Icarus {{ Four (FIN)

pogue Graphics 1,811 POSTS Pronouns: He/Him last seen Apr 16, 2024 18:41:45 GMT -5 Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?	Icarus {{ Four (FIN) Dec 27, 2015 22:35:42 GMT -5 via mobile Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by pogue on Dec 27, 2015 22:35:42 GMT -5 u thought it was over ha Guts {{
	Last Edit: Jan 17, 2016 17:15:56 GMT -5 by pogue

pogue Graphics 1,811 POSTS Pronouns: He/Him last seen Apr 16, 2024 18:41:45 GMT -5 Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?	Icarus {{ Four (FIN) Dec 27, 2015 23:55:58 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by pogue on Dec 27, 2015 23:55:58 GMT -5 What did it feel like with my hands wrapped around his throat. What did it feel like when the rock smashed through his skull. The only fight he ever lost was to the waves.
	Last Edit: Jan 17, 2016 15:41:25 GMT -5 by pogue

pogue
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1,811 POSTS

Pronouns: He/Him
last seen Apr 16, 2024 18:41:45 GMT -5

Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?

Icarus {{ Four (FIN) Jan 5, 2016 14:44:49 GMT -5

Quote

Post by pogue on Jan 5, 2016 14:44:49 GMT -5

I C A R U S

"Never got no good doing what I'm told"
_____________________________

If Life's a game of chess, than i'm the pawn.

Womb to world and within seconds i'm cursed with every shattered mirror, every black cat cross path, every opened umbrella indoors.

Every Friday the 13th in the history of the world, I got the bad luck from everything.

I guess, if we really get down to it, that's all i've got to my name.

Icarus. I was born too close to the sun, shot into the rays of an unforgiving nightmare. Singed, scarred, burned

Mom says my first view of the world was the sun up above.

It was paradise, for a moment.

But the arms of the sun wrapped around my body and dragged me back down to the hell of a District that I wasn't born to be in. It slammed me into my mothers arms, wings of my innocence burning up with every touch of its fiery grasp.

Slammed with the force of hundred upon thousands upon millions of bad luck, its no wonder I never stopped screaming.

Colic. Mom said for every day I screamed I gained a freckle on my sunburnt skin. As if the sun's fury hadn't done enough to me, now I was branded by it.

Three years old and I discovered

If life was a game of chess, I was the knight

I lost myself to my imagination, no longer fearing the suns rays but instead outmaneuvering them. I built castles out of bedbug pillows, commanded vast armies made of dust bunny soldiers. I was limitless, I was a warrior.

I was lonely.

Because what is a castle without a queen, and what is a queen without her king.

It didn't take long for a three year old mind already singed halfway to realize that the world was poison, and money was it's antidote. We could never afford the cure.

Side effects included but were no limited to: Grumbling stomach, misery mind, sickened childhood.

I fancied myself a knight, but I was still struck down by all three.

Dad was around so long as his paycheck allowed, away on ventures fit for a king, away on ventures fit for a struggling father.

Some days, when the Sun lost its power to the winter cold, and a blanket could not cover the amount of one scream two wail three cry freckles on my skin, i'd think he was dead, buried beneath the snow or the dirt somewhere.

But just as the flames of a fiery pit would begin to die, he would return. It was the same every time. Suffer, starve, revive. Suffer, starve, revive.

I never got used to it.

From Knight to Rook, the years dragged my imagination from that of dungeons and fantasies to the reality of crumbling castles.

I was a fighter before I turned 10, fists curled into each other with all the rage an eight year old, bad luck body could muster.

Dust clouds and bruised elbows, I'm picking myself up off the ground, a snarl painted on my face and blood adorning my lower lip. Three shadows loom over me, traced to the three wicked bodies they belonged to.

I stumble to my feet, rag tag clothing holding an even more rugged body together.

A castle doesn't fall after the first hit.

"Give it back." I mutter, words dipped in venom.

