CORA DEMPSEY // DISTRICT ONE

[/color]

The dark-haired beauty sat by the concrete pillar sighs, remembering each year. Each fondly remembered, each crush, love and broken heart mourned dearly. Memories of sweet guys, bad boys, geeks, jocks, preps and countless other fleeting commitments, each more powerful a connection than the last. The past four months have been the worst for her. Ever since Kaelen left. No... Not left... Ran away...[/color] A sigh passes her plump lips, those lips that cry out to be kissed, as she pulled the drawing pad, her most recent, filled with a million and one sketches, the occasional painting, a pastel work. Each numbered for posterity, paired with her notebook, lovingly bound in red and black leather. Her little red book, so to speak, keeping a record in ink of where everything was, what it was and in which pad. For what she looks at now, she knows exactly where it is.

There, on page forty-seven, is him. Perfectly kept nails, layer of crimson polish covering their form, trace the outline of the monochrome face that stares up at her, his expression carefree, happy, laughing at something. Something she wishes she could be the one to say. Slender fingers, those of an artist, deft, yet surprisingly strong, flick the page over, to another, pensive, as his captive, graphite frame studies the tome afore him. Another sigh passes from her mouth, open in the slightest of ovals, the hint of a wistful smile creeping upon her face. Oh how she envies that book, to be gazed at with such intent. To be looked upon at all...[/color] Her eyes do not smile, the deep russet pools matching the inner hurt, the pleading for attention unanswered, the dearest desire for her slender, pale form to be embraced, pristine skin caressed, admired for the smoothness she so painstakingly maintains, the five foot four, one hundred and ten package of devotion and adoration loved as it deserved. A tear begins to well in the corner of one eye, hanging there, building, growing, the dam of her resolve slowly giving out to the tide that tear represents.

It falls...[/color]

It rolls down the crest of her high cheekbones, adorned in the careful application of blush, accentuating her natural beauty, swiftly, as though her visage rejects the presence of this incarnation of sadness. It clings desperately to the elegant slant of her jaw, sliding down the pointed chin, to hang, on the precipice of letting go. Another joins it. Then a third, from the other side. The release of hurt. Rejection. A love spurned...[/color]

The bead of moisture hangs, suspended in a single moment, before finally dropping, splashing upon the page, next to his face. Even in paper, encapsulated forever upon the page, drawn by her hand, he rejects her. Her adoration meaningless...[/color] A distraught sob wracks the frame of Coramine Dempsey, squeezing her eyes shut against the fresh onslaught of tears, her modest chest heaving with each inhalation, lost in her sorrow, pulling long, slender, well toned legs in to her torso, huddling the image she crafted close to her heart, as though by pulling him closer here, she will pull him closer in life.

She sits like this for a few moments, sniffling slightly, before pulling a tissue out and wiping the tears from her eyes, tastefully outlined by a careful hand with eyeliner, lids shadowed with just a hint of rose, her face, her thin bridged nose. She looks down upon the drawing once again, fingers running across the tear drops. She turns her form to lean against the pillar, thin flakes of plaster dropping across her hair, clinging to the black sleeveless top she wears, dust, agitated by her brief motion, falling upon the navy hued jean-shorts she wears, thought to show off those legs she prides herself on. If only they would notice...[/color] She turns the page once again, a slight smile crossing her lips at the sight of the lock of hair she cut from his head from Hardy's, his favourite bar while he was preoccupied molesting the over-developed harlot he had taken there, lifting it to her nose, inhaling deeply, her face transforming from one of inconsolable sorrow, to an almost sadistic pleasure, gleaming white teeth showing with the twisted smirk that splits her features.

This time, her eyes smiled...[/color][/blockquote]

She continues to sit, leaning against the concrete pillar, oblivious to the world around her, her face buried into page, filling her senses with his scent, the fading smell of his hair, her thoughts lost to the hours spent dedicated to him. All the letters, the gifts. The meticulous planning of each step, her mind having devoted itself as much to him as her heart had. Fixated on trying to ‘get to know him’, without ever breaching the boundary that she simply could not. Speech. Her shyness, induced by the harshest of rejections, refusing to co-operate with her desire to find herself again. To find love again. Or quite possibly, to find vengeance… For the moment however, she was content to bask in the warm glow of the undertaking scant days ago.

