Categories > Celebrities > My Chemical Romance > Perfectly Imperfect
The Damned Don't Dream
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Chapter Ten – The Damned Don’t Dream
Mikey’s POV
Oh no. I’ve been stupid again, really fucking stupid.
I’ve let myself sleep. But more than that, I’ve let myself sleep in Pete’s arms.
It’s not that I have any sort of problem with my perfectly affectionate boyfriend, I still can’t help but feel overjoyed whenever I call him that, holding me like Frankie holds Misfit whenever she bounds into bed with him; far from it. With Pete holding me as though he is the oyster and I am the precious pearl locked within the natural walls of his castle that he must protect, I actually feel safe; feel loved like Gerard told me I wasn’t loved; feel more content than I have in a painfully long time. The fact that it’s him who’s holding me is not the problem, far from it, but rather the fact that I’ve been selfish enough to actually fall into the smothering veil of jet-black sleep.
Selfish because I know full well that I will wake up thrashing and screaming, that in doing so in the same bed as Pete, the one person who has never hurt me in any conceivable way, I will end up waking him up; thrashing into him and screaming straight into his ears. I should have lied and told him that I wasn’t happy sharing a bed, should have asked him to sleep in his parents’ room. At least then he would probably sleep through me waking up from the horrendous nightmares that bleach my eyeballs every night, well, on the nights that my body forces me to sleep. But no; me being the selfish little shit that I am, that Pete can somehow see as someone worthy of his embrace, I let myself beg him to not let me sleep alone. It’s not my fault that I got frightened of being left alone in the dark, but it is my fault that I used that fright to make Pete stay with me.
It is my fault that I’m a horrible, selfish, emo-slut who ruins everything for everyone.
Just like Gerard said.
But Pete said that I’m beautiful, that I’m perfect, and that I’m his.
His I may well be, but I’m not beautiful and I’m definitely not perfect. If anything the term ‘Mikey Way’ is the exact antonym of perfect; how can someone so insanely selfish be perfect; how can someone who brings everyone down quicker than a deadweight in a pond be perfect; how can someone too fucked up for a brother’s love be perfect? They can’t; I can’t. Frank’s perfect; he’s always kind and calm and caring, when I’m not making him angry with my big brother. Gerard’s perfect; he’s always honest with me, always tries his hardest and always does what he thinks is right, it’s just that I’m too ungrateful to see that sometimes. Pete’s perfect because he’s, well he’s Pete; twice as perfect than even Frankie and Gerard put together, definitely way too perfect for a selfish, pathetic, ugly motherfucker like me.
I know he called me beautiful, and I adore him all the more for trying to make me feel better with flattery, but I know that I’m not. Really, I’m not. Not on the inside; not on the outside. When you ask someone to define beautiful do scars and hollowed eyes and everything else about me fit their definition? Of course they fucking don’t. But that’s okay, I don’t want to be beautiful; I just want people to not stare at me and laugh at me and yell things at me every time I leave the house. Apart from with Pete by my side, only when Pete is by side, the kids at school rarely even look at me funny; it’s only when I’m not stuck to Pete like we’re two strips of Velcro do they start laying into me like I probably deserve to be laid into. Even Gerard said that I’m ugly. Well, he didn’t say it in those exact words, but he said that Pete doesn’t love me because kids my age can’t see beyond physical appearance, or words to that effect. If Gerard, the person always trying to help me through life no matter how bad I am, says it even though he knows how touchy I can get over my appearance then it must be true. It is. I know it is; I look like a fucking freak, like I belong in a science laboratory or a cage of some description.
But Pete makes me feel beautiful, makes me feel like he sees something beyond what the mirror taunts me with and as long as he sees me as beautiful then that’s all I care about; apart from he doesn’t think I’m beautiful. I know Pete, I know that he’s smart enough to see how ugly I am, I know that he only called me beautiful to cheer me up.
I heard my boyfriend whisper to me as I fell into the current darkness that surrounds me, somewhat similar to the sinister darkness of a cinema before the screening of some hideously violent horror film, I heard him whisper the kind of things that I should be telling him. Things that made me feel safe and secure enough to fall asleep to the rhythm of his steady heartbeat. I love being able to hear my comforter’s heartbeat, it just makes me feel like I’m not alone; makes me certain that they aren’t made-up angels from my imagination nor dead like my parents.
My parents….
Fuck! The surrounding darkness is convulsing with tiny particles of crimson flecks; just like every time I have a nightmare. Apart from they’re not nightmares, I haven’t had an original nightmare for a long while; I’d much rather have the release of a nightmare rather than the searing pain of the flashbacks that haunt me every time I dare to sleep. But seeing as I’m asleep, like the complete retard that I am, and I know that I have no hope of waking up until the end, I have no choice but to relive all of my worst memories; memories that I would much rather were called nightmares.
Because my past frightens me so much more than any bloodsucking monster.
Because my past is all my fault, not that of Fate’s warped sense of humour.
Here we go.
”Mikey, why can’t you take better care of your big brother?” My dad sighs down at me; eyes heavy and disapproving at the stupid twelve-year-old who can’t even make his brother not throw up all over the place rather than in the toilet. “He needs your help, not you sitting there with your headphones in all the time.”
