chaos theory ; arachne&arissa

chaos theory ; arachne&arissa Mar 16, 2015 20:03:08 GMT -5

Post by Deleted on Mar 16, 2015 20:03:08 GMT -5

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4

It's a crafts work.

Beats of my lion heart coursing through to my fingertips, blood drawing off the point of my chin, the point of my blade. The dark of this world is when I feel the most alive sometimes, adrenaline beating against my throat like a suppressed scream. Scream, "I dare you," my fingers tight around the handle of this cutlass and words pricking to my tongue with the same cutting as my glare. A single body sits in the snow, blood-bleached blond wisps, pinned against the blank dying canvas beneath them; there is no name. Names only matter for the people who win, I snarl, crows feet growing in my soul because every day is just one last day. I jump, blades first and-

I fall.

Reality picks itself back together and my blade catches nothing but air, morphing into the very being it sliced into. My heartbeat begins its decrescendo because instead of being in those games, fulfilling my destiny for a crown on top of my head of something other than flowers, I'm only caught in the recaps playing through the hollow room of the gym. Nineteen years of this repetitive shit, yet I still find myself in this same spot. This same gym, lusting to be on that same screen but it just never happens. Throughout the warmth air all I find is the ever changing regret I leave every year.

Two years, I watched my brother crowned on that damn television, last year I watched my very last chance blow before me (idiot, idiotidiotidiot) I should've went in. In this life I've always been the watcher, the checkpoint, and watching my eighteenth games running past my own eyes was like living a month in limbo, replacing my pupils with a nation's reality show. "I fucked up," I mutter to myself, through out my entire life I've been a queen, a monarch of intelligence, yet I got punked out by my own twin - idiot.

My fingertips graze the polished handles of metal, carvings chewing on the skin of my thumbs - scimitars, cutlasses, epees. None like the lion heart carried in my dream, swallowing the life of a girl whole, none nearly as impressive. Blue eyes seize solely onto a rapier, nothing more than scrap metal compared to what a champion would use.

(But I am no champion.)

I snatch the handle in my left hand, and the steps towards dummies bounce in the air; champion, in my lion's den I am alone. Solace, I breathe off the uninterrupted air, the absence of a fuckboy's small talk. Arissa, my face is stoic, by either the settling frustration or the general morning spell chewing at the bags of my concentrating eyes. Lion heart, I'm aware of the pulse of my body, so many years wasted all by my own cowardice, I am stronger than my past, than the flower crown that sits in comparison to my brother's gold. So why do they control me so?

Arissa, the name of the girl I killed in the snow, but names are only for the champions.

Rosemaries cross in my veins as the rapier handle slides from left hand to right, the intricate carving licking my wrists as I twist in a circle. Spinning once before halting on my knees, slicing up and through the wooden neck. The severed attachment is nothing more than wood, immobilized, the dummy's scalp crashing against the ground as "there's your damn crown," treks softly on my bottom lip.

It is just wood, nothing more, just as that girl in the snow sits bleeding out - Arissa. I am more than this past, that cowardly body swallowed whole; I am more than a damn crown, I know this fact, yet I still decapitate dummies every morning. This head on my shoulder should be crown enough, but it isn't, something is lacking, the blonde not luster enough to pass as gold, lack of jewels and bloodstains. I am just Leon's sister, nothing more.

There's a lash in my attention span, and I stab at the dummy with the rapier, unclean cuts diving into the wooden shell like a bear's child. Chopping at the bits with the side of my blade until an arm falls off its body, and I throw the metal at its thigh, grunting through this maelstrom and shouting ("Fucker! Leon, you goddamn fuckin'-") certain profanities before easing up again.

I kick the dummy to the ground with the hell of my boot before sitting on the ground like an overgrown house cat, hands pressed to my temples - how can I bite this?

chaos theory ; arachne&arissa Apr 12, 2015 1:05:54 GMT -5

Post by nyte on Apr 12, 2015 1:05:54 GMT -5

A R A C H N E

Fists pound the inside oh my skull, bright knives piercing closed lids and forcing my eyes open. The last night was a haze of lips and fists pushed through short hair. Of bitter tastes and bright lights and meaningless love. It's been but two hours since I stumbled home, unsure whether to be relieved or saddened that my parents no longer sit up, waiting for my return. (I decide upon the former because the latter is much too painful.)

I slip pain pills into my morning coffee, watching the bitter white dissolve like sugar in the drink. Slipping frail fingers underneath the sharp porcelain I drink deeply, suppressing my stomach's recoil at the horrific taste and downing it with a child's vigor. I don't mind the bitter taste left upon stale taste buds as I flee into a world not made for me.

Four is filled to the brim with careers, with children so willing to throw their lives to the wayside for a chance at glory. I once felt their hunger, the sharp biting that ran through my veins just as numbing opiates now do. The mission seemed such an important one. Worth dying for. Worth leaving families for. Worth everything.

Two years after one finally came home I'm not so sure.

I've seen nothing of Leon. Nothing of importance, at least. It seems that winning did nothing but break the boy and then force him into meaningless obscurity. And I'm not supposed to be glad that my nineteenth has passed. I'm supposed to mourn my survival because I could have died a hero or lived long enough to become a coward.

Even as meaningless as my life has become I am so, so glad.

The few blocks that I must travel to reach work have collapsed in upon themselves, as I have arrived in no time. The drugs haven't even taken the edge off as I slip through glass doors and smile at the students who almost literally have placed their lives within my palms. I never thought of it before, like that, of the pressure put on trainers. Because if I forgot to teach them anything, messed up one technique, it could very well be the reason they die, god forbid, their name be pulled.

The stress weighs on the corners of my lips and I cannot remember the last time a smile graced them.

Angel tells me that I have a smile to light up a room. He says that it could replace the sun and he would enjoy every second of my radiance. (I have to laugh because my brother's words are going to charm a great girl one day.) And then he'd tug on my curly strands of auburn, pressing them against my top lip and informing me that I should never grow a mustache. We'd burst into a fit of giggles lasting so long that the both of us were on the floor clutching at our guts.

She's here today. I press myself against one of the mirrors in the back and watch the girl with a body as smooth as water's currents, The waves are angry, rapids white as snow and sizzling as they overwhelm a dummy in the form of a sleek silver blade.

Arissa Krigel is her name, a vixen in her own right with dark hair and bright eyes. She's a force of nature, knocking over the dummy and pressing into it with her blade. She's my age, perhaps even a year older, but she has not given up. Unlike me she keeps the title of career close to her. She arrives with the vigor of a twelve year old finally allowed into the gyms and bests even the strongest of eighteen year olds. I don't understand why she remains, but I cannot take my eyes off her as she moves.

"I'll never understand what they do to you." I concede, pointing to her fallen enemy and approaching carefully. My hair is taught against my skull, contained by a colorful band as it nips the back of my neck. A single longsword becomes an extension of my body, a third limb, as I slice through thick air and downward into the dummy's skull. "But I think you've won."

And my voice is like satin, but my heart runs as rough as a cliff face.