His name is Travis, a boy too big for his age and too stupid for his low grade level. He's fighting a constant battle with puberty, and he's been on the losing end since day one. Acne scars and pimples adorn his face, sweat smeared across his pores like butter on bread. His body doesn't walk, it lumbers. His voice cracks when he speaks, as inconsistent as his school grades.

No one ever laughed at the voice cracks.

Except me.

"Icarus. Your names as stupid as you are."

He holds my sweatshirt in his hands, dirt stains and grease smudges transferred from fingertips to clothing. It was a gift from my father, amongst a dried out, mold studded cake and a half-burnt candle. We'd used it the year before, and the year prior.

I take a step forward, but the intimidation factor doesn't exactly emanate from a body that is two years younger than the boy I face.

"Give it back, Travis. Or i'm gonna-"

He cuts me off, pulling the sweatshirt back just before I can attempt to snatch it.

"Or you're gonna what? Tell on me? HA, why don't you go tell your daddy."

I'm close to breaking, castle bricks falling falling falling with every word he fires at me.

"That is, if you can find him."

Boom. The final blow and my white-knuckle fists fly through the air, pushed forward by a cry fit only for a knight.

It connects with his jaw, and a tooth flied from his mouth, splattering the ground below with it's indecency.

It was the only hit I got before they dragged me down.

One hour later and the silence outside the principal's office is choking me, bruising my vigor with fists of regret and doubt. She'd scolded me, told me that what i'd done wouldn't be tolerated in a school like this. I'd told her that that was good, that I wasn't cut out for this school anyways. That I should just leave.

Doors swing open and i'm met with the icy stare of my father, face drawn into an expression that could only send the nastiest of chills sprinting down my spine, tainting every vertebrae with fear.

"Dad, I-"

I'm killed by his footsteps and put to rest by his silence. It's the first time i've seen him in months, since the fire in our living room flickered and died, dancing to the tune of its own heartbeat.

The first time i've seen him in months, and this is our reunion.

He takes me by the hand and drags me out the doors, the creaking of their metal hinges the death tune to what I can only assume is going to be my funeral.

He stops, I stop. I'm trailing in fear of what will come before he raises his hand, blocking out the sun and I wince and brace and he

He holds out his hand. In it is Travis' tooth.

"If you're going to fight people, Icarus, you have to win."

My reputation sealed and my castle rebuilt. A week later he pulled me from the school, and instead taught me boxing.

From Knight to Rook to Bishop, I become a preacher man whose fists are his only passage, and pain his only way of communicating.

I never learned to listen to the voice of the waves, of tongues crashing against rocks and ocean tides swallowing the sand dunes I so love to make my home. I never learned to wrap myself in its comforts, awakening myself as a true resident of District Four.

I never learned to swim, my mother put survival over playtime. But I learned to swing and I learned to block.

Never learned much more.

My reputation spread like a plague, and my bruisings spread even faster. It didn't take long for puberty to hit me, and while the rest of my personality spent eons trying to cram itself into my ever expanding body, my fists hardly changed at all.

With bloodied knuckles and a new man's voice as my weapons, I had set out to settle my reputation as a fighter who couldn't be beat.

There wasn't much sense to it all, to connecting fist to face and bruises to ego. But when you become a drop out at the age of eight, the cheers and jeers of a crowd that's excited over watching you do what you do best-

It has a way of intoxicating you; a true romantic.

I dropped enemies like flies, and amongst the taunts of the crowd my ego began to inflate like a balloon.

Icarus Callaghan never loses.

Icarus Callaghan also never turns away from a bet.

It was a side-effect of the fighting rings, brought on by sickness and solidified by the sermons of my own two fists. It didn't matter when, or where

It didn't matter stupidity or bravery, danger or peril.

I never turned them down.

Cliffside. They speak to me in riddles, using vocabulary that sixteen years of life and a third grade school levels don't provide.

I don't realize it, they're treating me like an idiot.

