.asylum.
"Get in there, fag." I stumbled and tried getting my hands up to protect my face from colliding with the wall but my reaction reflexes weren't up to much as I go face first into the concrete wall. I groan as I turn around to put my back up against the wall to try and balance myself out as Matthew locks the door, looking more smug with each and every minute that passes by, "Enjoy your stay here with your boyfriend."
I smile halfheartedly, trying to gain the breath back that I had lost somewhere between being dragged here and being pushed into this cell, "Can you unlock the doors so I can really get to enjoy my alone time with Frank? My hand will never be as good as the real thing to be honest." I hear Frank laugh from the room beside mine when he heard what I said and the disgusted sound that Matthew made. The orderly slams the door shut and glares at me through the wired mesh before his footsteps were heard as he left.
I smile at his defeat he admitted to as he walked away and left us alone here for the next twelve hours at the least. I slide down onto the floor, bringing my knees up as I rest my forehead to them. I close my eyes, trying to push the splitting headache I had from being punished for kissing Frank, not even wanting to touch the raw skin I had either side of my temples from the marks left from my treatment. Frank sighs, sounding frustrated as he mutters something to himself, as if he was trying to recollect some of his thoughts, to remember something, "I've forgotten your name."
I snort and let my head drop back so that I was now leaning against the wall with my eyes closed, "I guess the therapeutic treatment worked out a lot better on you than it did on me. I might be slightly hallucinating and seeing colours that I've never seen before but I have a lot of memory left over and I actually remember your name." I smiled to myself as I look away from one of the walls to the other before adding, "My name's Gerard." Frank groans and it sounds like he smacks himself before mumbling an 'of course it is' to himself.
"So it was your first day here in this shit hole," Frank starts off, quite clearly wanting to ask me some probing questions about myself seen as we have a lot of spare time on our hands, "and you have already hit the same guy that works here twice, been knocked out by someone twice, had shock therapy for being gay and been thrown into solitary. You're certainly one hell of a guy to pull off some bullshit like that and still he alive."
"Actually, not that I'm trying to big myself up or anything, but I was actually knocked out three times just in case you wanted to know." There was a long pause after I finished speaking in which both Frank and I was silent before Frank started laughing at me, "I guess they thought that either you or them were in danger because of what you done to get in here. They probably done it to protect themselves more than anything. You shouldn't have to worry yourself about being knocked out as much anymore unless you attack someone."
We lapsed back into silence once more. It went a short while before either of us decided to make a noise, the person that did was Frank because I was more than content with the silence that seemed to somewhat soothe my throbbing headache, "Gerard, I'm not sure if you're gonna tell me a straight answer and honestly, you don't have to but when Matthew was insulting you, he mentioned something about your brother..." I knew what was coming, sooner or later there was going to be a question about why I was here, "What did he mean by it? What did your brother do?"
I sigh and bury my face in my hands, consciously aware of the burn marks on my temples. Frank must have heard me because he made a little 'oh' sound, "You- if you don't wanna talk about him, or your family, or what you done, it's fine, please don't go all quiet on me. I just- when he said it- your face dropped and you looked like you had been stabbed a thousand times, you looked so sad and it kinda hit me that someone that was related to you could hurt you so badly." Frank's ramble finally comes to an end, only a few seconds after it ends do I realise how wide the smile on my face was.
Frank sounded so young and innocent, just how he looked, something that really made you question what the hell was such a lovely kid like Frank doing in such a place like this, a place for the criminally insane. That's when it hits me, that you didn't have to look a certain way to qualify as a certain group of people. Those things were all just stereotypes, set for us to settle our mind, to give us hope that it was only one type of person or group of people that would do certain things but it wasn't like that at all, everyone was capable of anything but it was just a matter of what boundaries everyone was willing to break to do those things to break stereotypes.
I open my mouth to speak up but silence myself when I hear whistling down the hallway headed in this direction, a single set of footsteps accompanying the whistling. A few seconds later, the whistling getting louder as the person approaches, Frank begins to join in with the tune before they were both whistling together completely in time. All of a sudden Frank stops his whistling and giggles, "Hey Ryan! Did Bren send you over here to entertain us until it's work time for you?"
Ryan's whistling ceased now too, the boy coming into my view to inform me that it was one of the people from the group I had joined in with so recently. He had a ghost of a smile on his face as his eyes connected with mine, the boy not seeming to be able to look away from me when he bends down and slides a tray full of a weird, minced looking meat with bread sat beside it, a small plastic cup half full of water beside it. Ryan disappears from my sight for ten seconds to slide Frank's tray under the door before he appears back at my door, the smile starting to creep me out.
I divert my eyes away from Ryan to the plate once more, not really up for eating the grey-coloured mystery meat, "Hey Frank? You want my food?" I hear Frank and Ryan chuckle at me, both of them probably accustomed to eating this muck, Ryan's eyes lighting up as I pushed the plate back out of the room but keep my bread and water, "I don't eat meat, but if you're offering up the bread, I'm open for it." I sink my teeth into the hard bread and struggle to rip the mouthful off of the rest.
"I'm too hungry to give up my bread, sorry." I say with a mouthful of uneaten bread when I did manage to tear away from the chunk of bread, Frank chuckling from his separate cell, "I wouldn't blame you, the bread seems to be the only edible thing around here." I give a halfhearted laugh, not knowing how to continue the conversation but not wanting it to fall silent between us just yet.
Soon after we finished off our bread and water in the silence, Ryan takes the plates back from us and disappears down the hallway without saying a word to us, just picking up where he left off with his whistling and leaves Frank and I in complete silence once more.
