Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1237384.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Bandom
  Relationship:
      Bert_McCracken/Gerard_Way, Frank_Iero/Bert_McCracken/Gerard_Way, Mikey
      Way/OMC
  Additional Tags:
      Drug_Use, Alcohol_Abuse/Alcoholism, Prostitution, Murder, Breath_Control
      Play, Violence, Rape/Non-con_Elements, Drug_Addiction, Minor_Character
      Death, Explicit_Language, Underage_Sex, Underage_Drinking, Underage
      Smoking, Perversion, Sexual_Violence, Mental_Instability, Imprisonment
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-02-25 Words: 6759
****** Sadie Atkins, She's Just A Withered Old Hag Now ******
by frenchpirate_(Whiskey_n_speed)
Summary
     It was a cold, quiet autumn afternoon on Sodeman Lane.
"Nature’s got a way, brothers
Of scraping the bowl
Eye of the hurricane"
*
It was a cold, quiet autumn afternoon on Sodeman Lane.
Two elderly women stood in the last sunrays on the cold pavement, the strong
wind making one clench her handbag to her chest, swaying lightly and the other
keep a hand on her broad hat, the grey one with a yellow flower in it that she
only used in the autumn when she was wearing her expensive coat.
Both women were standing with their heads turned in direction of the end of the
road, quietly but carefully observing the large house lying there as if any
minute the devil himself was going to launch out of it and skin them both
alive. That was how anyone with just a grain of common sense looked at that
house, even kids, who were still innocent and couldn’t even fathom the horror
of the things that had been going on in there. They never played tag in the
front yard or climbed the trees that stretched out across the beautifully
wrought fence that surrounded its grounds like a fair warning to pedestrians;
it was like anyone that lived around the last house on Sodeman Lane knew better
than to come too near.
Except, of course, the handful of young men, the mysterious daredevils that
everyone saw but no one talked about, who walked Sodeman Lane in dark clothing,
alone in the middle of night and discreetly entered the gates and disappeared
inside, one every other day or so. It was an unspoken rule, the men came and
went, and everyone pretended that they didn’t know, because the possible
errands that boys barely out of college could have in a house like that at such
odd hours, was none that any decent suburban housewife would willingly bring up
in broad daylight.
But it was a beautiful house, underneath all its rot. Back when it was built it
had been the greatest one in the whole neighborhood, three floors, a wide porch
and ornaments around doors and windows. They were few left around who still
remembered the original family Way, who had lived there in all their wealth
years and years back, but the two women standing there, small in the setting
sun with carefully set hair being ruined by the playful wind, was among them.
The Ways had been good, hardworking people, deserving every last penny of their
fortune, had chatted over the fences with their neighbors and hosted more
charity events than anyone dared to count. It had been such a tragedy, such a
horrible, horrible tragedy. And their stunning, young daughter just out of high
school, her whole life had been lying open in front of her. Anyone who had been
around when it happened got chills from just thinking about it, all over the
newspapers, such a tragedy. They never talked about it in detail; it was too
obscene for their quiet daily routines. The house itself was reminder enough;
it was like it stunk all over the neighborhood, like a stain on a wedding
dress, a toxic mark on their map, never sold again after they cleaned it out.
It was still the Way house. It would always be.
“Poor Linda.” The woman with the handbag mumbled, shaking her head in
compassion.
“Now, they don’t know for sure what happened to him, that sweet boy of hers.”
The other woman crowed, her voice dry and hoarse, the voice of a lifelong
smoker. “What was his name, again?” 
“Frank. Only talked to him a couple of times, but he was a nice kid. He went to
church like a good catholic and always cared so much about Linda.”
“I hope to God they find him. She’s hasn’t been right in her head since then.”
“It’s been three months – if they just knew where to look.”
“You can’t keep dwelling on something that happened more than twenty years ago,
the past is the past.” Squinting as the wind hit her eyes, the women pushed up
her head a little and looked at her neighbor. “You’ve watched one too many
episodes of that detective show, what’s it called?”
