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 Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:55 pm
Trapped. I'm trapped. It's a weird realization to have but the last thing I remember is pain, darkness, the feeling of hands inside my body in places that it wasn't possible. I think I'm dead and in some kind of strange Purgatory where I can't escape. I've walked around this little town at least a dozen times by now. The swings, the jungle gym, that single classroom with the door in the middle of nowhere. My parents' house and the apartment that I've kept for the Negaverse. For Aree, if I have to admit it. It's easier to find her when she's staying there and I worry less about her if I can keep tabs on where she is.
I'm really glad she never realized that because she would have stopped staying there to spite me when we fight.
Oddly missing is Elzo's apartment. You would think that the happiest place I've had recently would be here but maybe that's just how my soul was weighed. I can't have true happiness because I was truly damned. I never had the chance to do the great good to make up for the great evil I've committed in the world. Everything is done in shades of gray and blue, haunting me in shades of teal like Linarite is being reflected back at me with every breath I take. Has she really taken my life over this much? Who I am now -- Audrey or Linarite? Who is the alias now?
Does it matter? I mean. I'm dead. Aren't I? I don't hurt anymore but I'm alone. God I hope I'm dead and not trapped inside of my mind. I will take Hell, Purgatory, just give me another soul to cling to. I can't be alone. I can't. I tried for so many years to try and isolate myself so that no one could hurt me and no one could get to me. But didn't I sit on the game with the largest population in the world? I always had Vicky to call if I really needed to talk to someone and my parents did love me. How could they not? It wasn't my fault that my mom couldn't have more kids and they didn't blame me.
I've never really been alone. I don't know how to be alone. Please don't let me be alone.
I go to sit on the swings and look up at the roiling clouds in blue behind which there is some phantom sun. Or I think there is. There's some form of light that never really reaches me to warm this place. It's as cold as I tried to be, as cold as I wanted to be, as cold as I failed to be. "I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough to be cold. I'm sorry I couldn't stop needing someone. I'm sorry." I don't know who I'm talking to but there's a voice that snaps out at me, so familiar that I can almost feel her there. "You should be." Tanzanite. Aree? No. She's Tanzanite now. Irrevocably.
Another voice, male and confusing in so many ways. "Don't ever be sorry for loving someone." Castor? Is that you? My head turns the opposite direction of Tanzanite's voice and sees...nothing. Are they just voices in my head? Memories that ring in my lonely ears, craving the caress of a living voice. Any voice. I would have even loved to talk to Beryl in that moment because it would have meant I was alive. And not alone.
I can't be alone. Trapped.
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Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:56 pm
Limbo was, and I guess is, a weird place. I've been here....awhile now. That sun behind the clouds never sets and I exist in permanent cloudy afternoon here. You'd think that if I could be here in Limbo other people would have shown up by now; lawyers, thieves, some people who were generally good in their life but had shoplifted a few times in their wild teen years, something! But it's remained permanently empty no matter how hard I try. There are some things that I've created. One was a few changes of clothes into whatever I wanted. I ran around for awhile dressed perfect like Sylvanas and I have to say, it was pretty badass.
I wanted a breeze and a breeze came. Anything I want to eat I can have though pretty quickly I found out that I could eat and eat and everything tasted the same bland and boring as the thing that came before it. I also was never really hungry and I never really had to breathe. I did try to get a pool to show up but that didn't work. I couldn't get Elzo's apartment to come out of nowhere either and any door I tried to mentally summon up in or out failed.
I am still very alone.
Thankfully what I lack in human voices to keep my mind from echoing in and around itself to drive me insane I've got in music. Somehow this whole place acts like a giant sound system and whatever music I can have. I started to randomly dance one day and found out...I could! Never mind that Elzo, Jada, and Vicky have all been patiently working with me for months to make sure my stupid feet stop tripping over each other and I don't look dumb. Here? Here I fly across the floor. My feet never even touch and everything is beautiful, like in a movie.
I'm not even sure what this song is called, who composed it, and who is playing it. All I wanted to was to dance and the music came out of nowhere. The dress I brought out of nothingness has so much material in the skirt that when I spin it's like being an umbrella. When you're lonely you have to give yourself comfort where you can. Apparently here, I feel beautiful. Isn't that ironic? I am beautiful and there's no one here to finally see it!
