memories left by the day ✞ attend&anyana

[Deleted]

a n y a n a.

There was always something I loved about St. Tiras's. It was not the men if anything, even the best of them were awful; one of them tried to adopt Penelope, nearly choked her out in the back room. Our manager is not a complete saint, but he has a soul at the very least. Enough to never sell us out into danger. Of course, not enough to give us all a warm welcome, the kindest comfort he could find for me were sold in the words "The name's Bruno," before he left again.

Being brought here never meant much at first, it never does to anybody. It is hard to tell, a lot of the time - how these girls feel, truly feel. We're a sisterhood here in a way, branded into our bone marrow by the contracts sold out from under our heels. The entire lot of us understand what the rest has lost, even without the need for tongues. For the ones who still have tongues, they seem to have lost more than unspoken words. It is a lot easier to suffer silently, in a way, not being able to say the wrong words at any given moment comes as kind of a silver lining. Avoxes among us, we just relearned how to speak through smiles and giggles; though not entirely the same, bowing our heads and covering our mouths to hide what was once our's.

And I crack a smile at the girls surrounding me, all dressed in lace and frill because dolls sell quicker. Mabel is smoking in the corner, while Penelope tries to cover the bruise marks around her neck and right eye with make up. In the center of our back room is Rhea, whispering Alice about something she over heard Bruno mention. They both look excited and it surely must be, there is not much I can hear Rhea say from cross-legged across the room. Both of them seem happy despite Mabel and Penelope looking miserable, but I'm always smiling when us five are off duty.

Us five are the "dolls," the most pixie looking; the most expensive happy endings. 'Men' like Penelope's red hair, Mabel's soft eyes (Rhea told me once that they used to be less dull,) Alice and I's faces and Rhea's tongue. So they pay extra, for something 'extra,' because us five are not woman in their eyes. Even the ones with tongues, and not even just us five, the entire lot of us are just their play things. Just porcelain on a shelf, looking a hammer in the face. That is why I smile when us five are together, because for those few moments when we are not being rented we are just women.

I smile, because for now none of them are Kaya, or Sampson, or Yanika. They are just another broken family of mine.

For a moment I hesitate before moving back into the main lobby from my break - you never really get used to the bright lights like they say you will. Mabel's cigarette smoke trails from the door, but under the mixing of male cologne and egos, the smell of smoke lathered on my skin is left unnoticeable. Shoulders firm, I walk past the line of bar stools and weak men, unbroken yes, yet to break and survive is a thing called growth. Strength. For twenty one years, I have been broken and rebuilt, and I am still standing.

Perfect. Strong.

Although I would be successful at it, it is not my job nor my place to be stronger than the men who will pay for me. Strong. Instead, I just have to prance, sit, like a doe being hunted, except I have no chance of escape, because the price of my freedom is less than the price on my head. My job is not to be a woman, but "to be desirable," the main words ever reached from Mabel's red lips to my ears. Two years trained by her, how long until I pick up ashes and smoke too?

Strong, "be desirable," my eyes are soft like a dove's, while my face is stoic, modifiable by imprints. The sooner a bidder, the sooner I am no longer in this lobby, no longer an auction to be bought. I find solace in the lobby sofa, textile rubbing through the frills and stitching of the white lace - "they're made to be destroyed, like us," Mabel's lines are always the easier ones to remember. Lips parted, breaking for air to reach my lungs, I'm left a relative fluid statue, breathing but void of life.

In this lobby, they are all just looking for a doll anyways.

[cass]

a t t e n d

The sun disappeared behind the horizon like a drop of hope in an ocean of disbelievers thirteen times whilst he sat in that cage. Thirteen times it slipped in-between the cracks of the wooden prison he sat in where the air seemed to smell of mould and blood and death. At first he’d wondered whose body had been in here before his, how many people had died before he had been sentenced to this doom. The air had bellowed the lyrics of a death song; it’s twisted darkness clawing at his scarred skin as soon as he’d been pushed into its confines. He’d breathed it in, letting the darkness sink into his body, accepting the fate he’d been sentenced to. It burned holes in his lungs, and the first few hours were agony. He had no real understanding if why he was there, he’d done nothing wrong.

They’d hurt him, punished him and left him for death when he had done nothing. He’d done his job, he’d let that foul rich lady play with him, touch him and present him to her friends. He’d let them all do as they had wanted with his body. The mere thought of their touches still made him flinch. He’d hated the way they’d looked at him, their eyes hungry, as though he had been some item, a bought possession to be used as they deemed fit. That was what happened to Avoxes after all. But then that greedy, jealous son of theirs had hit him and hit him and beaten him and hurt him. Even when every inch of him had screamed to fight back he hadn’t. Somehow he had still ended up being shipped off, being whipped and left to rot.

