100chupa-chups

[100chupa-chups]

To Save A City

I've never understood why people believed time travel would destroy everything man-kind has ever made. Everyone I knew warned me off travelling down that path. They told me over, and over again that it should never be pursued, never be discovered, and certainly never be used. Dangerous things would happen, they said. Terrible things, horrifying events would take place if the time line was disrupted. Even a tiny little change could give us a future that we didn't think could get any worse than this. That little flap of a butterfly's wings, the metaphorical pebble in the river of time could spell disaster for us all. We would be helpless.

But now, as I watch the sky light up with a mushroom cloud of white hot fire and ash, I think I understand. I understand now, that the first time I sat down with a pen and paper at my new desk that I bought from IKEA and started drawing plans, I am the reason. I understand that the first time I watched as the piece of paper I sent back in time was the very same paper that my grandmother had given to me when I was sixteen, it is all me, always me. I understand that I am the reason everyone I'd ever loved, everyone I'd come to care about, everyone who I've ever met, are now dead.

It's too late now. I can't save my family. I can't save anyone. But what if they were never dead?

I can change the past to better the future. But there are so many possibilities! I can stop that first breakthrough. I can steal the plans, I can burn them, and I can tear them to shreds. I can destroy the facility, and I can withhold the funding. I can stop the person who thought it was a great idea to stop the first decent American President from being assassinated. I can stop the creation. I can kill the leader. I can murder the mastermind.

Myself.

And suddenly I grin for the first time in years. For the first time in years I feel hope. I can remove one small factor that was never meant to happen. I can stop that one event that was never meant to happen from ever unfolding.

I'm running before I can think, back to the large white building where I've lived for years. The Great Building. Yeah, the name sucks. But the door opens easily despite the damage of the walls, and I sprint through the winding corridors and halls, passages. Banging doors open, and winding around desks. My lungs are struggling for air in the dust filled atmosphere, and they're burning from the heat.

Never in my life have I ever felt so dishevelled, so rushed but so at peace with myself. I now have a purpose. My normally tame brown hair is falling free of its confinements. Dirt and ash cover me from head to toe, and I ponder how I'm still alive because I can see bodies littered outside in the heat of the out of control burning of the city I've called home for two decades. My green eyes are red rimed from the dust and my skin is in near shreds.

I pull up at the room with the Atom Separation Time Travel Unit. What a name, and it's such a mouthful. I shouldn't have to hate my life's work. It's my child. But the child that is now in jail for murder and rape and child molestation. I hate it more than I ever have. It's pushed, and prodded, and forced me to do unspeakable things. Things I never would have done otherwise. Maybe I should rename it "The Life! Ruiner 2000." Huh. Maybe I have gone insane. Hopefully, if do this right, I won't have to rename it.

I go through the motions of turning it on. Turn this knob, turn that knob, pull this lever over here and push that lever other there, press some buttons here and some buttons there and it's whirling to life under my expert hands. I pause and make sure it's all working just as it should be.

I step inside the Sub-zero Temperature Cylindered Transport Port Thing. There was never a proper name for it. Whatever. My hair whips around my head as the suction of the vacuum kicks in.

I breathe in and my body feels as though it's being forced through a straw. I hurl through the space time continuum as a rate of something I've never calculated, I've never needed to. With my skin prickling with cold, intense heat and black-hole like suction, I can feel my eyes water. I've done this trip a thousand times, and I wonder why it's so painful now. It never was before. Perhaps it knows that this is the last trip it will ever make, in this time and the next. Perhaps it knows that in this timeline, after I change it forever, it will not exist now and hopefully never will. I say I've travelled this journey a thousand times like it's a good thing. It's not.

As I breathe out my feet land on solid ground again and my legs collapse in a weak state of confusion and pain. But I haven't seen grass in years and the sound of heaving and coughing reverberates in my skull. I will it to stop about three second before I realise I'm the one making the noise. I thank the gods that I won't have to do this again.

"Oh, My god!" a girl shrieks from somewhere behind me, "Are you ok? You don't look good."

I know that voice. It's the voice I hear every day, and the voice I will never have to hear again. The voice that talks to people like I do, and did, for all my life. It's strange to hear it coming from someone else, even though it's still me. I don't stand up and I don't turn to her. But I listen.

"Miss? Do you need the Hospital?" she asks again, "Miss? Are you ok?"

Her voice is so young. It's free of the pain, free of all I've seen in my life. Free of all the horrible things I've done. She breaks my heart. I wish I didn't have to do this.

"Miss-" I know she reached out to me, because that's what she'd do. It's what we do. We help people in need; we smile at people who need kindness. That's what I did too, but I went too far. I tried to fix mistakes that didn't need fixing. Mistakes that would have been learnt from if I had just left it alone. I tried to fix mistakes that would have prevented the bleak future that so many people died from.

She is just a little girl, a child. She shouldn't have to live through what I have, and this is the only way.

"I'm so sorry, Reily," her face is shocked when I stand and turn to face her. I don't think she expected me to know her name, let alone talk. She needs to know this, though. She need to know what I'm stopping, "I never wanted it this way, Reily. You have to know that."

My voice breaks and tears leak out my eyes in rivers, "You have so much potential, Reily, too much. I wish you could grow up with your friends the way you need to. The way you should. Lila, Brent, Vivian, Indego, they all love you. Mum and Dad and little Josie, they will always be there, I know that, you know that. I wish there was another way. I wish I didn't have to do this, but it must be stopped. We must be stopped, I must be stopped. The things we do, they are unspeakable. We cause too much destruction."

I don't know if Reily is listening to me, I don't know if she understands the extent of what I'm trying to say to her. Maybe she can't understand what I'm saying because my throat is clogged up with unsaid words and unsaid confessions and unannounced apologies for things she may or may not do. I could stuff this up so badly that we cause even more disaster.

Maybe I won't have to kill us, me and her. But no, I have to. It's the only way.

The cold metal of the gun slides along my hip as I slide it out of my pants.

"No." Reily backs away, and I can see she's scared. I need to do this, "Please. Don't do this."

"I have to Reily," I must look insane to her. Crazed. A lunatic out to get innocent little girls who have their whole lives spread out in front of them. Spouting out crazy stories, trying to convince them that this type of murder is ok. Like I'll get rewarded for it. Oh, god. Who have I become?

"I've become a monster." I breathe. I can't do this – but yes, I must.

"Please!" Reily's lower lip trembles. She knows her fate. What a funny word, fate. Sort of reminds me of fake. It's much the same. There's no such thing as fate. We make our own choices. I know that now.

"I have to." I steady the pistol at her, aiming between her eyes to make it as painless as possible. So it's over and done with quickly.

