The Nightmare Box (2/?)
Title: The Nightmare Box (2/?)
Author:
xx_anarchy_xx or
synthetic_tales
Rating: R
Pairing: Frank/Mikey
Disclaimer: I own nothing but merchandice and an overactive imagination
Summary: His head was filled with possible ideas of what it could be, where it came from, what was in it, but every time he voiced them his new baby brother would start crying
Warnings: AU
Author's Note: Inspired by Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted and Mrs. Clark's story.
Part 1
It was a few days before Gerard was allowed home. The vacant stare came with him. It followed him everywhere he went. He functioned like a robot. No one asked what he’d seen for fear what happened could happen again. It was the shameful secret, the embarrassing relative that they had to live with. The box remained on the table, filling the once vibrant dead space with ticks. Every time it ticked they were all reminded of what happened. The fear. The confusion. It all came flooding back.
From then Mikey stopped thinking of it as a little box of midnight sky.
It became the nightmare box.
For the first time the ticks got annoying. When her boys were asleep the mother wrapped it in old blankets so it could no longer be heard and put it in the attic with all the other unwanted things. She couldn’t throw it away, knowing what it did. She didn’t want to cause another family the fear that she had gone through so it sat in the attic, collecting dust and ticking.
School was no longer an option for Gerard even though it was tried. He was sent home with a phone call saying that he was unfit to learn and that he could come back when he was better.
God only knew when that would be.
Instead of school he sat in his room, sat in the dark, and stared at a blank spot on his wall, everything and nothing running through his head at haste. Like there wasn’t enough time. His mother had taken away his clock for dread that it could happen again. He was a shell of what he used to be. He became more and more dishevelled as what he saw replayed in his mind on a loop, he couldn’t get rid of it no matter how hard he tried. Mikey caught him trying to pluck his eyes out with a spoon to scoop at his brain to make it go away.
Whatever it was.
From then on Gerard couldn’t be left alone. His mother quit her job during the week, applying for government benefits for having a disabled son, and Mikey moved into Gerard’s room to make sure he was still alive when he woke up. At weekends he became his brother’s carer while their mother worked, making sure he was alive enough to pass for not being dead. He knew Gerard was dead inside, anyone who knew him could tell you that. Mikey talked to Gerard liked nothing had happened, trying to keep some level of normality, telling him about the people at school who picked on him and what he would do to them if he was given the chance. Normally Gerard would laugh and give him pointers, the best way to hack of a foot, a hand, a leg, how to make sure that his victim would still be breathing and would feel every moment of pain while he crushed the ribcage, the spine, the skull, all the while knowing that it would never happen. Instead he just stared at whatever direction the voice was coming from, an unreadable expression constant on his features. Mikey desperately wanted to ask what his brother saw that turned him into a robot but was also afraid of the repercussions.
Eventually he had to ask. Curiosity had gotten the better of him.
He asked the day Gerard pulled out his eyelashes, every last one. He started to resemble a cancer patient. He’d cut his hair when Mikey had fallen asleep one night. Luckily he woke up before Gerard did damage to himself. Hair grows back. Ears don’t. In patches it was like stubble but in others it was just below his eyebrows. Over dinner Mikey asked the question they’d been dying to know but didn’t have the guts to ask. Gerard didn’t really eat anymore and even if he did it was only melted chocolate mint ice cream and white chocolate chip-less cookies that passed his lips. He was wasting away on high fat food. A prop at the dinner table to make everything seem normal.
“Gerard, what did you see?” Mikey asked. His mother shushed him violently but the question had already gotten into his brother’s head, bring back everything he saw and didn’t want to remember anymore. Instead of answering he banged his head against the table, an empty hollow sound ringing out, and fell to the floor wailing like an abandoned child. His mother quickly stretched him out so he couldn’t freeze up again. She didn’t want to relive what happened. Mikey held his feet. Gerard wouldn’t stop wailing. It got so bad their neighbour started thumping on the wall, encouraging Gerard more as apposed to getting him to shut up. In the end they had to carry him down to his shared room and hope for the best. Mikey stayed up all night, just holding his wailing brother and saying sorry.
Sorry for asking the question.
Sorry for making him think about it again.
Sorry for not stopping him looking into the box.
