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with death upon my shoulder {kite and x jb}
Jan 31, 2016 0:05:59 GMT -5
Post by [nyte] on Jan 31, 2016 0:05:59 GMT -5
They don't often think about the society in which we are bred into. One which thrives upon control, the documentation of every little detail, down to that freckle on your asscheek the one you never noticed. It's easy to forget when your very existence does not break that status quo, when you are not forced to hide 'neath the floorboards every reaping because your very beating heart is some awful offense.
I am a criminal not because I have killed another, not because of the cash I stuff into my pockets that was torn from some screaming woman's palms. I am on the run because I do not exist, because I was born on the corner of some nowhere street without a shiny gold certificate to tell the world that I belong. To them I am dead, and they yearn to return me to the ground in which I belong.
It's pathetic to envy the orphans allowed to roam this district without so much as a care in the world. We're not much different, me and them. A ghost and a child, both lost, both forced to wander alone. But at least the world does not seem to wish them dead, does not stack every fucking odd against their favor. It's a miracle I have not somehow been reaped although I have no name to be screamed across the hushed crowd.
Not that an orphan's life is particularly better, not that I care. I'd rather wallow in this isolation, filling my cups with self-hatred and pity and drinking so deeply that I forget the only man who knows I exist would just as soon kill me than give me an identity.
This ghost has raised himself to be nothing better than the thick, evergreen scum lining my home. A boat that has been docked my entire sixteen summers. And sometimes I imagine that its gentle rocking is the hands of my mother, the one I killed so long ago. I like to imagine that she is watching over me. Maybe she is proud, for whatever reason, that I have made it this far with only an apathetic guardian and poison laced smiles.
These last few weeks have been haunted, my nights filled with restless tossing and turning while bathed in bitter sea fog. These last few nights I have been watched, eyes tearing into a neck that is left so vulnerable to silver blades in soft velvet hours. For years I have stitched a metal mesh, protection from the most complex of human weakness. I am a man of steel, I am unbreakable until I am left curled upon the withered wood of an old sailboat.
I am being terrorized at my most vulnerable.
I've taken to calling her Death. The ghoul that has so disturbed my peaceful nights, with beady black eyes that see nothing and everything at all. It was childish of me to assume it was anything other than Mother Nature's beasts, one I found to be perched upon a crumbling mast and searing hatred into my skin.
She was large, sleek black feathers moist with the dew that leaves me freezing even without a salt-laced breeze most every night. She was sinister, feathers upon her chest ruffling the minute sleep-stained eyes found her and guffawing with loud, lingering screeches. Not a crow, she was too large. Too elegant. She was a queen upon a throne, crown of thorns wrapped around her throat.
A raven.
I could think of no better way to end this torment than appeasing her, appeasing Death. I kept bread hidden in an old compartment, one sealed and kept away from the rats I often hear gnawing on the dying wood. I broke the loaf in half, presenting her with the better half in a gesture of good will.
Since then she has taken to bringing me treasures. Chains made of gold and watches etched with fading names. Trinkets stolen from the rich and the wealthy, from those I have come to despise more than most anyone else in this district. (Then again, I have yet to find one person that elicits anything better than a bitter taste in the back of my throat.)
She is the closest thing I have to a companion, even taking to eating bread out of the palm of my hand and perching herself upon my shoulder every night.
Death looms over me today, perched upon the rafters as I watch them gather. Like pigs for the slaughter they dress in their fancy clothes huddle around a broken stage. With baited breath they wait for their names to be called. Some hoping and some praying. Some smiling and some biting back tears.
"I want to visit the boy." my arms are crossed, teeth digging impatiently into flesh of my cheek. "Name? My name?" I press a bill into the fat man's palm, fingers lingering upon the soft leather of a peacekeeper's glove. Somehow, I expected it to feel something more similar to barbed wire. "Yes, very well thank you sir."
Because humanity is shit and we are all fucking selfish assholes so why did he volunteer.
Why do I care? Why am I here?
Fuck, I dunno.
Death's eyes are fixed upon me as I creep into a building named after yet another corporate lie.
