Barely Breathing [Mylee]

[Tom]

Description/writing, Speaking , Thinking , Hears

Five times. That's how long it took for him to finally feel numb about it all. Five Deaths. That's how many people he cared about died to the games. Mangled bodies forced to fight in a game where no one was a victor, not even the survivor. The victors were the worst of the mangled bodies that escaped the arena, mentally scarred with a wound that clawed their brain from inside out. Nothing could make them better, just like nothing could make him feel alive anymore. Five times. That's the amount of bodies he's had to see honored in a funeral or one's he had to celebrate on his own. Theo's funeral was a drunken night of crying and trying to forget everything he knew. It never worked, just like he knew it wouldn't work every time he wanted to come to the haunting place.

Flowers of red, white, and purple sits neatly in his hand. The perfume of the innocent object drifts to his nose, inhaling the smell of sorrows that he would leave at the graves of the dead. Surrounding himself with a coat of the sorrows, he'd drown within his own tears and alcohol later on. His goal was still alive for the day, even if it meant breaking his body down slowly. Upon entering the haunting place, memories of every death silently attacks his mind like the blades that had cut into Riordan's chest before Jequirity's death. The sting of sorrow grabs his sides every night, forcing him to fall to his knees like he's choking on the sobs that echo through his body, but there wasn't time for that.

The graves stand in line, stone cold, and silent. Silence, that's all that shrouded the graves that held so many of the dead from games and other things. As his hand touches a stone softly, the cement feels rough and yet smooth to the touch. His body feels on fire with memories of them all, Naveen's smile, Theseus' calming words, Jequirity's beautiful performances. Memories that haunt him in his dreams, yet it was the only time he truly felt alive in the world full of hatred and death. The stone arches stare at him, eyes of stone and sorrow, names engraved into their skin, bodies stuck in the ground with the coffin that holds the dead. Riordan can only move forward as his distaste for the place continues to grow.

The first stone arch holds Theseus Rhodium, a friend who showed Riordan that life wasn't fairytales and adventures, it was suffering and painstakingly rough. White flowers fall onto the ground in front of the stone arch staring back. His hand grazes the top of the stone, cold like Theseus' eyes when he watched as the blood flow from Theo's throat and onto the ground, Naveen's soft song echoing through. Riordan retracts his hand in fear of losing himself to the bad memories. Theseus Rhodium wouldn't want him to think of him, but focus on living life, not suffering through it. A deep inhale of breath gives his body life and the will to move onto the next grave beside Theo.

Naveen Casovnik is labeled clearly upon the stone that holds her, or what was left of her. Green grass and brown dirt cover the resting place of the first girl that Riordan had talked to in his entire life. Her voice was soothing to the ear. Dreams of her singing still helped him feel at peace, even if in the morning, he knew none of it was real. A soft frown fills his face with regret. Jay had missed her just as much as he did. Someone in the world knew how he felt about Naveen Casovnik, but forgotten words and broken hearts lay in her grave. Red flowers for the girl who the games had broken inside and out. Red flowers for the girl who had taken his heart the first time. Pieces of it lives in the stone that rests above her head. Winds caress his face as he steps away and enters farther in the graves. Naveen Casovnik's singing disappearing from his mind for that moment.

As he reaches the next destination, the sound of a violin in his mind can be heard. The strings playing beautifully in his mind, her smile on her lips, just as gorgeous as the day he met her. Everything about her had made him crazy to have her, but in the end, they had been nothing more than friends. In his dreams, he can see her smile as he would do something, her hair flowing down her shoulders. Everything about her, he missed. Everything she was, he missed. She was gone. Just like the others. Body aches for him to stop. The purple flowers still in hand. His mind forces his body to continue it's journey.

