Kill All Your Friends.

I stared at the wall of the apartment, following each crack with my eyes silently.

Gerard was in his room, he had been all week, I’d only heard him speak for mere moments when he apologised for breaking my rib after our fight; I do so much for him and he doesn’t even realise, I wasted my high school years looking after him and I’m now wasting my College years doing the exact same.

I am the younger brother, I am the one that should be looked after, not the other way round.

But until he accepts Bert’s illness I’ll just have to be here to pick up the pieces when he pulls them down around himself in a bitter rage, I can’t let him know that I’m just as broken inside, I have to keep it together for his sake.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, I wake up and roll out of bed and wonder why I even woke up in the first place.

The silence was disturbed by the rattle of keys outside the front door, Frank was home, four hours late and reeking of cigarettes and bad cologne, the smell quickly filled the small living room.

I can’t do anything quite right, I swear I’m trying.

“Mikey,” His voice echoed through the dimly lit space between us, it was so familiar yet I had to resist a smile at the sound, he was the only normal one left in this messed up apartment.
I lifted my head; a dull pain still lingered from the brutal attack Gerard had unleashed on me only weeks earlier, bruises still covered my chest and face but I’d had to forgive him even if he had left me for dead, it was what brothers did. Frank stared down at me, his eyes were red with dried tears and a faint cut was healing on his lip.

“I really need to talk,” He chewed his lip, catching the cut with his teeth, refusing to let it heal as he spoke; I just stared waiting for him to carry on, Frank hadn’t confided in me in too long, he kept his feelings to himself.

He dropped his keys onto the coffee table and fell back onto the seat beside me, his tiny body barely making a dint in the old and broken couch. He glanced at me but quickly looked away; fixating his vision instead on the same cracks I had previously watched.

“I went to see Bert.” His gaze didn’t move from one large crack in the wall, it was like he was afraid to look at me.

But don’t you fear my dear, you’re the only thing that keeps me feeling anything at all.

“It was awful to see him like that,” Frank paused to look down at his sweaty palms, revealing a small slip of crumpled paper, “I got permission from the hospital to bring Gerard to see him.”

My heart sunk in my chest, Gerard needed to see Bert, of course he did, but he still wasn’t ready.

“He’s not ready, Frank, we’ve been over this.” I murmured, my throat sore from being silent for hours, Frank closed his hands around the paper, grasping it tightly in his fist as he returned to look at the wall.

“He will never be ready. No one is ever ready to say goodbye to someone they love.”
“Just wait a few more weeks, he needs time.”

“There is no ‘few more weeks’, there is no more time, Mikey, this is it; Bert is dying and the only way Gerard is ever going to accept this is if he sees him, before it’s too late.”

It’s already too late, I’d watched the way Gerard had fallen apart for weeks, months and I’d just made it worse; my mother would be ashamed to know her children were ruining each other.

“I don’t want to see him hurting anymore,” Frank turned his gaze towards me, tears were beginning to form and his voice was becoming strained, “I think I love him, Mikey.”

Emotions fade, the nightmares start and I can’t waste my time, I close my eyes and ease my troubled mind.

There were never any normal people in this apartment; everything is always a facade, a lie, broken.