when you build your house / elliot & eileen

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

^{/ then call me home /}

◈  eileen langston   ◈
eighteen

You stare hard at your reflection — and you will the glass to shatter.

Eighteen years, and this is all you have to show for it. Bloodshot, puffy eyes and lips trembling around a choked cry. The next door neighbor is mowing his lawn as you sob, razorblade hum over the sound of your gasping breaths. There's a positive pregnancy test tossed in the bin, and the longer you glare down at your knuckles gripping the counter you wonder if your rage, your sorrow, might be enough to flay skin from bone. If in one brief flash, you could simply unravel yourself, turn your trauma into stardust and just be done with it.

You'd take that over this.

Glancing up at yourself with that guilt shining in your eyes, always that same pitiful expression you have no right to wear. Because you place landmines in your path, and then you have the audacity to dance over them. You invite boys into your bed who you don't love, boys you resent and regret, and you strand yourself here. In this same dark feeling, this same golden thread between you and all your worst hurts. They're all wearing your face. And when you love / you cause harm / and the knife is always in your own chest.

The truth is that Tommy means about as much to you as the trash you're kicking onto the floor, screaming at the top of your lungs. You've never been silent with your pain. The kind of girl to throw tantrums, to wail in heartbreak, to charge into chaos with a battle cry. When you're falling apart, you invite the crowd to watch. Tell a boy he matters to you / try to make your best friend jealous. She just started her new job, and you've just graduated. This time of the week, before things changed, you'd rent a movie to make fun of with her at your side and enough popcorn to share.

And you'd laugh all night long, or maybe you'd cry, or you'd feel just frightened enough to hold hands / but you'd always be together.

A lifetime of needing someone.

It comes down to this.

The halls are quiet save for the echo of your crying, the shaky breath you inhale to try and calm yourself. And for as easy as it's been for your friend to move on, to take that next step into the world, you can feel the mud clinging to your legs. Weighing you down with each step, locking you in a room in a house in a town that you can't stand anymore. You picked the wallpaper color. Now you'd see it all burn, for what you care. Being alone with yourself shouldn't cut quite this deep.

Some people are just destined to ruin their lives.

Running out into the street, into desperation, into fear / into arms that stopped reaching for you a year ago. Best friends are temporary treasures. And stories go in different directions, and luck works for everyone differently. But you hold your hand of cards, and then you crush them in your fist. You have always been so wonderful at making the worst decisions. Because if you were a good person, someone who truly loved Elliot, you would watch her leave and you would be grateful that she got out.

But instead you knock on her door, all your calamities in tow.

[rook]

elliot testino-lee

two years & ten months until incident

It has been a long three months of work. Whilst you passed every examination with flying colours and proved yourself to be intelectually the sharpest young mind in all of the Six, nothing could have prepared you for the physicality of what was to come.

Abraham's stone-faced expression and dark eyes peered into yours as he told you that you were nothing but a baby-faced child with puppy fat and bad posture. Your stomach churned as he lamented your terrible cardiovascular fitness and sub-par physical strength.

"It is not enough to be strong of mind."

He had you doing sprints for hours, squatting half your body weight until your legs gave out. Every time you fell to your knees whilst trying to hold a plank he pushed your dinner back by an hour. When you completed the five sets of sit-ups that you barely managed to finish, he ordered another five.

You hated him, but you were determined. After all, you spent your entire life working towards this. You would make your body stronger, no matter the price.

Today's routine consisted of shuttle runs, carrying kettlebells to and from waypoints, killer burpies, and a devestating set of chin-ups. Lactic acid has coroded your body, it's an effort to move as you pour yourself a coffee and peel open a nicotine patch, slapping it to your tricep and pressing until it sticks.

A creature of habit you skulk barefoot through the expensive new apartment that Abraham purchased for you. No longer living under your parents rules, you want nothing more than to order in three crates of beer and throw an out-of-control party. It would be fun to sit widelegged on your chaise-lounge and watch all the hot couples make out.

But you have discipline now, it's been burned into you. You settle for your bitter hot drink and late-night television.

As you walk over to the couch, across the open-plan ground floor of this luxury home, the silence freezes you. This is what it's like, to have everything you ever wanted. You alone in the expanse of your living room, the space compresses down on you as you stand there, frowning all of a sudden. Is it all that you hoped it would be?

A sharp knock on your door startles you, flecks of brown coffee spill from your shaking hand onto the tile flooring. You wipe at it with your bare foot.

You haven't seen your best friend in months, but as you pull back the door she stands there wide-eyed, her breaths hurried. You suddenly feel a flush of heat to your cheeks, and are unexpectedly self-conscious of your duck-egg green dressing gown, goofy reading glasses and shiny post-shower hair.

"Eileen." You tense up as the cold air blows through, "Is everything okay?"

Your hair flows in the thick liquid of the tank, your brow furrows, milky blue iris moving beneath closed eyelids.