“I’m a model, you know what I mean. And I do my little turn on the cat walk, on the catwalk yeah. Shake my little tush on the catwalk.”

Mikey’s alarm wakes me up this morning with the annoyingly fruity tune of ‘I’m Too Sexy’. He flushes, muttering a quiet “I forgot about that” and rolls out of bed, hitting the off button on his phone. I follow, Helena complaining about her beauty sleep and trudging along behind me.

Our father had kept his word and left early, before Mikey and I even woke up. He left a note for us, something about ‘be back soon, behave yourselves’. My brother makes our breakfast as I read the note to him, preparing cups of Coffee and bowls of Count Chocula Cereal. The Coffee is delicious and he tells me I used to drink it all the time, at both breakfast and sometimes even later into the night. Apparently it caused me to have a very awkward sleeping pattern, part of the reason why I slept so terribly the night before.

I’m still convinced that was because I was asleep for three months, but you never know.

The cereal tastes a little funny, sort of chalky, but I don’t say anything, not wanting to offend him. Mikey seems fragile and I don’t want to fuck him up.

He leaves hurriedly. I offer to drive him but he comes up with a couple of rushed excuses, as to why I couldn’t drive the jet black Mustang (which looked expensive and probably came from my mother) saying he didn’t want to bother me, etc, etc. I assume he actually meant that I’m a terrible driver and he doesn’t want me to scratch the stylish white racing stripes running from the front fender to the trunk.

“Bye Mikey!” I call as he pulls down the driveway. He smiles at me, and nods, swinging the fancy car out onto the asphalt and driving off down the road. I head back inside, calling for Lena as I shut the door. She doesn’t answer me and I assume she’s off doing whatever ghosts do. I can’t expect her to be with me all the time. She does have her own life. Well, afterlife, actually. But still.

Without Helena to talk to, I wander around the house looking for something to do. There’s an old beat up Play Station Two set up in the living room, a stack of games lined up next to it and a large book shelf in what looks like my dad’s office that’s full of biographies and stupid how-to books. Nothing around the house really interests me. So I tidy up from Breakfast and head up to my room.

I go through the closet first. Aside from my clothes, there isn’t much there, mainly just a rack full of jackets and hoodies. There’s actually some color there, so I assume some of those things are Mikey’s. I scan over the knife box, but leave it be, too afraid to really mess with it at the moment. On the floor is a line of four pairs of shoes: black converse, two pairs of winter boots, and black and white vans. Against the back wall are a few tall white boxes labeled in lazy script. I read off numerous super hero names; Dead Pool, Doom Patrol, The Watchmen, X-Men etc. I don’t bother opening the boxes, considering taking the duct tape off would be a pain in the ass and they might not even be mine for all I know. Next to the comic boxes, in the corner (I can’t believe I missed this when I first looked in the closet) is a big cherry red electric bass. I marvel at it, running my hands up and down the neck. I check to see if my fingers have calluses, but find none, so I assume it’s Mikey who plays it. I smile, setting a note in my brain to ask him to play it for me sometime.

Mikey is a bit shy when talking about himself. I had asked him the day before what he liked to do and he muttered something about reading and walked away, although he loves to talk about other people, especially me. He had told me just about a million things that I used to do, things I liked, disliked, and he wasn’t finished. For the next few weeks, I’m sure he would tell me a million more things. He loves to talk, that’s for sure, just not about himself. He hadn’t told me about his guitar, or much else that involved him for that matter. I’ll have to get it out of him when he gets back. He’s my brother, and I’m curious about what he has to say. I’ve only just met him, but it feels like I’ve known him for forever, which would make sense, because I have. I just can’t remember. And that’s what’s really pissing me off.

