OMNIA NOX ☆ D3

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INFORMATION

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BIOGRAPHY

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In the bottom of the bottle, there are no answers. Downcast eyes search for something, anything, to find only their own reflections, distorted and mute in the glass. Hollow people become transparent when you stare at their reflections long enough, especially when the poisonous grasp of alcohol is sparkling in their system. Omnia Nox is transparent. Eyes like December struggle to focus - they are the reason he seldom looks into the mirror these days. To be afraid of your own reflection is one thing, however the fear of someone else's infinite eyes is another entirely. When Omnia looks into the mirror, his family stares back. This is why the bottle holds so much attraction. When you search it for reasons, it never pries inside your soul past your own justifications and excuses. The inch of bitter liquid left is gone in a single, burning second, and before long that bar is completely empty. Just as lonely as it always was.

The dust begins to settle on the counter once more, the coins stacked up one on top of the other all but forgotten. Omnia lights a cigarette and raises it to his lips with the careless precision of somebody who has held onto a bad habit just a little too long. In the darkness, the tiny tip simply illuminates his soft features, giving them a radiance that contrasts with their rough, unkept appearance. For now, he is nobody. This is how he prefers it - an alleyway nowhere near the house he grew up in, a faint trail of smoke blooming around him and hiding him from everything, the rain falling ever so softly upon the sleeves of his jacket. Lost and alone is not how he likes it at all.

Dark hair provides a blanket from the blackest night. Smoke mingles with the heat in his heavy breaths and creates a cloud of mystery. Eyelashes long and heavy are cast down in an attempt to ward away the world. The boy's steps are careful, heavy, and it seems that perhaps the universe lays on his supple shoulders. His universe does. A pair of full lips purse together in what seems like a calm kind of frustration as he approaches a house. Arms wrap just a little more tightly around himself, as though by pushing his hands into his pockets further than they stretch he is able to fall through the material. His body stiffens as a tentative hand touches the doorknob, and yet he opens the door and crosses the dark hallway just the shame. The fire hasn't been burning. Omnia Nox reaches the attic brimming with something that cannot be contained. He is no longer afraid and cold, his eyes dead. They burn with something brighter than fear.

"Fuck you!" he shouts, his eyes brimming with tears. "I'll never forgive you, never!" His usually cool cheeks glow red, smooth hair ruffled and out of place. Every footstep he takes along the floorboards is the same, a struggle, and yet he takes them all the same because he cannot bare to stand still. The vein in his temple throbs, anger flowing through every pore in his body. Omnia Nox is afraid. "How could you let him hurt me?" His hands shake, and for a moment he thinks that perhaps his entirety will shatter and he will be in pieces on the floor for the third time in his life. It doesn't, and he resists the urge to run out into the cold and stop his face from burning with the snow that burns the ground. You can do it, he promises himself.

The next words that escape from his lips are more of a strangled whisper than a demand, but he says them anyway, addressing the boy he hates the most, the one who broke his promises. "How could you?" The mirror doesn't care. The attic, so empty, hollow as Omnia's empty eyes, doesn't listen to his pleas. And then something does break, and it is not his mind or his sanity or his heart. The mirror falls to the floor. The reflection is no longer defiant and solid, but suddenly it is flying in all directions, collarbones jutting from flesh jutting from slender legs and twisted hands. The empty room and the mirror mean nothing, and Omnia is gone, his footsteps far from silent as he descends the stairs. The snowflakes calm him, but only a little. "I'm sorry! I forgive you, okay!" He means it, although he doesn't want to. The handful of pain steals away the anger all at once and Omnia almost forgets the seven years of bad luck he is about to endure.

He is left with the sound of his own beating heart, thundering persistently behind his ribs. A hand presses to his chest in a frantic bid to calm it, and instead finds bony fingers digging in, catching on the notch where the bone broke. You can't see it, and the pain is long gone, and yet the tiny ridge remains, silent and strong. An invisible reminder of the hand that came crashing down and the boy that tumbled backwards, helpless. As if Omnia needs yet another reminder of how he cannot fight for himself. Hands by his sides once more and a bitter taste in his mouth, the boy sets out into the night without aim. Is this what it was like for Aliquot? A simple case of setting one foot in front in front of the other, digging your toes into the snow and yet carrying on? These thoughts spiral around in the child's mind as he follows in what he half-hopes, half-fears are the footsteps of his brother. By the time the sun shines again, Omnia is back on his doorstep, tears frozen in time on his windburned cheeks. Walking in circles was never his aim, and yet he arrived back at the beginning again and again.

