Keep the Faith
You Are
He knew that face.
Pale skin made more pallid by the fluorescent lights, angular yet slightly rounded features, messy black hair with strands strewn about his forehead, and golden eyes that stared back at him, wiser with every day that passes, a bit worn out, but surviving, just like the man that possessed them.
He knew that man.
An angry fifteen-year-old, a twenty-four-year-old with a renewed vision, a thirty-year-old who had everything but was clinging onto nothing. The broken, the beaten, and the damned would call him a hero, those who are better off labeled him a fool, and for those he spent his life with knew him as Gerard.
But sometimes, he himself didn’t know who Gerard was.
-
He rummaged through the pantry, his sight blurred by the onslaught of tears that had long past broken down the barrier of his eyes and now spills down his cheeks, making him choke on his own sobs.
He sees the small bottle of pills he somehow couldn’t find in the bathroom cabinet, as if someone had already been waiting for him to look for it and was two steps ahead of him, as if that’s how goddamn predictable he’s gotten, but it doesn’t matter now, because he has it in his grasp.
There is another bottle in his other hand, taller and darker, the liquid something potent, and together they spelled escape, release, perfection. Because who was he to think he could be anything perfect while he was here, while he could make mistakes and fuck everything up like the stupid motherfucker he is, and the knows that’s all he is, not any of those words he was so stupidstupidstupid to have believed, and… and…
What was perfection other than being dead?
He stumbles and falls, and the force of the impact should have hurt his kneecaps, but he doesn’t feel anything because he is numb, so very numb and drunk, and there’s gonna be bruises there tomorrow, all purple and yellow and prettyprettypretty, if he even makes it to tomorrow, because he sure as hell ain’t lasting until then.
He sets the vodka down on the dirty kitchen floor, stifling his cries with a bitten lip, and hurriedly, clumsily unscrews the medication bottle and taps out its contents on his open palm. Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten, counting, counting, and in each compact white brittle brick on the bridge to his death he saw faces: a wife, a brother, three best friends, a mother, a father…then, a multitude.
Thousands of screaming boys and girls, featureless critics, friends turned enemies… looking up at him, looking down on him, depending on him, burdening him…
How did they expect him to take it? To make it? He wasn’t a god, it was too much, he wasn’t enough, it was too hard… he can’t try, not anymore, not this long.
His eyes, still brimming with saltwater, focused too much on figuring out how many pills he already held, did not see the door open at the corner of his vision.
“What are you doing, Gerard?” Mikey asked warily, although the answer was already evident.
“I-I’m s-sorry.” His voice trembled, like his hands did, as he popped as many as he could in his mouth before taking a swig from the vodka bottle to wash them down.
To be continued...
Pale skin made more pallid by the fluorescent lights, angular yet slightly rounded features, messy black hair with strands strewn about his forehead, and golden eyes that stared back at him, wiser with every day that passes, a bit worn out, but surviving, just like the man that possessed them.
He knew that man.
An angry fifteen-year-old, a twenty-four-year-old with a renewed vision, a thirty-year-old who had everything but was clinging onto nothing. The broken, the beaten, and the damned would call him a hero, those who are better off labeled him a fool, and for those he spent his life with knew him as Gerard.
But sometimes, he himself didn’t know who Gerard was.
-
He rummaged through the pantry, his sight blurred by the onslaught of tears that had long past broken down the barrier of his eyes and now spills down his cheeks, making him choke on his own sobs.
He sees the small bottle of pills he somehow couldn’t find in the bathroom cabinet, as if someone had already been waiting for him to look for it and was two steps ahead of him, as if that’s how goddamn predictable he’s gotten, but it doesn’t matter now, because he has it in his grasp.
There is another bottle in his other hand, taller and darker, the liquid something potent, and together they spelled escape, release, perfection. Because who was he to think he could be anything perfect while he was here, while he could make mistakes and fuck everything up like the stupid motherfucker he is, and the knows that’s all he is, not any of those words he was so stupidstupidstupid to have believed, and… and…
What was perfection other than being dead?
He stumbles and falls, and the force of the impact should have hurt his kneecaps, but he doesn’t feel anything because he is numb, so very numb and drunk, and there’s gonna be bruises there tomorrow, all purple and yellow and prettyprettypretty, if he even makes it to tomorrow, because he sure as hell ain’t lasting until then.
He sets the vodka down on the dirty kitchen floor, stifling his cries with a bitten lip, and hurriedly, clumsily unscrews the medication bottle and taps out its contents on his open palm. Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten, counting, counting, and in each compact white brittle brick on the bridge to his death he saw faces: a wife, a brother, three best friends, a mother, a father…then, a multitude.
Thousands of screaming boys and girls, featureless critics, friends turned enemies… looking up at him, looking down on him, depending on him, burdening him…
How did they expect him to take it? To make it? He wasn’t a god, it was too much, he wasn’t enough, it was too hard… he can’t try, not anymore, not this long.
His eyes, still brimming with saltwater, focused too much on figuring out how many pills he already held, did not see the door open at the corner of his vision.
“What are you doing, Gerard?” Mikey asked warily, although the answer was already evident.
“I-I’m s-sorry.” His voice trembled, like his hands did, as he popped as many as he could in his mouth before taking a swig from the vodka bottle to wash them down.
To be continued...
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To be continued.