Mercy

September 29, 1999.
Cemetery Row, California.

I wasn’t aware of his presence at the time, but Frankie was lurking in a corner while Billie Joe and I made love. He wasn’t particularly concealed by shadows, for his fluid form appeared to glow in the darkness with paradoxical vapidity, yet any sober attention the old man and I possessed in that sloppy moment of passion certainly was not given to the sullen spirit. His translucent fingers, childlike in their frustration, were unable to make contact as they ghosted along Billie’s spine and my arms. The old bastard saw and felt nothing but my body gyrating beneath him. A frigid lick of air along my bicep was the only supernatural sensation I sustained, though the clammy feeling of undead fingertips were, more likely than not, entirely psychological. In reality, I felt nothing at all. I merely saw his feeble attempts to draw my body away from Billie Joe’s.

Frankie was cold as he watched us moan and climax, and with a garbled cry, he eventually realized he no longer held any paranormal power over us. Our blatant disregard for his violent warning presented him with nothing but an absence of fear, an absence of fuel, to keep the vengeful fire brewing within his lingering soul. The fire that had taken his life, that had continued burning to match his mounting rage, was extinguished the moment Billie slid inside me as gently as a graceless drunk could manage. He did not disappear from sight until his panting ex passed out on top of me.

Billie’s rapid breathing reduced to a wheeze the second he was thrust into unconsciousness, and for a moment, I was paralyzed with fear. Had Frankie given up because of our inability to fall out of love, or had he merely thrown in his towel to give us one last instance of impenetrable closeness before the old man ultimately returned to the ghosts of lovers past? I honestly didn’t want to find out. My tormented counterpart couldn’t be taken from me so soon. I was just starting to know him, to understand him. The wheezing in his chest must have been brought about by the physical demands of sex. It was the only option that was going to keep me sane, but it didn’t keep me calm. I passed out in the throngs of a panic attack with a wheeze identical to the old bastard’s.

It was poetic justice for being healthy in the midst of a dying man.

I needn’t have worried about him. When I woke, the only evidence of Billie Joe ever having lain beside me was a petite indentation in the sheets. Other than that, the other half of the bed was barren, cold, and it left me with a peculiar sense of abandonment. My hand longingly traced the imprint the old bastard’s hip had left until the sheets regained their usual shapeless appearance. I regretted doing so as soon as the final essence of Billie was wiped away by my own hand. I mentally kicked myself and sat up, lazily wiping the sleep and drool away only to be met with a sickening jolt the instant my fist collided with my nearly broken nose. The pain was nauseating. I was half tempted to collapse back into a remedial state of slumber, but I was preoccupied with recent memories of a man who was supposed to be sleeping soundly at my side.

Groaning, I rolled out of bed. Frankie giggled lightly at my naked body, but there was something missing in his mockery. It seemed halfhearted and distant, as if the mere act of existing was a struggle for him, and I smiled at the thought. If he didn’t have the energy to materialize before me, I was more than ok with that. He was nothing but a menace as far as I was concerned. I doubted anything Billie had left to elaborate about the cocky teenager would change my mind about that.

With Frankie’s giggle dissolving into the air around me, I clothed myself Billie’s attire once again, more for his amusement than for mine. I probably could have mustered up the courage to search through the bags of shit in the kitchen and find my own clothes to wear at that point, but something in the mischievous way the old bastard grinned when he saw me wearing his clothes compelled me not to go looking. I could handle ill-fitting garments for one more day if it meant getting a rise out of my…boyfriend?

No. Boyfriend meant commitment. Billie’s rapidly approaching mortality made it impossible for me to be anything more than a paramour. A quick little fling before he kicks it. That alone made me want to cry, but I bit down on my bottom lip until the feeling passed. There was no use in crying over it anymore, for he’d made his decision long ago not to come looking for me until it was virtually too late.

I wandered aimlessly about his house before ultimately concluding that he was nowhere to be found. I didn’t understand. Why would he leave? Where the fuck would he go? He didn’t have a car, so deserting me completely was out of the question, and both his bum ankle and ailing lungs more or less ensured his entrapment inside the house. I was about the flick the panic switch after twenty minutes of fruitless searching until an anomalous movement outside caught my eye. I peered out the window and, sure enough, there he was.

