And I'm Paralyzed

Gerard:

For an endless moment, I just stared at him. And he just stared back, his vivid brown eyes unblinking and very, very wide. I could see the crests under his eyes reddening as they always did when he let something slip that he wasn't supposed to. His eyes fell to the carpet, because he knew I'd see the truth there.

“You...really?” I whispered tentatively. Would he just say that to make me feel better? The way he stayed silent made me almost sure what he had said had been true. But how could he love me? There it was, the moral and usually true half of my mind spoke up.

He is amazingly beautiful, but he is your brother!

But he just told you he has the same feelings you do.

No, he didn't mean it. He's a fifteen year old boy, he has no idea what he wants!

What if he does? And he wants me?

Pfft, really? You, the crumpled shell of a socially retarded screwed up emo boy? He could have anyone, male or female, that he wants. Why would he settle for you?

...stop being right.

When I snapped out of my mental argument, I saw Mikey staring at me expectantly. Clearly he had spoken when I had zoned out, and he expected an answer.

I blinked and looked away, “I'm sorry, what?”

Mikey sighed shortly, “I said, I don't know if what I'm feeling is real, or if I'm ready for this, or if I'm ready for you. I do feel for you, but I'm pretty sure it's too early to determine the exact, uh, nature of the feelings. Ya know?”

I nodded, carefully considering what he was saying. I found some strange, chocking emotion building up inside me, burning at my throat and twisting my heart.

He cannot love me. I won't let him! He can't! I won't let him ruin himself!

But you want him to love you!

Not nearly as much as I want to save him from my eternal damnation...

I stood up and stared at him. Mikey kept his eyes on me behind his glasses, “No.” I said, “No. Don't love me. Stop loving me right now. Stop feeling anything except hate for me. Get out of my room.”

I forced the coldness into my voice. I could almost watch him deflate, the sadness in his eyes was enough to rent my heart in two. He stood up, not looking at me, and headed to the door. When he reached it and put one hand on the knob, he turned back and said, “You can kick me out of your room, you can kick me out of your life, hell, Gerard, you can kick me out of your heart, but I'm gonna keep on feeling what I feel, and there's nothing you can do about it.”

And then he was gone.

~

Mikey:

I didn't understand his reaction. If anything, I had expected joy. Then, Gerard was never one who met expectations. He didn't know or understand the workings of the minds of others, and they didn't understand the workings of him, but he understood himself, and I'm sure whatever impulse had made him do what he did, it was perfectly logical in his mind.

What I wasn't prepared for, what I really, really wasn't prepared for, was things to go back to normal. Normal being his total avoidance of me and the rest of the family. I quickly realized that recovering Gerard was long gone, replaced by frightened, breakable Gerard.

Over the course of the next few days, it was made evident to me that he was falling back into the dark place. I could hear him crying every night. He started locking the basement door again. I heard his screams as he tore at his own flesh.

And I was the reason.

He had been healing, changing, returning to the normal-ish, funny, geeky, sarcastic, stubborn brother I had grown up with. He had become, in a way, a stronger Gerard. A Gerard that was getting past the pain and trying to live his own life, if not for himself, for me. Of course, he hadn't magically changed overnight like some oversized goth butterfly, but he had been progressing, changing, getting better.

And it was all lost. All of it. Every moment we spent together sinse his bout of silence, every word exchanged, it was gone, never to be seen again. I wanted to, in the very least, understand why my confession of feelings had been what had driven him back into his dark corner. I wanted to see how his mind worked, why that scared him to the extreme where he stopped eating and socializing.

Mom wasn't surprised when I talked to her. Our conversation was brief, and went something like this.

“Mom, do you think Gee will get better now?” I asked, regarding the other night when he had spoken to our mother and father.

She looked sadly at me, “Truth is, I doubt it. Things like the rut Gerard has made himself are hard to climb back out of. Sometimes the walls are too high and we don't even want to bother.”

It hurt me to realize how true the words were. How could I lose Gerard again, after working so hard to keep him? How could I, the one who most wanted him to become his normal prick self, drive him back into the state of mind where he hurt himself daily and cried himself to sleep?

I didn't know what Gerard was thinking, calling himself a monster. I didn't know what Gerard was thinking when he did anything he did. All I could really be sure of at this moment was that he was the innocent broken boy, and I was the monster.

~

Gerard:

It is dark. I like it dark. Everything is dark. I don't even know if my eyes are open or closed. I lift a finger and attempt to touch my eye. It is closed. I am afraid to open it. There are a lot of things I am afraid of, but at the moment, the most dominant fear is of opening my eyes.

There are a lot of reasons that I am afraid to open my eyes. Because I may see a zombie limping around my room, even though it is pitch black, I am convinced I would see the zombie anyway. There could be a demon waiting to swallow me. There could be a number of illogical things waiting to kill me, but none of them really scare me.

There is only one thing that really scares me. I can't say it or it will appear. It isn't an it, it is a he. But that does not matter. All that matters is that I do not say his name, or else he will come. Which is the very last thing I would like to happen at the moment.

I am scared right now for another reason as well. I am scared because I heard him scream. I am scared because he is dreaming bad dreams and I am scared to go help him because he frightens me. I have bad dreams some times. I do not think I scream, though. But he does. He does a lot.

He screams again, and I press my eyelids together, making my vision underneath them go red slightly. I do not like hearing him scream. I wish someone would help him. But not me. I cannot help him because I am scared.