Aftermath of the Last Kiss

“Ashley, my Outlaw and deviant! Why did you have to leave?”

Twenty-four-year-old Andy Biersack lay in his bed, cuddling the pillow that his beloved husband hadn’t long ago rested his head upon as he slept to his chest. It’d been two weeks since his unfortunate and untimely demise, and the pain in his heart was so immense he wasn’t sure he’d be able to live with it. Yes, his beloved, now deceased husband, Ashley, had died in the most noble of ways possible, but he resented the fact that he’d had to go so young at all.

The man he’d loved more than life itself, had chosen as his husband, had laid down his life when a crazed fan had broken into their house and tried to suffocate their year and a-half-old daughter, Legacy. The woman had been certifiably insane, should’ve been locked in a psych ward long before she ever had the chance to hurt anyone, but she hadn’t been. When she’d interrupted their nap by smashing the glass of their front door so she could unlock it, he’d grabbed the gun he kept in his nightstand drawer so he could protect his family, but he’d ultimately failed. His sweetheart, the only man to love him as much, maybe more, than his own parents, was dead and pushing up daisies in the graveyard a short distance from their home.

Ash had been stabbed in the heart while trying to get the butcher knife away from their attacker, and he’d gotten to the master bedroom just after he collapsed. In a moment of rage, anguish, and shock, Andy’d pulled the trigger and put a bullet in the woman’s skull, but it was too late. The man he loved knew he was going to die, had used an old Lita Ford lyric to beg for one last kiss, and died moments after they professed their love, in the midst of that last kiss, in his arms.

Sure, the older man, who was thirty-one, had died happy, both because he’d gotten his last wish and had died in his favorite place in the world, but it still hurt. The tears Andy’d been crying hadn’t stopped since the moment he’d realized he was right about not surviving the stabbing. His friends and bandmates, Jake, Jinxx, and CC, had been trying to cheer him up, to no avail.

“I miss you so much, Ashes,” he whimpered into the pillow he hugged tightly. “I just want you to come back to me! I’ll do anything!”

I miss you, too, Batman. He swore he heard his sweetheart’s voice. I love you and Legacy with all my heart and soul, but our baby girl needs you; she needs her Daddy. We’ll be together again someday.

His tears began to fall faster and his buried his face into his husband’s pillow, still wishing they weren’t separated by Death. Only the sounds of their young daughter’s crying a short while later drew him from his depression, and even then, it barely did. Andy wiped his tears away, his nose on his sleeve, as he rose from their bed, still wondering if he’d actually heard his sweetheart’s voice. He sighed heavily as he walked down the hall to the nursery Ash’d so painstakingly designed, forcing as warm a smile as he possibly could for Legacy. Losing his husband hurt, and only time and tears would heal him, but he would heal from his loss eventually.

Notes