"I'm so sorry." I whisper through my tears. The metal buckles in my hands and I see her go down.

Please let it be enough.

And as the blackness fall over my eyes, as this version of me stops existing, as I cause a paradox like none other, and as I kill an innocent child because it was the only way I could think of, I've know I've saved a city.

[100chupa-chups]

As I Go

My mother cries as I cried.

My father stares at nothing.

The people I love pine for a self they will never know.

Hold this just world,

Keep it save.

Because when this world fails,

So too with the hands that tried.

Seek the justice,

Discard the evil

And perhaps be allowed a breath.

Because between the hatred and kindness,

The unstable grows

Like mold along the walls,

Creeping up from the skirting board,

Staining the paint,

Staining the plasterboards with the blackened debris

Of hatred upon a people who only wanted

To smile.

[100chupa-chups]

Waiting for Salvation

In the early morning fog, a woman stands on a bridge.

She is on the wrong side of the railing and her toes hang over the edge as she peers down at the raging river below, at the rocks that reach for her from under the water. Who are you? she asks, though she knows the answer already.

Curly brown hair, a scarf bought with the last coins in her money box that represents a boy band she used to like wrapped around her neck. This would be the last time anyone saw her like this. Desperate and alone.

The woman does not cry. Tears are for those who need it. She does not.

Cars drive past with their purring engines, trucks with their noisy exhausts, motorbikes with their puttering. The bitumen is damp from an earlier rain and leaves float in the gently trickling water in the gutter, the air smelling of wet dirt and petrol fumes. She could almost taste the city on her tongue, the pungent scent of oil and sticky pavement drowned out by the aroma of fresh bread and roasting nuts until it is no more than the colour brown; made from so many, and yet so unremarkable.

Nobody slows down, nobody stops to wonder why a girl with a striped scarf and frizzy hair is hovering at the start of a two hundred and fifty metre drop. They do not care. They do not pretend to care.

She shuffles forwards, and now only her heels connect, her right hand gripping the cold metal fence in a loose fist. If she loses balance she will not right herself. If she falls now she will die. If she lets her hand relax and she lets go, she will fall down, and the rocks will be her last embrace.

A car pulls up behind her and its door wrenches opens. A voice she has heard once calls to her, footsteps hesitating on the footpath between the road and the girl who stands on the wrong side of the fence.

“Wait!” It is a girl. She is familiar in the way a face she might have seen once on the street is familiar. Familiar in the way this sinking feeling in her chest thuds through her, electric and unsettling, and yet almost comforting. “Don’t jump!”

I am your final destination.

And the woman drops. There is nothing but air.

[100chupa-chups]

Don't Know What To Call This

               The fire in my hand is dancing.

                 Fluttering in and out of focus it prances across the span of skin that is my palm. I make a fist and the light goes out. With my back against a damp brick wall my lungs are screaming at me, they want air. The rain is pounding against my drawn hood. Closing my eyes I concentrate on breathing. In, hold for three seconds, out for four, in for three, out for four. After my breath is back I start running again. Down the alleyway towards the unknown I run, with no idea where I’m going at all. Chances are they’re still chasing me.

               I open my hand and re-ignite the fire. With the warm light I can see the walls of the alleyway. My feet are slapping against the wet pavement, water splashing on my bare legs. The constant rhythm sends shockwaves through my body. The dark night sky is showing through the gaps in the buildings. I look up briefly and my eyes squint against the rain. Head down I continue running.

               Red brick floats in my peripheral vision. I can hear the sound of other people following me. I speed up, sprinting, feet moving faster, rapid breathing, in out, in out. A corner turning left is up ahead so I ready myself for the dodge. My feet slide against the drenched pavement and…

               I see a red brick wall stretching towards the sky. I turn 180 degrees and look back. They’re not here yet. Looking left I spot a bin and walk over to it. Hastily I lift the lid and peer into the contents. There’s rubbish, and it’s full of water. Closing the lid, I know there’s no way I can hide in there.

               The sound of seven people running causes me to panic. I desperately keep looking around to see is there is another way out. I leap towards where the bin meets the wall and I can see that it doesn’t quite touch, two feet, maybe. I crawl into the gap. With my back against where the two walls meet, I put out the fire and wait.

               “Where is she!?”A deep voice growls in the distance. The rain is stronger than before and the sky lights up white.

               “She’s gotta be here!” Another voice yells over the top of the rain. I hold by breath, ready for the capture.

               “Check over there, you idiots!” The deep voice screams at the other people. There is suddenly a bright light in my face. I start shaking and fold myself into a tighter ball, trying to melt into the wall.

               “Well, well, well, what do we have here?” A man’s voice mocks. The outline of a tall person looms over me. My hand is seized in a tight grip and I wrench my hand away, but the hand is not moving. I am yanked up to my feet.

               I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die. There are seven people in a semi-circle blocking the exit wearing some kind of uniform. They all have guns.

               “NO, NO, NO. PLEASE, LET ME GO!” I screech.

               “Now sweetheart, why would we do that?” The leader says with a frightening smile upon his lips. The person holding my arm pushes me to him, but my legs aren’t working, they just cave. I land on the wet ground in front of the leader. I feel a hand grab my hood and pull it down. My neck is injected with something and I know I will no longer be able to use my fire. Tears slowly fall down my face as the leader points his gun at me.

               “What, you’re that weak you needed to stop my powers. Pussy.” I spit in his face. The blow hits me before I can blink. Blood slowly trickles down my face from my temple.

               “Shut up, bitch.” He hisses, and levels the gun between my eyes.

               “You are a coward.” I say without hesitation. I look him in the eyes and grin, “You are a sick bastard. You have lost your humanity. You are nothing but a-“

               BANG.

               Dead.

[100chupa-chups]

On Mortality

We really are mortal, aren’t we?

This moment in time will end,

And so will this life.

You aren’t going to live forever,

You know.

Neither am I.

I realise that I need to do thing,

Get out more,

Help people.

Live.

But I cannot bring myself to,

To do things just because.

And I know, that

By the time I’m at my death bed,

I’ll regret not living while I could.

I am not immortal,

I will die,

And I know that I am going to regret,

So many things.

But, despite this,

I still do the same thing every day:

Nothing.

[100chupa-chups]

The Plan

I feel myself planning

Everything.

Clothes given to the destitute,

Trinkets to family,

Heart to the dirt.

I find myself alone and surrounded,

All at once.

I yearn and plead for someone to just

Understand, but I am

Begging where people cannot hear.

I want people to listen to the tears I shed

Everyday.

I am marked by scars, and

They will never heal.

They may fade, but the residue of

The knowledge that,

I couldn’t stop it.

There is no way I can rebuild

What has been shattered

Years ago.