I want to go home.
Eyes close and hands raise into the position I know is right, though there's no partner and I have to both lead and support my weight on the balls of my feet. One two three and sweep. I move through the empty areas of my parent's house and all that is inside are photos on the wall and curtains fluttering in the breeze I created to make me feel...feel something. Not even two years ago all I wanted was to feel nothing and just get through high school without feeling anything. Now I'm afraid that I feel nothing but need and want, and that there are things inside of me that I neither control nor understand.
The music and my movements wash all that away and as I move to spin myself in a strange fashion, a hand grasps mine. It feels so good that I almost falter but they are there to lead me through the motions perfectly. Even in the heels I'm so short that it's almost impossible to dance properly but somehow we manage. My heart soars and for the first time since coming to this awful place that exists in nothing but shades of gray, I'm so happy.
The tempo sweeps ahead and so do we and I swear that we've exceeded the bounds of the house but I'm too afraid to open my eyes. Afraid that this warm body under my hands is nothing more than a trick and a dream and I don't want it to end. But even as we move together as one form in perfect unison the music ends and the smile stretches across my face. The body hasn't vanished.
So slowly, eyes open and I all but glow with the happiness to see that face in my sight. She smiles back, as best she can, and I whisper. "Thank you, Tanz." It was a mistake. My words break the spell of what had happened here and she's gone under my hands so that I am alone again in the confines of this empty house, in this empty world. What did I ever do to deserve this?!
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Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:57 pm
A few hours later and I’m staring up into that gray sky, watching the clouds move and shift as the odd light passes around and through it. My mind won’t stop wondering if Tanzanite had really been there with me and if she had really been there...why? Out of everyone, why Tanz? I mean I know that Aree had been a dancer before she came to the Negaverse. She was a Crystal student on scholarship because she was just good at what she did. Beautiful, apparently.
Not that I’d ever seen her dance. I wish I had.
My mind starts to wonder about all sorts of things. What would it have been like had she never come to me to look for Castor. What if I hadn’t told her where to find Castor? Would Charonite truly have killed his most promising lieutenant because she couldn’t find him? What would have happened if I had never met Castor, for that point?
Would I be here now if I had?
A foot rocks the hammock I constructed above a bed of pillows so that when I fall out, as I invariably do at least once, there’s somewhere else soft to lay. Very few things hurt here though. I guess Limbo itself is so miserable that they didn’t bother to worry about things like laws of gravity, physics, and pain. The pain is all in your mind and if you’re not careful you’ll go mad.
A life without Castor means...does that mean a life without Tanz? I can’t even begin to fathom that I never would have met her at all without him because I first was impressed on my birthday. I’d finished poking at Nealite, felt like s**t because she didn’t rise to it, and we tried to kill that girl....I don’t even remember her name now. Some kind of storms so that we were wet.
Tanz was so mad. I remember that, and then she was put under me because of Castor. So he helped but it wasn’t all due to him. My eyes get heavy and then I’m dreaming. Am I dreaming? Or is this just a way for Limbo to show me things? You can’t ever tell if you’re watching a movie, a memory, or if it’s just a dream. I don’t feel like I’m asleep but I’m watching the screens that are my eyelids.
Do you know how weird it is to watch yourself? There are subtle variances in the uniform that signifies General Linarite. It’s a darker gray and the staff is edged with deadly steel. A super long sword? Some sort of glaive or halberd? The look in my eyes so cold until it warms and a body passes through my phantom watcher form.
“Late again? Sidetracked. I can feel it.” A hand came out and the claw that was Arm reached and the fingers linked before it pulled the smaller girl in against Tanzanite’s body. They rested against each other but were still vigilant, eyes skimming the town below them for signs of life and a plan for the night. “I can definitely feel it. A super?”
Tanzanite’s reaper grin said it all. “Her power was ridiculous. I think she was actually shooting clouds at me.” She looked south and Lina rolled her eyes. The casual intimacy between Tanz and...well me is rather surprising. Tanz hasn’t ever been that touchy. Not that I can ever remember!
“Ah, so she was asking for it. Aren’t they all? We’ve got them on the run at least. The Queen’s been pleased with us lately.” Her head snapped to the side as Arm tensed -- they both sensed it. “Half a mile to the south? Eternal. Feel it?” I couldn’t.
