Monsters are Men. //Calypso

[gamemaker kelsier]

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[atrb=style, word-spacing: 1px; text-align: justify; opacity: 0.6; padding: 35px 10px 5px 10px; border-radius: 5px;]The first rock hits the water with such force that I swear I can hear it sizzling. Automatically, my hands wrap around another one, numbly picking up rocks and tossing them in one fluid movement. I feel like a robot, built with only one function. I feel the entire ocean fill my lungs and I spit it out again in a soaring scream that tackles the ugliness of the peaceful blue sky that is above. I throw another rock and it hits a wave, burrowing into it like Ewe's finger into the bowl of whipped cream we had once. The cream was meant for the strawberries, but it was so sweet and good that we'd ended up licking the bowl clean. I scream again, this time it pierces the area around and birds fly up from the trees and ground. The strength of the output of noise seems to take up all of my body and it crumples down with the echoes, curling in on it's self and then bursting free again. I dig both hands into the pebbly beach and come up with handfuls that I toss into the water. Once a pile leave my hand, another is swooped up with clawed fingers. I will dig the entirety of the beach into the sea before my anger subsides. I don't think it ever well, it steams up inside me like a crayfish, and there is nothing that can melt it's ice. My little brother has been reaped. My little brother is on a train right now, headed for the Capitol and I don't know if I will ever see him again. My little brother will get kicked, punched, stabbed, and there will be nothing I can do about it. All I'll be able to do is watch as fate's tide takes him down. My very bones rage with it. I have to be there, I have to protect him. I'm the only one who can, the only one who knows what he needs. I'm the one who notices when his leg is hurting too much and I'm the one who bends down to give him a piggy back ride. I'm the one who gets mad at bruises on his face and deals with the kids who did it. I'm the one who has spent long nights stargazing in the tree house that dad and I built for us. I'm his older brother, I am the one who should be in the arena, protecting him. It should be me. I kick at the very stones I stand on in anger, sending up a spray of pebbles and sea weed. I want to kick the ocean for it's cruelty, I would if I knew it would help. I feel sick, disgusted, like I'll never be able to eat again. My insides are raging war with my skin, I feel too hot, too tired, too messy. I wish I was fourteen years old again in the worst of ways. I could have volunteered. I hated being fourteen, I still sort of bothered going to school and I was ready to stuff my head in the sand and never come back out. Ewe is the one who kept me from doing anything drastic, he's the one who never looked at me any different, who called me cool and actually believed it. Even in that tiny little room in the justice building where the man told me I had two minutes, he still looked at me with those eyes. I'll never see that look on his face again. That thought is what kills the electricity in the air. I drop the pebbles that I had just scooped up. They fall like rain to the ground. This time when I fall to my knees I stay there, head lowered, breath coming hard and quick. My hands roll up into fists and attack the ground roughly. My knuckle go raw, and then start to bleed from hitting the stone but I can't stop. My body is seething, everything inside of me knowing that I have to be there, I have to go to where my brother is and save him. I have to. I can't, it's impossible. The knowledge of it overwhelms me and I feel nauseous. I live in a gated community, and that means there is no going in or out. There re hundreds of people in this place that I will never ever meet, hundreds of people who will live and die without seeing the sea, or the mountains, or a desert. I am one of those hundreds. I could have a soul mate, but she could be down the street from me, or in the middle of District Seven. I will never know. My brother is in the Capitol, one train ride away, but he might as well be on the moon because he is unreachable. I can do nothing for him here but watch. A growl forms in my throat, then a scream. I throw my head back with it and I already feels raw. salt land on my cheek and I realize it is from me, I am crying, and there is nothing I can do to stop the tears from falling down my cheeks. I do not even bother trying. There is nothing I can do. I am powerless to save him, my little brother. I let my head fall forward again, bits of hair falls in front of my face, and I bring two trembling hands up to cover my eyes. They are bloody and in some places, pebbles stick to the knuckle. I enjoy the sting of it. I am powerless to save Ewe. What use am I then. No matter where I sleep, Y o u a r e h a u n t i n g m e , But I'm already there, I ' m a l r e a d y t h e r e .

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[✨ zozo.]

