Things Are Better If I Stay

My stomach twisted in fear again, so much so that I couldn’t find it in me to speak. Instead I sat staring out the front windscreen, trying to disappear into the soft car seat. Gerard had put the radio on quietly and was now mumbling along to the words of the song. It felt so wrong, so unnatural for him to be doing something so normal. He was some kind of stalker. His spare time should consist of planning out his next kidnapping scheme. He should definitely not just be sitting there casually singing along to cheesy pop songs on the radio.

I concluded after a lot of deliberation that I should try to act as normal as possible before he stopped the car and then I would just throw the door open and bolt, never to look back. “So, um,” I started awkwardly, thankful when my voice didn’t break and reveal how scared I was, “Interesting taste in music.”

He chuckled slightly before replying, “Yeah, um, honestly this isn’t really my thing. My brother used to play stuff like this a lot, purely to annoy the hell outta me. My tastes are a lot more similar to yours, I think.” My eyes widened in at his words. How the hell would he know what music I liked!? He must have noticed the panic on my face and was quick to say, “I mean, judging from your Misfits hoodie and that.” I slumped back down in my seat now that the extra panic had left my head, although I was nowhere near relaxed because the fact that Gerard knew my name without me even telling him was still fucking creepy.

We fell back into an awkward silence for the rest of the journey. A few minutes later and we were now in an area that was a lot better than the one I had been in before, but it still wasn’t exactly safe looking. There weren’t any smashed windows that I could see, so that was a good sign. We turned into the parking lot of an apartment complex to find a large group of men, all dressed in black biker jackets standing together in the middle. “Fuck,” I heard Gerard mutter under his breath. “Listen to me Frank,” He said louder this time, “When I stop the car I want you to run into the building and head to my apartment. It’s apartment 5a, on the very top floor, okay?” He handed me a key ring with a range of keys connected to it. I nodded before realising what I was agreeing too, but by that time there was no going back because he had parked in one of the spaces closest to the apartment building and had already shut the engine off.

I threw open the door and shot out like he had told me to. I could have flown off in any direction. I could have dropped his keys on the ground and run off back down the street. Instead I found myself running into his apartment building, up the grey, damp, dirty stairs and right up to the door of his apartment. It wasn’t until my shaking hands were trying to get the right key into the lock that what I was really doing struck me.

I didn’t know who this guy was. Yes, I knew his name was Gerard, but how did I know that was his real name? He could be anyone! And there were so many odd things about him. Like how even the most threatening of people found him scary as hell, or how when he saw a large group of tough looking men standing outside his apartment that he obviously knew, he seemed more annoyed than even slightly scared of what the biker jacket guys could do to him. And then don’t even get me started on the name thing. That was beyond creepy. That was just scary as hell. Yet here I was, scrambling to get into his apartment. The worst bit though, was that it didn’t feel wrong. My mind and every shred of common sense I had was screaming at me, telling me to run and never look back, but my gut instinct was telling me that by being in this exact position, I was doing the right thing. For the purpose of this evening, I was going to follow my gut instead of my head. I finally managed to get the key into the lock and pushed the door open.

I burst into the apartment, leaving the door to slam shut behind me. The fear still present in my head, I frantically searched for the lights just so that if there were a collection of bloody dead bodies scattered across the room, at least I could make some sort of note to show where I would like my body to be placed on display. What I saw when I finally found the lights amazed me beyond belief. It was absolutely incredible, and the last thing I expected.

The apartment was extremely tall, just this one room looking as though it could easily have been used as two floors. On the opposite side of the room were two large bay windows with a shelf below big enough to count as a bench, and they were obviously used as that judging from the collection of pillows that rested on them and around them. Just to the left of the windows there was a set of rusty metal stairs that led from the splintered wooden floor up to an unknown black hole that was placed roughly halfway up the wall. Throughout the room there were random easels and canvases, some finished whilst others were unfinished, with open paint pots and used brushes scattered around below them. The little furniture he had, which was simply two small loveseats, an armchair and a coffee table was completely covered with random splats of colour that only added to the life that filled the room. On one of the walls there was an archway that seemed to lead into the kitchen. It wasn’t the bay windows, or the unfinished art that amazed me most though. It was his achievements that he openly displayed on his walls that astonished me. The walls were bare red brick, but you could hardly tell because while one wall was taken up with the bay windows, the wall behind me and the wall with the kitchen archway on it were covered in pieces of art; All the way from amazing landscapes to truly awe inspiring comic book strips and pop art pieces. On the one remaining wall lay a sight that I didn’t even think was possible. The idea seemed so simple and easy, but I realised that only someone with true talent would be able to do it so that it was truly breath taking. The wall was covered with a mural of splattered paint, random coloured swirls and patterns all conjoining together to form one amazing sight that I felt truly honoured to behold.

