Thurman Iliad-Laws // D12 // FIN

Page one.

Fuck, I...

I don't even know where to start.

How am I going to start this whole thing off?

The story of Thurman, you know, there isn't really a fitting place to begin telling of the events and feelings that are tied to my name.

He's...he's lost, he's...

Shit, I...

And already, the book's shut closed. Ripred, I can't fuckin' do this. The leather-fastened collection of pages is set down on my lap, light fingers tapping away at the front cover as everything, everything is just seen, and--and felt all over again, I...

My heart...it's weak, but it's still beating. I've had to pick up the pieces before and put them all back together, it wasn't easy but I did it. I actually managed to fix it back up, but...

It's not ready for me to go over my life up to this point yet.

I'm not ready to revisit the past yet.

The glue's not drying up, the bandages aren't falling apart, the organ won't scatter all over my insides for me to clean up after all over again. Not now.

I can't risk it.

There's no sense in doing so, but yet...

Fuuuck, I just...

What's better--a heart that's taken a long time to heal once before becoming undone a second time, or a bottle of a soul with a cork blocking pent-up pain that's just waiting to geyser out and break me, only I refuse and keep a lid on it for just a little while longer?

Because, because...n-nobody needs to know.

Nobody needs to know so they can send me falling off the edge all over again.

That's...that's what people do best, after all.

Make each other suffer, no matter what the circumstances are and how they go about doing it.

Ugh, I can't fucking deal with this shit. Not again, not now, not when I'm this close to figuring out how to control it.

You think you're finally about to find the answer, but then you get your hopes up too much and make a costly mistake causing all of your work to come crashing down on you,

your expectations only leave you in reality with nothing but a broken heart.

That's it.

I've seen it happen before. I know it's happened many times before.

My words, I can't directly hit the feeling, I gotta make them something I'm just and only but familiar with.

Tears welled up in my eyes but I quickly move the back of my free hand over them and reopen the journal, the other wielding a black pen and getting to work.

I know how I'm relieving the pressure of feelings out of a bottle-soul without reopening the wounds stitched up beneath my chest.

I...I wasn't always like this, you know.

I never knew what it was like before, feeling red beating with love get cut in half. Wings beating against the pit of my stomach before whirling upwards into my brain like a storm and sending my thoughts in disarray so the new ones of pain forming within it can torment me with ease.

No distractions, no reassurances, no consolations.

Just pain.

I never knew what it was like for a long time, I was just a kid trying to make the most out of so very little around here.

So we're not rich, things can't come easy to us like in other districts, we'd be lucky to even have more than a single bite of food in one day.

Thurman, he didn't care before, he...he tried to think differently about it all, find ways around the obstacles he was presented with.

Dad worked in the mines, so he usually came home with a decent amount of coal to keep us warm. Why not trade them off for food to suppliers who were running low on the rock?

Our house was falling apart, why not find things strewn around the District that aren't needed or wanted by anyone to make it more livable?

There wasn't really anything to do, why not make friends and come up with plenty of games for us all to laugh and have fun in?

He was smart, he was creative, he was so perfectly in one piece.

Dark blonde hair and blue eyes, it was kinda like he was the sun and the sky. His grin was no uncommon sight, and always covered the lower half of his face. His gaze, it glittered with numerous possibilities.

No wonder it wasn't difficult for him then, to see the sun that sits patiently behind the clouds ready to come out when they were ready to go.

Then he looked away and no longer envisioned the bright ball of light when he heard the explosions.

Not directly, but through the breaths of parted lips swimming through all ears. An accident, his father was a part of it.

Dad was gone.

It was the first time he felt the organ split up into two.

Not Running on Oxygen.

[...] The boy was able to live, but he didn't use air. Instead, everytime his lungs inflated, black soot in the form of clouds spiraled their way out of his insides.

He scared people, nobody could understand him. Nobody wanted to. [...] Everytime he tried to reach out, others moved farther away from him.

He had no one. [...] and with a twisted grin, fate saw to it that his life was cut short in irony as a rope burns into his neck.

