Mercy

June 17, 1966.
Black Leaf Falls, Georgia.

I can’t do this. They’re all staring at me, fifty pairs of drunken eyeballs pining for a Billie Joe Armstrong original, and my fingers are frozen above the keys of my mother’s baby grand piano. I used to live and breathe for this Friday night tradition, but without Jason perched on the empty stool beside me, I’m nothing but a deflated imposter. His presence alone on this shitty excuse for a stage, grinning and urging me to begin, was what kept me from bolting every single time, and once his guitar harmonized with my voice and my piano, we were unstoppable. Our ballads hypnotized the barflies into a stupor thicker than any of their precious alcohol can induce, and they were compelled to dole out the remainder of their hard-earned cash on us. We always had an overflowing tip jar by the end of the night. Tonight we won’t because Jason’s not here to save my candyass from bolting right off this stage.

I try to make eye contact with a friendly face amidst the drunks, but even my mother looks disappointed from where she’s standing behind the counter, furiously cleaning a glass with a dirty washrag. She knows none of the local yokels will try to start anything with me as long as she’s there because they all have a certain respect for her. She is the barmaid, after all. They would have no place to get completely trashed every night if it wasn’t for her, and they know it. She could have walked away from this place nearly eight years ago when the sickness turned my old man into maggot munchies, but she didn’t. My momma kept Falls Inn up and running to please the likes of these greasy old men regardless of how they don’t deserve an ounce of her sympathy.

Now look what they’ve done. Look how they’ve repaid her. They killed one of her best employees and my best friend. Jason was like a son to her, and not seeing him seated next to me tonight is killing her. I can sense it. I can feel it radiating from her in thick, hot waves.

Or maybe it was just her disappointment I was feeling.

My eyes drift away from my mother and lock upon the only pair of sober eyes in the bar. Adrienne’s. Her thick, dark curls are pulled back away from her face with a few wispy strands poking out here and there just enough to make her look frazzled. Worry lines are carved deep into her face as she continuously wrings the edges of the apron she’s wearing in her hands, and her chocolate eyes are filled with tears. She doesn’t see Jason either. She knows I can’t do this. She knows I’ll run.

I see a flash of metal out of the corner of my eye and turn my head towards the light. A man, the same one who’d been seated there last Friday, is stroking the gun he has holstered at his hip. Four of his friends grin and do the same. They’re waiting for me to give them some kind of sign, any kind of sign, which would let them know whether or not I was in love with the boy they killed. If I slip up, I’m dead, but they couldn’t possibly know I’d lost my virginity to that boy. I denied it ever happened, and Jason wouldn’t dream of damaging my reputation. Love was a one-way street as far as we were concerned. He may have been comfortable with people knowing he was queer. I wasn’t.

Sometimes I wonder if he resented me for that.

I try to say something into the microphone. Nothing but a pathetic puff of air escapes my throat. I gulp and peer over at the empty stool once again, noticing the caked brown stains strewn about the legs of it. There’s more of those stains on the floor of the stage, and a few splotches on Jason’s guitar. Those arrogant assholes didn’t bother destroying the damn thing last Friday. They let it lie exactly where it was to mock me. They let his blood soak into the stage, the stool, and the guitar to spite me.

A curious glance from a pair of swollen, bloodshot eyes keeps me seated behind the piano a full minute longer than I had planned. I was about to bolt right then and there, before the drunks had the chance to draw their guns, but those paralyzing gray eyes stop me. He’s trying to wordlessly tell me something. I don’t understand, and I only have a faint idea who this boy could be. He then mouths one word with a forced smile that instantly reminds me of Jason.

“Play,” he says.

I nod, clear my throat, and start to play a tune that has been haunting me for a week, for it was the last song I ever played with Jason. As I play, all I can hear is his scream as the bullet tore through his chest and into his heart. Bastards didn’t even let him finish strumming his final chords before shooting him down. I wonder if they’ll let me finish.

My mother, Adrienne, and the boy who convinced me to begin are all wearing similar horrified expressions while I sing, but the local yokels around them are hungrily eyeing me with mounting fascination. They didn’t anticipate me playing this song. They all assumed I was too much of a fairy to face what they’d done to my best friend head-on, and the familiar tune pummeled their eardrums like a boxer to a speed bag. They’re all wondering where I’d grown the balls to so blatantly defy them.

I peek over at the boy with bloodshot gray eyes and smirk at him. I realize exactly who he is, and his presence in that crowd is suddenly just as empowering as Jason’s had been for me. I feel like I already know this boy from the glowing reviews my best friend always had to give about him, yet they all instilled a sense of jealousy deep inside me. If I wasn’t such a coward, every single one of those glowing reviews could have been about me. I could have made Jason’s eyes shimmer the way the gray-eyed boy so effortlessly did. Instead, I only filled his eyes with guilt and shame.