Tanz apparently could as the pair were already detaching from one another and moving in tandem through the shadows. I could follow easily, drifting along like one of those clouds that unfortunate senshi had been shooting. They apparently couldn’t sense or feel me. Was this a glimpse of what if? It’s all so confusing but the beautiful savagery of it calls to me.
And there he is. Eternal Sailor Castor. There’s barely a glance spared between the two as Tanzanite advances to get his attention. Stinging Storm, the ice punch, all familiar to me and to watch them fight backs up the breath in my lungs. It’s incredible. But then...he falls.
A glave has ripped through him in the back and my Amazon partner reaches down for his life. It’s shared between them and they look down. “Have we seen him before? Sorta looks familiar.” Hands are joined around the star seed and the look on my face...oh the euphoria. Even my ghostly palms ache to think of what it would feel like to capture such a power between them.
I want to scream that that is Castor. Don’t you know him? But they don’t. They’re so wrapped into themselves that I realize something. Something awful, wonderful, life-altering.
My eyes shoot open as the pair and the scene melt and tears track down my face. The realization? I love Tanzanite. I don’t know how it happened or why but she’s as much a part of me as Castor. As Elzo. A smaller part but that darkness inside of me sings and Tanz has always sung back. We’re trapped in dark side of each other, two stars orbiting and trapped in each other’s gravity wells.
She’ll burn me out first. But I keep going back. I need to go back. I send out a prayer to the gray skies. Please. Let me go. Let me die or let me wake, I need to get out of this place before it breaks my heart utterly.
Because no matter how I feel....I can’t ever let anyone know. I would lose my friend, my support, the person that understands, and who keeps me from getting myself killed. No. No one will ever know. Even if I do ever wake ********>
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Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 12:57 pm
It was stupid to be scared. That’s what Daphne was telling herself, sitting alone in her shared apartment’s bedroom. Elzo had gone out to do things that he said were ‘Prince things’ which probably meant making sure his senshi friends didn’t kill her on site. Or something. If she found him in the Red Light district she’d just have to cut his hands off and that’d be that.
The somewhat mundane thoughts had helped push back some of the Knight’s apprehension as she phased forms with little more than a thought. Castor had been interrogated rather minutely on how exactly he got to his planet of origin and Lina thought she had at least some understanding of how this was done. There was this nagging pull in the back of the knight’s head calling to her.
Insisting.
He’d said something about a cell phone which the girl decidedly did not have but she did have this...scouter. This thing, whatever use it could be for, was like a futuristic cell phone wasn’t it? Fingers touched next to her ear where it attached, scrolling through the options and thinking about that pull. It was for trees, warmth in the middle of the tundra, a breeze on her face. A grove of trees that were exclusively hers to protect because...because...they were hers. “For the glory of Mercury, I pledge myself.” It was the short version that rang through her head of a greater pledge.
The change was immediate to notice. It had been quiet night in Destiny City but there was even more of a stillness here. Not a great amount of light though, which was odd. They opened slowly and stared out at what was in front of her. There were trees, great palms that shaded the ground that were deeply rooted in what was seemingly...a glacier? An ice-carved archway was not far away but it was unimportant for now.
It was incredible! From this change she had to be...had to be on Mercury? ******** Mercury! Standing, the bluenette pushed the button to banish her scouter’s screen back into the holding bay at her ear and goggled. Hands brushed over palm trunks and for a moment everything felt right with Lina’s mind. There was no turbulence of emotion, simply an overlying sense of peace with everything in her world.
The largest tree was in the center and had a ring of daisies at the foot of it, half-hidden by the snow. It was amazing that all of this could grow in the middle of what was apparently a dark, frozen wasteland but plants were everywhere. It was almost like a lukewarm oasis in the middle of the snowy plains such as there were water-filled cool oases in the deserts of Earth. Maybe that’s why she was supposed to protect it?
It was certainly magical! Fingers touched that large trunk and it was an immediate conduit to memory and sensory perception. Purpose and knowledge of what she had been well-trained to do over a thousand years ago flooded Lina and no matter how she tried, she could not wrench her hands away. Daphne had been born on Earth so many years ago. But that’s all she could remember.