"Why'd you do it?" I bark, shoving my hands into my pockets and falling against worn wood with a soft thump. Social graces are certainly something I was born without."You gotta have a reason. Something to gain from this, right?"
"So spill, big guy."
I am a criminal not because I have killed another, not because of the cash I stuff into my pockets that was torn from some screaming woman's palms. I am on the run because I do not exist, because I was born on the corner of some nowhere street without a shiny gold certificate to tell the world that I belong. To them I am dead, and they yearn to return me to the ground in which I belong.
It's pathetic to envy the orphans allowed to roam this district without so much as a care in the world. We're not much different, me and them. A ghost and a child, both lost, both forced to wander alone. But at least the world does not seem to wish them dead, does not stack every fucking odd against their favor. It's a miracle I have not somehow been reaped although I have no name to be screamed across the hushed crowd.
Not that an orphan's life is particularly better, not that I care. I'd rather wallow in this isolation, filling my cups with self-hatred and pity and drinking so deeply that I forget the only man who knows I exist would just as soon kill me than give me an identity.
This ghost has raised himself to be nothing better than the thick, evergreen scum lining my home. A boat that has been docked my entire sixteen summers. And sometimes I imagine that its gentle rocking is the hands of my mother, the one I killed so long ago. I like to imagine that she is watching over me. Maybe she is proud, for whatever reason, that I have made it this far with only an apathetic guardian and poison laced smiles.
These last few weeks have been haunted, my nights filled with restless tossing and turning while bathed in bitter sea fog. These last few nights I have been watched, eyes tearing into a neck that is left so vulnerable to silver blades in soft velvet hours. For years I have stitched a metal mesh, protection from the most complex of human weakness. I am a man of steel, I am unbreakable until I am left curled upon the withered wood of an old sailboat.
I am being terrorized at my most vulnerable.
I've taken to calling her Death. The ghoul that has so disturbed my peaceful nights, with beady black eyes that see nothing and everything at all. It was childish of me to assume it was anything other than Mother Nature's beasts, one I found to be perched upon a crumbling mast and searing hatred into my skin.
She was large, sleek black feathers moist with the dew that leaves me freezing even without a salt-laced breeze most every night. She was sinister, feathers upon her chest ruffling the minute sleep-stained eyes found her and guffawing with loud, lingering screeches. Not a crow, she was too large. Too elegant. She was a queen upon a throne, crown of thorns wrapped around her throat.
A raven.
I could think of no better way to end this torment than appeasing her, appeasing Death. I kept bread hidden in an old compartment, one sealed and kept away from the rats I often hear gnawing on the dying wood. I broke the loaf in half, presenting her with the better half in a gesture of good will.
Since then she has taken to bringing me treasures. Chains made of gold and watches etched with fading names. Trinkets stolen from the rich and the wealthy, from those I have come to despise more than most anyone else in this district. (Then again, I have yet to find one person that elicits anything better than a bitter taste in the back of my throat.)
She is the closest thing I have to a companion, even taking to eating bread out of the palm of my hand and perching herself upon my shoulder every night.
Death looms over me today, perched upon the rafters as I watch them gather. Like pigs for the slaughter they dress in their fancy clothes huddle around a broken stage. With baited breath they wait for their names to be called. Some hoping and some praying. Some smiling and some biting back tears.
"I want to visit the boy." my arms are crossed, teeth digging impatiently into flesh of my cheek. "Name? My name?" I press a bill into the fat man's palm, fingers lingering upon the soft leather of a peacekeeper's glove. Somehow, I expected it to feel something more similar to barbed wire. "Yes, very well thank you sir."
Because humanity is shit and we are all fucking selfish assholes so why did he volunteer.
Why do I care? Why am I here?
Fuck, I dunno.
Death's eyes are fixed upon me as I creep into a building named after yet another corporate lie.
"Why'd you do it?" I bark, shoving my hands into my pockets and falling against worn wood with a soft thump. Social graces are certainly something I was born without."You gotta have a reason. Something to gain from this, right?"
"So spill, big guy."
[ n a m e u n a v a l i a b l e ]
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