corrupted lungs {ember + rave}

[Ember]

Renevolia Marx  ♠
I searched beyond the clouds, are you there
and I walked sadly onward through the crowd, alone somewhere
and I saw beyond the blur to right where you were
and I beheld a sight so pure

Before, I’d often questioned the concept of deserving. Who’s to say what anyone deserves in this world? Maybe I deserved shitty parents and a dead nanny. Maybe my parents deserved better circumstances, and maybe my nanny deserved better health, and maybe my tulips deserve something greater than the garden I can give them.

Regardless, the only thing I know for sure is that Charlotte Pryce Brownings deserved better.

She deserved parents that lived and a house that didn’t go up in flames. She deserved a world where children aren’t sent off to die every year, and she deserved a world in which she wasn’t one of those children. She deserved a friend that would volunteer to spare her, to suffer for her, to die for her, to protect her, the one shining beacon of light in this world that takes and takes and takes until every one of us is left with nothing. She deserved so much more, and she definitely didn’t deserve me.

There’s a wall behind her house of ashes, a grimy, crumbling wall, graffitied all over. When she’d get into one of her rambling moods, she’d complain about how much of a “fucking eyesore” it was, and I always made a mental promise to paint it for her, one day. But then she was gone and one day became never and all I could envision painting there now is her.

But I know she doesn’t deserve the sentiments of someone who let her die.

There’s a hole in my chest and I can’t breathe and suddenly I realize I’m covered in ash, lying next to the remains of a doorframe, and my tears are black, and all that’s running through my head is her face when that knife went through her chest. A pain she didn’t deserve--but I did.

And that wall is right there, staring me in the face, standing in the very same spot it stood when she walked past so many times. I can see her, her face so clear in this gloom. Her eyes have that misted over look she’d get when she spent too long locked in her head, and her fingers are tracing the graffiti on that damned wall, over and over and over until her hands are dark with dirt. And I find my fingers grazing the soot beside me in the same rhythmic motions, circling and dotting until the message, “Topaz Ross has a big ass”, is etched three inches deep into the ground.

And then Charlie’s giggling, that giggle I haven’t heard in so long, and her laughter fills my head and dips and swirls like music. It grows louder, greater than the pounding of my heart, and my head aches with the sound. I am spinning, spinning faster than I ever have, twirling and leaping in this heap of ruins and nothing matters because she is here and she is laughing and I love her. Yet as quick as I am up doing pirouettes around the remains of a kitchen, I am on the ground, tears leaking from my eyes and dotting the soot, and the laughter is gone.

“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” I choke out. I don’t know where she is but I hope it’s here, and I hope she’s listening. “I’m so, so sorry.”

I draw an X in the dust and fall asleep.

[Deleted]

l u c e

I never liked the idea of burying my sister; kinda funny really, since I never liked the idea of a sister either. Charlotte, though, Charlotte was blood, meaning that, whether I liked it or not, I had to show her whatever respect that came with the ties, no matter how much she belittled me while there was still oxygen making its way to her heart. Back before she stabbed it out on national television. But there's nothing I can change about it, she was given her stack of cards and one of those were that district four lady and her fire knives to match Charlotte's temper, and whether I liked it or not (I can't say I enjoyed watching my sister die, no matter how malicious I am a person and how much of a bitch of a person she was) there was no changing it.

At least she can't fuck things up from inside a grave.

But knowing my sister, my darling Charlotte, only she would be able to find a way. For weeks, weeks, I had people on my end of the business - my business - talking to me about my sister, the fact that she died as if I was a couple lifetimes late of the memo. Personally, I wasn't a fan of it, these few frats talked down about her as if they would've catcalled her from the afterlife, and I was half tempted to skin them. She was spilled Brownings blood, and of the few odds of us left, we still cover each other's asses. Dead or not.

That's the way Brownings work, my great uncle Sully taught me that when Charlotte moved out. There aren't more than four Brownings that actually get along with people, and one of them would be my mother buried under the ashes of my first house. Sully is one of those four of course, he's an outstanding guy, but he also told me that we're Brownings by namesake. If one of us is a cripple, then we're all cripples. Charlotte was a good example of this, but she went out swinging and so nobody's allowed to fucking down talk her.

Somebody in the vine told me about this one girl though, a Wren or a Rena or something of the like, but it wasn't anything special. He just yammered on a bit while I twitched the ring around my finger that I took from Charlotte's body; she took it from the games though (that's one of the few things I do know about what occurred in the 67th) and once she died everything that was her's became mine. I didn't become any type of invested in the conversation until he mentioned that she was Charlotte's friend, and I choked at first. My sister didn't have friends, she had alleyway hook up's and bar fights.

Ridiculous.

