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Champagne Supernova	By : SolusNemo Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Good Charlotte Views: 862 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the members of Good Charlotte. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Champagne Supernova
- 2-Chapter Two
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- 2
Title: Champagne Supernova
Fandom: Good Charlotte
Rating: R
Pairing: Nil.
Summary: He had saved the life of his twin brother, but he had also taken one away. Can he ever live with himself knowing that he’s nothing more than a murderer?
Author’s Note: Alternate Universe.
Disclaimer: The events in the following story are mostly fictitious, they have not happened in real life. I am implying nothing about Joel and Benjamin Madden and as far as I know they are neither criminals, but I’m sure they would do what any one of us would do when put in a horrific situation.

Chapter One

“I focus on the board – I’m out of focus.”

The rain was coming down around the car like every last Greek god thought it would be a good idea to wash Waldorf, Maryland right off the map. They were putting everything into it, too; the water droplets hit the walls of the vomit green and rust speckled vehicle like tiny bombs trying to break through the metal surface they hit, like sperm wriggling and pushing their way into the egg.

Yeah, I can never seem to get my mind off sex, but you have to admit it’s a pretty decent metaphore.

With the deluge being so loud it was an inane effort to listen to the radio, but it was on anyway. My twin brother, Joel, could only concentrate well with music in the background – it didn’t matter what the genre was, really, just as long as it had some kind of beat to it. I think at the moment the dial was set to a top forty station, but it was laced with static because we were evidently in a blind spot of the station’s satellite. I didn’t mind at all, I wasn’t never a big Whitney Houston fan.

While Joel was thinking about the task before us, I was looking out of the windshield. Well, maybe I should stick the word trying in there because the rain water was cascading down the plate glass like it thought itself a waterfall. I turned my head to look at Joel, sitting in the driver’s seat with his head back on the head rest and eyes closed.

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” I said calmly. “I mean, we’re going to get soaking wet. It’s not going to be hard for Mom and Sarah to connect two and two together. They’re going to show the security tape on the news and think it’s kind of suspicious that two guys soaked to the bone committed a crime and that we walked into the house looking like drowned rats. Tomorrow night it’s not going to be raining, we can go then.”

Joel didn’t even flinch, still looked like he was trying to take a nap in a field of daisies instead of strategizing before we perform an armed robbery at a gas station. “You know we can’t do that,” he replied in that creepingly relaxed way of his. “The money won’t be there tomorrow night and the eviction notice said we have until Friday.”

“We should have walked.”

“Benj, breathe, man. I took the license plates off, remember? You saw me do that in the garage just before we left and you stuffed them under your seat – double check if you’re that nervous. We’re parked out of the range of the lamps by the pumps so the car looks several shades darker than it really is. The people in there will only see the back of it if they can manage to look out the windows that far from where we’re going to put them. Nothing bad is going to happen, I promise.”

“How can you promise something like that? You don’t know that nothing bad is going to happen.”

My brother sat up straight, opened his eyes, turned his head, and met my gaze. “Look, if you’re really that nervous then you can stay here. You can sit here and drive off when I jump in the back seat when it’s over with. We’ll get away that much more quickly.”

That sounded like a good idea, but I’m the chicken of the family. I’d never last in this car while I waited for Joel to finish robbing his old place of employment, could never not go completely insane with worry as I prepared to stomp on the gas pedal when Joel came running at the car at full speed, threw the door open, and dived inside. No, I might as well piss my pants with paranoid fright inside.

“No.”

“Right then. We’ll do as we already planned,” Joel said more to himself than to me. “We’ll keep the car running and go inside, rob the place, run back out here with the money and drive off like two bats out of Hell.”

I had one more nagging thought. “How much money’s going to be in there? Don’t most people use credit cards while paying for their gas and snacks and shit? What if we don’t get all the money? We owe a lot, Joel. We’re a few thousand in the hole if I remember correctly.”

