synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

"Fine then, say you pull this off, say you save everyone else. What then? Who saves you?" Once upon a time, her answer might've been his name, and a part of her she'd buried still felt her heart beat just a little faster and her breath come just a little easier every time she caught his scent or heard his voice.

But that was before the uprising—before the massacre and before they broke her in order to make her something else.

Something they’d called gods at the time; even then she'd known the “divinity” they’d granted her only served as a maddening curse.

Now she was just a monster…

“No one,” the kind with no place in the peace that would follow if everything went as planned, “I’ve not been worth saving for a very long time now.”

An excerpt from a pet project I've been working on for a while.

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Fragile

“Or-Or I could run, get as far away as I can.” The boy knew then that something inside his new friend was broken and probably had been for a long time. He remained silent for a few minutes, her words hanging heavy like the scent of ozone in the air as he studied her; she had her knees pulled to her chest and her head in her hands so he couldn’t see her eyes to be sure, but there was an almost instinctual level of fear and dread written into the way she was hiding, the way her fingers knotted white-knuckled beneath permanent bruising in her black hair streaked shock white and her voice had shuddered when she spoke.

“Is that really possible?” The boy—her first friend spoke softly, barely breaking the silence because from what he knew of her family, the only escape was death, “Can you really escape them?” Either theirs or hers. She lifted her head from her hands, a harsh laugh escaping her lips as she looked up at him with green eyes that just looked empty and lifeless to him now.

“It can’t be done, not without…” she trailed off, but he knew what she’d been about to say, “It doesn’t matter—even if I did… escape, I don’t know how to be anything other than the monster he made me.” He knew she wanted him to leave, that staying was dangerous right now but something about the way she looked then held him fast in place. She was a shell, fragile and held together with little more than bloody bandages where she huddled in the corner, gaze glazed over and unfocused on anything in the room now that her attention had drifted from him. He sat beside her after a moment, ignoring the fact she flinched when his shoulder brushed her back.

“I don’t think you’re a monster and I never have,” he spoke softly and something between a broken smile and a sneer tugged at the corner of her lips, “I’m not afraid of you,” slowly, he wrapped an arm around her waist, leaning her against his side, “and I don’t blame you; it’s alright.” She seemed so broken he wasn’t sure what else he could say, but a part of him was thankful she was like this, thankful for the opportunity because he knew she’d never let him get away with being this close to her for this long otherwise.

That part of him drew his gaze to her exposed neck and wanted to kiss it.

And he kind of hated that part.

But that didn’t stop him from moving slowly closer, wrapping his other arm around her too so that he could press his lips to the side of her neck.

She almost seemed to purr at the sensation, eyes closing slowly as she shifted against him like she was in a fog. He pressed his lips to her shoulder, too as his fingers traced the vein and lightning scars slowly down the other side of her neck and this time she tipped her head back against him, allowing better access as she shivered.

“Hey…” her voice sounded far away, a sleepiness to it like she was only half awake. The boy’s fingers grazed the flat of her stomach beneath her shirt and she shuddered against him.

Then he pulled back, shifting his hand away to lace his fingers in hers before he did something she’d make him regret later. The girl lifted his hand, caressing and playing with his fingers as she seemed to study them.

“Nat?” His voice was soft, barely enough to break the silence as she pressed their palms together as if comparing them and she smiled that broken smile again.

“I’m just… checking.” He hummed quietly in question so she continued as she laced their fingers together again and squeezed his hand a little tighter, just enough that it wasn’t quite dislocating anything, but he could feel the bones creak and shift, “I’m afraid I might break you.” She didn’t need to explain for him to know what she meant, she was strong for her size and human life was so fragile in her hands.

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Chalk

There’s chalk on the ground and tape on the door. Everyone stands around while I lay on the floor.