His chastising tone evaporates as he hears the drunk fifteen-year-old groan in his sleep.
I honestly don’t mean to let him get drunk. I just… I just don’t know how to stop it. I try to get him to play videogames with me instead of sulking off to his room to get smashed like he does every night before Mom and Dad get in, but he always says that he’s had a rough day, that he needs to relax in his bedroom, that he’ll play with me tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes.
It’s because he hates me, I know he does. He tells me every time he gets drunk how much I piss him off, how much he wishes I would just leave him the fuck alone, how much of a terrible little brother I am.
“Aw, leave Mikes alone, he didn’t do anything wrong; did you Baby?” My Mom’s camomile voice drifts in, cutting across my silly little whimpers, and she ruffles my hair. “Now, run along to bed, Sweetie. Good boy.”
I run off up the stairs to my room like the coward that Gerard calls me for hiding from him whenever he gets drunk, but just as I reach the staircase I hear Gerard say something that makes my heart break with it’s painful honesty.
“Why’d you always take his side? He’s such a fucking weirdo… Why can’t you take my side for once? Why’d you love ‘im more?”
That was the first time that I realised Gerard really does hate me. He may have been drunk and hurt that Mom was fussing over me, someone that nobody else ever noticed, rather than him, a boy too drunk to be able sit upright, but he was being honest. It’s like his mind had padlocked the truth about me in his obscure want to protect me from it, but alcohol undid that padlock and let me know exactly how much of a shit human being I am.
It hurts, being forced to relieve that old memory of four years ago; of being able to feel the tears dribble down my face and hear the sincere hatred in my big brother’s voice but, if history is to repeat itself, then my reoccurring hell is far from through with me.
The black swirls around again, like the panic churning in my heart, and I feel myself being sucked into another memory of something I’d much rather forget; the first time that Gerard hit me.
I can hear him retching over the toilet, like he’s throwing up the glass containers of what is causing him to puke almost as much as I did at school today after getting beaten up one time to many, I can hear him and I want to help him. Help him like a good little brother.
Apart from I’m not a good little brother; he tells me that every time I get in his way whilst he’s in this state. He screams at me that I’m the ‘worst little brother ever’ and that he wishes I could just ‘fuck off and die’ so that he doesn’t have to act like he likes me all the time. That’s what he said last night, anyway. The night before he didn’t say anything to me, just glared at me when I tried to talk to him, glared like I had some sort of disease that made me disgusting. I am disgusting, disgusting and horrible and ugly and the worst little brother ever.
Why? Because Gerard said so, because Gerard has never lied to me before so why should he start now?
Exactly, he shouldn’t. And he hasn’t. He’s just being honest. But how can I be he’s ‘bestest little buddy’ in the daytime and then be his hated, bastard babyish little brother the second the sun sets and he hits the bottle. Maybe in the daytime I’m better, maybe I fuck up during in the day and he only realises it at night, with the help of his beloved vodka, that I need to be punished.
But I’m going to try again tonight!
Tonight I’m going to be better and everything can go back to normal; he can read me his comic books and we can curl up on my bed through the current storm that’s raging outside. A storm that would be reducing me to a nervous wreck if it wasn’t for the fact that I can hear my big brother throwing his guts up.
“Gee… Are you alright?”
“What the fuck do you think, Momma’s Little Genius?” He spits from the other side of the locked door, resentment thick in his voice. Resentment for the little brother that he would have been holding this time last year because he knows how scary I find storms. But nowhere near as scary as his alcohol abuse. “Huh? Haven’t you got an answer for this one? Does Mikey not know everything after all? Better not let Mom find out, she might see how pathetic you are.”
He’s never said something like that before, something so sincere and slicing and crippling and really fucking excruciating. I collapse against the hallway wall, knees up close and head in my hands, opposite the door blocking me from helping my big brother through his throwing up session. Because I still want to help him, of course I do; he’s my big brother. The only way I can make him not hate me is by doing nice things for him, right?
Well, I’ll be here when he emerges, be here with a hug just for my big bro.
Apart from right now I’m sobbing my heart out, like an abandoned dog howling for it’s owner, and I can’t stop shaking long enough to ask him if he needs anything; let alone am I able to stand and hug him.
“What’s wrong, Mikes?”
It’s him! He’s out and he’s concerned about me and he wants to know what’s wrong and he loves me again and-
Fuck! My jaw!
“Don’t fucking bother me next time, Momma’s Little Angel.”
Did he just… My own big brother just punched me. Hurt me. Hates me.
Just like everyone else.
I can feel the sting of my jaw right now, like it really has just happened all over again. And even though I know this isn’t real, that it’s just something that my own mind despises me enough to put me through again, I’m really fucking scared. Just like I was back then, four years ago when he first started hurting me. Back when he was fifteen and I was twelve, back when I was too fucking stupid to see that I should have just left him alone; after all, if I’m not near him how can I make him mad at me?
I even started to withdraw from Mom, tried to show Gee that I’m not trying to steal his mom away from him; not trying to be the favourite son. Not that I ever was. Mom loved us both equally, just found more opportunities to hug me and kiss me purely because Gerard always shoved her away. As for Dad, well he blamed Gerard’s downward spiral on me; said that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t look after my big brother like I should have, that I wasn’t being a good enough friend to my brother. That killed what last little light of youth I may have had; being told by my own father at the age of thirteen that my brother’s worsening alcoholism and drug addiction was my fault.