“If we don’t get it all tonight, then I guess Maryland’s going to see a rash of robberies tonight. We could always burgle a house, too. If we just sneak in there, take the silverware, and sneak right back out the owner’s won’t ever notice until they go to use the stuff. I’ve heard of that happening up in Connecticut. The guy didn’t take anything other than the silverware, didn’t so much as breathe on anything or leave the drawer to the silverware any different than before he touched it. The homeowners never knew they were robbed until months later when they threw a big dinner party or something.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, Joel, we’re not even out of high school yet. That guy, you’re Mister Connecticut Silver Thief, was a lot older than us. He had to’ve been if he was able to buy a house a town or two over from the very township he robbed from. And, I’m sorry to burst you’re bubble, he was caught. He started lifting things from his own neighborhood and they caught him, threw his ass in jail. I don’t want to get arrested, I’d like to go to college first.”

Joel frowned at me. “Think of Mom. We don’t have the money right now to find a new place. If we can’t pay the landlord we’re going out onto the streets. Mom’s too sick for that, Sarah’s too young. I don’t want to do this any more than you do, Benj, but we don’t have any other choice.”

I knew he was right and I knew he was being truthful when he said he didn’t want to do this. We really didn’t have an option, at least not one I could see. So there we were, too poor brothers brought to the horrific task of robbing people at gun point – hell, maybe even shooting one of them – just to try to get the money we needed to keep a roof over the family’s head. I shuddered to think what a judge might think of that if we were caught.

I shut my eyes tightly, trying to tell myself that what I was about to do was completely justifiable or maybe I told myself that this was all just the most vivid of dreams. When I opened my eyes I was looking into my brother’s chocolate orbs – haunted, no doubt the mirror image of mine.

Joel put his hand firmly on the back of his neck, pulled my head forward far enough for him to kiss my forehead. He let me go, gave me a weak smile and for the first time that night I saw just how terrified he really was.

“No matter what happens I love you.”

“Don’t get sappy on me, Joely,” I replied with a smile. I clapped him on the shoulder and turned my body so that I was facing forward again. Taking a deep breath, I opened up the glove compartment and took out two pairs of black gloves, two black ski masks, and two pistols.

I had never been up to speed on guns, all I really knew about the ones that I had retrieved were that they had been my father’s before he ran out on us when we were sixteen. He told me once that these kind you had to cock before firing. I sighed as I handed one of everything to my brother, cocked my gun.

We remained in silence as we put the ski masks on, the gloves, stuffed the guns into the back of our pants – the bulk of the weapons hidden by the oversized sweatshirts we lifted from our church’s lost and found.

I turned the rear view mirror toward me and looked at the man staring back at me. I looked like a no-good crook and that’s just what I was about to become. The image in the mirror frightened me, set me on edge. Some rapists wear these kind of masks, the ones who assault and murder little girls and boys who had only seen a single digit amount of life. That sickened me. I pushed the rear view mirror away from my face.

Joel must have thought something to the same effect, for he didn’t look at himself long either.

“There’s no turning back now.”

I can’t remember which one of us said it. It might have been me, but it didn’t seem like it. Then again, it didn’t sound like Joel either. Once we put everything on it seemed like we had transformed into different people. I didn’t like it, it felt as though I had slime seeping out of my pores instead of sweat.

I can’t recall which one of us opened a door first either, but the next thing I knew we were standing outside the car in the rain, slamming the doors behind us simultaneously. We didn’t even look at each other as we started walking toward the convenience store.

There were no other cars at the pumps and that didn’t surprise me. It was almost one in the morning.

From our parked but running car to the front doors of the BP station didn’t take as long as I thought. In fact, the seconds ticket by at a supersonic speed. I was pulling open one of the two doors much sooner than I would have liked. My heart was beating so fast, so loud, I’m sure Joel could hear it from behind me.

My mouth went dry when I walked inside the building, heard the sleigh bells above the door chime. I wasn’t ready for this. I was terribly unprepared.