Both my sister's behavior and this man's topic, ridiculous, in the near two decades I have been breathing and exhausting for some significant plant's life, I have never, not once, heard of somebody who actually liked my baby sister. I nearly shot my own foot that day for not remembering the name clear enough of the person, because hell I would have paid them a visit had I remembered. But in the end, I am a busy man in a busy world, so that, of course, was when I stopped caring.

It was driving me mad though, because if my sister, this inconsiderately obnoxious child could actually make somebody like her, just imagine what else should could have actually done with whatever dead beat life I thought she had. I wasn't as much interested about somebody caring about my sister, I could care less, but Charlotte is my sister, she's no idiot. She never talked to Sully or I about anything, so how do I know she never robbed a bank or had some stash of Aunt Patty's.

At this point, I was really fucking interested to put it bluntly, for Charlotte could have actually amounted to something worthwhile and I at least wanted to know. See, my family had a real Brownings run of the mill funeral for Charlotte, in the means that Sully gathered a few family members who didn't fully hate the girl and threw some things in her casket, and then we - we being Sully, grandfather Pelton and I - buried her in the backyard of her first house, which just so happened to be a bunch of ashes.

I made this theory, however, that when she was buried ole Aunt Peggy might have threw in something important, since she's always been real heavy on leaving around notes. The last note of her's they found was in my great grandfather Roy's casket, which had led to one of Aunt Patty's stashes. Plus, Charlotte had her own life at one point, and knowing how sneaky a bitch she could be, she could have died with coordinates in her pocket without me even knowing.

My main problem with grave robbing my sister's casket for information is that I hate that lot - Charlotte and I's first home. Every time I pass it or simply think about it I punching each scorched brick into rubble myself. Neither of my parents were poor, and neither were Charlotte and I, but for some reason, for some odd dumb ass idiotic reason, we lived in the slums of district one, and if I hadn't met runaways from eleven through the vines, I would think with my privileged thoughts that we were poorer than they were.

Because that's what we looked liked in that house.

And, sure enough, as I rounded across to the ruins of that first house that the district never got around to cleaning up because it was in the poorer side, and wasn't even worth it with my shovel in hand, I felt exactly like smashing it further into the ground.

I still remember the layout of this house; I remember the way the bathroom door creaked and the way Charlotte always managed to smash her head on that one pipe in the laundry room. I remember how I always laughed at it too, and how upset my mother looked as she knitted from the living room in her great red chair. I remember how my father always slept in that library of his, and how my mother wished it would burn down one day. 

What I don't remember of my first house is a pink haired girl and an X drawn into the ground. At first I thought she was a squatter, but of course, that makes no sense, since first of all why would somebody sleep at a completely burned down site voluntarily. Second of all, why would somebody with pink hair do it. In my line of work, though, you see a few things that make you question, and I have seen a fair share of corpses, of course, so as you can probably tell, I was questioning this girl's ability to breathe. The closer I got, however, the more obvious it was that this girl wasn't dead, but just stupid.

Or insane. 

Once I got maybe five feet away from her, I slammed my shovel on the ground, trying to wake her up from whatever state she was in: hungover, drugged, etc. Hoping more than usual that this girl wasn't actually dead, since nothing is more suspicious than a tattoo'd man holding a shovel over an unconscious girl in a burned lot in the eyes of a peacekeeper. This is the kind of Charlotte-thinking that gets people arrested, making a scene and all, but I have somewhat of a decent reputation, and I'm not losing it to some pink-haired fairy watching me dig up my dead sister. 

Now, I can't say truthfully that I was paying attention to this body as much as I should have been, since as soon as that shovel made contact with the ground I was preoccupied making sure that nobody else was too close to my sister's grave. This girl looked, more or less, alive by the time I turned back to her, and more or less alive is good enough for me, as long as she gets the hell out of dodge.

"Hey ma'am," fuck you, "why are you in my house?"

[presto][/presto]

[Ember]

Renevolia Marx  ♠
I searched beyond the clouds, are you there
and I walked sadly onward through the crowd, alone somewhere
and I saw beyond the blur to right where you were
and I beheld a sight so pure

The day Charlotte died, I didn’t leave this lot of ashes for at least two days. Maybe it was three. I don’t actually remember; I was too busy trying to find the pieces of my heart to notice the passage of time.

I hadn’t wanted to watch the Games. I’d rather have taken my selfish heart somewhere else, somewhere in which I didn’t have to view the gradual destruction of a girl who didn’t deserve it. But the guilt tied me down, and so it was that the only sound in that house during the Games was the TV and my ragged breathing.

And I watched. I watched her eyes shoot bullets through every tribute in that arena before that gong rang. I watched her spill blood with the same kind of ferocity she did everything else with, be it tugging knots out of her mane of hair or helping me dig up dead tulip bulbs in the backyard patch. I watched as she formed alliances and had them ripped apart around her, as that absolute bastard Leon fucked all of them over, as everyone abruptly stopped appearing until only three were left. I watched her glare down her own weaknesses with unfaltering strength, and marveled at her, a survivor on this battlefield of sacrifice and cruelty.