Which it was.
Dead by thirteen.
”He’s out of fucking control, Donna!”
I flinch on the stairs, forced there through Gerard having a drunken rampage in my en suite and my parents rowing with each other in the living room. The stairs were the only safe place for me, not up high in the clouds with my dangerously intoxicated big brother nor down in the depths of fiery anger with my parents; just sat in a kind of limbo. Purgatory, I guess. Apart from I know that I’m going to go to Hell because that’s what Gee told me and I know that’s all weak little cowards like me deserve.
“Don’t you think that I know that? He’s my son too, y’know. And speaking of sons, when was the last time you spent some time with Mikey? He needs you too.”
I shudder at my mom’s forever placid voice yelling at my dad, pointing out his lack of love for the quiet, skinny kid who he told a few days ago is an unwanted accident. Unwanted, definitely; unwanted by every-fucking-one. Not Mom, though. Mom wants me. Mom loves me. Mom doesn’t love that I’ve started to go all quiet, started to push her away like Gerard has in an attempt to show Gee that he can have all of our parents’ love if he wants it; he already has my portion of Dad’s care.
“If Mikey took proper care of his brother in the first place then this never would have happened!”
Shut up! Please, stop it, please; I know it’s all my fault, I know I’m a shit little brother, but Gerard’s three years older than me and a hell of a lot stronger. There’s not a lot I could have done to stop him from drinking before it became this bad. But that just makes it even more of my fault; I should have made him happier, should have given him something better to live for than booze and the strange bottles of stuff that he hides under his pillows. I didn’t though, didn’t do a good enough job and now he hates me; now Mom and Dad are saying things like he’ll be lucky to make eighteen if he carries on like this.
“Mikey’s just a confused little kid, Don. Whatcha expect him to do? Besides, you know it’s always Gerard looking out for Mikey, not the other way around.”
Gerard looking out for Mikey. Eldest looking out for youngest. Big brother looking out for baby brother. Like it should be. Yet it isn’t. Not anymore. He hates me and I’m terrified of him. Even when he’s sober I can’t help but be jumpy around him; it’s hard not to when my face, my chest, my entire body sometimes, still hurt from the night before. But he doesn’t even remember, can’t recall any of what he does to me. And that’s the way I want it to stay. The last thing my big brother needs right now is some ridiculous guilt trip over adding to the bruises that the bullies give me. He doesn’t hurt me when he’s sober; in fact when he’s sober or even hung-over he tries to ask me where the bruises come from. He thinks it’s just bullies. And that’s the way it’s going to stay. I don’t want to make him hurt bad enough to drink more.
“Well, maybe that damn kid should grow the fuck up and start acting his age!”
How should a frightened thirteen-year-old act? I am one and I still don’t know. Shows how fucking stupid I am.
I let out a pathetic, raspy sob.
Dad pokes his head out of the living room door, eyes dull and apathetic. Until they rest on me. At which point they flare with a violent fury that makes me shake even harder.
“Have you been listening in?” I nod. “Good. Because it’s true. Gerard’s like this because of you. Because you didn’t stop him.”
Fuck the fact that I’m sixteen, fuck the fact that I’m in Pete’s arms, fuck the fact that Gerard’s been sober for over a year and hasn’t hit me for just as long; fuck the fact that this is some sort of fucked up memory-nightmare. I’m genuinely frightened, petrified, terrified, fearful, guilty, remorseful, miserable, morose, lost, hurt, panicked.
Because, in my mind, it’s all happening right now; all of my worst memories, all of the things that made me cry the most are all happening again.
And I know that I deserve it; all of these events are my fault, so therefore I must deserve to be cursed with them forever. It is my fault that Gerard struggled with three years of addiction, it is my fault that I’m so ridiculously shy, it is my fault that my relationship with Gee isn’t what it should be.
All of it; my fault. I ruin everything. Just like Gerard said. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling like I’m weeping even more than dark cloud on a rainy day. Maybe I am. Is it even possible for someone to cry in their sleep? I hope not. I don’t want to wake Pete up, not just because it would mean robbing him of his rest, but also because it means that he’ll ask questions.
Questions whose answers I really don’t want to remember.
Questions whose answers I can’t forget no matter how hard I try.
I can still remember what day of the week it was when Gerard knocked me out for the first time. It was a Thursday; I can remember that because Mom and Dad didn’t get in until eleven o’clock on Thursday nights. Perhaps if it had been any other day of the week then they would have seen what unfolded. What made me see my big brother in a different light forever.
I’m lying in my bed, fiddling with the Rubik’s Cube that Gee got me for my fourteenth birthday two weeks ago. A day that was filled with Mom and Dad praising him for managing to remain sober the whole day just because he knew how much my birthday means to me. To the stupid little kid of the family. To the bruised, banged-up little bastard who can’t take anymore.
I wonder what Gerard would do if I tell him the truth tomorrow morning when he asks me about the bruises that he’ll undoubtedly give me at some point within the next hour; would he feel bad, or would he be happy to know that I know how he really feels about me? Apart from I know that I won’t ever tell him. Because if I do I run the risk of upsetting him over something that isn’t even his fault.