I leave the closet, and get down on my hands and knees to look under the beds. Under Mikey’s bed (which is in fact the Ninja Turtle one) is a bunch of books, mostly classics like The Catcher in the Rye and The Outsiders, some music magazines and a few CDs. I can make out a couple boxes farther under, but it’s Mikey’s stuff and I don’t want to pry. Under my own bed is pretty much the same thing, minus the novels and more magazines and CDs. I pull out the two boxes from the back (it's my stuff after all) and open the first one, which is a converse shoe box. There’s a Polaroid picture of a tree duct taped to the top, a very big oak on the edge of a clearing, most likely in the middle of the woods. In the picture it looks like its afternoon, everything glowing gold. I smile to myself, admiring the image, wondering where I got it from and then opening the top. Inside are piles upon piles of art supplies. Brushes, pencils, erasers, sharpeners, water colors, colored pencils, sharpies, and a handful of an interesting Japanese brand of markers. I check the top of the box again and it does indeed say ‘Gee’s: Do Not Touch (especially you, Mikey)’ on the top. It’s my stuff. Mikey hasn’t told me anything about my art yet, so I’m sort of surprised. So much art supplies points to the fact that I probably really liked it. I make a mental note. Ask Mikey about it.

The second container is yet another Converse box. I realize that I only have one pair of Converse and I check the side. It’s for a shoe, much smaller than the ones in my closet, and hot pink. I scrunch up my nose, wondering where I got a box for pink converse, half my size. I flip it back over, setting it in my lap and begin peeling the tape off. The whole box is wrapped in duct tape, several times around. The top, just as the other one, says ‘Gee’s: Do Not Touch (I’m not even kidding this time Mikey. I will eat you)’ but in bolder letters. I peel away the tape, scraping my nails against the sticky metallic substance. Lucky for me my nails haven’t been cut in a while (I was asleep for three months, what can I say?) so I pull it off easier than you would think. The top of the box comes off with a soft pop. The box is fairly light, so I’m surprised with how full it is. There’s so much stuff inside that it starts to spill out on the floor as soon as the top comes off. I find tons upon tons of Polaroids, much like the one taped to the top of the art box, several folded up pieces of lined paper, and for some odd reason a miniature book entitled ‘Pocket- Book of Poetry’. I go for the photographs first. Some of them are of scenery and places. All of them are beautiful. I come to find that a lot of them have my face, my hair a little shorter, but not by much. I come to the conclusion that these are someone else’s photographs. I was merely the model, the subject to have my picture taken. Not the photographer.

I find a very intriguing picture, caressing it in my hands delicately. The photograph is an image of a very old looking building lifeless and crumbling. The windows are boarded and the siding is falling off in most places, completely gone in some. The roof covering the wide porch is caving in slightly and the door is boarded off. On the right of the house I catch a bit of door, the ones that are on the ground and lead down to a cellar or a basement. It’s red, rusted a bit, but seemingly intact. It hangs open as if the person who had taken the picture had just come from inside. I admire the photograph a bit more but drop it back inside the box. Words on the back of the picture catch my eye and I quickly scramble to pick it back up. The wording is in very loopy script, tiny and almost cursive in appearance. I squint to try and read it.

'Tuesday.’ And below that ‘1764 Hope St., Belleville NJ'

I’ve seen that address before.

Heart pounding, I spring up from the ground, and dash to the windowsill. The blue sticky note has fallen from the glass and landed on the white cracking slab of wood below it. I pick it up and quickly read the address.

They’re matching.

Coincidence? Maybe. But it doesn’t hurt to investigate. Taking the sticky note and the picture with me, I run downstairs and hop onto Mikey’s laptop. His password is pretty easy to figure out. Yesterday he had told me he had a girlfriend named Alicia. It takes a few tries to figure out the spelling of her name but I eventually log on, hitting internet explorer and printing out the directions from Google.

The walk isn’t very far, maybe ten minutes. Grabbing one of the many leather jackets out of the closet and slipping on my pair of faded chucks I dash out of the house, following the directions easily.

I can feel the excitement grip the bottom of my stomach, twisting it into little knots. I have no idea what I’m going to find there, but the fact that I’m going on some sort of adventure makes my heart pump faster with adrenaline. I was expecting to sit around the house and do nothing all day long, waiting for Mikey or my father to get back. From what I’ve heard so far, my life was pretty boring before this whole attempted-suicide-coma fiasco. I didn’t have a girlfriend (or boyfriend. I have this strange feeling that I’m gay, but I’m not quite sure yet) and it seems that I didn’t have many friends. I had been a loner. A recluse, hiding out in the house all day, drawing, reading comic books, or playing video games. Other than the fact that I can see ghosts, my life’s pretty mundane. And even the ghost thing isn’t all that exciting. The only ghost I’ve successfully met is my dead grandmother, and I’ve yet to raise any zombies from the ground.