She was just so very authentically Charlie, until the very end, a girl who lived--and died--on her own terms, and said “fuck it” to anyone who disagreed.

“Only children cry,” she’d say, but that wasn’t true, because she didn’t know how it felt to lose her.

Those couple days are a blur. All I know is I stayed in these tragic remnants until the tears ran out and my hands stopped trembling. Which is why, when the sky falls out right next to my face and rattles my skull, I start to cry.

But soon it comes back to me, and I realize it’s been months since the Games, I am lying in the ashes of her old house, and there is a person just feet away from me who is probably wondering what the hell I am doing here.

A vaguely discernible voice reaches my ears, but the ringing, whose cause was apparently the rusty spade in front of me, drowns it out.

“I’m sorry,” I croak out. “what did you say?”

I look up to see my visitor, and my heart stops.

♠

“Could you braid my hair up? It’s in my face and pissing me off,” she said, in that characteristic tone of annoyance.

I begin to weave the strands over and under, and as I do, a small portrait peeking out from under her collar catches my eye. The high cheekbones and angular jaw are reminiscent of only one person: Charlie herself.

“Who’s this tattoo of? The red tones in it are gorgeous,” I ask.

“My dad,” she says hesitantly. That would explain why she’s never showed me before.

“Oh,” I answer softly. “You look like him.”

I finish the braid and tie it off, pinning up some loose strands in the back.

“Thanks,” she whispers, and her eyes flash with heartache as she turns to leave.

♠

“You--you look like her tattoo.” I stutter out. The stranger standing before me possesses all the same features of that portrait inked onto her porcelain skin, albeit arranged a bit differently.

She’d never been very vocal about her family; my knowledge of it consisted mainly of the fact that she’d once had parents and a sister, all of whom died in the flames. This man, however, is completely unknown to me. The questions run rampant through my mind, one after another, but only the most pressing escapes my lips.

“Who the hell are you?”

[Deleted]

l u c e

This entire sight gave me that taste of vomit you get when you eat a lot of sugar, except instead of a risk of diabetes I was high on heartache. See, think what you want to think of me, as a business man I'm supposed to be an embodied cold front anyways, but in my heart is a sweet spot for this old place: the house, the neighborhood and whatever's left of my childhood. I mean, not so much the house, the thing was practically a festering red rot before my mother and father even bit it in. The environment though, that's what really gets me. On the corner of my house lot, I can still see where I used to play with those stupid glass marbles with that one boy, Elliot, and he accidentally knocked mine into a gutter so I accidentally knocked his face with my size six boots at the time.

Which was, arguably, one of my favorite memories.

No way was I an excessively abusive child though, in fact me kicking Elliot Lowe in the back of the head was probably the most malicious thing I've done in my lifetime, without enough cause of course. In fact, I was always one of the best behaved on our street, me and that brunette, Dulcie. But she grew up to be a prostitute, while I'm actually giving back to my community in the form of something other than hormones. Then there was Desmond and Tiras, who Elliot told me were inbreeds and at the time I hadn't known what that meant, so of course I asked Uncle Sully, who brought up my Aunt Peggy. At the time I didn't catch it what he said, but at least now I know why her and my Aunt Patty look so much alike.

This was almost the same stress my Uncle Sully almost got married to his, at the time, fiancee, Francis, except Grandpa Roy had something against it and burned the entire thing down like a fool. Francis didn't die in the fire of course, only Uncle Sully's love for him, so the wedding was called off and Uncle Sully attended Francis's funeral nearly two months later; why he died we aren't sure, but I still think Grandpa Roy helped dig that man's grave for a reason.

Now, I've never had a special place in my heart for any special man or woman, I'm mostly married to my job you see, but I'm not saying I'm against finding one either. The one time Charlotte and I caught up after she decided she was smart enough to live on her own, she went on about this one person and of course, I told her it wouldn't work out. Marriages don't work out in this family, somebody always ends up dying in them - my parents, Aunt Patty, Grandpa Pelton's wife. She, of course, told me I was a dick and also that she would never talk to me ever again. So, I guess Charlotte never did anything too special with the unlucky bastard, since she died at seventeen, or maybe she did, who cares.

Honestly, I think the banshee owes me more of an apology and a thank you, I mean half of her pride work on her body was because of me after all. First time ink broke into the walls of skin sculpting my sister was from a pen I was holding, and her first completed tattoo was a photo of our father on her neck. She never shut up about it either, a thirteen-year old Charlotte half-crying, half-screaming while jumping around our Uncle Sully's house when I first gave it to her, can you even imagine that?

