sticks and stones }} aj vs ss

Recall the times past
Burned in memory to last.
Each moment of truth
Acts to pull tight the noose.
Recoil from the lies
Told to keep spirits high.
He will find you one day
Every man is the devil’s prey.

Slipped from the ropes we had knotted ‘round their wrists, Scarlett and I stood side by side as we watched the two captives flee from our grasps. My whip discarded at my feet, I knew that if I saw the boy I had claimed as my own again I would thank him for being courteous enough to return what was not his.

I’ve got no tolerance for thieves of trivial things or thoughts.

The boy who I had turned my fists against had lingered for only a second longer, fleeing with the passing moment of opportunity. I smirked as his back turned, spitting at the place where his feet had once stood.

Coward.

I do not know if I was simply talking about him.

With the silence passing, the two of us remained shoulder to shoulder, and after the presence of company had been completely eradicated, I left her side to slump down against the wall. “What a shit show,” I mumbled. The dead body of Brooke Destin still crumpled by Scarlett’s feet. It was known in the back of our minds that she would be gone by the time night fell— no point in lingering to watch the mechanical funeral procession of a girl who’s name I only knew because of her death.

Indention in the top of her skull splattered with blood, I turn my attention back to Scarlett— specifically the name-matched splatter of color across her curled fist. It had taken her one single second to end the life of a girl without any means by which to rightly do so.

The fear I had for her was synonymous with admiration, not yearning. I knew that to end a life in that way would never be in my future, near or distant. But still, I could watch with interest as she seemed to have the balance of life and that beyond in her hands, one in each.

If I was to believe that such a god was to exist in this world, I imagine they would look something quite similar to Scarlett Stroms.

If I was thus walking in the presence of a god, I knew that my step must be light, my heart must be open, and my mind must be focused forward alone.

Perhaps she was the protection I did not seek directly; the prayer I could not bring myself to say out loud. Perhaps her heart held the answer to which place beyond Cha Leviane had vanished to, and if so, how she was doing there.

Desperation is a damned devil, causing imagination to bring the most vivid pictures into existence.

Our venture had continued as we trekked on, searching for Raven or Lazarus or another sign of life. Cannons matched the beat of our steps, and together we walked, side by side, up and down sets of stairs that never seemed to end. We had debated continuing until we had the answer to a question we did not know, however, at the sight of nightfall we had found neither nor, so together we hunkered down as the anthem began to blare.

Faces flashing away as quickly as they appeared, the list rolled on until it arrived at Brooke Destin. I watched Scarlett’s face for any sign of recognition, but she offered none, and so I turned my eyes upward again just in time to see the face of Lazarus Stroms light the sky silver.

A slight gasp leaving my mouth, I catch it in my throat and look desperately at Scarlett for some kind of emotion, if only for the reason of calming my own.

She says nothing, and I am once again afraid.

We do not speak the rest of the night, but as she drifts off to sleep I keep my eyes focused upon her. The way her hair falls on her shoulders; the way her lips curl at the edges just to a point sharp enough to strike terror into the receiving end of the look.

Middle of the night bright in my mind I eventually find my eyelids growing heavy and my heart rate slowing until I drift off to unconsciousness.

I awake first with a start, afraid that she will have left during the time she had to think about her decision to stay with the drunk now hung by a noose of her own accord. But she had not vanished, and for this I was immensely grateful.

Gently rousing her from her sleep, I whisper that we need to leave and search for Raven, and she agrees with a temperament less than enthusiastic. No blame to be placed on her shoulders at this, I take hold of the sword I had brought into existence less than twenty-four hours prior and watches as she gathers her belongings as well.

Walking in silence, my eyes first catch sight of movement, slight and hidden, but still existent. I say nothing, but motion in their direction as we shuffle forward as quietly as possible with the change of terrain to clear rock underneath our feet.

Upon reaching a closer proximity to the two figures, it comes to both of our attentions nearly simultaneously that we had stumbled upon two of the three fled from the day prior.

The handle of my sword burning into the palm of my hand, my eyes train upon the boy with the broken bone. I had one of my own to match, and I touched my elbow gingerly as I winced in pain.

Placing a hand upon Scarlett’s chest to halt her movement momentarily, I press my lips to her ear and whisper, “He’s mine.”