Speaking of which, my supposedly dead granny isn’t anywhere in sight, even as I saunter up to the house. I find myself wondering where she is as I stare up at the building before me. It looks much older in person. The once yellow paint is now a sickly brownish-gold color, the roof caving, and all of the windows boarded up. The lawn out front is choked with dandelions and crab grass, and it seems that it hasn’t been mowed or weeded in millennia’s. The porch looks so rotted that I don’t think I can step on it without going straight through. By the structural architecture of the place, anyone can tell it used to be beautiful. The old house is three stories tall, a lighter rectangular marking around the top windows, almost like tan lines. Remnants of a balcony, long gone from neglect, it seems. One corner, on the right, is rounded off, as if a winding stairwell makes its way up to the top floor. The two windows on the bottom are wide and intricate, one broken and boarded, the other masked with a faded pink curtain on the inside. The house goes far back into the yard, one side lined with wild, untrimmed bushes, the other with an old flower bed, overrun with weeds and moles.

The house used to be the prettiest one on the whole block, I’m sure. Elaborate and astonishing, the owners hosting banquets and parties every month just to show off the elegance of it all. To its left and right are tiny, single stories with cliché garden gnomes and your everyday lame plastic siding. I can’t understand how such a beautiful piece of artwork was built on such a homely little back street in a boring old town in New Jersey. It’s almost saddening.

Scrunching up my nose, I look around, scanning the building for clues to my mystery note. I find a curious looking worm on the sidewalk, but nothing more. It seems so… normal. Your average, every day, plain Jane abandoned Victorian. Dangerous, maybe. The abandoned house that your parents won’t let you play in, no matter how much you plead. That house that’s rumored to be haunted. The one Johnny went into and never came out of.

But all abandoned houses have those sorts of stories. And this one is no different.

I sigh in defeat, getting ready to turn around and leave. The once alluring, mysterious, abandoned house is simply that. An abandoned house. I grumble to myself taking one last look and turning to leave.

But something catches my eye.

To the side, hidden in between the flower beds is a bright cherry red cellar door, flung open, extending into the air carelessly.

I check the picture one last time, matching the real door before me with the one in the photograph. The message that had been written on the sticky note comes back to me. ‘Come get ice cream in the basement.’ This must be the basement that had been referred to on the tiny blue square of paper. At least I hope this is what it means. I would hate to know that I came out here for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Stepping off of the riddled, off kilter sidewalk, I make my way across the lawn and into the shadows of the side of the house. The red doors are sunken into the ground, one side shut, the other side open halfway. Descending down is a narrow, heavily cemented staircase, enveloped in total and utter blackness about the fifth step down. It’s so dark that I’m almost afraid to go inside. I walk down into the darkness anyway, my curiosity taking over my fear of the unknown.

Fumbling my fingers in the dark, I find the light switch on the wall. The dusty bulb on the ceiling flickers on, lighting the dark with a dingy yellow, almost eerie glow. The basement is dim, shadows lurking quietly in the corners, shrouding who knows what with the cold absence of light. Cobwebs litter the stained, off-white cement walls, and line the ceiling. The floor beneath me is dirt, packed tightly together after years and years of feet stomping around on it. To one side is a long wooden work bench, the iron legs rusting, threatening to give way under the heavy block of wood. Atop the work bench is a stack of plastic buckets, a roll of duct tape, several darkly stained rags, and a neat little manila envelope. Next to the bench is an old, retro style refrigerator, with a freezer connected on the top, and it seems as if the big hunk of metal is running, giving off a sort of humming sound. There’s a makeshift sink built into the wall on the other side of the bench, stained with rust and layers of scum and grime. The other wall is lined with a large wooden trunk, painted black, with a lock on the front. Several metal folding chairs are stacked against the back wall and an old wooden, rickety staircase runs up the corner of the room, leading out of the basement and into the house. Oddly enough, one folding chair has been removed from the wall and placed in the center of the room, upright and ready to be sat in. The whole place smells of dirt and grime with a slightly rotten hint beneath it all. The air is cool and damp, thick with condensation, and the walls tremble slightly as a car drives by on the road above me.