“All I’m saying is the last time a teenager disappeared from this road, she was
never found again. I’m concerned, on behalf of both Linda and her son.”
“We all are. It’s empty,” she gestured with her free hand towards the house.
“Has been ever since. There’s nothing in there.”
The woman with the handbag didn’t argue. They both knew it was a lie anyways.
No one knew what exactly was going on in there, but it sure as hell wasn’t
empty. As if the string of visiting men wasn’t proof enough, the pale lights
that could be seen there from time to time was.  
*
“Gerard, get up here!” a voice screeched, all the way from the top chamber,
down the staircase and right into his ear canal, causing him to flinch, but he
didn’t move. He was lying face-down on the floor, feeling the little specks of
dirt against his cheek. The bruise there made it burn – it was probably already
infected, but he couldn’t bring himself to bother caring about it right now. He
didn’t remember how he got here, but he must’ve fallen last night, and never
gotten up.
“You heard the bitch, Gerard, I was tired at looking at your face anyways.”
“You fuck off Bert, the only reason you ain’t her little dog is ‘cause she
doesn’t give a shitwhether you live or die.” He groaned threatening, slowly
pushing himself off the dirty planks, hissing as he touched the sticky bruise
below his eye. “Keep an eye on schoolboy over there while I go see what the
fuck she wants.”
“He hasn’t been awake for three god damn hours and I still have to sit guard
here like a fucking watchdog. He’s wearing a fucking chain, Gerard, he ain’t
going nowhere.”
“Shut the fuck up and do as I say.” Gerard mumbled while staggering towards the
door, almost stumbling over a half-empty bottle, spilling some liquor on the
floor and causing a clicking sound that annoyed his hangover, almost as much as
her voice did.
“Whatever, go break your neck.”
*
He slowly made his way upstairs, creaking step by step with his hands on the
wall as support, crinkling his nose at the smell that hit him as he reached the
last couple of stairs. The upper rooms had always smelled like piss and mould,
and it was a smell that he would for the rest of his life associate with his
mother. It fitted her, whatsoever, and in his mind he referred to her bedroom
as ‘the cave’. The curtains were always shut tightly and nobody set foot there
except him.
“That was about god damn time.” She growled when he pushed open the door and
walked over, careful not to step on anything because he had no chance of
knowing what it was in the dark room, and he could imagine plenty of things on
this floor that even he didn’t want underneath his shoes. “You smell like
vomit, that’s fucking disgusting.”
He looked down and saw some yellowish stains on his shirt, and tried recalling
last night as hard as he could. It was foggy, but he remembered Bert yelling
and the boy had been crying, what a fucking pussy, weeping like he was a little
girl. He was fairly certain that it was also him who had puked. Gerard had
learned never to do it on his own clothes, with a good amount of practice.
Yeah, it was definitely the boy, he recalled Bert cackling that if he did it
again he would pull out his teeth.
“The little catholic boy got sick, ma.” Gerard just excused, and his mother
snorted.
“That’s what you get for keeping religious weaklings like that as your little
pets, you perverted pig. Now tell your brother I need a good new stash of good
ol’ Jack.” She said, and at the mention of the whiskey a small smile played at
her lips. Gerard never disobeyed her, mostly because she was crueler when she
was sober. For a blind woman missing both her legs, who pissed in a bucket and
couldn’t move from her bed, she was quite a handful to handle.
“Your one true love.”
“Shut it, kid, don’t you dare feel sorry for your maggot of a father. Look what
he gave me, a slut and a sadist.” She spat at him, turning her head in his
direction, her white, milky eyes making him feel smaller. “Get the fuck out of
here.”
*
On his way down to the ground floor, he passed the bedroom he had just left
where Bert and the boy was still inside, and only a faint sobbing and some
heavy steps escaped the closed door, and he didn’t bother with going inside and
checking on them right now.
Downstairs always smelled different, not necessarily better in any way, but it
was like a different kind of rot owned these rooms. There was light curtains
hanging from all the ceilings, and though all of them was torn and some almost
fallen off their hinges, it was sometimes hard to figure out where his brother
was.
