NIGHTMARES

TWO MONTHS LATER:

“Why do you always wear sunglasses, Frank?”
You asked me that last time, Frank groans to himself, pressing his chapped, bitten lips tightly together and tapping his right foot anxiously against the floor, Why can't you just drop it?
“You wore them in our last session too. Is my office too bright for you? I want you to feel comfortable here, and as at ease as you can be given the circumstances.”
Shut up you idiot, just shut up! Frank begs silently from behind gritted teeth, staring so hard at the carpet that it blurs into misty yellow clouds.
“The clinic staff tell me that you haven't spoken a word to anyone in nearly a week, Frank. I would like to know why that is. This is a safe place and you can say anything you want to here. I'm not ever going to judge you. Why have you stopped talking?”
Because nobody in here fucking listens to me, you fucking asshole! You all think I'm delusional and hallucinating and crazy and if no one believes what I say then Lorna died for fucking NOTHING and I hate you for that! You keep stuffing drugs down my throat but they don't solve shit and I wish I was dead, I want to be fucking dead like her!
“I'll assume from your continued silence that you still don't want to speak. That's okay. Would you like some pen and paper to write down or draw your feelings instead?”
I'd rather make myself puke, Frank thinks wearily, dropping his head into his hands as his eyes sting and grow wet behind his shades, Go fuck yourself, Doc.

***
When Frank first awoke in hospital it was with a cry of fear.

Splitting open his bruised eyelids, he whimpered under the harsh electric lights as the after-taste of nightmarish hells bubbled in his chest and flooded his cheeks with tears. Beyond the noise of his own harsh breathing he could hear a fast mechanical bleeping sound. His tortured head buzzed and ached, buried deep in a mound of damp pillows in a strange bed and smothered pain throbbed in his temples. He couldn't feel his legs but his stomach hurt and his throat felt dry and full of sand. Blinking hard he took a deep shaking breath and almost choked, sobbing as needles of hurt pierced his ribs. A small white room took shape around him and the sound of distant footsteps and voices clattered and thundered somewhere far away but nobody was in sight. He was alone in here. Oh god, what the hell was going on? Timidly lifting his head he caught woozy glimpses of white cotton and shining metal and plastic pouches of liquid running tiny snakes into his arms. A black screen was flickering with glowing green lines bouncing along it to the tune of bleep...bleep...bleep... and fear pierced his belly as he realized he was in a hospital. Shit, was he hurt really bad? He couldn't remember anything.

Fighting against a druggy numbness weighing his body down, he tried to move his hands and felt his fingers twitch as spikes of soreness shivered up his arms and made him feel sick. Groaning miserably as tears washed out his sight, he tried to remember how he'd ended up here but all he could see in his mind's eye was a frightening haze of blood and grime and death and pain and before he could stop it, his brain exploded into a hundred gory flashbacks that overwhelmed his senses and stole the real world away. He could see Gerard's face, pale with fear and bathed in blood, crying his name. So much fucking blood! Sticky red pulses flooding his eyes and throat and he could taste it all over again now, see it oozing from his scarred flesh all over again! His own blood, Gerard's blood and Lorna's blood, it soaked through the hospital sheets, clinging to his wet skin and painting him red. It was everywhere, it was smothering him!

Terror drowned out reality as blood gushed and poured over the bed and Frank gagged and trembled in panic, shoving the wet sheets away as Lorna's corpse, gray and rotting, appeared beside him carved up like a butchered pig. Her dead gaze pierced his heart like a bullet and her terrified last words shrieked in his ears as visions of fatal blades flew at his face and sharp metal shards slashed his skin to ribbons. Wild unbearable pain burned through his legs and Anna and Lorna screamed and howled for vengeance and mercy and his own voice was screaming now too like it would never stop.

A passing nurse heard noises coming from Frank's room and rushed in to find him awake and hysterical, curled up in agony with his hands over his ears as he sobbed into the bandages on his arms and begged and screamed at the empty room: “No please stop! STOP IT! STOP!!”

***

The winter in New Jersey is bitterly cold in 2005 and drags on into late February and early March. The freezing streets seem permanently encrusted in dirty snow and ice and Gerard stares glumly through the foggy bus window at the rows of gray buildings and even grayer people blurring by. Slumping in his seat, he re-reads the directions he scribbled in smudged marker on the back of his hand and sucks his lips, tasting the vodka he hurriedly necked twenty minutes ago in the bus station toilets. There's another bottle in his backpack and it's calling out to him now but he can't turn up at the clinic drunk. They might want to commit him too. Fuck, maybe they should. Pulling his black coat tight around his body, he tugs his hood further down over his face and breathes steam into the gasoline-and-fart-smelling air, craving a cigarette. Buses are gross but at the ripe old age of 27 he still can't drive. It's either this or he gets off and walks and fuck that when it's cold out and he still has five miles to go.

This is the first time he's been to see Frank since the police let them leave LA and he's pissed off and nervous, his heart beating too fast as alcohol sweat prickles under his arms and on the back of his neck. With MCR on indefinite hiatus, he's moved back into the basement of his parent's house in Belleville and his life has screeched to a depressing halt. He started drinking again the night they discharged him from the hospital because alcohol helped numb the flashes of blood and guns and dead girls terrorizing his brain. He's rarely been sober since. Several months of tee-totalling have gone down the fucking drain but he doesn't give a shit right now. The right mix of booze and pills can block out any nightmares, no matter how bad. Even if he runs the risk of dying from this sort of doped-up sleep he doesn't care. Without My Chemical Romance he doesn't have a life anyway. He doesn't have anything.