Despite the obvious creepiness of the basement, I step forward, examining the room more closely. I approach the chest first, for the sake of just seeing if it can be opened or not. It can’t. Jiggling the lid, I try to pry it open with my bare hands but it doesn’t work. Sadly enough, there doesn’t seem to be an extra crowbar conveniently lying around anywhere, so I don’t think I’ll be opening it today.

Walking across the room, I come to the work bench. The duct tape and the buckets seem pretty normal, just your average silver sticky roll and blue chunky containers. The rags are an array of different colors, all of them older and tearing. They all seem to have large, dark stains on them. I convince myself the stains are just from juice and then I turn my attention to something else, trying not to psych myself out. The envelope is what really catches my eye. Grabbing it by the corner, I pull it off from the table, holding it delicately between my palms. On the cover is a name written in large bold letters. <i>Gerard</i>.

Okay. This is weird.

I quickly run my long fingers under the seal of the envelope, opening it carefully, just to make sure I’m not setting off a bomb or letting poisonous gas into the air. I seriously need to stop watching crime shows. (According to Mikey, I used to watch a whole lot of them.)

I pull the contents of the envelope out very gently, letting the manila folder fall to table after a thorough inspection to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. The only thing that had been inside the envelope is a sheet of lined paper. Words are written across the front in red sharpie.

'Your surprise is in the freezer.'

Next to that is the same damn heart, identical to the one on the sticky note. I must be in the right place.

The letters seem almost forced, handwriting choppy and odd, none of the letters really matching. Whoever had written it is definitely trying to hide their identity. I scrunch up my face. Who would take the time to place a sticky note on my window, send me across town to an abandoned house, and write a letter for me? I thought I was the loser kid who no one liked. It’s not like I have friends who care enough to do this. And even if I did, why would they go through all this trouble? I have ears you know. They could’ve just told me.

I turn around slowly, facing the freezer, humming against the wall. The dingy yellow appliance taunts me. Images of bloody, frozen severed heads, with soulless blank eyes and gasping mouths flash across my conscience. What else could be in the freezer but your typical detached body part?

Man I really need to stop watching Law & Order.

I approach the freezer with slow, cautious steps, almost afraid to touch the handle as it comes within reach. My vocal chords anticipate bouts of screaming (the bloody murder kind), my legs bracing themselves to run away, as fast as I possibly can, and something pulls at the pit of my stomach, creating a hole of dread that almost hurts. Reaching forward, I wrap my fingers around the handle and pull it open.

No severed head. Or arm. Or any other body part, actually. In fact, there isn’t even anything horrifying inside. Just a simple tub of ice cream. It’s one of those small, cheap ice-creams; the container made out of clear plastic with the pull-back cardboard lid that has the mini wooden spoon underneath. The words on the sticky note come back to me, telling me about the ice cream I’m supposed to have in the basement. It all starts to come together, the gears in my brain squealing as they crank back to life. The anonymous person wants me to eat this ice cream, in this house. But why? Questions nag at the outskirts of my mind, but I keep them there, just as they are, and continue with my search. I need answers, not more questions piling up.

I lift my other hand from my side, extracting the ice cream from its cold icy tomb and examining it. It looks normal enough, no signs of someone lifting the lid or the plastic being tampered with. But it seems that everything that appears normal at first doesn’t actually turn out that way. The ice cream is not an exception. Written across the cardboard top, over the generic logo and required nutrition facts, is the same red sharpie, the same forced handwriting. This time the words are written extra small to fit on the lid.

'Sit in the chair and check underneath. Oh and don’t forget to eat the ice cream.'

And a heart, of course.

I sigh. More directions, no explanations. The simple red instructions are beginning to get tiring.

