i c h o r | 6

[gamemaker kelsier]

I   C   H   O   R

We who are crafted from starlight and the things that go bump in the night, that slip past the eyeglasses of those that watch for they aren't watching for creatures such as those that we are. We were made by the painstaking ritual of those that came before, scratched out of rock, we dulled the tongues of the righteous with our foul play. We are the dreammakers, the boxcar racers, the freewheeling lovers that build houses out of sticks and hold stethoscopes to the chests of their lovers just to hear their hearts burst. We are the destroyers, the sandcastle kickers, the war heroes and poets that wax words long and dainty at the moon.

We are wilding, growing smaller and taller all at once and no one can see it but us. We will die before the sun hits our cheeks, we will lie in our spots in the darkness and sleep eternal sleeps. We are the war heroes of old with rifles for mouths and bullets for words. We hit where it hurts and we destroy everything.

Everything.

I think about the twelfth of October three years ago where I sat on the sill, one leg out and one leg in, my body a minefield and my head craving more. I was hungry for the thing, the guy, the lover, the monster that turns the insides of us to jelly and turns our heads towards the dark and the streets and my little sister stood in the doorway. Painted from a scene in a novel we were, her hands reaching out for me and my long curls brushing my cheeks and making my stomach roll with pain.

I can't forget the look of disappointment on her face when I turned my head towards the moonbeams and slipped my other leg over the sill, into the night and far far away from where she was waiting for me to be her older sister once again.

Her name was Nora and she was twelve years old and afraid for her first reaping and I was fourteen and already wilting like wildflowers plucked from their stems. She built me a hat from straw the summer before and it was stiff and brown from the lack of water to it's feelers and we were dying, the both of us so I left.

I took my money and anything I had that I could sell for smack and I left.

I didn't look back once.

A week later I was passing 'lost girl' posters with a child on them that vaguely resembled me and I remember tearing them down, ripping from their perches piece by wrinkled piece and I used them as kindling to keep me warm at night when I couldn't find a bed to keep me held down.

People say that kids like me end up in places like these for a reason but I think they're wrong. No one forced me to do anything I didn't want. The first time someone passed me a needle full of the lady made from iron I took it between fingers that did not shake and I pushed the plunger, watching as my blood mingled with the drug in the vial. Society didn't force me into this life; my parents were warm, loving and sweet people who cared for me, who loved me. I didn't love them back. There's something wrong with my brain I guess. All I feel is numb.

I wasn't hanging out with the wrong crowd. I had a friend named becky and she was a girl who sloughed through math textbooks like they were made of feathers. I had a brain like an apple in a district full of pears. The only thing that had ever interested me were the gardens outside the classroom window. I liked to dig my hands in the dirt and cup the life of a plant inside of my palms. I liked the feel of holding a prickle plant, of feeling it draw my blood.

They told my parents they were sorry, I was slow.

I'm not slow, I'm fast. My feet hit cobbled street and I am running again; running away from home. That first night when I was just a little girl and I didn't know where I was going but I knew I was going to where she was, the woman in the vial, who filled up my senses and made things feel alright again.

I'd met her at a party, as that's where first loves are often found. A boy named Eager had traded me a hit for a kiss or two and I'd agreed because even then I knew that it was nothing special, a kiss. Not like her, nothing has ever been like her since. That night, when she clung to my veins and turned the world rightside up.

I was looking for her on those streets.

It didn't take long to find her in a chemical district such as ours.

I was one of those girls who have the body of a woman before they fully understand what that means. My hips were always meant to shimmy and my chest had been one of the ones to develop early. Becky had always huffed at me, told me it wasn't fair. I knew though, looking in her eyes that she'd rather be smart and needed rather than something like me, slow and destined to be sitting on the laps of old men for the rest of my measly adolescence, however long that lasted. We pretended that we both didn't know this and got along fine.

I could feel her eyes burning a hole in the back of my head every time I walked away from her so I started walking backwards.

I haven't seen becky since school.

When I found the lady I was sitting in the back booth of a bar that had gum stuck to the bottom of it's tables in layers. A boy's hand was between my legs and I was ignoring the fact that I was far too young for a place like this, just like the bouncer had. My shirt was cut low enough and I wore eyeliner thick as my pinky finger that no one second-guessed me.

I didn't care about any of that bullshit.

Having her in my veins was like flying, a warm, loving haze. Nothing was wrong, not anything. Even the things that should have made me afraid or bothered me were alright. As long as she was with me, I was alright.

From then on, I became known as the girl that would do whatever you wanted, as long as you gave me what I wanted. For some I'm certain my beauty did not matter. They wanted my heat to mix with theirs and to feel something like love but I've always been cold as ice.

I guess that's why Amity decided to collect me. One night when I was freshly fifteen and I had my legs spread in a boy's lap she took me by my collar and promised to take me away from 'all this'. She held out a vial full of the lady and I guess it must have been easier than catching a wild animal. She promised me drugs for working for her and I said yes. I was tired of having to put in effort to find them myself. If I worked for her I was promised a steady supply.

Can't decide still if Amity is my angel or a devil.

She keeps me up in the clouds with a steady supply. I just have to do as she asks, always as she asks. Like a beloved pet I am kept on a leash. Where Amity goes, I follow. When Amity says fuck, I fuck. It's all I know how to do now.

I can't say I care, as long as she keeps me high.

[gamemaker kelsier]

done!

[maverick hale 🌧️ d5 [nyte]]

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