Peroxide (Peterick)

this entire thing is just one big shitpost

                  

Sweltering tears trample my skin as they're bombarded by the breeze from the door when it's shoved open, and the world suddenly isn't so exquisite anymore.

The birds' tongues have been severed, then deposited into a roaring flame so that they may no longer sing. The trees are stationary, their roots' purpose finally discovered as one to hold the oaks in place. The air screams in anguish for a reprieve that is more permanent than it hoped for.

You're going to a mental hospital, psycho, right where you belong.

I fucking know, but I know after the middle-man told me. My own mother wants to lock me up, as if that's not what I've been doing to myself for five years, and she didn't even inform me of the plan. Am I not entitled to my own future?

Ever since I was a kid, I dreamt of what life would be like as a young adult, and not once did I consider what it's like for me right now. Not once did I think I'd be forced into daily medication and doctors. Not once did I think I would hallucinate voices in my head. Not once did I think I would be under continuous surveillance. Not once did I think I would be sent to a mental institution.

I familiarized myself with football teams and school dances, with movie nights and laughter. I didn't ask for this.

And through all of the pandemonium catapulting around the mind that turned out much different than I would've desired, a crimson-haired lad of eighteen approaches me, a smile chiseled into his feline lips that soon disappears due to my obvious strife.

Gerard fucking Way, the life-ruiner as a result of his chronic grin — and the last person I'd expect to see standing outside of a psychologist's office at four in the afternoon.

"Hey, Patrick!" the teenager greets, sliding his hipster frames farther up his slim nose with the same fingers he employs to shake my hand, not bothering to mention my tears throughout the journey, because I'm sure he recognizes that I'll never open up to anyone.

After the formality, my fists condense and camouflage in my pockets, awaiting the direction of the conversation. "Is there a reason why you're here? I don't mean to be rude, but my friends usually don't show up after my psychology sessions."

Who are you kidding? You don't even have friends, you psycho.

Gerard clasps his hands together to signal the call into discussion. "Ah, yes, right, sorry. Seeing as it's winter break, I'd like to invite you to my lake house in Caribou (that's in Maine, just in case you were wondering)."

The Ways aren't particularly rich, surfing on the spectrum of the middle class, but they managed to score a deal — whose specifics are beyond me — and won the house, but Maine is a couple hours away, so the property hasn't been utilized often.

Now Gerard's unearthed the perfect chance, but my requital isn't so proclaimed in my demeanor as it should be.

"You've been such a great friend to me, with picking up Mikey from daycare and being amazingly supportive of my art, so I wanted to thank you," the guy elaborates, fortifying himself to hear the final verdict, but the ambition flickers on and off. "What do you think? Are you coming?"

My stomach twists into an immovable knot, but a compromise is speedily regurgitated. "Can my friend come?"

I had predicted an uneasy expression from Gerard, but all that's projected is surprise. "It's fantastic that you've met someone else, and as my mother always says, a friend of you is a friend of me." The boy laughs jovially. "Of course he can come. Do you want to text him?"

I fetch the phone from my pocket, unlocking it with a sheltered geography near my chest so that no one can see what I typed. Searching through my contacts until I find a one named "the neighborhood gay kid", I draft a brief message to him, vague enough to keep him intrigued.