It’s my fault, I always end up getting in his way or saying something bad to make him angry.
Oh great, I’m crying again. Crying so hard that the colours of my Rubik’s Cube have smudged and distorted through my tear-sodden glasses lenses.
I can hear heavy footsteps, all crashing and smashing along the landing. Here we go again. It’s stupid, I know that I should be used to it by now, two years after that first punch, but I can’t help but feel afraid. He’s my big brother; I don’t want him to beat me! I want him to fix me before I get so broken that I can’t even look anyone in their eyes. Not that I really can anymore anyway, I just get frightened that they’ll see the same side to me that Intoxicated Gerard does, the side that Sober Gerard pretends isn’t there because when he’s sober he’s almost like normal. All caring and cuddles and trying to find out why I cry almost every time he asks me about my blemished face. Because he really doesn’t remember a thing the morning after.
My door swings open and I shrink back into my bed. He looks really bad; all slumping shoulders, bloodshot eyes and unruly black hair. He’s definitely high. Drunk and high. My poor big brother.
Maybe tonight will be different. Maybe tonight he won’t hurt me; maybe he’ll want to be my big brother again. I tell myself that every night, but every night (for that’s how regular it has become) the same thing happens; I get in the way, I make him mad and then he slams me around.
“Mikey… Mikey, whya scared?” His slurred voice almost sounds as miserable as I feel, and I really want to say something to him, but I just can’t. The fear is freezing my vocal chords and self-preservation kicks in; I let out a loud cry of pure terror as he stumbles forward, eyes suddenly furious. “Mikey, whya bein’ a cry-baby? Whya bein’ all pissy wi’me?” He leans forwards with surprising accuracy for someone so far out of it and grabs me forcefully by the collar of my polo shirt, yanking me towards him and shocking more terrified tears from my stunned eyes. “Attention seekin’ Momma’s boy, got everythin’ and you’re still bein’ muthafuckin’ emo.” He snarls right in my face, tendrils of his alcohol-stained breath infesting my nostrils like a plague.
He tugs me fiercely around and slams me into my far bedroom wall. I can hear things cracking, things that aren’t just my wall or my possessions, and blood is filling my mouth before I know it.
He’s never done something this bad before.
I must have been really terrible to deserve this.
“Momma’s Little Genius needs teachin’ by stupid Gee? Love it. Kinda ironic.”
That memory only stops there not because of any small mercies from my own traitorous mind, but because after that I really don’t know what happened. Because after that point he knocked me clean out. I don’t even understand now, two years on, what I did that time that was so awful that I deserved something that bad by the way of punishment. All I do know is that I must have carried on doing things that bad because it sure as fuck wasn’t the last time he made me pass out. The morning after that particular memory Gerard had actually had to come and wake me up because I hadn’t come down for breakfast; when I’d opened my eyes to his own panic-stricken ones I’d started a frenzied struggle to get away from him. Until I realised that, once again, he just didn’t remember. So it wasn’t his fault. And, once again, I made him feel bad; he was a shaking, sobbing wreck at seeing me so bludgeoned and completely battered. I think he thought I was getting the shit beaten out of me at school and that I was trying to hide it from him; so we just held each other. Mom and Dad were already at work, so we took the day off. Gerard insisted on cleaning the bloody gash on my forehead and I probably would have enjoyed his brotherly gesture, had I been able to get rid of the pure panic that his touch bought me. Still brings me.
Panic that has been with me ever since.
What if he hates me? What if he wants to hurt me again for shouting at him, for having a boyfriend that he doesn’t like, for being a foul little brother? What if he beats me up when I go back home for being ungrateful, for being a slut, for ruining everything? What if Frankie hates me too, hates me for making him angry enough to hurt his boyfriend? What if Pete realises how awful I am… how hittable and damageable I am; how deserving of getting hit and damaged I am?
This is it. I’m going to do it. There’s no point in living a life if it isn’t even living, is barely surviving.
I can see the bus coming. I don’t really feel anything, just a kind of acceptance that this is just how it’s meant to be.
Here it comes.
I close my eyes.
I step out.
I scream.
Fuck, it hurts, it burns, it stings, oh my god.
Why aren’t I dead yet?
Why won’t the pain stop?
I can feel it, feel it all; the searing sensation of the gritty road surface pulling my face apart, the constricting feeling of my chest being slammed straight into the road, the pure panic of not being able to see anything or hear anything, of just refusing to die.
I can feel it, feel it like it’s happening and I don’t know how to deal with it. Any of it. Gerard, my parents, that motherfucking bus. I can feel it all and I can’t fucking take it!
“Sugar?”
Fuck, my body feels like it’s on fire; on fire like when the road tore it up. Oh God, I’m burning. I’m all itchy and burning and tearing and stinging and tingling and searing and I can feel it all. I want to just tear my skin off to escape the pain that being me brings.
“Sugar! Sugar, please stop it, you’re going to hurt yourself!”
And I just can’t wake up.