It had been that single response to her that had sealed his fate. She admired the amusing notion that a single action could spell the downfall of an individual. As history told her, could play out the doom of a nation, a people. A single act of rebellion condemned District Thirteen to nuclear oblivion. As a single act of rejection had caused his premature end. The savage grin came back to her face, lifting her face away from the page, relishing in the power she had held over him. That one decision from her meant he lived or died. It clung to her, the last trace of his essence trapped within the paper, before she turns over once again. More images. Far more disturbing than her previous endeavours.

It was a memorial to her ultimate triumph over him, photographs of the scene she had set for her vengeance, for her pleasure. The one pleasure she found solace in, now love was denied to her. Now she denied herself love… Death. The morbid and criminal pass time of ending lives. A photo of his home, where he lived alone, one of the fortunate few to have been able to move out early. Away from, no doubt, loving parents. Where he hoped his own subject of adoration would move in one day. No longer. No longer would anyone live there. Countless angles of the same area layered the page she gazed at. The malicious smile upon her face remained, consumed by memories.

Her thoughts flickered through those recollections. Everything felt once again, her sharp ability to remember so much a blessing in this case. She had laid in wait for three hours, her preparations complete. Six hours previously, she had ‘let herself in’ to his residence, mere locks no match for her ability with a pick lock, ferrying the materials to make her vengeance play out, taking immense pride in herself. She was, after all, a somewhat self-absorbed creature when she got like this. It was a work of genius, artistry of the finest kind in her eyes, something even Aurora had to admire the simplistic beauty of it. All using the most commonplace of materials, steel wool, a battery pack, twine. And of course, the gas from his cooker. It would all look like a horrible accident… She had been thorough in her planning, but the true masterpiece was not in the manner of death. It was the scene she had set out.

For the three hours preceding her leaving of the building, she had daubed his walls in thin red paint, mixed to resemble blood. Her feelings she had felt for him poured out across his house. Declarations of love. Promises of passion. The hurt. The pain. The anger. The hatred. All now lay upon his walls, written their in her elegant, flowing, sweeping handwriting. Condemnations of his rejection, of his choosing the harlot that he was so infatuated with over her. Who could choose such a vapid creature as her over Coramine Dempsey… She had wept the whole time that she had been in his home, pouring the swirling maelstrom of emotions out over his walls, crafting her delightfully simple trap for him.

The final piece was the crux. A single note, attached to the kitchen door. The words ‘Bear witness, the death of love behind this door’. He would take the bait, she had known it. Almost as much as she, he was a shameless romantic. This solitary piece of her script would spell his end, spring her trap, to clamp shut on his life with the ease of breathing. Daubed on the wall opposite, in the same blood-red of the walls, were written the words ‘Look out of the window, and behold the architect of thine fate.’ Her ego, bruised by his rejection, screamed for attention. It was with that, she had set everything into irreversible motion, turning all five gas hobs on, leaving the building, locking the doors she had unlocked, jamming the one on the kitchen, blocking the barrel to prevent his escape. Her ultimatum was in place. Unstoppable. Like a force of nature…

Her patience seemed without limits as she sat, unmoving. As though she had become part of the tree, completely masked by the leafy canopy, to never have graced this place with her presence. She lay in wait, before her heart leapt with savage elation at his arrival. Like the fly, caught in the web of her fatal retribution… He was tired, sweating from his long stint in the training facilities. Unaware of the immutable fact he was about to be cut loose from his mortal coil. Excitement bordering on ecstasy filled Cora, as she began to descend, this blind fool who dared to spurn her stumbling headlong into her delicately laid trap. She landed deftly upon the ground with the same grace she showed in her fiendish plotting, just in time to hear his confused cry of outrage. Her soul cried out in joy, as she tilted her head back, eyes closed, relishing in the ticking time-bomb he had unwittingly started, sighing in pleasure at the very thought of the delightful execution to come.

