♦ paper over the cracks ♦ frumtum

you're always looking at far away places

can't you look at me?

There is a lot of bobbing and weaving behind the scenes that I am still not accustomed to—men and women better seen and not heard, we rush here and there trying to complete the commands brought on us. It’s amazing that the people without tongues have created a way of understanding one another. The signal with their fingers, pointing here and there, motioning about all things; there is more than just words being spread about. I see it in the pained look of the long haired woman who stands next to me in the kitchen, the crow’s feet showing that she had been here long and will be here longer still. Until we are discarded, the all of us disappearing to nothing because we are nothing—or so the capitol wants us to think. We are the untouchables, the men and women without a voice, prisoners with no names, no faces, and no hope.

Tonight I am to be a server for a grand party in one of the places that has nothing but men in their long coats and ladies in their sparkling dresses, laughing and smiling while the rest of us ache in our stomachs. I’m reminded again and again of how lucky I am to be here, rather than locked away in the detention center. You could have been one of the unmarked graves. That’s what keeps tumbling through my head as I prep in the kitchen, helping to roll out the dough for the little pieces of bread, or beating down the meat to tenderize it. There are a great many that never make it through the doors to the capitol—the many, many that are left on tables, needles in their arms, faces gaunt and breaths shallow. They are the ones that the capitol deems truly worthless. Only good enough for their experiments, they are rolled up in black bags and tossed into the earth as though they were never anything at all.

I should’ve broken into pieces when they took me. Just outside of District Eleven, the peacekeepers found my shaking body holed up in a tree next to the wall. I had taken back the one that had kept me safe because it was not safe for the both of us. Little Sampson had cradled me through life and death since I had been separated from Freya, but he was too sick to go on his own. Three years since he had fled from the districts, he’d grown into a man but not a man. And when I heard the coughs and the softness in his voice, I knew that there was nothing that could be done. He wanted to die rather than go home, but—as much as I wanted us to go it alone—I knew that there was more for him in the district than there was in the wilds.

I chose to die then, on my own.

The world had gone seen, and now I was blind, unknowing in all that there was to offer. Sure, I could feel and taste and fly with my feet—but what good was living without the brightest blue or deepest purple? You may call me selfish, and indeed I was—thinking that the problems could be solved through death. That’s what suicide is all about, really. There was an emptiness I felt, a hole that couldn’t be filled. I thought that the darkness was better; I thought that the weight could be put to rest by expiring. I suppose that in the few days I had in the outside world, I’d eventually run out of water, and just—disappear. A body that rotted into nothing, just as I thought I was meant to be. I had no mother, a father that disowned me, brothers that never knew me.

But they found me instead. The men in white discovered me not two nights into my suicide. They tore through the patch of trees where I slept, and grabbed onto my arms. They beat me until I tasted copper, and then again until one of them recognized my face. My brother saved me once again, his face making me more important than I truly was. I wanted nothing more than for them to kill me; I would’ve begged for one of their poles to crush my skull. But instead, they packed me into a vehicle, and let the night rattle into silence. I faded in and out of consciousness, until at last they pulled me down into hell. I say that knowing full well it could’ve been worse. But this was—and will forever be—where demons come and go.

I remember most the needles that pricked my skin. They liked to taste my blood, if only to see that I was indeed related to Benat Izar. They could do no more than marvel at the fact that I was alive and well—was I part of their imagination when I was vomiting, when my arms bled, when they eyes crossed and I shrieked? But there was no stopping them, not when they poked and prodded. There was a man who they’d never known sitting before him, one who’d died and yet refused to die—how could they not test every ounce of his being? They wanted to see me squirm, to see me cry tears, to break what already should have been broken. And yet I held on. My body suffered and my mind raced, seeing nothing but blurs in my blindness.