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Ashes

She walked. Despite the pouring rain and cold that chilled her to the bone, she walked with a single-minded determination. None asked her who she was nor where she was headed, instead, they avoided her, went out of their way to give her space. She had a feral look about her, her hair thick white-blonde and wild, her eyes a amber that seemed to shine in the dark. And her clothes, they were covered in blood, most of it dried and from long ago. From when the musket ball had struck the soldier in front of her, when The Ripper slashed her friend’s throat, and when she had lost her control and killed for the first time. The list would go on, but that was long ago. So she walked, and the hounds of hell followed her, they always followed her. She stopped and stared up at the stone church, she was not religious, the concept of a merciful god had fled her mind centuries ago, and yet it was still a sanctuary. For some unknown reason, the hounds couldn’t follow her there. It was painful for her, though when all she’d felt was pain for the past few centuries; it didn’t hurt. She stepped inside the church and sat in one of the back pews, her face down so that it was hidden in the shadows. Her Civil War jacket dripped onto the wood, seemingly in time with her heart beat. She closed her eyes and listened to the rain outside, slipping in and out of the realm of dreams, content with the peace. But if she had learned nothing else in the centuries she’d lived, it was that the peace never lasted. The thought had barely passed when the doors behind her swung open. One corner of her mouth twitched up in a wicked grin before she pulled her pistol and swung around.

“Cinis cinerem,” She pulled the trigger.

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

A voice has been narrating your life ever since you were little. Occasionally it announces a new chapter, marking a turn of events in your life. Today it announced “Epilogue”.

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Texts

I tend to spam

a lot of inane bullshit

when I text a person consistently

(so Grey,

pretty much,

and sometimes my sister)

and I've never

really

expected a reply

to every little thing,

just the important stuff,

though there's a part of me that feels

I'm probably annoying them

and doesn't really expect a reply at all.

I've realized recently,

I send those texts

more as a way to check in—

to say I'm still breathing,

but lately

I've been sending less and less

as it gets harder to breathe

and a voice

in the back of my head

tells me how easy it would be

to just stop—

to fall silent

and disappear.

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Almost

The hardest part of losing him was never the loss itself.  The hardest part was the fact he—left behind as he was—couldn't get out of his head, constantly replaying the events over and over as if it would make a difference.  He'd almost been fast enough.  He'd almost made it in time.  They'd almost walked away alive, the two of them.  Maybe not well, but alive.  That would've been better.  Almost six months had gone by and he could almost sleep.  He could almost forget.  But the nightmares—almost real and yet almost worse—would plague him as if to remind him of what happened in vivid detail.  He could almost hear his voice when he woke— When he was still somewhere between waking.  He could almost feel the warmth from the other side of the bed when he reached out in the middle of the worse nights.  If only he'd been a little bit faster— gotten there a little bit sooner.  He almost survived. 

But he didn't— and no matter how many almosts he thought of, he could not change the past. 

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Lost

Spray paint. He’d been a child the last time the teen had seen spray paint, an oddity one of the scouts had brought back to Mercy with the meager supplies from that run. The teen reached up to touch the reddish paint and his fingers came away sort of sticky with residue. It was still relatively fresh, almost enough to glue them together as he looked up again to take in the large "No" now scrawled above "Mercy" on the sign directing travelers to the settlement. He listened to the quiet sounds of nature, wondering if maybe whoever was responsible was still nearby—it was sort of funny how these days some of the humans were more dangerous than the literal undead—at least a z he could hear coming. 

A twig snapped. 

It’d been years since then and the young man's hand twitched to the knife on his belt, pulling it free in time to stab into the incoming z's face as it tried in vain to bite through the duct tape wrap on his sleeve. It made a squelching sound as it dropped with a thud and he pulled the knife free; he'd learned that use of duct tape from her shortly after they met that day. She'd been camped out in a tree near Mercy—the place he'd called home until recently—she was the one responsible for the spray paint. In her mind, there was no place for mercy anymore. She'd had her reasons for thinking that way, but she'd never shared them with him even after they'd grown close. He'd enjoyed her company through the years when he could get out to see her, she'd become one of his closest friends. He trusted her despite what those in Mercy say about the people without barcodes and despite the fact she usually looked one bad day away from turning feral. It was safer that way for her, it acted as a deterrent on the occasions she ran into other people because the world's not like those old black and white westerns from pre-z where the bad guys always wore black hats. She didn't trust people, that was made very clear very quickly. Still, she'd grown to trust him over time, enough to relax some when he was around. She trusted him enough he didn't believe she would leave without word of some kind to let him know, not after all that time. But then she vanished—no body or other evidence she might be dead—just an empty tree camp without a trace of life like the repainted sign he passed as he set out to find her. 

