Destroy Me

Gagging on snot and tears, Gerard clutched the slippery vodka bottle with shaking hands and brought it to his lips again, chugging as much as he could in one go without puking all over the damp smeared floor. He’d been locked in this tiny bathroom for hours now - a dim gray space in a dirty motel in a stupid nowhere town - and nothing else was real. It was just him and the alcohol and the despair gripping his throat, rotting his guts and leaking from his bloodshot eyes in streams of pathetic tears. He didn’t want to feel this way anymore - fuck crying and fuck feeling any of this shit! He wanted to get so drunk he lost his mind and just felt numb and dead. Sobriety was for the hopeful and worthy and that wasn't him anymore. Feeling nothing at all, or even feeling dizziness and nausea, had to be better than this crippling sadness. Twenty-two years of living hadn't meant anything to him. Ugh, Christ, he should've bought more pills.
Screwing his dripping eyes shut, he swallowed another couple of shots and shuddered queasily, his head swimming. His useless body sank back against the stained toilet and sobs caught in his throat like a lump of warm coal. It was hotter than hell in Florida tonight and his skin was slippery with sweat and sticking to his damp clothes. His black hair hung wet and dripping over his eyes and the air in the bathroom was heavy like a sauna, but despite the heat he was shivering and hopefully that meant alcohol poisoning was already setting in and fucking with his brain.
Another swig of liquor brought dark waves crashing over him and when he opened his eyes again he was sprawled on the cracked linoleum watching the bottle roll away from his clammy hands. An ocean of alcohol bubbled in his belly and he badly needed to vomit but the cool sticky floor felt good right now and he couldn’t find the will to get up. Belching loudly, he started crying again and couldn't stop, even when he punched himself angrily in the face to stop the tears spilling down his cheeks. ‘Why the fuck wasn‘t it me?!’ he screamed at the empty room, ‘Why didn't I fucking DIE?’
Dragging a heavy hand across his eyes, he rolled over weakly, scraping his ribs on the floor, and desperately reached for the lost bottle but his clumsy fingers found a half-empty beer can instead. Oh well, anything would do if it made him a little more numb and a little closer to passing out. Or dying. He didn’t give a damn about what happened anymore. Sitting up drunkenly against the bathtub, Gerard watched the room blur in and out of focus and drained the can dry before chucking it at the open toilet bowl. He missed.
Thirty-six hours ago, he had bailed on his second funeral of the week, ripping off the sad suffocating black suit and grabbing some money and street clothes before fleeing to the nearest airport, desperate to get out of New Jersey and out of his skin before he exploded. He’d boarded the first flight available, not caring where he ended up because he never wanted to go back. What was the point?
With his head and heart aching so much he couldn't function or breathe without something to numb the pain, he’d got shit-faced drunk on the flight and when he landed in Florida he spent a long dark day lying sleepless in a moldy motel room before trudging into unfamiliar streets to find a liquor store. Later, hung-over and dizzy from too many pills, he’d started on the vodka and called Frankie, rambling drunkenly down the line at an answering machine after his ex failed to pick up the phone.
When his cell ran out of power he had smashed it against the wall and taken all of his remaining booze into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He was determined to get so drunk he might die tonight because who gave a fuck? Nobody! He couldn’t take anymore hurt right now and there was no one around to talk him out of doing something stupid. He wanted to drown out the storm of anger and sorrow in his chest and forget all about Frank and his voice and his smell… and the sight of the coffins in the cemetery... and all of the endless sad faces... and Mikey's empty eyes... and the blood on the steering wheel.
‘FUUUUUCK!’ Gerard screamed to the empty bathroom, his skin soaked in salt-water as sweat and tears ran down his face and neck and soaked through his t-shirt. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore but he wanted to keep drinking until he blacked out and floated away from this hell. He hated himself for not being able to cope with so much tragedy but he just wasn’t strong enough and he couldn’t take it. Not all at once, not when he was alone. Not now.
