Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > Welcome to the Black
All These Things That I've Done
11 reviewsHis name was Bert McCracken. Word was that he had been locked up four years ago for mass murder and then moved to St Eloise a few months later when he tried to slit a fellow criminal’s eyeballs w...
5Exciting
I am so so so sorry it’s taking me so long to update but hopefully the cliff hanger last chapter kept you on your toes. Or not.
B.T.W. For those of you who’ve noticed, yes, Tim is no longer Tim. He is Bert. Original, I know.
Well that sucks.
It was like the whole world was put on hold at that moment. Gerard was standing before me as my chest began to tighten, my throat closing and I found it increasingly near impossible to breath. He watched me from behind the dark bangs of fringe, expectant for my reaction. This, after a few seconds of gasping for air, happened to lead to my knees buckling and my whole body crumpling into a heap onto the moulding couch. And there, in front of him in the hideout with my heart breaking into tiny little pieces, I did the only thing I was physically able to do that minute.
I broke down and cried.
3 years earlier
He sniffed and fingered the small wristband around his skinny pale wrist. Way, Gerard it read in black printed letters. He didn’t like the wristband. He didn’t like how anyone could know his name by something as small and insignificant as a quick glance. If they knew your name - your true name - anyone could control you. Your name was everything.
And when you’re locked up in a mad house like St Eloise, your name is the only thing you have left.
The new cell wasn’t so much of a problem. If it even deserved to call it a cell. Quite literally, it was a box. Your average loon cage. White walls. White floor. White bed. White everywhere.
It was Kirk that was the problem. Sure, there were obviously the pills and the needles and the other wackos around, but it was mainly Dr Kirk. Dr Berk, Gerard thought childishly, plonking himself down onto the mattress of his bed. Kirk came by everyday to ‘see how he was doing’. It had been a week since Helen and Geoffrey had handed him over to St Eloise, and Kirk never ceased to pop by. He hated the visits. Yes, he was lonely. Yes, the cell was depressing. But the last thing he wanted was good ol’ Dr Kirk and Co. ‘popping by’ for a chat. He didn’t need chats, and he sure as hell didn’t want them.
The recognisable buzzing noise came from the locked door a few metres away from his spot. Kirk was poking his pretty, blonde head towards Gerard happily on the other side of the glass window separating them. Gerard sighed and slid off the bed, making his way towards the door before pressing the large red button in the corner allowing them to speak.
“Morning, Gerard,” Kirk sang.
“Why am I here?”
He never hesitated to ask that question every day. But every day he would get the same answer, or a variation of it. Kirk sighed and shook his head exasperatedly, almost pitifully.
“We’ve been over this now, Gee,” replied Kirk. Gerard winced. He hadn’t heard that nickname in a long while now and he hated how the first person to call him that in the long months it took for his foster parents to realise there was something wrong with him was to be the one man in the entire building he couldn’t stand to be around.
“We’re keeping you here because you’re different,” Kirk continued. “And we want to keep an eye on you because we know that we’re the only ones who...can...look after you right. In case something bad happens, per say.”
The anger of how patronising the doctor said these words bubbled inside him, as if Gerard was no more than five years old and didn’t have a clue about what was going on. In my own mind, he thought bitterly. My own goddamn mind.
“Don’t fuck with me,” he muttered. He spoke so quietly that Kirk had to strain his ears to hear him through the speaker.
“Excuse me?”
“You think I can’t look after myself?” Gerard spat. “You think I need you ass holes telling me what’s going on? I’m a freak, I get it!”
“Gerard, please calm down.”
“Stop treating me like I’m a fucking kid, goddamn it!” Gerard thumped his fists on the glass in rage.
“Gerard!” Kirk said, his voice wobbling slightly with fear despite his stressed attempts to sound authorative. “Calm down this second. Do I need to give you a sedative?”
“I don’t need a fucking sedative!” he bellowed.
Kirk sighed in a “you brought this on yourself, sonny” manner and drew a syringe containing a clear liquid from the trolley of pills and other drugs he pushed along with him. Gerard swallowed and took cautious steps backward as the doctor unlocked the door and swept inside, holding the syringe up at the ready like a deadly weapon.
“No...please...I’m sorry...” Gerard stammered, beads of sweat forming on his brow. “I’m okay now...please, just don’t...” His knees buckled as he met the bed. Kirk approached him steadily and placed a hand on his harm to hold him.
“NO! Get that fucking thing away from me!” he screamed, desperately attempting to writhe out of Kirk’s grasp. “Get it away from me! You sonofabitch! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all, you motherfuckers!”
Kirk plunged the needle into Gerard’s side and almost instantly his eyes began to droop and his once tense, squirming limbs became limp.
“Sonofa...bitch...” he slurred before finally sliding off the mattress and collapsing onto the floor.
2 years, 9 months earlier
“This seat taken?”
His name was Bert McCracken. Word was that he had been locked up four years ago for mass murder and then moved to St Eloise a few months later when he tried to slit a fellow criminal’s eyeballs with the edge of an old bus ticket. Gerard didn’t care what his history was. Right then he was just another madman in a stained brown dressing gown, cloudy blue eyes and a sharp, unshaven jaw looking for a place to sit in the games room.
“Knock yourself out,” he muttered. Bert slumped down into the seat opposite and watched him attentively.
“You play?” Bert asked, gesturing to the abandoned chess board sitting across the table.
“I was playing.”
Bert raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? With who?”
Gerard’s eyes met his for the first time. “My brain.”
Bert was silent for half a second but then let out a short high pitched chuckle.