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Sink

I've never really liked swimming.

I didn't get a lot of opportunity

when I was a kid,

so that and riding a bike

waited until I was a bit older

and now I'm equally bad at both.

I can keep my head above water,

but anything more complicated

is pushing it.

I sink in the water,

not enough fat on my bones

to be buoyant,

and sometimes,

I let it happen,

push the air from my lungs

and just sink

down where it's darker

and quiet,

the only sound

the flow of my own blood

through the veins in my ears.

Then,

for the two or so seconds

I can hold my breath,

I'm faced with a choice:

push up from the bottom

and inhale again

once I've broken the surface,

or inhale now,

fill my lungs with water

and let myself sink

to the bottom.

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Mine

Years ago, there was a little boy that spent most of his life in the closet under the basement stairs. He was small and frail for his age -malnourished but not starving- and his dark hair and eyes stood out in stark contrast against his pale skin that rarely saw daylight except through windows. His house was small and in shambles, the paint peeling and floorboards warped and broken but it was the only home he’d ever known. He shared the space with two others: the demon who often appeared to him as a red-headed little girl in colonial dress who shared his closet with him or as a tall, shadowy figure that would linger and whisper from dark corners and the monster, a young woman in her very early twenties who shared similar features to his own once you looked past how gaunt he looked next to her. The demon was his friend- an imaginary companion he’d conjured up while locked in the dark closet where he was safe from the monster who kept him grounded her in the present rather than drifting off in some unexplored universe inside his head, a friend who’d vanished a few months back when he’d told her she wasn’t real, leaving him alone in the house with the monster. 

He missed her now, missed the distraction she offered that helped him forget he was trapped without the price of also forgetting reality. The little boy couldn’t be sure how long he’d been locked in this time, just that when the wires finally clicked in the lock and he let himself out, the dim lights felt blinding and he was hungry, so he crept as quietly as he could manage toward the kitchen. He froze in the archway when he heard a crash, like shattering glass from the other room, holding his breath as he listened to the monster move sluggishly in the room, debating whether it was safe for him to sneak some food or if he should eat from his stash this time rather than take the risk. The monster stopped and he exhaled through his teeth before tiptoeing around partially full glass bottles on the linoleum floor to climb the counter so that he could sneak some snacks from the upper cabinet -saltines and peanut butter- things that she wouldn’t miss before he opened the door of the fridge to peek inside -an orange- because he was feeling a little bold today. The little boy took his loot and climbed down from the counter to flee only to find the monster watching him from the archway so he froze in place, prey caught in the gaze of a predator. She was bleary-eyed and sagged against the wall, stinking of alcohol even at this distance with new needle marks in her arm and for a moment, the little boy hoped she hadn’t actually noticed him. “Oh my sweet little boy,” he flinched as she started toward him, taking a step back and stumbling over one of the bottles that had long ago become a permanent fixture there on the floor, like glass booby traps, this one’s contents spilling across the linoleum. “I love you.” His blood ran cold; he’d never heard those words before, had no concept of what they meant or how to react. He didn’t have to wait long to learn because the monster stepped forward and the light caught the glass in her hand- a broken bottle with sharp, jagged edges. 

Run. 

