Title: A Year in the Life: Walpurgisnacht
Author: Rebecca
Rating: R for language and eventual smoochies.
Series/Sequel: Part 5 of the "Year in the Life" J/SB series.
Summary: Paranoia comes home to roost. Jay and Bob see the people
around them through new eyes.
Disclaimer: Jay and Silent Bob and any other Askewniverse characters
mentioned herein are the property of Kevin Smith, VA productions and
Miramax Studios.
Notes: After two months of nervous anticipation, I punched this out
during final exams week at my college, in between studying for World
Lit. and Sociology exams. Then promptly rewrote it during the
Christmas break at home. My knowledge and experience with the
celebration of May Day is as pedestrian as Bob's and his descriptions
are mostly paraphrased from a couple encyclopedias and a Wiccan
almanac. Also, I have no idea if Miss June on Playboy's 2005 calendar
looks anything like what I've described - I've taken a bit of
creative license there. The mention of George Romero's "Dawn of the
Dead" is both a poke at Mallrats and a reflection of some of the
themes within the larger thread of the series: isolation, fear and
(tenuous) escape. For shits and grins: "Caveman" reference. I won't
say where.
Warning: Some meta-comment. May is my birth month (and the 29th my
birthday), and I couldn't resist dropping myself in here.. as the
stalker's potential fuck-buddy. With a crush on Dante. All shall be
explained.
Dedication: For all the authors that came before: Charles, ren, Kel
and Joy. And Nyghtshayde for beta-ing this entry.

**********************************************************************

"What's all that shit, Silent Bob?" Jay calls out to his hetero life-
mate from where he sits on the floor, tangled in a nest of black
electronic wire.

Silent Bob hangs bells above the doorway. Long strings of tiny silver
bells that, precariously balancing on the top rung of a small step-
ladder, he attaches with thumbtacks above the door frame. There are
more practical alarm systems in the world. This is more about
superstition.

Or, rather, celebration.

The date is May the First. May Day, Beltane, Walpurgisnacht, derived
from Walpurga, the Catholic Saint and protectoress against witchcraft
and sorcery, situated directly opposite Halloween. The end marker in
the seasonal cycle beginning with Candlemas, better known as
Groundhog Day.

"Ah, hell yeah. I love that shit, Lunchbox! Bill Murray is the
*man*." The indirect mention of a hilarious comedy is enough to turn
Jay's attention back to the multiplex system he's been trying to hook
up for the past hour.

The corners of Bob's mouth perk up as he positions the last strand
above the corner of the frame and drives the tack into the dry-wall.
His own knowledge of the holiday isn't much more sophisticated. To be
perfectly honest, it extends as far as the tiny blue calligraphied
card a girlfriend of his sister's had once enclosed in a box of
flowers, a similar strand of bells woven around and in between the
long, green stems:

The celebration originated in Germany and Sweden in the eighth
century, a hodgepodge of St. Walpurga's canonization and Viking
fertility rites. Children would play pranks on unsuspecting victims
around midnight on April 30, similar to Halloween. The Brocken, the
highest peak in the Harz Mountains, had taken on a Faustian legend as
a mythical meeting place for witches.

On May Day, witches burned bonfires and earth spirits like fairies
and elves would come out of the hills and barrows to dance on May Eve
and well into the summer.

Then the Christians took over. Walpurgisnacht became a fest to drive
out "evil" spirits, including the happy dancing elves and fucking
faggot faeries, and so the doctrine still stands today. Bob being a
good Catholic boy would know more than Jay. Bethany, being the niece
of Christ, would probably know better than both of them. He makes a
mental note to call her when they reconnect their service.

On the Eve of May the First, bells may toll in some areas and prayers
may be said; there may be blessings with holy water and blessed
sprigs can be found in homes and barns. But, the most widespread
remedy against evil spirits during Walpurgisnacht is noise. As soon
as the sun sets, boys and girls of all ages ring bells, scream, rage,
fire shots, pound the earth making the biggest, fucking noise they
can.

There's no noise on the surveillance equipment. That's wire-tapping
and wire-tapping equals a federal charge. Something they don't need
if they ever have to turn the footage over as evidence. Bad enough
that Jay's pot plants - not showing some height and a healthy amount
of color - are visible in one corner of the frame. Bob makes another
mental note to have his roommate fix that later.

The early morning and nights are fraught with activity. They watch
Bob brushing his teeth. Jay battling with the laces on his Doc
Martens. Bob reading. Jay playing with his action figures. Eating
toast and Mooby cereal for breakfast. Leaving to go to the block of
stores or the mall. The two of them watching the morning news in the
living room. Playing video games. Watching a movie on TV, the slow
slide as Jay leans further and further into Bob's personal space
until they are cuddling for the last half hour of the film. Star
Wars. Point Break. And - judging by the initial disgust and eventual
fascination on Jay's face - The Princess Bride.

