Outcast

    Why should I even fight?

    There’s nothing I can do anyway…

    Besides, I…

    “Quite frankly, you’re a monster.”

    I turn my head away from her at that last word, gritting my teeth.

    “Wrong.”

    “Failure.”

    “Criminal.”

    Right.  Because I only know how to break whatever I touch, because I’m starving for blood, because I enjoy thrills and challenges - and there was nothing better to do as a child than to commit illegal activities in my hometown.  I’m an adult now, working 10 hours a day without even batting an eyelash.  With that kind of raw energy, what else was I supposed to do?

    Maybe they’re right.  Maybe I should stop just trying to—

    “What were you even trying to do anyway?”

    My eyes drop now, and I rub my fingers behind my back, trying to get blood past the gritty ropes around my wrists.  Noticing, the figure behind me grabs a fist of my hair and throws me hard to the side.  I fall with a cry from my knees, landing on my left shoulder.  With an effort, I manage to get back up to my knees, only to feel a boot kick down on my upper back, forcefully bowing my head to the ground.

    “Answer.”

    “I don’t know,” I reply weakly.

    Why did I do what I did?

    Tell me that I had another choice! I want to scream.

    Tell me that I wasn’t just trying to save those closest to me.  Tell me that I should have bound myself to entropy when I have this incredible ability to ignite fire from my fingertips and charm snakes to sleep with my tongue.  Tell me, if this pain isn’t real, what was I supposed to do back then?

    “I…I loved him.”

    “Tell me what you did before.”

    Was I bored?  Was I arrogant?  Did I hate the world?

    I wanted to have fun…

    How do I explain this?

    At my silence, the queen before me sighs.  “You have no excuse for the shedding of innocent blood—”  Not innocent.  “—nor do you possess self-control for your strengths—“  Then you negate who I am?  “—and, as a result, you will come to face the just consequences.”

    “You mean, punishment,” I snarl.

    The foot eases up off my back, and I raise my head briefly, only to catch a kick to the mouth with enough force that I feel my skull crack against the ground as I jerk backwards.  I choke off a scream, warm blood flooding my mouth, and run my tongue across all my teeth, making sure they’re in place.  At the same time, another kick drives into my stomach, and I heave.

    Stop…

    The figure kicks again, and vomit curls out of the sides of my lips, down behind my neck into my hair, across the smooth golden floor.  I double over on my side, tears flooding my eyes, and gasp for air.

    “You deserved this.”

    I deserved this?!

    “For what?!” I yell, an edge of panic in my voice that betrays my sudden fear.

    There’s no response, just the sound of a metal staff breaking my ribs.

~ ~ ~

    I screamed as they broke my legs, and then I blacked out sometime as they were dragging me back to my prison cell.

    Now I wait here, healed.

    How long has it been?

    I think even the guards forgot.

    They set everything to heal perfectly, which was part of the whole “consequence versus punishment” spiel.  If they were punishing me, wouldn’t they have maimed me beyond recognition?  That’s what they said.

    I’m not sure that they haven’t.  The fire’s back in my palms, and there’s nothing left to burn.  I pace day after day, eating the same food day after day, and they want me to prove to them how submissive and obedient I’ve become.

    How can I show them that?

    This is who I am.

    “Wrong.”

    Outcast.

~ ~ ~

Little snippet I wrote a month ago.  Leaving here because I like it too much to delete it, but I don't care enough to save it on my laptop.  :P

Write on!

Clove

Retreat

How pathetic.

"Just walk away," it said, "Retreat and find a place to recover."

She did as she was told, scanning the lake house's living room.  The boys were all in the kitchen, noisily scrounging around for sandwich materials, so she slipped away unnoticed down the dark hallway.  Without thinking, she went into her room, an obvious hideout, and shut the non-locking door behind her, just hoping vaguely that no one would try the handle.

"Now sit down," it said, "and cry."

Easy.

She settled on the corner of the queen-sized bed, her fingers digging deeply into the tree-print comforter.  Within seconds, there were tears: hot, helpless tears followed by screams.  If she had been out in the forest alone at night like when she was a child, she would have let them go, screaming these pathetic, horrendous shrieks of desperation.  Instead, she caught the noise, just throwing the action with her head tilted back, her throat rippling with pain.