I guess I should’ve broken. Like a bone twisting until it inevitably snaps… I should’ve been the boy that gave. I wanted to die, didn’t I? I wanted to disappear into dust after all. A faceless, unnamed boy that should’ve been nothing more than a footnote. But all that time writhing, all the time that I should’ve inched closer to death I realized or rather, something awoke—I was selfish to want to die. Because to die then, and give up all that had ever been given to me would’ve been consent to say that what I had been experienced was okay. To die was to say to the world, and all that lived in it, that Rum Tum Tugger had never mattered. It was to say that when the birds called and the sun rose that there had never been a reason to wake in the morning because fate had already been decided. And I had never, never in my life accepted things as they were.

The beauty of my life has been the cracks in the edges. I say that now, adjusting my tie and watching the rest scurry. There is always a sun that rises, and a moon that shows its face. So many disappear because they give in to this notion—that we cannot go any further. That there is nothing new. But there is always something, there is always something just on the edge of the horizon. And to give in to the men and women that held me down, that plunged my arms full of strange things—that was to say that the sun would not rise. That was to turn away from the moon as though it did not exist. It was blasphemy of the highest degree. Because people still existed, whether or not I saw them, whether or not that I was a living, breathing thing.

They gave before I did. My sight came back, and not long after that, I was stuck in a little tube with flashing lights, and brought back to a fancy home in a faraway land. They called it the capitol. It was a place where women wore great colors and men had white faces with hair that couldn’t have sprung from their heads. It was not freedom, but it was not death. That much was certain. They wrapped something around my neck that sent terrible pain through my whole body whenever they—the people in command—decided but I was not tongueless like so many around me. I was—too important, as they said—to lose my tongue. I was worth more with my voice.

Tonight we walked along the edges of the rooms like ghosts, and held great trays of food that had my mouth watering. I would sneak a kernel or two or four when I could. But the night went as well as they usually did. The men and women would drink and laugh and dance. And then they would see me, and my face. They would whisper and point. The young ones would come up to me, press against me, and command me to speak. And they would clap their hands together and laugh. If I wasn’t fast enough, they would press a strange box, and I would writhe on the floor, enough for them to laugh.

“I told you,” One says, pointing at me. I blink. “It’s just… creepy!” She says, her mousy face pinched and her eyes narrowed. I open my mouth and close it, but it’s too late. She’s already made up her mind. “I want to… I want to hear him!” She claps her hands. “It was so… romantic, when he died. When he and—what do you call her—fought. I was rooting for him, you know? And then that terrible display…” Another murmurs, and I see one of the older servants hand her the box. I bite my tongue, but it still doesn’t prepare me for the shock through my system. I drop the tray, and the others let out a shout. I turn over and grunt, watching as they pass the box from one another. “Freya, you should get a turn, it’s just so…”

My heart beats one, two, three. I stare at the girl with the curls and lick my lips. Here I could say here name, beg for it to stop. I close my eyes and take another deep breath.

made by remi of isc
inspired by abby's template

you're always looking at far away places

can't you look at me?

 But why do I have to go back…

His voice skitters out, soft as the first brush of snow on the mountains outside District Twelve. Sampson lets out a cough, and the two of us embrace. As much a man as he’s become in three years, he still sobs like the boy that I first met. I press a dirty hand against his cheek and purse my lips together in a hush. A lot of folk like to speak words to fill up the silence. They think that by being profound they’ll break whatever pain we feel in our hearts. But I’ve found that it’s not these words that make us stronger. The embrace—the touch, the feeling—that’s what I remember most of everything. I press my lips to his forehead. He is the last of my kin, the one who tended me when I could not tend myself. We both know how far a blind boy (am I a man now?) get without a guide. But his cough keeps getting worse, and his body cradled against mine feels thin in threadbare clothes.

Sometimes we have to make selfish choices. In the moment, I couldn’t see any further than the morning after—that Sampson would live on if he had family to tend to him. As strong as he’d been walking with me, there was no chance for both of us if he stayed with me. I had wanted him to live more than me. That selfish, disgusting desire for someone else to go on without me because I didn’t want—and I didn’t deserve—to be here as much as he did. I’d never been a part of that world. They had run through rows of corn, they had played games like hop-scotch and jacks and things that I did not understand. Their language, even though the words were the same, was not my own. I was too far removed to become a part of them, even if I ached to be with them. And so as I wiped the sweat from his brow and the tears from his eyes, I decided that we would part.