“You’re funny.”
“You’re crazy.”
He chuckled again and pulled the chess board towards him, wiping the pieces off their squares to start anew.
“Mind if I interrupt?” he smirked. Gerard shrugged absentmindedly.
“Not my problem.”
And so they played. Again and again, match after match they played. No words were spoken between them. No outbursts of rage for losing or glee for winning. They just played in sullen, resolute silence. And then;
“How can you stand this place?” Gerard said. Bert shrugged and cracked a wild, tooth-stained grin.
“I can’t.”
“You’ve been here for – what – three years? What are you in for anyways?”
Bert shrugged.
“You know. The usual. Mass murder and all.”
Gerard raised his eyebrow at Bert’s casual demeanour. Mass murder. The usual.
“But,” Bert continued, “I don’t just kill people. Nu-uh, that aint enough. Ya see, I make them all pretty after they die. I make murder into an art form, ya know? Out of...the remains...”
He paused sceptically, chewing over his words. Gerard felt his stomach lurch and a wave of nausea to wash over him; this resulting to his companion to burst out in a series of high pitched maniacal giggles. This didn’t help with the nausea.
“Anyways,” said Bert with a slight wave of his hand. “Doesn’t matter how I got here. No no no...” He grinned raggedly. “Ya know what matters, kid?”
“Enlighten me.”
“What matters is how I’m gonna leave this fuckup.”
Gerard frowned. “Leave?”
Bert’s eyes flashed. “As in...leave.”
“You’re gonna escape?” snorted Gerard doubtfully. “Good luck.”
Bert shrugged. “Busted outta plenty sticky situations before. Stickier than this pile of shit. And besides,” he added. “Things don’t go my way...well...”
He made a gun shape with his hand and pointed it towards Gerard, eyes shining;
“Things always go my way.”
He shot with his make-shift gun and erupted into another fit of maniacal giggles.
“Check mate.”
Bert frowned at Gerard’s odd interruption to his monologue.
“Ya what?”
Gerard gestured to the chess board. “Check mate. I win.”
The elder’s grin widened and he leant back in his seat.
“So you do. Congrats,” he replied. He took a bishop from the board and twiddled it between his fingers.
“Breakin’ outta hell, baby,” he whispered, more to the chess piece than to Gerard. Breakin’ outta hell.”
2 years, 7 months earlier
It was quiet. Way too quiet. The recognisable footsteps of Browning, the guard’s, shiny black boots against the cold linoleum floor had ceased to echo and bounce around the corners of the corridor. Gerard sat in his cell with his legs pulled close to his chest against the wall on his bed, brooding. He had succumbed to brooding ever since he discovered it was one of his best bets of passing time, when, of course, he wasn’t being poked and prodded with needles and the never-ending questions of therapists and psychologists.
He heard the familiar buzzing of the speak box in his door, and he looked up hopefully. Bert tapped the small window, victoriously jiggling a set of keys between his fingers. Gerard grinned and waited at the door before hearing a click from the lock and the door swinging open.
“Let’s party,” Bert smirked.
They slipped down the moonlit corridor in silence, hidden in the shadows.
“Where’s Browning?” Gerard whispered as they reached the glass door separating the East Wing to the South. Judging from the lack of answer from his companion, he decided that he’d be better off not knowing. With a click of the lock, they stepped into the reception. The woman at the desk gasped and made to press the security button at the bottom of her draw, if it were not for Bert grabbing a syringe filled with a strange bright blue liquid lying on the medical trolley standing conveniently in the corner. Holding the syringe at the ready, Bert seized the security guard that had rushed in through the front door and pushed it against his neck.
“Don’t...move...” Bert growled. The receptionist held up her hands in surrender.
“Bert, what are you doing?” Gerard said cautiously.
“Shut up,” he hissed. “You’re gonna fuck up my plan.”
“Plan?!” Gerard snorted. “What plan?”
Bert didn’t answer. Instead he pushed the syringe deeper against the wildly quivering security guard who looked like he was about to cry.
“Now,” Bert said through clenched teeth. “Listen to me very carefully, ‘cus I’m only gonna say this once, alright? You’re gonna open that door nice and easy, or I’m gonna pump this sonofabitch full of this shit, a’right? Ya got that?”
Gerard sighed. “This is never gonna work,” he muttered exasperatedly.
“Shut the fuck up!” Bert screamed at him, wild-eyed. “I talk, you walk, ya got that pretty boy? Now start walking, ‘cus the nice lady at the desk is gonna open the door for us, aren’t ya sweet heart?”
“Help me, Maurice,” the receptionist squeaked to the security guard.
“There’s no point in what you’re doing,” Maurice said shakily. “As soon as you’re out of that door the cops and the whole of security will be on your heels.”
“He has a point,” murmured Gerard.
And that was enough to set the madman off. Bert released a warlike cry and, holding the syringe high above his head, leapt at Gerard. He straddled him and punched him over and over across the face, blood bursting from Gerard’s nose and cut cheek.
“I told you to shut up!” Bert bawled. “You’re ruining EVERYTHING!”
Gerard tried hard to splutter a sentence against his attacker’s raging fists. But then his vision blurred and it all went black.
*
As soon as he woke up, he noticed the many blades of grass in his mouth, eyes and nostrils. Groggily he sat up, running his hand through his greasy hair which curtained his face and spat out the remaining grass in his mouth.
“Morning, sunshine,” a familiar voice sang awkwardly behind him. Bert.
“Where am I?” Gerard croaked.
Bert, who was sitting cross legged on a small stone a foot or two away, grinned and gestured around the grassy space separated from a highway with a line of neatly trimmed trees.
