when two {worlds} collide--Chime

I'm going crazy
'Cause there's things in the streets I don't believe
So we'll pretend it's alright and stay in for the night
Oh what a world
I'll keep you safe here with me

The ocean is a lovely thing. It whispers and calls and coos, it's been my lullaby since the day I was born and it will be until the day I die. I can feel the tides as they push and pull at my heart, at every fibre of my being. It's a harsh mistress, a hungry beast when it's been starved, but it's still just the same as the very pulse that thrums against my chest. It's dangerous and reckless, unpredictable and unforgiving, but it's a beast that can't be tamed and that's all that you should ever expect from it. I've loved it every day of my life, but it terrifies me as well. That's why I've always told my stories sitting on craggy rocks and cliffs on the beach, my toes skimming the waves as my feet kick and my hair floats around my shoulders, picked up by the salty winds that turn my cheeks soft tones of pink. There's a girl by my side, and I know I should remember her name, but it's become lost to me. Someday it will come up in a story that I tell the ocean, and maybe it'll become so enraptured that it hunts her down and accepts her as one of her own, but today she's safe. Today the ocean is satisfied to watch and listen, and I'm glad.

"Then the little boy followed the creatures to the very edge of the world, far, far away from Panem, from everything hat could hurt him, and these creatures weren't muttations, they were his very own guardians, bringing him closer and closer to something beautiful..." I could see it in my mind's eye, a world where the colours were richer and the sea was always contempt, where the winds breathed over sails without yelling and pushing them stern-over-bow to swallow them whole. A paradise where fish swam in rainbow schools so thick that you could dip your hand into a tide pool and come up with a whole writhing mess, enough to never be hungry again. Somewhere fairy tales were real and nursery rhymes always ended in happily ever after.

Somewhere not here, where I felt the Peacekeeper's sour words wrap themselves from the back of my neck to around my throat and steal the breath from my lungs before I ever heard his steps, his cheeks scratching against my back with whiskers that had been unshaven for two or three days. His breath smelled of the honey cakes that I saw in shining windows but never tasted myself. "Do you know what the punishment is for spreading lies?" I wanted to tell him that they weren't lies, that I could see it too clearly, that it must have happened, but I could feel shadows pressing against my chest and curling over my lips, my skin prickling with their cold, damp silhouettes. If I opened my mouth they'd crawl inside and steal my heart and break my ribs, so I let myself be taken away and pitied the little girl at my side who would never hear her happy ending.

"Coward," the shadows said in their eery language, something akin to a breeze as it rustled through a rosebush and stirred the thorns, curling tighter around my wrists. Or maybe that was his hand, his fingers overlapping around the fine bones that made up my arms, tapered into my pale hands. My fingertips felt as cold as ice."Go away," I pleaded through clenched teeth. All I got in return was the Peacekeeper's rough laughter and another sharp tug in his direction, even though I already didn't have enough room to move one foot in front of the other.

I knew the process by now. I knew where I'd be led (to the heart of District Four, where all the ghosts of the ocean swirled within the living in the market, wearing their grim smiles) and I knew where I'd be pushed (in front of the wooden whipping post, where rough hands would make the parched ground meet my knees, everyone around me turning into giants with their heads up in the clouds) and I knew which Peacekeepers would watch and smile and which would keep staring on as if I was nothing at all. I don't know if it's the shadows stringing my arms up and becoming my puppet master or if those are human hands, and I can't tell the difference between the murmurs of the crowd and the phantoms that only show themselves to me. I just knew to kept my head down, to stay focussed on how my frothy, pale blue skirts circled my wireframed body, on how my blonde hair turned mousy-brown at the tips as it rubbed against the dirt.

"...Punished for their crimes." That was definitely him, the man who dragged me here, who worked with the monsters that followed me around and folded around me when I went to sleep, braided themselves into my hair and curled into the spaces hollowed out by my bones. I didn't do anything wrong. I knew it, but no one else would hear it, and I still couldn't speak or they'd climb inside and I'd never be able to get them out.

I knew what would come next. They even warned me, told me it was coming as I heard the whistling leather as it arched in the air, the sharp crack as it broke against my back. He hadn't given a specific number, so I bit my lip hard enough to taste copper and closed my eyes, the shadows brushing their fingers across my cheeks and soothing me, telling me it would be over soon. Maybe they were right, but I've known them to lie when it suits them. Maybe he'll keep hitting me, over and over until his arm is too sore to do it anymore. Another crack, this time over the other side. I can feel tears sting my eyes but it's not as bad as the sharp criss-crosses of pain shooting down my spine as my skin breaks. My dress has a circular cutout in the back, fastened with a tiny button and couple of scraps of fabric. The thin fabric offers no protection from his cruelty.

I can feel myself retreating inwards with the next two hits. The phantoms are by my side now, catching my tears before they can roll off my face. That one just licked it's fingers and that one is rubbing the salt over it's skin, making it shine iridescent like a fish's scales. They'll tell the ocean soon. They'll tell the ocean and everything that lives in it. They won't be happy.

Another sharp impact on my back makes me waver somewhere between here and there, but I can feel my head fading to black as blood trickles down the ridges of my ribs.