The shocks come in waves.

No matter how many times they happen I can’t prepare for the way every tendon in my body stands on end. I can barely scream between the shocks because all of my tenses at once. Here the room spins, and I wonder if the girl in front of me is just an illusion. But then one of the others, the one with the pinched face, she says her name again. I kneel with one hand on the cold, marble floor. My wrists shakes at the weight and I refuse to meet her eyes. No matter how far I’ve gone, the universe saw it fit for us to be together again. The Izars Benat and Sampson always talked about being small parts of a big, big universe, but I think there’s more than that. We’re all parts of a big, big universe that entwine with one another. Because for all the time that we have been separated, we were never really apart.

I watch her hold the black little box in her hands. It’s a game to these men and women, to watch all of us struggle and hurt and even bleed. I should expect to be beaten and touched, poked and prodded at every turn. But Freya—she wasn’t like them. Not the girl that had walked through those fields, had seen the lighthouse, the one that had sat atop a roller coaster and watched the stars with me. But we had lost one another—or rather, I had lost her. She must have thought that something terrible had happened to me. Maybe that I’d died. Would she even believe that my face was my face, and not just something that these monsters were able to create? It’s then I stare up at her face, my eyes wide.

I was the one that had hurt her.

Poor, little Freya had to endure the ones that I’d tried to protect her from. I’d been the selfish one, spending so long wandering without her. I hadn’t made a plan to find her again because I’d lost hope. Even with Sampson at my side I was too afraid to take that risk. The Districts were too dark, the capitol was a great fortress that a blind boy and a child couldn’t hope to storm. So it was better to hide in the forests and make a life out of drinking from streams and stumbling over mountainsides. And for a while we were happy. Because when you’re selfish, you forget how to feel for other people. It’s what all of the capitol has forgotten: how to feel for the ones who need it. My momma always taught me to walk in another man’s shoes; when I was with Sampson the only ones I understood were my own. I tried to forget about her, and about everything, because she was better off without me anyway. What use was a blind boy trying to survive the wilds?

I want her to push the button. I know that if she doesn’t there will be consequences. There are always consequences for not following the group here. But more than that I want to be punished for what I’ve done to her. I lost her, and she was sent back here, the one place she never wanted to return. Worse still, I hadn’t wanted to live—I had chosen to throw it all away—because I had thought only of myself. Not for her, not of her, not with her. And for all the time I spent in my own head, I had missed all the people that I had hurt along the way, wanting to end in the easiest possible way. She needed to push it, she had to. I ached as she hesitated, but closed my eyes and I saw her fingers move. The shocks had me on the floor again; long enough that when I opened my eyes, the other avoxes were picking me up and motioning that it was time to bring out the desserts.

I staggered into the kitchens on the arm of a pale skinned blond. She touched the top of my arm and chewed her lip before turning away. I gave a forced smile. If I still had one act of defiance in my bones, it was that I could still smile. Even though the hairs on my neck stood and my face flushed hot, I wasn’t going to fall apart here. Not when I needed to be stronger. I took another step and gripped tight against the granite counter top. Each step hurt then, and I felt my heart beating through my chest. But worse than all of this, in the reflection of the pots and pans, I can see just what I’ve done.

“Freya…” I whisper out. My breath is still shallow, and I have to place both of my hands flat on the granite to keep steady. “W-what are you… what are you doing?” I lick my lips. “Freya…” I plead, I beg, I do all the things that I’m not supposed to—because none of us are to speak to capitolites—hoping she sees, that she can really see me. “It’s you… it’s… it’s you…”

made by remi of isc
inspired by abby's template

you're always looking at far away places

can't you look at me?