He couldn’t help feeling it should have been the other way around somehow. How many thirteen year olds have to make their sixteen year old brothers stop wailing and howling?
News travels fast in small communities. Mikey wondered how many other people heard Gerard when he walked to school the next morning. People looked out of their curtains at him as he passed, quickly diving away from their windows if he glanced at them. If he wasn’t an outsider before he sure was now. For once the kids at school left him alone, the urge to pick on the weakest member strangely gone as if it was never there. An animal instinct driven to extinction. Instead of hiding Mikey spent his free time doing what he did everyday, looking up his brother’s mysterious symptoms.
He found nothing that could be applied to Gerard’s situation.
When he got home his brother was screaming. Screaming like he’d had his nails pulled out by pliers. Screaming like he’d cut off his toe with a hacksaw. Their mother’s voice could faintly be heard underneath the scream, saying everything would be okay. Everything was going to be okay. As long as she could say it she could fool herself into believing it. Mikey sighed and followed the screams to find his brother in his mother’s arms, sat on the floor leaning against the cupboards under the countertop.
A knife lay next to them.
Without even thinking Mikey picked it up and put it away. Gerard registered his presence and scuttled towards him, wrapping his arms around his legs like a drowning man. Still screaming.
He stopped four minutes later.
“He’s been doing that all day,” his mother admitted, getting herself off the floor, getting rid of the non existent dust on her clothes. “For thirteen minutes at a time.”
13. 13. 13.
The number seemed to haunt Mikey. Thirteen days after he was born the box arrived. It stopped ticking 13 days after his 13th and now his brother was screaming for 13 minutes at a time. It was enough for any conspiracy theorist.
“Where’s the box?” Mikey asked, shaking Gerard loose now he was silent. He was a dead weight.
“The attic,” his mother admitted. Before anyone said another word Mikey was upstairs and pulling down the ladder. No one stopped him. He flicked the light on and everything that was no longer needed was brought back to the day. Cardboard boxes of childhood toys kept as keepsakes, clothes, gowns, picture albums, furniture. Mikey followed his ears, following the muffled tick that he knew anywhere. He found the box behind everything else that had some value. He unwrapped it from it’s blanket cocoon and grabbed one of the handles, the brass peeling off under his fingers before throwing it against the wall. When not even a crack appeared he tried again. His mother shouted at him to stop. He would bring the house down. Mikey wanted to break the box, to release the mystery inside that destroyed his brother, the mystery that killed him within. The box stayed solid. Not even the black finish could be tarnished. Mikey yelled and swung it round by one handle before releasing it, watching it fly out the window and spraying glass shards on the front lawn.
Curtains twitched. Rumours started. Gossip was kept for the next work day, to be exaggerated to make a better story.
Mikey’s mother shouted at him again, telling his to clean up the glass, Gerard could hurt himself on it.
The box stayed outside all night, ticking into the dark.
Mikey didn’t hear Gerard get up that night. Didn’t hear him walk upstairs. Didn’t hear him open the door. He heard him scream. Everybody in the neighbourhood did. They started to congregate on the sidewalk in their bed clothes and bathrobes, in slippers and socks. Mikey was the first out of the door. Gerard was doubled over next to the box, which was embedding into the soft ground, screaming like it was the end of the world, screaming like the apocalypse was finally coming. Playing before the assembled audience Mikey tried to make sure his brother couldn’t go into the living rigor mortis stage again, tried to make him stop screaming. It wasn’t that he cared about what people would say, he just cared about what it meant. It meant his brother was in pain, scared, unable to do anything else. The audience watched the drama in silence, picking up details they could use and twist so there were more over the top than anyone could ever imagine.
“Please Gerard, please just stop screaming!” Mikey begged, pulling Gerard’s hands away from his face Their eyes locked and Gerard calmed down long enough to be taken inside and down to their room before he started up again.
The box stayed outside. The audience disbursed, retelling the scene and thinking of ways to make it worse:
He sliced himself on the broken glass.
The kid beat him over the head with the box showing no mercy before dragging his carcass, his beat in head almost flat, to finish him off.
Their mother watched from the window like a roman emperor, she watched the kid mutilate his brother as if his life depended on it.
Gerard fell asleep on Mikey that night, screamed out, hands clutching at the skinnier waist to remind himself that Mikey was there.
