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They had nothing to say to each other. What could he possibly say to the only person who knew him well enough to destroy him the way she had? How could he say anything to her when he could barely look at her face? He wanted more than anything to tell her that he still loved her, no matter what hell she put him through, that he would always forgive her, but he wanted words like that to be true, and for now at least, they couldn't be.

Even if he could have found his words, she had nothing to reply with. Somewhere in her heart she wanted to apologize. She wanted to say she loved him now and forever and would do whatever to prove her love and make it up to him. The only problem was, she was well aware that if she did say all that, she would be lying. She was many things, a harlot and a traitor, but she was not a liar, and she would not become one out of guilt.

No, they had nothing to say to each other, and they never would again.

The hallway was silent, except for my own nervous breaths and my muffled footsteps on the carpet. I crept up the corridor quietly from my own dorm room toward the last room on the left, passing empty room after empty room as I went. They had all been abandoned for winter break, leaving myself and my targets alone, and making it the perfect time to strike my vengeful blow.

I passed by the window at the same moment that a nearby owl let out a loud hoot, and froze instantly in my tracks, heart rate escalated, fearing I had been discovered. After standing stock still for the better part of 15 minutes, I was finally able to continue my covert journey down the hall. As I found myself drawing nearer to the door, my only obstacle, I felt a maniacal smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. I slipped my hand into the inside pocket of my maroon uniform blazer, felt the cool lethal metal that lay inside, and grinned wider still.

At long last, I reached the door, which to my great pleasure was left slightly ajar. I pushed it the rest of the way open, slipped noiselessly inside and stood over the occupied bed. In it lay the lover who'd betrayed me, and the person he'd done so with. They were settled warmly in each other's arms, breathing in sync, a truly sweet and romantic scene. It disgusted me.

I drew my hand out of my pocket, bringing with it my loaded hand gun and took aim at my ex's blonde head. Two shots rang out, shattering to silence, and both hitting their marks, one in the blonde, one in the brunette. Their blood bubbled out of their fatal wounds and soaked the sheets they lay on.

My hand, still holding the gun aimed at their heads, started shaking. My vicious grin slowly fell away, my eyes widened, and tears slipped out of them. What had I done? I surveyed my handiwork with absolute horror, I almost screamed, but the tie I wore felt as if it tightened itself on my neck, strangling me. It was too much, the guilt and the gore. There was no way I could bear it, so brought the barrel of the weapon to my own temple.

One final shot was heard, and the hallway was silent once more.


I sat bolt upright in my bed. It had all been a dream. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I was immensely relieved, but at the same time, I couldn't shake my disappointment at having woken up.

Look around you, little boy,
What a worthless battle you fight.
Pointless and stupid, unworthy of your tears.

Look around you, little boy,
And see the faces you love.
The fear at the sight of you, all your own fault.

Look around you, little boy,
You've gone and wrecked it all.
You picked a fight with no winner, and only one loser.

Look around you, little boy,
You've been left all alone.
You only wanted to keep them, but you've chased them all away.

What a precious person she was. She was not innately beautiful, she was built of sharp angles, everything long, slender, gangly. She was not even particularly feminine, with her flat chest and short hair. But she was oh so precious. Her eyes were bright, full of life always. Her smile was like a blessing from heaven. Every word sounded by her soft voice was a treasure more valuable than gold. Her laugh, which was rare and hard-earned, was the sweetest sound to ever be made. She kept her head held high, proud of all she did, nothing holding her back. What a strong person. How terribly she is missed.

He always thought he was meant for the country, for the clean air and the smell of animals and the feel of sand and dirt under his feet. If not that, then suburbia, neat little houses and a trimmed, prickly lawn. He was sure he was meant for stars overhead, and dead silence of night occasionally broken by neighbor returning home late or the bark of a frightened hound at some stray cat or bird. That was until he set foot on city pavement.