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

No matter what, your life is worthless.

The wild look in his eyes, the way he seemed to be grabbing her shoulders and yelling at her - man, that felt so bad.  Why did games always go wrong with these lethal people?  Bruised hands, thoughtless words.  Sometimes, she got the sense that nothing ever changed between then and now.

I'm sorry that I let you down.

Just like in that muggy summer with the smell of American coffee lingering in the air, if he was mad, she would have taken his punishment submissively.  She would have bowed her head and apologized.  If he wanted to yell because she was unimportant or burdensome, he should have the right to yell.

No matter how much you accomplish, you are still pathetic.

You can never be good enough.

In every sense, you are without value.

Well, that was a lie, because he - neither of them, really - had any say over her intrinsic value.  "Only God does," it reminded her, and, for a second, that argument gave her hope.  She lifted her head, her tears stopping for a second, but that was too much effort to pick up her mind's edge and fight - and despair proved stronger.  In another second, darkness had crushed the righteous action in its fist, welcoming that familiar sense of hopelessness.

She cried for a long time, weak gasps and whimpers escaping her tired body.  Eventually, that death-loving urge became too strong, and she scratched at her forearms, leaving large swaths of red and white inflamed skin.  She was spiraling, and, at this point, she knew she was spiraling.  After dealing with this villain in her for so long, she knew what it said, what it tried to do, how it would make her bleed as she tried to cut her flesh to the bone.

Worthless.
Pathetic.
Burdensome.

These are the words that describe you.

"No," she said to no one, her panic becoming more and more violent.  Was she back here after putting up a fight for so long?  Even though she had been denying that sense since last spring, was she really, truly as needless and fake as she kept thinking she was?  If he was yelling, just like they all did, then she was unloved.

That was all.

Her life was worthless.

Weapon.

Frantically, her bloodshot eyes flit across the room for anything.  Pain broke this cycle: glass, a knife, a piece of paper, anything that could make her bleed.  She was trapped, trapped in the soft, secure, weaponless bedroom of a vacation home.  She could run out now and make a scene, crashing into the arms of her brother to only gain more attention - and maybe that would save her - or she could keep struggling here.  What would that do anyway?  They would all be asking her what's wrong, and what could she say other than that she wanted to die?

"Someone--"

That sea of complete desperation.

"--someone help me."

"Hey, does anyone know where she went?"

Silence.

Footsteps.

...no.

Closing her eyes tightly, she sat still, her adrenaline peaking.  For a second, the thought crossed her mind that, like a child in a thunderstorm, she could hide in the closet with her hands over he ears - but that would be even harder to explain if he found her.  He stood at the bathroom door at the end of the hallway, knocking, and then came back down, pausing at the other side of the closed door after he knocked.

"Hello?"

She was shaking uncontrollably, a whooshing in her ears as her chest tightened.  No one ever came after her.  If he even dared to intrude on this privacy of hers--

...but, at the same time, she wanted him to come in so badly that tears started squeezing out of her shut eyes again.  Even if she was just dead weight to him, she wanted him to come, to love her, to heal her with those soft words like he always did.  But how could she ask for even more?  Those piercing snarls began flooding her mind again: "Shut up!  Shut up!  SHUT.  UP."

She had yelled back at him too...

Too pathetic...

Before she could find the courage to cry for help, he had moved on to the other bedroom on the hallway, knocking there.  In that moment, she felt both relief and death, covering her face with her arm.  The salt from her tears stung her scratched skin, but she was safe.  Out of the two disasters: her remaining in that room, locked and alone, or him coming in after her, she had avoided the worst.  Even if this path meant that she would suffer and sacrifice herself to save him...

Well, she didn't deserve his help anyway.

You're just a burden on him.

When he got no response from the other empty bedroom, the small-steps hero called to the others in the kitchen, "Which bedroom is hers?"

One of them replied with the correct answer, and the footsteps came back with only a perfunctory knock this time.  The doorknob turned, and he was there in the doorway so suddenly that she jerked in alarm.