The boy’s instincts repeated the command from the voice and he did try, turning to dash for the other door, but he only made it a couple of steps before the monster closed bony fingers on a fistful of his threadbare shirt and jerked him back. Cold glass tore into his flesh and blood gushed from the wound where his neck met his shoulder and frightened tears poured down his cheeks while he struggled to get away. Frantic dark hazel blue eyes looked to the silent walls for help and in a moment he would later call blood loss induced mania, the boy heard the strange voice again- the demon’s voice, like millions of overlapping whispers in a mostly incoherent jumble until a possessive growl broke through the rest with one word:

Mine. 

Then the monster slipped, losing her footing in the puddle and crashing to the ground, hitting her head on the floor hard enough her eyes went glassy and closed. The little boy was free of the monster for the moment and fled quickly to his hidden stash, finally releasing the death grip on his food to pull an old shredded sheet from withing to press to the wound, repeating over and over in his head the steps to stop bleeding that he’d read from one of the books he’d found at the library. It wasn’t helping, not until he felt icy hands close over his, firm and solid despite there being no physical form to accompany it and the little boy shivered. 

I understand now, that voice again, the whispers from deep enough inside he suspected it had a grip on his soul, why you never feared me. The boy wanted to know who it was, but the voice answered that with a familiar presence- the demon that haunted his every step, lingering in the dark places in his head and the real world. 

“Why?” The boy’s voice was hoarse from lack of use and sounded far away. There was a sound, something like a purr but primal and dangerous. 

Mine. 

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Housemate

I don’t have a housemate

by choice, you know;

I’m an introvert severe enough

I’m happy to go weeks

without seeing another person,

let alone talking to them.

I got like that after high school,

shut myself in my little apartment

and wrote almost nonstop

because I had a lot to say

and no other way to say it.

Sometimes Grey would stop by with takeout,

a ‘wellness check’ he called it,

to make sure I was still breathing;

he never said ‘alive’,

I think because I haven’t really looked alive

since the hospital the first time.

I don’t remember what triggered it,

if anything,

but that itch started,

the one in my wrists

that I always want to dig out

with a knife.

I was in the bath,

trying to soak my bruises

in the hope the pain would fade

at least a little,

when it got bad enough

I was taking apart a razor,

head in a fog

and clothes clinging to my skin.

I woke up

to Grey shouting my name,

pressing bloody towels to my wrists

and turning the water off

so the flooding didn’t get any worse,

glass shards from the broken window behind him

catching the light like earthbound stars. 

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

The Idea of Me

Green eyes looked at me with a nervous light to them I could only call hope. “I love you,” she told me and I- I didn’t react despite the itch in my scar, my expression didn’t change; I was silent, trying to determine what she meant before I spoke. A joke? She seemed too serious. Practicing for someone else? I couldn’t think of a reason she’d pick me to practice with, we’d rarely spoken before. “You don’t know love,” I broke my silence. If I was being fair, I didn’t really know love either, but I wasn’t in the mood to play fair. The light went out as she faltered, “O-Okay, then,” a beat to think of a way to salvage a situation I was not going to let her salvage, “I like you.” Again I was silent, trying to think of the best way to kill her interest because I was so far not capable of love even if I’d been interested. “No,” my voice was colder than I’d expected as I rubbed my temples in an attempt to stave off the impending migraine, “you like the idea of me; you like the quiet mystery I present and already filled in the blanks yourself without ever actually trying to know me, otherwise you’d already know how this would turn out for you. You are not the first and you won’t be the last.” Green eyes filled with tears now, “Not even an ‘I’m sorry’?” she spoke through a sob. “I won’t apologize for your poor judgment.” Her gaze narrowed into a glare and I supposed I got my wish. “Go to hell, you ass!” A smile- maybe a little too wicked- crept across my lips at that. “Sweetheart, where do you think I’m from?”