The hours in between are deader than dead. The sleep timer turning
off the television. Central air blowing rolling papers off the coffee
table. The various shadows thrown against blankets, tables, walls as
the sun sets. Still life with bongwater.

They watch the images a thousand times on the laptop Bob managed to
finagle away from Tricia for half the store price. They lose sleep
scanning frame after frame for something and never finding it.

'Ha ha, the joke's on you.'

They never get a good look at the fucker's face. Because he's not
there.

Bob looks at Jay for a long time -- the cold stare and nervous twitch
as he continues to stare at the small screen -- before resuming his
own appraisal. Bob knows. Of course the bastard's not there.

He's under their fucking skin.

**********************************************************************

They'd both agreed that it was time to stop being afraid and start
fighting back. The decision as invigorating as it had been necessary.

Funny thing is, though, it's hard to fight an unknown, unseen entity.
Witholding one's identity prevents the other party from making an
accurate assessment of motive and further action. And sometimes, it's
not the lack of information that makes the fight difficult. It's the
fragments of information left in wake of earlier action. A trail of
bread crumbs into a stunning, black void.

Paranoia set in long ago. And it eats up their days and nights as
surely as the fear had.

Jay's social skills deteriorate somewhat under the need to remain in
control. The velvet sneer, a hard outer persona that aspires to be
cool, detached and results in a silence that rivals that of his life-
mate's. The silence disspates on Jay's more manic days when he is so
verbal, highstrung and high octane (even for Jay) that he drives
people away, friends and customers alike, in droves.

They fight back with routine. Sometimes they win: They leave the
apartment. They ride the bus. They go to Food City to stock the
pantries that quickly emptied during their self-imposed isolation
back in March.They make their weekly trips to the mall, their daily
trips to Quick Stop. After a week, Dante can read Jay's pantomimed
demands as well as Bob's. Randal doesn't bother to learn, preferring
to ignore "Silent Bob and Sometimes-Silent Jay" all together. Fine by
them.

Because it *could* be Randal, couldn't it? That makes about as much
sense as anything else.

The thought is brief, easily discarded as irrational. As irrational
as suspecting the gray-haired man in the beige windbreaker that buys
two boxes of condoms and jar of peanut butter from Dante. The middle-
aged woman who asks Randal a question about a Russell Crowe movie
and, two seconds later, chucks the tape box at the clerk's head.

A short girl with dark, bobbed hair enters Quick Stop, moving to
stand behind Jay as Bob motions for a pack of cigarettes.

"Three packs of wraps," she tells Dante, peering from behind a pair
of Lisa Loeb glasses.

Five minutes later, she concludes her one-stop shopping trip outside
the with Jay and Bob. She buys three nickel bags as Bob looks her up
and down, appraising her in the same way he appraises everyone now:
leather jacket, button down sweater, Doc Martens, a 3" inch badge
pinned to the front of her plaid, wool skirt: "Play with my dog but
leave my pussy alone." A kewpie doll with a dark side. Darth Velma.
Her smile at Bob doesn't quite reach her eyes the way it did when the
clerk took her money.

He knows Jay's thinking the same thing: she could be that fuck's
sister. His girlfriend. His cousin. His fuck buddy. It's the same
thing that goes through their heads about all of their customers, the
clerks, the people on the fucking the street. People they see
everyday: everyone is suspect.

Because point a) the bitch *knows* them. Because point b) the bitch
had to know when they were out of the apartment, had to be familiar
with their routine if they were planning to break in. Unless the
piece of shit truly has no life and has been watching their apartment
all this time. Or potentially *is* watching it now.

Rational. Point c) what the fuck is rational?

**********************************************************************

They fight back with routine. Most of the time they lose: they work
their respective points on the wall inside Eden Prairie and outside
Quick Stop, case their respective marks, nod at approaching
customers, they make the trade and tell each person - in no uncertain
terms - to get the fuck away as fast as their stoner legs will carry
them. Newbies flee their sight with deliberate speed. Regulars who
once got a charge out of Jay's hyperactive banter or Bob's
comfortable presence tend to linger, but soon melt away just as
quickly.

It doesn't take long for word to get out: the friendly neighborhood
burn outs are no longer so friendly.

Three weeks go by before someone finally calls them on this sudden
lapse in behavior. Irony of ironies, the first one to voice his
concern is Dante Hicks. Not concern for *them* or even for
the public he serves with such mediocrity. He's seen them casing the
customers and its beginning to freak *him* out.

Whatever's going on between them or between them and someone else, he
tells them, they need to resolve it before they piss him off any more
than they already have. If they want to scare off their own business,
that's fine. If they want to scare off Randal's customers at RST,
that's.. probably fine, too. But Dante needs something to pass the
time in his sad, pitiful existence besides two lowlifes that just
hang around sucking up his oxygen.

