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Chapter Two – Endless (K)night

Mikey’s POV





He pushed me.

No.

I pushed him; pushed him with my pathetic little squeal and petrified frozenness. Pushed him into thinking that my life is worth more than his, even though I myself am sick of the stupid little routine that my existence has faded into. But with Ray it’s different, with Ray it’s like I’m just a normal kid again because he doesn’t see all of the fresh bruises and faded scars as my fault; he sees them as something that makes me all the more huggable to arms that should never have to cradle a weak little bastard like me. Arms that should never have knocked me out of the road, onto the ground in such an urgent way that it made whimper in fear of the memories that such harsh contact causes to churn at the back of my mind like a restless volcano of memories that soon became hazes due to the numerous concussions and contusions that those memories themselves resulted in.

Ray pushed me out of the way of the bus, saved me for the billionth time since I’ve known him, and as a result I’m perched on the hard, unforgiving plastic chairs of the A and E waiting room; waiting to hear if my boyfriend, the one person who really understands me to the extent where I don’t even need to use words with him if I don’t want to, is fighting for his life in some clinical, horrible hell of a room. Because of me. Because I’m too fucking stupid to be able to look after myself. Too fucking stupid.

Just like Mom and Dad used to say, said that they had to knock some sense into me. Apart from it didn’t work. I’m still just some dumb fuck in need of a good pounding for wrecking everything that everyone around me has. I’m like some sort of black hole, just consuming all light and happiness from anyone who gets too close.

Take Gee for example; I make him sad all of the time. I never mean to, honest I don’t, but I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve fallen asleep to the sound of him whimpering whenever he thinks that I’m already out for the count, I hear him sobbing to Bert about me because I’m too much of a weak little weirdo to show my big brother that I really am alright now; that he doesn’t have to worry about me because it really isn’t that much of a big deal. Loads of parents hit their kids, right? I mean, sure, not a lot of kids have been knocked out by their own father, but he’s my dad; I know that he loves me really, that he just hurt me for my own good.

Right?

Ray says that my parents were wrong, that I have to listen to him and Gerard when they tell me that I’m better than getting hit, even though I always did something to warrant it. Ray holds me and strokes me and kisses me until I actually believe him, at least for a little while. He makes me feel like I really did do the right thing by letting him see my bruises, by letting my big brother take me home with him and get our parents arrested.

No. They were just giving me what I deserve, what I need in order to be able to learn how not to be what I am; a fuck-up. Maybe if I was still with them then I wouldn’t be here right now, sat in the stew of panic and sorrow and anguish and pain and disinfectant that makes up Belleville A and E. Maybe Ray wouldn’t have been carried in by paramedics, paramedics who had to keep reminding me that I need to breathe, that it looks worse than it is. I don’t want to think about how it looked, my heart shrivels even more into itself at just the thought of even trying to recall it, yet at the same time I can’t get it out of my head; the way that his eyelashes were matted together with his platinum blood, as though agony itself was sewing shut the two things left on this world that are still capable of giving me some degree of hope; the way that his skin had an almost eerily pale glow to it due to the way that his ruby life force was dousing it like coal dust on a canary; the way that he wasn’t breathing in the right way, that he was breathing in a way that I’m all too familiar with, in a way that means the type of excruciating agony that comes with having a fair few broken ribs; the way that he looked so… Not like Ray.

Not like the boyfriend who’s always ready with a great big bear hug should I want; not like one of the two people who I actually let touch me pretty much whenever they want without actually running away in fear of what that contact might mean. I know that I sound immature and childish and stupid and in need of a good punch, but I can’t help it; I don’t want to get knocked out again, I don’t want to have my blood splattered across the carpet like out-of-date strawberry sauce ruining a perfectly made meringue. And I know that Ray and Gee won’t hurt me; I honestly believe them when they say that they’ll never hurt me for as long as they live, but it’s just a case of ‘what if’. What if I mess up again? What if I let them down? What if they suddenly realise that their caresses can and probably should be chastises? What if my parents get out and get me like I know that they will? What if something clicks in their heads and they stop loving me?

I fidget in my too-small chair, staring blankly down at the linoleum floor and trying to blink back the tears that long since deserted my ugly eyes; eyes that are surrounded by bruises from my earlier encounter with the bullies. The bullies who don’t give a shit that I howl like a dying dog every time they so much as raise their voices at me, let alone kick the shit out of me like they do every Wednesday. It’s just how it is; people like me were made to be punching bags because we’ll never be good for anything else.

Dad told me that. And he’s right; just like always. He was never anything but honest with me and for that I’m grateful, at least now I understand my place in the world I can’t set myself up for disappointment in the form of longing for better. Besides, I think that I’ve got it pretty good; I live in a nice house with two very nice people, even if Bert does have a tendency to make me feel more than a little frightened half of the time, and I have a beyond nice boyfriend.

What if that becomes ‘I had a beyond nice boyfriend’; what if he dies and it was me that killed him?

