Return Of The Knife Master

"What you're telling me is that you've been here this whole time; not here,here, but 'around' and you couldn't come back because you were stuck in the Matix?" The most bewildered look was pinned to his features now, and the rhythm took a second to scratch at his scalp with both hands agitatedly.

"There's no Matrix, dude. It's just--" An airy laughter rang from his lips, but the brief moment of amusement was cut off by venom-tipped words of a highly volatile mixture of emotions.

"Jimmy, this isn't funny! This isn't a game!" He growled harshly. "You were just GONE one day. You left us without explanation, and you didn't even care enough to leave us a note behind. For fuck's sake, we weren't important enough to you to even give us a weak-ass goodbye! We were crushed! Completely heartbroken! Our world was ripped to shreds and incinerated in an instant, and what you're expecting me to believe is you've found some 'key to the universe' and you can fucking travel inter-dimensionally?! SERIOUSLY JIMMY?!"

"Yes," he answered sheepishly. He'd never heard Zack scream so loudly, or speak so harshly in his entire life, and it both pained and shook him to the core. Pulling his legs up on the couch to hug one to his chest now, he spoke so gently, one would question whether or not he was actually an angel. "This is me, Zee. The four of you are my whole world, and I have never lied to you. If I was, wouldn't it be something more 'Jimmy' as you guys call it? Something just, I don't know. Completely random and stupid," he sniffed at the tears that were now softly tracing nearly invisible lines down his cheeks and he wiped his nose across the back of a hoodie sleeve covered hand. "Like, 'Craziest thing happened. I went out for ice cream and got pulled over by the cops for not wearing a seat belt. They were taking forever to run my license so I made a stupid joke about the body in the trunk, and they took me in for questioning. Longer story short, I ended up being detained because by the time they got me to the station for questioning, I was bored, and every time they asked me for my name, I just answered with, 'I'm the knife master, I don't have to answer to you'. It's amazing how seriously some people take their jobs.'"

The look on the younger man's face went through a handful of emotions while his friend spoke. When he was finished, Zack's expression was quite a mixture of all of them, and it was tough to read. Though tempted to ask what was on his mind, Jimmy just sat quietly. A hand lifted to brush the trail end of the emotion-filled droplets off of each cheek in turn, but he bit back the anxiety that welled within him and remained still after that as he awaited a response.

The rhythm said not a word for the longest time. He busied himself with his hands, chewed at his lips, ran a hand through his hair, and bounced his legs gently as he worked through things in his mind. Finally, he sucked in a sharp breath, and found a way to bring his eyes up to lock on the shining blue ones he'd missed for so long.

"I believe you," the three words did not come out boldly, nor were they lined with an overabundance of confidence, but they were there. The set of eleven letters hung between them for a good thirty seconds before the drummer moved to close the gap between them.

"Thank you, Zack," he whispered so softly, and drew him into a tight hug. "You have no idea how sorry I am. I'm going to spend my life making it up to you guys."

"You're here. That is all I could ever hope for."

-

“Hey Matt,” the drummer said with a small smile.

“JIMMY?! HOLY FUCK- HOW THE HELL- FUCKING SHIT!” the singer sputtered, mouth agape at the sight of his best friend. His phone dropped to the ground and broke into several pieces now, completely forgotten about as he lunged forward and grabbed the drummer into a massive hug.

“Matt, I’m so sorry du—” he tried, but was cut off by both a torrent of tears that began falling into the crook of his neck and a very emotional ramble by the rattled man.

“Jimmy, holy fuck! I’ve missed you so much! How the hell- what the hell- God, I’m shaking and stammering like a fucking idiot!” he bawled as the older man gripped him tighter and pulled him into a bear hug so strong, it now hurt both men to breathe. “I don’t even fucking care where you were, you’re fucking here! YOU’RE HERE!”

“Yes, I’m here Matty!” he exclaimed, and couldn’t help but shed some tears of his own now. “I’m so sorry I was gone this long. I never meant to hurt you, or anyone. I’ve missed you more than you could ever imagine!”

“Get inside before I make an ass of myself in front of the whole neighborhood!” the singer belted, and yanked him inside by his shirt.

“Oh, dude, you broke your phone!” his stoop to pick up the fallen item was stopped immediately.

“Who gives a fuck? I can buy millions of those! The only thing that matters is that you’re here!” as the excitement began to mix in with reality, a hand came up to unashamedly wipe some of tears that were still hotly rolling down his cheek and his brows furrowed. “Wait a minute, dude. How the fuck are you here?! Am I dead?!”

“No! Hell no, you’re not dead! You’re every bit as alive as I am. It’s a long story though,” he sighed now. One that he was honestly already exhausted from telling tonight.

“I’ve got all the time in the world, Jimmy. Go sit on the couch and let’s get you some JD!”

The hazel eyed man quickly walked towards the kitchen, but made a detour along the way. He darted into his bedroom and grabbed his iPad off the charger. With the push of a button, the screen lit up and he brought up a group message to both Zack and Johnny.

Guys,I may be completely losing my shit here, but I’ve got Jimmy in my living room somehow?!

The responses came back almost instantly from each.

I’ve been trying to reach you for half of forever- I’m having a drink with him as we speak. This is fucking insane!!!!! Zack said.