The stark cry of ‘no’ was the last thing he would ever say, and he careened into the kitchen, before a confused expression crossed his face, reading the message daubed on the wall. Slowly, suspended in an eternity, he turned to face the smiling form of Coramine. She thought she may burst from the riotous onslaught of almost agonisingly painful euphoria that wracked her, such was her unmitigated desire and passion for what was about to come. A moment she would remember forever, daubed indelibly upon her fragile, deadly mind. A vengeance she strove to enact tenfold upon that first instigator of her perpetual heartbreak… The look on his face was one of pure horror, for he knew of this girl. In the same class.

In that moment his own memories of her blazed a trail through him. The artistic young woman, the one who was always so pleasant, at odds with the aura surrounding her surname. The one who cared so dearly for her sisters, the one who he had seen fleetingly. And it makes perfect sense now. That she kept appearing so subtly in the background, never enough to be noticed, but enough to be remembered, displaying that inner desire to be loved. All those times he could have caught her, but her innately slippery demeanour evident in the fact she had always eluded him. The fact that she has laid such a trap turns his blood to ice. How many other times has she followed him, and he not seen? Enough to end his life…

It happens suddenly, as she blows a kiss at him, the mechanics of her pernicious, fiendish trap begin to move. The twine, connected to the handle, had moved the steel wool, which now rested upon the battery pack. It heated rapidly, before glowing red hot. The spark to ignite the flame. The entire kitchen is consumed with flame, the build up of gas immolating him almost instantly. A rapid end for weeks of pain. She cries out in joy, as the sudden burst of flame ignites the building. He and his home, consumed by the flames of her burning love for him… She grins viciously at the sight, before the camera is in her hands, snapping countless photographs of the scene, before leaving, like a shadow, blotted out by the glare of the incandescence of her hate, rage and pain made manifest in her vengeance.

Her memories shatter like a hammer breaking glass, as the final bell of the day rings. She sighs, casting aside the last vestiges of such pleasurable retreats into the broken expanse of her fragile mind, instead turning her mind to one of the few things that keeps her sanity at least remotely intact. Her sisters. Though they care not to admit it, they need her. At least, she believes they do. Aurora especially. Darling Aurora, with her ugly habits involving brains of rapists and walls. The former being smeared across the latter… Her brutish enactment of what she calls justice eliciting a mental sigh of disappointment at her lack of appreciation for beauty in her work.

She is waiting by the gate for her three sisters. Kiera, with her rebellious countenance, Aurora, dressed to kill, however literally that may be, and little Blair, the one who un-nerves her more than any living thing should. She loves them all dearly. Each for their own reasons. Kiera for the beauty behind her work, the irony of absolution through death striking a chord with Cora’s artistic streak. Aurora for her passion and conviction behind her actions, and the fact that she makes her feel needed by the abominable mess she leaves every time she goes on a killing spree. The mess that Cora, with all her guile and stealth is best placed to clean up. Blair, though somewhat reluctantly, for her budding and creative genius, even if her canvas is the most disturbing one she could envision. This coming from a girl who murders those she loves…

The four walk home in the camaraderie that clearly only a family of murderesses can share. That they all depend one each other. It comforts Cora to know that she will always have them to love, and not ever suffer the pain of rejection. Each held with superstition, earned through relation to their cousin, most beloved cousin. Beloved to one more than the others… Few spoke to them, such was the detestation of the atrocities committed by their cousin. It was why he left. It made sense now. But that did not lessen the hurt she felt at his leaving. Few words are spoken. Few need to be spoken. Not in public at least.

Immediately on entering their home, Cora embraces them all in turn, kissing each one on the cheek thrice, smiling beatifically at them, looking very much like the perfect daughter to their parents, so desperately seeking a loving, caring daughter to carry on their non-violent legacy. Their smothering behaviour, however, has driven each one in turn to murderous excess… She looks at Aurora, folding her arms across her chest. When you go out tonight, can you make an effort to not make such as much mess as last time? There was barely anything left of his skull, it was most unsightly. She shakes her head disapprovingly, still smiling, despite her exasperation at her lack of control when it came to the kill.