It hadn’t been her fault. She’d gone into District Three because our stomachs wouldn’t stop growling, and with a recent snowfall, it was hard enough to find roots that we could chew upon to survive. I was supposed to wait by the wall, but I’d heard twigs crack just up the way. My first thought was that if they caught me, then surely they’d catch Freya too, and we’d be punished. Worse still—and here the selfishness filled my stomach until it overflowed—we’d be separated, never to see one another again. I started to move along the wall at first, hands grasping at the rocks at my feet. The sounds grew louder, and I turned my walk into a jog, and before long, a sprint. My knees would scrape against a shrub here or there, or clip a stray rock against my ankle. But the sounds faded the further I ran. I let out a laugh as I bounced along, thinking that once again I’d escaped certain death. And then my foot dug hard into the earth, I lifted into the air, and then— crack.

Blackness.

She doesn’t say a word. I stare at the hair that tumbles down past her shoulders. It’s so much straighter here, no spots of grease or curls from the humidity of a summer rain. Her face isn’t smudged with dirt but it looks paler. The little lines that popped up underneath her eyes are gone, and the crease she’d been developing above her eyebrows—usually from when I said something she disapproved of—was hardly there. And the dress! Lovely was too a word to catch the way it clung to her body. I didn’t miss the rags that she’d clung to when we walked along the forest. It wasn’t to say that she needed all of these things. It was… it was that she was as though she was allowed to shine here, to be the girl that she was meant to be. She should’ve been shining, and happy—if it weren’t for the pain our stupid journey had brought to her. Hadn’t she family here? And the boy—the one that she’d been in love with, he had to be here, too.

“Freya…” I say again, stronger. The other avoxes stare from their perches toward the door of the kitchen, and some of the cooks lean to hear. I should care about all of these spies, but here there is only Freya. I feel as though the hour glass is tipped and slowly slipping. How many more moments will I have with her? Will I ever see her again? What if she never wants to see me again. I close my own eyes and breathe. There couldn’t be a lack of courage here, not if I wanted to be forgiven by Freya. Not if I wanted her to dry her tears, and to speak. I took another breath and felt the pain in my chest build. This wasn’t from the shocks, no. That Freya Hanig couldn’t even bring herself to speak to me, after all this time. I should have known to turn away then, to resign myself to this life—didn’t I deserve to a worthless servant until the day that I died—but instead, I caught her reflection in the cutlery again.

“Do you remember what you said to me…” I’m quiet now, pacing closing to her with my hands up against my chest. “When I said that I kept to myself… in my head?” It seems so long and distant that we were in those woods for the first time. Me with a babyface and her dressed up like a capitolite playing rugged explorer. “You said… who’s going to collect your thoughts the day you die? That you can think all you want, but that’s not going to change anything… unless you actually speak out!” I let the words hang as I stare at her now. The pain is still there in my chest, and—is my voice shaking? I can’t believe that the universe is cruel enough to bring her back here, to see me like this. As though it wasn’t bad enough she was trapped, she had to see the boy that had led her over mountains and through woods safe and sound.

I linger in front of her, my hands now in front of me, shaking. The shocks have made it hard to keep still, especially on nights such as this. I take another deep breath. I want to shout at her, to tell her she has to speak. She has to forgive me, to forgive us for everything we’ve ever done, because without this forgiveness I’m just as broken as I was when I’d turned and left Sampson. I want to shake her, too. It’s an anger that strays from my bones and up through my throat. She has no business hiding away. Not when I saw what I saw. The kind, wonderful, amazing Freya Hanig that was unlike any of the awful men and women of the capitol. She was much more than the pretty dress and soft expression lining her face; she was—we were. The words hide behind my lips and I keep my eyes on her, not caring that I should be bussing the tables now.

We were something so much more together than separate. And though they played their games, and the world shifted from summer to fall to the snow of winter, we were. I’d been an idiot to think I could ever leave it behind. I only just wished that I had been able to find my way back to her before we’d been torn apart. I take another breath and turn away.

“I’m sorry…”

made by remi of isc
inspired by abby's template

you're always looking at far away places

can't you look at me?