Adrienne notices the smile I shared with the boy and scowls. She’s well aware of my feelings for her, platonic due to my sexual orientation, yet a longing inside her compels her to believe I could love her one day. I don’t have the heart to tell her it won’t ever happen. I can’t love her the way she deserves. Adie’s simply my other best friend, my Summer Girl, my disguise. Through her, I can feign heterosexuality because everyone assumes we’re a couple. I needed the phony relationship more than I ever did once Jason’s homosexuality became public knowledge. If I was single the day Jason came out to the world, the barflies would have shot us both last Friday.

Five drunks, the same five who had fired their weapons at my best friend, irritably gnash their teeth, and one reaches for his gun. This wasn’t at all the sign they were looking for. They imagined me being unable to go on without Jason, to weep before them in my inability to perform without my lover, but I didn’t make it that simple. I confused their already intoxicated brains. They’re wondering if the song pouring from my lips and fingertips is more of a congratulatory hurrah for their slaying of the queer, and they don’t like it in the least. Those animals are out for blood. After getting their first taste of it last Friday, they want more. They’re addicted, and their disappointment towards my simulated lack of remorse for Jason could turn deadly.

I finish playing and leave the stage, hardly bothered by the empty tip jar sitting near Jason’s empty stool. It wouldn’t feel right earning money from his death, anyways. It would be worse than whore money, and the thought of receiving either made my stomach turn. Both would leave me with a pocketful of tainted cash.

Cash still stained with Jason’s blood.

I stumble into the bathroom, unaware of the gray-eyed boy who followed me in, and attempt to puke into the single grimy toilet. All I can manage is a dry heave. My eyes cloud with tears as I begin to sob into the murky water, frustrated at my inability to quell the ache inside me. I’m still in love with Jason. I shouldn’t be. He’s dead and he had a boyfriend, end of story. I barely start to reminisce of the first time I kissed Jason when the gray-eyed boy rests a hand on my shoulder. I jump to my feet at once, fists clenching in preparation to defend myself, but my body softens once I notice who it is.

Jason’s boyfriend.

He puts an arm around me and leads us both towards the door, but I’m hesitant to leave. If anyone other than Adrienne sees this boy with his arm around me, I’m dead. I stop at the door and whimper, yet the other boy makes no motion to open the door. Contrarily, he locks it and lifts me up against the bathroom wall. His lips crash down on mine, and I instinctively wrap my legs around his waist. I can already feel his erection pulsating against my inner thigh despite how both of us are violently sobbing into each other’s mouths. It’s a pity fuck, I can feel it in the desperate way we’re pawing at each other, but we don’t seem to care. We’re both in agony over Jason’s death, and this was the only way either of us could properly grieve him. We need to ravage another to dull our own pain.

The gray-eyed boy is clawing at my shirt, peeling it from my body, but I don’t mind. I’m ripping every inch of clothing from him as well. I don’t think I can handle any excruciating amount of foreplay, and the sooner we both are naked, the better. I need him inside me. I need him to make me scream.

He senses my urgency and mirrors it, throwing the rest of our clothing to the floor before attaching his lips to my neck. I moan like the worthless little whore I am and reposition myself until I feel the boy’s cock pressing against my opening. He doesn’t wait for another frantic moan to commence in pushing his length into me. It hurts like hell with the only lubricant in use being the sweat which slicked our bodies, but I don’t mind. I want to hurt. I shriek in pain, yet I simultaneously beg for him to continue. In seconds, he’s slamming me against the wall with each of his erratic thrusts. I’ll have nasty bruises by morning.

We cry out Jason’s name as we cum, tragically aware of how we’re both still so in love with him. The gray-eyed boy no longer has tears in his eyes, but they are still an abundant flood down my own flushed cheeks. He kisses them away as he pulls himself out of my entrance and carries me to where he’d flung my clothes. Jason’s boyfriend dresses me as if I’m incapable of doing so myself. Part of me knows it’s true, so I allow for myself to be babied by this near-stranger. After every article of cotton and denim covers my body once more, he clothes himself. I watch, silently. There’s nothing either of us can say to bring Jason back.

He takes one final look at me before extending his hand to help me up. I wobble on unsteady legs, and he holds me until I can walk on my own. The boy kisses me a final time on the cheek and unlocks the bathroom door before wordlessly exiting. I don’t realize until after he is gone that I never learned his name, but I know it’s far too late to ask.

I never saw that boy again.