The Kiss of Vanity Blessed Me With A Spiritual Murder

It's cold, and the teeth of the strong wind are what makes Gerard wrap his ratty, brown old hoodie tighter around his shoulders and drag himself inside.

The door creaks and Ryan looks up at him, raising his hand in his direction and motioning at him to sit down on the floor next to him. It’s warm inside, and he finds the courage to unzip his hoodie, his lighter almost rolling out of his pocket and onto the floor. The glass in Jamia’s hand is full of something that looks like slightly discolored coke, and it gets on Gerard’s nerves how it glimmers almost unnaturally against the antique yellow lighting. Pete and Ryan are sharing a joint while Frank is sitting in Jamia's armchair, the yellow one- the one Gerard was sitting in when he first got here, and an uneasy feeling appears at the bottom of his gut when he gives him a lift of an eyebrow as a greeting.

“Hey man,” Pete blinks, “man. Man. Gerard, man.” Gerard just looks at him, disinterested, but Pete continues nevertheless. “Tell Jamia that playing ‘Spin The Bottle’ is stupid. I’ve already made out with Ryan a lot of times and let me tell you that I’m not about that life.”

Gerard just looks at Jamia, who is playing with an empty bottle in front of her and grinning mischievously at Pete, and then at Ryan, who’s too busy singing Janis Joplin to even acknowledge anything Pete is saying. Gerard would gladly object playing, but he’s already started scratching his wrist in his lap and he can’t seem to speak or say anything at all as Jamia is trying to make Frank join the game.

The anxiety doesn’t kick strong, but it still aches his throat mid-breath every time he tries to catch some air. He can’t seem to breathe through his nose even though Ryan settles on kissing the back of his palm as if he’s some kind of royalty, and Gerard’s lips sting from the biting but he still smiles even though he knows the skin will break. It’s sort of trivial, since Ryan is high as a kite and probably not even sure what his own name is, but he somehow still remembers the fact that any form of rough physical contact makes Gerard feel attacked. It makes him feel like a charity case, but he still appreciates the gesture.

It’s safe to say that the atmosphere is near to loose even though Pete and Frank are constantly bickering over something, and Ryan’s disgusted face kind of represents Gerard’s constant mood as Jamia is forced by the stupid game to shove her tongue down Pete’s throat. Gerard’s brain is already hurting a lot when Ryan pecks Frank’s lips horribly awkwardly, and it all feels like a movie whose executive producer is Gerard himself. It’s all too embarrassing, and he practically feels home because of it- but then again, miserable that he associates safety with general shame of simply being who he is.

The situation turns different when Frank spins the bottle. Gerard can feel the nausea up to his throat, and he knows who the bottle cap will point at even before it lands on him. In any other situation he’d probably congratulate himself for being unnecessarily psychic, but all he wants to do right now is throw up without it being in anyone’s lap.

He doesn’t want to have to do this, because Frank him jittery and he’s pretty sure that the guy hates his guts with all he owns. Gerard then feels all eyes at himself, and the sickness he senses deep inside his skull increases because he’s more or less under the spotlight, which is probably the last place he would ever wish to be. He doesn’t look at Frank, instead he just lowers his eyes on his shirt and sees a stain he can stare at right beside the collar, but when he realizes it’s pitch black and it looks like oil tar more than anything else he feels the bile working up towards his head. He closes his eyes and he’s fighting off the urge to scream, or vomit, but he’s afraid his vocal chords might blow up and stain the clothes of everyone around him. And staining other people’s stuff is rude, isn’t it?

He can’t fucking breathe, since he’s painfully aware of the fact that he can’t exactly back out of this. He isn’t sure why it’s so important not to come off as a moron he knows he is in front of Frank, and Frank alone- maybe just because he knows the guy has no compassion or mercy, and will make him feel ten times shittier about being himself than he already does.
And it’s kind of a path into his own doom either way, because Gerard hasn’t kissed anyone since fifth grade.

But at one point, when he’s already close to tears, he hears someone moving. He freezes because he expects it to be towards him, and when he opens his eyes to check, he catches a glance of Frank looking at him, from across the room. His eyes are cold and shining dark, and Gerard knows his own are wide open as is Jamia’s mouth from beside him. The contact is pushing ice cubes down his bloodstream, but the way Frank breaks it and turns around quietly is what catches his nerves tighter than they were the entire evening, and his scalp feels like it’s on fire. He hopes it isn’t, though, he’s just dyed his hair- it’d be a shame if it all burned out and slid off.

