Ballad of Mona Lisa Chap1

Title: Ballad of Mona Lisa: Chapter 1
Fandom: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Song Fic, Supernatural, Drama
Word Count: 1000ish
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: None right now
Warnings: Brendon dies, sorry for the spoiler

He was dead, he knew it as he lay there on the bed, his back propped up against the head board, his chin resting on his bare chest. Blood trickled from his neck and pooled in the hollow of his collar bone. He could still see, he could still hear the ambient sounds around him, and he was still sitting there in that bed but he was dead. He hadn't tried to move yet, but he knew his body would not obey him. He felt nothing, just numbness. She moved from the vanity across the room where she had just reapplied her lip stick, not that his blood hadn't already died her lips a garish shade of red.

Her thumbs blocked out his vision for a moment as she closed his eyelids, but when she removed her hands he could still see. He was simply sitting in the same place his body was, no longer seeing with his eyes but instead with his spirit. But why was he still here? Why wasn't he at St. Peter's Gates or walking the shady paths of the Dark Wood on his way to Hell?

She was still hovering over him, her hands resting on her hips as she tilted her head to the side in contemplation. "Maybe I should've kept you around," she seemed vaguely sorry for a moment before she shrugged off her seeming regret and left him alone in the richly decorated hotel room, the gas lamp on the dresser still burning.

He sat for a moment in the red glow of the velvet room wondering what he should do now. Was it simply a matter of time before he proceeded on to the after life, or was this it? He willed himself to move and he stood up from the bed. With what would've been a shakey breath, he tentatively glanced over his shoulder at the bed. His body hadn't made the move with him. He turned to face it and then through himself onto the form. Nothing happened. He simply landed through his body and onto the bed. There was no returning now. He was stuck as a spirit.

He rolled over onto his back, off of his body, and rested on the bed for a moment. Strange, he thought, he could still feel the texture of the sheets and he wasn't passing through the bed. It was still firm for him. Yet he passed through his body...

He closed his eyes and relaxed, perhaps... perhaps this was something he could control. He rested on the bed and then began to think of it more like water, something he could move through. He opened his eyes again and it was not the ceiling that he saw, but the bottom of the bed, the planks that held up the mattress were now above him. He could pass through objects, it seemed, by expecting to. Perhaps that was why he could pass into his body. "Now if I could only control it," he mused.

He rose from the floor and looked down his soul half surprised that he could see it, he seemed to have willed himself dressed already as well which was of some small consolation. He stood for a moment and looked back at his body as the realization finally started to sink in. "I'm dead..." He looked back at the door where the woman had disappeared through. "She killed me!" Panic seeped in as he realized that his experimenting with trying to get back to his body was not just an objective subject of interest, it was now his reality.

He clutched his head in agony as he sank to his knees, sobs of panic and fear ripped free from his mouth. He stayed there in that state until the door opened again. She was back. Fully clothed now in the rich, yet revealing black dress she was known to wear in the saloon and brothel. The same dress that had seduced him to his death. Her eyes searched the room before it landed on a purse resting by the vanity.

He rose behind her as she walked across the room. "You!" He screamed. "You whore! You murdering whore! You killed me!" He moved to stand in front of her, getting in her face and trying to grab her attention with his wrath. But she didn't see or hear him. In vain he screamed at her. He walked to the nightstand, reaching for the lamp to throw it at her. But his hand passed uselessly through it. In frustration he tried again, but to no avail. He could pass through walls and lie on beds but he couldn't pick anything up. Enraged, he ran at her trying to grab her, hit her, shake her, make some kind of physical contact. He failed in all his attempts.

In exasperation he stepped away from the woman, watching in confusion as she drew a knife from her purse. With a sense of finality and professionalism she approached his body where it still lay, propped up, on the bed. "Oh! What are you going to do with that, huh?" He shouted, "I'm already dead if you can't see that!" She firmly grabbed his body's head with one hand and drew her other hand, holding the knife, across his neck effectively slitting his throat. "Can't have anyone thinking a vampire killed you, now can we?" She murmured distractedly, wiping the blade clean on the sheets before putting it back in her purse.

She straightened her blouse and licked any blood that remained off her fingers before walking out of the room. She paused briefly at the door, her hand resting on the knob and looked back at her dead patron. She was regal the way she stood there, the warm light of the lamps reflecting dully on brass buckles of her corset. "Nothing personal," she said. And then she was gone.

He stood alone in the room, frozen by indecision, not knowing what to do next. There was no way he could let her get away with this, but there was nothing he could physically do. No one could hear him, and he couldn't even pick up a pen to write it. He noticed a paper left on the nightstand, a train schedule for trains leaving Chicago. He memorized the time that was circled and gasped in surprise at the familiar destination she had chosen, he couldn't do anything now but he wasn't going to let her leave his sight while there was still a chance for justice.