I'm the Last One That You'll Ever Remember

Gerard was about to exit the house to take the trash out when he swung the front door open to Masika’s animated face and his brother’s indifferent one right over her shoulder. His jaw dropped as his light brown eyes expanded like beach balls in panic. His mouth opened and closed like a goldfish as he struggled to assimilate the people before him. “Why...how...what...I.”

“Hey, Gerard!” Masika accosted affectionately, her eyes sweeping the exterior of his home. The last and only time she’d been here was in the dead of light, and her main focus was to infiltrate his home to find him, not to praise the home’s structure or furniture. “Holy shit, is this serious where you’ve been living? Cause if so, you need to move on over and make some room for me! This shit is fucking HUGE!”

“Like hell you’re moving in here!” Gerard snapped, finally lucid. His mind hadn’t been swindling him, Masika and Michael were here in the flesh on his doorstep! Swiftly glancing over his shoulder, he felt a wave of reprieve steady him because the hallway leading into the living room where he left Frank and their kids was unoccupied. Turning his head back to the others, he leaned out the doorway and hissed in their faces. “What the FUCK do you think you two are doing here!?”

Michael shrugged in his leather jacket, biting back a smile at how outraged his brother was. “We were just in the neighborhood and thought we’d stop by for tea.”

“We wanted to talk to you further about these letters.” Masika answered candidly, bringing up the true purpose they were there. “Do you happen to have any on you for us to have a see yet?”

Gerard exhaled loudly through his nose. He would have told them to get the hell off of his property if they indeed just been in the neighborhood like Michael said, but because this had to do with those gruesome letters he didn’t want to wait any longer to get his answers. Gesturing with his head to the right, he instructed them. “Wait by the garage door. We’ll talk there.”

“You got it.” Michael nodded, placing a possessive hand on Masika’s shoulder and leading her away.

Shutting the front door, Gerard picked up the trash bag that fell from his grip and called out to his lover as he headed to the garage. “I forgot to roll in the trash bin the other day, babe. I’ll be another minute.”

“Okay, Gee!” Frank answered back from where he sat on the living room floor with his kids trying to build a giant lego structure with the new gift their grandparents mailed to them. Having been stuck in a rut for so long due to the threatening letters he had kept secret from Gerard, Frank was finally feeling like himself these days since revealing the truth. At first, he was worried his lover would react violently after finding out, but Gerard had seemed pretty calm and was handling everything fine. So fine in fact that Frank let him handle the letters after much persuasion. Welcoming the serenity, Frank took advantage of spending more time with his children now that he wasn’t a traumatized zombie.

Entering the garage, Gerard pressed the button that opened the large door up and in came Michael and Masika. They tarried at the back of the vehicles to keep out of the viewpoint from the other garage doorway that led into the house. Gerard appreciated that so much he ebbed his temper enough that when he joined them with the letters in hand, he was no longer seething with rage. “Here’s some of the letters I got this morning. Careful when you open them, sometimes there are nails, teeth, or slices of flesh in them. I got an ear this morning.”

“Sick.” Michael accoladed, his brows rising with esteem as he took the letters and divided them between him and Masika. She got the letters. He got the ones that came with the gifts of flesh.

“Hey, you like em? You can keep them.” Gerard shrugged. He too would have been thrilled by the letters hadn’t they been directed towards his family. Passing the couple by, he went to obtain the garbage bin with the trash bag he had been toting around with him.

Masika perused through some of hers and frowned. “Mikey, all these letters are different. They’re cut from so many different magazines and newspapers. Who do we know back at the house that has an extensive collection of magazines and newspapers?”

“No one.” Michael answered, dumping the fingertips of a small child back into the envelope so he could read the bloody letter inside. “And these body parts aren’t from the same person. These fingers are from a child, but the teeth in this envelope feel like they were ripped from an adult.”

“They have multiple victims to choose from then.” Masika sighed, shaking her head with abhorrence. “There hadn’t been a child slaughtered by the Killjoys in years since I’ve joined.”

“And there hadn’t been one since.” Michael finished for her, lifting his inquisitive eyes to her. “So, which one of our Killjoys murdered a child?”

Masika shook her head, declining to believe that the miscreant was one of them. “No, that can’t be. They know better than this. As Killjoys we all know better. We don’t kill at random.”

“Those are rules, Masika. Rules are meant to be broken.” Gerard inserted, finally rejoining them. “Surely one of those assholes is responsible for this!”

“But who?” Masika asked him. “Who despises you this much to make these?”

“Are you seriously asking?” Gerard rhetorically asked her, dumbfounded that she didn’t know. “Dash.”

“He certainly loathes your guts, that’s for sure.” Michael agreed before making a face at the sight of a child’s nose tucked inside another black envelope. “But I questioned them and even went as far as to run a check on each of them and have found nothing. This isn’t one of the Killjoys though the work is comparable to Killjoy fashion.”

“Did you double check Dash!?” Gerard demanded, refusing to believe that he didn’t have anything to do with this. It was so like him to pull something like this off! “Hell, triple checked him?!”

Michael shook his head then lifted his eyes from the letters to study his brother. “No, but after reading these you bet your ass I will as soon as I get back.”

“We both will.” Masika seconded, specifying the letters in her hand. “These letters are fucking disgusting and if we find out one of those idiots decided to play these kinds of fucking games with you, Gee, we’re gonna impale them to a fucking tree limp by limb like Christmas ornaments.”

“I didn’t instruct these letters to be arranged or dispatched to you.” Michael swore his brother, wanting to make it definite with him. “Not only are they disrespecting you, they’re disrespecting me by stepping out of MY order and killing outside of our design. I want their lives for this insubordination.”

Gerard nodded in agreement and was soothed that they were just as obstinate to aid him. Masika because she cared about him and had probably mentally put herself in his position already. Michael because he was his brother, and also because his family could be acting out by maiming innocent people which wasn’t the Killjoy way. But what if they weren’t dealing with a Killjoy? What if this was someone else? “What’s the plan if this person isn’t one of us? What if it’s someone on the outside of the family?”

“Like who?” Michael inquired, arching a brow at him. “Have you made enemies out here in this new life of yours you haven’t thought to mention yet?”

“Want us to check this motherfucker out for you and make him wish he never saw your face again?” Masika offered him with a villainous smile on her ravishing face.

“No, as far as I know I don’t have any enemies.” Gerard answered as he canvassed the surroundings outside his garage. “But if it’s not a Killjoy, that just opens the whole world up to scrutiny, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does.” Masika agreed, her eyes following his. “But no matter what it takes, we’ll find them and make them stop one way or another.”

“First things first though, we need to head back and crack down on those minions of ours to find the truth.” Michael said to Masika, draping an arm around her shoulders and making her smile. Looking at his older brother, he gave him a firm nod. “We’ll let you know the minute we find anything.”

Gerard answered his nod with his own. “Thanks, you guys, this means a lot. I owe you.”

“You can make it up to us by letting us meet your precious Black Opal and scope out your new pad.” Michael proposed playfully, knowing his brother’s answer.

“Fuck no!” Gerard snapped before hustling them out of his garage. “Get the fuck off of my property!”