Hope is such an ugly thing. It beats its silver wings against ribcages, staccato remembering of flannel shirts, summertime lovers, one more sunrise. But how soon it sickens, its little yellow eyes burning like the darkness: sugar turning dusky caramel from the inside out. Hope is all rusty feathers and iron tails. Hope is too pretty to look at. Hope is a monster. Hope is the knowledge that in one more year, the man who is the end of all things to you will be dead. Hope is the knowledge that you could kill him. Hope is the pondering of your future. Hope is the way you stand up to his swift cruelty. Hope is clanging in your ears every day, ding-dong tick-tock, a fierce clatter against your chest, rising up like froth.
And we kill it so quickly, hope. It dies so sweetly in our palms, cupped in fingers just dying to feel love. How easy it is to stifle that scissor-cut heart beat, slice slice sli- The World Will Never Love Me.
Tremble, hope, tremble. Soon you will quick dissolve.
I am so alone.
xxxxxxx
Her hair is the color of wind, music through the ears, a jarred letter on a handwritten love note, the quivering before a song, the feeling of flying. Her eyes are all that friendly loneliness, where you smile and know nothing but the separation between lost lovers. She is selfish, and in another life, she would have demanded the world and she would have received it. She is weak, but she fights with a stupor of breakneck power. Don't you wish you were her? She twinkles with glittering light and talent that she flaunts, unknowing.
You would know, if you were her, what it is like to hum with a friendly confidence, with the certainty that you will be the overtaker. She is only ever overtaken. She is only empty. She is only a grey house and black silk tights; she is only ever what you wish her into being. She is the stars. She is the rain. She is the ivy.
She is running down an alley, her hair (wind rain music) streaking out behind her, ribboning in the force of her movement. She is panting, and her bare feet are bleeding. Behind her is a force she cannot contest with: it is man. It is an Afflicted. And she is Better Than That. He is cackling like a candle. He wants her blood because he wants the legend, the safety, the cure.
"Do you think you can run?" he asks her, and it echoes in her head. Do you? Do you? Do – No. She does not think she can, but she is running still, over the crooked cobblestones, past the grey walls, past the grey trashcans, past the yellow lines of police tape where the Afflicted houses have been marked off.
His Affliction sounds like bones, but it makes instead a spreading warmth. Her shadow splits into splinters. His Affliction smells like Evensong, the midwinter celebration of the three weather angels, it smells like laughing over a cup of hot chocolate, it smells like her father's favorite armchair, it smells like ashes. It smells like her skin burning, because it is.
"I will get you, halfie bitch," he screams, and it throws itself into her ears like daggers. Oh, she thinks, I wonder if I will make it home in time for dinner. She wonders if she should be feeling pain, but instead she just crackles with energy from nowhere. She knows that when the adrenalin wears off, she'll hurt, but she just accepts this and pushes off the ground, her fingers scrabbling for purchase against a rattling chain link fence. She wonders if this will be the end, because the peak is too far away, too far away.
She pauses at the top to look at him, at the spattering of fire down the alley, at his charred face, his grim smile. His anger, burning at his fingertips. The Affliction, she sees, has taken his sight, his skin, his hair. He is one of the dirty ones. He has oil in his veins. Of course, she thinks, tossing her body to the ground, she is dirty too. Halfie bitch, halfie bitch, it rings in her head like music.
She stumbles to her feet again, and from the way they ache, she has about two minutes left before she starts to really feel it. Her soles hit the tarmac to the sound of jump-rope rhymes in her head.
Mommy's got a dead man sitting in her bed, how many days 'til he rips off her head? One for the blood, two for the tears, three for the little girl that mommy has to rear.
Halfie's got the oil blood, halfie's got the dirt, halfie's momma let a man soil up her skirt. Halfie's got no powers, halfie's got no dad, halfie's just a little one, but half is twice as bad.
A-F-T, T-E-R, when the world is covered in tar; S-C-H, O-C-K, AFTERSHOCK will save the day. One great Seven for the each of us, each one fighting for our trust. Virtues like a spilt-bark tree, can you name them faster than me? Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, Humility.
That is enough. She knows better than to recite the great Seven, even in her head. The man behind her makes her think of burning hair and a time when she could step out into the light and not be spat at. Before she knew the truth of her parentage. Before she was named halfie scum, halfie bitch, poor little half-blood child, be glad you're alive at least, be glad daddy's last gift was your sick little Afflicted blood, be glad we still tolerate you, little half-blood, half-heart, half-way to ruin.
She is ruined, always. Always.
xxxxxxx
You wake up, although you don't remember falling asleep. There is a girl, next to you, her eyes wide and her hair dark. She smiles as you react, her nose over the side of your bed, her lean fingers digging into the mattress. She grins and you mirror the expression without thinking. She reaches over and tugs your hair gently and you laugh, rolling out of bed and sliding into your shoes.
