Disorder

Gerard got up from the ground. His breathing was haggard and he had a vile taste in his mouth. Whether the taste was from last night’s booze-fest or the foam that developed just now, he didn’t know.

Another panic attack had overcome Gerard’s body. That was the third one this week and it was only Wednesday!

He stretched his back, throbbing from the many falls he’s been suffering lately. He tried to twist around to see the bruises darkening the skin on his back, but couldn’t crane his neck far enough.

“You look like a dog trying to chase it’s tail,” Mikey noted, opening the front door and dropping the family Station Wagon keys in a basket on the floor.

“Shut the fuck up,” Gerard replied. Today had not been a good day. With the panic attack, the ignored calls to Kat and the angry e-mail sent to Gerard from his ‘boss’ that he better get his ass in the office right now after failing to show up for work for several days.

Mikey frowned at Gerard’s pained expression, “Gee, you alright?”

“I’m fucking dandy, baby brother. Don’t you have some sort of swank-ass event to attend to for valedictorian or something?” Gerard snapped. He knew he wasn’t being fair to Mikey, but he couldn’t help it. All this shit coursing through his life was proving to be too much. Gerard had never been a weak one; he always knew how to handle things - or at least manipulate the situation to make it seem like he knew what he was doing.

“You’re just upset because I got that title, and not you!” Mikey wasn’t really proud of being valedictorian. He just saw it as another thing to make Gerard hate him. And it seemed to Mikey that Gerard hated him more than anything, considering how much they fought and all the cruel remarks Gerard dropped on him daily.

“Yeah, I really want to be a faggot wearing the gold streak of gay pride in a mass of black. And I really want to make a speech to a crowd that doesn’t even give a fuck, because they aren’t going to care about you, Mikes. They won’t give a damn about what you say. All they want is for your little speech to be over so they can get stoned and laid,” the words tumbled out of Gerard’s mouth before he could stop them. After he spit out the venom burning his mouth, much like the vile taste, he felt better… but regretted unleashing it on Mikey.

The corners of Mikey’s mouth quivered and pulled down. He looked anywhere but the merciless depths of Gerard’s eyes. His hands knotted together, “I hate you.”

Gerard didn’t respond to Mikey‘s angry words, he didn’t so much as blink.

Mikey snatched the keys back up from the basket and slammed the door extra hard behind him, rattling the china dished lined up on some shelves. He half-ran, half-stomped to the car and struggled with getting the key in the lock. When he finally had a steady enough hand to open the door, he shook it up again, thinking: Why does he do this to me?

After thinking of no logical answer besides “he hates me,” Mikey drove off. Destination: the fuck away from Gerard.

He stopped in front of Frank’s house, but the family Oldsmobile wasn’t parked in the driveway, so Mikey kept on driving past all of the worn down houses and potholed streets.

He finally just stopped in front of the hospital where Kat worked. He choose this place because the parking lot was nearly empty and because no one would notice an 18-year-old boy sulking around in the chairs; they would just assume a loved one was having their testicles removes or something.

So there Mikey sat, with his head resting in his hands, fighting off sobs.

“Mikey?” Kat asked, putting her plastic-gloved hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her through his glasses with a dazed look on his face. “Mikey, what’s wrong?”

“Gerard hates me,” he mumbled, still sitting and staring up at Kat.

“Of course he doesn’t,” she sat down next to Mikey and took his hand, lacing her fingers through his. “What makes you say that?”

“He called me a faggot a-and he sa-said no one w-w-would listen to my valedictorian s-speech,” Mikey whimpered. He didn’t even know why this was affecting his so much. It wasn’t the first time that Gerard had said mean things to him. And Mikey knew it wouldn’t be the last.

“Oh, Mikey. He didn’t mean it. Gerard is just having a hard time right now, is all. I’m sure that he’ll apologize when he sees yo-,” Kat started to sympathize for him, but he cut her off.

“You obviously don’t know him, then. You’ve been dating him for… what, like 6 months? Shouldn’t you have already come to the conclusion that he’s a heartless bastard who’ll never change? Nothing you ever say or do will change him. He’s too far gone now; he likes hurting people. He’ll hurt you. He hurts anyone he loves. It’s his way. It’s what he does,” Mikey said, his voice reaching the point of hysterical, making people prolong their glances at the boy wearing black work pants and an Anthrax shirt.

“Shhh, Mikey. Calm down… and you don’t know that. Gerard is changing. I’m changing him. He’s going to be okay! I can feel it. And he would never hurt me…” but by the last utter of her words, Kat already knew that Mikey was right: There was no changing Gerard. She could try forever, but he was so far gone now, it was like he was running on empty.

***

Gerard dropped his eyes to the floor and concentrated on breathing deeply. No need to cry, Gerard… you’ve been told ’I hate you’ plenty of times. This is no different. He told himself. He continued to breathe deeply until the long breaths turned into short, choppy gasps: another panic attack.

He ran to the fridge, desperate for anything to stake off the attack. He grabbed things at random and they clattered on floor, leaving a disgusting mix of old cottage cheese, week-old chicken and other unidentifiable things. All of this mess was caused for nothing, though, because there wasn’t a beer in sight.

Gerard ran down to the basement, his breath getting more ragged by the second and his vision dimming. He knocked over empty beer cans and bottles, not finding so much as a sip to help him ward off the assault.

A black film seemed to settle slowly over Gerard’s eyes. The suffocating was caressing his lungs, almost like a lover to his partner after particularly rough sex.

Feeling very desperate, Gerard flung open his drawers and pulled out the bottle of xanax. He poured the pills directly in his mouth and swallowed them dry. The ground was comfortable when Gerard sat himself down on it, leaning against the dresser. He banged the back of his head on it until his vision returned and he could breathe normally again.

Only the air coming into his lungs didn’t feel very real. It felt like it was going too slow… like just the air was moving very slowly but the rest of the area around him was moving at normal speed. Gerard blinked, but it seemed to be in slow-motion. Confused by this, he tried to raise one of his arms and realized that he couldn’t. His mind processed all of this at a snail-like speed in small increments.

What the fuck?

For more than half an hour, Gerard sat there in his room… inhaling… exhaling… before he could finally move again. He shook his head, trying to clear it. The bottle of xanax was still on the floor, the cap resting a few inches away from it. He picked it up and counted the pills.

“Four. I took four pills,” Gerard muttered to himself. The bottle said to only take one pill every 4 hours or two pills every 8 hours. He placed his hand over where his liver would be if it were visible through the skin. There was no pain there, but would you feel pain if your liver was failing? Gerard wouldn’t know… he’s never been exposed to anything serious enough to cause liver damage.

He decided to just shrug it off, figuring that at least he knew that the pills were fast acting. He just couldn’t take four or risk being paralyzed like that again.

((I expect comment galore, please.))