DєAD DªISIєS ~ [keeni family]

[semper]

bear Keeni


Fuck flowers.

They’re everywhere – in every available space, they’re spreading their wretched array of colors and carpeting the ground with rainbows. Really, it looks like someone vomited up rainbows everywhere. All the yellows, purples, reds, pinks, whites, and I don’t even know what; spikey edges, round edges, thin needle-like things, and they’re all different sizes, some coming up to my knee, waist, and even head. Those particular plants are tall with wide, rough leaves, and like a head of little pink flowers on long stems. I pull the serrated knife from its nesting spot on my jeans and swipe it out at the plant, cutting it in half. The force of me hitting it, though, caused a plume of yellow pollen to spray up at me, and as soon as I breathe in, I instantly react by sneezing rather violently. If I didn’t know any better, I would think that the power housed behind the sneeze was enough to blow my nose clean off my face – another sneeze, and another, and another.

I scowl and quickly dart away from that flower, but not without giving it a good stomping first. While on my escape, I take a few good swings with my boot at a patch of “happy-looking” yellow flowers, tearing them up out of the ground and sending a few flying through the air.

Spring is the worst. Now that I mention it, summer is hell, too. And winter is awful. Fall is just eh. There’s no good season. They’re all a piece of shit. I hate staying indoors though, so I’m just forced dto endure the wrath of Mother Nature.

It’s not like I don’t like staying inside at times, but my entire family (minus all the shitty dads and our mother) is all living under the same shanty roof I grew up under. There’s about fifteen of us, all with crazy and psychotic ticks, and I’m honestly surprised we haven’t slaughtered each other yet. While we may only yell and tear each other down, you can’t find a closer-knit family. We all know of each other’s issues, and we still accept them. Someone talks smack about us Keenis? They’ll have fourteen psychopathic teenagers chasing them with either flames, knives, teeth, or their own stark-naked body. Hell, people fear us! They sometimes actually cringe when they hear the name Keeni! My family is a legend, I tell you. A legend!

Upon entering the small house, I make a beeline for the kitchen sink, opening the cabinet underneath and pulling out a drawstring bag. I closed the wooden doors with my shoe and seated myself at the kitchen table. Pulling the bag open, I reach in and take out a strip of my infamous jerky and started eating it, drawing patters into the wooden table with the tip of my knife.

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[Wonder]

tick-le (noun) 3. to excite agreeably; gratify

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The world around him screamed in excitement, as if pulsating alarms were throbbing through the very air. They were alarms that gave off the presence of any human contact within one hundred metres of him. Crouching, waiting for the very air to laugh at anyone trying to surround him, but the peacekeepers, the victims of his theft would never find him with the very earth supporting his actions. Tickling fingertips grasped the prized. The sapphire necklace felt weightless clutched in his hands, willing to accept its new owner, Robin Keeni, the boy who couldn’t be caught.

Feet tiptoeing down the dark alley, in which he’d hidden, the walls seemed to converge in on him forming a layer of safety. Soft reassuring squishes cheered beneath his small feet as he splashed in the small puddles drowning the cobblestones of the alley from a recent rainstorm. The world was cheering his deeds on, who needed to be a conman when you could have a necklace beneath your fingertips within minutes of skulking. Finding his way back on to the streets safely, Robin walked home.

Home, not really. The Keeni household had never in particular been a place of refuge for the small theft. It was a home, sure, but not his home. To him it was a rowdy house filled to the brim with children with weird problems, talking to the dead, stripping naked, each as stupid as bizarre as the other. And yet, there was an overwhelming sense of community, almost, each of them had their own problems in one form or another. All these weird and bizarre children born to a useless whore, all striving to move forward together in the world. Though the others were luckier than he was, as opposed to him and Bear, the other children had father’s still around. Well, Robin wasn’t even too sure if Bear had a father around, but he was always at the Keeni household regardless. It wasn’t his place to ask.

Robin’s father had died nearly a year and a half ago, and the wound was still wide open. Passing by the district square was only another constant reminder to the fate that his father succumbed. It was the destiny of a conman. His father was only waiting to be killed, waiting to be caught in his constant tricks. The day that he died was a day that the crazy man had been waiting for year upon year. This is where Robin and his father had always differed, Robin was invincible.