He wanted the vodka back but the bottle was too far away and his blurry eyes couldn’t find it. Reaching up with shaking hands, he gripped the slippery bathtub and dragged himself to his feet, swaying unsteadily as he staggered over to the sink. Leaning woozily over the basin, he took a few rough breaths. His legs trembled and shook under his wasted body and his heart roared in his ribcage like a rabid animal. His hazy reflection seemed pathetically vulnerable and sad and he screwed his eyes shut on the sight of himself crying like a little child, groaning so loudly it was almost a yell.
A surge of nausea chose this moment to rocket through his guts and his stomach convulsed as a gush of booze and stomach acid poured into the sink. Gagging on the rank vomit as it splashed his face and hands, he threw up another mouthful and then another, his body aching as bile stung his mouth and nose and made his eyes water. Coughing and gasping, he wiped his dripping chin on the back of his hand and lost his grip on the sink. Collapsing to the floor, he smacked his head against the basin on the way down and knocked over a complimentary drinking glass which smashed to pieces on the floor beside his body.
Blinking blearily at the shattered glass, he finally started blacking out and welcomed the darkness like a friend… only to wake up a few seconds later with the bathroom’s cheap florescent lights burning into his eyes. This nightmare was never going to end! It was cold hard reality that had killed his friends and his little brother and the thought of living with so much grief on top of the depression already lurking in his genes forever was too much to take.
Trembling with panic and drowning in bad memories, he wept and pounded his fists on the slippery floor and suddenly there was a weird scraping sound between his left hand and the linoleum. Opening his weepy eyes, Gerard saw a piece of jagged glass lodged into the side of his palm. He hadn't even felt it go in. Staring in breathless fascination, he grabbed the edge of the shard with two numb fingers and yanked it free in a small spray of blood, panting with shock and relief as the tiny jolt of physical pain distracted him from his emotional hurt. But only for an instant.
Sitting up, he stared at his bleeding hand as crimson droplets fell slowly away from his flesh, taking some of the filthy depressing hurt in his heart away too, like waves washing down a sandy shore. An exhausted calm settled over him and suddenly he couldn’t feel anything at all anymore. It was like he was watching someone else’s hand from somewhere far away. He was watching someone else bleed. It was just a movie on a screen.
Biting his lip as tears dried in lines of salty crust on his face, he watched in a daze as a pale sweating hand that didn't feel attached to him at all picked up a long jagged spear of glass from the floor and stabbed it deep into his left forearm, making a long vertical slash. Too numb with shock, grief and alcohol to feel the acute pain, he let his hand keep slicing: raking through his wrist along his arm towards his elbow, slicing though skin and fat and thin red veins in search of more blood and more distracting physical sensation, until there was so much red gushing out of his arm that it looked like a river!
Licking his lips and tasting sweat and vomit, he whispered a single stunned word as his head got so light he seemed to be floating above his own ruined body: “Wow.”
Crimson liquid flowed into pools of warm wet red and everything seemed so endless and silent. He could finally feel his consciousness slipping away, maybe forever this time. But... no, wait... hang on a fucking minute! Was FOREVER what he really wanted?
With a mental crash, Gerard's floating, drunken mind slammed back into his body and the nerves along his arm exploded in violent agony. It hurt so bad he instantly began to weep and moan, trembling with trauma and fear. What had he done?! Ohgodohgodohgod! Gasping in pain and panic, he dropped the slippery piece of glass he’d used to mutilate himself and stared in horror at the deadly mess he’d made. Blood was streaming from his veins and spraying down his arm as the pain got worse with every heartbeat. His skin was turning paler than the gray bathroom floor and he couldn’t breathe properly. Oh shit! OH FUCK! The realness of impending death and the true gruesome pain of it all hit him like a sledgehammer in the face and he felt his heart beating hard enough to break his chest. He didn’t want to die here, not tonight, not alone! No, no, NO!
Grabbing a white motel towel from the tub he pressed it hard over the worst of the bleeding and watched as it quickly soak through with red. He needed help. Where was his phone? Oh god, he smashed it! Crawling weakly towards the locked bathroom door, he felt his eyelids grow heavy as his dying body trembled and alcohol-thinned blood poured out of his arm. His stomach hurt and shadows flickered in the corners of his eyes. Life was leaving him forever, just like Frankie and his friends and everyone else, and he was scared out of his mind. Everybody dies eventually but no one wants to go too soon. This was too soon! This was...too...
