but it's all alright {nolive}

[[nyte]]

WE ARE DEAF WE ARE NUMB

O L I V E  M O R T U U S

FREE AND YOUNG, WE CAN FEEL NONE OF IT

For a child raised by death this hurts. I have seen corpses, bodies gray as stone and cold as ice. Their eyes are wide, jaws hung slack as though marveling as some unseen deity come to drag them back to hell. I have smelt death, the decay of bodies and the stench of iron blood doomed to drip, drip, drip onto concrete like spring's first shower. And I wish she had been the first canon to ring, I wish that all of this had been over so much sooner because hope is a disgusting thing and it was all I could do.

Celia is was strong. Celia could couldn't come home. It was duct tape forced around my wrists, socks shoved down my throat and I was a slave to the childish belief that she was going to make it. Because the centuries ago that were only yesterday, back when I feared monsters and searched for them out of some sick curiosity, she was always the best at keeping me safe. I don't know if she meant to, there is nothing you could know about Celia Mortuus. She was a raven perched upon Death's shoulder, her most trusted servant and every word was a riddle clicked off an ebony beak.

It doesn't matter if she loved me. It's not like she'll come home and it's not like I'll ever get to ask her. She is blood and bones, the very thing in which her hands were so often bathed. A reaper was reaped. It has never seemed so permanent. Not when I sneaked to the attic room every morning and let the spirits of all the souls we stole into the heavens above. I thought they were alive. I thought for the longest time that there was something more than this world and that's why life was so fucking shitty. Because there was something better.

What a childish notion.

We are nothing but skin, tools to be used by those lucky enough to have survived another day but the joke's on them because you cannot win a race to which there is no finishing line.

I think I'm going to be sick- my stomach churns and boils and there she is. Seeping out upon the swamp floor. The shot of my sister's dead body lingers, taunting and triumphant. And I run, I run I run I run. Into the bathroom, bracing either side of the porcelain with shaking hands because I'm going to be sick.

Nothing comes. Nothing but diamonds off the tip of my nose, clattering against the stagnant water below me and it might as well be knives against glass because it's so fucking loud. Tears come fast after I have broken, shoulders shaking as I collapse upon the floor. This isn't how it was supposed to go. I was so fucking sure that no one could kill a woman who feared not even death itself. Who greeted her as her equal nearly every damn day of her life. It wasn't supposed to end like this.

I can see her in the mirror- in every one my features. And part of me expects her hands around my throat in an instant, shaking me and forcing a scattered brain to come to its senses. But her canon has fired, heartbeat personified. Celia Mortuus is dead. "FUCK!" The mirror shatters. The sink turns black with my blood. "Fuck you! Fuck you for leaving and fuck you for dying. I hope you're fucking happy Celia I really hope you are."

She's not anything but dead. I don't think about that.

I wrap a jacket that once belonged to her around my shoulders, one that is neither my style nor my size. It smells of vanilla and death. It smells like her. It is a bandage- one much like the thin white cloth still stuck to the gashes in my back. It eases the pain because suddenly- I can breathe. I can think.

I can run.

Out the window- it'll take them longer to notice. My feet hit the ground and it hurts something awful. Don't think about that because I can stand. I can still fucking run. Past buildings, past peacekeepers. Past the town square and the stupid fucking screen. And I don't look back. Not once. Because when I get to where I'm going, I won't need any of them.

"Nori!" I leave blood upon his front door- pushing shards of glass further into my flesh but I don't care.

I'm not going back there.

"Nori please open up I- I need some help."

My voice breaks and so do I. Because there is no one I need more than the smart mouthed asshole who took me to see his fucking dog after I decked him for no goddamn reason. There is no one I would rather see, not even the littlest monster could stop this aching, the one no longer sated by my sister's jacket around my shoulders and fuck them.

I can't be a Mortuus. I cannot be Death's only son for another minute. The price is too high- the pain is too great. And without Nori I think I might just be dead by sunrise.

[Deleted]

Breaking through the blinds of my window, I prop my head on my hands with lines of the night sky over my chest; my shirt stitched to my skin with sweat when I woke up. A headache crossed across my membrane - shit - I scratch at the cut on my back, the swollen skin around my eye and jaw keeping me from laying on my sides. I hate bar fights.

