FicWad

A/N: Hey guys! This is a little oneshot I’ve written for Halloween/ Ieroween. It’s pretty different to what I usually do, but I hope you like it- I certainly enjoyed writing it, even although it took me the best part of two days! It hope it’s not really bad…R&R and enjooooy (:


Life Is But A Dream For The Dead…

Icy bullets of autumn rain lash against my raw cheeks and soak through the thin black fabric of my hoodie as I race through rambling woodland, wending my way in and out of the spindly trees as my converse splash through overflowing muddy puddles that spatter my jeans with decaying October leaves.

The wind is harsh and bitter, icy and whipping through my tangled raven hair like an unearthly shriek, lingering on the tip of my tongue and tasting of dying rust, decomposing leaves and pure, undiluted fear.

“Don’t you dare run away, freak!” the harsh yells echo violently behind me, haunting me, hounding me, their brutal cries rupturing off the skeletal trees that surround me and swamping me in raw fear.

“Don’t you fucking dare!”

The brutal echoing makes me stumble faster still through the sprawling brambles that scratch at my legs and snag my jeans, tripping on the ribbons of ivy that creep across the forest floor and up the mossy bark of the bleak trees, intertwining with their spiky branches; stumbling on and on, fear bubbling up inside me, choking me, drowning me.

It’s wrapping tightly around me like rusty ribbons of barbed wire, slicing into me and constricting my wheezing lungs, but making me run faster and faster and faster, frantic; running desperately through the twilit woods under the ghost of a vivid burnt amber sky that’s now clogged up with congealed clouds of thick grey rain, their dense tendrils obscuring the faint glow emanating from the feeble moon.

Running through the howling wind and lashing rain that rips and burns at my vulnerable flesh with its vindictive chill.

Running through the muddy corpses of a thousand fallen leaves that shroud the forest floor.

Running and running and running.

I’m bleeding now, the spiky branches of the gnarled trees gouging into my soft flesh, snagging my clothes, scratching my arms, but I can’t stop, I can’t ever stop, because then they’ll get me.

I can hear stumbling footsteps behind me, raucous laughter rupturing around the desolate, dying woodland, illuminated by feeble fragments of silvery moonlight bleeding through the violent rain, the harsh, vicious laughs chilling me to the bone, creeping up my spine in terrorised goose bumps that accelerate my already frantic heart.

Zombies and ghosts, vampires and werewolves are nothing; just fictional monsters with fangs and claws that feed off flesh, blood and bone, haunting the night and skulking in the darkest shadows. Humans are different; the most terrifying monsters of all…brutal beings that destroy the broken world and feed off your very soul, tearing you to tiny little pieces with nothing but acidic words and taunts until you’re nothing but a hollow shell, an empty skeleton of dour defeat.

I will never understand why people are so scared of the supernatural. Reality is so much more terrifying.

These bleak, dusky woods I’m fleeing through are supposedly haunted; Haunted by the ghost of a boy, a teenager who was murdered in the bleak blackness of night, never to breathe the decaying woodland air again. No one dares stumble into them on this eve, on October 31st, on Halloween night. But why should they be so scared of the ghost of a victim? Why aren’t they scared of the monsters that destroyed him? Why should they be so scared of imagination when there’s a whole broken world of real monsters to run from?

I’m still running frantically, stumbling my way in and out of the lifeless trees, praying, pleading for escape, fleeing for my life from the harsh cries that hound in on me, when suddenly the stark woodland shrouded with bitter night and the muddy, mangled carcasses of a million fallen leaves opens out into a deserted clearing where the icy bullets of autumn rain fall freely to the dense ground.

Crumbling in the middle of the deserted clearing, under the thin, stark light of the half-hidden moon in the murky sky is a large house, darkened and derelict; Victorian style with broken twirling pillars, an ivy incrusted balcony and shattered windows.

I skid to an abrupt halt in the grey satin twilight, panting, gasping desperately for the decaying woodland air that fills my lungs, panicked breaths smoky tendrils of fear curling up into the cold, dusky sky.

After the frantic race through the rushing rain and bitter wind that howled in my ears, it suddenly seems eerily silent, nothing but the sound of my gasping breaths filling the icy air, the pound of my frantic heart, the rustle of dead amber leaves beneath my feet.

It’s silent, so silent.

