The Butterfly's Captive
Pick a Star and Close Your Eyes and Wish Real Fast and Maybe You'll Find What You've Been Looking For.
It’s funny to think about, that tragic things happen, but oddity wasn’t strong enough to make what happened to Frank disappear into the past; as hard as it was to accept, Frank would always be cast in a victim’s role. And he supposed he knew that. He watched silently as tears rolled down the sides of Gerard’s face. He watched, quietly having a panic attack, as Gerard fumbled for things to say, or for a comforting gesture to offer. Frank watched, viciously deprecating himself, as Gerard tried to deal with what he had just heard.
The man with the porcelain skin and fiery hair sat before the victim helplessly distraught. He ran his hands through his hair enough times for it to need a wash, and he cried enough tears to fill a drinking glass or two. Sure, he felt silly for reacting in such a way, any person should; he was the one that was breaking down by just hearing about it. There was really no reason for him to be so emotional. Not as far as Frank saw it, that is.
Truthfully, Frank just wanted a decipherable reaction – tears could mean anything, really. There was no good way to discern whether the man who sat before him was crying out of sadness, pain, frustration, confusion or anger. How was he even supposed to know what Gerard was thinking, what Gerard wanted from him, if the man couldn’t even form a coherent sentence?
Frank knew at least one thing about tears, considering how weathered he was in the sport of crying, and that was that no one wants to just sit and cry himself into oblivion or madness alone. At least that’s what the tattoo-laden boy figured, so he did something that he wished someone would have done for him all those nights that he cried himself to sleep while the two men hurt him in all the ways that they pleased. He rested his dry hand on Gerard’s shoulder. Way’s head rose to meet Frank’s scared face slowly, as if he were afraid to look at him.
Something clicked inside of Frank’s mind as the man with golden green eyes looked at him, and he grabbed his hand back as if it had been set on fire. The twenty-year old let all of his hidden anxiety manifest itself in the form of tears.
“I – I’m sorry,” he stuttered, his still-gravelly voice barely above a whisper. “I – I shouldn’t ha – have touched you. I – I shouldn – shouldn’t have. I – I’m sorry.”
“No, Frank, it’s okay!” Gerard shot up to comfort Frank, though he wasn’t sure how to.
“Puh – please don’t hurt me. I di – didn’t mean tuh – to.” Frank’s entire petite figure shook with frightened pleading, never mind how much it hurt his broken ribs.
“Frank, where is this coming from? It’s okay, I won’t hurt you.” At that, Gerard lifted Frank’s head up carefully and placed it on his shoulder before he wrapped his arms around the boy’s malnourished body.
They sat there for quite some time, Gerard trying to calm Frank down, and Frank trying to control his terror. He kept his eyes shut tightly in a vain attempt to prevent the tears from escaping, and he buried his head in the crook of this near stranger’s neck. Iero couldn’t understand why he trusted Gerard so much, but he just knew that the man that was caressing his hair and planting soft kisses on the top of his head wasn’t planning on hurting him any time soon.
“Frank,” the older began softly after he thought enough time had passed, “you should sleep.” He hadn’t even waited for a reply before he carried the fragile boy into his bedroom and tucked him in like a child. Frank hadn’t really stopped crying, but he didn’t protest the action, he knew he needed to sleep.
Before he shut out the light and closed the door for the night, Gerard stated, “You’re going to be okay, Frank. All of your wounds are covered up, and you stopped bleeding. You’re safe here, and all that’s left to do now is sleep.”
Once a person is used to something a certain way, like crying himself to sleep, it’s difficult for him to do it any other way, so Frank figured it was better that he was crying uncontrollably, otherwise he might not have gotten to sleep at all.
An old man travelled down a rough dirt road slowly. He was walking with a small flower in his hand, though his aged mind could not remember exactly how he had come to possess it. The road ahead of him, to any other person, might have seemed unending, but the gray–haired man knew it well, all of its bumps and its rocks and its hills and even its end. He had travelled this road countless times throughout his life. He had travelled it so many times, he might as well have never travelled any other road at all.
The sun was hanging pleasantly above the man’s brown hat. He knew the sun well too, they were friends, as it was. The sun knew how the man liked the weather, and on the days that she could chase away the clouds, she would warm the air just enough, and never too much. The sun liked this man, for he had always been good to her, never cursing her warmth or wishing she would just disappear. He had always tolerated her brightness, because he knew that she was an unmatchable star. He knew what she could do. He knew, and he still loved her. And she loved him in return.
The old man continued down the road, knowing that he was nearing his destination, that it was just over the next hill, and he couldn’t help but be filled with dread. In all his life, the man never liked even the idea of the end of his road. He knew what waited for him there, even as a child, when he didn’t fully understand what it meant, he knew. And yet he travelled it consistently, subjecting himself to the end simply because he enjoyed the path he took to get there so immensely. The stroll was always worth what awaited him over the hill.
