Wild :: [Rook]
Jun 26, 2013 22:50:32 GMT -5
Post by L△LIA on Jun 26, 2013 22:50:32 GMT -5
| [bg=F3F4F8][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,400,true][atrb=style,width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i50.tinypic.com/2d6lamw.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; padding-top:40px; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius-topright: 25px; border-radius-topright: 25px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 25px; border-radius-topleft: 25px;opacity: 1;] Mine are the feet of a mad cat, skittering around at a pace frantic enough to leave scorch marks on the cement floor. Here and there the aching yowls of panic and worry sneak out from my lungs, licking at the air as though baring my teeth and sadness in the same instant — a little bit threatening, yet inevitably pathetic. I want to haunt the shadows of the moon and prowl back alleys for scraps and promises, but there is no such thing. This place is a cage. Like an idiot, I begged for this prison, screaming obscenities and confessions until they came for me. I had to. I had to follow. It's all I know how to do anymore. I won't let you leave me, Kaelen. Not again; not even for Hell. To hold onto the last threads of my sanity, I have devised a system to tether myself to the room. I was born to live in the hollow spaces between walls, to be sealed up in darkness, but the reality of this vacant place shakes me like the idea of being sacrificed to the belly of a cathedral in the name of superstition never did. There is surely something holy in the fate of an anchorite, a blessing in exchange for the gift of a soul to the birth of a new building, but this room is no sanctuary. Instead, I have to run from one wall to the next — pressing my lips or palms against the cool, cruel surface — to reassure myself that there is still space enough for me to move. Turn after turn I find myself begging the room not to close in, warding away the fear that it is shrinking and soon everything will press in until I am encased in steel and cement. "Don't leave me here, Kae —" My vocal chords are raw and splitting as I beg at the emptiness, hating it for what it isn't, as I turn into my own echo. "— l-leave me here, Kae." A hiccup twists in my throat, hunching around his name as though trying to swallow it back protectively, wanting to hold what little I have left within the safekeeping of my own useless body. It seems like enough for now, although I don't know why. Still burning with mixed pride and self-loathing over what brought me here, I resign logic to being a double agent of my own making and race to the thin excuse for double beds on the far side of my cell. The twin shelves of metal taunt me and I hate them for it. "Come. Please, come. Please. Please please please. Come. Come, please —" All at once I am pleading with Kaelen, with the Peacekeepers I threw myself at in a fit of desperation, with the walls, with the phantom ghost of my cellmate, with myself. I know I need something, but I don't know what. My voice unwinds into a loop of incoherent self-echolalia, an endless repetition that fades into the hushed keening of defeat as undefined minutes or hours or days pass in such a frivolous way as to be a profession that time is aspiring to become me. Here dwells the déjà vu of nothingness. I must sleep because I wake screaming, the infinite gray of the room — walls, ceiling, floor — flickering with the fragmented haze of my nightmare. The cement flashes with green, leaves sprouting from the cracks as a centuries-old forest rises up in the burst and bloom of a highly questionable second. Blood stains the dead leaves of my memory as I turn just in time to witness as a Peacekeeper's bullet buries itself in Kaelen's shoulder. They are taking him; they are taking him away from me. No. My babbling wail turns to the murmmered confessions of a girl who has loved to the point of madness, scared only that my captors might sense the innocence I want to keep secreted away. "I-I-I killed them. Me. I k-killed them. I killed them all. Poisoned their liquor. Murderer. I am." Breathing is hard, but I gasp for it with determination, willing my stuttering, shuffled words to be true, even if the only person around to hear now is myself. "Kaelen Dempsey is innocent. Take m-me. Shoot me. Me. Me, me, me —" My wicked, obsessive heart knows there is no lie upon my tongue. I have swallowed all of Kaelen's guilt as though I were a sin eater, greedily claiming his faults for my own. "— is innocent. Me. Poisoned. I am. I am, I am, I am poisoned —" The whispered profession is so earnest that I don't even notice when my ever-spiraling echo betrays me. Distraction has carried me away, the door swinging out in a rush of metal that swears this is it. This is the moment when the walls collide to swallow my soul into the as-of-yet breathless mouth of this prison. Good little |