That he was real.
Author:
xx_anarchy_xx or
synthetic_tales
Rating: R
Pairing: Frank/Mikey
Disclaimer: I own nothing but merchandice and an overactive imagination
Summary: His head was filled with possible ideas of what it could be, where it came from, what was in it, but every time he voiced them his new baby brother would start crying
Warnings: AU
Author's Note: Inspired by Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted and Mrs. Clark's story.
Part 1
It was a few days before Gerard was allowed home. The vacant stare came with him. It followed him everywhere he went. He functioned like a robot. No one asked what he’d seen for fear what happened could happen again. It was the shameful secret, the embarrassing relative that they had to live with. The box remained on the table, filling the once vibrant dead space with ticks. Every time it ticked they were all reminded of what happened. The fear. The confusion. It all came flooding back.
From then Mikey stopped thinking of it as a little box of midnight sky.
It became the nightmare box.
For the first time the ticks got annoying. When her boys were asleep the mother wrapped it in old blankets so it could no longer be heard and put it in the attic with all the other unwanted things. She couldn’t throw it away, knowing what it did. She didn’t want to cause another family the fear that she had gone through so it sat in the attic, collecting dust and ticking.
School was no longer an option for Gerard even though it was tried. He was sent home with a phone call saying that he was unfit to learn and that he could come back when he was better.
God only knew when that would be.
Instead of school he sat in his room, sat in the dark, and stared at a blank spot on his wall, everything and nothing running through his head at haste. Like there wasn’t enough time. His mother had taken away his clock for dread that it could happen again. He was a shell of what he used to be. He became more and more dishevelled as what he saw replayed in his mind on a loop, he couldn’t get rid of it no matter how hard he tried. Mikey caught him trying to pluck his eyes out with a spoon to scoop at his brain to make it go away.
Whatever it was.
From then on Gerard couldn’t be left alone. His mother quit her job during the week, applying for government benefits for having a disabled son, and Mikey moved into Gerard’s room to make sure he was still alive when he woke up. At weekends he became his brother’s carer while their mother worked, making sure he was alive enough to pass for not being dead. He knew Gerard was dead inside, anyone who knew him could tell you that. Mikey talked to Gerard liked nothing had happened, trying to keep some level of normality, telling him about the people at school who picked on him and what he would do to them if he was given the chance. Normally Gerard would laugh and give him pointers, the best way to hack of a foot, a hand, a leg, how to make sure that his victim would still be breathing and would feel every moment of pain while he crushed the ribcage, the spine, the skull, all the while knowing that it would never happen. Instead he just stared at whatever direction the voice was coming from, an unreadable expression constant on his features. Mikey desperately wanted to ask what his brother saw that turned him into a robot but was also afraid of the repercussions.
Eventually he had to ask. Curiosity had gotten the better of him.
He asked the day Gerard pulled out his eyelashes, every last one. He started to resemble a cancer patient. He’d cut his hair when Mikey had fallen asleep one night. Luckily he woke up before Gerard did damage to himself. Hair grows back. Ears don’t. In patches it was like stubble but in others it was just below his eyebrows. Over dinner Mikey asked the question they’d been dying to know but didn’t have the guts to ask. Gerard didn’t really eat anymore and even if he did it was only melted chocolate mint ice cream and white chocolate chip-less cookies that passed his lips. He was wasting away on high fat food. A prop at the dinner table to make everything seem normal.
“Gerard, what did you see?” Mikey asked. His mother shushed him violently but the question had already gotten into his brother’s head, bring back everything he saw and didn’t want to remember anymore. Instead of answering he banged his head against the table, an empty hollow sound ringing out, and fell to the floor wailing like an abandoned child. His mother quickly stretched him out so he couldn’t freeze up again. She didn’t want to relive what happened. Mikey held his feet. Gerard wouldn’t stop wailing. It got so bad their neighbour started thumping on the wall, encouraging Gerard more as apposed to getting him to shut up. In the end they had to carry him down to his shared room and hope for the best. Mikey stayed up all night, just holding his wailing brother and saying sorry.
Sorry for asking the question.
Sorry for making him think about it again.
Sorry for not stopping him looking into the box.