Honestly, I would have preferred a severed head.

I close the fridge with a pop from the plastic air tight lining pressing together, and head towards the chair in the middle of the room, peeling off the top of the ice cream as I walk. There’s a wooden spoon underneath, and I pull it out to shovel the first bit of chocolate and vanilla goodness into my mouth. The ice cream is a familiar sensation on my tongue, and I just know I’ve had it before. This very brand, this very flavor, possibly in this very room, a snarling case of déjà vu gnawing at my heels like rabid Chihuahuas. I sit down in the cold chair, the metal shocking the warmth out of my ass. I cringe slightly, letting the ice cream rest on my thigh, reaching over to grope under the chair, looking for- well I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking for. I’m simply looking for something.

And I do find something.

It is duct taped to the bottom of the metal, and I have to use my finger nails to scrape it off. I finally manage to yank it from its spot under the chair and bring it in front of my face.

I stare at another piece of lined paper, also written on in red sharpie. The only difference between the last piece of paper and this one is the duct tape around the edges. It seems as though it’s even written on the same notebook paper. I pull it closer to my face, reading the contents.

'Gerard,

Please excuse the oddness of the situation. It’s best for you right now to just trust me. I know that’s hard and all but you have to try.

Take a bite of your ice cream and think really hard.

With Love. '

And then a heart.

Placing the paper in my lap, I read it over again as I pick up my ice cream. What the hell did they mean ‘think really hard’? Think about what? I huff, taking a bite of my ice cream, and looking around. Think. I have to think. I look around the room, scanning for something to think about, something to ponder over. But nothing comes to me. I take another bite. There really isn’t much in the room to think about. The chest could be interesting, but It’s locked and it would really only piss me off not knowing what’s inside. The fridge could spark some thinking, but my thoughts would be plagued with severed heads, which as interesting as it sounds isn’t very good for my ‘fragile’ state of mind. The stairs, the workbench, the buckets, the duct tape, the rags, the fucking red sharpie (that was really ticking me off). Nothing’s working. I heave a sigh, scraping off the next layer of frozen sugar and spoon it into my mouth.

And then it hits me.

Really hard, straight in the face. I’m surprised that I don’t get a bloody nose from the shear impact. It’s so obvious and I feel like a complete and utter idiot for not realizing it before.

The ice cream!

It had been mentioned on the sticky note and in the envelope. The letter under the chair had told me to ‘take a bite of my ice cream’, for god’s sake.

I mentally bitch slap myself in the face, as if the utter obviousness of my realization hadn’t hit me hard enough. If Lena was here, she’d probably slap me in the face too. Maybe even Mikey, a guy who seems like he wouldn’t hurt so much as a fly, let alone his own twin brother. I had seriously been that stupid.

I stare at the ice cream. Glare at it even, willing it to tell me the secrets to the universe. Ice cream can’t talk (who knew?) and I’m apparently too stupid to get whatever it is I’m supposed to be seeing here, so nothing happens.

Anger wells up in between the delicately curved bones of my rib cage and I pitch the ice cream across the room. It hits the wall with a loud thud, spraying chocolate and vanilla all over the fridge, the buckets, the rags, the tape, and the work bench. The plastic falls to the floor, leaving a thick patch of stickiness on the white plaster, slowly dripping down and pooling where the floor and the bottom of the wall meets.

Ding ding ding! Déjà vu. The ice cream. The basement. The stickiness running down the walls. The buckets. The rags. The tape. The chest. The fridge. The chair. Everything. It had all happened before. In this very sequence. All of it. My mind rattles, the hollow clank of the container hitting the ground echoing in my ear, and everything slows down a notch. It feels like something has dislodged itself from the deepest depths of my brain and is coming forth to the surface, gasping and thrashing. My head throbs. A memory. At first it’s only images, foggy and unclear, lots of color and unidentifiable shapes, sounds, and voices, clips of audio, a catastrophic pandemonium of vivid events. The rocket of memory flies through my brain, crashing into my skull, and leaving clouds of dust and dirt all around it. As the fog begins to settle, I watch in miraculous horror, witnessing a memory unfold right before my very eyes.

