Mekhi :: Avox (FIN)

I'd always craved the pain.

I open my eyes and I see white. Endless, endless white.

And it's a half dazed half asleep world i'm living in for those few stranded seconds as I lay on broken metal bars with a mattress thinner than my bones laid on top of it, my spine cracking back into place, a single strand of hair draping itself over my eyes as if to block what I was supposed to be seeing.

White, white, i'd painted it white with a tube of paint some Peacekeeper had snuck into my cage last month. White, white, it was so pristine, so empty and so untouched, sitting on the wall there, hastily smeared with hands that had seen far too much red blood paint for their own good. White, white, it's all I see before I focus, truly truly focus. 

White, white. There's dirt and slime inching it's way down the walls, racing towards a finish line that I never wanted them to reach. Black, oils, soots and grimes, it's the only thing I see nowadays. And I really, I really hoped that someday they'd give me enough paint to turn this whole cell white. Because I wanted something completely untouched.

I wanted something blank, I wanted a restart, a start over, and extra life.

I stand in the middle of the room in nothing but my underwear and a cloak of faceless names hanging heavy over my skin. But there's no warmth from it, in fact, I shiver as a breeze blows through the cages and then the cells 

and then it blows through me, and I steady myself on a wall that has a rough square of white painted onto it, my hand leaves a dirty fingerprint as I pull it away.

And another thing, another thing corrupted.

The peacekeeper sends rickets rickets rickets crack through the cell area as he makes his way down the line, a lifeless whistle escaping as an amused tune from his lips as he practically skips down the cells.

I survey the words fished up pulled up lifted from the lips of thousands of people I will never know and the words, the words are superglued onto the skin of my arms with a needle and a steady hand, ink swallowing my blood my veins my identity. 

I'm drowning in ink, and to think I used to crave it. 

I rub calloused fingers over the name tattooed on my left hip.

Camelia 

It has a heart as the dot over the "i", as if I was supposed to feel the beat beat boom of a heartbeat whenever I ran my fingers over it. No, no, I felt none of that.

I felt nameless, wordless even though my body is riddle with them. They line my skin, vertically horizontally diagonally, tracing my hairlines like some fucked up version of connect the dots. 

Tink , Laz , Jude<3 , Glam , Claud , Nite 

I'm a human canvas, and I can't even paint myself.

A shirt and pants hit my face and chest and there's a peacekeeper in front of me, twirling a baton in between his fingers as he smiles menacingly at me.

"Put them on, we've got new orders for you to be inked." 

I want to scream and I want to melt into that stained white square on the wall, and most of all I want to spotless.

But instead, I left leg right leg and right arm left arm and then i'm lead, shackles around my hands and head tied to the ground in front of me down down down unnamed hallways and locked doors, past the groans of an avox thats barely surviving, past the cries of a new arrival, up a flight of stairs and then down down down another hallway and

It's a completely white room with a woman draped in an even whiter uniform sitting in the middle of it, tattoo needle laced between her fingers like a rolled up cigar. She's blowing smoke rings of inhumanity. 

They sit me down and when they first started it I would fight, I would fight so hard until they'd restrain me and then knock me out entirely.

But they usher me to a seat that's too clean for my stained body and I lay down without a single flicker of resistance.

I hear the machine start and there's eight names on the table and as my pants are pulled and there's a blank space found on my thigh I tell myself

to

"Focus on the one's that matter." 

I feel the cold of the needle and I-

His arm hurt.

Three coffins with wilted flowers sprawled out on top of them. There's rips and cracks and holes in the wood, and the nails are rusted and pulled up and one's pulled up and bent backwards like it's spine was bent bent snapped against the wind. Dry knuckled hands hold each other in open invitation as he stands, dressed in rags that had once been the riches of a man who wasn't even worth the pennies he'd sold his soul for. 

He's tried to cry, that much is true, but his tear ducts have dried up to the point of not even being able to function. He's frowning constantly, not because he's always upset but because the one two crack that occurs whenever he moves his lips is a pain that is engraved into his memory, into his being. There's a sweat bead thats hanging by it's fingernails from the edge of his hairline, hanging hanging 

falling, falling and it travels down through the air and his eyes watch it's path before it lands and nestles itself into the bloody cracks that had spread itself across his own knuckles, sweltering heat sizzling burning stinging 

and it's a new pain that he can remember forever.

His eyes are on the dry grass beneath him instead of the coffins in front of him.

Three bodies.

Three broken spirits.

The wind tugs at his collar and breathes beads of sweat down his neck, laughing giggling cackling into his ears as it lays on his skin like winter layers.

I took your family. Their lips cracked and left tiny little dots of blood stains on the pillowcases, their ribs patterning a texture beneath their skin, bones sticking out through tissue paper covering as they laid bent broken snapped in their beds, starving to Death in a summer heat that had taken everything else from them already. And it's funny, because he'd always pictured Death as being an icy touch, a cold embrace or a glacier scythe that dug and tore through flesh like knife through butter but

It was so warm when they died, he remembers every single sweat bead that fell across their forehead as they 

breathed in 

breathed out

breathed in 

stopped

His arm hurt, but his heart hurt more. Raw skin, bare skin, he'd fulfilled a craving to live drink be ink with a tattoo that he thought would mean something when he got it. But needle had kissed skin and it'd left permanent bite marks beneath the surface, and as he sat at his desk, shirt ripped off and laying in a sweaty mess on the floor, covering up blood stains left by a woman he'd never known, he examines his right arm in a mirror, waiting for some form of fucked up memoriam and self-fulfillment to come to him.

But the only thing he can focus on is the fact that his arm hurt so.fucking.badly. 

And it made him angry, sent rage boiling up up up through his body and he swipes at the items on his desk, papers taking flight and an hourglass filled with sand that had been dormant for months falls falls 

down

and shatters.

Three coffins, three bodies, three broken bent snapped nails and, three weeks later, his mother and father are building up a relationship off of broken glass and taped up picture frames. 

Death was so warm, but their voices were even warmer, burning with venom, set ablaze by a hatred that had spawned off of something that was supposed to bring them together.

Broken glass, broken dreams and broken marriages. Bottles had traced a path across their kitchen from hand to air to wall 

And tears of glass reflected the dying light of the marriage between two people as they fell to the ground.

A taped up picture frame is what they stood in, with a picture painted over themselves that showed a perfect family. 

But the paint is peeling and their arms are shaking stumbling cracking under the weight of a picture frame that is too heavy for them to keep up.

And it will all come tumbling, tumbling down.

There's a woman outside his home as he makes his way away from a broken hourglass, a blood stained carpet, a trauma stained marriage and a scream stained kitchen.

She's walking up and down the street, wilting flowers laced between her fingers and she's screaming ever so gently, the wind sweltering her voice.

"Flowers for the dead."

"Flowers for the dead."