But still in the split second it had taken to formulate the thought, the boy whose hands had once been bound by the whip around my waist had struck out at Scarlett. I had half a thought to act in vengeance, but instead I still found my gaze turned upon the other.

My head pounding and my heart stilling, I strike out at him to fulfill the costly claim I had just made.

Cha Leviane may have left behind a sister tired, depressed, and terrified, but she did not leave behind a bitch.

Wonder wide-eyed
Etched into my skin
I hope that one day
God loves me again—
Holds me tight when I sin.
To knees I then fall
Only to pray
For one moment more
Living hour to stay.

Her voice is smooth, like the call of a bird seeing over the summit of the mountain for the first time after the length of an odyssey, “Back for more, boys?”

In the seconds between I had struck at the same one from yesterday in the pair, but my sword does less damage than the bone still broken by the flesh of my fist. Shallow and hardly seen blood begins to well on his cheek, but it is nothing more than the disappointment of slight failure disguised by adrenaline.

As she steps back, I cannot take my eyes from her. Even as unfamiliar voice fills the air around us, I see nothing but her. Perhaps the sole result of infatuation, I am attempting to do nothing more than determine the very nature of who she was. Beautiful in divinity and powerful in the face of commands left cold— she could not be human.

The one I had taken captive finds a fresh source of bravery and steps forward, words of false nature spewing from his tongue and he tries to convince them both that the known truth among the four of us was nothing but relative.

I knew that there was no strength hiding in the spaces between my bones, and perhaps for this reason alone I knew that he had filled each syllable he spoke with the purest form of a lie he could manage.

There is some unidentifiable form of comfort in being surrounded by others as vile as yourself.

But even he breaks our unspoken code of similarity when he strikes out at Scarlett, and my skin begins to burn as though it is the victim. For a split second I had seen something in the lines of his skin that matched my own. He knew that exposing one to the truth only set one free in order to make the target on their body clearer. I wanted then nothing more than to chastise him; to tell him of the rules he had broken and how he should turn his blade against himself for it.

Suicide could only be glorified when one was not running from a fear they could not conquer.

Blood seeping from three wounds now fresh, I see fire in her eyes that does not give a signal of flickering on much longer.

I am still caught in the time of the day prior, hearing the contact of knuckle to bone and the cannon of Brooke Destin. I want to ask why she cannot kill these two in a manner of the same; I want to ask her why I cannot do anything more than follow her footsteps and hope for similar results.

To no avail I see no worth of the same dripping from the end of my own blade.

Determined in the most detrimental sense, I grip tight to the handle until the skin of my knuckles goes white for no other reason than to stop the trembling.

But amidst the knocking of my own bones, traitor better off as a liar speaks, “With all due respect, fuck you.”

I sneer, unsure of the amusement that has crept into my throat. Eyes locked with his, I make sure his mind is nowhere else when I speak, “I don’t think you could.”

But he is nothing more than an afterthought, the hangover begun at the sound of the arena’s bell. No, he is nothing but the string connecting his last wishes to the back of a boy he hoped could carry them both.

Turned back to the boy I struck the day before, I find sympathy on my tongue leaving behind its acrid taste, “I do believe I am doing you a favor by ridding you of this dead weight.”

Imagine a world with no good—
Vicious, violent, and grey.
Imagine this world just the same—
No difference can be found here today.

My biggest fear used to be silence.

When we were younger, Cha and I would sit in our room, opposite of each other for hours on end. I would attempt to fill the second in between with questions and absentminded thoughts— anything that would take up space and bring us back into existence. During those times, she hardly ever spoke. Perhaps it would be a single word to answer a question I had repeated one time too many over the course of the past hours; perhaps it would be a request for quiet once more. She saw speech as the pinnacle of human error, as the easiest way to depreciate the value of a single moment in time.

As we aged, my conversations began to take up less time, to shorten in length and therefore meaning to my own heart. I would still speak, but I would allow time for more answers, for more time to ponder and imagine that there was something differently defined from the place we existed in then.

When my mother, father, and I were gathered around the screen watching her stare into the eyes of a victor, the room had been silent. Desperately, I had started to speak to my sister through the space between us as though somehow that would prolong the inevitable event that I knew was coming to pass.