A boy with the name Letters swims in your head. Your home swims in front of your eyes. Your father, your family, your life.
Then you blink, and it is gone.
xxxxxxx
To name something is to own it.
Love, love, love, love. Do you hear me, love? Do you hear me calling you?
There is no surprise in the futility of my actions.
xxxxxxx
He is standing over her, and all she can think is, At least I'm not the only one panting. His teeth are yellow and black like his skin. His eyes are the color of fall. What do you do when you turn on a light? she wonders, watching as he clumsily flips out a blade, Do you set the darkness burning? He smells like ashes and her fireplace. He smells like the holidays and she thinks, How nice.
The blade is silver. The blade is gold. The blade, she knows, is tarnished and dull, and it will hurt. It will hurt like the way the pain is spreading now, from her raw legs to her burned arms. She thinks that if she was going to kill someone, she'd provide them the privilege of a sharp blade at the very least. The puddle under her is seeping up through her fingers, and it feels like oil, it feels like ink. The wall behind her back is cold like the ground, cold and wonderful because it soothes her just like that, just like that. She thinks that if she was going to kill someone, now would be the time, because he takes a breath and puts the edge against her neck and her lungs suddenly forget how to expand.
Did you know, she wants to tell him, That to access the carotid artery, one must slice dangerously close to the windpipe? That the vocal chords and trachea are put at extreme risk?
She is in danger, and suddenly she recognizes this. She recognizes and thinks, Oh shit, mom's gonna kill me, and then she realizes that she'll be dead by the time her mom notices she's not home for dinner.
Bye bye, mommy. Little halfie whore has been killed by an oil blood.
xxxxxxx
The sun's rays are blinding. They torment the comforting darkness that is the aftermath of your sleep. You struggle against your eyelids to open them. Almost there -failed. You hear something calling in the distance, helping you in the struggle. It is a soft, kind voice.
"...Ja..ne!...ime...for...reakfast!...ake...up..."
You push ever harder. How could something as weak as eyelids be so difficult to fight against?
Push...push...push...
Snap!
All of a sudden, before you realize what has happened, you're sitting up on the couch, the victim of many children's stares. You're still in that trance, the kind which you are questioning your very existence. Are you alive? Why are you here? What happened to you? Where are you? You forcefully shake yourself out of this trance -for the second time. It works. Flashes of several images surge throughout your brain: what happened yesterday- a car ride, murder, orphanage, the boy called Letters. Your 'father' was murdered. And you hardly cared. Why?
You snap yourself out of that train of thought and ponder about what really matters at this very moment: How the hell did you get on the couch?
"Jane, about time you're awake! I see you slept in a bit more on the couch. Too lazy to go back upstairs?" Carmen quietly giggles. You shrug. It is very typical of you to wake up very early and go back to bed, usually on the couch. However, you never remember what you do during that span of time you're awake. Ever.
Just as you attempt to remember what went on, your head begins to hurt.
xxxxxxx
"Sir, we have another one."
"Another murder?"
Such simple creatures they are. Can they not see the extravagance of a man stabbed to death with mere pins, blood pouring out of his throat in harmony with its knife? It is very delicate work. Death brings out the beauty in things. When something is dead, you truly begin to appreciate it. We humans have proven it with our funerals. Funerals are a time to truly appreciate the beauty of death... the appreciation of life.
"This one has to be the worst yet. This guy, whoever he is...is a true monster."
So stupid and simple minded. They cannot grasp the beauty of my work. The blood, the status of death. Blood, pins...and music! I make such a brilliant work, and they dare criticize me and deem me a monster?
They say that in order to appreciate something, you must become it.
And it would be an honor for me to turn them into my beautiful works. I chuckle from afar. They will truly be my best works yet.
xxxxxxx
The Affliction. Such a phenomenon, it is. Where does it originate from? Is it a blessing, or a curse? A plague, or a miracle? Scientists are still studying it to this day, but know nearly nothing about it. They've barely scratched the surface of my lovely virus. Those humans, they have been told so many times. Warned so many times. Yet they still yearn for more. Yearn for more power. Little do the darling dears know that the very thing they seek will kill them from the inside. For no human is built to contain this much power within their bodies throughout their life.
But now, they will truly see:
The closer you rise to the sun, the faster your wings burn and the quicker you tumble.
xxxxxxx
"Oh blade you'll warm tonight!
Awash in crimson-purple flows,
Your sheen will dull with aching flesh:
Palpating anatomic mounds
Caressing, dancing, writhing round
Your metal form,
Whetted 'gainst a lonely bone,
Then to probe the pounding, begging heart."