jinx me once, jinx me twice. {briknope]

After awhile of silence between them, with Theron soaking up the words just like his gauze soaked up the blood, it clicked with her that the boy that sat in front of her, with a pair of outlawed eyes that had seen far more than the average person should, had lived through something that took his sister away. He was the boy with blood staining his sleeves from self-inflicted wounds, the boy that had three scars on his chest from the attempted murder, the boy that had sat in his bedroom, his hands unnaturally calm as he shook some pills into his hand and lived to tell the tale, and it was all because of that one event in his life. But she didn’t know that. Theron only knew that his sister had disappeared. Vanished. Turned to mist and gone. Evaporate from life and go to a place for the better or for worse. She was gone, so that nobody could see her face as they talked to her, or hear her high-pitched voice lightly spun melodies together. She was in a place where she couldn’t come back.

As she turned the thought over in her mind for awhile, she glanced over him, her curious and thoughtful and all-seeing eyes taking notice of him, resting her bright orbs on his arms, taking in the red jacket that had darker red patches over it (which, he knew if she asked and he lied, it would be obvious to tell) from two years of self-intended pain and suffering caused by razors, fingernails, cigarettes, lighters and the sort. She didn’t seem to react to it, almost as if she saw bloody arms every day of her life - and he highly doubted that thought, since she was a nice girl that seemed to have it together, but as always, he remembered that looks can be deceiving. When her eyes rested on his hands with a passing gaze, examining them as they rested on the table, her eyes caught the blood that was smeared over his palm. He didn’t notice it before, and when he saw it at the same time she did, he made no effort to hide it. The sleeves were enough of a give-away to tell her that what she saw was true.

"So is that how those happened?" She didn’t move; didn’t make an attempt to grab his hand and examine the material that was obviously blood that was smeared on his hand. He expected her to get mad (and he didn’t know why she possibly didn’t notice earlier, with the sleeves and all, maybe she suspected it was the jackets coloring?) and tell him not to do such a thing to himself and then snatch his arm and examine the scars and fresh cuts, but oddly enough, she didn’t. She just sat there, hands clasped, looking as if it was an ordinary thing (as he had noted earlier). He cleared his throat, and with a small bit of fear coursing through his spine, believing that her kind demeanor would explode into anger, he answered her, knowing that there would be no way to lie to her. “Yes. And it’s not something I’m proud of.”

While his mouth spun delicate words together, a low voice casting over the small area of the table, Theron reached a delicate, bony hand underneath the table, shuffling it around before bringing back up a small little object that Jinx almost hardly couldn’t see what with the dim lighting of the bar (almost half of the light coming from the illumination of the ends of the old people’s cigars and cigarettes). But the little light that hung over the table cast down, revealing to his eyesight a safety-pin. At first it didn’t occur to him of what it was used for; he just assumed that it was a sort of object one would twirl to keep their hands busy. But when he got a good look at the thing for a moment when Theron brought it to full exposure, he took notice of dried blood on the needle part of the little thing. And what he thought earlier, about her being together and un-broken, he knew had been false. And there’s her perfect weapon.

For awhile, she spun her fingers around the thing, bringing the needle from its open position to its closed position, and when the needle pierced her skin and sent life fluid flowing down her thump-pad, she didn’t even seem slightly deterred by it. "I think I can relate," she breathed in a melancholy tune. “And I’m sorry you can, Theron.”

_-/One Week Later\-_

With a small clatter, the piece of metal fell to the floor, Jinx’s hands slightly trembling as he put them to his sides. Through his black veil of hair that covered his eyes, he saw it, glittering on the floor, clean, unused, and sparkling, almost as if it was mocking him. For the past couple of days, he just couldn’t get himself to do it. Each time, after he lit a cigarette, he wouldn’t put it out on himself. Each time, after he was alone and had the switchblade in hand, he couldn’t get himself to do it. He would neglect it, which he knew was good as he knew the act that he kept trying to perform wasn’t a good show to put on. Staring down at the little blade that sat on the floor, he took a deep breath and crouched down and picked the little thing up, looking it over for a second before he closed the blade and enfolded it in his hand. I know it may seem like my wounds are sewn now, but even I know that the stitches have to come out sooner or later.

And sometimes things don’t heal completely and fully and there can still be an open wound, but sometimes we can surprise ourselves.

It was at least six or seven in the morning, and after about twenty or so minutes, Jinx came out of the bathroom, wet black hair sticking to his forehead and no new injuries obtained (which he was actually slightly proud of). He was dressed decently, some jeans, slip on sneakers, a long sleeved shirt with double-clipped bandages on, mind you , and a nice leather jacket that he had found a couple days ago while walking home from the smoke shop and he just had to have. It wasn’t all that expensive, but it wasn’t exactly cheap either but to him, it didn’t matter; he just didn’t want to have a blood problem.

With a smoke in-between his index and middle fingers, he sauntered up cracked, dirty sidewalks, his sneakers only adding to the filth of the ground, just like he believed that he was just a smudge on a clean slate of society and he needed to be brushed off. He had even tried to complete the deed for society, but for some reason, he was just a stubborn stain. He was just a boy who grew up with hatred, singing along to the painful tone of a razorblade symphony. He was just a boy that had cigarettes and pills shape who he became in life. He wasn’t together, mentally or physically. Jinx was the mirror that had cracked after someone had punched it in with their fist. He was the pieces that lay strewn across the floor, catching small reflections of whatever was around.

As he walked along with blades and cigarettes and blood behind him, he could only think of the girl who he had only encountered earlier that week. Mousy brown hair, dark eyes that could see any lie and pain, pale skin like his that almost could make them ghosts. He still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that she was a broken thing too, with pointed objects penetrating skin to comfort her during an hour of need and desperate attempts to release pain and suffering. He couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that a girl like her, with a twin brother that should protect her and love her and tell her that she means the world to him would be the girl who would hide behind smiles and sleeves and educated words. They were both the same; caught like flies in a web of only suffering and attempts at putting feelings somewhere other than their minds, but only finding skin. Some people, when they have emotional distress, fight pain with paper and pencils, but people like Jinx and Theron fight with knives and pins.

As soon as he got to the bar, he took one long, final drag from the little lovely piece of cancer and allowed the smoke to roll down his throat and contaminate his lungs before boredly blowing out the smoke, shifting the position of his mouth to create little smoke circles in the air. Instead of putting it out on the side of his wrist, he threw it to the ground, rubbing in the bud to the ground with his heel. Leaning against the railings in front of the bar, he crossed his arms, the skin giving complaint due to all of the marks and burns all over, but he didn’t care. A little bit of skin irritation wasn’t anything compared to what he does to himself almost every day.

Finally, with his eyes passing over everything in sight and then catching the sight of a petite frame, her found her walking up towards the bar to where he sat, leaned against the rails that framed the front of the little tavern. “Hey, Theron.”