[presto] C A L Y P S O L E T O I KNOW YOU CARE I SEE IT IN THE WAY YOU STARE. [/presto] SHE IS wandering when she finds him in the daylight. Mandatory reapings leave her with a sense of uneasiness. She is not one to run away from her troubles - rather than face them head-on, to tackle them with all her might, demand them to stop their wrongdoings or face the consequences. And the place in which she feels the most insecure is silly, for someone from Four. The shore is supposed to be their life source, their second home, an escape from the real world. But it has brought her nothing but nervousness ever since she was a little girl, struggling to breathe underneath a mass greater than her eyes could see. It was not the water that brought her such discomfort but the endlessness of it. How creatures lurked beneath the waves, the changing tides in the blink of an eye, nightmares and dark stories spun from the depths no man has ever ventured in before. Such fear-striking paralyses forced her body to sink to the floor, struggling to keep herself afloat whilst her father barked muffled instructions and her sister laughed from ashore. Calypso can't swim, Calypso can't swim, Calypso can't- - be dealing with such silly childhood fears. So she found herself wandering towards her greatest weakness, cautious but determined. Yet a fondness for the sea (from afar, of course) has always settled in her bones - perhaps it was her heritage, part of her very core that yearned for something of home - for she understood it's systems. Always yearning for something beyond it's reach, slamming into the shoreline time after time, clawing for another inch wave by hammering wave. Sighing for something it cannot have, no matter how many times it tries to prove itself worthy. Stories have filtered through her ears about creatures of the deep that listen to your thoughts, absorb your dreams and sometimes, if you're lucky enough, grant your wishes. Playground games of hearing the whispers of the shoreline through seashells have long since left her peer group, preferring lighters and music to conch's and echoes, but she lets her guard down just this once. I loved my sister, she thinks to the ocean. I kept her safe. Surely she should have loved me for that? (The sea does not reply, of course, because they are silly, childish ideas - but whatever humanity she tries to conceal outside of the Love Club sighs inside of her.) I did the right thing. Right? Silence follows. The ocean has spoken. Still, she doesn't shift her perspective. Doubts come late at night when she thinks of childish delights and simpler times, succumbing to a wave of sleep as it drags her down to slumber by heavy eyelids for anchors and sheets of white as sails. But echoes of heartbroken screams have always awoken her from guilt-ridden dreams. At first she thinks it's the sirens screaming their answers to her - answers that can only be heard where they reside, deep underneath the water. She is a lighthouse and the screams call for her, her beckoning light needed underneath the darkness of the water to guide them home. Perdita's muffled chant starts up again in-time with her racing heart and she sinks, ever-so-slowly, back into the memory. There is sunlight above her - and bubbles, bubbles of air, her precious air, blurred faces of her father and her sister that she claws at - but the water drags her limbs down second by precious second, screaming lungs from a screaming little girl fighting the water. But she's become the tattle-tale, the siren caller, for the very first time and the ocean wants its precious creature, it wants to take her home as she screams for help and for safety and for someone or something to lift her from this crime as the ocean steals away her life and Calypso can't swim, Calypso can't swim, Calypso can't swim, Calypso can't- - breathe. Because it's him, the artist in the night. No, not an artist, she thinks - a criminal. But all her evaluating through night after terrible night has lead her to question herself yet again (she's getting awful good at that lately) - is art really a crime? No. But her next actions are. He can't see her - perhaps he can hear her. After all, she could certainly hear him. Regardless, as her shoes crunch against the shells and stone, unwanted debris from the ocean left discarded and helpless against the rocky shore, she comes to a halt beside his grieving frame. (Take a risk, the sea calls - but she cannot hear it on the ground. Dive in.) She does anyway. If she can face the ocean currents headstrong, then why does infiltrating through his boundaries seem so uneasy? Perched next to him upon the sand and shells she spies his hands, tainted with red paint - no, it's not paint at all - and simply sits. And she listens. And she waits. Nothing, or nobody, makes a sound. Today, the tattle-tale sings no song. And in the silence, she thinks can see him for the first time. template by chelsey

[gamemaker kelsier]

[atrb=cellSpacing,20,true][atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 400px; padding: 0 0 0 0px; border-radius: 10px 10px 0px 0px; background: #ffffff; background-image: url(http://i.imgur.com/CDkjvqf.png); background-repeat: no-repeat, padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 35px; bTable] e y e s a w.