A/N: Thank you very much for reading; I’m sorry if it’s confusing/dragged out/crappy. I didn’t enjoy writing this chapter, I really struggled with parts of it so I hope that it turned out alright. Thank you very much for reading and please review! :)
Mikey’s POV
Oh no. I’ve been stupid again, really fucking stupid.
I’ve let myself sleep. But more than that, I’ve let myself sleep in Pete’s arms.
It’s not that I have any sort of problem with my perfectly affectionate boyfriend, I still can’t help but feel overjoyed whenever I call him that, holding me like Frankie holds Misfit whenever she bounds into bed with him; far from it. With Pete holding me as though he is the oyster and I am the precious pearl locked within the natural walls of his castle that he must protect, I actually feel safe; feel loved like Gerard told me I wasn’t loved; feel more content than I have in a painfully long time. The fact that it’s him who’s holding me is not the problem, far from it, but rather the fact that I’ve been selfish enough to actually fall into the smothering veil of jet-black sleep.
Selfish because I know full well that I will wake up thrashing and screaming, that in doing so in the same bed as Pete, the one person who has never hurt me in any conceivable way, I will end up waking him up; thrashing into him and screaming straight into his ears. I should have lied and told him that I wasn’t happy sharing a bed, should have asked him to sleep in his parents’ room. At least then he would probably sleep through me waking up from the horrendous nightmares that bleach my eyeballs every night, well, on the nights that my body forces me to sleep. But no; me being the selfish little shit that I am, that Pete can somehow see as someone worthy of his embrace, I let myself beg him to not let me sleep alone. It’s not my fault that I got frightened of being left alone in the dark, but it is my fault that I used that fright to make Pete stay with me.
It is my fault that I’m a horrible, selfish, emo-slut who ruins everything for everyone.
Just like Gerard said.
But Pete said that I’m beautiful, that I’m perfect, and that I’m his.
His I may well be, but I’m not beautiful and I’m definitely not perfect. If anything the term ‘Mikey Way’ is the exact antonym of perfect; how can someone so insanely selfish be perfect; how can someone who brings everyone down quicker than a deadweight in a pond be perfect; how can someone too fucked up for a brother’s love be perfect? They can’t; I can’t. Frank’s perfect; he’s always kind and calm and caring, when I’m not making him angry with my big brother. Gerard’s perfect; he’s always honest with me, always tries his hardest and always does what he thinks is right, it’s just that I’m too ungrateful to see that sometimes. Pete’s perfect because he’s, well he’s Pete; twice as perfect than even Frankie and Gerard put together, definitely way too perfect for a selfish, pathetic, ugly motherfucker like me.
I know he called me beautiful, and I adore him all the more for trying to make me feel better with flattery, but I know that I’m not. Really, I’m not. Not on the inside; not on the outside. When you ask someone to define beautiful do scars and hollowed eyes and everything else about me fit their definition? Of course they fucking don’t. But that’s okay, I don’t want to be beautiful; I just want people to not stare at me and laugh at me and yell things at me every time I leave the house. Apart from with Pete by my side, only when Pete is by side, the kids at school rarely even look at me funny; it’s only when I’m not stuck to Pete like we’re two strips of Velcro do they start laying into me like I probably deserve to be laid into. Even Gerard said that I’m ugly. Well, he didn’t say it in those exact words, but he said that Pete doesn’t love me because kids my age can’t see beyond physical appearance, or words to that effect. If Gerard, the person always trying to help me through life no matter how bad I am, says it even though he knows how touchy I can get over my appearance then it must be true. It is. I know it is; I look like a fucking freak, like I belong in a science laboratory or a cage of some description.
But Pete makes me feel beautiful, makes me feel like he sees something beyond what the mirror taunts me with and as long as he sees me as beautiful then that’s all I care about; apart from he doesn’t think I’m beautiful. I know Pete, I know that he’s smart enough to see how ugly I am, I know that he only called me beautiful to cheer me up.
I heard my boyfriend whisper to me as I fell into the current darkness that surrounds me, somewhat similar to the sinister darkness of a cinema before the screening of some hideously violent horror film, I heard him whisper the kind of things that I should be telling him. Things that made me feel safe and secure enough to fall asleep to the rhythm of his steady heartbeat. I love being able to hear my comforter’s heartbeat, it just makes me feel like I’m not alone; makes me certain that they aren’t made-up angels from my imagination nor dead like my parents.
My parents….
Fuck! The surrounding darkness is convulsing with tiny particles of crimson flecks; just like every time I have a nightmare. Apart from they’re not nightmares, I haven’t had an original nightmare for a long while; I’d much rather have the release of a nightmare rather than the searing pain of the flashbacks that haunt me every time I dare to sleep. But seeing as I’m asleep, like the complete retard that I am, and I know that I have no hope of waking up until the end, I have no choice but to relive all of my worst memories; memories that I would much rather were called nightmares.
Because my past frightens me so much more than any bloodsucking monster.
Because my past is all my fault, not that of Fate’s warped sense of humour.
Here we go.
”Mikey, why can’t you take better care of your big brother?” My dad sighs down at me; eyes heavy and disapproving at the stupid twelve-year-old who can’t even make his brother not throw up all over the place rather than in the toilet. “He needs your help, not you sitting there with your headphones in all the time.”
His chastising tone evaporates as he hears the drunk fifteen-year-old groan in his sleep.