“You see that there?” He pointed to a building Gerard knew too well to be the asylum sitting on a hill in the distance; so far away it was like a smudge of dark paint on an oil painting against the orange tinge of the sunset backdrop.
“We...we broke out of there?”
“Mmhmm,” Bert replied. Gerard could feel a grin splitting his features and he sighed contently, falling back against the soft dewy grass.
“Broke outta there in style too,” Bert continued.
“Whaddaya mean?” Gerard murmured. He heard Bert snicker.
“What do I mean? Man, you don’t remember?”
Gerard frowned and sat up. “Remember what?” he said, worry sinking into his stomach. “What happened?”
“You killed them, Gerard,” Bert whispered. “You killed ‘em all. Well,” he added casually, “Except for the cute receptionist.”
Gerard could feel the colour draining from his face – that feeling of nausea was enveloping everything.
“No...” he stuttered. “No...this isn’t happening...you’re joking, right? Right?”
Bert’s eyes were shining. “Nu-uh, bro’. This is for real.” He grinned wickedly. “It was pretty impressive, to tell you the truth. Didn’t even think you were man enough to do shit like that. You just...blacked out. And then...you got up and...and it was like you were a different person, ya know? Started screaming, laughing, singing. Scary shit, man. And then...boom.”
“...Boom?”
“Boom,” Bert whispered, grin widening. “No more mister nice guy. And there was blood, too. Whole lotta blood-”
He was interrupted from Gerard lunging for him and forcing his hands around his throat. They began to roll around the grass, Bert writhing and squirming against Gerard’s unfamiliarly iron grip, his face gradually turning a purplish colour.
“What...the...fuck...” he spluttered. “What’re...you...doing?”
“You made me do this!” screamed Gerard, his hands tightening around his throat. “This is all your fault! Look at me now! Look what you’ve turned me into! LOOK...AT...ME!”
But then Bert released one last blood curdling gasp before his eyes went blank and unseeing and his head lolled back against the ground. Gerard gasped for air and wiped wet strands of hair from his forehead with blood stained hands, sweat mingling with his tears. The sound of police sirens approaching from the distance snapped Gerard out of his reverie and he pushed himself off the ground, grabbing the body by the ankles and discarding it in a nearby bush.
Then he ran.
*
Food. It was all he wanted that minute. They had done the kitchen up while he was away. The unattractive 60’s style cabinets had been removed from the newly painted apple green walls and replaced with shiny wooden one’s with marble counters. They had changed the curtains; sunny yellow one’s Gerard suspected Helena had picked out. And the floor was a traditional black and white square linoleum now as well. He liked the new kitchen. He wondered, with a sad smile, whether they would do his bedroom next.
Gerard crept silently over to the fridge and searched around for something decent to fill his appetite with. As he rustled around, a butter knife left on the counter slipped off and landed with a loud clatter on the floor. Gerard cursed and his head snapped up towards the doorway as he heard the sound of small footsteps against the carpeted staircase. Slightly panicking, he slipped into the shadows and waited in silence, heart beating ferociously.
“H-hello?” a small voice squeaked from the doorway. Gerard’s heart skipped a beat as he peered into the darkness to see the faint outline of his younger brother standing vulnerably a few feet away.
“Mikey?” he whispered and he heard the boy gasp and step back in fright. “Mikey, it’s me. It’s me...Gerard.”
“Gee?” Mikey breathed and the lights suddenly turned on, revealing himself to Gerard for the first time in a long arduous six months. He hadn’t changed, Gerard realised, at all since the last time he had seen him. His floppy straw coloured hair was still falling into big hazel eyes which were hidden behind the lenses of his glasses, and his skinny frame was shrouded in an oversized New Jersey Spartans shirt and blue striped pyjama pants.
“Is that really you?” he whispered. Gerard nodded and closed the gap between them, pulling his brother into a rib cracking embrace.
“What are you doing here?” Mikey said into Gerard’s bloodstained asylum shirt. “You’re not...supposed to be here.”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Why?” the younger hissed, pulling away from him.
“Because I missed you,” Gerard frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“You can’t be here,” Mikey whispered. “You can’t. If mom and dad find you here-”
Gerard snorted. “Mom and dad? Are you serious?”
“Geoffrey? Geoffrey what’s going on?” a woman called from upstairs.
The two boys froze as their foster father stepped gingerly into the kitchen holding the family rifle at the ready, shock marring his features as he saw them.
“Gerard?” Geoffrey breathed. Gerard didn’t answer. “Mikey, come here. Get away from him, son.”
Gerard sent daggers his way and placed a protective hand on Mikey’s shoulder.
“Don’t listen to him, Mikes,” he whispered into the frightened twelve year olds ear. “Don’t do anything he asks you to.”
“Mikey come here now.”
“Don’t, Mikey.”
“Gerard I’m warning you. Get your hands off my boy or I’m calling the police.”
Gerard laughed maniacally. “I’ll be gone by then. Far away. And I’m taking my brother with me.”
“He’s not going anywhere with you.”
“Are you serious?”
“You’re crazy. You’re a crazy, murdering psycho and you should be ashamed for what you’re putting your brother through. You think I don’t listen to the radio? You killed two people, Gerard.”
“What?!” Mikey yelped. “You did what?”
“Don’t listen to him, he’s a liar. You know it wasn’t me. You believe me, don’t you Mikey? It wasn’t me. Right Mikes?”
Mikey drew away from him and took a shaky breath, tears in his eyes.
