The Truth about Matt

18 - The Truth about Matt

It was nice being with Professor Humperdink again as I felt he was my only real friend in this new world I was living in. Every other friend I had was corrupted some way.
Now I was in The Gray Republic, under the "protection" of Emperor Elliot, who was literally a baby in emperor's clothes. My good friend (albeit loopy) Hagley had been disgusted by the fact we had just eaten her sister and had been taken away, where to? I had no idea.

So I found myself in the Emperor's mother's house, which had fallen into disrepair and looked like a house you expected to be haunted.

The inside looked as bad as the outside, there was a large hall with two sets of wooden stairs leading up, one of the set of stairs had collapsed and the other looked like it would go any moment. Cowebs were everywhere and even the dust had dust. JoJo bid us goodnight and went to her chambers upstairs. Luckily, I was situated on the ground floor. For some reason my spidey sense didn't like to be near JoJo.

Matt Warb, a pre-end 28 year old artist who post-end seemed to be pushing two thousand years old, showed me to my room, which had a four poster bed and various portraits of the Gray family.
"I hope this is to your liking Adamicus?" Matt croaked.

"Yeah, it's fine. But look, what the hell happened to you Matt? I mean, you're younger than me and now you're... well, a lot older."

Matt sighed, and leaned on his zimmerframe before telling me his story.

Matt had been celebrating the night before The End, as he had just sold a piece of artwork for a couple of hundred pounds. His comics were starting to pick up in popularity and he had finally met a girl who wasn't crazy, who he had fallen for. Things really couldn't have been better for Matt at this particular moment.
At least he had one last good night before The End. Which is more than can be said for a lot of other people.

The night before The End for me had involved me cleaning up after my wife and...


something is missing.


Where was I? Oh yes, Matt and the morning after the night before.

Well, Matt woke up after The End had happened, so was blissfully unaware of any change happening.
For all of five seconds.

He awoke with a headache but a smile on his face, he'd used the best moves that I'd taught him and pulled the girl he liked. She was in bed with him now. So he turned round and went to say good morning.

However when he turned round, it was no longer the girl, but his mother! I'm actually joking there, it wasn't really, but I still amuse myself with "your mum" jokes when it comes to Matt.
The woman in bed with him was indeed the girl from the night before, but she had inexplicably died when The End happened. Her face was inside out.

Matt rushed out of his room screaming, not minding that he was dangling all over the place as he ran naked from room to room, discovering the other party goers also inside out.
Matt told me he thinks he survived due to all the lead pencils he'd worked with over the years. I told him I thought that was a shit theory, but who knows, maybe he was right?

He went on to tell me that he had gone out looking for other survivors but instead was found by Ray on one of his food hunting missions. Ray and Matt exchanged stories and Matt told Ray about all the dead bodies in his house that could easily be served up to his ever-hungry wife as long as she didn't mind cannibalism. Ray told him that that wasn't a problem.
Matt left Ray and Shav's when he noticed Shav eyeing him up for an entree, and on his journey he bumped into my brother. Matt wouldn't say what happened, no matter how hard I pressed him on it, but just told me that I need to stay away from him at all costs as he'd gone bat shit crazy. I'd find this out for myself in person a little later on.

Shortly after he escaped from my brothers evil clutches he was set upon by rabid badgers. Matt should have died but was saved by Jayme Gray who was out testing his latest contraption (an anti-badger device) They were both overjoyed to see each other and Matt was welcomed to come back with Jayme to their home and he'd been here ever since.

It seemed that something was missing from his story... like where the hell Jayme was? What had aged him prematurely? How had Elliot gotten in charge of this "empire" they've created? But Matt was in no mood for answering questions as a clock struck the hour (which was odd as time isn't working anymore) Matt sighed and went out.

I looked down to Professor Humperdink and told him I had to know what was going on, so we both snuck out of our room and followed Matt. He took his sweet time to get to where he was going, what with moving at speeds a snail would consider to be slow, but in the end he climbed the one good stair case and went into a room where a familiar voice called out "Matt, you took your time!"

It was JoJo in there.

My stomach sank, what the hell was going on!? Was he... you know? I had to find out. So I slowly opened the door, and there they were. I was relieved to find out that it wasn't what I had thought initially thought it was, she was only draining his life force not... well anything else.

JoJo, it seemed, was some kind of Vampire now!

Did you see that coming? I mean, I kinda sign posted it for you with her floating and the way she looked at me like a piece of meat. I actually figured it out when I first saw her at the dinner table and can remember thinking "yup, vampire." If you thought that JoJo was a vampire, then you get ten points. If you get a hundred points you get a prize (I'll tell you where I hid the thingy)

I thought that I'd let them get on with the feeding, so closed the door and turned round to go, but someone was already behind me.

He was skinnier than me, tall and gaunt. His hair was overgrown and grey, and he had a beard that made the dwarves from Lord of The Rings look clean shaven. Behind the beard he had a manic smile and his eyes were wider than a kids on christmas day.

"Adamicus buddy! Elliot told me you were here! Now we can sort this whole mess out!"

and with that, Jayme Gray gave me a large hug and lead me down to his workshop...