I feel myself planning everything,

So that my family, don’t have to,

Find me.

[100chupa-chups]

Murder?

Who am I, you ask?

Well, I am the person you left in the dark,

When all I wanted was my home.

I am the person you thought you could discard,

Like a piece of paper you’d forgotten for years.

I am the person you thought was weak.

Well you will find that this knife is not flimsy

And my aim is true.

[100chupa-chups]

Faces That You Quickly Forget

You see me in the dark but you do not recognise me.

You see the cuts on my face, but you do not realise

That there are tears in my eyes as well as shards of ice.

Your eyes look at how I flinch at any noise, yet it does not connect

With your brain that these scars are not accidental.

You see that I am cracking like a porcelain jar

From the words they speak and the words I say

In my head over and over again that I’m not important,

That I am worth nothing more than the body I inhabit.

You see, but you do not realise

You hear, but you do not listen

You smile, but it does not help.

I fall backwards into my own grave.

[100chupa-chups]

'Friend'

This empty void

Inside my chest

Was made with my own hands

As you stood at the lip,

Directing me where to dig.

I don’t want to look up at you anymore;

I am taller than you

But sometimes I feel

Like an ant beneath your foot

If it were made of acidic words,

Lips going from smiles one second

And condescending grins the next,

And bitter words caught on my tongue,

Left there in the wake of a destructive

Friendship I don’t want anymore.

Well timed scoffs

Were your best weapon.

And as my knees bruise where I kneel

Before you

Because I am not strong enough

To raise myself.

I was a foot from salvation

But an inch from damnation

And you had been pushing me

Ever closer towards that dark abyss

Hand burning

Your mark upon my back

Telling others of my weakness.

I thought you were the hand reaching

To save me,

But I am destined for disappointment.

[100chupa-chups]

24 Things I Have Said

One.

I said, “Child watch where you put your feet;

On that footpath, misplaced dreams have been dropped

From trembling hands attached to trembling people,

Trodden on without a care by those with dreams in steel cages.

Dropped as another slapped them from arms

That held them too loosely, too delicately, like one miss-step

Would spell the end of their lives.

I said, the bottom of your feet will feel

Like they’re burning as you stumble through

The blame of people, as they see you tripping

Over the dreams they had,

But lost long ago.”

Two.

I said, “Don’t you hurt me

Just because you are as I am.

The words you utter under your breath

Reach my ears and I hear every breath

You take as if it is a sign of what is to come.”

Am I made to be your scratching post?

Three.

Mamma you told me, “Darling, people will hurt you

And sometimes you need to let them

Even as they carve hateful words into your heart.

You need to stand tall.”

Mamma, I said, I don’t want to stand tall,

Not when I see them every day.

Not when I try to bury myself into the hole in the heart inside my chest

I do not feel is mine,

From people I thought were my friends.

Mamma, I let them heal, but sometimes

They open again and take longer to stitch together.

And Mamma, sometimes I don’t want to let them in again,

But they tell me they’re sorry,

They tell me I should have said something before,

And I open my heart to them again

And Mamma when I am kind to the people that carve those marks,

Sometimes I feel in that moment that it is not them,

But me who set the knife upon my skin.

Mamma I don’t want to bear them proud like scars

From heroic acts.

Mamma, nothing about this feels heroic

Four.

This world will never be fair.

I said, “Kid there are things you will see,

There are things you will do,

But that doesn’t stop you from being a good person at heart.

I know it sounds cliché, but there are things in this world

That are enough to corrupt even the kindest of hearts,

But I know yours will shine in the darkness.

Kid, I need it to because I feel like those that love me

Are the only ones holding me from the raging river.

I feel myself drowning

The tethers

Snapping.”

Five.

Mum.

Mum I’m sorry.

Mum have you ever just wanted to die?

Mum, please.

Mum I’m sorry, how can I tell you what I feel when I don’t understand it myself?

Mum, how do I explain to you that in my memory kind words become lies,

Smiles become sneers

Laughter becomes mocking.

Mum, I feel like I’m alone in a full room.

Mum this room is a void with no door to escape.

Mum there are too many people that don’t say anything.

Mum, I cannot smile anymore.

Laughter tastes bitter in my mouth.

Mum, how can I tell you I cannot breathe without choking up

On words I have left unsaid?

Six.

Mum sometimes I can see the light,

But sometimes it is the train coming down the tracks.

Mum I don’t want to be over-run.

Mum I guess sometimes I need to learn how to get out of the way.

But sometimes I hesitate.

Seven.

Mum, you said once that I must be kind,

To the people who hurt,

To be there and comfort them.

But Mum, they are not there for me.

But Mum they have never been there for me

And I stand by their sides,

Feeling like I’m in a fish bowl looking out at a world too good for me.

Mum I feel like they don’t want me there.

Mamma I feel like they never have.

Eight

Mum I feel like this world is too much for me.

Six.

Mum, please don’t make me go.

Mum, please I can’t talk to anyone right now.

Mum, please understand these words are not complaints,

These words are not excuses,

These words struggle to claw their way up my throat because they need to be said.

Mum I don’t want to say them.

I don’t know how to say them.

Seven

Mum you tell me to work hard.

Mamma sometimes I am tired of being the only one.

Mamma sometimes the work is pressing too much,

And I see others caring about nothing but themselves.

Mamma, sometimes I want to do that too.

But Mamma I see them, with their sneers and their uncaring drawl,

And Mamma I want to stop working so hard when nobody else does,

Mamma I’m tired of trying so hard.

Eight.

I cry with every step I take on rusty nails driving up from the ground,

I hear words coated with poison, and the dead hopes of people long since given up.

But, Mum, you tell me, “Don’t give up, there are things in this world that will give you happiness.

Baby, there are people in this world who care.

Baby, I see you.”

Nine.

I said I can’t do it anymore, Mum.

Why are you pushing me?

Ten.

Mum, I’m sorry.

Eleven.

Mum, I’m sorry.

Twelve.

Mum, I’m sorry.

Thirteen.

Mum, I’m sorry.

Fourteen.

You tell me now that I am worth it.

That I am worth more than the space I inhabit.

That I am worth more than the air I breathe

As it catches on the knot in my throat,

Stuck forevermore in place

And it cannot come undone.

Mum people are asking me if I’m okay.

Mum did you tell them?

Fifteen.

They are looking at me with a sadness in their eyes.

I have never wanted to see it directed at me.

Mum, when pity is all you see,

How could I ever see it as sorrow?

Mum, when they asked how I was,

As first I didn’t know the answer

Because I did not feel right saying I was not okay.

Am I okay if I can manage to get out of bed in the morning,

No matter that I punish myself every time

I hit snooze?

Am I okay if I can smile but it feels like the lies I tell every day?