She embraced them all again, still smiling, trying to repress her urge to just hold on to them forever. As much as she adored them all, she was mindful of the effect of being smothered. They all were. She smiled at them before heading up to her room, to her private sanctum. It looked very much like any other eighteen year old girl’s room, school books placed in bookshelves lovingly restored by her own hand, her sketchpads, all thirty eight, bound and marked up lining the topmost shelf. Everything organised meticulously, each with it’s place, all recorded in her leatherbound notebook, that, almost literally, contained her life. She had but one thing in mind today. Finishing pad thirty nine. The fourth of her ‘murder’ pads. She leaps upon the bed with the enthusiasm of a girl getting a new puppy, whipping number thirty-nine from her messenger bag, pulling the photographs, recently developed at school, unbeknownst to her teachers, out, flicking to that last few pages. She smiles wistfully as she inserts each one lovingly, filling the last blank pages with images of her vengeance. She sighs once more, running her hands over the last image, on the last page.

Such perfection... So beautiful...

[/color][/blockquote]

I knew something was wrong from that very morning. I could feel it, deep within myself, a gnawing, slowly eating away at me. Unable to concentrate. To think clearly. More so than usual these days. My thoughts flickered back and forth between my unease, and my infatuation. That forbidden infatuation, bred over years of playful behaviour, that line that the ties of family blurred between what was platonic affection, and what was unrestrained adoration. Each time I caught myself thinking about him, my heart fluttered, and my brow wrinkled. I knew it was wrong. Kaelen was my cousin, my first cousin no less. That unwritten rule was explicit in that...

But then, if it was such an immutable truth, why did it feel so right? I bit my lip in idle thought, as I sat with my sisters, called together by Kaelen. This was the source of my unease. He never called us all together. Not like this. This felt... Wrong somehow. A dark cloud hung over me, even as I repressed the desire to sigh just by looking at him. If only he knew the effect he had on me... Little Cora, as he so loved to call me. Even that pet name made me a little giddy. Giddiness escaped me now though, fidgeting in my seat, the silence oppressive. His voice, sumptuous upon my ears, once again calling forth the urge to sigh. I catch myself, thankfully. Though we sisters love each other, I wonder that this boundary was not one that could be crossed without repercussions.

His first words put ice upon my skin. A cold feeling, chilling me to the core. The words the end flittered unbidden into my thoughts. If his words before had frozen me, his next thawed me out, warmed me to my core, a faint blush spreading across my cheeks. I can't take my eyes from him. My pulse pounds in my ears. I'm torn between joy and sorrow. That glimmer of hope duelling with the inescapable, forboding air that surrounded this day. I look down to the ground, tears beginning to well in my eyes. It's like something is being torn from me. Peeled away, desperately clinging on to my feelings and heartstrings, yanking them in painful new directions.

Then I feel his touch upon my cheek, my face involuntarily moving against his thumb, a single tear rolls down, running down to his outstretched thumb. 'I... I will cousin...' Another tear joins the first, bottom lip trembling slightly. I can't bear this. Not now, not ever. A faint sob wracks my chest, before I take off, hair whipping behind me as I flee, from him, from this room, from everything, leaving a quintet of very confused relatives in my wake, another sob tearing itself from my lips, eyes reddened, the back of my hand against my mouth, breathing elevated. I don't even make it to my room before the tulmultuous mix of grief, joy, and that same joy being snatched away, tears running freely down my cheeks, my sobbing a strained, continuous stream of whimpering exhalations. Why now...

I didn't even hear him running up the stairs, so lost in my nigh-inconsolable grief as I was. Each sob as painful as the last. Standing on the precipice of emotional oblivion, verging on simply closing down, becoming emotionally mute. And then I found myself in his arms, his words ringing in my ears, soothing, as I continued to pour out my hurt and my anguish, my head buried in his chest, tears staining his shirt, each heaving, broken utterance of my misery, pushing myself into him further, as though trying to meld with him, so I cannot ever be without him, or he without me. I was unable to speak, my arms locking around his torso, as clinging to him, hoping that if I hold tight enough, I can change the stark reality that slammed itself into me, like a freight train out of control. He's leaving. And I don't know why. The internal monologue blames me. 'He knows' it screams. 'He doesn't want you. He never did. You're just a silly, vain, lovestruck girl.' The words I mentally torment myself with cut me deeply, bringing a fresh sob, hiccuping slightly from the peal of agony it tows behind it.