Sneaking around back streets in the unlikely chance that someone was following close behind, Robin entered the household from the backyard which was always a common occurrence. Launching himself over the rickety brown fence, he found himself lying amongst the usually beautiful flower garden. Surrounded by vibrant reds and blinding yellows, Robin sat there and admired the space around him. The deep purple’s swaying to the left with the light breeze blasting through the area. The whole area was blessed with a superb beauty in which the rest of the house lacked. The garden was the only spot that you could feel any peace.

Pushing himself off the ground, having fallen from the fence, Robin carefully maneuvers through the flowers, sometimes it seemed like they never ended, as if they grew themselves reproduced more darling buds, almost human to him. But plants and such were never his speciality. Robin’s specialty was hidden in the shadows on dark nights with open windows, begging for entrance. The life of a thief. The ground was surrounded by stomped on stems and cut flowers. Clear cuts right through the middle, something that could only have been done by a knife. Large footprints seemed to bed in to the yellow flowers closest to him, stomped on with brute force. Killing the beautiful things around them, that was such a Keeni thing to do.

Sapphire necklace tingling in his pocket as if it was from the gods, he trampled into the house and into the kitchen. The house was dead quiet. The only sound to be heard was a repetitive sawing motion. Bear. The brutish boy who resided there constantly with him sat carving up the table, as if everything they owned wasn’t broken enough. It was clear, at least in Robin’s mind, that Bear was the one who destroyed the flowers.

[/SIZE] “You know Bear,” Robin started, the flowers had upset him. Beauty was to be admired not destroyed. “if you’re going to be upset about girls not wanting you, you don’t need to take it out on the flowers.” It all seemed so childish, but mockery seemed to be the only way to get across to someone so thick headed. “My advice on the girl front is that you just need to stop eating them.”[/BLOCKQUOTE]

[meg.]

And when we first came here,
We were cold and we were clear,
With no colours on our skin,

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'Till you let the spectrum in. [/size]

FLORÉAL KEENI

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The morning had been a good one. She had seen many of Them today, and had even picked up a strand of hair that she swore belonged to one of the younger members of that particular tribe. Cradled in the empty skeleton that had once propped up an acorn, she watched the light lick it, scratch it, but never quite encase it, as if even it could not properly see something that belonged to Them.

It did not belong in this world, as Floréal Keeni did not belong in this world. Perhaps her blood was thick and hot, and her eyes full of liquid and not dust, as Theirs were, but she knew that she was part of Them. As the balls of her raw feet brushed the rusted leaf-carnage, she promised herself once again that she would whittle herself down to no bigger than her smallest finger, to Their size. She honestly believed that, a convict captivated in a prison-body, she was meant to be that size.

Two of what biologically constituted her brothers were sitting at the table when she returned home, heels raised and Achilles tendons beginning to ache. It would be easier for her to return the base of her feet to the ground, sure, but They walked as so, and Floréal always tried her best to replicate Them.

Her bed was nothing more than a litter of pillows and blankets, in a room where many people slept. Sometimes, she wasn’t even sure who some of them were. Under the very bottom blanket, she forced her hand into a clutter of leaves which hid her grater, and a squirrel skin, now not much more than an ever-screaming face with it’s lips curled back in a grimace. Her siblings had often complained of a stench emanating from her bedding, but keeping it well hidden, there was no way she would let anyone find it and dispose of it. She had once seen one of Them dance with it, and then bite out its throat with Their stunningly miniature teeth. Now, it’s taut skin had leathered, and was beginning to reveal curbs of ivory bone, but if she listened very carefully, she could hear Their power still reverberating in its jowls.

Her grater was well used, threads of skin still stuck to its blunted incisors. She started to whittle away at her toes, layers of skin dancing to the floor until her flesh, soft and raw, started to show. She could not let it bleed- that would be a sin, to let the woolly bubbles write ‘HUMAN’ on the soles of her feet. Their veins were full of glittering dust, an indicator of the lack of life, the ethereal nature of Their miniature bodies. Once she had finished perfecting the excoriated derma of her feet, she started working on her fingers, shaving away until they were the most perfect shade of pink.

