The Kiss of Vanity Blessed Me With A Spiritual Murder

This is the first time Gerard agreed to cut class with Jamia.

It's only French, nobody will even notice they're gone, she said, eyes tired as she was dragging him across the hallway towards her 'secret smoke spot'. He felt tingly, arms in an overlarge sweater casting shadows across the gloomy walls and making it feel like proper October. His feet were a little uncoordinated but he supposes that's the reason she hasn't let go of his sleeve yet- Jamia knows things without making them too awkward to discuss.

She told him he smells like exhaustion and Pall Mall this morning and he couldn't disagree since he hasn't slept like a human being in over a week. He can't really help it- every time he closes his eyes all he sees is sharp teeth and tar-stained fingers gripping his throat and choking the life out of his body. There's a pair of eyes behind the madness sometimes, too, but it's only after he's asleep that he sees those; green, gray, red and jet black on golden brown that rounds the darkness he's staring at. He starts whimpering, then, he knows he does because his mother told him that's how she used to know he was having a nightmare when he was a kid- but it doesn't last long. Something wakes him up and it feels like it's something gentle on his wrist but when he wakes up nobody's there and he's left with an aching chest and the urge to light a smoke.

He doesn't tell his mother about the nightmares because he knows they're different than the ones he's used to. It'd worry her and she already worries too much- the calm is just a charade that they're both trying to persuade themselves is real. It's just paranoia, he tells himself, it’s who I am.

“Your lighter is fucking shit,” Jamia says and, as if to prove her point, drops the lighter in his lap. “Do it for me.”

He blinks a few times, just to get his focus right, grabbing the lighter from the dent in his sweater and flicking it in that sideways motion which is the only way to get it working. She takes a drag and lets the cherry burn right before looking at him in suspicion. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

He coughs on instinct, furrowing his brow. He takes a moment to think, rolling his cigarette between his index and middle finger. His nail polish is chipped again, but so is everything else in his head, so he doesn’t really have to worry about that. “H-uh?”

“Your eyes are really bloodshot,” she says simply, leaning her shoulders against the brick wall and looking at the rain falling a few feet in front of them. She hasn’t washed her hair, he knows because her hood is up, and her lips look chapped as she’s taking another drag. “And I know you’re not a stoner or anything. You’re also really pale, and the purple around your eyes isn’t really helping the situation much.” She stops herself then, but when Gerard is about to respond she continues. “I mean… don’t get me wrong, you do always look like you got punched in the face,” she rolls her eyes at Gerard’s ‘jee, thanks’, “but you seem horribly drained lately. I want to know what’s up.”

He ponders over it for a moment, blowing a puff into the rain and thinking about how disgusting the drops that caught smoke would be if they by any chance ended up on his tongue. “Just had trouble sleeping,” he says, and he’s proud to say it’s not an actual lie. “That’s all.”

She just gives him a look though her eyelashes, and doesn’t say anything until her cigarette is squished underneath the sole of her shoe. They’re dirty and washed out, and he realizes he never thought dark chucks could fade so well until he met her. There are letters in green pen ink written all over the white rubber, and Gerard knows they’d read out Bouncing Souls lyrics if he were to look more carefully. He smiles at that, but she doesn’t notice, instead she just lights another cigarette and sighs into the knee she’s hugging with her free arm, the one that isn’t holding the smoke. He likes how one month in her presence made him trust her more than he trusts himself- but then again, he’s more likely to give up on himself than anyone else seems to have been.

“Do you ever feel like the world is playing some huge prank on you?” She suddenly looks really bitter, like un-sugared coffee and years of heartbreak all piled at once. “Like someone up there is watching, and all they fucking want is to make you as miserable as you can possibly get?”

Gerard smirks a bit, just for irony’s sake, and hopes that whoever is watching usually isn’t doing it right then at that moment. “Yeah. And they’re a serious dick.”

Jamia snorts, shooting him a dirty look through her grin. “A serious dick?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“I met this girl the other day,” she bites her lip, “red lips, dark eyes, long legs and hair as black as yours. She asked me out.” She huffs a laugh into her sleeve, as if she’s mocking herself. “And I said no.”

“So I was right thinking that silly bandanas and badly-sung Bee Gees songs were more of your thing.” She looks at him carefully then, almost as if she was scared. He smiles like he understands and her eyes seem calmer for a second.

