-- jacqueline malay » D4 » complete

- - jacqueline cecily malay
seventeen
female
district four
❄

appearance - -

It might occur to you that some girls are awfully lucky. You might look in the mirror and see your wavering reflection stare back at you and pick apart your own skin, scrub at your hands and face and pinch your flesh until it bruises, pulling apart every single flaw until you can't possibly find another. Then you do, just as you turn away, and the process starts all over again, because what if you've been missing a hundred tiny details that makes you so impossible to love that you should just give up on the idea of that four letter word that so much rests on? But still you go on. Every day, not knowing what you look like to everyone else, just seeing out of your own eyes. Seeing what may not even be there, but being too terrified to unsee those things. Just in case there's more to be found, and it'll make you less disappointed if you can only slip by tiny increments instead of fall down a cliff and break your neck.

I hope that sometimes you can still stroll along in parks and skip on stones over rivers without being afraid of a reflective surface. I hope you can appreciate the delicate petals that fall off a cherry blossom tree. I hope you can, because that means you can see all of the beauty in the world. The innocent rain of petals floating down to the Earth, covering it in a thousand butterfly kisses.

Look at the wings of a butterfly. Brush your fingers over the silken petals of a rose. Breathe in the juice that runs onto your hands, staining them pink. Let yourself close your eyes and you'll see her hair, the colour of golden honey spread on bread, the promise of life when you're starving. Every strand sparkles and shines in the sun. She hides behind her shield of hair, lets it tickle around her waist even though she wants to cut it short. She's a tiny little thing, tucked away from the world by her very own blanket.

Remember. As easily as you crushed that flower in your gentlest grasp, you could break this wire-framed girl in two. She is glass. She is ice.

Now don't be scared, just look at her face. Trace your eyes along her soft cheeks that curve down into a perfectly pointed chin, follow them back up to the soft flush that resides right on the bones. Just the slightest tint, the faintest hint of pink that indicates life. Her lips curve around every breath, the bottom full and plump, as if she bites on it to keep from speaking in her soft wind-chime of a voice. Her delicate nose is a thing of dreams to those in the Capitol; they empty their pockets and purses to have such a thing of beauty on their greedy faces. She deserves to be carved into a cameo with the finest quality of ivory.

Look away, before she gets too scared. Did you see how her sapphire eyes started to shine, how her chin began to tremble? Don't look too long or she'll cry, salt cascading down her cheeks like the ocean that she so loves. The water that she so fears.

She's a little mystical creature, a story told from mother to daughter and daughter to granddaughter. When children look at her they turn to each other and whisper, retelling bedtime stories that they never thought were true. That's what beautiful people do. They make you believe in the impossible.

Or maybe they just are impossible, since who can be that flawless? She is not made out of stone. She will crumble under her own weight, her legs will snap like twigs if she jumps too high and forgets her wings when she falls. Her shoulders are speckled with freckles, the dust of a thousand days under the heat of the sun. She has scars adorning her hands, dots on her thighs from where she's blistered and burnt. Lashes on her back that have faded to white lines. The Peacekeeper's doing, for they don't love beautiful things. They want to break them, break anything that could offer hope.

They want to watch her fall, not slip. They want to see her turn to dust.

Because they're jealous?

No.

Scared?

Of course not.

Disgusted?

Got it.

- - personality

The next time you happen to stumble upon a cat playing with a mouse, letting it go and scurry off before pouncing on it's tail again, trapping it between the cage of it's claws and staring at it's to-be meal with a purr, just stop. Watch how the mouse knows, how it realizes that these are going to be the last few minutes of it's life, that as long as the cat is entertained it will keep the poor thing alive. Some of them will stop playing, will stop trying to escape. It will welcome death like an old friend, and fall gracefully into it's open arms. Others will try to sink their little teeth into the cat's paws and squeak when they're batted off without a single care.

Others still will try to run, run, run, without any idea of where they're going. They'll just know that they want to get away, and won't care where they go as long as it's not there. It doesn't matter if it's safe or not. It'll feel safe, if only for a minute. They could be running right into another trap and they wouldn't care. Not for a split second of complete bliss.

