fallen angels {kousei}

► ► ►

This universe is a cage.

I spent my years in adolescence looking for a key, desperately searching for an escape route as my eyes darted from corner to corner; I needed a way out one way or another. It was always something more than a five year old pressing a crown of flowers on his brow and telling everyone he was their king but it didn't quite teeter on the edge of pressing a blade into my skin and wondering if it would be better to go any deeper even if the effect ended with the same output.

A joint or a drink -- anything could be a key if I willed it to.

There is no key to end my now suddenly rhythmic existence or escape route from the walls of this seemingly metallic grey training center. They've given me the tools to change fate -if such a thing even exists- and break down the future written in stone tablets but all it's done is remind me what I am and what I have to look forward to. Blinded by red screens, leaving my mark on every target with a miss until death's skeletal hands grip my shoulder. I shiver, I'm trying not to think about it.

I was always great at finding temporary escape routes, distractions in the forms of anything percieved to be fun, and it sems that definition can be expanded to activities I'm useless at and find reprehensible. I'm not a killer but I find myself tracing the outline of every weapon I walk past, running my fingers along every spear and flicking the point of every blade with my index finger.

Anything's better than being left to myself, simply sitting back and thinking whether I'll ever transcend the status of hunted. In all honesty I prefer not to give it much thought, if I could ever call myself a hunter and watch the foundations of someone else waste away.

Put a blade against someone else's trembling skin and watch them die.

I blink and pick up a shorter spear for a split second before placing it back on the rack. It's not a matter of if I'd be willing to do it but a question of can I do it? With years of smoke in my lungs and the threat of withdrawal a very close reality I realize that probably not. This world belongs to the careers and the people who take, not the people who hide from reality at the potential expense of their rhythmic pulse.

"Looks like you'll be easy to kill. If you're still alive when I get to you."

I freeze in my tracks, the icy coldness of resignation quickly replaced with the burning sensation of panic.

(this world belongs to the people who take)

I bite my lip and turn around, this isn't a pretty girl who I can accidentally charm and woo so she goes from threatening to cut my throat sleeping with me and this doesn't look like a little boy who's trying to hard to reach for the stars. A number seven may be sewn onto his shirt but he bleeds a ruthlessness that only a career can achieve.

He could be the one to tear me from my reality.

My heart races, rising up to my throat and panic setting into the corner of my mind. "I... I-" in the presence of a reality that's found a way to catch up, my voice trembles. I suppose that even a poker face has cracks and crevices within its intricate designs, even behind its smile. "I guess you better be quick to get to me then, my blood's on high demand you see."

Bitter reality or euphoric fantasy, even when the line blurs I still don't know when to quit.