***
Frank Iero was hot, tired and pretty damn fucking annoyed. He’d been chasing his ex-boyfriend (and the love of his short-ass life if he was being honest) Gerard Way, for nearly two days trying to locate him and bring him home to New Jersey where his family were going out of their minds with worry, but now that he had almost caught up with Gee's trail, Frank was starting to fear what he might find.
Yesterday he'd managed to track the GPS location of Gerard’s cell phone to Pensacola, Florida and had followed it with a desperation, love and fear that he hadn't felt since he and Gee were an item almost six months ago now. When he'd arrived in the South, sweating in the tropical heat, he'd used up most of the money he'd been saving for college to bribe the owners of local motels into confessing if Gerard was staying with them. At the third place he tried he'd got lucky and even got a spare key to Gerard’s room. It was amazing and kinda sad what a hundred bucks could do to people.
Up until a few days ago, Frankie hadn’t seen Gerard since their relationship imploded on New Year's Eve when Gerard got blind drunk and kissed another man at midnight, leaving little Frankie with a paranoia in his heart that he couldn't accept or ignore. The two young men had split up in a storm of shouting and tears and gone their separate ways: Gerard back to art college in New York City and Frank back to boring old high school life in Belleville.
Then last week a mutual friend named Ray called Frank with some disturbing news: Gerard had been driving home drunk with his brother Mikey and a couple of friends and they'd been in an accident. Gerard was the only survivor. He'd escaped the crash unharmed but had to sit alone with his brother's mangled body for twenty minutes before help arrived. Now his own family were blaming him for the tragedy and he wouldn't answer any of Ray's frantic phone calls.
Remembering how bad Gerard's mental state could get when life took bad turns, Frank called his ex a dozen times to offer sympathy and a shoulder to cry on but he only got Gee's answering machine. Eventually the teenager went out looking for him and found the older man in a local park one gray day looking miserable and pale behind Rayban sunglasses with a 40 of beer in his hand. Shy and self-conscious, Frankie had offered his condolences but Gerard only sniffed and shook his head before walking quickly away, his pockets rattling loudly with fresh pharmaceuticals. Frank was too disheartened to chase after him.
On the day of Mikey's funeral, Gerard had left town without a word and Frank had been chasing him ever since, out of his mind with worry and hounded by anxious phone calls from Ray and his mom and Gerard's poor parents. Everybody knew something was horribly wrong but they didn't want to say it out loud. It was a total disaster.
***
Shutting the motel room door behind him, Frank took a nervous breath of warm cigarette-smelling air and looked around the dim, curtained room, scared of what he might find. “Gerard... Gee?” he called softly, “It’s Frankie. Just checking up on you cos I'm worried. Everyone's freaking out about you back home. Are you here, babe?” Nobody answered.
The single bed was unmade and empty and Gerard's jacket and a broken cell phone were lying on the floor beside some crumpled paper bags and several empty beer cans. Frank tried his hardest not to freak out at this little pile of ruined things. “Gerard!” he called louder, gazing anxiously at the closed bathroom door across the room, “Are you in the bathroom?” Tip-toeing up to the door, he listened for the sound of water running or even Gerard throwing up but all he heard was silence. When he tried the door handle it was locked from the inside. “Gee, hey! I know this is weird, me showing up like this but I heard about Mikey and... I just need to know you're okay. I've been so worried about you. Please open the door... ... Gerard?”
Still no answer.
Hot with panic, Frank banged on the door with his fist and rattled the handle. “Come on Gerard, this isn’t funny! Answer me!”
***
Somewhere far away Gerard could hear a distant drumming… or rumbling thunder… and someone shouting in the dark... “Answer me!”
Was that Frank's voice? Dragging his ruined arm towards his face, Gerard watched through fading vision as his life's blood flowed steadily into a widening crimson pool under his body. He must have passed out trying to get to the door. Funny: the wound didn’t even hurt that much anymore.
