Alex. Day Twelve - 0:02

"I have to do it, Jacky. I have to do it."

My words had lingered in the silence for far too long, but it was just long enough for both us to accept the fates that would befall us. I'd accepted mine, and he knew, he knew what was to become of this whole ordeal; he knew it too well, I could too from the saddened glimpse in his eyes.

He knew what was going to happen, what needed to happen, and he knew that it needed to, but despite this, he was still stubborn enough to not want it to, but I guess that kind of innocently framed stubbornness was just what made Jack well... Jack. I just hated that I wouldn't be able to see that anymore.

"W-What do you have to do?" He knew - he just didn't want to know. He wanted to be told something else entirely and pretend things would never have to happen, but no, I'd already decided this all, and I'd spent far too long deciding as well. He wanted me, he wanted me to pretend that everything was alright for him, but I was Alex Gaskarth, I wasn't here to baby him - that's exactly what had gotten us into this mess in the first place.

"You know." My words came out in more of a linguated breath as opposed to actual formations of syllables, but he still managed to hear me - I could tell; I'd become painfully adept when it came to reading Jack and his emotions. It was a useful skill, but a painful skill, because sometimes thoughts were just kept private for a reason.

"I know you know." I didn't want to say it aloud and he wasn't going to guilt trip me into it, despite what those puppy dog eyes pleaded. Jack had a certain way with persuasion, and I was usually more than happy to given it, but it shouldn't affect me at all, I'm Alex Gaskarth, nothing should affect me, and there you have reason two as to why this has to happen.

"You're going to kill..." His words came to halt, his throat choking on air, unable to speak. I daren't finish his sentence for him either, leaving us in the most uncomfortable of silences ever known to man.

I began to think about last words. Last words were important, even if it'd only be the two of us to hear them; last words were the last remaining shard of a person's soul, drifting away as their spirit went beyond the veil.

At first I wasn't sure if I was ready, or if I really wanted to do this at all, but now I was more than certain. There was nothing else but this - it was the only thing to do, and it wasn't just required, it was begging to be done. It was like a dog yapping at my heels, and Jack was the cat distracting it and trying to tempt the dog away... hmm, Barakat, ironic, huh?

I began to think that maybe I didn't want to, but really I was just selfish - this is what's best, for the both of us. It's better for me, and it's better for Jacky - it'll keep the angels away, or the monsters. I can't differentiate between the two anymore, and I'm beginning to suspect that maybe the words 'angel' and 'monster' were just synonyms; two words for the same thing, leaving a confused society to interpret them as two different things.

The angels don't want me to, but I'll shut them out for now. They need what I'm going to take, and they're ravenous vultures circling overhead, wondering if they can still abuse the dead flesh. Angels and monsters are like scavengers, if anything, because they don't kill or feed directly, the abuse other people to their own will, and that's both brilliantly clever and terrifying at the same time.

I don't think I should have told Jack this. It'll probably scare him, but he needs to know what's going to happen. I owe him that at very least. The deathbed changes the world, doesn't it? It's odd how people only seem to care when someone's gone, but then again, humans. Humans are alive they don't care for some normal, only someone different, someone dead. That's why zombies hunt the living... or maybe just for revenge...

Isn't revenge just rather odd? I do love revenge. I think revenge is one of my favourites, emotions I mean. Revenge is like addiction - it's compelling and powerful, yet gruesome and cruel. To feel revenge is to feel a true act of god, because what the angels want... it isn't justice, it's revenge. I know that now. Revenge is the blood red carpets and the shattered light bulbs casting ghastly shadows upon a grimy ceiling, revenge is the murder scene and what was left of a life once gone.

But what I'm about to do isn't revenge, not for myself, not for anyone. There'll be nothing left - I'll make sure of that. There'll be no murder scene, no fingerprints, and no memories either; there entire occurrence will just be wiped from existence. It's what needs to happen - it's for the best. It's survival, in an ironic way, because who knew that survival could only be accomplished with death?

I was stalling by now, because even now I was scared - scared to do it. And this fear, this emotion was exactly why this needed to happen, but I know for sure now, I am going to do it. I am sure of that now, very sure in fact... more than sure.

"You're going to kill..." He tried again, his voice a raspy whisper this time, but he still couldn't quite force the next word out. Maybe I'd have to do it for him. I didn't want to do it for him, because I didn't quite want to make this feel quite that real for the both of us - the gun in my back pocket would do a perfect job of that by itself.

As little as it wanted to be said, it had to. It was a shy word, in an unorthodox sentence, one that held far too much meaning for so few words. It was the words that really made my hand grasp the gunmetal, and take the euphoric pleasure within the cold metal against my skin - it was messed up, but so was I.

