Andy

"Easy..." Andy whispered in my ear, my eyes were wide, and my pulse was thudding too loudly for me to even really hear him. The mortician seemed to be distracted, as well. He carried a tray of utensils, and a couple different pads of touch up makeup. He looked directly at the coffin, and approached us, standing right next to it, and he didn't even breathe in our direction.

He continued to hum some classical song while he worked over Andy's body, getting it ready for tomorrow. I glanced over at him, and sighed. He looked nothing like Andy.

They put him in a black suit and a white button down shirt that had a snug collar to hide the tattoos on his neck. The mortician did not come back to color eyeliner around his eyes or unbutton the first seven buttons of his shirt for a more Andy look. He came to dab more of the already excessive blush of the wrong shade onto his cheeks, contouring them at the wrong angle, so he looked like his cheeks were blocks.

With a nod, the mortician left the room. He looked like he was half blind, actually...

"Why are we here?" I hissed when he'd left. Andy released me, and with a wicked grin, he pulled out a bottle of liquid eyeliner from his pocket. "Coloring." He answered.

"What?! No, you can't! Do you not think he will notice?!" I shouted at him under my breath.

"He won't." Andy responded confidently. "He's done working for tonight. Someone will be here in fifteen minutes to move my body to the morgue again. And we'll go ahead and shut the lid, no one will look in on old Andy until tomorrow."

He went without hesitation to the edge of the coffin, leaning over himself, he sighed in almost relish, as he whipped out the wand, and began to color curvature lines around his own eyes with a great skill level.

"You got a towel or something?" He asked a couple minutes later without looking up.

"Will this work?" I asked, pulling a tissue from the box beside the coffin.

"We're going to need a lot more than one..." He sighed as he worked, "They did a number on me. Like, a whole inch of fucking concealer, what a damn mess. Hand me the whole box."

I tossed it to him, and he went to work wiping down his cheeks and forehead, recreating himself.

After he'd wiped off most of the concealer, he produced several other pieces of stolen makeup, stolen from my room, might I add. He redid the cheek contouring, and got rid of the blush altogether. His forehead crushed up in concentration as he worked.

After the makeup was done, he stretched his hands before ruffling up his sleek hair cut, how it'd been combed over strategically, to make it look like he hadn't shaved half his head, and that he actually had a full head of hair.

"There." He grinned, stepping back to admire his work. "Oops, one more thing."

He reached up to his ears and pulled out the cross earrings, and bent over the body to apply them. Now the face of the body looked like him, unfortunately, the suit didn't match the rest. Andy shrugged, happy enough that he got to modify himself to a recognizable state.

"Alright, I think we're done here. Help me with this?" He asked as he pulled down the coffin lid. I placed my palms under the lid and helped him lower it silently.

"Okay, we should probably get the hell out now, before someone finds out we were here." He grinned, and ran for the exit. Of course, he didn't have to look around and keep an eye out for the mortician, unlike I, who had to sneak about like a ninja to the front door.

"What took you so long?" He asked, cocking his head. I extended my middle finger in his direction.

His laugh echoed behind me, and I briskly walked to put as much distance between myself and the funeral home as possible.

"Okay, explain to me how that whole invisibility thing worked?!" I demanded when we were alone.

He grinned, "This afternoon, I was walking on the street, behind this girl and her friend. Guess I got too close to them, because her friend turned around and started calling out for the other girl and the girl beside her was answering her, but they couldn't hear each other until I stepped away. My bubble of invisible weirdness can be expanded, and projected onto other people!" He exclaimed excitedly. "Do you know how many concerts I could smuggle you into?" He grabbed my shoulders and shook them, an excited grin on his face.

"How long can you do it for? Indefinitely?" I wondered curiously, thinking of all the trouble that was waiting to be done.

"Yeah, as long as you're within a foot around me, no one can see nor hear you."

"Comforting."

"Also, there's more perks to this than just remaining hidden. Check this out."

He grabbed my hand and towed me up the street aways, until we approached a man standing under a streetlight, reading a newspaper on the bench. Andy slung me up onto his back and approached the man.

"As far as anyone's concerned, as long as you're within my bubble, you're a ghost, too. You can do anything I can, stay underwater indefinitely, jump from roofs, scream in people's faces, all of it. Unfortunately, we have to be incredibly close for any of that to work, so it is kinda useless, but I'm sure we'll find some pranks to play."

And that's all he cared about right now. Was pranking people with his glorious new discovery.

"Boo!" Andy shouted at the man, leaping up onto the bench beside him. I clung tightly to him, in fear that I'd slide off onto the ground, and the man would have a heart attack because a teenage girl just fell out of the sky.

"Okay, now check this out..."

He plucked the newspaper out of the man's hands, and I knew if Andy were entirely invisible, the newspaper would have popped out of existence, invisible within the bubble, as well.