I honestly don’t mean to let him get drunk. I just… I just don’t know how to stop it. I try to get him to play videogames with me instead of sulking off to his room to get smashed like he does every night before Mom and Dad get in, but he always says that he’s had a rough day, that he needs to relax in his bedroom, that he’ll play with me tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes.
It’s because he hates me, I know he does. He tells me every time he gets drunk how much I piss him off, how much he wishes I would just leave him the fuck alone, how much of a terrible little brother I am.
“Aw, leave Mikes alone, he didn’t do anything wrong; did you Baby?” My Mom’s camomile voice drifts in, cutting across my silly little whimpers, and she ruffles my hair. “Now, run along to bed, Sweetie. Good boy.”
I run off up the stairs to my room like the coward that Gerard calls me for hiding from him whenever he gets drunk, but just as I reach the staircase I hear Gerard say something that makes my heart break with it’s painful honesty.
“Why’d you always take his side? He’s such a fucking weirdo… Why can’t you take my side for once? Why’d you love ‘im more?”
That was the first time that I realised Gerard really does hate me. He may have been drunk and hurt that Mom was fussing over me, someone that nobody else ever noticed, rather than him, a boy too drunk to be able sit upright, but he was being honest. It’s like his mind had padlocked the truth about me in his obscure want to protect me from it, but alcohol undid that padlock and let me know exactly how much of a shit human being I am.
It hurts, being forced to relieve that old memory of four years ago; of being able to feel the tears dribble down my face and hear the sincere hatred in my big brother’s voice but, if history is to repeat itself, then my reoccurring hell is far from through with me.
The black swirls around again, like the panic churning in my heart, and I feel myself being sucked into another memory of something I’d much rather forget; the first time that Gerard hit me.
I can hear him retching over the toilet, like he’s throwing up the glass containers of what is causing him to puke almost as much as I did at school today after getting beaten up one time to many, I can hear him and I want to help him. Help him like a good little brother.
Apart from I’m not a good little brother; he tells me that every time I get in his way whilst he’s in this state. He screams at me that I’m the ‘worst little brother ever’ and that he wishes I could just ‘fuck off and die’ so that he doesn’t have to act like he likes me all the time. That’s what he said last night, anyway. The night before he didn’t say anything to me, just glared at me when I tried to talk to him, glared like I had some sort of disease that made me disgusting. I am disgusting, disgusting and horrible and ugly and the worst little brother ever.
Why? Because Gerard said so, because Gerard has never lied to me before so why should he start now?
Exactly, he shouldn’t. And he hasn’t. He’s just being honest. But how can I be he’s ‘bestest little buddy’ in the daytime and then be his hated, bastard babyish little brother the second the sun sets and he hits the bottle. Maybe in the daytime I’m better, maybe I fuck up during in the day and he only realises it at night, with the help of his beloved vodka, that I need to be punished.
But I’m going to try again tonight!
Tonight I’m going to be better and everything can go back to normal; he can read me his comic books and we can curl up on my bed through the current storm that’s raging outside. A storm that would be reducing me to a nervous wreck if it wasn’t for the fact that I can hear my big brother throwing his guts up.
“Gee… Are you alright?”
“What the fuck do you think, Momma’s Little Genius?” He spits from the other side of the locked door, resentment thick in his voice. Resentment for the little brother that he would have been holding this time last year because he knows how scary I find storms. But nowhere near as scary as his alcohol abuse. “Huh? Haven’t you got an answer for this one? Does Mikey not know everything after all? Better not let Mom find out, she might see how pathetic you are.”
He’s never said something like that before, something so sincere and slicing and crippling and really fucking excruciating. I collapse against the hallway wall, knees up close and head in my hands, opposite the door blocking me from helping my big brother through his throwing up session. Because I still want to help him, of course I do; he’s my big brother. The only way I can make him not hate me is by doing nice things for him, right?
Well, I’ll be here when he emerges, be here with a hug just for my big bro.
Apart from right now I’m sobbing my heart out, like an abandoned dog howling for it’s owner, and I can’t stop shaking long enough to ask him if he needs anything; let alone am I able to stand and hug him.
“What’s wrong, Mikes?”
It’s him! He’s out and he’s concerned about me and he wants to know what’s wrong and he loves me again and-
Fuck! My jaw!
“Don’t fucking bother me next time, Momma’s Little Angel.”
Did he just… My own big brother just punched me. Hurt me. Hates me.
Just like everyone else.
I can feel the sting of my jaw right now, like it really has just happened all over again. And even though I know this isn’t real, that it’s just something that my own mind despises me enough to put me through again, I’m really fucking scared. Just like I was back then, four years ago when he first started hurting me. Back when he was fifteen and I was twelve, back when I was too fucking stupid to see that I should have just left him alone; after all, if I’m not near him how can I make him mad at me?
I even started to withdraw from Mom, tried to show Gee that I’m not trying to steal his mom away from him; not trying to be the favourite son. Not that I ever was. Mom loved us both equally, just found more opportunities to hug me and kiss me purely because Gerard always shoved her away. As for Dad, well he blamed Gerard’s downward spiral on me; said that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t look after my big brother like I should have, that I wasn’t being a good enough friend to my brother. That killed what last little light of youth I may have had; being told by my own father at the age of thirteen that my brother’s worsening alcoholism and drug addiction was my fault.
