Wild :: [Rook]

[L△LIA]

[bg=F3F4F8][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=cellSpacing,0,true][atrb=cellPadding,0,true][atrb=width,400,true][atrb=style,width: 400px; background-image: url(http://i50.tinypic.com/2d6lamw.png); background-repeat: no-repeat; padding-left:40px; padding-right:40px; padding-top:40px; border-left:1px solid #000000; border-right:1px solid #000000; border-top:1px solid #000000; -moz-border-radius-topright: 25px; border-radius-topright: 25px; -moz-border-radius-topleft: 25px; border-radius-topleft: 25px;opacity: 1;] Mine are the feet of a mad cat, skittering around at a pace frantic enough to leave scorch marks on the cement floor. Here and there the aching yowls of panic and worry sneak out from my lungs, licking at the air as though baring my teeth and sadness in the same instant — a little bit threatening, yet inevitably pathetic. I want to haunt the shadows of the moon and prowl back alleys for scraps and promises, but there is no such thing. This place is a cage. Like an idiot, I begged for this prison, screaming obscenities and confessions until they came for me. I had to. I had to follow. It's all I know how to do anymore. I won't let you leave me, Kaelen. Not again; not even for Hell. To hold onto the last threads of my sanity, I have devised a system to tether myself to the room. I was born to live in the hollow spaces between walls, to be sealed up in darkness, but the reality of this vacant place shakes me like the idea of being sacrificed to the belly of a cathedral in the name of superstition never did. There is surely something holy in the fate of an anchorite, a blessing in exchange for the gift of a soul to the birth of a new building, but this room is no sanctuary. Instead, I have to run from one wall to the next — pressing my lips or palms against the cool, cruel surface — to reassure myself that there is still space enough for me to move. Turn after turn I find myself begging the room not to close in, warding away the fear that it is shrinking and soon everything will press in until I am encased in steel and cement. "Don't leave me here, Kae —" My vocal chords are raw and splitting as I beg at the emptiness, hating it for what it isn't, as I turn into my own echo. "— l-leave me here, Kae." A hiccup twists in my throat, hunching around his name as though trying to swallow it back protectively, wanting to hold what little I have left within the safekeeping of my own useless body. It seems like enough for now, although I don't know why. Still burning with mixed pride and self-loathing over what brought me here, I resign logic to being a double agent of my own making and race to the thin excuse for double beds on the far side of my cell. The twin shelves of metal taunt me and I hate them for it. "Come. Please, come. Please. Please please please. Come. Come, please —" All at once I am pleading with Kaelen, with the Peacekeepers I threw myself at in a fit of desperation, with the walls, with the phantom ghost of my cellmate, with myself. I know I need something, but I don't know what. My voice unwinds into a loop of incoherent self-echolalia, an endless repetition that fades into the hushed keening of defeat as undefined minutes or hours or days pass in such a frivolous way as to be a profession that time is aspiring to become me. Here dwells the déjà vu of nothingness. I must sleep because I wake screaming, the infinite gray of the room — walls, ceiling, floor — flickering with the fragmented haze of my nightmare. The cement flashes with green, leaves sprouting from the cracks as a centuries-old forest rises up in the burst and bloom of a highly questionable second. Blood stains the dead leaves of my memory as I turn just in time to witness as a Peacekeeper's bullet buries itself in Kaelen's shoulder. They are taking him; they are taking him away from me. No. My babbling wail turns to the murmmered confessions of a girl who has loved to the point of madness, scared only that my captors might sense the innocence I want to keep secreted away. "I-I-I killed them. Me. I k-killed them. I killed them all. Poisoned their liquor. Murderer. I am." Breathing is hard, but I gasp for it with determination, willing my stuttering, shuffled words to be true, even if the only person around to hear now is myself. "Kaelen Dempsey is innocent. Take m-me. Shoot me. Me. Me, me, me —" My wicked, obsessive heart knows there is no lie upon my tongue. I have swallowed all of Kaelen's guilt as though I were a sin eater, greedily claiming his faults for my own. "— is innocent. Me. Poisoned. I am. I am, I am, I am poisoned —" The whispered profession is so earnest that I don't even notice when my ever-spiraling echo betrays me. Distraction has carried me away, the door swinging out in a rush of metal that swears this is it. This is the moment when the walls collide to swallow my soul into the as-of-yet breathless mouth of this prison. Good little mad cat anchorite that I am, I don't fight the moment. I just watch, my palms pressed flat against the wall behind me as though posed in a final, split prayer: Please, come. It is only my pulse, a secret hidden deep with the name I wish to shield, that betrays a more frantic truth.

