Far Too Young To Die {Colt Hanlon}

[gamemaker kelsier]

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anaïs Nin

I've often wondered, just what it was that made a body able to think.

I know that it has something to do with the brain, or possibly just about everything. Why is it though that I feels things in the pit of my stomach like someone is holding tightly to my intestines? Why does it feel like I can't breathe when I look at the blood that decorates my knuckles. Does my brain do that? Tell my body how to feel? Or do we really have souls that fit inside our bodies like they were designed for us. Sometimes I think I can see souls, following behind the body, chained tightly to it. However, I can only spot them in the late afternoon, when the light shines on them in an odd way. They are long and dark and I suspect that they sound like whispers.

I'd like to say that I've thought through a lot.

Sometimes, when it is very dark and I can't see any light coming through the crack of underneath my door, I wonder if I should have said yes. To what? To the way his voice quivered when he asked me, to the hopeful look in his eyes, to the taste of his skin, to the colour of his tongue, to the sound of his heartbeat late at night, to the way he made me hate him just as much as I loved him, to the many nights I spent sitting by him, waiting for him to respond, to the way his hair stuck up all over in the mornings, to the length of his limbs, to the sturdiness of his hands when they caught me, to the hateful way he'd correct me, to the way he finished my words for me, to his laugh, to the sound of his singing, to the way he played the piano late at night, to the sadness that tugged at his smiles, to the callouses on his hands, to th-

Oh, him.

Yes. Him.

My lips taste of iron and it is from the blood that has run down from my nose. I am dirty with sweat and grime but I am missing my fingernails, my head. Where did I put my head? I don't know, where did you last see it? Oh there. I pick it up and place it back onto my neck, tightening it very carefully by turning it from side to side. It isn't one of those screw on heads, you can't be turning it all around, it isn't healthy.

I am waiting because it is almost time for the next session. It's where they take me into a room and they send Kaelen in. It isn't Kaelen though, he says he isn't. I'm pretty sure it isn't because Kaelen wouldn't hurt me I don't think. Not intentionally, the way this Kaelen does. I have bruises in places I didn't know I could be bruised in. How long have I even been here? I don't know. I might have been able to tell before by the measure of my scars, but I was never free of them before. Now to look at my own skin is to see a work of art. I remember the day that Kaelen came into my cell and it was him, I know it was him because he was there and I felt his skin and I knew the way he tasted. They took him away and never brought him back. I shut my eyes and sway in the darkness, slowly humming to myself as I bring my hands up to the empty air in front of me. I can pretend he is still in my arms.

We dance to a song that I played for him once on the cello. I can hear it in my head. It is like a meadow beneath the stars with trees all around. I miss the stars, I miss the trees, I miss the meadows. Sometimes I pretend that I can see through the cement walls and ceiling that surround, that I can dig through the dirt and find the sky again. I imagine he is up there waiting for me. He never came back when they took him away. It has been ages, years, months. It has been so long since they took him. I wonder if he is dead. I wonder if he is free.

I don't know what I did.

I can't remember why I am here.

They ask me questions all the time, about where I lived, what I was doing in District One, what happened to my family.

I don't know what happened to my family. I ask them each time if something bad happened and they ignore me, telling me I know, I was there. My head is a filing cabinet dumped upside down. I don't know where 'there' was. It's...that word for when it feels like you are walking on the ground but it's lava and you can feel heat rising through your shoes so you clench your fists up tight and want to scream because the floor was meant to be tiled. I locate my feet. They are inches away, toppled over on the ground. I must have kicked them off in my sleep. I drag myself forward and figure out which is which easily enough. The nail on my pinky for my left is gone, taken the time I was pretending I was mute.

When the door to my cell opens, I am intent on finding my index finger.

"Come on Hanlon, you know the drill," they say. It's what they always say but I've always found that curious. I have never met the drill in my life. I wonder how many people have and if it hurts for them to know it, if it burns when it twists it's self into the skin, if pain is something new for people. I think it is because I can remember a time when everything didn't hurt. It's gone now, I am not sure where, I haven't been able to find it. Everything is a labyrinth and everything is gone. I do not know if my heart is ticking like a clock or if it's just a time bomb. Where are you? Here I think, in the bottom of your rib cage. They pull me to my feet and drag me out into the hallway.