She was never a strong girl. She was never brave. She was nothing but fleeting, a wisp of cloud floating away on the wind. She runs, runs from nothing and from everything, runs just because it's something to do. When she speaks her voice is a whisper, a breath like the puff of wind that flutters a sail on a dock, the gust of wind off of a sparrow's wings as it takes off into the trees. When she can't run, she hides. When she can't hide, she runs. When she can't do either, she folds in on herself and hopes to disappear.

Next time, when the stars align just right, look to the sky with a piece of sea-glass to your eyes. Oh, I'm sorry, did I say sea-glass? I meant see-glass. You can only find it when you're not looking, can only see through it when you want to be blind. Look at the world through her eyes, just for one second. Can you see them? The monsters that haunt her dreams? The girls with torn wings, the boys with their ribs exposed, threaded through with festive ribbons? Can you see how they dance and sing?

They're beautiful, aren't they?

This is her world. These shadow creatures are all her children. They climb into bed with her and braid secrets and whispers into her hair. Can you feel their breath upon your skin, the nectar-sweetness of their lips on your's? These are the things that wake her up at night and lull her back to sleep. They climb out of the ocean and parade across the beach in all their finery. They kiss her forehead and let her dream.

Try to hide from everything in the world, including the people you love. Wind your hair around your shoulders and put blinders on yourself, so you can at least pretend they're not there. Now try to keep going forwards without being able to see a thing. Can't do it?

Didn't think so.

Instead try this. Make the dark things your friends. Love them; shower them with adoration. They'll drain you of your mind, make you insane. But it's the price you pay. At least you can move forwards, even when everything around you is terrifying. Even when you can hardly breathe for fear. At least you're keeping something alive.

Terror.

It's your best friend now, your kindred spirit. Closer to you than any soul.

It's easy to be afraid of the dark. At least you can say you don't know what's there.

Being afraid of your own twin?

That requires an explanation that you cannot give.

That requires courage that you do not have.

Stay with the shadow things, darling. At least they can only terrorize you while you still breathe.

Don't forget to run.

history - -

What would you do if you woke up when you were nine and everything was turned upside down? Sure, you still had all of your little comforts. Your still had your health, or so everyone thought. You still had your home, even if it was too small for the eight people that lived in it. You had a meal on the table, even though you would never be able to divide it by the family that all shared your tiny home.

What if you learned that it wasn't eight but seven that everything had to be divided by? What if you woke up to screams and wails, to the lost sobbing of a mother whose child went missing? Nothing else. Not a single other noise, not even the shuffle of feet on the dirty floor. It's the afternoon. There should be brothers hollering, a four year old boy asking for a lunch that can't be supplied.

There is no four year old boy anymore. He disappeared. Right into thin air. He did what you had tried to do since he was born.

What do you do when you come out of bed and see footprints on the floor, and a single, tiny smudge of blood on the bed frame? Sitting there on your sister's side. A little promise. A little warning?

She would never know.

After that, she unravelled like an old sweater. Bit by tiny bit, slowly at first, then faster and faster and faster. Now there's hardly anything left. She still pretends though; people make excuses for her, call her shy, modest, sweet, even. They compare her to sugar and treats, say that she must be a breath of fresh air in a home full of such loud personalities.

Not the peacekeepers though. They stare right through you and see your treachery. They see how your mind has fallen apart, and they know that you could be dangerous. Not because you know you are, but because you don't. She tells stories, nothing more, but replay them in your mind.

Start from once upon a time and go to happily ever after. Stop. Don't repeat it, or you'll be the next on the whipping block. Happily ever after isn't allowed anymore. Happily ever after is hope.

You cannot feed the districts hope, even if you're a crazed little girl who lets the words tumble out like escaped things, creatures that kick and scream and scratch at your insides until you let them out. Even if it means one, two, three lashes on the back. Four, five, six. The peacekeepers aren't so bad, the whipping can be bared. She's never even cried out.

It makes them angry, but all they can do is hit her harder, and she can only retreat farther in on herself.

Then she goes home. She's coddled and loved. Especially by her sister. Every time her twin touches her, she can hear the gasps of her brother's lungs as they try to swallow air, his nails along the sides of a stolen boat as he tries to find purchase on the water-soaked wood. She can see where the edges cut him, where he's swatted away. She can feel rusty streaks on her skin, lines that she scrubs at until she's raw when she gets the chance.

Tick.

How much longer until someone sees how she's decayed?

Tick.

How much longer until someone cares?

Tick.

Miracles don't happen in Hell.