ʙʏ ᴄʀᴏᴏᴋᴇᴅ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛs — { dars. }

Five in the morning,

jolted awake by a downpour’s wet gurgles and fanged thunder. Roof leaks rainwater, bricks don’t keep the cold at bay – so many chinks in this armor of a house; I swear there’s a dollar-store metaphor related to me tucked somewhere between the two.

Every agent in our illicit organization is entitled to a property, but grandiosity is moons away. Most are derelict tenements akin to my apartment: rickety floorboards, blown-out windows, scarcely holding onto its own mortar.

My neighbors probably regard me as a local junkie crashing at an abandoned studio and,

they aren’t wrong.

I am synonymous with junkies; skin curved out of flesh, bare ribs, two dark craters beneath my eyes – typical drug-addict features, except for my hatred towards drugs.

They put mother six feet under, got a young orphan entangled to the web of crime from a young age – ten, that’s how old my bones were when the recruitment crew came for fresh blood.

They marched in the youth center, cladded from head to toe in black, an army of sorts – and took us. I did not protest;

a dark excitement swelled in
the vastness of my ribcage.

The routine’s almost mechanic to these hands. Brush teeth, wash face, scavenge around deserted cupboards for breakfast, and eventually give up, fake ignorance towards the growl of your empty stomach whilst you wear that ankle-length, black coat.

Mirror on a cracked wall,

it shows a cold broken teen* guised as a weapon. There’re scars from the past assignments, blood-edged, never completely healed. Fingers slap a band-aid on the lividest of bruises. The azure expanse outside is glacially waning to a greyness; it’s around six now.

Today’s mission: rendezvous with this boy from another organization.

Apparently, the name ‘Wasp’ has pervaded as if it were a bushfire, an obscene tumor. Some alleys house those wanted posters, my mug shot inked across it.

A cathedral-sized reputation, forged by the bones of names I’ve crossed out from a yellowed-out paper. So, they requested this cold broken teen* as a liaison between the two organizations.

Cursive-lettered directions on paper lead mud-caked boots to an old, desolate park – then – to a wildflowers-strewn track. Stomach growls even though I’ve been chewing on a peppermint for the past twenty minutes. One lonely figurine awaits near a wrought iron fence; my manners choke and perish.

“Fuck, sorry man. Kind of lost my path there – big park, huh?” Baby blues rake his countenance. Young, but blood-stained.

“I’m Wasp. You're the one who's going to show me the ropes right?”