That and how to move. Everything felt fluid, boneless, shapeless inside of the skin that was Lina Knight. Hands dropped away and without even thinking she dropped into a fighting stance. Fluid motions carried through a quick series of punches and kicks -- never once did she trip. Knowledge was power to Lina and oh was it true in this instance!
Of course it wasn’t all from that one quick shoving of muscle memory into her that was helping the movement, hell no. Lina had to remind herself that before Cosmos had even come along there had been...someone. A hazy memory of red hair that was teaching her to defend herself and driving her to the limit because she’d wanted to know how to fight.
The Negaverse had served Linarite well and she had tried her best. Now she knew that the best way to serve all of them was to pull them over to this purer way of thinking, this gentler power that was much more than it seemed. There was no reason to kill the senshi if they could simply convince them to stay on their own damn planets! And Beryl...no there were no memories of if Daphne had ever met the Negaverse Queen before she had been such.
There weren’t a whole lot of memories of a whole lot of things, past and present. Lina, for the moment, contented herself with sitting against the tree and closing her eyes. There was time for a nap and the girl was entirely certain that tonight, there would be no nightmares.
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 12:11 pm
6:07 pm. The tiny numbers in the bottom corner of her toolbar had Daphne sighing and switching her chin from the left hand to the right. Fingers scrolled the mouse bar down as she read yet another Cracked article, though a smile never once cracked her own face other than a twitching of lips here and there. Her messenger service was open but silent as the grave, as it should be. There were only two contacts on her list and one was there only because Elzo didn’t think it was odd that she’d ask for his brother’s name.
Not that she ever talked to him. There was something about Daphne’s entire existence that offended the younger Xanis brother. He went out of his way to pick and pick at her until she nearly exploded with nastiness, something that usually ended with her storming out of the room and hiding in here when he was around.
Another article finished and eyes drifted down again. 6:12 pm and she was ready to scream from boredom and loneliness. Her fiancee wouldn’t be home for hours yet. He had a class in the afternoon which meant he was working late and Daphne was on her own until the evening. It wasn’t dark enough for Lina Knight to be walking about town yet unless she really, truly had a death wish. And she didn’t. Ever.
Weight pressed against the back of her computer chair and it slid onto an angle, feet propped up on the edge as fingers scrolled through contacts on her cell phone. The number was new of course. Daphne Xanis couldn’t have the same phone number as Audrey Collins because they would undoubtedly call it when she’d vanished. Some pain was too much for even the bluenette to bear and she’d thrown the SIM card into the blender almost immediately.
The numbers in said phone, however, had been meticulously copied first. You never knew when you’d need to call someone up and reassure them that you were alive. Or just the comfort of knowing that at one point you’d had someone to call. Or you know, if you were feeling like a stalker. More and more she was feeling like a stalker as the teen watched Victoria, Jada, and even Pasha go about their lives.
It wasn’t exactly what she could call a good time.
Fingers brushed against the contacts labelled Aree (whom had lost her phone almost immediately upon receiving it) and Rosie (who never moved without hers). Two people she could have always counted upon when feeling lonely and out of place. Now both were out of her reach and dangling high above her head. One had tried to kill her family and one was family. Neither could be told of Daphne’s former identity.
Swearing viciously the phone was tossed back onto the dark wood of her desk with a clatter as arms came around to hug her knees. Blue curls fell around her body like a curtain and the eighteen year old veteran of the Senshi Wars looked more like a child than she had in years.
It was mildly amusing, if you had a sick sense of humor, that she would be so very lonely and longing for friends. Not more than two years ago Audrey would have scoffed at the idea of her longing for friends. She had her computer, she had WoW, and most of all she had her math. What the hell did she need friends for? They were just there to stab you in the back and make you feel like s**t when they did things better than you did. As if anyone could do anything better than Audrey!
But they could. And now, more than ever, she just needed a friend. Funny how there wasn’t a single one to be found. Shivering, Daphne put her head on her knees for a moment, squeezing before springing out of the pathetic position and snagging both keys and phone.
Like hell she was going to sit around waiting for life to happen ever again!
