November 1st (Frerard)

31: Wednesday, October 31st

Gerard wasn't entirely sure why he had listened to Frank, perhaps it was simply something about how guilty he felt knowing that Frank sat by him: uttering unaware that he'd be gone in less than forty eight hours, and indeed in less than twenty four now, for it was October 31st, and somehow, it didn't quite feel real.

But he had listened to Frank, and he'd allowed him to drag him home, and he'd watched Kat's face light up in a concoction of shock and delight, and he'd watched as Kat narrowly resisted the urge to utterly disrespect his personal space and pull him into a hug right then and right there, but the three of them had just stood in an odd kind of captivating silence in the kitchen: as if the world around them had grown to a halt in that very moment, and in all honestly, Gerard just wanted to run, to go and lock himself up in his room: a place he'd sworn to himself that he'd never see again, but the world had a funny way of working, and perhaps he did owe Frank and Kat this at least: one last day, his last day, and he'd attend Frank's party and he'd smile and he'd pretend, and indeed everything would be okay with the simple knowledge of what was to come in the morning.

He'd eventually just walked into his bedroom and locked the door behind him, catching the sounds of badly muffled and suppressed yelling from the kitchen: the voices of Kat and Frank, and the subject none other than Gerard himself, and he wasn't at all surprised, and in truth, he didn't care nearly as much as he should have done. He sat there, in his room and let them argue, let the world fall into chaos around him, because here he was, and his death was very much a fixed point and drawing closer and closer by the minute, and everyone lay so naive and unaware.

And Gerard was sorry, but not sorry enough: only sorry because he felt compelled to be so, not sorry because there might have ever been an ounce of regret within him. And in the most blatant truth, Gerard wasn't really sorry at all. And that was okay, because no one would ever have to know.

Come the morning of the 31st: the final day in October, the final day of his final month: a simple twenty four hour countdown, and indeed a means to an end, Gerard sat on bed his bed at nine in the morning, having surprised himself by getting a good eight hours sleep that night, but in truth, he had found himself to be awfully tired yesterday, as there was something about wasting away in the middle of nowhere that was indeed nowhere near as appealing as letting his home fade away around him, as he looked out onto the ocean and found comfort in every single shade of blue he saw.

Gerard was content and perfectly ready for what was to come; he'd found that Kat had finally emptied his draw of pills, but that wasn't an issue, it wasn't an issue at all, in fact, in the odd sense of euphoria that Gerard found taking over his final day, nothing seemed to matter at all.

He had his letters: completed and fine tuned finally, and he had the picture of himself: a picture he'd taken up by a tree upon the hill, and a message scrawled upon the bottom of the polaroid in black marker pen: 'October, G.W. - 'The End'. He glanced over his darkened hazel eyes, and his hair: dark and strewn across his face messily, and the way the colour had almost been drawn completely from his cheeks, and to some degree, he did indeed look dead in that state.

And most importantly, he had Frank's birthday gift, which was perhaps not something Frank might have expected out of his emotionally drained wreck of a boyfriend- Gerard stopped his train of thought to ponder the fact that Frank wouldn't have a boyfriend come tomorrow-... to produce, yet Gerard had laboured over an A5 sized painting of the sea, upon which two black silhouettes stood by the shore, and Gerard knew as he'd created it, that this was what Frank had, and this was what Frank would treasure and remember him by, and somehow, suddenly, his art held worth and impact and meaning to the world, and indeed a part of him wished that it just didn't have to be this way.