Shed Your Yellow, Take My Hand

1

"Baby, you can't let yourself go so long without eating," Gerard's mother said soothingly.  She worried for her son, and of course he understood, but things had changed. He didn't need to be soothed or babied anymore.

He remembered when he was a kid. Mama would smile and ruffle his hair and cut him a giant helping of lasagna or spoon generous portions of soup or stew into his bowl. He was unmistakably chubby and adorable in his mother's eyes. "What?" she would ask incredulously when her husband gave her that look. That look that told her she was spoiling Gerard. "He's a growing boy and he needs to eat." She would say these words while patting Gerard's hand or dolling out even more insane amounts of food onto his baby brother, Michael's, plate.  Mikey, however, did not seem to suffer from Gerard's unfortunate metabolism.

Gerard shook those pleasant memories away as he reached for his mother's outstretched arm and shoved it back away from him. "Mom. You have to stop feeding me. I can't." Gone were the days that her meatloaf would satiate him. No more steak or casserole or pizza. Gerard had grown into a man with specific appetites and his mother could no longer feed him without doing significant harm to herself.

Gerard had changed since childhood. In particular his second summer back from university he had changed a great deal. He was noticeably slim and paler and no matter how much food his mother put on his plate or the number of times she'd begged him to see a doctor, nothing helped. She chalked it up to him growing into his looks, as he was quite a bit more conventionally handsome.

When his mother had first found him outside of their house late one night, his lips attached to the throat of their neighbor, she'd thought he'd been getting lucky. Unthinking, she pulled him off of her with a stern, "Gerard Arthur Way, this is not how I raised you."  Her hand was on his shoulder and she flipped her son around to given him a talking to. She was expecting him to be bashful or even angry. What she was met with was the distorted face of her son, snarling at her with a mouth stained by blood that looked almost black in the moonlight.

That was the worst night of her life. Her son had died and she never knew. Her son had died and then continued on in her home as though he had never changed. He hid his problems, his pains, his needs. And to make matters worse, he'd taken to assaulting people to fill those needs since he no longer felt safe to ask his mother. She watched with wide eyes as her son told the neighbor girl to forget about him. As he looked into her eyes and she'd mindlessly agreed that they'd never met. Gerard, who? Oh the neighbor's son, away at college? Yeah. She hadn't run into him yet.

Donna Way's oldest son... was a monster. A vampire straight out of a novel or a movie. Undead. Deadly. Supernatural. But he was still Gerard Arthur Way. Still her baby. Still her good boy. And from that point on, once a week or more, she gave him her wrist. To save him from hunger and the potential to hurt people. So she'd forbidden him from feeding on strangers. If Gerard was hungry, he'd just have to take her vein. It was a mother's job to nourish her son, was it not?

But Gerard couldn't anymore. These last few months, he'd been feeding from her less and less. Sometimes he would let himself grow weak, other times, he'd sneakily substitute her blood for that of a stranger. He didn't feel bad for the strangers. People were less people to him anymore. He could no longer connect with them on any level. His emotions were different, his body was different... On an evolutionary scale, he wasn't even Homo sapiens anymore.  He felt bad for his mother, though. She was getting older and weaker. Taking her blood for the last five years had made her anemic and weak. She had clotting problems and a terrible immune system. She passed it off as age and health, but Gerard knew better. She'd been feeding a parasite for years. She wouldn't be able to do it any longer.

The day that Gerard refused her wrist for the last time, he looked up into her sad eyes. "I am what I am, mom. I can't change it. You can't feed me anymore, and to be honest, I feel better when I hunt. I take more and can do it without hurting the person. It's... it's healthier for me. And you."

"What about your soul, Gerard? You can't continue to hurt people. Baby, God is always watching."

With tears for his mother in his eyes, Gerard replied. "I'm already dead, mom. I don't think I have a soul, and I'm pretty sure there isn't any God. Where was this in the Bible? Where were vampires in Sunday School? Catechism?  It's all just... stories, Ma."

That was probably what hurt Donna the most; not the end of Gerard's life or his need for blood, it was the damnation of his soul, that she was sure still existed.