So Long, Not Goodnight

Chapter Sixteen

The sunlight painted the floor and walls bright blues, reds, greens, all the colors of the glass creating a kaleidoscope of the once darkened cathedral. All the pews developed into their lightly shaded wood from the gloomy thickness of night and the candles on the altar appeared smaller, a fraction of the way the illusion of their flames played the night prior. Ruddy, smudged carpet that frayed and gave way to the slatted aisle wiped clean of the soot from after dark. Overturned bibles and fragments of parchment haphazardly decorated the benches and floor just like it was when they had first arrived. The sun rising was the Cinderella effect turning everything back to normal from the cursed church that bustled with terror once the sun had set. They had hours to prepare for another night or to find another place to go.

They had both sat and watched the sun rise without a word or a whisper. Frank not wanting to cut him deeper and Gerard reluctant to confess the next part of his story, but knowing that he needed Frank to understand as best as he. Gerard snuck a glance at Frank staring out the window. His face was haloed in a canary yellow with a stripe of green that just struck over his top lip. Knees tucked between the cradle of his two hands whose fingers latticed between one another holding the denim and cotton of his jeans that were tight against his pelvis and hugging his calves. The tops of his naked feet dangled together, muscle taut against his held pose puckering the skin and exposing the tops of his metatarsals. Gerard made his way back up to his exposed torso, up his tattooed neck to the stubble that appeared overnight and dotted up to his chin. 

"You aren't going to tell me, are you?" Frank was still staring out the window as Gerard shamefully pulled his eyes away from him.

"I don't want to," Gerard reached over and took Frank's hand in his. "But I have to."

As soon as their fingers latched, reality clashed with nightmare as Frank felt himself looking into the crawling black globes of Gerard's cut up face smiling up at him. He felt his knuckles slice open and pool between their connected skin and the black bile a tidal wave crashed over him. Then everything went back to daylight, to them holding hands, Gerard's hazel eyes as they always were. "Oh, Frankie, did I upset you?" The concern worried lines into Gerard's forehead and around his eyes. 

Frank cleared his throat. "Not at all, Gee." He flexed the corners of his mouth up, clamping his lips together. 

Gerard sighed and gripped Franks hand tighter as Frank settled his thoughts that he wasn't back inside his own head. As Gerard opened his mouth to speak, it was like they had both travelled back in time in the detail to about nine years or so ago, his confession so clear and concise as though it were just moments ago and not thousands of days. 

*

"How are you sleeping, Gerard?" Her voice was as soothing as she made it sound.

Doctor Lindsey, his therapist, watched him closely, pen in hand and his thick file in her lap. "I barely am." His eyes were closed as he wanted to scream all that had happened out, whisper his confession into her ear, but he couldn't.

"Have you been taking your pills?" The sound of the ballpoint against paper scratched so loudly into him, it reminded me of the gravel against his fingernails.

After the first night of medication, he remembered laying completely paralyzed beneath his sheets, his body pinned to his mattress like an insect. He couldn't see anything, not really, but he had this feeling that he wasn't alone. That feeling followed him everywhere; to and from school, into the shower, in the car with his family, and it loomed in the dark corners of his room late at night. "I was," His mouth felt dry and chapped. "But... They made me see things."

"What kind of things?"

"Have you ever felt like... Like something was watching you?"

The pen began again, scratching parchment, causing Gerard to shudder. "So they were also making you paranoid?"