Which it was.
Dead by thirteen.
”He’s out of fucking control, Donna!”
I flinch on the stairs, forced there through Gerard having a drunken rampage in my en suite and my parents rowing with each other in the living room. The stairs were the only safe place for me, not up high in the clouds with my dangerously intoxicated big brother nor down in the depths of fiery anger with my parents; just sat in a kind of limbo. Purgatory, I guess. Apart from I know that I’m going to go to Hell because that’s what Gee told me and I know that’s all weak little cowards like me deserve.
“Don’t you think that I know that? He’s my son too, y’know. And speaking of sons, when was the last time you spent some time with Mikey? He needs you too.”
I shudder at my mom’s forever placid voice yelling at my dad, pointing out his lack of love for the quiet, skinny kid who he told a few days ago is an unwanted accident. Unwanted, definitely; unwanted by every-fucking-one. Not Mom, though. Mom wants me. Mom loves me. Mom doesn’t love that I’ve started to go all quiet, started to push her away like Gerard has in an attempt to show Gee that he can have all of our parents’ love if he wants it; he already has my portion of Dad’s care.
“If Mikey took proper care of his brother in the first place then this never would have happened!”
Shut up! Please, stop it, please; I know it’s all my fault, I know I’m a shit little brother, but Gerard’s three years older than me and a hell of a lot stronger. There’s not a lot I could have done to stop him from drinking before it became this bad. But that just makes it even more of my fault; I should have made him happier, should have given him something better to live for than booze and the strange bottles of stuff that he hides under his pillows. I didn’t though, didn’t do a good enough job and now he hates me; now Mom and Dad are saying things like he’ll be lucky to make eighteen if he carries on like this.
“Mikey’s just a confused little kid, Don. Whatcha expect him to do? Besides, you know it’s always Gerard looking out for Mikey, not the other way around.”
Gerard looking out for Mikey. Eldest looking out for youngest. Big brother looking out for baby brother. Like it should be. Yet it isn’t. Not anymore. He hates me and I’m terrified of him. Even when he’s sober I can’t help but be jumpy around him; it’s hard not to when my face, my chest, my entire body sometimes, still hurt from the night before. But he doesn’t even remember, can’t recall any of what he does to me. And that’s the way I want it to stay. The last thing my big brother needs right now is some ridiculous guilt trip over adding to the bruises that the bullies give me. He doesn’t hurt me when he’s sober; in fact when he’s sober or even hung-over he tries to ask me where the bruises come from. He thinks it’s just bullies. And that’s the way it’s going to stay. I don’t want to make him hurt bad enough to drink more.
“Well, maybe that damn kid should grow the fuck up and start acting his age!”
How should a frightened thirteen-year-old act? I am one and I still don’t know. Shows how fucking stupid I am.
I let out a pathetic, raspy sob.
Dad pokes his head out of the living room door, eyes dull and apathetic. Until they rest on me. At which point they flare with a violent fury that makes me shake even harder.
“Have you been listening in?” I nod. “Good. Because it’s true. Gerard’s like this because of you. Because you didn’t stop him.”
Fuck the fact that I’m sixteen, fuck the fact that I’m in Pete’s arms, fuck the fact that Gerard’s been sober for over a year and hasn’t hit me for just as long; fuck the fact that this is some sort of fucked up memory-nightmare. I’m genuinely frightened, petrified, terrified, fearful, guilty, remorseful, miserable, morose, lost, hurt, panicked.
Because, in my mind, it’s all happening right now; all of my worst memories, all of the things that made me cry the most are all happening again.
And I know that I deserve it; all of these events are my fault, so therefore I must deserve to be cursed with them forever. It is my fault that Gerard struggled with three years of addiction, it is my fault that I’m so ridiculously shy, it is my fault that my relationship with Gee isn’t what it should be.
All of it; my fault. I ruin everything. Just like Gerard said. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling like I’m weeping even more than dark cloud on a rainy day. Maybe I am. Is it even possible for someone to cry in their sleep? I hope not. I don’t want to wake Pete up, not just because it would mean robbing him of his rest, but also because it means that he’ll ask questions.
Questions whose answers I really don’t want to remember.
Questions whose answers I can’t forget no matter how hard I try.
I can still remember what day of the week it was when Gerard knocked me out for the first time. It was a Thursday; I can remember that because Mom and Dad didn’t get in until eleven o’clock on Thursday nights. Perhaps if it had been any other day of the week then they would have seen what unfolded. What made me see my big brother in a different light forever.
I’m lying in my bed, fiddling with the Rubik’s Cube that Gee got me for my fourteenth birthday two weeks ago. A day that was filled with Mom and Dad praising him for managing to remain sober the whole day just because he knew how much my birthday means to me. To the stupid little kid of the family. To the bruised, banged-up little bastard who can’t take anymore.
I wonder what Gerard would do if I tell him the truth tomorrow morning when he asks me about the bruises that he’ll undoubtedly give me at some point within the next hour; would he feel bad, or would he be happy to know that I know how he really feels about me? Apart from I know that I won’t ever tell him. Because if I do I run the risk of upsetting him over something that isn’t even his fault.
