Jacynth Voclain D4 (Done)

Sand spreads between my fingers, smooth and warm from the bright glowing of the sun.

A storm was coming soon. The white fluff of clouds growing denser the farther I look out towards the sea. There's no rainfall yet, but it'll come with a crashing sound of lightning and a sea of rough waters. I lay in the basking sun still, with the intent on getting an escape for just a moment. My thin and toned body extended towards the sea where I feel at home. I'm a gentle wave that grows into a tidal wave that crashes into the hearts of everyone I know. I sweep everyone with a cleansing glare that cares too much. My sharp tongue read to strike like the ocean against the sides of the cliffs to my right. The stretching of my legs is when I know I should stand. They've fallen asleep with a tingling sensation that rises through them.

Stretching was important to the body, waking up the muscles that were cut off from the blood that couldn't reach it as it normally would. My small hands reach to the sky with purpose. A storm was approaching in the distance, but I've outlived them all. Tsunami, rainstorms, possible floods, and so many more. The sea was my calling, even if father's own poison seemed to be pushed into my hands. A sigh comes from lips because I know that they'll worry about me if they can see the storm clouds. Alex didn't have to deal with them like I did. Mother's whispers of how pretty her little girl was stuck in my head on a loop. It's never-ending shrill that echoes loudly in my mind.

She doesn't understand what true poison was.

Beauty be damned, I walk my own path, like a tidal wave.

No one there to stop me from the crash that inevitably will happen.

It's happened before. The crash of my young age when the family secret was told to me. Smart or not, I had a way with the poison that father made. The reactions and chemical components were easy to learn like a lesson of history in school that we had to learn. The ocean is the only escape for me from his and mom's work. Deals dealt in the back of the shop for things that never were for sale. Strangers that paid too much for something that could be made on their own, but I dare not speak for a crash would come. Another lock down in my room with tears and the exhaustion to never want to leave that room again.

Fear hides deep in my chest with sharp stabs into my heart, but I don't show it. Weakness creates scars, that stretch across the skin. We don't talk of our parents. It's a silence that hides in our skin that we all understand deeply, but don't outright say. Mainly, for our own safety. I always catch Alex with a look in his eye that tells me that he's a storm that rains on everything. He's always beating someone up with those bruised knuckles and hard looks. Bothersome to most, I still find him intriguing to say the least. There's a story in his skin that I know more than others, but I don't know his secrets. And he'll never know mine.

I keep them under lock and key under my tongue with a cold poison that no one will ever be able to get through without sudden death. Allergic reaction is what they'd call it. Call it for being some food that no one's ever eaten. I leave with nothing more than a smile. Hands bloodied, but not visible. I've never had to done it, but I know how it goes for my parents. It wouldn't be any different for me. No matter how much I would want it to be different. Catch me to catch the original culprits. Countless of murders on their hands. On my hands because I create them for cash. I create them for a cut of the greed that lies in my skin.

I slide my palm against the door as it's color is barely fading, a new paint job that I could always do, or pressure Alex into doing. I heard him when I was five when he told father that he wanted to be a painter. Support is all I ever gave him. A lesson that we both learned that day, but I didn't get wounds for it. I just slid by knowing my place in the home. We both train because that's what we were meant to do. What we were born to do in a district of water, train to kill another soul.

Fuck it though.

Alex would get reaped over me.

I've got other business to attend to in life.

I watched him beat the shit out of the last guy that I kissed today. Partnered up to fight, the pathetic guy begging for information on how to beat Alex from me. I told him to work harder instead of begging the sister that he had kissed. I only made things worse when I told Alex. A fury of knuckles into the guy as I watched in awe at the sound of a sickening crack. The guy wasn't even my type. Better to throw him away now before he realizes that I'm just a tidal wave that crushes everyone around me. Starting with a gentle wave that seems fun to unknowing, until it grows into a tidal wave that kills. No one really understands me, but I don't need them to.

I have myself, Alex, the ocean, and my own type of fun.

Making poisons wasn't fun, but it was something to do at times.

I prefer the acts that can be performed behind closed doors with a gentle sound of a storm that is approaching. There's always a whisper of how pretty I am or how good I am at everything. Secrets that slip from their lips, but it doesn't matter. I don't care what they have to say. It's my way of escape, even if it's just for a moment. Mother and father were frustrating to even be around. Their grip upon our chest through fear lays in our chest waiting to burst from too much. Then my crash comes, with a chilling echo and the sounds of screams. I burst from it being too much for me to handle anymore, but as soon as I crash, I build myself back up.

