Goner (Patrick Stump/FOB Short Story ft. Tyler Joseph)

Chapter 10

"I'm dead," I repeated myself in defeat, the memories of that fateful night flooding back to me. I moaned out of frustration and leaned forward, covering my face with my hands as I began to cry, starting to truly come to terms with the truth.

My wife just stared at me, not understanding what was going on. The two ghosts who'd picked me up off of the streets stared at me too, however, they understood what was going on, probably better than any one of us. "Patrick, w-what are you talking about?" She finally stammered, finding the words she was struggling to discover before.

"I made a mistake," I mumbled, my words barely audible over the sharp intakes of breath, "I-I stupidly let myself go and...and I died because of it!"

"But you're here," Elisa stated incredulously, "I can see you, I can touch you!"

"It's because I want you to," I explained under my breath, slowly lifting my head out of my hands to reveal my reddened and glistening sunken-in eyes, "That's how it works. If I want you to see me, to touch me, you can. But if I don't, you can't."

The woman I married with the intent of spending the rest of my life with tilted her head down, twiddling her thumbs in her lap. Silence fell over the house for a moment or two before she broke it, asking, "Pete said you called him. So if you're..." She couldn't bring herself to say it, just like I hadn't been able to before this. "...how could you call him? How could he hear you? How could you pick up a phone?"

I glanced back over my shoulder at the doorway that Tyler and Allie were standing in. However, the two were no longer there.

"Does anyone else know?" Elisa inquired, leaning toward me ever so slightly and looking at me with wide, concerned eyes.

My eyes trailed back over to the curly-haired beauty I was lucky enough to call mine and I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know."

"What's going to happen when they find out?" She continued her seemingly never-ending stream of questions. I couldn't blame her though. Had our positions been switched, I would be just as confused and frustrated as she was. Hell, even in the positions we were in, I was confused and frustrated. I still didn't fully understand what was going on; how it all worked out. All I understood was that I was never coming home. I was never going to be me again. The world that Patrick Stump once knew, and at one point even loved, was no longer.

"Patrick," I heard my name be whispered from behind me. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Allie standing over me, a folded-up newspaper clenched tightly in her hands. I wondered if Elisa could see her, she must've been able to. Otherwise my wife wouldn't have found me. "Can you come with me for a second?"

"I'm kind of in the middle of a conversation," I retorted in a hushed voice, flickering my eyes in Elisa's direction. She was staring at Allie, her eyebrows knit together as she reconsidered the first impression she had of the girl who'd picked her up at the airport.

She seemed so real then, when the blonde who Elisa had never seen before approached her and told her that she was there to take her to her husband. She seemed so real when the two of them rode in the backseat of a taxi down the streets of the Los Angeles together, creating small talk over meaningless topics to pass the time. And she seemed so real when she blocked the doorway, not wanting to let Elisa in, and was pushed aside because there was nothing that was going to stop the couple from seeing one another.

"I know you are, and I'm sorry for interrupting, but this is kind of really important," Allie stressed, her lips stretched out into a thin line and her eyes begging me to agree to go with her.

"Allie, I-"

"You can go, Pat," Elisa cut me short, attracting both of our attentions. She nodded her head in affirmation and feigned a grin I knew she was only sporting to convince me that she was okay with this. "I'll be here waiting for you."

I bit my lip, debating on whether or not to believe her. However, I didn't have time to make a decision before Allie thanked her and pulled me up from the couch, dragging me out of the room and into the front hallway where Tyler was standing, a sorrowful expression marking his face.

"What is it, you guys?" I shouted at them as quietly as I could manage, "My wife is in there and I don't think she's going to be sticking around for much longer, so this better be-"

"They found you," Tyler muttered.

My eyebrows furrowed, my brain trying to process and understand what I was just informed about. "They found me?" I repeated.

Allie pulled out the newspaper she and Tyler were looking at before and handed it to me. I snatched it out of her possession and unfolded it, giving the paper a quick snap before glancing down and seeing the picture of me sitting in the alleyway I died in printed in black and white. The scene wasn't gruesome enough to be excluded from the paper, even with the vomit staining the front of my shirt and the grime that clung to the wall behind me and the pavement beneath me. My eyes doubled in size.

"They found me," I said in disbelief, my gaze lifting up from the periodical and meeting Allie and Tyler's, "Does that means..."

The two of them nodded their heads.

I pointed over my shoulder. "So she..."

They shrugged their shoulders.

"What about..."

"We're sorry, Patrick," Allie apologized. For what? I didn't know at the time. All she did was step forward and give me a hug, her voice muffled by my shirt as she told me, "You're welcome to stay here as long as you want, though."

"Yeah," The former lead singer of twenty one pilots blurted out, backing up the dead girl he'd become acquainted with's claim, "The more the merrier, right?"

I stood there in Allie's arms for a moment or two, my body tense and my mind trying to wrap itself around the new turn in this situation.

Before I was just dead, walking aimlessly around Los Angeles and trying to find my place. No one knew that I had passed but me, Allie, and Tyler, and even then I didn't even really know. But now? Now the whole world knew.

Tears began to waver in my eyes and I held onto Allie tighter, my lip quivering and my vision growing blurry.

This was it.

There was no more question about it.

I'd died.

I was gone.