Fractured Greyhound Routes
every human's frailty.
I wasn’t sure if I was either mentally or physically drained; either way, I felt like a corpse on my feet, grasping Mikey’s hand like a ghost ready to fade, leaving him with an empty fist. I drifted to Gerard, wondering if I was decaying on the inside like his body was on the outside; just a rotted spirit tugging along an endless path to nowhere. It was the hardest trying to keep my eyes pried awake. I don’t think I could endure another haunt. Mikey’s words just seemed to crash right over me, like a wave too big for you to jump over, pulling me under to tumble through the thick salty foams. And there I was, a sunken skeleton, not even floating back to the surface but allowing the current to carry me. He could see me choking, the way his eyes shifted to look at me and the way he gulped, his adam’s apple rolling up and down his throat. Poor kid should have just left it alone; now things just seemed to be breaking off. We were the train speeding over the limit, going farther then we were built to endure while our fuel tanks unhinged.
There wasn’t a day that went by when my mind didn’t drift to Anthony Iero. His presence always seemed to trail not too far behind, like a second shadow creeping beneath my feet. Those eyes. His fucking eyes were what I saw whenever I closed my eyes. My eyes. Everything, down to the muddled sunset hazel to the haunted glaze that seemed to permanently swim in our iris’. Something dead just seemed to sink our gaze, the only thing keeping our eyes bright was the piercing brown-green haze. Sometimes I wondered if Mikey saw the same malicious flame I’d seen in my father’s glare night after night. It kept me up at night to the point I didn’t need my pills to stay awake.. The small hairs on the back of my neck still stuck up, like his stringent pants were still biting into the back on my neck. I’d wake up flailing, expecting a crushing weight to be pushing me into the mattress. I can’t say I still don’t whimper into my pillow, held down or not.
Before Mikey, the alcohol and Demerol were my private requiem, the things that kept me numb as my body shoved against the bed in some rapid motion that seemed to turn slow and hypnotic while my head laid limp to the side, smiling at my dresser that was the only thing refraining from moving. The Phenobarbitol was always soothing; it knocked up out, leaving me to escape my own body but leaving the bitter taste of the corpse I was becoming. I made sure it all stopped once I started getting the nightmares. My head would pound and I would wake up in a cold sweat, my fingers to numb to pry his fingers from sinking any further into my arm without popping blood vessels. Then came the pookies and rolled dollar bills; the chopped up white crystals stinging up my nose to slide down the back of my throat, intoxicating my saliva and surging the orgasmic ripple of euphoria.
That was where I met Mikey. I can still remember his skeletal arms holding up the lighter to the bottom of the pipe as it melted the crystal grains inside. I’d been counting every vain in his arm that popped out through his translucent skin, the water color blue-green wires running up his wrist and through his palm. “Breathe in.” I remember sucking in the acetous smoke with a short breath, quickly breathing back out the toxic air. As I felt the rush of jubilation trickle through me, while I drifted right through cloud nine, I looked up at the figure who possessed the transparent arm. The way we both looked into each other’s eyes; his forest green and my sunset hazel, I was gone.
I so wished we could still look at each other the way we had at that moment. Nothing but rapturous bliss coursing through both of our bloodstreams as we drifted into each other’s world’s behind the murky colors.
But now, as we sat in the morning’s chill, I sat numbly. No trace of any kind of fullness, no ruptured exhilaration coursing through me no matter how many times I glanced over at Mikey.
He’d made me think the rest of last night and this morning while he paid for our bus tickets with the money we’d panhandled. I just trailed behind, not muttering a word but thinking a million questions a second in my head. Did Mikey really see me thinking of my father as much as I actually was? I thought I hid it so well, looking away before he could see it in me or shoving him away so he wouldn’t feel me shudder from any familiar touch. He made it sound so easy to just forget. Down to the alcohol, the Demerol, the Phenobarbitol, the adderal, the meth, the little rainbow amphetamines, I had tried everything to forget. I wish it was that fucking simple.