He couldn’t help feeling it should have been the other way around somehow. How many thirteen year olds have to make their sixteen year old brothers stop wailing and howling?
News travels fast in small communities. Mikey wondered how many other people heard Gerard when he walked to school the next morning. People looked out of their curtains at him as he passed, quickly diving away from their windows if he glanced at them. If he wasn’t an outsider before he sure was now. For once the kids at school left him alone, the urge to pick on the weakest member strangely gone as if it was never there. An animal instinct driven to extinction. Instead of hiding Mikey spent his free time doing what he did everyday, looking up his brother’s mysterious symptoms.
He found nothing that could be applied to Gerard’s situation.
When he got home his brother was screaming. Screaming like he’d had his nails pulled out by pliers. Screaming like he’d cut off his toe with a hacksaw. Their mother’s voice could faintly be heard underneath the scream, saying everything would be okay. Everything was going to be okay. As long as she could say it she could fool herself into believing it. Mikey sighed and followed the screams to find his brother in his mother’s arms, sat on the floor leaning against the cupboards under the countertop.
A knife lay next to them.
Without even thinking Mikey picked it up and put it away. Gerard registered his presence and scuttled towards him, wrapping his arms around his legs like a drowning man. Still screaming.
He stopped four minutes later.
“He’s been doing that all day,” his mother admitted, getting herself off the floor, getting rid of the non existent dust on her clothes. “For thirteen minutes at a time.”
13. 13. 13.
The number seemed to haunt Mikey. Thirteen days after he was born the box arrived. It stopped ticking 13 days after his 13th and now his brother was screaming for 13 minutes at a time. It was enough for any conspiracy theorist.
“Where’s the box?” Mikey asked, shaking Gerard loose now he was silent. He was a dead weight.
“The attic,” his mother admitted. Before anyone said another word Mikey was upstairs and pulling down the ladder. No one stopped him. He flicked the light on and everything that was no longer needed was brought back to the day. Cardboard boxes of childhood toys kept as keepsakes, clothes, gowns, picture albums, furniture. Mikey followed his ears, following the muffled tick that he knew anywhere. He found the box behind everything else that had some value. He unwrapped it from it’s blanket cocoon and grabbed one of the handles, the brass peeling off under his fingers before throwing it against the wall. When not even a crack appeared he tried again. His mother shouted at him to stop. He would bring the house down. Mikey wanted to break the box, to release the mystery inside that destroyed his brother, the mystery that killed him within. The box stayed solid. Not even the black finish could be tarnished. Mikey yelled and swung it round by one handle before releasing it, watching it fly out the window and spraying glass shards on the front lawn.
Curtains twitched. Rumours started. Gossip was kept for the next work day, to be exaggerated to make a better story.
Mikey’s mother shouted at him again, telling his to clean up the glass, Gerard could hurt himself on it.
The box stayed outside all night, ticking into the dark.
Mikey didn’t hear Gerard get up that night. Didn’t hear him walk upstairs. Didn’t hear him open the door. He heard him scream. Everybody in the neighbourhood did. They started to congregate on the sidewalk in their bed clothes and bathrobes, in slippers and socks. Mikey was the first out of the door. Gerard was doubled over next to the box, which was embedding into the soft ground, screaming like it was the end of the world, screaming like the apocalypse was finally coming. Playing before the assembled audience Mikey tried to make sure his brother couldn’t go into the living rigor mortis stage again, tried to make him stop screaming. It wasn’t that he cared about what people would say, he just cared about what it meant. It meant his brother was in pain, scared, unable to do anything else. The audience watched the drama in silence, picking up details they could use and twist so there were more over the top than anyone could ever imagine.
“Please Gerard, please just stop screaming!” Mikey begged, pulling Gerard’s hands away from his face Their eyes locked and Gerard calmed down long enough to be taken inside and down to their room before he started up again.
The box stayed outside. The audience disbursed, retelling the scene and thinking of ways to make it worse:
He sliced himself on the broken glass.
The kid beat him over the head with the box showing no mercy before dragging his carcass, his beat in head almost flat, to finish him off.
Their mother watched from the window like a roman emperor, she watched the kid mutilate his brother as if his life depended on it.
Gerard fell asleep on Mikey that night, screamed out, hands clutching at the skinnier waist to remind himself that Mikey was there.
That he was real.