“I don’t know who you are anymore, Gerard.”
The words pierced Gerard’s heart like a thousand knives as Mikey, his best friend, the only one who understood him, the only thing he ever cared for and probably ever would, slipped through his fingers and joined Geoffrey’s victorious side.
“You will leave this house,” Geoffrey said. “And you will never come back, you understand me? Stay away from my family.”
“No...” Gerard said through clenched teeth. “You can’t make me...”
He didn’t know what, but something took over him there and then. Maybe from the anger bubbling in his veins, or the lust for revenge writhing inside him he did not know, but whatever it was made him blindly grab a kitchen knife from a drawer and charge at Geoffrey. Mikey screamed as he waved the knife ferociously at Geoffrey’s neck, Geoffrey dropping the gun and waving his hands around frantically to protect himself. The blade of the knife connected with something and Gerard frowned as he became aware of the blood seeping through an oversized New Jersey Spartans shirt.
“Gerard...” Mikey breathed before falling forwards onto the linoleum floor. There was nothing but shocked silence until;
“You killed...” Geoffrey whispered before releasing a cry of anguish and hurtling at Gerard like a nuclear missile. He landed on top of him and they crashed against the cupboards. Geoffrey punched Gerard again and again in the nose, eyes, mouth, torso, anywhere he could find. Coughing and in a frenzy, Gerard grabbed the discarded gun lying on the floor and pulled the trigger. Geoffrey stopped and frowned momentarily at the bullet wound trickling blood in the centre of his chest, and then collapsed onto the floor by the side of his foster son.
Three months earlier
“I’m Gerard.”
“Lee,” I replied, shaking it. I sharply drew my hand away from the shockingly cold touch of his skin. Geez, his fingers were cold. Like, fucking freezing.
Two months earlier
He sniffed and shrugged. “No,” he replied. “I used my supernatural powers and walked through the walls.”
I raised my eyebrow at how he said it so casually. There wasn’t even a hint of sarcasm in there. I smiled briefly, shrugging it off like it was nothing.
One month earlier
“I want you to know now, Lee. There’s something...” He sighed in a way that suggested there was something he wanted to tell me but didn’t know how.
“Something...?” I probed.
“If we’re going to carry on like...this,” He gestured to how I was snuggled right between his arm and his torso, “I want you to be careful, okay? I’m not...I’m not all I seem.”
I frowned. What could I possibly have to be careful from? I nodded slowly.
“I’m not afraid,” I found myself whispering.
Twenty minutes earlier
For a minute he didn’t say anything. But then he took a deep breath and spoke.
“There’s...there’s something I haven’t told you yet.”
“What, Gerard?” I sighed. He bit his lip and cast his eyes around the room while the tension in my stomach was mounting high against the limit.
“I’m...I’m not Gerard.”
I snorted and raised my eyebrow. “No? Who are you then?”
“Well, I am Gerard. But I’m not. I’m...uh...y’see...I’m his ghost.”
My heart froze. “Ghost?”
“Yeah...” he sighed, as if I was the hundredth person he had told this to when I was pretty damn sure I was the first. “Ghost. I’ve done things, Lee. Bad, bad things. I killed six people, including my own family.” Tears were welling up in his eyes as he spoke.
“Mikey died in a fire,” I argued. “And you’re foster parents...”
“No,” Gerard said bitterly, tears cascading down his pale cheeks. “No, the press got it all wrong. I broke out of St Eloise, and went there. I don’t know, I guess I wanted to take Mikey with me - wherever the hell I was going. And...something went wrong. Really wrong...” His eyes clouded over and his voice was barely a whisper. “I wanted to kill Geoffrey. I wanted to see him die. But Mikey was in the way and...and I killed him instead.”
“Then what happened?” I asked albeit regretfully. I didn’t want to hear anymore, but it was the only way to find out the entire truth.
“Then...” Gerard said, wiping his eyes. “Geoffrey went mad. We had a fight and...his gun was lying on the floor...I shot him to the ground. Then I burnt the house down, Helena in it and all.”
“How did you get out of there?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t. I died in there and I damn well fucking deserved it.”
This couldn’t have been right. It was impossible. He was shitting me, right? But everything made sense now. How he was so cold, and pale. He said he could walk through walls. He was...different. And as I thought over it all then, reality seemed like the fantasy and what he was saying seemed like it was possible. But it couldn’t have been. I looked back at him. He was staring down at his feet, eyes glistening from crying.
“D’you know about purgatory, Lee?”
I frowned. “Excuse me?”
“When you die, you go to either heaven or hell depending on whether you’re good or not, right?”
“Right.”
“Right. So what happens when you’re too bad for heaven, but not bad enough for hell? You walk the world alone until you sacrifice something close to you to pay for your sins. That’s purgatory.”
“Do you know what that thing is?” I asked sceptically. He shook his head.
“It’s been a year, Lee. Sometimes I wonder whether I deserve to go to heaven.”
“Don’t think like that,” I said firmly. “It was an accident. Half of those deaths were either self defence or your schizophrenia, right? So of course you do. It was an accident.”
Gerard shrugged. “Whatever you say. But now you know why I’m dangerous. Why we shouldn’t be together.”
Well that sucks.
It was like the whole world was put on hold at that moment. Gerard was standing before me as my chest began to tighten, my throat closing and I found it increasingly near impossible to breath. He watched me from behind the dark bangs of fringe, expectant for my reaction. This, after a few seconds of gasping for air, happened to lead to my knees buckling and my whole body crumpling into a heap onto the moulding couch. And there, in front of him in the hideout with my heart breaking into tiny little pieces, I did the only thing I was physically able to do that minute.