. . .



The patterned carpet slides in and out of focus, apparently providing far more interest to Omnia than the woman who sits before him. Legs crossed, fingers knotted together, eyes flickering to anywhere but her vacant gaze, the boy fights the urge to flee the room and stand in the rain. In the rain, nobody can see you crying. "Chejae, darling, look at me." The lump that has been building in Omnia's throat since he fell asleep the night before threatens to choke him. He looks up at his mother, and she looks back. Her eyes reflect the open window, the rain that is pouring in and making a damp patch on the floor. They do not see her youngest son, his eyes brimming with their own heavy raindrops. A frail arm stretches out, shaking slightly, and takes his hand. "I missed you, baby," she says, an absent smile playing on her soft features. Omnia nods, his expression carefully blank. "I miss you, too," he whispers.

For a long time, the room is silent. The only movement in the shadowy room is the hand on the clock, methodically working it's way toward the moment Omnia is allowed to leave. It takes a moment for him to establish that he cannot count the seconds, that every time he tries his mind wanders and he finds himself staring at nothing at all, trying to see. "Chejae?" With a slight shake of his head and a gentle hand upon hers, the boy corrects his mother. "No, I'm Omnia." His eyes are pleading, filled with a terrible, daring kind of hope. The kind of hope that comes from spending a childhood barefooted in the forest, trailing behind and never keeping up. The kind of hope that comes from endlessly watching raindrops etch their tracks on window frames, of pushing cold faces up against colder glass to peer into the night. "Of course, sweetheart," she says, her voice empty and confused. "Are you okay?"

Omnia nods, a lie. He can barely trust himself to speak, so instead he stands and perches on the edge of the bed, looking across the room at the least lost of all his family. Still, she will never be found. "I've been thinking about things, that's all." The words are easily, surprising, and his mother's look of acute concern sparks joy in his heavy heart. Her eyes fill with urgency, care, and he cannot help but smile at her. Perhaps, just maybe, she still cares. "You can talk to me, you know," these moments are few and far between, and Omnia thinks that perhaps she understands. The words he speaks will be irrelevant, soon, lost in a mind filled with the past and the present and the future and all in between. "Do you believe in love, Mama?" What he means is does she believe in the kind of love that is enough? The kind of love that will keep people together always and forever, that nothing will be strong enough to break. He's asking if love is acquired and worked for and earned or unconditional, something that you either have or have not. Omnia Nox doesn't want to know the answer.

"Sometimes when someone loves someone more than anything in the world, they have to leave them." The disbelief is clear in Omnia's dark eyes, a picture of the lies he has lived. They almost suggest a challenge - daring her to love him so much that she cannot leave, not ever. With his words contradicting his eyes, he nods, and whispers to her in a tone without emotion. Fingers slide to the most recent bruise, violet and grey on his arm. A hot tear slides gracefully down his mother's cheek, so subtle. Omnia notices it instantly, and turns away. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-" Again there is silence as time slips away, and the rain continues to fall outside. It's thunderous lullaby does nothing to calm the flickering gaze of the boy who cannot help but love too much. The price of approval] is too great for a child to pay.

Finally, a face appears in the doorway, a carer who seems to shrink backward behind her glasses. When Omnia was smaller, he always wondered if her too-tight hairstyle hurt, and then his mind wandered away, to the fish that swam in circles in the hallway and the dreary lampshades that didn't quite cover the bulbs. The hallways of the facility were always aplace of peculiarity, because every door held a new secret, every bronze-plated number another terrible story. Omnia held his breath every time he passed twelve, a gesture that he hoped would spare him from ending up here himself. "It's time to go now, Mr. Nox," the woman then turns and her footsteps fade away, as though perhaps insanity is contagious. With wide eyes, Omnia faces the fragile shell that he once knew and slides his sleeve back down his arm to hide the scars that adorn his skin, the bruises and marks that tell the story of the last four years. "Goodbye, Chejae," she calls, once again hollow words and vacant thoughts.


