KELSIER VAN DAM, CAPITOL

The Sparrow was small in stature and curious in the fact that it was seemingly broken. The boy had never seen one of it's like before, the birds he knew were either holograms or automated things that the vendors at the street markets wound up for the benefit of the smaller children. He'd grown out of automated sparrows a couple of years ago.

The bird lay on the ground in front of him, twitching and chirping weakly, it's beak opening in a silent scream every now and then. No sound emerged at that point, as if the bird's horror at it's own situation was enough to make it speechless.

The boy crouched down in front of it, his knees sinking into the mixture of slush and ice that everyone insisted on calling snow but was not. He'd read about snow in books. Snow was white and fluffy, you could eat it if you wished. The boy's mother told him that if he ate this snow he'd get poisoned from the toxic waste in the ice and he'd die. He wondered if that was what this bird had done,if he'd eaten the snow.

Wonder filled him as he tenderly scooped the bird up into his hands that ached and were cold from the falling ice. Instinctively, he curled his hands around the small bird, as if he could protect it with a barrier alone. Wonder overtook him again as he felt the tiny thing's heart beating against the pads of his thumbs, the softness of the creature was not automated. Neither was the quick, steady beat of it's heart. The soft down on it's chest rose to the rhythm of the beat. He ran his thumb over the softness there, the fragility of the creature he held standing true.

It was light in his hand, like touching a cloud, or a piece of magic that was not meant for the human hand. It was lighter than he expected it to be, a creature of feather and wing should still weigh something he assumed. However the bird was barely there at all, bones as hollow as his stomach when he went to sleep at night. It blinked up at him, trying to move it's wing that was sticking out at an odd angle but it could not, the pain made it shut it's eyes slowly as if he could not bear it.

Panic filled him; the boy broke into a run, keeping his hands as steady as he could to give the bird as much comfort as possible. There was an urgency to his step, evident with every single one that he took. Uncertainty tainted his movements however, he did not know what to do with the tiny but dear life in his hands. He was just a boy you see and a boy cannot be expected to know. That is what mothers are for. He only knew that it had to be saved.

He ran across the park to where she sat on the bench in her fur coat and bright pink lipstick. She was talking again, like she always did when the other ladies were around. Her hands gestured wildly through the air and she smelled of the same roses that she had been wearing now for six years. Once the boy had thought that she might stop wearing it when his father stopped coming around and for a while she did. A while turned into days and days turned into weeks but when weeks turned into months, the familiar scent of roses followed her once again and that was that.

He hated flowers because his mother loved them.

When he reached her however, he held his hands out to his mother without hesitation, the bird laying dormant in his hands and the knowledge that his mother could fix it. It took a moment to get his mother's attention; it often did. She was always telling him that 'she was very busy after all, sometimes she forgot and that's all.' As he grew older he was finding that she forgot a lot more than she used to and just last week she'd stayed out all night and forgotten all about him.

She saw his hands quickly this time; who would not notice a bird laying so lovely in his fingers? He watched as her laughing expression turned into one of confusion, then understanding, then disgust. She tilted her head to the side, sighing softly before shaking her head in the way she often did to denote that she was disappointed with something; often him.

"What did I say, darling," she said as she pulled the cigarette from between her lips, "We don't touch icky things." She lifted the sparrow by one talonned claw with one gloved hand and tossed it over her shoulder with barely a second glance.



source: 'et cetera: short stories & other untold tales' by K.V.D

I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE, I NEED OUT, I NEED OUT, I NEED OUT. I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE, I CAN'T BE HERE WITH HER, AKA SATAN how dare she??? how dare she do that, I didn't do it for anyone to see I wrote it here because i needed someone to talk to that didn't include HIM AKA ASSHAT #1 and she went through my stuff how could she JUST GO THROUGH MY STUFF AS IF IT'S HER RIGHT TO AS IF SHE CAN DO WHATEVER SHE WANTS?!?!? I HATE HER I HATE HER I HATE HER GOD FUCKING DAMNIT

My mother did it. She did it even though I didn't give her permission to and do you know what it's like to be sitting down to two and a half pieces of toast with peanut butter spread evenly on one side and honey on the other and then to flip through a magazine on parenting because that's what is on the table ONLY TO FIND A SHORT STORY THAT YOU WROTE FOR YOURSELF PUBLISHED BENEATH AN ADD FOR BABY FORMULA DESPITE THE PRIVACY OF THE STORY AND THE FACT THAT YOU NEVER SENT IT TO THE MAGAZINE NOR READ IT TO ANYONE AND IT'S JUST THERE GLARING AT YOU AND YOU DROP THE TOAST ON YOUR LAP AND YOU GET PEANUT BUTTER ALL OVER YOUR FAVOURITE BOXERS BECAUSE THE ENTIRE EARTH IS TILTING SIDEWAYS

because i do.