Instantly, the tears stopped, and she hastily rolled down her sleeves.  Then, he called out her name in a voice full of sadness, and that was all that the solider in her could do to regulate her.

Boom.

A gunshot in his voice.

Her strength took a direct hit.

In her name, he had given her permission to be weak.  "I know you are here, and I came after you," he said in his actions, and she was losing more and more control.  Heaving for breath, she keened, no longer able to hide her cries, and he pushed further in to her chaos, closing the door behind him and sitting on the bed next to her.

Stop, stop, stop.

Anyone who saw this weakness of hers before had left her with an "oops, sorry" - but here was the punk, trying to peer closer into her face scrawled over with embarrassing, illogical self-hatred.  Even worse, he felt like he had some responsibility for her feelings, didn't he?  She could tell that much by his quiet caution.

Shielding her face from his view with one hand, still acting like a toddler, she hunched her shoulders and tried to disappear - but that felt awful too, pushing him away like that.  He seemed concerned.  After the first few times, she got the idea that he should be jaded to this by now, but he never seemed that way, not even now as he started talking like he always did, his voice low and soft and hesitating.

What was he saying?  She never paid too much attention to the words, but to his presence and his feelings of overwhelming distress for her.  How she even knew that was a mystery since she was too fragile to even search his face.  He apologized for the way he acted, saying that he put her in a horrible position, and she murmured some short, pathetic replies, too angry at herself to completely neglect his kindness.

What...was wrong with him?

She avoided his steady gaze, but she was crying irrepressibly again, her shoulders shaking.  She could perceive his desire to hold her then too, to wrap her in his arms and never let go - and how much he fought that off in respect to their decision.

"I--"

Fate was rude, like usual.

Before the conversation could lift off into its regular flying pattern, the voices in the living room called them and said that they were going to start their next session soon.  Another external force caused another reversal, and the solider came back to life.  While he got up and responded to them, she went to the bathroom, scrubbing away her tears with icy water to reduce the swelling.  Maybe the others would notice that she had been crying, but they shouldn't know how close she was to hitting the bottom of the cliff.

If he had just left me like a sane person...

He stood in the doorway of her bedroom again, watching her from there with those eyes filled with grief.  Flicking the lights off in the bathroom and drying her face, she walked towards him and pushed her face into his shoulder without hesitation, breathing in his scent and feeling the warmth of his jacket pressed against her numb skin.  He stood with his arms at his sides, not touching her, and, though her palms raised instinctively, she also stood her ground, brushing the ridges of his clothes with the left side of her lips.

He said something, and she pulled away to listen, her gaze still cast down.

When he was done, she rested her forehead on his chest for another moment before gathering strength to go out to the others.  In the dim mirror in the hallway, she stretched her pretty face into a convincing smile, squinting her eyes forcefully, and then went out into the sunny meeting room with an unnerving laugh.

Fake.

~ ~ ~

That afternoon, he took her back to his apartment, the late sunlight playing on her hair and eyes as she rested her head in his lap on the long car-ride.  She should have apologized to her other friends who drove - for being antisocial and pathetic - but apathy and numbness had her completely surrendered.

Once they were dropped off, they walked quickly inside, cutting over the well-manicured grass with some admitted guilt and a quick laugh.  The air was too cold, and they were both too tired, so the heinous act was overlooked with some effort.

Then, for the rest of that day, they rested together.  There was a big, thick, green-and-red comforter that smelled like him and his fingertips playing on her face, funny videos and home-made beef bourguignon over rice, and his eyes, watching her steadily as she calmed down.

He was like that.

Protecting her.
Loving her.
Talking to her that night with her brother about her misplaced sense of value.

She knew what she had done wrong anyway.

The point is that no one gave him permission to intrude into her darkness, and he did anyway, walking through her hell consistently like he had been there before.  With that calm readiness, he kept naming her crows and demons, smiling softly, and holding her close to him in the night.

Is that love then?  To fall for a hero who keeps saving you?

I'm...helpless.

~ ~ ~

Bad ending but I'm too tired and emotional to care haha.  No amount of my editing is ever going to convey how this feels anyway; I'm pretty convinced of that at this point.

Night, y'all.