"Yes, Jacky." Our eyes locked for what I thought would be the final time, as I pulled out the gun in my back pocket. I let my right hand fit snugly around the handle, and readying my index finger upon the trigger, not wasting my bullet by just letting the tip of my finger hover millimetres above the cold metal. "I'm going to kill-" He didn't let me finish my sentence, but part of me was secretly glad, because none of me particularly wanted to.

"Fuck-" He gasped aloud as he watched with wide eyes as I pulled the loaded gun out where he could see it. I felt a slight smirk dance upon the corners of my lips, because even now I still loved being right, surprising him, and that was far too human. That had to go, this all had to go; I'd tear this whole fucking house down if I had to, and I did, by the looks of it.

"I'm going to kill myself."

The words seemed to take a physical impact upon him, as if I just aimed the gun at his forehead and not mine. I wasn't scared, not really, or at least I was stubborn enough to pretend so hard that I actually found myself numbing the pain, but deep inside, nothing could stop that panicked heart of mine from fluttering at the speed of a hummingbird's heartbeat.

"Lex-" He took a step closer and I took a step back; we were like clockwork, but clockwork that worked against itself - a clock that would never quite display the right time, because we weren't opposite magnets anymore. We were both the same magnet, and I hated how this had occurred.

The angels just cackled, the angels always cackled when it came to Jack. "Please-" He managed to choke out through tears... what tears? Tears? Tears? Fuck, tears just complicated everything. I looked away from the watery eyes that seemed to stab straight into my soul, not that I particularly had much of a soul really. "Just put the gun down."

I adamantly pressed the end against my forehead, almost basking against the cold gunmetal pressed against my forehead so hot and full of racing blood. Guns were simple, not complicated, and they always gave you an easy option, even if in the long term it wasn't the right one, it always gave you short term benefits and if things worked out particularly well, maybe the long term wouldn't be an issue anymore either.

"Now you say that?" I began to chuckle a little maniacal, and the angels cackled with me; I was glad to be entertaining them - at least I could manage that right? But that's all I was, the joker. They found this all funny, amusing, even.

"I thought-"

"The gun's been in view for at least five minutes, Jacky." I whispered, hating how much he made me want to change my mind, but I shouldn't. He's just human, he only cares when the trigger's about to be pulled. The rest of this mess is fine, but now... now things just get complicated. Complication is nothing more than a complication, and surely even they can be overcome somehow.

I knew I shouldn't have told him, but a part of me felt like he deserved to know, some warning before he was faced with the body, lifeless and cold as stone on the bathroom floor. He shouldn't have to see me like that- I shouldn't have to care, but somehow I had found myself in a situation where I did - it was odd, sickeningly odd, and there was little either of us could do about it apart from eradicating one of us from existence, but I couldn't do that to Jacky... that's why I was the one who had to go.

Fuck, these emotions. I'm too human; the mexiletine doesn't work anymore, no matter how many pills I force down my throat... it just doesn't block these emotions out anymore. They're only getting stronger by the day, and sometimes when you want to destroy the bomb, you have to burn the whole building down to get to it.

"Alex." His eyes met with mine - sad eyes, both pairs. I didn't like the sadness; I didn't particularly want to die, but I didn't want Jack to more. "I didn't think you were going to kill yourself." He said it as if it was such an unbelievable thing, but then again, he was only human, I couldn't expect him to really grasp the weight of the situation in anyway at all.

I just laughed, but this time the angels didn't cackle with me, it was silence, and somehow the silence managed to unnerve me more than the cackling, because that's what it would be like to die - endless silence, and I didn't want that- yes, I did. "What on earth else could you have possibly thought?"

"I thought," he bit his lip, his eyes away from my face, my forehead, the gun. "I thought you were going to kill," his eyes finally met with mine, and then he uttered the most painful word of them all - the one that really struck me twice through the heart, "me."

"I would never-"

"Six people, Alex. Six people - that's a lot." His gaze met me hard, and I just knew he was right, but it didn't stop the confusion and the compulsion. Six people was a lot when I really did come to think about it, despite the fact that I really didn't like to, I found this now, on my deathbed, to almost be a necessity.

I thought of the six lives that had ended because of me, I thought of the six partners with broken hearts because of me, I thought of the six families with an empty seat at the dinner table because of me, I thought of the pets that had no one to feed them because of me. I thought of the empty seats on the bus, and the empty desks at offices, the never to be used birthday presents, and the unworn clothes, the friendship groups one member short, and the coffee mornings with one member short... all because of me.

