Drabble.
I look at him, and he looks at me. The simple request floating through our cramped room; a second passes. He doesn't want too. He's too big to play games with his little sister. I'm too old to want to play games that revolve around tag and hiding, counting to ten; here I come. I shouldn't have asked, but still I did. The thought roams through my head, the ideas, I don't feel save.
''Please, please… just, one little game.''
He tells me yes, and then it's dark.
''Count to ten,'' I tell him as he walks out of the bedroom door and shuts it close behind him.
I hear the murmuring of his voice. His hooded, careful eyes plaguing my memory. So secretive. Has father hit you again, brother dearest? Are you out to get his favorite songbird in the universe? Am I your next… next… next what? What was I thinking?
I move back, pressing my back against the wall. One deep breath, two deep breathes. Silence.
''Here I come.'' He murmurs.
It's careful step after careful step. One at a time. You, a hunter. I, your prey. These games I play, I always end up found. The idiocy. What is so fun about hiding, the intensity of my sweat with a hint of fear? I don't like the pounding my heart makes. It's too loud. I will be found.
And you do find me, one hand grasps my arm and I giggle. I giggle, and squirm, and in the darkness I try to escape. Flee to the door for another game of hide and seek.
But your arms envelope my tiny waist and you won't let go.
…
He has a way with words. The resentment and agony lies in every nib of his tongue. Sharp and violent profanities aimed to hurt me. Sometimes, when he realizes it doesn't, not the right effect, I don't respond, I look away; I walk away. I don't let you get me because I escape. You proceed to change tactics. Maybe a punch, maybe a hit; a push against my back when I try to run away. It saddens me. I have no balance and I fall. The hairs of our carpet are too hard, my skin is too fragile. I bruise, I ache; mother is not there. Daddy would make you pay.
I'm silent, because the thought of seeing one of your cuts re-open because of father's intoxicated movements and vicious mood swings are a horrendous sight for me too witness.
Every night, at the break of dawn, I can hear you leave your bed and enter mine. Brother dearest, why me?
…
I shake my head. It's not true. I am lying. A compulsive liar. I wring my hands, my foot trembles beneath me. A horrible habit. In times of twitter and worry I lose control.
''Katniss… it's okay.''
I barely manage to keep my eye from twitching. But I feel it. The veins pop, my back hunches over. They're looking. Everyone is looking. The disaster that has awoken within me. She wants me to talk, but I hush, this time. Insanity is valued, therapists long to find a cure. The craziest minds are fuel to their bickering thoughts. How to save this one, how to save the next?
I can hear their respirations, unequally, some. Quiet, most of them. Theirs eyes feel like a burden on my shoulder. They want a story, I have not one; but hundreds.
…
School was not dreaded. I was not stupid. My peers made it dreadful, my teachers made me stupid. I longed to be the best, I overachieved. I made myself known. But the walls, they had a secret. My principle, he wasn't nice. He took me aside, told me to get down on my knees. How many times, I rather not say. Why, that's a secret itself. So secretive, I doubt even he knew.
I think everyone knew. I think Ms. Henrietta failed me purposefully because she assumed I got my grades the nasty way. Through the dirt, the sweat, the tears; the legibly of what occurred in the safety cabinet of many; I fouled myself. My hands were never clean. And she knew. My peers knew. I was dubbed the freak, because they knew.
…
That's a lie. I never went down on my principle. He didn't even look at him. He was hardly at school either. My teacher did loath me though. I was better than her, that's all I can say. My peers adored me. I was a price among game shows. They all wanted to be around me. I wanted to be loved; that, their adoration was important.
…
That's a lie, too. A boy in my class always pinched my boobs and I was unable to say anything. I was the quiet girl in the class. I was the one demented and scarred for an eternity. I was the one hoping the earth could turn faster around its own ash so day and night could come and go; a better place waiting on the other side for me. Only for me.
…
The people among me stare back perplexed, confused. I am making no sense, but I haven't done that for a while either. How much is true and how much isn't. Is anything true?
If the psychiatrist is getting annoyed with me, she doesn't show it. I'm humoring to some, I think, one. A perfectly good-looking Blonde haired boy by the name of Peeta. Just Peeta, he had said. He only goes by Peeta and he likes chocolate bars covered with sprinkles and motor cycles because the chance of dying is so much larger then. He longs to die, I pick up. Death is tantalizing. I understand him. I haven't feared dying since I was twelve.
Or maybe it was eight.
Do you believe me?
''The only way to find yourself, is to look for yourself.''
This is not me, she wants to claim. Her sparkling green eyes. They remind me of someone. My former English teacher. A pretty woman. She had the prettiest eyes I had ever seen. The thought of her; the thought of the students in my class admiring her. Why couldn't I be like her? Beautiful… tantalizing. I, for one, awakening a sudden emotion out of an individual, something that goes beyond rape and abuse; I am worthy of love.
The truth is; I don't want to be loved.
The lie is; I don't want to be loved.
My lips are chapped, I can't utter a sound. So, Peeta chuckles. At the wrong moment, at the wrong timing, he tells the therapist; ''are you yourself, ma'am? Or do you just think you're yourself? If we think we're ourselves, ever the demented. Does that make us demented?''
I don't look at him, but I can feel him looking at me. Oh Peeta, with the Blonde hair and the perfect pale complexion. Just the right type of broadness, and the shaggy way his trousers are draped around his legs. You tortured nondescript soul.
''None of you are demetend.''
''Are we what you say we are?''
She's silent. Then she responds to his initial question. ''I am me. I am sure of it, Peter.''
''Peeta.'' He states.
