C-4 ✁ DISTRICT 1 ✁ FIN

C - 4

A constant humming: I try to forgot how it is to feel broken. 

That's supposed to be a good thing, at least I assume -- putting each piece together in a slow manner. Hot gluing flower petals back on, it's a learning curve. Wingclippers firm in pale hands, it's all I've ever known, I hold bed sheets like a life line. Like a boat's white sail, I smell sea salt in the form of pooling blood, how did it get this bad? A shot, antidepressants, the door behind me locked as I stare out a balcony- sweet, sweet home. Rivers of blood, frozen; it's what I've known for so long.

Timeless, the clock's cold hand gripping by the throat- I forgot what it felt like to be fourteen, fifteen. Forgot the sinking feeling of adulthood, childhood; of every ounce of shame and grief and guilt in my soul, overlooking the blackest stains of remorse, it's an almost tangible thing. Remorse for a girl who no longer exists, from one who was never meant to begin existing- fuck.

I'd rather swallow it.

C - 4

Etched in the hands of a tiny god's palms; a house meant for nothing more than me. A ruined thing, torn wallpaper, few rooms, too little rooms -- barely enough room to breathe. Just enough to look myself in the eyes. It smells like smoke. A tiny apartment living, built from the grounds for shady bitches like me; there's hostility in the dark. It's something you learn fast, locking every door behind yourself, one part paranoia, two parts ghosts. After living so long the life of invisibility, I think I've grown to hate the dark- if I could leave the lights on I would. 

That's the thing with migraines, 
they want to feed you to lions. 

I can't blame them. One lit cigarette, dropping grocery bag of alcohol and take out, old speech clings like screams in my skin, desperate more than I hold house keys - they make good weapons. I walk past dead plants, brown stems wrapped around counter top and shadow: I've learned there's no point caring a kind soul for dying things. Flicking cigarette ashes in the plant pots,

I wish this weren't the case. 

C A Y E

The funeral was so many years ago, Caye Iverson embedded in obsidian and flower petals in a private organization; they wanted a closed death for their daughter. A place hidden away from prying eyes, from blinding judgement and truth hid itself in C-4's throat. There was a lie somewhere in it, Ceris believing only to herself that the Iverson parents cried or weeped or bled -- a daughter drowned, an assassin forged from the same waters. There was no beauty in this, she never understood it, never found an answer that led away from any questions; Ceris died in ways Caye couldn't. 

C E R I S

A man's hands gripped around her's, staring her in the eyes before spitting on her-

"what's the fuckin use of her-"

She half prayed they would kill her off early. A child too young for sword's play, she held tongues lightly on herself, a suicide mission, she hadn't learned the meaning of break in. There were few girls, and she held temper in her veins; Ceris punched and screamed and yelled and caused as much hell as she could, replacing pomegranate seeds with bruised knuckles, another roommate under her finger tips until the admin grabbed her by the hair. Her first year came in fire,

"you must be out of your goddamn mind,"

"FUCK YOU-"

And she'd get punched in the jaw, her tiny body fueled with fire like a conflagration; she burned alive. Being thrown to the side of the hotel room, "you gonna calm down bitch?" Ceris didn't know the admins names, nor did they care to learn her's. The name they branded onto her skin, something that can't be traced and reaped: she did not look nineteen. Ceris did not fit her name, her role, her life, nothing more than blood stains spit on the ground, 

"no."

Ceris grew to be accustom to swallowing her own blood and pride. 

("what a shitty trade.")

C E R I S

A name born from infernos, Ceris, she burned it herself. 

Abandonment never killed a bitch; she bit the word, black wool choking her own mouth. Enough times she'd been called it, by men with alcohol on their breath, by her landlord, by ghosts with a knife in their neck -- she learned to accept it. Learned to cope, eye bags weighing her down, eighteen years a burden. Tortured and cut and trained, the undergound putting a sword in her hand and a target in her way, it became second nature. Swallow pride of sorts, fill out for shelter, forged like a weapon and she played the role her lead's gave her.

She misses the phase, C-4 as Ceris, being able to swallow fog and remorse without choking; not hating herself. Blood like ink in her finger tips, she tried to do every thing right after a while. An opera singer, a scam artist, a brother - they made her memorize every person she killed. Identify every in and out of their life, every family member, made her recognize how much more human they were than herself, Ceris couldn't talk back, as she aged she realized they'd kill her eventually. 

As Ceris aged, she realized they couldn't hold her forever. 

Nor could those murdered, last words etched into her fore-memories, a pocket knife strapped to her ankle; she sat in the audience. A brown cafe, a beautiful woman, the drum set player and her smiled at each other as she sang something of beauty that Ceris held under water, the day she ordered black coffee. There was something about watching the deceased before their time, knowing what their last moments would be; it haunts her more than her supervisors could have intended. 

Ceris followed the cabaret singer- Anise. A stage name, a bitch could relate. Echoing foot steps overlapping the sound of her own beating veins, pulsing her neck as she kept her eyes low, Anise bobbed her head on the walk, as if she heard music in her heart beat. As Ceris watched her enter her apartment, she felt that same heart wave, if love at first sight was a thing, C-4 shot the arrow through Anise's throat herself. 

Small things pieced together, ripped and shredded edges matching up and she caught information through the seams of places she did not belong: there were two admins of the underground. A man named Trigger and another named Rugger, they made her attend the funerals of her hits. Past pay check, describing who cried, how many showed up -- they held a leash around her soul, control on the human spirit and she was supposed to be the collector. 

And she slipped, C-4.

C - 4

She found safety in a slut house; Trigger should've shot her in the heart. 

A train station, sent out by her own; her higher ups gave her the directions, the backing. A brother, Jackson - she never pieced together what was real, if any of it was or if she was killed for a phantom - she held her breath when the time came. Rusted scrap metal, the taste of iron, she heard echoes of movement,

"we've got no use for runaway bitches, Ceris."

"That's not my name."

And for as many times she encountered death, the years of filled graves and man made tragedies, she was not prepared to die; Trigger took no less a blind shot as she took her will to the grave. She was lucky, for power wasted in his bones, a privilege she never participated in, the bullet shot in her skeleton, swallowed whole by bruised and sullen things, "rot in hell, whore," last words she memorized for a girl named Ceris. Blurred things swirl in her pooling eyelashes, wiping tears onto a bloodied sweater sleeve-

A bullet wound, clean through the dip of her collar bone, she swore through drops of blood. 

The learning curve of plotted murder, a bitch would drain their bodies dry.