Monster.

I want to pull out his black fingernails, one by one.

When he lays his jittery hands on me, the monsters seep out from underneath his cold, clammy skin and claw their way into my chest where they give birth to skipping heartbeats. And I feel wrath, not anger but wrath fill my veins in a futile attempt to fend off the inevitable suffocation.

He sits in the armchair across me and stares out the window emptily, his puppet glass eyes still hungover, his hair, wet from the shower, sticking to the eyelashes of his right eye turning him into a one-eyed stranger. The uncovered eyeball focuses on me suddenly and I shift my gaze toward the book in my lap.

The letters rise out from the slightly frayed paper, twist, turn and tango in front of my eyes, burning my retinas. “You are the monster,” it said.

Once the book falls off my lap, I don’t make the effort to pick it up again. Its hardcover shrieks under the rubber sole of my left shoe when I get up and head to the small kitchen where his soiled clothes lay crumpled on the terracotta colored tiles and I pick them up, my heart skipping a beat when the stale nicotine and booze odor drenches the fleshy inside of my nostrils. Shadows withdraw and for a split second time stands still.

I bury my head in his coat and breathe in the scent of comfort and familiarity, submerging myself into the castaway memories that were long ago dismembered by insomnia and trauma.

I try to smile but my face hurts. My lips stand frozen in the same old permanent scowl that never leaves their pallid, bloodless flesh. I forgot what it felt like.

While my time stood still, his hours ticked by too fast.

I find myself standing in the middle of our bedroom, covered in impenetrable night and shrouded in chills. Darkness drips off the walls in fat droplets of black. My shadow, cast against the opposite wall never moves with me, but stands still, twisting with the passing headlights.

The wind chime in front of the window tingles with slivers of some unknown melody, taunting my mind to think back to the time I lost. But nothing comes to me but the sensation of blood crusting on the surface of my palms, my face, my lips.

Numb, I move through the dark house, floating over the hardwood floors with unmoving, cold feet. My hands stretch out in front of me while my body saunters like a somnambulistic zombie, crashing against counters and doorways…

A gurgling, guttural scream makes this dead body of mine, that really isn’t in my possession anymore, turn around and stare at its source with dumb, empty eyes. Even the eyelashes were enveloped in this crusted shade of red.

“You monster! You monster! You monster! Monster, goddamn you, fucking monster!”

Blood gushed from his neck artery with every gurgling breath, with every shriek. This terrifying, disgusting mass of cut up flesh and loose tendons, points at me with shaking hands and bulging eyes. Wheezing lungs cry out in helpless anger. Why, he asks me, why?

My massacred lover, cut up with my hate. My monster, my demon in his precious coat with our happily ever after seeping through his hollow pockets.

“I love you, you monster.”

And my life caves in, terracotta tiles stained with coagulating reds and browns.

“Frankie!”

The coat drops from my shaking hands and onto the brownish floor. His face dives out from the gloom, his pointy nose touching mine. “Baby?”

I touch his throat, his lips, my fingers travel across his eyes, black fingernails gently scratching down his jaw, neck and collarbone, my hand closes over his strong, beating heart. I lean my head against his chest to savor its sound; iloveyous sent to me through the cordial Morse code.

My baby is so pretty, with shiny hair and big, doe-like eyes, the left one carrying a small red mark beneath it from the moment when I accidentally marred the tender, white skin with cigarette ash and we met for the first time.

A slight blush penetrates the pallor of his smooth cheeks, “Why are you looking at me like this?”

I am seeing him for the first time, I am seeing myself reflected in his eyes for the first time. And there, with sunken cheeks, wet hair covering his empty eyes and thin, quivering lips, caught in the liquid amber, stands this sad ruin of a man.

There stands the monster.

There stands Frank Iero, filled with rage and love towards the only perfection in his shipwrecked life.

“Gerard, I love you so much that I despise you.”

His eyes sink to the floor.

Every tear that falls from them hits the brown surface with a deafening roar.

His knuckles turn white from holding onto my shoulders so firmly.

He will never let go.

All this time… hating him… looking at him… It was me. My every flaw, every sin, every annoying little habit that I hated about him, it was all mine, projected into this silver-voiced angel who loves me like I will never learn to love him.

In his loving eyes…

…I am the demon.

The monster.

the end.