Sixteen.

I’m good.

Seventeen

I’m fine.

Mum I’m not fine.

I have a jar stuffed full with all my problems.

Mum, I shoved it to the back of the closet,

Forgotten,

Hidden,

Unseen.

Mum it is covered in webs.

Mum, the jar is cracking.

Eighteen.

I’m not breaking.

Nineteen

Mum did you tell them?

Twenty.

Mum, you did not tell them.

I have given up trying to hide it and now they are treating me like glass,

As if there are eggshells around me.

Mum, I don’t want them too,

Mum, I’m sorry.

Twenty-one.

There is nothing to tell.

The woman sits across from me,

Computer in her lap.

I sit on a bright red chair,

My hands folded together as if hiding the one shred of dignity I hold,

My back straight.

I never hold my back straight,

But perhaps it is the bookshelf of self-help books,

The children’s toys stacked neatly in a forgotten corner,

That made me feel interrogated.

Twenty-Two.

But, oh God, when did I hit rock bottom?

When did these days start feeling like punishment?

When did my heart begin to feel like emptiness

Because I cannot build houses of hatred,

Or sadness,

Or happiness.

It is a graveyard of everything I’ve ever loved.

When did writing become so hard?

Twenty-Three.

Do I see it now?

I see that people can be different.

I see that this room has become a second home.

I see that this woman, although she probably has not experienced

The feeling of being unable to breathe,

Or the inability to smile with her eyes,

Or the steel hand clenching her heart so tightly

She felt the stitches coming undone,

Truly cares.

I see that I am not okay.

Twenty-Four.

I am worth it.

[100chupa-chups]

The Not-Date Date

Wind susurrates through the large empty space sprawled right in the epicentre of the city, as if dropped there by mistake; a permanent fixture created through the misjudgement of a minion to some high and mighty supervillain. Still, somehow, as I sit here shivering with my arms like a vice around my knees in some failed attempt to stave off the cold, I can’t help but know it is meant to be here. Like the innate understanding that I am human, I understand this has all been premeditated. Slabs of concrete and stone the kind of grey that performs osmosis with the old men in sharp business suits with their unimaginative ties and shining oxfords. The kind of grey that remains unseen amongst the rainbow of pride. And in the middle, like a dream, green like the emerald city.

The grass has been freshly unravelled and the lines between each carpet are distinct and surreal like the way school at night is surreal, like the way hospitals are surreal, like the way waking up in someone else’s house with a sudden lapse in memory is surreal. I sit at the edge of the grey border so only my toes curl and wiggle into the blades, sandshoes and socks arranged neatly next to my bright orange back pack that is a beacon at my side.

It may be cold now even through the layers of plaid flannel, singlet and jumper, my pants as grey as the buildings around me, but this feeling is as nothing I’ve ever experienced. This feeling of sitting near grass too new, this feeling of sitting amongst a bustling city, surrounded by cars and people and a cacophony of noise that is no louder than music in my ears, this feeling of importance and sheer insignificance all at one, yet knowing intimately that if I were to go, nothing would change. Not a thing would change. The workers dressed in fluorescent yellow descending underground through a glorified man hole would continue to work, and the world would still turn. The winter would turn to spring and spring to summer and summer to autumn just as it had been before me, and just as it will be after me.

The roads of the city wrap like string around the small park, as if it were a bead threaded in a home crafted bracelet. Cars and busses drive in tandem, people stroll along the distant pavement, individuals in a world full of similarities. Cars and busses drive with wheels, have passengers, move from one place to another and are easily recognisable; they are vehicles. They are the epitome of city life.

But the people. Who are they? You look, and you don’t know.

Okay, you might say, that one is five foot, eight inches and has brown hair pulled into a severe bun at the top of their head.

But are they wearing heels? Do they walk with their back hunched? Are they flat footed? Is that person a woman or a man or somewhere in between? Is that person gay or straight or along the spectrum? Is that person religious or atheist or agnostic? Was that person born here, or are they Asian, or African, or American? Who is that person? What do they think as they wander through the city to a place only a select few people know they are going to? What are their hobbies? Do they like pasta? Do they hate the fatty texture of avocado?

We don’t know the half of anyone’s story.

Even now, I am someone in a place of so many other someone’s. I am directly across the grass from a person who wears what looks like a poncho with the pattern of an oriental rug, but I can’t be too sure. I am so distanced, so removed from their that I will never truly know. Do they look at me and wonder what I believe in? Are they wondering what I will do when I leave this place?

I breathe in and the whole world smells like city, but like city in the way that the scent of sticky pavement and car fumes are cancelled out by the sweet aroma of nearby markets full of fresh bread and roasted nuts. It is almost as if my nose has been assaulted by so many different smells, so many contradicting elements of taste and culture that I can’t smell anything at all. Like mixing a thousand colours together and you get one single colour that is unremarkable, irrelevant, despite the good and the bag that makes it up. It’s not beautiful, it’s not horrific. It just is.

Behind me, the pedestrian crossing shrills like an angry robot. I peek over my shoulder, braid tickling the skin at the base of by neck and watch as so many different people walk and pass each other with barely a glance. People with brown hair piled high and blonde hair hanging loose, someone with a flowing yellow skirt, a woman in black dress pants and a lacy white blouse, a man with galaxy yoga pants and a blue zip up jacket, children holding tight to tired fingers. And there, among them all, she strides forwards, artist fingers wrapped diligently around the straps of her own backpack.

She looks at me with a smirk etched so smugly onto her lips.

My face burns and I jerk my head away, ducking down to hide from her gaze, fingers digging like claws into my shins as if that will help me slow my heart and perhaps breathe properly for the first time since Monday. Monday when she. . .well.

Let me just say that I have never been one to approach people, so when she declared in the middle of a conversation we have every day at about 1:50pm just before we both go out separate ways from school, that we would be meeting at this exact time at this exact place for a date she had been waiting for for months, I couldn’t very well say no. Not when she smiles like she does, not when her callused hand grabbed my forearm so tightly, not when her brown eyes had been filled with fierce determination. To be completely honest, all I did was nod and try not to hyperventilate at the contact.

I never said I didn’t like confident people, I just said that I wasn’t confident.

Wordlessly, I train my eyes on the flock of pigeons waddling before me as I wait for her to sit, pretending I had never seen her even if we both know I did.

What is it with pigeons anyway?

With their wacky head bang like they belong on a stage during a particularly aggressive rock concert, and their crooked eyeballs that is so alike the comic relief in the weird penguin group in Madagascar. I could almost reach down with my quaking hands and snatch them right from the grass. And their feathers are iridescent, but it reminds me of oil slick, with colours reflected on the surface from the beams of sunlight. Green and red and blue like stained glass, except not really.

