niho moon // peacekeeper

Toxicity is a drug. that's the only reason I'd know that people look for it. They get addicted; it's not their fault, but I know. I've been in it, swam through it. I know how easy it is to live with, how comfortable it all becomes. After awhile, you forget that there's anything else.

(Her skin smells like rain on hot pavement in August.)

I saw her from across the ballroom floor, black dress, fabric draped in folds exposing her lower back, clinging to her curves exquisitely. Marian. I don't remember her family name. Those things stopped mattering to me a couple of years ago. I watch her hips sway as she walks and I know that I'm going to look for her within the hour.

I turn the ring on my right hand's ring finger once and then twice so that the inscription faces the bottom.

Colin looks over his shoulder, locking his eyes with mine. It's been four weeks since I saw him last and five since his marriage to Celestia Cox. I miss the way his lips taste against mine and it feels harsh, like a scrape against my teeth. Our last conversation ended with raised voices and bloody knuckles. The alcohol I've consumed and the heat in the pit of my stomach tell me what I already know when I see his face, all thought of Marian out the window.

He turns his gaze away from mine, locking eyes with Celestia instead. She laughs, vibrant. He's said something funny, possibly about me. I don't know if it matters. My body feels empty, devoid of all thought and possibility. My future lies with Marian in the backseat of her father's limited edition Chevrolet Cadillac.

But I don't go to her, I don't go find her. I start walking instead, feet taking me out the front doors, across the terrace and into the gardens.

And I wake up alone in the barracks in seven, loving him all over again.

...

I never thought that I was going to be a peacekeeper. I wasn't supposed to. My future had always been laid out for me like tomorrow's outfit. I was supposed to graduate university and take my rightful place on my father's leather lined, brass-buttoned throne. My future was sitting behind an office desk and marrying young.

I ruined that for myself when I scribbled my name down on white forms, receiving a start date and a white uniform for my trouble. That was two years ago now. I haven't spoken to my father since but I still feel his breath on my neck, angry and hurt. We communicate through my mother now, the last time I was on leave and went for dinner my father worked late.

My mother understands, she was wild once too.

I don't tell her why when she asks, why I left. Sexuality has only ever been a straight line to her. She may suspect something or other but I can't say. They've always felt like polite strangers rather than parents.

I'm at home in a helmet, anonymous and detested.

You can always tell when a district doesn't like you, they hand you a bullet-proof vest upon arrival and people move to the other side of the road just to avoid passing you by.

I like that, the solitude.

There are no parties anymore, no lavish balls but that's good, comfortable. I was never right there anyway unless I was standing beside Colin, drink in hand.

I think about him sometimes, about the way his hands felt on my hips and the low sounds he'd make during sex. I still don't know what I was to him, a lover or someone to fuck for a while.

I want to think the former but I know it never was that.

We were just two rich boys with nothing else to do.

I toil in the districts, hands bloody from blisters. They've begun to warm up to me in ten because I help them dig ditches and take off my helmet for conversations. Nine doesn't like me, there are too many gangs and too many people loyal to them. I was stationed there for five days once and witnessed the death of a fellow officer and the maiming of a second.

Hell is in nine.

I prefer seven.

The trees are barbaric, reminiscent of skyscrapers built by an ancient goddess. They tower over me in the woods and I feel so alone it brings tears to my eyes.

I can't help but go back as often as I can, begging for the hollowness of that feeling.

That lonliness.