Making It Up

When a person dies, they say you go through five stages of grief.
Denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance.
I was on the precipice of the fifth stage. I had denied his existence for so long, raged at myself, lived my life in depression’s grasp and bargained Mikey’s freedom for my own. The only things missing were acceptance and an actual death. Maybe part of me died, and that’s why this was happening. Or maybe the animated corpse on his knees was the culprit.
-------------------
I questioned him, when I regained composure. About his life, his children. Such a normal conversation to have with the monster of my childhood nightmares. It was surreal. How could this fragile looking thing be the force that tore my world apart?
But then he said it. Words I had only dreamed of hearing.
"I don't hate you, I never could"
He – he didn’t hate me? I wasn’t so pathetic that he despised my existence? I was just the focus of teen rage. So many years staring at a reflection at the bottom of a bottle over nothing. Nothing.
Anger is the second stage of grief.
I lunged for his throat.
-----------------
He made no effort to stop me , just lay there passively as I sat above him with my hands on his neck, needles hanging limply out of my arms. My whole vision was tinted red, and I finally understood what was going through Mikey’s head.
But I couldn’t do it. Of course not. Since then I have come up with many reasons why I couldn’t do it. He had children that depended on him. I was in a weak condition. Many, many theories. In the end though, I couldn’t do it because I as much as I didn’t want to live in a world with Frank Iero in it…
I didn’t want to live without Frank Iero either.
I loosened my grip, and slumped to his side, tears finally falling. A white rag doll on the hospital floor. He turned to me and raised his arms. I thought he meant to strike me, and flinched. He sighed sadly and embraced me.
There I was, shaking with tears on a hospital floor, with my head pressed against Frank Iero’s chest. He tucked my hair behind my ear and whispered to me.
“I’ll make it up. I swear. I’ll fix you. Somehow, I’ll fix you.”
And I believed him.
-------------
Of course, we couldn’t remain there unnoticed for long.
Pete and Patrick half ran into the ward, panting. They stopped dead in their tracks when they saw us there on the floor.
“er. Right. I see. We may have slightly misjudged the situation.” Patrick stuttered. Pete just stood there with his mouth open. Even now, Patrick was trying to be level headed.
“no offence gee but what the fuck is going on?” asked Pete, his face strewn with confusion and residual drunkness.
“I - well – um… this.. well it’s a very long story” I managed to splutter some words out in a random order. They looked less than satisfied.
“Gerard, honey, you drank bleach. This is clearly an important story. We need to talk about this” Patrick said in a soothing tone. Oh fuck. My therapist was gonna kill me for this stunt. I felt frank physically shudder at the mention of bleach.
“It’s my fault” frank groaned in a monotone. The two just stared at him. Pete looked about ready to kill him. I wanted to defend him but, well, he wasn’t wrong.
“Right. Fabulous. So we have our suicidal friend and a mentalist who made him try to kill himself inside out. I – I need a fucking drink. Patrick this is your area, call me if anyone needs the shit kicked out of them” he looked pointedly at Frank, and then left. Patrick sighed and rubbed his eyes.
“I don’t even know where to start here.” Patrick exclaimed, throwing his hands up in the air. Finally a break in his calm appearance. I felt awful for this, they were trying so hard to help me.
“From the beginning.” Frank’s voice broke the silence. Delicately, he lifted me back onto the hospital bed. “we have to tell him” he muttered. And he was right, we did. So I took a deep breath, and started telling my sad little story.
And watched Patrick’s whole face turn deathly white.

Notes

hi guys, ren here. ooh drama. thankyou for all the lovely comments, I'm trying to write longer chapters now. keep commenting guys! just by the way, if you're being bullied please tell someone. because being bullied sucks. tell a teacher or a parent or something. right responsible bit over, enjoy the chapter :)