Duh. I’ve been getting liiiiiiit with him for like two hours,man. Or, maybe it’s only been ten or fifteen minutes.Not sure. Point is,Jimmy’s baaaaaacccckkkk!

“Does Brian know you’re back yet?” he asked as he came back into the kitchen to grab another glass.

“Oh yes,” Jimmy groaned. “Love him to death, but it’s like Dateline is doing an investigative report over there. He’s asked me a million questions and it’s exhausting!”

“I’m sure it is, but dude, you’ve been gone so long and now you just popped back up without any sort of explanation. There’s going to be questions. I’ve got a ton too, but I’m still shaking and I need to let it sink in some first.”

“I would have an ass ton of questions too, if the tables were turned. I just was kind of hoping everyone would greet me the way you did first,” he sniffed at the emotions that were tangibly gathering in his eyes now. “I can’t imagine all the pain you guys have been through while I was gone. I suffered too, though. Imagine being gone all this time, knowing you all thought I was gone forever, and not being able to come back.”

“I bet it was hell, man.” Matt agreed, and handed him the glass upon returning to the living room. “Pour yourself a drink. I have a million and one questions, but let’s start with a drink to your return.”

“Please.”

“If you want to give me the abridged version of where you’ve been, I would definitely like to hear it. I can’t promise you I’m going to be able to hold everything in, but I’ll do my best to hold my questions until you’ve gotten settled in a bit,” he said, and took his drink from the other side of the photo album on the table before them and brought it to his lips.

“Long story short, I’ve found the key to the universe. I’ve spent the last ten years travelling inter-dimensionally to different eras in time.” The blunt words caused the singer to strangle on his drink, and the substance shot out of his mouth and nose at damn near the speed of light. “Are you okay, dude?”

“Yeah. Totally fine!” he choked out as Jimmy gave his back a few hardy pats to help him regain his composure and breath. “Yeah, my best friend just showed back up after ten years of some sort of jujitsu interstellar, interuniverse time traveling matrix extravaganza- totally normal. I'm completely fine. S-sorry, I just-uh...” he stood now and made his way back into the kitchen. “Let me get some paper towels to clean that up and….I’m going to pour myself a quadruple, and maybe all of that will make perfect sense then.”

-

Meanwhile, the chocolate eyed man was becoming exhausted. He'd asked almost every question and posed every scenario he could think of, and his level of comprehension on the matter was not much more than it was an hour ago. This was so much more demanding than jumping around under thousands of killowats of light or under the hot sun on stage for a show, and that was getting to be more difficult as he got older.

"Jimmy, I swear to God I hate saying this, but I don't understand. So you just--"

"I'll tell you what, how about we meet up with the rest of the guys over at Matt's huh? We can have some drinks and talk about all of this. Maybe it'll make more sense when Zack explains some of it," he offered as he stood and stretched a little bit.

"Why Zack? And why Matt's? And don't you think I should try to talk to everyone before you just show back up?"

"Zack has the best grasp on the concept so far, and we're gonna go to Matt's because he lives on the beach and drinks with everyone by the ocean sound nice tonight," he explained with a tiny sigh. "You forget I don't live life in a straight line, Brian. I've already made my rounds to everyone while you and I were taking. You're just taking the longest to adjust."

"What the hell does that mean? How were you in four places at once?!"

"Again with the shouting," he groaned. "For the second time, I have ear drums; or at least I used to until you broke them. And for the hundredth time, you are living life in a straight line. You see life on a fixed time line, so things have to progress in a forward fashion. Monday night turns into Tuesday morning, followed by the rest of the week in a rapid, set succession. I don't have a box anymore, and I don’t live the rat race, one lane life. I can get up on Monday morning here, in what I'm going to call your reality, circle to another place and age, and be back the same evening with you, now that I know what I'm doing. In the same fashion, I have spent what your clock says is about an hour talking to you, but because I'm able to come and go as I please, I was also able to be with Johnny, Matt, and Zack during what you call the same 'time' but it really wasn't."

"For the love of God, how?!" The guitarist groaned and his hands tore through his hair exasperatedly now.

"Here, let me do this really quick. Hand me a pen and a note pad, and I'm going to show you something. After that, I'm out of ways to explain it, and we're just going to go meet up at Matt's; fair?"

With a grumpy grunt of concession, the shorter man stood and went to retrieve the requested items. As he walked, he really began to wish that this wasn't all in his head. As was indicated by his long, in-depth conversation with the drummer, he had a thirst for knowledge. He truly wanted to know everything; but beyond that, he just wanted his best friend back.

"Here," he said unceremoniously upon his return. Taking a seat the next cushion over, he leaned forward to watch what he fully expected to be an Einstein-esque set of numbers and diagrams for the grandiose explanation. Instead, he found himself more puzzled by what was drawn on the unlined sheet of printer paper.

"Jimmy, that's just an O with a line through the top section!"

"Yes. It's that simple."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"Okay, so it's not exactly like that. It's more like...." lifting the pen, he flipped over the page and drew a new line, but longer this time. He then proceeded to draw four roughly dime sized circles across it. "It's more like that."

"How does that explain anything?"

"The line is your thought process, how you perceive reality to be, and the circles represent the way I move and live life."

"You know what? I'm more confused than when we started," he grumbled. "Let's just go to Matt's."