Hey, everyone. This is my first story on Fanfiction. Let me know how you like it, okay?
Well, let's go back to the middle of the day that starts it all…
I remember the very first words you said to me. It was years ago. Eons. Millennia. I was so young then. I was, physically, an adult, but emotionally I was still a child. Innocent. Naïve. Not like you. You were jaded. You had seen the horrors of the world. But I hadn't. I wasn't hardened like you. I saw the world through childlike eyes: I knew bad things happened, but they had never happened to me, so in my mind they didn't exist. You could see the rawness of my inexperience and you took advantage of that. I don't think I've ever forgiven you entirely for robbing me of that.
Do you remember what you first said to me? I do. I remember the exact words that fell from your lips, already stained with lust and pain.
You said, nice shirt.
Remember that? This whole long, brutal affair was started with those two seemingly innocuous words. Nice shirt.
I don't suppose you remember the actual shirt, do you? Of course you don't; you never paid attention to the small details. You said so yourself that you were a big-picture person. That was your fallback excuse for when you missed something important; birthdays, holidays, anniversaries….But never mind. I am one. I remember the exact shirt. It was black, but a soft, warm black that only resulted after it had been washed over and over. It was an Iron Maiden shirt. Your favorite.
I still have that shirt, you know. I never wear it, but it's in my closet, hanging silently, reminding me of the pain and pleasure of those years.
Pain and pleasure go hand in hand. That was always what you said as you watched the red life flow from your arms. That divine mixture of masochism and bloodlust we both craved desperately. The fusion that was the cornerstone of our relationship. We bonded over razorblades and blood.
I can't begin to let you know just how I'm feeling…
You said nobody understood you, and I think that was true. You were never good at communicating with the world. Nobody ever really understood how deeply you felt things. I came close, but even I never fully got to the center of your emotion. I soothed your frayed nerves, calmed your aching heart. I tried, but I never completely succeeded.
The insults flew thick around you, too. I remember all the things you were called. Names were thrown from down a street, from a doorway, from a car's open window, speeding away into the dark. You said you didn't want to get me involved with all of that; you loved me too much to make me a target. I insisted on being with you anyway. Fuck them, I said. We have each other.
Remember those first weeks? You do, don't you? Those first weeks after you commented on my shirt and asked me to go with you to a club were spent dancing to music nobody but us heard and sharing secret kisses in abandoned lots in the night. We spent days doing all those things couples do; being happy with each other. Laughing. Playing. Joking. You told me in that time that you thought you were dying of happiness. I laughed at you then. I thought you were being romantic and dramatic. But know I realize that it was true. The sheer happiness welling in your heart was too much for you too deal with. It was a good emotion, but it was too big, too much to deal with properly.
Then I found the blades. Underneath your bed. I remember that they were clean, kept free of dried blood and shreds of skin. I was surprised, considering that they were kept in a room that was closer to a den then a livable space. You made excuses, but I just held up my arms and pushed back my sleeves. I saw your eyes light up as you took in the snarling tracks crossing my skin; we were two of a kind, you and I. We had found kindred spirits in one another. No one understood but us. No one but us enjoyed the pain in our arms; no one but us enjoyed the sight of blood trickling down their arms and dripping off their fingertips, creating patterns of carnage on the floor.
One thing after another started after I found that box of blades. The sharing of blood came first. I remember, you giggled when you cut through the vein and dropped some blood into an angry slash on my arm. I laughed too. It was funny, to watch the droplets of my blood spill off of my hand onto yours.
The red ones make me fly, and the blue ones help me fall...
The drugs came next, didn't they? The powder, the injections, the pills. Syringes became affixed to your fingertips, remember? I went for powder myself, but I remember clearly the tiny holes in your elbow. I remember thinking that those were so incredibly sexy. You loved pain so much you were stabbing yourself with needles for it. I felt weak for not wanting to inject. You never knew that; I never told. But it was true. I felt pathetic that I didn't want to fly high above in the clouds enough to stab myself.