Thirteen times he had stretched out his pale fingers and felt the warmth of the sun on his sickly skin. When he’d gazed downwards at the light that filtered in his eyes burned, the cracks in the wood allowed for no more then a few hours of light each and everyday. He’d hold his hand out, fingers grazing the rays that seeped into his cage, he’d stare at his hand as the light slipped past his fingers, he’d twirl the fingers, watching as it moved and danced and changed, knowing that, unlike him, it was free to leave whenever it wanted. And every single day it did. And he’d watch, he’d watch as the shadows lengthened and the light, which had once encompassed his entire hand slip to the tips of his fingers. He’d watch the dust and dirt swirl in the lights reflections, settling over his skin and he’d watch as it slipped away, like a glove being stripped off.

No matter what, though, he knew it would always return.

Those were the few hours he loved; those were the few hours that kept him sane. On the thirteenth day Attend Cage did not see the light. (“We need a man, a trial of sorts, have you got one for us to use?”) At some point between the night and the day a man had come into his prison and shoved a needle into his arm. (“Yes, I do. We’ll bring him to you.”) The light still came, as loyal and trustworthy as ever. It slipped into the cracks of his cage and remained there for a few hours, slipping, slipping and fading, lighting up the space where his hand had always been to reveal nothing. Sometimes Attend wonders if the light misses his touch, because he knows that it still returns, and he knows that it always will.

”He seems good enough. What’s with all the scars though?”

”That couldn’t be helped. Will he do?”

”Yes. He seems desirable enough.”

”Very well, return him when you-“

They dance had the edge of his subconsciousness. With a groan he awakes, legs shifting through the material that wraps around them. It smells clean and fresh, as though the scent of the dead has been forbidden to enter.

”He’s awake.” The voice is brisk, it’s a female, and seconds after registering the words strong hands thrust him upwards, roughly shoving him against a wall. His feet scramble for a purchase, sluggish and weak. Opening his eyes he blinks rapidly, trying to gain an understanding for his current situation, as the fog clears, and his view becomes clearer he notices a lady standing a meter or so in front of him. She’s staring right at him, as their eyes meet she moves forwards, roughly grabbing his face and tugging it upwards to meet hers. ”Tch.” She huffs, a scowling forming on her face, he’s still rather out of it, and doesn’t have the strength to pull his head out of her iron grasp.

”Take him to get cleaned. I’ll have one of the girls show him what to do.” She lets go, spinning around; he doesn’t see where she disappears to, as the two men holding him begin to drag him forwards. Each of them are holding tightly onto his forearms, he’s been so numb to his surroundings that he hardly releases that their fingers are digging painfully into his skin. Instead he attempts to keep up with their demanding pace. They round a corner and before he knows it they’ve opened a door and he’s dumped into a room.

[Deleted]

a n y a n a.

It was only twenty minutes at most - the first few moments wasted away in rubbing my palms against the rough fabric of the lobby sofa, the rest wandering the lobby to find the first person to pay. Boots clicking against the hardwood floor like applause, my wide eyes and set eyebrows hunting for that blessing, that person to get me out of this lobby so I am able to return to those girls. The men hosted in this brothel always surprised me; one man only had one eye, the other replaced with what seemed like a stop watch, and the capitol hair colors foreign to district two painting my peripheral with turquoise, lavender, mauve. In this sea, I'm the only brunette alive.

Fingers pressed into my wrist, dull nails digging into my veins and I nearly choke in a gasp, creatures and vultures this crowd but you never get used to the rough palms. My heart rate skips, what if I receive Penelope's fate? Uncultured hands wrapped around my throat, knuckles meeting tender flesh of a right eye like the sun hitting the horizon as it fades. I panic, balling my free hand into a fist before hitting the latched's wrist. Heat pangs to my neck, my throat, my face, as the words "fuckin' dirty whore," laced along my dress reaches my ears. And I shutter, because for a second I forgot who I was.

A whore.

I forgot that my very job was to be grabbed, that my very job was to return to that back room and return to those girls after, and it's goosebumps that line my soft skin. In my wide eyes, innocence still tries to creep its way back, and my heart flutters. Penelope, a whore, I am a worker, but masked by my pride I still am not able to be toyed with like that, to allow blackened eyes and busted lips. I sacrificed my tongue, why is that not enough?

Before he is able to reclaim a position on my arm, I curl my wrists into my chest; this entire time, these two years plus I've spent living like this, like Anyana, only, I have never forgotten what my role is. What my niche is in this society, so why am I slipping now? I slip from the crowd, knocking shoulder first into a lady before twisting into Bruno. Smashing face first into his crew shirt, and then trying to pick the pieces back together before he could notice. The drum shots in my chest burn out after a minute; Bruno isn't an amazing citizen, he runs a brothel in all honesty, but at least he is a man worth his word. And in front of his bald head, I can actually breathe.

