Stripped Down to Our Skeletons Again [Fall Out Boy]

1

Of course, the minute Fall Out Boy ended was the minute the world decided to go to shit.

Well, maybe it wasn't that close, but it was definitely within the week that Patrick cleared his last guitar from the recording studio and gave Pete a longer hug than was strictly necessary.

When it happened, he'd been at home, staring at the little audio files that had been sitting in his laptop for who knows how long, shoved into a folder labeled 'private' because they really didn't sound like Fall Out Boy. He'd just began to click into one when he heard a weird thud on the window.

He looked up from his laptop, half-hoping he would see Pete peering in, being weird, and tried to ignore the stinging disappointment boiling in his stomach when all he saw was some weird white gunk smeared across the screen. He was almost immersed back into fiddling with his songs when he realized what it was, freezing up with horror.

If somebody was jacking off in his front lawn, spurting all over his fucking window, they were going to have Hell to pay.

He slid his computer off of his lap and onto the couch, and marched over to the window, all of the anger and frustration and general sadness rushing up within him, ready to be blown out in anger at this one person, probably some high teenager.

Patrick peered out the glass, fingers hooked under the sill to pull open the window, and did a double take when he didn't see anything but the street and the late afternoon sunlight glinting off of the snow. His eyes narrowed in on the displaced snow leading up to his window, and his heart began to beat a little faster once he registered the strangeness of the tracks. It looked like someone had walked up to his window without using their left leg at all, not even in a limp. Like they had just been dragging a dead limb behind them, using their hands to keep their balance.

He unhooked his fingers from the sill and instead pressed them against the glass, his nose bending awkwardly as he looked directly beneath him.

What he saw made his body go cold, and then incredibly wired, his heart seemingly stopping and beating erratically at the same time.

His left window, the one he was at, was about five feet from the ground due to the little hill his house was on. The concrete of his tiny basement was visible beneath it. Below him, crouching inhumanly, was the most horrifying creature Patrick had ever seen. It's eyes were missing, flies flitting in and out of the sockets. Its jaw was completely gone, and its tongue lolled along its neck, only attached by a few strings of who-knows-what. One leg was in the crouching position, while the other stuck straight out and to the side, half of the thigh ripped away from its hip, presumably to help it balance while it waited. On its wrist was a wound that oozed white stuff. Its face was turned upwards so that its empty sockets met Patrick's widened eyes.

His breath stuttered out, creating a cloud against the glass, and he was frozen in place for what felt like hours before its tongue twitched and sent Patrick pushing away from the glass so hard he crashed into his coffee table. He scrambled to his feet and went tearing up the stairs, unable to stop the sob of terror that ripped its way out of his throat.

He crashed into his bedroom and slammed the door shut, locking it and shoving his dresser in front of it with the inhuman strength only the truly terrified possess. After he'd done that, he bolted to his phone, fingers shaking so hard he could barely punch in Pete's contact.

It'd only rung twice before Pete answered, and Patrick was relieved, because he'd half-expected him to ignore the call, because they hadn't really parted on great terms, and he really couldn't blame him, because--

"Patrick?" Pete's voice sounded so disbelieving that Patrick was calling that, under any other circumstances, Patrick's heart would have broken with guilt at whatever he did to make Pete feel like he wouldn't call. But now, he just sobbed gratefully into the phone.