Each grave he passes, a purple flower for. One by one, he walked down the graves. Names of the fallen appearing before him. Keeni. Venn. That's when he saw the name etched into stone, Wyatt O'Connor. His finger traces the name softly, as it did with the others, a sign of respect in his family. Memories of his dead uncle's grave and how his mother told him to trace the name for peace in the afterlife. A simple idea that his mother's mother had and passed it on. Riordan wasn't one for superstitions, but when it came to the dead, peace was the only thing he hoped for them. A soft sigh escapes his lips, the air taking it on a journey somewhere else. As he places the flower in front of the stone, his heart beats for the fallen. Riordan Einfallen, did this every week, since Naveen had died. Grave after grave. He made sure every grave had a flower, so everyone can have peace in their passing. A soft frown fills his face, memories of the dead still fresh in his mind, and all he could feel was numb.

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

{ rudyard o'connor }

I suppose we are all unintentional creatures of habit.

Those who claim spontaneity has been etched into their skin since birth are either naïve or liars, and I do not know which one would be worse to claim as my own downfall. Thankfully, I see order like I see the sunrise or movement of the minute hand— welcoming and unfaltering with each day that passes in and out of the fabric of time. If you split the threads you find the frayed ends that lead to unplanned events— there is a reason that fortune tellers are still in existence if you know where to look.

As humans, we are afraid of what we do not know, and what I do not know is what I am afraid of.

Every second Tuesday of the month, I had promised myself I would visit Wyatt’s grave. I never told myself why I would go or what I would do when I got there— sometimes the answer to both was a blank mind and nothing in particular but at least I was there. There is the point in existence where respects are paid and grievances are aired and you are supposed to feel enlightened, but every time I have laid my palm upon the cold stone bearing his name I have simply felt empty.

Not void of my worries, but void of my hope.

I blame him for feeling hollow, but never for dying— we all do that anyway, regardless of whether it’s dramatized by the static of a television screen or the silence of a last breath taken. No, I blame Wyatt O’Connor for casting his sense of self-worth beyond the grave. Even in death he was a reminder that no one was truly satisfied with whatever we called self, and I hated him for it. When he was alive, he did not exist in the minds of many, but in death now, he had become six’s household name. Wyatt was a five letter word that reminded me of how hollow I had always felt and how hollow I would always be— I had stopped attempting to fill the space when I realized I’d end up dead regardless of whether or not my bones grew heavy.

The last conversation we had had had taken place on the day before his eighteenth birthday. I had asked him what it felt like to stand on the brink of adulthood and know that the rest of your life was stretched out before you like an open road or a blank canvas. He had scoffed, said that that was the vision of the idealist; said that those kind of people did not make it far enough into adulthood to see what they wanted to create come to pass because they were too absorbed with the notion of creating itself.

He told me that the best artists were not the ones who labeled themselves as such at all. I asked him then if that made him an artist, and I saw him smile for a split second, “Answering that would tear apart the foundation of my reputation if it were to be considered true.”

What an unsolvable riddle Wyatt O’Connor had turned out to be.

More alive in death now than he had been trapped behind the same white walls day in and out he became the paradox I did not want to consider. He became the memory I wished to forget. He became the problem I did not want to solve, see, I had thought about Wyatt O’Connor more in the past thirty days than I had prior in the entirety of his time spent alive. I never really thought about his death— on occasion I’d think of desperation and remember his tone, or think of anger and see him reflected in the blades of tongue and knife.

And I never really thought about how he had been when he had been alive, either.

No, when I considered Wyatt O’Connor now I saw simply the soul of a boy lingering in limbo. I saw the questions trapped beneath the weight of their own answers and the questions left as fragments and pieces of words strung together by a thought so thin they could barely manage to bear their own weight. Every second Tuesday of the month, when I would march with heavy feet to the site of his grave and salute the boy who respected no one, I would stand with glazed eyes and blank mind in front of his tombstone and remember every question I had always been too afraid to ask.

I suppose you could say I hated that fucking grave.

