“The world loss was inadequate. Loss just meant a lack, meant something was missing, but it did not encompass the totality of severance, this terrifying un-anchoring from all that he’d ever known.”
R. F. Kuang, Babel
26Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡoLRKEGZPHK
Patrick Stump lay motionless on the bed, listening to the rain pound on the roof, on the walls, on the window. He had been up for several hours by this point, and yet he hadn’t moved a muscle since waking. No energy. It had gone with his will to make music, which you kind of needed if you were a musician. Patrick was a musician. This was probably why he couldn’t get out of bed.
Lightning flashed across the room, followed by a rumble of thunder. One of many, each instance illuminated the mess of discarded instruments, lyric notebooks, electronic equipment, and tangled plugs. The remains of an honest but ultimately worthless effort to cook up a second solo album. Pointless, since nobody had cared about the first. He had deleted what little he’d made of it from his computer by now.
The rest of Patrick’s house was much the same. Gray and dark, the ruins of a failed music career scattered like human guts all over. Excess CDs, miscellaneous wires draped over the couch, more pages of lyrics and riffs. The kitchen didn’t contain any music equipment, so it seemed pristine. Then you’d open the cupboards, filled with bottles of whiskey, or the fridge, filled with nothing at all. Patrick had been suffering an eating disorder watching his weight. A bit of an unnecessary undertaking, since apparently everyone had liked him better when he was fat (in other words, with Fall Out Boy. God, he was so worthless without Fall Out Boy).
Still, despite being empty, the refrigerator hummed happily through the daytime storm, eager to do its job. Beside it, the kitchen phone began to ring.
Back in the bedroom, Patrick did not move. He heard the ringing, of course he did, especially since he’d left the door ajar, unable to bother with closing it no matter how much cold air came in. He just didn’t care. And there was no one he wanted to talk to. Fall Out Boy, the members of his touring band, his girlfriend Elisa, hell, his own parents. He’d been a dick to all of them. He didn’t deserve them. And Patrick supposed it was part cowardice that even if it was one of them calling, he couldn’t be bothered to speak with them.
Not even after Pete Wentz had directly sent Patrick a text message a few days ago. Patrick still hadn’t read it. He just avoided the message app on his phone like it was the plague.
Patrick’s intention had been simply to wait until it stopped. But once the call rang out, the ringing simply started again. And again. And again, and again. It took a fifth round of ringing to get Patrick to sit up, painfully, slowly, and peel the blanket off his pale, lithe body. He shivered as his bare feet hit the ground. The air was cold, the floor too, and it had been so long since he’d properly stood that the swaying made him a little nauseous.
Patrick rubbed his eyes sleepily as he shuffled to the kitchen, even though they had been open this whole time. He pointedly avoided looking in the direction of the bathroom where the sink mirror stood right in front of the door, and his dark, baggy eyes and unkempt blonde hair would be reflected back at him. Miraculously, he didn’t trip over the mess in the living room.
The house phone was on its sixth round of ringing by the time Patrick reached it. Damn were these people persistent. He grabbed the receiver with clumsy, trembling, tired fingers, ready to tell whoever it was on the other end to fuck off.
“Hello?” Patrick asked, voice dull and flat.
The voice on the other end was not one that Patrick recognized. But they uttered three names that he did.
“Yeah, I know Pete, Joe and Andy.” Patrick’s voice remained dry, but a faint sense of unease began to stir in his chest. Or maybe that was just his nausea getting worse. “What about them?”
Patrick listened to the unfamiliar voice on the other end as it continued. It was formal, but apologetic. Official, but laced with sympathy. As it spoke, Patrick’s eyes widened, his breathing hitched. The trembling spread from his hands to all over his body as he began to hyperventilate. The voice on the other end waited for a response.
“Mr. Stump…?” it asked, tense, when it did not receive one.
Patrick said nothing. The rain pounded on the walls. Somewhere in the distance thunder rumbled and the sound echoed in his ears. He couldn’t breathe. Slowly, the receiver slipped from his hand and clattered to the kitchen floor. Patrick followed it, hitting the cold tiles on his knees. He doubled over, gripped his hair in his hands, and screamed.
The police were unable to find an official cause for their deaths in time for the funeral.