It would be breathtaking if it weren’t so unsettling to look at.

I startle as her bag drops heavily into the space beside me and something heavy thunks alarmingly loud against the hard concrete. A moment later, with the hiss-click of a Monster energy drink can, she flops herself so close to me the entire length of her blue skinny jean covered thigh is against my own.

Embarrassment floods through me as I swallow, unable to move away. Unable to look away.

“Hello,” she says, mouth still quirked into a grin with the kind of quiet coolness that only comes with a great deal of self-confidence or Gryffindor courage. “Sorry I’m a little late. I underestimated how long the trip would take.”

Blinking, I whip my head out so fast my neck cracks. “It’s alright. I was early anyway.”

Well, there’s a reason Pottermore put me in Slytherin and not Gryffindor.

She frowns, brows pinching, and wipes her top lip. “You weren’t waiting too long, were you?”

Without thinking about it, my eyes stray to the small pendant in the shape of an eye resting against her collar bone, then wander to the patch of blue sky between the white cotton clouds puffing like a steam powered train overhead. “I left at nine,” I mumble into my arms.

Early by three fucking hours. I raise my eyes and meet her gaze for a moment, momentarily pushing past the cowardice that has plagued me for a very, very long time. My face is so hot I fear it may fall right off.

But her lips twitch, downturned eyes crinkling. “Oh, yeah?”

I wet my own lips unconsciously. “Yeah,” I croak. Wracking my brain I struggle to come up with something funny. “See, I tend to overestimate how long it takes to get places, so I just double the time I think it will take and suffer the consequences later.”

God help me Jesus. Why am I like this?

“Foolproof plan,” she chuckles. “I like it.”

“Yeah, at least I’m never going to be late.” I almost groan at that. Did I say ‘yeah’ too many times?

We fall into a near tense silence and she tilts the can back to down another mouthful. The vibrant colours flash so bright in my peripheral it’s almost as if she’s holding a festive lantern in a dark room.

Behind us, the pedestrian crossing chimes again and a child screeches out, “Mummy lookit, lookit!”

I clear my throat, fiddling with the end of my braid. “So, uh. . .not that I want you to leave or that I don’t want to be here, but I’m just wandering. . .Why? Why did you ask me out? I don’t understand.”

She freezes with her hand almost to her face, energy drink clutched and forgotten in her loose fingers. Twisting around to face me, she says, “You’re kidding, right?”

I blink dumbly. “No?”

She stares, jaw dropped open. “You’ve been flirting with me for months!”

“I have?” No, really, I have?

“You didn’t want to be?” she asks, incredulous, eyes widening. “But I thought—”

I flail my arms. “No! It’s not that I don’t want to be here, on a date with the most—I want to be here! I just didn’t realise that was what I was doing! I was being awkward and oversharing.”

She starts laughing and drops her head into her spread hand. “Oh, my God. Oh. My. Freaking. God. You kept touching me and staring at my mouth! What was I supposed to do? Ignore it?”

Oh, Jesus I had been staring at her too much. Christ on a pogo stick.

“In my defence, how could I not look at you?”

She gasps out, “Oh, my God.”

[100chupa-chups]

Lose me to Forever

Music in my ears / loud / everything

I feel in my heart / broken / disintegrating

Glue holding what remains / together

We sing on this pedestal,

Our voices drowning out / omitting / ignoring

What we see as unimportant / useless / all

In our head.

Nothing is real anymore / dead / hopeless

Is all we feel.

These fingers are attached / connected / joined

To hands that can no longer hold / cradle / carry

This burden that clouds our judgement,

Clouds everything others say / declare /

Are you okay? / talk to me / I am here

I am here

I am here.

No / I am not okay / help me /

Help me

Help me.

I am drowning / struggling / suffocating

Help me / hold me / lose me

To forever.

[100chupa-chups]

The Shadow

A knock at the door,

A drop of a plate,

My heart thudding.

There stands a black figure,

Void and empty.

Silhouetted in my life’s light.

I see yellow eyes,

Above yellower teeth,

Rotting in a mouth too crowded.

I say hello

And it takes me home.

[100chupa-chups]

The Watch

The watch is old, yet it holds strong.

There are duplicates around the world, so similar but so different; cut from the same glass, shaped by different hands.

First it is a boy, 12. It is his birthday and he has been wanting a watch since he turned 7. His mother bought it for him three weeks ago and it sat in its wrapping at the bottom of an old closet until the morning of February 27. He grins, puts it on and hugs his mother. His father clutches a glass of whiskey on the rocks in a loose hand; his wait coat is unbuttoned. He appears unhappy.

Next is the first born girl. She is 15 years old. She wears her hair in two plaits to her waist. Her father had the watch for two decades before he handed it to her, unwrapped and almost careless. He doesn’t care for the watch anymore; there are more important things to worry about, but the girl, she had known that watch for her whole life and she understood it to be one of the few constants in her life. Her mother is dead and her grandfather has a loose tongue when he drinks. She does not think he likes her much.

Third, another boy. He does not like mornings any more than he likes the heap of green beans on his plate forced upon him by his mother. He stares across the table, knuckles white around his silver fork. It is not his birthday, but it is Christmas. The watch is still slightly too big on his mother’s thin wrist, and he believes he could do it justice. He is 10, just old enough to explore his own opinions, but not yet old enough to understand how hurtful they can be. He takes it from her with steady hands, ignoring the shake in hers. He does not care yet, about the impact this has on her. He wears it for three days and forgets about it until:

Lastly, a girl of 24. She has just buried her grandfather. It is bittersweet as she clears out his cluttered shed; spider webs cling to the corners and the bike wheels. She does not like spiders, so she wears her pants tucked into her socks, her shirt into her pants, sleeves into gloves. She holds a can of fly spray in one quaking hand. She will not fail. She finds the watch stuffed in a container filled with old toys and rusted bolts. She scoops it out, holds it to the flickering light dangling from the ceiling. It is intricate and beautifully made. She knows nothing of watches, but she finds herself gently tracing the fine carving on the edge of the metal with her thumb.

She gets it fixed up and wears it her whole life until her resting place, where the watch accompanies her into the dirt.

[100chupa-chups]

Read Between the Lines

How (Is) it possible I had loved you too deeply?

(This) silence between us burns

(What) I thought (I was).

Is this all I was (made for?)

To ache with you gone? They say

(To) love and to lose is better than to have never loved at all,

But is a (Lie) told to the hopeless;

I have despised it since the beginning

(Back) when I still dreamt of a happy ending,

(And) I think you (forget) that.

(We) lived in the moments we

(Were) granted, but now alone in a world without you

How could I (Ever) be (happy?)