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Posted: Sat Jul 30, 2011 12:35 am
Life sucked. Life sucked huge, giant, elephantitis-engorged c**k. Despite the summer heat, Daphne Xanis trudged towards her previously-shared apartment complex in a giant baggy sweater that came all the way down to her knees and encompassed her hands entirely. Her mess of blue curls looked like it hadn’t been brushed since the beginning of time and was piled carelessly on the back of her neck. Ostensibly she was at least wearing some form of shorts beneath the sweater that was more a dress than anything else, but no one could really tell.
To put it shortly, life sucked and Daphne looked like hell.
Throwing out Elzo had been what she still felt was the right thing to do. Yes, she slept alone at night clutching a raggedy penguin that he had given her as his very first present, sometimes sniffling into its belly. But he was adamant about killing people that she liked. People that she loved. Would he have killed even her mother? Maybe Victoria, were she in the Negaverse? What made her so different from Zinkenite or Scheelite? His love?
These ideas ran through her head again and again so that Daphne snorted at thin air like a crazy hobo. She was different because she chose to be different, she chose to wake up and see what was happening, to try and change it. If she could change anyone could change! Yet the lofty, brilliant, totally cocksure Prince Castor refused to admit that she might be on to something. No, they were all monsters.
It was that mentality that had him thrown out. It meant that her salvation, her progress, her entire willingness to become a new person and atone for her crimes was based entirely on him. No. She wouldn’t allow that mentality to sleep with her at night, put his hands on her, live the cozy life that she had sacrificed so much to have. It all felt false now and it broke her heart.
Elzo had already tried to get back into her life, she didn’t really expect anything differently. A few phone calls, messages begging her to talk to him, then days of silence. What he could possibly be doing in his free time, his supposedly unattached time, kept her up at night. Though Daphne had refused to wear his ring, the pendant that had come from his planet never left her neck. She still bore his name. Daphne Xanis, separated wife of Elzo Xanis. They weren’t even legally married but changing her name seemed....well. She didn’t want to do it.
But that didn’t mean she was going to forgive him. He had to earn it! He had to make her want to take him back. First of that was changing his goddamn attitude and admitting, outloud, that she was worth something simply for being her. Had he helped change her life?
Yes.
But he wasn’t the full cause.
Plodding into the complex and nodding at the doorman who looked at her down his nose, she pushed the button for the elevator, not even sparing a glance. He knew she lived here, he saw her leave. ******** him. Nobody who currently was in Daphne’s life could understand how easy it was for her to lapse back into speaking to no one, acknowledging no one, living her life as cold as solitary as she had started it two years ago.
It wasn’t as easy as she wanted it to be. Feet stomped down the hallway and stopped dead in front of the doormat. It was the basic Welcome mat in blues and whites, something they’d picked out and tossed there as a bit of an inside joke. The mat wasn’t the problem. No, the problem were the daisies bundled and carefully cut and wrapped sitting on the mat. They were the exact shade of her hair and came from only one place in the universe.
“Castor.” A soft murmur as she bent to pick them up, looking at the attached card. It was typical, which meant the bluenette had to steel her heart against it. His handwriting was a little stiffer than she remembered it being but it professed his undying love for her. He missed her. So he brought her flowers, but she wasn’t home.
Face blank and emotionless, Daphne let herself into the apartment. It was only when she was inside the dark entryway, all the lights off save for one in the kitchen, that she gave in. Her face buried in the flowers and inhaled. The scent was icy and calming at once, bringing tears to her eyes and fingers clenched over their stems. It would be so easy to throw them out the balcony window where she wouldn’t have to be reminded, every day, what she had given up for her own inner strength. For what she thought would save the lives of others that she cared about.
Instead, she laid them on the counter and pulled out a vase.
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Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2011 1:16 pm
 Lina's life is a little...shaky...right now.
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Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2011 3:53 pm
O God, you do not willingly grieve or afflict
your children.
Look with pity on the suffering of this family
in their loss.
Sustain them in their anguish;
and into the darkness of their grief
bring the light of your love;
through Jesus we pray.
Amen.
A prayer for the family. They were all present there, those backwater relatives from Kansas that had known and loved Shelley Collins. Dozens of children under the age of fifteen, so many cousins, aunts, and uncles. Victoria was standing there with her own father next to Shelley’s husband, her arm around him and offering dry-eyed support. His eyes were not as dry but they were not overflowing, yet the traces remained on his face that there had been many in this short period of time.