While the sun was up and the sky was clear, he strolled down the sidewalk and peered into each store he passed, most of them tiny, cramped little things with their doors flung wide open and welcoming in each passerby, jazz and classic rock and all other types of music pouring out. Others passed him; smiling, laughing, eating hotdogs vended from the Lucky Dog carts on every street corner. Some waved and said hello when they noticed the wide-eyed boy, obviously not accustomed to the city, watching at them. Every restaurant and café was full of people, some in groups, sharing loud conversations over heavy lunches, some alone, sipping coffee and reading books and papers. A group of teenagers on a field trip was taking a picture in front of the St. Louis cathedral and then another in front of the statue of Andrew Jackson and his horse in Jackson square. He caught his first ever ride on one of the old street cars and rode it everywhere it went.

The pavement itself exuded life and living like no soil he'd ever felt could. And that was only the day. When the darkness fell, the sky was filled with neon. If there were crickets and cicadas out, he never heard them. The air burned with music seeping out of bars and strip clubs and rising from the throats and fingers of street musicians. The streets were crowded with cars and people, drunk and sober and carriages drawn by horses and mules. Fortune tellers lined up in front of the famed cathedral and artists covered the fence around Jackson square with their creations, hiding the VIP only party inside from the view of the common folk on the sidewalk. A wedding procession flowed out the cathedral and walked down to Pato's on the river, cheering and waving cloth napkins painted with fleur-de-lis and removed high-heeled shoes. Everything smelled of gasoline and horse sweat and the heavy spices used for the famous food. Somewhere nearby, sirens screamed over the music and laughter.

Ever since that experience he found his way back to the city every chance he got. The silence of his homes in the country and suburbia drove him mad. He counted down days until he could find himself in some wide city, far away from the sheep dogs and the flower beds. He craved the sound and the life and the people. It was in his blood and it always would be and he knew, no matter what happened he could never again belong to the sand and soil he had grown up in.

4 baby dolls
2 children’s Halloween costumes
A pair of worn out tennis shoes
3 cases of Hot Wheels cars
A torn photograph
A left high heel
12 long lost memories
One dearly departed childhood

(Most of that stuff wasn't even mine)

5 poems that will never be finished
A dozen streams of consciousness
A half-written novel
3 late English assignments
A timid dream
Countless vignettes
Black humor
Bad video games
Wasted time
Animation software
Downloaded music
The complete first season of Glee
A broken biography

