Gerard Way one shot: Watercooler romance

Watercooler Romance

I watch as the sky darkens, turning from grey to grey, colours mixing like ink and water as the sun cowers, scared behind the clouds. Buildings rise up, piercing through the veil of mist and drizzle. They're grey too. And the people, their heads lowered, watching the downpour crash to the floor and collect in puddles, which ruins their new, ash coloured shoes.

I shuffle through the crowd, staring into each face as I pass it. Male or female, black or white, beautiful or ugly, their expressions are the same. Bored. Because life is boring. Especially for me.

I work in a small cramped office with nothing more than a a single computer and a chest of draws. I couldn't even tell you who I work for or what I do. All I know is that I sit there, plugging in numbers from six until nine until my cancer finally kills me.

The bus is red. Rose red. Firetruck red. Blood red. My-hair-that-I-dyed-the-other-day red. A passionate bloom of colour in this water-painted city. I'm a minute late. A minute off schedule and so I need to run to catch the bus, my worn boots making momentary craters in the endless puddles. I don't bother to smile at the driver as he hands me my ticket and he doesn't either, simply nodding at me before placing the cheap paper into my hand.

"Thanks," I say in a monotone, not wanting him to get the wrong idea, but also much to lazy to bother putting emotion into my voice.

"S'alright," He replies, sounding vaguely harassed. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything.

I don't sit at the front of the bus because that's where you sit if you're old, or disabled, and I don't want people to make assumptions about me. But I don't sit at the back either because that's where all the chavs and the hipsters and the cool people sit, blasting out their music without a care in the world. I am not cool. I dislike cool people and I never want to be cool. Not ever.

So I compromise by sitting in the middle, between a guy who forgot to shave today and a woman with cigarettes in her pocket.

I sit silently through the whole dull journey, watching the rain batter the windscreen, and listening to the relentless roar of the wind mixed in with the faint, upbeat music, drifting like a bad smell through the bus. I even ignore the woman in the seat in front of me, who keeps winking at me. Each time she does it, she raises her eyebrow; adding more wrinkles to her already lined forehead.

I am twenty-five years old and this is my life.

A jigsaw puzzle of days that are all identical and nights that have me sitting on my bed, making bracelets with beads of blood that circle my wrist or even pressing a gun into my forehead.

Is it better to die of boredom or self-hatred or cancer?

Is it better to make a decision, even if it means walking down a path you don't want to take, or to wait until all your choices are taken away from you?

Because at the moment I'm waiting. Waiting until the tumour in my brain finally kills me.

I get off the bus at same stop that I always do, without even a nod to the driver. I don't want to talk to him, and he doesn't want to talk to me. So why bother being polite?

It's still raining. I pull my hood up, watching the water fall off my hood, a wall between me and the rest of the world. Because I don't fit in here. I Don't fit in anywhere.

I dig my fingernail into my wrist, savouring the pain that frazzles my nerves. I run my finger down the razor in my pocket.

No. Not now. I can't let her see me like that.

I walk quicker, impatient to get to the worst and best part of my day. In a way this second of my day is the only thing I live for.

The crowd thins as we get into downtown New York. My building is right on the edge. Not even a skyscraper. Reluctantly, I open the colourless metal and glass door.