let's be {alone} together :: kolt

And it's funny how days can turn into years and weeks can turn into months in two seconds flat. How the world can turn completely upside down in a matter of seconds and make your tongue stick to the back of your throat in horror. Stop beating, I ask my heart. Not so much ask, do I command it, voice as stern as I can make it, which isn't very stern at all. I think I have been staring at these concrete walls for hundreds of years. Thousands of seconds at least spent staring and not knowing what else to do, even when they threatened to cut out my tongue I didn't know what to say. Dad, why would you say that? My father had never made such threats before, and my mother wasn't as kind as she was when I wasn't here. Something about coming here made them mad at me and I don't know how to apologize because I don't know what I did.

I gave up on sorting through the files that I call my mind weeks ago, because after awhile, staring at a pile like that gets exhausting. I don't know when I lost my resolve, but I haven't been able to find it. Things seem more complicated now than they were before. Standing up takes steps, where before it was just the simple matter of pulling myself up, now I have to consider what I will exert. I have to think about the fact that I will have to do something with my feet, that I will have to do something after standing. It doesn't seem worth it. Not when it hurts so much at least. Standing hurts because I have become bruised. I have become bruised, cut, burned, everything. They asked me questions, they do everyday, questions I cannot answer. My brother prods me with metal, my aunts and uncles watch me from a one sided mirror. I think sometimes that I can hear my little baby cousin crying outside my door, but when I knock on it, desperate to get at her, my old school teacher tells me to stop. They always tell me to stop.

They tell me to speak a lot too, to tell them things that I don't know and I try to tell them I don't know but I can't. I've forgotten how to speak at all. Words, they always skittered away from me, now they never come near at all. To say the simplest sentence...I cannot. Walking is painful. Speaking is painful because I never speak fast enough for them. I am not smart enough for them because they pull things from me that I didn't mean to give and I wallow in my own guilt for days after. I don't know how long I've been here, I don't think it matters because they'll never let me out. I don't think I want them to. I can't remember what's left for me out there.

Sometimes I'll come back, walking around the room, banging on the walls until my hands are raw from hitting the concrete. That Colt wants to get out, I watch him sometimes, making his rounds around, while I try to work out if it's worth it to even stand up anymore. Everything just seems so pointless, and by the time I'm done calculating, I've lost why I wanted to get up in the first place. My mother comes to visit often, and she always bring flowers that grow into the floor and wilt within minutes. I don't mind though because they're beautiful for at least a moment. For at least a few minutes it doesn't hurt as much because my mother is there and she has brought me Gazanias. I don't know why I ever missed her because I can't remember the time when she wasn't there. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know she has been dead for years. I know they all are. In that big mess of paper on the floors of my mind I hold the information, but I can't find it. I don't think I really mind anymore, because even though it hurts to see my ghosts, they aren't ghosts to me.

Especially when he comes to visit.

Sometimes they come one at a time, other times they come all at once and I am nearly suffocating from all the people packed into one small room. It's alright though because I've missed them even if it's only been hours without them. With them, the pain is gone for a while. Sometimes they try and tell me things. They try to tell me where they went in the first place, and they say I know. Sometimes when they come, they're bleeding. Not paper cuts, but serious blood. It drips onto the floor and onto me. Once it filled up the entire room and I thought I was going to drown in blood, I couldn't stop screaming, I couldn't. Everything went black that time, and when I woke up, I was strapped down to something. It was okay though, I knew that. It meant the knives and the whip was coming soon. Routine. I could handle that, especially with my mother smoothing back my hair and telling me what a brave little boy I am being. I could even handle it when they injected me.