The squeal of the weary tires coming to a stop and the loud gasp of the exhaust taking a pause, I looked up to see the silver bus painted with blue and white. Mikey sat up, his hand dragging me up like he couldn’t wait to get back on the road; I couldn’t see why, we were only just traveling aimlessly. In line with others who wanted on as well, we gradually made it up the steps and into the little aisle leading down the rows of seats that would make my ass numb in a half hour. Mikey presented our tickets, looking over to me as I snatched my hand out of his grip before the man could give him back that ripped ticket stub. Relieved no one had paid attention to our laced hands, I settled while trying to find a seat for us with less stares then I was used to. Mikey, who either didn’t care what people thought or didn’t appreciate me taking off down the aisle without him, followed after me with a frown. A soft pang of guilt hit me as I noticed the lines etched in his face, permanently carving a frown naturally into his features. My heart missed the soft smile he always used to wear; the one that used to wrinkle his nose and push his glasses further up his face.
We shifted ourselves down a row of seats, heaving myself down into the seat beside the window while Mikey sat down beside me. A small smile curved up his lips, it was such a pitiful attempt to look optimistic but I just smiled back, giving him my own fake façade. He grabbed my hand again, lacing his fingers through mine and giving them a squeeze, a little harder then meant for affection that sent my eyebrows to forward.
It didn’t take long for the bus to pull out of the greyhound station after everyone was aboard and seated. I watched the town stretch out into the highway once again, leaving yet another town. As I watched the freeway signs pass us by, I sat back in my seat and let my head lean back to rest on the back of the seat. The roof of the bus was just the same, dark metal and dull like the outside, nothing attractive or worth any attention except for the emergency exit door incase the bus was to tip over and block off the main entrance. As I stared up at it, reading the bold red letterings describing how to pull the handle, I wondered if I would follow out with the rest of the people here. I cracked a small smirk as I thought of people frantically pushing to get out of the bus that might just be leaking gas, like there was some stop watch counting down the seconds before everything was blown to smithereens. Then I pondered what I would do; I knew Mikey would be able to get out, hell, he’d probably squeeze out through the windows leaving everyone to push and shove for the emergency exit. But he wouldn’t leave me behind. And I knew exactly what I’d do.
I’d sit contently in my seat on the tipped over bus, smiling across at the panicked passengers while I just waited for the explosion. What a way to go? Just one big boom and everything was gone. There wouldn’t be any Frank Iero left except for scattered ash, no flesh or bones left behind of the boy that had only seconds earlier been whole.
“What’re you smiling about?”
Mikey was staring strangely at me as I tilted my head, still keeping it back to see him sideways. Maybe something was wrong that I felt so humored to picture myself burst into flames. Was it so sick to get enjoyment from picturing your death?
“Just wondering what happens when you’re engulfed in flames, is all.” He must think I’ve gone over the deep end this time. Mikey Way had finally pushed little Frankie over the edge and was fucking insane. And I didn’t deny it. I was fucking crazy, psycho, loony. Of all things, this was what made me smile.
What made me think I was definitely loosing it was when Mikey burst into his own amused smile, like it was actually fucking real.
“Well that’s always interesting,” he shrugged and looked up at the ceiling with me, his thumb tapping against the top of my hand thoughtfully.
“I’ve always been a daredevil kind of guy.” This time I lifted up my head and looked down at his strangely.
“Y’know? Wonder what would happen if I just stepped out a little bit more into the street, or swayed a little bit too hard on my roof.”
I just stared, confused as fuck at what he was just saying. I pictured Mikey sitting on his roof, feet dangling over the edge while contemplating swinging his feet a little bit more to unbalance him, or standing on the curb watching the cars go by, wondering how much blood he’d leave splattered on the driver’s windshield. Oddly enough, I hadn’t felt this connected to Mikey in a while.
“Well what’dya know,” I muttered. “Who knew little Mikey wanted to die.”
