Drowning Lessons.

[Mikey POV]

A 38. Great. This is the second time I have failed my geometry test. What has happened? Oh, that's right I am just a boy that is too tall, too skinny, with black rimmed glasses at the tip of nose. Nothing special.

"Son, is everything alright? Your grades have been slipping quite rapidly." The teacher asks me. See, I usually do great on tests but lately my grades have been going downhill, and to make it worse, I always have to be compared to the ever so perfect Gerard, one of my best friends, and my brother.

It's always the same six words from my dad, "Why aren't you more like Gerard?"

I am not Gerard. I am Mikey, but that doesn't seem to be good enough.

"Everything is fine sir."

I wish that was the truth. To be honest, things are not going too great. The girl who I thought I was going to marry, Christyna, just dumped me, my grandmother just died, I am doing horrible in school, and I think I have a problem.

TIME ELAPSE

"Hey Mikey!"

It is Ray and Bob, they are two of my best friends, along with Gerard and Frank. They are basically my life.

Gee likes to think of us as more of a "gang" but I don't think that we could go around killing people.

Actually, I take that back, I think Bob could do some killing.

As Frank and Gee arrive, Bob and Ray notice that something isn't right.

"Mikey, where is Christyna? You two are inseparable."
"She wont be around her anymore….."
"Why?"
"She kind of broke-up with me this morning."

I think to myself, after four years, she finally dumps me, she must have been cheating on me. I mean I don't look good and am not popular to say the least.

I look up to see Ray and Bob talking among themselves, Ray is looking pretty shocked.

"What wrong with Ray? He had that oh shit look on his face." Gerard asks Bob

Bob gets up and quietly whispers something into Gerard's ear triggering him to give Mikey a hug.

"It's ok Mikes. You were way too good for her anyways."

"I think it's the other way around." I mumble back.

That night I look at myself in the mirror and see just a kid with many problems. A kid with no hope at 16 years old. I can hear my parents down stairs fighting, again. I can't take it anymore.

One part of me is saying to fight the feeling. Don't do it. Yet another part is telling me do it, it will make all your feelings and problems go away.

Suicide.

I open my medicine cabinet to find a small, shiny piece of metal.

I quickly grab it and press it against my wrist just enough to make it bleed, no deeper than that. The feeling of my blood trickling down makes me feel relieved in a way.

I throw the razorblade in the sink and run the cold water over my wound. It seems to have stopped the bleeding, for the most part so I wash away the evidence of the blood splatters across the sink.

Time to go to bed and do this all again tomorrow.

| TIME ELAPSE TWO HOURS |;

I wake-up in the middle of the night, gasping for air to fill my lungs. My eyes are wide open and I can feel beams of sweat streaming down my forehead, trying to cool me off.

I had just awoken from another one of my night terrors.

Ever since my grandmother died, I have been having these episodes in the middle of the night. They consist of these two figures. I call them Fear and Regret. Fear is this young boy, about seven I would say but when I see him all the things that I have ever feared comes rushing back.

The other figure, Regret, is a older lady. She has short black hair, and a black bar across her face. When I see her, I think of everything that has ever made me happy, yet she turns it into something terrible, something that has so much emotion I cant stand it. It feels as if someone is gripping my throat and squeezing.

I reach over to my night stand to grab my glasses. I slide them onto my face and suddenly everything becomes clear.

I slowly get up and walk down the hall to the dinner table, trying my best to not make any noise so that I wont wake anyone.

I turn to the cabinets and pull out a coffee cup. I next start to brew a pot for myself.

Once it is finished, I pour myself a cup then mix in some sugar and creamer. I basically live off of coffee. It calms my nerves.

I sit at the table sipping my coffee when I hear someone else walking down the hallway.

"Who's there?"

"It's just me Mikey."

It was the ever so perfect Gerard.

"Can I have a cup with you?" he asks gesturing towards the cup of coffee that I had in my hand.

"Sure. No one is stopping you."

I see him stand on his tip toes looking down towards my chest, like he was trying to see something that was not so visible.

"What is that on your wrist?"

Fuck. I didn't notice that I wasn't wearing my wristbands; they hide all of my scars from the rest of the world. They hide all of my pain.

"It's nothing you need to worry about."

Gerard gets that annoyed look on his face. He then reached for my arm and grasps my wrist making me quench from the sharp pain that is being sent up my arm from my unhealed wounds.

He feels the wounds and a concerned look falls across his face.

"Why Mikey?"

"There is no point in me living. I am tired of my life. I can never be good enough, never."

"Mikey, don't think like that. You can't piss away your life on suicide, you are better than that."

Easy for you to think, you are perfect to the whole world, I think to myself.

"…Is that why you are down here so late?"

