All new now. I fixed it, well, tried. New and improved HOACC ... Which looks like an STD, but we'll skip over that. What do i actually say here? Welcome? 'Don't hate, tolerate!' haha. I guess i can apologize for spelling like a nob. And that what i say here is absolutely no reflection on my writing style or how this story is gonna wind up. Enjoy ... i guess ... :D
There's a stack of cards littering the breakfast table. Some of which remain unopened. An avalanche of unanswered apologies, these crinkled envelopes, a tumble of yellow and white, have become a more permanent decoration in your home. To wake up each morning and see these scattered letters, these are your scars. Ugly reminders of painful events left to the past. The scrawled names of relatives you've long since forgotten, feel as though they've been scratched into your skin. With vague interest you scan the messages, bleary, bloodshot eyes dragging lazily over the sorrowful scene.
'We're sorry for your loss.'
'Sorry.'
One reads 'Get well soon'.
How inappropriate.
Death is an incurable disease, a permanent state, a little more contagious than most will admit. It's not just the robbery of one life, it's the chain reaction, the turbulent emotions that leap from loved one to the next. Death consumes their thoughts.
It's got your mind in it's rotten fingers.
You dance your fingertips purposely over the cards, reaching for a photograph resting atop the pile. It's paper throne.
It's old, the corners folded and torn with age. Coffee rings and fingerprints, people who refuse to face into memory.
You struggle to recognise the frozen faces timelessly watching you.
Such a happy family captured within the thin white border. An image from your childhood you can never recapture.
A mother and father, holding hands, smiling with what you assume to be something remotely resembling love. They're too young, the world hasn't caught up to them yet.
But it did.
The father's hand rests possessively upon the shoulder of his eldest son. The young boy looks grim, perhaps aware of what lay in his future. His mouth a thin line, his skin a sickly pale shade. Even then shocking blue of his eyes had lost it's glimmer. More a grey than anything, identical to the ominously grey clouds gathering overhead. Pale, pastel colors, easily covered, easily influenced, and in the last few weeks of his life, that boy was anyone's but his own. His words formed someone else's, his heart beating to keep a smile on his father's face.
Standing noticeably separate from the family, the youngest son, eyes cast downwards, the corners of his mouth curled downwards, his arms folded stubbornly across his frail chest. A vision of childish innocent, a hint at his potential for rampaging teenage arrogance. You can easily picture the thoughts and emotions flitting through this boys head as the flash captured him how he'd always be remembered. How accurate. He still feels the same.
You should know.
You see him through the mirror everyday.
Your eyes no longer reflect the light, the muscles in his face having long since forgotten how to smile. Just pointless fashion accessories you sees no practicality in.
You slam the photo on the table in frustration, some of the cards fluttering to the floor, a ridiculous imitation of the tears you can't bring yourself to cry.
Welcome to your life.
"I'm going out," you mutter to no one in particular. What's left of the family from the photograph has lost interest in the straying son, always standing a little further apart.
The grave still looks new, foreign and unwelcome among all the old decaying stone markers. The grass has yet to grow here, patchy dirt covering the burial patch, the earth still recovering from a death it did not expect. It's stunted recovery.
You kneel before it, the material of your jeans so thin at the knees, the moisture soaking in steadily. A desperate chill set up the notches in your spine and like a drug you'll return here to fall before this final resting place, and each day you'll struggle at conversation. You trace the carved letters, so rough and basic, much like the boy buried beneath.
"Loving son and brother".
Your brother.
You wonder momentarily if he misses you as much as you miss him. Can he see the downward spiral he's set before you and your father? If he could have his last few moments back, what would he say? Offer you an uncharacteristic sympathy? Stroke your back gently and tell you it was inevitable? Or bury a fist in your dirty blonde looks, push your nose into the dirt of his final destination and blame you? A poster-child for an unstable personality. He's silent, inviting you to talk, although he never used to listen, and you're well aware he's not listening now.
"Dad misses you."
Your voice sounds scratchy and harsh, hardly appropriate for a graveside conversation. You say it more as an accusation. Your father is behaving as though he's lost his only son, rarely speaking to you. You make a point of not interacting with the sorry excuse, the rotting old man, resigned to decaying within the walls of his broken family home. Brief encounters and lying smiles, What your relationship has been reduced to.
You've lost your only friend.
"What happened you?" you ask again, for the umpteenth time, once again hoping for some sort of sign from beyond the grave. His monotone drawl, a brief few words giving you permission to carry on. He's still reluctant to tell you. Those words trapped forever behind motionless lips.
