pavlikovsky / d9 / fin

Your life is just like any other tragic story. There is nothing new or special about it, just another shitty life in an entire book of shitty lives. Your mother was an alcoholic and your father had a tendency to speak with his fists. You moved around a lot, your father’s work taking you to all different corners of the District. There was no time to settle down. Not like you could ever feel settled in a house like yours, anyway.

One night, your mother drank from the bottle one too many times and stumbled out a window. You were eleven, maybe. The years have blended together after all you have been through. You can’t remember your age, just the sound her body made when it hit the pavement. It wasn’t loud or gruesome. It was just a strange, flat noise that you never wanted to hear again.

Your father didn’t stop you from watching her body being carted away. He had seemed oddly calm about it, but you know he didn’t kill her. You probably would have felt better about the situation if he had. If he killed her, at least it meant you would have been next. But no, you were cursed to continue on living, at least until you stopped being too lazy to do something about it.

At seventeen, you ran away. You were sick of your father’s beatings. He was a man who saw no worth in his own son, and so you saw no worth in yourself. If you were going to be worthless, you were going to do it somewhere where your eyes wouldn’t be blackened, so you left. You heard that he died shortly after you left, but you’ve never had any interest in confirming it. He isn’t worth wasting time over.

You bounced around homes for a while, sleeping in attics or on couches. You tried to keep steady girlfriends, just for their beds, even if you weren’t interested in the relationship itself. One girl was so obsessed with you that she wanted to marry you. You can’t even remember her name now, only that she had pretty dark eyes and scarred hands from working in the factories. You married her. You got divorced. She was torn up. You couldn’t have cared less.

You wanted people to understand you, but you were so afraid of what would happen if they did that you pushed away anybody who got close. This is what happens when an unloved child grows into an unloved adult. You never stop desperately chasing after the attention you were deprived of. You do whatever you can— steal, sleep around, anything that makes you feel seen. You know they’re looking straight through your eyes, not seeing you for who you truly are, but then again, could anybody ever see you? The walls inside your chest were iron, shatterproof. They needed to be impenetrable or else you knew you’d be killed by your own fucking heart.

Art theft was an easy job. You’d been doing it since you were a kid, selling off paintings you took while your mother was too drunk to notice, learning how to forge priceless artifacts and bargain with collectors. It was all you had time for when you weren’t putting as many drugs in your body as you possibly could. Sometimes you felt like you were better at it when you were on drugs. You felt less bad for stealing away these tiny glimmers of hope and pawning them off to people who only wanted them for money. When you were sober, then you had the brain capacity to feel conflicted about it.

You started out as one of the low level workers, but now you’re top dog. You crawled your way out of the heap and spit your blood on anyone who tried to drag you down. Now, you’re the one who those people listen to. Everyone listens to you. When you give orders, people obey them, and if they don’t follow through, you get to decide what happens to them. You’re powerful. For once in your life, you’re powerful.

So why isn’t it enough?


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