The sound of my voice did not stop her death, and from that moment on I no longer feared the silence.

That single act of destruction brought every foundation of my belief crumbling to the ground. At that point, I was no longer invincible, but naïve. My voice could not stop the mountains from crumbling or the tide from coming in or my sister from dying, and it sent shame surging deep into my bones.

I sat in silence often after that.

Days spent in the absence of my own voice were sometimes spent in the absence of my thoughts as well. Other times, my head would be spinning and my tongue would seem to be burning— daring me to make an attempt to save the world just another time, as though the probability of success still remained despite my recent discoveries.

Extinguished flames and ashes— that was all my body was now made of.

Two strikes at Jano both missed and I am sent stumbling backward, digging my heels into the ground and attempting to find traction wherever its presence could be made known.

Scarlett attempts to follow suit, and beneath heaving breaths I pray she does not make the same mistake as I. Not entirely replicated, her blade makes contact in the slightest, but it is nothing in comparison to the sound of her skin sliced open just seconds afterward. There is fire in her blood, and with the exposure of it to the presence of air, I feel we are all at danger of being burned alive.

I would rather go by her hand, because at least the exit would be beautiful.

She was still glory in the gore; still perfect in the face of pain.

I saw no wrong in her, and perhaps that would be what killed me in the end.

To know that this was a path I would gladly follow left me but one option: to keep her life dangling by even the thinnest of threads, as long as it was still suspended. If she was to fall now, I would be nothing more than a girl snuffed out by silence twice over.

Gold alone ain’t worth much.
Copper simply corrodes.
On the surface my heart is beating,
Nevertheless, I’m sure it slows.

My blade strikes thin air and I stumble forward, looking for balance in the ground beneath my feet shifting. Mind cursing but tongue silent, I bring myself back to an upright position and whirl around, attempting to keep my eye on Jano in the most efficient manner without causing my stomach to take a breath of fresh air for its own.

His strikes have never been turned against me prior to this moment, but he is also not a mind I have chosen to trust, and as my eyes adjust to their new field of vision, I spot him first. He steps back, and before I can process the following series of events, there is blood gushing from his stomach, matching almost exactly the color of armor allegedly protecting his flesh. Seeping from the point of the wound I see Scarlett on the other end, the smirk one signature to her face gone, and a chilling grimace now replacing it. Her body was beginning to give way, and I know that there was nothing I could tell her now to stitch the wounds.

Just as Raven had failed to protect Lazarus, I had done the same to her.

The only difference here was that she had become the god I idolized.

If she was to die, I knew that the last remnants of my faith still in tact would be shattered. As a soul just converted to the power of prayer, I knew death would follow not far behind if that scenario came to pass. I could not die being an unconverted soul.

Jano brings himself to unsteady feet, axe gripped with white knuckles, regret, and hidden fear. His eyes flicker between Scarlett and I, and I can only imagine which way his axe will fall. But before the decision can be finalized in my mind, the sound of his voice breaks my concentration, “You’re going to have to fucking try harder than that.”

The true mark of a brave man is being outspoken when your flesh has already met that which is not human.

A heart of gold or silver no longer strikes admiration into my being. I have discovered what it means to trade in the worth of my own soul to save that of another and come away empty handed. To be human meant to be selfish, even if the intention was not blatantly apparent.

He turns his aim towards Scarlett, and the axe falls lightly upon her left leg. My body tenses, waiting for pain to strike through my own nerves out of instinct, but there is no feeling that comes to pass, and I am left standing beside her.

Numb.

Mind spinning, spitting, and burning I am left defenseless. With a sister lost and dignity shattered, all I had to my name now was a sword held loosely in one hand and childish hope held tightly in the other.

If there was nothing to be found in the sunrise, I suppose there would be nothing to see in the sunset.

Perhaps the worth of gold was only determined by the eye of the beholder; perhaps the only thing of value in this world was the last day you lived within it.

If each day was thus supposed to be lived with vigor due to the variable of the unknown, how would one distinguish the fool’s gold from the glory?

The other— named Asriel, I have since discovered— attempts to bring health to the other by way of words alone, and I scoff as strikes quietly at Scarlett.

With the voice of a lamb, there is no way to play the part of a lion.