And only then did I quite manage to realise just how much a human life really meant.

"I know." I breathed out the words again, letting everything sink in all at once, because now, with all the tonnes of guilt pressing down on me like a colossal emotional boulder. "That's one of the reasons why."

"No." I didn't know what were firmer his words or his gaze, but I didn't want to and I didn't have an awful lot of time to ponder over the matter, and mostly I just didn't want to - it hurt. There was no denying that, but I should be used to it; everything hurt these days, and what I needed to do was quite possibly the only way to stop all this mess.

"There are no reasons for you to die, for anyone to die, in fact." Jack was wrong, very wrong - more wrong than he'd ever been, and the broken part of me didn't want to say this to his face, but the rest of me wanted to scream the words into his ears until his eardrums burst and blood trickled down his ear canals.

"What about the angels?" My words were quiet so they couldn't hear, but my efforts were fruitless, the cackles began as the word left my lips. The cackles were welcome though, because the cackles only encouraged me; the cackles knew this had to be done. The angels had practically commissioned the whole ordeal, in fact.

"They have an awful lot of reasons to justify my death, a horde of reasons as to why this needs to happen." I looked him in the eyes, letting the truth flow through our eye contact, "and believe me, Jacky, it does need to happen."

"What angels?" He hit me with a confused look and I hit him with one right back. "Angels don't kill, Alex. Angels are good-" He was very wrong, Jack was far too human, far too good at being wrong. I didn't like humans and their default orientation towards failure, I was above them, and I knew how the world worked better than they did.

"Angels and monsters are just two words for the same thing; choose the one that takes your fancy." My voice was harsh, but I wasn't quite angry at him, I was more focused on my shaking hand that so much wanted to move the gun, but I wouldn't let it. The gun was staying; my fate was locked - it had been from the start.

"No they're not - they're too very different words." He spoke in an over exaggerated, patronising tone, one that I didn't like being spoken to in. The gun didn't like it either, and soon enough the gunmetal was firmly pressed back onto my skin. "Please- just... fuck, Lex. Drop the gun."

I ignored his words. "Do you think you're an angel or a monster, then?"

"I'm neither..." He paused letting his breath settle in the colour air, "I'm just human. We all are."

"I'm not." Our eyes met again, for what I really hoped was really the final time. "I'm a killer."

"It doesn't matter; it doesn't change the human heart that's beating inside of you." He protested, but he was wrong, all so very wrong.

"I was born with a killer's heart, because this heart it's not built to feel... anything at all." He was very shocked at this, but I didn't blame him, humans weren't built like I was and they didn't like to think that I could be anything but lying. "But it does feel, and that's why. It can't cope, you know. It just can't."

"Try to cope-"

"These are human emotions, I'm not human!" I was determined to prove a point here, just to let him know exactly how things were, because I knew and he just didn't, he didn't at all, and he was just far too stubborn to grasp that. I hated this sometimes, but other times, I loved it.

"No, you are human. You're just very fucking sick!" He took a menacing step towards me, his anger spurring him on, making him into a determined soul. His words did actually kind of hurt, despite the empty shell he was intent upon firing them into, but that's the thing about empty shells, they reverberate.

"I'm sick." I repeated and he nodded, albeit a little less defiantly this time. I wasn't sick, I was surviving- fuck, I tried so hard, and all I was, all I'd ever be, was sick. I needed to survive, but I wasn't stupid enough to push the truth aside.

But, I knew, I always knew I was going to die, Jack was going to die. The world was going to burn and the death certificate would have my name on it, embroidered in golden and spiralled writing, like little ornate spiders of death curled out upon the paper. "I need curing." My finger was ready, it could feel the metal of the trigger and now I was ready, fucking ready for it, and I pulled, I pulled so hard my finger could just about snap off even before the bullet went anywhere near my head.

I pulled and...

Nothing...

I don't mean that I was nothing, there was nothing. Nothing had occurred, not even my own demise - I didn't like it; I liked the job to be done properly, and it certainly hadn't been, not in the slightest. This was a piss poor pisstake of a pissy bitch end.

Nothing happened.

"It's not loaded." I stood in mesmerisation and as I just found myself looking at the gun, he took the opportunity to snatch it straight from my grasp. I didn't like to think of his fingers curling around the gunmetal... I was jealous, almost. It was weird - i shouldn't be jealous of a gun, but never had a gun mattered quite that much as it did now, because this gun was my escape route, my only remaining option. "Hey-"

"It's for the best." He was lying. Everyone lied these days and I didn't know why. Humans were terrible at lying - we could all tell, even the humans themselves. Lying was even frowned upon in human society, maybe because it was a painfully visible weakness and humans didn't like the obvious. They didn't like to remember who they are, what they are - weak.