Write on!
Clove

Chapter 3 - Jaiden

I have to say I’m impressed.

Bellumine won the civil war.

Honestly, I doubt anyone saw that coming.

Especially the former government.

Haha.

  Staring at the television, I sprawl out on the couch in a sports bra and sweats, sucking on a cheap grape popsicle.  The reporters are going insane on every channel, excitedly or cynically commentating on Bellumine’s first official press meeting.

I admit I might be a little hyped too.

  The old man looks pretty good on television, surrounded by his entourage of political and military superstars.  I guess it helps he was born with one of those leader-like faces: chiseled features, sweeping gray-brown hair, broad shoulders and a full frame.  Today, he’s wearing a navy blue suit and a periwinkle tie that works well with his blue eyes.  Behind him, the white capital building of the Maximum looks just as polished and bright as ever, standing to contrast with his dark clothes.

What a man.

For almost two minutes, the crowd continues to cheer, and the reporters kill time with professional filler-gibberish.

I start nibbling on my popsicle stick, anxiously flipping upside down.

Finally, Bellumine holds his arms up, shaking his head.

  “Thank you!  Thank you!  You all are far too kind.”

I wonder if he’s enjoying this a bit too much.

Eventually, the crowd calms down.

“First of all—” Bellumine has a voice that’s low and manly but still clear, “—first of all, I want to say that I am enormously humbled to be here today.  Compared to the men and women and children - the heroes - who stood behind me these past ten years, I am a mere man.  Only because of your sacrifice and your service are we here today - free of oppression.”

“Eh, he’s not kidding around, is he?” I say, sliding off the couch impatiently as the crowd explodes in applause again, “I wonder when was the last time Twainside even laid eyes on a leader like this…the self-righteous, indifferent prick.”

  Well…

Maybe name-calling is out of place.

  I should be clear.

I respect Bellumine - but I hate him all the same.

From what I’ve seen, he’s fantastically intelligent in strategy, and his heart for democracy is unmatched.  I mean, you can’t just win a rebellion against a militaristic, tyrannical government that has been established and grounded for decades if you’re some spineless, lily-livered flop.  Bellumine - over the last ten years since he began his uprising as a small pro-democracy anti-group - has seen his own ups and downs, even losing his wife to the war, but he’s always made the right decision for his followers, and I appreciate that.  I suffered under the last government too.

Still.

Until he gives up his hunt - and he never will - Bellumine and I can never see eye-to-eye.

That much is clear.

  “I have many people I need to thank,” Bellumine continues, “Thank you to the many journalists who have come here tonight to celebrate victory with us.”  Applause.  “Thank you to everyone who served in our military, strategy, and support divisions for your endless selflessness over the last ten years.”  Applause.  “Thank you especially for those from the former government who have helped provide a smooth transition of power.”  More applause.

  “Honestly, I could go on,” Bellumine admits with a small laugh, “I’m so incredibly happy right now, happy to be here alive and happy because of the response we have received from you all through the war.  I know we have suffered much, myself included…”  Dramatic pause, tangible pathos.  “…but we have survived, and we now bear the responsibility of rebuilding, recovering that which was lost.”

“Woo,” I intone as the crowd spasms in excitement.

“I doubt you all would like to hear me carry on when you have your own questions.  Please,” Bellumine says, “let me try to answer as many of them in the next half hour as I can.”

Instant bedlam.

Out of my mind from the waiting, I groan and close my eyes as the journalists desperately try to get their questions out first, all of them screaming like angry toddlers.  Laughing kindly in a self-effacing sort of way, Bellumine points into the crowd, and the first woman steps forward with an almost shrieked-out question: “What preventative measures will the new government take to restore checks and balances of power?!”

“This begins with me,” Bellumine replies, “I am not arrogant enough to believe I am a man righteous enough to withstand the corruptive effects of absolute power.”  The crowd disagrees, but Bellumine shakes his head.  “Over and over in history, we have seen good men turned evil by opportunities for self-gain.  Even if I am the exception to this rule, how could I risk your well-being to determine that?”

I grimace at the television.

This man is unfairly good.

