◆ Alexei Mathix ◆ D8 [FIN]

My mother used to tell me I had the most beautiful eyes, that they reminded her of twin coals, dark and warm and alight as if they held the stars within their depths. She said they were a dreamer’s eyes, always questioning, endlessly curious, I her little dreamer boy. Of course, that was a long time ago. I am no longer my mother’s little dreamer boy, and I can no longer see the stars she so loved shining within my own darkened gaze. Instead I see black, hollow orbs framed by thick, dark lashes and set within a pale, moonglow white face. As a growing boy of sixteen, my snow-dusted skin is not always blemish-free, my delicate cheekbones often flushed pink in a light, rosy hue. My lips are thick and full and lightly chapped, arched in an effeminate cupid-bow shape and hung below a nose that has a broad, flat bridge and a slight bump just above the pointed tip. My brows are thick, dark blocks set above once-starlit eyes, the same color as the straight, feathery hair that just barely tickles the delicately sloped line of my jaw. The spitting image of my father, people tell me, except for my dreamer eyes. Those are all mine.

They say I look like a ghost, and I suppose that with my pale complexion and lean, slender figure that they’re not far from the truth. My body is long and thin in proportion, though I stand at an average 5’6 for my age. My shoulders curl inward on their own accord, disproportionately broad, scrawny arms narrowing into thin, dainty hands with nimble fingers, the nails bitten down to stubs and consistently stained with a colorful assortment of dyes from the clothes I spend my days embellishing. It seems my whole body is a canvas, from the vibrant hues of my fingertips to the stray streaks of paint etched into the fabric of my clothes from years of work in the dye factory. I’m like a black-eyed rainbow, but I don’t mind. It sets me apart from the bland, lifeless people of my district. Not in the way they look, but in what I can see in their eyes. Dull, colorless, empty, just like mine.

I walk this empty street
On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
When the city sleeps
And I'm the only one and I walk alone

P E R S O N A L I T Y

Why is it so easy to break me? To shatter the frail thing that is my heart, just as my parents had done? I am as delicate as the wings of a moth, the terrible fragility of my being concealed beneath the guise of solemn beauty and eyes the color of oblivion. I’ve broken my own heart too many times to count on just the rainbow hues of my paint-tipped fingers. Perhaps I am just that easy to deceive, my emotions that simple to twist and bend and snap to the will of the people I am so foolishly quick to trust. It is not that I am naïve or incompetent or blind to the cruelty and deception humanity is capable of, but that my need to be wanted, needed, cherished by someone- anyone -overrides my sense of judgment. I am desperate for the love my parents once so freely gave me, my mind overrun by my own insecurities.

But I promise- please don’t listen to my father- I’m a good boy. I won’t judge you, I swear, because I am sad and broken and I don’t even deserve to have the love and attention that I crave above all else, so who am I to judge in the first place? I understand, I really do, what it’s like to feel like a whole lot of nothing. I’d treat you the way I wish people would treat me, because I know what it’s like to be hated. I’d do anything, anything, for the people I care about it, and it is so easy for me to care; too easy. My heart is a fish out water, vulnerable and deprived of what it needs most. I’ll take what I can get, what I think I deserve, and I don’t think I deserve much. Because all a murderer deserves is eternal damnation. My father likes to remind me of that.

But I wasn’t always this way. I wasn’t always a murderer, sad and hopelessly lonely, clutching desperately at the tiniest semblance of attention that comes my way. I used to be happy kid- a dreamer boy- who my parents doted on and showered with all the affection they could give. I had been so fascinated with everything; why things happened, how things worked, what’s the purpose of this and that and those and these? I’m still a curious boy, just a tiny glimmer of starlight left in my ebony-black eyes, but my mother doesn’t gladly answer my endless questions anymore, and my father no longer gives me that little pat on the head and amused smile that’d I’d come to know so well before it disappeared forever. My mother isn’t happy about much of anything anymore, and I haven’t seen my father’s smile in years. Not since I stole it away along with the life of my sister.

