Revive

I can hear the ambulances now. Their high-pitched screams pierce the still night air, echoing sharply in my skull. But instead of being a sign of relief, a hope for rescue, they just sound ominous. A long, sad call of mourning.

Morning breaks through the tension.

I’ve been thinking about ways to get out of here. Obviously, the door would be first priority. No such luck. It’s been jammed by a broken something outside, hinges refusing to budge a single centimeter. The sky blushes with streaks of rose as dawn settles on the horizon through the shattered frame of the broken window. I try as hard as I can to find it beautiful, but all I can think of is blood.

Blood on my hands.

Blood on the ceiling.

Tracks of blood carved into his pretty face.

“How are you doing?” I ask him, kneeling among the splinters of glass and debris. My hand automatically searches for his.

“I’m okay,” he replies, almost robotically. His face is so pale and drawn, and I fear for the amount of blood that he’s lost. The carpet surrounding his body is stained a dirty rust-colour.

“Are you sure?”

The sound of his breathing is so faint. Each breath seems so labored, a struggle to bring air into his shrunken body. Each moment he’s shrinking away into nothingness. His legs lay at haphazard-angles, twisted so unnaturally. I wonder if he is in any pain at all, despite the numbness that has consumed his lower limbs. The tight grimace upon his lips assures me that each second he is still alive is purest agony.

“Where does it hurt?” I ask before he can reply to my first, ignorant question.

“Everywhere,” he chokes. Emotions flood his hazel eyes left and right, spilling over his eyelids. A single, clear droplet slides from his lashes to his jaw, creating a jagged river through the sea of dirt and red stained upon his cheek.

My head throbs painfully at his pitiful word. Oh God, the breath rattling in his lungs. Like the bones of a skeleton, clattering together in a nervous dance. Each feeble intake of air swirls around his hollow lungs before withering away into dust.

Unconsciously, I bring his grime-caked hand up to my face, brushing my lips against his fingers. “What can I do, Frankie? Tell me what I can do.”

A lone siren plays its funeral march in the distance.

Another breath slips away from his dusty lips.

His tongue swipes across his chapped bottom lip, but no saliva hydrates him. His mouth is bone-dry.

“Just talk to me, Gerard, okay?”

In that moment, I am wiser than I have ever been before. I look at him, and something in me whispers that he is dying. He knows it too. With every drop of blood that oozes out of his veins, and every breath inching towards his last, we become more and more aware of his mortality.

The thought comforts me a little. After years of my bullshitting and drinking and using and fucking around, Frank will finally have some peace. But then my heart beats weakly inside the hollow cage of my chest, and I realize that it has been immortality that we have been facing together all along. His hand clasped firmly, almost desperately in mine, is proof enough that I’ll soon follow wherever he fades away to. Things hidden are always revealed in times of honest trial and transience. Immortality has never meant escaping death; it simply meant moving beyond it, into some divine Eternity…

“Do you remember when you first met Jamia?”

“I…I don’t want to h-hear about her, Gerard,” Frank whispers, staring me straight in the eyes. His body involuntarily gives a convulsive little shudder and then settles.

I clear my throat and try to think of something else. Something that can will him to keep on breathing. Oh, his grip on my hand is getting weaker with every passing minute. My voice trembles as I speak, “Remember when we first met, Frankie?”

His eyes slide shut, thick black lashes kissing the tops of his cheeks.

“Frank?” I murmur, black bile rising in my throat. My heart stops beating with the intent of never starting up again.

“Tell me,” he croaks, and I know that he is still alive. In this moment. My heart gives a feeble pump.

I rush on. “I…I went to one of your shows. Down at the Brave New World on Berlin Street. Remember? Mikey wanted me to see you play. He told me, ‘This guy, Gee, this guy is amazing. You should hear him scream; it’ll rock every bone in your body.’” I pause as a soft smile creeps up on his lips.

“Please keep going.”

“So I went,” I continue, “And I got smashed. I was so drunk, Frank, and you sounded so good. Even without the alcohol you would have me mesmerized. I was so blown away by the way you played your guitar. Like your hands knew every fret and chord by heart. No, your fingers didn’t play; they flew across the strings. I…I remember thinking about what it would…what it would feel like if you t-touched me with those fingers…” I stare out the window, where coloured flashes light up the sky like raging flames. “Do you remember what happened next?”

Eyes still shut, he nods.

I smile a little, even though he can’t see. “I made Mikey properly introduce us. After the show. You already knew my name and my face, even though you’d never seen me in your life. I was so loaded, I almost broke the drum set when I fell into it. They almost kicked me out of the club, but you said, ‘No. He stays.’

“And then you came up to me, your guitar still slung across your bare chest. You had sweat and hair in your eyes. You smelled like…like sex, and cologne. You said to me, ‘Don’t you know not to mix your drinks?’

“And I told you, ‘I don’t want to remember tonight.’ I was so low, but you had me strung up so high. I was losing it that night, so fucking close to crashing. I might have even died out there when the mosh pit tried to suffocate me.

“But you looked at me, and you said, ‘I’m gonna make sure you never forget.’”

I watch as he mouths that last sentence along with me, and my voice cracks. Sweat trickles down my back, and I had no idea I could be so hot and freezing at the same time.

“You never let me forget, Frank,” I choke, “I know you think I just put that night behind me, but you’re wrong. I never forgot that night. How could I? How could I forget the things you did?”

His eyes open again, glittering in the pale sunlight beginning to creep across the carpet. A river of blood trickles from the corner of his mouth, and I tenderly wipe it away. “What did I do?” he mouths, hardly any sound escaping his throat.

The world shakes again, but it’s not the earth falling apart this time. It’s my lips finding his in the glowing pastel light, despite all the conflicting emotions swirling madly through my blood stream. It’s his shallow intake of breath, struggling not to waste that precious air. It is my own greedy lungs sucking away all of that air, leaving us breathless among the stars and the clouds.

Warm blood spreads sticky-sweet across my bare chest, and I can’t tell if it’s his blood or mine. Our blood fuses together, creating a mismatched swirl of crimson splotches across my skin. I can feel my pulse in my hands and my heart and my lips and my crotch. His timid pulse races beneath skin-too-tight.

The ticking of the old grandfather clock bolted to the wall.

A siren song echoing through the broken city.

Both are counting down the hours, minutes, seconds left until one of us fades away. My worst fear is that it will be him.

Oh God, don’t let him die today.

How I wish again for the black cover of night.

“Gerard,” he moans, voice thick with tears and distress, “Gerard, I don’t want to die.”

“I’m here, right here…”

“I want to feel…”

“Here, right here…”

“Oh God, Gerard, I want to feel something!”

“Here. Right. Here.” My hand grasps his, plunging it into the torn flesh of my bare chest. Pressing both of our hands right up against the bloody pounding pulp where my heart resides.

Oh, it has belonged to you, and you never let me forget.

Never let me forget…

Never let me forget, love…

…this sunless dawn.