I broke down and cried.
So there you are. Once again, apologies for how long it took! I hope it was worth the wait. R&R, suckers! x
B.T.W. For those of you who’ve noticed, yes, Tim is no longer Tim. He is Bert. Original, I know.
Well that sucks.
It was like the whole world was put on hold at that moment. Gerard was standing before me as my chest began to tighten, my throat closing and I found it increasingly near impossible to breath. He watched me from behind the dark bangs of fringe, expectant for my reaction. This, after a few seconds of gasping for air, happened to lead to my knees buckling and my whole body crumpling into a heap onto the moulding couch. And there, in front of him in the hideout with my heart breaking into tiny little pieces, I did the only thing I was physically able to do that minute.
I broke down and cried.
3 years earlier
He sniffed and fingered the small wristband around his skinny pale wrist. Way, Gerard it read in black printed letters. He didn’t like the wristband. He didn’t like how anyone could know his name by something as small and insignificant as a quick glance. If they knew your name - your true name - anyone could control you. Your name was everything.
And when you’re locked up in a mad house like St Eloise, your name is the only thing you have left.
The new cell wasn’t so much of a problem. If it even deserved to call it a cell. Quite literally, it was a box. Your average loon cage. White walls. White floor. White bed. White everywhere.
It was Kirk that was the problem. Sure, there were obviously the pills and the needles and the other wackos around, but it was mainly Dr Kirk. Dr Berk, Gerard thought childishly, plonking himself down onto the mattress of his bed. Kirk came by everyday to ‘see how he was doing’. It had been a week since Helen and Geoffrey had handed him over to St Eloise, and Kirk never ceased to pop by. He hated the visits. Yes, he was lonely. Yes, the cell was depressing. But the last thing he wanted was good ol’ Dr Kirk and Co. ‘popping by’ for a chat. He didn’t need chats, and he sure as hell didn’t want them.
The recognisable buzzing noise came from the locked door a few metres away from his spot. Kirk was poking his pretty, blonde head towards Gerard happily on the other side of the glass window separating them. Gerard sighed and slid off the bed, making his way towards the door before pressing the large red button in the corner allowing them to speak.
“Morning, Gerard,” Kirk sang.
“Why am I here?”
He never hesitated to ask that question every day. But every day he would get the same answer, or a variation of it. Kirk sighed and shook his head exasperatedly, almost pitifully.
“We’ve been over this now, Gee,” replied Kirk. Gerard winced. He hadn’t heard that nickname in a long while now and he hated how the first person to call him that in the long months it took for his foster parents to realise there was something wrong with him was to be the one man in the entire building he couldn’t stand to be around.
“We’re keeping you here because you’re different,” Kirk continued. “And we want to keep an eye on you because we know that we’re the only ones who...can...look after you right. In case something bad happens, per say.”
The anger of how patronising the doctor said these words bubbled inside him, as if Gerard was no more than five years old and didn’t have a clue about what was going on. In my own mind, he thought bitterly. My own goddamn mind.
“Don’t fuck with me,” he muttered. He spoke so quietly that Kirk had to strain his ears to hear him through the speaker.
“Excuse me?”
“You think I can’t look after myself?” Gerard spat. “You think I need you ass holes telling me what’s going on? I’m a freak, I get it!”
“Gerard, please calm down.”
“Stop treating me like I’m a fucking kid, goddamn it!” Gerard thumped his fists on the glass in rage.
“Gerard!” Kirk said, his voice wobbling slightly with fear despite his stressed attempts to sound authorative. “Calm down this second. Do I need to give you a sedative?”
“I don’t need a fucking sedative!” he bellowed.
Kirk sighed in a “you brought this on yourself, sonny” manner and drew a syringe containing a clear liquid from the trolley of pills and other drugs he pushed along with him. Gerard swallowed and took cautious steps backward as the doctor unlocked the door and swept inside, holding the syringe up at the ready like a deadly weapon.
“No...please...I’m sorry...” Gerard stammered, beads of sweat forming on his brow. “I’m okay now...please, just don’t...” His knees buckled as he met the bed. Kirk approached him steadily and placed a hand on his harm to hold him.
“NO! Get that fucking thing away from me!” he screamed, desperately attempting to writhe out of Kirk’s grasp. “Get it away from me! You sonofabitch! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all, you motherfuckers!”
Kirk plunged the needle into Gerard’s side and almost instantly his eyes began to droop and his once tense, squirming limbs became limp.
“Sonofa...bitch...” he slurred before finally sliding off the mattress and collapsing onto the floor.
2 years, 9 months earlier
“This seat taken?”
His name was Bert McCracken. Word was that he had been locked up four years ago for mass murder and then moved to St Eloise a few months later when he tried to slit a fellow criminal’s eyeballs with the edge of an old bus ticket. Gerard didn’t care what his history was. Right then he was just another madman in a stained brown dressing gown, cloudy blue eyes and a sharp, unshaven jaw looking for a place to sit in the games room.
“Knock yourself out,” he muttered. Bert slumped down into the seat opposite and watched him attentively.
“You play?” Bert asked, gesturing to the abandoned chess board sitting across the table.
“I was playing.”
Bert raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? With who?”
Gerard’s eyes met his for the first time. “My brain.”
Bert was silent for half a second but then let out a short high pitched chuckle.
“You’re funny.”
“You’re crazy.”
He chuckled again and pulled the chess board towards him, wiping the pieces off their squares to start anew.
“Mind if I interrupt?” he smirked. Gerard shrugged absentmindedly.