“What?!” My voice cracked in astonishment, my eyes staring at my mother in deaf terror. My own mother, abandoning us to some guy we didn’t even know. Some guy she told us was dead.

“It’s not like I can take you with me to New Zealand, Gerard,” she said with a grimace. We were standing in the kitchen, surrounded by an array of stainless steel appliances and white granite countertops. Between us was the island, also white granite, a bouquet of fresh lilies and carnations in a glass vase at the end.

“I know! I don’t want to go to New Zealand. I wanna stay here. And I’m sure Mikey does too!” I leaned on the counter, glaring at my mother. She couldn’t do this! She couldn’t just take me and Mikey away from our life again. She’d done it too many times to count, and to be honest, and on top of that she was dumping us with some random nobody who was supposedly our father.

“Gerard, I can’t leave two teenage boys alone to fend for themselves for a month. That’s ridiculous!”

“Why? I’m responsible enough.”

“Gerard, last time I left you here by yourself you didn’t take your pills and woke the neighbors up with your endless screaming.”

That was harsh. The blow of her words stung my chest. The subject of that dreaded weekend when the Monsters came out. It was taboo, and only ever escaped her lips as weapons in an argument. But I couldn’t judge her for it. I knew she didn’t believe me. She never believed what I saw. The doctors had convinced her I was ‘Mentally Ill’, but I knew better. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t believe in Necromancy. She couldn’t see the monsters, and for most people, seeing was believing.

I knew she wouldn’t accept my words, but I still felt the need to defend myself.

“There was-“

“Monsters in the house, I know. You’ve told me about a million times. Which is why I can’t leave you alone, or you’ll forget to take your pills again.”

They thought the pills helped. Sure, when I took them I couldn’t see the Monsters anymore, but the Monsters didn’t come out every day. For the most part, all I saw was Lena and sometimes her ghost friends, the Monsters only lurking in the shadows behind me. They only came out when I was alone, the perfect time to attack. But I wouldn’t be alone this time around.

“But I won’t be alone, Mom. Mikey’s gonna be with me, he’ll make sure I don’t forget. And Marcia’s only gone on vacation for two weeks, so technically Mikey and I will only be alone for the first half of the month.” I pleaded, ready to get down on my knees and beg.

“I don’t care, Gerard. You’re going to your father’s house and that’s final,” my mother said this in such a way that I couldn’t object. My mouth stayed shut as if it had been stitched together. The woman in front of me sighed to herself in relief when I didn’t speak, and then she crossed the kitchen, grabbing her car keys and her purse off the side counter. “I’ve got to go to a meeting. Start packing and help Mikey with his things when he gets home.”

“So I have to tell him that we’re going to see our ‘father’ who was presumably dead about ten minutes ago?” I stared at her in disbelief, finding the courage to speak again.

“Yes you do. My meeting is in twenty minutes, Mikey doesn’t get home for another hour. Now go. No buts, Gerard, go pack.” She shooed me out of the kitchen and left the house.

Mikey didn’t take the news very well.

He started to cry and collapsed into my arms, sobbing into my shoulder asking me why mom would lie like that.

In kindergarten, when Mikey and I were five, we had a career day and all of the little kids dads came in to talk about being a business man or an actor or a news anchorman (we went to a very prestigious elementary school). Mikey came running home that day, the words “Where’s our Daddy?” being the first thing to escape his lips when he walked in the door. Our mother stood in front of us, staring down at our upturned and curious faces, her eyes growing wide and her complexion washing out into a stark white color. She stuttered for a moment, but finally came out with a strong cold answer, her words emotionless.

“He’s dead.”

And she walked out of the room.

Mikey had cried, bawling his eyes out, just as he did when I told him where we were going.

“Mom lies too much.” Mikey mumbled, sopping up his tears with his sleeve. And then we got to packing.

The next morning was a Saturday and my mom had the car waiting for us at 6:00. Mikey and I ate, I took my pills, and we left for Belleville.

