Ink
Gouges.
There’s. Nothing. There.
Ten pale fingers branched out like slender white vines across the glassy surface of the mirror as he let his weight sag forward and just watched his own cold hazel eyes stare back, trying to catch just the barest glimpse of what had made Frankie so fucking afraid… Not the hideous, deformed monsters that he had hid from when he was fifteen, grotesque and blood-spattered, with six-inch ivory claws and gaping tar-black mouths, but something faceless, unfamiliar— An awful, intangible fear without a name.
There’s. Nothing. There.
Gerard lowered his head and spat forcefully onto the chipped green porcelain of the sink bowl, trying to get the sour taste of stale nicotine and coffee out of his throat. Memories ground against each other like jagged glass shards under his skull, flickering in kaleidoscope fragments of sickening color behind his contracted black pupils; the synthetic olive-green patina of Frankie’s wide eyes burning holes in a dead-skin face, the strips of mahogany paneling on the walls flashing their terrible shellac grins, a blur of raw rose-and-alabaster skin brushing skin, and the awful, violent red red red red of the blood staining his parents’ cream white sheets—
Colors, tastes, sensations. Skin, sex, salt, saliva, vomit…
He’d watched Frankie press his face hungrily into the stains afterwards, like somehow filling his ashy lungs with the sickening scent of syrup and dull copper would get him even fucking higher, one pale hand held tightly over his own mouth as he forced the hot, acidic bile back down his esophagus.
Just the thought of that spilling, sticky-sweet crimson nauseated him, standing there on the chipped bathroom tile with both white-knuckled hands gripping the sink edge, a hurricane of sensory images tearing through his brain; the sick, crimson-tinted smile that had graced Frankie’s mouth as he’d pulled his head back up, tongue running fleetingly over his lips as though he fucking enjoyed it; the red, the shocking scarlet, the color of shrieking devils and ambulance lights and bloody revengeful sunsets, crimson guts and buckets of paint splashing down the bedroom walls.
The bruises were dull and lifeless, just dark splatters of indigo and ink on anemic pale skin, but the red… The red still haunted him every time he looked at Frankie.
From down the cramped hallway, he could hear the cheap wood floor of the bedroom creaking under the younger boy’s weight, making his stomach churn as he remembered the metallic whine in that trembling voice as the shaky words clawed their way out; There’s nothing there. With a final tentative glance in the dirty mirror, he reached for the loose doorknob, hesitant to tear his eyes from the reflection of his pale features staring out of the streaked glass as though he thought they might morph and melt the instant he turned away.
Frankie was still lying on the floor when Gerard returned, the uneven boards digging painfully into his bony back as he stared upwards and slowly let himself sink deeper into the suffocating ocean of white-hot pain, its snarling, foamy waves crashing up and over and against him until didn’t think he could stand another fucking blow.
He could hear muffled footsteps on the dusty wood, and then there were two glimmering points of light hovering like a last glimpse of sunlight somewhere in the sea above him, hazel eyes burning brighter than cigarettes in a pale blur of rubbery, amorphous flesh—
“Get up.”
A plaintive whimper was the only thing he could manage, breath ripped away by the icy harshness; the sharp, calculated violence that didn’t bruise cobalt like his father’s, but instead cut right though to the bone.
“Get the fuck off the floor.”
He choked the words out through the liquid agony filling his nose and mouth; “I c-can’t-” and then two hands grabbed the front of his shirt, sharp fingernails digging crescents into his skin through the fabric.
“You gonna lie here until your fucking father finds you, Iero?”
