Ghosts of children's past(Closed)
Apr 17, 2011 22:19:20 GMT -5
Post by Dancin on Apr 17, 2011 22:19:20 GMT -5
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Sebastian Miller
The house dwarfed everything else on the street. It has huge and boxy, made of all the same kind of red brick. The huge wooden double doors were currently chained shut, though some of the tiny windows had been smashed in. Gnarly old bushes grew wild on either side of the door, and a bronze plaque sat between the doors and the first set of windows on the left. Sebastian couldn't see it from where he stood, at the end of the lawn but he knew the words written on it.
District 8 Graveyard.
IN THE WINTER, FAR BENEATH
THE BITTER SNOWS, LIES THE SEED THAT, WITH THE
SUN’S LOVE, IN THE SPRING BECOMES THE ROSE.
As a young boy, Sebastian had come here almost everyday. He'd loved to wander amongst the graves, staring at the names and imagine. Was this person his mother? And this name beside her, was that Sebastian's father? It had always seemed better to him to imagine his parents dead. They had to give him up, they really had loved him. It was better than the alternative, the thoughts that always lurked in the back of Sebastian's mind, waiting until he was angry or sad and then leaping up, attacking him like a bear. His parents didn't care about him, didn't love him, and had given him up willingly and while they were living. Even thinking it now, made Sebastian's lungs shut down, his brain go fuzzy.
After he turned twelve, Sebastian stopped coming to the graveyard. He was never really sure why. Maybe in part because he was old enough to fear the dead, maybe because he had finally given up hope of figuring out who his parents were or maybe it was just that he had gotten out of habit. Whatever the case, he had not laid eyes on it since his twelfth birthday until today. He had passed it on the way home from work, on a detour and was brought to a halt at the sight of the decrepit building.
He had been standing there, in the same spot for almost two hours now. The sun had dipped down below the skyline of District 8 and a damp chill had crept into the air. Sebastian shoved his hands deep into his pockets, protecting his silk smooth skin from the windy cold. His eyes watered slightly from the wind and his longish hair twirled about on his forehead.
"Screw it." Sebastian mumbled, finally taking a step forward. The grass of the lawn was spongy beneath his feet, and the bars of the fence, when he reached it were cold and brittle feeling. Falling back into his old habit, he easily scaled the fence and tossed himself over it. After landing on the other side he straigtened, brushed what dust may have accumulated on his coat and walked off in a familiar pattern.
The graves were almost as worn as the building in front of them, in some cases more so. A few of the markers had crumbled completely, and now the destroyed remnants of their name and days were strewn in a two meter radius around the grave spot. Other, grander graves had stood better against the tests of time and still glowed slightly whiter in the darkness. On the opposite side of the graveyard, near the games keeper's shed stood the rows of simple white rectangles that marked the lives of all the Peacekeepers who had died in District 8. Sebastian had always thought it was odd that they were buried here and not at one of the fancy graveyards in the Capitol. I guess even the Capitol's law enforcers weren't very important to the Capitolites.
He walked for almost two minutes before slowing to a pause in front of a tall white gravemarker. The name on it was Katherine M. Patrice. It was a grave he visited nearly every time he had been in the graveyard. It was the person he felt was most likely his mother. Her death date was a month or two after Sebastian was supposedly born and her birth date would put her at 32 when she died. Sebastian liked to think that the M. stood for Miller. This grave, of a woman he had never seen or met was the closest thing Sebastian had ever had to a parent.
Very suddenly, Sebastian felt horribly guilty. In all the years he had come here, Sebastian was Katherine's only visitor he knew of and even if she wasn't his mother, he had been so attached to her for so long. He felt awful for not coming to see her in over four years. Emotion welled up in his chest and angry tears sprang up in his eyes.
"I'm so sorry Katherine." He mumbled, brushing the pad of his thumb across the indented font of her name. "You deserve better mourners than me."