And with that thought Frank is gone from his sight and down the hallway that turns dark right after the door slams shut. Perhaps it was the wind that extinguished the candle Jamia had lit almost an hour ago- and perhaps it just couldn’t bare the frost Frank carried around with himself when he walked.

*

The air is chillier than it was before, and the fog that rose around the front porch of Jamia’s house is only making Gerard’s knuckles go whiter than they usually would.

He feels kind of choked, like the disgust he saw in Frank’s eyes when the bottle ordered him to kiss him just piled up between his lungs and bronchi and made him want to bang his head against a wall. It all happened so fast that Gerard isn’t even sure if it really did, but the sinking sensation he still feels in his pulse is probably the truest evidence he can muster up with right now. That is, if you don’t count the pitiful look Ryan shot his way when he thought Gerard was too dumbfounded to notice.
He refuses to look at the scab he’s dug up on the left side of his forearm in the meantime even though he’s sure it’s bleeding.

Gerard’s knees feel like they’re filled with gravel as he walks the familiar third of a mile it takes him to get home. The windows are shining dark blue and it doesn’t fit the paint of the outside walls at all, but it still comes as a relief that he won’t have to walk up the stairs in complete darkness.

There is some strange stillness to the world after midnight and it reflects on this town particularly- it is so calm that the thought feels disgustingly plastic in his head. It’s like some bad drug that makes you have video game dreams and nothing feels completely real; as if it would all start crumbling if he touched it.

The volume of the TV is quiet and his mother is dozing off on the couch again, bare arms on rough fabric and Gerard immediately goes up to her and touches her wrist gently. She stirs and opens one of her eyes, whining slightly when she sees his eyebrow arch up.

“Alright, alright, I’m going upstairs,” she grumbles in a thick voice, “thank you for reminding me who’s the real mother here.”

He sniggers quietly and it hurts the back of his throat because it’s so uncertain, and she picks it up, but shrugs it off like she knows he doesn’t want to mention it. She probably does- because he never wants to mention anything.

“You go first,” she continues, remembering the stairs, “I’ll go get some water and lock the door.”

“Three times?” It escapes his lips in a wobbly tone even though he doesn’t want it to, and her guilty smile just confirms how anxious he is to the tips of his fingers.

“Three times.”

*

Gerard’s never liked the way stairs feel underneath his feet.

It’s better when they’re bare, the wood is smooth then, but it always creaks more when he’s got shoes on. It makes his nose scrunch up and he immediately loses a part of his balance, as if the sound has hooks that want to drag his body down in between the thick boards.

The stairs are a threat of a sort to him- but that’s old news. Most things are.

He doesn’t like sleeping in sweaters but getting a second blanket takes energy which he doesn’t have- it’ll rain, he’ll be cold. He’s left the window open again and he can smell the soil from the outside. It sticks to his eyelids, makes him sleepy- eyelashes heavy and shoulders weak as he brushes his teeth in the bathroom and comes back to his room, closing the window.

His brain is collapsed before his head even hits the pillow, and he’s so tired- tired enough not to notice the tar black stains around his window pane.

*

The only thing interrupting the dawn’s quiet is the sound of Gerard’s breathing.

It’s smooth for the most part, but sometimes it skips a beat and it makes his left hand twitch before it grabs his bitten pencil again. He isn’t sure what he’s doing, if he were to draw it the picture would just be hideous brains on paper and he supposes he’d make it feel like sunrise, since he likes painting time in frozen fractals.

But instead, he’s just puking words, just pure shit mostly, mixed with scruffy handwriting and solid thoughts that would otherwise melt into oblivion if there wasn’t for his left hand to scribble them down. He doesn’t like being left-handed, he feels like it’s a bit off, but for the most part he’s also off-minded so it doesn’t make any difference at all.

He isn’t sure when he’s woken up, probably around four-thirty since he’s lit his first smoke around five. He never liked dawns in fall when he was a kid, he always thought they were too dark, too gray, too empty.

But then again- he never thought he’d feel like one back then, either.

Notes

okay, so, this is all kind of horrible and short? i apologize? it's just kind of an awkward part of the story. i'll get better at this.

anyway, all of my exams are over, summer is dangerously near and i'm leaving jet black hair behind for a while? which is completely insane and i'll probably get back to it before october, but a person can dream, can't they?

i got sick on the last day of school and i'm still quarantined as my friend ciara would say. don't shoot me for this, pals [i hate the word 'pal', but it's the most neutral so i always go with that?]
tell me abt ur plans for this summer/winter. [the southern hemisphere exists !]

xomls