He found him in the back room behind what used to be their kitchen, which now
had no electric devices at all, but was mostly just an empty room with a bunch
of counters hiding underneath a thick layer of grease and puss. He was sitting
on a blood-stained mattress on the floor, indian-style, with a cigarette
clenched between his bony fingers, naked except for the black boots he always
wore, a couple of dollar bills sticking up from behind the laces. Gerard always
admired how calm he managed to look, Gerard was never calm, and Bert was never
calm either, it was like the two of them had their own little pit of rage
upstairs that made people like the catholic boy wish they’d never been born.
His brother, he was always calm, despite how his shoulder was torn and dripping
fresh blood down onto the already dry, brown ones he was sitting on, and
despite being beaten half to death once every couple of days, despite missing
half his fingernails, keeping them in a drawer somewhere for reasons Gerard
didn’t know and didn’t want to know either, despite the man lying next to him,
still sleeping, who was one of those causing these things. But they paid good
money, so Gerard never thought too hard about it, it was like he had one of
those curtains hung inside his head too, and he pulled it shot whenever the
thoughts of his brother and those men came creeping up in his consciousness.
“He calls me Baby today.” He said dryly when he spotted Gerard between two
curtains.
“We need more Jack for ma, Baby.” Gerard stated and then nodded towards the
tall, tan guy that was curled up around where his brother, Baby, was sitting.
He was naked too, but his skin was smooth and unbroken, though smeared with
blood and spit and semen, like his brothers was too. “Why is he still here?”
“That’s what he pays for, what he likes. Violence and comfort.” His brother
said with a shrug and took a drag of the smoke, dropping his ash on the bed
next to the guys face. “I’ll get the Jack tonight, do you want me to come up
now?”
“No. The boy is alive.”
“Fine. Come get me when he isn’t anymore. It reeks all the way down here when
you don’t move them.”
Gerard nodded as he made his way through the curtains and back towards the
stairs again. It always felt weird walking back up again, as it got gradually
darker and the smell changed. Downstairs smelled like fucking, like various
body fluids drying in rooms where there never was a window open. And smoke.
Upstairs it just smelled like violence, and vomit.
*
Gerard thought bruises was so pretty when he was high. Kneeling in front of the
toilet with the lid closed, carefully shaping another line of cocaine with the
razor, he thought about how pretty his brother was, with his skin all green and
purple. Sometimes he understood why they did it, especially when he was on his
fifth line and he could feel his heartbeat all the way up in his throat. But
not to his brother, his tiny pretty baby brother, they changed his name and cut
him open, they made him wear tight leather and bend over and then they beat the
shit out of him. He was just a baby.
“Just a baby boy. Poor baby boy.” Gerard mumbled to himself, holding the dollar
bill tight in his shaking hand, snorting up and feeling his eyes whiten as it
kicked in, and he let out a cough and then a triumphant laugh, letting himself
fall back against the wall opposite of the toilet, breathing out.
*
He hadn’t been sitting in the bathroom for long. He didn’t think so at least,
but his sense of time wasn’t the best, and he wasn’t sure if he had passed out
or not, so maybe it was longer than he thought. The boy was crying when he
staggered out and walked towards the bed with his shoulder sliding across the
wall as support. Not the discreet kind of sobbing like he always did whenever
he was awake, it was loud and obnoxious and fucking annoying. Gerard wanted him
to shut up, but Bert wasn’t here to make him be quiet. He had probably done
something to him and then gone into the next room to sleep, since it was close
to fucking impossible when the boy was wailing like that. He was almost a grown
fucking man, Gerard had estimated the last time he was sober that his brother
and the boy were probably the same age, and his brother never cried like that,
like his whole fucking world was closing around his skull, squeezing it until
it busted open. His brother never cried – he rarely ever made a noise. Gerard
knew when he wasn’t alone, he could hear the backdoor slam, but he never made a
noise. He was such a good baby boy.