“In the new government, according to the New Contract, if we find that the citizens of Twainside are in agreement, we hope to install a nine-member council, represented by the members before you here.”  Bellumine flourishes an arm at a number of faces I know - and some I don’t.  “These men and women will be direct ears for you in a legislative and judicial manner, and they will be ultimately responsible to the executive power, which will be comprised of another council.”

“How will we be able to trust the councils?!” someone yells.

Bellumine smiles kindly in response.  “You will be the councils.  Every council member will both hold a two-year limited term and be voted in by fair-ratio proportion representation - with a salary cap.  If you love Twainside as much as I do, perhaps you could be a member of the council.”

“What are your plans for the Minimum?”

I perk up instantly.

  Finally.

Yet, just as the world’s best journalist asks the question I’ve been dying to get the answer to, the door to the loft swings opens, and Janiyah, my little two-year-old sister, runs in, laughing and shrieking.  A second later, Dante, my nine-year-old brother, comes up after her, scowling.

  “Sorry, Jaiden.  She got away.”

  I shake my head, turning up the volume.  “Don’t worry about it.”

Janiyah climbs onto the couch with me.  “What - you - watching?”

“News.”

“For now,” Bellumine says, “we do not have the stability to tamper with the Minimum.”

The crowd rustles.  Their first evidence of disapproval.

  “However, I have no intention either of letting the Minimum subsist untouched for any length of time.  When the Maximum is stabilized sufficiently, my reform team will amend the violence and squalor rotting beneath these city grounds.”

“What is the time estimate for reform?” another reporter asks.

“Two years,” Bellumine answers, a cool edge in his voice, “If we pull everyone together cooperatively during this current unstable moment, then we will likely proceed in less time than that.  The new councils will discuss this matter in length and release an official statement.  For now, if we do not continue to rally together, we may very well lose the footing we hold now.  The war for democracy is a life-long battle, my friends.”

  Dante looks at me, tilting his head.  “What's squalor?”

  “You,” I reply deadpan.

He grimaces and leaves, slamming the door.

I think I’m done too.  I have the answer I needed.

  Scooping up Janiyah in one arm, I click off the TV with my free hand and toss out my popsicle stick with the other.

“Down you go,” I say, pushing Janiyah out of my room and closing the door.

She squeals, protesting, but runs off to harass any of my other seven siblings, probably Dante again since he’s so good with her.  When she’s gone, I sink to the floor, drawing my knees into my chest.  Just being around her for those few moments, while hearing Bellunine’s estimation at the same time, suddenly makes me feel incredibly sick.

  Down here, in the cavern city underneath the Maximum, exists a dirty, highly-criminal culture that was well-culled by the former tyrannical government.  The drug lords had their regular customers and no more; the gangs kept to their respective territories and nowhere else.  Since the turn of the government, though, crime has quickly bloomed with no authority to step on the Minimum’s illegal activity.

  How many friends have gone missing within the last week?  How many corpses have I seen dragged into dark cracks in the rocks, shot to shreds?

I can’t let any of my siblings leave the house…

  Even when I leave to buy groceries or to work, human traffickers are always watching, waiting for me to be alone…

The Maximum needs to help the Minimum immediately.  If Bellumine’s focus isn’t here, then my first order of business is to get his attention at any cost, which means I need to make a phone call to my only connection to the surface…

Antony.

~ ~ ~

Write on!

Clove

Chapter 2 - Silvia

  All right, here’s the deal.    If I write my side of this story, Brook has to keep up his side of the deal.
    That is the only reason why a kickass chick like me is writing a book, okay?
   Laugh if you want.
    I’d still beat your lame-ass ass blindfolded with both hands tied behind my—
    Ugh.
   Brook says I need to stop cussing.
    Go away, Brook, you’re cramping my style.
   Haha, he says I’m breaking immersion.
   Ooooops.    If you just agreed to go out with me now, Brook, we wouldn’t have this problem, hehehe.
    (He just smiled, kissed me on the forehead, and left.)
   (Worth.)
   (Sort of.  Maybe.)
    (Ugh.)
    Look, I’m just going to get this done quickly, so…yeah, ummm…have a paragraph break.

