Care For Me Not, I'll Hurt You Too Much

Gerard didn’t show up for the rest of the day, and for the next two days.

Meanwhile, things went back to normal in your school. You once again disappeared to the public, and no one stared in your direction unless they became lost in the space of their minds and wound up spacing out on your desk. That’s about as close as you came to being noticed. You became invisible once again and you could function as normally as you knew how. Well…normal in this way.

Things became the same, other than the fact that you found yourself worrying. You actually seemed to be expecting something. And that something hadn’t shown up for the past three days so far.

You found yourself actually waiting for him to walk through the door with his head down and a small smile plastered to his lips. You were actually waiting to see a flash of black hair down the hall or a nervous voice calling your name. You found yourself watching the door every morning and going back into your normal routine every day disappointed after seeing nothing of what you expected.

At nights though, the neighbors were still moving in. The moving van stopped coming, but you could see silhouettes in the window unpacking boxes, moving side tables, and hanging pictures. They opened the curtains a couple of times, and you could see a slightly stout woman walking back and forth with random items and vacuuming the carpet. You weren’t stalking them or anything, you just noticed these things as you sat on your bed, cradling your sketchbook in your hands as you stared aimlessly out the window, waiting for something to come so you can start drawing.

Last night you saw the light in your cousin’s old room come on and someone walk in, but in the past two days the window had been blocked out and the only way you could tell there was someone was in there was because of the faint outline of them that you could see through the dark curtains. You wondered if it was the boy from earlier, moving things around in his new room, trying to make it feel more like himself.

That night, you really had no choice but to look out your window at them. Your neck had stiffened up while you were sleeping. That was only because you got home right after school ended and were met with His flying fists. You were down in seconds, but that didn’t seem to stop him from discontinuing his beatings. He kicked you in your gut so you curled up into a ball to attempt to protect yourself. He kicked your spine so hard you had to bite into your lip in order to keep from crying out loud in pain. The tears ran swiftly down your face, but you remained silent as he brought his foot down onto your thigh once more.

You felt a soft thud next to you as he seemingly dropped to his knees on the carpet next to you. You felt his cold fingers wrap into your hair on the back of you head as he tilted your head back, exposing your neck. This must be it. You think as you imagine him coming up with a knife and slitting your throat clean open.

Instead of feeling a knife slicing through your skin, you heard his musky voice right against your face as you smelt the mix of Vodka and Whiskey on his breath.

“Where were you?!” He nearly shouts.

Your eyes open slowly, painfully. You were sure one of them was bruised. Your left eye didn’t open all the way and it pained you to try and move any part of your body any further. You were met with his smirk, surrounded by whiskers and that leering grin spread across his face permanently. He seemed to enjoy putting you in pain. His eyes held no compassion, no sympathy, not even pity. They just had a glaze over them that you were sure was the effect of hours worth of drinking.

“I said where were you?” He says again, this time leaving a small trail of spit running down the side of his mouth.

No where you would care you bastard! You feel like shouting, but you don’t.

“School.” You croak out, nearly groaning.

“Don’t you lie to me you son of a bitch! You were ditching weren’t you! Weren’t you?!” He spits into your face while wrapping his free hand around your throat.

You attempt to move your hands up to pull yourself away from his tightening grasp on your neck. You can feel your face tightening as you try to move your hands up to your neck. Don’t! It’ll only make it worse!

Your hands drop to your sides as your eyes begin to roll back into your head. He squeezes harder.

“Answer me fucker!” he shouts in your ear.

You shake your head feebly, feeling all the blood slow in circulating to your brain. Your throat is tight, and he’s not making it any better with his fist around it. “Sch-“—you gasp—“School.”

He removes his hand from the back of your head and slaps you across the face one final time before throwing you back into the wall. You fall over, gasping for much needed oxygen as you clutch at your own throat to try to ease the pain.

“Bitch.” Is the last thing you hear before another blow to your stomach knocks you out cold.

When you woke up in your room, you simply opened the window with difficulty, considering your aching sides, and sat against you wall. You bag was thrown meaninglessly on top of you so you didn’t have to go far to get your sketch book and pencil.

While you were sitting there, waiting for the usual urge to draw, or the thoughtless scrawling of your hand out of its own free will, you stared out the open window. Your ears were more than likely red from the heat now in them. Your room was just too stuffy, and it seemed that there was no breeze accompanying the chill of autumn tonight.

You try to ease the pain on your neck—or at least make it go away faster—but every time you try to move it, sharp pains shoot through the base of it. You already had enough pain as it was, so you just sit there, staring out the window aimlessly, waiting for you hand to begin to move.

It does move eventually, but that’s to check your right ear, which has been feeling warmer than your other one. You run your index finger over the outer shell of your ear and feel nothing out of the ordinary. Why does this one feel different then?

You run your fingers around your ear and find that blood has been slowly encasing it. You only found that out after you unintentionally scratched it, only to find a thin layer of dried blood underneath your short fingernails.

