dinner for one {rene/elena}

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rook
Veteran Member

2,361 POSTS

Pronouns: he/him
last seen Sept 26, 2023 15:42:53 GMT -5

who needs another thing to be sad about?

dinner for one {rene/elena} Sept 10, 2013 9:52:49 GMT -5

Post by rook on Sept 10, 2013 9:52:49 GMT -5

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rene rallis

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shake my tree, where's the apple for me?
tickle my feet with the enemy
no point laughing if you don't know why
i phone my love just to hear her smile[/center]

The hand-painted crockery is placed neatly atop the white doily. A white chicken breast elegantly lies in the middle of the plate, dressed with broccoli and cauliflower mirroring each other on opposite sides of the dish. A white dressing, presumably cheese or white sauce, is drizzled over the top. I sit in the grande wooden chair and stare at the food she has given me. I fidget whilst she arranges a knife and fork either side of the plate, and fills a wine glass with fresh water.

"I, uh..." I cough, "I brought my own knife." I half-grin, swatting away the tiny metal knife from its matching set and slamming my own dagger into the wood of the table. It quivers, the point digging into the oak. I avoid her gaze, tilting my head and deciding what I think about the meal Elena has given me. Most of the food I eat is out of a tin, so this is certainly higher than my usual standards. Not that I care. Food is food.

I grab the chicken breast with my right hand and pick it up. The sauce trickles down onto the plate and over the tablecloth. I stare at it with mild fascination, before taking a large, meaty bite from it. Grease runs down my chin and stains my plain white shirt - The one Elena gave to me to replace my blood stained clothes. I take a second bite of the chicken, my elbow resting on the table. I swig the water and meet Elena's gaze.

"Uh..." I take a handful of broccoli and take it off my plate, putting it on the tablecloth, "I don't like green vegetables." I add a quick smile before munching on some cauliflower and finishing the chicken. I cough again, more violently this time. My chest is tight and the bandages she's wrapped around me make me feel constricted and restrained - Almost claustrophobic. I down the rest of the water and finish off the cauliflower. The plate is empty, as is the glass. The heap of broccoli has soaked into the cloth. I take the doily-thing and use it to clean my face.

"You, uh..." I lean back in my chair, plucking my knife from the table and picking at my teeth with the point.
"You not eating?" I notice her just standing there, judging me. Do I care? I find a strand of chicken stuck between my incisor and my canine, and swallow it gratefully. My complexion was quite pale, but a warm meal could do wonders.

I slice at the air in front of me, carefully trying to pull at a tear. Not happening.
"It just... I can't..." I mutter, closing one eye and slashing gently at the air in front of me. My tongue sticks out awkwardly as I preoccupy myself with the impossible task, "Almost... Just..."
Nearly.

girl in the queue, got an eye on you
think you're in, and she's looking for sin?
yes you're not wrong, she wants to know what's in your pocket
sing that song, dig it all night long

lyrics: beady eye - "second bite of the apple"
notes: welcome back onyx[/size][/blockquote]

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an hourglass is just a glass with sand inside

Onyx
Capitol Resident

1,169 POSTS

Pronouns: she/her
last seen Jan 3, 2023 15:20:14 GMT -5

in between somewhere and nowhere

dinner for one {rene/elena} Nov 20, 2013 17:33:32 GMT -5

Post by Onyx on Nov 20, 2013 17:33:32 GMT -5

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BOOM, BLAST AND RUIN, GIRL, CAUSES DISTRACTION
YOU'RE ROOTED IN HELL

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I was eight when I made my {chameleon;} connection. My father had been reading to me from one of Mama’s history books: ‘An Encyclopedia of Extinct Genera and Species of the Old World’ when I pointed to an illustration of a lizard with eyes like mothballs and a spiralling tail. Dad smiled, pronouncing its ancient binomial: Chamaeleo dilepis so I could mumble it in repetition. “There was something magical about these lizards, Lena,” he explained to me, “they’re one of the only species of reptile that scientists managed to clone before they became extinct. Now all we have to remember them by are paintings like these…” I sucked in the information like air, revelling in the symbols that flitted across my vision, adding this new glyph to my collection. One sentence made me frown, and I pointed it out to him. “This can’t be true, can it? ‘Chameleons consume only water, which was believed to strengthen their ability to camouflage effectively.’” The long words came out slightly garbled by my twisted teeth, but father nodded, impressed by my pronunciation for such new words. “Pre-Panemites thought chameleons could survive by only eating air, and it made them practically invisible. That’s why they were so hard to track- it’s logical, see? The truth was that they were so endangered that it was very rare to find one, but now that we have no idea of their diet, we treat this old assumption as fact.” I loved the way that father spoke to me like I was an adult, treating me with respect and giving me this knowledge of the world before the Dark Days.

Suffice to say, I was dumbstruck. Chameleons, these hideous, mesmerising creatures, ate nothing, and their reward was invisibility. And if they could do it, why couldn’t I, too? The irrationality meant nothing to me. If scientists were allowed to experiment on me, surely I could experiment on me, too. And I would have given anything to have been invisible, normal for just one day. So, slowly, carefully, I reduced the amount I ate. It started as simply leaving the last cut of meat, the last spoonful of soup, the last sliver of bread, but soon I was eating only half portions and then skipping meals altogether. My mother didn’t worry (I forced it by putting pebbles in my underwear when she weighed me for my doctor’s reports, and tying my dresses tightly with ribbons) and for my part it seemed to be working. It seemed to me like my shadow was fainter, and I made less noise as I came down the stairs in the mornings. Soon, it was more visible that I was more invisible in other ways: I could fit through smaller spaces as if parts of me weren’t there, and I saw the world slightly faded and blurred, which was a sure sign that I was becoming obscured from reality. The experiment – the hypothesis – was proved. Until the next Capitol appointment. The doctors and all their assistants were horrified by my appearance (or, as I thought, my disappearance) and immediately began fretting with scales and tape measures and statistics and equations until they came up with the results. {hourglass; alphaomega; baby; ant} showed me the truth: I had spent all this time starving myself, and soon there would be no way to recover. I was going to die. The poor nine-year old realised this truth like a blow to the sternum, shattering my confidence in the outcome of my experiment. All I could do was whisper, “don’t tell mama.” My only aim from then on was to recover, and chide myself for my naïveté.

A decade later, and I’m stuck in the same mindset of irrational recklessness that I was that year.

Ever since I first saved the life of Rene the filthy, stinking, vicious street rat, my life hasn’t been the same. It started as fleeting thoughts, when {snake;} came up in my mind. Then dreams, of his stench, of his chest against my side, of the gashes on his back, of the fingers in his jar… Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to find him again. My logic, unreasonable at best, told me that the only thing to do was to wait for him at the last place we’d seen each other. Like my safety-minded father always told me to do if we go separated at public events. So I took my essentials – toothbrush, hairbrush, night robe, slippers, lantern, broom, pocket watch, bedding, tablecloth, placemat, cutlery and crockery, seat cushion, salt and pepper and everything else totally necessary for a comfortable dinner every night, waiting for the inevitable return of my stranger.

Sneaking out was the hardest part. As a girl who is blinded, literally, by mistruths, making excuses for my absences was immensely difficult. It came to the point where the only way to escape was to storm off to my room to eat dinner alone, and then shimmy out of the spare room’s window with supplies tied to my back. However, the effort I went to never seemed to be in vain. One day, Rene would return. This evening was no different to any of the others. I arrived just after sundown in my weekend best after a hasty departure from the tension of my home. Chicken breast packed for dinner, with gravy and vegetables in a small pot next to it. As always, I laid the table precisely, flattening the white cloth and straightening the doily on top. Then, I set my cutlery out like a proper lady should and served myself the meal. It took a sniff, and the slightest {snake;} of recognition to know that something – no, a very certain someone – had come to disrupt my solitude.

After the stink, thick over the mouth-watering aroma of my home-cooked supper, came the groaning, and then I knew I couldn’t be hallucinating. Sharply, I stood, racing for the source of the noise, following my nose, my ears. And there he was. Just as I found him the first time, lying bloody and stunned on my camp’s threshold. Rene.

Dragging him in was easier than it had been the first time, and I wasn’t as repulsed as I peeled off his tattered shirt and began to dress his gashes. I was prepared with supplies, and I had steeled myself mentally for this as well; playing out a worst case scenario over dinner every evening I’d been here. I gently pressed the bandages onto the cleaned wounds the way my father had taught me in his many first aid lessons and replaced the shirt I’d removed with one I’d brought with me on one of my earlier nights out. Crisp and smart, it looked comically mismatched with his tattered jeans and the rest of his appearance. It was no time at all before, with a grunt and a gasp, my companion was animated again. I suppressed the smile that threatened to overtake my features and instead busied myself with helping him up to the table. With good foresight, I had put his knife with my belongings on the far side of the room, but after he grabbed my collar with unexpected force and snarled for me to fetch it for him, I realised it was a hopeless idea from the start. Almost as if he was bonded to that weapon with something more than history, he treated it like it was his soul. {danger; evil;} buzzed around my brain, but I swatted them aside and took the seat opposite him, inviting him to eat.

My companion now eyes his plate, licked clean but with evidence of what it bore before stained onto the tablecloth around it, warily, and idly waves his knife around. That knife. With a suppressed shudder, I recall the bite of its blood-tinged edge against the corner of my jaw. If I had been anyone but me, his creditor who saved his life that time ago, I know he would have slit me open ear to clavicle without even blinking. For someone who seems to spend so much time turning life problems over in his own head, his moral compass is horrifically skewed. He waves and stabs his knife in front of me like he’s trying to catch some invisible target and I flinch away. The abrupt action makes my stomach growl noisily, and I try to mask it with a cough. “N-no-” I begin, trying to reassure him now he's seen my empty place, but no sooner has the lie left my mouth than letters and symbols are angrily flashing in front of my eyes. I recall the earliest conversations with doctors and psychologists, that really betrayed the gravity of my... issue:

"It's not that she prefers the truth, per se," the White-Coat of the day explained, "it's almost as if it's impossible for her to do so. The brain activity peaks here-" his index finger brushed a seemingly random portion of a scan of the fucked up organ inside my skull, "just where most of her synesthesia stems from. The act of lying- no, even the thought of deliberately straying from the truth, would cause a spike in electrical impulses here that it might cause her mental, and even physical distress." I hated that, how the scientists never used my name, like I was a sick dog on a vet's table, not a human being - and an extraordinary and unusual one at that.

They were right, though, no matter if they spoke directly to me or not. That "no", generated by impulse and realised with dread, shoots through my vision on a cloud of white meteorites and hot razor blades and I instinctively clutch my temple. A whimper leaves my lips; the throbbing in my forehead so intense that I don't even think about what Rene might make of all this. I've been playing chameleon all night, and now I suffer the consequences - shaking, clenched fists, gritted teeth, and the curious, if not somewhat bemused attention of an unlikely and undesirable audience.

ooc: i adore you and i hope this is better and yay muse!!!!!

Last Edit: Nov 20, 2013 17:34:07 GMT -5 by Onyx

someday we'll be drinking with the seldom seen kid

rook
Veteran Member

2,361 POSTS

Pronouns: he/him
last seen Sept 26, 2023 15:42:53 GMT -5

who needs another thing to be sad about?

dinner for one {rene/elena} Nov 20, 2013 18:36:02 GMT -5

Post by rook on Nov 20, 2013 18:36:02 GMT -5

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ÆSAHÆTTR

this is our decision
to live fast and die young
we've got the vision
now let's have some fun

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She smells like peppermint. Her conduct is perfect. The way she holds herself is above everyone else. When I think about it too much, it makes me angry. Not all of us have the privilege of toothpaste and chewing gum. The shirt she has given me in place of my rags is pristine white, or at least it was when she first slipped it over my torso when I was unconscious. Since then it has become blotched in chicken-grease and blood. I could care less, but acting like I don't care is getting me free meals.

