FicWad

Somehow I feel like all I've done within the last week is write. It's a nice feeling, though at the same point I question my sanity. XD Thanks again to all of you for responding. I'm so glad you're enjoying it. Now, however, it's time to pick up the pace. Let's get something interesting going on...

It's been a week, and I have com to a decision.

There are not enough cigarettes on the planet to make me get along with Frank Iero.

He is loud and obnoxious. He snores. He uses up all the hot water. He is vegan. He never, ever shuts up. He's nosy. He's lazy. He's cocky.

I. Can't. Fucking. Stand. Him.

And I tried. So help me god I have tried. I have given every ounce of myself over to just TRY and get along with him, but he makes it so impossible!

Virtually everything about him rubs me the wrong way.

Though we discussed alternating who sleeps on the floor and who sleeps on the couch, by the time I get home he's always conveniently passed out on it, and I am just too damn polite to shove him onto the floor, though every cell in my body always aches to do so.

The worst is that he pretends he doesn't notice how uncomfortable he makes me, and is always cordial, so I can't call him out for being the absolute dick he is. It's the little biting remarks, and small actions that show me he hates me, and somehow make me feel one fourth of an inch tall, though I'm not threatened or intimidated by him. At all. In any way.

But somehow I feel like he's taking everything away from me. Like my brother. And my cigarettes. And I can't ever shake off that feeling that I get when I'm around him. The only way I can describe it is complete and total inadequacy.

I have spent more time at the park than I care to admit, and even gotten so desperate as too pick up extra parties at work, so that I don't have to go home. Barney thinks I'm finally warming up to the clown-dom. I don't care if he thinks that-especially not if it results in that raise he's been hinting at.

Tonight is Friday, and my paycheck and I are chugging along in my P.O.S. towards the closest bar. It's only five o clock, but I am craving liquor with an astounding intensity.

I wind up at a hole in the wall called Jackie's where I don't ever remember having been before, not that THAT means anything. It looks exactly like any other bar, dim, dingy, dull. The walls are decorated with pin-ups and porn posters and advertisements for a multitude of different liquors.I scan the room quickly, and there are only three people in the bar besides myself.

One is man in a suit who is holding a glass and shifting his eyes back and forth quickly, clearly waiting for someone-most likely a hooker. He runs his hands through his thinning hair and sighs, taking another small sip and touching his cell phone every now and again, lighting the screen and looking for a message or a call that will probably never come.

The next is the bartender, a heavily tattooed man pushing three hundred pounds who is cleaning tall glasses with a disgusting rag. I gag a little bit, first at the rag, then at the thought of all the needles used to give him his tattoos. Needles terrify me- another thing that Frank has recently become aware of and decided to use against me every little chance he gets. I came home yesterday to find him pretending to stick one through his ear. I took one look at it and sprinted out the room, a split second from throwing up coffee all over him.

Lastly, there is girl, looking somewhere around my age. She is completely average looking with a narrow nose, a heart shaped face and dark eyes, which are narrowed as they skim over the papers stacked in front of her. Well less stacked and more scattered as they encompass the entire area around her. She doesn't seem to notice, as she is completely focused on whatever their contents are. She wrinkles her nose and the skin there puckers.

After a moments consideration I slide into the stool a couple down from her, rapping on the bar with my knuckles. The bartender looks up at me with bored eyes, and I can't help but sympathize with him.

"Can I get a gin and tonic?" I ask him in a muted voice.

He nods. "You want a tab?"

I shake my head. It's too early for a tab.

I've had a grand total of three sips of my drink when the girl breaks the silence, her head snapping up, hair flying wildly around her face. She looks over to me and her eyes are piercing.

"You. Over here. I'm gonna analyze you."

I raise both my eyebrows. "Come again?"

"I said I'm gonna analyze you." Her tone is so commanding that I don't even think about refusing, hopping off the stool and taking the one nearest to her.

She spins to face me, cupping her face in her hand and gazing at me intently. I've never seen eyes this sharp before.

"Name." She says bluntly.

I hold up a finger, taking a healthy sip of my drink.I set the glass down with a clink and she is still looking at me with the same, intense expression as before.

"Name." She repeats.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." I tell her, holding up my hands in surrender."I'm your's for the analyzing, or whatever, but can I ask two things first?"

She bites her lip, and I swear she almost says no, before spitting out a quick, "Shoot."

"Firstly, what are you 'analyzing' me for, and secondly, what's your name."

"I'm studying to be a psychologist and I have an important test tommorow on human analysis.So you're gonna be my practice test. Now talk!"

"Hang on a sec. You didn't say your name."

"Not important." She says quickly, waving her hand. "Now give me your name, age and occupation." She looks me over once more, then adds, "If you've got one."

I feel myself blush. I'd almost rather just tell her I don't have a job than tell her my real one.

I clear my throat nervously before speaking. "Uhm, Gerard Way, 24, and I'm a clown."

Her face stays completely blank, no reaction to my strange job.

"Who do you live with?"

"My brother and his uhm...friend."

"Friend?" She asks me, arching an eyebrow and showing more expression than she's shown the whole time.

I snort. "Yeah."

"Do you like his 'friend'?"

I snort. "No. No I don't."

"Why not?"

"He's a dick."

She sighs. "Your non-descript answers are really no help to me."

I groan. "He's completely arrogant and obnoxious and he has absolutely no regard for anyone. And he's vegan." I exhale, then add grudgingly, "And he smokes all my cigarettes."

She's smiling a little now.

"Tell me about yourself, Gerard." She says as she reaches into her pocket, pulling out a slightly dented pack of cigarettes and flipping the top open, offering me one. She smirks. "Since your brother's 'friend' smoked all yours."

I take it thankfully, allowing her to light it for me, then light her own. I take a deep drag before continuing.

"What do you wanna know?" I ask her skeptically.

"What do you like? What do you hate? Besides...what's his name?"

"Frank..."I spit out, then ask her with a quizzical expression, "How'd you know it was a he?"

She ignores that. "Speak."

"Ahhh....I like to draw. And read comics. And sing a little I guess."

She's nodding intently, and her penetrating eyes are closed now. I pause, confused, but she waves me on, telling me to keep talking.

"I like horror movies and serial killers. I love art, beautiful things." I watch her carefully, and start to notice the little twitches on her face when I say certain things. I continue to monologue, delving into my childhood now, released and unable to stop.

"I used to be a fat kid. It was the only thing that kept me from getting shoved into lockers like my brother." I laugh bitterly. "I hated highschool."

"Didn't we all?" She says, so soft I'm not sure I heard it. There's another quiet moment before she questions me again.

"Best thing about yourself?"

I open my mouth several times, but I can't think of an answer. An unsettling silence sets in.

She tries again. "Worst thing?"

I feel like a fish, the way I keep trying to speak and come up with nothing.

"Biggest regret?"

Nada.

She takes a deep breath, eyes still shut and head tilted back toward the sky.

"Biggest fear?"

"Needles. And being nothing. And dying. Dying. Dying a nothing."

She releases a large cloud of smoke after inhaling deeply from her cigarette, a suspicious twitch at the corner of her mouth, though it is not a smile.

She opens her eyes, finally. They are wide and clear, untainted.

She takes another puff on her cigarette, glancing around the bar before looking back to me.

"Thank you." She says in a gentle voice.

"You're welcome." I pause, recalling my gin and tonic and taking a sip. "So aren't you gonna tell me the results?"

She blinks, looking confused. "Come again?"

"Aren't you gonna tell me what you've found out?" I make air quotes. "From your analysis?"

She arches an eyebrow. "You really wanna know?" She says in a voice that is both cautionary and slightly surprised.

"Yeah."

She slides off her chair and begins collecting all her papers, looking at me with those strange eyes again, and for the first time I notice the hint of green in them.

"Truth or sugar coated?" She asks in a polite, casual tone, like she's offering me a choice between a glazed or sprinkled doughnut.

"Truth," I tell her bravely.

She is looking at the floor for the longest time, and still doesn't meet my eyes when she begins to speak. "You're a coward." She says in a genteel tone. "You have potential but you refuse to use it for anything because you're afraid of failing and winding up a nothing, as you put it. You have zero self confidence, which probably contributed to you being fat when you were younger. I bet you took refuge in food, but when you got older you got tired of being fat and lost all the weight in some unhealthy way. It wouldn't stun me if you have now or used to have an eating disorder of some type. Your lack of confidence is also probably why you hate your brother's friend so much. You're jealous of his confidence, though you view it as arrogance."

I cannot seem to catch my breath.

"You're also extremely bored of life, which explains your fascination with death and killers and horror flicks. It also manifests itself in your smoking and drinking- you like the riskiness of the self deprication." She is tracing circles in the dust with her foot as she speaks. I am still waiting for her to be wrong.

"You feel like you are stuck. Boxed inside yourself. If I had to guess, I'd say though you never mentioned it, you also have a deep fear of drowning."

I feel like she's knifing me in the chest with every word that falls out of her mouth. Like she's tearing me apart, exposing me for the fraud that I truly am.

She finally looks up at me, eyes sparkling unnaturally. "You're a protector. I could see that from the mere look on your face when you mentioned your brother."

I inhale after long last, nearly choking on the air because it feels so foreign to me. I search for words, feel my mouth opening and closing to no result.

"You got all that from a few simple questions?" is the only thing I can manage to get out.

I realize the sparkles are tears as one escapes her eye and slides down her cheek, leaving a shiny trail all along her face.

"It's the questions you didn't know how to answer that I got the most from." She says to me. There's a split second where the whole world seems to stop turning, and then she, this strange girl who pinned every aspect of me down in five minutes, she turns away from me and heads toward the door. She calls over her shoulder to me, "There's more. You're hiding something from yourself. But you have to find it on your own."

I'm so shellshocked that it takes every ounce of my effort to yell after her, "Wait." She stops walking, but doesn't face me.

"What's your name?" I ask her, in a defeated, desperate voice.

There's an eerie quiet. "Mallory." She answers, standing there for another second before heading out the door, leaving me sitting alone and paralyzed.

How. How. How did she do that?

She just brought everything to the forefront, waving it all right in front of my face. I feel stripped down, bare and laid out.

How.

I feel like I'm going to be sick.

I whirl around, picking up my glass and swallowing the rest of it in one large gulp. I blanch afterward, shutting my eyes tightly. I've gotta get out of here.

I barrel out the doors to my car, where I throw myself into the front seat. My hands are trembling so violently I drop the keys twice. As the car sputters to life I bite the inside of my cheek until it begins to bleed, and by that time I know where I'm going to go.

Fifteen minutes later I cross the threshold of a salon. I walk up to the front desk, slamming my hand down and frightening the receptionist.

"Change me." I demand. "Please, please, change me."


Well........WHAT DO YOU THINK??? I'm dying to see your reactions to this one. It was a joy to write, but also really difficult. Show me what you thought. Who the fuck IS this girl who got our beloved Gee so very quickly? What is he going to do? Let me know your thoughts! Rates and Reviews feed my soul and fuel the story! xoxo.