“I didn’t think it was that obvious.” Her tone is reserved, and distant, and probably just as cold as the rain that’s been drumming against the school’s windows for hours now.

“It isn’t,” he reassures, twisting a lock of his hair around his finger to keep himself from fumbling after a cigarette. “I just notice things. LikeI noticed that Ryan has no idea.”

“I might have to kill you now, y’know?” She smiles, and it finally reaches her eyes when Gerard returns it. “You know too much.”

He shakes his head slightly even though it hurts. “Don’t pretend like you don’t have any dirt on me.”

He’d maybe say he’d caught her off guard if someone asked, but he’s pretty sure she recovered before his brain could even comprehend it. “There’s something off about you, you know? You’re just… you’re so… tragic? It sounds pathetic, but it’s sort of the kind people write about in novels and shit. The blue kind of tragedy, the one that looks like rain and sounds like Sunday.”

Gerard smiles nostalgically, his heart beating a little faster. It’s just a reaction to letting people in, even a little bit. He supposes there’s got to be at least some connection between tragedy and Sundays- he’s never liked the Sun anyway.

He doesn’t even realize that he hasn’t responded when she continues. “Is that why you don’t seem to notice anyone around you? I mean, you’re a teenager, most teenagers are stupid, shallow horndogs who are just waiting for someone to fuck. And you’re- well, not.”

“I guess I don’t care about,” he inhales, “fucking. Not really. I suppose I just don’t believe anybody wants a sad person by their side. Not just regularly sad, I mean,” he clears his throat, and he can already feel the knot in his chest when the anxiety kicks in. “Sad by default. Lavender blue kind of sad.”

“You’d be surprised to know that this isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone say something like that,” she says, eyes peering into the distance. Gerard can hear the thunder as it rolls and the downpour just thickens as he’s trying to breathe normally again.

“Yeah?”

She doesn’t say anything.

*

It’s way too quiet in the library when he arrives.

He stays away from the cold corner this time- Frank’s corner, or whatever you want to call it. He’s got Bad Brains’ discography on shuffle even though it’s set to a low volume, and he’s browsing in the Poe section when he hears the drag of Jamia’s chucks from behind.

“You suck,” she simply states when she sees he’s got ‘Frankenstein’ shoved underneath his arm, “Do you read anything shitty? Or human?”

“No,” he smiles and hands her a copy of ‘The Black Cat’ to hold for him. “Take this, I’m going to get some Anne Rice real quick.”

“I’ll be here somewhere,” she tells him before he strolls off.

He just stares at the titles for a while when he sees the familiar name, but he’s cold all of a sudden and his sweater fits uncomfortably against his elbows as he shifts in distaste. He smiles when his favorite song starts playing in his earphones, and he crosses his fingers over the golden letters engraved into the hardcover of ‘Interview with the Vampire’. They’re cold, too, and his neck feels weak as he slumps a little forward on reflex.

“Bad Brains, huh?” He hears, and he bangs his shoulder against the shelf in startle. It hurts and he knows a bruise will bloom there as soon as tomorrow, but he ignores that as he turns around to look at Frank.

“How long have you been standing there?” He asks, voice raspy as he’s looking at the book he’s dropped, blood-red letters spelling out Mary Shelley’s name above the title.

Frank picks the book up from the floor, dusting it off with his hand, his face studying the cover as he’s running his other hand through his messy hair. “That’s a really good band,” he ignores Gerard’s question and stares at the book a little bit more. He then looks up, face softer than Gerard’s ever seen it before- still far from gentle or anything of the sort, but at least Gerard can’t read out ‘I hate you’ from the arch of his eyebrows anymore. “And this is a really good book.”

“Yeah,” is all Gerard can reply with, and he spends a moment just willing his eyes to break contact with Frank’s. It’s strange and Gerard’s entire body feels out of place, stomach swirling with nerves and he almost recoils from the fear when Frank holds the book out for him.

“You have good taste for a loser,” is all Frank says before he turns away and walks down the same aisle Gerard’s come from.

“You too,” he says in all but a mere whisper, glancing at the book in his lap.

He swears he can hear Frank’s chuckle reverberate from somewhere in the darkness of the hallway.

Notes

brought to you by sunny day real estate and my summer vampire vibes. it's july, almost halloween. time doesn't exist. xo