je suis devenu la mort. sings.

instead of carving up the walls

why don't you open up with talk?

'cause we are ready
we are ready for the floor

The twitch comes back.

Starts in my finger tips, a numb sensation. Creeps through my palms and into my bloodstream until I am shaking, all-consumed by it. Guilt's a terrible thing. Usually sits heavy in my stomach, forces up my breakfast and my lunch and my dinner. I kneel in grits and grit my teeth and wake up with the devil clutching my shoulder, forcing me back down to pray away my sins.

When I get up, I go to the graveyard.

I think I wanted to see it for myself. His grave. Andy's grave. Mom and Dad in the living room whispering and crying and I can see that smiling boy with the devil in his eyes plunging a sword into the heart of the girl who killed Andy.

He had eyes like Andorra. Eyes like mine.

Bad deeds deserve punishment.

The twitch comes back.

He'd dug it himself, the bastard. The spade - the same one I snatched from his hands and slammed into River's chest - resting against his blank gravestone. I stop running once I reach the foot of the grave and my eyes see the glint of the metal, rust and blood caked against the handle. I stop moving, stop breathing, just stand in place and glare at the damned thing and know what he'd say if he was here.

"Stop fuckin' blubbering", he'd scowl at the glint of tears in my eyes and my trembling lips. Age five, age fifteen - and when I realise that one day I'll be older than my big brother my hands shake something awful. 

I would of taken Andy's sword and plunged it into her chest myself. I would have ripped her to pieces. I would have screamed and thrown myself in front of her blade and committed every sin listed in Vati's fucking book - and he wouldn't even tell me thank-you. Not even as I died in his arms. If he even stuck around long enough to watch me leave this earth. 

He and I both know he wouldn't have.

We're too alike. 

We were too alike.

"Bad deeds deserve punishment."

"Shut the fuck up, Vatican."

Slowly, slowly, I unfurl my fists and take a shallow breath and force myself down, down, onto my knees, further, deeper, lowering my legs into the grave and pushing away thoughts I'd dreamt up of their midnight antics - then I pull them back closer to me, clutching any thought or memory I had of Andorra Sing until my spine rests against the damp, earthy base of my brother's grave. 

Because it should've been me digging my own early grave, my body being prepared to be lowered into the earth. If not me then the both of us, three feet apart, the devil's stain on the Sing family buried with all of our demons. 

Wonder if Vati would of robbed my grave. Wonder if he would've robbed us both. Wonder if he'd even dare. Wonder if I'd haunt him, begging him to answer my question over and over and over again - Why?

I could never summon the right words. To pray, to confess, to repress. Even as I lie in the hole in the earth he dug for himself - as if he knew - there's a million on the tip of my tongue and only two ringing in my ears, his voice, a blade in the hands of a girl my age plunging into his back.

"I'm sorry."

It's all I ever said. Fat lot of use it did me, looking for forgiveness in a home with no mercy. I never understood why Andy chose not to get on his knees until now. All the prayer in the world and he's still dead, and I'm still alive, wishing I'd had the strength to save him again. 

Wishing I'd had the strength to say goodbye.

Wishing I'd vol-

Wishing I was d-

"It’s me you should hate.
You probably already knew that, huh."

But I don't hate him. I never did. I might of hated what he and Vati did, I might not have understood it, but I could never hate them.

I hate me. I hate, I hate, I hate, it's all I ever do, and now I'm sobbing in my brother's grave like the child that I am and the grey, rain-cloud sky swims above me. I hate, and I am punished for it, knowing he's not going to stare down at me until I stopped crying like he used to when I was a little girl. 

God, what I'd do-

Feels wrong to ask God for anything in Andy's grave. Instead I press my lips together, close my eyes and listen to the sound of the rain, hoping someone will bury me here in the earth where I belong.

do it, do it, do it now

say it, say it, say it now

i can't hear your voice

do i have a choice?