And amongst the screams and shouts and cheers and jeers and taunts of the waves, maybe I am one.

They want me to jump. I get the gist of it.

These cliffs are made for viewing, not jumping. But the grin on my face says otherwise and I am stripping down for them, shirt torn off and tossed to the rocks to my left, pants follow suit, socks and shoes and rag tag life thrown on top.

I'm in my underwear and the ocean breeze becomes a lot more prevalent, not only because it's running through my boxers but because i'm five feet from the edge.

I'm five feet from my death and I don't even realize it.

"Well, are you gonna do it-"

He cuts short. I grin.

And then I jump.

I get about halfway down before reality beats me senseless and I realize that I was never taught the ways of the waves. Limbs lock and jaw clenches and my body

slams

Into the waves and I am weightless, picked up dragged slammed into the rocks that surround me as easily as a feather in the wind.

Second grade comprehension was enough for me to realize that Death's hand was on my shoulder and his blade three inches from my throat. I open my mouth to scream but all that escapes is a gurgle, the hands of the ocean reaching down and strangling me from the inside out.

Maybe time stopped.

I'll never know.

I give up. It's the only fight i'll ever lose.

Blackouts, blackouts, a bed of sand is a lot more comfortable than the void of the ocean. Eyes snap to reality and I cough up the poison of the sea, lungs grabbing fro anything anything that'll keep me living. My fists clench, white knuckles of a bishop, of a preacher all too in tune of what had just occurred.

His hand rests on my chest, pushing me down into the sands of my own life.

I shake, echo, groan as my body realizes the weight of the world is now upon it, bones shaking teeth clattering as an icy cold takes me over. Once blood stained lips are now flush, white as snow and cold as ice.

He sits in the threads of a rich man, water dripping from their pores. Amongst the ice of the ocean his hair burns red, memories of fiery embers flashing through the mind of a boy who'd just nearly lost his life to the sea.

It's a familiarity that neither of us realize.

"Who...who are you?" I stutter, words choked by water.

"Ingram." He says, water dripping from his hair.

"Ingram Callaghan."

I had met my brother.

I spit into the fire, bubble poison dripping on my lips as my saliva loses a fight to the flames. It crackles and screams at me, but I can no longer lose myself in the fire of a childhood fairytale.

From Knight to Rook to Bishop to nameless. I sit in silence, hands clasped to the armrests, white knuckle scar knuckle bruise knuckle

I'm waiting for him.

Anger is in my bones, threaded into my soul. Once upon a time I was lost in a fairytale, playing a futile game of knights and rooks, chess pieces brought to life with the mind of an eight year old. But with every word Ingram Callaghan

My brother

Every word he spoke put new rips into the fabric of my soul, of the reality that I clung to. It crumbled like a hastily built castle, words laying siege to my kingdom.

Spotlight hits flames, and the creak of a door bangs in my ears. His footsteps rattle the floorboards, years of lies falling in the dust.

Moms in the doorway when my Dad's body slams into the wall next to her, walls cracking and peeling wallpaper adorning the indent. My fists are cuffed around his collar, and sweat droplets are sprinting down my forehead. Teeth grind and the poison of a preacher man castle turned dust speaks.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US."

He taught me how to have a temper, how to break teeth and arms and bones and spirits. He taught me truths and he taught me lies.

He never taught me the art of making money.

He was well educated in it all along.

An hour later and the fire is crackling and dying. Theres holes in the walls and cuts in my knuckles, shattered floorboards where I threw us both down, black eyes where the sight of my father's pride used to be.

He hasn't answered my question, but there's guilt splattered across his face, complemented by the black eye I gave him.

I glance and there's pain written on Mom's face, sprawled across her cheekbones like a hastily painted work of art. Maybe that's the worst fight of all, to fight for a marriage and watch it crumble before your eyes.

Her eyes drop and she shuts down.

"We... we can leave with Ingram. He can take us in."

I grind my teeth.

