Zane Utimio | Wanderer

I’ve always been dirty; hair, clothes, eyes, build, skin, voice. Not necessarily a bad thing, just always been that way, impossible to shake off. I was born into it; when you’re surrounded by trash, sometimes you can’t help blending in, your clothes match the moth-bitten quilts, your skin takes on the quality of rusty nails, bolts, your eyes manage the same dullness of the gritty silverware that you later use to pick at half-eaten sandwiches and softened fruit, sweet but bruised, waste you can save from being wasted. You meet other people just like you, sifting through mountains of the stuff, looking for shelter from the rain, and you all look alike, they sound like you and you sound like them, and in the end you’re all the same: strays. Sometimes I still let old slang slip, and while Tiva allows it to drift over her thick head of dark hair, I get a quizzical look from Lydia, a tilt of the head, a polite smile. Only Ella ends up recognizing, and the idea that we both share some special understanding, even if it’s as miniscule as dialogue, always reminds me of even dirtier secrets, hidden in darker depths, sunken behind eyes, closed lips, clenched fists (I can't help/don't know why I loathe it).

Running away to the wild ensured that the filth stayed put, matted against skin, streaked under our cheekbones like warrior paint, scattered beneath the soles of my feet and through the threads of my eyelashes. Still, I bathe more often than I used to (Tiva says it cleanses the soul, do it regularly), so I brave the cold water and scrub. Fingers run through the black fibers spindled across my head, an overlapped and cross-swathed inky color that's bland against the night, hardly noticeable, black against black, brushing the tips of my ears. I’d say it grows out, rather than down, (dotted with strands -weeds- that need to be cut, never quite tame even when I try. I used to trim it with a pair of scissors when I could, but it ended up more lopsided then it had started out, considering how my hands shook when the blade neared too close to my scalp).

The water mimics me when it lies still, angling up my reflection before I can say, "No." Olive skin, patched up in places, with an askew symmetry of eyes, so deep-set that lashes almost brush my eyelids, etched eyebrows, broad mouth, sharp jaw line that jaggedly slopes. Dark circles, purples and grays and shining ivory translucent skin, thanks to lack of sleep (instead of the small fistfights that used to earn me sweet, sweet shiners. I've kept my complexion from the sweaty nights lying awake, next to Lydia, staring up at the sky with some kind of cleverly camouflaged exhaustion that my body just won’t recognize. My limbs feel wiry the next day, muscles strain under light loads of firewood, never mind the more taxing chores, and I have to constantly sit down and rest. Obviously, I’m not as strong as I used to be. Guilt erodes like a fucker. Instead of bulk and veins under my skin, that I used to carry around, obtained from hard days of intensive career training, I now have something more compact and lithe, traces of definition in my legs rather than my arms (I've been running my whole life).

Sometimes Tiva threads together clothes. Ella and I don’t wear the attire we came in (those were covered in a red even Tiva had a hard time washing out). She braids Ella's hair, feeds us medication when we have head aches. She takes care of the necessities, and more.

I don't remember much from the beginning, only scattered details, faint imprints on imprints on memories; cinnamon candy, a sister, turning on the old lamp in the hallway when I had to use the facilities at night, doing laundry, large stacks of papers, "Sorry, buddy, I have work to do right now." I remember the dry, dry roof, huddling between milk-and-water sheets, wearing my father's old shirts and listening to my mother's humming in the next room. Sticking my hands into vapid heat during winter, when the fireplace would come alive. (I slept in the den, on a couch, so I was familiar with the flames, flares, crumbles, falling down and building up again.)

Then, gravel was stuck to my palms, waking up somewhere else, white-capped bitterness, a swirl of concrete and sky, and old bricks, crisp air, no trace of the familiar smoke perfume veil I used to fall asleep under, used to exist under, nothing... all just a large chunk of blank slate. Purgatory. And then I found the slums.

Hell. But a type of hell without the fire, and the torches, eerily dim... it was disguised (as paradise) with dunes of colors, old towers, children everywhere. I was able to find an old orange free of charge, brush off the dirt, peel it on the sidewalk curb. Never had been able to do that before, the food intake regulated in my old home due to a hollow piggy bank, and where could you get free food, anyway? Not anywhere I had ever been, although before I was halfway done separating the slices, the orange disappeared into the hands of a boy (older, faceless), and then he was gone. Later in the week, I learned I had been lucky that first time; at least he'd left without starting trouble.

