Rant: The Oral History of ‘Mad’ Michael Way (1/4)
Title: Rant: The Oral History of ‘Mad’ Michael Way (1/4)
Author:
xx_anarchy_xx
Raiting: R
Pairing: Implied Mikey/Quite a lot of others
Disclaimer: I own nothing but merchandise and an overactive imagination
Summary: Bullshit did my brother quarantine New York City. Fucking bullshit!
Warnings: AU, swearing, implied bedroom funtimes =D
Author's Note: Inspired by Chuck Palahniuk's Rant which is a brilliant book and I highly recomend it. Written in the style of people telling you the story incase anyone gets confused
Donald Way (Daytimer - Father): Do we really have to talk about this? It’s bad enough we’ve had to bury our son. No parent should ever have to do that.
Donna Way (Daytimer - Mother): He’ll always be my little angel, no matter what he did wrong. It couldn’t have all been his fault anyway. To infect a city of over 8.2 million people alone is impossible. It’s more than impossible. He couldn’t have done it by himself. I refuse to believe it.
Gerard Way (Nighttimer - Brother): Bullshit did my brother quarantine New York City. Fucking bullshit!
Donald Way: Seriously, get that microphone out of my face before I beat it out.
Gerard Way: I mean, come on! Anyone who has ever met Mikey will tell you he’s incapable of even hurting a fly so the thought of him infecting half of New York is laughable. He was just an innocent caught in the crossfire. Someone to pin the blame on. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. Not by a long shot.
Donna Way: I’ll never forget his innocent little smile. He’ll always be my little angel.
Gerard Way: Telling mom and dad that he died was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Their expressions still haunt me. I’ve never seen them so depressed and I know they blame me for it, they always will. I killed Mikey. I didn’t look after him when he decided to come with me to the city. I didn’t tell him enough about being a Nighttimer. They always wanted him to stay a Daytimer so they could keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t get into trouble because one way or another it always found him. If they had their way he’d still be alive, locked in the basement and only brought out when company comes round like some fancy china. They never truly understood that he needed his own life.
Geoff Rickly (Daytimer - Historian): The split between day and night started in the big cities; LA, New York, Las Vegas. They were two different worlds coexisting together quite peacefully until the government decided to split them up for good. Citizens of American were forced to choose the way they wanted to live. Personally I think it was a well organized conspiracy. You can’t deny that the better off chose to be Daytimers. I chose because I like sunlight and prefer not to get rickets. Only people with highly important jobs were allowed to be both.
Gerard Way: It was like I was the grim reaper or something just appearing on their doorstep out of the blue and saying that their son is dead. At first they were pissed because I was out of curfew and could legally be arrested, fined or just gunned down depending on the neighbourhood.
It’s always good to stay out of downtown Manhattan after curfew hours.
Geoff Rickly: After everyone chose the ID cards were handed out, the records were changed and it was over. Congratulations. America was now split in two. The curfews started a few weeks after; too many people were going against their life choice and wandering around when they shouldn’t be. Daytimers get from 8am to 8pm. Nighttimers get 8pm to 8am. If you’re found out of curfew you’ll be arrested and fined $3000 on the spot.
Franklin Iero (Nighttimer - Childhood friend): Do you really have to call me Franklin? Frank’s fine dude.
Donna Way: Don’t mention the Iero boy. I can’t bear to hear his name.
Donald Way: He killed our son!
Franklin Iero: If I could go back in time and change things I would, but I can’t so we just have to live with it.
I can never be sorry enough for what I did though. I know Gerard - his brother, you’ve met him right? Seems kinda pointless to be asking me about his life if you haven’t spoken to his family. I know Gerard doesn’t blame me, his parents do though. It’s like constantly having to wear a coat of guilt I can’t shrug off after a long day. They’ll always blame me and in a way I blame myself too.
Donald Way: There are wild dogs around here. At night you can hear them howling. They’re dogs that use to be domesticated but were abandoned or kidnapped for no reason and went back to their natural ways. A few did at least. The over domesticated ones just died in the street and were run over by more cars than I care to count. Let’s just say after a day or two you couldn’t tell where the dog carcass ended and the asphalt began.