And I guess they hate me too; last time I help Al out. Ma drug me through hell and back, cleaning the wound and near praying that next time the Lord would take me before she would, and I swear lying to her is getting harder each time I have to. But hell, what's a delinquent to do? I cross my heart that I'll get my shit together and she crosses her heart that I get sent to the detention center the next time before I get killed, and I smile a lighter smile -- "at least I would get three meals in there" -- and she hits my shoulder. 

There was a moment of silence, my sweating skin sticking to the wood of the chair and my mother wiped her hands on a rag, "Nori," and I was like yea wassup, rubbing a migraine into my eyes. 

"I don't think your father's coming back." 

I scratch my palm, my eyes heavy under the weight of cosmoses; "now I don't want not a single goddamn fight today," Al's contra voice scratchy under the citrus beat through the bar, "don't like the bets, then how about you volunteer next year and do better." 

And you see, the two of us made eye contact and everything, and I winked my name onto that contract and swore I wouldn't fight; but what's a delinquent supposed to do? Besides, faithful Al always gives the same speech every year, been this way for the past few even before I started swinging in here. And I'm a cocky cunt, always have been, and I put all my money on Celia and pull up a bar stool, the wood unpolished and rough. 

("Awe, Nori's got a crush on the Mortuus tribute,"

I stumble, "and you don't?")

I cough, the air in my room thick in the summer's new heat. 

The buzzing of fireflies outside is all I hear over the sound of somebody's fists meeting the skin of somebody else and me cracking my neck, men shouting -- I swear, this one wasn't on me. For once I wasn't the problem, I guess, the bittersweet taste of blood in my mouth and the crack of my neck on a pivot. And I punched back and I guess that was my problem, a dead girl, a broke wallet and my bleeding gums; I fell on my ass and a beer bottle. 

And Lord if I didn't fuck that up. 

When I got back on my feet, more meatheads jumped into the pile and my nose was bleeding, Al kicked me out. Told me to leave the money and don't come back, but he's done this before, he'll let me back in the next time I come, I guess, and I rub the cuts in my back -- "shit." 

I guess I messed this one up really bad, I didn't tell Ma about the money, just that I got played. And truthfully I don't know why I joined in on the fight, why the trash talk got to me or why I cared about Celia enough to make the fight personal. I scratch at my back. Ma got all the glass out, swearing my name with each piece, "what the fuck were you thinking?" And I grit the pain; "it was in my horoscope, honestly." 

There's a banging on the door, echoing through to the twisted headache and shaking blinds: "Nori!"

Shit.

Olive? 

Fucking Olive. 

He's screaming some shit and I hear it through the open window, the night sky's whispers and buzzes broken by him and shit, he's like a fucking wounded animal, and I grab the stiff shirt off the ground in my balled fist, my feet light on the tiled floors, shit. I open the door with cotton mouth, my ma still asleep in her room near mine -- "Olive? Shit." -- he's bleeding. 

("Nori.")

What the fuck did he do, blood print on the wooden door and he's shaking, shit, fucking hell, what the hell; I hold his gaze, "for a nurse, you're a fucking mess." I lean out of the doorway, the night air sticking to my clammy chest and I want to hold this fucking idiot but between us there's no space of skin that has been beaten or cut. 

Just what the fuck. 

"Try not to bleed on the furniture," I rub my eyes walking back into the kitchen - what the fuck.

What's a delinquent to do, huh. 

[ firestorm ]

[[nyte]]

WE ARE DEAF WE ARE NUMB

O L I V E  M O R T U U S

FREE AND YOUNG, WE CAN FEEL NONE OF IT

It's not like I don't know I'm an idiot. I am a dove with a heart made of glass and I think I have given Nori a piece of the shattered organ much too soon. These seven days have stretched on for centuries- the night after I left a purple kiss upon his jaw and he sewed swollen black skin around my eye I sat on his doorstep and tried to ignore how our shoulders almost touched. Every one of these seven days I have searched for him, for what he has come to mean. Escape. ("Oh comon, it's District Twelve, Oliverking. So many people get whipped here you'll be forgotten in a week.")