He didn't think of solutions to make the lives of he and everyone else around him better anymore; now he was trying to solve the problem of how to keep holding onto his mother, not letting her go.

She almost did, once. She tightened her hold on his hand though, in the end she wasn't ready to.

But she could no longer find peace; worry followed her everywhere she went, every step she took. She had to keep us and us alone alive, dad was no longer here.

So she went into the mines herself.

That was the first time his mind gyrated into a tornado, most of the time he was now left alone. There was almost never anybody around to keep him grounded, to keep him from taking off into the sky and swallowing dark clouds.

There was no more reason to try and be enthusiastic. There was no more reason to try and live life to the fullest. What was there for them?

It was all a facade, and here he manages to see and lift off the mask.

Reality's shown its true colors to him now, and with time they just became darker and darker.

"You'll see me again soon, okay? I love you."

It was a weird way of saying goodbye to your son, but a few days later he learned why she said it the way she did.

Another incident up in the mountains, but this time it was with purpose.

She threw herself off a railing high above ground next to an elevator shaft.

Meaningless Words.

They lived in two houses across a wide stretch of river surrounded by forest, just the two of them. A boy, a girl, and their families. [...]

Everything was like a dream, they were so high on love they might as well have started hallucinating images of each other as they walked without one another. [...] She said she'd see him tomorrow, like she always would.

But this time, she wasn't there. [...] It's been a few days now. He swam across the body to the others, and panting loudly was about to ask the question they already knew the answer to. [...] She had drowned on her way over to his side that morning.

I was lost now.

Why did you leave me?

Why did you leave me alone here, ripped my heart out and took it with you, do you want to see me cry?

Do you want me to feel like to die?

I'm no good on my own, I-I...I can't make ends meet on my own, I...

HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?

There was nowhere I wanted to be but with them, my suffering was now laid out for all to see. I wandered the streets and scavenged for scraps like an animal, I was not fit as a fiddle but thin as a twig, with black tears running down my eyes and shallow breathing like I was trying to swallow coal dust, because that was their legacy.

That seemed to be the fate meant for me.

I was so cold.

All I felt was the winds of a storm constantly raging inside my head, and I had to keep trying to fight it alone.

I was so cold, and I was so alone.

Even when a man's eyes fell upon me and my own now dull ones, and he exposed to me a heart golden and shining like the sun I used to see even behind the gloomy clouds.

Even when he gave me his name.

Even when he gave me a home, even when he gave up my rags for his riches.

Even when my skin started to glow again and light returned to my eyes, when they suggested me to take to physical activity to pass the time when I started to get bored of what was in the shelves and cupboards and so I bulked up a bit and looked even more healthy than I did in years.

Even when I had a family again, and all I heard was the whooshing of playing cards as numerous fingers flipped through the decks and all I saw was smiles upon the faces of strangers as games were presented in front of them at the dining table.

No family can be found here.

I don't fit in, even if other orphans like me live here.

Love is for fools who want something to keep believing in, even in the darkest of hours.

I am so cold, and I am so alone--because that feeling is all I have, it's the only thing I know will never go away. It's the only thing I can trust to stay and not leave my side.

Love doesn't last forever, I know that much; and now they do too, now that Mitchell is gone.

At least I have the hurt to count on.

He Went Cold.

He was interested in the boy, but wasn't ready to confess his feelings just yet. [...] The boy was cold, especially his hands. The boy was always seemingly in deep thought, and maybe a bit too serious...but he always meant well.

He always thought the palms of winter meant lying inside the boy was a heart of summer. The boy always denied, but not without a small laugh of amusement. [...] He decided, that next day: he was going to reveal his rapidly growing love for the boy.

As they walked after school, if only the boy stepped off the sidewalk just a few seconds earlier, just a few seconds later-- [...] as the boy lay dying in his arms, he wept and held onto his cold hands. The last words they exchanged were the admissions of love, before their love was no more.

The cover joins the pages, I was finished writing for now.

God, that felt good.

And even with rivers coursing down my pale cheeks from dispirited pools of sight, I smile.