Prologue

I've never felt as manic as I do in this moment. My chest feels like it's housing a 6-piece hardcore band and my lungs ache like I've just finished smoking Lucky Strikes one after the other for 20 years straight. I'm gasping for air, violently rolling down the window of my black Scion xB in an effort to entice Jack Frost himself to give me CPR. The air temperature is chilled, but my body feels like it's on fire from the inside out.
The roads over in Moonside are as slick and wet as the vinyl covered steering wheel before me, now dotted with countless tears. Mother Nature follows my lead and now my windshield is completely saturated with rain. Even on the highest setting, the wipers can't seem to catch up. They continue to sway across the smooth glass in time with MCR's first album playing on my iPod. The tree-lined stretch of Redwood Drive looks like an abstract painting through the smeared windshield.
By now my head is spinning like a top, but I'm unnaturally aware. Panic attacks, like the one I'm in the throes of right now, always heighten my sense of awareness like that. Everything is more vibrant, more saturated, and seemingly more alive, even as it feels like I'm dying on the inside.
With every few feet, a new set of streetlights beam across my face like single frames in a motion picture. Here and gone in a flash.
Just like your face. Just like your entire being.
Gone in a flash.
My legs feel both wobbly and like they are weighted down with sandbags. I'm near numb. I don't notice the needle of the speedometer inching its way further and further across the semi-circle. I don't notice what's in front of me. I never hear the screeches, the shattering glass. I never see the blood or feel it drip down the bridge of my nose.
Darkness seems to seep through the glistening asphalt roadway to envelope the world around me.
Everything is still except for the spinning of the front driver's side tire which turns and turns as Gerard Way continues to belt out tunes from my speakers.
"Until the end, until this pool of blood
Until this, I mean this, I mean this
Until the end of..."