laufeia "chief" pots { p k i n q u i s i t o r } done

I was a bastard born from a night of drunken sex and the absence of a condom. There was no tenderness in my mother's embrace and when I was passed to my father he dropped me in a crib. They say he  stormed out in the hallway swearing so brutally that he was escorted off of the premises. Sugar and spice and everything nice was all I was made of and day by day that was stripped away. I had no pink blanket and no clothes spattered in sugar-sweet saying or (gods forbid) a dress. I had nothing to discern me from the boy they had wanted. Father told mother that women were weak and she agreed because she was. She let father hit her because that was the way things were. He hated her and she loved him because that was the way it always was. 

He tried, he really did, to will a baby boy out of me. The man was far too stupid to realize that whatever color I adorned there was nothing slightly masculine in me. His daughter's build was slight and her lips the shape of a heart. She was beautiful, the pride and joy of any competent, caring father. My father was neither competent nor caring. Perhaps I took after him because whenever my flesh was bruised I did not cower. I was nothing like the woman he beat because she let him beat her. I wasn't a weak fool and he hated every bit. ("Men are the leaders, you fuck! I am better than every other in this house and you better fucking learn it you good-for-nothing whore!!) He didn't even have to drink to say such things. It was simply who he was. An ugly, fat man disappointed that his own life had deteriorated so quickly. I don't know why I wasn't afraid, he was a scary man, but I don't remember feeling much at that age. 

The kids at school told me I had the eyes of a dead man. My hair was cut so short it was mere bristles on the sides of my head and the only thing I wore were over-sized sweaters to hide whatever womanly form I acquired in six years. Father couldn't convince himself that he had a little boy, but he tried to convince everyone else. I'd laugh if his desperation were actually funny. What made him such a bitter, fat, man I could not tell you. I didn't care to ask him and I have no interest at returning home and investigating this query. Some are born great and some are born pathetic assholes.  

Training was torture. Every morning I rose before the sun and my bed was made to the point of perfection. I ate and drank until my stomach bulged and then I ran until I was hungry again. They gave me sword and knives by I never used a single one. I'd only ever seen father use his fists and the damage done to my mother was more than enough. Every part of my body burned until I grew used to the exercise and once I no longer hurt they pushed me harder until it would. The first time I'd passed out was my seventh birthday. It was a horrifying experience, blood leaving my face and the ground suddenly rushing towards me. The black eye I adorned the next day was not from my fall.

It was that very day I refused to cut my hair. That very day I stole my mother's clothing and with the hands of a child cut them and tied them to fit my body. I screamed every single word father had ever screamed at me and I hit him in every place he had hit mother. I wanted to see the fear in his eyes that I saw in mother, I wanted to be powerful for once. 

He only laughed, but never again was I forced to make myself a boy. 

My time was spent avoiding home from then on. I came to know the neighborhood well. Despite the strict career training, we lived in the slums. We had just enough money to pay the bills and to buy father clothing because it seemed every day his old ones became too small. The caves were my favorite place to be and I would spend hours in them sitting by myself watching others go by. They didn't know who I was but I knew that one day they would fear me. I wasn't going to be small. No one would stand over me like father and I would cower under no one. 

It took only a year for my hair to grow out. I could see his disgust every time he looked at me and I hoped that same disgust was mirrored back at him. There was never a filter in my house. Disgusting words were flung as freely and often as though half of Father's vocabulary was the vulgar terms. I guess I've always took after father because when rage overcame me I lacked the proper terms to describe it and screamed every word he'd ever directed at me. 

There was so much rage within me. They said I was a pretty girl. They didn't know the half of it.

I met her when exploring the caves. Father was in one of his moods and I knew that I would fall under his fists lest I avoid him. He would make me feel small and I hated being small. She was pretty in an exotic way and her voice held a kind of power behind it. She was looking for something and fire lit within me. There was a chase. I loved a chase. 

She let me help her and we searched for a pet. We ran and we cornered it and I when I saw its eyes they looked just like mother's. Wide and panicked and afraid. It was afraid of me and her. The power the little white creature filled me with was intoxicating. From the instant I took the first hit I wanted more and more and more until I was something more than human. Never before had I had so much fun. 

I liked her from the minute we met. 

We met again and she told me what had become of her furry friend. Every word she spoke revolted me and intrigued me. As it had feared her and then feared nothing at all. Was that what would become of mother and father? Would she fear him and nothing? Was it to be the end of my mother, meek and mild and too stupid to pick up our things and run away from the man who tortured the both of us? I came to the conclusion that however her story ended she deserved every minute of it. My lips moved and I found myself asking her for her company again, in the only way I knew how. Relationships never came easily to me, not ones that were mutual, between two people of equal power but I welcomed the chance to experience it. 

Perhaps. 

And then we were friends. 

In the time leading to my father's demise he spoke of a war. His fists turned brash and his face fatter as he screamed and screamed that it was coming. He broke mother and broke me and broke himself as many times over as he could. He didn't wait for us to heal by the time he broke us again. My face was never bloodied or bruised, he was a smart man, he knew the public would despise a pretty girl beat by an ugly man like him. I wore long sleeves and sealed my lips because I was too proud to admit that I had cried under his fists and stooped as low as to beg for him to stop. But he yelled. And he yelled. And he yelled. ("Oh father just stop!")

It wasn't very long until I believed him. Perhaps it was his fists that swayed me, or seeing a man too proud to submit to his betters wither before my eyes and beg. He told me he loved me and he told me they were coming. I was eighteen, but I would always be his little girl. I spat in his face and I scoffed and the next day he was gone. They broke down the door and the saved us. They took him away and the pain stopped. 

A war! A war! A war! he screamed

And my mother stood in the doorway holding a crumpled letter. Only upon my nineteenth birthday did I find it stuffed underneath her sheets. A plea for help, slipped into the pile of bills she went to pay. She sat me down and told me that father was unwell. That he saw things that were not there and that she wished she'd been braver so as to save us both the heartache. I told her that she was pathetic, I told her that I hated her and I told her that I didn't care if father was mad because he was right about one thing. She was stupid and weak and didn't deserve my time.  I left. And I didn't look back.

A part of me loved the both of them. A sick, twisted part of me that was shriveled and beaten and picked at for six thousand nine hundred and thirty-five days. I was the girl who they'd never wanted and the career who'd never brought them glory. I was the child who had a bad attitude and the one who would kill her own family had it benefited her. He raised me to be cutthroat and she raised me to hate. They did a damn good job preparing me for what I was to become. To be on the frontlines in this war.

You see, my father's ramblings were just that, the ramblings of a man whose mind had betrayed him. He should never have had a girlfriend or a child. The just thing would have been that he wither away in silence and I never even take my first breath. But it is in madness that we see the absolute truth. I enrolled into the academy and I worked and I trained and surpassed those who thought I was merely a pretty face. Because I painted my face beautiful hues and dyed my hair they assumed me like my mother. They assumed me one to be taken advantage of. Disgusting creatures, humans are. One day I will be something more than them. 

The war that comes is against them. Ungrateful, wretched things. They will pay for how they've wronged me and anyone I call a friend. They will crumple beneath me and fear me because that is what I want. The minute I graduated the war began. Dressed in a riot suit I roamed and I was feared. All they need see was the white fabric which fell from my body and their spines straightened. There was not a look of incredulity or of doubt, everything about me demanded respect. 

I did not pity those I hurt just as I did not pity mother. Some of their eyes burned with a fire I'd seen in the mirror and some of them were as broken as she. I didn't care. My hands wrapped around their bodies and I squeezed and I hit and I demanded their cooperation because that is what I deserved. The opposing soldiers were weak at first and I rose in the ranks like a bird soaring into the sun. They were proud. I was proud. I was winning the war and I didn't care whose side it was on. 

Someday I'll be feared.

That day is today. 

{let the rain
was away all the pain
o f  y e s t e r d a y ;