I don’t remember much about the wedding, or the trip to Granguard. I slept for most of it, seeing as I was still very young and such a long trip exhausted me. But I do remember that the Granguard princess, Cassandra, seemed less than overjoyed about it. As did my own mother. I remember they argued a lot, when no one was looking. I remember Mother telling Father, the king of Arrida, that he would pay for spiting the mother of his child, the woman who loved him, if he went through with this wedding. He married anyway, and Mother was angry, but she didn’t retaliate as she had promised. She told me that it didn’t matter, as long as I remained the only son, the only heir, illegitimate though I was.
We returned home soon after, and things were mostly as they had been. I worked as a servant in my father’s palace, though I was prince. It had been decided it would be this way when I was too small to remember, but apparently the other servants with bastard kids, sons and daughters of the other royals, still had to have their children be servants, so why should Alicia’s child, the son of a peasant of the lowest class and the king, be any different? So I was a servant, but with much easier work than others, and lessons in science and geography and politics and literature and manners as any prince would have. After Cassandra’s arrival, I was made to be her attendant, at my mother’s request. I was to report to my mother every day about everything Cassandra said and did. Being seven, I thought nothing of this request, and did as I was told without question. I never imagined what would come of my spying.
I was bringing Cassandra her dinner when I heard she was pregnant. She as speaking with a doctor who had confirmed it and one of her ladies in waiting. A maid who was cleaning and eavesdropping declared “At last, a real heir, not like this bastard ‘ere!” gesturing to me. “’E looks the princely part with those sweet brown eyes and dark ‘air, but ‘e is awful at them lessons the tutors try and give ‘im! Better suited to serving the royal tea, ‘e is!” She cackled loudly and went back to dusting, and I ignored her like everyone always did. It was bad form to listen to the gossip of an uneducated maid as she swept your room. Besides, if this child of Cassandra’s was also the child of my father, it meant I would soon have a sibling, and that excited me. I ran to tell my mother, thinking she would also be happy. A new baby was always a joy, and this one would be my fellow prince, my playmate, my brother. But she was not happy. When I told her, her face twisted with rage, cold and harsh. She barked at me to fetch my father for her. I was frightened by her tone, and was glad to run quickly to find my father.
I brought him to see my mother, as I had been told to do. I was sent out of the room, but I stayed at the door and watched discreetly, scared and curious as to what my mother was so angry about. She began yelling at my father, saying that I had better still be the heir, the crowned prince no matter what the baby was. It was my birthright. My father shook his head and declared in his kingliest voice that if the baby was a boy, it would be the legitimate son’s right to have the throne before the bastard’s. Mother was furious. She shouted, struck at Father, but he was calm and tried to calm her. She only became more infuriated. Then suddenly seemed to calm, take a deep breath and go still. She turned away from him and towards the small bureau we had in our room and rummaged a bit. She said something, to quiet for me to hear, and Father stepped closer to her, nearly obscuring her from my vision. But I could see enough of her to know that just then she whirled to face him. And Father staggered, took a step back, and fell, hard. The sound of him hitting the stone floor was deafening. There was knife, handle deep, in his chest, right in his heart, and blood seeped out of the wound. My breath was suddenly impossible to find. I wanted to cry and run, to not see it, but my feet were rooted to the ground and I couldn’t get the air to scream.
I fell terribly ill soon after, a raging fever possessed me for a long time, and I was delirious. I mumbled and cried in my half-sleep, and I relived the terrifying murder again and again. Finally, I came out of it. But I was far from myself again. Especially in this new environment, after the king’s murder, where everyone was suspicious, as Alicia had somehow managed to cover up that it had been her. I went back to working, and though now I was tense, suspicious, ill at ease all around the palace, I was always happy to see Cassandra as her belly grew with my sibling. I was still excited, and I grew more excited as she came closer to the time to give birth. The day came at last, and my mother was one of her attendants. I waited anxiously just outside, listening to all the commotion. Hours later my mother rushed out, an infant in her arms, Cassandra’s new son, who I had heard her name through the door Charles Thomas. My mother had gasped, as if something was wrong, and ran out of the room, Charles in hand. She handed him off to another woman, a friend of hers, and gave her hushed, hurried, instructions. The woman and my mother went off with the child. I didn’t follow. I didn’t want to witness any more sinister things just yet. But I’d heard enough of the instruction to know that they would not kill my infant brother, they were only sending him away somewhere. Soon Mother returned, faking tearfulness, and told Cassandra her son was still-born. A child who died before his life began. I don’t know if Cassandra cried. I ran away before my mother finished weaving her lies, because I feared she might, and as I like Cassandra very much, seeing her cry would have been too difficult.
Having lost husband and child and being born of a foreign country, the throne of Arrida was soon usurped from Cassandra in favor of my aunt, Adenfall. Cassandra was angry and hurt, and not long after disappeared. Left in my father’s deteriorating house, and having been witness to my beloved mother’s terrible wickedness, without the Cassandra I admired as I did, as a sister of sorts, I was quickly plunged into terrible madness.

Despite what you think, I always knew this wouldn't work.

I knew it was a useless effort.

I tried anyway. I had to.

Effort after effort, I failed.

Attempt after attempt, nothing worked.

Think whatever you like about it,

But the only thing that will make me quit is death.

I always knew this wouldn't work.

I still know it won't work.

But I'll keep trying.

I'll always be smiling as I fail.

I will continue on like this forever.

Always in cheerful vein.

I let you believe it wasn’t, but it was always futile. I let you believe I thought there was hope, but there wasn’t. I knew from the start that there was not changing the outcome, that there was no fighting fate. It was useless to even try; it was just a waste of energy. Even so, I had to try anyway.