In that moment my entire opinion of Gerard changed. Strangely, I didn’t care about all the creepy, peculiar stuff anymore. There was no way that someone capable of producing such beautiful pieces of work was capable of being evil. What was in this room right now, was what was in his head all the time, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it had the capability of being about as harmful as a child’s teddy bear.

I shuffled forward slowly, unable to move any faster due to the fact that I was still in a daze from Gerard’s art. I walked around the edges of the room, my fingers brushing carefully over the canvas and bumpy paper as though trying to find some way of extracting the beauty from the work and making it into something tangible that I could take with me and carry around with me for the rest of my days. When I got around to the mural I went even slower, trying the feel the colours seep into my skin, washing away all the bad memories and experiences of my past week or so. Taking me back to a time before tonight, before the funeral, before the crash. A time that even if I wasn’t totally happy with my life, at least it was a lot more stable than the one I have now, which can barely be classed as a life at all. The paint rose and fell beneath my fingertips where Gerard had left large random blobs of colour to slowly drip down the wall, leaving trails of blue, green and yellow that slowly merged together to form completely new colours.

It felt as though barley any time had passed when I felt a warm breath on the back of my neck. It didn’t scare me like it would have before. I was too engrossed in the colours surrounding me now, for any negative thoughts to even cross my mind. “What do you think?” I heard Gerard whisper just behind me. I would’ve thought that I would have noticed him come back, seems as I had his keys and I had left the door to close behind me when I came in. He must have just had a spare key.

“It’s- It’s incredible,” I murmured, still brushing my fingers along his mural.

“Thanks,” He mumbled in reply. I could practically hear his nervous smile in his voice. I turned around to see him and noticed that his smile was more of a slight smirk that lifted up the right side of his face. Now I could really see him in the bright lights that lit his apartment. Yes, he seemed to be even paler than before, but he was even more beautiful than before too. Even his awe inspiring artwork paled in comparison to his gorgeous face that was framed by his shaggy raven hair. I felt my fingers twitching with the urge to brush through the messy locks like they had the paintings.

Okay, wow. Slow down. What? Did I seriously just say I wanted to run my fingers through his hair? I swear today was just getting weirder. Before anymore thoughts like that could run through my head I turned away and walked towards one of his unfinished canvases. “What is this going to be?” I asked after examining it for a while and not being able to come up with anything.

Gerard came over to stand beside me and cocked his head to the side as he examined the painting just as I had. Eventually he simply shrugged and said, “Nothing important.” Then, out of nowhere, he grabbed the painting and split it in two against his leg. I felt my mouth drop open, unable to shut it again. I was in complete and utter shock. Even if I was unable to tell exactly what it was yet, it still looked incredible. I would have killed to have been able to paint something even just a tenth the standard of that.

“What did you do that for?!” I asked after the initial shock had worn off, although it was still evident in my voice. He just looked at me as he dropped the two pieces of ripped canvas to the floor, a slight smile playing at the edges of his lips. Shaking his head he walked towards the kitchen, leaving me still in shock at his apparent emotionless destruction of his work. It made me wonder just how many pieces hadn’t made the cut for him before. How many other ripped up pieces of paper, cracked wooden canvases and perhaps even scrapped murals had occurred at his unsatisfied hand.

“Do you want anything?” He called to me from the kitchen, “Coke? Tea? Coffee?” My ears perked up immediately at the word coffee and I turned towards the kitchen nodding frantically. He chuckled lightly at my reaction before heading over and flipping the coffee machine on.