He was silent, not saying anything for a moment. His mouth opened just the slightest, like he was going to croak out some kind of sob, but then closed and his face went back into a numb grin.
“Everyone wants to die Frank. In some way or another,” he whispered. “And the ones the do; the ones that step off the curb or fall off the roof, they’re the brave ones.”
This brought back an old memory, some old saying my mother had when her nephew, my cousin, hung himself. He was seventeen, his brother found him when he came home from school; poor kid didn’t realize why he couldn’t push his door open. My mother had been furious, called it a selfish act to his brother for having found him and a spit in his parents face who had given birth to him and to God who had given him life. He didn’t have a right to take the life God had given him, she sneered, then looked down at her fifteen-year-old son, me while she was tying my tie for the funeral. “You’re a damn fool for giving up on life— if I have to stay here, then so do you!” That statement in itself sounded kind of selfish to me. Lisa Iero only insisted her son stay alive so she wouldn’t be left alone on this earth with her husband. Who was selfish now?
Where they really brave? In a way, they got the balls to take that step off the curve, to take that fall off the roof, to pull that trigger, to push those pills down your esophagus, to tie that rope around your neck and push those books out from under you. It was something I was pitiful at. The only thing I had succeeded at was waking up in my own chunks of stomach acid and bits of deteriated food while my body shook and my head pounded and spun. After that, I never was curious about how many pills I could swallow before my heart stopped beating.
“Just look at that guy.” Mikey pointed to a guy in the seats opposite of us and a few rows ahead; he was some guy in a thick professional black jacket that bulged on the shoulders. He wore a black bowler hat with watching slacks and shiny polished shoes while he read the newspaper he’d brought on with him.
“That wedding ring…he has some honey at home. Stay at home wife who drinks a nice glass of chardonnay in the morning and at dinner time while she eats with the kids until they go to bed and she finishes that bottle in the dark, still at the table, alone without a phone call from her husband who’s away on business.” I studied this guy a bit more, following to his gold wedding band to the suitcase placed at his feet. I turned back to Mikey who was smirking at the man, already acknowledging this guy’s common husband cycle.
“Then there’s him… Devoted—or maybe not. Goal is to bring home the bacon, provide for his kids like he remembers his father doing; a fuckin’ replica of his daddy who never was really home and always missed his baseball games because he was away on business fucking some other woman who wasn’t his mom. He wants to go home but he has to do his job, for the money, for his wife who he doesn’t know is at home popping those antidepressants the shrink gave her and washing them down with a bottle of wine. He knows she’s going down-hill, just like he watched his own mother do, and just wants to fucking throw himself off those business buildings he works for, because he realizes he’s turned just like his father.”
I watched Mikey intently, his eyes never leaving the man who sat with a stone face just staring down at the news printed on that cheap ass paper.
“What makes you think that?” I asked, like he really did know the story of everyone’s life and the key to it all.
“Because he’s just like my dad.”
Acknowledging this with a slow nod, I tried to recall Mr. Way. Mikey’s parents had divorced when Mikey was seventeen; his mother had finally had enough and moved out leaving the last of the Way family behind, even her son who looked just like the man she had grown to hate. They only stayed in touch by phone, every once in a while Mikey would give in and ring up his mother, dying to hear the woman’s voice who had raised him and given him comfort since he was a baby. I guess the alibi matched up; I do remember seeing Mrs. Way bring in the groceries while I visited during my time with Gerard, she’d always have bottles to last her the week wrapped up in those Vons plastic bags.
“Wow Mikey…” What else could I say? Why Mikey, that’s a wonderful talent you’ve got there! Can you list off my dad’s life too?
Abusive husband.
Alcoholic.
Pedophile.
Check.
“I think,” he paused, looking back up at the ceiling in thought for a moment. “You can never really escape your parents, they’re just a part of you. You just have to be the one to edit out their faults.”
I pondered on this. Well, I wasn’t sure about the abusive part. I’m sure I hurt Mikey, even if it wasn’t with fists like Anthony Iero. The alcoholic part, I don’t think I drank that much, not anymore at least. And the pedophile, that was something I could easily edit the fuck out.
