My Story's Seldom Told {Library Plot}

Pictures dot the floor, spread out like a plain across the sizeable room and if i squint it looks like the images in the photos create flowers or something like homes and animals and once i read in a book that there used to be buffalo so maybe those too and i wonder what colour they are. i sit cross legged in front of them even though my back aches and there is a perfectly good arm chair in the corner and it's one i dragged from all the way down the street, heart almost breaking for the scraping of those gorgeous clawed feet against the cement eating away at the falcon's toes like sand paper. Scratched and bedraggled it still made it here and looks okay with the blanket that andorra brought down those nights ago to cocoon herself in it because the basement is cold and i must be born of ice giants. i think to be a giant made of ice i'd have to be taller at least it's what i said to her but she laughed, arms gesturing wildly, well you are cold enough, your words harsh and icey you are already half a one. since then i've grown a full inch so I'm getting there.

The walls are plastered with photos in every spare space, the room is criss crossed with photos hanging from fishing lines by tiny clips that are shaped like hearts/lightning bolts/stars/clouds, and once in desperation i used a wad of gum as a loop and it stuck that way so that was gross but it's one of the Niko photos and I don't think he'd mind. personally i mind very much because niko has got to be one of the biggest idiots i've ever met. not to mention the absolute sea of troubles in front of me, hundreds upon hundreds of photos laid out all that wasted film becasue of a boy with a penchant for stupidity. some of them are actually of niko but i don't think i should differentiate at this point.

in almost every photo niko is either in the back ground or hopped in front of my lens with flailing arms making him look like a frightened goose and crooked grins theiving my art from me because maybe the lighting was perfect maybe the expression of the subject i was trying to get but then he shocks a bird into flying or he tries to fly across the frame himself and all i get is birds. There's my other project too (I didn't do it out of jealousy and no i don't like this idiot he's dumb and even if i did like him it doesn't matter because he's straight and so am i) the time when i became generally curious how many girls this guy gets and so i have rows and rows of niko, arms wrapped around a female here, flirting with a girl there, making out with a girl over there, and there was that one i accidentally got that was too much information even for a lens and i burned it with the lighter that i found in my brother's things.

Not that Niko hasn't made it to my so called wall of fame anyway, the pictures that are so honestly lovely that i carefully place them lined up right along each other to create no free space because i know this wall will grow and i don't know what will happen when there is no more wall left but maybe by then there will not even be anymore me. and there are stories on this wall of expressions of instances of hurts and curses and reapings and pain beyond belief of a lady standing with her big floppy hat in her hands and of a boy with a younger brother that he didn't get but tried to. I glance up at the photo of niko and i'm biting my lip in annoyance and it hurts when i bite too hard and break skin, searching carefully i spot the photo and niko isn't smiling or laughing or pouting or with a girl or with anybody else but there is sunlight streaming through the window and dustmotes caressing his face and his eyes are searching but there is nothing to see and his legs are sprawled out in their length and his expression is unplaceable but it isn't false.

and i don't want to find him lovely especially not when he's the reason for my latest headache in the form of all these photos dotting the floor like dust and my broom is from a doll house i haven't even made a dent yet because there are literally hundreds of incriminating photos, hundreds of photos he's ruined by smiling knowingly behind them or those stupid bunny ears he gives my subjects. if he were here right now i'd punch him in the jaw and in response my hand clenches which is curious because i have such an absence of care for what other people do that it's making my angry that i'm angry. i think maybe he should at least pay for all the film that's been wasted on him but that would mean showing him all these photos and i don't show anyone these photos but andorra and if anyone found this room i'd die because maybe these photos aren't me but they are pages of my diary and i'm not that type of guy.

What type of guy? I don't know just not the type to show people something so personal to me because i'm guessing i'm the type who is happier to listen and not to share because if you share pieces of yourself bare yourself to someone else they will hold a piece of you and that is terrifying beyond measure because then they will know something about me and something that i didn't give them willingly (although i'm not used to people asking when they take my little pieces but then again it's because i let them take so willingly that maybe they can't even notice how quickly i'm disappearing) so that's why i lock the door behind me when i leave, why even andorra doesn't have a key to this room anymore because if i need to be there to explain things so she doesn't jump to conclusions about me because i. am. not. that. boy.

with a sigh i uncross my left leg, stretching it out to rest it on a picture of niko up close and personal from that time when he literally jumped right in front of my camera but it's so close that all you can see is his dumb mouth and one eye, the rest of him immortalized on other pages. sand tingles down my leg and i feel like an hourglass full of sand that's been tipped over, sand trickling through, making my limbs heavy and making me drown. it occurs to me that i don't really know hour long I've been down here and it could be a very very very long time becasue there aren't really any windows and the room is lit by pale white lights in the shape of flower petals that cost me three months of the allowance my brother gives me and i felt o guilty when i bought them because we could use that money for something else.

i must look a wreck, my hair pulled back into a messy do and liner smeared by the rubbing of my palm against them as i try and keep all these nikos in focus but i'm getting tired and i have to pee and all i'm wearing is this dumb shirt i pilfered from my brother and a pair of loose sweats that hug my hips and i feel so gross because it's a sunday and that meant i didn't have to try but i think maybe i should have to try everyday but then again nobody is perfect and especially not me. it occurs to me that maybe i shouldn't have had so much green tea earlier but i read it was good for digestion and i thought that my thoughts could be more organised if they were digested but maybe a full pot isn't what they meant and the incriminating kettle is sitting empty in the corner and i really have to pee.

i frown at the pile of photos in front of me at the girls clinging to niko's neck arms wrapped so tightly that they might as well be slothes hanging off a branch and fuck it really pisses me off. angrily, i stand, and scuff at the photos, sending them fluttering away in the soft ripple of wind and my foot feels like dead weight and tingle from the sand shifting and i shake it out a bit to get the feeling away but it doesn't go and i really need to pee so i sort of drag myself out the door and down the hall to find solace in a bathroom stall. and as i pee the water tinkles and it occurs to me i should have locked the door but maybe i'm just being paranoid and -that feels better- i'm only gone to pee i'll be back in minutes, less than, and maybe i should just chill out a bit because who goes wandering around in old library basements except for idiots and people who work there? it'll be fine.

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ooc: I don't think that there is a posting order, but please let Lalia go first.

Disclaimer: I can spell and am okay at grammar, this is supposed to be stream of conscience. Not very good but I'll get better, until then, thank-you for your patience.