Three out of four members of Fall Out Boy were found lying on the floor of their separate homes, unresponsive, within hours of each other. No blood, nor signs of struggle. If the police had found a cause of death, they hadn’t disclosed it to anyone. Not to Patrick, not to their partners, not even to their mothers. Everyone but the law themselves was left to stumble through the complete and total dark. It cast a pallor over the funeral preparations, but sweet Mrs. Wentz requested they not discuss it for the sake of her son’s memory. So, they didn’t.
It was decided by all three families that the funeral would take place in Chicago and yes, that they would be sharing. It was convenient for Patrick seeing as he’d already been living there for quite some time, but Pete Wentz, Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley’s coffins had to be flown in from various parts of the country (L.A., New York, and Milwaukee, to be specific). Such a fact felt wrong to Patrick. Why should his friends come to him when he had so thoroughly shut them out? On the other hand, he supposed it was the Fall Out Boy reunion he deserved.
The wake (and subsequent repast) was to be held at the old Wentz house. Patrick arrived wearing a stylish dark suit and tie, the sort that seemed to make his pale skin glow in comparison. His girlfriend, Elisa Yao was at his side in a beautiful, but modest black dress. The two had made up the day Patrick had found out, when she’d rushed to his home to check on him when she herself heard the news, former grievances be damned. For that entire night she hadn’t left his side, nor had she for any of the subsequent ones where she’d cook his food and make sure he went to sleep and stayed there. More than once he’d woken up to her softly wiping the tears from his fair cheeks. That’s how he learned he cried even in his sleep.
Pulling up to the house and seeing it through the window was enough to make Patrick sick. The Wentzs had always been well off as evidence by how large and opulent their house was. But under the dark, cloudy sky it seemed almost menacing in how tall and grand it stood, as if it were angry that one of its residents for so many years couldn’t call it home ever again. Patrick was nearly weak in the knees at the thought of approaching it, but Elisa gently took his hand, led him up the driveway, up the porch steps and knocked on the door. Mrs. Wentz greeted them both with a sad smile. “Thank you so much for coming,” she said, as she tried and failed to keep the tears out of her own voice. She hugged Elisa.
“It’s no problem,” Elisa said softly. “Thank you for having us.” Patrick said nothing, the lump in his throat was too big. It was fitting that it would all end here, where he, Joe and Pete would rehearse and write back in the Evening Out days. It felt like both yesterday and a million years ago when Patrick had sung for them at Joe’s insistence in the basement, saw both of their mouths fall open as they fell in love with his voice. It occurred to him suddenly that he was the only one still alive with that memory. The idea brought hot tears to his eyes.
Mrs. Wentz invited Patrick and Elisa into the house which was pristinely kept and quite crowded considering that most of the guests hadn’t arrived yet. The consequences of three families grieving at once, Patrick supposed. Food in aluminum tins under plastic foil were huddled together at the corner of the counter in preparation for the repast. He recognized the wilting flower arrangements and piles of sympathy cards on the mantlepiece because he had those things in his house as well. Parents, siblings and wives crowded in the kitchen, dining and living room, pointedly avoiding the three coffins that sat side by side in the parlor. Patrick recognized Meghan and Melanie of course, and even Ashlee. But when he caught sight of the parents, the stoic heartbreak in Mr. Wentz or the sadness in Mr. Trohman's eyes, it all became too much.
So, Patrick excused himself. Though the day was overcast and chilly, standing in the wind seemed preferrable to being inside with his friends’ dead bodies. So, he walked out the back door and onto the porch, hoping to spend some time alone and collect himself.
But Beau was already there.
Beau was Pete’s son and his spitting image. During their first visits to the house, Mrs. Wentz had shown Patrick and Joe countless pictures of her son growing up (much to Pete’s embarrassment). Beau looked just like those pictures. Same tanned skin, same brown curls, same cheeky smile. He was wearing a black suit just like all the other men, though he was quickly soiling it as he tumbled around on the playground. How old was he now? Three? Four? Certainly not old enough to remember his father when he grew up, Patrick realized, and he’d felt a pang in his heart at that. Pete had been so proud of his only son…
Patrick was content to sit back and watch his dead friend’s son play (even if it did hurt a bit) but then Beau noticed him standing on the back porch. He ran over.