Your brother was killed in the fighting. The dramatically un necessary showdowns, tearing the streets apart as well as the families. He was another unfortunate casualty. The authorities reluctant to look into the incident, for fear of investigation into one murder case, leading to various families insisting the same treatment on their own victims of battle. The Shinra empire only embarking on his rampage to success, political parties far too concerned with Shinra monopolizing 'their' world to even consider the disaster raging through the city streets.
Your father hit a low point soon after your brothers death, retreating to his room for days, looking over old photographs and school reports, fondly forcing a laugh every so often. In denial regarding your existence. Exercising his fondness for playing the victim.
Concentrating on the cold stone, you keep your words to a minimum, reluctant to forgive your brother for his involvement in the streets.
It's common knowledge you have to be civil to a dead person.
"Whatever," you grumble at the lack of response to your previous question, heaving your creaking bones from the ground and vainly attempting to brush the dirt from his grave off your knees. Another scar for you to ignore.
The beach.
He used to stand here for hours, staring at the waves, wordlessly. Enjoying the feeling of being among a happy family, although no necessarily his own. Smiling children running about him giggling, laughing, gestures foreign to him. Women occasionally greeting him with a smile, a brief nod.
Of course it was all just happy imagination. Your brother had been carved from ice, constantly changing. And while the society around him remained unchanging, fixed pieces in a bigger puzzle.
Your brother was never meant to fit in.
You stand in the same spot as he once did, watching the violent grey waves, the wind whipping your skin. This beach is so ugly right now, but yet you can't help but feel homesick at it's emptiness. You want something more from this scene, but you can't understand what. There's no people, a quick glance at your watch quickly clarifies why at such an early hour.
Sit in the sand, hold your head in your hands, You have plenty of issues with being alive.
Way off, along the pier, barely visible to you a girl climbs from the water, blonde hair pasted to her head, skin tinted blue with the early morning chill.
She's laughing, but there's no one to hear.
She's naked, but there's no one to see.
Embarrassed, you cast your eyes once more over the stormy waves and wonder vaguely why a girl would chose a morning where the sea is angry, vengeful, it's voice raging and crashing along the shoreline. There's a flurry of movement in her direction before you dare turn your eyes to see her walk slowly, barefoot along the pier, high-heals clutched in her hands, a distant smile playing on her lips. Her pale dress blending with her pastel shaded skin.
She walks by you and doesn't seem to notice. It's a fact your growing more accustomed to. Your urban camouflage is too good.
No one knows you're there.
In the following days, you find yourself standing among the wind and the sea spray more than you ever did while you were young and this obsessive behaviour was acceptable.
The girl returns each day, clutching the same sparkly red heels in her hands. She reaches the end of the pier, and unashamedly tears her dress off before diving into the murky waters, regardless of the weather. And each day you find yourself watching with only one question in mind.
"Is she gonna resurface?"
It's ridiculous how people who take such little interest in their own health can outlive those cautious and protective people, like your brother. But here stands your experiment, a visual indication, the lively young girl swimming in the ocean as the winter months draw closer, while your brother lies underappreciated among the frozen earth. How she offers herself willingly to the icy waters, while your brother constantly worked to avoid that chilling sensation, despite witnessing it in his own eyes in every reflection that followed him.
Finally you unearth the courage to confront this girl, discover if maybe, in a way, she's already suffering something relative to death. To see if there's method to her madness. Because yours to is unfocused.
As your near her neat bundle of clothes on the pier, you hear her splashing beneath you, it's then the embarrassment creeps up your neck, spreading a blush with it. An uncomfortable heat reaching from the clammy palms of your hands to the back of your neck. A sudden sensation of smothering, despite the surrounding scene of the great outdoors. The bundled up dress a reminder of why you had previously failed to confront her. Her clothing an unnecessary reminder of your embarrasment, your social awkwardness, an inability to communicate with these street-wise flowers.
"Excuse me miss?" you ask, as politely as you can force, the words sound completely foreign spilling from your mouth.
There's a hesitation below, even the water itself seems to pause, awaiting her answer.
"Yes," she sings at you, although her voice sounds strange, you assume distorted by the waves. Like a mermaid enticing you to your death. You warily eye the turbulent waters, edging further from the edge of the pier.
"Are you alright?"
Another pause follows.