I walked into the kitchen and noticed that it wasn’t quite the same as the main room. This room perfectly reflected the rundown apartment block Gerard lived in. The ceiling in here was low, giving the feeling that you were trapped compared to the amount of space you had back in the other room. The sickly green wallpaper was peeling and it was slightly tinted orange at the top and bottom borders. The cupboards were a dirty pale colour and the counter tops were scratched and faded. The breakfast bar that sat in the centre of the room looked like one of the cupboards had just been stuck in the middle of the room and a random plank of wood dropped on top. The two stools pushed under the bar looked as though the legs would snap the second anything put its weight onto it. For this reason I didn’t sit at one until Gerard pushed a steaming mug of coffee over to my on the table and took the stool opposite me. I decided that if the stools could take him, the larger of the two of us, they would be fine with my weight.

Gerard had also pushed a tea towel containing ice over to me, and I took it without question, holding it up to my stinging face.

After much internal deliberation during the awkward silence that settled between the two of us, I concluded that it would be better to just bite the bullet. I had already settled the suspicion of Gerard being a psychotic murderer in my mind, so I felt more comfortable and confident that if I was to ask Gerard then he wouldn’t try to hack me apart with a kitchen knife. “How did you know my name?” I blurted out so quickly that even a humming bird would be more understandable. Gerard simply took the coffee mug away from his lips before swallowing and making a small humming noise suggesting that he wanted me to repeat what I had just said. “How,” I started, slower this time, “did you know my name?”

I thought I saw a slight look of panic flash through his eyes, but it was gone before I could be sure. “Oh right! Yeah, sorry!” He rambled, “Wow, I bet that must’ve been creepy.” One hand had disappeared under the table and he was trying to pull something out of his pocket, “I found this on the pavement after those guys had run off,” He handed me a small item that I realised was my phone, “It was unlocked on some random page and it had the name Frank open on it somewhere. I just kind of took a lucky guess that it was you, and then when you answered to it I was like, wow! Jackpot! I was lucky there then! It never really crossed my mind how creepy it must have been. No wonder you were really freaked out in the car and stuff.” A sheepish smile spread over his face as he waited patiently for my reaction.

It was actually a perfectly reasonable explanation, and he seemed sincere enough about his excuse. He probably had a lot of other things on his mind after what had happened, and he must have just not been thinking about the effect calling me by my name would have. I didn’t remember dropping my phone though, because it had been hooked up to my headphones during the attack and my headphones had stayed hanging out the front of my jumper. I had only put them away in the car. Mind you, my memories of the events were pretty blurry and I couldn’t remember any of it clearly. Maybe the phone had become unplugged and fallen to the floor. In that case I had yet another thing to thank Gerard for. My phone was the only connection I had left with home, and even if I felt as though everyone there didn’t care about me, it was still my only backup if this whole running away thing didn’t work out to the point where I was on the verge of death. “Oh, um, thanks!” I said eventually, realising that I’d gotten lost in my thoughts again and Gerard was looking at me expectantly still with that sheepish smile on his face. “I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost this! And don’t worry about the name thing. You probably had other things on your mind.” I flashed him a small comforting smile before taking another sip of my coffee. It had already begun to go cold because of how cold it was in his apartment. I hadn’t noticed before but now I had I realised that it was barely any warmer than it was outside. An involuntary shiver ran through my body and Gerard noticed, his eyebrows furrowing in worry and apology.

“Sorry,” Gerard mumbled guiltily, “I’ve turned the heating on so it should warm up in here soon. I don’t really notice it as much as you do.”

“Why not?” I asked, curious as to what made him so special and so immune to temperature.

“I’m kind of used to it. I can’t really afford having heating and electricity all the time, so I’ve taught my body how to cope without.”

“W-What?” I spluttered, astounded. How could you live without heating, especially in winter? It was still only early November, and it would get a lot colder. There was no way he could survive. And without electricity either! How could he see anything? What surprised me more though was that from the things he owned I would never have guessed that he didn’t have enough money for bills. He had such a large collection of art supplies and for any normal person they would come after basic human necessities in their order of importance. Although, it was pretty damn obvious that Gerard was not any normal person. Far from it.

“I have more important things to spend that money on. I make my money through my art, and so I spend the money I earn on my art. I have learnt to go without such pleasures in my life, such as heating.”