The meat on her feet blinked, but she took the pain and cupped in her mouth, hoping it would turn her words into Theirs. They, surely, would have had to go through this at some point to achieve Their perfection. Taking two strips of cloth pixelated with old blood, she bound her toes tightly, and glided down towards the kitchen.

Bear and Robin conversed freely, their words course, rough, of this earth. Watching Bear scar the tip of the table with his knife for a moment, she closed her nimble, almost-bleeding fingers around his, and examined the palms of his hands for a second.

“You know, Bear, with a little work your hands could be just like Theirs,” her voice were empty of emotion- that was a human thing, after all. She might not be able to stop herself feeling it, but she could try and stop talking it. A darting-eyed glance was casted to her other brother’s fists.

“Yours could get there too, Robin. Only way to be like Them is to work, after all.”

Proceeding to the sink, she poured herself a glass of water, flecks of filth dancing in it as if it were a lit stage. She watched ripples quiver around her finger as she dipped it in the liquid, thinking that They could surf those waves. Licking the drink with a pointed tongue, she let its sweet nothingness dissolve, giving her the life that she so did not want to have.

Say my name,
And every colour illuminates,
We are shining,

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And we'll never be afraid again. [/CENTER] [/size][/blockquote]

[florentine, d4b ❁]

FELIX VALENTINE-KEENI

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♕ DISTRICT SIX ♕

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I swear on my life that it wasn't me.

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You and I walk a fragile line,
I have known it all this time,
But I never thought I'd live to see it break,
It's getting dark, and it's all too quiet,
And I can't trust anything now,
And it's coming over you like it's all a big mistake.

Freya knocks a vase from the side and it crashes to the ground. Shards of glass fly out in every direction and one skims the side of my hand. A bead of blood appears, crimson as the blood she shed when she died. I look at her pale, pale skin and shake my head. "Freya, we should go before somebody notices it's broken." So we do go, we walk outside and sit down on the grass among the daisies. It's easy enough to find time alone with Freya, even though there are many, many souls in the house. Some of them are alive and some of them are dead but each one is as real as the next. Some of them are slowly being forgotten and so they fade away into whatever comes after ghostly being. I never want Freya to leave me even though I get the feeling she kind of wants to. It's like she's getting tired and that beautiful light that is surrounding her is growing dimmer. But she can't leave because without her I would be all alone in my crowded family. I know it is wrong but I have never loved anyone as I love Freya. Others speak to me but their words are harsh and biting and far too alive. Freya does not have to speak for me to know what she means to say.

So the two of us sit in the overgrown grass as we always do when something breaks and we cannot stay. I hand her the little white daisies and she runs her gentle fingers down it's stem. The stems split right down the middle and I think about my sister and how she runs the grater over her fingers and they split down the middle and bleed. She wants to be a fairy, does Floreal. Like the little people she sees. I cannot not believe her because although nobody can see Freya anymore I know she is there. Freya doesn't believe in the fairies, though. I tell her that she has to, because what is there to say that anything is impossible at all? I just do not want Freya to be sad. If she is sad perhaps she will drift away from me, and I know that she is my best friend. Freya laces the split daisies together to form a chain and loops it over her head. It rests in her golden hair and I think how perfect she is. Beautiful and faded and real and gone and flawless.

I think that perhaps it is time to go back inside now, to greet my siblings and to see if perhaps today one of them can see Freya. As I walk inside I look at the girl who follows me, suspended in the air. Frozen at twelve years old, frozen just before she died. There is no gaping hole in her chest where the dagger pierced her - as she died her body took all the imperfections from her and she was left as I always saw her in my mind. Without fault. Her white dress kind of fluttering around her transparent legs, touched with gold. She is not an angel, she is a ghost. But at the same time she is Freya and she is mine and I don't see why I should ever have to lose her. Like that day when I was four years old and she was three and we held hands and I promised her I would be there for her until the day she died and then some. But I never thought about what would happen if she did die and she didn't want to be there with me anymore. Then what? It's kind of like the rain - it comes and then it is beautiful and then the sun comes out and it dries up and the clouds fade away and everyone forgets it ever rained. But not the grass and the flowers - they remember exactly what they have been if the rain had not come. Withered.