For a while, I’ve not been living in the now. Maybe it was losing my vision that stuck me in my mind, and made me lose sense of being then and there. All of a sudden it was a lot harder to take joy in all the things that I couldn’t see. Sure, the fruit was just as ripe and the wind was just as cold against my cheek, but a part of me missed the red of the morning sunrise, or the blue of the ocean tide. I got to thinking in my head about the past because I could find happiness there. It was too important for Sampson to not be happy. I was his older brother, and I had to be strong. And I had to be strong in knowing that Freya had been happy—that both of us had been happy—and that our lives were once as perfect as the rust on that roller coaster, or the salt lining the sides of the lighthouse. Perfection. I could be happy thinking about how she smiled, about how my brother had been alive, that there was no one that had died for me to be alive.

But that’s a temporary sort of happiness. The kind that’s false because you just keep bobbing back up to the surface. Why don’t we have enough food? What are we going to do about the cold? When will we ever be able to just rest? And that’s when I slipped forward, past the present. Sampson would get mouthfuls of hope from the future, when we would be far away from the Districts up north. We’d build ourselves a little cabin on a mountainside, next to a stream. Then we’d plant some crops, and build a well. We’d have a little porch swing and be able to lie back, smoking our tobacco, at peace with the world as the world was at piece with us. He liked these visions—enough that he had me telling him stories before we faded to sleep at night. He’d repeat them, too, when I was too tired. His little voice would find a new strength in envisioning how deep the valley was, or how green the trees were. It was a hope that kept the cold from our toes and the pain from our stomachs.

When I look at Freya, I’m reminded of all the time that I’ve spent, backwards or forwards instead of right now. I can’t help but be more sorry—sorry for all the time that I’ve wasted not living in my own skin. I’ve thought a lot of what I’ve done wrong, of who I’ve been. It’s like I’ve stacked those bricks on my back, weighed myself down, and let them crumble around me. And when the little bit of light did peek through, I threw my hands up over my eyes. I wasn’t ready—I still don’t know if I am—to be part of their world, especially with a collar around my neck. But that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? I take a deep breath, and stare at Freya. I have two eyes, a nose, a tongue, a heart rum tum tumming. It’s hard not to think about what I am, or what all the people through the doorway want done to me. But that’s not… that’s not what this is about, not here.

As much as they’ve taken from me, I’m still my mother’s son. They could have their tele-visions and their ovens and all the things that made them what they are. But I’d never been more than the clothes on my back, just footsteps away from the best or worst day of my life. The Rum Tum that had climbed mountains and hidden in caves, the one that found his brothers because he had to find his family, the one that took in a lost girl—he’d never left. Because being a Tugger meant a lot of things, but most of all—taking in what was, and understanding what was beautiful. And here and now she—the both of us—were what was beautiful.

The clatter of the knife is enough for me to jump but then—her hand wraps in mine. I feel younger, then. My heart races and I have to swallow to hold back the gasp of air that was bound to escape. I want to stutter out words to Freya but there’s nothing there. Instead I come face to face with her, and she with me. It’s a moment that I could save forever, staring into those eyes. Maybe someday I’ll tell her how she looked, just as sad and broken as the both of us were. But how beautiful, in the crook of her lips, the glint of her eyes? How wonderful was it to smell her again, to feel her warmth? We have enough in our lives buzzing around, enough not to notice that there’s no need for great magic. Just the simple, quiet sort of love that fills your bones. Her arms get around me and I let out another gasp. But My arms wrap around her body, too. I take in the feel of her dress, and how her little body presses tight up against my own. She cries, and I start to cry, too. Not because of how sad we are, but because I’ve found the moment—when we just are.

“Just stay here…” My voice is soft, and I brush back the hair around her ears. “Just for a minute.” I know the rest of the avoxes are circling, ready to flail me for touching a capitolite. If they had tongues they’d have run and grabbed someone by now. But the world isn’t so important as Freya. Instead I soak in the warmth, her shaking hands and crying eyes. I take another deep breath. It’s sweet—powdered sugar and what they call iced creams, with a bubbling pot of hot coffees. I squeeze her tighter against my chest and bring a hand back behind her head. No long speeches about love, no vaulted words, just a quiet moment shared between the most important person in my world and, me.

“We’re going to be okay…” I don’t know if it’s a lie or just want I want to believe, but it’s a promise all the same. Somehow, I’ll find a way to make it true.

made by remi of isc
inspired by abby's template