That was also around the time I found Auggie and Ella.

Now that I think about it, I'm surprised they even found me, skinny, hollow (bones), inhumanly pale, face red with blood blush against the cold. I was too young to figure things out for myself (and stupid), besides shuffling through trash bins for food and running away from bad guys when they came around, nevermind finding shelter or any form of warmth, really. All I remember is a flash of black, soft-looking, like baby hair, harsh in contrast with the sallow sky, and a touch of blonde there-after, translucent, almost non-existent, and before I knew it smiling faces were attached to those colors, a boy and a girl (one taller, one shorter, both with mesmerizing angel wings) and they were the seraphs who took me in (let me sleep in the crumbling hut that they called "home," have a bite of their stew, day-after-day-after-day.) They were imperfect (to the point where they were perfect), and they turned out to be mine; and I don't remember when it turned into us, but I was undeniably theirs all the way from the start, whether they wanted me in the long run or not.

Things changed after that; I gained a bit of weight, walked distances without hunger pains pulling me to my knees every few minutes. Watched dawn turn to noon turn to dusk without the fear of what would happen when the lights shut off and the stars flickered on, blurry saucers behind the snow, when the temperature would drop to nothing, sheets of occult ice, below zero. I had Auggie's (rigid, pre-pubescent, bleached) body to keep me warm, Ella a subdued whisper beside me in the dark, soft lullabies that etched themselves into the creases of my mind until I was humming them at night under the worn quilt, (soft symphonies) until my eyes felt heavy and I drifted out of consciousness to my own voice, pressuring me into sleep so that I could work through another day, another week, month.

We'd go out as a pack (all three of us) and search for provisions, split up to cover the clutter, working quickly, and yet keeping each other in check out of the mired corners of our eyes. We'd be out at the crack of dawn when everything wasn't quite so manifested with other kids (although that was made up for with the abundance of racoons, caught in the all-knowing eyes of the gray morning light), and the oncoming day would write itself across the sky in bold letters of lavender, blood orange, and rose petal, sunrise, a new beginning. Sometimes we wouldn't get up quite so early (after a rough night of tossing and turning when we just couldn't pull ourselves to our feet, when I'd brush Ella's hair away from her face, tell her to get up, and she'd turn away from me and bury her head into the pillow), and that's when Auggie would have to do the fighting, bullying just so we could have supper that night. Sometimes things wouldn't get too messy, and we'd get out quickly, but other times a punch would be thrown, insults muttered through clenched teeth, sharp and yellow and horned, but Auggie was always the more silent, calculated. He wouldn't waste time on words, only act in brute force. And sometimes, he wouldn't come out victorious.

All in all, watching Auggie fight for us when we just stood back and watched (and did nothing); I think that's what pushed me to pursue career training. That, and the time Ella picked up a loaf of bread (a whole loaf, a bit moldy, but we could eat around the edges, something that would keep us going for a long while, indented from where the baker's hands pressed into the crust). Auggie wasn't with us (I can't remember where he was, probably off in a different part of the slums, maybe back at our shack) but the girl came out of no where, slapping Ella across the face with the back of her hand, winding up for a second assault (assault with a purpose, a one way track, and the noise made me wince, even though my own face wasn't blossoming with multicolors), and before I could make a move towards her, she was gone, just as fast as she had come, and the bread was gone too. I watched Auggie closely after that, noted how he fought, practiced on the walls, the ground, striking anything that wouldn't fight back really. All I had to do was dig deep and look for something to be angry about (and sure enough the image of blueblack skin would creep across the back of my eyelids in an adrenaline-driven lightning bolt, excitement crawling under my skin, throwing ropes over my arms and pulling my fist against the cement).

We went to school. It was hidden out of site, behind a tall building, a little bit out of the way, just on the outskirts of the district square. We'd walk over there around noon, when the sun was high and bleeding fire onto our callused skin, when we had nothing better to do and we'd find ourselves hanging around there anyway, picking at flies and listening to the sound of our own voices for entertainment. Klaus's voice was more interesting though; he had the vague traces of a Capitolite accent, his words slightly mutated at the end, his inflection off the charts, speckled with grit and District one dialect, rough around the edges and yet ran smoothly through our eardrums with snippets of outside-world information, which we soaked up like sponges (thinking back, our world was just as sheltered as any, most of us never having lived under a solid roof, the bittersweet life of the average, working-class foreign to our taste buds). He told us stories about the wild (the loose mutts, the sharp teeth), addition and subtraction. If someone gave him a bite to eat, he'd sing what he called his own "original songs," mostly about glistening buildings and fancy parties, extravagant clothing. (We all knew he was from the Capitol, or at least suspected it, but when confronted he'd just say he didn't know what we were talking about, didn't remember anything due to his old age, and sometimes, he'd just shut down completely and yell at us to get out of his house).