“Not my problem.”
And so they played. Again and again, match after match they played. No words were spoken between them. No outbursts of rage for losing or glee for winning. They just played in sullen, resolute silence. And then;
“How can you stand this place?” Gerard said. Bert shrugged and cracked a wild, tooth-stained grin.
“I can’t.”
“You’ve been here for – what – three years? What are you in for anyways?”
Bert shrugged.
“You know. The usual. Mass murder and all.”
Gerard raised his eyebrow at Bert’s casual demeanour. Mass murder. The usual.
“But,” Bert continued, “I don’t just kill people. Nu-uh, that aint enough. Ya see, I make them all pretty after they die. I make murder into an art form, ya know? Out of...the remains...”
He paused sceptically, chewing over his words. Gerard felt his stomach lurch and a wave of nausea to wash over him; this resulting to his companion to burst out in a series of high pitched maniacal giggles. This didn’t help with the nausea.
“Anyways,” said Bert with a slight wave of his hand. “Doesn’t matter how I got here. No no no...” He grinned raggedly. “Ya know what matters, kid?”
“Enlighten me.”
“What matters is how I’m gonna leave this fuckup.”
Gerard frowned. “Leave?”
Bert’s eyes flashed. “As in...leave.”
“You’re gonna escape?” snorted Gerard doubtfully. “Good luck.”
Bert shrugged. “Busted outta plenty sticky situations before. Stickier than this pile of shit. And besides,” he added. “Things don’t go my way...well...”
He made a gun shape with his hand and pointed it towards Gerard, eyes shining;
“Things always go my way.”
He shot with his make-shift gun and erupted into another fit of maniacal giggles.
“Check mate.”
Bert frowned at Gerard’s odd interruption to his monologue.
“Ya what?”
Gerard gestured to the chess board. “Check mate. I win.”
The elder’s grin widened and he leant back in his seat.
“So you do. Congrats,” he replied. He took a bishop from the board and twiddled it between his fingers.
“Breakin’ outta hell, baby,” he whispered, more to the chess piece than to Gerard. Breakin’ outta hell.”
2 years, 7 months earlier
It was quiet. Way too quiet. The recognisable footsteps of Browning, the guard’s, shiny black boots against the cold linoleum floor had ceased to echo and bounce around the corners of the corridor. Gerard sat in his cell with his legs pulled close to his chest against the wall on his bed, brooding. He had succumbed to brooding ever since he discovered it was one of his best bets of passing time, when, of course, he wasn’t being poked and prodded with needles and the never-ending questions of therapists and psychologists.
He heard the familiar buzzing of the speak box in his door, and he looked up hopefully. Bert tapped the small window, victoriously jiggling a set of keys between his fingers. Gerard grinned and waited at the door before hearing a click from the lock and the door swinging open.
“Let’s party,” Bert smirked.
They slipped down the moonlit corridor in silence, hidden in the shadows.
“Where’s Browning?” Gerard whispered as they reached the glass door separating the East Wing to the South. Judging from the lack of answer from his companion, he decided that he’d be better off not knowing. With a click of the lock, they stepped into the reception. The woman at the desk gasped and made to press the security button at the bottom of her draw, if it were not for Bert grabbing a syringe filled with a strange bright blue liquid lying on the medical trolley standing conveniently in the corner. Holding the syringe at the ready, Bert seized the security guard that had rushed in through the front door and pushed it against his neck.
“Don’t...move...” Bert growled. The receptionist held up her hands in surrender.
“Bert, what are you doing?” Gerard said cautiously.
“Shut up,” he hissed. “You’re gonna fuck up my plan.”
“Plan?!” Gerard snorted. “What plan?”
Bert didn’t answer. Instead he pushed the syringe deeper against the wildly quivering security guard who looked like he was about to cry.
“Now,” Bert said through clenched teeth. “Listen to me very carefully, ‘cus I’m only gonna say this once, alright? You’re gonna open that door nice and easy, or I’m gonna pump this sonofabitch full of this shit, a’right? Ya got that?”
Gerard sighed. “This is never gonna work,” he muttered exasperatedly.
“Shut the fuck up!” Bert screamed at him, wild-eyed. “I talk, you walk, ya got that pretty boy? Now start walking, ‘cus the nice lady at the desk is gonna open the door for us, aren’t ya sweet heart?”
“Help me, Maurice,” the receptionist squeaked to the security guard.
“There’s no point in what you’re doing,” Maurice said shakily. “As soon as you’re out of that door the cops and the whole of security will be on your heels.”
“He has a point,” murmured Gerard.
And that was enough to set the madman off. Bert released a warlike cry and, holding the syringe high above his head, leapt at Gerard. He straddled him and punched him over and over across the face, blood bursting from Gerard’s nose and cut cheek.
“I told you to shut up!” Bert bawled. “You’re ruining EVERYTHING!”
Gerard tried hard to splutter a sentence against his attacker’s raging fists. But then his vision blurred and it all went black.
*
As soon as he woke up, he noticed the many blades of grass in his mouth, eyes and nostrils. Groggily he sat up, running his hand through his greasy hair which curtained his face and spat out the remaining grass in his mouth.
“Morning, sunshine,” a familiar voice sang awkwardly behind him. Bert.
“Where am I?” Gerard croaked.
Bert, who was sitting cross legged on a small stone a foot or two away, grinned and gestured around the grassy space separated from a highway with a line of neatly trimmed trees.
“You see that there?” He pointed to a building Gerard knew too well to be the asylum sitting on a hill in the distance; so far away it was like a smudge of dark paint on an oil painting against the orange tinge of the sunset backdrop.
