Galanthus

She grabs my face and kisses me hard, her chapped lips snagging against my teeth. Her breath is hot, smells a bit like the booze she smuggled from a recent home visit. I don’t know where to place my hands, or if I should open my mouth--maybe slip some tongue like I’d read about in some trashy romance I’d just finished--so I do nothing. My hands dangle by my sides, and I’m sure my face is frozen in a parody of the Scream painting.

She laughs against my mouth, and pulls back slightly. Her hazel eyes look more green today, and I can see the beginning of a pimple forming by her thick eyebrows. My fingers twitch; I really want to pop it. Her pupils are shot to shit, and her red cheeks are more pronounced thanks to the cheap liquor coursing through her system.

“You look like you had fun,” I say, mainly to fill the space between us with anything but my own awkwardness. “You’re gonna get caught one day. Get thrown in seclusion again”

“Not when I have you,” She purrs, and oh christ, she’s moving in. Is she going to kiss me again? She’s too damn close, and I think my eyes are starting to cross with trying to make appropriate eye contact. Whiskey. She’s lucky there’s a staff shortage today or she’d be fucked.

Cheap perfume. Something citrusy, I think. Faint BO. She’s so nasty sometimes; I swallow hard.

“You’re my lucky charm, girlie.”

The nickname sticks to me like a burr I can’t escape. I’m exactly five months, two weeks, and three days older than her. I know because she’s told me. She runs one finger against the lettering on my tshirt, and I’m momentarily dazzled by the chipped nail polish. Black. Inelegant. There’s something caked under her fingernail. Several small scratches on her knuckles. I taste metal in my mouth; and the air crackles around us. My shirt feels constricting.

“Exactly how many baseball shirts do you own, Perce?” Three, but they’re in heavy rotation. They’re soft enough that they don’t feel like livewires against my skin. I shrug; sweat prickles at my spine. At my temples. In the fucking air. She sniffles wetly, sucking it back into her throat. Nasty. Is she sick? Will she get me sick?

“Are you gonna get me sick?” I ask. I don’t like how helpless I feel when I get ill.

She stops tracing my shirt to pull me against her. I can feel her breasts against my own. She’s taller, but I know she’s deliberately bending her knees. I hate how my own feel against her. Hers, though.,,

Something clatters onto the ground nearby. She won’t let me look, instead grabbing my face again, making me look her in the eye. I want to claw my eyes out.

“You know what I love about you?” She asks, ignoring my question.

I know. At least I think I do. She saw me doing something I shouldn’t have been doing the first day she arrived at our group home and blackmailed me into a friendship that quickly turned into… whatever this is.

“My tshirts?” I say, and she barks. That’s her laugh. She sounds like a throaty hyena when she laughs. Something else falls in the background.

She doesn’t answer; instead pulls me the rest of the way and plunders my mouth like she owns it. In a way she does. Nobody else looked my way before her, and a year later, she makes sure it stays that way. “Open your mouth,” she demands, and I comply. Her tongue follows her aggressive invasion a moment later, and I’m lost in the taste of unbrushed teeth, booze, and licorice I’d seen her eating an hour earlier. She nips my lips so hard and by the wet pain, I think she’s drawn blood. Again.

She moans and deepens our kiss. So she did draw blood. It’s her thing. It’s part of the reason she got placed on this ward with me. My small pain, my little moments of death, fuel her.

“Put your hands on my hips,” she says, and I awkwardly comply; my hands fumbling around until I feel the sharp bone against my skin. She’s all sharp lines, tall and skinny; her frame as uninviting and standoffish as she is. She’s always bruising me with her edges; always scratching me against her jagged bits. I’m softer. Shorter. On the edge of fat. She loves it.

I smell smoke.

She pants against me, and her fingers back to my tshirt, but this time they bypass the letters. She wants to feel everything. She hates barriers, and we’re hidden well enough that she doesn’t give a shit about getting punished. She’s also fueled by liquid courage and her own dumbass decision making skills. She shoves her hot hands my skin, and I’m so fucking cold, I lean into her touch. She’s burns like a furnace; I’m never warm enough. Funny how that works.