''But your name is Peter.'' Annie Cresta replies confusedly. She is a destroyed case. Years of neglect and alcohol brought her to a downward spiral. Her face left untouched, her shape filled gorgeously. Annie is perfect. I am…
I am not.
''I am not Peter. I am Peeta.'' He glances at the psychiatrist knowingly. ''And that is who I really am.''
…
I had slept with Peeta, once upon a time. I think; it was a sort of blue lagoon scenery. We were lying on a meadow. There was horse shit somewhere behind, there were flowers everywhere, there was an orange sunset inching closer to the horizon; halfway. I remember. I told him; 'halfway'. He smiled.
I never loved anyone. He was my first love. It must have been the way he said my name. The airy way he dragged the words out; ''you are beautiful,'' as if he knew that nobody had ever called me that. And my first time hearing the words, yes, that had to be special. In the least way, in the most possible way. His words, simple ones, told every second, every day, every once in a while. He made something ordinary sound magical. The word love; magical. Peeta restored its original purpose. To shed magic.
Oh, Peeta.
He was on top of me, suddenly. I remarked the way the earth dug deeper into the dimples on my lower back. His hands looking for places to attach himself. First my hips, then my stomach, then my breasts, then my lips. Then… everywhere. Everywhere with his two mauled hands. He used his mind, his glorious eyes… His lips found mine in a sear onslaught of love. Of passion.
Him, I had loved. He had been my first.
He had undressed me and made love to me. He had moved into me, traced his fingers over the nubs of my breast. Moved his tongue over the hollow of my neck, there where my pulse point quickened. He had whispered in my ear; ''I will love you for eternity and beyond.'' Because he believed that beyond wasn't stronger than the love he had for me. Beyond, yes… he will love me beyond.
I came with a cry of his name, a jerk deep within. He made me feel everything at once.
And afterwards we lay naked on the meadow, the flies and birds moving along. Nothing dared to disturb our peace. We were content.
…
But I never knew Peeta before therapy. I don't know Peeta. Peeta is a fiction of my imagination. We never made love. I don't know what love is. I have never felt love. Peeta is in my therapy sessions, just like Annie and everyone else. I made that up. I am a compulsive liar.
…
''Tell me something I don't know, Katniss. Tell us a secret.''
Sharing means caring, I want to say. Long ago, long, long, long ago. When I didn't know the difference between a microwave and an oven. I ended up burning my food in the oven. It's strange, how did I not notice? Microwaves don't have fire, ovens do. My adolescent mind thought it to be a special kind of oven. A new kind. I wasn't wise. I was stupid. It was then I had experienced something people would call realization.
I longed for a moment to hug my mother. But mother didn't want any hugs. Those reminded her of father, and I looked like father. I resembled him in every aspect. We had the same nose and the same smile. We had the same eyes, the same hair and the same voice. And when I sung; I resembled him so much, mother had to shut me up abrasively. She took me by the shoulders and shook me around, over and over. The burning of my food was noted. Macaroni, I think. It was macaroni, definitely. She shook me until my head started hurting and my arms were crying out.
'Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!'
I shouldn't have sung louder, but I did. And mother slapped me almost like a rude awakening. We were both in denial. I awoke, she fell asleep. Deeper. Snow white's prince wouldn't have been able to wake her up.
''I have a secret,'' Peeta suddenly exclaims.
All eyes are on him, but not mine. But not our psychiatrist's.
No, we're not ready.
…
I don't even have a brother.
…
At the back of the room, there's a guy murmuring to himself. His knees are hiked up to his chest and he's cradling himself like he's holding onto a baby. He looks insane. Do I look like him? Have I stepped out of bed more demented and twisted than ever? I move my lips to tell him we're not the same and my chapped lips tear. I can see the blood trickling out through a tiny open wound. Commonly, my tongue peeks out and I capture the leak.
It tastes like metal. Iron bars from jail cells.
I went to jail twice in a row. One for homicide, the other for maltreatment. Truth be told, the suckers had it coming. They took something that was rightfully mine. I don't go around trying to rip everything from everyone. But they did, and suddenly, I had enough. I had a knife shaped arrow, and my rage that took the better of me. I had been in jail for years before I was let out for good behavior. Only to return back, once more.
It was a cry for help, the judge said. I need help. I was a teenager. I am nineteen now.
…
I had a sister.
I lost her during a fire, one that spurred out of control.
I think I had a sister. I'm not sure. It's foggy and my mind keeps replaying an off, distant voice that vaguely sounds like mine. I cry out her name, a weird name; ''Primrose, Primrose, Prim.'' I am confused. I am not sure, did it really happen? My fingers; I see matches, then there's screaming.
She was ten, my sister; Primrose. She was ten, I was fourteen.
…
I never killed anyone. I never went to jail either.
…
''If we all keep talking in circles, changing our stories—lying. We're never going to do much healing,'' the psychiatrist says, after she finishes listening to Peeta. He talked about butchering a cat. An ugly cat. It's horrible, but it sounded like the cat deserved it. I had an ugly cat once, I think. Its name was buttercup.
''You make it sound like we need saving.'' Peeta chirps up.
His eyes find mine again, and I wonder, was I wrong? Was I lying? Did the event really happen? Did we make love in a meadow with a blue lagoon scenery, do I know him? I don't remember. Everything is a cluster fuck. I'm not sure what is real or not real anymore. I am a compulsive liar, I am demented, I am twisted, I have lost myself, I have no idea who I am anymore.
''Because… you do.''
And after minutes upon minutes without talking, my dry tongue relents itself from its slumber and utters;
''I don't.''
…
I'm not sure. Maybe I'm lying.