I glance behind me apprehensively, but I can no longer hear the clumsy footsteps, raucous laughter and hash yells that haunted me through the spindly, ivy entwined trees with spiky branches that scratched at my vulnerable flesh like clawed hands.

Silence shrouds the circular clearing, dusky and intoxicating.

It’s as if everyone in the world is lost in a silent dream but me.

The rain is still falling around me, icy cold and bitter, but it no longer crashes to the ground and lashes against my raw, stinging skin. Instead, it hardly seems to hit the forest floor, just soaking silently into the muddy leaves that shroud the floor of the clearing in a soft whisper.

I feel like I’m alone.

Not the kind of alone I feel every single day in the endless, swarming school corridors of people who don’t understand, in the crowded lunch room slumped at my usual, solitary table out of everyone’s way, or when I’m sitting at home in my room instead of being out with the friends I don’t have; really alone, as if there isn’t another soul in the world to hound and haunt me.

I look up at the crumbling house in front of me; the dark green ribbons of glutinous ivy curling their tentacles around the deteriorating building, weaving their way in and out of the shattered windows, slithering down the disintegrating grey walls like serpents of the gloom.

There’s something intriguing, something almost pulling about the atmosphere, something tugging at my very being, reeling me in, enchanted and intoxicated by the deafening silence.

My eyes are drinking in the almost gothic, broken beauty of the ivy incrusted ruin when they snag on an ancient, gnarled old oak tree standing over the crumbling building, its spiky branches leafless and knotted with age. There’s something etched into the twisted ebony bark in deep crimson, something like spiky letters, thorned words.

Feeling almost as if I’m in a dream, I start tentatively towards the ancient tree that stands, unyielding in the dusky seeping rain like a tainted mark of time; heart-pounding as curiosity ascends my spine in thrills of adrenaline that replace my fear.

Etched into the knotted and gnarled bark are 17 spiky words, carved into the thorny trunk viciously in a deep, dark crimson that dribbles down the blackened wood like avenged blood seeping from a brutal laceration.

Chilled, horrified goose bumps flood my shivering skeleton, icy and appalled.

Frank Anthony Iero was destroyed here in 1960. May the monsters who obliterated him burn in eternity.

Horror fizzles through me like a venomous poison, engulfing me in remorse that clogs up my thoughts, infiltrating my skull like tiny cobwebs. The stories are true; the spooky tales of a teenager who was murdered in the endless dark of these rambling woods one Halloween, fifty years ago.

It was true.

Almost lost in a dream, I start tentatively towards the uninhabited house.

My converse trudge through the fallen leaves, the soft rustle of dying life underfoot and the thumping of my heart the only sounds audible in the dusky clearing. It feels almost as if the ruined house is calling me, it’s rustic, broken beauty and gothic dereliction reeling me in, spellbound, my previous overwhelming fear forgotten in the curiosity of the mysterious silence, the crumbling stone, the twirling ivy.

The door is old and made of heavy oak, rough and splintered on the soft skin of my trembly palm, creaking softly as I push it open and duck under the cobwebs that hang copiously from the deteriorating doorway.

Inside, it’s dark; almost pitch black, the musty taste of age and deterioration lingering on the tip of my tongue in tiny speckles of grey dust, only the thin, silvery light of the crescent moon seeping through the shattered window panes in the deserted hallway.

Tiny shards of broken glass sprinkle the damp, rotting floorboards like tiny fragments of pristine snow descended from the shattered chandelier that hangs precariously from the dusty ceiling, shimmering in the dull moonlight that trickles through rain, the darkened, dour hallway in tentative fragments.

The house has a different feel to any other place I’ve stumbled into utterly uniquely individual.

It feels almost…peaceful, but at the same time shrouded with lingering sorrow infiltrated with dust and underlying revenge.

It’s undisturbed and aging; dusty and mouldering, but there’s a dark sort of serenity that mingles with the musty, deadened air that fills my lungs and tickles my throat.

It’s like the ruins have been trapped, hidden, saved inside time, concealed in a bittersweet, unending sigh of the past that still lingers strongly amongst the crumbling walls, charismatic and infringing on lost souls.

The bitter breeze that sweeps through the smashed windows blows the stray dead leaves along the narrow hallway, a rustling whisper breaking the black silence that hushes my ears.

It feels devoid of the pain and angst of humanity, free from all living horrors

The corroding white marble of the twirling banister ascending the mouldering spiral staircase is smooth and calming on the skin of my cold palm, tranquilising my frantic heart and stuttery pulse.

