Under the last bridge out of town everything is dark and damp and reeks of stale piss. The floor is made of bursting garbage bags and smashed bottles and the ancient curved ceiling is painted grey and green with slime and bird shit. The walls are covered in graffiti but in this neighbourhood no one cares enough to clean it up. Cars rumble overhead on their way out to the suburbs but nobody respectable would dare to walk under here anymore. This is a place for broken, forgotten things and only broken, forgotten people come here. Junkies and hobos or miserable combinations of both.
Gerard shudders as he stumbles under the dripping dank bridge for the third time this week, his filthy sneakers skidding on the wet cracked pavement. He hates himself for being here but this is the only connection to his old addicted life that he hasn't burned. It's midnight on a cold Monday and everything is shadowed and layered with threat. Hungover doesn't even begin to describe how shitty he feels. His nose won't stop running and his tongue feels furry and dry. His stomach still hasn't settled down from when he was vomiting cheap whiskey and coke snot all over his mom's rosebushes yesterday and he knows that his little brother is starting to hate him. He can't pass out drunk in peace anymore without waking up screaming and sweating through his clothes with hellfire dancing in his eyelids and he'd do anything right now just to feel better. Peering through the gloom with sore, crusty eyes, he spies Johnny lurking behind a gang of homeless bag ladies huddled around a barrel fire and shambles over to the tall skinny dealer with his head hanging.

“Hey Mr Famous, where's your entourage?” Johnny drawls sarcastically, narrowing his eyes as he looks the singer over. “Shut up,” Gerard sighs, his voice husky from too much smoking and drinking, “That shit's over now. Jesus.”
Johnny raises his eyebrows and leads his client further away from bag-lady central. “Whatever man. You want the usual?”
“No, I need double this time.”
“Shit. Okay, but can you afford it if you ain't singin on MTV no more? I don't take nothin but cash money. No freebies.”
Gerard nods shakily, wiping his nose on his hoodie sleeve, and fumbles in his pocket for a handful of crumpled bills. “Here. 500 right?”
“Right,” Johnny smirks, counting the money and shoving it quickly into his sweatpants pocket. “I'll leave the stuff in the usual place but wait til I'm gone before you pick it up this time.”
“Okay.”
Johnny starts to walk away, kicking up garbage water with his flashy Nikes, but then he turns back, his expression curious in the low light. “I gotta ask you, man. How come you need so much these days? You're not sharin my shit around for free are you?”
“Nuh uh,” Gerard blurts, shaking his head so hard his greasy hair falls into his eyes, “I just don't wanna sleep that's all. The pills and coke counteract the booze I'm drinking. This shit keeps me awake.”
“And how come you don't wanna sleep?” Johnny insists, looming tall and lanky over Gerard's shivering form.
“It's...complicated,” the singer mumbles, rubbing his aching stomach through his grubby clothes, “I have these... I dunno, nightmares I guess. Terrors. S-Sometimes I see flames and I'm dying and it hurts like... Shit, it's like the worst trip in history! Sometimes I see people that I love dying, everyone just burning to death and I can't take it! Nothing else helps!”
“Woah, okay, sorry I fuckin asked,” Johnny says, holding up his hands and walking off into the night with his shoulders hunched, “That's some crazy shit, man.”

**
When Gerard gets home, his hoodie pockets bulging with drugs and a fresh bottle of knock-off Jack Daniels, the whole house is in darkness. His parents are away for the weekend and Mikey is probably in bed sleeping or jerking off like a normal person.

Staggering downstairs to the basement bedroom he's slept in since childhood, Gerard shuts and bolts the door and flips on the lights, sitting down heavily on the unmade bed and dropping his aching head into his hands. He feels nauseous and hungry at the same time and his hands and feet are freezing but his t-shirt is stuck to his back with sweat. Shrugging off his hoodie, he slides miserably off the bed and crawls over to his stereo, slipping on a pair of tatty '90s headphones and pressing PLAY on a Misfits album. Harsh punk guitars and Glenn Danzig's evil-Elvis vocals flood his brain and he turns the volume up so far he's almost in pain. Dragging the bag of drugs out of his hoodie, he cuts two fat lines of cocaine on a hardback Hellboy comic with a razorblade and crushes a few uppers into the mix. Using a wrinkled dollar bill, he snorts that shit up until he can feel his brain expanding and taste the music roaring in his ears. Lifting the booze to his lips, he chugs a couple of sour shots, coughing and laughing when he drinks it too fast, and lies down relieved and smiling on his back on the dust-bunny covered floor. Melodies and endorphins charge through his veins and shine from his dilated eyes and he feels like he could fly. He won't fall asleep tonight that's for damn sure.

**
Long after his mother has gone to bed, Frank lies awake on his bedroom floor listening to Anti-Flag on his ipod and shivering in the chill draught whistling under his door. He's naked except for a pair of boxer shorts but the cold is helping him stay awake while he tries to decide if he really wants to plunge headfirst into the glimpses of hell bleeding through his brain. His hand is striped with band-aids and the broken glass from his mirror has been swept up and thrown away. He's pulled the curtains tight and shut his cell phone in a drawer, avoiding its reflective screen and any other shiny surface in which he might see an army of accusing blood-splattered corpses staring miserably at him from their shitty-looking afterlife.

His favorite Les Paul guitar, Pansy, is lying on his bed with her strings freshly played and the warm tingling in his callused fingertips is such a comfort right now he could cry. It's time for all of this pain and anxiety to end. He can save Gerard and get My Chemical Romance back on track, if only he can summon up the courage to not be afraid of his own mind anymore. He has to do this. He NEEDS to do this.
Sitting up achy and cold, he shivers and climbs slowly into bed, pulling the covers up over his thin body and nuzzling his pillows until he warms up. Rolling over, he peeps out from under the sheets at the bedside table and grabs the bottle of sedatives and thermos of water he put there earlier, swallowing double the recommended dose of medication before he can change his mind. Burrowing deep under the blankets, he turns out his bedside lamp and shuts his eyes. The meds work quickly in his empty stomach and just before he blacks out he hears himself muttering, “Rest in Peace, Lorna. Ditto Anna... But stop fucking haunting me you assholes!”

Notes

((Sorry this chapter is so short!
Feedback would be great, even a one-word comment helps me write.
I love everyone who gives their time to read my dumb stories! xx))