(Now) I wait for you to return

(So) I can let go of the agony.

(Obsessed) with the reminder of what we had, and

(With) the unforgivable prospect of dying alone, I’m barely

(Keeping) hold of my sanity. It is

(Me) who must live with it, but the fault is

(Yours) and (You shackle me)

(To a future) so terrifying

(That) it (threatens to)

(Consume me) and everything I know about myself.

(Who am I anymore but) someone who loved too much.

Who am I but (a) person who lost the only good thing in their life?

I cannot use a (Band-Aid over) to cover my bleeding heart.

This is not something (a) few stitches will heal.

It is my (problem), but it was

(You) who caused it. How could you

(Refuse to see?)

[100chupa-chups]

Time and Again

A young woman rested on her knees, her lifeless obsidian eyes gazing up at the pebbles floating around her, their shiny surface gleaming in the afternoon light. Beneath her knees, the ground was hard and grey, a concrete so riddled with cracks and overgrown with the green of unwanted weeds that it could not very well be called concrete, let alone support grand structures again. It was just like her kingdom—it could not be called such a thing again.

The air was thick with the sickly sweet scent of rotting fruit and decaying bodies in the warmth of the fading sun, the sharp burn in her nose drawing her attention to stench of sweaty horse hair and salt from the sea crashing into the boulders at the bottom of the cliff, the spray reaching, climbing towards the sky, towards her but ultimately failing a hair’s breadth from touching her skin.

She smiled slightly, teeth almost glinting, hands moving in the air as she watched the rocks move, swaying gently in the susurrating wind ruffling a stubborn white-blond curl away from her eyes. Snow swept around her and clung to her lashes, her hair, her clothes, the biting cold delicately brushing against her skin. She shivered, still looking up at the small stones, her fingers moving slowly.

Bodies littered around her like discarded trash, their armour glinting in the setting sun, faces pale, white powder building up on their cooling bodies in the wake of winter. She had slain them all as they had slaughtered her people, with knives in their backs and lightning setting their skin to fire leaving them writhing in agony, screams echoing around the decimated city only a few months before colourful and happy. Now nothing remains but the memory of the massacre on the wind and the reminder that she should not remain lest she meet the army that would follow. Shouldn’t keep kneeling here at the edge of the cliff waiting for the courage to just jump. It would be better for those few survivors; she had just made it worse.

If she remained no doubt she would find herself at sword point. She didn’t think she’d be able to fight back as they dragged her away. Wouldn’t be able to do more than stare at the horizon as they dragged her through the pink-stained snow, spilt blood soaking into her white tunic, the snow numbing her skin.

The choice to leave her people was out of her hands and had been for a long while. They hated her for what she had done. She had no one to stay for, no one to protect. They were dead. They were all dead.

Snow crunched behind her.

“Miss?”

The man’s breath heaved, his clothing rustled as he moved forwards, stepping over one of the thousands of dead around her, the blood soaked snow evidence of her betrayal. He swallowed audibly.

It was a voice she did not recognise, the kindness in the word something she had never expected of anyone this time. Evident in the way he spoke to her as if he, too, didn’t know who she was, didn’t recognise the purple hyacinth and dark crimson rose wrapped in fir displayed on her back like a banner of desperation. Didn’t understand the significance. This man was not of the troop that slaughtered the city, this man was not from the city, either, or he would be demanding answers, or killing her, whichever came first.

This man was unknown to her.

Slowly, jerkily, she lowered her hand, the pebbles dropping heavily to the ground, landing deep in the pink snow, leaving shallow dents. Turning her head, fist dropping to the powder, clenching the cold in her hands, its sharp demand for attention preventing her from snapping her arm out at the man and killing him instantly. She had been at the mercy of her adrenalin for weeks and it was only now that she could breathe properly and think about her actions before she killed someone. The war had been a testament to that.

“Yes?” she mouthed, her right cheek to him, inviting him to stare at the deep tissue scar that had now been there for years. She could be rid of it if she chose the same path again as the hundreds of times before this. Wanting to ask so desperately the question on the tip of her tongue, her jaw moved as she clenched her teeth. She could not well ask him what he was because no one asked that anymore, no one but her enquired after their Astral Flux before their loyalties. It was a habit long ago downgraded to only enquire after their vulnerabilities before engaging in a battle to the death. She kept her mouth shut.

“Are you--?” he stopped suddenly, eyes flicking to the image on her back, the symbol of Yletyun’s royal court and council. Surely, he knew of it. but there was no moment of realisation, just a glance of dismissal before looking around at the slaughter and paling.

She could only see his dark books against the snow, only see this thick brown pants that bunched at his knees. Sword clutched in his hand, satchel hanging from one shoulder and a rifle in the other, dagger tucked into his belt, she understood immediately the danger. He would not hesitate.

“Think about the questions you wish to ask, child,” she murmured, despite looking a great deal younger than him, loud enough for him to hear, just loud enough to be heard over the wind, over the crashing waves below, over the chirping of the gulls like a cloud above her, their beady eyes scouring the land.

And yet, there was a significance to this man itching at the back of her head, demanding her to entice him in, entice him to help her as she had refused help before. She squeezed her eyes shut, begging away the feeling, begging away that feeling that he was significant to the survival of her kingdom. But no. No, it was too late. He could not help anymore.

Caving to her instincts never lead to anything good. They had been leading her in a wild goose chase for decades.

“Did you kill all these people?” the man asked sharply, sword rising. He stepped forwards again, feet sinking. She heard no tremor in his voice, as if he knew the answer already.

“They slaughtered by people,” she whispered, turning back. She did not want to see the weapon coming towards her. Knowing it was coming was enough. “Do you honestly think I wouldn’t retaliate? They should have died slower as my people did, should have suffered as the children did, should have died with screams on their lips as the innocent perished.”

“Poetic,” was all he said, but she registered the thump of his weapon as it landed on the ground. Her shoulders tensed. Why would he— “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t with the armoured ones.”

The woman looked to the sky, letting a smile flirt with her mouth. “Who am I to stop you from seeking knowledge? It is a privilege disallowed to too many.” She shifted, facing him fully.

Just as she suspected. He was nowhere from here. She had never seen skin or eyes so light before, nor hair so dark. His piercing blue eyes put the sky to shame.

All she said was, “From where do you hail?”

“Bureisis,” he said haltingly, if a little cautiously. “Why? That is not a question for a time such as this. You must understand my apprehension, miss. You are asking needless questions. I know from where you hail, at least. Surely you know where I was born.”

She laughed bitterly, raising her hands and encompassing the land around her, motioning to the kingdom that fell under her rule because of mistakes she made, the people who died because she was too prideful to risk everything on a small—

“Have you heard of the prophecy?”