“What did he do to you?” Gerard finally asked when the boys sobbing had quieted
down. He couldn’t see him from where he was lying; he was sitting over in the
corner, where the chain from the collar around his neck was nailed to the wall,
but he could damn well hear him, and he didn’t even reply.
“Answer when I’m fucking talking to you, pussy.” He roared, reaching out and
grabbing the nearest thing he could get from the other side of the bed, which
turned out to be another almost empty bottle, but then again they were lying
everywhere in here, and he spilled the last drops over himself as he launched
the bottle over at the wall above the boy, drying his hands off on his pants.
The little asshole couldn’t just sit there and ignore Gerard as if he wasn’t
the only one keeping him alive by now. If he was lucky he hadn’t hit him, but
some of the broken glass would fall down on him. “Tell me what he did to you.”
“He hit me – over and over,” the boy sobbed with a tiny voice, and Gerard
maneuvered himself up in a more sitting position so the boy came into his
eyesight, he was sitting in the corner, all curled up in a ball with his hands
hiding his face. “And then he took his, his-“
He burst into another sob and Gerard rolled his eyes, and for a moment it hurt
his skull and he had to press them shut tightly. Fucking drugs, the shit Bert
brought was always filled with crap, making him nauseous and paranoid. It
wasn't good drugs.
“His what?” He demanded to know, though he already had his ideas. Honestly, it
was Bert left alone with a catholic schoolboy; it was like he couldn’t figure
it out.
“His pants-“ the boy stuttered and Gerard let out a breathy laugh. Yeah, of
course he took his pants off.
“Did he touch you?” he asked with a sly grin. The boy shook his head slowly.
“Did he piss on you?” He kept shaking his head and a couple of tears rolled
down his cheeks and landed on his filthy jeans. They hadn’t been changed since
they caught him, not that they really cared anyways, but if they had wanted to
change his clothes they wouldn’t have had anything in his size either. He had
already been small when they found him, but he hadn’t been fed for days now,
and he was getting smaller day by day.
“Did he jack off and cum on you?” Gerard asked, still grinning as the boy went
still. Of course he did, it was what he did, everytime they caught a new one.
He was marking his territory. He’d done it to Gerard too, but the difference
was that Gerard had wanted it. He almost always wanted it. He laughed at how
miserable the boy looked, if he just knew how they hadn’t even gotten started
yet. It was best like this, when they were all innocent and surprised with what
Bert and Gerard could come up with. And this one, this boy, he was a virgin
too. They didn’t come any purer than this. Gerard felt heat spread from his
stomach and downwards when he thought about it. The three of them were going to
have so much fun.
*
Mikeys throat was burning and his knees were scraped and bloody from kneeling
on the wooden floor only minutes ago, his wrists too probably, though he
couldn’t see them, tied tightly behind his back with a piece of fabric torn off
one of the curtains. Right now he was pushed face-first against the wall, eyes
shut tightly and biting down hard on the inside of his cheek to focus less on
the slow pain from the man behind him pushing inside.
“You like that, you fucking bitch? You like it rough, like the filthy little
whore you are?” He groaned into Mikeys neck before slapping his ass so hard
that a whimper almost escaped him, almost, he was good at keeping quiet, they
never liked it when he talked when they hadn’t told him too. And he was a good
boy.
“Yes, please.” He gasped, sounding as convincing as possible, sugarcoated voice
and pursed lips, pushing his hips backwards. He was such a good boy, and this
guy was his favorite, he wanted to be good for him. He always paid good money
and whiskey for his mother when Mikey asked for it and he never broke skin
except for on the knees if he could avoid it.
“You like it when I slap you? You’re gonna make me do it harder?” He hissed and
Mikey nodded the best he could with his face pushed against the harsh dry-wall.
“You’re gonna beg for it?”
“Please hit me harder, please, please, I’ve been such a bad boy.” Mikey pleaded
in between small breaks of breathing in sharply, when he pushed in, always a
little harder than before.
“Do you deserve it, bitch?”
“I do. I really do.”
