Frank stared down at Gerard's fake serenity, his face was glossy in the murky shadows cast from what little light they had. "Frankie..." A gasp from ghostly white lips beneath him.
As he slid himself out and off of Gerard, Frank felt the back of his hand against Gerard's glistening forehead and it felt like his palm was pressed against a flame. "Shit, Gee, you're burning up."
Gerard's eyes remained closed as his breathing pitched again, but his body was shaking feverishly. "Frankie... I.... I'm so close..."
Blood pulsed from Gerard's nose and rushed over his lips and dripped from his chin, a dam had burst. Frank found his soiled shirt and wiped at the rush that continued to run red. The room was suddenly a furnace and the candles bounced and their flames grew surrounding them in a ring of fire. Frank lifted Gerard's naked body into his arms and fled the room to the opposite on the other side of the chapel. Placing his body back onto the familiar small bed, he returned the sheets to their original position tucking Gerard inside, as safe as he could be and nestled snugly. "You stay right here and I promise I'll be right back."
Frank kissed him on his burning scalp and descended back into the cavernous chapel to extinguish the flames from the other room. As he made his way back to the far space, all the candles were still and dark, their wicks black and withered. There was a ring of soot that linked them all together, remnants of where they torched. As he turned to leave, the room felt unusually dark. Frank glanced over his shoulder and noticed the portrait was blacked out. There were no angels, no eyes, no blood crosses, nothing. Just a black hole in the wall. He turned around and stepped towards it, his hands out to catch him just in case it was some turned portal, but his palms met mortar.
As confused as he was, Frank left the room in darkness and rushed back to where Gerard was and remained. He sighed in relief and made his way to the small bathroom. The red towel hanging from the side of the sink would make a good cold compress. Frank drew water from the tap onto the towel and wrang it, twisting the cloth until it was just damp enough and returned to the bedside. Placing the compress just above Gerard's eyes, it was an immediate relief as Gerard slumped into the mattress. Frank found the abandoned glass of water from earlier and brought it to Gerard's lips as he poured small amounts into his mouth and hoped that he could extinguish this black flame, but he was absolutely terrified of what if he couldn't.
There was still a pinkish stain rimming Gerard's nostrils and cupid's bow that was vibrant against the moonlit white of his face. Frank continued to pour him sips of water with one hand while his other gripped tightly at Gerard's limp wrist. He was so warm, but he looked lifeless; a ghost like the one chasing them. A light funeral march floated into the room over them. Gazing down at the bed, Frank pressed his eyes shut tight and reopened them. Was this all a hallucination? He found himself standing at the altar still holding the glass of water in his one hand and Gerard's hand in his other, except he was leaning not over his bedside but his coffin. Gerard's dark hair fanned in greasy waves over the plush, snowy lining and entirely shrouded in black except for the dried, pink blood on his neck and nose. His hands crossing over his darkly dressed chest holding her rosary interlaced through his fingers like how schoolchildren play cats cradle.
Frank sucked in his lips, tucked his chin, and felt himself falling. The glass floated through the air and shattered on the splintered wood sending sparkles up to the roof and on all the surrounding walls. The open lid of the casket glittered in their shadows of diamonds reflecting Gerard's face in a diluted rainbow and catching the powdery white of the backs of his hands seamlessly blending in with the cushions that surrounded him and would rot next to him for eternity. "Gerard!" Frank sobbed, feeling widowed. "Come back to me, Gerard!"
His sobs rained down onto Gerard's face each turning cold and rose red as they touched his ghastly face thinning into sharp cuts. The music slowed, a music box that needed to be rewound. A stray tear struck Gerard's fanned out eyelashes and his eyes shot open and were entirely blacked out, thin worms of veins wriggled back and forth. Frank gasped as he felt Gerard's grip on the rosary and his hand tightened, slivers of nail puncturing Frank's knuckles. "Gee?"