You chance a brief glance over the side into the murky waters below, arms outstretched to maintain your balance, wondering how this lady looks up close. She's struggling up the ladder, knuckles frozen with the cold. Thin blonde hair clings to her shoulders, bones protruding painfully through her skin. From this angle you can almost count the notches in her spine. You peel your eyes away from the painful vision as she nears the top of the ladder, snatching the dress from your feet as the rose blush spreads once again across the bridge of your nose like a fever.
Your spine almost cracks withe the speed at which you glance away.
She struggles and grumbles with her clothes before clapping her hands together enthusiastically. The sound echoing along the empty beach.
"You comin'?" she asks, her accent so strange and bright among this world she's so attached to, the grey clouds and the ugly waters. You struggle to understand her friendly invitation, an unquestionable innocence. She speaks like she knows you, and you almost pity her for it.
Suddenly, as you replay her words, you feel like you've missed all your lines in her little monologue.
Where are you going?
Barely twenty minutes later, you're seated opposite her in a dank, dreary hole of a café, she's nursing a cup between frail hands and wearing a vacant smile that vaguely disturbs you. The smell of cigarettes and sex lingers, stinging your nostrils and burning your eyes. Despite the falsities her expression advertises, her attempt at warmth is almost comforting. It almost sets your heart beating.
You feel overwhelmed with an unexplained shame and guilt while various other people in the cafe stare at you and whisper about you behind sound-proof hands as though you're the cause of the mascara spilling over her cheeks. Throughout, she never fails to smile.
Up close, you can't help but admit that she is strangely pretty. Unnatural, unique, comparable to your brother's brand of superhuman. She reminds you of your brother before reality hit him. There's electricity in her eyes, vivid blue, flashing with more emotion that just happiness. Her skin is pale, her lips are tinted blue from the icy waters. Her hair barely reaches her shoulders, emphasizing the tendons and bones in her shoulders and neck, her simple dress doing nothing to cover them. Veins stretching like a web between pasty skin, marking the roads of her life.
"What's your name hun?" she asks, her eyes still entranced by the steam in her cup.Her voice maintains it's distorted characteristic. The same uncaring tone she addressed you with from beneath the pier.
"It's Roxas," you offer, voicing it as more of a question than a fact. Sometimes you wonder yourself. Your mind can't make order of the questions you have for this girl, It struggles fruitlessly with the scrambled letters.
It's as though she knows your struggling with the most basic of human interaction, and she's silently enjoying that fact, a coy smile on her face.
After moments of awkward silence between you, your eyes drifting to the world beyond the windows, she stands up suddenly, pushing the cup across the table, slamming a fistful of notes on the surface before offering you a welcoming smile. Cheap dirt.
"I'll see you around, Roxas".
Even after she's gone, you can still smell the cheap perfume from the stained notes she placed on the table.
In her absence, the questions become clear and organised, the first one already forming on your neglected lips.
"What's your name?" you whisper to yourself before taking your leave.
You have no idea where she's left you. You're not so knowledgeable about this area of town. The rough areas, where the fighting claimed your brother.
Most of the buildings are vacant, boarded up with spray-paint declarations scrawled across the decaying brick work. The streets are littered with broken glass, and suspicious stains on the tarmac, and you find yourself frantic, the possibility of this being where your brother met his end.
Keep your head down, Roxas. You're best at being nothing.
A handful of people stand idle about the street, leaning against the boards, their presence punctuated by the glowing tips of their cigarettes. Angry eyes following your every movement. You pass quickly by a small group of under dressed middle-aged women, cackling and shoving eachother, before the inevitable pause as you attempt to steer silently around them. You're not even outside the range of noise their voices can reach before you hear the usual cat-calls, 'pretty-boy,' 'little girl, where's your smile gone?' And although you're aware they do not expect a response to their taunting questions, you've already prepared you reasons behind your lips. Verbal bombshells for them to consider.
Your eyes remain glued to the cracked pavement and the litter gathering against the buildings. You know where you are now. You know whose those women are.
Something sparkles among the litter, glittering red. You recognise them as the shoes of the young girl from earlier. She's gazing at the sky, a cigarette hanging lifelessly from her lips.
"Heya Roxas. Sorry hun but I'm back on the clock .. We could go somewhere if you like?" she rattles it off, making it blatantly obvious he's not the first one she's proposed this to. She doesn't even turn those misty eyes to glance at you.
Prostitutes.
You should have noticed her 'pretty' was rehearsed.