little bits of treasure {paris and kit}

There is music some days. Music so beautiful that it creeps through the cracks in my cement prison. It is sharp against ears that are so rarely blessed by anything but screams and shouts and sometimes by a voice that is soft and that whispers happy endings into my ear. I love those sometimes. Alas, they have not come for a while. Not since Salt and Pepper has spent every night in this cave with me, fists clanging against skin and shoes like gunfire to my ribs.

Some of them are broken I think. Puzzle pieces forced out of place, torn to shreds and waiting for the slow mend that might not ever come. I'll die before it has a chance to begin. The end is near. The battle I've fought for sixteen years will soon be over. I can smell the death coming off of my breath, feel it in the blood dripping off my lips. It's formed a puddle upon the cool floor, sinking into a jagged crack and staining the off-white pavement black. I am an artist in my own right. My body, the canvas.

I've tried to find things that I will miss. A reason not to give into this throbbing ache that has not left me for days and weeks and years. It's somewhere in the back of my head, burning into my skull and skittering down my spine with each shaking breath. Living is torture, they don't need their weapons anymore. Every time I close my eyes, there's a chance they will never open again. There's a chance that this is it and that I'm going to die down here with a number in my chest and a name that only one little girl cares enough to speak.

I'll miss Princess, that's for sure. I've told her that again and again, with fingers turned weak without food. When she sits on my lap, back pressed into my chest and reads me stories that always end with the boy trapped in the old, worn out tower being whisked away by some pretty man with the whole galaxy in his gaze. I'll be gone soon, Princess, please don't miss me too much. You were so good to me.

And I swear her ringlets curl every time I tell her, brow furrowing in annoyance as she'd slap my shoulder and she tell me just to wait. She was looking for the prince that would save me and I need not be so impatient because she was going to do it. She was going to find him.

There's no such thing as princes. They're as much of a fable as the fire breathing dragons that once guarded the poor, trapped boy's tower. Where he wasted away much like I do. I suppose I am as much of a fable as any of those characters Princess has told me about. Because who is so cruel as to lock someone in their basement? Who would let his ribs break when they are already so apparent behind his flesh, whose chest has not a centimeter free from scars and bruises? One need only look at me, arms tied behind my back and clad in jeans two sizes too small to see that I could not be real.

No man could be so cruel.

At least this is better than the cages.

My hands have turned clumsy these long months. The ones that drag on like years and which very well could be. Perhaps I am an old man now. There's a stubble already breaking through skin still raw from the last time scientists dragged a razor blade across my chin. They like to keep me looking nice. They let my hair grow down to my shoulders before they cut it, but they scrub my body clean every week. They thin the hair on my arms and my legs that is so brittle it breaks within their grasp. My hands were once bound for three months because I started biting my nails.

I learned very quickly such behavior was unacceptable. It branding three deep lashes into my back, thick x's that have only just turned bright red with scar tissue.

They like to keep me pretty because I am the only one left. The only child that has survived into their teens after the hell that they dragged me through.

If only they knew my heart beats simply to spite the lot of them.

My head is hung so low it nearly touches the floor. The music is there, surrounding me in an embrace that reminds me of the Princess' soft palms on my cheeks. When she promised that she would get me out of here because I was her best friend and her best friend did not deserve to be a prisoner. I would lick my lips to stop them from burning but I could never stand the taste of blood.

Instead I sit and I hurt. Every heart beat sings me further into oblivion as I listen to the gentle tune that I have come to love. It sounds just like a lullaby, the one Princess sings when the night burns terror into my tongue.

I wouldn't mind dying right here.

Right now.

Just maybe....

I...

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