tired of. talking | arisne

arachne.

It was different when it was me. Different when the long silver body that curved into the harshness of hilt belonged to me. With every lunge, every parry and every twist of a well trained body I slayed my demons. We were lambs for slaughter, the lot of us.

In my lifetime, how many victors have come from four?

And how many have actually brought the glory we were promised? That aren't some gamemaker's pretty thing to wear around his finger like some kind of trophy?

My whole childhood was built upon lie after lie. Falsehoods and promises that could not be kept. And upon my throne turned to shattered glass, I watch them. The children who believed just like me. We are cattle, herded into place. Puzzle pieces crafted out by the greedy hands of our parents.

I was damn near picture perfect. I didn't question, didn't object to their requests. From dusk 'til dawn I swung a blade at lifeless corpses and took merriment in the fake crimson bubbling from every wound I drew. Until my muscles were plagued with fatigue and even past that point I fought through it all.

Because I wanted to win a games?

No, because I was told I wanted to. But for eighteen goddamn years I couldn't tell the difference. My life was not something unique, something to be cherished and held above anything. As much as I wanted to believe I was special, the best at what I did, there are a thousand other Arachnes in my gym alone. Different names, different parents but the same story.

They'll be dead by eighteen or they'll be a nobody the year after.

I'm twenty today. Or maybe a week ago. Sometime within this month I don't remember. It's all been a haze of booze and lips and sickly sweet lip gloss upon my tongue. It won't be any different tonight, I think. I hope.

There is so much about this world, something sweeter than training until every inch of your body screams for release. Something better than falling asleep only to once again grind your bones into dust and to spit your blood on the mats. This is living. Some semblance of it. This is my fucking choice.

Bars are cold, no matter the sweltering heat or the chatter that fills them. No matter the bodies pressed up against each other, desperate to create some kind of friction to keep out the frostbite. I think it's why I order a shot of whiskey, watch as it is passed down the bar so clumsily that the amber liquid spills over the glass' edge, staining the wood like an ocean's bubbling rage.

Down my throat it crawls, lighting a fire somewhere in the pit of my stomach. It's something else to focus on. Something other than this emptiness, this embarrassment. I am a sheep sheared of her wool, useless. And so I drink until I cannot remember that.

"Hey. Hey you." She is soft, warm in a place like this. So barren and filled with ice. I like these types, the ones filled with something. They're not easy to find, not in the watering holes of the damned and the purposeless. She is a lighthouse and I a tattered sailboat. One I have only just noticed, How long we have sat here, mutually ignorant of each other's existence I am not sure. Nor do I care. "Hey." My head is on fire, swimming as I stumble over to her. I'm a walking contradiction, in so much pain yet I can't feel a thing.

Not another word leaves my lips, I am far too focused upon snaking my fingers under her chin and pressing our lips together.

She tastes bittersweet.

arachne.

There are no questions asked in this land of dead souls. She does not force her palms against my chest and break our embrace. She does nothing more than move her lips in a frenzy against mine, tasting something in between poison and cherries. And the world is nothing, the ground beneath our feet is falling away, crumbling into dust and we are suspended only by the tips of our fingers and I can't find it in me to give a shit that our lives are about to be over because she feels so damn good. I'll gladly self-destruct with a pretty girl's hips pressed against mine.

And my fingers wrap around those pretty hips, guiding them to the wall just behind the bar as I proceed to catch my breath upon the skin of her jaw. A jaw that is soft. That tastes sweet as i drag my lips down the skin, searching for treasure buried underneath pale sand. Or perhaps I wish to be consumed by beach and plummeted into an ignorant oblivion. I don't know. I don't want to. I don't care.

There is not much that I care for, these days. (In fact only one name comes to mind, through the intoxication. The high I am getting off of her lips.) In this moment, I do not care what she is. Murderer. Pawn. A fool. I do not care who has done this before and who will do it after. All I care about is sucking careful bruises down the skin of her neck. Ones that will have faded by nights and and then there will be nothing left of me.

To leave a trace is to chance attachment. It is against everything I have ever been taught, everything I have ever believed in, to do something so foolish. Giving your heart to another is to kill yourself and I love the way it throbs and twists within its cage, its gentle murmur as I find myself drifting off into the stars for another night too much to do so.

I'm not one for relationships. For sweet I love yous shared under a clear sky. I will never live through a picnic sat on the beach, wind whipping through my hair and trading words with a beautiful girl. I will not let my guard down enough to do so.

Just because I am not in the arena does not mean I fear a knife shoved into the small of my back any less. Murder, pain, betrayal. They are not the worse bits of mankind stored away in the darkest parts of the arena. Every single victor is a murderer. Every single victor is a piece of shit because they killed and watched their friends die simply to return to a life that is mediocre at best.

I doubt they even remember their names. The tributes they held as each night ended and whispered sweet nothings into their gashes.

Every single person is capable of what they do. Victors simply wear the hearts of those slaughtered around their throat at though it is something to be proud of. Some trophy they worked hard for. We're all freeloading assholes, really.

"Call me Arachne." I whisper the words into her ear, trailing my lips back to her own and pushing a hand underneath the hem of her shirt, fingers peppering kisses upon her stomach. She is soft, glass about to shatter beneath my touch. She is strong, cold steel rigid within my grasp. "Or call me anything you'd like. Just say it loud enough for me to hear."

We are all animals, in the end.