Wraith Subtraction // Cricket vs Digitamole Day 5

she's such a
c h a r m e r
oh no
she's always
l o o k i n g a t m e

Staring into the eyes of a viper wasn't scary before I came to the Arena — although it is quake-mouthed; echo-tongued; canyon-eyed — and that hasn't changed. The air seethes with the voices of its hellion brethren until my every exhalation is humming along, raspy sighs creeping out between the smallest gaps in my teeth. These are not threats passing between us, but memories of what we've been together despite the distance of our lifetimes. The snake's eyes are reflections of the cliff-side rising up around us and mine are lowered in respect as I crouch to meet his shatter-gaze. I have met him before, when the songs of my almost-father still haunted my footsteps. His name is Homegiver. His name is Freaksalvation. His name is Ringmaster.

Family is something I've made for myself, disregarding bloodlines as any words my sister might ever have attempted to follow me out the door with became twisted in her throat — as useless to me as they are to her. Halcyon never tried to keep me any more than I clung to her, however. Or our parents. I only ever went home when I left our house, the circus-stripes of the Big Top tattooed across my shadow. Wolf howls from a human throat, the gleeful scream of a masochist's most pleasurable pain, and bees... bees like a second flesh or the still-beloved lungs of the dying. These were the voices of my siblings —

("Wraith subtraction! Ventricle start forgiveness! Gave stitching heave already done as relocation lilacs mourned can vacant to hammer shun." Halcyon wails from forever-away and even if her mouth were pressed to my ear, unleashing the most wicked rage of her disconnected language, I still wouldn't hear: Awful liar! I hate you! I hope you die so I can stop pretending you haven't already left me.)

My breath cracks, snake-speech splitting into a broken glass cough that picks the air to pieces. It's enough to destroy the slow tick of time that was holding everything still, causing me to reel backwards with a THUD that shakes the ground as the viper twists away. The easy way it leaves hurts more than a bite would, proving how it is missing the one thing I truly left back in District Two. Despite the way they too are slipping from my grasp in this land, both the sinister snake charmer who gave me a piece of his stage — of myself — and the feral rush of my sister with her shuffled words still possess at least a distorted fragment of what the elusive beasts within this pit do not: optionless loyalty.