Slowly, his hands in my hair begin to calm me down, soothing my pain, my vicelike grip easing on him. It still hurts. The occasional murmur still pushes itself past my lips. My head turns, the side of my head resting upon him, my fingers idly stroking his back, reassuring myself that, at least for the moment, he is still there. His presence consoles me somewhat, the voice in my head rebuked. If he didn't love me, why would he come to comfort me? An internal war rages within me, elation, grief and confusion each vying for control over my expression. My face settles into a slightly frown, lip still trembling. 'Did... Did I do something wrong...?'

It hurts to even contemplate that I have pushed him from us. It's anathemical to my very being to even hint at hurting him. I love him more than anything. More than I love myself. More than I love my sisters, my mother, my father. Anyone or anything in this life. In any life. My hands reach to his shoulders, hanging on to them, before looking up at him, eyes wide and tearful. ’I don't want you to go... I want you to stay... Stay with me... With us...' It's childish, I know, but I don't care. I can't lose him. No matter what they say about time healing all wounds, nothing can reverse your heart being ripped away.

Each word tumbling from his lips began to melt the sadness eating away at me. It confused me at how someone so utterly useless with emotions could quell my own anxieties and crushing despair so effortlessly. As though we were each others. That he knew me as well as I could be known. But I couldn't detach myself from the lie he spins as he holds me. Nothing else. Just holding me. That blissful place in his arms that I have longed to be in for more than those passing moments where he hugs me in greeting. Where he spins me about for no other reason than to show off just how much bigger he is than I, in protest to my squealing, at odds with the wish that that moment would never end, fixed forever in that dance. 'No it's not... If it was going to be all right you... You... You wouldn't have t-...'

My voice caught slightly, trying to finish the sentence, sobbing slightly at the very thought of his leaving. I whispered in the faintest of voices 'To leave...' My head reeled and my heart fluttered as he addressed me once again. ’My Cora...’ My Cora. Elation won out as those words fall upon my ears. He wants me... He wanted me to be his. My grip on his shoulders lessened slightly, as I looked up at him dolefully, tears still filling my vision, a slight sniffle marking the presence of sadness, but the look in my eyes unmistakable, redoubling as he told me of his desire to stay. His hands play a delicate symphony in my hair, down my back. I didn't even hear his words, so caught up in his admissions I prove to be. I saw he was speaking, but all I could see were his lips moving. Those lips that tempted me now, his seeming wanting of me making me look at him less with hopeless adoration, more with the doting love Dahlia tried to captivate him with.

My breathing ran shallow as he stopped speaking, frozen for an instant in a moment I knew would change my life forever. So many years of yearning, wanting, needing, all bottled into a single moment. The whisper of 'no' from the rational part of my mind drowned out by the screams of 'yes' from my soul, my heart, every other fibre of my being except for my self-denying mind. My hands reliquished their hold upon his shoulders, before reaching up to snare his head, pulling his face down, my lips, slightly parted, my breath faint, wispy, all frozen in that instant before we connected. My soul squealed in joy, a faint murmur in my chest, my arms looped around his neck, pulling him tighter to me, eyes closed, head cocked to the side. The Hollywood moment, stood on tiptoes to reach his lips, those lips that felt so good upon my own. So right. So very right...

Bliss embraced me as he responded to me in kind, pulling me in as I pulled at him, the utter perfection in that single moment as terrifying as it was exhilarating. No other person had ever made me feel a tenth of the joy, not prior, not since, of that which I felt in those few, sweet seconds of unadulterated joy. My heart sang in exultation, a triumph of heart and soul against head. My lips pressed against his, indescribable sensations fluttering like pulses of static, twitching every nerve in the most delightfully thrilling of ways. This forbidden union, the taste of him upon my lips, my first kiss, the first time I had ever welled up the courage to do such a thing. An instance of perfection. He tasted of almonds, slightly bitter, slightly sweet, but wondrous to experience, the delicate mix as much a thrill as the sensation of his lips upon mine. If but I knew it, an irony of the mix of arsenic and cyanide. Sweetness and bitterness. Lethal. That would forever poison me.