She must see me like a pet. That makes me angry, but I keep it bottled up inside as I sit fidgeting with my knife, thinking about all the different ways to slit her throat. She is a witness. She found me bleeding in the alleyways with a knife in my hand. She could have turned me over to the Peacekeepers for violent crime or attempted murder, but she didn't. She brought me food and dressed my wounds and all these weeks I've asked myself why? She is a witness, but a silent witness. The big questions is how long will she stay silent?

She looks increasingly uncomfortable around me. She lets out a whimper and my eyes shoot to hers immediately. Was she containing a scream, then? I grip my knife tightly, but my eyes are locked on hers even tighter. She wouldn't give me up. She's making all this effort to keep me alive, and she has no reason to call for help. If she wanted, she could leave, and I'd never know where she lived, who she truly was, or even what her full name was. She'd just be another face that I would look out for, but never find.

She won't do that, though. She's got this morbid fascination over me, and I'm struggling to figure out why. We're from two different worlds - One a sterile world of truths, the other a harsh reality of consequences. Even my knife couldn't tear down the barrier between our lives, but somehow she's made it through to my world. To my hell. She should go back to her world, back to her tidy house and her neat table etiquette. She doesn't belong in my world any more that I'd belong in hers.

Two lines are carved into my back, again. Last time we met, it was the same. I'd won my knife fight, but only just. Three lines down the opponent's back is how you win, and I've come dangerously close to losing in succession, now. The price of losing is a finger, and I have the bastard's index secured in the jar in my pocket. You could say that the price of a narrow victory is just as dangerous. The blood loss from two deep wounds has killed men before, but not me. I keep surviving. I've tried to die, but death has spat me back out.

The land of the dead. That world is connected to all of our worlds. I visited it, briefly, before Elena brought me back to life with her damn resuscitation. Death didn't like that. He scarred me for trying to escape his grasp, and now I'm more frail than I was before. I decided to stop with the knife fighting, because I have become so weak that some of these fights are death sentences. I can't help it though, I'm addicted, unbeaten. King of the slums, Rene Rallis. Godkiller. Æsahættr.

"I'm from District Two..." I say suddenly, having broken eye contact with her a few seconds before and getting lost in my own thoughts. If I'm going to be her pet, and she's going to be my guardian, she better get to know me. I stare at the point of my knife, trying to see where it ends and the world begins. The point is infinitely small, but I see it so clearly. It is beautiful.
"-Originally..." I add, saying the world slowly and pronouncing each syllable.

I suppose I owe her an explanation. Last time we met, I tried to take her fingers. She brought me back from the dead and I threatened her. Fear keeps mouths shut. That was the logic behind it. Logic? Since when did I become logical? I've always been a man of instinct. She doesn't even know why I lie on the edge of death every week.

"I-..." And there's a big pause as my eyebrows raise. I think I've found a tear in reality. I quickly try to open it, slashing at the air with my knife, but I fail.
"...Participate in competitive knife fights, for money." I shove my hand in my pocket, grabbing a fist-full of coins and slamming them on the table without so much as taking my eyes off my knife.

"I have so much money that I don't know what to do with it..." I lick my lips, still dry. I need another glass of water, but I'm too captivated by the point of my knife to do anything but talk. I make eye contact with her now.
"You once asked me who I was," I shrug, "Well, I'm an addict!"

It's shit, but I really am addicted to cutting peoples fingers off.

forget about our mothers
and our friends
we're fated to pretend
to pretend

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