octavias {9} king

When I’m fucked, it’s hard. Emotionless and cold, filled with nothing but another man’s lust. It’s my back to silken sheets, my eyes closed and waiting for the world to stop shaking. I don’t know his name- I don’t remember the color of his eyes and I don’t feel anything by the time all is said and done and two bodies upon a sweat-stained mattress becomes one. It doesn’t feel nearly as dirty as it used to. Even without the numb happiness of alcohol bubbling somewhere within my veins I can simply sleep. Not haunted by the sins of loveless sex, nor what a man who does not know me has taken. 

But it is not one of those nights where my head is so blissfully dead that I have fallen into a waking sleep hours before my head even hit the pillow. It is one of those nights where I am so achingly empty that I think I might be sick and the scratching in the back of my skull is that of every sorrow I am too cowardly to face. People like me try to live our lives in only euphoria. Loss, love, emotion- they are burdens upon the shoulders of the less privileged to fill their empty spaces with because they cannot afford the gold that we have used to paint bright smiles upon our cheeks. 

I don’t think I’ve ever had a real friend. We use each other, vultures picking the meat off each other’s bones and we pretend like we cannot feel it because that is what everyone else does. My despair is that of my fathers before me just as it was his father before he married him off to some woman he didn’t love with a lot of money to her name so that our wealth would double in size by the time she had a child with dirty blonde locks and eyes as empty as her. They named him Octavias before they gutted him. Strung the baby boy up by his ankles and beat the weakness from him with hands and sticks and words that perhaps cut deeper than the belt his father drew across fresh skin. 

But I love them, my mom and dad. Regardless of how hard I have taken to flinching when my father raises his hand, I smile when I see him. And I wonder if my father loved his father in the same twisted way. If he felt that familiar mixture of potent fear and faint elation whenever his eyes landed upon him. I wonder if they were always so harsh and cold and burned black spots into his skin because I cannot think of any other way my father’s eyes could have become so angry.

And I loved my mother’s porcelain skin, hair the same grungy shade as mind that fell in loose ringlets around her shoulders and a face that would have been beautiful had it not been so disturbingly dull. There was never a light that I could find within her eyes and there were scars beneath the long-sleeves she so often bore; I think that Dad grew to love her in the time they had been together because he cried when she swan-dived off the roof of our mansion and splattered upon the sidewalk below. Sometimes I stare at the spot and think that I can make out dried blood between the cracks in the cement. 

Three months after she died and two months after I had turned seven he married again. This time a woman with short hair and angular features that made her brow look ever-furrowed in disgust and a natural curl to her lips that I sometimes wonder is even natural at all. Perhaps she regards everything as though it is the foulest, most disgusting thing she has ever found stuck to the bottom of her ashen grey shoes. 

Until I met her I thought there was not a man on earth that could hate me more than I hated myself. Her bruises were careless, angry even, as she worked her nails into my skin and it was as though she needed no reason at all other than to coax pained whimpers from a child only ever taught to swallow his feelings. These days I am so tired. The world is a weight I have shrugged from pained shoulders and I am beginning to understand just why my mother just wanted it all to go away.

I sit up, body aching and I’m glad that I can feel at least this. Something more than oddly numbing despair that is all I have been subject to since I could remember. The front door slams and the man whose name I do not know is gone from my life forever. In the mirror, I see a stranger. Hair pulled up in every other direction by greedy hands and teeth have imprinted themselves upon my shoulder. When I touch them, it hurts. ” Fucker.” I mumble, running the pads of my fingers along the deep indentations. They mark me often, as though by simply undressing in front of them I have given them permission to do as they please. To own me. If they wish to own an empty shell, who am I to stop them?

It pisses me off nonetheless.

