Dead love - how romantic. The same feelings that you are supposed to have when you are alive, oozing through pores of now rotting organs. Stenching up the air, as it seeps through every fiber of your carcass, equivalent to what you'd imagine to be corpse sweat or corpse piss. Romantic, indeed.
It perforates the same organs that maggots and worms have feasted upon ever since they shoved you in the ground like a lightning rod. A conduit to the next world. But instead of the filth, all you feel is the long-fabled flutter of butterflies in the hollow cavern that used to be your stomach. So delicate their wings are - yet so marauding as they callously wreak havoc upon your insides - the same insides that should long be numb with decay. It hurts to know that even though they have wings they cannot fly away.
A dead heart, oh god how cliche, that since first glance has felt like it has begun to beat again. And despite it's romantic inflections, is actually quite painful. The feeling of blood vessels enlarging and swelling, breath scraping through your lungs, large paroxysms cramping through your chest as you are forced to inhale and exhale. The breath and blood stinging as it moves. It burns and sears, but you are forced to breathe to escape the feeling. The feeling of intoxication as the other's breath nips at your nose and sends the bumps rising on your silvery, etched arms.
You're envious, desperate, resentful that she can breathe without the same searing pain, that she has inflicted this doom upon you, when you had already resigned yourself to a lifetime of misery without pain - if such a thing exists.
Yet, you can't get enough. You crave what she has - she's your antithesis. Your contradiction, and it drives you mad. Your brain, which shouldn't function to begin with upon the loss of synapses firing as all the electrical current left your body as you fell lifelessly and bloody to the floor, now stirs like boiling water. The electrical current that the other person gives off when you come into contact acts as an AED, shocking you back to life. It hurts as it flows throughout your body, feeling as if you were almost electrocuted by the same lightning that hit your buried body during a storm. It singes as it leaves trickles of electricity at your extremities, fingertips and toes writhing with live current, eager to touch their source of energy.
Words spoken, not a new activity even though your vocal chords have long since snapped and withered away, have since changed meaning. Gained new perception, a new dimension. They curdle with curiosity as they loom in between stolen glances and the jellyfish-like stings inflicted upon you by the other's presence - growing manifold as proximity increases. The brush of her charged fingertips against your arm shock you as they leave static cling. She becomes the ultimate magnet, drawing you closer and closer, causing your cadaver to crave the attractive opposite - her.
Words change. They possess more depth, although they sound more hollow coming from your dead voice box. They also sear the most because these new words pack passion and lingering notions behind each syllable that leaves your chapped lips. Packing with a punch. Waiting, taunting you for a reciprocated reply with matched intentions. The passion engulfs your larynx as it burns up your throat, to the tip of your tongue and then knocks at the backs of your teeth, and finally escapes like a prisoner of war. You wish you could have closed it sooner, locked the door tighter. Dead bolted it shut. Even swallowing flames would be better than having them looming, heavy in the air with anticipation and rejection. Yet, they escape your dead prison of a body, creating a wildfire.
"I love you."
All the ideas, the feelings, the principles, the dreams, the fears when you were alive are expelled from your body again upon uttering these three little words. It's like dying a second time. Breath constricts, heart freezes, blood chills, brain stops - until there is a numbness that tries to dull the pain of possible rejection. It surrounds you like a catacomb. Death is easier than living. Rigamortis from terror sets in.
But then the words are returned. The same words that stung your body and caused you pain.
But hearing them is like drowning and coming up for air. Once again, your heart and chest swell. Your blood races through your veins. Your heart pumps faster than ever before - even more than right before you died. As if fighting for life could compare to such a battle, such a victory overcome. It surges, sending that same electrical current, that it must have stored up from the friction between you and the other, coursing up and down your spine. You're practically your own life force generator.
But your brain is still numb. It can't comprehend. How could something alive requite something dead? How could something beautiful see the beauty in something so horrifying and horrendous? How could something even so full of light shine enough to see through the abysmal darkness? Then the pain sets in again.
It can't be true.