"No. I had a bad dream. I think of them more as night terrors."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I am caught off guard by this. Gerard isn't freaked out and thinking that I am just some kid with a shitload of problems? Does he actually care about me, about the things that people never know is going on because they are too afraid to just talk?

"I don't want to dump all of my problems on your shoulders, Gerard."

"I really don't mind Mikes. I'm your brother, and one of your best friends, I am here for you."

I finally give in a start to tell Gerard what is really going inside of my head.

[Gerard POV]

How could I have let my brother get like this? How could I have not seen his depression? This is serious. My brother, one of my best friends, wants to kill himself. He may not know this, but, I need him. He is the one that helps me get through the day.

Mikey started to go into vivid detail of his night terrors and what I hear scares me. Nan's death has affected him so much.

"…I see an image of Nan. She is there just a couple of feet away. I can even smell her scent of body wash and shampoo. I start to walk towards her because she is calling me. "Come here my dear Mikey…" As soon as I reach out to hug her, she turns into this black silhouette. Inside I see everything that happened to her. I see him pointing the gun towards her and shooting. I also see Christyna, with that other guy. She cheated on me and I took her back…twice. A lot of good came from that. But that is not where it stops. Nan's murderer comes back for me. He gets me every time. He does things to me. He'll do sexual things. Then kill me. That's usually when I wake up."

"Wow Mikes. Am I the first person you have told this to?"

"Yes,"

I cannot imagine everything my brother has gone through, everything he has taken in in these last couple of months. It probably doesn't help hi when people are constantly comparing us side by side. I am nowhere near perfect and by Mikey being told to be just like me, I don't blame him for what he has been doing to himself. He has all this pressure on his shoulders and he can't take it anymore. To be honest I would probably be doing the exact same thing.

"Is there anything else you want to tell me Mikey?"

"Actually, yea. I have been wanting to tell someone, I just didn't know who to… come to help for."

This worried me. He needs to help with something other than self-harm? Did he want to see a doctor or something?

"Follow me Gerard."

Mikey slowly got up and squinted at the pain in his arms as he pushed his body weight up and out of the chair. Mom and dad were still sleeping so we had to be extra quiet.

Mikey led me into his room and told me to have a seat on his bed. I sat down and watched him kneel down by his night stand which was right next to his bed.

He slowly pulls out a small square box. Is this like a box that girls keep with all their things from ex-boyfriends or something?

Mikey then stood up and sat next to me on his bed. He placed the box in his hand and just sat there for a couple of minutes. I guess he was thinking about if he really wanted to do this so I just sat and waited patiently. You really cannot rush these kinds of things, it may push them away,

When he was finally ready, Mikey stood up and opened the box. He started ruffling through the box's contents and threw a piece of sharp metal on the bed. It was a blood stained razor. The one he had just used to cut himself not that long ago.

"I know you knew about that but this is what I need you to know about" he told me.

Mikey started to ruffle through the things in the box again and pulled out a small plastic baggy. He threw it on the bed and turned away looking at his feet.

I picked up the baggy and saw a pretty good size amount of white powder inside. This cant be what I think.

"Mikey….is this --- is this,…cocaine?"

[Mikey POV]

What the fuck have I done? I start to feel something trickle down the sides of my face. Great. I am crying, again. I am sick of crying. Sick of everything in this pathetic world that is so superficial.

"Mikey. This is… this is serious. It is one thing to abuse yourself, but, cocaine, … it's totally different. How long have you been using?"

"About a month."

[Gerard POV]

That was like a giant slap in my face. A whole month. I walk up to my younger brother and rub his back for comfort; eventually embracing him into a strong, love filled hug. Just holding each other, and crying for a good 10 minutes, I had no idea why I was crying. I suppose just from all the tension and emotion that filled the room.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and quietly whispered to Mikey, "Why?"

It took him a couple of seconds to register the question.

"I don't know."

"There has to be a reason Mikes."

"No. I don't know." He said to me get louder.

"You can tell me Mikey, I am your older brother."

He yelled back in frustration, "I don't know!!!!"

I guess Mike finally had enough of this because he pushed his body away from mine and faced the wall, shaking his head at himself.

"Gee, please; just help me. Take it. Take it away, please. I can't control it. I need help. It is starting to consume my entire life. Everyday I end up needing more. More of these drugs. More of this pain. Don't ever leave me Gee."

I realized that I need to stop being so forceful and just help Mikey. He needs it. He needs me right now more than anything.

"I'll never leave you Mikey. Never."

"And as always, innocent like roller coasters.
Fatality is like ghosts in snow and you have no idea what you're up against because I've seen what they look like.
Becoming perfect as if they were sterling silver chainsaws going cascading..."