. . .


For Omnia Nox, there is no true beginning to his story. Rather, who he is consists of a whole lot of middle. Time spent not being the tragedy, but being the child left behind once the apologies have run dry. Farewells and doorsteps and wondering if someone will ever come to collect him or whether he should start walking home. If anybody ever cared enough to ask him where he would like his history to begin, he would answer before. Before he was the kid with the dead brother, the abusive father, the insane mother and the runaway protector. Far before the winter when everything changed - he would prefer it if Omnia Nox in his entirety began one autumn morning. In a world of stepping stones across rivers, of tree-houses, of forts and rope swings and barefooted wonderland, this day was the same as the rest. This is what makes it so special. It began with a smile, the squeak of boots on polished wood, the boy in the bed on the other side of the room tossing a pillow his way to awaken him. Hurried footsteps descended the stairs together, the soft hands of his mother roped scarfs around three eager children and demanded that coats and gloves must be worn. The slam of the backdoor as their breakfast was ignored on the table.

Running across the grass together, they laughed and shouted and played. It was only as they reached the foot of the forest that Omnia Nox began to fall behind, his tiny legs not managing to match the strides of his two elder siblings. He didn't call out for them to slow down, because as much as he liked running by their sides, in truth he preferred following their footsteps. A hand reached backwards, and then another, until the elder two were both pulling him alongside them. That day the river ran cold as ice, and when Omnia almost slipped from the fallen tree they were using to cross it, his brother caught him. That day, the boy didn't know he was five years old. He didn't care that Aliquot and Chejae had five and three years until their first reaping, respectively. Because in those moments of shallow breath and skipping stones and flying, time was infinite and nightfall was still simply centuries away and forever was that day and the whole world was that forest with it's sky-high trees and falling leaves. It was all he knew and all he loved.

That day is the beginning of Omnia's story, for no reason other than the fact that that was the best day. On October the twenty-fourth, the year of the fifty-first annual Hunger Games, those three children were more than brothers, more than best friends. They were pirates, explorers, convicts and peacekeepers and pilots. They fought dragons, braved the seven seas, built the most wonderful house amid the treetops and ran through the braken until the souls of their feet were bleeding. Every time Omnia fell into the mud, a hand was there to pick him up. Caring fingers brushed away the dirt from his knees and gentle lips kissed him better before it all began again. That day was the first time Omnia ever reached the top of the Old Oak Tree, the one Chejae always said was the best for climbing. Usually he waited at the foot of it for the other two to emerge from the branches, but not that day. Sturdy grasp and careful footing carried him to the two people he loved most in the world. That day was important, because of the view from that tree.

Omnia believed that the forest was a magical kingdom that belonged to only him and Aliquot and Chejae. In his mind, it went on forever. From the highest branches of the oak, with Chejae clinging to his t-shirt 'just in case, Omnia' (But I'm not a baby anymore!) the five-year-old could see the stream and the clearing and the field. He could also see the house he lived in, just the same as always, plain and reasonably pretty and not magical, not at all. He grew withdrawn for what seemed like a long time after that moment, but in reality he stopped babbling for a few minutes at most before being carried away back into the world of his dreams. It wasn't quite the same anymore, but even if their kingdom wasn't quite what he had assumed, it was still almost-perfect, a land where it didn't matter that he couldn't reach what the others could and couldn't read like Chejae or write sentences like Aliquot. Not yet. That perfect day ended like so many others - sitting, huddled together by the fire, hot chocolates in their hands and legs tangled together beneath one patchwork quilt. It was one of many that their mother stitched for them, for she toiled away with a needle all day while their papa read the books he collected.

It wasn't long before Omnia could read. That year, he too was sitting beside the others in the library, working out sums and itching to be in the forest like the years before. His attention span short and his questions irrelevant, the boy often found himself on the wrong side of his father's unruly tongue. Chejae could always calm their papa, save Omnia from the wrath, and for that among many other things, he was thankful. As soon as they were dismissed, the countryside became a place of wonders and the weather played little influence as to whether or not they would spend their time outside. While the eldest two learned the forest as though it was their home, Omnia did not. He followed, trusting their judgement completely and never deciding for himself. They knew the paths so he didn't have to, they followed the sun across the sky so they would get back before dark, they picked up his coat every time he left it lying on the ground, forgotten. It was Chejae who showed him the stars and Aliquot who let him climb into bed with him each and every time he had a nightmare. And then, one day, everything stopped being perfect.