So I kept fighting and trying and working. I kept on for your sake, even though every failure was harder to take than the last. I kept saying that there was something else that might work, even though I was exhausted and weak. Think what you will, that I was deceiving you, or that all my efforts made the ending harder to take, but without them you would have given up on everything, not just this one hopeless thing. That couldn’t happen, and the only thing that would keep me from pushing you on was death.

If I suffer, it doesn’t matter. I do not care what becomes of me, so long as you press on and reach your goals, my friend. So I will suffer so that you can keep on. I will smile as I fail every task and weaken with every step. I will continue to fight my own fate, in cheerful vain.

“I just want to go home.” A small and trembling voice rose into the cold, foggy air. The child lifted her tiny, pale face from where it had been buried in her knees. Dirty, tangled blonde hair that had been hastily and unevenly cut to shoulder length framed her face. Her misty eyes, blue as the flowers that had once grown wild near her home, stared upwards, futilely searching through the dense clouds for a glimpse of familiar constellations. Finding nothing, tears began to trickle down her cheeks, leaving thin streaks of clean skin on her muddy face. She hugged her knees closer to her body, trying to keep what very little warmth was left in her body from escaping. “I just want to go home.” She said again, her voice trembling more than ever.

“I know, Chloe. I do too.” The boy lying next to her, a teenager with the very same round, wide eyes and delicate blonde hair, was even more plastered with mud and filth. His voice was hoarse, and it barely rose above a raspy whisper. Unlike his tiny sister, he made no attempts to keep warm. He was stretched out on the frozen earth, shivering violently. He weakly reached out to her, and wrapped his long bony fingers around one of her small hands. There was no warmth, physical or emotional, in the gesture.

After a few moments of nothing but wind and sniffling, the boy sighed quietly. He had long run out of pity for the girl’s sniveling and longing for home. For no other reason than to make the irritating sniffing stop, he decided to cheer her up.

“Do you remember what home was like?” The child nodded. “Tell me about it.”
There were several minutes of silence, as Chloe conjured up the most detailed map of the warm and wide open land that had, once upon a time, been their home. As she imagined it, a faint smile lit her would-be pretty face.

“There was a lot of tall, green grass. It grew so high I got lost in it all the time.” She giggled at the memories of playing hide and seek with her brother, and laying the shadows of the blades cast by the sun. “Cameron, do you remember how you would always find me?” She asked. No answer came back. Her brother’s eyes had closed, and he wasn’t listening. She didn’t notice, and went on with her memories, recounting even the smallest of details, like the scent of the air after heavy rain, and the patterns of lines on the wood that their house had been built from. For what must have been hours, she spoke of grass and sun, wood and dirt, and finally she came to her most important memories of all, those of her mother and father.

“We look like mom.” She said quietly “She had long hair. It looked white sometimes. And her voice was so pretty. She always sounded like she was singing.” As she continued, Chloe’s bony body unfurled she laid flat on her back, pushing her brother’s limp hand off of her own. “Dad was so tall. The tallest in the world, I bet. My friends said he was scary, but he wasn’t scary at all. He was even nicer than mom.” Gradually, her voice began to get quieter. Soon there was no voice at all, only chapped lips moving silently, and tired blue eyes slowly flickering closed.

The sun rose slowly over the muddy valley. It burned away the fog and bathed the world in its warm orange light much too late.

Cierra left the room, which left me alone with all of Atlas’ stuff. I just kept staring at that box of assorted Doctor Who junk. I guess I should have been happy or something that we liked the same show. But I just felt frustrated. The most frustrating part was this: Atlas was dead. Here I was, learning about him and appreciating him more as a person and all that, and the bastard was fucking dead. I couldn't call him and get excited that he was actually even more into Doctor Who than me. I couldn’t get angry that he lied to me and ignored me when he didn’t want to talk. I couldn’t tell him that I was sorry that I left him alone out by the lake because he didn’t want to go hang out and make new friends with me. And he couldn’t react to any of it. I could sit here and think and say whatever I felt like, but my best friend was never going to answer me. I had never really thought it was possible to hate someone who wasn’t around anymore. But I did hate Atlas. I hated him more than anything.