Gerard stared at the ceiling without a blink or a breath and then there was the crunch of bone snapping cleanly as his face ticked inch by inch to his right until lining up his eyes with Frank's. His lips parted and showed dark twine stitching that pulled sharp points of pale pink gum from inside his mouth, a second row of teeth. With each gradual pull, a seam bust open one by one until a trail of string fell from tongue and cheek, a reverse pullstring. "Shhh," Gerard hushed.
His face was listless in death, having no regard for any pain nor pleasure. Frank held his free hand over his mouth and his eyes reflected the horrific black of the eyes boring into his. "I..." Gerard continued, his lips barely touching as he spoke. "I lied, Frankie."
His hand felt asleep with just barely a feeling of touch crawling up his wrist and arm and slowly blooming throughout his body. Feet floating and the cold of the cathedral mellow and soothing. "I," Gerard whispered, the spool of twine tangling against his tongue. "Lied. And she... Died."
The whites of his eyes began to throb in his cathartic numbness and began to fill with ink that spilled out and over his cheeks and through his nose and out his mouth. The throbbing melted away as the feeling drained from his entirety. A trickling sensation like a phantom limb as his own body pumped what poison was replaced in his veins, filtering through right and left ventricle. "And now," Frank saw the string flick from side to side, a serpent's tongue, as Gerard spoke. "You'll. Die. Too."
Frank found himself lying in a coffin beside Gerard on the altar and their hands were now firmly gripped in one another's dangling over the gap between the wooden slats. They lay toe to chin and Frank could see Gerard still holding onto her rosary, the black beads contrasted against his skin. The altar became the plot of a grave and there were multiple black silhouettes peering down at them from an eternity above, eyes all glowing red, as a dozen roses rained down onto them, their thorns pricking and tearing at their dead flesh but they didn't feel a thing. The dirt scattered over Frank's face, lids still open, fingers still twisted together and frozen as one. "Gerard!" Frank's whisper reverberated throughout their grave.
"Shhh," Gerard responded, the bones of his wrist breaking as he pulled himself up from his coffin and stared down at Frank, who's eyes became heavy with anesthetic. Gerard blurred in and out of focus. "You'll die too."
"Frankie!" Gerard was out of bed and the color had returned to his face. "Frankie! Wake up! You were having a nightmare, baby."
Frank gasped and felt a cold sweat dripping all over him and flushing his face. "Fuck, Gee, it... It felt so real. You were..."
The words were mangled up inside, not wanting to be spoken. This would frighten Gerard more than it did himself. The frames of breaking bones and blacked out eyes was a stamped image in a television set, burned into the pixels forever and always showing over anything new playing. The thick clay of the ground felt so real, Frank brushed at face and through his hair swearing that he'd find just one stray speck in proof, but there was nothing there. The faces that Gerard explained to him earlier that were following her, he would bet anything he had that those were of the same staring down at their demise. The frayed thread that sutured Gerard's mouth, he remembers the dull brown with flecks of scabs a perfect photograph in his memory and how it strained against it's stitching sent goosebumps up from the base of Frank's spine to behind his ears causing him to shudder and flinch.
Yet, here he was, sitting on the cold floor with a very much alive Gerard fussing over him, combing back his hair, holding his body close with ropes of muscle that would make the perfect noose to hang himself with; what a way to die. Frank pulled Gerard in further, trying to use him to ricochet the images from his mind; he is here, he is in my arms, he is breathing, he is alive.
There was a sepia tone spilling through the open door gesturing that dawn was approaching. Another day had passed with nothing gained. "Do we have any more cigarettes?" Frank slapped at his jean pockets.
"I thought so. Maybe you left them in the other room?" Gerard's voice cracked a bit at the mention of the other side of the church.
"I'll go check. You stay here, alright? I'll be gone just a minute." Frank leaned down after he got up and Gerard tilted his head up from where he sat on the bed.