“Michael? Where’s Ray?” A shrill voice drills into my swamp-like silence, smashing all calmness that I may have just been retaining; it’s Mrs Toro, a woman who seems to hate me just as much as my own parents do when I’m bad. “What the hell did you do to him?”

This is my fault, isn’t it?

Of course it is; if I wasn’t such a terrible fuck-up then Ray wouldn’t have had to push me out of the way; if I hadn’t have crumbled like a cookie in the hands of a giant then I’d still be with my parents, people who would never have let this happen; if I wasn’t so selfishly stupid then I wouldn’t be sat here, choking on the stench of death and feeling very much like I’m about to run out of panicked rasps.

I ping my head up to be met with the sight of a huge, thundering woman towering over me just like… Just like my mom did the last time she hit me.

I can remember it so clearly; it was because I pulled a funny face at her, she’d said with alcohol stained words. I don’t remember looking at her in any way different from what I normally did, but I must have done or else she wouldn’t have slapped me hard enough to make my head feel like it was about to roll clean off; wouldn’t have kicked me with the razor-like points of her stilettos; wouldn’t have yelled at me as though she was the sun telling the moon off for being out in the daytime. I was always being bad for her and Dad, I always deserved what they gave me. They wouldn’t have done it if I was a good boy; they just love me and want me to turn out good. But no-one else sees it like that, not even Bert, and everyone just hollers at me whenever I try to point out that it wasn’t abuse; that they never hurt me just for the sake of hurting me. They did it because I made them, because they loathe me and who I am.

They said so.

“What’re you whimpering about? You’re not the one in the goddamn operating theatre!” She barks at me, her hands resting so harshly into her hips that they will probably leave stark imprints in her sandy skin.

Her words pierce through me like an arrow blunt enough for the agony of her words to be dragged out and unforgettable; because she’s absolutely right. I’m being some stupid, ignorant little bitch whilst her son, my boyfriend, is fighting to stay alive amidst the damage that was caused more by my own stupidity than any speeding school bus. And she’s shouting at me, staring me down with bullet-like eyes; eyes that convey to me exactly how much she loathes me, not just for getting her son into this mess but because she knows who I am. She knows that I have a reputation as a ‘problem child’, as the local freak and attention-seeking emo kid so it’s only natural for her to hate me, right? Even Ray admits that his mother despises me, although he doesn’t put it exactly like that; he just says that she’ll realise that I’m a lovely person and then she’ll be sorry that she was ever not nice to me. Whenever Ray goes on like that, like I’m actually a lost cause worth finding, I usually just tune out. Not because I’m bored of hearing his words; it’s just that I know if I listen to him and properly absorb his views then I know that I’ll cry like the pathetic little shit that I am. Cry because I know why he feels like he has to say those beautiful lies to my hate-corked ears. He only says it because he thinks that it’s what I need to hear, that if I don’t then I’ll relapse to who I was a few months ago; but that can never happen.

Because, deep down, I still am the exact same shaking, broken mess of a person that I was a few months ago; the person who can’t look anyone in the eye or stand to so much as be in a room with another human being because, if the past is anything to go by, that human being is most likely going to hit me. Hurt me. Make me scream and bleed and concuss. If my own parents are more than willing to make me do those things, then why shouldn’t anyone else be?

Because Ray says that it’s wrong. Because Gerard says that people who hurt kids are monsters. Because Ray says that I’m better than that.

But right now Ray could already be dead and it’s all my fault; even his mom, a full-grown adult, agrees with me on that one.

“I’m sorry.” I whisper, my voice blotted by my never-ending barrage of relentless tears that just won’t stop blocking my trachea. As a general rule I don’t normally talk unless I have to, that way I give people less reasons to want to hit me, but an apology is the very least that I owe Mrs Toro.

She just laughs.

The kind of laugh that clearly states her utter contempt that only Ray and Gerard don’t have for me. She leans down to be right in my face, her perfume infecting my nose like the all too familiar stench of the alcohol that was a constant to my nasal passages just months ago, and locks me with such a harsh stare that I can’t help but press my body against the back of the chair as though I want it to simply swallow me up. I do want that; at least if I got suckered into oblivion I wouldn’t have go through being yelled at or being constantly on edge through my never-lapsing fear of being hit. Because right now, with this extremely intimidating shadow of a woman breathing in my face, getting slapped or punched or spat at is a very real possibility. A possibility that, although I know I deserve, I don’t think that I can cope with right now.

So I pull the hood of my Anthrax hoodie, the one that Ray got me a few weeks ago because I looked like I ‘needed cheering up’, tighter around my negativity-contorted expression, wincing as it both rubs against my fresh black-eye and as the smell of Ray wafts from it’s sacred fabric straight into my dry-blood-clogged nose.

How can something so precious make me hurt so much?

Oh yeah, because I deserve it.