The car ride from New York City to our father’s house wasn’t very long, half an hour tops, but it felt like much longer. Mikey and I were silent for the most part, our mom flapping her mouth on and on about how she had enrolled us in Belleville schools and how much we would like It there. We finally pulled into our new home at 6:30.

“Please, come in.” His voice was annoying. And so was his face. It was discomforting how much he resembled me and my brother. He stood in the entrance of his neat little house, holding the front door open and casting an arm in the direction of the house, welcoming us in. He smiled at us in some sort of attempt to make us comfortable but it wasn’t working.

“I’ve got to go, boys,” My mother said as we stood in the kitchen, our bags at our feet. She kissed the tops of our heads, telling us to call her, and then dashing out the door and driving away. Mikey and I stared at our father.

“So, uh, your room is upstairs. I know it’s not as lavish as your mother’s place, but it’s all I’ve got so- where are you going?”

I didn’t answer him as I walked out the door.

My thin black hoodie was drenched in two seconds flat. The rain made my dark hair impossibly darker, the inky locks gluing themselves to the sides of my face. Water soaked its icy hands through the canvas of my All Stars and then through my socks so that every time I took a step it made a squishing noise. My fingers grew numb, my chest getting tight from the cold. Goosebumps popped up on my arms and the wind blew itself up under me, making the cold even colder. It felt like icicles were growing inside my heart and piercing right out through my chest.

And goddamn did it feel good.

I just wanted to lose it. Lose all sense of everything and just walk. The icicles in my chest kept my body numb, protecting my heart from the fiery heat of hell itself. My mother’s voice chimed in the back of my head, “You’ll catch a cold if you go out in the rain.” But the ice was plaguing my skull and drowning out the thoughts of my mother. Drowning out everything with the deafening sound of silence.

And I kept walking.

I would walk until my feet bled, and then some, if I could. And even if I did, I still couldn’t escape the heat.

There was suddenly a burning sensation in my hand. Not quite burning, but unwelcome warmth that invaded my numbness. I spun on my heels and came face to face with the most intriguing eyes I’ve ever seen.

They stared at me, wide brown eyes as deep as the ocean. It wasn’t the color that interested me, but the flame behind them. A spark, a fire, burning with intensity. They weren’t like any other eyes I’d seen, deeper and more full of life than anyone else. But I only had a few seconds to really take them in before the skin beside them crinkled up in a smile and a very hard object hit the side of my head.

I was out cold in a matter of seconds.

My eyes slunk open slowly, a thick wave of pain sending my head spinning in circles. I could feel the side of my skull throbbing where I’d been hit, and I squeezed my eyes shut again, trying to will the heated pounding inside my skull away. It didn’t work and I let a tiny groan, trying to lift my hand and clutch my head.

My hand didn’t move.

My eyes snapped open and I stared down at my lap, my back bent and my head falling forward. I was sitting in a metal chair, my wrists bound behind me with duct tape and my ankles each taped to their accompanying chair leg.

My hair was still sopping wet, my jeans damp against my skin. I heaved in a breath of air, lifting my head. A searing white pain flashed across my head but I ignored it, trying to get a look at my surroundings.

I was in a basement with a dirt floor. The walls were blank and grimy, a work bench, a sink, and a fridge to my left and a chest and a stack of chairs to my right. In front of me were cemented steps leading up to a set of doors. Atop the work bench was several plastic buckets, two or three rags, some duct tape and a mysterious object rolled up in a black cloth.

I was alone.

So I made as much noise as I possibly could. I yelled, I screamed, I rocked my chair back and forth, the legs hitting the ground with loud thumps, trying to get someone’s attention.

I did, but not a person I was expecting.

“Would you shut up?!”

I turned my attention to the cement steps in front of me. A boy was descending down them, his short arms wrapped around a bucket full of soapy water.

I was quiet for a moment.

“Thank you,” he uttered, stumbling over to the work bench, trying to keep the heavy looking bucket of water from falling out of his grip. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t just use the sink.

He placed the bucket down and turned toward me.