The man was silent for a moment, looking down at her, brows knotted. “I—no, only in passing. It’s a load of shite if you ask me. Can’t believe everything you hear and all that. . .” he trailed off with a nervous laugh.

The woman recited from memory, “In the fading light of dusk, within the sea of that version’s last mistake, a man moves to greet the catalyst. . .unknown to him but known to her, deceit and sacrifice will prevail for if either accepts fate or opposes it, neither shall receive their due.”

Not a word was spoken, her words disappearing in the wind like a forgotten dream, and the woman turned her head away from his incredulous look, chuckling with no humour. The man dropped to her side, curling his hand around her thin shoulder. He stared at the side of her face, at the freckles that contrasted drastically with the darkness of her skin like a spatter of white paint haphazardly thrown without thought as to where it went.

His icy blue eyes gazed at her, flicking about her features, at the outline of her long thin nose, the pout of her bottom lip, the point of her chin. To anyone else she would have been beautiful, enchanting even, except—

There was something about her silhouette. She glowed around the edges as if they were fading into the background. As if she were but an apparition come to warn him about something. He shook his head, dispersing the thought.

But he couldn’t be rid of the notion that this—this thing about her, his transparentness, was as if she shouldn’t ought to be here. And he could only see it because—

The Astral Flux couldn’t touch him and never had.

“Did you want to come with me? We can be a team. . .or something. I’ll protect you,” he said quietly, searching her face.

It seemed like he was trying to promise she would be safe, protected from any threat. As if he truly believed he could keep her save. She almost laughed.

How could he—a lonely man on a lonely road—ever protect her?

She was something that should never be countered or stopped or threatened, let alone protected. Protecting him was a great deal better than he protecting her. She was not defenceless, just without hope.

But—

She looked sharply towards the sun just now sinking behind the horizon and then around her, yet another mistake she had made costing the lives of her people, her friends. Then she finally understood. The itching at the back of her head was not to be ignored.

This war would be her last mistake.

She would not oppose fate, she would accept it.

She was the catalyst, the deceiver. She would sacrifice this time, herself, all that she was and ever would be in this time so that, perhaps, she could save them.

To her he was a boy for all the years she’d lived, but she reached a hand out and touched the pads of her fingers to his sharp cheekbone and trailed down his jaw and to his chin. This would be the last face she saw.

She just needed him to agree.

Her mind was writhing with the possibilities, with instincts that she would enact upon for the last time. For the last time, she would do as the Astral Flux decides. She had come through time, she had begun again and again and again, she had seen the same people die, seen the same people scream for help as the dagger landed it’s blow, seen the same people beg for their lives and the lives of their children so they could be spared the pain of watching their parents die. She had seen too much and she had been the one that made it happen.

She had seen too much and failed every time.

It was not she who was meant to go back.

Another person, another who’s heart did not bleed black and who’s soul remained untainted by decisions, by events that could have been prevented if she had just—

Perhaps it was better if she didn’t know so that she could not ruin it again. So she could stop making the same mistakes over and over again and perhaps—perhaps to force herself to accept the truth of her actions: that it’s impossible to shoulder everything on her own.

It was better this way, so that it may finally free her kingdom from the treacherous cycle of death, destruction and failure. She had failed so many times, exhaustion wracked everything she knew.

Visons whirled.

“You have heard of the Rafinek family of Yletyun?” she murmured as her eyes traced the uptilt of his eyes, the blue so bright the sky wept with envy, at his hair as black as crow feathers, the fullness of his lips. At least the last thing she saw would be beautiful.

Her hands visibly shook and she did not care to hide it.

Chin wobbling with the onset of tears, she steeled herself for the backlash and said, “I cannot do it again. I fear I may well return to the fate that awaits me if I do it again. But you—I do not know you. You are from a place I have been only once when I was very young. You could change the world because you are unknown to me, you have never been in my life before so there is no threat that you will be found out by a changed outlook on life. I can send you to a time where I once believed I could do it on my own, where I once believed I did not need the help of others.” Tears leaked out her eyes, “You will be that person, yes? You will help me?”

Her accent was harsh, the vowels sharp on her tongue and in the air, a result of the Yletyun’s attempts to speak the common tongue. The consonants were like a blade on the wind as if she did not want to utter them here or anywhere else. It was the accent of a folk that had once been accommodating and perhaps a little too self-sacrificing before the King and Queen died and the council took over until the only daughter could finish her studies and take over rule.

His face paled further, eyes widening and he backed up, tripping in the snow. He had his dagger in his hand and gun trained on her before she could blink.

He could not forget the Queen’s name. It had been uttered under the breaths of thousands of people like even whispering the name would bring on terror even the Pvokenas would be hard done by trying to keep their food down. He had been ordered to kill on first sight, but he found that his grip on his dagger was looser than it should have been. Found himself hesitating at the defeated look on her face as she wrapped her arms around herself.

“Yes,” she said, smiling grimly. “I thought that would be the response.”

“You—You’re Evalynn Rafinek,” he stuttered, dagger still pointed towards her, eyes whirling around seeming search for more threats. “Queen of Yletyun.”

“I cannot force you,” she went on as if he had said nothing. “But if not for me than the people who died, if not for me than your family, your friends. If not for me than at least the kingdom.”

“You destroyed everything of mine!” he snapped. “There is nothing left for me to long for! How dare you ask this of me?”

“Listen to me!” she demanded, her face a mess of tears. She couldn’t seem to stop crying. “When I send you, you must push yourself into my life no matter what I say. I was pushing the limit of what I could cope with that everything just fell apart because I just couldn’t figure out how to protect the cities. This time I thought that if I could make them hate me then Pvokena would only go for me and not my people, but I was wrong. I was so wrong because they died anyway and I became that which I hate most, I became the people who decimated my kingdom over and over again no matter how many times I do it over.

“Please,” she croaked. “I cannot watch it again. I cannot return only to fall helpless as my people are slaughtered before my eyes. I cannot do it and if you try to make me I’d rather just—“

She stopped and gathered in a ragged breath, her hands fisting at her dress where it bunched at the knees, her creamy brown skin a bleak contrast to the pink snow. “I cannot—I cannot bear to think. . .” she swallowed, closing her eyes and bending over her thighs. “I once wished nothing but equality for all my people, wished nothing except that which I had sworn to do, but I suppose you’ve never seen that because I always went back before the people could see that I was trying, trying so hard to save them. . .”

He saw the truth in her words, heard the pain in her wracking sobs as they burst forth like raging storm, and he understood. He understood now that there was nothing she wouldn’t do for her kingdom. She would destroy herself, destroy her reputation, destroy all the good she was, had ever been and would ever be just to ensure the survival of her people.