“I’ll be damned,” I muttered, taking a moment to marvel at the simple shirtless beauty that was Billie Joe Armstrong.

He was facing the house with a pensive expression splashed across reddened cheeks. In his mouth was a clothespin which he retrieved almost the instant I noticed it was there. Underneath tattooed skin, muscles flexed and contracted as he maneuvered one scrawny arm above his head to grasp a clothesline and the other into a basket beside him. The second hand snatched a cloth and quickly brought it up to meet both the pin and the line, but the wild wind swirling about him made the task of hanging clothes a bit more of a struggle than it should have been. Droplets of perspiration cascaded from his temples, and his face flushed a much deeper shade of red as he tried to straighten the white cloth out on the line. In an instant, it was ripped right from his hand and drifted away from him so languidly that it seemed smug in its escape efforts. Playful, even. Billie watched the damp cloth as it was stolen from him and was not angered in the slightest. In fact, he was smiling.

I shook my head in disbelief at the surreal scene in front of me. Billie Joe was the last person on earth I would have pegged as a morning person. A frequently shirtless morning person, no less.

The shrill shriek of a telephone tactlessly tore me from watching my perky little bastard hang his laundry. I cursed at the sudden disturbance. Hell, I didn’t even think the old man had a phone. In a daze, I scrambled about the living room until I came across the source of the maddening ring, and I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find a preposterously outdated telephone with a dial instead of a keypad resting atop a small table in the far corner of the room. It looked to me as if both the tiny table and the phone were added as ill conceived afterthoughts once Billie settled himself and his sons into the house. I was still chuckling softly to myself as I picked up the phone, but my amusement quickly faded as I realized I didn’t know whether to claim this as the Armstrong or Wright residence. Ultimately, I assumed a simple hello would suffice.

“Mike?” a hesitant voice squeaked on the other end. I knew that voice. I found myself grinning again.

“Jake! I didn’t expect you to call,” I replied, the joviality all but oozing through the telephone wires. Billie’s son exhaled deeply in relief once he understood I wasn’t at all angry with him.

“Yeah, I, uh…didn’t think I actually would, but…I’m worried. Is Dad ok? He was in pretty rough shape when I took off, and I…I feel terrible,” Jakob stammered, voice trembling ever so slightly.

“He’s ok now,” was all I replied. Jake didn’t need to know how close his father had come to dying that night. He never would have forgiven himself if I told him.

“That’s good. Is he around? Can I talk to him?” Jakob asked, hesitant in his request.

With a sigh, I answered, “No, he’s outside hanging laundry. You could always stop by later. I’m sure he’d love to see that you don’t actually hate him.”

“I wouldn’t exactly go that far. I’m still trying to process the fact that my dad’s a pedophile and a murderer. I don’t think I’m ready to see him just yet.”

The words your mother’s a pedophile, too threatened to pour from my mouth, but I managed to swallow them down before they could do any more damage than had already been inflicted.

“Look, don’t tell Dad I called. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t, y’know…dead,” Jake swiftly added. I could hear rustling on the other end. It appeared as if he was suddenly itching to hang up the phone.

“I won’t,” I lied. It would have been impossible to hide this conversation from a psychic.

After goodbyes had been exchanged, I hung up the phone with an unsteady hand. I wasn’t sure what about my brief chat with Jakob made me feel so uneasy, but the apprehension was undeniably running rampant throughout my body as I walked back into the kitchen to peer at Billie Joe through the window. I looked upon him through darkened eyes. His son had a damn good reason for being wary of his father. Shouldn’t I be heading for the hills as well?

I eventually decided I didn’t care anymore. He was going to explain to me, in detail as great as the beginning of his story has been told, his reasons behind sleeping with a child, and until that day came, I wasn’t going to judge him. He went through his own personal hell, one similar to my own, and I felt as if I should respect that. It more or less made us equals, and we needed each other to sort through the bullshit we’ve endured.

Inhaling deeply, I began to make my way towards the door that would lead me outside, but a familiar squirrel scuttling across the clothesline caused me to stop mid-turn. I was unable to peel my eyes away from the window as each clothespin snapped open upon Zombie’s brief touch. Every article of clothing, every blanket, and every towel fell directly to the ground. There was nothing playful in their rapid descent, and Billie Joe wasn’t smiling anymore.

He was screaming.