I'm an expert at it now, after the thousands of times the wounds in my skin hurt.

The sound of my heart breaking every time it happens echoes.

Alex doesn't talk to me when it happens.

I prefer him not to anyways.

Inside the door, I can feel the air grow thick. Tension in the air like it always was. My mind floats in a peaceful moment of a gentle wave as I watch Alex move past me out the door, to do whatever a teenage boy does at night. Mother wanted me home. She wanted me to make the things that put the blood on my hands, but I can't feel my body move, until I head to the room in the back. A door with a lock and key on it. The silver knob shining back at me as I insert the key that lays deep in my pocket. A twang of a click enters my ears as the sound of words being shared fills my ears. Mother's there speaking out loud like the psycho that I remember as a little girl when she showed me the poisons that we don't dare talk about. Lesson spent on how to make them using ingredients that I don't want to know how they got their hands on. Days spent just mixing liquids to poison the body. The thing about poison is that we were the same. The same poison that mixes with a person and kills them. We're both silent and stealthily, until we strike. My words like poison that has slipped old friends into a madness. A madness that they never truly escaped from until they left me out to dry.

Mother doesn't talk about the poisons anymore. Only glances of knowing looks that tell me to make what they want. Silent words spoken behind a closed door as my hands shake involuntarily from the knowledge I know. I know that I'm killing people, but I can't stop. I can't crash or things will be worse than they could ever be. Father's violence would prove that. Alex wasn't the only one who ended up with purple marks and threatening words. Expectations of what their family was to the world lays in our skin like a coat of sorrow that weighs more than anyone could ever imagine. I told him I wanted to be a dancer once. He spat in my face that time. I was only four when he did that. My knowledge of poisons became noticeable to them when I became older. They trained me to be able to make them quickly with my brain, but I hated it.

I hate them.

No matter what happens when I crash, it hurts. The reason it hurts, overwhelmingly so, is because I know it'll never be fixed. We are broken brothers and sisters in a constant loop of poison, sorrow, and storms. There's not a rainbow at the end where everything is fixed, but only more ominous clouds that threaten to storm again and again. We are not going to find an eye of the storm to cower away even for five minutes. There's no happy laughs, except for the ones that we try to make for ourselves. We are alone with parents that ask for us to be more. To become no longer human because we are flawed. We are flawed beings that want to be something else, but we live as makers of poison and careers. Nothing will change that. No matter how hard I try.

I crash like the tsunami that shattered District Four. Mother speaks about a poison for someone that I don't care to pick up their name. I don't want to be in their business. I don't want to be their star anymore. I never did. They want me to be the monster that makes them proud, but I break easily. I break with a shattering sound of a bottle as I toss it to the ground, pushing past her shoulder on my way out. My lock turns as my body falls onto the sheets of my bed. My head goes into my pillow as my voice gives way to an inevitable scream of frustration. I let go of myself for twenty minutes. I let go of everything around me because it's better to not think than think. My mind drifts off as my mother walks away from the door with my father who had been banging on my door asking for me to come out.

If I had, I would have purple marks on my skin the next day.

I've learned not to open it for him.

Instead, the window in my room opens up to a stormy sky. Rain pours onto the ground with a hard splat as my eyes train onto a way to leave. My hands move as my legs are lunged over the side. A step is all it takes. The rain doesn't bother me as I throw my hood over my head looking for an escape. An escape that'll keep me busy for the night. Nothing else, but feeling like I am actually whole. When I arrive at the house, my hand knocks at the window as a boy from the career training facility looks at me. My skin tingles with what's about to happen. My smile glimmers at him as he opens the window letting me inside.

Lips crash into one another as I let out a chuckle.

"Can I stay the night."

"Of course, baby."

He's asleep now with a quiet breath as the rise and fall of his chest is on my ear. Wrapped up in sheets and a warm body to rest on. Tomorrow, he'll be nothing more than a conquest. Alex will punch him in the face as I laugh away. Our parents will ignore my outburst the night before. I will feel like I am drowning again. Everything will be the same, but for a moment I can just live. A moment is all I need. We created the eyes of the storms that let us breathe for just a moment.

I am a gentle wave that grows into a crashing tsunami.

I am the poison that kills people with just a taste.

No one knows that I'm drowning under it all.

Storms, tsunamis, poisons, expectations, careers, and so many other words that were meant to be us.

All I feel is just that I am myself.

There will always be clouds that are forming, storms always coming through, but I'll find the sun.