Book of Death + Kia's DP +

  I had forgotten this, but Jefferson never truly smiled. It was a half-grin. The kind that reaches the lips but never the eyes. His eyes were always dead. Marbles of black that seemed so unseeing and unfeeling. No doubt they were.

     Death looks at me, a curious gleam in her eyes. She smiles and turns back to the scene. I don’t remember this, but I must be nearly six. Maybe older.

     “You’re seven. It’s about six months before you become an orphan.”

     Orphan. That word was so foreign. I hadn’t been an orphan for nine years. My time as one was brief. Very brief, luckily.

     “Jefferson, mom says we can’t play outside after it starts getting dark. We need to go home.”

     He shrugs. It’s strange to be watching this scene from outside my head. I look so young standing next to my eleven year old brother. It’s just one year before he can be reaped. Before he’s a big boy and Mom and Dad won’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to.

     “I’ve got things to do. You head home,” he says, pushing me towards the street.

     “I don’t want to leave you behind. It’s not safe. We need to go home.”

     “I don’t give a shit, Kia. Go home.”

     “No.”

     Jefferson turned around, his eyes blazing. I was standing a couple yards and nine years away and I still felt the jolt of adrenaline and the intense burning of fear, licking my insides like someone had lit a fire inside my rib cage.

    “What was that? Do you want to go through the cat incident again?”

    My seven year old eyes widen and manage to let out a whispered, “No, Jefferson. I… I’ll go home.”

    Cat incident?

    “You don’t remember?” she asks. “It’s probably for the best you don’t remember your brother beating you until you would kill that cat. It was a calico. You didn’t kill it. A girl saw what was happening and went to get her older brother and his friends.”

    I watch myself hurry away, running from Jefferson. The older boy smiles to himself. An evil smile. One that doesn’t truly reach his eyes. A smile that scares me.

    “What is her name?”

    “Constance. She died last spring in childbirth. She was sixteen.”

    She was dead? This girl who probably saved my life was dead?

    “It’s admirable, though, that no matter what, you refused to hurt this cat. I mean, you forgot that sense of honor in the Hunger Games, but no matter. It’s a kill-or-be-killed world, am I right?”

    (…..)

    “Kia?”

    (…..)

    “Kia, I hope I haven’t upset you.”

    “Just take me to the next memory,” I choke out, trying to prevent liquid weakness from running down my cheeks.

o O o


s a y   s o m e t h i n g ,   i ' m   g i v i n g   u p   o n   y o u

i ' m   s o r r y   t h a t   i   c o u l d n ' t   g e t   t o   y o u

a n y w h e r e   i   w o u l d ' v e   f o l l o w e d   y o u

s a y   s o m e t h i n g ,  i ' m   g i v i n g   u p   o n   y o u

          The lines of my father’s face were not so heavy when I was eight as they were by the time I was reaped—nine years later.

          He looked… young. He doesn’t look young anymore. Fatherhood took that out of him.

         Even now, though, I watch as I sit at the other side of a table in a meeting room. My legs dangle and kick in the metal chair. He looks at me.

       And without speaking, he finishes filling out the forms and signs his name. It’s a large, flowing and looping signature in black, wet ink seeping from the nib of his favorite pen. The messy kind that you don’t really want to throw away.

        Eight-year-old me stares at this man. This man I hardly know, but can’t imagine not trusting. “Wait, Mister,” I hear myself say. “I got some stuff to get.”

          Father nods and as I dash away, smiles to himself.

      “Did he sign the paper?” Rodney demanded of me as soon as I entered into the boy’s dormitory. All the other grimy faces of all ages stared back at me.

         “Yeah,” I say, nodding and walking over to my bed. “He did.”

        I hear some whispers and mumbling, but it’s relatively silent. You could hear every tap of my worn shoes against the cracked concrete of the floor.

        Rodney cleared his throat. “Well, we’re happy for yah kid. Hope it works out.”

        He reached out to shake my hand and I stared at it, blinking.

        I was a newbie. They didn’t acknowledge newbies, much less shake our hands. Rodney has been an orphan since birth. He had some of the highest seniority.

        But, against my own misgivings, I apparently took the hand and shook it. “Thanks, Rodney. I hope someone picks you soon.”

        He pursed his lips and nodded. If I hadn’t just been adopted, he probably would have decked me. At least six inches taller than me, he was. But I think he was curious. What did the newbie do to get out so quickly?

        I shouldered the canvas bag of things I’d been allowed to take with me from home. A lot had been destroyed or stolen since I’d joined the other kids but I still had the sack and some old shirts and mom’s locket around my neck.

        Mom’s locket. I should’ve brought Mom’s locket, but… well. I had to leave it behind.

        “Maybe we can finally get some sleep,” one of them murmured to another as I passed them.

        “Little shit gonna leave us be.”

        I watch my little shoulders slump in disappointment. I remembered that feeling. The… disappointment. The guilty. The embarrassment and shame at people being glad I was going.

        Just as quickly as I’d wilted, I’d picked myself back up. As I strode out those doors to greet my new guardian, I could just make out my lips mouthing, “Everything is and will be okay.”

        This man didn’t know that I screamed and bawled in my sleep. He didn’t know my past except that my parents had died. This man wanted me for my future.

        And so, I watched as eight-year-old me relaxed and gripped onto the edge of Mr. Soul’s suit as he led us through the throngs of people.

o O o


f a c e s   i n   t h e   c r o w d

f a c e s   i n   t h e   c r o w d   w i l l   s m i l e   a g a i n

a n d   t h e   d e v i l   m a y   c r y

t h e   d e v i l   m a y   c r y   a t   t h e   e n d   o f   t h e   n i g h t