Sighing as the bus rumbles to a halt in heavy traffic, Gerard rubs his gritty eyes and jumps out of his skin when a car suddenly backfires outside. The gunshot-like noise shoots his heart into his throat and tenses every muscle in his body with fright. Gasping for breath as the phantom taste of steel and blood floods his mouth and panic boils in his stomach, he blinks back tears and flashbacks as he desperately fumbles in his bag with trembling hands for his ipod and headphones. Cramming the foam buds into his ears, he hits PLAY and thumbs the clicking wheel until he finds a track that can bring him back to earth and block out the noise of the outside world that always hurts him so fucking much. There's no gunman here. There's no danger. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay...

It takes the rest of the bus ride for him to calm down enough to take a deep breath and when he gets off at his stop his legs are still weak and shaking. The steel gates of the psychiatric clinic loom darkly over the street as the bus hisses and grumbles away and Gerard slowly removes his headphones and tucks his greasy hair behind his ears, shivering in the icy wind. He didn't want to be here but Frank's mom had sounded so desperate on the phone this morning:
“Please, Gerard, please go and see him. I think...I'm scared he's getting worse. He won't even talk anymore. He won't even talk to me! You were there with him when...when IT happened. Maybe he'll respond to you. I'm so sorry to ask this of you honey, but maybe you can help him. We don't know what else to do!”
***
Frank is confined to the clinic's secure fourth floor men's ward in a room at the end of a long windowless beige corridor. When the middle-aged nurse who leads Gerard there opens the door, the stale smell of body odour and old food washes out and she sighs loudly, scrunching up her nose, and strides into the simply-decorated cell to open the window as far as the safety-catch will allow. “You need some fresh air in here, Mr Iero, and you've got a visitor so please leave the door open. I'll be back in ten minutes to give you your meds.” Walking briskly out, she pauses by Gerard who is standing self-consciously in the doorway and whispers, “Don't be surprised if he won't talk to you.” Then she's gone and Gerard is left in uncomfortable silence.

Frank is slouched in a nest of crumpled pillows on the room's only bed, dressed in torn jeans and a baggy army surplus shirt that's far too big for him. His feet are bare and although his eyes are hidden behind a curtain of shaggy hair and some aviator sunglasses, he's obviously staring down at the bleeping GameBoy gripped tightly in his hands, refusing to look up and see who's stopping by. He's lost a lot of weight since Gerard last saw him and his cheeks are unshaven and hollow, the tattooed skin of his hands and neck as pale and delicate as a porcelain doll's. There's a tray of untouched mashed potatoes and greens sitting near him on the sheets with a hungry fly buzzing around it. Several empty plastic coke bottles and dirty socks litter the floor.

Gerard clears his throat in the uneasy silence and Frank finally glances up, his twitching fingers dropping the GameBoy carelessly in his lap. There's a large pink scar running through his lower lip to halfway down his chin and he slowly raises his hands to his mouth and exhales loudly through his fingers, his expression unreadable. His fingernails have been chewed down to blood-stained nubs and he's shivering slightly in the draught from the window.

“Hey,” Gerard says nervously, taking another step forward, “How're you doing, kid?”
Frank frowns and sighs, folding his arms over his skinny chest like a pouting toddler and Gerard almost smiles but stops himself just in time. This is some serious tragic awful shit and it's only the booze that's making him giggly. Fuck, he could really use another drink.
“Your mom asked me to come see you,” he mumbles, looking around the small room at the faded yellow wallpaper and the armchair in the corner, the small sink and the wicker clothes hamper under the window. “It's pretty cosy in here, huh?”

Frank doesn't say anything, just shakes his head and lies down, tossing his shades blindly at the floor and pulling a wrinkled blanket over his head. “Alright, I guess that means you don't feel like talking today,” Gerard sasses, anxious anger creeping into his tone, “Well that's too bad because I need to say something to you and I'm gonna say it whether you answer me or not so listen up!” Taking a deep breath, he sits down hard on the bed, deliberately making the mattress bounce, and Frank shoves the blanket aside and glares at him with sickly bloodshot eyes surrounded in dark shadows of sleeplessness.
“I think I know what you've been seeing in your head at night, Frankie,” the singer whispers, glancing briefly out the open door to make sure the nurse isn't eavesdropping before returning his hazel gaze to Frank's scarred face, “I think deep down I've known for a long time but I never wanted to believe it because I thought it was just the same old night-terrors bullshit I've been dealing with since I was a little kid. If you have that kind of thing your entire life you just get used to it, y'know? You have to, to survive. Toro still calls me the leading authority on bad dreams and he's right. At least...I thought he was right. But ever since L.A ...” Trailing off, Gerard swallows hard and watches Frank sit up slowly, still staring at him. “Look, what I'm trying to say is, uh...fuck man, I think I get your stupid weird magical impossible fortune-telling nightmares too, okay? I just didn't let them drive me crazy. There, I've fucking said it!”

Frank's face slackens in gob-smacked surprise and then quickly hardens into anger and disbelief and he opens his cracked lips to bark the first word he's spoken in weeks: “WHAT?!”

Notes

((Hello again faithful gorgeous reader people,
Sorry it's taking me so long between updates. I am trying to beat my writers block and you guys help just by reading and commenting so thank you so much.
I'm a little self-conscious about this story because it's not rated/voted as high as my other ones
but I hope you are liking it anyway.
To be continued, soon I hope.
xx))