one risk to the next | Daniela vs Hayden [Day 6]

It is hard to determine what I miss. I threw it all away by reciting two words, surely there is nothing I yearn for when I look back home. Maybe the necessities’ like a warm plate of food and the comfort of my own bed but the real tragedy is, there is nobody back in that pit of gritty despair that I beg to be stood beside. Crowds of faces with the Rasoio name sewn to their head, I know each of their names but not a single one has entered my mind as I have trialled through this. Just the burden of my father that looms over me. Not that I miss the man. His existence is an enemy that latches onto my shadow. The only effort to free myself of him; end up being brutally killed for the entertainment of others.

No way have I rocked through this easily, there may be no scars visible on my skin but the damage is just becoming bearable inside. Maybe I am repelling death, short efforts to steal my life over the past week but nothing has come far. I can’t say it is luck. I am just that good at defending myself. Years spent in a self-taught school, re-enacting the tricks of my siblings that my father kept hidden from me. I never really needed him; I can get through this myself.

What about the boys?

….forget about them.

I need to trap the thought of their presence to the back of my head. Dormant and never to be touched. Add them to the pile of faces back home that I have no care for. So many battles in life to fight, it is hard to believe that the most dangerous one would be in my head. Dilemmas and worries, wandering thoughts on those that have turned their back on me; what the fuck is wrong with me?

My greeting to the girl from Two is a kiss on the forehead from my wooden stake, her name is shared and is stored with the boys that I care to disremember. So there is a name to my potential killer now. Will history repeat itself? She will be joining the flimsy throne with Ansgar rotten Todd if that is so. What a curse to the family name this will be; Rasoio blood creates victors.

{ "There is no him. He's dead, he's buried, the body will rot."}

I can’t just fucking disappear.

I am not going to end up like him.
Hayden’s axe strikes my neck, a mirrored kiss from my own attack. Instincts force me to caress the new-born wound. Panic forces me not to curl up in a ball and whine over the pain. Just one push of the door, I am not like Jenoah; I am just going to have to do it my way.

"How about you, Daniela? Do you miss them?"

It is already becoming a losing battle, five days with three boys that I can barely call friends but every minute, each of their faces have brought me into a zone of memories. There is barely anything joyful to remember of them. Alfie’s silence, Sirrah’s brutal death and Ansel’s arrogance; I am proud to be a spoilt bitch but he doesn’t even realise that he is an utter dick head.

I shake my head in response to her question; I feel the little drop of blood landing onto the strap of my dress as I do. The skull mask like it has for most days remains on the back of my head; I am not taunting death by already decorating myself in something that is deceased.

”One never spoke to me, one is dead and one is a prick. I don’t think I will ever miss them.” Honesty floods from between my lips; my voice is raised, firm on delivering my statement.

”So you are career then?” Curiosity takes hold as I circle the girl, the wooden stake held out in front of me as I form the new stance. ”I have asked this question to someone else but they never gave me a straight answer…have you have stolen a life before?”

Something so permanent and it isn’t even a taboo to witness. Death; this past week is not my first viewing of the event. A monthly ritual back home sent packs of rats to their untimely demise. One crate pushed out the way and they are all came pouring out. Escaping for freedom but ending up in the jaws of my family. Such a brutal way to go, a single boot pressed on their head and they were gone. I only ever felt sorry for the poor boy that had to sweep up the mess afterwards. All of it sounds so very similar, there is a boot falling from the sky and it is aimed towards me. I just hope if it does land, it is just as quick.

I have heard of the divide of Districts, moans from the men about those from One and Two, even the mockery about the mining District and its neighbour. Eight has always and will always, be a mediocre District. Not rich enough to self-indulge but not poor enough to complain. Nothing about my home, I can say I am proud of. Maybe the odd dress hand crafted with someone’s sweat and blood but all these products go to waste anyway. Plucked from the hands of a hard day of work and thrown onto the shoulders of a far greater self-indulging prick than those from One and Two.

At least my self-taught skills are consistent, another peck from my blade but this time it is on Hayden’s back. If only I could mirror all that I have experienced during this past week, the Bandit’s company was a burden but his acts during key moments; a part of my learning progress. If I am to step back onto that train alive, he is certainly not going to be rewarded with recognition for my efforts, even if I do imitate his skills.

"I am a career, yes, or I thought I was." I can hear the doubt wrapped in her words. There is a heart pouring out to me right now and I just want to step aside to avoid it. Jenoah tried to use me as his shoulder to cry on once, I think I caused more tears than soaking them up. "But I feel more like a lamb, raised for slaughter."