They pecked each other a kiss and Frank smirked at Gerard through the doorframe and then made his way up the altar to the far room. Once broken, the door's hinge was back to where it was originally, not battered or broken. The candles were where they were from their first encounter together as was the chaise lounge and the painting was wiped clean as if nothing had ever happened. The side table held the empty offering cup and the blood on the blade beside it was a rusty brown. The torn sheet was a stagnant puddle at the foot of the chair, lingering from where Frank had cut it free from Gerard. It was a relic of their first night together and not the night that they both had died in some way. There was no blood or wax remnants on the floor, just the beige carpet. On the carpeting near the hall, there was a slightly crumpled pack of Marlboros, half full, it's paper lip torn open showing the inside of the pack. Frank retrieved the pack, took another look at the surrounding scene, and left, closing the door behind him and hearing the lock click into place as cleanly as if it had just been installed.
Before coming around the side to the bedroom door, Frank noticed Gerard's outline on his knees on one of the pews, arms laid out on the wooden top and his head angled up towards the broken mosaic of colored glass. Frank mimicked his position as he retrieved the lighter from his front pocket and lit two cigarettes and passed one to Gerard. As Gerard plucked it from his fingers, they both drew in a drag in tandem, held, and recycled the smoke out, Frank from his nose and Gerard from his mouth, into a combined cloud that rose and dispersed around those stained glass eyes. "So," Gerard pulled at his cigarette again and felt the nicotine rush up to his brain, feeling that fleeting high. "You know about my dream..." He flicked ash from his ember and exhaled exhaust. "Tell me about yours."
The dim, dawn light sparked the green of his eyes as Frank's caught the spark and lit only wishing he would sooner entirely catch fire than have to confess his vision to Gerard. He didn't want to hurt him or panic him any more than he already was. Frank's wrists crossed over one another as he hung his head at their apex. "I," Frank swallowed, feeling Gerard's eyes burn into him, begging to meet them. "I don't want to hurt you, Gee."
Gerard pulled his bottom lip inside his mouth and pulled at a chapped piece, chewing before letting it go free. "I need to know."
The burning of his stare was too much, Frank surrendered to it and stared pleadingly into his lover's eyes. "Please..." Gerard kept his focus on Frank.
Frank sighed and brought the cigarette up to his mouth taking another drag and spitting it and what he wished he could forget out. He tried to filter it as best as he could, but there wasn't much that he could turn vague; it was so sharp in his mind, he was surprised it hadn't torn his nerves and grey matter to shreds. The casket, the shards of glass, bones breaking, everything black, being buried together, the red eyes. Gerard's face was complacent and firm from thought. "...and you kept saying two things. That you lied and that I would die too." It was a struggle to form but more so to speak those pieces out loud and hear them for the first time outside of himself.
Gerard nodded closing his eyes and mouth, audibly inhaling. He didn't say anything but pulled and pulled from his cigarette until the ember met filter, glowing brightly against his middle and pointer fingers. "Well," Gerard cleared his throat, finally, and stubbed the light out from ash against the bench, just missing the side of his palm. "There's one thing from my dream that I didn't tell you..."
Gerard rolled the butt between his thumb and finger, freeing the cotton inside. "Helena kept repeating the same thing to me..."
Frank's eyebrows rose and fell in confusion, but Gerard continued. "She kept saying... "You're lying" over and over and over again..."
Their dreams were beginning to relate in some conspiracy that Frank couldn't fathom. "What does it mean?" Frank tried to keep it hushed, but his voice echoed against the vacant walls.
A satirical smile twitched over Gerard's lips for just a second or two as he stared at Frank from the sides of his eyes. "I didn't tell you everything." His hands kneaded and pulled at each other like he wanted to break free from his skin. "There's more to what happened..."
Before Frank could counter, Gerard continued, his tone rough and ragged like how aggravated the pull of his own skin against skin felt. "What happened after everything... I know now... Never again."
The sun rose from the horizon and everything turned sepia to sweltering, but even in the light there was a total darkness that Gerard began to admit. "Never. Again."