"We don't want to live with him. We want to survive. You fucked us over, Dad. You..."

I trail off and he leaves.

Less than a month later and I can't take care of a mother who's shut down, never recovering from a fight to fatal.

A week after that and we're moving into an empty house, money and pain in its walls.

From Knight to Rook to Bishop-

to Pawn. I play a game i'll never win.

I met her two months after I began my relationship with Ingram, broken bandages too thin to fix the scars my father had cut into me. She was running fights, sitting atop a throne fit for a Queen.

And I, the Knight.

Beat downs and smack talk, I upheld my tradition of never losing a fight. At least, not against another man.

Ichabod Callaghan. She oozed confidence and assurance, shady and resourceful.

She made me promises that I could hardly wrap my broken beaten bruised head around, words too far from my vocabulary used to make me stray too far from my comfort zone. Fingers poking my sweat stained shirt and there's an undying fire in her eyes. Back up against a wall, Ichabod Callaghan looks me dead in the eyes and reminds me of the crackling fires that used to signal a Father coming home.

"You've still got a shit ton to learn, kid."

Fists clench, and I spiral into her school of street ethics and promises.

Gold, Glory, Guts.

Ingram was the supply, cash threaded into his skin and soul. Ichabod the Glory, the machine behind the madness. Cold, calculating, resourceful, intelligent.

And i'm the Guts, nothing more than an enforcer.

We control part of the uncontrollable, bring light to the Black Market of District Four. Death threats and intimidation tactics, we're feared not because of our name or our looks but because of our ways.

My hand around his throat and I can feel the air caught in his lungs, adam's apple bobbing up against the curve of my hand. His eyes are bloodshot, veins pulsing as the adrenaline tries to save him from something unavoidable.

I sit on top, fist raised and brick laced between my fingers and my teeth are grinding in my mouth, poison seeping from my lips as I look down on him.

"We told you not to break the deal, Mullin."

He sputters, spit dribbling from lips to my hand. I tighten my grip and his body shutters.

"WE TOLD YOU NOT TO BREAK IT-"

My muscles tighten and the brick crashes into him and theres blood on my arm and broken bones and skulls and dreams and hopes and-

Ichabod Callaghan rests her hand on my shoulder and pulls me off of whats left of a broken body, muscles twitching and legs pulling.

I can't breathe, can't think can't act can't-

I know nothing but the fight, but the adrenaline of fist to skin and bones to breaking point.

She pulls a gun gun and click and his body rests, blood pooling beneath his skull.

Knight Rook Bishop

A queen whose wits far outclass mine takes three steps away from the body, heels clicking as she turns and she drops the smoking metal in my lap, still warm from the Death she'd delivered.

"Get your shit done and move on- Life's too short to waste."

Two more steps and she stops.

"Come on, we have more targets to hit today."

Pulling myself together thread by thread, bit by bit hope by hope dream by dream.

Icarus Callaghan. I hold no pride to my name, nothing to my life but my fists and my inability to turn down a bet. I'm the enforcer, nothing more, always less.

If Life's a game of Chess, then i'm the pawn.

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Last Edit: Jun 14, 2020 18:48:57 GMT -5 by pogue

pogue Graphics 1,811 POSTS Pronouns: He/Him last seen Apr 16, 2024 18:41:45 GMT -5 Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?	Icarus {{ Four (FIN) Jan 17, 2016 17:15:33 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by pogue on Jan 17, 2016 17:15:33 GMT -5 Finally done uvu xoxo, eat ass rice bitch

Deleted 0 POSTS last seen Apr 25, 2024 11:18:56 GMT -5	Icarus {{ Four (FIN) Jan 17, 2016 20:36:07 GMT -5 Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Deleted on Jan 17, 2016 20:36:07 GMT -5 god this is incredible im crying i love it i love you i love your writing shit accepted af
	Last Edit: Jan 17, 2016 20:36:42 GMT -5 by Deleted