He smells like nicotine. 

For a second, I stare at him completely caught in the spotlight, hands curled into the lacing pattern printed on my chest. He must've saw me smash that man's hand, without the brothel I have nowhere to go, nothing to do, street whores are even less noteworthy than the employed, and as it is we aren't the ones who are remembered on gravestones. Black eyes and cigarette burns, we are nothing more than workers with the cause of surviving, and I look into the palms of my hands to avoid his eye contact to settle my breathing, to calm the tides of my stomach. Why am I slipping? I breathe, one - two

Three. "You're needed in the back," Bruno croaks. These words are almost foreign to my ears through the dazed state, I'm left replaying his voice silently as he strolls away. Breath freezing in the air, back room, I inhale, back room, I exhale. Anonymous purchases always struck a cord, it broke whatever type of connection an escort could make before completely handing over their pride. My stride quickens to catch up with Bruno, and I presume he already got a second worker to cycle my absence. We enter the hallway, branching off to the six rooms I left cold only twenty minutes ago, but he doesn't press me to any of the regular rooms, instead the one with the silver door. Not the break room hosting Mabel's soft eyes and Penelope's shaking wrists and Rhea's fairytales and Vivian's giggles, but the parallel - Bruno's room.

With a creek by the hinges, he motions me inside before shutting it behind me again, the loud slam making me flinch my sprite body. I glance back at the door before the rooms contents, the back of the door a plain brown. Exasperation sounds from the ground, but I'm met by a ghost as I turn around. I'm met by quickened heart beat and curling my hand back into my chest while the other wraps around my mouth.

Attend.

I feel the world's pulse, I feel gravity shifting through my knees and my heart falls through my skeleton, and with three slow steps I, too, fall next to him. My throat itches for a voice to say something anything, to let their be something other than the echoing of a slammed brothel door, something other than Attend in this room. My brother, he's vertigo. He's pale, sickly, shaking and I cannot bring myself to touch his cheek with my hand like mother used to as my graze meets his.

Pale, sickly, shaking - I am too.

[cass]

a t t e n d

It sits there, this pulsing, looming glow of darkness. It steals its way to the edge of my vision, drawing itself around the edges of the shadows, sucking it all in, it’s impending disaster, it’s doom, pain and suffering and every now and then it’ll stretch out its fingers and swallow a part of me. It’ll encompass my heart or my soul, a leg or an arm and there will be this unmeasurable amount of pain following along with its touch. Badoom, badoom, badoom, the echo of my heart is its own beat, shrinking and expanding with every pulse of my heart. Forwards, forwards, forwards it moves, ready to consume the rest of me.

This time when it stretches forwards I don’t have the strength to move backwards, it looks different though. It doesn’t hold the normal entanglement of darkness; it isn’t the pure picture of blackness, a shadow from within the shadows. It… it’s almost as though it’s warm. But that can’t be right, anguish is cold and deadly, there is no warmth. I shake the very thought away my trembling body shaking with even more desperation, the poison in my body a thick blanket over an already fogged mind and I can no longer make sense of what is happening around me. The fundamentals remain the same, a stain on a piece of torn paper. Instinct has told me that no one comes near more, asks anything of me or does anything for me if I am not to suffer in some sort of way. There is no warmth here, no light.

An almost grey like beast slips out of the darkness, a long hooked claw extending to touch the side of my face and for a split second I wonder what is about to happen. Will there be blood? What does it matter? No matter the wound or the injury there will be pain. With what little strength I have left I try to pull away, eyes shifting away, before flickering shut as though being unable to see that approaching pain will make it sting any less. I hold them tightly together, hands drawn upwards and to my stomach, white knuckles a ghostly image against the dark shirt I wore.

Stop, stop, stop, make it stop.

Not again, please. If I had a tongue I’d have pleaded with them to stop hurting me, if I had a tongue I’d have said anything to stop the pain. If I had a tongue I’d have told them to fuck off a long time ago. I’d not have stayed with those first people; I wouldn’t be here at all. I’d be back in district One, safe, happy and living the life I had fled from on that morning. I wouldn’t be so broken and beaten. I wouldn’t be this frail, damaged sculpture of who I had once been. This silly thing that could be taken away with a breeze? This world had made me into this.