When Omnia awoke, the sheets felt the same. His father's laugh sounded the same, the toast his mother set on the fire tasted the same. And then the field was bright as summer and the picnic basket was filled with what seemed like endless amounts of goodies and everything was going to be just as it had always been, only perhaps better. Running, like always. Today, though, he was left to follow in the wake of those who always led him to safety, and no hands stretched back to hold his. He didn't mind - he was eight and a half and perfectly capable of finding the tree and the clearing and the river as long as he could still see them in front of him. But Chejae ran ahead, and Aliquot tried to keep up and somehow Omnia got left behind so he could no longer see his parents or the house or the picnic basket. And then Ali was in the way and tears were in his eyes and he was screaming and people were running and Omnia was being ushered backwards into the shadows and nobody was listening no matter how many times he asked, "Where's Chejae and when are we having our picnic?"

They never did have their picnic, and it seemed like forever before the child finally set eyes upon his eldest brother again. When he did, the coffin was cold and distant and Omnia knew that the body wasn't really Chejae at all, not anymore. All Omnia remembers when he thinks of the open casket is staring. He didn't cry, not yet, he simply watched his brother as though searching for moment. When he couldn't find it, he turned away. Nothing else is relevant in his mind, no words or screams or people stand out in his mind in that day. The weeks that followed were almost beautiful as the last few, only it was as though the world was a jigsaw with the biggest piece missing forever. Everything almost right, only now sometimes Omnia fell and had to pick himself back up. Sometimes Aliquot got to play the King and that was wrong, sometimes he forgot to pick his coat up and it was left behind until morning. Nobody was there to hold him as he looked over the uppermost branch of the oak, so he never climbed it again. They carved a 'C' into the thick trunk although Aliquot never did explain that their brother had been flying, and then he had fallen. That tree held the secrets Omnia Nox did not want to find.

It was four years of watching the bruises grown on Aliquot's skin, four years of waiting for something to break inside of him that never did. Omnia knew what was happening, but when his elder brother came into his bedroom and assured him that it was okay, that he was simply fighting monsters to keep everything together and well. Not once did Omnia wish he had began that fighting before the family broke apart, because the pillows he held over his head never quite blocked out the cries. Always assuming something would trigger a reaction in him, bravery, he waited. But it never came and two years after the death of his eldest protector, Aliquot left him behind as well. So lost and alone, the days of ruling the kingdom, together as one were gone. Omnia sat on his rusty throne with no subjects and no reason, wondering why everybody had left him. It was those days when he no longer played in the forest that he instead stayed at home, and he realised that his mother was leaving him, too. So filled with sadness, those black eyes, aching for the children she had lost. Omnia was simply an afterthought to the perfection, and without those who held everything together, the three remaining family members fell apart.

Omnia withdrew from the world, sitting by the fire, all alone, unable to stop the look of exhaustion from haunting his mother's frail features. The library no longer held a world of adventures just like the outdoors - it was another world of lies. With nobody to follow and a sudden move to the center of the district, the child turned to the kind of habits that he shouldn't - knowing precisely what he was doing and yet half believing that the mistakes weren't his. It wasn't his fault. He wasn't hurting anybody, and although he had always dreamed of running away with the people he loved most in the world, letting them pave him a path he trusted, he couldn't help but stay. How could he run with nobody to chase, with nobody to grab his hand when he fell behind? Hands came down upon him in rages just as they had to his brother. This time, there was nobody who's lies he could believe - do instead of fighting monsters and saving princesses, Omnia Nox hurt. He ached to be good enough to make his father proud, his mama happy. He ached to be good enough for Aliquot to come back for him, for Chejae to hold him one more time. Once, he returned to the forest in which he grew up. It was the only thing he loved that he had left instead of the other way around, and he wanted to prove to himself that it was waiting for him. The tree had fallen, struck by lightning. The carved 'C' was facedown in the dirt. Omnia Nox lit a cigarette, and, without lifting it to his lips, tossed it away. It glowed for a moment before becoming nothing at all.

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COMPLETE

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