“We...we broke out of there?”
“Mmhmm,” Bert replied. Gerard could feel a grin splitting his features and he sighed contently, falling back against the soft dewy grass.
“Broke outta there in style too,” Bert continued.
“Whaddaya mean?” Gerard murmured. He heard Bert snicker.
“What do I mean? Man, you don’t remember?”
Gerard frowned and sat up. “Remember what?” he said, worry sinking into his stomach. “What happened?”
“You killed them, Gerard,” Bert whispered. “You killed ‘em all. Well,” he added casually, “Except for the cute receptionist.”
Gerard could feel the colour draining from his face – that feeling of nausea was enveloping everything.
“No...” he stuttered. “No...this isn’t happening...you’re joking, right? Right?”
Bert’s eyes were shining. “Nu-uh, bro’. This is for real.” He grinned wickedly. “It was pretty impressive, to tell you the truth. Didn’t even think you were man enough to do shit like that. You just...blacked out. And then...you got up and...and it was like you were a different person, ya know? Started screaming, laughing, singing. Scary shit, man. And then...boom.”
“...Boom?”
“Boom,” Bert whispered, grin widening. “No more mister nice guy. And there was blood, too. Whole lotta blood-”
He was interrupted from Gerard lunging for him and forcing his hands around his throat. They began to roll around the grass, Bert writhing and squirming against Gerard’s unfamiliarly iron grip, his face gradually turning a purplish colour.
“What...the...fuck...” he spluttered. “What’re...you...doing?”
“You made me do this!” screamed Gerard, his hands tightening around his throat. “This is all your fault! Look at me now! Look what you’ve turned me into! LOOK...AT...ME!”
But then Bert released one last blood curdling gasp before his eyes went blank and unseeing and his head lolled back against the ground. Gerard gasped for air and wiped wet strands of hair from his forehead with blood stained hands, sweat mingling with his tears. The sound of police sirens approaching from the distance snapped Gerard out of his reverie and he pushed himself off the ground, grabbing the body by the ankles and discarding it in a nearby bush.
Then he ran.
*
Food. It was all he wanted that minute. They had done the kitchen up while he was away. The unattractive 60’s style cabinets had been removed from the newly painted apple green walls and replaced with shiny wooden one’s with marble counters. They had changed the curtains; sunny yellow one’s Gerard suspected Helena had picked out. And the floor was a traditional black and white square linoleum now as well. He liked the new kitchen. He wondered, with a sad smile, whether they would do his bedroom next.
Gerard crept silently over to the fridge and searched around for something decent to fill his appetite with. As he rustled around, a butter knife left on the counter slipped off and landed with a loud clatter on the floor. Gerard cursed and his head snapped up towards the doorway as he heard the sound of small footsteps against the carpeted staircase. Slightly panicking, he slipped into the shadows and waited in silence, heart beating ferociously.
“H-hello?” a small voice squeaked from the doorway. Gerard’s heart skipped a beat as he peered into the darkness to see the faint outline of his younger brother standing vulnerably a few feet away.
“Mikey?” he whispered and he heard the boy gasp and step back in fright. “Mikey, it’s me. It’s me...Gerard.”
“Gee?” Mikey breathed and the lights suddenly turned on, revealing himself to Gerard for the first time in a long arduous six months. He hadn’t changed, Gerard realised, at all since the last time he had seen him. His floppy straw coloured hair was still falling into big hazel eyes which were hidden behind the lenses of his glasses, and his skinny frame was shrouded in an oversized New Jersey Spartans shirt and blue striped pyjama pants.
“Is that really you?” he whispered. Gerard nodded and closed the gap between them, pulling his brother into a rib cracking embrace.
“What are you doing here?” Mikey said into Gerard’s bloodstained asylum shirt. “You’re not...supposed to be here.”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Why?” the younger hissed, pulling away from him.
“Because I missed you,” Gerard frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“You can’t be here,” Mikey whispered. “You can’t. If mom and dad find you here-”
Gerard snorted. “Mom and dad? Are you serious?”
“Geoffrey? Geoffrey what’s going on?” a woman called from upstairs.
The two boys froze as their foster father stepped gingerly into the kitchen holding the family rifle at the ready, shock marring his features as he saw them.
“Gerard?” Geoffrey breathed. Gerard didn’t answer. “Mikey, come here. Get away from him, son.”
Gerard sent daggers his way and placed a protective hand on Mikey’s shoulder.
“Don’t listen to him, Mikes,” he whispered into the frightened twelve year olds ear. “Don’t do anything he asks you to.”
“Mikey come here now.”
“Don’t, Mikey.”
“Gerard I’m warning you. Get your hands off my boy or I’m calling the police.”
Gerard laughed maniacally. “I’ll be gone by then. Far away. And I’m taking my brother with me.”
“He’s not going anywhere with you.”
“Are you serious?”
“You’re crazy. You’re a crazy, murdering psycho and you should be ashamed for what you’re putting your brother through. You think I don’t listen to the radio? You killed two people, Gerard.”
“What?!” Mikey yelped. “You did what?”
“Don’t listen to him, he’s a liar. You know it wasn’t me. You believe me, don’t you Mikey? It wasn’t me. Right Mikes?”
Mikey drew away from him and took a shaky breath, tears in his eyes.
“I don’t know who you are anymore, Gerard.”
The words pierced Gerard’s heart like a thousand knives as Mikey, his best friend, the only one who understood him, the only thing he ever cared for and probably ever would, slipped through his fingers and joined Geoffrey’s victorious side.