The stairs are wooden, rotting away in places so that I have to be careful where I tread, but I finally reach the top of the ivy incrusted staircase and come to an abrupt halt, breath snatched from my lungs, eyes wide and staring in the frosty air.

I’m standing in what must be the attic, but the skylight is ripped apart, it’s remains shattered remains scattered haphazardly, the torn hole in the tiled roof filling the room with the cold night air and tendrils of rain, the thin as the pale, luminous light of the crescent moon streams down into the mouldering floorboards, reflecting off the shredded rose-pattered wall paper.

It feels strong and magic and powerful, power in the silence and the individuality, the solitude.

I take a long, deep sigh of the dusty, decaying air, letting the feelings fill me up, infiltrating my body, mind and soul so as I forget my fears and just be.

“You aren’t scared.”

A very soft, slightly rough, raggedy voice floats across the moonlight bathed attic, making me jump violently out of my skin and whirl round, heart pounding fearfully.

Standing resolutely in the doorway is a small, skinny boy; a ghostly pale teenager with ancient ripped blue jeans and dark, chocolate coloured hair that falls across his cheeks and tickles his lips in careless locks. His eyes are big and wide, heavy-lidded with spiky dark lashes; startlingly russet and swirled emerald in the pale glow of the moon that makes him look almost translucent.

His t-shirt is white and plain, but it has a huge gash ripped across the centre, from his ribcage to the bottom of his stomach, the edges of the frayed, torn fabric tainted with rusty scarlet that sends blunt daggers of shock through my body.

He’s almost beautiful; pale and drifting and dreamy with such sorrow filled, sad eyes.

He’s still looking at me with those wide green eyes laced with such soul searching intensity that I shiver.

“W-who are you?” I stutter, stumbling back against the wall, heart thumping violently against my ribs, although in all honesty, I think I already know who the sallow-skinned, skinny boy with bright green eyes and a torn t-shirt is.

“Frank.” The boy says simply, and then he glides forwards across the crumbling floor, his feet not quite seeming to touch the rotting floorboards. “Why aren’t you scared?” he repeats, coming to a halt right in front of me and looking right into my skeleton with questioning, curious and slightly wary emerald orbs that glisten and gleam a vivid curiosity that makes my heart tumble.

“I am.” I stutter honestly, trying to take in deep, calming gulps of the musty night air as my lungs suddenly seem to be devoid of oxygen.

“Now, maybe…but before, when I wasn’t here. Why weren’t you scared?” he persists, tilting his head to one side and surveying me closely, his startling green gaze like an x-ray of my soul. “Of the house? No one ever comes here. Ever.”

“It’s just sort of…beautiful..” I whisper, trembling uncertainly.

“You think?” he narrows his eyes, emerald continuing to survey my weak, trembling form backed up against the wall.

I nod shakily, heart beating the blood of fear around my shaking skeleton.

“What’s your name?” he asks, gliding back a little and giving me room to breathe in the ethereal air that sweeps the space of the attic.

“G-Gerard. Gerard Way.” I stutter, not moving, feeling almost as if I’m in some kind of vaporous dream.

“Don’t be scared.” He says softly, eyes drifting over my trembling hands. “I won’t hurt you.”

I take a deep, shuddery breath of relief, heart racing, pumping adrenaline round my fizzling bloodstream, clashing with the metallic red fluid in chemical combustion. “Y-you won’t?”

“Why would I?” Frank asks quietly, sitting down in the corner by the shattered window on the decaying, dusty floor and pulling his legs up to his chest, hiding the wide slash that gnaws through the ragged material. “But no one’s ever come here before…they’re too scared, they think it’s haunted.”

“…Is it?” I find myself whispering, shifting apprehensively from one foot to the other and trying very hard not to focus on the slightly vaporous tinge to the skinny teenager who’s staring thoughtfully out into the indigo sky beyond the house where the clouds have stopped crying.

He looks around, a small smile tickling the corner of his pale lips. “Depends what you think haunted is.” He smiles more widely as I visibly gulp.

Oh.” I breathe, sliding down the wall and collapsing to the floor a couple of metres from him.

“But really, why weren’t you scared?” Frank persists, looking at me seriously with wide green eyes, tainted heavily from the fractures and failings of the world, the injustices of reality, but still tinted with lingering innocence.