“I don’t want to be like my father, Frankie,” Mikey whispered. He took his eyes off the roof to stare up at me. “I don’t want to give up like he did on my mom.”
I brought his hand that was still entwined with mine up and brushed my lips across him knuckles, resting the back of his hand on my cheek as I enjoyed it’s cool comfort. I closed my eyes and sighed.
“Me either Mikey.”
There wasn’t a day that went by when my mind didn’t drift to Anthony Iero. His presence always seemed to trail not too far behind, like a second shadow creeping beneath my feet. Those eyes. His fucking eyes were what I saw whenever I closed my eyes. My eyes. Everything, down to the muddled sunset hazel to the haunted glaze that seemed to permanently swim in our iris’. Something dead just seemed to sink our gaze, the only thing keeping our eyes bright was the piercing brown-green haze. Sometimes I wondered if Mikey saw the same malicious flame I’d seen in my father’s glare night after night. It kept me up at night to the point I didn’t need my pills to stay awake.. The small hairs on the back of my neck still stuck up, like his stringent pants were still biting into the back on my neck. I’d wake up flailing, expecting a crushing weight to be pushing me into the mattress. I can’t say I still don’t whimper into my pillow, held down or not.
Before Mikey, the alcohol and Demerol were my private requiem, the things that kept me numb as my body shoved against the bed in some rapid motion that seemed to turn slow and hypnotic while my head laid limp to the side, smiling at my dresser that was the only thing refraining from moving. The Phenobarbitol was always soothing; it knocked up out, leaving me to escape my own body but leaving the bitter taste of the corpse I was becoming. I made sure it all stopped once I started getting the nightmares. My head would pound and I would wake up in a cold sweat, my fingers to numb to pry his fingers from sinking any further into my arm without popping blood vessels. Then came the pookies and rolled dollar bills; the chopped up white crystals stinging up my nose to slide down the back of my throat, intoxicating my saliva and surging the orgasmic ripple of euphoria.
That was where I met Mikey. I can still remember his skeletal arms holding up the lighter to the bottom of the pipe as it melted the crystal grains inside. I’d been counting every vain in his arm that popped out through his translucent skin, the water color blue-green wires running up his wrist and through his palm. “Breathe in.” I remember sucking in the acetous smoke with a short breath, quickly breathing back out the toxic air. As I felt the rush of jubilation trickle through me, while I drifted right through cloud nine, I looked up at the figure who possessed the transparent arm. The way we both looked into each other’s eyes; his forest green and my sunset hazel, I was gone.
I so wished we could still look at each other the way we had at that moment. Nothing but rapturous bliss coursing through both of our bloodstreams as we drifted into each other’s world’s behind the murky colors.
But now, as we sat in the morning’s chill, I sat numbly. No trace of any kind of fullness, no ruptured exhilaration coursing through me no matter how many times I glanced over at Mikey.
He’d made me think the rest of last night and this morning while he paid for our bus tickets with the money we’d panhandled. I just trailed behind, not muttering a word but thinking a million questions a second in my head. Did Mikey really see me thinking of my father as much as I actually was? I thought I hid it so well, looking away before he could see it in me or shoving him away so he wouldn’t feel me shudder from any familiar touch. He made it sound so easy to just forget. Down to the alcohol, the Demerol, the Phenobarbitol, the adderal, the meth, the little rainbow amphetamines, I had tried everything to forget. I wish it was that fucking simple.