He will come to me the least often. He only comes when I don't think I can handle it anymore, when I consider asking them to just shoot me. He'll come and press his hand to my cheek and smile. Or he'll tell me I'm an idiot and I'll laugh. Sometimes, in the dead of night he will lay down beside me and he will hold me, wrap himself around me so tightly that I can breathe again. I will study his eyes, and never sleep again, or I'll be able to sleep for once when he's there. Other times I will hate him, I will hit him. I will slap him. Other times I can't understand why they care so much about him, why they're always asking me things. My mother asked because she cared I think, but my father always seemed to be angry, so I'd deny knowing him. My dad had never been okay with how I was. For him, I could pretend to be whatever he wanted. My mother, I'd give shy details. Stuff like how once we'd had spare time and had sat in a field. How he'd read to me as I'd played with his hands. How I thought I was in love with him. She was always patient with those, but seemed to want to know other things more, like who he talked to, where he seemed to spend most of his time.

It has been weeks and days spent here. I know because I mark the wall with little ticks after I get three meals. There are many ticks on the wall. They got me one day after I went to visit Rora in the hospital. I just made it into the woods when there were guns and I was taken, a hood on my head so I was blind. At first, they were going to just take my tongue and be done with me. Then, a voice told them that I was needed because I had information, and I ended up here, a concrete forest with no trees. There is a bed but I prefer the corner so I can watch the door. I like to be able to see who is coming to take me next. I like it best when it's my mother, but my brother isn't too bad either. My brother always looked out for me. He does it here too. My father and my teacher are the worst. My teacher still calls me stupid, my father doesn't give up on my love life. I forgive them though, I don't think they mean to hurt me. Not like he did.

I wonder if I could forgive him, but whenever he comes to me, it's like I already have. Sometimes it's not, and he looks like I've slapped him when I haven't. Sometimes it's like nothing ever even happened and he was running down the stairs looking all nervous and excited. Sometimes it looks like I never broke his heart, and it feels like he never broke mine.

Today when he comes, it's because he's pushed through the door. Which is funny, because usually he just comes in. He comes in and takes me to the place with the chair and the straps and the metal with blood. Or he just comes in to stare at me. He's never been forced in before. I should find that odd. Mostly I'm just happy to see him today, although he came yesterday, and that's far too often than normal. He looks different from yesterday too, scars are on his face, he looks ragged, at first I'm not sure if it's him. He says my name. I shut my eyes from that. My head hurts again, splitting pain piercing through me, and my hand flies up to grip my hair, to pull on it, to make something else hurt instead. The way he says my name, I didn't think I would hear that properly again. The way his voice holds each syllable. It hurts.

Confused, I open my eyes again, I blink at him. I hit my head into my palm, and the thud doesn't stop the pounding in my brain. I don't understand. Shallow joy blooms like a ripple from underneath my collarbone, and I can feel something beating again down deep in me. It hurts, searing through me as something comes to life again and I can feel my memory flashing disjointed warnings from their places in the pile, but the pile is enormous. I can't understand what it's trying to tell me. There is joy, but I see him all the time, why is there so much joy? Warily, I stare at him, and when the door closes behind him, I stay put, limbs feeling like cement blocks after today's session. I drink him in, the scars on his face, the grey sweatsuit. Off, because he's always just been in one of his t-shirts with those skinnies and the eyeliner. Never fresh faced in a grey suit like this. Never with all those scars. I don't know if this is Kaelen or an imposter sent to mess with my mind, for my father to get information from me.

Hesitantly, I ask, "K-kaelen? Th- A....are you....a-are..." helplessly, I gesture at him, Are you real?

Grass sprouts up through the floor, pushing aside the cement in such a way that I jump to my feet in surprise. I had forgotten what spring was. Flowers force them up through the floor, roses climb the walls, thorns sticking into the cement like tacks into drywall. The metal pillar by my meagre bed grows bark, and it laughs at me in a gravelly voice. The sun breaks through the ceiling of this underground world, and it presses itself up against Kaelen. I doubt I've ever been so happy to see anybody. As I struggle to my feet, he only stares, and I am afraid to step towards him because I know I haven't the strength. I press a hand against the concrete wall to steady myself and I feel the wood panelling of my home, the world fills with chatter of friends and family but where it has always come so loud, it is dull in the presence of him.