Today was the same, a second Tuesday of another month that would begin with dread and end with regret, and the only difference between this second Tuesday and the one before was now I was a rough thirty days closer to being buried beside him.

But today, instead of standing in silence and wondering where everyone else had buried their obligations in this waste of space, I was met by the sight of a boy placing a flower upon the grave I had for so long seen in only shades of black, white, and grey.

I am not a fan of the word jealousy or coining it as a token of my own description, but somewhere in my throat I felt fire kiss my tongue and ask me if I loved the feeling of being burned.

I told him yes, set my world ablaze and watch the ashes blow away on the wind— we’re all going to be dead one day.

From my place of paused shock I lurched forward, just as mechanically as ever before but now with an addition of subsidized arrogance thrown into the bones of my feet. I stop just behind him and place a hand gently upon his shoulder, just as one might do with a relative or old friend.

“I appreciate the show of sentiment, but I don’t really think purple is his color.”

[Tom]

Description/writing, Speaking , Thinking , Hears

Never did he expect to see a living person within the soulless place that he visited too often. His heart having a better connection to the dead than the living that thrive within the district. Depression always kissing his lips every day of running the Tempus Opera House. Tears prick at his eyes as the images of the past disappear with new faces, new personalities, but the same haunting place. The dead understood him better than the living. He belonged with them, in the cold ground. His spirit dancing among the past lives that touched his soul. A hole within his heart at all of the names he knew. Wyatt O'Connor was right. District Six wasn't meant to bring home a living person, only dead bodies and broken hearts that they could test their medicines on.

He swallows the pill of grief down as he feels a hand touch his shoulder. A feeling that pulls him away from the place that stands before him. An echo of a feeling he's felt so many times before. Naveen's hand touches his shoulder as he nervously goes over his lines. Theseus' hand touching his shoulder, a small smile upon his lips, the scars showing only slightly. Jequirity's hand upon his shoulder as his emotions tear himself apart, piece by piece. All he can do is gasp for a second as reality comes crashing down in front of him. Her words sends a bullet straight into his gut, tearing his insides to shreds, just like his outsides. “I appreciate the show of sentiment, but I don’t really think purple is his color.”

Purple is not Wyatt's color. It wasn't anyone's color. It was everyone's color. His mother may have been crazy, but she still knew what she had been talking about when she taught him the appropriate way of respecting graves. Purple was the color of both beauty and death. Mother had told him to always put purple flowers upon graves. Though, she could be wrong. She had been wrong about many things before.She was always trying to protect you. She was right in the end. You aren't cut out for the real world. All it's done is hurt you. The world gave him so much and took it away just as quickly as it could. His mother would have taken him to a dozen shrinks for how he always felt. They wouldn't work either way. None of the shrinks he's seen had useful advice for him. Or he wasn't ready to let go. Letting go was hard. Harder than anything he's done and he wouldn't let go of them ever.

His voice cracks with the cool morning air, "Oh. Sorry." A small smile pulls at his lips, a hand to the back of his neck, gently rubbing the feelings away to seem so not broken by the graves. He can see the girl now, as he turned to look at her. Gorgeous blue eyes stare at him and all he can do is smile at her. A pretty girl who obviously had some sort of relation to Wyatt, if she was speaking about him. His hand moves down to his pocket now, feeling his breath vanish. The world seemed to break around him like it always did. The cracks of reality that shatter with every thought of them. The dead that he could save from the horrors of a game where no one wins.

A breathe of air is all it takes for him to calm himself even more. The air allows him not to crack under the weight of everything that hd ever happened in his life. The drugs, the pain, the alcohol, the selling of his body. The air allows him to live and for that he's thankful that something can keep him alive. The wounds that had once been on his chest over scars of the day Jequirity died. As he frowns now to the girl, something in his chest pushes him to ask a question. A simple question that could make his day a little easier knowing he's doing something for the dead and the family to show them respect.

"Then what's his color? I'll get the right one next time."