cast me down. { kousei }

[tick 12a / calla]

c a d e .

It's always the same.

Day in and day out, living, breathing, just because it's something to do. Staring at the ceiling and counting the cracks, one, two, three, waiting for the hammer to fall. Hanging from a thread of lucidity, a technicolor dream. Blink and an hour's past. Roll over to the open window and the sky is dark.

Another day gone.

Poison in the back of my throat and addict on the tip of my tongue. Looking for a release but if you lose it and punch a brick wall you'll only end up with a broken hand. Punch a washed up junkie and you can at least make off with some of their shit. Sometimes you don't even have to get your hands dirty.

But life sure does suck when there's no other dumbasses around to steal from.

Waiting is teeth grinding and pins and needles, tracing patterns onto the brick walls and Ripred, why do dealers take so fucking long. The smug bastards, all cozy with their bags of party tricks, prancing around like they're got all the time in the world. People are dying out here.

Footsteps down a dark alley, hollow echoes and broken windows staring down like the eyes of disapproving mothers, and for fucks sake I'm just trying to survive here.

It's not my fault that lives fall apart so easily.

Picking cat hair from my sweater; one, two, three tries because fuck, my hands are s h a k i n g.

And I still remember how my mom would shake and shake and shake. How she'd talk real slow, words melting between her teeth, and how she'd already be passed out when I looked up from my crayon drawings on the floor. I remember the powder that always got used up too fast, how there were never enough pills in the bottle and how we'd burn our fingertips on the edge of a blunt before feeling any kind of buzz.

A trash can lid falls, crashing against cracked pavement, and being here makes my skin itch but it's not in the agenda to die today. Expectation better suit its ass up and meet reality because there's a restlessness in my veins and I'm not going anywhere yet.

A colour wheel spins in front of my eyes, blue skyline falling away to red fire like water turning to wine, purple bruises under tired eyes and we're faithless poetry in motion. Paint splatters on the sidewalk, painful graffiti and scuff marks like a sick mural. And I guess there was a fight here. Not surprising because there's been a fight everywhere around these parts. Broken bones and cat scratches and-

shit, Arlo's probably missing me.

I like to think that he actually cares, a weight on my chest pressing down like gravity, and he goes all rumbly until the tremors stop. Hopefully he's not getting into anything while I'm gone. Not that there's much left for him to find anymore.

A cheap lighter in my pocket and a wad of bills in my waistband, probably not enough to cover anything but my usual guy would cut me some slack if I went home with him. He'd share a hit there anyways and wouldn't charge for it, some little token of appreciation I guess. But that was before he blinked out of existence and I guess he's just face down in a ditch somewhere because it's obvious that that's how we'll all go.

Tiny shivers run through my bones and I don't know how much longer I can wait for this guy. Hand running across my face, through my hair and shake it off, alley cat.

Mom didn't raise no quitter.

[kousei ♚]

Power is surprisingly easy to come by when we're cast down from the heavens.

But this ain't that special place in hell reserved for people like me. 'Fire and brimstone' they'll hiss at me before my fists kiss the front of their teeth and swell their lips with twisted shades of black and blue. Red burn, a dagger in my gut and a red claw clutching at my throat -- yeah right. I was cast from heaven a long time ago when they grew tired of the fresh scars forming tracks along my knuckles and needles marking my skin. This ain't warmth and family, and this sure as hell ain't that broken clock tower that rings with the rhythm of the cracking of my knuckles and the clicking of my bones.

This ain't heaven, hell or home.

It's unfamiliar, these rundown buildings that tower over me threatening to collapse. The sweet music of a ghost town only growing louder with every footstep I take towards sweet oblivion, glass footsteps threatening to shatter the unsteady foundations of this peace forged from abandonment. This world is grey, the sky threatens to weep over broken lives and lost souls. Men and women too weak and withdrawn to even dare cry for help from whatever god stopped listening to their pleas.

I wield weapons of divinity, a bag of gear and a spiked bat. I'm their god now.

I grin, knuckles turning whiter as my grip around the handle of my barbed bat tightens and my grin widens. Whoever this washed up addict is better figure out quickly who not to fuck with, I ain't scared to crack another skull and watch their blood stain the concrete. I'd kill a customer before I let them screw me around, not that it ever comes to that. They've usually learned after the first resounding swing. Call it judgement from divinity, I'm always gonna reap your wealth one way or another.

I've dipped my fingers in this distorted reality of power and now I'm an addict at heart. Taking roles I never dared to imagine would be possible for an abandoned man with nothing but the clothes on his back and scars on his skin. A man living off of his second chance and living for his next hit. One careless footstep in and I am their debt collector, on the next step I've become their king and the step after I'm their god. A warped view on power reaps a hell of a lot of benefits I suppose.

Still, in truth I am just another foot soldier in an empire of drugs and wealth in the grand scheme of things. A foot soldier with a moral compass that toils on the boundary of irreparable and non-existent and that's what makes me great.

Addicts; I ignore them because they're nothing to me. No cash, no value -- I've come here for one man and one man only. Despite being at least fifteen minutes late I still take my time, he's the one who'll suffer through sleepless nights from his withdrawal after all. Whoever he is. Bag of gear on my right shoulder, spiked bat slung over my left and the promise of profits or beat down seared into my eyes. This is where I belong.

I turn a corner, spotting a mirror for what I could have been had I not gone to that bar but my heart ain't heavy. "Yeah, I'm late," I say lazily, scratching the back of my head and letting the bag slide down arm and into my hands. Clutching his salvation in the palm of my hands. "Had things to do." I quickly explain to him, footsteps coming to a slow halt as I let the bag dangle loosely at my side. "So, I'm guessing y'know what you want right?"

Goddamn, I hope that special place in hell's something like this.

[tick 12a / calla]

c a d e .

Brick-face looming to brush fingertips with the sky, my vision swims with vertigo and maybe this wasn't such a good idea. But I guess all ideas seem like good ones when you're high out of your mind,

( like jumping from rooftops at two am

"hey man, watch this"

and calling it an escape route,

"mkay. but if you die can i have your stash?"
"don't get ahead of yourself, tiger."

breaking window latches and taking in a damn street cat - )

Being dead seems a whole lot easier than being alive.

My veins are still clogged and everything's a little fuzzy around the edges. Tripping over my own feet, how the fuck did this even happen. There's memories locked away with at that statement and h a- never mind. Absently pulling at a loose thread instead, the one from my hem matching the one in my mind.

I don't know why everything's so mopey today, my teeth set on edge and every rat scuttle making me jump. I could throw a stone and hit one, two, three, other damned souls worse off than I am. Junkies and hookers, street rats and scumbags, and

"you're not that special, kid."
"never fucking said i was, mister. you wanna do this or not?"

And it's been a shitty day. Waking up in a cold sweat that I haven't shaken yet, all jittery and shifty and now there's a fucking twitch in my arm. Paintbrush strokes on my skin, black and blue and red overlaying but at least it's something to look at. And I guess my life is a mess. I don't even know how the fuck someone burns coffee, especially when it's more water than anything else, but somehow here we are and the roof of my mouth still feels like it's on fire.

There's a fire on my ass now too, a timer counting down the seconds, three, two, one, until a snap.

A stake through my skull and I'm a dead man walking.

And then the fucker shows up.

He's late and he knows it, dangling his shit show in front of my face and okay, I'm already pissed off to begin with but this kid's pushing the line. One up-down and he's got a spiked bat, trying to be all edgy and intimidating like some big head fish. I bet he won't be so badass once I throw up all over his shoes - r i p r e d alleyways are nauseating.

But his bag is probably chock full of shit I run on so I just run a shaky hand through my hair and let myself lean against the wall. A support system that I'm desperate for. Everyone's an addict these days, no use in denying straight up facts.

"I'm guessing y'know what you want right?"

We've all just got different poisons.

"Morphling. Just enough until my usual turns up." I wouldn't be surprised if the peacekeepers finally got to him but I'm staying all good and optimistic like. It hurts to smile, crunching glass and tasting blood. "Then you can go back to your things to do and won't have to see my sorry ass ever again. Deal?"

I just want to go home.

( But what if home is six feet under. )

[kousei ♚]

Anyone else but you
On a lonely night
Was a burning light
A hundred years, we'll be born again

Fuck me, what a fucking mess. Every time I spot a fucker like him there's a reminder in the back of my mind, playing on repeat and whispering in my ears from the corners of my mind; that damn well could've been me, easily could've been me. So in that sense, addicts like him are a mirror, an insight into what could've been if the right guy didn't catch me swinging at the right guy in the right bar. If I hadn't gotten my knuckles bloody at the right place and the right guy and they didn't take me into that clock house, feed me and keep me clean when I was cold and vulnerable.

Correction; I was never fucking vulnerable, just in a transition phase.

I suppose in this sense, I'm a man built on the shoulders of raw brutality and luck. A foot soldier and a slave to the pain of a fist in my eye and a chipped tooth in my mouth, fuck it's a good thing I'm a savage animal or I'd be like this kid. Back propped up against an alleyway wall, head slumping, sweating like a kid from a bad dream and ready to be beat into the ground by the next psycho he looks at wrong. Running his hand into his hair and looking like every word is drawn from a throat with one too many glass shards buried within it. He sounds like cracked porcelain.

"Morphling. Just enough until my usual turns up."

I smile, so he likes the good shit. No wonder he looks so fucked up. Still, I would've pegged him as more of a crack guy. Cocaine maybe if he was rich once. But no one's ever rich enough to stay addicted to cocaine for long, no one on the street at least.

"Then you can go back to your things to do and won't have to see my sorry ass ever again. Deal?" My grin splits into a laugh, someone's fucking cranky. Must've woken up at the wrong side of the cardboard box. Goddamn, that could've been me and it probably ain't healthy for me to be thinking back and lamenting on all the what-ifs and could'ves. Fact is, that isn't me, I'm here he's there. I have a roof over my head, a belly full of food and cash to last the week if I do good enough and chances are I can ground anyone here into the dirt. Smash their bones with a feather heart and not a word of apology drawn from my lips.

I'm the archangel and devil here. I'm the one who feeds the addiction of broken men and I'm the one who punishes them when they step out of line -- it's a nice being handed divinity. The power to stop the man from down the street rattling in his cage but also being stroke enough to break a finger or crack his skull when he thinks he can get away without paying or can spit at my feet when he's in a back mood. It's a backwards world; the only place where I can be a common foot soldier and a god at the same time.

The world needs a savage like me I suppose.

I keep an eye on him -can't be too careful with these people, wouldn't be the first guy to come for me so he can make off with all my shit- as I thrust my hand into my bag and pull his bag of needles. "Yeah, sounds like a deal," I tell him, pausing for less than a second. "Although, usually when someone's 'usual' has fucked off for more than a week they're either dead, avoxed or worse."

I throw the bag of poison at his feet, a playful grin spreads across my face.

"But don't worry, if that's the case I can treat you real good."