Naturally, it takes someone they actually respect to make the message
stick.

It's a Tuesday afternoon the day Brodie Bruce asks them not to come
by his shop for a while. They were going to pick up their reserved
copy of the original "Dawn of the Dead" and possibly shoot the shit
with the former talk-show host, but their friend clearly had other
ideas.

Again, it was fine when their less than "customer friendly"
personalities were thinning out the hardcore paying geeks from the
stupid fucks who thought the place was a library or that would
treat "The Dark Knight Returns" like it was a used copy of Hustler.
But, like Quick Stop and their own private enterprise, they're
driving away the loyal leeches that keep him in clover and Brodie's
wallet can't handle that. It's bad enough he already owes his mother
for two months of back rent. If Jay and Bob keep this up, he could be
in debt back to the Stone Age. Without the added benefit of seeing
Raquel Welch in a fur bikini.

"Call me when you're both a little less *mental*" is the parting
phrase he chooses which Jay and Bob both reward with a parting sneer
and, in Jay's case, an obscene gesture. The bravado, like so many
once "loyal leeches," doesn't survive the bus ride to their apartment.

Separately, including the sundry overheard murmurings of prospective
customers (who quickly ran when they saw they'd been noticed), each
is easy to ignore. The combined equation, however, leaves them
gutpunched and - once again - without a gameplan.

The new equation is cold, but simple: if they want to keep living,
they have to *make* a living. They want to deal, buy comics, hang out
at the mall or with Brodie, they have to get over it. Or, as it
happens, find yet another way of dealing with it.

The missing variable is obvious: how they fuck do they do that?

**********************************************************************

"Ready, Lunchbox?"

More than. Bob nods and Jay switches the multiplex on to "CABLE" as
his lifemate turns on the DVD player with the remote. The blonde
examines the case for "Dawn of the Dead" as he settles into his usual
place on the sofa next to Bob.

The white teddy bear winks at them from his perch on top of the
television, the eye of the microcam not visible (but giving them a
knowing wink). They've taken a few days refuge from Quick Stop and
Red Bank in general. Not shut in, because they've both vowed never to
get that afraid again. This is a recharge, a few days vacation to
reflect and remind themselves of who they are and what they've done.
They've faced down renegade angels and mammoth security guards. They
were chased halfway across the country by U.S. Marshalls and
professional diamond thieves. They are not going to be intimidated
any more than they already have. *And* they are not going to let it
change who they are.

The rules for this new mission -- should they choose to accept it
(and they have to) -- are mapped out on a series of Post-Its on the
front of the refrigerator, both their bedroom doors, the side of the
TV screen and their bathroom mirror, in case either of them should
forget:

Rule Number 1: They are not going to scare away paying customers.
They can't afford to at this point. Jay's pot plants can't water
themselves and neither can their owners without some green of their
own.

Rule Number 2: They are not going to piss off the one or two allies
they actually have in this world (apart from each other). They rely
on each other for so much already. They shouldn't have to add daily
amusement to that list.

Rule Number 3:  Most importantly, they are not going to watch the
video feed on the microcams 24/7 anymore. It's boring as hell most of
the time anyway. And the images have already made them self-conscious
about how easily they can anticipate each other's actions. Bob
wonders if he's predictable while Jay remains transfixed by the
indignity of some of his most-used expressions.

Jay gradually leans into Bob, until his head is resting against his
partner's shoulder, jean-clad hip to hip and thigh to thigh in a very
non-gay, totally heterosexual, "you say one fucking word.." manner.

Bob, for his part, doesn't say anything, choosing to let the woofers
and tweeters of their new speakers do the talking for him, with a
little help from George Romero and his walking dead. Gaylen Ross
hides her face in her boyfriend's shoulder when she sees her first
dead man. That's cool. By the end of the flick, she's piloting the
helicopter that takes her and Ken Foree away from the mall, eight
months pregnant, minus her man and a pile of perished undead to her
credit.

Bob raises his bottle to her in tribute.

"She looks like my baby," Jay drawls, referring, of course, to the
saucy blonde number that fills Miss June's spot on the calendar. It's
only the 29th, but with three days to go, Jay has already turned the
page on the next chapter in their life story.

"We are *not* going to do that shit again, Silent Bob." Emphatic,
commanding and noticeably even, the tone is a welcome change from the
extreme turns Jay's voice took in the last few weeks.

And Bob silently thanks God that he's decided to take charge for
once. When Jay presses even further into his side, Bob remembers
another excerpt from the card his sister's friend sent:

Focusing on the fertility aspects of the celebration, some pagan and
neopagan circles celebrated May First or High Beltaine with a
reenactment of intercourse between the May Lord and Lady.

They're not more than halfway through the first part of the film when
Jay pounces (and Bob lets him), ready and willing to make some noise
of their own.

FINIS