“Hattie,”I sound faint and weak. But I just want to lose myself in the scorching oblivion. It’s all I can think about. She knows my weakness, and is already nodding before I can beg. “Hattie, can y-”

“Do it,” She growls, and then she’s dipping back in again to make me bleed. “Give it to me and I’ll bring down the sun, girlie.”

I am covered with her scorch marks, her possessiveness, but it still isn’t enough. It’s always so cold. I am sick. She is sick. We are…

I’m drunk on her heat; surrounded by her gritty body odor. Her curly hair is damp against her temples. I’d go to Hell for her right now. I will got to Hell for her right now.

I close my eyes, and I feel her against me. Restless with anticipation. Expectation? No, entitlement.

There, that’s the one.

I hook into the feeling and drag it up from deep within my gut--it’s like knives, cramping my abdomen and it’s all I can do not to sob against her. It burns into my throat, feeling tar-thick and sticky but I know it isn’t; and it flows into her waiting mouth as something else.

I hear her inhale, feel her withdraw and I open my eyes.

Delicate white petals disappear past her lips, followed by thick, fragrant green stalk.

Galanthus this time.

This one died cold. Unloved. Abandoned by its god.

Like me.

The smoke detector goes off. She finishes off the rest of the flower. Her eyes are completely black. All pupil, and it still brings a chill. I don’t see any humanity left in her. Her lips are caked in blood. My blood. She bit me harder than I thought. I watch her swallow it all down, and I wonder what it feels like to her. To me, it’s a poison, carrying these worlds inside of me. It hurts. It’s a thousand memories that I can’t discern from my own. Each tastes differently, but it’s always another chip in my own Ego, making me lose a little of my original self.

She loves it.

When this first started, I was repulsed. A year later, I’m worn down enough to appreciate the artistry in how she uses me. How she makes art of me. How she needs me. Nobody has ever needed me before her.

I watch her twitch and shake, her forehead glistening with sweat. She’s blurred with movement, and the heat rises. I don’t feel any of the awkwardness right now; I just feel her. I feel the potential. This one seems like restless. A match for her. Watching her master it does something to me, and I want to drown us both. Just the two of us, until the world falls away, and nobody can interrupt. Nothing can stop this train. La petit morte as it were.

Christ.

She wins the battle. She always does, and her features go blank for a split second before warping. It’s still her, but not. Like a stranger unfamiliar with her skin. No, not “like”.

Is.

Their fear is palpable as they see the world anew from her perspective

I know this drill.

“You’re okay,” I start, and they look like they’re seeing me for the first time. They fall back onto their ass, hyperventilating as they claw their way back. “No, hey…”

“I have nothing worth giving,” they say, and their voice is throaty. Deeper than Hattie’s. Possibly masculine but it’s hard to tell under her normally light tenor. Hattie’s cheeks are damp with their tears. “No riches nor land. Everything is gone. Do your worst!”

I’m never one for these introductions, but somehow, I’m always the one doing them. It’s a new world to them, this small ward. I watch them take in the locked doors, the barred windows, the off-white blandness. their sadness smells like the end of winter. The ones who die sad are usually easier to reason with than ones who die angry, so there’s a chance.

My breath frosts. They don’t have much time; they aren’t one of the luckier ones.

“I want your pain.” I say in a rush.. Whatever they’d hoped I’d say, that wasn’t it because they’re knee-walking, crawling away from me like I want to eat their soul. Well, I mean. I guess maybe they have a reason to be afraid. I try again. “I’m not gonna hurt you, okay? I just wanna give you a chance. Your pain called to me. Trade me for it.”

Hell, I could be reciting Latin for all the good it does. To them, I am the face attached to their end. I am the god of a world they don’t understand. Why shouldn’t they believe I want to destroy them? I only vomited them into oblivion.

Just a standard Wednesday activity.

“What need do you have for my pain?” They ask, surprising me. I was expecting more back and forth, but they just sound tired. Ready to go to any end so long as it means there is an end.

I dig my nails into my palms.

