NIGHTMARES

Forgetting for a moment the gun-wielding murderer behind him, Gerard desperately grips Frank's shoulders and starts shaking his body, his trembling hands slipping in the blood on his friend's skin. “Frankie?” he sobs, his voice breaking as Frank's limp body remains unresponsive and cold, “Frankie, wake up! FRANK!”
While the killer looks on, snickering in amusement, Gerard grabs the stained dagger still stuck in Lorna's chest and cuts the wire tying Frank's hands together before rolling him fully onto his back and starting CPR, pressing his hands hard over Frank's heart and blowing tear-drenched gasps of air between his pale blue lips.

After a few seconds the world stops spinning and Frank groans loudly with pain as Gerard crushes his fractured ribs, coughing a few hoarse breaths as he half-opens his eyes and tears spill down his bruised cheeks. “Ah-owww...”
“Frankie!” Gerard wails in relief, stroking his friend's wet face, “Oh god, you're not dead! I thought you... Frankie?”
Looking deep into Frank's dazed bloodshot eyes, the singer realizes with a sinking feeling that his friend is either still unconscious or so badly hurt that he's brain-damaged or blind. Formally so bright and full of mischief, Frank’s eyes have been dying for weeks now. Ever since the nightmares began to haunt him their light has dimmed a little more every day but now, swollen and dark with blood and tears, they’re completely hollow and empty. Like Frank isn’t there anymore.
The murderer in black clears his throat and Gerard’s heart plummets as he remembers the hopelessness of the situation. Turning to look up in terror at the killer standing over him he feels puddles of congealing human blood shift and squelch under his knees and his stomach churns.
“W-What have you done t-to Frank?” he hears himself stammer, tears filling his eyes until the killer is a mist of shadow and shade, “W-Why won’t he wake up?”
“Are you retarded or something?” the huge man snorts, brutally pistol-whipping Gerard in the head with his gun, “Shut the fuck up!”

With a yelp of agony, Gerard collapses on his back with what feels like a dozen needles drilling into his skull and he wants to pass out from the pain but adrenaline and fear won’t let him and he bursts into tears.
Why did he come in here alone? It was so fucking STUPID!
***
Shimmering and splitting apart, Frank's vision dissolves into a soggy gray and red blur before fracturing into deep black nothingness and it hurts so much to breathe he wishes he could just die already and make it stop. His terrorized mind must be playing tricks on him because he could have sworn he heard Gerard's voice just now. But that's stupid. Gerard can't be here because no one is down here in the deep dead dark except the ghosts of Anna and Sam and everyone else who has died... and the still-living thug who killed them.
Anna's wispy gray form leans over Frank's battered body in the darkness and strokes his face with her slim ice-cold fingers. “Wake up,” she whispers and a storm of visions and images trample through Frank's exhausted brain as sensation burns through his chest and hands.... Whiskey and vomit...blood and screams...Lorna's butchered remains and the knife lodged in her dead flesh... Are my hands are untied now?...Fuck... Oh god, oh fuck, fuck it hurts so much! Everything hurts and...there's a knife on the floor... a gun hovering in tense sweaty air... someone else is here?... someone I know is in danger again... oh fuck, Gee?!...so many eyes filled with fear...
“Come on Frankie,” Lorna's ghost whispers, her voice joining Anna's in a faint raspy chorus like rustling leaves, “You have to wake up now!”

***
“Does anyone else know you’re here?” the killer barks, stepping over Frank's body and aiming the revolver at Gerard’s face.
“I-I don't know,” Gerard sobs, staring wide-eyed at the loaded gun and praying that Stacey has called the cops already.
“TELL ME!”
“No, no one!”
“NO ONE?”
“I SWEAR!”
“Really? And how the fuck did you know Frank was here tonight?”
“I…er…”
Scared half to death, Gerard can’t think of an answer that doesn’t involve Stacey so he says nothing and the hand holding the gun tenses with fury, ready to strike him again. “ No stop!” he begs, shielding his face with his arms and smearing the dead girl's blood all over his cheeks, “Don't!” But the blow never lands. Instead, the killer leans down and roughly shoves Gerard’s arms aside, pressing the gun to his forehead and searching his pockets until he finds and removes the singer's cell phone and smashes it to bits on the concrete.
“You'd better not be lying to me! But either way you’re a dead man.”
The gun presses harder against Gerard’s face and slids down his jaw to bite into the thin chapped skin of his lips. “Open your mouth!” the killer growls.
With death staring down at him, Gerard shakes his head helplessly and locks his jaw shut, sweat streaming down his face as he hyperventilates with terror. Without hesitation, the killer hits him again and Gerard’s mouth fills with blood as the basement pitches and rolls violently around his aching head.
“OPEN YOUR FUCKING MOUTH!”

With no choice Gerard does as he’s told and the cold, bitter-tasting barrel of the gun is forced between his teeth; crushing his tongue and scraping the roof of his mouth raw. The killer leans down, his cruel, angular face mere inches away, and looks him hard in the eyes. “You are going to die now,” he spits, his sour breath hot on Gerard’s skin, “You are going to DIE you fucking moron. Nod if you understand.”
Weeping desperate, chest-shredding sobs that emerge as tear-soaked gasps around the gun, Gerard nods and cries harder, his teeth biting down painfully on the hard metal filling his mouth. His head throbs hot and his eyes burn as the whole world shrinks down to this one tiny pinprick of existence and he doesn't want to die here! He’s twenty-seven years old - he doesn’t want to die!
The killer’s cold gaze pierces Gerard’s skull and the air thickens with the stench of blood, sweat and fear. Dust hovers in empty air and black shadows hide the sound of distant sirens wailing through distant streets. Too far away to help now. Gloved fingers tighten on the metal trigger and Gerard’s mind fills with thoughts and memories, feelings and faces, so many images and sounds of beauty and horror and sweetness and pain that he can’t take it and he feels shattered under the weight of it all. How will his parents cope when they hear the gruesome details of their son’s death? What will Mikey do without his big brother to look out for him? Breaking under the heart-stopping terror, Gerard squeezes his eyes shut as the last fleeting moments of his life count down to zero. He doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t_

BANG!

Notes

((Hi readers, sorry for the wait and the shortness of this chapter.
I've been away for Christmas and New Year and I left my laptop behind.
I love you forever for putting up with me and commenting.
Your comments help me write.
Now I'm back I will update ASAP. What the fuck is going to happen next?
I'm re-writing stuff so we'll see. Any thoughts?
xxx