"You know what is for the best? This." I pointed to the gun, the metal glistening in the artificial light - I liked the way it glistened, the lamps painting the end in an enticing light. It was really very enticing, especially in this situation - there was no denying that.

"I was doing it for you, for you, to save you from myself... and them. The angels, they want you, but you're too strong; they can only get to you through me, so I need to protect you... I need to destroy me-" The tears came again, but this time from my eyes. I didn't like crying - it was too human, but slowly, I found myself becoming human, like someone turning to stone, except I was turning from stone.

I liked being stone; empty, cold and unfeeling - this was all too much, too human, too real. I could hear my heart beat - I wanted to shoot the damn thing straight out of my chest, but with hands shaking like these, I'd miss, and that'd be awfully messy. I didn't want Jack to watch my organs spurt out all over the floor, and I especially didn't want him to have to clean up the mess once I'd finally gone.

Then suddenly, I felt his arms around me, pulling me close to his chest, our bodies were pressed together and then nothing else quite seemed to matter anymore. Things should matter though, because this comfort was all lies - he knew that maybe he could just talk me out of this, and there was nothing that was going to stop him from trying, because he was Jack and he was awfully big-headed and awfully human like that. I didn't like it, but I liked him - it was an odd combination to say the very least.

"Please do only one thing for me," he whispered into my ear, pulling me up with his hug and fixing the slight height difference between us. I always didn't like that he was taller, but now, I didn't mind quite so much, maybe I wanted to be looked after, perhaps being in control all the time wasn't quite as enticing as it seemed from a first glance.

There was a weight on my shoulders; it was a weight I wanted to lose, but a weight I never wanted Jack to carry. I didn't doubt that he could carry it, because that boy was strong, both physically and mentally, I simply didn't want him to, because even on his shoulders it still hurt me, because he'd become an awfully permanent part of me, almost like my favourite arm.

"Anything, I'll do anything." I mumbled into his chest, letting my words muffle into the blue cotton of his V-neck. It smelled good against his skin; it was his now, I couldn't wear it anymore. Jack was important enough to have his own things now.

Jack would have this apartment when I finally died, Jack would have the guns and the pills, I just hoped he wouldn't use them, because he was my Jack and I wanted him more than anything, just to stay pure and innocent, because even something as little as that showed that there was still hope in this whole, light within the dark.

"Remember this." He paused, his words coming out slow and clear, "I can't lose you. And I won't." He was horribly instant upon this, and I didn't know why... he just didn't want to understand, and he was human so I could partly figure out as to why.

"I don't want them to hurt you-" I protested, however my words still remained nothing to him, drifting away into the silence as they left my slightly parted lips.

"Look, the angels, Lex." He pulled my away slightly, holding me at arm's length and letting our eyes connect. "They're not real-" I tried to interrupt him, but he shushed me, and just this once I didn't mind all that much. "I know they seem real, I know they seem as real as you and I, but they're not. The angels are not the enemy, the enemy is the mind."

"I was trying to blow my brains out-" I needed to express just how real, and just how necessary this all was, but his words, and as long as he continued to speak, his words they continued to sweet talk me into thinking this wasn't necessary at all. And I hated that, but I was far too complacent within it.

"There are more efficient ways to defeat something than pure violence." He sounded like some hippie, but I didn't care. I couldn't care at all, because he was my Jacky and that's all that mattered in this reality stricken moment of madness, which I found myself viewing behind blood stained glass shards.

"I'm a killer - violence is all I know, violence is who I am." I hated saying out loud, especially to someone who mattered as much as Jack did, but it was the truth - it had to be said, and I wasn't quite the type to shy away from things like that, but now, I really didn't know who I was anymore, especially not with the unloaded gun as his arms around me.

"I'm going to change that." Before I could even fathom protesting, he pushed his lips against mine. I kissed back; amazed at his powers of shutting me up, and now I was content in our silence, mainly because he had silenced me in the most perfect of ways.

I could reach for gun, as it now hung loosely at his side, but you know what... I didn't.

And now I've really won, because the angels know I'm clever, and my death was what they really wanted all along.

He pulled away, still blushing in an impeccably cute manner. "I promise."

"I promise too."

We're Concentrating On Falling Apart. We Were Contenders, We're Throwing The Fight, But I Just Wanna Believe, I Just Wanna Believe, I Just Wanna Believe, In Us.

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