The man looked around, startled, and looked for his newspaper. High and low, under the bench, on the ground, but it was obvious, he had no explanation for the sudden disappearance of his paper.

Andy laughed, and jumped from the bench into the street, and jogged up to a blind corner where I slid off his back and joined him in laughter.

"Did you see his face?!" I snorted, laughing too hard to form a normal sentence.

He nodded, mute from silent laughter, gripping his ribs, bending over, his laughter evolving into a mis-matched trail of snorting. "Oh, God, that was great." He sighed after the moment had passed. We looked at each other and began laughing again.

It was very unusual for me, still. To have a best friend who was a ghost. One who could join my world, make me laugh uncontrollably, and experience things I never, ever would have attempted had I been alone. Andy was great to have around, and I was glad now, that even as terrified as I'd been at the time, that I said his name.

Sure, I was good friends with Elizabeth, but she didn't know me well, she didn't know everything about me, just the basic things. She smiled at my jokes, even if they weren't funny, because she wouldn't just tell me they were awful. Andy, on the other hand, if he didn't like something you did, he just outright called you an emo bitch.

"Alright, how much time do we have left?" He laughed almost drunkenly, and turned back onto the sidewalk, and began walking.

"Umm... Another half hour, then I probably need to get back. Why?"

"One more thing." He grinned, holding up a single finger, half concealed in a pair of leather fingerless gloves.

I didn't question it this time, and followed him. We ended up on Main Street after a while, and we approached a bar. Andy pulled me into his bubble and we stood in the doorway, listening.

"Music?" I commented.

"Your first concert." He corrected. "These guys are great, they'll be at the funeral tomorrow."

He pushed through the door, which to anyone looking our, way, wouldn't see. I took a breath, and smelled the sour stench of alcohol, sweat and vomit. Great.

"Who are they?" I asked as we wove through the close crowds to the stage in the back of the room.

"My band." He responded with a great deal of pride in his voice as he looked up at the stage. "Not anymore, obviously. After Ashley's death, and me moving away, they formed a new band. That, that's CC, or Christian Coma." He pointed at the man on the drums. "That's Jake Pitts and Jinxx."

I looked up in wonder at the men. There was a new vocalist and guitarist on stage, but they were still giving the show their all.

"Are they playing one of your songs?" I asked.

"Yes." He responded, "It's an old one we never released."

He didn't elaborate on what that meant, so instead of waiting for him to answer, I turned towards the stage and watched them, getting acquainted with their appearance, because I'd see them tomorrow, on the most tragic day of our lives.

"They're amazing..." I sighed in amazement. Wondering silently what they must've been like before. With Andy at helm, and Ashley on guitar, playing bars and backyard shows weekend to weekend.

Andy smiled over at me, and looked back up at the stage. There was something in his eyes, he was waiting for something. I waited, not asking just yet.

"Okay, our last song of the night." The man named Jinxx said into the mic, "We'd like to dedicate this song to our old friend, Andy Biersack. You may have heard of him, he passed away last week." A murmur among the crowd.

"Back in the day, though." Jinxx said with a reminiscent smile, "He went by the name Andy Sixx. Y'know, as in Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue? Yeah. Okay, this song is called Knives and Pens."

Alone at last, we can sit and fight
And I've lost all faith in this blurring light
But stay right here we can change our plight
We're storming through this despite what's right
One final fight, for this tonight
Whoa, with knives and pens we made our plight
Lay your heart down the ends in sight
Conscience begs for you to do what's right
Everyday it's still the same dull knife
Stab it through and justify your pride
One final fight, for this tonight
Whoa, with knives and pens we made our plight
Whoa and I can't go on without your love
You lost, you never held on
We tried our best
Turn out the light
Turn out the light
One final fight, for this tonight
Whoa, with knives and pens we made our plight
Whoa and I can't go on without your love
You lost, you never held on
We tried our best
Turn out the light
Turn out the light

They thanked the crowd, and suddenly, Andy shouted. "Thanks, brother!" Up to the stage, and Jinxx, CC and Jake looked over the crowd in search of the source. Andy must've made himself visible for a moment.

"Come on, I'll take you home now." He pulled me close through the crowd so I wouldn't be noticed as a minor.

Out on the sidewalk, the sky was rolling above. Andy sighed. "I haven't seen them in so long, that was nice."

I nodded in agreement and walked with him in the general direction of home.

"Okay, so what I was saying earlier... About laying all my cards on the table? I want to do that now."

I waited for him to speak, preparing myself for the detailed description he was about to give.

"I just... Can't go to the grave, knowing no one really knew what happened to me in those final moments. That no light came, and I just faded from myself. One minute, I'm looking up at the cloudy sky, agony all over my body, EMT's swarming me, and then... I'm standing over them, confused, wondering what had happened... What a stupid accident." He shook his head.

