church of what's going on } max&ratts

Trauma was a broken record. She heard the bang, Garrett’s scream, the pounding of her own heart in sync with the rush of her footsteps. The moon’s white glare illuminated her path, but Garrett had been left for the shadows. Now he lay healing in the whitest of rooms, everything stained permanently with the stench of sterile chemicals and sickness. The medical center made her uneasy, but it was the only way she could see him. The rest of her days and nights were spent with her other best friends, liquor and wine, sloshing within cold glass bottles that now lay discarded near her mattress.

Her apartment felt like emptiness between four peeling walls. Silence was the loudest echo and she couldn’t handle locking herself inside of there for very long, especially with the TV on. The news about the future Games left an acidic taste in her mouth, and it burned whenever she parted her lips to complain.

She didn’t have anybody around to listen to her, so she surrounded herself with bar folk. Men and women with slurred speech and noisy personalities, voices to fill the void even when she hadn’t a care in the world for what they had to say.

Except for one, apparently.

Bold words for a stranger, but she swallowed them like a shot. ”I would’ve remembered you,” she said, because she remembered every hot person she slept with no matter how wasted she was. ”Maybe you can see into the future?”

Or maybe you saw me sock Katelyn in her prissy fucking face.

She shouldn’t be doing this.

She also didn’t give a shit. Life had spiraled into the sewage system years ago, when one grave marked the slots for future graves. Among them, Garrett had almost been one. She couldn’t fathom why the Peacekeepers had been patrolling the community graveyard that night. Normal thieving she understood. But grave robbers?

She had limits.

Tonight she deserved bliss. A night to drown in alcohol and share a space with someone that didn’t make her think of pain and suffering and loss. The girl was even offering a location that wasn’t her own disheveled apartment, an embarrassing one-bedroom space littered with empty bottles and despair. It was in no condition to be used as a sanctuary for sex.

She had some dignity. Dwindling, but active.

”Show me,” she said, turning her back to the crowds behind her. They were boisterous and contagious, but they had nothing to offer in comparison. She wanted to forget every problem weighing on her shoulders until tomorrow morning. The death, the dying, the healing, the future – all of it was bleak and grey. She was going blind, the darker it became. All she had to hope for was that Garrett would be discharged from the medical center without further charges. They weren’t fucking grave robbers. Yes, they were technically trying to steal the entire casket, but it was for good reason. Still illegal.

”Also, I’m Rattiera.” But don’t call me rat.