It’s my fault, I always end up getting in his way or saying something bad to make him angry.
Oh great, I’m crying again. Crying so hard that the colours of my Rubik’s Cube have smudged and distorted through my tear-sodden glasses lenses.
I can hear heavy footsteps, all crashing and smashing along the landing. Here we go again. It’s stupid, I know that I should be used to it by now, two years after that first punch, but I can’t help but feel afraid. He’s my big brother; I don’t want him to beat me! I want him to fix me before I get so broken that I can’t even look anyone in their eyes. Not that I really can anymore anyway, I just get frightened that they’ll see the same side to me that Intoxicated Gerard does, the side that Sober Gerard pretends isn’t there because when he’s sober he’s almost like normal. All caring and cuddles and trying to find out why I cry almost every time he asks me about my blemished face. Because he really doesn’t remember a thing the morning after.
My door swings open and I shrink back into my bed. He looks really bad; all slumping shoulders, bloodshot eyes and unruly black hair. He’s definitely high. Drunk and high. My poor big brother.
Maybe tonight will be different. Maybe tonight he won’t hurt me; maybe he’ll want to be my big brother again. I tell myself that every night, but every night (for that’s how regular it has become) the same thing happens; I get in the way, I make him mad and then he slams me around.
“Mikey… Mikey, whya scared?” His slurred voice almost sounds as miserable as I feel, and I really want to say something to him, but I just can’t. The fear is freezing my vocal chords and self-preservation kicks in; I let out a loud cry of pure terror as he stumbles forward, eyes suddenly furious. “Mikey, whya bein’ a cry-baby? Whya bein’ all pissy wi’me?” He leans forwards with surprising accuracy for someone so far out of it and grabs me forcefully by the collar of my polo shirt, yanking me towards him and shocking more terrified tears from my stunned eyes. “Attention seekin’ Momma’s boy, got everythin’ and you’re still bein’ muthafuckin’ emo.” He snarls right in my face, tendrils of his alcohol-stained breath infesting my nostrils like a plague.
He tugs me fiercely around and slams me into my far bedroom wall. I can hear things cracking, things that aren’t just my wall or my possessions, and blood is filling my mouth before I know it.
He’s never done something this bad before.
I must have been really terrible to deserve this.
“Momma’s Little Genius needs teachin’ by stupid Gee? Love it. Kinda ironic.”
That memory only stops there not because of any small mercies from my own traitorous mind, but because after that I really don’t know what happened. Because after that point he knocked me clean out. I don’t even understand now, two years on, what I did that time that was so awful that I deserved something that bad by the way of punishment. All I do know is that I must have carried on doing things that bad because it sure as fuck wasn’t the last time he made me pass out. The morning after that particular memory Gerard had actually had to come and wake me up because I hadn’t come down for breakfast; when I’d opened my eyes to his own panic-stricken ones I’d started a frenzied struggle to get away from him. Until I realised that, once again, he just didn’t remember. So it wasn’t his fault. And, once again, I made him feel bad; he was a shaking, sobbing wreck at seeing me so bludgeoned and completely battered. I think he thought I was getting the shit beaten out of me at school and that I was trying to hide it from him; so we just held each other. Mom and Dad were already at work, so we took the day off. Gerard insisted on cleaning the bloody gash on my forehead and I probably would have enjoyed his brotherly gesture, had I been able to get rid of the pure panic that his touch bought me. Still brings me.
Panic that has been with me ever since.
What if he hates me? What if he wants to hurt me again for shouting at him, for having a boyfriend that he doesn’t like, for being a foul little brother? What if he beats me up when I go back home for being ungrateful, for being a slut, for ruining everything? What if Frankie hates me too, hates me for making him angry enough to hurt his boyfriend? What if Pete realises how awful I am… how hittable and damageable I am; how deserving of getting hit and damaged I am?
This is it. I’m going to do it. There’s no point in living a life if it isn’t even living, is barely surviving.
I can see the bus coming. I don’t really feel anything, just a kind of acceptance that this is just how it’s meant to be.
Here it comes.
I close my eyes.
I step out.
I scream.
Fuck, it hurts, it burns, it stings, oh my god.
Why aren’t I dead yet?
Why won’t the pain stop?
I can feel it, feel it all; the searing sensation of the gritty road surface pulling my face apart, the constricting feeling of my chest being slammed straight into the road, the pure panic of not being able to see anything or hear anything, of just refusing to die.
I can feel it, feel it like it’s happening and I don’t know how to deal with it. Any of it. Gerard, my parents, that motherfucking bus. I can feel it all and I can’t fucking take it!
“Sugar?”
Fuck, my body feels like it’s on fire; on fire like when the road tore it up. Oh God, I’m burning. I’m all itchy and burning and tearing and stinging and tingling and searing and I can feel it all. I want to just tear my skin off to escape the pain that being me brings.
“Sugar! Sugar, please stop it, you’re going to hurt yourself!”
And I just can’t wake up.
A/N: Thank you very much for reading; I’m sorry if it’s confusing/dragged out/crappy. I didn’t enjoy writing this chapter, I really struggled with parts of it so I hope that it turned out alright. Thank you very much for reading and please review! :)
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