For a moment, I believe I have died. It's the only way to explain this, other than the fact that maybe I am insane. Because Kaelen looks so different from even last week, but those wounds couldn't have had time to heal in the short while it's been. I shake my head, trying to clear it. The man said that the Kaelen I knew wasn't real, that I was just seeing things. That funny little man with the bow tie and the heavy brow. He told me that I haven't been seen in the District for months, and Kaelen Dempsey is still on the loose. I told him that didn't make sense because here he was, and here I am. Yet I'm lost, oh ripred I'm lost. He's never made his presence so clear before. He comes toward me and I flinch away. I don't mean to, but it's hard not to, not after becoming so used to instant pain after the touch of another human being. Even when they heal me here it hurts. It's come to the point where I'm not sure if they're actually healing me or just trying to slow down my rate of death. And yet, when his hands hover over my cheeks, I can feel heat radiating off of them.

Trembling, I reach up and grasp one of those long spidery hands with both of mine, and press his hand against my cheek. I shut my eyes, and press myself so hard into his hand it hurts from the bruises that have only barely faded. I don't mind though because for him, any pain he gives me will always be worth it to me. What happened here is that I lit a match late one night and instead of trying to extinguish the fire that started, I let it burn me right up. I am a creature of dust and sorrow, things to be swept away with wind and time but I cannot help spreading myself all through a room, feeling my heart crumble away with my life passing. I feel depriving sadness, a deep longing, and it has rested in my chest since I left, like so much water that I am drowned by it. It's alright though, I don't think I was ever meant to survive this.

I am so cold, I have been frozen, and he has always come to me colder still, draining me away and I am tired all the time, but he has heat, and it is beautiful, I press myself into his hand, drinking him in, the scent of him. Woolen sweaters, cigarette smoke, and fall. There are new smells too, and they hurt me physically because I know I caused some. I can't look at him, I can only be in two places at once, and I have found myself stranded in twelve separate places at this moment. I am overwhelmed and underwhelmed. I am whelmed. I cannot think at all, I float in this moment of him physically being here, and I am excited for my mother to finally meet him. I feel like I have been given my last meal before they finally do me in, I'm on the edge, I know. I have been for a long time, all it took was a little push to get me to my tipping point. All it will take is one more. Then I could be free.

He calls me an idiot and I grin against his palm, I feel my lips spread against skin, and the warmth of happiness falls into me. I feel my roots screaming in happiness, finally nourished for the first time in weeks. That was what I had wanted to hear, wasn't it? I had wanted him to call me his idiot. Not with that pain filled voice though. But didn't I? In confusion, I pull away from him. Wasn't I mad at him, didn't I hate him? Didn't I hate him for not noticing me? Why hadn't he noticed what was happening to me, I can't remember why he didn't seem to care. His proximity is suddenly terrifying and I slide down the wall, falling to my knees, I stare into the face of a sunflower. My mother used to loved those. Used to? She still does. She said they were wonderful because they always looked for their sun, and would always face them. They watched the sun all day and when the sun went to sleep, they loved it so much that they did too. She told me to find my sun one day.

I rest my head against him, unable to stay away, as long as I don't have to look into those eyes. I can feel myself ticking away, something starting again now that I have him here. It's like his presence has restarted me, I can feel the air stiffen. "I..I ju-st wanted....I wanted to...I wanted to see..you....walk a-a-across the sky." I eel like my tongue has betrayed me. everything does if you live long enough to let it I suppose. I can't stand to not be able to tell him what I feel, but I'm not sure if I do feel after so long without sunlight and it feels like I am dying every day and I'm not sure if it's worth it if everything is spiders. I can feel myself decay and it sickens me, I can feel my body dying on me. They told me to tell them where he was and I didn't yet he's here anyway. I must have failed him yet again.

I'm in the kitchen, and I have my hand on the table. My head pounds and the wood breathes beneath my hand. I'm watching him break. Replaying it again and again, I can see the exact moment in his eyes when I went too far and we became an irreparable thing. I chuckle, and it isn't the same malice that I felt before that night Yet the night is around me, and I vaguely know that I am in a cell, but here I am too, locked here, in this moment. There is a fire going in the living room, but I am so cold. I am so unbearably cold, and there is his hand, reaching for me. I smile softly, and apologize, "....I...I...have have failed. You. Again."