“What do you need it for?” I snap. “Look, we don’t have much time so, I don’t know, give me your letter; maybe I can finish up your unfinished business and you can go somewhere better. As in, not here. Or where you were.”

They’re staring at me like I’m crazy but they’ve stopped trying to run away. Small steps.

“I do not have to return?”

“That’s what I said.”

“In exchange for my pain,” They pause. “And what else?”

And here is where Hattie thrives. She would have swindled this poor soul out of their remaining Thread, snipped it all for herself, then drained all of their the Light, and left them depleted for their next life. Probably stuck in some luckless karmic cycle.

I am but a humble farmer compared to her.

My fingertips feel numb. Minutes left.

“Half of your Thread.” I say quickly. “It’s a far better deal than you’d get with--”

“Yes,” they interrupt. Their eyes--Hattie’s eyes-- are wide now with…hope. Terror, too, but right at the surface is that faint glimmer and I want to cry. This is what keeps me here. This is why I haven’t left after everything. “Please. Yes. Help me forget.”

I hold out my hand, palm up, trying to project a calm exterior when I’m counting down the seconds until this fails. And then we’re all fucked.

They pool a string into my hand. It’s barely an inch long, and frayed to all hell, but it’s still living. Pulsing a deep purple. It’s not electric in texture like I normally get-- there’s a difference with Galanthus. It’s faint; like accidentally stumbling into a cobweb. Same spine-tingling horror, too. Their Thread is a tragedy.

I bring it to my lips, and breathe on it. It rises into the air, growing darker in color until it’s almost black, before collapsing as a single brown flower seed back in my palm. I pocket it.

“Now your soul letter.” I say.

Theirs is on old parchment and it goes like this:

Dearest,

I have adored you in every life, and this one proves no different. But I fear our time has run out. Not because I lost faith nor belief that you are a man of your word, but because to stay would mean your death. My sister has learned of our Threads, and it will be only a matter of time before she comes for your end.

She believes my falling in love spells the end of this world. She says my love is a fire, and it destroys everything it touches. She thinks me weak, that any show of romance would engulf us all. I wish I could make her see that it is an absence of love that will destroy this world, but she remains as hard-headed as ever. She means well; she has an unbearable burden and cannot lose everything to what she believes is a fool’s whimsy. Your hot-temper does you no favors either.

If only she could have seen how dashing you were when you swooped in to rescue me from a play-fight with an old family friend. If only she could have felt how cherished you made me feel when you climbed those stairs by the garden wall just to hold my hand. She might not have feared so much.

All she sees is the numerous ways you could break my heart, and bring upon the end.

I know how proud you are. I know you would choose to fight for us and face the oncoming hardships together, but I cannot lose you. Not this way. We must all have a choice, and I am choosing to lose you to a hopeful future than to our next life. I hope your choice is life.

O, would that I have held you just once. Would that I have taken your hand like we’d promised all those years ago. Would that I have held you at your worst and stood beside you at your best. I will mourn those moments for the rest of my life, but it will be easier knowing you will thrive in their wake.

Please go with the knowledge you have been dear to me. Accept my apologies for the mistakes I made in this life, and that I was not strong enough to chance losing you. I am not as brave as you, but maybe the next time around, you will teach me to be better.

Until then, I cannot say the sentiment but know that I carry it eternally.

Affectionately Yours,

S

“I was too weak,” They say after I fold their letter and hand it back to them. “I could not not love him, and Ania….She…cut our Thread. She...took him.”

I’m queasy; I’d guessed at their tragedy, had tasted pain like theirs before but it still sits heavy. To cut a Thread spells the end of every life together, not just the one. “And then you killed yourself?”

They are a million miles away; another life over. “I wanted no part of a world that chose fear over love; and I had no use for people who could harm a soul as beloved to me as his over something as undefinable as chance,” Their face is ravished as they undoubtedly relive it, but their voice is flat. Clinical. They stare at a bare wall. “So I destroyed us all."

tbc; unedited

Submitted January 03, 2019 at 09:50AM by AVelainoux http://bit.ly/2LMvWVZ