It is the hand of a stranger that turns on the shower. The body of a stranger bathed in water so hot that I think he might melt. Perhaps a better me would take to rising from his ashes, something more than a bratty, privileged piece of shit who cannot help but curl his lips at the sight of someone dressed in rags. It’s not their fault that they were born below me. Born into the dirt while I was bathed in gold and I know I cannot blame them for their own misfortune. But I do. There’s nothing I have done to deserve my place in this world, I have not worked a day in my life and yet every step I take is that of a man with hubris in his veins.

I have everything I could ever want, but that’s nothing at all. 

And it’s wash, it’s rinse, it’s repeat. It’s some ungodly hour in the morning and there is music in place of a hollow heartbeat. “Hey, Octavias!” His smile is bright, like pearls upon sweet pink canvas and I cannot peel my eyes away from his swollen lips. But I can only hum in response, the hands around my waist tightening when I try to escape. 

“Ay! Fuck off!” And my speech is slurred, I can barely rip his fingers from the waist of old jeans and I crash into Peter’s chest. He laughs and when he wraps his arms around me it’s warm and I think that I can close my eyes because for once another’s company brings comfort and not despair. 

“You really know how to pick ‘em.” Peter grumbles, locking his fingers around my wrist and I giggle when he pulls me through the crowd of dead hearts and broken bodies. There’s tension between us, I can taste his anger upon the tip of my tongue. I know I should be scared.

”I din’ even know I was dancin’ with someone.” I mumble into the silence and it swallows up the words I could barely manage as we sprint along twisting corridors and into the dungeon above us. If it was not for his hand around my wrist I would have lost myself within the velveteen darkness that has enveloped me after one drink too many. 

”Shit, you’re already fucked up.” He pouts pushing me onto a bed and positioning himself above me. ”You even remember what we got planned?”  It’s all I can to furrow my brows, looking at the ceiling past his cheeks and searching an empty mind for some semblance of a memory to match my friend’s words. 

”No, but I trust you.”

I’ve said the wrong thing. I know it as soon as he has rolled off me and onto the carpet below. ”When I’m convenient.” And I should have known he was going to bring this up. I should have known better than to agree to this.

”No fucking shit, Peter, don’t act like you didn’t know me.” The outrage is crafted from false smiles, from gentle whispers and teases whenever he drew near. And It’s not like I didn’t know I was leading him on, it’s not like I didn’t know how fucking despicable it was. But he is, in his own words, convenient. He was there when I needed him equipped with whatever I might be craving. I felt nothing for him and yet I ran my fingers along his jaw, stayed in bed with him for long hours without the burden of clothes between our body. Perhaps I knew of his feelings for me and yet I did not stop. It’s his fault for falling in love with an empty shell.

”You said I was different!”  He’s shouting now, upon his feet and looming over me. He’s right. I did. And I meant none of it. 

”I lied.” I go to stand but my feet stop touching the ground. He’s backed me against a wall, fingers digging into my throat and I cannot breathe. And I’m scared. Holy fuck, I’m scared. When I search for something in his eyes it is only white hot rage, an anger that I have no chance of taming.

”Y-you’re hurting me!” I manage, starving my lungs of what breath I have left to plead for my life. Because all I can feel is pain. Perhaps it begins where his nails dig into my flesh, but I know that is not where it ends. This pain runs deeper, past the blue tint of my lips, deep below veins I have abused with pain and poisons. A summer storm has come, leaving bitter rain to slide across his fire-etched knuckles.

”You’re crying?”  He mumbles and the shame turns my cheeks bright red.

In a moment, he is gone, taking the last of my strength with him. I cannot catch myself when I fall, instead crashing against white washed walls and sending the world into orbit. I love you, he had once said- a night when our throats ran dry and there was no reason for him to speak with such vile phrases. And I think I broke his heart but I had no way of knowing that the emotionless, rough rocking of the bed beneath us had meant something to him. He was beautiful, yes, but my appreciation for others will only ever run skin deep.

I keep telling myself that I didn’t know.

I keep lying.