[atrb=style, word-spacing: 1px; text-align: justify; opacity: 0.6; padding: 35px 10px 5px 10px; border-radius: 5px;]I can hear the rocks screaming in pain beneath the feet of someone else but I ignore it. Where I'm usually always calm and cool, I can't find the strength within myself to be collected. My face feels hot beneath my hands, but I don't remove them. If I can't see the ocean and it's tossing waves than maybe I can't be angry anymore. I press my hands so hard to my cheeks that it hurts, bone presses against bone, the thin layer of meat and skin all but forgotten in my body's grief. I am wilting, all the glory in my anger stealing my life blood, when I take my hands away I will have aged twenty years. My brother might never reach fifteen. By the time I am eighty years old, his bones might have rotted long ago. We were supposed to grow old together, to take over Dad's fishing business. It wasn't supposed to be this way, he wasn't meant to get reaped. Everything has gone wrong. Sorrow leaks into my systems, wedging in between my bones to pool in the bottom of my abdomen. I feel heavy with it, every movement becomes difficult. In the back of my throat is the taste of salt. Everything is salt, I am salt. I am water and salt. I am blood and sweat, tears and stone. I am heavy as a feather and as light as a weight. My whole body shakes with the effort of feeling, of this emotion. It doesn't know what to name it. It is similar to grief, but more like hatred, similar to anger but more like sorrow. My whole heart is conflicted to the point where it doesn't know what to do and with one tap I might fall away, a formless dust. I can't take my hands away, I have to hold myself together. I hear someone settle beside me on the millions of tiny pebbles that make up this particular beach. I don't know who it is. I can't remove my hands to find out. We sit there in silence for a while, nothing but the surf hitting the beach to tell us that time still goes on. I should feel discomfort about having someone here, but I can't bring myself to feel anything but the slow rush and ebb of the horror that slips against my bones. I don't know how to wrap my head around the fact that in the space of seconds, my brother was ripped from safety and taken from me. This feels like a nightmare but I have already felt the eek of pain that should wake me up. There will be no waking up this time. That is the most horrible thought of all. After many minutes have gone by and my body has stopped contracting with racking sobs, I part my fingers the tiniest bit, which takes great effort. The figure beside me is that girl from the other day, with hair the colour of a raven's feather and a moral code seemingly as straight as roll-up measuring tape. I do not feel shock to see her there, I do not feel anything. Silently, I regard her. She is still heartrendingly beautiful and I don't know if it's just because my heart is broken already or if her presence has shattered it further. I don't know how she can know me, find it easy to sit beside me on my pedestal of despair. I want to jump up and challenge her, ask her if she's pleased I'm so upset, ask her if she thinks this is justice in the flavour of karma. My hands curl into fists, painfully against the dried blood. A few pebbles fall off, I hear them clatter against the ground. I press my fingers against my eyes, trying to shut them off, to stop the tap from flowing. I can't find the switch. All there is to do is to hold them closed. A soft groan escapes my lips, the last sound of sorrow that makes it's way out as if in closing. The anger has worked it's way through my system, and now I only feel tired. My bones ache. The last time I was this angry I worked myself into such a frenzy that I slept for a day straight. I have run out of strength to beat the ground with, so instead of with my fists, I lash out with my tongue. "What do you want. Come to gloat?" When I speak, my voice is ragged, far more broken from my angry screams than it should be. I sound so weak that it makes me grit my teeth in further hatred for myself. No matter where I sleep, Y o u a r e h a u n t i n g m e , But I'm already there, I ' m a l r e a d y t h e r e .

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[✨ zozo.]

[presto] C A L Y P S O L E T O THESE MOMENTS CAN'T REWIND 'CAUSE THIS LOVE IS A CRIME. [/presto] THAT STINGS. She doesn't feel triumphant. She doesn't really feel anything - well, anything but that. Words are weapons in the right set of hands. Words are deadly, words are lethal. Words like 'He stole our bread' and 'I wish you were dead' and 'It's for your own good' and 'What do you want. Come to gloat?' They all make their mark, all hack away at her insides until she is nothing but disintegrating dust or sand falling through the spaces between her fingers. Words made her strong, once upon a time. Words put the crown upon her head as she sat upon her throne of do-gooders and thieve-killers and the world was her kingdom, with a sword of a tongue and only the very best crowned her knights in shining armor. (She used to think she was tough, too. Until her armor rusted away to nothing but bare skin and false, empty words. Just a broken little girl with her broken little toys.) All that was left was a silly little girl who couldn't swim but could tell tales with a flick of her tongue and send those most unfortunate souls that heard her cries to the depths of the ocean. And she began to realise that nobody really liked her either way - armor or not. Words would clink against her armor and she would laugh at their measly attempts to hurt her. She still does. But at times when the world catches her off guard and she stings across her skin and feels their words within her rib-cage she realises that she cares. And caring never used to matter - at least not to strangers of the Love Club. Not to her sister, not to her parents, not to mysterious boys in the dead of the night who grieve for a loved one stolen away by two simple words: a first name, and a last. "No," she retorts defensively, hurt laced in-between the syllable and a huff of air from her lungs. It surprises her when people assume the worst in her, even though it shouldn't. She may not realise it, but she has done some terrible, terrible things. Things seen as right and good by those she aspires to be, things she knows in her heart of hearts were the right thing to do. (Right?) "You don't want to hear that, do you?" The words tumble from her lip-chewed mouth into the empty air. Her old self might have told him that he should be proud - but she's right: he doesn't want to hear that. It's a stupid question, an obvious one, but what the hell does she know? (What had she wanted to hear when her sister locked herself away in her room and vowed never to speak to her again?) She doesn't know. She probably never will. But what she received was silence, so silence she will give. (What do you say to someone who's just lost his family? Sorry doesn't seem to cut it but that's all she can seem to reel in from her shallow self.) Reapings leave a vulnerable impression upon her and it takes everything she has to stitch herself back up where the seams have torn, but that doesn't mean accidental honesty won't slip from her tongue every once in a while. She's only human, after all. template by chelsey