"I'm originally from Ohio, if you didn't know. When me and my parents moved down here, my grandparents followed. My aunt and uncle already lived here, and so did a few of my cousins. Moving from Ohio to Utah was tough, for a number of reasons. One being, even though I was just a shitty fifteen year-old, I had a girlfriend. Her name was Scout."

He reached into the side pocket of his 'Prophet' jacket, and pulled out a worn photo of him, in extreme emo mode, with the whole layered, comb over thing, and her, a girl with reddish brown hair and a big smile. "I had to leave her behind in Ohio. I wrote a song about her, with the weirdest title. Her dad was a mortician, so, I didn't know what worked better." He smiled faintly with a shrug.

I held the picture in my hands for a few more moments before handing it back to him, where he returned it to his side pocket with a sigh.

I smiled a little, he meant The Mortician's Daughter, the track I'd be performing tomorrow.

"I told her I'd be back when I turned eighteen. We had plans, we were young, dumb, and nieve... When I got out here... Things just worked. I started the band immediately, and Scout kinda slipped into the background for a while. We kept in contact every now and again, but it wasn't the same. I got to High School, and then she called me up, said she couldn't do the long distance thing anymore... She broke up with me over the phone, so of course, I was mad and upset. She was my first heartbreak. So I turned to music and dark clothes to mend me through the process, that was why the bullying started." He shook his head a little, as though he wanted to place blame on Scout, but couldn't.

"Things moved too fast, and before I knew it, I was in California, trying to find my way through the darkness, struggling with withdrawls. I finally found a place, started my collage classes, and decided it was time to try again. I called Scout, but her parents answered, and told me she'd gotten married the year before, at age nineteen, and already had a son. It shocked me, and made me reconsider my own choices a bit. A few years in California went by, and it was time to come home and visit family. I took the week off from work to come up here and see my parents. I didn't even make it to their house... I sat at that intersection, with our old EP playing on the CD player in my truck. I looked down for a second... One second, and was side-swiped by semi truck. It rolled my truck over with enough force to throw me through the window. Somewhere in that process, my legs were run over, and I lied there in the pavement, a victim of hit and run, bleeding out until the ambulances showed up. By that time, I'd lost a lot of blood, and the truck was on fire, bound to blow up any moment. And in that moment, I saw my life play out before me.

There was no music or sound. It was silent, accompanied by my pulse thudding in my ears, making everything sound distant and faint. I slipped back and forth between the real world and dreams. I saw my Grandpa for the last time, kissed Scout for the first time, and saw the moment I shattered three ribs while performing. All the awkward, joyful and sad moments of my life played out in front of me, and I was dazed, not reacting. I looked up and could see the sky, the EMT's were trying to ask me questions about my identity, but I was preoccupied with something beautiful.

I saw the rain, coming down on me, covering the accident in a slick, sweet smelling layer of moisture. It soaked me through while I lied there, and I think I smiled a little bit as it did. I died with a smile on my face, because no matter how God awful things had been for me, I realized right then, that at least I had gotten the chance to breathe at all. And I was grateful. I wasn't mad that it was he end, I just kinda accepted it... It was weird as hell, to be looking at myself in a way other than a reflection in a mirror.

It was the end, and I didn't know what I was supposed to do, and I look over as firefighters are showing up, and there's this girl standing there... Standing there, getting her white dress soaked, staring down at me with shock, and worry. She bit her nails nervously, and her dad tried to pull her back. I wondered why she didn't leave or cry. She just stared numbly. I thought for a moment she was familiar, but she had green hair and I couldn't tell."

I was pressing my lips together in a firm line to keep from smiling now.

"She looked like Scout, and for a moment, I thought she was, but I couldn't be sure. The police were telling people to get back, and her father made her leave. I was curious, if it was Scout, or someone like her. I followed you home, and found you, sitting in front of your desk that evening, trying to write about the dead boy you'd seen in the road earlier.

To be honest, it shocked me that I'd shocked you. Like I've said before, no one's ever really reacted to my existence, and it almost facinated me. I did find out pretty quick, though, that you weren't Scout. But I still wanted to know what it was about you that kept you from being scared. But then you screamed at me, and passed out in front of me, and I was just more confused. To be honest, I didn't think you'd ever speak my name, not after that. I was making plans, already set on going to Hell, since I was probably destined for that anyways, and then, you called out to me, in the middle of the woods.

Oddly enough, you had a... Bearable personality." He joked, and I shoved his arm with a smile. "Weird, though. The way you spoke to me, was always with a veil of curiosity. So many questions burning in your eyes that you'd never ask.

I never made the final decision, though. And I'm still trying to decide if there's enough for me here on earth to avoid the otherworld entirely. Still haven't figured that out yet."

Notes

Song performed by the band is Knives and Pens by Black Veil Brides