~ ~ ~

     Sup.
   My name is Silvia Thornton, resident sarcastic hottie of Twainside, future girlfriend to Brook, and the hungry devourer and vanquisher of all solid, double-stack hamburgers and seasoned fries.
    To just stick with the essentials, my side of this story probably started around six months ago.
   I had just gotten off the subway station at dusk, and I was kicking my skateboard through the dim streets of Twainside, probably grinning like a mad fool.  That musty, over-packed subway was literally the worst.  The new government had just opened up this jail-bar wall that went around the entire city, and, suddenly, everyone from the countryside and their mother was riding up to the capital to try to find work and a better life, myself included.  The subways were clogged.
    Oh, also, I’m the second oldest of seven kids.  My responsible older brother stayed behind to handle the duties on the farm, and the younger ones were too little to be employed.  I’m 18, by the way.  The next youngest just turned 15, so I was drafted by my parents to go and work in the city.
    Sound harsh?
  I wasn’t really too concerned.  My dad raised me straight, and I got my mom’s silver tongue.  Between those two, I’ve never had much of an issue, whether finagling or fighting my way through life.  Besides, my mom’s older brother - my uncle - lives here in Twainside, and he already had work lined up for me.  As long as I did well in whatever he had for me, I figured I would be all right.
    Those subway seats, though, I thought to myself, massaging my backside as I swerved around a young couple.  Did the old government actually pay an engineer to design a torture device like that?  At least my rear is well-endowed, another courtesy from my curvaceous mother; I can’t say so much for the others on that seven hour train ride.
   Most of them were unhealthily thin.  Granted, yeah, six months ago when this happened, I was a bit underweight myself, but, at least we had a farm, so food was right at our fingertips, and we weren’t paying through our nose for a bag of flour under the rule of the former government.  Everything said and done, we were pretty well-off during the former tyranny.
    That’s not to say I wasn’t looking forward to the new government when I came to Twainside.  My parents fought over money more than they fought over anything else, and, for all the brawling I do myself, man, I hate hearing other people get at each others’ throats, especially people I love.
    As I tore through the streets, I glanced back briefly, my skateboard making a suspicious amount of noise.  Sure enough, two kids my age were keeping pace behind me on their own boards: a guy and a girl.
    Boyfriend and girlfriend?    No…siblings.
  Twins, maybe.    They both wore smiles similar to mine.  Maybe Middle Eastern?  She had an adorable pixie cut under a basketball cap, and he sported a dark brown goatee, tons of piercings between the two of them.  Their white chucks were matching, and their fashion styles seemed to sprout from a similar theme: faded, near-white denim and lots of those iron-on appliqués.  Hard to tell if they were rich enough to afford a sense of fashion - or if their pieces just so happened to match in a fashionable way.
  Anyway, I made eye-contact, and they scooted up next to me, one on my left and one on my right.    “You’re Silvia!” the girl said.  Her voice was higher than I expected and super cute.
    “Yeah?”  We kept skating, even though that felt awkward.
    “I’m Kelsie!” she said, “We know Shrike.”
  Ah.  Shrike.  My mom’s brother.  My boss to-be.   Kelsie extended her hand, and so did her twin brother.  I crossed my arms to shake their hands, wondering for a moment if this was some sort of trap.    “How…do you know me?”
    “Pictures.  We were expecting you.  Shrike told us to keep an eye out on the station in case if you got into any trouble.  Crime’s not at its lowest, you know, and you got here closer to night.  He said you might need some help defending yourself in the case of an accident, but…” I got an eye-over from Kelsie, “I guess that might not be the case.”
    Huh.
  I wasn’t blaming Shrike for sending the twins - the last time he saw me, I was just a helpless toddler - but I wish he had given me some sort of warning.  Random strangers aren’t the easiest to trust.    I glanced at the brother.  “I didn’t get your name.”
    “Jessie, but you can call me Jess.”  He winked at me, smiling softly, and I laughed suddenly.
    He’s that kinda guy.
    “I hope this is all right,” Kelsie continued obliviously, “Shrike was also worried that you might not trust us, but he said this would be better than nothing.”
    I nodded, wiping the smirk off my face, and slowed to a stop at an intersection.  I think we needed to cross there anyway.
    “Nah, it’s fine.  Just curious how you two know Shrike.”
    Jessie and Kelsie hopped off their boards just as the cross walk sign changed, at which point we all skipped quickly across the intersection on foot towards the training center.
    “We work for him.  You know what your job is, right?”
  I laughed again.  “Nope.  Not the foggiest idea.”    “Ohhh…”  They exchanged a side-ways glance that made me feel 100% included.
  “Well,” Jess said, “basically, you’re like…our maid?”    “You’ll get paid really well, though!” Kelsie quickly interjected, “And I’ll kill anyone if they even think about looking down on you.  We’d love to have you hang out with us too, so…you don’t need to f-feel like you have to…be…alone or a-anything.”
    She sputtered to a stop and glanced at me with an apologetic face.
  “It’s fine,” I replied, unable to bear how cute she looked at that moment, “I figured I would be doing some sort of menial labor.  Besides, I’d be pretty impressed if you can give me a task in the city worse than mucking out stalls back at home.”   Jess and Kelsie exchanged looks again - they have that kind of ability to communicate without speaking that everyone wishes they had - and let out what seemed to be a sigh of relief.    “Cool,” Jess said, “Let’s get you settled in then.  Shrike will give you your first tasks from there.”

