Vacant Eyes & Butterflies(Frerard)

Chapter 1- Like Ghosts in the Snow

Chapter 1

Like Ghosts in the snow

I was never good with words, but I absolutely adored writing. For some reason, every time I tried to write something deep, my thoughts just never properly translated on paper. Simply, my jumbled up mind was too complex for anyone to understand, including me.

Sure, I could write essays and poems in school but as soon as I had to open myself up I was lost for words. For me, writing was something far too personal. Writing was cutting yourself open with a knife, it was digging your guts out and spilling them all over the page, blood staining every corner. It was scary. It terrified me. As soon as I was asked to rip myself open, to anyone, I would always decline. I never liked people knowing my innermost thoughts and feelings- it was unsettling to say the least.

So, when Mrs. Vince asked me to write her foster son's eulogy, I politely declined. I was never good with words.

To say the least, it confused the shit out of me why she would ask me out of all people to write Mikey Way's eulogy. Although she was quite unaware that I was the murderer behind his death (an accident at that) she hated my guts.  She believed that I was a bad influence for Mikey; I fucking smoked cigarettes sometimes, I drank liquor, sometimes I did whatever drugs I could get a hold of. And Mary Vince, Mikey's foster mother knew. 

The funeral came and gone in a matter of two and a half hours, not that I was counting or anything. By the time we got to the cemetery to lower his casket into the grave, it was snowing furiously; the snowflakes became ice pellets in a matter of minutes, whipping across my complexion. My face rapidly growing numb, I just wanted to leave. I couldn't fucking handle this.

It wasn't easy. None of this was. Mikey Way was only 16 years old. He was too old to be a kid and too young to even be an adult yet either. Mikey would never graduate high school, he'd never be in a band, find a girlfriend, get married or have a kid. I took everything away from him.

And the worst part was, was that it was my entire fault, and nobody knew but me.

As his casket was being lowered into the ground, and people carefully tossed the cold, almost frozen soil over Mikey Way's grave, I ever so slightly raised my head; a mop of bright red hair stood out among everybody else here. Whoever or whatever it was though didn't seem like they were actually invited to the funeral; they were sat a few feet away from the group on a small wooden park bench. The colour of their hair was too bright for the winter. The sun reflecting off of the snow was really fucking hurting my eyes bad enough; the red patch of fire truck hair wasn't helping either.

Eventually, the casket was buried beneath the frozen earth and everyone broke off and scattered everywhere. Some people went home, some stayed. My mother went home to cook dinner while I stayed. I didn't need much of an explanation though, and she didn't question me like she usually would, which really was a huge weight off my chest.

I paced up and down the rows of graves, just meandering around the cemetery, my eyes still nonchalantly fixated on the bright red blob off in the distance. As I walked closer, I discovered that it was a man, who looked to be in his mid twenties. He wore tight black jeans, black combat boots, along with a black leather jacket. He was hunched over with a sketchbook placed on top of his lap, the snowflakes drifting down, and dissolving on his page.

He crinkled his small, pointy nose up as he erased something on the page, sighing and then dropped his pencil. The way he breathed showed in the air; the fog escaped from his mouth in a huge puff and disappeared over his head. The way his icy breath floated up towards the sky reminded me of cigarette smoke. It reminded me of Mikey and how we'd always split a pack of Marlboros because it was cheaper that way.