Summertime (Frerard)

44: I'll Know It's You And That It's Over So I Won't Even Try

Gunshots screamed out like the whimpers of a child - too young, and too inexperienced in the eloquent and deceitful arts of expressing one's self: all alone now, and with gunpowder to scream out for them; settling like the touch of death himself - black dust against untouched, newborn skin, and a glance of perhaps sorrow, perhaps regret, but most of all guilt as the realisation comes and the acceptance stumbles far too far behind.

There's silence and its unstoppable and hearts beat out like that rhythm you never paid all that much attention to, but once isolated, it became the only thing ringing through your ears, and perhaps it would be better if it stopped, for clarity's sake, but it's just echoes now, ringing out against the folds and cracks hidden away throughout this mess, and this is penance, perhaps, or this is masochism with two feet still bolted straight to the floor.

And the floorboards don't even creak, and the clock doesn't even tick, and perhaps time is frozen, but the house is just silent: everything ever known is just silent. Silent in shock, silent in horror, and waiting, on edge, nail biting, nervous ticking, for someone else to speak, because it's moments like these when cowardice really seems to shine.

The silence doesn't accommodate, though. The silence is overpowering and chocking and not a word is uttered, perhaps in fear, but perhaps in wisdom, and arrogance brought through in the right time: no one notices. No one would notice anything now, not at all, because a sin rings aloud with the toll of the church bell, and the whole community looks up in horror, in shock, and in silence.

The silence doesn't stop until the church bell tolls again, and the world is set back into living, and the ones without loved ones go back to life, with a selfish turn of the head and a conscience drowned in liquor by night, but the ones with loved ones, and loved ones no longer by their side, they want to run: in their hearts they run to the church tower and peer upon the sinner strewn upon display and scrutiny for the whole world, but they don't. They know not to; death doesn't like to be disturbed.

The foolish do; the foolish always do, and the foolish never live to tell the tale, but at least they get to die for something, even if it turned out to be nothing in their eyes, it was always something in someone else's, and compassion lived out as the hero between the survivors and selfishness ran as the oppressor, the dictator, and silence reigned and bell tolled again, and life went on, as it does.

The silence doesn't last forever, and life doesn't accommodate for the sorrow of its inhabitants, as the tide never thinks of the sand castles on the shore that it takes as victim under the waves, and no one thinks of the sandcastles soon or later, but it's not quite like that with gunshots and Gerard Way, at least not for a while, because the gunshot will never stop ringing in me ears, and perhaps maybe one day, I'll be able to move from this spot, but it doesn't seem to be soon.

But the world gets back together with the second toll of the bell - the second gunshot, and the clock almost seems to jump forward a few minutes, and what felt like hours comes back into the reality of the time it takes to make toast.

I consider breathing, but it doesn't seem all that necessary and I consider the idiocy with which such words are strung with and make myself dizzy with the thought, or perhaps the lack of oxygen, so I force my lungs into action, and they work after a while, and I say that I'm alright, but I'm not, and I'm not particularly good at lying either.

The back door slams against the wall as was forced open, Mikey standing there - eyes filled with fury and what would be tears if his fists weren't clenched and cutting off half his circulation with the strength they were, and he didn't even care, he didn't even speak; his eyes only meeting his mother's temporarily, before the silence shattered into nothingness and I slumped to the floor at the sound that only I could hear.