I didn't know what we were doing really (I was exhausted, debilitated, numbly slipping under sheets and urging sleep to take me sooner rather than later), letting fingertips trail through long black hair absently, letting my mind hands? wander (eyes closed), wondering what would happen if the stars fell from the sky right then, right through our roof, setting the old wood on fire, wondering what was going on in the capitol, going over the correct way to throw a knife in my head, (feeling the curve of the blade in my hand) happy to know that when I woke up I'd have more time to practice (Maybe Auggie was still out practicing?), feeling the room close in, but in a soothing way, a place to finally breath finally think, and not think at all,

"You're beautiful, you know that?" A voice not my own, (low and loose, like gravel), muttered so quietly even I had to strain to hear it. I'd said those exact words before, on more than one occasion, laughing them into the day, and they had always come easily, had always left me satisfied with getting the point across. (Ella was beautiful, self-proclaimed queen, deftly confident, dusty-dry humor, a combination of sun and sand), but this was different... (She was beautiful), and I was breathless, instead of satisfied, anxious, not matter-of-fact, anticipation trembling in my core like an earthquake (I didn't know what we were doing), but I liked it.

And after that, things were different. It was like were making up for lost time, (making use of the dark), concentrating everything (listen, touch, taste, see, smell), done with the trivial, takingtakingtaking. And receiving (I cultivated my selfishness without a second thought, throwing my own force against it until it gave way), and it was like we were set on a one-way course, I couldn't have pulled off the road even if I'd tried (I was on hyper sensitivity, my mind an explosion of headaches, hormones, and hallucinations, or were they real?), pulling me under and setting me loose inside myself, chewing on the ropes that controlled the sinew, tendons, flesh and blood, until they were frayed beyond repair, and replaced them with wires. I was wired, my world was wired. And our worst fear was if Auggie found out.

It had to be wrong in some way, so it was kept secret, one of those taboo topics we never brought up in conversation. Auggie was our brother. Our father, even, to some degree, so to confess would be to confirm that everything was real, and we were not ready for the repercussions that we were convinced would rain down. It's our own fault we weren't more discreet, because Auggie just walked right in one day anyway, empty water bottles hanging from hooked fingers, one of Klaus's cigarettes fitted loosely between his lips. It took me a while to register his face (partly because my eyes had to adjust, partly because of the smoke slipping, tumbling down his lower lip, partly because terror was throwing ink across my vision, black dots in the corners of my eyes), but his face was empty, (something you could bounce an echo off of), feet planted firmly on the ground shoulder width apart, shaking ashes off the butt of his nicotine stick with a flick of his wrist. And then he smiled (or smirked, really), flickering for a moment, lop-sided between a drag, and then he made a casual exit, shutting the door behind him.

We didn't sneak around anymore, seeing as we didn't really care about any other opinions besides Auggie's, and it was finally then that I just let everything take me by the hand and lead me up along the staircase,
high on life in a way that had me thinking everything would be alright. We'd live into old age, take care of Auggie like he had taken care of us, scrummage up enough money to buy a nicer place (although I loved the shack, I couldn't help remembering how it used to be before. How a house generated more warmth, comfort, protection). I'd get a job (work in the factories, cut the diamonds, I figured, a salary to keep the food on the table). I'd have Ella, and we'd be alright. We'd make it. All it took was a little effort, a little time, training and seizing opportunity. I just had to work harder, get stronger, turn the doorknob. (Sometimes I wondered what would happen if I threw myself onto the table and put my odds into the game. Becoming a victor would ensure all these things would come true, and more.) Somehow, we'd make it work. But it wasn't enough, and sometimes, when I reflect back and look at the big picture, maybe I wasn't enough, clueless.

Ella started disappearing into the dark (a lurid mattress not as comforting as soon someone gets lost in the covers), and Auggie and I stirred pots of cold soup and shuffled stones, greeting her at the door with drained hellos and a tin bowl. We sat around in a crooked circle as the birds called out to dawn, joked about a curfew, yawned, finished the soup, and went to bed. Red bruises printed themselves into the corneas of my eyes, the size of fingerprints running down the back of her neck, along the knobs of her spine, barely noticeable in the minimal light, the outer edges rounded into neat circles, but I figured she had just gotten into a scrap, something I'd ask about in the morning (I'd let the sound of day harmonize with my words and make it all seem a little. less. menacing).