The old man felt as though, given his elderly state, he may not be able to walk along his road many more times after his current journey, and he almost wished he could stop to admire the trees or the sun or the clouds or the blue hue of the sky or the smell of the golden fields that peaked out of the forest every once in a while, just to make sure he would remember it if he couldn’t experience it again. But that was the thing about the road, as it is for all roads that the man had ever known, he couldn’t stop. He could only admire such beauties in passing, a fact which brought his attention back to the sole flower that he held in his wrinkled hand. He didn’t understand how he had acquired it in stride, and he thought it odd that he didn’t even know what sort of flower it was – he was well versed in nature’s names. It was a simple white flower that much was sure, but he had never seen its type before. Its petals rose from its center before falling, in the most graceful way, outward. Still, the man figured it was just his old age that made him forget what kind of plant it was.
The road began to bend upward, forcing the old man’s legs to supply more strength, and the man himself to become sadder than ever. The crest of the hill gave way to a small white house, the one that he had loathed more than anything in his entire life. His feelings didn’t matter, however, as his feet, as if by their own accord, carried him to the front porch. He dropped the flower, knowing that he could not take it inside, and wiped the bottoms of his shoes off on the mat that resided atop the concrete step. With this action, the weathered carried him to the front porch. He dropped the flower, knowing that he could not take it inside, and wiped the bottoms of his shoes off on the mat that resided atop the concrete step. With this action, his weathered feet caught the frail plant under their soles and tore it apart violently.
At the sight of the dismembered flower the man began to weep, realizing that there was nothing he could have done to stop it, for his feet had to be cleaned on that step and the flower had to be relinquished before the door was opened. That’s just how things had to be, and if his feet had not mutilated it, something else outside the evil house would have.
It did not stop his old, bulging eyes from releasing a stream of tears, however, because his rationalization could not stop him from mourning the destruction of the epitome of frailty as well as beauty. Even so, the old man opened the front door, possibly for the last time, because that’s what he had to do, and stepped inside the dungeon. He immediately recognized the place and it’s perfectly arranged furniture. He remembered, too, the trail of blood that haphazardly lead to the wooden door that gave way to an unknown place.
The man had never ventured past that door, fearing the worst, though that’s what he got anyway. It was simply that anything could be waiting for him beyond that threshold, and he would much rather endure the same pain every time he walked down his road as opposed to enduring a new one.
But he could contain his curiosity, and he figure that he should go past that door at least once before he quite walking his path. The fact that he didn’t know how many more times his physical condition would be well enough to take the road decided that he would have to go behind the door that time, and soon if he wanted to make it there at all.
So he followed the trail of blood, even with its nonsensical loops and curves, and came to a halt closer to the plain door than he had ever been before. With a deep breath and a shaky hand, he twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open.
A small set of concrete steps descended before him, ending on a concrete floor that expanded into the darkness of a basement. The man took his hat off absentmindedly and took the first step down. His old eyes didn’t see as well as they used to, but they did catch that the trail of blood continued, even worsened, down the steps. Against his better judgment, the elderly man continued, though he was terrified of what he was going to find.
There was a light switch at the bottom of the short staircase, and he flipped it up, soaking the room in the worst kind of light. He shielded his sensitive eyes for a minute, waiting for them to at least partially adjust to the harsh brightness. It was this sort of light that made the man miss the sun dearly. Unfortunately, the man came to see that the light wasn’t the worst part about this basement.
In the middle of the room there was an intricate standing mirror that was facing away from him, settled in a pool of what appeared to be blood. The wall decorations, that included maces, knives, machetes and various other terrifying objects, confirmed that the liquid under the mirror could be nothing but blood.
The man thought that he could turn back now and avoid adding to that pool of blood, but he desperately wanted to have a look at himself. He couldn’t remember what he looked like, since he hadn’t looked in a mirror since he was a teenager. He couldn’t pass the opportunity up, and quickly enough, he could shut out the lights, and climb the stairs to face his usual torture as if he had never been past the wooden door in the first place.
So he wobbled over to the other side of the mirror, weak from the journey, and stepped into the pool of blood so that he could see himself clearly. It was then, when he saw the way that his pale skin hung baggily over his bones, accentuating his already present wrinkles, that he knew everything.
He knew that it was his blood underneath the wooden legs of the mirror, he knew that he would not make it back up the stairs, and he knew that he would never see the beautiful sun again. The old man knew who he was and who had had been and where he was always meant to go.
He understood that the road he took was unimportant, irrelevant, nonexistent, as long as he was in this house. The road, the people that he had met, the things he had seen, they meant nothing anymore, because his own, sad reflection would be the last thing he encountered before the blackness. And most importantly, the old, decrepit man knew that he had gotten off easy in the upper rooms, because down here was where hell resided, and he knew that no human alive could even imagine what this was, what it meant. Down here was so much more than what he thought was the worst.
Notes
Hello, everyone. How I missed you so <3
this chapter isn't technically complete, but I figured I could end it inside Frank's dreamscape without much fuss. Anyway, sorry for any spelling mistakes (I expect that there are more than usual) because I didn't go back over this.
I love all of you and I have some parting good news:
Doctor Who is my new addiction.
xoBunny
Please... I need this.
8/25/14