blue sky in your brain — robin&priscilla

[tick 12a / calla]

p r i s c i l l a

This is all there is now - ushering half a dozen assholes out the door, laughing along and watching their back pockets, multitasking like it's a god damn olympic sport.

There's a rock in my shoe and a crick in my back and I should be getting a medal just for smiling.

It's all a game; a haha and a whatever let's get drunk.

Tragic.

When I was eleven I filled the sink with rolled up socks, counted the seconds until everyone else got home and waited for the water to spill over so I could go diving.

I guess I used to be pretty interesting. But there's a metaphor here, a thousand different bad ideas; I learnt how to tie cherry stems under a stairwell, smiled at everyone on the street and kind of figured I'd be famous by now.

Maybe that's how life is; you either get one big kick in the ass or a dozen little ones. Maybe that's just how everything is because Harper was being a big baby this morning, microphone shoved three feet up his ass, and just when I thought the day was looking up Eli ditched me after work to go neck biting with the new kid and

I don't smoke. Eli doesn't either but his friends do, and his friends are my friends because they always sit at the same table and the same guy always kicks his work boots up after I wipe it down. I wanna deck him every time but then I'd definitely get fired so I just imagine it real hard instead.

He only asked about mom once, just like everyone does, and I didn't know what to say so I just let a plate of greasy shit fall on his lap when I went by, let him steal my tip back when he thought I wasn't looking.

At closing time he tucked a joint behind my ear, winked before he walked out the door and I stared at it through my peripheral when I started walking home, threw it in the overgrowth because I don't smoke and Eli doesn't smoke but his friends do.

And his friends are my friends.

I had a dream last night that the bubbles in his gross strawberry soda all floated up and when they popped these heaps of confetti popped out, fell like sparkly red snow and screamed like real live people.

I dunno, sometimes shit doesn't mean anything.

Sometimes shit is just work and then home and then work and then home again. A rut of gigantic proportions - all that ever plays on the radio is old reruns of tribute interviews and a version of the anthem that sounds like two cats going at it in a silverware drawer.

Ok, maybe like, really tiny cats. Tiny adult cats. Tiny adult cats that both consent to being in the drawer and -

I'm about to break an ankle for real this time I swear to fuck, shortcut my ass, who even put that root there.

Maybe the same dude who put that treehouse there and I have to blink twice because maybe I'm just going crazy but I'm at least eighty percent sure this is the way I always go and that definitely wasn't there before.

Sleep deprivation will do that, I guess.

Love me a good tree house, though. And I mean what am I gonna do? Not climb it?

It doesn't take long before I make it up there, mastering the ladder shimmy just like I master everything else and it

smells like sadness.

It might be the rotting wood but it also might be the body in the corner and oh geez oh shit oh fuck someone fucking died up here and I'm in the middle of grabbing a stick, trying to remember the difference between involuntary manslaughter and the hey-I'd-already-found-the-guy-dead kind.

This is great, really, why does everything happen to me, "please don't be dead please don't be dead." I'm throwing up in my mouth a little, about to poke the lump when it moves all shudder like and if this thing comes back to life I swear. "You better not be a zombie"

It's karma.

If this is my big break I really don't want it. Because I can just see it now: smoking hot waitress kills a guy and stuffs his body in a treehouse, definitely did not just find him that way. No way no sir not me.

Dear Ripred if you're listening up there I'll never throw out free drugs ever again.

Pinkie promise.

[pearl mcclain d4 [ryan]]

You don’t even try to blend back into society.

You miss Raven too much in order to do something like that. Most of the time, you spend weeks at a time in the treehouse that both of you built because you think it still smells like him. Its been years since Raven has stepped foot on the earth, but you swear that you can still sense his presence, that he is still within the wood that made this house, and it haunts you.

You aren’t sure why it does so, but you think its because you knew that you should have been the one to go in. Not him. You should have died in his place, and the fact that his own cousin had used him in order to get elected as mayor made you feel even worse.

Phoenix did not know Raven like you knew him, and he begged you not to say anything. You chose not too, because you knew that is what Raven would have done. Sure, there was a blind hatred for anyone that had ever tried to take advantage of things in your life, but you knew that you had to let it go.

