The Story of a Man, A Woman, and the Corpses of 1000 Evil Students

Gerard didn’t call or text me at all within the last few days of break. Saturday came and went in an anxious blur; I took so many sleeping pills to help me calm down so I was in a zombie-like haze. It was nice to have a day of staying in and watching Netflix instead of getting drunk with Frank and Gerard, though I would have jumped at the chance to do so if there had been one.

I spent most of Sunday getting things ready for class again, heavily dreading Gerard’s class the next morning. It was going to be so awkward. I definitely did not want to be the one to text him first and break the silence. I didn’t want to look weak. I had always been the weak one when I had been dating Anthony and...even though I wished I was dating Gerard, I wasn’t, and this was different. Hey, it was a big step for me to even admit that I wished I was dating him.

Couldn’t remember the last time someone other than Anthony had made me feel something like this. Maybe it was a sign of healing and moving on, finally, after five years of horror. Jessica got back into town and invited me over to have a girls’ night, but I had to decline. I wasn’t in the mood for talking to other people right now. I especially wasn’t in the mood to deal with Jessica asking me what I had been doing all break, because I knew she would get carried away if I responded truthfully.

After hanging out with Frank Friday night, my mind was more at ease than it would have been if I had avoided thinking or talking about Gerard with someone. Frank had divulged Gerard did talk about me, and not in a bad way; in a way that Frank assumed he had a thing for me. I was beginning to assume he had just gotten carried away with loneliness and alcohol.

Frank shot me a text Sunday night.

From FRANK, 7:49 PM
Hey, how you holding up?

To FRANK, 7:50 PM
Meh. Nervous about teaching tomorrow?

From FRANK, 7:51 PM
Never! Let me know if you need anything.

I needed to change his name from the obnoxious capitals to lowercase. He had insisted on putting it in my phone like that, so I would know it was him and not just any other Frank. Because, you know, Frank Iero is always shouting. Gerard says it’s because he’s short. Frank agrees.

As the night wore on, I wondered if any bar would be open late enough on a Sunday night. I didn’t feel like cooking and definitely did not feel like going to the liquor store nearby. I wanted a drink premade and handed over to me with a burger and fries. Or wings. I could definitely go for some wings.

I walked the few blocks to one of the renowned dive bars of the area, O’Flannigan’s. Sure, it was just a bar with a pub name, but I liked to pretend I was in an Irish pub and not right down the street from the hell hole of my university. It was surprisingly busy on a Sunday, and I realized that’s because it was couples karaoke night. My stomach turned; I’d always loved the concept of ‘couples’ activities before I dated Anthony, but he always thought they were stupid.

The girl at the mic on the small stage had blonde hair in ringlets and chocolate eyes. She was wearing something akin to what a cowgirl would wear after she’d been torn up by a loose steer. The longer I stared at her, the weirder she seemed to me. I could have sworn I’d met her before, but I could not for the life of me figure out where in the hell I had seen her. She was probably just another student. Maybe she lived in my freshman dorm.

A few guys tried to hit on me, which was always an ego boost, but tonight I was definitely not feeling it. I only let one of them buy me a drink because he seemed nice. He was nerdy, with thick rimmed glasses and suspenders, but I had the feeling he was going for a more hipster vibe. We talked about our favorite video games, and it was refreshing. He seemed to forget he was trying to get into my pants and maybe he actually viewed me as a person for a few seconds.

That is, until someone shouldered up to him and told him to beat it. My heart froze in my chest. I wasn’t sure who I had been expecting, but it definitely wasn’t him.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Anthony asked lowly. I was internally screaming, (what’s new), but swallowed my feelings down with a mouthful of beer.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” I spat back. Not my finest comeback, I would admit that. He inched closer at me, probably to threaten me, but the sound of breaking glass caused us both to jump. There she was, in all her tube topped, denim mini-skirted glory, Blonde Cowgirl Karaoke Singer.

“Are you the skank that hit on my boyfriend and tricked him into sleeping with you?” She shrieked at me, her drink now in pieces on the floor. “You bitch!” I only had a moment to realize she was lunging for me, and at that point it was too late to duck. She brought me to the floor where she landed on me with a sickening thud. My shoulder was pressed into the fragments of glass she had just dropped on the ground.

“Holy shit, get off me, I don’t even know who you are!” I screamed, muffled under her. She was trying to hit me, but mostly succeeded in slapping me and pulling my hair. After about half a minute of this, a group of guys successfully pulled her off of me screaming.

“Of course you don’t know who I am, you hussy!” She spat at me. “I’m dating Anthony!”

From my sitting position on the floor, I almost just laid back down into the glass. Anything to not have to deal with this shitshow. But instead, I sighed, watching the blood drip down the side of my face into a neat little pool between my splayed legs. So Anthony had cheated on her with me. That made me feel...great. Fantastic. Valued. Definitely not cheap.

