Reprise, Reprisal • [#SG vs. DI vs. DT, Day Four]

someone's got a body
it's over, can't maneuver
yeah, i wanna stay, but i do't want to fight
used to feel like we were doing alright

My spear extends forward from my hand and makes contact with skin, but I have lost the ability to comprehend where it falls from there. My body feels heavy, weighed down by burden or backhanded excuses that only serve to be shit out at a later date.

There is a boy standing to my left, and he looks dejected. He does not speak to me, but he touches his palm to a place on his arm that tells me I may be the cause of pain served. But if he is not able to understand that here that is my only task, well, he’s about as dense as he looks. He raises his axe and I instinctively put my arm up to shield my face but the pain never comes

From him.

My wound from yesterday screams out in protest and I open my mouth to do the same, but misery is cut short of glory when I watch the leg of a girl come clean from her body. My jaw drops, and I stand there for a second longer before turning away from the others to retch violently onto broken and trampled bones.

Daniela’s voice is ringing in my ear, as if she is standing behind me, nudging me with stake and soul to get back up and help her, Sirrah, Ansel. When I turn, she is nowhere within my vicinity, but standing with shoulders open and body held rigid. She is staring down my district partner, taunting her and I wonder what would have happened if I had spoken to this girl on our way out from Twelve.

I am not here to carve olive branches from my own bones.

But Daniela is not one for compromise, and her stake finds a new place of residence in my district partner’s forearm.

My memories of home are all like this— bloody and broken with no chance of redemption in the sunlight. When tragedy finds a grip on a household, there is little that can pry the fingers loose enough to cut them off without damaging the foundation and woodwork of the home.

The day before my father left, he broke every window. He pulled the doors off of their tracks so that they would never shut. He cut the curtains to shreds and pissed on the carpet.

He wanted us to spend at least six months remembering him.

My mother had been at the edge of a steep cliff for quite some time, but he knew that she, like any other, had found the point of no return. When there, one has two options: you step off and commit suicide, or you turn to face the one who led you there and push them over instead.

My mother is alive, so it can be assumed which path she chose.

And all the better for it, I believe.

We spent the next month sweeping up shards of broken glass and picking the unobserved from our heels— I stepped on so much glass I stopped exclaiming pain when it happened. My mother sewed the curtains back together and I worked the doors back onto their tracks.

Our front door still does not close all the way, and I believe my mother is angry because I have once more given him the chance to return.

She thinks, in a way, that I am him, and that I will only return to break the windows and smash the plates once more.

When I was called here, she was void of the fact that she would be losing a son to the crusades. She visited me for only two minutes, and she did not let me speak. She told me I had nothing more to say of importance. But, she took both of my hands in her own and kissed me on the forehead, all stood on the tips of toes and quivering smile.

“My son, if you are going to swing a weapon, swing hard; if you are going to kill a man, make sure you know where you are headed first.”

they've got control of you soldier
put you in the filed with a gun to shoot and kill 'em all
just play your part, little soldier
marchin' left, right, left, right

[ dars ]