Franklin Iero: At school we used to talk about the dogs, hear through the grapevine if anymore had gone missing from the area and see if we could find them and collect the reward money. People love animals more than people. Why do you think there are more animal charities than human ones? It all makes sense.
Donald Way: Those mutts lived in the woods near by. We wouldn’t let the boys go anywhere near them because we knew they were all infected with something. Then that Iero kid had his smart idea.
Franklin Iero: One afternoon we decided that if we wanted to make some serious cash we needed to check the woods. We both knew that’s where most of them lived. We’d gotten lucky finding a few dogs in the street so close to dying it was easy to pick them up, return them to the owner and collect the money. Split 50-50 of course. But like all good things the street dogs started to dry up, or were hit by cars before we could get to them.
Have you ever smelt a dog that’s stomach has burst open on impact with a Chevy’s front bumper? I have. It’s not pleasant.
Donna Way: We should have never let him in our house. My baby would still be alive if we’d shut the door in his face.
Gerard Way: Of course I can’t blame Frank for what happened. It was a simple mistake. Could have happened to anybody. But like I said before, trouble seemed to always find Mikey.
Franklin Iero: I remember it was a Saturday. A really hot Saturday. The kind of hot where it’s painful to wear jeans, but even at thirteen Mikey had a thing for pain. He wanted to test himself, see how long it would take for him to break so he was in the thickest jeans he owned. I told his dad that we were going dog fishing when he noticed the bag of treats in my hand. He warned me to keep Mikey away from the woods.
I really should have kept to that.
We quickly made out way through the woods until we got to what we thought was the middle before we started fishing, each with a handful of treats from the bag we started calling the names of lost dogs we knew, hoping they would still recognise them and come running so we could leash them.
Our business would have been a lot harder if dogs evolved with thumbs to take their collars off.
Gerard Way: It was the most infected wound I’ve ever seen. And I’m a zombie fan.
Franklin Iero: A few hours passed and nothing. Not even a howl. We called a break and spread some treats around just in case before collapsing on the floor. Mikey looked half dead, all pale and sweaty. He was pale anyway but that was taking the piss. He decided he’d found his pain barrier for one day and begged me to help him rip his jeans up to make them into cut offs. Looking back if I hadn’t done that he’d never have become infected. Those jeans were like Kevlar!
Gerard Way: I do blame Frank for not helping enough when they came back. Making Mikey limp couldn’t have done anything to help.
Franklin Iero: So there we were, in the woods, just sitting on a dead log that was starting to rot. Mikey was swinging his bare calves not caring for the moment that his mom would kill him when she found out. For denim that thick they must have been pretty expensive. The trees seemed to make everything hotter, like a steam effect. We were determined to get a dog though. A few times we’d gotten a street dog and the owner had actually abandoned it and didn’t want to know when we brought it back expecting a reward. Those were bad days. All that hard work trying to catch it only to have to hand it over to the pound and get nothing for it. Anyway we were just talking about nothing when we saw one, it was creeping closer. It looked fucked, rib skinny, chucks of fur missing but it was our first dog of the day. We weren’t going to leave without it. There was no way I was going to leave without it. My funds were running low and there was a guitar I had my eye on.
Donna Way: I think the Iero boy said it was a Harrier that attacked. Not that it matters.
Franklin Iero: Harriers are bastards man. They fight to the bitter end and this one already looked like it had taken three rounds. It needed a kill. Mikey had the leash as we approached it, ready to clip the collar if it ran past or when we pounced on it. Whatever came first really. We didn’t expect it to pounce. Mikey certainly didn’t expect it to bite his ankle. It was only then I saw the snarling lips and the seriously amount of saliva, the hollow angry eyes.
It had fucking rabies! No wonder it looked so fucked.
Donald Way: I’ve never been able to look at a dog since, knowing what it did to Michael.
