My Harlequin Romance (MCR Fan Fiction)

Chapter Six; Letter

Dear Gerard,

I don't know what to tell you in this letter. So many things run through my mind. I wish you could just unhook my skull and read my thoughts and memories and feelings like a book. I want to tell you everything. I want to start from the beginning.

I hate when people assume I had an unhappy childhood. Up until two months ago, I had a family. I can't remember very much from the days prior orphanage. What I can remember, on the other hand, is the most precious thing I own.

I can barely remember the old townhouse I lived in. It was small, but not uncomfortably. I remember it being artsy. That's all we were though. Art enthusiasts.

My mother was a comic book writer and an amazing actress, even in she never showed it. She worked for DC and helped come up with the layout and storyline of some of the new Batman comics. She would talk about the new ideas with my father and I. Even today, I still don't know if she ever used any of those ideas. I think she just liked us to think we were helping

My father was a photographer and he loved animals of all kinds, big or small, more than humans. He, like my mother and I, found art in all things bright and beautiful, even if a normal person didn't think they were beautiful. He took pictures if everything. The inside of the refrigerator. A brick that held open the door. And the door knobs. As if his whole life depended on the doorknobs. 

My mom used to say, "They aren't even fancy doorknobs." 

He would always reply, "But they're our doorknobs."

He never took pictures of me or my mother, but that doesn't mean he didn't love us, because he did. I think he just wasn't concerned about losing us. Maybe we should have been concerned about losing him.

Then, one morning he just left. He took his suitcase and walked down the street away from our home. To this day, I don't doubt that he still thinks about his family. The daughter he left behind.

I think my mother thought he was coming back. She sat by the window, for weeks at a time, staring onto the barren street, expecting him to come back like some lost dog.

He never did.

It was the night after he left that I let all of our animals go. I flushed the fish down the toilet. I let the mice and birds and frogs and insects and turtles free in the backyard. I took all of our cats and dogs into the streets and unhooked their collars.

"Go," I said.

They went, and just like my father, they never returned.

For a long time, I woke myself up in the morning. I dressed myself. I got myself ready for school. I was my own parent. Up until a few months ago, I was in charge. Then, my mother came back. She, just like myself, had gave up hope.

He was never coming home.

You would think this is the end. My mom became happy (or so I thought) and went back to work. You would think all was well.

It wasn't.

Sixty three days.

1488 hours.

That should be enough time. I should be happy again. I'm not.

Sixty three days ago, my house burned to the ground so hot and fast, the fire chief later called it a literal roman candle. 

I used to collect my drawings and hang them on the walls on my bedroom. If those papers hadn't coated my walls, would my home have burned so brightly? 

Everything was lost. Every picture my father had taken. Every comic my mother had ever read. Every drawing I had ever touched. Everything fueled the inferno.

My mother had chained herself to the bathroom sink and surrounded herself with gasoline. It was there where she lit the first and last cigarette of her life.

Nobody knew she was suicidal.

I don't think she wanted to kill me. If anything, she wanted me to get away from her for my own safety. No, we were not incredibly close, but I loved her. She was my mom.

A week after the worst day, I decided I needed air. Everything was different now. Every person on the street looked sick and scared. Every building seemed minutes from going up in flame. I was so paranoid and dying, I just needed a sense of normality. I went to my favorite coffee shop, sat down in a corner and read "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" like a normal fifteen year old.. That's when I saw him.

It was so strange to see him out in the world. He sat all alone and looked so small and inferior, when, really, he had helped create me.. I wanted to run up and punch him for leaving my mom and indirectly making her kill herself. I wanted to scream horrible things at him. I wanted to throw the book I was reading right at his stupid face. 

No, I turned, and walked away without a single word, just as he had done many years ago.

I bet he saw me. I bet he looked right at me and said not a word. I don't care. He's not my father.

People used to ask me how I was after the worst day. "Are you doing okay?"

My answer would always be the same.

"I'm fine."

When, in reality, I wasn't, and I'm still not. Nobody cares about me anymore. Does anyone see an ambulance and wonder if it's me in the inside? I wish I had never been born. Better yet, I wish love had never been invented. In the end, that's what drove my father away.

Moral of the story, Gerard, is never, ever love someone as much as my mom loved my dad. Love is what tears humans apart.

I don't know what this all means to you. You're the first and final person who will ever read this. I trust you. Please don't hurt me.

Lola