“Because the real world is so much scarier than things like haunted houses and ghost stories.” I reply, hiding behind my hair. “Vampires and zombies and ghosts, creatures of imagination don’t scare me the way people do.”

“Do I scare you?” Frank asks, a hint of well-concealed sadness and uncertainty infiltrating his voice, and I look up at him from behind my curtain of ebony hair.

He’s small and skinny like me with unearthly skin and scruffy hair, wide eyes and bitten down fingernails. He’s not scary. He’s like me; just a little bit different to everyone else.

“No.” I answer truthfully.

Frank looks up at me in disbelief, eyes wide and suddenly vulnerable, exposing the rawness of his soul. “Really?”

“Really.” I reply, knowing it’s the truth, but not knowing why I should feel so unthreatened by someone I’ve randomly stumbled across on Halloween night in the dusty darkness of a derelict house. Maybe it’s because he’s got that same air of an outcast, a scapegoat, a misfit of the shadows that I feel tearing my being apart every day.

Frank says nothing, but a small smile stretches across his face.

“Are you a…are you a…ghost?” I blurt, and Frank suddenly bursts out laughing the soft sound musical and ragged, echoing through the dereliction of the house.

“What planet are you from, Gerard?” He shakes his head at me and gets to his feet. “What kind of person is see-through, floats and has an ice-cold touch? Or has the human race done some serious evolution since I died?”

“Umm…” I mumble, embarrassed, shrugging and hiding behind my hair. “I wasn’t sure if I was just…y’know…imagining it?”

Frank chuckles at me, making my cheeks pinken. “Watch.” I look up to see him suddenly floating two feet above me in front of the pale, the vulnerable light steaming from the moon that shining right through him as he grins widely.

“See?” and suddenly he’s right beside me again on the floor in one of my shaky heartbeats.

“And…” he reaches up a ghostly hand and softly, gently strokes it across my cheek.

I get shivers and goose bumps all over that I seriously doubt have anything to do with the fact his fingers are icy cold on my burning cheeks, and more to do with the fact his eyes are almost russet with sad, salty smiles, a vivid, startling emerald that sees through my empty shell of a soul, sorrowful and beautiful.

“Oh.” Is my blushing response as I try and hide my burning cheeks behind my tangled raven hair.

There’s silence for a moment or two, before Frank says- “What makes you think reality’s scarier than the supernatural?”

I look up, eyes wide, and Frank laughs again.

“You look like you think I’m about to drink your blood or rip your guys out or something!” he shakes his head at me. “I’m not, don’t worry- I just meant, why do you think reality is so scary?”

“People can tear you apart- not just you flesh and bone like zombies and stuff, but like, your soul…they can ruin you.” I mumble.

“Have they ruined you, Gerard?” Frank asks softly, and I jump as an icy cold hand brushes my cheek again, tucking the dishevelled strands of raven I hide behind back.

I look up into big, greeny eyes, shimmering in the cold light of the moon, compassionate and full of caring sincerity.

I say nothing.

“Don’t let them.” Frank says softly, not taking his eyes from mine. “You’re too special. I might have let myself be ruined, but you can’t do that, okay? You’ve got to stand up for what you believe in. Stand up, fucking tall, and never give in, okay?”

His eyes are full of sincerity, raw emerald concern that gives me goose bumps and makes my pulse stutter.

“It’s not that easy.” I whisper. “They’re there… everyday… every fucking day, making my life a…making it a living hell.” I spit the last two words out bitterly, smoky and sour in the cold night air that surrounds us.

“You think I don’t know what it’s like?” Frank raises his eyebrows at me, gesturing to the rip in his t-shirt that makes my stomach plummet horribly.

“W-what happened?” I ask tentatively, not sure I want to hear the answer.

“The work of my so-called ‘friends’.” Frank says tensely. “I’ve never really talked about it.” he laughs, but the sound is hollow and broken. “I’ve not spoken to anyone in nearly fifty years.” He shakes his head despairingly.

My eyes go wide. “I’m the first person you’ve talked to since you…y’know…”

“Died?” Frank finishes my sentence with the harsh end. “Yeah. I mean, I could have, if I’d wanted. But I never came across anyone who wouldn’t get freaked out by the fact I’m y’know…slightly see through and not entirely… breathing.”

I have to smile at that, despite myself. “But...really?”

“Yeah.” Frank sighs. “I didn’t want to talk to anyone, it wasn’t just that most people would have freaked out. You’re different, Gerard. You’re special.”