I've had all of two friends in fifteen years, one I have known for little more than a week. I don't think I'm meant to be a people person, to rub shoulders with every other soul because it leaves me black and singed- tired and shriveled. I am a pathetic thing, easily overwhelmed and so desperate for change that I reject every comfort I once drank so deeply from. And in the end, there are two people in this world I can even stomach. Ones that are not sickly sweet nor sour and rotten.

The Littlest Monster is my innocence, the nights we spent sprawled out upon golden wheat and told tales so tall that lemmings could jump off their edge every spring. Nori is what I have become. A beautiful, ugly thing. He is a smile sewn to drunken lips and the fluttering of a heart struck with teenage lust. He is the reason to ignore swollen skin sewn together with bandages drenched in cheap antiseptic ointment.

When Nori opens the door it seems the world has taken to keeping completely still. His skin is bare, marred by imperfections that make him all the more perfect and I can't fucking breathe. With little more than a glance he turns my cheeks a rosy shade of white and holy fucking shit he looks good.

Lust. Need. Want. Whatever I may label this burning in the pit of my stomach it is strong. Turning my heart into a caged bird so desperate to escape it might destroy me. Too bad small, pathetic twinks are most likely the opposite of what a guy like him would want. I've had crushes- of course I have. Hyacinth says it's normal for growing boys like me to think of things like that but every boy I have ever set my sights upon had a pretty girl sewn to his hip. Boys aren't Nori's type and so I'll try to pretend they aren't mine either. I'd hate to lose him to something so stupid.

"For a nurse, you're a fucking mess." He steps back, rubbing eyes swollen with deep sleep and I smile through the pain of my sister's broken body falling to the ground. Limp. Lifeless. It wasn't her in the end. I'm starting to wonder if it ever was. "Try not to bleed on the furniture."

I'm bleeding? Oh right, I'm bleeding. Clumsy fingers take shards of bloodstained mirror out of my palm, chucking them into some nearby plants before I take to stumbling into the sanctuary. "Sorry." I'm slurring, tongue tripping over every syllable and I pull Celia's jacket tighter around my shoulders, searching for her strength in the worn fabric. "Nori she's dead. I watched her die a-and... and-" blood crawls down my wrist, beading off broken skin like tears do my nose and it hurts. Everything hurts. Except for him, it would seem.

So I need him. I need to wrap cautious arms around his neck and bury my face in the bare skin of his shoulder. I need to hope he won't hate me for this. The he won't push me away, won't tell me to get the fuck out of his house because just maybe that would break me even more. Because I need this. "what do I do?"

[Deleted]

hey, hey, wouldn't it be great, great,
if we could just lay down and wake up in slowtown,
today, day, i want to go away, way,
'cause things are too fast now,
i want to be in slowtown.

---

("Face it, you're over your head.")

Printed in my skin, braile for the blind and the blinding; words to live by. "You're in over your head, Nori," a street rat and an abuse victim, beaten and bloodied and bruised and in over his head, Al whispers in my skin before every fight and bet and every day I hear it when I wake up -- you can't do this. A bigger man, one of the nineteen year olds in our kiddie fighting ring he socks me in the face, I hear cheering as I fall because they've got bets on the other guy. They see a winner in the face of a man who knocks me down and I see another day, another day of this in and out, the gravel scratching my skin and my back tooth loose.

I inhale; you can't do this, Nori. 

But I have to, so I must. 

"Sorry." 

What - "Nori she's dead. I watched her die a-and... and-" shit. Oh shit my bets. 

Fuccck, Al told me not to - what the fuck. I stumble, verging on numb and insensitive, this isn't about my damn money. I press my palm into the soreness of my cheek; don't be a cunt, Nori. I hesitate on the stepway into the kitchen - I can't leave Olive alone for a second, I don't trust that kid not to get killed by a loose floorboard or something. Hell, first time I met him I could've maimed him, if he wasn't a nurse he probably wouldn't still be alive. 

("For a nurse you're a fucking mess,") he had glass in his hand, and I watched him pick the shards into one of our plants, the cunt. But I should probably do something for that right? Like, stitches or something, bhit I can't stitch skin, what am I doing. We don't have much of anything else; what does momma do? Usually when I'm fucked to hell she just calls me an idiot and hands me a towel. Fuck, this wasn't a situation I expect to be in. Olive needs something, right? I watch him grip onto his jacket harder, clumsily grabbing at glass and- 

"What do I do?" 