Instead of turning left, we turn right. Today we go to the interrogation room. I can't remember what we do there. I like it better then the other room, the one where they take my teeth and never kill me, where m misery is always in and never out. I don't try walking between them. I've always liked the dragging bit where I trail my feet behind and I feel like a criminal. They treat me as one so I suppose I should at least act the part. Sometimes I act rebellious just in case they are bored.

When we reach the interrogation room there is no one there. The mirror is there of course and there are a few items on the table along with the chained manacles, but there is no one. I wonder if he is coming later, the one who torments and asks questions so twisted and confusing it is like he is turning a key in a lock that doesn't fit.

They drop me on the floor and I lie still and quiet while I wait for them to yank me up so I can have my wrists rubbed rough and raw once again. They do not. I hear the door shut behind them when they leave. Seconds pass with no sound. I press my ear to the tile and wonder at it, the cleanliness of it, the shine to it. I've never seen tile so clean. I've learned to fear clean tiling. It means that they clean it a lot. It means that they have to clean it a lot. I whimper and push myself against the wall, waiting for something. This is wrong. I was in my cell. I am in my cell or I am in that other room, the one with the metal instruments on a tray and the straps that keep me down.

I press my hand against the tiling and when I pull it away, a small green sprout sticks out. It begins to grow and I watch entranced as it becomes a small sapling and then I have to move to avoid it's roots dislodging the floor. The floor becomes dirt and I am at home. I am in the gun shop. On the table in front of me there are items. That is why I am here, this is why I am here, they want me to see them.

I crawl forwards and use the edge of the table to haul myself up. It looks like the big oak one that always stood in our living room as I was growing up, but it feels like metal. There are guns on the tabletop, which makes sense for a gunshop. It is Crescendo, it is Descant. My old friends. I don't stop to think about why they might be here, we are in a gunshop after all.

The other two items on the table are not as gun-like at all. In fact, they are rather flat and full of paper. One says 'Colt Hanlon' on a little tab that sticks out the side, the other says 'Kaelen Dempsey'. It has a red line through it. I wonder what that means.

I stare for a moment and then look underneath the table. Grass is growing through the floorboards.

Reaching a decision, I grab my fie and slowly slide it off the table until I have it safe within my grasp. I chance a look at the mirror but I cannot see through it. I wonder if someone watches me or if I am alone in this. Whatever 'this' is. I open the file up, and am introduced to a cover piece with my name and information on it. Turning this piece over, I know enough about myself, I beg-

NO DON'T. Huh? DON'T READ IT COLT, NOT IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU. But it's about me? Why not? Don't I know myself well enough? What's the harm? COLT, LISTEN TO ME, THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW. How do you know? Who are you anyway? YOU. COLT, I'M YOU. But I'm me. We can't both be me. I WARNED YOU.

-in to read.

PEACEKEEPER REPORT, DISTRICT THREE, HANLON GUN SHOP, FIFTH OCTOBER.

>>The Scene at the Hanlon Gun Shop was horrifying upon arrival. We count a total of twenty-three deaths, the only survivors being the murderer and the brother. It seems that Gage Hanlon took his father's guns and shot dead the entire family. Why, we have no idea, but the scene was unlike any we had seen before. Colt Hanlon was found with his mother's lap in his head, trying to make her breath when she was full of six bullets. Gage Hanlon was nowhere to be found. Photo evidence is enclosed.

I drop the paper I was reading, and my eyebrows furrow. That cannot be right. The date says near eleven years ago but my family is alive and well. They've been visiting me, they have been visiting me. I told you not to. Look at what you have done. I do not scream because my throat is confused, that or I left it back in my cell. Blood pools around my feet until I am sitting knee deep in it and my uncle stares at me from the other side of the table. I whisper his name and it feels like I have done so before, but he doesn't answer. I can remember the blood I can remember how contorted his face was I can remember this.

It feels like my head is splitting in two. Colt Please, calm down, it's okay. No it's not. I bend forwards, clawing at my own head, trying to open it to see what is wring inside because it is physically hurting like someone is placing my entire being back. My body shakes and it hurts and it hurts it hurts.