I was there, and I fucking can't.

It's insane though, I can recall all these memories of Charlotte's "devil may care" self as thirteen, and Uncle Sully's first attempted marriage, and my glass marbles, and unfortunately Dulcie, but I can not, for the fucking life of me, remember where this pink haired girl crawled the fuck onto my lot from. From her tone of voice, her complete blunt half-shouting of, “you--you look like her tattoo,” I almost took her as a long lost cousin of mine. Completely fucking crazy. She looks mad at least, as if she's gonna start speaking out of tongues the longer I look at her until I roll my eyes. Manics.

"Who the hell are you?"

I chuckle at first, ("who the hell are you?") crazy, this random ass lady plops her-mess-of-a-self on my home, and questions me as if it wasn't my goddamn last name burned into the ground and my family buried feet away. She's a tombstone on my front door, this girl, and I don't even know what casualty brought her here. Who the hell am I? Manic. "I'm only a business man," here to collect my grievances in the form of Charlotte's fortunes. It's mine anyways, from death her will goes to the first Brownings to go for it.

"Just here to reclaim a family diadem, so long as I don't bother anybody," I said it smirking, I could feel it in each syllable I said before squatting to eye level with her. "Now," give me one reason not to bury you along with those graves out there, "who are you?"

[presto][/presto]

[Ember]

Renevolia Marx  ♠
I searched beyond the clouds, are you there
and I walked sadly onward through the crowd, alone somewhere
and I saw beyond the blur to right where you were
and I beheld a sight so pure

My mind is racing, searching for some scrap of information about this person who shares Charlotte’s cheekbones and hair and eyes of burning coal. But there’s nothing to be found, and so I sit there in the dust, even more dumbfounded by his response.

“I’m only a business man, just here to reclaim a family diadem, so long as I don’t bother anybody.”

This manner of speaking, the way his d’s roll off his tongue and the words are forced out of his mouth on a slight lilt, they are reminiscent of only one person, a person whose words are etched into the veins of my heart.

♠

There is a girl lying in my front yard.

Hair the color of ink, lips the color of blood, porcelain skin laced with kaleidoscopic tattoos, and flaming eyes gazing at the sky.

I think, I think that I would like to draw this girl.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“Sometimes it seems pretty fucking impossible to figure out, fairy girl. But I think I’ve finally got it. Who am I? I am no good for anyone.” she spits out, her stare never flickering.

I understand her. And I am intrigued by this girl, lying in my front yard, with her eyes on the sky but her head in the dark. And I think, I think I would like to find out why.

“What can I call you?”

Her eyes shift and land on mine, and I can feel her stare soften.

“Charlotte. No. Charlie. You can call me Charlie.”

“Well, Charlie, would you like to come inside?”

And as we make our way back to the front door of this home ringed with isolatory emptiness, I think, I think I would like to know this girl.

♠

"Now, who are you?"

I look around me for the first time since waking, and I realize there is something drastically unnerving about this encounter.

This man, whoever he is, thinks I am utterly fucking insane.

And maybe he’s right: aren’t I, after all, the one who wrote “Topaz Ross has a big ass” in the dirt until my fingers hurt and the apparition of the dead girl I’m in love with disappeared? Why wouldn't he think I'm crazy?

♠

“Caroldra, why don’t Mommy and Daddy hug and kiss anymore?” I inquired of my ever-exhausted nanny.

“Well, ‘Volia baby, sometimes ya think ya love someone, but ya spend too much time with ‘em and ya don’t love ‘em like ya used to. And sometimes, people like yer mama get real sad for a long time for not much of a reason, and ain’t nothin’ can cheer ‘em up.”

“Is that what happened with you and your husband?” I asked.

“Not quite, baby. What happened there is we loved too strong, and after he got sick and passed, it hurt me for a long, long time, made me crazy. And there wasn’t nothing anyone could do to cheer me up or fix me, either.”

I sat for a long time, pondering the kind of hurts that couldn’t be fixed with a bandage and a kiss.

She broke the silence with a question: “‘Volia my love, promise me one thing, will ya?”

“Okay.”

“Never fall in love, baby. It’ll tear ya up.”

♠

Once, Charlie told me I cling to memories too much to be healthy. I had to let go of things, she said, or else I’d never find peace with myself, rolling the past over in my head until kingdom come. But I dreaded forgetting, I dreaded waking up and not remembering how her voice sounded, how her eyes flashed when she was angry, how her hands held mine with a gentleness I hadn’t known existed within her. I cling tight to memories because they are all I have left of so many things, before they dissolved or disappeared or worst of all, I ruined them.

And so, when I look this man in the eye and am hit with both foreign and familiar in one stare, I answer his question.

“I am Renevolia Marx, and I am no good for anyone.

Especially Charlotte Pryce Brownings.”