*
Three new bottles of Jack were standing on the floor next to the mattress, the
guy was buttoning up his shirt in the middle of the floor and Mikey was sitting
half-way in a wet spot with another cigarette, the smokes almost a permanent
part of his left hand by now. A fresh bundle of dollar bills was shoved inside
his boot as usual, and he was taking deep breaths through the filter, trying
not to feel all the parts of his body that hurt.
“You should get out of here.” He said suddenly as he picked up his jacket from
the floor, and Mikey looked up with a frown. They were done doing business, and
he wasn’t taking orders anymore. Usually they never even exchanged a single
word after the money was handed over.
“Why?” Mikey asked calmly, his voice was hoarse and he had to cough after
speaking.
“They know about him. The boy you keep upstairs. Someone has found out. They’re
coming.” He explained hastily, he dark eyes flicking through the room, never
meeting Mikeys.
“How do you know?” Mikey took another drag, he was skeptical towards the man,
even though he was usually nice.
“This street doesn’t have any secrets. Not even yours. You hear things when you
pass through it. I can help you out of town if you want.” It was a nice offer,
and Mikey considered it for a while, putting out his cigarette against the
floor, but he was a good boy. He stayed with his family. Good boys didn’t run
off with strangers like the catholic boy upstairs had done. And Mikey was good.
“I stay. But thanks.”
When the guy hurried out the backdoor and through the bushes behind the far
fence of the backyard, much faster than he usually did, Mikey had already
figured out that he wasn’t going to see him again. It was a shame; he had been
so good to Mikey for so long.
*
Mikey never wasted anything. He didn’t have a lot of things to waste in the
first place, either. He had his boots, his cigarettes and his mattress. And he
always smoked the cigarettes right to the filter, never a single grain of
tobacco wasted, and then he pushed the filters inside the mattress, through the
hole in the side where the stuffing was falling out. It smelled awful and
wasn’t very comfortable to lie on, but it was better than sleeping upstairs.
Mikey didn’t like upstairs, and he rarely went there.
It always stank even worse than it did down here, and he never knew what he
stepped in, or what he’d find if he accidentally pushed the wrong pile of
garbage over. And Bert and the boy were up there. He didn’t like either of
them, they weren’t good boys. Gerard weren’t always either, not at all when he
came and asked Mikey to come upstairs and drag those kids, those bad, bad kids
out into the backyard, but he was his brother so it was different. He didn’t
even remember the last time he’d been all the way up in his mother’s room. He
liked her least of all the people in the house.
But she had told him to never let anything go to waste, which was why he drank
half of one of the bottles of Jack instead of just pouring it down the drain.
He rarely ever drank, unlike everyone upstairs who was rarely ever sober, so he
was more than fucked up when the bottle was half-empty. He could feel his head
spinning and his thoughts sliding in and out of focus, but he couldn’t lose his
grip now. They were coming for him, they were gonna take his mother and his
brother and him. He was never gonna let them do that, he was a good boy.
He fell over when he knelt down in front of the sink in the old kitchen, and it
took him a few ungraceful minutes to get back up. He flinched when he leaned on
his knees, they were both still open wounds from earlier when he had been
sitting in front of the man, dick in his mouth and hand in his hair.
He opened the cupboard and stared at the rusty pipes when a cockroach suddenly
crawled out from behind one of them and onto his leg, quickly followed by a few
more. Mikey brushed them off with an annoyed sigh, and kept on looking into the
darkness. He almost couldn’t remember what he was looking for, when he suddenly
spotted it behind an old bucket.
He pulled out the bottle of bleach with a bit of difficulty and had to fight
off at least twenty more cockroaches in the process, but in the end he got it
out and carried it with him into the backroom where the half bottle of whiskey
stood. It would taste different, but he had spent a couple of hours thinking
about it, and three bottles of Jack a week for years and years would’ve killed
off her tastebuds by now. It would burn her throat more than usual, but if he
gave her one of the pure bottles first, she’d be too drunk to notice before it
was already over. Maybe she wouldn't even notive in the first place. He had to
hope.