Franklin Iero: Mikey just froze up completely; hoping that if he stayed still the Harrier would loose interest and piss off. Rabid dogs are different though. They know they’re going to die and they want to take something down with them, no matter how big or small. The Harrier’s grip just got tighter and tighter around his ankle. It was only after the third snap of its jaw did he scream. I’ve never heard anything like it before in my life and I don’t want to hear it ever again. Never again. I grabbed the nearest thing to me, a stick - oh the irony - and started to beat this dog, yelling at it to get off Mikey. I beat its head so hard it was difficult to tell the difference between Mikey’s blood and the dog’s.
Gerard Way: To be honest, I wanted to ring his neck when I saw Mikey’s ankle but that was just impulse. I knew it wasn’t his fault, last time I checked Frank didn’t have extremely prominent canines. It’s just lucky mom and dad were out otherwise Frank would have been dead meat.
Franklin Iero: He clutched me so hard as we hobbled home, muffling his screams until his lip was torn to shreds. I kept saying I was sorry. Always sorry. I never should have asked him to come along, we should have just stuck to street dogs. We should have never tried for a big score. If we’d stuck to street dogs 6.8 million people would still be alive.
Gerard Way: I had to phone mom, I couldn’t drive at that point and we needed to get to a hospital. Mikey’s ankle was fucked. Frank told me what happened, fretting about the place and not helping anything. Mikey moved his grip from Frank to me. He kept telling me ‘it hurts’ which I could see for myself. The tendons at the back of his ankle were ripped, that much I knew, that and he would soon pass out from the amount of blood he was loosing.
“I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die,” he begged. I promised him I wouldn’t.
I really fucked that up, hu?
Donna Way: Gerard called me at work and I nearly collapsed on my feet. I had to leave without even giving a reason. The only law I’ve ever broken was on that day, speeding, and I had a good excuse. I slapped the Iero boy as we left for the hospital. He knew he deserved it.
Gerard Way: Frank told the story of what happened to the doctors. Mikey was getting paler than the disposable sheets. He wouldn’t let go of my hand like I was the drug he needed to get miraculously better. He kept begging me to not let him die and I kept promising it. I honestly thought that was the end. Bye bye Mikey Way. His life was short but he lived it to the full and all that sacramental bullshit.
Franklin Iero: I kept explaining to his mom that I didn’t mean it to happen. We didn’t know it could happen. It was just a mistake but she didn’t believe me. She still doesn’t whenever we pass in the street and I try to explain again, to clear my conscience. She just ignores me and goes on her way.
If she still doesn’t believe me after all these years then fuck it! I tried. I can’t do anything more than that!
Donald Way: I wanted to kill the little runt. I’ve got no shame in saying it because I did. It’s a fatherly instinct, you wouldn’t understand.
Gerard Way: I kinda dreaded it when dad turned up. By the look on his face Frank may has well signed his own death certificate. Thankfully for Frank there were more pressing matters at hand. The doctors said it was easy enough to fix though Mikey may walk with a limp for the rest of his life. A constant reminder of the dog attack. That and the surgery was pretty expensive so it meant one if us wasn’t going to collage.
Hell, I was here first.
Franklin Iero: I never told them that the dog had rabies.
Donna Way: Mikey was in the hospital for just over a week. I was so happy just to get him home again. Yes, I did mother him uncontrollably but I thought I’d lost him.
Gerard Way: His limp was terrible at first, it was like he was constantly falling over invisible objects, but in time it got better until it was barely recognisable. That or I just got used to it since he wasn’t allowed out of the house anymore. I tried to explain that he needed to get out and get his life back but our parent’s weren’t having any of it.
Donald Way: If he went outside he’d be back with the Iero kid and then we’d be back to where we started. That wasn’t going to happen.
Gerard Way: Parents are stubborn fuckers sometimes but I could see where they were coming from. They just don’t understand that it was an accident, that it could have happened to anybody. There was a 50-50 chance that it could have been Frank that was attacked but they never think of that. Maybe I just can’t truly understand where they’re coming from because I don’t have any kids yet.
Franklin Iero: Mikey never blamed me for what happened. In some ways he just took it in his stride. I did keep saying sorry though.
