If your heart stops beating

~*Mikey’s Point of view*~

Frank held the knife up to the light, examining it with a strange look on his face. He touched the point, shook it, held the hilt against his ear, then in one swift motion he turned and plunged it into Gerard’s chest. Gerard toppled back off his chair, while Frank sat back, nodding.
“Nice. Very realistic.”
Gerard got up and handed the knife back to Frank.
“It better be, it was bloody expensive.”
He rubbed the place where Frank had shoved the knife into him, while Frank carefully pressed the tip and watched the blade sink back into the hilt. Gerard shook his head.
“How could you be sure? How could you be so sure it wasn’t special in some other way? You could’ve just killed me.”
Frank laughed.
“Just call it payback.”
“Oh! Oh! I’m so offended. Here, have this.”
He took a card, hand-drawn, from the bag and placed it on top of the knife. The front depicted two skeletons, one with long eyelashes and a bow on top of her head.
“How do I look?” She was saying.
Frank opened the card. Inside was the same scene, except the male skeleton was now saying:
“Drop dead gorgeous.”
Frank cackled loudly.
“Oh, it’s so inappropriate. I love it.” He laughed again.

~*Frank’s point of view*~

A few days later they told me I could leave soon. I spent hours with Alec, the ten-year-old who visited me a lot, and he told me why he kept wandering around. He sat on the side of my bed and looked at his feet while he talked.
“My parents are divorced. My dad lives in Oregon with his new girlfriend and my mum has a new boyfriend who drinks a lot and throws bottles when I refuse to be his servant. He was the one driving the car the night this all happened. I don’t want to go to either home, so I do stuff that will rip my stitches or otherwise make them keep me in the hospital.”
He looked away from me, towards the wall.
“Maybe if I do something crazy enough, they’ll put me in an insane asylum. Then I won’t have to live with either of them.”
“God, what a fucked up world.”
I realised what I had said and clapped a hand over my mouth. He looked at me.
“Don’t worry, mum’s boyfriend says much worse than that.”
There was so much pain written all over his face, and not physical pain either. I had a sudden horrible premonition.
“Alec?”
“Hm?”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know... look, I like you. You’re a good kid. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
He smiled sadly at me.
“That’s more than my father’s said to me in the past year.”
He bent forward so his head was on his knees and after a moment I saw tears dripping onto his pyjamas. I hesitated, then reached out and patted him on the back. He started, sitting up and wiping away his tears hurriedly. Then the nurse came in looking for him and he jumped off the bed. When he was halfway to the door, he turned. The nurse was already outside and he turned back to me, speaking so only I could hear.
“I wish you were my father.”
Then he left quickly, closing the door a little harder than was necessary.

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