He couldn’t let them take her. He was a good boy. He protected his mother.
*
“We’re gonna have so much fun.” Bert crowed, kneeling down in front of the boy,
grinning. “Much more fun that you and I had this morning.”
The boy just let out a small shriek and pushed himself further up the wall,
away from Bert. He moved slowly and his eyes looked heavy, Gerard estimated
that it was at least ten days since he’d eaten if he counted all the times he’d
puked it all up again, the ungrateful bastard, so he had little energy left to
fight them. It made the whole thing easier and much more entertaining in
Gerards opinion. They’d caught plenty of kids through the years, most of them
from other neighborhoods though, and none of the aggressive ones had lasted
particularly long. It was the manageable and weak ones that were better in the
long run, like this one. They could keep those for weeks, watching them grow
more and more desperate.
“Now, where do we start?” He asked, faking overly excitement, hovering his
finger playfully above his stomach and making the boy look up at him with
frightened eyes. “I think, we’re gonna start right – here.”
He put his finger to the boy’s crotch and let out a rasping laugh. “We need to
remove these dirty fucking pants.”
“-please, no, please don’t-“ the boy kept chanting continuously as Bert zipped
down his jeans and firmly pulled them off him along with his briefs, making him
fall over and sit on his ass, and he barely even tried fighting back. Gerard
giggled, he was such a weakling. This was going to be so easy.
*
Mikey didn’t remember when he’d last been upstairs, all the way up. He wasn’t
really allowed, it was only Gerard who came here when their mother called for
him, but this was a case of emergency. He knocked her door carefully, wrinkling
his nose and longing to get back to the ground floor where it smelled less like
death and bitterness. He didn’t belong here; he wasn’t built of the same
sadistic bricks as his family.
“Gerard, ‘s that you?” she crowed, muffled from the other side of the door.
“No, ma, it’s Mikey.” He replied slowly, hoping that she wouldn’t just send him
away. It wouldn’t be unlikely, since his mother had never been fond of him in
the same way that she was of his brother. “I have something for you.”
“Fine, then come in here. What is it?” She snarled as Mikey pushed open the
door and felt as his eyes watered by the rotten smell of his mother’s bedroom.
She was halfway lying down, resting on one of her arms, her face sharp and
unfriendly. She reminded him of a queen on her throne, or a spider in the
center of it’s web.
“It’s your Jack, ma.” He said and bowed his head a little even though she
couldn’t see it. He couldn’t help but feel shame, but it was for her own best.
He couldn’t let them take her. They couldn’t take his mother. He’d do what he
had to do.
She reached a shaking arm out towards him, and he walked over and handed the
bottle with the discolored liquor in it to her and couldn’t help but notice how
her limbs were white and bony like his. They were like a family of spiders.
When he was a kid, Gerard had told him that spiders sometimes ate their spawn.
Mikey was scared of his mother, sometimes.
“It smells awful.” She commented, before taking a long sip and coughing as she
swallowed. Mikey put down the other two bottles next to the bed and went back
to stand by the door. He swayed a bit, feeling the half of the bottle he’d
consumed only hours before. “You’re lucky I can’t taste shit, or I would’ve
thrown this fucking sewage at you. You bought me cheap whiskey didn’t you?
Ain’t no fucking way this is Jack.”
She kept on coughing, and Mikey felt a sting of guilt in his chest as she took
another and longer sip to make it stop, and somehow it hurt worse than when
they beat him, the men.
Mikey knew that his mother wasn’t old, but life had been hard on her, she’d
been hard on herself and she was weak, looked deceased already and had for
years, hell, he was already starting to look so himself. It didn’t take many
more greedy gulps out of the bottle before she sounded like she was choking,
and he knew that it was over. Her body was giving up.
“You fucking whore, you did this didn’t you? You did this.” She rasped, and he
didn’t answer, he just stayed in the doorway, watching her suffering and
feeling it like a clamp around his ribs. He was only trying to be a good boy.
It was for her own best. He couldn’t let them harm her.