In that moment, I cared not. My lips began to part against his, pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable, over-ruling all taboo against such a thing. We fit together. All else is meaningless. My hands looped into his hair, tugging at it lightly, the release of so many pent up emotions straining to rush out and make themselves known, pressing my lips against his with more vigour. I can feel his eyelashes brushing against my cheek, the sigh upon my lips finding it's way to his own. It's like a fairy tale. Perfection bottled into one single action, so perfect in timing that stories could be written about it.

But like all fairy tales, it comes crashing down, annihilated by the harshness of reality.

I can feel pressure against my shoulders, my neck craning to stay in contact, addicted to him as surely as the wretches hooked on morphling. My eyes slowly open, my breathing husky, lips parted, eyes hooded, the flush in my cheeks spreading down my neck, to the top of my chest. I'm near delirious with the joy of the moment I almost don't hear his words. I almost reject them through that same joy. But in the same way one cannot ignore being stabbed, the gut-wrenching statement he utters, at odds with his gentle motions with my hair ran screaming towards me, obnoxious and loud, unavoidable, hated, despised. Numbness gripped me. My eyes shot wide open at the utterance. My pulse seems to stop. My breathing catches.

I can't speak. In a single moment, my life comes crashing down around me. ’I love you. But not like that.’ Words I don't want to hear. Words I prayed I would never hear. Words that slice through me, like the chilled northern wind through naked flesh. My blood is like ice, tearing holes through my veins. I can't even feel his hand in my hair any more. But I can hear his words. He wants to be miles away by sunrise. Only a few moments ago he didn't /want/ to leave. I struggled to breathe, shaking slightly. Every fibre of my being is rejecting his words. Every fibre, except my thrice-accursed mind, that simply shakes it's head solemnly, knowingly.

His lips upon mine break the final dam holding back the flood.

The lightest of touches can break the most fragile of barriers, and this is the most extreme of both. The ghost of a kiss, rending my fragile state of mind in twain. His words punch holes through my heart, leaving ugly gaping wounds I would later learn would never heal, torn ragged and bloody by this single minute. A life ruined, lost forever, in a sixty seconds. His words forever imprinting themselves upon my mind. As he turns my facade of confusion and denial splinters, cracks, then shatters. I am broken by his act of rejection. I do not sob. I don't even cry.

I wail.

The sharp, keening cry that only utter heartbreak can bring. My knees give out, as I tumble, not even able to break the fall, slumping to the ground, a marionette with her strings cut, her puppet master abandoning her to the cruelty of life without support, without someone to hold her up, lift her high, and give her form and function. Tears once again flooded down my face, time no longer a concept. I am lost in my despair. Never before have I felt such sadness. Such misery. So inconsolable. With only sorrow as a companion, against the emotional tide that crashes inside of me.

Until I remember words he had spoken to me scant days previous. Anyone who doesn't give you the love you deserve, doesn't deserve to live. These few words change everything. Though I still wail uncontrollably with my sorrow, Kiera, Moira and Aurora unable to shake me from the depths of my loss, I find solace in a new feeling, one I never thought I could associate with Kaelen. Mixed in with the love undying that I would cherish forever, was the diametric opposite that so often accompanies the sweetest of feelings. Hatred. Deep. Burning. Incandescent. Remember me he says. Oh I shall remember him. Invisible to the other three, my eyes flash dangerously, menacingly, all the bitterness, anger, hatred and desire for revenge I feel toward him condensed into a single, fleeting expression. I shall remember him. Remember this.

And I shall remind him of it when I show him his still beating heart.

oDair


Speech: C02B2B
Other Speech: D55228
Main: F5A145
Emphasis: FDD86B

Faceclaim is Kate Voegle

Kill The Lights - The Birthday Massacre

Bio template, graphic, and coding by South

[/size][/color][/blockquote][/justify]