dahlia elizabeth black ❂ one

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INFORMATION

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BIOGRAPHY

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Miss Cordelia 


"What does death taste like?"


"How can anybody ever know?"

"But blood, blood tastes bitter, like a house with too many bricks and not enough cement, or like a bonfire that refuses to stay alight and simply glows until somebody tosses a glass of wine at it; and even then it only fizzes, surrounded by the shouts of people who think alcohol has more value to it than warmth."

"That's different, though. You can touch blood, you can see it."

"You can shake hands with death."


"Not on your own terms, Dahlia."

"Try me."

"Alright. What does he look like?"

"Death looks like the edge of a waterfall, so steep the plants can't grow. He looks like that drop in your stomach when you realise you've locked the keys inside the house and must spend the next four hours sitting in the rain. He's the space between knowing and forgetting, when you're clinging to something that isn't really in your mind anymore. Only, you can still feel it."

"Nobody can look like those things."

"Have you seen him?"

"No, but-"

"Then don't tell me that I'm a liar."

"Fine. I'm sorry. Is there anything you wanted to talk specifically about in our session today?"

"When can I go home?"

"You know that isn't an option."

"Not now. But when?"

"Once your condition improves. Once your parents are able to care for you."

"I can care for myself."

"Look at your arms, your legs, your neck."

"I'm not going to die. I can't die."

"What was going through your mind when you tied that rope around your neck?"

"I was thinking about how many times my sister has done it. How the first time she tried, my father didn't shout for a week, and we all ate dinner together that night. And - I was wondering what it might feel like to have hands around your neck. Maybe, if someone else did the killing instead of myself, I'd die? And I was thinking, perhaps I should test that. Perhaps not."

"Why?"

"I don't want to die."

"If you don't want to die, why the pills, the knives, the ropes? Why did they have to restrain you at the train station the other day? Why do you gravitate to the edge of cliffs, smoke every cigarette you can get your hands on, prod at the snakes we find in the garden? These are suicidal tendencies, you know that."

"If I die, then I was alive all along."

"You don't think you're alive?"

"If I was, surely I'd be dead by now.

"You've been lucky, that's certain."

"You call it luck. But you call it luck when you find a plant with one more leaf that usual, when you wear a special pair of socks and win ten dollars in the lottery. You cried out luck when the rain cleared the time we planned a picnic, and when the kittens of the stray cat that found a home in our roof all died before we had to deal with them. Your idea of luck doesn't match mine."

"Call it what you will. Your heart is beating."

"And yet your godforsaken meds haven't fixed me yet."



Luxe


My sister, Luxe, is broken. She's silent and beautiful, and everybody loves her. Except, perhaps, our parents. Two years older than me, she has always seemed like walking on ground hollowed out by tree roots. You can hear your own footsteps as echoes as you cross her, reminding you that there is a complex and twisted world right below you. It's beyond your reach, older and wiser than you'll ever be. Stronger, too. Like me, she tears away at her flesh and digs deep into her skin as though trying to find her bones. She does it for another reason, though. She doesn't want heads to turn and theories to be confirmed. She doesn't want to live forever. In fact, she doesn't want to live at all. I don't try to understand. It's alright that I don't. 


"Are you sleeping, Luxe?"

"Not anymore."

"Can I sleep here tonight?"

"What's wrong with your bed?"

"It's the shadows; they're too dark."

"Turn on the light, then."

"They're inside my head."

"Fine. Breathe quietly, though."

"I won't breathe at all."



Madeline


I don't want my pills. There are many - a rainbow of blacks and blues, reds and purples. They doll them out to me in tiny boxes after breakfast, as though they're presenting me with a gift rather than a sour-tasting capsual that gets stuck in my throat. I want to feel the pain, anyway. Numbness, it makes me wonder all the more how much my medical records lie; not feeling any pain does nothing to test how much I can endure. It's become routine, now, to slip them into my lap when only Cordelia is looking - (you can still see the burns etched into her cheeks as though she was blinded only yesterday.) S

Sometimes, I take them in handfuls all at once, sitting on my bed in the darkness. They're painkillers; I sleep. Other time, Luxe comes knocking at my door and I feel almost as though I am at home again. Only instead of a face filled with tears and an empty stomach, she comes with straight lips and sadness reflecting in the whites of her eyes. She begs for the medicine. Occasionally, I'll hand them over. It's not like anything inside of me truly needs them. They stop the pain and yet do not stem the flow of blood. Certainly, they can never stop my heart from pulsing blood through my veins, each beat a mocking choir filled with voices singing songs, promoting a holiday I don't believe in. 

Mostly, Madeline bribes me for them. She'll have whatever I've got - on the mornings that they give me the strongest stuff, usually right after an accident, she's clamoring for them before they even touch the bare skin of my palm. I resist for the sake of what she has to offer, not because I care if she gets them. And so I get to fall into step behind her, between Thalia and Abigail, leaving Luxe alone. She's doing her very best to leave me behind - my sitting five seats down from her at dinner surely won't weave tangles into her hair. Our family has been fragile for long enough for me to consider it well and truly broken by now. (Isn't everyone in this house spintered and split, bent out of place and twisted well beyond repair?)

"Hand them over!"

"What'll you give me?"

"My first born child, I don't know. Just do it."

"Whatever I want?"

"Anything."

"Anything it is."

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COMPLETE

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