“It’s fine,” he used to say. “Let’s just not go dog fishing in the woods anymore.”
Author:
xx_anarchy_xx
Raiting: R
Pairing: Implied Mikey/Quite a lot of others
Disclaimer: I own nothing but merchandise and an overactive imagination
Summary: Bullshit did my brother quarantine New York City. Fucking bullshit!
Warnings: AU, swearing, implied bedroom funtimes =D
Author's Note: Inspired by Chuck Palahniuk's Rant which is a brilliant book and I highly recomend it. Written in the style of people telling you the story incase anyone gets confused
Donald Way (Daytimer - Father): Do we really have to talk about this? It’s bad enough we’ve had to bury our son. No parent should ever have to do that.
Donna Way (Daytimer - Mother): He’ll always be my little angel, no matter what he did wrong. It couldn’t have all been his fault anyway. To infect a city of over 8.2 million people alone is impossible. It’s more than impossible. He couldn’t have done it by himself. I refuse to believe it.
Gerard Way (Nighttimer - Brother): Bullshit did my brother quarantine New York City. Fucking bullshit!
Donald Way: Seriously, get that microphone out of my face before I beat it out.
Gerard Way: I mean, come on! Anyone who has ever met Mikey will tell you he’s incapable of even hurting a fly so the thought of him infecting half of New York is laughable. He was just an innocent caught in the crossfire. Someone to pin the blame on. He didn’t deserve what happened to him. Not by a long shot.
Donna Way: I’ll never forget his innocent little smile. He’ll always be my little angel.
Gerard Way: Telling mom and dad that he died was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Their expressions still haunt me. I’ve never seen them so depressed and I know they blame me for it, they always will. I killed Mikey. I didn’t look after him when he decided to come with me to the city. I didn’t tell him enough about being a Nighttimer. They always wanted him to stay a Daytimer so they could keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t get into trouble because one way or another it always found him. If they had their way he’d still be alive, locked in the basement and only brought out when company comes round like some fancy china. They never truly understood that he needed his own life.
Geoff Rickly (Daytimer - Historian): The split between day and night started in the big cities; LA, New York, Las Vegas. They were two different worlds coexisting together quite peacefully until the government decided to split them up for good. Citizens of American were forced to choose the way they wanted to live. Personally I think it was a well organized conspiracy. You can’t deny that the better off chose to be Daytimers. I chose because I like sunlight and prefer not to get rickets. Only people with highly important jobs were allowed to be both.
Gerard Way: It was like I was the grim reaper or something just appearing on their doorstep out of the blue and saying that their son is dead. At first they were pissed because I was out of curfew and could legally be arrested, fined or just gunned down depending on the neighbourhood.
It’s always good to stay out of downtown Manhattan after curfew hours.
Geoff Rickly: After everyone chose the ID cards were handed out, the records were changed and it was over. Congratulations. America was now split in two. The curfews started a few weeks after; too many people were going against their life choice and wandering around when they shouldn’t be. Daytimers get from 8am to 8pm. Nighttimers get 8pm to 8am. If you’re found out of curfew you’ll be arrested and fined $3000 on the spot.
Franklin Iero (Nighttimer - Childhood friend): Do you really have to call me Franklin? Frank’s fine dude.
Donna Way: Don’t mention the Iero boy. I can’t bear to hear his name.
Donald Way: He killed our son!
Franklin Iero: If I could go back in time and change things I would, but I can’t so we just have to live with it.
I can never be sorry enough for what I did though. I know Gerard - his brother, you’ve met him right? Seems kinda pointless to be asking me about his life if you haven’t spoken to his family. I know Gerard doesn’t blame me, his parents do though. It’s like constantly having to wear a coat of guilt I can’t shrug off after a long day. They’ll always blame me and in a way I blame myself too.
Donald Way: There are wild dogs around here. At night you can hear them howling. They’re dogs that use to be domesticated but were abandoned or kidnapped for no reason and went back to their natural ways. A few did at least. The over domesticated ones just died in the street and were run over by more cars than I care to count. Let’s just say after a day or two you couldn’t tell where the dog carcass ended and the asphalt began.
