From the Ashes, You Crawl

Chapter Eighteen; Flashback

Gerard had a dream towards the end of it all, a month before Frank's passing. He had a dream that had scared him when he had it, but he did not know why. Towards the end, his dreams started to become clearer as he lost himself more and more. He knew he was about to die when, finally, when his dreams were less desolation and more calm. A healthy man would dream of death in a world full of it. A dying man would dream of clarity.

His dreams were crystal.

-

In his dream, the glass was sucked back into the window from the floor. He could see tiny milimeter sized shards rising and falling back into the pane. His body rose from his old sofa, the rag returned to his hand, the flash was whipped from the room, like a backwards camera flash.

In his dream, skin pulled back onto faces instead of melting off, making people look normal. Puddles of people reconfigured into humans. Shadows blown onto the sides of buildings took the shape of people, their bodies appearing as they stepped back into their very last actions before the bomb had exploded. The little girl missing half of her face, turned and appeared again with her face full, hair long and brown, clothes in tact, a smile on her face.

The fire and smoke disappeared, wafting away until they didn't exist. The screams faded away, drawn out and emptying until they were only words. Blurred, strange words that Gerard could not understand. People's faces Gerard had never seen before. They were smiling.

Smiles.

Gerard blinked a found himself frozen and falling in the air in the bathroom he once knew, clear pills motionless around him, arms open. He expected to fall, but he did not. He was still, entirely still, body in mid-fall, foot slick with his own blood. Gerard closed his eyes, wishing to embrace the sure pain, but it never came.

Gerard next found himself sitting above his mother, hands pressed over a pillow on her face. The knitting needle gripped in her hand and plunged into his right leg. Gerard gasped, but much to his surprise, she ripped it from his leg, jeans and skin healed completely after it's pentration. Gerard couldn't believe it. He pressed his hands to where the pain usually would be and felt nothing. He removed the pillow to find his mother alive, her eyes wide as her arm and hand moved behind the headboard where she had untied herself. She was alive.

Gerard blinked and was standing in front a mirror he felt he had once seen, when he realized it was the mirror in his old room years and years ago. It was shattered and as he stood there, he watched as the shards raised from the ground and placed themselves like it was their duty. His reflection appeared, and Gerard was stunned.

He had not seen his reflection in years. He was bone thin, like one of the infected, almost. His cheeks were sunken. His hair was missing except in black patches. His eyes were only black, dark abyssses where white marbles beamed back. His lips were so chapped they bled the slightest. His clothes were rank, limp with filth across his entire body, holes torn and stains of all colors ran across like paint. He didn't even look like a human anymore. He was a monster.

Gerard turned away at once to see his brother sitting on the bed, tense and frozen, blood splattered against the wall behind him. Gerard almost jumped towards him, but, in an almost horror, he watched as the blood on the wall and down Mikey's face rolled back into his head, his body slumping forward as a silver, sleek bullet popped between his two lips. Mikey spit it onto the floor, and it rolled, almost happily, along the floor up and over the door frame and out of the room.

At that moment, Mikey raised his head, and their eyes met. It was almost like old times, back in the days where Gerard was still his brother. The days when they were together every day. Days when they would play for hours and hours and hours. In later years, Gerard could remember how he would take Mikey aside and whisper his feelings, his concerns. Mikey didn't ever understand, but, when they would spend hours in the back of their closet, faces illuminated by the glow of a flashlight, Mikey would try, eyebrows ruffled as he listened to Gerard explain the feelings he had for other boys.