the good, the bad, the { l o v e l y } // dars

I've gone cold.

My heart has felt too much, hurt too much, and it has finally decided to give up hope. I have decided to give up hope, because what is the point, really? Things are different from when I was a child. Though those were much, much simpler times, where it seemed things were always going to be looking up for me, and happiness could be found like oxygen in the air, just the simplest things making my day, perhaps even my week. Happiness- it's not just something I can just come across in the middle of the day anymore, is it? It seems to be a figment of my imagination in truth, a myth just the same as the stories I was told as a child.

Sometimes I think I can see it. Older couples that have lived a thousand lives in the time period of only one, mothers and their new children, and, I suppose even the careers called at the reaping have a bit of it, though I feel that emotion is completely different. Pride, that's more like it. The problem is, no matter how much I see it, large doses or small, I can't seem to get any for myself. My life is the same routine, and other than gambling, I feel perfectly safe- no, not safe, confined at all times.

The sounds of the dice dancing along the shiny wooden tables, cards clapping together in the hands of capable dealers, poker faces worn as a necessary garment of one's outfit, that is where I can find excitement. My uncle says I'm beyond my years in deception, a natural, he calls me. "You could walk a man off a cliff and still have him thinking he had the upper hand the whole way down." He told me. Be that as it may, my talent for lying and manipulation isn't something I should be proud of. Hurting people, using their weaknesses against them for my own personal gain when, really, I don't need it, it's something I should be ashamed of.

Until I find something else to bring a twist in the ride that is my life, however, I'm going to have to stick with it or risk going insane in the boundaries I am supposed to remain within. I try things. I hear people talking about all of these activities they partake in, hear them ramble on and on about how much they love them, and I try my hardest to agree with them, but nothing is really as incredible as they all make it seem. Perhaps I am an addict to gambling, a teenage burn out that has run out of options. It would make sense. It seems smoke filled rooms and decisions made by alcohol rather than sound minds are the only flavors of life for me, every other one tasting bland to me, but it's a habit that I am going to have to break eventually, before I meet my match and find myself with absolutely nothing.

This time, it is a circus act I am trying to use as a distraction. I found a flyer on one of the posts along the sidewalk, telling me in clear letters of the event, and decided it was as good an option as anything. I lost track of the time, so I found myself walking along the street in the mid-afternoon, hoping I wasn't too early or too late. I have heard about this act. Cricket Antoinette, Victor of the 63rd Hunger Games is one of the leading acts. I didn't have to read what it was, exactly. I watched her games, and I know exactly what she was going to be doing in front of the cheering crowds.

Before I can see her perform, however, or anyone for that matter, and blunt force slams square into my right shoulder as I round a corner, and I watch as a head of pretty blonde hair scrambles to the ground. "Oi! Why don’t you watch where you’re going, idiot?" I lean forward to get a look at the girl. Pretty, exceptionally so. Sandy curls fall past her frail shoulders in a mess due to the fall. Her eyes are blue, and currently clouded with tears. (I'm not the reason for them, am I?) Surely not.

I scoff and cross my arms over my chest. "I was watching where I was going. It was you that was running like some kind of a lunatic." It's the truth. She was running, almost as if trying to escape something, perhaps even someone. She has no reason to blame me for that, or anyone. Whatever she is so scared of, whatever has got tears making it hard enough for her to see that she can't manage not to slam herself into me is her business. I have nothing to do with it. I smirk at her, but I still extend a hand to help her up. "You okay there, Speedy?" She may be quick to place blame, but does that make her a monster? No.

How would I know?

Why, I am a professional.

My mother once told me I was the kind of boy mother's wished for.

I wonder if she still feels that way. I know that she hasn't bothered to tell me if I am. She hasn't barely bothered to speak to me at all these days. Maybe it's just because I am getting older. Maybe she is trying to get me ready for the world. I tell myself that, but it seems like she has an ulterior motive, and it isn't just for my benefit. I genuinely think she wishes she didn't have me to look at in the mornings at breakfast sometimes, and the same goes for my father. It is strange, looking at how close we all once were. She would pat me on the head when I helped clean the kitchen with her. My father would hug me when I got a good grade on a test, or even if I got a bad one. "You'll get it next time, Kiddo." he would promise. Now, I don't even think he knows what grade I'm in.

Things change. That is a part of life, I have learned. There is nothing I am ever going to be able to do about it. Everyone you love leaves you, everything you care about fades away, and in the end you are just left with yourself and just enough will to start over. The only question that this logic begs is this: What happens when you don't have enough will to go on? I think that is the point in which you become someone like me, who really isn't a person at all, but more so a vessel where a person used to be. It's sad, I suppose, but it's the truth. I am no more alive than the concrete I am standing on.

The slight blush that wisps across my cheeks is inevitable, but it fades quickly, hopefully quickly enough that she didn't notice it. She probably can't notice anything with those tears in her eyes, anyway. I have been flirted with before, and I have done my fair share of it myself, but for some reason she has managed to catch me off guard. That was what she was doing, right? Flirting with me? It certainly seemed so, and I should know, I am the king of tricks.

And what is love but a trick?

It pulls people in and traps them, like the web of a spider, and then they are just stuck, doomed to wait and see where their fate will lead them. There are so many options, and so many of them are saddening. The monster could come and take away the one they love, or it could take them instead. They could have a chance to escape, but have no time to save the other, or there is the other option, which seems the slightest, and they would both make it out happily and live together forever. In my experience, the last option never happens, and I have watched as the world has ended relationship after relationship, and in complete honesty, I am sort of blessed to now have a frozen heart. It means it's too numb for me to feel any more pain.

I fold my arms across my chest and raise an eyebrow, pushing the thoughts in my head away. Keep her company? What exactly did she mean by that? Hopefully it isn't what my gut tells me- as macho as I am, or, pretend to be, whatever, there is a secret that only I know about myself. Inexperience isn't really a bad thing, and I shouldn't feel that it is, but I can't help thinking people would see me as less of a person. A sheltered idiot, or a chicken. Until my heart gave up, I told myself I was just waiting for the person I wanted to share everything- more than just my virginity- with. Now, I am not sure why exactly I remain loyal to what mother's wish for their sons to be. Maybe what people would say about me is right. Maybe I am a sheltered idiot, or a chicken. Maybe something worse.

"If I were a betting man-" I am a betting man, the betting man, in fact. "I would say you just wanted to spend some time with me, Miss Vaine." I narrow my eyes at her in a sort of playful manner. The tickets actually are a good wager for what she is asking. Whatever she is, which is apparently something that can get me free tickets to the next show, she seems interesting enough to hold my attention, so I nod. "Deal."

I lean against the brick wall and smile again at her. "So, where to?" There are a few places I hang out, but none of them hardly seem appropriate for such a little, fragile girl. Actually, she isn't quite fragile as much as she is just small. Strong arms, quick steps, sure movements, she is definitely physically fit, not some dainty damsel in distress that can't fend for herself, but it still seems inappropriate to take her anywhere I would think to go. Just because I am a monster doesn't mean I have to turn her into one as well, does it? I can pretend I'm a good person, if only for a short moment, and she won't ever know the difference, so that's just what I am going to do.