~ ~ ~

Break is great, guys.
Write on!
Clove

Chapter 1 - Skain

Iris vomits into the most extravagant toilet I’ve ever seen.

  What even are those?  Gold inlays on the handle?  Flowers, real flowers, in a basket on the tank of water, and this weird series of buttons on the side that I imagine controls the bidet feature of this porcelain masterpiece.  What a bizarre display of wealth.

  But I guess that’s rich people for you.

  I hold Iris’ long golden hair back as she heaves one more time and then pulls away, gasping pitifully.  She grabs toilet paper, which also seems ultra-fancy and thick, and wipes her mouth, smearing lipstick across her cheek.

“What’s the time?” she asks.

“You have plenty,” I reply, helping her stand on her five-inch platforms.

She shakes her head, flushing and dropping the smudged paper into the swirling cyclone of water and vomit.  “What’s wrong with me?”  Her manicured fingers linger on the gold lines of the toilet handle.  “For that matter, what’s wrong with this toilet?”

“Rich people,” I remark, smirking a little.

She steps away from her mess, which is now already swallowed up by the piping, and stands in front of the bathroom’s fancy mirror, washing her hands in the fancy sink using fancy soap that smells fancier than normal.

I wait, watching her.

“My makeup,” Iris mutters at her reflection.  Sweat lines her nose and forehead, and her lipstick is horribly marred.

“I can get a dresser for you,” I say, but she shakes her head.

  “If even one more person touches my face with less than a milligram of powder, I swear I’ll break.  I’m going to take it off.  I can’t stand this.  They don’t know what they’re doing.”

Sensing that familiar ring of stubbornness in Iris’ voice, I stand down, smiling to myself as she dumps the contents of her clutch onto the countertop.  Given the fact that, outside of a combat knife, the rest of the items in her clutch are cosmetics, I wonder if this has been her plan all along.

Either way, I get it.  I didn’t feel like the cosmetologists currently in the Plus House knew what they were doing, not necessarily because they were poor makeup artists but because they just have no idea who we are.

Iris’ eyelids are matted in golden glitter, her lips a fresh, vivacious pink to match her blush, which gives her a strange frilly look when combined with her classy black ballroom gown.  By the time she is bare-faced again, she already looks vastly more appropriate for tonight.  Then, she adds her killer eyeliner, dark and thick and sharp, and a blood red lipstick, and she’s fabulous - and lethal.

The way she is in reality.

The way I have always known her.

Blowing out noisily in annoyance, Iris puts her items away and tosses her hair away from her neck, giving herself a final once over.

“How long do those buffoons study before they get to paint their clown faces?”

  “Hard to improve on perfection,” I say, “Go easy on them, princess.”

She laughs weakly and turns, facing me.  “How much time?”

I check my watch again.  “Thirteen more minutes.”

“Do you have a smoke?”