“Who are you?” he asked, in that high pitched voice of his.
“My name is Patrick,” Patrick answered with a sad smile. He crouched down so he could be at Beau’s level. “I was one of your dad’s friends.”
“My mommy told me that daddy’s friends died,” Beau said. Damn. Patrick forgot how blunt kids could be.
“Two of them did,” Patrick said softly. “Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley. They were my friends too.”
“So, all four of you are friends?”
“Yup,” Patrick said, and he felt the hot tears prick the corners of his eyes.
“And now you’re the only one left,” Beau said, as if thinking it through. But he had said exactly what Patrick had been thinking. Still, he nodded, a lump forming in his throat. The thought had crossed his mind before, of course. It was one of the first to do so after he’d gotten the phone call. But seeing the three coffins lined up together in Pete’s parlor had really driven it home for him. Patrick was the last one left. The only one left. The sole survivor of Fall Out Boy, not just a band but a close-knit group of friends forged in the grimy underworld of Chicago’s hardcore scene. Though really, how close-knit could they have been if a bunch of petty arguments was enough to drive them apart, to the point where it took death to reunite them again?
Although Pete had reached out before. With that little text Patrick had been too cowardly to answer. Too stupid. He still didn’t even know what it said…
“You know…” Beau said, pulling Patrick out of his thoughts. “You’re not the only one of daddy’s friends left.
Well, that’s an incredibly morbid thing for a kid to say, Patrick thought but aloud he just asked, “Oh, is that so?”
“Mhm.” Beau nodded and pointed towards one of the upstairs windows. “Daddy has a pet.”
“Oh yeah, Hemmingway,” Patrick said, smiling, mostly for Beau’s benefit. Still, he would never have been able to forget Pete’s dog any day. But Beau wasn’t talking about him.
“No, Hemmingway is grandma and grandpa’s pet,” Beau said, shaking his head. “Daddy has a bird for a pet at his house. Called Phoenix. She’s staying upstairs in my room now.”
“A bird?” Patrick echoed, confused. He’d never heard of Pete having a bird, not even through social media. But when he looked towards where Beau was pointing there he was, a regal falcon of all things, sitting on a perch by the window. Patrick stood up straight, eyes widening. “Woah…”
“Yeah, she’s pretty,” Beau said. “Daddy always calls her so. And she can do all sorts of tricks.”
“Tricks?” Patrick’s eyes flicked from Beau back to the falcon again.
“Mhm.” Beau nodded. “Like, she can land on daddy’s hand if he tells her to. And she can fly really far and still find her way back. Oh, and daddy says she’s really intelligent. So, he talks to her. But not like he talks to Hemmingway, like he talks to you and me.”
“I see…” Patrick muttered, looking up at the falcon, Phoenix apparently, with interest. She was pretty, he supposed, in that regal sort of way. But then she turned towards them, looked straight down at him and Beau with those dark eyes. Patrick’s breathing hitched. Phoenix’s gaze was piercing. Not in the way that a predator’s was but in the way a human’swas, specifically a human who knew a lot more than they let on.
Patrick turned away, shivering. Pete was (or had been) a weird guy. But Patrick simply couldn’t imagine him owning a pet like Phoenix. She was just too… serious…
Beau frowned at Phoenix too, but for an entirely different reason. “I don’t think she listens to anyone else but daddy,” he said, his little voice tight with frustration. “I’ve been trying to get her to land on my hand for like, thirty minutes. But she won’t listen. This bird is going to be the death of me, I swear,” Beau finished, and he threw his arms up like a tired middle-aged man.
“Well, why are you trying to get her to land on your arm, anyway?” Patrick asked.
“So, I can take her to the funeral,” Beau answered and when Patrick raised a brow at that, he continued. “Mommy, grandma and grandpa say she can’t go because she’s an animal. But I think daddy would’ve liked her there, anyway.”
“Oh,” Patrick said, frowning because what do you say to something so innocently heartbreaking? “Well…” he thought for a moment about what to say. “Well, that’s very nice of you, Beau. And I know your father would’ve appreciated your efforts.” Or at the very least found them funny, he thought, with an aching heart.
“I know,” Beau said. “I’m trying to bring Hemmingway too.”