That great clan of family ranged around the coffin in which the gruesome remains had been delicately placed. No one had looked inside; it was even firmly locked in such a secretive way that even those who were feeling daring could not desecrate the woman nor their own minds with the memory of that broken figure. There was only one person missing from the Collins family.
Or so they thought.
Cold amber eyes were locked on the wooden tube that held the remains of the mother she had loved a great deal more than she had thought. True, her parents had been much too wrapped in each other and their losses to pay much attention to their living child, yet Shelley had always been there. Tying the ribbon in blue waves every morning, patting her on the head in that distracted way, teaching her to cook. Four owls in her bedroom were attributed to her maternal care as well as the blanket that even now was on Daphne’s bed.
Finding a priest to perform the service had been difficult. Though the Collins family was not strictly religious and not remotely Catholic, there were those still that believed that a suicide was dooming a soul to Hell. There had been, perhaps, a great deal of hunting and frustration to find someone to send the once-beautiful cheerleader’s soul where it belonged. Shelley had been, and would always be, her daughter’s guardian angel.
She had tried to be subtle. All of her blue waves were pulled back into a severe tail of hair, a look that Audrey had never adopted before in her life. The glamour would have easily protected her but how many golden-eyed bluenettes were there in the world? That weren’t Collinses. The number was disastrously few. Drawing attention to herself on this particular day was something that she wanted to avoid at all costs. Black stockings with black shoes and a slim black dress had the pale young woman looking little more than a wraith in the crowd that had gathered to pay their respects.
Later, Daphne would tell herself she never meant to get that close. But when the group had moved to shuffle past the coffin and pay their very last respects at the gravesite, she found herself moving with them. Hands reached into the large bag at her side, pulling out the project she had poured her grief and love into scant nights before. When the news had broken that a local woman, 38, had jumped from a local business tower into the crowd below. The police had learned that her daughter had run away from home and she’d had a recent miscarriage in a long string of them. There had been nothing suspicious about the death, a textbook suicide.
She knew better.
All of her grief had been woven into an intricate wreath of multicolored ribbons. Every single ribbon that this poor woman had ever put into her daughter’s hair had been sacrificed to the offering on her mother’s grave. It looked out of place amongst the flowers, the scraps of paper, the photographs of a smiling woman that had never given up on life. Yes, Audrey knew that her mother had not killed herself. She’d been warned, hadn’t she?
Warned and done nothing. Audrey Collins has killed her mother.
The knowledge of it burned her eyes, brought a spark and life to them that had not been seen for weeks. Almost as if he had sensed her presence, knew that something was different about her, her father moved from Victoria’s side towards the young woman looking lost and forlorn next to the coffin. “Excuse me. You...you’d be a friend of my daughter’s? Audrey.” The flicker of recognition in this strange girl’s eyes, so similar to his baby girl’s, pushed him to continue. “Thank you for being here. You look so much like her...Shelley would have mentioned that. I bet that’s why you were friends. I..” A light hand touched his shoulder. Victoria. “Rosie...” The softest whisper out of Daphne’s mouth before she caught herself.
“Yes. I knew Audrey. I am so sorry for your loss, please excuse me?” Daphne could not breathe. Could not get away fast enough. Pushing away and through the crowd her whole body burned with the agony of it. Away and away until she was out of the cemetery, throwing her body into a cab. She didn’t even know if she was giving him the right address until the cabbie, remembering where he’d picked her up and what she looked like, got out to open the door. “You okay girlie? You’re home.”
Home. Was she home? The building was alien to her, foreign for a long moment. The dullness in her eyes sharpened and she nodded. “Yes. Home.” Elzo’s home, the home that he had brought her to when she had been forced to leave her own behind. “Thank you...” She idly pushed whatever cash had been in her bag at the man, not caring that it was three times the fare, ambling into the elevator.
It wasn’t until she went into their dark, quiet apartment that it started to hit. You look so much like her. “Yeah papa, I look just like Audrey.” The laugh was hysterical, shaking, hands pulling at the drab black hat and throwing it aside. Blue flashed everywhere around her, consuming her, as the hysterical laughter turned into ragged sobs. God, she felt so alone! There was no one there to comfort her because the one person who was left to love her had been told to go. Not even the kitten he had given her was there that day.
