C'mere

Ray's POV

The days that followed Brian's funeral weren't difficult...because they weren't anything. Time stopped having meaning and the sun and the moon no longer marked the beginning or end of my days, for I had long stopped receiving their visits.

I stayed in the Underground almost permanently now. This vast basement underneath a rotten mechanics building was my dungeon, where I self-inflicted a special kind of torture: isolation. I never ascended the fire-escape stairs to the world anymore. The red steel iron handles and steps stayed untouched and, despite my wishes, mostly intact (in an angry fit, I had tried destroying them, only to have Gerard risk his life to peel the sledge hammer away from my hands.)

Many people came to my door, begging for me to leave my home. They said they knew people who could help me, they said they knew what I was going through, they said they loved me and hated to see me like this. But what they didn't get was that there was nothing wrong with me!

I didn't want to leave the Underground, it was the only place Brian and I had left. All his clothes were still messy in his drawers and all his vinyl albums were still perfectly lined on the shelves, sorted by genre then by artist in alphabetical order as he had arranged them. This was the last piece I had of him, so this was the last piece I needed of the world.

They said they understood that, but they didn't understand how much I needed this. They just thought I had become different. That time they thought right; I was different. I was no longer just Ray, who loved and cared and joked--I was becoming a robot. I did mundane tasks at mundane times, hoping to stall the grief that boiled in my veins. I was becoming the Tin Man--searching for a new heart, because the only one I ever really knew had been buried six feet under Los Angeles.

At night, a happiness I could not have haunted me. I dreamt of the first time Brian and I met, the first time we kissed, the first time we...oh fuck, it doesn't matter. As soon as I wake up, I am flooded with anger and misery and longing. I wish for sleep to take me back, embrace me in its arms, and show me everything consciousness had robbed me of. But sleep is a cruel master. He takes you, treats you kindly when you're at his will, then rips everything away from you so that you may cry and he may laugh in your face.

At this moment, in fact, I am on my bed, with my knees bent at my chest, eyes closed, and lips whispering a prayer for renewed sleep. But it is of no use, and I get out of bed.

I pass the thick black curtains that I hung in front of the basement's only window and make my way towards the small kitchen we had built. I open the fridge and see I am low on supplies, and I internally groan. This means a trip to the surface.

"Haha, surface, I sound like a mutant...or a mole person? Hmm." I chuckle at myself a bit more as I make a bowl of cereal. From the kitchen, I can hear the basement doors rattle, and I know that Gerard and Mikey, his brother, are here. Another moment passes, and hear then descending the stairs.

"Would I be considered a mutant or a mole person?" I ask aloud as they enter the kitchen.

"Definitely mole person," Mikey states. I see Gerard throw him a look, and I pat him on the shoulder as he sits next to me.

"Don't be mad at him. At least he treats me like a normal person."

Gerard sighs and taps at the Tapatio bottle on my table. "How am I supposed to treat you like a normal person when you haven't left the basement in almost 2 weeks? And look at the window! And you bedroom! And basically this whole damn place!"

He throws his hand out behind him to point to my home and I shrug, seeing nothing wrong. Everything is dusted, arranged neatly, and in it's place.

"What? it's clean!"

Gerard sighs again. "That's exactly it, Ray. It's too clean! And look how dark it is! Why don't you just open up that window?"

"Be-Because I..erm..." I hesitate with my answer. I don't really know why I ever covered it up. I throw a desperate look at Mikey, who only throws his hands up in a "don't ask me" kind of way.

"Because I'm a mole person." This causes Mikey to giggle and Gerard to crack a smile.

"Weird Mother Fucker," Gerard mumbles as he gets up to help Mikey rifle through my food .

The sudden silence causes my mind to wander back to what Gerard had said. "How am I supposed to treat you like a normal person when you haven't left the basement in almost two weeks?"

So it's been two weeks. Now that seems like an eternity, but why had it felt like only days? I'd heard that when a person loses someone, the time spent after that feels like forever is happening too slow. What did this mean? It didn't mean I didn't care...right? Of course I care! But why so little? Why did the twoo weeks not feel like a century?

I shook the timeline out of my head and looked up at Mikey and Gerard, who were now staring at me with concerned looks.

"I need to go shopping. You're eating me out of house and home," I said abruptly. With that, I got up and walked back to my room, all of a sudden wishing for sleep to come back to me...