I finally got to my feet after somebody gave me a helping hand-I was pretty sure it had been the nerd I was talking to earlier, but I wasn’t paying too much attention-and I wandered out the back door to the smoking alley. I just needed to feel the cold air. The breeze was like needles poking into my skin and I could still feel warmth dripping down my head, face, and arms. I had ripped up one of my favorite flannel shirts.

“Fuck!” I hissed, taking it off of me painfully and leaving me in a black camisole; the blood was beginning to congeal into it, causing more wounds to reopen. I balled up my shirt and pressed it on the deepest cut on my bicep. I figured since it was already ruined beyond repair, I might as well put it to good use.

“Were you one of those chicks in the fight in there?” Some guy walked up to me, flicking his cigarette into the dumpster.

“No, I just walk into bars and start bleeding everywhere,” I cut at him sarcastically.

“Bitch,” he said, spitting on the ground before walking away. I would walk home in a few minutes; right now, though, I needed to take a breather. I sunk to the ground against the back of the bar wall, sitting on my heels. Just take a few seconds, I told myself. Just breathe. Clean up when you get home.

The back of the bar opened again and someone swore under their breath when they saw me. I’m sure I was a sight to behold; blood was streaming from my hairline down the sides of my face and everywhere else, for that matter. I ignored them, staring down at the gravel between my knees. “Charlotte, what the fuck happened?” I recognized that voice. My cheeks grew hot, but not because of the blood on the outside.

“Oh my god, don’t look at me,” I begged Gerard. He crouched down, picking some small chips of glass out of my short hair.

“Yeah, let me just not look at you and leave you here, bleeding behind a bar,” he said as he slipped his cigarettes back into his jacket pocket. He had been stepping out here for a smoke. Not to find the mangled body of one of his students he had drunkenly made out with in a moment of regret.

Maybe I was bitter.

“I’m not going to bleed to death, I’m fine. Somebody just got mad,” I explained, trying to smile. I coughed up blood instead. Close enough.

“Come on. We’re not far from my place. Let’s go.” He hooked an arm under mine, hauling me to my feet. “I walked here, but we’re getting a cab.” A wave of relief washed over me. I really was in a lot of pain. That bitch had been heavy. The cabbie regarded us with wide eyes after we were dropped off outside of another apartment complex. Gerard had tipped him a lot, probably because I bled all over the leather interior. Most of it had wiped off.

His apartment building was nice. There was an armed security guard in the lobby who held the door open for us. Gerard silenced him by putting his hand up, “she’s fine, just got in a biking accident. Thank you.” At least Gerard was quick with his words today. I wasn’t quick with my words or movements.

He lived on the sixteenth floor in a two bedroom apartment. One he used as his studio, the other was a plain old bedroom. The scent of incense permeated the entire apartment, even spreading out into the hallway. The walls were a deep red, and most of the furniture was black. It put my apartment to shame. He guided me to a seat at his dining room table.

“I think I’m dying,” I spat, the blood running down the side of my head, pooling in my mouth. I cupped my hands under my chin to catch the overflow. I thought I was going to throw up.

“What the hell did you do, eat glass?” He hissed, but his concern was apparent. His eyes were wide but his hands moved expertly, as if he had dealt with something like this before. Gerard held a bucket under my face. “Spit,” he instructed. Red splashed against the clean white plastic, making more bile churn in my stomach. I fought it back. He shoved gauze in my mouth, his eyes sparkling, clearly amused at my lacking of the ability to speak.

We were just sitting at his dining room table, staring each other down. Every now and then the corner of his mouth would twitch downwards in concern and he would readjust the gauze he had in and around my mouth, but mostly he just stared at me. I was sure I was a real spectacle; my shirt was ripped, my makeup and mascara had to be staining my cheeks by now, and I was sure my hair was a ratted mess.

After what seemed like hours but was in reality a few short minutes, Gerard pried my mouth open again, cleaning all of the gauze out with his fingers. I tried not to think about my art professor swirling his fingers around inside my mouth with some sort of angry fire in his eyes. I definitely was not thinking about that longer than I needed to. He dumped the bloody gauze into the formerly white trash can sitting on the ground before he began moving around the kitchen, mixing something in a glass.

He sat back down next to me, pushing the glass in my direction. “You’re going to swish that around in your mouth then spit it back in there. Don’t swallow it, because it’ll probably kill you.” I picked up the glass and did what he said, my insides churning at the way he was telling me to do things. Shut up. “While you are being the most obedient you’ve ever been regarding things I’ve told you to do, you might as well tell me what got you into this mess. After,” he added, holding a finger up in the air, “you finish this anti bacterial swill to make sure you don’t get an infection.”

I spit the now bloody mixture into the glass. “Done. I got in a fight with someone. They were being shitty. Punches were thrown. Everybody was a little drunk. It’s not like you can say that’s never happened to you before,” I said. My words were a little slurred; it felt like my jaw was slightly out of place. Everything about me just felt slightly off; I was glitching.

