More angst ahead everybody! I thought I'd put both chapters up on the same day because they are related. Still don't own a thing.
2-29: Body Paint
She ran as the devil was upon her, stumbling a few times. So hard to breathe. Threw herself onto the mattress. Screamed. Sobbed. Words garbled, oppressive air.
Oh Andrew! God damn him! I didn't know. I didn't. I'm sorry…I'm sorry.
Eventually her body wore out, but it seemed forever before sitting up. In the mirror faded hair, scrawny arms and neck. Littered with the trophies of warranted cruelty. But her eyes. Her eyes were sphered in black-purple muck that streaked every exposed inch. Hands, arms, face covered in it. She slid from the bed. Boneless. And as her legs rubbed together another mark. Sticky. Sinful.
Rage was all she felt then. She leapt to her feet. Grabbed a washcloth from the basin into her cracked, red hands. She heard the tear of fabric. Pieces of her cheap skirt lay on the floor. Everything cheap.
She couldn't, wouldn't dare look down at her legs. Into that wasteland of jagged, burgundy-gray. Crude, everlasting blossoms. The Lord that made them not the one she served now.
Instead she scraped the rough fabric inside herself. Over and over until she was raw in all the places they had been. Bitter water poured over the death on her skin. It wouldn't wash away Norrington. Not Andrew's eyes. What she was.
And in this knowledge Rose grabbed up her knife from the splintering floor. She took a streak of black upon her fingers. One shallow slice across the thigh. Mixed. Then she crawled into bed, sleeping only with blood, pain and paint. In her dreams green eyes, puppets and her brother's voice calling:
What do you lack? Do you love yourself? What do you lack?