I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone

H I S T O R Y

I had a happy childhood. Or, at least, as happy a childhood as to be expected for a young boy in a district as stricken with poverty as mine. I'd never had much, growing up, living in a ramshackle house deep within the twisting streets and immense factories that make up my district, but I was happy. I wasn’t a planned baby, my mother merely nineteen years old when she became pregnant with me, fresh out of school and just past those terrifying years when her name had been jumbled with hundreds of others in the Reaping bowl. My father was twenty at the time, and they had been together for just less than a year when I suddenly came into their lives. The two of them decided to go ahead and tie the knot just three months before I arrived. I had been unexpected, but I was loved, and that is all I’ve ever needed.

I was a curious little thing; still am, though not to as great an extent. I wanted to know everything, from where babies came from to why the sky was blue to why the leaves changed colors in the fall. I wasn’t particularly intelligent or anything; I didn’t read books and I made decent grades in school, but my thirst for knowledge was unquenchable. And with a mind filled to the brim and racing with endless possibilities, I possessed an extraordinary imagination. My teachers all said the same thing: never listens in class, off in his own world, unaware of events happening around him, always dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. My mother was more amused than disappointed, though I couldn’t say the same for my father. He’s always been a very conservative, practical man.

It wasn’t until I was four years old that I became a brother. I still remember the day Talia came into my life. There aren’t any official hospitals in my district, so when my mother started to feel the familiar, immense pain of labor, we rushed to the home of a woman who acted as a sort of healer for the people in my area. The woman had me bringing damp clothes back and forth from the kitchen after I’d asked if I could help, and for six hours my ears were filled with the agonized shrieks of my mother as she endured the pain of childbirth. And then, suddenly, something else: the shrill cries of a newborn child, my new sister, and such a beautiful thing she was. Unlike me, she looked just like our mother; she bore the clear, luminescent blue eyes of all newborns, smooth, baby-soft skin the color of wheat and a tuft of dark, honey-blonde hair atop her head. My parents were delighted, and I had quite a lot of questions.

Life was…different after that. Not in a bad way or anything, just…different. Talia cried a lot, and my parents would be up at ungodly hours of the night catering to her and her needs. My mother had quit her job in order to stay at home and care for her while my father took double shifts at work, so money was tight for the first year or so. My mother went back to work when she turned one, leaving her in the care of a family friend. It was like that for two years; Mom and Dad going to work while I went to school, Talia being watched over while we were gone. Life was nothing less than normal.

Talia was four when I killed her she died. My mother was up at the factory and I was bathing myself in the washtub in our backyard, my father lounging on chair nearby and keeping an eye on Talia. She kept trying to get in the tub, and my father kept telling her no, but I wasn’t really listening because I was off in dreamland like usual. And then my dad had to go inside and he told me to watch her but I was looking up at the sky, gazing at the clouds as they drifted lazily above, wondering what it would be like to up there soaring amongst them, and then the tub jerked and there was a loud thump and I looked down to see that Talia had jumped into the washtub, but she must’ve slipped and hit her head because she wasn’t moving and she was just floating there, face-down in the water, her long hair dispersing around her like a golden halo, bubbles rising around her, and I did nothing.

How long could she stay there? What would happen if she did? Would she grow gills and we’d have to keep her in a tank and feed her fish food? My mind was racing with questions, stupid, pointless questions, dark eyes watching curiously as Talia’s body jerked once, twice, convulsing violently before me, water sloshing around the tub until suddenly she just stopped moving. The life left her tiny body while I sat healthy and alive just inches beside her, and I had done nothing but watch it happen. And all I could think was do all people do that when they die? My father came back then, and he made this horrible, horrible noise when he saw Talia floating in the tub, rushing forward to yank her out of the water and lie her on her back on the ground and her lips were blue and she was so pale and my father was screaming “What did you do? What have you done? Alexei, why?” and I started crying because I don’t like it when people yell at me. And then he hit me.

I didn’t know, I promise, I didn’t understand. I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t even know what death meant. I regret it, I really do, I really, really do. I wish every day that I could go back in change it, but there’s no way I can ever do that. My parents hate me now. They can barely even stand to look at me. My father hasn’t hit me again since that day, but the look of horror when he sees me has never really left his eyes, and his words hurt so much more. I don’t ask them questions, I don't ask for anything, I work long hours at the dye factory, letting the colors of a colorless world comfort me, and I don’t dare to dream.

Read between the lines
What's fucked up when everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone…