tempest ➳ district nine ➳ fin

"Fuck you cunt!"

My hand swingin', decking the man in the mouth and leaving teeth imprints on my knuckles -- it's a mouth I've never grown into, this one. It's probably why I'm stuck where I'm at. My mamma used to tell me the same shit, "Tempest," and I'd pull my hair past my shoulder, "that mouth is gonna get the best of you some day." Growing up in a morgue, you realize a lot about the human body and the biggest thing is that, for a thing we spend so long in, we don't get to choose a damn thing about it. So who cares where my mouth came from, it's mine and it'll always be mine.

It's always been my home, like my mama's arms, this fucking funeral home. 

And it's strange, I guess, that I've always found life in a place filled with actual dead bodies, candy skulls and funky bones. When I was young, my mama would always try to hide them from me, keeping me as far away from caskets as she would til the day she died -- she thought that they were two different planes. The livin and the dead. And her hands were the twine stitching the two together, that only a mother's touch could care for dead bodies; regardless, I never really did much of what she told me to. That's probably why I ended up in a gang, snorting crack of a fat hooker's ass huh. 

A child's hands, soft and tiny, prying open closed coffins and touching all up on a dead man's body; I really think that's why I turned out like this. I used to try to think of their stories, whispering their name in the empty halls as my single mother went out and did something, hell if I remember. A bald man, big crooked nose and cold skin -- he was my uncle. Not really, but I told all my friends he was. This stupid bitch named Ciara Davos, I fuckin hated her man. I tried to steal her cat until I realized I couldn't take care of it, so I just kinda let it run off. 

Don't think it ever got back to her. 

But anyways, I told fuckass Ciara that her dead mom wound up in our funeral home -- she never met her mother, mind you. At the time I was twelve, and I remember holding her hand as we opened the coffin and a beautiful woman sat staring Ciara in the face, and see, that's where she first should've realized I played her ass. No way her mug came from that woman. But my mom walked in and beat my ass and apologized to Ciara's father, fights happened blah blah blah. I ended up kicking that bitch down last year too. It's a good stress relief -- beating a bitch. 

My nails dug into her skin, scratching her face up in swipes and she didn't retaliate much, some people are nothing but a wise mouth. See, my mama taught me better, kinda, told me I would get my ass whooped if I kept my mouth how it was, but genetics don't change, you see. So my ass figured out how to start a fight and how to hold one, because my lips weren't going anywhere. And Ciara's mouth was all she had, smacking lips in between breaths about my bastard birth and runaway father -- the goodies. Spit in her wounds as I pulled that bitch to the ground by her braid. 

Of course, then I fucking ran faster than her mom did leaving them behind. 

Detention center who? Not this bitch.

Words have truth no matter how you say them, and she wasn't wrong. That's probably why my hot head ass got the better of me, scrapping blood out from under my nails -- my mama never told me about him. Just that he was a cunt, and that's all I needed to know. She married the first time a man named Andrew, but he died and so she got a new one. Men are replaceable like that, nothing but soldiers and bodies; when I was fourteen she married again to a boy named Line, and I guess he was the best out of the three. Vindicta blood ran through my veins, and like my mouth, like my mother and like my nails, there was no changing that. 

I've always been a Vindicta girl. 

The induction came like a venereal disease does, one bad job and suddenly you're in a gang with a bunch of half sisters you never knew existed. My mama coughed up blood telling me to do whatever it took not to join, that she kept me away from it for a good damn reason, but I've never been stupid. She held my hand and gave me a funeral home to bury her in, and I stared death in his goddamn rotting face and told him to fuck himself. 

I joined 'cause I needed money. 

'Cause I had a dying mother and a chain smoking stepdad. 

I joined because I'm a Vindicta girl, and there's no real changing that -- so why not?