My eyes drop slightly, I try to contain the sympathy. If I met a girl like Hayden back home, I’d be talking about her with my friends as she has her back turned. Poisonous whispers would be shared if she ever walked by but the foreign sense of pity is brewing. Only one of us is going to step away from this, I could be the last person she ever speaks too. This isn’t the type of death I have witnessed before, it is more frightening and not just because my own life is hanging on the line.

One thing I can relate to from her speech; being brought up as a little lamb, maybe not sent to slaughter but used and abused in such a different way.

"How do you think you'd live with it?"

Her final question is a pointer to raise my eyes from the ground, there hasn’t been a moment where my stake has dropped from its position in front of me but my attempts of blocking her attack are careless, her axe just takes a nip of my hip.

”I am a little lamb raised not for slaughter but to sit at my father’s feet.” Everyone else had their strings much longer and looser than mine, his youngest and most protected child. I never needed all the shielding and containment from the world. Of course his efforts were ill as I had entire window to everything that happens. ” I had to rebel my own father just to go outside, while my brothers and sisters had all the freedom in the world.” A sigh rolls from between my lips, signing off the sentence. ”And now all that rebelling lead to this big mistake.”

I just shake my head; I have already greeted that reality, the reason why I am here. I haven’t the energy to head back towards it.

”I don’t know how I am going to live with it that is why I asked.” An unanswered question is hanging over me and I need more people to ask. ” Ansel Khiev would never give me the answer. Maybe I don’t need to know.”

To be prepared or not? I penned the question of my end into the diary; I forced the pages shut before I could even pick out the answer. I don’t know what I want to know anymore.

Vibrating ear drums and the slight stinging pain emitting from my newly carved wounds begin to knock on my attention. I snap myself out of the thought, glaring to the one thing where my full focus should really be directed.

”There is so much talk between us, yet one of us is going to die. It is all so strange.”

Barely a time spent with this girl but my familiar self is not breaking through and unleashing all bitterness onto the girl. Someone like her would be a repellent back home. Someone like here isn’t even found back home.Yet I circle her, my blade barely trailing a scratch on her skin and sweet words with hardly a bite are thrown back and forth. Just a week spent in here and i have ventured to parts of my inner self that have always remained unlocked. Rusty keys just barely turning and revealing a sleeping me, so the rumours are true then. Walking onto the penultimite road of life, really magnifies the true self - how boring is this. There must be a junction ahead, a way to get off this before I am thrown into the light.

Something is taking my strings, emotions wrapping them all into knots, tangled in a frenzy that is so hard to escape from. Barely a grip holds onto my stake as the sweat begins to flood from my palms. It is worry that is kicking in now, a part of me is looking to the future - what is left of it anyway. These shared words are distracting me from the reality that is likely to come and now everything is back in focus; the panic is beginning so show. A heart is trying to break free through my chest, the boney cage is enslaving the organ, it's only escape route. Every inch of my body that can react to this emotion...is, I wonder if Hayden can see it too.

"If you cannot live with yourself, live for another." If only they could be words to live by. I freed myself from all those I could consider potential enough to live for, nobody is close to my side. Really, who can I call a friend? The occasional company that comes and goes, nobody really sticks with me...

Realisation has been the greater thing that has been hitting me, far heavier and deadly than Hayden's blows. So this is a part of the journey to the end, realising who I truly I am, what I am.

I have no one.

A full house with hundreds of faces greeting me everday but none of them are truly someone I could live for. They are all dead. Jenoah and my mother. Everyone that I ever loved is dead.

"I'm getting married."

Her confession barely wakes me from my shock, despite how random and obsurd it is. So many confessions of life from a girl I barely know, an entire life story recited in just this moment. How thick of a book would my story be? Barely five chapters and the word fin would be printed on the page, I haven't lived my life and now I have just ended it for myself.

I need to live, it all needs to change from now.

"I have myself to live for, I need a chance to change it all." A pinch of realisation but this time it is not a deadly blow to knock me down; it just lifts me up instead. Flat onto my feet with my chin held high, it is all go from here. "I know why I volunteered for this, not just to free myself but change it for the better."

Any smile drops from my expression, my charge towards the girl is more frantic than the attacks before. All my energy is packed into this time. It is time to change it all. "And you're the the first thing that has gotten in the way of it.”