Great. You think. If you don’t clean out your ear soon, then the blood is going to end up caking inside of it and closing it up.

But where did the blood come from? From what you felt before, you don’t have any injuries on your ear or around it, so where is the blood from?

You once again run your hand around your ear, this time prodding and pressing lightly on the skin with your fingers. When you finally decide that there is no wound near your ear, you trace the dried blood with your fingertips along your hairline to the wound you gained before from your father’s beatings. The stitches were now gone, and the wound supposedly healed up, but now as you felt it, you realized a small part at the very base of it had re-opened.

Damn doctors. They don’t know what they’re doing sometimes. You think with a sigh as you move your hand back down to look at the semi-dry blood.

You heave yourself off the bed quietly. The crick in your neck soon became annoying, seeing as how you couldn’t turn your head to straight in front of you to look properly. Eventually, you made it to the bathroom, but the soreness of your muscles prohibited the movement of your neck to allow you to asses your wounds properly.

With great difficulty, will power, and some unknown strength, you grasped your chin and the very back of your head. You took a deep breath and counted to three in your mind. However, on two you found yourself suddenly—and painfully—spinning your head till you heard a cracking sound and your face was now facing in front of you instead of to the side.

The sharp stings and bolts of pain that shot through your body at the movement nearly made you cry out in pain as you grasped firmly onto the sink and forcefully rotated your neck in every direction while keeping your eyes shut tight. There was a light throb in the back of your skull, and you were sure you were either getting a migraine, or something was cut open back there too that you just reopened.

You sigh again, after continuous rotations of your already sore muscles. Fuck.

When you finally look up, you realize that you look a mess. Your left eye, the one that you were sure was bruised and swollen, was exactly that…bruised and swollen. The skin welled up around it sickeningly and you were finally able to tell how red it was. You could already see the makings of the purple bruise, that you were sure would develop more sometime during the night. You were just hoping the swelling would go down. Thankfully, nothing else was wrong with your face, but that wasn’t the same case for your neck.

Your neck already had small spots surrounding it that seemed horribly discolored. They were so miniscule that they looked like hickeys. The thought alone, brought a smile to your face and nearly made you laugh out. The smile on your face faded once you noticed the finger patterns of the spots, each one right where his thumbs or knuckles would be.

You notice some of them trailing down beneath the neckline of the light sweater that you still wore. You took it off quickly, along with the long sleeved shirt that you wore underneath that. You were left standing in front of the mirror with only a muscle shirt covering your upper half. The bruises stood out prominently against your pale skin, even though some were barely forming, you could already see the damage that your father had done. Also the ones from several nights before were still slowly fading away into your skin. The bruises lined your arms, along with the scars of his previous beatings. You stared dumbly at yourself and thought about what another person would say if they saw this.

Probably nothing at all. You thought, seemingly optimistic. They’d probably go straight to the toilet after one look and upchuck their guts.Then they would run.

You sighed and contemplated your imaginary families’ reactions while you slowly dabbed away at the dried blood running down the side of your face and neck. You quickly replaced your shirt and grabbed your sweater from where you had placed it on the closed lid of the toilet seat. You walked down the hallway into your room once again. Your neck still stung like a bitch and you could feel a migraine coming on.

You reached your room and shut the door while locking it quickly. You went straight for the bottom drawer of your dresser tucked away in the corner of your room. Underneath several notebooks and flyaway papers, you found it. Your Tylenol bottle.

You didn’t do any drugs and the only prescription medication that you had was from your visit to the psychiatrists’ office years before. You never took those, yet you wondered why you kept them all this time. Besides, you barely took the Tylenol. You only took it when you were in physical and emotional pain, something you can’t help at all. You swallowed two of the small capsules dry and moved to go sit once again on your bed.

As soon as you did, you placed your sketchbook once again in your lap and leaned your head back against the wall. You dug your two fingers into the base of your skull and rubbed to try and ease some of the built up strain while waiting for the medicine to take effect on your body and mind.

When you dropped your hand, it went immediately for your pencil. You soon found yourself staring wonderingly as the powers overtook your motor functions. As usual, you had no idea what it was that you were drawing until you completed it. Also you could think about totally different things, and it wouldn’t change what you were drawing in the slightest.

You ended up thinking back to people’s reactions to your new wounds, the one on your eye being a little more noticeable than the others scattered across your skin. Michaels would definitely notice, but what would she say? You were hoping that came to a ‘Nothing’ but you could never be too sure. Then suddenly…

What would Gerard think?

That thought seemed so random that again, you nearly laughed.

Nothing remember? Because he’s never know. You drove him away remember?

You sigh again, only to find that your hand has stopped drawing. What you see there makes your nerves flutter again. It was an exact replica of a drawing you had done earlier.

It was his eye.

You feel so absurd now that you hurl your sketchbook across the room and into the opposite wall.