I Love You

Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com

Synopsis: There is a fine line between fandom and complete insanity—too fine for some fans to discern.

Author's Notes: This was written as part of the Angst Lord Time Trials, an Iron Chef on PPMB begun by Undefinedlust in April 2009. (Thanks to Legendeld for coining the ALTT phrase.) Brother Grimace challenged me to write a story in which Stacy Rowe is subjected to “the most desperately angstful treatment… with one special condition… [that] [s]he isn't to be physically harmed... Beyond that—use your imagination." I got the story idea while eating lasagna, which reminded me of the bloodied body parts typically found in the vomit of a victim of late-term Ebola.

And yeah, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to poke fun at another Daria fan, but it was just too much to resist. (If you don’t know who I’m talking about, be glad that you don’t know.) Everyone has permission to poke fun at me in return. Enjoy.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to everyone who was grossed out or horrified. J

The birth contraction ended, leaving a sweating, red-faced Stacy DeWitt-Clinton gasping for air on the delivery-room table. “God, that hurt!” she cried, wishing she had asked for an epidural instead of toughing it out. “I can’t believe how much this hurts!”

“Breathe with me!” whispered a nervous Ted at Stacy’s side. “C’mon, Stace, you’re almost there! Breathe!”

“Your husband’s right, Stacy,” said the doctor who stood between Stacy’s bare legs, looking down. “You’re dilating fine. Next time a contraction comes, I want you to push, and push hard.”

“Okay!” Stacy gasped. “Okay! Jeez, this really hurts!”

“You’re doing fine, Mrs. DeWitt-Clinton,” said the doctor in a soothing voice. “You’re not physically harmed in any way by the birth experience. Get ready to push!”

“Okay, okay,” Stacy croaked. “Okay, here goes, here—”

Without warning Stacy’s abdomen ballooned out several inches in all direction. She threw back her head and screamed, insane with agony.

“Here it comes!” shouted the doctor from between her legs. “Here it c—SWEET MOTHER OF GOD!”

A pediatric nurse shrieked and ran from the delivery room in terror. Another nurse and the anesthesiologist looked between Stacy’s legs—and fell to the tiled floor in a dead faint. Stacy’s screams rose in higher tones and louder in volume as her abdomen swelled to almost a yard across. Then the swelling rippled down toward her groin in a single motion. Her hips lifted off the table. Her screams broke the delivery-room windows. Ted stared in mindless horror as from his young wife’s birth canal emerged—

“Whoa! Ouch!” cried the damp young man who pushed himself out, falling to the delivery-room floor. He wore a black T-shirt and blue jeans, with old sneakers on his feet. He got to his feet after a moment, putting a hand to a bump on his head. “Wow, I made it! I got into the cartoon! Oh, hi, folks! I hope that wasn’t too creepy or anything. Man, I’m all wet! Smell funny, too! Ha! That was wild!”

The doctor fell to the floor next to the nurse and anesthesiologist. Her eyes shut and her face turned to the ceiling, Stacy wept. Ted stared at the young man, unable to utter a word.

“You must be Ted,” said the young man, noticing him. “I always thought you were an absolute weirdo and the one person on the show I never really got. You know, this whole thing feels like an angst fic in the making. Creepy! That’s sort of an in-joke, kind of hard to explain. Oh, right, what’s my name. You can call me, uh, Stars, that’s it. Stars. That’s my online name, or it used to be, a short form of it. Only Stacy can know my full online name.” He turned his attention to the young woman on the delivery table. “Stacy!” cried the young man. He suddenly blushed. “Wow, you really great naked, even better than I imagined you would if you were in really good hentai! You’re not dirty, though. You’re too pure to be dirty, even naked like that. Wow, did I really come out of there? Doesn’t seem possible, does it?” He laughed.

Pushed beyond all reasonable limits, Ted DeWitt-Clinton let go of Stacy and ran at the unexpected intruder with madness in his eyes. He prepared to attack the monstrosity with a Wing Chun spinning front kick, but the young man merely snorted and waved a hand at Ted, who collapsed on the floor with a cry. Ted quickly struggled to get back on his feet, but then doubled over in a massive spasm of pain.

“Sorry, Ted,” said Stars, “but my love for Stacy is so deep that it transcends all sexual attraction, even though there obviously is some kind of sexual attraction, which is sort of creepy under the circumstances, yeah, but forget that. You’re in the way, Ted, so you have to die.”

Ted managed to get to his knees before he doubled up again. He choked, then vomited up a thick spray of blood. When he vomited again seconds later, mixed with the blood came torn chunks of black-spotted gastrointestinal tissue.

