the +pros+ and -cons- of breathing :: circe
Feb 12, 2014 19:24:44 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2014 19:24:44 GMT -5
K A E L E N D E M P S E Y Loss does something to your perception of time. Every second feels like an eternity, and yet days can pass in the blink of an eye. I've lost track of where I'm going or how long it's taken to get there. I don't have a watch, don't have a map, and if the truth is to be told I don't really care much exactly where or when it is I wake up screaming. There's only a vague sort of dissatisfaction that I wake up at all. Hunger eventually gave in after I left the Detention Center, killing any plans I might've had to starve myself to death. With no weapons and my trapping skills being passable at best, my diet mainly consists of roots and berries, the occasional rabbit I manage to catch in a shoddy snare. I haven't seen anything poisonous enough to be lethal. Karma has a sense of humor. Given the first chance, I'd down a fistful of atropa belladonna, pop nightlock berries like candy, do something to make an end of it. The Peacekeepers that had turned me loose, body ravaged by torture and heart ravaged by loss, had told me that dying was too good for me. And if living like this is supposed to be my penance, I'm inclined to agree. Death would be easier, cleaner. I wouldn't have to walk around feeling gutted, wouldn't have to sit up at night fiddling with a golden band between my fingers, staring for hours on end at the promise that Colt never wanted from me. I don't know how I got here. I don't know where here is. All I know is that in some infinite, minuscule passage of time, there is sunshine and I'm walking beside some District fence, electricity humming loudly in the metal. Is this One? Has my fractured subconscious carried me home without my knowledge? Even if it has, I can never go back. They told me that. The first sign of my face back in District One, and my whole family dies. I've had enough of death. The mere thought is almost laughable, Death incarnate as I am, but I've had enough of death. "Unless it's my own," I chuckle aloud, the sound bouncing off the silent trees around me like gunfire. I remember gunfire, remember the pain blazing through my body and the feeling that the entire left side of my torso had been ripped to shreds. The bullet wound is nothing more than a raised knot of tissue now, another scar on my ever-increasing inventory. I know that I'll never make it back to Thirteen at this point, but if I did, I wonder if Alyssa would even know me. My face didn't do well under the onslaught of Pyrite Shore's knife back in One, the corner of my mouth pulled into a permanent scowl and my left eye clouded, unable to see anything more than blurred shapes and diluted colors. Weeks of migraines later, I curse my pride for not letting Bean just take the whole eye when he patched me up. My body didn't fare any better in the wake of the Detention Center and subsequent wandering, emaciated and scarred. I haven't seen myself since I left One, but I'd wager that I'm something frightening to behold. After years of being called a monster, I finally look like one. "Poetic justice." I've been talking to myself lately. It helps a little when the silence closes in and presses so hard that I can hear the whispers inside my own head, the hideous, violent ones that scrape along the inside of my skull until I feel like I'm going to break. You should have known better, they say, you should have known by now that you break everything you touch, including him, especially him... "I knew. I just didn't believe." Humming quietly to myself, I lean against a tree and take the ring out of my pocket again, a tribute's token in the world's Arena, twirling it between my fingers and watching it refract the light. "The blame can't all be mine. He's the one who promised he'd never leave and then did it anyway." One lie. What is his one lie compared to your whole life of them? What is his one sin in the face of all of yours? I frown and press a hand to my forehead, the pain behind it practically staggering me. The electricity buzzing through the fence shrieks a series of hair-raising harmonics, off-key with the song I'd been humming under my breath. I wonder if it would be enough to kill me if I touched it. Probably not. Outside of the Arena, wasted lives mean wasted workers, and the Capitol isn't likely to be keen on that. Better to inflict pain and teach a lesson rather than lose another drone in their self-indulgent hive. Still, the curiosity plagues me, and I wonder towards the metal barrier with a magnetic sort of attraction, leaning over to pluck a long blade of grass from the ground on the way. Touching the grass to one of the wires in the fence gives way to a sharp snapping sound and a hot knife of agony rocketing up my arm and down my spine. I like it. It makes me feel real. I almost don't see her, silent and hovering in the peripheral of my bad eye. It's not until I turn to walk away (the electricity won't kill me, and walking with burns all over me would be even more miserable than I already am) that I spot the pretty blonde girl, that sort of broken-beautiful look about her that's all too familiar. "Hello," I smile, or at least one half of my mouth does, offering her a vague little wave before I go back to playing with Colt's ring again. "Are you looking for death, too?" She is the first human being I've seen in weeks. Or maybe minutes. Loss does something to your perception of time. template by chelsey |