“I-I am?” I stutter, shocked.

“Yes.” Frank says quietly, and suddenly he seems a lot closer than before, icy cold breath tickling my lips. “Very. You see past the differences, you give people a chance. You’re talented and beautiful and you should never, ever give up.”

“How do you know any of that?” I ask, my heart thumping at the vaporous proximity.

“I can see people.” Frank says simply. “Their good points and bad points, their hopes and dreams. I can see.”

“I can see too, but I can’t see any of that in people I’ve only known for half an hour.” I whisper, heart still beating a violent taboo against my fragile ribs.

“I know. It’s just something I can do.” Frank smiles gently at me. “The outcasts seeing the other outcasts. It’s not hard, considering I’ve been through it myself.”

“Didn’t you have any friends when you were at school?” I ask.

“Not really.” Frank sighs. “I was in with this big gang who all picked on me and I was too scared to stand up to them. I was the weirdo cause I liked punk music and black and I loved horror movies.”

“I love all those things too.” I say softly. “But I don’t understand why no one wanted to be your friend.”

“I don’t understand why no one wants to be your friend.” Frank shoots back, smiling wanly at me.

“I wish you went to my school.” I sigh, the exhale curling out into the air and seeping through Frank’s translucent form.

“I don’t think they let ghosts in.” Frank smiles ruefully at me.

“What’s it like…y’know, being a…ghost?” I ask, voicing the question I’ve been wanting to ask since I first met Frank.

“Ghostly.” Frank grins at me. “I don’t know…it’s kind of, fluid, dream-like. Apart from that, it’s not that different from being human, but better. For me, anyway.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Not really…I’ve never wanted to go back. But now..” Frank trails off, raising his eyes to mine, bright green and glimmering in the moonlight.

“Now?” I ask tentatively.

“I sort of wish I was. Just for a little while, so I could keep you company.” Frank smiles a little sheepishly at me and I feel my cheeks pinken rapidly. “You feel so alone and I wish you didn’t have to feel that.”

“How do you know that?” I ask, knowing it’s the truth, but curious as to how he can see that in me.

“I can see so much in your eyes.” Frank says softly, brushing an icy finger down my cheek and looking at me with such compassionate intensity I get another epidemic of goose bumps flooding my shivering body. “Eyes are what you see the world with, Gerard, and I can see your world in your eyes.”

“I hate my world.” I whisper brokenly, breaking the gaze we’re locked in and looking down at the floor, ashamed.

“That’s why I wanted to be human for a bit, to make you feel better.” Frank smiles slightly, eyes searching for mine under my mass of dishevelled midnight hair.

“Thanks, but I’m really not worth it.” I shake my head dismissively.

“I think you are…” Frank whispers, and then suddenly he’s very close, ghostly tendrils of chestnut hair tickling my skin, icy breath brushing my cheeks, and then gently, softly, sweetly, he presses his icy lips to mine, frosty and ghostly and tender, sending shivers down my skeleton and making my heart race wildly behind my ribs.

The magic is broken, the silence of the night viciously shattered by raucous, disorderly laughter echoing from the clearing. The familiar, bone-chilling fear swamps me, drowning me in anxious adrenaline and I pull away, eyes wide and fearful.

“They’ve found me!” I breathe, frantic fear shocking through me, trembling partly from fear and partly from the lingering sensation of Frank’s lips on mine that made my hear race so fast, my chest ache.

“They?” Frank’s translucent pallor has a slightly pink tint, but he glides up instantly, drifting over to the shattered skylight window and peeking out into the ebony night.

“People from school…they hate me- they chased me, they want to get me back for letting them down at football.” I say frantically, running a panicked hand through my hair. “They’re drunk, they’ll beat me to death…what am I gunna do?!” I jump to my feet, wringing my hands in desperation.

“Clam down, it’ll be okay- they’re only at the edge of the clearing.” Frank says from the window.

“It’ll be okay?” I say incredulously, fear manifesting itself as irrational anger. “You don’t know them! They’ll fucking kill me!”

Frank raises his eyebrows.

“Sorry,” I wince, suddenly feeling awkward and embarrassed at my sudden, unjust outburst.

“It’s fine.” Frank brushes it off, gliding towards the staircase just as there’s a loud smash from the hallway; it sounds as if the door’s been ripped off its rusty hinges and slammed into the rotting ground.