She gagged a few times, but she never vomited, it all went so quick. A small
trail of thick, yellowish drool ran from the corner of her mouth as she went
still, and the arm she was leaning on collapsed under her weight and she rolled
onto her side. Mikey quietly closed the door behind him with a small sigh, and
walked downstairs.
When spiders died they curled up with all their legs above their head. Mikey
wondered if spiders sometimes ate their parents, but he figured that they
didn’t. He’d never heard of it, at least. He wasn’t a spider. He was a good
boy.
*
The boy was lying in the corner, and Gerard wasn’t really sure whether he was
sleeping or unconscious, but he had pulled his shirt down to cover himself up
which didn’t really help because Gerard could still see his dick if he turned
his head in that direction.
They’d shared an 8-ball when they had been tired of the boy, and now they were
lying on the floor, staring up at the dark ceiling and Gerard could feel his
brain racing, and it was like his blood was alive, snaking its way through his
veins, making it scratch from the inside. It never went well when they got high
together, someone always ended up bleeding or knocked out. If they were lucky,
it’d be the kid they kept around, but mostly it wasn’t. None the less, they did
it more than once in a while anyways.
But up until that point where the bomb went off and either of them exploded, it
was comforting, lying there, breathing next to each other and forgetting where
one body ended and the other begun. It never lasted long though, and this time
it was Bert who ticked first.
Suddenly he rolled over and pushed himself on top of Gerard, putting his hands
on his throat and squeezing, grinning down at him with wide eyes and growing
pupils. It was soft at first but it got gradually harder, and Gerard felt his
heartbeat quicken as he ran out of breath, he knew how this went, he tried to
knock Bert off him, but when he lay like that it was impossible, and then his
eyes whitened.
It never went all the way, never even to a point where it got really dangerous,
and yet he reached thinking that he was going to die, every single time, before
Bert let go and he gasped for air for a good minute. Then he did it again. And
again. And again, and Gerard could feel the bulge in Berts pants growing,
fucking unbelievable, he just gave the boy all that he possiblyhad. It was
never enough.
“Get on your hands and knees.” He demanded, and Gerard took a moment to catch
his breath before he grinned up at Bert, then spat in his face.
“Fuck you.” He gasped, still out of breath but amused by the trail of spit
running down Berts cheek as he growled at him.
“You fucking bitch.” He roared, and Gerard barely registered how he lifted his
fist, before it hit his jaw and he felt his heartbeat all the way in the center
of his brain and a second of anger shooting through him before everything went
black.
*
When Mikey carefully pushed open the door to the big bedroom right underneath
the one where he’d just left his mother’s corpse, it was completely quiet in
there which he found odd since there was almost never quiet in here.
As he stepped inside, a little unsure on his feet due to the alcohol, it didn’t
take him long to find out why. The catholic boy in the chain and collar was
lying curled up in the corner, almost like their mother upstairs, his pants
discarded somewhere in the other end of the room. From here, Mikey didn’t think
it looked like he was breathing.
Gerard was lying in the middle of the room, face swollen and deformed, blood
trickling from his nose and with his shirt ridden up his pale stomach a bit,
exposing a few inches of grease and scar tissue. It looked like he’d been in a
fight, which seemed more than possible since Bert didn’t seem to be anywhere in
either the bedroom or the small bathroom next to it.
He staggered over and kneeled down besides the boy. There was blood on the
floor, but he didn’t bother to check where it was coming from, he never did
that to the kids. He knew far too well of all the possible places blood could
come out of. He just reached up and put a hand to his neck, feeling for a pulse
and finding none. He was as dead as their mother. But he was far too innocent
to be a spider, like they all were here. The house was a spiderweb and their
mother’s bedroom was the center.
Gerard always asked him to move the bodies. For some reason, he didn’t like
doing it himself, which Mikey found odd since there wouldn’t be any bodies if
it wasn’t for Gerard and Bert. But he never questioned it, he just did as his
brother said, trying his hardest to be good. But not this time; there wasn’t
time for such things right now. He had to get his brother out. He wasn’t going
to let them take him either.