At first I couldn’t see anyone and that both panicked and calmed me. I thought that if no one was there we could just leave without anyone getting hurt or carted off to jail or have guilt eat away at him back home while watching the developing coverage of the robbery on the news.

But then Joel started to say something. His voice was deeper than normal because he was trying to disguise it, his words swimming around my head in a garbled mass. But then everything became clear. I turned to my right, toward the service desk. A large turning stand of novelties and jewelry was in my way, but I was still able to see a blonde woman behind the counter and Joel walking toward her with his gun raised high, right at her head.

“–the safe,” Joel ordered. “Open the safe right now and put all the money into a bag. Do it right now and don’t you even think about calling the police, pressing a button under the counter. You understand? No tricks and I blow your pretty little head off.”

He didn’t sound like the brother I knew, but I also didn’t act like myself. I was walking down the isles of food, of videos, of fancy glass figurines in cases, of toys and magazines and Maryland caps and t-shirts. I couldn’t find anyone there, nor did I at the payphone alcove or the one bathroom. I opened the surprisingly unlocked employee’s only door – no one.

I moved back out into the store and toward the counter. I walked up to Joel who was watching poor Nancy – that’s what her name tag read – sob as she shoved cash money into paper bags. I leaned my left side against the counter, hand on the gun at the back of my pants, and hoped the tremors going through my body didn’t set off the trigger and in effect shoot my ass off.

I could hear the blood rushing through my ears as I watched the deserted black macadam area housing the eight gas pumps, the road cutting past the small BP station. No cars, no joggers, not even a dog.

Nancy was heart-breaking to hear. She could hardly breathe as the cried for her life, for the man with his gun pointed at her to not hurt her. It was her brother’s birthday tomorrow, she was saying. She was going to meet her baby niece for the first time at the surprise party she and her parents were throwing him. She didn’t want to die without saying good-bye to her family, without holding little Ashley.

Joel told her to just hurry up as gruffly as he could. He was waving the gun around as he gestured for her to be quicker.

How much time had passed since we got out of the car?

The cashier stood up and set the two bags on the counter, told them through her weeping that that was all the BP station had for the week. It wasn’t much, they had had a “drought” over the past two or three weeks; not nearly as many customers as they usually had. To me it was more than enough money.

She stood behind the counter shaking like a leaf, looking at us with wide, hazy green eyes. The cat had gotten her tongue, she couldn’t manage any more words. Her eyes moved from Joel to me and back again. Over and over again, just looking at us like either one of us was about to burst into flame.

I tried to ignore her, but it was one of the most difficult things in my life to do. I had heard people pleading for their lives before on the television, in the movies, but you never know just how soul crushing it is until you’re right there, until you’re the one being asked to not kill someone. It felt like my heart had wilted, had turned to scum. I believed in God and I could feel Him looking down at me. I wanted the floor to open up and suck me down to blackness.

And then it happened.

Nancy reached for the gun.

It all happened in such a disorienting blur, but I saw Joel start to turn around with his bag in one arm and gun in his free hand. I saw Nancy reach forward, still sobbing, and take the pistol away from Joel. He wasn’t expecting something like that to happen so of course he wasn’t holding onto the gun as tightly as he should have. So Nancy had the gun now and she was pointing it at Joel, right at the right side of his face.

I don’t remember grabbing my gun, but I did with my free hand which – thankfully enough – was my dominant one.

“Just put the gun down!”

The voice that erupted from my throat was one I couldn’t recognize. I had never heard it before and I pray I never have to hear it again.

I looked at Joel and saw the sheer terror in his eyes. He didn’t risk moving, just kind of stayed frozen there with his gaze fixed solely on me.

No tremors passed through me as I turned back to Nancy, my arm out and finger poised on the trigger. This woman was ready to shoot my other half, I couldn’t let that happen. I could deal with losing my father, I had made it through that abandonment alive, but there was no way I could make it through this. I had to have Joel with me, very much unharmed. God, if I lost him there’d be no way I could go on.