Deep within the folds of a broken heart is a small dying flame and it dies with every second I cannot express myself and that’s my parents fault, it’s their fault I cannot breath a single word, I cannot be the person I wanted to be. It’s their fault I’m in so much pain; it’s their fault that I must su-

My mouth opens and a cry escapes my lips as the hand touches my face. It’s a sound of terror and swallows me whole and before any part of me can recognise what is happening there are tears streaming down the side of my face, carving their way through the dirt on my cheeks. I look upwards, a sob escaping my lips, and my body goes numb, shock slips into my veins like ice, the surprisingly warm touch a contrast to the deadness of the air. The world is a blur as the tears continue to fall, but I hold myself upwards, mouth hanging open, I don’t understand what’s happening, why there is no pain, why there is a warm tingling feeling on my cheek, why, when I look upwards do I see a ghost?

Her name sits on the edge of my lips, it pulls at the chords of my heart and I want to say it out loud. I don’t want to sit in silence as I make sense of that short brown hair, of those warm, caring brown eyes, of that pale skin, those tender hands—Anyana. I want to say her name, and the words right there, it’s right there and I try, I try to say it, to speak it, so she knows, so I know that she’s truly and really there in front of me.

Anyana.

My dear, dear sister.

Anyana.

But I cannot speak a single syllable; instead there is just that awful grating animal like sound. My hands slip forwards, and I’m trembling. I tip forwards, my face landing in her lap, and the trembling increases. My big sister. We’re both so broken. I don’t have the strength to wipe the tears away, or to hold myself up, to be her brother. I’m just too scared.

[Deleted]

a n y a n a.

For a second, seeing this body is nothing more than fear embodied; seeing the veins sketched like a child's trail in sand and raving body and beaten brown and black eyes. I am scared. It feels like melting, the shock riding my nerves and dismembering me until I fall apart. That constant heart beat tick tick ticking in a march with the snare of my throbbing wrists, my hand floating between the part between him and myself, as if I touch it, I'll break the facade, that fragile reality built around me.

He can't be real.

These girls and this frilly dress and these backrooms, for two years it's been the only reality left. I am no longer a Cage, only Anyana, I swore that oath and swallowed. My hand quivers, lips parted and eyes widened - he shouldn't be here. In the back of my throat there's a cosmic paranoia, because neither for me or for him is it good he stay here. I can't bring myself to touch him, to make sure my present is intact and that I am nothing more than hallucinating, to make sure the boy in front of me is him and not a look alike, not a cosmic joke or something other and with shaken eyes the best I can do is only to stare at him.

I choke, wincing as my fingers reach through his sideburns and my hope that that cage around my neck was only a mirage this time, that this time I'd be able to fly without my past clipping my feathers. With my left hand I cover my mouth as he spouts, a sob like an injured animal as I try to close my eyes but I can't help but to see through the cracks. It's a childish curiosity - why is he here? Why is he real, after two years why had my loneliness finally been choked to be lungs and forced back up with this single face and why do I still miss him while he's under my fingertips?

(Is this truly him?)

His face meets mine as I brush his hair, Attend, my touch like a dagger to his skin. Wide eyes and tear streams and Attend, I knew those eyes before the bags and his skin before it looks like ropes tattoo'd upon it and I knew him. Those hazed eyes stab through my gut, and staring back at my brother's shell is like placing my own hand in a fire. That repeating question tracking my mind transform like the boy at my fingertips I knew; why are you here became how are you here, and as the vision of protruding veins blurred between tears all I could piece together is how.

As I try to reach for him again, to hold the only piece of Cage I have left, he collapses into my lap. My hand rests on the back of his hair and I wipe my eyes with the other. Even now, I live by this prostitute's guide and with a brother in my lap I'm still worried about running mascara. And I have to grip his hair just to remember I'm not making this up, and I'm not sure how much I still want it to be a dream. His hair fills my palm and it's all in my power not to grab too hard. Inhale, 

exhale.

I don't like crying, and I don't like this gap in my mouth and I don't like this dress and these walls and rooms and it bits at my mind at how much I love these girls, and I don't like this present, this reality, I miss him, his red cheeks and soft hands and white pupils and the boy I knew and I miss Kaya and Sampson and Yanika and my boys and my heart bleeds as my fist slides to ball at the shirt on his back and bit at my fingers to suppress yelling because they'll come and I don't want them to.

For one moment, I just want to be Anyana Cage again. It's so hard to keep running for two years, to be running on these daggers and I've finally fallen with the walls around me and I never expected it to hurt so bad - Attend's shirt clasped between my long fingers and I want to rip it apart, I want to kick the walls and scream like I had a tongue again but I won't ever. It's forever too late, and with the exhales of my lungs, it's like conformation. 

I'm never Anyana Cage again in this lifetime, and Attend and I are just that. First names, second rate citizens and labor, we aren't siblings. We're alone.

Beating hearts and a walking march, for now I have him and until that now ends, I can still be Anyana Cage. 

I let go of his shirt.