She keened, and he stared as her back shuddered with the force of her desperation.

“If I cannot do it—if I cannot. . .” she gulped in air and sat up, eyes pleading, begging. He had never imagined he would be on the receiving end of a royal’s begging for salvation. “Please, I’ll give you anything,” she moaned, hand now clenching the snow, her skin staining pink.

He kept silent, still watching with bated breath.

Evalynn Rafinek would destroy all she was, would destroy worlds simply for her people to keep living, for their suffering to end. She would erase herself, as she was now, as he now saw her in all her insecurities and flaws, forever from existence, erasing all she had ever learned and erasing this moment and every moment she had ever lived since the moment she had first travelled.

She had sworn her life to her country.

And it had come down to her life or her country.

She could not imagine a world where she did not choose her people.

“I will do it,” was all he said. “But you still enslaved a nation. So I wish your oath to keep trying if I cannot do it, to keep fighting until the Pvokena are nothing but dust on the wind.”

Evalynn gasped with the relief of it, her sob a hint of hysterical laughter. “You must—you must try—get into the castle at all costs—“ her eyes widened and she scrabbled at her neck, pulling on the delicate chain.

It slipped over her head and she held onto the little pendant with a tight fist. “This,” she said urgently. “This will show me who you are if I truly require identification. This will show me that you are trustworthy and that—that is was me who sent you. I will know what it means.”

He nodded and peered into her face and at eyes so dark he didn’t know where the iris began and the pupil ended.

The Queen of Yletyun, barely three years younger than him, dropped the glass flower onto his callused palm. “Protect it, ensure it’s survival for as long as you can and reveal it to me only when in the direst of needs, and only alone. No one—no one must know!”

She grabbed onto his arm, squeezing tight. “I do not yet know what happens when others travel in time, or what would happen if others found out, so you must safeguard it with everything you are because this pendant is as recognisable as my name.” Her eyes hardened, “You must keep silent or I fear the consequences may be catastrophic.”

He was almost afraid to ask. “Worse than what it is now?”

“Much worse.” She moved her hands to his cheeks again and stared into his eyes, trying to burn the image into her retinas. “I owe you a life debt, of which you may demand anything. This I swear.”

His mouth parted. “But I haven’t—“

“You will—you will,” she swore, shaking him slightly. “I believe it.”

He thought he ought to cry, but his eyes remained as dry as the Broken Lands and just as barren. She was opening herself up him in her last effort, in her last try to save her people. Evalynn Rafinek Queen of Yletyun was begging on her knees to a commoner, putting that trust in him, putting the future of her people into his hands and trusted that he understood her desperation.

He could never express how surreal it was.

“Do it now,” he said instead, voice somewhere above a murmur. Her eyes watered again, the tears driving clean lines down her blood splattered and dirt ridden face. “Before I change my mind.”

Nodding jerkily, she stood and dragged him over to a clear area, shoving bodies away as if they were furniture and wiping the frozen blood on her white tunic, leaving handprints on her hips, just another mess on her already soiled clothing.

“You cannot turn back,” she said coolly, steadying her legs and planting her feet into the snow.

He swallowed thickly and looked her in the eye. “I understand, Rafinek. There is nothing for me here anyway.”

Evalynn smiled at the use of her last name. “I cannot guarantee a painless experience, nor exactly what time you will be placed, but I know it will be before my first do over, back to the original time line. Doing this will drain me, but I know you will be alive and uninjured when you arrive.”

He closed his eyes and breathed slowly through his nose. “Okay, do it. Just—do it.”

Evalynn held her hands out, palms to the ground and began humming, throat vibrating. Mist rose from the ground, electric blue and fizzing in the sharp cold of the air. The earth quaked and shuddered beneath her feet and she immediately felt the Flux engulf her, seizing her limbs, her veins, her bones, her skin.

She was fire, she was lightning, she was the gap between the stars and the unsaid between lines of text, the supernova of earth, the call of the wind to birds that had never flown.

Evalynn; time incarnate; existence personified and just a girl who would had wanted to stand on the clouds, but fell through too fast and too far.

The Earth reached up to meet her.

  000

  She was the moon’s rays on a gently rippling pool, her eyes glowing unnaturally.

The moment she began humming, agony pierced everything he knew about himself, bones splintering, head shattering in his skull and he fell to his knees, retching into the snow, body trembling with the sheer magnitude of the Flux that accepted her call, that allowed her to use it.

He had never seen it like this, never felt the Flux react so painfully.

And as his vision blurred in and out of focus, as his hand kept losing contact with the ground even with his whole weight put behind it, he wandered if it would be worth it. If leaving his life behind would bring about the goodness the Queen had yearned for.

If he could do what Evalynn believed he could.

Terrible, horrific screams shattered the air and there was nothing he could do but look at her, mouth hanging open, eyes bulging in his sockets. There was nothing but him and the pain and then—

[100chupa-chups]

Supernova

In the space dividing inception and dissolution, I linger.

Like a memory half recalled and a whisper scarcely heard, I tread warily within the circumference of my trajectory. I watch, and I wait with baited breath.

There she shines, a bright star in the shroud of nothing that plagues us who are left, and those that are still hiding behind the curtain, waiting for their moment to burst forth in a cacophony of sound and colour. She extends a radiance that suffocates any doubts within, extends a magnificence that blinds those who stray too close, yet I cannot help but love her.

I cannot help loving how she shines brightest, how she does not fall for callous remarks, how she smiles cruel and deadly to those who dare assume she is theirs to take. I cannot help loving the way she gazes out, her features solemn and vulnerable, when she believes no one is looking. In the moments between words, in the moments between each revolution, I yearn. In the moments between the furious storms upon her surface, I feel as if there is nothing more I wish than to know her mind.

Alone, here, within my small mark on the stratosphere, as I float between the brighter ones, as I struggled to make myself seen amongst the glowing whites and blues and reds, I watch others die. I watch more appear, watch other suns destroy planets in their system and I wander if this is all I was made for; to be an observer, never a maker.

To watch in sullen silence is to watch and lose meaning of what is important.

All I have ever wanted was for her to see me as small as I am and still want to see through to my core. I have never feared something more than the possibility that she will turn to me, indifferent to my longing, and shift her eyes to the more extravagant. That will be the moment I understand that my lonely existence will forever be my own. And if I must live without the comfort of that connection, I would rather feel nothing.

I would rather explode as my cousins did, as my friends and ancestors before me. I would rather roar as they did, with unhidden rage at my fate, left to burn in my moment, left to snarl at nothing. I would rather dissipate into nothing than return to the nothing I was before. I would rather shatter into pieces and hope that somehow I might circulate her atmosphere and perhaps know what it feels to be in her segment.

Dying would be more humane than this.