My heart goes cold with dread and the pure, undiluted fear that engulfs me, body and soul. “Oh my god!” I gasp, heart pounding violently with the quaking fear that wracks my vulnerable body.

Frank blanches and glides right up to me, eyes wide with worry.

“Hide.” He breathes urgently, face very close to mine, shivering me with icy breath that somehow almost comforting; its serene coolness numbing the raw, pulsating fear that’s writhing inside of me.

“Lets get the fuckin’ faggot!” the guttural, vicious drunken slurring shouts splits through the peaceful silence of the ruins, rupturing off the corroding walls and clotting my blood with terror.

“Now, Gerard!” Frank hisses, somehow propelling my numb, quaking body with his icy hands towards the big, double-door mouldering ebony wardrobe decaying in the corner of the attic. “Hide, quick!”

Fear drilling through body, distributed copiously by my pumping heart, I squeeze into the moth-eaten, dusty innards of the wardrobe and am about to push the door shut to hide me when Frank stops me, slipping into the confines of the mouldering wardrobe beside me and gently pushing the door closed on the frightening yells and raucous, drunken slurring laughs that drift up the staircase.

You could cut the tensely terrified silence that clots the flow of dusty air between us in the small space of the wardrobe; it’s laced with undiluted, dreaded fear, trembling hands and shaking hearts as we listen to the violent noises and drunken crowing ascending the stairs, looming closer and closer to our safe serenity.

I can feel myself shaking, feel the horrible, overwhelming darkness engulfing me in the rawness of fear, crushing me, tainting my thoughts with terrifying imagination and anticipation.

I can hear them on the stairs, stumbling drunkenly.

I can hear them in the room, staggering in alcohol intoxication.

I can hear them calling my name, their putrid, alcohol laced words full of threat and acidic vicious vindication.

They’re getting closer…closer…closer…

Can they smell my fear like a predator can smell the hot, metallic blood of its prey? Can they feel my shaking body juddering the decomposing floorboards? Can they hear me choking back gasps from the glutinous fear that clogs up my throat?

In the blinding dark and the engulfing fear, I vaguely feel Frank’s icy finger curl tightly round mine, and the terror fades a little as I cling back desperately, clinging onto death as if it’s my life support.

I might be more scared than I ever have been in my life, but I don’t feel alone; for the first time in what feels like my life, it feels as though there’s someone who cares and understands.

Strangely, I feel the furthest from alone I think I ever had as I sit, trembling with fear in the cramped confines of a rotting wardrobe, hands clasped with the icy touch of a ghost, the ghost of a lost, alone misfit just like me.

Suddenly, the cupboard door bangs open and the foul smell of stagnant alcohol chokes me, the cold, venomous eyes of the monster boring into mine, lethal and laced with alcohol induced sadism.

My heart is cold, ice cold fingers unlike the ones that cling round my own curling around its frantic pumping, freezing me to the spot.

“How dare you run away,” he slurs drunkenly, waving his bottle of vodka around angrily. “Guys, the faggot ran away from us… let’s make him pay…”

“Don’t you even think about it.” Frank says with steely determination, rising up in front of me, shielding me like a translucent screen between the alcohol festering monsters and my trembling form.

“Aww, look, the faggot’s got himself a boyfriend ever freakier than he is!” the guy sneers, and they all jeer drunkenly at Frank as I feel my cheeks go hot with shame.

“Don’t you dare call him that!” Frank snarls, while I cower in the corner, shaking violently, feeling utterly useless.

“Why the hell not? Who the fuck do you think you are?!” the guy growls, advancing on Frank menacing and vicious. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

“I think you might have trouble there.” Frank says lightly.

Then it all happens so suddenly in a blur of fists that Frank’s on the ground, writhing in pain, his chalk-white face contorted, eyes screwed shut as horror judders through my quaking body.

Perhaps ghosts can’t die, but it certainly looks like they can get hurt. And if it’s hurting him as much as it’s hurting me to watch squirming and writhing on the floor like that, he must be in agony.

I can’t watch it. I can’t let them do this. I won’t let them do this, no matter how scared I am.

“Stop it!” I hear myself cry, as they pummel Frank into the decaying floorboards with steely, unrelenting fists.

The beating instantly ceases and they all turn back, rounding on me. “Why, faggot?” the leader hisses.

“Gerard, don’t…” Frank groans from the floor, trying to get up and wincing horribly.