Maybe if we had never met, or had gone our separate ways when we first started to fight, it would be okay now. You would be here. Maybe not with me, but you would be in this earth, mortal and here to join me in our self-destructive path. But instead, we decided that we loved each other too much to leave. We were stuck on a dirt path straight to the deepest bowels of Hell and unconsciously we agreed to go down together. Our hearts promised that we would die together. But you lied.
You said that when you landed after flying away from this world, you always saw a reaper. Not the stereotypical scythe and cloak, you said, but a man dressed in a marching band uniform. You said he looked normal but that you knew, just knew, that he was a reaper. You said that he would save you one day. But you were wrong, my love. He didn't save you. He came for you and he took you away. From the bloodbath you called your life that you both loved and hated. From your pills, your pain, your blood, your booze. He took you away from me.
I think I'll blow my brains against the ceiling…
Our poisoned minds fed from one another. They grew into an enormous, twisted, deranged creature that eventually became too potent and overpowered you. You always felt too deeply emotionally, didn't you? You were never good at protecting yourself from evils that you didn't invite into your soul. You couldn't handle feeling too much of anything; good, bad, happy, sad. That's why you bled from your arms. You couldn't let all the emotion out of your heart, so you let it out another way.
I told you to stop reading the newspaper, but you didn't. You read every headline, every day. I never did; I knew that I couldn't handle hearing about the innocent ones dying in the gutters while the murderers and knife wielders made away with their lives. It's different to take your own life then it is to take someone else's, of course. We both recognized that. For all of our lust for pain and blood, we never once hurt anybody other then ourselves. It was an unspoken agreement that we were the ones who would bear the weight and pain of the world in our blades. Nobody else would suffer but us. Even if nobody knew about our sacrifice to the world, we would know. But I digress…You always read the stories. Then you went back to bed and took your inner pain and frustration at not being able to change the world out on yourself.
You know, I was the person who found your body. You probably planned it that way, didn't you? I'm sure you did. You wanted me to think you were sleeping through the day, as you so often did. I always kissed your neck and traced your jaw with my fingernails to wake you up. You loved it when I did that. So I bent down to kiss you when I noticed that your arm was hanging over the bed and was dripping blood. I grabbed your arm. That's when I noticed the words. Carved into the inside of your arm was "the sharpest lives".
That was all. No explanation why. No 'I'm sorry' or 'I love you'. No goodbye. Just a cryptic message. You always loved your mind games. That was just one big joke for you, wasn't it? Is that it? Is your death just some big laugh to you? I bet it is. I bet you're laughing right now.
I never understood why you decided to slit your throat. You never explained and I never got to ask. I have turned over every blood-stained rock in my mind. For five long months I have suffered more pain that I realized was possible. I loved pain; I embraced it. But the pain that I had felt with you was always self-inflicted. These last five weeks have been agony as I turn the same questions in my mind over and over again. I never realized that pain could be felt as anything other then mind-numbing ecstasy. I hate the pain now. I want my heart to stop beating life into me. I want it to stop keeping me alive. I only want pain if you are with me to enjoy it.
Why? Why did you leave me alone? Why didn't you take me with you?
It's too much to bear. I think now I understand why you took your life into your own hands. It was too much to handle, wasn't it? Too many thoughts, too many emotions. It's just too much. I never understood that, but now I do.
As I write this down, this final message, this final fuck-you to the world, I am holding a handgun to my temple. Preparation, if you will. It will be faster then your demise, my love. I believe that your death took time. Maybe it was an hour or more until your final breath was exhaled. For the first time in my life since I met you, I want to feel no pain. I don't want to be here without you. I don't want to have to suffer through this world without you to bleed by my side and make it better. I just want this scandalous, wretched, vengeful, miserable, insane, irreplaceable romance to be over.
Goodbye, Gerard. Goodbye, my love. Goodbye, and hello. We will be together again soon, leading the parade. Just like you always dreamed….
Goodbye.
So...tell me what you thought!