It was that one I wrote about freezing to death slowly and how nice that would be and I'm pretty sure that the entire world must think i'm suicidal or something and in the comments section some parents wrote shit about how my mother needs to send me to a therapist quickly or I'm going to end up as homeless and insane and it will be all her fault and I can't believe people buy into this shit and I can't believe someone thinks I'm going to end up as homeless and insane because despite being fifteen I'm pretty damn sure that my writing was pretty damn good there like WTF???

and to be honest it's sort of exciting to see something I've written in print but I wanted to send in my first piece of writing myself and I wanted it to be something I chose and I didn't want my mother to make it ALL ABOUT HER again. All this is is her trying to get pity for her psychotic son again and I'm so sick of it.

Some of these comments and reviews are just so....accurate though? This one guy wrote that the story was a plea for help and for the 'nurturing embrace of my mother' [gag me.] I mean sure I've always wanted my mother's attention but I'm also over it because

SHE STOLE MY STORY AND PUT IT IN A PARENTING PAPER.

In this case SHE is the psychotic one. They say i'm crazy but i would never do this to someone I care about and that's why I have to get out of here, that's why i have to move out. I want my own place so badly and maybe that's illegal because I'm fifteen but i've read that you can divorce your parents and honestly i'm going to look up a lawyer in the phonebook after i've finished here and i'm going to get that done because EFFFFFFF THIS.

-KEL

+ I used the last of the peanut butter on that last piece of toast and now there's none left
+ I ripped out the page with MY story on it from the magazine, scanned it and printed out a hundred copies and lined them up neatly on the living room floor, I separated them by exactly one inch on either side so they should be easily noticed by mother
+ I called the lawyer and he says what my mother did is actually illegal and I might have a case
+ He read the story in the magazine and wants to set me up with a publisher so there's that.

So father [asshat #1] decided that he'd finally had enough of me and my 'tantrums' and decided to take me to the doctor's office.

1. First of all, that was ridiculous. The doctor has always come to us ever since I was small because of my weak immune system.
2. Second of all, I'm not even currently sick which is a rare event for me, I know, but I think the staying indoors might be helping.
3. Third of all, he made me go outside??? We all know how I feel about that whole idea in general.

Anyway, so there we were, outside. It was the worst even though I was wearing my black surgical mask and the black leather gloves my mother got me for Christmas last year even though I'm not a biker(???). That made me feel a tiny bit better because if I wasn't breathing in other people's air then I wasn't going to get sick as easy.

Mother (who I am still not speaking with due to her GROSS transgression) says I must be such a germaphobe because one time when I was little this little girl kept biting me an it turned out that she'd had the beginnings of a flu at the time so then Ihad the flu and then that turned into chicken pox and basically I was sick for a good three months because of my stupid weak-assed immune system.

ANYWAY

So my father and I went to the Doctor's and of course he was surprised to see me and then he made some stupid doctor joke about how I look so pale that I probably don't need to be taught what trees are or something dumb and anyway

I sort of refused to take off my surgical mask so he could give me a full check up and he was trying to make me take it off and the middle button of my shirt was loose and it was pissing me off a lot and I sort of freaked out at the Doctor's office. To be fair to me though, I don't know what the hell kind of germs might have been in that office, I mean I know that they have to clean everything all the time but I bet they aren't as careful as I am. To give you an example, I have now cleaned this pen exactly twelve times in the last fifteen minutes and this is made possible by the sterile wipes I keep beside me while I write in case of emergencies.

Emergencies include but are not limited to:

1. dirt
2. sweat
3. spiders
4. unidentified specks
5. routine cleaning
6. in case i bite the end of my pen/pencil
7. interruption by parents (knob cleaning)
8. other bugs

Okay, I know I can be a bit picky about the way things are and how they are arranged and about things being clean but like that doesn't mean I'm actually crazy. It's perfectly legitimate for me to have a fear of germs, you'd have a fear of germs too if your system was as weak as mine. It's really hard to live this way but if I want to be comfortable then I have to and I'm not going to let anyone mess with my careful system that I have set up for remaining germ free.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that the Doctor recommended me for the therapy that I've probably been lacking my entire life and now this woman named Dr. Agnes is going to come to the house next week and give me a psycho analysis which sucks because I hate having to teach new people about the proper sterilization process if they want to even come anywhere near me.

this is going to be the worst.

-KEL

+ The lawyer got back to me again today and he said that we have a case if I want to go through with it.
+ I got a call from a publishing house and they want to see more of my short stories and other works which is cool. Right now I've got some poetry and short stories, I'm also working on a novel but IDEK.
+ My mom bought more peanut butter as a way of apologizing but I expect peanut butter anyway so I'm staying strong.

When Dr. Agnes came today I was expecting her to sit me down and show me pictures of inky blobs so that I could call them all butterflies. Instead she brought me into my parent's full length bedroom and we stood in front of their full length mirror. I thought that was odd because I'm pretty surer therapists are just supposed to talk a lot and then go away, not perform weird mirror exercises but go figure.

She wanted me to tell her what I saw and I have a list about what I look like so I just referenced that.

• my lips are too big
• i have acne
• my limbs are all long and gangly
• i'm a twig
• my eyes are really dark and boring
• i'm too tall already and i'm only fifteen so i'm going to be a giant
• it's really disgusting bet when i get anxious i pick at the skin around my nailbed
• i have really thick eyebrows
• my ears stick out in a weird way
• my fingers are creepy long
• when i was eight i stepped on a nail so I have a weird circular scar through my foot
• i'm really pale, like hella
• my head is shaped like an icecream cone
• i can't stick to one hair colour and it's ruining my hair so i'm going to go bald at 25
• my fashion sense is flawless though I mean really
• and i like my teeth because i'm obsessive about them so they are super straight and white
• I got a birthmark removed off of my neck when I was 5 because my mom thought it was ugly

but then she stopped me there and told me that i was extremely self-deprecating as if I didn't know that and then she went on to explain what it means, as if i didn't know that. Of course I know what the word means, what am I? ten?

Well I couldn't be too scathing to her because she had followed my rules for coming anywhere near me to a 'T' and wasn't even weird about it. She performed each step calmly and isn't even bothered by the surgical mask that i refuse to take off around strangers and I guess that's why she's a therapist. It probably doesn't mean that she doesn't think that I'm absolutely bonkers like mother and father do.

I don't know, when she went away today she told me that she thinks that she understands what's wrong with me. I probably just reinstated her thoughts when I had to stop our conversation just so that I could properly align the covers on my parents bed so that half a foot of the duvet hang over correctly on each side.

I know there is a lot wrong with me because I've been my mother's centerpiece in conversations for all of my life. Her favourite thing to do when talking with her friends is to tell them the latest things that I've done, the latest germ that I've picked up, the intricate details of my latest 'freak out'. It's embarrassing and I hate her for it but she's never had qualms with sharing private information about me. I'm more of a science experiment or an exhibit piece than anything else.

I don't want to be her sympathy piece anymore, not when she only ever tells me to 'get over it' or thinks that she can calm me with a jar of peanut butter. She doesn't even know how to be a mother and I've been her kid for fifteen years.

After the therapist left I called the lawyer and told him that I was going through with it and then I called the publicist and told them that I had a bundle of short stores that I would like to publish. They told me they'd set up a meeting with my guardian and I told them that I was my own guardian. My parents are idiots and I hate them. That seems harsh but it's true. I'm just a party favor anyway, as they have told me time and time again. All I am is the unfortunate accident due to alcohol and the lack of a condom so whatever.

I'll go my way and they can go theirs. We can both be happy.

We're a mess.

I hate messes.

-KEL

It begins on the eighteenth day of their journey. Simon is in front of him, pack bouncing on his back and the bottom of his cloak dusty from the road. His hair is in a disarray on the top of his head, flat on one side because of the way he had slept the night before. His hands, those hands, they hold the map and he's staring intently at it, feet somehow making their way over roots and around rocks. He's elegant there, in front of him. He's beautiful.

Yeah.

Simon is beautiful.

He's an idiot still. That's a given. Elend knows this better than anyone else. They've spent the past seventeen evenings around the fire, Simon always introducing some silly topic that doesn't apply to their current situation, somehow managing to steam Elend up, to create a heated debate. They'd talk far into the night and Elend would wake up the next morning, yawns blooming one after the other on his lips. They were always silly, contrived things too like whether or not the Kingdom should build catapults and how many. Things that didn't apply to them. "Of course it applies to us, everything that happens does. We're human, right?" Simon would say and Elend would nod meekly despite the lie.

He didn't want Simon to know yet, that he was his enemy. He'd never had a friend before.