The squeal of the weary tires coming to a stop and the loud gasp of the exhaust taking a pause, I looked up to see the silver bus painted with blue and white. Mikey sat up, his hand dragging me up like he couldn’t wait to get back on the road; I couldn’t see why, we were only just traveling aimlessly. In line with others who wanted on as well, we gradually made it up the steps and into the little aisle leading down the rows of seats that would make my ass numb in a half hour. Mikey presented our tickets, looking over to me as I snatched my hand out of his grip before the man could give him back that ripped ticket stub. Relieved no one had paid attention to our laced hands, I settled while trying to find a seat for us with less stares then I was used to. Mikey, who either didn’t care what people thought or didn’t appreciate me taking off down the aisle without him, followed after me with a frown. A soft pang of guilt hit me as I noticed the lines etched in his face, permanently carving a frown naturally into his features. My heart missed the soft smile he always used to wear; the one that used to wrinkle his nose and push his glasses further up his face.
We shifted ourselves down a row of seats, heaving myself down into the seat beside the window while Mikey sat down beside me. A small smile curved up his lips, it was such a pitiful attempt to look optimistic but I just smiled back, giving him my own fake façade. He grabbed my hand again, lacing his fingers through mine and giving them a squeeze, a little harder then meant for affection that sent my eyebrows to forward.
It didn’t take long for the bus to pull out of the greyhound station after everyone was aboard and seated. I watched the town stretch out into the highway once again, leaving yet another town. As I watched the freeway signs pass us by, I sat back in my seat and let my head lean back to rest on the back of the seat. The roof of the bus was just the same, dark metal and dull like the outside, nothing attractive or worth any attention except for the emergency exit door incase the bus was to tip over and block off the main entrance. As I stared up at it, reading the bold red letterings describing how to pull the handle, I wondered if I would follow out with the rest of the people here. I cracked a small smirk as I thought of people frantically pushing to get out of the bus that might just be leaking gas, like there was some stop watch counting down the seconds before everything was blown to smithereens. Then I pondered what I would do; I knew Mikey would be able to get out, hell, he’d probably squeeze out through the windows leaving everyone to push and shove for the emergency exit. But he wouldn’t leave me behind. And I knew exactly what I’d do.
I’d sit contently in my seat on the tipped over bus, smiling across at the panicked passengers while I just waited for the explosion. What a way to go? Just one big boom and everything was gone. There wouldn’t be any Frank Iero left except for scattered ash, no flesh or bones left behind of the boy that had only seconds earlier been whole.
“What’re you smiling about?”
Mikey was staring strangely at me as I tilted my head, still keeping it back to see him sideways. Maybe something was wrong that I felt so humored to picture myself burst into flames. Was it so sick to get enjoyment from picturing your death?
“Just wondering what happens when you’re engulfed in flames, is all.” He must think I’ve gone over the deep end this time. Mikey Way had finally pushed little Frankie over the edge and was fucking insane. And I didn’t deny it. I was fucking crazy, psycho, loony. Of all things, this was what made me smile.
What made me think I was definitely loosing it was when Mikey burst into his own amused smile, like it was actually fucking real.
“Well that’s always interesting,” he shrugged and looked up at the ceiling with me, his thumb tapping against the top of my hand thoughtfully.
“I’ve always been a daredevil kind of guy.” This time I lifted up my head and looked down at his strangely.
“Y’know? Wonder what would happen if I just stepped out a little bit more into the street, or swayed a little bit too hard on my roof.”
I just stared, confused as fuck at what he was just saying. I pictured Mikey sitting on his roof, feet dangling over the edge while contemplating swinging his feet a little bit more to unbalance him, or standing on the curb watching the cars go by, wondering how much blood he’d leave splattered on the driver’s windshield. Oddly enough, I hadn’t felt this connected to Mikey in a while.
“Well what’dya know,” I muttered. “Who knew little Mikey wanted to die.”
He was silent, not saying anything for a moment. His mouth opened just the slightest, like he was going to croak out some kind of sob, but then closed and his face went back into a numb grin.
“Everyone wants to die Frank. In some way or another,” he whispered. “And the ones the do; the ones that step off the curb or fall off the roof, they’re the brave ones.”