So I guess I deserve the bruises I can feel forming upon my neck. I guess I deserve a lot worse. I don’t think I care. I don’t feel anything once the pain has faded and I am left a crumpled mess upon a stranger’s floor. By the time morning comes I have gathered the courage to drag my sorry ass back to a mansion that feels just as much a home to me as the hardwood floor had. Peter was a mistake. I search for those who will not love me- I search for those who yearn to hurt me because the only scars they are capable of leaving are ones that cannot last. Bruises, scratches, broken bones- none are incapable of healing. 

--

”Dude, those are some ugly marks.” A voice that I do not recognize croaks from some short distance away. But my lips are heavy, head tilted to the heavens as though desperate to taste the ambrosia which so rarely overflows. I am not foolish enough to place myself upon any similar pedestal to the gods so instead I bring a hand to the base of my neck- tracing the broken skin and wincing whenever my fingers slip across a particularly sensitive area. 

Tonight is another party. Another house. More music pounding and drinks flowing and I have barely recovered from last night’s hangover but this desperate gluttony for suffering has no end in sight. ”’s nothing, really.” I mumble and the words are not lies. I feel nothing for last night’s events, for a life that could have been stolen and a heart that already was. There is no other way to survive in this world of broken limits. Of waiting for the next rule to be broken so that we all may follow suit and put our lives on the line because there’s simply nothing better to do. 

”Then open your mouth.” I do as I’m told, not minding the fingers that force their way into the back of my mouth. The substance he has placed there is tasteless, almost as though he is trying to shove tissue paper down my throat. 

”Oi! What the fuck?” I moan, allowing whatever he has placed to dissipate before speaking again. ”You did not just feed me paper.” I’m too drunk to do anything about it, in all honesty. Too drunk to be mad or to even care what is happening. In this moment I am completely helpless, surrounded by people whose names were lost upon me the moment they opened their mouths. 

”C’mon, Tavi, that’d be boring.” He singsongs, jumping out of reach before my palm connects with any part of him.

”Don’t call me that dumbass name.” 

And the world is quiet once more. I have settled back upon a leather couch stained with alcohol and spit, listening to the couple beside me force their lips together in perhaps the most disgusting way- it’s as though they are trying to suck the life out of the other and, given the people in this party, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case. In the end, I feel safe here. I have no right to, I am surrounded by strangers capable of anything but I find that familiarity to be a poison that I have spent my life trying to escape. It is easier to be hurt by a man that I do not know than one I thought I knew better.

That’s when it happens. The universe has long since been liquid beneath me, thrum of music drowning out any kind of conversation. It’s a noisy kind of silence, but a peaceful one. But the sudden whispering catches me off guard. It’s as though a man has pressed wet lips to my ear and moved them in no discernible pattern- making no effort to form words. My heart sinks, eyes opening wide but the world is nothing but a blur of calming motion. It would have almost been peaceful, had it not been for the lips upon my ear. The pitch has become feminine- soft in the way that my mother’s was whenever we spoke. 

You’ll kill yourself. I search for the ground below me, palms shaking as I shackle myself to the earth before I bump my head upon the ceiling. You’re empty, just like me. Her words are cruel, but they do not belong to my her. Not much of anything has belonged to my mother for a long time now and hearing her again breeds only panic and desperation. The breath is knocked away from me, white hot bile climbing into my throat and stealing what was once so calm and so safe. 

”Hey, Tavi, where are you going?” His voice is far away, somewhat panicked as my feet move without permission, guided by only the rasping sobs ringing in between my ears. ”Tavi, stop. Don’t! Get away from there!” 

Mist kisses my lips, back dug into dew-stained walls as I watch the stars twinkle and shift. It’s breathtaking. I want to watch the world die all night, infernos erupting upon the far away galaxies- slowly creeping toward us. Toward me. As though they are some faithful harbinger of the reaper- warning me of what’s to come. And it’s comforting, more than anything else. Especially after my mother’s lips have left my skin and everything is okay again. 

That morning I wake on the roof, knees pulled to my chest and no idea how I got there.