Vines are trying to force the roof up. I can see it from the corner of my eye and it bothers me. Those vines should know that we need this roof to be warm under. It feels like it's raining, a torrential downpour in here, I can barely hear Kaelen. I'm getting tired too. He doesn't usually stay for so long and I struggle to put together why he's here again. When I really saw him last, I know it wasn't on good terms. The kitchen clock loudly ticks just above my head from it's place on the wall, as if it's trying to tell me something. Something about how time is running short, we've got little left. They haven't come for me yet today, but they will soon. The ghost, the silver metallic sharpness of words sliding over my skin and cutting. Or will they still? Now they have who they want.

The table in the middle of the kitchen floor is made from a solid oak and I've wanted to sit on it since I saw it. It's the comfortable looking kind, and I can feel his lips ghosting over mine. It feels like home to have him so near. Yet my throat tightens, and I almost shout at him, I want to yell at him. I wanted to yell at him all those weeks ago. Uncertainly, I place my palms against his chest, tension there, ready to push him away. Yet, I cannot. He might hit his head on the table, and I care about his head. I do.

There are things I am supposed to remember, and I cannot. I feel like everything I thought I knew is flying away. I can feel the corpses of my past trying to tear through my skull and show me their faces. Horror is a common sight in here, and I can taste it in the water when they let me drink. It's constricting, making breathing difficult. I want the sun to come out, but it's raining. The sunflowers will wilt. If I cry, it will be pointless. Everything seems pointless now. I think I only wake up every morning to make my mother happy when she comes to visit.

I'll be nineteen soon but I feel like I have been alive for thousands of years. I can remember seeing the first rock being formed, and hear the sounds of the first drums of war. I can taste salt on my tongue and the first sunrise under my eyelids. My body feels older, battered and bruised. It is tired now, of everything. I want to shut my eyes and never open them again. I want them to toss me out into the ocean so I can float off the edge of the world. Maybe I will cross the River Styx and meet the god of Death face to face. My family would miss me if I die. I cannot do that to them. So I fight on.

Then there is this too. The pockets of time when he is here and I am not so alone. When he is here and I can touch his skin and know him again. I can forget my anger for this, fresh as it still is. I can forget everything for just a moment with him. Everyone always says that there is a soul mate out there. You are connected by a red string of fate, and when you find them, you'll be drawn to them. Life is just you getting closer and closer. I was lucky, I think, to find my soul mate so young.

He pulls my eyes back to his, and I stare up at him, obediently. I am good at doing what they tell me here. It hurts less when you do what they say. I guess I'm just used to it now because I've been doing what they say for a long time, now as best as I can. They tell me they don't want to hurt me. They have to because I am bad and I don't tell them everything. I tell them I told them everything. They don't believe me. I act like I hate him. They don't believe me. I think it's because of the time I cried out for him. (He didn't come.)

I've never seen so much sorrow. He looks like a sandstorm. A soft, slow one, where the grains seem to be dancing with the wind. I've missed his eyes.

I will not waste this luxury. Softly, I press my lips to his. The very first time I kissed him, it was hunger for something I'd never had. It was feral. Now my lips are hesitant, and I am almost afraid. There is a queer feeling in the pit of my stomach like hundreds of butterflies battering the walls. I won't let them out. Not yet. They don't get to go out for at least another half hour. Their feeding time is soon. When I am hungry they batter the walls, trying to break loose. They frighten me. Not this time. Now it is like they are whipped into a frenzy. When my lips brush against his, they tingle like they've been touched by electricity. My fingers slowly curl, until I clutch his shirt. Lowering my head I try and make myself smaller, to push myself into his very being. It's harder than it was before. I don't fit as well.

My voice comes out low and calm in a before the storm way, "I......too." I too. I love him too. I feel like a kid in class again, waving my hand in the background. Me too, please. Me too.