[rook]

ROUX O'KANE

for your information
i like my demons
'cause they keep me company
i've grown to love my new routine
but on my better days

[/i][/right]

Insanity is overrated. I've lived with insanity for all my life, but I've never once sympathized with it. Maybe I have always been immune to it because the madness has always been around me. It's like a maelstrom of lunacy has been raging since the day I was born, and I'm trapped in the eye of the storm. I am unaffected and uncaring. Does an absence of compassion make you inhuman, or just rational? I guess that makes me some kind of monster in my own right. No wonder they locked me up.

I'm a bastard. They say that baseborn children are plagued with madness. They say that they are weaker and more vulnerable to corruption. I fit the bill there, but then so does most of Panem. Panem must be full of bastards. My mother was fragile. She had a hatred for me because I was always so difficult as a child. I was hers though, I was hers and she threw me out. She was nothing more than a paranoid freak who did everything that her husband asked. He was even madder. The man who played the father figure, but is no blood of mine. He hated me more than she did. It's because of him that I was thrown out on the streets like a dying mongrel.

Madness. I've always been drawn to madness. I expect that my real father was mad too. I expect he shares the same jet black hair and pale face. The gaunt features, the dark eyes, the constant scowl. I wouldn't know. I've never met him.

Molly was mad too. Molly. My own insane pet. Was I any better than my so-called father when I ordered her around? I blackmailed her and manipulated her. I killed her, didn't I? Not directly, but I killed her. That's why I'm here. Because I'm mad. Hah. How pathetic that they think I'm the one who's mad. I'm the most same person here.

It was only fitting that the boy who has lived his life with the mentally strange gets put in a cell with a nutcase. There's only one word for her, and that's mad. Not like Molly mad. Molly was just vulnerable and weak, easily corrupted. Not mad like my fake father. No, he was jealous and selfish. Unloving. Not the same madness as my mother, who was weak and fragile. No, she's a new level of mad. Of all the madness I've known, this kind is not one I can relate to.

Her name is Widower

[/i], which wasn't exactly a comforting thing to learn. It's just as well that I'm not married. She is damaged, maybe beyond repair. I know this because of her whispers, her screams, her pleas. I know a lot about her and I've never even spoken to her. The name Dempsey is not one used lightly in District Two, and even out in Five most folk have heard things. Kiera Dempsey was as insane as they came, and I know all about her, having watched her in the 62nd Games with a grim fascination. Kaelen Dempsey is an even bigger name. The way that Widower talks about him makes me think she knows him better than is advisable.

She says she's done things. She says these things to no one, to an invisible God. She speaks to a deity who will not listen. What is a God if he can hear, but cannot act? Cannot forgive? She's a murderer. I have not said a word during my captivity, but she has told them everything. She confesses down on her knees, screaming to the walls and the ceiling, but never to me. Most of the time I ignore it, but sometimes I watch over with annoyance and without compassion. I'm a monster, remember?

Can she even see me? I've never tried to interact with her or talk to her. I've never wanted to be acknowledged, because I don't want to get tied up in her strange, pathetic life. I remind myself that I'll be out of here as soon as they realize I'm innocent, and putting me in a cell with someone who wakes up in the dead of night to scream her confessions contrasts in such a way that I'll appear less suspicious. They have to free me, they have no body, no proof, no evidence.

A hatch opens and two trays of food slide across the floor. The standard of food is questionable. The tiny carrots barely look orange, whilst the peas are almost gray. Whatever meat is on the tray has been slathered in a thick, greasy gravy. I grunt and rise from my metal bunk, walking over to my tray with a hunched back and a scowl tattooed on my face. I take the tray back to my shelf and sit crossed legged on the metal, eyeing up my meal. I shovel a mouthful of the chewy meat into my mouth and try not to think about what animal it came from. At least the food is better in here than in District Five.[/size][/blockquote][/color][/blockquote]

consider yourself one of my best friends
consider yourself one of my enemies
i wish i could see
i've been tired, down, dirty in these borrow sheets
it's been a bitch of a week

[/i][/right]

---

narrating
emphasizing
questioning
talking
listening

lyrics: Kids in Glass Houses - "Saturday".

graphics: by Rook.

theme: "Clean Slate" by Rook.

notes: thug lyfe