“Pleasures in life?” I uttered in disbelief, “I think you’ll find warmth is kind of necessary for, y’know, living.”

“So is art,” he said, the words filled with so much pure emotion and belief that I didn’t dare argue back. In my mind art wasn’t necessary for living. It was just pictures. Don’t get me wrong, I was impressed and I loved it all, but I found it more of a pleasure than a necessity. Gerard was an artist though, unlike me. He lived and breathed art, every day. His world was surrounded by it, engulfed by it and so I could actually understand perfectly why he would feel that way.

Gerard got up out of his seat and walked over to the sink, dumping his empty mug in the bubbly water as he did so. “Are you done with that?” He asked me after he had washed his own mug, and I pushed mine over to his waiting hand. “I didn’t know if you wanted any food? I don’t really have anything in, but if you’re hungry we could order a pizza?”

After the events of tonight I hadn’t even noticed that I hadn’t eaten since this morning. I wasn’t hungry though. Instead it just felt as though if I attempted to eat anything it would just come back up. I shook my head before noticing that he had his back to me so, after sacrificing a few moments to feel stupid for my pointless head movements, I answered with a polite, “No thank you.” I found comfort in knowing that my mother would have been very impressed with my manners so far this evening.

“Well, that makes life easier,” He chuckled, “I’ll go out and get us some food for breakfast in the morning. For now, I think it’s time to go to bed. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.” I felt exactly the same. Today my emotions had been all over the place, and not to mention I had used more physical exertion than I would use in a week when trying to run up to his apartment.

“Um, where’s the bathroom?” I asked as I lifted myself out of the stool I was sitting in and dropped the wet tea towel back on the table.

“Just over there,” He said, pointing to a door hidden in the corner on the other side of the main room, “Just use whatever you need, seems as you don’t have any stuff.” It was only then that I remembered I had left my bag filled with a few clothes and toiletries on my bed back at home. Oh well, it was too late to go back now. I murmured a thank you as I walked off into the bathroom. I shut the door quietly, scared to break the comfortable silence that seemed to hang around the entire apartment, and locked it before turning towards the mirror that hung above the sink.

My face looked horrible. My eye was still swollen and was showing no signs of getting any better anytime soon. There was a huge bruise covering my left jaw and my swollen cut lip still had crusty blood settled on it. As carefully as I could I splashed cold water on my stinging face, and then dabbed at it lightly with a wet flannel. After deciding that washing the blood off was the best result I was ever going to get, I took care of everything else before exiting the bathroom back into the main room.

Gerard was just finishing laying out some pillows and blankets on the sofa as I walked up to him. “It’s not going to be very comfy,” He said apologetically, “But it’s the best I’ve got.”

“Trust me, it’s a hell of a lot better than I expected to get tonight,” I tried to chuckle light heartedly. Really the line just came out flat, but I hoped that Gerard wouldn’t take any meaning from it other than exhaustion.

He gave me a slight sympathetic smile in reply before turning and walking away. “Well anyway, I’ll see you in the morning,” and with that he disappeared through a door that was hidden right in the centre of the mural that I hadn’t noticed before. It must have been his bedroom- his own private space hidden within plain sight. Now I knew that the rectangular outline of the door was there, it was hard to miss, and I couldn’t help but laugh at myself for being so unobservant before.

I didn’t feel comfortable enough in this apartment yet to be able to bring myself to remove my jeans to sleep, so instead I removed my battered converse and climbed under the covers still in my jeans, t-shirt and hoodie. Even if the heating was on, it was still freezing and I couldn’t stop shivering.

I lay awake for hours, my mind working on overdrive thinking about all the events that had led up to this moment where I found myself sleeping on some strangers’ sofa. I would never have dreamed that things would have happened quite this way, but here I was. I wondered if my life would continue on this odd tangent, or if it would slowly settle back into normality. Although part of me craved desperately for my old life back, another part of me wanted to continue on this new track. I wanted to know more about Gerard. I wanted to learn about his life, his art, his world. It was obviously very different from my own, from anyone’s that I had ever known, and my curiosity pulled me towards it. Somewhere amongst my fantasies of what Gerard’s strange secret world may be, I finally fell asleep.

Notes