“I gave you fast-acting Ebola,” said Stars. “Got the idea from some guy on PPMB. He was weird, but I liked the Ebola thing.”

“TED!” screamed Stacy, pushing herself up on her elbows as she watched her husband’s agony. “TED!”

“You can forget about him, Stacy,” said Stars, walking to her side and blocking her view of Ted. “He doesn’t love you like I love you. No one does. They were fools, all of them, saying you were just a cartoon and could never truly be mine. They were wrong, weren’t they?”

Two armed police officers burst through the delivery room doors. Stars made a hand gesture at them. The two men howled as they burst into roaring white flames, dropping their stun guns. They fell writhing to the red-splattered floor beside the still-vomiting Ted.

“I know this is kind of creepy—there’s that word again!—but listen to me, Stacy.” The young man put an arm around the trembling shoulders of the small naked woman with pigtails. “You are the sexiest thing that hyperventilates. Everyone on PPMB said you were just a doormat and some of them tried putting that into your DariaWiki webpage, but I took care of that. You’re no doormat. You were meant to be with me, crying on my shoulders when you feel lachrymose, sharing your pain and innocence with me whenever I want. It turns me on to think of you weeping with your head in my lap, shaking like a little pup, and—Stacy, you aren’t paying attention. Stop the screaming. I’m almost deaf, Stacy. Stacy!” The young man abruptly grabbed Stacy by the shoulders and shook her like a rag doll. “Stop screaming, damn you!” he shouted.

She stopped. Her face was dead white as she stared at him with impossibly large eyes. She quivered in his hands like a baby rabbit held before a wolf’s drooling toothy jaws.

“That’s better.” Stars kissed her on her sweating, ice-cold forehead. “See? Everything’s going to be fine. Oh, yeah, I should apologize for the way I dropped in. Talk about falling down a black hole. Anyway, don’t hold that against me. I’m not really your genetic kid or anything, so anything sexual that passes between us isn’t really like incest. That wouldn’t be very Joycean. Did you know that you’re in Ulysses? I’m a huge Joyce fan. Well, your last name is in Ulysses, not your whole name, but that’s almost the same thing. I wrote a lot of poems about you. I couldn’t bring them with me, but I can write them all again for you. Every piece of canon information about you only served to fuel my infatuation even stronger. I don’t care if you’re a cartoon or animated or anything. You’re beautiful. We were mean to be together always. In fact, I even looked up the meaning behind your name the other day, and—what the hell?”

Stars turned and looked down at a red-soaked shape on the floor behind him. One hand from the shape had reached Stars’ left shoe before the shape expired and moved no more.

“Thought I felt something,” Stars said. “Looks like Ted bled out from both ends. Eww. That’s Ebola for you. I gave it to the unconscious people, too, so they’ll check out soon like Ted did. Man, it smells something awful in here. Oh, right, forgot about the guys I set on fire.”

He turned back to Stacy. “I’ve wanted you so much. I missed you terribly when Daria went off the air. You know, sometimes when I lay in bed I was overcome by my yearning for you, and let me tell you it wasn’t even sexual. I just yearned. I mean, you have a fantastic body, wow, just look at you. You’re hot! You know, it would so turn me on to have you cry naked in my arms in bed. That’s not creepy, is it?” He laughed. “You’ve been waiting all your life for someone to console you and read you love poems. I had a whole bunch of poems for you. You’ll love them. Are you feeling okay?”

Stacy’s mouth was frozen open in the shape of small o. No sound nor breath escaped her lips. She wobbled on her elbows.

“Tell you what,” said Stars. “We should leave. Don’t put anything on, you can stay naked like that. You’re safe with me. What do you say, Stacy? Will you be mine forever?”

By way of a response, Stacy DeWitt-Clinton shuddered violently, then her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell back on the table with a thump. Her arms dangled from the sides of the table.

Stars looked at her pale, slender form and began to laugh. He ran his hands over her body, touching her without shame. “Wow, it’s really you! Stacy Rowe! This is great! You’re mine forever! And rest assured, my obsession with British Jennifers is much more creepy than anything I feel for you. Did you know that my favorite item of clothing is the anorak? I bet you know the reason.”

Stars lifted the naked young woman in his arms, grinning at her. “All mine,” he said. His voice lowered to a whisper as he placed his lips to her ear. “They don’t love you like I love you, Stacy. No one can. No one ever will. You’re mine, forever. I mean it. Forever.”

When the SWAT team broke in five minutes later, automatic rifles at the ready, no one was there but the dead.

Original: 05/06/09; 05/03/10

FINIS