71st Bloodbath

My mind is a picture-perfect-portrait, a million brushstrokes to go with a million unspoken thoughts, and I'm left speechless by the fact that no matter how hard I try to release those ideas with the exhilaration of a strength larger than my own, my head is a prison and my lips are a jail cell and there's no way in hell anything but breath is getting in one way and leaving all the same. That's okay, though, because in all reality, sometimes it's safer to abstain rather than to go for it, no matter how deep the water is or how rough the waves pretend to be.

My fingers are sweaty when I wake up that morning. It's not that I'm nervous, or that I'm uncertain of what's going to happen today- no, I understand that to a degree which settles unevenly in my stomach. What makes my palms feel so sun-drop hot is the fact that last night, I had dug my fingernails into them as if they were pillows, the heat and anger and discontentment from my inability to scream building up within me like a burning house, the fumes intoxicating my thoughts with a bellowing thunder made of glass shards, and the smoke so suffocatingly thick that I was left with nothing when I never even possessed anything to begin with. I stiffle a yawn at the thought of my misfortune. 

I wonder how many others have laid in the same spot as I, weeping to parents that will never hear and making a mess of the sheets- certainly not the same burgundy as these ones- that their parents will never see. What a damn shame that a show so elegantly beautiful is to be kept to the eyes of the dead, a secret for only the eyes of the beholder, a word for only the eyes of the silent. 

I laugh. 

When I move to get up from where I had been sitting, I let the crevices of my sheets paste onto my skin as if it were patchwork, the thin and silken material grasping me with the cat-claw of morning until my feet reach my dresser and I'm required to move in order to clothe myself into the last slice of humanity these calloused fingers will ever be allowed to touch, whether they make it out alive or not. The games do not produce victors, they produce robots. 

In all honesty, I'd almost rather die than allow myself the room to grieve for those who I owe nothing but life to. So I push even the mere thought of it out of my head and into the dusk of the curtains, a faint frown playing victim at the edges of my lips until the hem of my pants is safely plotted on my waist with the buckle of a belt and the sanction of long legs. I look like a doll in these clothes- like the children on the televisions from the years past- and it sends shivers down my spine to think that I am one of those children on the televisions now and that it's my life on the line, not theirs. What an odd feeling, to notice that you no longer have the safety of a mother's arms, or the happiness of a father's embrace- it's as if I've been left naked in the open, exposed to exactly how weak I am and exactly how weak I will remain, and the wind is biting at my ankles, forcing me into a direction I don't have the will to protest to. 

In between the time it takes me to grab my token- a single cigarette, in a single cigarette box- and make my way to the hovercraft looming eerily above, I count the steps left of my freedom. It calms me to know that there's something definite in my wait for death, to know that these 206 steps- these 206 fragments- are a rock in the eye of the storm for me to hold onto, because no matter what I would have done- no matter what I could have done- there would always be an infinity waiting as a wall between who I am and who I've become. 

It's fate, I tell my self in the bathing of silence that follows my entrance to the aircraft. It'll always be fate, I chant to no-one as the tracker is placed into my arm with a subtle click and I can feel another heartbeat- the pulse of the metalics- thriving under the very edge of my skin. From across the open space, I can see a familiar face- Taurus- and when I nod to him, a sign that I'm here just as he is, I don't wait for a response and instead look down into my lap, avoiding the brutality of the situation that in the following hours, the white of my palms could be stained red. 

I feel a jolt that brings me back into reality, some ten-odd minutes later, and when I move to stand, I am restricted by the fabricated arms of my suppressor. This is a prison, I remind myself with a dry smile when the arms release and I am allowed to stand, following the train of people out, and forward, and into the rooms to where I'll say my last good byes to a man I've barely known and let a bowl of soup that I'll never let touch my mouth grow cold. It's an act, and I'm executing it perfectly; capture the angst, capture the helplessness, the capitolites would say as I walk directly through the door and into the glass tube, not even bothering to give a second glace to my surroundings nor my stylist, who seems to have taken to something much more important than the current preoccupation which was my life. 

But it's okay, because I discovered my worth a long time ago, when that brightened and bolded crisp 4 bled maroon onto the tv and into my jeans, where it stained and left me to my own devices, a mind too empty and a heart too full. I sigh curtly, and a brief gust of air enters the tube, mussing my hair into a fountain and pulling the platform upward to the next tier of my life. I wave goodbye to the people below although I can't see them and they can't see me- it's a good system that keeps me distracted until I reach to a scalting halt, my eyes capturing black as if it were the only thing in existence and for a moment, I ponder if I had happened to go blind, too. But I know better, and when the curtains peel back, revealing an arena far more beautiful than that I could have imagined, I couldn't but let a gasp escape my lips, eyes wider than the moons I could see from the window of my bedroom back home. 

This place seems more like a luxury than a hell, and when I hear the harp begin to play its melody, a ticking-time-bomb testament to my death, I lose myself within the noise, my eyes dropping until a thicker cord hits, an emblazoned 20 waking me from my drowse and screaming for me to wake up and take my spot as one of the strong. I position myself to take off with the glass opening and a shaky breath releases itself as I wait restlessly,


20 

I dig 'til my shovel tells a secret

19

Swear to the earth that I will keep it

18

Brush off the dirt

17

And let my change of heart occur

16

Sold soon after the appraisal

15

The hammer struck the auction table

14

Louder than anything I've ever heard

13

Fault lines tremble underneath my glass house

12

But I put it out of my mind

11

Long enough to call it courage

10

To live without a lifeline

9

I bend the definition

8

Of faith to exonerate my blind eye
 
7

'Til the sirens sound, I'm safe

6

Meanwhile, my family's taking shelter

5

The sparks send the fire down the wire

4

A countdown begins

3 

Until the dynamite gives in

2

Please don't forget me.

1

[NEPTUNE LIEFDE ENTERS THE BLOODBATH]