“Can I go home now? I don’t think it’s exactly professional for a professor to be cleaning their student’s wounds at two in the morning. I just want to sleep,” I groaned, attempting to stretch but hitching when I felt two ribs grinding together. I squeaked, lurching forward to lean on the dinner table as I curled my arms around my torso. “Just let me sleep.” I couldn’t help but notice how much colder he was being. It just confirmed my suspicions about how much he did actually regret kissing me.

“What’s not professional is leaving someone in a bloody mess behind a closed bar. I’m just trying to be a decent human being.” Gerard rose to his feet, dumping the glass of bloody chemicals down the kitchen sink. He then poured himself a cup of coffee I hadn’t noticed brewing.

“Why on Earth are you pouring coffee this late? Or early? It’s almost half past two. You need to go to sleep, you have classes to teach tomorrow-”

“And you have classes to attend tomorrow. Tell me, Charlie, which one of us was out getting in fights in bars tonight on a school night?” Gerard narrowed his eyes at me over his smoldering coffee. Charlie. He called me Charlie.

“May I remind you that you were also out in bars on a school night? Maybe you weren’t getting in fights but I can hardly say we had different plans for the night; go out to a bar, get drunk enough so somebody there looks halfway decent enough to go home with, and sneak out before lecture at eight in the morning,” I said into the coffee table. “Maybe you just didn’t happen to run into an ex-boyfriend but that’s not your fault, Mr. Way.”

A startling crash on the tile kitchen floor jerked me upright, ready to sprint from this fucking place. But all I saw was a wide eyed Gerard, one hand clutching the countertop to steady himself, the other one curled into a fist where his coffee had been a moment ago. He was bent slightly at the waist, so his long, unkempt hair was shrouding his face.

I scooted the chair back, slowly rising to my feet. “I really appreciate you fixing me up, Mr. Way. I should really get back to my apartment now though, and shower so I can...so I can sleep before I need to get up for lecture tomorrow. I’ll see you tomorrow though. Right?” I began to back towards the door.

“So that’s who did this to you? A jilted ex-lover? How poetic. How disgusting. I can’t believe this,” he kneeled down and began picking the pieces of his mug up off the kitchen floor. I realized I should help him before fleeing into the night and grabbed a chunk of paper towels to soak up the rest of the coffee. “Was it the same guy from a few days ago?”

I couldn’t really speak right now, so I just nodded. He sighed, running another coffee stained hand through his hair before rising back up to his feet. “And on the last day of Thanksgiving break, nonetheless. Happy fucking holidays, huh?” I wasn’t sure who he was talking to, if anybody in particular. I felt another warm sensation on the side of my head, touching a finger to it. It came back red. “Charlotte, we really should get you to a hospital to see if you need stitches. I have the sinking feeling that you wouldn’t be comfortable with that.”

I threw my head back with a sigh, wincing immediately at the pain that accompanied this movement. “I really don’t want to. Can we just wait?”

“Until when? You said it yourself, it’s already two in the morning, we have to be at campus in a few hours. I’d rather not have you die in my apartment,” he added thoughtfully.

“I really appreciate that,” I said sarcastically. “I don’t want to see a doctor.”

“It can’t hurt! There’s nothing wrong with being cautious-”

“I don’t have fucking medical insurance, Gerard. I can’t afford it, okay?” I snapped, regretting my tone when I saw his expression soften. “I’m sorry.”

“Instead of telling you how that’s technically illegal, especially since you’re a college student, I’m going to give you an ultimatum; you either let me take you to the hospital, or you stay here and stay up with me tonight so we can make sure you’re not concussed,” he said calmly. I raised my eyebrows.

“Can we watch movies?” I asked, a small grin creeping up on my lips. I watched as he rolled his eyes comically, shoulders slumping in a fake sigh.

“I guess. It’s not like I have papers to grade or anything,” he smirked. “Let me grab some clothes for you. They’re, uh, going to be rather big but I don’t want you in...those,” he gestured vaguely to my body. I had to stifle a laugh.

I nodded in agreement. We had since thrown out my formerly favorite flannel. It was now sitting at the bottom of a bloody trash can. He came back with some sweats.

“They’re the smallest I could find. The bathrooms right over there, and if you want to shower, which I’m not pressuring you to do but you are literally covered in blood, feel free.” I gave him a thumbs up. “Towels are under the sink,” he said quickly before I closed the door behind me. I checked out my reflection in the mirror, biting back a shriek. A shower was definitely in order.

After I took the bloodiest shower yet in my life, I chose a dark towel so I wouldn’t stain anything. The pajamas he had lent me were so warm and cozy; I felt like I was swaddled in clouds.

“Now remember, no falling asleep,” he said before turning the television on and pulling a stack of papers into his lap. He had been sure to sit on the loveseat. I was on the couch on the right.

“How do you expect me to stay awake watching CNN?” I joked. He tossed the remote in my direction.

“Go crazy, kid.”

My heart did weird things when he called me that.

Notes