But I do. I’ve never really had something I think is worth standing up for before, never had something worth believing in, but now I do; now I know what it’s like to not feel so hopelessly, bitterly alone, to feel like just maybe, you belong somewhere, somewhere where you’re understood and valued. So this is me, standing up. This is me, standing up fucking tall for what I believe in.

Frank.

“Get off him!” I hear myself yell, the sound tearing through the atmosphere like a carelessly thrown blunt dagger.

“You’ll fucking pay. I’ll make your freaky faggot of a boyfriend pay.” One of the guys slurs furiously, raising his broken vodka bottle, the glass in jagged shards like the razor-sharp blades of a knife, raising it towards Frank’s vulnerable form, sprawled, helpless on the floor…

“NO!” I cry, flinging myself forward.

The next few seconds seem to go in slow motion.

Blinding, searing, sharp pain ripping through the soft flesh of my torso like fire.

Panicked voices, stumbling, drunken footsteps getting gradually fainter and fainter.

Frank’s ragged voice, urgent and scared right beside me.

And blood.

So much blood; crimson and hot, spewing haphazardly from the deep, dark gouge that lacerates through my feeble body, spattering the damp, mouldering wood of the floorboards with hot, vivid life.

I feel like I’ve been ripped in two, I can feel the crimson life pouring from me like a macabre fountain spattering the decaying floorboards beneath me.

Everything’s a blur; a searing, scarlet, spewing blur.

And I’m numb.

“Gerard! Gerard, speak to me!” Frank’s icy fingers find mine and grip them tight, squeezing, lacing them into knots as his other hand grapples at my scarlet stained shirt, trying to stem the spurting scarlet flow that washes away the blinding, ripping pain and leaves me numb, skin tingling vaguely.

“Gerard!” his voice is desperate, frantic, fearful, and I dimly register the sickening clink of blood-tainted shards of the jagged glass being deposited on the cold floor , guessing from the panicked hitches of Frank’s breath that he’s trying to remove the jagged shards that gouge so deeply into my innards. I can’t feel anything anymore; just the steady, warm gush of blood engulfing my weakening body and the fierce, ice-cold grip of Frank’s hand round mine.

I try and open my eyes, but I feel sleepy and slipping away into an unending peaceful dark.

“Gerard!” Frank sounds like he’s choking now, raw emotion tearing raggedly at his voice, his grip on my limp hand tighter, but the feelings growing weaker…weaker… “Gerard, please!”

I take a deep, shuddering gasp of the rusty, decaying air, and with great effort, peel back my heavy eyelids that seem to weigh the weight of the world.

Bleak greys and decomposing browns contrast starkly with a gruesome little pile of bloody jagged shards of broken glass beside me on the floor, scattered across the mouldy wood like a macabre mosaic of brutality.

The moon is still shimmering into the room, pale and vulnerable, luminously fragmented, and a shaky, translucent hand encrusted with congealed blood brushes my face, cool and icy on my feverish skin.

“Please don’t leave me…” I whisper through the blood that bubbles at my cracked lips, dribbling down my numb flesh.

“Never.” Frank says softly, gripping my hand fiercely.

And even though the life is flowing steadily from me in a gush of warm crimson that seeps through the thin fabric of my damp hoodie, I don’t feel scared.

For the first time in my angst filled life, I don’t feel scared, because, for once, I know that I’m not alone.

I can feel myself drifting, floating away from all reality, spiralling further and further away from my blood-soaked body and the bitter air of the night, like a dying russet leaf caught in a pirouetting tornado, sweeping me further and further away, away from the damp, mouldering smell of the ruins, away from the pale glow of the silvery moon, away from the macabre mosaic scattered beside my body…but not away from Frank.

I finally drag my gaze upwards with my remaining strength to look at my saviour, my ghost, my Frank…

His startlingly green, compassionate and tortured eyes, the eyes that understand me like no one else ever has or ever will, riddled with obliterating emerald agony are the last things I see with my tired, human eyes.





….And the first thing I see with my new eyes that flutter open to a brand new world, a dream-like, serene world devoid of loneliness, where I’ll be able to drift eternally across endless, violet streaked skies and rolling indigo oceans with Frank.

Together.




What did you think? Was it any good? I’ve never really written anything like this before, so I’d really appreaciate it if you told me what you thought, as this took me ages! Hope it wasn’t too bad anyway! Thank you so much for reading and pleeeeeease R&R! thank you :D

CosmicZombie xo