Before Killing Was Cool ➊ FRERARD

11: More Blood Than Necessary

C h a p t e r | E l e v e n

Present Day - Frank

Gerard isn't the same after realising he's really lost Mikey.

Even after we hauled our groceries to the kitchen, light-hearted and in a collectively good mood for once, it was never going to last. It changes him, knowing that nobody is coming to look for him, especially not his little brother. There's no hope left.

He mopes around Ray's house with a storm cloud over his head. The bags under his bloodshot eyes are permanent. The depression he feels comes in floods, relentless, suffocating, oceans of tears that drown him. I don't know how to help.

He spends most of him time curled up on the sofa with his - Ray's - sketchbook, mindlessly feathering his pencil across the pages. Sometimes he sings, and sometimes he writes what he sings. He clutches the book like it's his life, and at night, he cries. He doesn't talk to me, only Ray, occasionally.

It's been a month we've been on the road. Weeks I've watched him suffer, speechless. It gets worse. He shivers and mutters Mikey's name when he's talking to himself, almost in a trance. I bet he does it in his sleep. It's been twenty-eight days since I took him, and today, I hear his voice clearly for the first time in a long while.

"Why don't you just kill me?" He mutters monotonously. "I'm better off dead, to everyone."

"That's it," I snap, stubbing my cigarette out in Ray's ashtray (turns out he doesn't mind me smoking), and Gerard barely looks up, "I don't know what to do, Gee. You're obviously depressed and I don't know how to handle it! Just tell me what I have to do to make this right." I clutch my hair with my fists.

"Shoot me," he suggests with a shrug.

I gape at him. "What about Mikey; you're just going to leave him?"

"He already thinks I'm dead, Frank."

"Would you do it yourself, Gee?" I change my tactics and talk through my teeth.

He watches me with distracting hazel eyes and hesitates before answering in a hauntingly cool voice. "Would that make you happy?"

"Goddamn it, no!" I slam my fist down on the coffee table. "I don't want you to die!"

"What else do you plan on doing with me?" He lets out a humourless chuckle. "Will I be your prisoner for the rest of our lives? Will you always have to worry about me trying to escape, locking my bedroom door at night, taking me everywhere you go? Will you live out your days in constant fear that someone will recognise us? What am I to you other than a liability? In case you haven't noticed, I don't have much to live for at the moment."

"Gerard." I'm struggling to keep my temper in check and I start to see red. It's one thing for me to act so carelessly with my own life, to jeopardise it by going into a high-school with a gun, but to hear him lose the spark and energy in his tone ruins me.

"For God's sake, give me the shotgun and I'll do it myself." He rolls his eyes. "You said it yourself; soon they'll be looking for a corpse and, well, now they are, if they're even looking."

I give him no warning before I grab him by the scruff of the neck and slam him against the wall, watching him shrink underneath me and his eyes widen.

"I see you're bitter about the fact I haven't left you to rot in a ditch already," I say, scarily calm, "and I'm not going to lie, it would make things a hell of a lot easier if you were. But I refuse to let you go and you're just going to have to deal with it, Gerard, because in all honesty I don't know what I'm going to do to you if I hear you speaking so gleefully about your own death again, so go ahead and let your anger out on me then you're going to shut up and you better start treasuring your damn existence. Understand?"