“I don’t want to hurt you. Please, don’t make me hurt you.”

Nancy said nothing. She was standing rigid, holding the gun with both hands. There was something in her expressing that frightened me to the core.

My voice cracked as I started speaking again, I could feel what Joel was thinking. “You’re not going to harm him, do you understand me? I will not let you hurt him. Set the gun down now!” I was in hysterics, partly from the realization that three people could very well die tonight and partly because of what was racing through Joel’s mind.

I had already cocked my gun back in the car, all I had to do was press down with my index finger.

Joel, on the other hand, had chosen not to ready his gun before the robbery. I knew he would overlook some minor detail and my heart started banging against my rib cage when I saw Nancy’s thumb begin to cock the pistol.

The gun blast was loud enough to wake the dead, to make my ears ring. It felt like someone had thrown me into a giant washing machine. My head was swimming, heart racing and aching with the stress of fear. I almost fell over because my knees locked, but I somehow regained my balance.

I didn’t want to open my eyes. I didn’t want to see Joel lying there, dead, half his face gone. I gagged at the thought and quickly thereafter tears started rolling down my cheeks. My brother was dead, my other half gone in the blink of an eye.

My life couldn’t go on. There was no way I could live without my brother, I loved him with everything I had in me. I couldn’t bear the thought of living even more than five minutes without him by my side.

“Benj, what did you do?”

But it was more like a weak shout and I didn’t say it. I was too busy getting ready to cry over my dead brother to say anything.

Hold on.

Joel couldn’t possibly be dead if he just spoke clearly. He didn’t even sound like he had been wounded in any way other than by a deep bite of surprise and horror.

I blinked my eyes open, biting down on my tongue.

I wasn’t looking at Nancy anymore. Where she had once been standing was now empty and there was a small, black hole in the wall behind where she had once been standing. Apart from the hole – it was more like a tiny dent, actually – it was like she had never been there, like Joel had simply left his gun on the counter and – oh, God.

“Benj,” Joel said slowly. “Benj, you shot her. You’ve killer her, Benj.”

“I –” It was difficult for a moment to find words. “I didn’t mean to. I – I – She was going to hurt you, Joel. She was going to kill you dead. I couldn’t let that happen. I – Oh, my God. What did I do? Oh, my God.”

Joel grabbed his gun and looked at me. “We can’t stay here any longer, Benj. We need to get back to the car and get away from here as fast as we can. Can you do that, Benj? Can you?”

Though I was still in a state of shock over what I had just done I didn’t need to be told twice. I simply nodded and looked down, checked to see if I had everything with me. I looked back at Joel and started toward the front doors as fast as my legs would carry me.

When I reached the glass double doors I pushed one open and went out into the lot, ran under the lights hanging above the gas pumps and tried to get to the car hiding in the night as quickly as I could. I was too scared, too terrified of what I had just done to notice the rain or even register that Joel was nipping at my heels.

It had taken no time at all for me to walk from the car to the convenience store, but now even running as fast as I could it took me three times as long to travel the same distance. Eventually I did get to the car and opened the passenger door, scrambled inside and slammed the door shut behind me.

I fumbled with the bag as I set it on the floor in between my feet, nearly set the pistol off again as I tossed in the bag along with my gloves and mask. Joel did the same when he got into the car and handed his paper bag to me. I set it next to the other.

Someone was sobbing. It was me. My entire body was shaking more violently than it ever had before and I couldn’t stop sobbing.

Joel’s words I couldn’t make out, he might as well have been talking to me from the other side of a soundproof room. I could hear his voice, but not the words. I could only vaugely tell that he was driving us away from the BP station fast as the engine could manage. He slowed down at the end of the block and drove us the long way home, taking us into the next town via the highway and took wide circles back to our rented house.

If only I had stayed home and helped Sarah with her history assignment. If only I had done if for her like she had wanted me to.

Funny, the choices we make and how they can make it seem like we’ve been fucked by a train.
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Champagne Supernova