Every Other Freckle :: [Dahlia Widower // OPEN]

[L△LIA]

devour me devour me if you really think that you can stomach me I loved him like crazy, not understanding how a feeling could become fatal until something within me died for him. Kaelen Dempsey already tried to kill me once, poisoning me and abandoning my fading body where he thought I'd never be found, but this is different — this isn't something a girl can so easily come back from. I don't know what my heart is for anymore. They say Phantom Limb Syndrome can happen when a person's arm or foot or whatever else is cut away, but the memory of it remains like a ghost insisting everything is as it has always been. Supposedly there's an itch in the air, a place of emptiness that still feels as if it holds flesh and bone. Within the cage of my ribs, there is nothing except vacant insanity... but my blood aches as it floats through, like pale hands reaching out from the river Styx. I won't ferry The Damned to salvation, not this time. For years I've been the constant sacrifice for him, laying my pathetic body out on the altar of his idealism over and over and over... and maybe the rest of the world has been right all along. Maybe Kaelen truly is terrible and my love is a wasted whisper, unheard and unaffecting. That or maybe his poison never cleared from my body and I've been rotting from the inside out all along. No matter what, it all comes back to him. I've always been his and yet he's never been mine and I was just pretending that wasn't tearing me apart, limb from phantom limb, until he finally realized that I was the only person on this earth capable of loving every grotesque detail of him and suddenly — No, no, no, no, no — In mid-afternoon, the main street of District Two is so crowded that no one notices as my hand slips into the pocket of the man passing me by, lifting both his wallet and a pack of cigarettes before slipping away. I am the ghost now, disappearing in a flicker of flame and an exhalation of smoke as I make my way to a local cafe and take a seat on the outdoor patio, furiously puffing away as I order a cup of coffee with that stranger's cash. The sun lays the whole world out before me and even in this brightness, I can't see anything I want. Kaelen has been quietly following me through the forest for at least two weeks now, as if we've swapped souls and now he is the one so desperate for me. I should be ecstatic, but instead my stomach turns, sick with unnameable disgust. Something about the way he has surrendered to me, a last resort, is enough to make me want to run from him without looking back, sneaking through the fence to a place where I knew he couldn't follow: civilization. There are enough wanted posters of his infamous face floating around that he can't do anything except prowl the border, pacing through the trees and wondering if I'll ever come back for him. Except, in my head, his footsteps through the grass sound strangely like the sound of my own feet on the concrete floor of the Detention Center, when I was caged for his sake. Shaking the thought from my head, I exhale a trio of smoke rings to the sky, my head thrown back and wild curls tangling with the breeze. After months spent in the forest and my stint in government captivity, I must look a little savage around my edges. Now and then the eye of a passerby will catch on me and I shoot them dirty looks in response, the face of a good girl turned sour. I wish I knew how to turn the corners of my mouth into something truly intimidating or even terrifying; after devoting my heart to a serial killer, it shouldn't be so difficult and yet I know I was never evil for him. If I were, I'd have become one of his victims, not just a failed attempt. Still, I can't help going through the motions. "What are you looking at?" My voice is laced with bitterness as I glare at the guy sitting at the next table over, but the sound is still high enough to be pitched with sugar instead of the bad girl rasp I was aiming for. An exasperated sigh chases after the question and I don't know if it's dedicated to this stranger or myself or the persistent everything of Kaelen, but I take another drag off my stolen cigarette and tap the ash onto the saucer of my coffee cup. "Can't a girl be annoyed without being judged for it? Or is that a crime around here?" There's an itch within my chest that says it is, that I've done wrong and deserve to be punished for it. I know that it's a lie. If I tore my ribs apart, there would be nothing behind them, but my phantom heart has always been crazy and I can't help reaching out to its echo.