After all, it still had ben years since Raven had been here.

---

But the wood in the treehouse still haunted you, and even though your parents begged you to come inside, even in the harsh winter months, you found ways to remain their when they weren’t even looking.

Sometimes you had to forage for certain items to trade for warmer things, like blankets and gloves and hats to make you feel like you could stay here for all eternity. Of course, you still had to show up at home when it was necessary, but you cut the time short as much as you could. You didn’t even bat your lashes when your parents told you that if you don’t show up more they are just going to leave your stuff on the porch. You knew they wouldn’t.

They cared about you too much.

---

You were on a strong stint of living in the treehouse, huddled in the corner periodically because the chilly day made it perfect for you to lay in the corner with a good amount of blankets. You could feel Raven’s presence here even more so than other days. Maybe it was because yet another anniversary of his death had passed. His soul was in the wood, and you wouldn’t let go of that. Not even if someone forced you to come to terms of it.

You missed him.

Plain and simple.

You drifted off into a slumber that faded to black quickly, and you didn’t wake up until you heard a girl sternly make her way into the treehouse.

You looked up at her, confused as to why she was here. ”Raven?” you said, not sure if you were dreaming that he was here, or if someone was crafty enough to find your secret hiding place. ”Is that you?”

You began to wipe the sleep from your eyes, opening them up fully and sighing. It wasn’t him.

It never would be.

Instead it was a girl with concerned eyes that mentioned something about zombies. ”No, Im pretty sure I still am living. I think?” You smirked. ”Check my pulse?” you found a way to make a joke out of it after all. That was the easy part.

You were curious to how she found this place, but first you had to prove that you were of the living world. Then the real questions could be answered.

[tick 12a / calla]

p r i s c i l l a

The not-zombie moves, turns his head all life-like and holy fucking shit this guy might still be alive after all.

"Uhh, last time I checked I wasn't a raven, thanks."

Ripred, I must be going crazy. Maybe he's some kind of spirit, a washed up old god here to test my will or something. Except 'check my pulse?' he asks and I snort because "Dude, that's the worst pick up line I've ever heard."

There's no way this is real.

His place reminds me of old things, of faraway lands and all the stories we used to make up as kids. When I was young I'd wanted a tree house, but mom said I'd have to share it with Harper and that kinda soured it. See, I had been independent once, a pity party of one, always looking out for numero uno, and I'd play house in a home that wasn't mine until it suddenly was.

Me, myself and I

never told Eli why we hang around the diner so much.

It's easier than taking him somewhere empty, to an absent home, seven years of excuses and bringing home greasy leftovers because I could never cook for shit.

I learnt how to take care of myself at eleven. It took two more years to figure out my brother.

But there is a reckoning, something so rotten that hides away in a hereditary fear. I haven't been to visit mom because I wouldn't know what to do. If I saw myself in that second mirror image, all grey and gnarled, it'd turn into the shadows I see at night, some kind of twisted echo that tells me I'll end up just like her — half out of my mind and too tired to get out of bed.

I've still got too much of my life to live, a million unexplored paths and I can't be alone anymore, can't be another notch in someone's belt, another set of parallels that we turn a blind eye to. That's what I tried to tell Eli last weekend and he just threw his arm around me, tilted his head back all slow in the haze of dusk and said "You've got the mind, babe."

I still don't know what he really meant and I never bothered to ask, we just kept on walking and he bought me one of those sodas he knows I hate.

He ended up drinking it himself anyways.

But I guess that's the trick to a facade — you fool everyone but yourself.

I told myself I'd make it big and never get left alone again.

But maybe this all some sort of fever dream, the first step of the end. I might wake up any second and find myself on someone's couch or the diner's back room or the forest floor. Maybe I died somewhere along the road and Harper's already writing a song about it.

But I don't pretend to be philosophical. I don't pretend to know shit.

"Who are you, anyways? And what are you doing up here?"

But I know how to pretend, how to make myself seem like I'm the shit.

I nudge my way a little closer to the door, eyes all shifty, because there's no way in hell I'm going out like this, regardless of whether this guy's real or not. "This isn't some kind of drug den is it? If it is, I didn't know I swear, just don't go batshit on me, man."

Maybe I shouldn't have thrown out that joint.