“You will leave this house,” Geoffrey said. “And you will never come back, you understand me? Stay away from my family.”
“No...” Gerard said through clenched teeth. “You can’t make me...”
He didn’t know what, but something took over him there and then. Maybe from the anger bubbling in his veins, or the lust for revenge writhing inside him he did not know, but whatever it was made him blindly grab a kitchen knife from a drawer and charge at Geoffrey. Mikey screamed as he waved the knife ferociously at Geoffrey’s neck, Geoffrey dropping the gun and waving his hands around frantically to protect himself. The blade of the knife connected with something and Gerard frowned as he became aware of the blood seeping through an oversized New Jersey Spartans shirt.
“Gerard...” Mikey breathed before falling forwards onto the linoleum floor. There was nothing but shocked silence until;
“You killed...” Geoffrey whispered before releasing a cry of anguish and hurtling at Gerard like a nuclear missile. He landed on top of him and they crashed against the cupboards. Geoffrey punched Gerard again and again in the nose, eyes, mouth, torso, anywhere he could find. Coughing and in a frenzy, Gerard grabbed the discarded gun lying on the floor and pulled the trigger. Geoffrey stopped and frowned momentarily at the bullet wound trickling blood in the centre of his chest, and then collapsed onto the floor by the side of his foster son.
Three months earlier
“I’m Gerard.”
“Lee,” I replied, shaking it. I sharply drew my hand away from the shockingly cold touch of his skin. Geez, his fingers were cold. Like, fucking freezing.
Two months earlier
He sniffed and shrugged. “No,” he replied. “I used my supernatural powers and walked through the walls.”
I raised my eyebrow at how he said it so casually. There wasn’t even a hint of sarcasm in there. I smiled briefly, shrugging it off like it was nothing.
One month earlier
“I want you to know now, Lee. There’s something...” He sighed in a way that suggested there was something he wanted to tell me but didn’t know how.
“Something...?” I probed.
“If we’re going to carry on like...this,” He gestured to how I was snuggled right between his arm and his torso, “I want you to be careful, okay? I’m not...I’m not all I seem.”
I frowned. What could I possibly have to be careful from? I nodded slowly.
“I’m not afraid,” I found myself whispering.
Twenty minutes earlier
For a minute he didn’t say anything. But then he took a deep breath and spoke.
“There’s...there’s something I haven’t told you yet.”
“What, Gerard?” I sighed. He bit his lip and cast his eyes around the room while the tension in my stomach was mounting high against the limit.
“I’m...I’m not Gerard.”
I snorted and raised my eyebrow. “No? Who are you then?”
“Well, I am Gerard. But I’m not. I’m...uh...y’see...I’m his ghost.”
My heart froze. “Ghost?”
“Yeah...” he sighed, as if I was the hundredth person he had told this to when I was pretty damn sure I was the first. “Ghost. I’ve done things, Lee. Bad, bad things. I killed six people, including my own family.” Tears were welling up in his eyes as he spoke.
“Mikey died in a fire,” I argued. “And you’re foster parents...”
“No,” Gerard said bitterly, tears cascading down his pale cheeks. “No, the press got it all wrong. I broke out of St Eloise, and went there. I don’t know, I guess I wanted to take Mikey with me - wherever the hell I was going. And...something went wrong. Really wrong...” His eyes clouded over and his voice was barely a whisper. “I wanted to kill Geoffrey. I wanted to see him die. But Mikey was in the way and...and I killed him instead.”
“Then what happened?” I asked albeit regretfully. I didn’t want to hear anymore, but it was the only way to find out the entire truth.
“Then...” Gerard said, wiping his eyes. “Geoffrey went mad. We had a fight and...his gun was lying on the floor...I shot him to the ground. Then I burnt the house down, Helena in it and all.”
“How did you get out of there?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t. I died in there and I damn well fucking deserved it.”
This couldn’t have been right. It was impossible. He was shitting me, right? But everything made sense now. How he was so cold, and pale. He said he could walk through walls. He was...different. And as I thought over it all then, reality seemed like the fantasy and what he was saying seemed like it was possible. But it couldn’t have been. I looked back at him. He was staring down at his feet, eyes glistening from crying.
“D’you know about purgatory, Lee?”
I frowned. “Excuse me?”
“When you die, you go to either heaven or hell depending on whether you’re good or not, right?”
“Right.”
“Right. So what happens when you’re too bad for heaven, but not bad enough for hell? You walk the world alone until you sacrifice something close to you to pay for your sins. That’s purgatory.”
“Do you know what that thing is?” I asked sceptically. He shook his head.
“It’s been a year, Lee. Sometimes I wonder whether I deserve to go to heaven.”
“Don’t think like that,” I said firmly. “It was an accident. Half of those deaths were either self defence or your schizophrenia, right? So of course you do. It was an accident.”
Gerard shrugged. “Whatever you say. But now you know why I’m dangerous. Why we shouldn’t be together.”
Well that sucks.
It was like the whole world was put on hold at that moment. Gerard was standing before me as my chest began to tighten, my throat closing and I found it increasingly near impossible to breath. He watched me from behind the dark bangs of fringe, expectant for my reaction. This, after a few seconds of gasping for air, happened to lead to my knees buckling and my whole body crumpling into a heap onto the moulding couch. And there, in front of him in the hideout with my heart breaking into tiny little pieces, I did the only thing I was physically able to do that minute.
I broke down and cried.
So there you are. Once again, apologies for how long it took! I hope it was worth the wait. R&R, suckers! x
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