The stinging vocalizations from the other didn't sting her like they stung you. Those three little bullets you shot didn't hit her heart or even send the wings in her stomach into chaos. It's all a show, a filthy, goddamned horror show.
Hate returns again - for the other. The enemy. You hate her for making you feel alive and then dead and then alive and dead and so on and so on. You hate how easy it is for her to play yo-yo with your life switch. And most of all you hate her for giving you false hope. Death begins again after the anger cools...
But then it stops, the enemy looks you in the eyes, the alleged windows into the soul. Bullshit. You're still reliving the pain of dying a third time.
She stares into them and you feel, what is that? Your soul? Your soul ignites with fire. But, you are dead and too far gone to have a soul?
It's weak and trembling, small and minute, but it shudders louder than your heart, your blood, your brain. It screams as you see the reflection of yourself in the ultimate mockery of the others' eyes. The glassy mirror reveals the inevitable. A monster. A dead monster. Disgusting and shameful.
What seems to be your soul contorts, writhes in pain, screeches like a banshee, rattles through your entire body even though it is distinct, crushing your rib cage, gnawing at your skeleton. The only thing probably left of you after 17 years.
You are a prisoner locked in the other's gaze. Death and life are both easier than this.
The other's eyes pull at the prisoner like a crowbar, ripping and prying it to the surface. It clings with desperation to the walls that have locked it away for so long. Revealing, it must have been buried deeper than you were.
It scratches its way up to the surface right behind your eyes, leaving trails of havoc in its wake. It vibrates, spins, tries to annihilate itself - what little left of itself there is. But it can't - it's too late. It can't hide itself from the other. The other is too perceptive and has it in her trap. Surrounded at gunpoint just like you were in this very room.
It's incapacitated by the strength of the other's gaze. Her pupils moving, shooting bullets straight through its only defense, attempting to size up the quality of their opponent with each bullet hole. But upon a blink, it attempts to fire back. Sending all its ammunition and hate toward the enemy. It lobs it like grenades and missiles, but only to fall like deflated volleyballs.
Nevertheless, it misses.
It's shot down
just like you;
just like those 15 kids you murdered,
but by friendly fire.
Staring down the barrel of her rifle, the other pulls your numb hands into hers and returns the intensity with her eyes. She has your pathetic excuse of a warrior paralyzed behind your eyes again.
Do you believe in God? Her eyes inquire as her soul cocks the gun and aims to blow you away again.
"I really do love you, Tate."
Bang.
-I do believe, but only in you.-
The tyrannical giant behind her eyes is unrelenting, yet compassionate. It sees that it has hit its target and left it wounded, so it offers a tear as its white flag.
And that's it.
Somehow, you are alive - bulletproof to all other wounds.
Only she can hurt you now. She is the closest thing to Heaven, but also the closest thing to Hell. You've surrendered, even though you were on the same side all along. You just didn't know where alliances stood, but now you know.
You are resurfacing, but instead of just your heart swelling, your pathetic excuse for a warrior of a soul grows too. It grows as the other, shares her victory, your victory, together. The spoils are divided evenly, although you feel the richest. The scar left by her inflicted shot is ironically one of the biggest rewards. It should hurt and it does, like Hell, but the pain is a constant reminder. That scar belongs to her.
You smile wholeheartedly at her, revealing the relief in your eyes. She smiles back, closer, closer, and closer -
into a kiss.
Electrical overload.
Your whole body short circuits, before finally imploding.
Many die in battle, but more die in love.
You decide that you'd rather die again a thousand times, no matter the agony, in love than in war. After all, you are dead, and you are a glutton for the pain. Pain and love are the only things that make you feel alive, the only thing that make the scar real. Her scar.
You just hope that your dead soldier can one day match the living one behind the other's eyes. Her's is courageous and fair and beautiful.
But it's no longer just her's, and it is no longer the enemy. In some strange way, it belongs to you, too. The scar it left binding the two of you together.
Of course its fight is beautiful, courageous, and compassionate. Fiery, spirited, and smart.
After all, the soldier behind those live, electric eyes is Violet.
You watch her with new perspective and anticipation, hoping and praying...
Begging...
Shoot me again.