“I knew that you were trouble from the second I laid eyes on you; acting like everything revolves around you. Always pawing at my boy, acting like a little slut. Well, look where it’s got him; I bet you pushed him, didn’t you? Just for the attention. I knew you were trouble, you little sh-“

“Hey! You leave him alone, Lady!”

Before I can even process what’s going on, Gerard has pushed Mrs Toro out of the way and is kneeling in front of me with eyes so full of worry that it makes my heart twist in guilt purely because I know that I caused it; that I can’t make it better because I’m too much of a sobbing wreck to be able to do so. I have quite honestly never been more relieved to see my big brother; the one family member I have left who hasn’t turned on me for making my parents go to jail even though I didn’t have any say in the matter. He’s got his arms open out to his sides, making it obvious that I can do what every part of my body other than my head is telling me to; I can hug him. So I do. I just fall forward straight into him where I proceed to convulse with the force of my sobbing, wincing a little as the first of his back-strokes takes me by surprise but I cover up the wince with an impressive speed even for me; I can’t let him think that I’m scared of him.

I’m not; it’s just that my mind has some sort of mental block when it comes to physical contact, like my mind instantly interprets any touch as being a threat. Because, nine times out of ten, it is. Yet that doesn’t mar the sanctity of Gerard’s brotherly embrace, the way that he’s knelt on the icy floor of the waiting room and just letting me cling to him as though he doesn’t care that my tears are making a huge damp patch on his t-shirt; like he’s proud to be holding a freak like me. Like he loves me as much as I want to believe he does. As much as his soothing hushes and soft circles are making me feel like he does.

But it wasn’t Gerard who shouted at Mrs Toro; it was a fuming Bert McCracken.

“What the fuck did he ever do to you, huh?” Bert all but growls at her, surprising me with how far he’ll go to defend me; a person who he’s made no secret of not being a huge fan of. Not that I can blame him, in fact I wouldn’t be at all shocked if he were to ever hit me.

So why the fuck is he sticking up for me?

Maybe he really does care.

But why?

“Mrs Toro? I need to have a word.” At the alien, clinical voice I force my face out of Gerard’s shoulder just in time to see the lion-maned woman being led into a small side-room by a man, a doctor I think, in a white coat.

Shortly followed by Bert flinging himself restlessly into a chair a few seats away from my own with such a force that it makes me flinch before I can even think about trying to suppress the frightened little squeak of terror that it surprises from my quivering lips, just adding to my anxieties; because that doctor is most likely talking about my Ray, about my boyfriend, and for all I know it could be bad news, the kind of news that will mean my death as well as his.

At that thought I howl harder into my big brother, all comfort that his experienced hands was delivering to me completely washed away by this new wave of panic. The kind of panic that means I honestly don’t care about the fact that I’m bawling like a baby in a public place; Ray’s more important to me than any form of embarrassment.

“It’s okay, Mikes, it’s all gonna be okay.” Gerard whispers in the kind of tone that makes me feel like I’m his little baby, that he has to do anything within his willpower to make me safe and to protect me; not that I honestly think that he would. Why should he? But that doesn’t stop me from savouring how reassuring his medicinal words are to my diseased ears. “Wanna tell me what happened?”

What should I say; should I tell him that I was too much of a motherfucking coward to move out of the way of an oncoming bus? Or should I lie, make out like this isn’t all my fault because I really don’t want to lose my brother’s golden embrace, the cuddle that makes everything seem a little less terrible just because my big brother is right here with me. Just like old times.

“Bus.” I squeak out, before dissolving into another fit of piteous hysterics.

I can’t tell him. I just can’t. I don’t want to lose the only part of my family I have left; the one part of my childhood that still fills me with thoughts of warm hugs and hot cocoa.

I hear Bert sigh from a few feet away and, if I didn’t know any better, I would almost correlate his sigh with sympathy; the kind that I’ve only ever had from Bert a handful of rare and brief times. Times that we never speak of because Bert really does hate me deep down, just like everyone other than Ray and Gee quite rightly does.

“Shush, little brother, it’s alright; I’ve got you.” He kisses my forehead, making me fall further into his teddy-bear hold. “Ray’s strong, he’ll pull through. I just know it.”

“Promise?” I mewl up at him, instantly scolding myself for sounding so childish; so utterly hopeless. But I need to know, I have to know how much Gee believes what he’s saying before I can even consider relaxing into the idea of optimism.

”Promi-“

His vital response, a response full of pure benevolence and hope, is cut short by a noise that I really don’t want to be hearing; Mrs Toro’s deafening scream rattles through me like a runaway train. Because I know exactly what that scream means.

And, judging by the way Gerard holds me even tighter, so does my ever-optimistic big brother.

“No! My baby! My boy! He can’t be dead; it should be that little freak out there, not my little boy!”

She’s right.





A/N: Thank you very much for reading; I hope that this was alright! Alas, Ray is gone. I miss him already. Anyway, thanks for reading and please review! :)