Dead!

What. What the hell is happening?

Frank’s vision was blurred, but he could just make out a tall dark figure standing over him with some strange black and white things in the background.

When his eyes started to see again he realised that that figure was Gerard. And that the things in the background were yet more people.

He sat up slowly from the steel framed bed he found himself in and looked around. He was in a brght white room and the people were staring at him intently, their eyes dark and their skin pale.

They were dressed in very strange outfits (if an ‘outfit’ is the right word to describe something like this);

Some in hospital gowns, some with knives sticking from their chests, some in elegant black funeral clothes. The type that you dress the body in once it is dead. Even some in military clothes and gas masks.

“Frank.” The stern voice of Gerard snapped him out of his trance.

Gerard’s skin seemed a ghostly white, his eyes rimmed with a sunken darkness that definetly wasn’t eyeliner.

“Frank.” He repeated.

Frank jolted into consciousness. Breathing heavily and taking sharp, shallow breaths.

“Oh thank god. I thought for a minute we’d lost you there.”

It was only then frank noticed the machines and the wires. Wires strapped to his arms and chest, old fashioned heartbeat monitors on either side of him.

“You’ve been out for about 2 hours. You didn’t take very well to the crossing.”

Frank looked up at Gerard’s sickly pale face, smiling down at him. Then at the lines of strange people. Then back to Gerard again.

“Oh come on. I waited here for 2 hours and you won’t even say anything?” He frowned, but not in a hurt way. No, he looked concerned.

“I.. I.. uhh.. w-what?” Franks words came out as shaky and uneven as his thoughts.

“You told me to prove it. So here we are.”

“And w-where’s here?”

“The black parade. The afterlife. Whatever you want to call it.”

“wait” frank said, regaining some of his lost confidence “so.. you mean to tell me that
we’re... dead?”

“I am. But you are not. Well, not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”

“As I said you didn’t react well to the crossing.”

“...”

“The crossing from the mortal life into the afterlife. Technically you died. Your body is at the bottom of that river because killing you was the only way we could save you. Your body couldn’t handle the change of state. But you’re like me now. A member of the living dead. Meaning you can resume your mortal life as normal if you wish.”

Okay.. what? Frank’s head was spinning. Thoughts and questions colliding into each other inside his head. From what he could gather from what Gerard just explained to him, He was dead. Lying in a hospital bed in ‘The black parade’ surrounded by people who were all presumably dead too. His ’mortal’ body was decomposing at the bottom of the river.

He let out a shaky breath.

Well. He thought. It’s definetly going to be interesting.

Frank looked up at gerard's welcoming face. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad.

His eyes slipped silently closed. Giving way to his swarming thoughts.