Quote:
Follows it was lit fam
Happy sixteenth birthdsy, Faustite.
The sound that beat like a heart around him had shifted from slapping, to popping, to cracking.
He still remembered the sharp line of her jaw as she looked down at him. As she smiled in that knifecut manner, somehow sharper than the words she wielded. She could stab, bludgeon, assassinate without ever needing to lift a hand. Seldom did she. That was, he thought, more satisfying to her.
She said it several times over the years. Happy sixteenth birthday, Faustite. Sometimes she said it with cake. Sometimes with childish balloons and a row of sixteen candles like a chalk line around a murder-to-be. Sometimes she said it with witnesses. Sometimes she said it with a chorus. She often said it with a choice, too; he was sixteen now, this was a chance to prove himself. Show his devotion. Little coos of gifting him a new boy, a fresh boy, a better boy if he could only rid himself of the albatross around his neck. Singsong saccharine rhymes twisted over and about in the hands of history, burdened with a meaning darker than ever intended.
He didn't know why he remembered her so vividly. Her hair white as cracked lightning in the sun, under a lamp. Her grin always mocking, her eyes always stalking. It was April 6th. His birthday was barely a thought in the past years, often escaping his notice until someone with sincerity in their hearts pointed it out to him. April 6th was over three weeks away.
A storm brewed overhead, bitter and taunting. For some time now, he didn't hear the sound around him. It echoed up the derelict, neglected walls of Destiny City's ungentrified hub as surely as thunder rumbled out its throaty threats. The air was dry — humid, but charged. His pulse hammered in his ears.
Happy sixteenth birthday, Faustite. The sound around him devolved into dull, wet smacks, with an intermittent tail of splatters.
He squeezed a fist as he drew back. His fingers were wet — slick — they glossed over a weft of hair. The air didn't taste of rain. He tasted rage on his unburnt tongue. It limned his teeth in the fury of his core, churning over and over, ever trapped in an iron cage, ever turning out of habit. Like an echo, or a recording, or a reflection.
It was April 6th, maybe the 7th by now, and he was elbow-deep in gore. He'd long forgotten the crime, the slight. He combed his hands through his hair in a thoughtless crown of blood. Some of his fingernails must have snapped. Just more carelessness. Another reminder that he was yet rough around the edges, wet behind the years, still in desperate need of training to become the sharp-hewn malice that he could have been. That she wanted him to be.
Happy sixteenth birthday. The first thunderclap rattled so deafeningly that he visibly started. Fear quickened in his veins. Another reminder of numb defeat that hugged him from shoulder to hip, but its history still ghosted through him.
It suits you.
lizbot
ok fine here's your end of the world solo