Gerard was breathing. He didn’t wake up when Mikey shook him or slapped his
cheek, but he was breathing. It was a good thing, because carrying living
people was always easier, but on the other hand Gerard was bigger and heavier
than any of the kids Mikey had carried. They were all so small and skinny,
starved out and spotted and beaten up. They reminded him of himself, like
walking skeletons.
With a bit of maneuvering, he got his arms locked around Gerards chest and got
to his feet without falling over, which already had him out of breath. It was
going to take a while to get him down the stairs.
“They’re coming for us. They found out about the boy. They’ll come and get us.”
Mikey whispered like a mantra as he dragged his brother out the room, slowly,
step by step and all the way to the staircase.
Getting him downstairs was harder, partly because it required more actual
carrying than dragging, and partly because he had to be careful to not let him
drop too hard on each step so he wouldn’t get bruises. It wasn’t a concern he
usually had since the only people he’d ever carried down the stairs were all
dead. But he worked it out, and getting Gerard to the backdoor seemed fairly
easy after that.
When they were outside, Mikey stood for a minute and observed the silent house.
From the outside, it didn’t look like a spiderweb the least, mostly because the
stickiness and filth and the death on the inside wasn’t visible from out here.
It looked more like a cave, big and dark and threatening. For bats maybe. Mikey
didn’t know if bats ever ate their spawn, maybe they were generally nice to
each other.
He reached backwards and pulled a crooked cigarette out of the backpocket of
his jeans. It was weird how little cigarettes stunk when they were smoked
outside. He hadn’t been outside the house a lot in his life. Gerard was outside
when him and Bert found that it was time to pick up a new kid, when the last
one was long gone and buried, and they had gotten bored with each other. They
usually went far, neighborhoods and neighborhoods over. This time they had
barely gone to the end of the street, and now look what had happened. Mikey had
always picked stones up and made a small cross on each of them with nails,
placed them on top of each buried kid. There were more than twenty stones in
their backyard by now. And this kid didn’t even get one. Mikey didn’t feel bad
for him. He never felt bad for any of them. He just did what he had to do,
besides, he didn’t have compassion enough for all there was to feel bad for.
He flicked his smoke out on the grass when he heard sirens. They weren’t close,
not even remotely, but they were there. And he had a long way to go. He wrapped
his arms around his brother again and started making his way down the porch,
into the backyard. There was a single field behind their garden that stretched
out over a small hill, and behind that only forest. He had to reach it before
they reached him. They were coming for them. He couldn’t let them get him, or
Gerard, or their mother. He was a good boy. He protected his family.
*
It was all over the news. The terrifying cold-blooded homicidal siblings, the
older one a sadistic psychopath with a perverted lover and the younger one a
teenage prostitute, the carefully marked mass-grave backyard, the one thousand
dollars worth of drugs found in a puke-stained bathroom on the second floor,
the poisoned, crippled corpse in the master bedroom and the fact that a handful
of people had kept themself hidden at the end of the street for years without
anyone finding out, without anyone wanting to find out. And how the three men
responsible for dozens of deaths had managed to dissapear without a trace. 
A lady with a handbag stood on the corner of the street, holding on to a
newspaper, shaking her head in distress at everyone that went by, one of them
being another woman wearing a grey hat with a yellow flower in it. 
"Such a terrifying tragedy, isn't it?"
"Absolutely horrible. I'll pray for those poor souls."
It was a short exchange of words before the woman with the hat carried on, once
in a while shooting glances over her shoulder to look at the Way house, still
standing tall at the end of the street. They were talking about tearing it down
and building something new there, but no matter what, it would always be the
Way House. The woman sighed and made sure her hat sat neatly as she kept on
walking down the quiet suburban street. 
 
It was a cold, quiet autumn afternoon on Sodeman Lane.
*
"Peace is what you get
From a chemical change
You don’t yank on the spine of God
You get what you give
You know what I mean
Don’t be surprised if there’s a bug in your eye
The center of the universe
I love everyone"
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