Franklin Iero: At school we used to talk about the dogs, hear through the grapevine if anymore had gone missing from the area and see if we could find them and collect the reward money. People love animals more than people. Why do you think there are more animal charities than human ones? It all makes sense.
Donald Way: Those mutts lived in the woods near by. We wouldn’t let the boys go anywhere near them because we knew they were all infected with something. Then that Iero kid had his smart idea.
Franklin Iero: One afternoon we decided that if we wanted to make some serious cash we needed to check the woods. We both knew that’s where most of them lived. We’d gotten lucky finding a few dogs in the street so close to dying it was easy to pick them up, return them to the owner and collect the money. Split 50-50 of course. But like all good things the street dogs started to dry up, or were hit by cars before we could get to them.
Have you ever smelt a dog that’s stomach has burst open on impact with a Chevy’s front bumper? I have. It’s not pleasant.
Donna Way: We should have never let him in our house. My baby would still be alive if we’d shut the door in his face.
Gerard Way: Of course I can’t blame Frank for what happened. It was a simple mistake. Could have happened to anybody. But like I said before, trouble seemed to always find Mikey.
Franklin Iero: I remember it was a Saturday. A really hot Saturday. The kind of hot where it’s painful to wear jeans, but even at thirteen Mikey had a thing for pain. He wanted to test himself, see how long it would take for him to break so he was in the thickest jeans he owned. I told his dad that we were going dog fishing when he noticed the bag of treats in my hand. He warned me to keep Mikey away from the woods.
I really should have kept to that.
We quickly made out way through the woods until we got to what we thought was the middle before we started fishing, each with a handful of treats from the bag we started calling the names of lost dogs we knew, hoping they would still recognise them and come running so we could leash them.
Our business would have been a lot harder if dogs evolved with thumbs to take their collars off.
Gerard Way: It was the most infected wound I’ve ever seen. And I’m a zombie fan.
Franklin Iero: A few hours passed and nothing. Not even a howl. We called a break and spread some treats around just in case before collapsing on the floor. Mikey looked half dead, all pale and sweaty. He was pale anyway but that was taking the piss. He decided he’d found his pain barrier for one day and begged me to help him rip his jeans up to make them into cut offs. Looking back if I hadn’t done that he’d never have become infected. Those jeans were like Kevlar!
Gerard Way: I do blame Frank for not helping enough when they came back. Making Mikey limp couldn’t have done anything to help.
Franklin Iero: So there we were, in the woods, just sitting on a dead log that was starting to rot. Mikey was swinging his bare calves not caring for the moment that his mom would kill him when she found out. For denim that thick they must have been pretty expensive. The trees seemed to make everything hotter, like a steam effect. We were determined to get a dog though. A few times we’d gotten a street dog and the owner had actually abandoned it and didn’t want to know when we brought it back expecting a reward. Those were bad days. All that hard work trying to catch it only to have to hand it over to the pound and get nothing for it. Anyway we were just talking about nothing when we saw one, it was creeping closer. It looked fucked, rib skinny, chucks of fur missing but it was our first dog of the day. We weren’t going to leave without it. There was no way I was going to leave without it. My funds were running low and there was a guitar I had my eye on.
Donna Way: I think the Iero boy said it was a Harrier that attacked. Not that it matters.
Franklin Iero: Harriers are bastards man. They fight to the bitter end and this one already looked like it had taken three rounds. It needed a kill. Mikey had the leash as we approached it, ready to clip the collar if it ran past or when we pounced on it. Whatever came first really. We didn’t expect it to pounce. Mikey certainly didn’t expect it to bite his ankle. It was only then I saw the snarling lips and the seriously amount of saliva, the hollow angry eyes.
It had fucking rabies! No wonder it looked so fucked.
Donald Way: I’ve never been able to look at a dog since, knowing what it did to Michael.