“Gerard!” Frank’s voice bellowed. The poor kid sounded on the verge of tears and with an effort Gerard rolled onto his back and squinted through the misty shadows of the bathroom, wondering why he couldn’t see him. “Frankie?” he slurred tiredly, “Where are you?”
“Gerard! Why didn’t you answer me before? Are you okay?”
Frank’s voice sounded muffled. He must be outside the bathroom. Oh.
“Come on, Gee, talk to me! Are you okay?”
“No,” Gerard sobbed hoarsely, “I'm so f-fucking sorry Frankie...I did s-stupid thing...”
“Huh? What did you do?”
“But wasn’t m-me,” Gerard stammered on through numb lips, watching the bathroom ceiling spin like a merry-go-round, “It's my hand...I dunno....”
“Fuck, Gee, you sound really wasted. Please unlock the door and let me in, okay? I don’t want you to pass out in there by yourself.”
“I can’t…”
“Yes you can. Just open the door!”
More silence from the bathroom.
“Gerard!” Frank yelled again, his heart pounding, “Please…” Then the words dried up in his throat as he leaned closer to the door and smelled the reek of puke and blood behind it. “Oh god, Gee, what have you done? Can you get up? All you have to do is let me in and I can take care of the rest, please baby? Fuck... I'm calling 911, just hold on okay, Gee? You NEED to let me in!”
On the bathroom floor Gerard trembled weakly with trauma as thick arterial blood drained out of his body. Trying to see past the dizzy haze in his eyes, he managed to prop himself up on one elbow and crawl closer to the door. The bathroom was shimmering with fuzzy lights and polka-dot clouds of darkness. He felt like he was going to puke again and his shirt was soaked in sweat and blood. The distant drumming was much louder now and it vibrated through his sliced-up skin as Frank pounded on the door with all his might, trying to break it down. “Gerard, wake up! The ambulance is coming, just hold on!”
“Frankie?”
“Yeah...y-yes sweetheart, it’s Frankie. Can you unlock the door for me? Please…” Frank sounded like he was crying now, “Please baby, just open the door!”
Listening to his lover's broken voice helped Gerard’s dying brain stay conscious as tears and blood ran in wet, itchy trickles across his skin. His arm hurt like hell and all he wanted to do was puke and pass out but he knew he couldn't. He'd die if he did. Dragging himself stubbornly across the floor, he slipped and slid in his own blood a dozen times before finally reaching the door and lifting his good arm towards the handle.
“Help is coming Gee! Can...c-can you still hear me?”
“Uh huh,” Gerard panted as he stretched his trembling fingers towards the latch on the door handle. His vision was almost gone and all he had left was a fading sense of touch, but he just had to reach the handle and unlock it and everything would be okay. “Gerard?...are you s-still there?” Frank sounded like a frightened kid and the last thing Gerard felt as his trembling fingers found the latch and he blacked out at last was guilt at upsetting his sweetheart so much.
***
“Gee? Hey, shhhh, look at me...That's right. I’ve got you now, baby, I've got you.” Frank’s voice was so much closer now and something soft was wrapped tightly around his bleeding arm holding it floating above his head. Sirens wailed in the distance, getting closer and closer, and Gerard forced his heavy eyelids open long enough to glimpse Frank’s pale, worried face. “You did it, Gee, you opened the door.." Tears shone in Frank's green eyes and spilled over his lashes when he blinked, landing on Gerard's upturned face, “It's okay now Gee. Y-You’re gonna be fine...”
“Nuh uh. You're lyin',” Gerard whispered drowsily, his tired eyes locked on Frank's as the room around them faded to black.
“No I'm not!”
“Yeah...y’are.” It was getting hard to form words now. “'M s-sorry Frankie....Dint w-wanna hurt you t-too...”
“Shhhh, it's alright. The medics are gonna be here now and they're gonna take care of you so p-please just stay awake now Gee. Stay with me! It's gonna be alright.”
“No,” Gerard sobbed as he passed out in Frank’s arms and the cruel world went away at last, “...It‘s not.”

Notes