This brought back an old memory, some old saying my mother had when her nephew, my cousin, hung himself. He was seventeen, his brother found him when he came home from school; poor kid didn’t realize why he couldn’t push his door open. My mother had been furious, called it a selfish act to his brother for having found him and a spit in his parents face who had given birth to him and to God who had given him life. He didn’t have a right to take the life God had given him, she sneered, then looked down at her fifteen-year-old son, me while she was tying my tie for the funeral. “You’re a damn fool for giving up on life— if I have to stay here, then so do you!” That statement in itself sounded kind of selfish to me. Lisa Iero only insisted her son stay alive so she wouldn’t be left alone on this earth with her husband. Who was selfish now?
Where they really brave? In a way, they got the balls to take that step off the curve, to take that fall off the roof, to pull that trigger, to push those pills down your esophagus, to tie that rope around your neck and push those books out from under you. It was something I was pitiful at. The only thing I had succeeded at was waking up in my own chunks of stomach acid and bits of deteriated food while my body shook and my head pounded and spun. After that, I never was curious about how many pills I could swallow before my heart stopped beating.
“Just look at that guy.” Mikey pointed to a guy in the seats opposite of us and a few rows ahead; he was some guy in a thick professional black jacket that bulged on the shoulders. He wore a black bowler hat with watching slacks and shiny polished shoes while he read the newspaper he’d brought on with him.
“That wedding ring…he has some honey at home. Stay at home wife who drinks a nice glass of chardonnay in the morning and at dinner time while she eats with the kids until they go to bed and she finishes that bottle in the dark, still at the table, alone without a phone call from her husband who’s away on business.” I studied this guy a bit more, following to his gold wedding band to the suitcase placed at his feet. I turned back to Mikey who was smirking at the man, already acknowledging this guy’s common husband cycle.
“Then there’s him… Devoted—or maybe not. Goal is to bring home the bacon, provide for his kids like he remembers his father doing; a fuckin’ replica of his daddy who never was really home and always missed his baseball games because he was away on business fucking some other woman who wasn’t his mom. He wants to go home but he has to do his job, for the money, for his wife who he doesn’t know is at home popping those antidepressants the shrink gave her and washing them down with a bottle of wine. He knows she’s going down-hill, just like he watched his own mother do, and just wants to fucking throw himself off those business buildings he works for, because he realizes he’s turned just like his father.”
I watched Mikey intently, his eyes never leaving the man who sat with a stone face just staring down at the news printed on that cheap ass paper.
“What makes you think that?” I asked, like he really did know the story of everyone’s life and the key to it all.
“Because he’s just like my dad.”
Acknowledging this with a slow nod, I tried to recall Mr. Way. Mikey’s parents had divorced when Mikey was seventeen; his mother had finally had enough and moved out leaving the last of the Way family behind, even her son who looked just like the man she had grown to hate. They only stayed in touch by phone, every once in a while Mikey would give in and ring up his mother, dying to hear the woman’s voice who had raised him and given him comfort since he was a baby. I guess the alibi matched up; I do remember seeing Mrs. Way bring in the groceries while I visited during my time with Gerard, she’d always have bottles to last her the week wrapped up in those Vons plastic bags.
“Wow Mikey…” What else could I say? Why Mikey, that’s a wonderful talent you’ve got there! Can you list off my dad’s life too?
Abusive husband.
Alcoholic.
Pedophile.
Check.
“I think,” he paused, looking back up at the ceiling in thought for a moment. “You can never really escape your parents, they’re just a part of you. You just have to be the one to edit out their faults.”
I pondered on this. Well, I wasn’t sure about the abusive part. I’m sure I hurt Mikey, even if it wasn’t with fists like Anthony Iero. The alcoholic part, I don’t think I drank that much, not anymore at least. And the pedophile, that was something I could easily edit the fuck out.
“I don’t want to be like my father, Frankie,” Mikey whispered. He took his eyes off the roof to stare up at me. “I don’t want to give up like he did on my mom.”
I brought his hand that was still entwined with mine up and brushed my lips across him knuckles, resting the back of his hand on my cheek as I enjoyed it’s cool comfort. I closed my eyes and sighed.
“Me either Mikey.”