Franklin Iero: Mikey just froze up completely; hoping that if he stayed still the Harrier would loose interest and piss off. Rabid dogs are different though. They know they’re going to die and they want to take something down with them, no matter how big or small. The Harrier’s grip just got tighter and tighter around his ankle. It was only after the third snap of its jaw did he scream. I’ve never heard anything like it before in my life and I don’t want to hear it ever again. Never again. I grabbed the nearest thing to me, a stick - oh the irony - and started to beat this dog, yelling at it to get off Mikey. I beat its head so hard it was difficult to tell the difference between Mikey’s blood and the dog’s.
Gerard Way: To be honest, I wanted to ring his neck when I saw Mikey’s ankle but that was just impulse. I knew it wasn’t his fault, last time I checked Frank didn’t have extremely prominent canines. It’s just lucky mom and dad were out otherwise Frank would have been dead meat.
Franklin Iero: He clutched me so hard as we hobbled home, muffling his screams until his lip was torn to shreds. I kept saying I was sorry. Always sorry. I never should have asked him to come along, we should have just stuck to street dogs. We should have never tried for a big score. If we’d stuck to street dogs 6.8 million people would still be alive.
Gerard Way: I had to phone mom, I couldn’t drive at that point and we needed to get to a hospital. Mikey’s ankle was fucked. Frank told me what happened, fretting about the place and not helping anything. Mikey moved his grip from Frank to me. He kept telling me ‘it hurts’ which I could see for myself. The tendons at the back of his ankle were ripped, that much I knew, that and he would soon pass out from the amount of blood he was loosing.
“I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die,” he begged. I promised him I wouldn’t.
I really fucked that up, hu?
Donna Way: Gerard called me at work and I nearly collapsed on my feet. I had to leave without even giving a reason. The only law I’ve ever broken was on that day, speeding, and I had a good excuse. I slapped the Iero boy as we left for the hospital. He knew he deserved it.
Gerard Way: Frank told the story of what happened to the doctors. Mikey was getting paler than the disposable sheets. He wouldn’t let go of my hand like I was the drug he needed to get miraculously better. He kept begging me to not let him die and I kept promising it. I honestly thought that was the end. Bye bye Mikey Way. His life was short but he lived it to the full and all that sacramental bullshit.
Franklin Iero: I kept explaining to his mom that I didn’t mean it to happen. We didn’t know it could happen. It was just a mistake but she didn’t believe me. She still doesn’t whenever we pass in the street and I try to explain again, to clear my conscience. She just ignores me and goes on her way.
If she still doesn’t believe me after all these years then fuck it! I tried. I can’t do anything more than that!
Donald Way: I wanted to kill the little runt. I’ve got no shame in saying it because I did. It’s a fatherly instinct, you wouldn’t understand.
Gerard Way: I kinda dreaded it when dad turned up. By the look on his face Frank may has well signed his own death certificate. Thankfully for Frank there were more pressing matters at hand. The doctors said it was easy enough to fix though Mikey may walk with a limp for the rest of his life. A constant reminder of the dog attack. That and the surgery was pretty expensive so it meant one if us wasn’t going to collage.
Hell, I was here first.
Franklin Iero: I never told them that the dog had rabies.
Donna Way: Mikey was in the hospital for just over a week. I was so happy just to get him home again. Yes, I did mother him uncontrollably but I thought I’d lost him.
Gerard Way: His limp was terrible at first, it was like he was constantly falling over invisible objects, but in time it got better until it was barely recognisable. That or I just got used to it since he wasn’t allowed out of the house anymore. I tried to explain that he needed to get out and get his life back but our parent’s weren’t having any of it.
Donald Way: If he went outside he’d be back with the Iero kid and then we’d be back to where we started. That wasn’t going to happen.
Gerard Way: Parents are stubborn fuckers sometimes but I could see where they were coming from. They just don’t understand that it was an accident, that it could have happened to anybody. There was a 50-50 chance that it could have been Frank that was attacked but they never think of that. Maybe I just can’t truly understand where they’re coming from because I don’t have any kids yet.
Franklin Iero: Mikey never blamed me for what happened. In some ways he just took it in his stride. I did keep saying sorry though.
“It’s fine,” he used to say. “Let’s just not go dog fishing in the woods anymore.”