Elend had been taught since birth that the humans who lived in the Kingdom over the mountains were monstrous, ugly things. He was taught to fear their backward ways, to feel nothing but pity and disdain for the way that they toiled in the dirt and so he had. For hundreds of years he had believed his father's teachings to be true but then when it became time to actually get to know one, he had learned that his people were wrong.

they were dirty things, yes. He'd met a few in his travels that did fit the descriptions in his people's history books. Some of them looked as if the last time they had washed was during the foretelling centuries ago. Not Simon. Simon was clean and pure. He washed himself in the river every second day, sometimes once a day if they were near a water source and his eyes were the most beautiful shade of green he had ever seen.

They were not grey. His history lessons had never told him about eye colour, only about dirt and corruption, not about people like Simon. Simon was filled with ideas and the hope that all youth carries. Simon was built to have an indestructible innocence and it filled Elend with wonder. The purity of his new friend was enviable. He believed still in good, that people could be trusted to make the right choices, that this war could be stopped from ever happening.

Elend was fatalistic and bitter.

Within his people, the matter of love was a second thought. Love did not exist, only duty. To fall in love was a privilege that few had. However, they lived for so long that eventually one could find it. Elend never had, not yet. The women he courted did nothing for his heart, the only feeling within him a cold emptiness. As an excuse, he gave himself over to the army, simply to save himself the agony of feeling nothing but emptiness when he found himself alone with the ladies his parents matched him to.

His people were beautiful in an unearthly way but they weren't Simon.

Elend watched the back of his head with such intensity it was a wonder the man didn't turn around and ask him what the matter was. The man was oblivious to such things and felt completely safe in Elend's care despite his lack of history or credentials when he had applied to be his guard on this ill fated mission.

Simon couldn't know that Elend was given the job of making certain that he never reached his destination alive.

For the first time in two hundred years, Elend was struggling to follow the orders given unto him. For the first time since he could remember he was beginning to question what he believed in and what he knew.

All this disorder, this internal chaos.

Just because Simon is beautiful.



source: 'The Foretold' by K.V.D

The emptiness speaks to me.

Like the pieces of art in the museums that were meant to-
but never could.
they didn't have voices. But the emptiness, the emptiness, it does.

it croons in the night,
creaking through the vaulted rooms of
this
big
house.

Lost.

It keeps me up at night,
a rude neighbor with
too many friends,

but none for me,

none for me.









source: 'LXI-CX' by K.V.D

I have been on my own now for four years. It's easier this way. I haven't had to worry about anyone stealing my work for a long time now and Eva and I get along well. I never knew what to do with Avox. I couldn't wrap my head around the idea that someone could be made a slave just because they were told that they had to be one. It's disgusting. I don't know, I can't say anything, I've had so little to do with politics. I just know what seems right and what seems wrong. Taking someone's tongue out and beating them seems wrong. Our history says that we keep the Districts under our thumb because of their betrayal. It never says what the betrayal was. I doubt it could have been bad enough to still be punishing them.

I asked Eva if she'd had children.

She didn't answer me at first.

I never force her to do anything she doesn't want to do.

later that day she brought me a piece of paper that had been folded so many times that when I opened it up it almost split in two. The paper held four names, the names of her children I suppose. She couldn't have a photo of them, they would have taken it off of her when they took her tongue. All she had was their names. The paper was loved in their place.

My mother hadn't tried to contact me for four years now and she hadn't had her tongue cut out. She was an hour's drive away.

I have four published works now. My novel, just before I turned sixteen and then a second book of poetry when I was eighteen. I'm working on the sequel to the novel now but it's coming slow, I've hit a block. Lately I've been feeling somewhat...lonely.

Which is stupid. We all know that I dislike people in general and it's not like I don't get fan mail. My publisher delivers them all to me in disinfected plastic sleeves and I file them away after reading through them carefully. Sometimes I write back, other times I don't. I don't know why. I forget or I just don't know what to say. I don't know what they expect from me.

They expect a genius but I'm just me so that's failed I guess.

Everyday the garden dies.

Eva is getting on in years, she's nimble but it's difficult for her to bend over for long hours and I told her not to bother.

I'm too afraid of dirt to touch it.

It is fear and I am a coward, I know that. For about two weeks I was in bed with a really bad fever and I was so sick that I could barely get up to go to the bathroom. Anxiety kept me in there though, mainly in the shower. I couldn't stop scrubbing my skin. It was going raw, Eva had to confiscate my scrub brush to keep me from flaying myself.

It still burns a little bit.

There's an overwhelming feeling of apathy lately, I can't write, I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't do anything. It all seems pointless.

I'm here because of that story that mother stole four years ago now, one of my first ones that I ever wrote and the very first story in Et Cetera.

As winter comes on, so pristine, so lovely and pure, the feeling I fist had when I wrote it comes back, resting on my chest like a weight.

Sometimes I feel like it's too quiet here.

-KEL

+ sometimes.......
+ just sometimes.