Fuck.

He needs me.

It's a blaring alarm, red letters screaming 5am in my eyes and another fight rings in my ears, it's tiring. Another day, another fight and I'm not sure it's just about the ring anymore but I have to convince myself that it is. I run out the house before my mom's awake and I hold ice in my jaw; you're in over your head, Nori. Why not just give up, why not fall under the weight of five thousand sticks instead of piling another one on my spine, but I know why. He knocks me onto my back, shaking and collapsing and I feel the acid in my knees of every fight pulling me lower to the ground but I need this, you're in over you head, kid.

What are you doing here? 

Every time I stand up I see it in Olive's face, in the sound of bloody glass sticking to the clay of the plants pot and I feel it in the bags of my eyes; I can't do this. 

I feel sixteen. I feel like a teenager and not a fighter, an emotional kid on the verge of breaking, I don't know why I do this to myself. I feel myself fall through the loose floor board looking at the blood in Olive's skin and I have to snap my mind and body back together, forcing myself to still be me. He needs me, he needs me just as much as I need me to be me.

I can't choke now. 

"Don't," I swallow, "do that, sit down I'll get the glass out." Rationalize, what do I do. fuuuuuuucccccckkkk, I don't know what I'm doing, grabbing lightly at his wrist sitting us down on the couch - I'm a street fighter not a nurse. This is his job, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, you're in over your head. I always end up in these situations, huh. I put my hand under his, fuck. Oh fuck, I forgot the towel. 

("What do I do?")

Stay calm? His sister just died, he's got a hand full of glass and he's sitting across the couch from a delinquent, how the fuck do I say that seriously? Shit I don't know, but for Olive's sakes I've gotta do something. 

"You ready?"

[ firestorm ]

[[nyte]]

Celia used to chase the monsters away. She was branded in fire, birthed from darkness- she was everything I needed when the world turned dark and the shadows took their first breaths. But Celia is dead and somehow I have to keep moving. Celia is dead, her cannon has rung. Celia isn't coming home in anything other than a box and-

I can't replace her. Not with the glass embedded in my flesh and not with the jacket wrapped about my shoulders. It smells like her, like death and vanilla and I can't get it out of my head. Her body, mutilated and worn. Her body, ruined by a boy who deserved nothing more than a death more gruesome than I can even imagine.

It's all so confusing. Rage, fear, sorrow, hopelessness. They congeal in my gut like the blood off of my palm in thick streams and shit I must have hit a vein. I close my eyes for a long moment the world spinning beneath the soles of my feet like it did the night I met Nori and my fist met his jaw.

Sit down he says, I listen because it's easy. I don't have to be myself, to be so broken, when following his orders. Sit down he says and I fall back onto a couch, oceans spilling from empty eyes and I don't know why I can't stop crying. One moment I am gone and the next I am tethered by only pain and despair. I am thin as smoke, frail as glass and I am about to shatter.

Or maybe I already have.

"Ready?" Nori asks.

Nori. Nori. Nori.

His words take far too long to reach me, bouncing about every wall before landing in between my ears and I am left a sobbing fool. That's what he must think of me.

Weak. Disgusting.

It's not like I can't see the disappointment in my siblings eyes when even Riley has surpassed me in sheer bravery.

Still I slip my hand into his, firmly in place with the palm turned upwards. The brittle ice catches the moonlight with every shaking breath and I think it might melt soon if we're not careful- trapping the pain beneath my flesh forever and I-

can't.

I'd cut my own heart out before I lived only to wish I was dead.

"I'm an idiot, huh?" The words are little more than a whisper, sneaking from between dry lips and burning holes into my heart with every syllable. "An idealistic fucking idiot who tried to see the good in the world where there was none." As hard as I try to keep a bitter taste off of my tongue it still slips into my every word.

"'S it too much to ask for-" I pick a shard of glass out of my palm, wincing as fresh blood begins to break the surface, slipping in crimson beads down my wrist. But I can't scream. He musn't know how pathetic I am.

(If Celia was here-

but she's not)

"Don't make me sleep alone."

And though I have lost everything, there's still so much left of me to take.

coding : elegant