Everything was wavering, blue, and she’d had enough. “I don’t want to be her anymore. I want it to stop. I want to go.” Snagging her hair, tugging, it wasn’t enough. Tears freely flowed down Daphne’s face as she moved swiftly into the kitchen. Drawers banged open and closed, a frustrated scream as scissors eluded her. Everything was a blur after that. The knife was in her hand, the first thick hank of glorious hair loose and floating on the pale carpet.
Daphne’s vision, obscured by tears, cleared only long enough for her to see it. To stare at it in disbelieving grief and agony moments before hands moved again, hacking away at her hair with a dull-bladed kitchen knife. Over and over as much as she could grab. “No more. No more.” It was a chant, a mantra, as she fell to her knees and became an island of black in a sea of blue hair and carpet.
What she would do when she ran out of hair was anyone’s guess. The weight of her choices had finally broken the tiny girl and she would not be able to gather the pieces alone.
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Posted: Sun Dec 25, 2011 7:04 pm
November 8th, 2011
Audrey Joanna Collins
Born November 8th, 1992.
Died November 2nd, 2011.
Beloved daughter, forever missed.
“Couldn’t even make it to nineteen, could you kid?” It was just past midnight on her nineteenth birthday and the graveyard was silent. Well who the hell even went out at night anymore, let alone hung about in dangerous places like graveyards? Scaling the fence hadn’t really been anything harder than phasing into her knight form, leaping lightly to land on the balls of her feet, before continuing on in civilian guise once more.
The only sound on the chill almost-winter night was the sound of the glass bottle in Daphne’s hand clinking against the headstone she was perched on. They hadn’t really spared any expense, erecting this headstone next to Shelley’s. The difference between the two was that one was freshly-disturbed dirt and the other hadn’t even really been disturbed more than the feet that had trampled the grass to bury Audrey’s mother. Both stones were made from a stormy grey travertine, veined beautifully with crack-thin lines of black and white and the irony was not lost on the girl perched on the two-foot high stone. It was a mimic of what her life had become when the other girl’s had ended.
“You’d think you would’ve at least gotten somewhere by now, but things aren’t exactly peachy ******** keen, are they?” Talking to yourself in a graveyard at midnight boy she’d really moved up in the world, hadn’t she? The bottle of vodka rolled and tapped against the stone another time as it was contemplated, uncorked and allowing its chemical vapor to seep into the bite of the November night.
Elzo hadn’t been entirely forgiven yet though they were seeing each other more often. Patrolling together was almost a necessity for Daphne and it wasn’t as if he really trusted her to go out on her own and not get critically injured of some kind. Though she resented the overly-protective attitude she couldn’t exactly say it wasn’t warranted. She’d died, hadn’t she? If the stone was to be believed she’d died twice now and wasn’t that a kick in the a**? But she’d chosen this.
That whole deal in space, at the Surrounding, was a step forward for Lina Knight wasn’t it? She’d been trusted enough to carry the message to as many people as she could, as fast as possible, and had done so. Lina had discovered that in her past she and a young Virgo had been very close, and headway had been made with Flora. Flora was critically important being that she was one of the two strongest presences around Princess Chronos, the real person Daphne was trying desperately to impress. They hadn’t spoken personally yet but things were better. Right?
“God what the hell do you know? You can’t keep a damn thing together.” Fingers reached up to touch the slightly-ragged ends of her choppy haircut. Helen had done the very best she could to even the damn thing out. The stylist had done a bit better to fashion an asymmetrical style that made Daphne look oddly chic. The bleach at her tips and turquoise in a middle strip gave her hair that interesting gradient; beach hair she called it. No, she didn’t look a damn thing like Audrey Collins, not even in those whiskey-colored eyes. Audrey’s had been big, bright, looking towards the future. Daphne Xanis’ were shaded with the disappointment of a future that was nothing but another fight, another place needed to hide, a war that she would never really see the end of.
Making up her mind finally the vodka was lifted to her mouth for a deep draught. To the girl’s credit she didn’t quite choke on the taste. The bottle was raised to eye level, glared at, before shoulders slumped. Now she was telepathically arguing with a bottle of goddamn vodka; maybe it was time to go home. Upending the entire thing Daphne rose to her feet and started to walk away. “Have a drink. You weren’t ever old enough for it, but I won’t tell anyone. Promise. Happy birthday, Audrey.”
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