Re: Charlotte Gould | D1 [WIP]

My appearance changes like the temperature, spanning from a pasty, pale-faced red head to to a blonde so platinum, it looks like the snow I shovel off my porch. It used to be that I had to coat the dye onto my hair, trim it to my ears, burn off moles and skin tags, spray tan my limbs like a canvas until I had completely painted over myself enough to satisfy the art critics of my family, relief found in looking so foreign that maybe I wouldn't be pin-pointed as Donovan Gould's daughter like the convict I was. I used to hate it; hate changing my voice and walking in the shadows and throwing my hair trimmings into the garbage, waste to be taken away forever, and though it might've been because I felt like I was losing myself, more-so it was because I hated doing what my parents said. After a childhood of, "Don't worry, honey, blood isn't all that bad when it isn't your own," and the muffled screaming of my parent's arguments in the cellar, I've learned that they're not very reliable at all. Especially when we (Donovan Jr. and I, their little angels, their only heirs) were grabbed in the dark, gagged, and dragged down to gang headquarters like mules, thrown under the knife until we cried out with pain (low guttural noises you don't even realize are your own, until you do) and then it was our own blood, and it did matter, but we grit our teeth to dull points and waited for our saviors to come, even if it took days weeks. Suicidal thoughts mushroomed in my mind like heavy smoke, souring me to my parents one plume at a time, (because they were the enemies, the murderers, wrapped up in their games of hide-and-seek and soldiers with squinted satan's eyes burning red, all-consuming fires of time, energy, and patience) until I noticed the way my build resembled my father, eyes that of my mother, and I loathed it, because a part of them will always be in me, if not psychologically, than at least physically, wrapped in my DNA like vines (and the ghosts of their vestigial souls nip at my heels). I'm stocky and tall, Donovon Senior's body to the last digit (minus the muscles, veins and tendons, bony hands that crushed bones), hailing around five foot nine, sinewy limbs like spider legs that match my long torso, hipbones jutting out at it's base, situated by thin tissue that's hard to miss, clothing or no clothing (I've been asked if I'm sick on the familiar District One streets, and yes, I am).


Don't get me wrong, I love my looks, vanity fair, catcalling my own reflection in the water, and I love admitting that, because it's so easy when you're surrounded by low self-esteem (I feed off of it, so please, please, kids, if you hate your daddies because they called you 'fat,' do join the untouchables, I'm sure we'll find a place for you.)