The look on his face must have betrayed the chill that scintillated through him at the name, because there was an almost imperceptible shift in the blurry halo of flesh tones that had once resembled a human face, and the smirk in those hard, glassy eyes was unmistakable. “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s what they call your daddy, isn’t it? Then who the fuck are you, Frankie? Who the fuck are you? You just the bastard kid in a dead-beat, shithole town in downtown Jersey? The fuck-up faggot son, jacking off to Sports fucking Illustrated in your goddamn bathroom? Strung-out piece of shit kid too scared to buy his own fucking drugs? You liked it when I fucked you, you fucking loved it, Frankie, because it made you feel all fucking grown up; because it was nice to have a dick up your ass instead of a f-”
All Gerard saw was the nauseating red lining behind his eyelids as Frankie’s sharp knuckles connected hard with one side of his skull, the wave of sick color blurring quickly into the matte grey-and-white of the water-damaged ceiling above him as he was shoved flat on his back, skull slamming into the rough wood hard enough to jar another stream of serrated, swirling pigment loose in his brain; so overpowering that for an instant, it almost rendered him numb to Frankie’s awkward left-handed blows.
Blood blood blood; glazing pale pink lips, pouring in smooth scarlet ribbons down ivory wrists, red rose crimson carmine blood sex guts anger dynamite hatred war rage—
But when the ache in his jaw and his cheeks and his temples returned, throbbing like a virus embedded deep within the bone, he did the only thing he could; reached blindly up in front of him until he felt his fingers connect with soft flesh and gripped hard, nails lacerating the skin of Frankie’s neck; gouging streaks of virulent crimson into the translucent blue-and-white surface until its owner recoiled with a sharp gasp of pain, spitting an immature “F-fuck you,” through trembling lips.
His hot intestines collapsed when he saw the blood on Frankie’s throat, the force catapulting a wave of caustic vomit up his esophagus and into his mouth, where he choked it back, snarling “Fuck me? Fuck you, you pathetic little shit; so scared of your goddamn daddy that when he’s drunk you let him-”
“One time!’ Frankie shrieked, his whole body contracting into itself, like an overdone flinch, as he clenched his undamaged hand into a fist so tight that lacquered fingernails cut raw crescents into the sweaty flesh of his palm. “One t-time.”
Struggling not to let his eyes slip to the new injury, thin red lines slowly bleeding and branching out on flushed tissue like newly-forming capillaries, Gerard watched the tortured little fifteen-year-old face flicker with uncontrolled emotions until he saw the hideous, distorted black shadow – a shadow that still haunted his own dreams – claw its way across the razor-sharp protruding cheekbones, tightly-stretched translucent skin going dark with memory; his heart suddenly giving an uncertain, threatening lurch beneath his ribs. “F- Frankie?”
Olive eyes collapsed instantly in their sockets; squeezing tightly shut as they flooded with hot saltwater tears, and then two awful words, less than a whisper, changed everything. “M-maybe twice.”
Inevitably, he felt the familiar warm rush of suffocating taste and stench: wet hot blood and urine and sweat, arms tied immobile, thick, pressing weight slowly forcing the air from his burning lungs— With the intensity of the sensations threatening to crush his slender body, he staggered unsteadily upright, one hand at his throat as though to physically hold back the rising stomach acid, and forced himself to spit out the only thing there was left to say: “We’re leaving.”
The eyes shot open in shock, and he recognized a new haunted flicker buried in each inky pupil. “Wh-what?”
“Pack your shit.”
“G-gerard-”
“If you don’t fucking pack your shit and get in the car, I’m going to fucking leave you here – with him.”
“I c-can’t,” Frankie whimpered, terror rushing into his bloodstream like a heroin fix; surging through his veins and leaving him nauseous in the aftermath. How the fuck could he leave? “G-ger, I c-can’t!”
The hazel eyes were just hard and unforgiving holes in a melting plastic face, betraying no emotion; no sign that the older boy had ever inhabited the skin-and-bones hell of the broken little marionette sitting, shaking and pleading, on his scarred bedroom floor like a bruised white flower, holding his broken wrist as still as he could between sobbing breaths.
“I’m s-sorry I hit you, I p-promi-”
“Get your fucking stuff and get in the fucking car.”
Ten pale fingers branched out like slender white vines across the glassy surface of the mirror as he let his weight sag forward and just watched his own cold hazel eyes stare back, trying to catch just the barest glimpse of what had made Frankie so fucking afraid… Not the hideous, deformed monsters that he had hid from when he was fifteen, grotesque and blood-spattered, with six-inch ivory claws and gaping tar-black mouths, but something faceless, unfamiliar— An awful, intangible fear without a name.
There’s. Nothing. There.
Gerard lowered his head and spat forcefully onto the chipped green porcelain of the sink bowl, trying to get the sour taste of stale nicotine and coffee out of his throat. Memories ground against each other like jagged glass shards under his skull, flickering in kaleidoscope fragments of sickening color behind his contracted black pupils; the synthetic olive-green patina of Frankie’s wide eyes burning holes in a dead-skin face, the strips of mahogany paneling on the walls flashing their terrible shellac grins, a blur of raw rose-and-alabaster skin brushing skin, and the awful, violent red red red red of the blood staining his parents’ cream white sheets—
Colors, tastes, sensations. Skin, sex, salt, saliva, vomit…
He’d watched Frankie press his face hungrily into the stains afterwards, like somehow filling his ashy lungs with the sickening scent of syrup and dull copper would get him even fucking higher, one pale hand held tightly over his own mouth as he forced the hot, acidic bile back down his esophagus.
Just the thought of that spilling, sticky-sweet crimson nauseated him, standing there on the chipped bathroom tile with both white-knuckled hands gripping the sink edge, a hurricane of sensory images tearing through his brain; the sick, crimson-tinted smile that had graced Frankie’s mouth as he’d pulled his head back up, tongue running fleetingly over his lips as though he fucking enjoyed it; the red, the shocking scarlet, the color of shrieking devils and ambulance lights and bloody revengeful sunsets, crimson guts and buckets of paint splashing down the bedroom walls.
The bruises were dull and lifeless, just dark splatters of indigo and ink on anemic pale skin, but the red… The red still haunted him every time he looked at Frankie.
From down the cramped hallway, he could hear the cheap wood floor of the bedroom creaking under the younger boy’s weight, making his stomach churn as he remembered the metallic whine in that trembling voice as the shaky words clawed their way out; There’s nothing there. With a final tentative glance in the dirty mirror, he reached for the loose doorknob, hesitant to tear his eyes from the reflection of his pale features staring out of the streaked glass as though he thought they might morph and melt the instant he turned away.
Frankie was still lying on the floor when Gerard returned, the uneven boards digging painfully into his bony back as he stared upwards and slowly let himself sink deeper into the suffocating ocean of white-hot pain, its snarling, foamy waves crashing up and over and against him until didn’t think he could stand another fucking blow.
He could hear muffled footsteps on the dusty wood, and then there were two glimmering points of light hovering like a last glimpse of sunlight somewhere in the sea above him, hazel eyes burning brighter than cigarettes in a pale blur of rubbery, amorphous flesh—
“Get up.”
A plaintive whimper was the only thing he could manage, breath ripped away by the icy harshness; the sharp, calculated violence that didn’t bruise cobalt like his father’s, but instead cut right though to the bone.
“Get the fuck off the floor.”
He choked the words out through the liquid agony filling his nose and mouth; “I c-can’t-” and then two hands grabbed the front of his shirt, sharp fingernails digging crescents into his skin through the fabric.
“You gonna lie here until your fucking father finds you, Iero?”
The look on his face must have betrayed the chill that scintillated through him at the name, because there was an almost imperceptible shift in the blurry halo of flesh tones that had once resembled a human face, and the smirk in those hard, glassy eyes was unmistakable. “Oh, I’m sorry, that’s what they call your daddy, isn’t it? Then who the fuck are you, Frankie? Who the fuck are you? You just the bastard kid in a dead-beat, shithole town in downtown Jersey? The fuck-up faggot son, jacking off to Sports fucking Illustrated in your goddamn bathroom? Strung-out piece of shit kid too scared to buy his own fucking drugs? You liked it when I fucked you, you fucking loved it, Frankie, because it made you feel all fucking grown up; because it was nice to have a dick up your ass instead of a f-”
All Gerard saw was the nauseating red lining behind his eyelids as Frankie’s sharp knuckles connected hard with one side of his skull, the wave of sick color blurring quickly into the matte grey-and-white of the water-damaged ceiling above him as he was shoved flat on his back, skull slamming into the rough wood hard enough to jar another stream of serrated, swirling pigment loose in his brain; so overpowering that for an instant, it almost rendered him numb to Frankie’s awkward left-handed blows.
Blood blood blood; glazing pale pink lips, pouring in smooth scarlet ribbons down ivory wrists, red rose crimson carmine blood sex guts anger dynamite hatred war rage—
But when the ache in his jaw and his cheeks and his temples returned, throbbing like a virus embedded deep within the bone, he did the only thing he could; reached blindly up in front of him until he felt his fingers connect with soft flesh and gripped hard, nails lacerating the skin of Frankie’s neck; gouging streaks of virulent crimson into the translucent blue-and-white surface until its owner recoiled with a sharp gasp of pain, spitting an immature “F-fuck you,” through trembling lips.
His hot intestines collapsed when he saw the blood on Frankie’s throat, the force catapulting a wave of caustic vomit up his esophagus and into his mouth, where he choked it back, snarling “Fuck me? Fuck you, you pathetic little shit; so scared of your goddamn daddy that when he’s drunk you let him-”
“One time!’ Frankie shrieked, his whole body contracting into itself, like an overdone flinch, as he clenched his undamaged hand into a fist so tight that lacquered fingernails cut raw crescents into the sweaty flesh of his palm. “One t-time.”
Struggling not to let his eyes slip to the new injury, thin red lines slowly bleeding and branching out on flushed tissue like newly-forming capillaries, Gerard watched the tortured little fifteen-year-old face flicker with uncontrolled emotions until he saw the hideous, distorted black shadow – a shadow that still haunted his own dreams – claw its way across the razor-sharp protruding cheekbones, tightly-stretched translucent skin going dark with memory; his heart suddenly giving an uncertain, threatening lurch beneath his ribs. “F- Frankie?”
Olive eyes collapsed instantly in their sockets; squeezing tightly shut as they flooded with hot saltwater tears, and then two awful words, less than a whisper, changed everything. “M-maybe twice.”
Inevitably, he felt the familiar warm rush of suffocating taste and stench: wet hot blood and urine and sweat, arms tied immobile, thick, pressing weight slowly forcing the air from his burning lungs— With the intensity of the sensations threatening to crush his slender body, he staggered unsteadily upright, one hand at his throat as though to physically hold back the rising stomach acid, and forced himself to spit out the only thing there was left to say: “We’re leaving.”
The eyes shot open in shock, and he recognized a new haunted flicker buried in each inky pupil. “Wh-what?”
“Pack your shit.”
“G-gerard-”
“If you don’t fucking pack your shit and get in the car, I’m going to fucking leave you here – with him.”
“I c-can’t,” Frankie whimpered, terror rushing into his bloodstream like a heroin fix; surging through his veins and leaving him nauseous in the aftermath. How the fuck could he leave? “G-ger, I c-can’t!”
The hazel eyes were just hard and unforgiving holes in a melting plastic face, betraying no emotion; no sign that the older boy had ever inhabited the skin-and-bones hell of the broken little marionette sitting, shaking and pleading, on his scarred bedroom floor like a bruised white flower, holding his broken wrist as still as he could between sobbing breaths.
“I’m s-sorry I hit you, I p-promi-”
“Get your fucking stuff and get in the fucking car.”