starboys and stargirls. { kousei

[✨ zozo.]

imogen eckhart.

I'm wearing a dead girls' shoes. 

I found them in the attic. They told me not to go through the boxes they'd taped up filled with all of their stuff. Jeq, Amerika, Luci. So of course I climbed up the ladder with a kitchen knife the second they weren't looking and tore open my treasure chests one by one, hunting through the remnants of sisters past. 

I was chased out the door by scathing words pouring from the mouths of sisters with brooms and bruises.  

"You're a psycho, Immy!" 

Sprinting down the pavement, I grin - I know that I'm strange. It's what makes me, me. 

"Give those back!" 

I run away from home with glitter shoes and flowers in my hair. 

And I find solace in quiet music and stools and thumb tacks, some corner-end boozer I stumbled in once or twice or three times before. There's now fairy lights strung across the bar and paper shapes hung from the ceiling with string, old photographs and beer caps and remnants of those in the past stuck up along the walls. The guy who runs the place always lets me in if I tidy the place up, a free glass of juice ice-cold in my hand, a chewed-up straw between my lips and shiny, sparkly shoes on.

"Hey Twinkletoes," the bar manager hollers from below as I sway to the beat of the guitar in the corner. "Kid at the table there wants to talk to you."

Absent-minded stare, I gawp at him and sip my juice.

"Lights. Over there. Hop to it." Points a finger and my eyes follow it's direction to a lone figure sitting with a glass half-full in his hands. Above him, my blank canvas.

Alight, I beam. "Okay!"

Hop to it, hop up on a stool, hop up onto the wooden surface, tongue poking out the side of my mouth and I get to work stringing and twirling and wrapping, sparkles on my feet and in my hands and beneath my eyes. Consumed in thought, starlight in my vision, until-

Someone's looking at me.

I turn my head to look back at him - kid, bar, oh.

Something doesn't click in my head. It hardly ever does.

"You've got a funny face" I decide aloud upon inspection, furrowing blonde eyebrows from the ceiling to scrutinise his every atom. "Is your drink too sour?"

A tip of my own in my hand and a smile. "I prefer the juice."

[kousei ♚]

s h a d o w

Four corpses were sent to the morgue today, and I wheeled every single one of them there. I became a guide for the dead - almost a synonym for death itself. Guiding the unresponsive to their light, their future, those who had fallen onto the wrong side of limbo under our care. Causes of death tagged, I let their final impressions into the ground fade; known as a cause of death, there was no quickening of this heartbeat or rushing of blood through these veins. Their impressions onto legacy faded as soon as the next one was tagged and declared. Shifting, calm, routine - I am steady and there is no concealment needed.

(I enjoyed it, the control that came with it - a taster of the grim reaper)

And then he makes his presence known in the room as I pull off latex gloves.

"Take the rest of the day off, son."

Confusion floods my brain and I raise an eyebrow. "Why?"

"We've lost four patients in one day and you've had to deal with the fallout, you need to rest."

I want to carry on, I want to keep working, keep carting, keep talking to patients, keep manipulating, and most of all, I want to keep using,

"But I'm fi-"

"I'm not saying this as your father, It's not a suggestion."

He still thinks I'm sensitive.

(I wear my camouflage too well)

But I'm the puppet master with strings along his fingertips. Manipulative, evil, dangerous and yet I've never felt a hint of remorse or said words of apology coupled with sincerity. I cart away dead bodies and take advantage of the vulnerable - they are my playthings and I am the boy with all the masks and all the camouflage. All the answers.

But to him I'm the sensitive son, the good son. He does not see the network of puppet strings attached to countless limbs leading to my fingertips.

It's irrational, this human nature need to consume play with corruption in a glass prism labelled 'liquor' and watch the same result in anticipation. Judgement clouded, stomach churning, poisoning. It's madness to repeat the same action and expect different results, just like it almost seems mad to blow all my money in a bar until I can't even remember six letters that correlate to spell my own name. I won't get intoxicated, but the bar is where regular people go.

So I leave the clinic and go straight to the nearest bar - all in the name of disguises and lies of course. I need to keep hidden, I need to seem normal.

I quickly place my order, and the drink is placed before me even quicker. It's quiet, almost completely and utterly empty and rundown but I didn't come for socialising and manipulation. To be honest, it's a mystery why I even found myself here. Planting myself somewhere secluded, I begin taking slow sips before lips tighten and shudders pass through my spine.

It's horrible.

(to think normal people drink this sour piss)

There's a reason I'm not normal.

I let the bartender know that I need to se one of his employees, I need a new drink and to inquire. Pushing the drink away, my attention wanders for a second and then-

(I smell opportunity)

there's some girl on the stool next to me, no attention, no words. I'm confused.

She looks down at me, her words suspended in the air between us, light gripped in the palm of her hands - as if she's illuminated herself and now sees right through my darkness,

(but no one can see through me)

"You've got a funny face. Is your drink too sour?"

The words suspended between us are nothing short of confusing, eccentric, permanent.

(did she really just dare insult me?)

I raise an eyebrow, opening my mouth to speak.

"I prefer the juice." Words accompanied by a disarming smile that's obvious even from down here and light intruding my darkness. My eyebrows unknit and I sigh, one part of me is amused while the other part still licks his paper cut wound from the insult - the balance between the two comes naturally.

(it's about wearing a mask and wearing it rightl)

"Wish I could say the same, but I can't exactly see your face from all the way down here can I?" I pause, letting the question hang - I hate those lights, they make me feel exposed to a truth I cannot face. "Besides, juice is a little bland compared to other things."

It hasn't got quite the same effect - corruption, poisoning, risks - living on knife's edge.

"And trust me girl, you'll get very bored very quickly, so how about you grow up and move to something more... useful."

I roll my eyes at her and take one more sip for good measure; I'm numb to the taste this time.