He was short with a full build, broad shoulders and a darker, almost tan complexion. His hair was a dark brown, slightly longer and falling in his face. Around his bottom lip and left nostril were silver rings, and in his ears gauges about the size of dimes. He wore jeans, a black flag t-shirt, and a gray zip-up hoodie, drizzled with raindrops.

He had deep dark brown eyes that much resembled oceans.

I glared at him. This was the boy who had hit me upside the head, and there was no doubt in my mind that he had tied me up here too. I had no idea what he was going to do to me. He didn’t seem like the kidnap and murder type. Sure he had a couple piercings and tattoos and sort of looked like a thug, but he didn’t seem capable of murder. He was just some punk kid. Or at least, I hoped.

The kid with eyes like the ocean crossed the room toward the fridge, pulling open the upper half which doubled as a freezer. He pulled out two little tubs of what looked like… ice cream? He held the two tubs in one hand and closed the door with his other. “You want some?” He asked, holding one of the small plastic containers out to me.

I just stared at him.

This was too weird. He had knocked me out, duct taped me to a chair in a random basement, and then offered me ice cream. Who’s to say it wasn’t drugged? Or worse, poisoned? What if he put fucking lye in it? Was he stupid, or did he just think I was stupid?

He rolled his pretty ocean eyes, sighing. “Just take the fucking ice cream. It’s not like I put poison in it. I’m too poor to get my hands on that shit.”

“I’m sort of… stuck,” I say quietly, wiggling my fingers.

“Oh right! Sorry.” He left his spot near the fridge and walked over to me, bringing out a pocket knife from his jeans. He got down on one knee and started to saw away at the bounds on my hands.

What idiot would tie someone up and then untie them just as quickly to get them ice cream?

When he was finished sawing away the duct tape, he peeled it from my wrists and stuck it to the floor. I pulled my hands away from the back of the chair, rubbing the red welts where the tape had been. Standing up and he held the ice cream out to me. I looked up at him, narrowing my eyes, and taking the container slowly from his fingers. He laughed.

“It’s okay, I ain’t gonna bite ya.” His smile lit up the room, I swear. How could a boy with eyes like the ocean and a smile like the sun be keeping some bottom-feeder loser hostage in a basement? This was insane.

The boy perched himself on top of the work bench, popping open his ice cream. There was a wooden spoon underneath and he dug it into the chocolate vanilla swirl. “Well go on and eat your ice cream. We don’t have all day.” He waved his hand full of ice cream at me and then placed the spoon in his mouth.

Well… sure, I guess. Things like this never hurt anybody.

So I took a bite of the ice cream.

He smiled again. And I couldn’t help but smile back.

After a minute of eating our ice cream in silence I spoke. “I have to ask, why do you have me duct taped to a chair?”

He grinned, the skin around his eyes crinkling as it had when we first met. He hopped up from his seat at the table, and pranced over to me. He leaned into my ear carefully, his warm breath tickling my neck. “It’s a surprise!” He pulled away, laughing to himself and scraping the last bit of ice cream out of the bottom of his tub. He gave me a malicious grin, a twinkle in his ocean eyes that sprung a bit of horror up in my chest. Tossing the empty container on the table he made his way toward the door.

“Hey, wait! Don’t leave me here!”

He giggled, wiping his hands on his pants and giving me a little wave.

In urgency and anger I launched the ice cream container straight at his head. He ducked just in time, the ice cream hitting the wall with a wet thud.

He laughed again, his giggle high and ecstatic as he climbed the cement stairs. He pushed the red doors open, revealing the night sky, smothered in Jersey fog. He brushed his hand against a light switch I wasn’t fully aware of and the room was immersed in darkness save for the minimal light the outside gave. I cringed, wrapping my arms around myself, afraid of the sudden darkness. Laugh all you want, but when your tied to a chair in a basement in the pitch dark you tend to get a little bit freaked out.

“Have a fantastic night in the dark, darling.” And then the boy with eyes like the ocean and a smile like the sun was gone, an echo of a laugh and utter darkness the only things left in his wake.

Notes

Finally a look into Gerard's memories YAY

And also Frank. Because he is awesome. And he hasn't really been in this yet.

Yeah :D

Comments appreciated!
-Roach