Shelter [Zoe]

[kousei ♚]

Tranquility; the quality or state of being calm.

The only times I ever felt a state of being calm was when I would be locked in my bedroom for a 'time out'. My mother and father didn't hesitate to drag me into my bedroom and leave me strewn across the floor with a red cheek and a piece of my shattered sanity. When they bolted the door I would stride up and down the room, slamming my fist into every wall and door that dared stare at me in mockery. It was a pre-staged steady routine for my own routine for my heavy downfall. When my knuckles were grazed, bruised and cut and I was foaming from the mouth, my voice would shatter and I would be left in the state of numb. I felt nothing. And from that nothing I felt calm. Tranquility.

It was a sporadic routine of my own downfall but from my downfall I felt calm from the blackened ashes of my sanity. Not once did I ever envision myself feeling a similar kind of tranquility without tasting the ashes of another fragment of my sanity.

Clack!

Sitting on the training centre rooftop, the tranquility I felt during those episodes is mirrored at this very moment, bar the blackened ashes of my sanity of course. Nighttime bathes the night sky, I can't tell if they're nothing but fiction or artificial but they almost seem to weep from above. Through the blanket of the dark and all, I allow the scene to wash over me. My purpose here is lost on me, I'm a fool for daring to step foot where I- where we-

Clack!

Another pebble hits the force field surrounding the perimeter of the rooftop. I don't need to be told twice why it's there. Not every tribute comes to the rooftop to feel a sense of tranquility or watch their already non existent ethics slur into nothing. How boring would that games be if there were only twenty three because someone decided to throw themselves from the rooftop like I threw away my sanity those four years ago.

Clack!

"Can't lose fresh blood yet." I mutter to myself, grinning as I chuck the pebble at the force field once again.

Clack!

There's a strange sense of peace of mind when the pebble flies back towards me and my hand moves automatically to catch it. A part of me should hate it. The constant repeated motion, the constantly repeating end point. The same input for the same output every time the pebble flies from my fingertips and flies back. There's no chaos in this, no uncertainty; it's far too sane for my mind to comprehend. I'll just mark the experience as a shade of gray.

Clack!

Still, when the pebble flies back to the palm of my hand I find myself grinning wide and proud. I could never comprehend a sense of calm without the charred taste of a fragment of my sanity. It's different, but an abstract different.

Before the pebble flies from my hand I hear the sound of force field against pebble and my eyes widen at the broken pattern. I turn my head, to see a shadow in the dark doing the exact same thing; the same input for the same output. But something tells me she is not here for the experience of tranquility that I'm mulling over.

No time to question how I didn't notice and no time to mourn the loss of my steady routine, I heave myself up onto my feet, sticking the pebble in my pocket. Every step closer reveals a new detail I missed in my drunken trance of tranquility.

It's a female (not Desimae).

Blonde hair.

A foreign face to me, all the reaping recap videos remained unseen.

I'm already next to her when I speak. "I'm surprised, I thought I'd be the only one here," I say calmly, "what brings you here?"

At this moment, I no longer want red; tranquility dulled my lust hours ago.

[✨ zozo.]

S A M I R A  H A R T

 

I watch him arrive as the sun sets.

Career boy opens the door as the last of the light disappears from the horizon and I hold my breath, pretending I'm dead, practising for later on. When I was younger I used to lie still on my bedroom floor, close my eyes, and try to slow my heart rate down to one beat per minute. I didn't want to die but I wanted to be dead, just for a moment, enough time to trick my mother into thinking I had passed so I could be free of all of it.

Escape routes at the back of my eyes and a bag packed, always, beneath my bed. Turns out I became a little too good at pretending to die, climbing through that bedroom window and living with nothing but a backpack and my wits. If I close my eyes I can feel the hardness of my wooden floor against the back of my head, cool at the palm of my hands, counting steps, no sound but the-

Clack!

Escape routes form as constellations above me and I map out my journey to the door, back down the stairs, floating down the elevator to the fifth floor, my room, my bed. Tempting, I sit up and the world tilts from upside down to just about right but there he is, a silhouette against the night life light and the stars and my eyes. Career boy in all his glory, throwing pebbles at the sky and watching them spit his offering back out again.

Clack!

Yesterday's mistakes in an empty bottle (or two) by my feet, bottle caps pressed tight in my hands, their ridges creating temporary scars in my skin. I wonder if he knows I'm here. I wonder if he wants to kill me.

My body mirrors his, an arm thrust through the air as my bottle cap flies. Perhaps I expected something more, for an inkling of surprise flits through my chest as it makes the same noise and rattles across the floor to my feet.

Clack!

Career boy spins and turns to face me - stupidity becomes me and I grin. He prowls toward me, lion to prey, in a blink he is by my side. I swallow my own pride and stare out at the sea of darkness and punctures of light in its body, waiting for light to pour out of me too - tainted with crimson sin and a life not worth living.

But he doesn't want to kill me. Yet.

"I'm surprised," he muses, "I thought I'd be the only one here. What brings you here?"

My body screams run. Of course, I stay to taunt death with a shrug and a smile.

"Thought I might fling myself off of the side of the building. One less person for you to worry about."

Grinning, again, fuck. I have to stop doing that.

"But the world doesn't want me dead."

Bottle cap clack!

"Yet."