We stand at the doorway and see that Bear and Robin and Floreal are all inside. They sit at the table and they speak to each other and they listen. I find it hard to listen to the alive ones for too long because their words are too bright, too sharp. I begin to listen and see that Floreal is trying to tell them how to be like her litte people. How easy it is in her mind to achieve what she loves. Why is it not just a case of walking high on my feet and grating away at my own flesh to reach forever with the one I love? Instead I must hold her close so she cannot forget me and slip into the darkness. There, I may never see her again. I do not glow in the dark as she does.

"Flor- do you think that perhaps Freya could become a fairy? Would it hurt an awful lot?" I say, because suddenly I am thinking that if Freya isn't a ghost then perhaps she cannot leave me.

The daisy chain slips from her crown and onto the floor.

Speaking
Expression
Body
Headings

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[Python]

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Pyrian could not hear his shoes rustling the grass and shuffling the dirt - he never would. A world of silence and mystery was his world, but when it’s a world that has grown with him, what did it matter? There was no need to hear the obnoxious people speak to him - all he needed were a pair of functioning eyes to see the beautiful flickers of light that enlightened his world. As he strolled through the garden of the Keeni household - possibly one of the strangest locations on the planet, if you ask him, and very much like a wonderland modified to suit a horror film rather than a children’s fantasy - he was slightly entranced by the variety of colors, though there were colors in particular he felt were lacking. His wandering, dark eyes - alight with their usual mischievous glint - spotted something peculiar, then; a few stray flowers who were not so fortunate compared to their blossoming brethren. In a violent ambush a weapon of sort had ended their glory by slicing through their connection to earth’s resources, essentially cutting their one and only lifeline. How unfortunate it was to see them scattered about the beautiful garden, and to think they would go to such a waste. Well, he would soon find a use for the poor things.

He cradled the love of his life in his right hand, admiring smooth texture and metallic glint as he picked up one of the flower-corpses from the soil. It was quite a wonder that with just a gentle flick of his thumb he could create something as beautiful and dangerous as an open flame. As his thumb grazed the button, his eyes scanned the flower’s pale, yellow petals, and he imagined how brighter they would look once the mixture of orange and yellow with just a faint hint of white embraced its fading beauty. Unable to resist his desire he eagerly pressed the button and slipped a smile when the tiny flame erupted before his glittering eyes. He held the flower’s petals above the tip of the flame and watched it reach for its next victim.

Have at it, my dear; you deserve to shine. The flames seemed to dance upon the petals and sway with the wind that raised the bristle on his arms - bristle that was still in the midst of growing back after a recent experiment had singed it all off. As soon as the flames engulfed its prey and resembled a miniature torch, Pyrian turned on his heels and headed into the house with a smirk plastered across his features.

Once inside, the flames quickly devoured the flower’s petals until they were reduced to shriveled ash dangling from a drooping stem, but soon enough the small, hint of fire that remained began to crawl its way down the stem. As a master of flames, it was a expectation to understand and experience the sensation of a burn, and Pyrian found it to be quite bittersweet. However, he had come to the conclusion that the bitterness associated with days worth of stinging overruled the sweetness, and now took certain precautions to prevent such damage to his skin. So, when he noticed the flames dripping ever so swiftly toward his fingers, he glanced about the kitchen, ignoring the sight of Bear, Robin, and Felix, and spotted Floreal holding a glass of water. Currently uninterested in whatever conversation the three boys were having, he made his way over to Floreal and snatched the glass out of her hands before she could finish it. He then dropped the dying stem into the clear fluid before it could brush against his fingertips, and watched it quickly extinguish the vicious flame. Problem solved.

He stared at the black twig that once was a thriving symbol of nature. It sunk to the bottom of the glass and remained suspended in his line of vision until Pyrian finally looked up and realized that Floreal still existed. He shrugged at her and handed it back; there was no need to apologize. There were other glasses and other opportunities to have a refreshing beverage. Pyrian was a guiltless soul, anyhow, so he wouldn‘t carer either way. ”Here you go.” He felt the vibrations in his throat, a sign that the sound was emerging from his voice box and escaping between his lips to touch the atmosphere. How slurred he sounded, though, he was not quite sure of - normally his speech was clearer than many would expect, but it wasn’t like he could check. So, he merely stared at Floreal, and waited for her to speak or take her tainted beverage back so he could be on his merry way again.[/justify][/blockquote]