Gage why are you doing this, I asked him and he said because they wanted to hurt you I did this for you Colt don't you see they wanted to send you away well now they can't and I stared at him and I wanted to throw up and I wanted to cry but I didn't know how to and my legs gave out from under me and I fell to my knees because there was sally and her new baby shot down dead and her body was curled around it like she was trying to protect it but it was goner than she was and I screamed at gage and I asked him what he had done with mom and he said that she was dead and I told him she couldn't be because how could she be who killed her I asked him and he said that he did and I laughed I laughed at him because he couldn't have killed her it was mom it was mom it was mom but he had and I think back to how I had been sitting outside reading and I'd heard the shots but I thought it was just dad practicing a new design again but it hadn't been it had been gage killing everyone I knew and loved it had been gage and that was why there had been screaming too because he had killed them he killed them he killed them all.

My older brother murdered my family and that's why I left three.

I scream and reach for descant because I will kill him but he's holding both of them and they are still smoking, barrels still hot and he killed them with the guns that I've worn on my hips for eleven years.

I can't breath I am going to die.

Not yet Colt, not yet, you've survived this long, please, you don't want to die, you're far too young to die, don't, please don't.

I scream and bite my lips until I draw blood and taste it in my mouth between my teeth between my gums upon my lips and I want to throw up. I remember how the iron tastes because I pressed my lips against my mother's when I tried to give her life again but she was already cold having been the first to die.

I sob and bite at my hand, rocking back and forth trying to make the images of their bodies strewn across the floor go away but they won't and they are so present. If I reached out now I bet I could touch them and they would feel real. Would Kaelen feel real if he was here right now, I wish he was here, I need him, I need him. I was there for him when Kiera died, why wasn't he, why isn't he here for me, I need him.

I smack my head against the table leg until the wooden flooring goes away and I am in the tiles and metal room once again. My father stands in front of the mirror and there are bullet holes and I can see his tongue through his cheeks.

I don't want to remember this, I don't want to, I want to think of something else, anything else, anything but this. I reach up and I take Kaelen's file off the table. The red slash through his name scares me I wonder if he is dead if he is dead I don't want to live either.

Remember that night he came home, covered in blood and with a knife?

I open his file up and stare lovingly at his picture. He is all sardonic smile, all eyeliner and mussed brown hair. I miss his hair, I miss his coffee breath, I miss his smile.

"Don't read it Colt," he pleads. I look up to stare at him. He sits underneath the table, all bent funny because he's too tall. A sigh gets caught somewhere between my lungs and my mouth. I've missed you I tell him and I want to reach for him but if I reach out for him he might not be real and I don't know if I could take that. "Baby please, don't read it." But it's too late not too because I am already flipping over the page and reading.

There is nothing to read.

Just a series of photographs.

At the beginning, they are bodies slumped backwards or forwards over a drink, looking far deader than I imagine that it's normal to be. They stare at nothing and it is eerie. I wonder why this is, why they are in his file. I stare, uncomprehending as I flip through photo after photo. There are too many victims I cannot count them. Too many dead. More than twenty-three, maybe the same as twenty-three. I keep flipping and suddenly the image is so different.

There is a girl lying on the floor of some dirty looking bathroom, wearing a dress that is too short and a horrified expression. She holds two hands over a bloodstain on her dress, over a wound in her body, over a knife wound, over where a blade entered her body, over where her life was, over where she was ruined. She looks like a doll, all dressed up and empty of everything. There is no weapon beside her but the caption reads that it was a knife, the caption says the murder weapon is lost but the caption reads that it was a knife.

Remember that night he came home, covered in blood and with a knife?

no, i whisper

not him, i say

he wouldn't, i think

But he had a cabinet full of spices, a book full of herbs. Why do you think he ran to Thirteen when he had Rora and all the rest in One?

The table starts to crumble away in front of me. Pieces of it fall, slowly at first, and then all at once like sand. I try to clutch at it's stability but it doesn't work and suddenly Crescendo and Descant are in my lap. I curl my fingers around their familiarity. The photos all fall to the ground as I stand up and the trees shrink before me, uncertain, afraid. My face is blank, Kaelen is gone. I can feel my heart beating in my chest but I'm not sure still if it's my heart and I wonder again how bodies know what they feel, how they think, how it all works. I wonder if we really do have a soul, I look for mine, but I don't see it behind me, there is no mid-afternoon light here.

Did you know that I made love to a man who murdered people and my entire family is dead because they were murdered by my brother?