I pull a packet out of my jacket’s inner pocket and hand one to her, taking one myself.  I may not have been the one to throw up out of anxiety, but I would be lying to say I wasn’t slightly nervous.  In a sense, everything is finally coming together.  All twenty years of my life before now were just long, slow stages of incubation, leading up to tonight’s birth.

  Iris and I eventually take a seat on the edge of the fancy shower, slowly breathing in and out and letting the drugs calm us down.  Maybe we’re about half-way through our cigarettes when there’s a knock on the bathroom door, a sound that immediately registers in my mind as “weird”.

We were on the third floor, in an abandoned hallway next to Heinrich’s office.  Everyone should be two floors below, ready to spill out onto the portico to face the journalists.  Glancing sideways at Iris, I get up and hesitantly unlock the door, peeping outside.  In that second, I catch a glimpse of maybe seven or eight plain-vanilla Maximum soldiers before they slam open the door, almost whacking me in the process, and squeeze into the unaccommodating bathroom.

Iris is on her feet, her clutch open, but I hold her back with a finger at my side, tacitly telling her to wait.  These young men, dressed in their formal service attire, are Bellumine’s soldiers, which means that, in a relationship akin to the historical American Army and Marine Corps, these kids are our unofficial allies.

  We still hate their guts, but, allegedly, according to our higher-ups, we work together.

  Besides, they’re pretty drunk, and fighting drunks is never fair in Heinrich’s eyes.

“Heyyy, Effar!  How we about that Maxi?!”

I ignore Dunce A’s coarse slur and reply, “Fine, thanks.  Can we help you?”

They snigger, like I’m a comedian, and shove me back a step, so that Iris and I are side-by-side.

“Has the sun been bothering you?” says Dunce A.

Dunce B adds, “Need to borrow my shades, Effar?”

Dunce C elbows Dunce D and says, “Like SPF ten thousand, am I right?”

What’s more amusing is that the sun does bother me, and I do need to wear sunscreen in the daytime.  What’s less amusing is that we don’t have time for something like this.

Glancing at my watch, I read 1853, so seven more minutes.  I toss my burnt out cigarette into the fancy toilet and grab Iris’ hand, intending to walk confidently past the Dunces and head downstairs.  Like most drunk people, if you ignore them, they become confused and fail to respond.

The Dunces, unfortunately, are more aware than I thought.  Before I can shoulder past Dunce A, he shoves me back again, except harder this time, in a way that is meant to hurt or spill me over.  I narrowly keep my footing as someone else ends up shouldering me in the chest one more time.  Knocked out of breath, I trip over the side of the fancy shower and fall, hitting the far wall and landing hard.

Iris stands in the corner between the toilet and the shower, watching with wide eyes and waiting to take action.

  “Just want to let you know where you stand,” Dunce A says, smiling, “Did you think we were drunk?  With your cool underground skills?  Nice performance, huh?  Were you patronizing us, just like you condescend everyone?  Calm down, Effar.  Remember where you were born, and remember what she is.”  He throws up a rude sign at Iris that, strangely, out of all of his comments, makes me the most angry.

“Noted,” I reply, a bit banged up, but more damaged in the ego.  My heart is roaring in my throat, pulsing from an adrenaline surge in a way that feels like I’m about to be strangled.

“See you downstairs, then.”

The Dunces, who I realize too late actually don’t smell like alcohol, filter out in a cold silence, and Iris offers me a sweaty, shaking hand.  I climb to my feet and take a second to catch my breath.

  “I need to vomit again,” Iris whispers, “but now is not the time.”

“We can talk to Heinrich about them later.  Come on.  We’re going to be late.”

~ ~ ~

Write on...at 2:27 AM on a Saturday morning!  :P

Clove

Front Row

Her eyes are so full of regality.

She looks like a princess, but not a first or last born: some discontent 6th or 7th daughter of an emperor's harem wife.  She must live an amazing life, though, full of pleasures and handsome men, rich feasts and wealth.  I think...maybe she has no idea how much she actually has, or maybe she is lonely.  If she is, I have a feeling she desires to remain alone.

That look in her eyes is too bitter, too condescending and beautiful.  To her, I bet I look like a beggar, something filthy that got stuck on the heel of her hand-crafted leather boots.

Write on!
Clove