Patrick smiled sadly at that. It wasn’t fair, he thought, that such a good kid should have to lose their father like this.
“Beau?” Ashlee, Beau’s mother and Pete’s ex-wife, popped out from the back door and sighed. She’d seen the dirt and mud on her child’s suit. “Beau, I said you could play outside as long as you didn’t get dirty.”
Patrick’s heart broke. She sounded genuinely tired. Even little Beau must have picked up on it because his frown deepened. “Sorry, mommy.”
Ashlee sighed. “It’s alright, sweetie. Let’s just get you cleaned up quickly. The service will start really soon.” As she ushered her son inside, she nodded towards Patrick. “Sorry for your loss.”
“You too,” Patrick muttered. Not exactly the most profound conversation, but the two had never quite gotten the chance to know each other. Pete and Patrick had stopped being friends not long after the wedding and now, only three years later, he and Ashlee had divorced. And it wasn’t as if a funeral was the perfect opportunity for making new friends.
“Are you going to stay out here?” Ashlee asked, still holding the door open. Patrick shook his head.
“I’ve been out here the whole time. I’ve…” Patrick paused, swallowed the lump in my throat. Thought about the sickening image in the parlor. How all three of his friends would be taken away soon, to be buried under the Earth and then never seen again. He trembled slightly, felt the bile rise in his throat at the thought. But at the same time, he knew he couldn’t start the service without saying a proper goodbye.
“I haven’t given my friends a proper farewell yet,” Patrick finally croaked. “And I probably should soon… since… you know…”
He trailed off, but Ashlee nodded, her expression deeply sympathetic. “Oh, of course, I understand… you have to say goodbye to all three of them…” Suddenly, Patrick was hyper aware of how she was looking at him, as if she could sense how much this loss was breaking him, how fragile he was compared to everyone else. And why wouldn’t it break him? His three best friends were gone, he was the last one left. Surely all the other funeral goers had to realize that by now. Had to sense that his loss, his grief, was different from all of theirs, had to be whispering about it all behind his back.
Or perhaps he was just injecting more meaning into Ashlee’s expression than was actually there. He had always been so anxious…
“Well…” Patrick started cautiously. “I should probably uh, get to it, then…”
“Oh! Of course,” Ashlee said, stepping aside awkwardly so Patrick could come inside. She went off to prepare Beau for his bath and once again, Patrick was standing in the dark house where their bodies were.
This was going to be the worst day of his life…
The service proper was held in a cemetery deep within the city. The nearby church loomed over the grounds, tall and dark, its ornate spires scraping the black clouds from which the rain had finally begun to pour. A heavy bell tolled high above the guests as they filed in, and Patrick was nearly taken aback by the sea of umbrellas before him until he remembered (with a pang in his heart) that this was a funeral for three.
That was the number of graves that had been dug in the ground, the number of headstones erected before them, tall and proud, each one with two dates on it. The second date was the same for each of them, March 5, 2012. Patrick couldn’t bear to look at them. Instead, his gaze drifted off to the side where he imagined his own grave and headstone would be, if things had gone a bit differently. Tears filled his eyes at the thought. At least if they had he wouldn’t have had to deal with this utter nightmare. He sniffled.
“Patrick…?” Elisa asked, furrowing her brow in concern.
Patrick hiccupped, bit his lip, whispered, “I should be with them. I should be next to them there…”
He hadn’t meant for anyone to hear, but of course, Elisa had anyway, and she squeezed his hand. A silent no. You don’t belong with them. Not yet. Patrick wept and squeezed back.
The two of them were at the front of the crowd, along with the immediate families of the deceased. The Wentzs were the worst. Though she had tried to stay strong for the wake now she wailed through every eulogy as if she were the one dying, loud enough so that the sound echoed through Patrick’s ears. Little Beau clung tied to Ashlee’s dress eyes shining as he asked over and over “Is daddy going to come back?” like he already knew the answer. The Trohmans were quiet, almost stoic but Patrick could see the bob of Mr. Trohman’s Adam’s apple, the trembling of Mrs. Trohman’s hands.