I'm not sure if I can remember to breathe, so I beg the ocean for gills as the crowd looks away.

written by chime
template and graphics by chime
faceclaim is neda marcinkonytė
lyrics by a day to remember

I'm going crazy
'Cause there's things in the streets I don't believe
So we'll pretend it's alright and stay in for the night
Oh what a world
I'll keep you safe here with me

I don't remember anything. There is no past or present or future, just the constant impact of a whip against my back, lodging itself between the visible knobs of my spine before curling up high in the air again as it begs the Peacekeeper to make it find my skin again, hot and aching and bloody, the pale slate of my shoulders turned red as the air stopped smelling like the ocean and instead smelled like old metal as it corroded on the docks, waiting for a unfortunate soul without enough money for shoes to step on a nail and slowly bleed out. I don't know how much longer consciousness will keep it's hold on me, and I'm not even sure if I care. What does it matter anyways? We're all dying here.

The phantom things surrounding me are singing soft lullabies now, braiding my hair with beautiful lies and sorrowful compliments. I can't make out individual words, just the soft hum of their voices mixing together and turning my head impossibly lighter as something burning and sticky trickles down my wrist. The shadows are trying to blanket me under the sweet relief of sleep, but the Peacekeeper won't let me slip away to oblivion. I want to sink/crawl/stumble/fall down the rabbit hole, but I won't/can't am not allowed. I want my dreams to welcome me with open arms, the monsters wrapping their slimy, too-tight grip around my waist and calling me as one of their own, far away from the staring/flickering/there/not there eyes of my own District. Far away from the people who do not care or cannot care or will not care. The only person who cares is my sister, and she will suck the souls out of everyone in the world.

"Stop."

Somehow, my head moves up, my chin lifting towards the source of a noise that's too solid to be one of the ghosts, too shaky to be one of their voices. The ones that sound like wind and waves and thunderstorms and the darkest corners of the world. It can't be one of them because I see them all turn in the same direction as I do, can feel them press closer in on me. "Ours." I hear them hiss, staking their territory and making it obvious that they don't want to share, not with a single person in the crowd or anyone else. They want to keep me all on my own, a broken thing in a land of terrors. I'm their dolly and their puppet, everything they've ever wanted. They don't want someone else to save me and take me away from them. They don't seem to know that no one else would want a fractured soul.

My eyes don't focus for a long time, just the blurry outline of a boy standing in my vision, long lines and tanned skin and what looks like brown hair, or maybe he's just wearing a hat. From the way my phantoms and shadows stir and press even harder in on me, I decide he must be handsome, must be a threat to make them squirm and kiss my hair. "You're our's, don't forget. Don't leave us, don't run away. Don't be like the rest of them and let us fade away." I'm at their mercy, but I know every word is true. I know that I owe them for all of the wrongs that everyone else has done, for the lives that they took and the people they cast away. Some day I will be one of them, one of the forgotten and devastated, and they will bring me to their wonderland and tell me all their secrets, but for now I am a creature floating in the dark as I wait for the day that I go home.

"Stop right now or you will regret it."

The words barely entered my head before there was another sharp crack against my back. I heard something tear and rip, heard my dress split open right before I felt my skin open up and my eyes flew wide. I felt my head shake from side to side as I tried to form a word, tried to form a sentence or a command or even just ask him to run, to leave so I didn't have to sit and watch with watering eyes as the Peacekeeper turned his skin into rags after me. Turned him into one of the half-alive things that often stumbled away from a whipping, their legs barely holding their weight. I would survive this. I didn't do anything, not really, but I doubted if he stood in direct defiance of the Capitol he would be quite so lucky.

"In fact, I was just about to." His voice was a snake sliding around my throat, forming a noose that rested right at my collarbone as he waited for a reason to take away my stool and let me fall, let my spine crack in two. He could bleed me out with too many hits of his whip. He could do it and say it was just an accident if anyone asked, but it wouldn't matter. Everyone would know. They just wouldn't care, not if they didn't want to be next. "But now... But now I'm not so sure." I did not want to be the thing they were fighting over, the prize in which they could prove their own power. I just wanted to get through this alive.

"It's okay. I'm okay." Was that what I was supposed to say? I didn't know, but my voice rang out in the air anyways, over the silence that came from the crowd as they all held their breaths. This was the only time the District was truly a unified being. When a little girl was tied to a post and crying, when a man with a whip stood over her and a boy with bitter alcohol on his breath was standing up to him. The only time this place held any kind of familiarity was when they expected someone to die. "I'm not-" I meant to say that I wasn't worth it, but the phantoms hiss and whisper and tell me I am. I can't finish my sentence, not without angering them. "The shadows will keep me safe. The ocean will come for me. I'll be okay." The Peacekeeper is confused now, unsure of what I'm saying. Maybe he's afraid. He should be, he should know better than to hurt the sea's children.

All of a sudden, I feel the blood rush to my hands as my fingers hit the muddy ground, staining them the colour of bricks. "You're insane." He's laughing at me, dark, abrupt chuckles that threaten to crack open my skull. He's looking at me as if I'll infect him, as if it's a drug that I can inject under his skin to melt away his brain. He's wrong. I'm not insane. I just see the truths that everyone else is too afraid of. "You're crazy. What's the point in hitting a crazy girl? You probably liked it." He spits on the ground next to my knee, an awful sounding word tumbling out of his mouth with it. I don't know what it means, but my guardians bristle and coax me to my feet. I have to grab at a rope drenched in my own blood to stay up.

"Help me," I can hear my whisper, hear my voice like wind chimes and flute notes, feel my lips move even though I'm sure my words don't reach the crowd. I need to get away. Far, far away, before my sister sees or the ghosts get too mad or the ocean comes to show us all what she's capable of. I want to run, but the world is a carousel and I don't know how to move. "Fix me." And this time, I know it's all in my head.