Questions were brushed off with playful answers, dancing around the fence of my mind like a trapeze with the lithe of a ballerina before jumping off and leaving me with nothing to go on. She'd only come home late occasionally (and each time, I'd see slash-marks outlining hipbones, criss-crossed cuts dipping below the collar, visible for just a few milliseconds before hiding behind fabric, painted constellations across skin in a chromatic scale bloodred art), but soon the time-span was shortened to every other day, Auggie and I pacing, whispering in hushed voices, we'll follow her next time, what is she doing and where can I find them? We didn't get the chance to act, because there was a swing of the door, heavy footsteps, Ella toppling over and catching her breath before she told us the truth, the client and his knife, sadistic fetishes, torture regimens, clotted paradigms, (all I could do was try to separate crimson and hair, apply pressure to wounds, and hold down the fury that pulsed like a fever, stringing my hair and appearing on my brow in salty-sweet sweat that burned my eyes, snow white knuckles). We braced ourselves,

and they came. Demonangels, divine faces unnaturally soft-looking against pale moonlight, liquid silver dripping off fangs and glistening in eyes like sacred pools (the rest of the face was covered in thick black cloth, fine silk fibers woven delicately, foreign on rigid cheekbones, skin pulled back from teeth in smiles, snarls). The shack creaked on it's foundations, unsure of how to deal with all the new weight, floorboards clinging desperately to each other in an attempt to stay whole, the quiet exhalations like pin drops in a sea of silent soliloquizing. And then everything surged forward simultaneously, dinging bees in the shape of fistslegsshinselbows, buzzing in my eardrums and drowning out the symphony of vocal, vivid, vivacious violence that screamed from all directions like a cyclone (including Auggie's last words, last wheezing breaths). People were lifted from the ground, thrown across the room in a blur and spit out like seeds, left to dry in the face of the marigold sun, rising above the hills with a cheery "hello," and the beaten, pulpy body, carved gashes and slick gore and hardly recognizable stone-cold eyes, unseeing, dead, was the last thing we saw before we ran out the door and bolted it shut.

The wild was cluttered in a different way, trees, twigs, stems, pinecones and gumballs piercing our feet and legs, branches clinging to our clothes like hands. We didn't speak (we counted the leaves, went to bed, woke up, walked, ghosts trailing behind us still pale from the moon reading thinking of you cards from the underworld). We didn't have a destination until the thirst and hunger took over, driving our limbs forward in search of somethinganything to keep us going (desperation like sick dogs dragging their paws under their bodies, wasps falling from the sky, cattle stepping over to the to the blade), until a nymph (princess, savior) with brown hair the color of soil and land, rich chocolate, a soothing voice smoothing solution over our wounds fed us wildcherries and pinenuts, giving snippets of reassurance rather than asking questions that we didn't want to answer, never wanted to answer. Tiva, the traveling gypsy warrior with a purple heart, sun-kissed by the gods.

We slowly worked our way into a routine of scavenging, gathering, small talk, setting up camp, starting the fire, watching it work for us. Sometimes Ella and I would hunt, even though Tiva insisted that we find another substance to prepare for dinner, something besides the meat of our cousins, and we grew accustomed to being outdoors, walking with light steps, dodging trees and underbrush and making our rounds with wheedled wood and pocket knives. The fence's barbed wire peeked at us from around tree trunks and overgrowth, warning us to keep a safe distance with a happy hum of electricity. It was there that we found Lydia.

She reminded me of those unlucky kids, the ones who didn't make it on their own, succumbing to hunger, hypothermia, or to the hands of their fitter, stronger, smarter peers, but I'd seen enough death in my life to know that she wasn't all gone. Just unconscious, from the way her head was angled away from her body, her pulse faint against my my index/medius fingers, (it lightly batted my hand away with each beat break beat) and we couldn't leave her, not in critical condition like that. We brought her back to our camp and tried on Tiva's halo, attempted to pull her up into health's grasp the same way Tiva had worked so hard with us (until she opened her eyes, our fingers tracing along the burns on her arm), "My name is Lydia Emmeline Samuels. I'm sixteen. There was a fire. That's all I remember," and that was the beginning.