Behind the immediate families were the cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents (there were so many of them) and behind them were all the friends Pete, Joe and Andy had made over the years. Some folks Patrick recognized from all the way back from the hardcore days, bands like Arma Angelus. There were the remaining members of Racetraitor and the Damned Things. A reminder for Patrick that his band wasn’t the only one that had been ended by these sudden deaths.
The funeral had brought together My Chemical Romance (Bob Bryer stood by Frank, Ray and Mikey who was weeping onto Gerard’s shoulder) and Panic! At the Disco (Ryan, Brendon, Dallon and Spencer all stood side by side, heads down and shoulders shaking). Along with them were many more members of the bands signed by DCD2 Records (including Cobra Starship, The Academy Is…, and Gym Class Heroes). James Montgomery and Chris Gutierrez had shown up and it was Dirty of all people who ended up giving one of the most touching eulogies, describing the many adventures he’d shared on tour with Fall Out Boy.
A few days earlier, Mrs. Wentz has asked Patrick if he’d be able to play Saturday at the service. Already raw from the utter flop that was his solo album, he unfortunately couldn’t bring himself to accept. He’d stopped singing after the Soul Punk tour and now he didn’t know if he’d ever sing again. So, Brendon sang the song instead, as the three coffins were lowered into the ground, as each of the guests took their turns laying flowers and saying their final goodbyes.
It was then that Patrick couldn’t take it anymore. The people, the graves, the lyrics he’d written about Pete so long ago, it was all too much. The dam broke and the tears burst forth. He doubled over, choking, gasping, gnashing his teeth and pulling at his hair and wailing because this just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t supposed to have ended like this. Not so soon, not so suddenly, not with him as the last one standing.
Patrick wondered if he was being punished. It made perfect sense if the universe laid it out. First, Soul Punk is a failure and now this. How dare you try to be anything without Fall Out Boy, the universe seemed to be saying. How dare you abandon your friends. How dare you shut them out so cruelly. Now all he felt was stupid. He’d been so angry and petty and for what? Patrick could hardly remember. It didn’t matter. Not if it wasn’t Fall Out Boy. And Fall Out Boy was gone, so nothing mattered.
Had his friends even known he’d still loved them, Patrick wondered. Or had they died believing that he hated them, that he was done with them forever? The mere thought sent such a sharp pain through Patrick’s heart that it brought him to his knees.
No, no, no, I didn’t mean it, Patrick thought as the mud seeped through his clothes and the hysteria bubbled to the surface. He didn’t even know if he was speaking to his friends or the universe anymore. Did it matter if he knew that neither would hear him? Still, he pleaded. We weren’t done yet, I promise, we weren’t done. I promise, I still wanted them. I still want my friends…
The feelings of despair and hopelessness were so overwhelming, so endless as he crouched there, pawed at the muddy ground and felt his hot tears mix with the cool rain on his cheeks. Yet somehow, through it all, he still saw them.
Patrick (and everyone else at the service for that matter) had, up until this point, pointedly avoided acknowledging the groups of people on the other side of the wall, peeking above it at the ceremony through cell phones and cameras. Most of them were merely overly invasive fans (predominantly of Fall Out Boy, but Patrick was sure a sizable amount of them were here for Panic! Or MCR). They had died hair and tattoos and piercings. They wore ripped jeans and band tees and had make-up every color of the rainbow.
But there were two women at the wall who didn’t quite fit that description. For the most part, they were dressed like the funeral goers, modest black dresses and black umbrellas in their hands. But they wore more make-up, Patrick noticed, deep lipstick and eye shadow, thick, metal chokers on their necks and on their coats was a strange symbol, a music note crossed through with a red line.
At first, Patrick thought they might be fans too, albeit dressed more eccentrically than the others. But then they made eye contact with him. And they smirked. And they each gently tapped a finger to their chests, three times, slowly, before pointing a perfectly manicured and painted finger straight at him.
It was just too much.
Not even his knees were enough anymore. The world blurred, then tilted slightly and Patrick felt his heart sink with it. His face hit the ground, the mud and rain caking his cheeks, his suit, settling on his tongue so that all he tasted was dirt. His vision was fading, the world getting father away and Patrick couldn’t muster the strength to reach for it...
The last thing he remembered was Elisa shouting his name, the sound echoing faintly in his ears, before it all faded away.
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