Why didn't you tell me?

If you knew, why didn't you say?

Why did you let me go on like this, unable to remember, not knowing that my life was a total joke, a greek tragedy.

You betrayed me.

I wish he was here.

Do you hate him now?

No. I don't think so. I don't know, probably.

Remember that night he asked you to marry him and you told him you hated him even though you didn't?

I know what it is like to be the one who survived, to see your family member's dead body and wonder at why it doesn't sit up anymore, why it doesn't laugh and smile anymore. I understand how it is to look for someone who won't ever be there again. I wonder about the people who related to those in those photos. I wonder how long they waited up before they got worried, if there were some who thought that their mother and father ditched out on them, who never learned the truth. I wonder if when they found out what had happened to them, they swore revenge. I think of the photo of the girl in the club, the one who tried to hold herself together and failed. I wonder if she had ever been in love or if she had died before her first kiss. I think about the brothers and sisters who couldn't find their sister. I think of the people who went to the bar for a drink after a long day's work to try and make money for their families and found that they didn't survive the night. I wonder if they suffered.

I think I hate myself more.

Why? What did you do?

I made myself forget.

You didn't kill anyone.

I might as well of. I love a killer, my brother is a killer. What's the penalty for that?

A life of sadness, and a horrible history.

I don't want it.

What?

You heard me.

I have my guns, I could get out of here, I could escape. Where to? I don't know. I can't go back to One, I can't go back to Thirteen, I can't go back to Three. Where do I go? Maybe there is nowhere for me. Maybe I don't want there to be anywhere for me. I think I deserve this, to suffer. I deserve to waste away in here, to never see the light of day again as long as I live, however long that may be. I don't think I want it to be that long.

Everything hurts see.

I wonder if he ever thought about killing me.

I wonder if the first time we met he thought about stabbing me or putting poison in my food. I wonder if everything he did was to get me alone so he could murder me in some painful way. I wonder if he ever loved me at all, if he just wanted to play with me like how a lion might play with a mouse.

I am hardly significant.

He left me here.

He said he loved me though.

He still left me here.

I glance towards the mirror again and the room is clear, there are no trees coming out between the cracks because I have dug up all my roots and I finally know everything. I think I know how this ends too. I know how I want it to. I take Crescendo and I think about the girl in the club, how she tried to hold her blood in. I wonder if it hurts to die like that. Being stabbed in the stomach is a slow death. I turn the gun so that the barrel rests against my abdomen and I wonder if it is worth it. I'm so numb now, so tired of this. The mystery is solved. I can go now I think.

This can be my punishment. I will die all alone, like that girl in the club. I will suffer.

I pull the trigger and my body stumbles back and I slip, I fall it hurts, it hurts, mom it hurts! Crescendo falls from my grasp and hits the floor with a dirty clang. My hand flies to my stomach and it burns, I am scared, it hurts, blood, there is blood it spreads warm and sticky underneath my hands. I am alone, there is no one coming for me and the door is locked I can't escape from me, why did I do this? I don't want to die, I don't I am afraid, what if it's dark, what if there is nothing what if we just go what if I got to hell what if I lose myself what if Kaelen is there what if he isn't.

A sob escapes from between my lips and my lip curls. It hurts more than anything. Descant is still clutched in my other hand though and I have never really been one to leave a job half done so I pull the gun up to my mouth and open it and I put the barrel between my lips and I wait and I feel the pain spreading but I feel it leaving too, it's easy to not feel it, it's easy to float away because I do it everyday in the other room, the torture room, the one where they told me to stop protecting him because he didn't deserve it and I told them I never would because I loved him.

I'm dying.

I'm dying right now and I am so afraid and it really hurts and there is no adrenaline rush and I feel like I have been split in half. I can't feel my legs and I don't know how to whisper anymore so I shout and I scream an it hurts and there is no one coming for me I am dying I am dying I am dying I want it to stop, please make it stop, please Gage, stop why are you killing them why did you kill them Kaelen why did you do that they were people and if you didn't know me would you have killed me too? I don't understand it hurts, Why what did I do to you, what did I ever do to you please why are you stabbing me please I just want to go home, please my stomach hurts, please someone, anyone

make it stop hurting

I pull the trigger.

[presto]

e.e. cummings

[/presto]