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Smile

I don’t know if my default expression just looks depressed or pissed off, but I get a lot of strangers telling me to smile. I do, sometimes, to get them to shut up and leave me alone, but it’s strained and fake- a thinly veiled threat. I might smirk or let slip a harsh laugh at Grey, but my real smiles are few and far between. Someone told me years ago, after seeing one of those rare real ones, that I smile like I’m about to cry, that I laugh like I’m dying inside, and that I get this look sometimes- when I think no one is watching- like I’m broken and lost with no idea how to put myself back together even if I did manage to find all of the pieces. His words haunt me, from time to time- on sleepless nights when I feel hollow and empty with only Lucy to patch the holes and fill the void, and a part of me wonders if I even want to try. 

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

A Joke

I like you,

so much it honestly terrifies me.

I could play games,

toy with signals

I don't understand

and blame that for why

you don't seem to

really hear me

when I tell you.

Instead,

I say it plain as day,

but still my words go

overlooked or written off:

weightless jokes at best

and I'd rather not think

what at worst.

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Grief

I come back to the place

I've never really called home,

receive no greeting

other than the quiet whispers

from a dark corner

while the light illuminates

the bed where you lay dying,

a shell of your former self.

It's empty now,

a small mercy I tell myself,

relief from the pain

you no doubt suffered there.

I turn the light off;

I'd rather hide

in the comfort of the dark

than face the void losing you

left behind.

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

Consequences

“You know I never wanted to hurt anyone,” the woman with the lightning scars spoke softly, each syllable carefully controlled because if she didn’t, that could hurt people too, “I never wanted it to end this way.” There were tears welling in her green eyes, a hint to tell him she was being honest about that, at least.

“Even if it’s been a while, even if it was just one this time,” he watched her flinch, wanted to tell her it’d be alright, but he didn’t want to make her a promise he didn’t know if he could keep, “you did hurt them.”

“I know I did!” She snapped a little, the Irish overpowering the normal Russian of her voice and electricity sparking in her eyes for a second before she broke off, taking a deep breath while she raked fingers through her choppy black hair, exposing more of the shock whitened streaks as she did, “I know- I did it all arseways, I just… I’ve always been one thing, even after all these years I still can’t handle silence,” she gestured wildly in the direction of the speaker somewhere in her cell playing a faint melody, “and I- I didn’t know what else t’do,” she looked away, years of guilt eating away at her from the inside, “I don’t know how to be anything better than the monster my father made me,” another deep breath, raking her fingers through her hair again before she looked up at him through the bulletproof glass, “but this time,” a cruel, broken smile found her lips as the electricity sparked in her eyes again, almost making them look blue, “I wanted to do it,” she held his gaze with an expression less hers and more primal despite the fact the music hadn’t cut out, “he deserved it for what he did.”

“He deserved justice,” he replied despite knowing there was no real point in arguing about something already done; she’d killed a man, didn’t matter if he was guilty or not. He wasn’t her first, but he’d been the first since she’d… escaped her family- lost her family… she never was clear on what had happened exactly, just that she was never going back.

“So did the kid,” she argued back, that smile again, the one that had earned a consistent place in the description witnesses sometimes gave about a famous and very dangerous vigilante right along with the electric blue eyes, “but the system failed him,” her voice was cold and hard now but still controlled, “and I refused to do the same.” She turned away, more lightning scars visible beneath her tattoos than he’d expected, marking her spine and her joints but not quite hiding the older ones from metal belt buckles, cigars, and blades- gifts from her father. She settled against the wall, the electricity gone from her eyes when she looked up at the detective again, replaced by an exhaustion he hadn’t seen there in years- since before her escape. “If that makes me a monster to be caged like this for the rest of my life,” she cocked her head to one side, as if mentally weighing her consequences, “then so be it.”

[synonymsforsincerely-nilesflynn]

The Worst of It

The worst part of it all wasn’t that she could never go home; it wasn’t that her silver~blue tattoos- like pure mana embedded into old tribal scars on her forearms hummed of a place long forgotten to history, unwelcome gifts to accompany the slave brand on the side of her ribs. The worst wasn’t even that after her arson, kelpie thievery, and escape she’d learned the one person she had in her life was granted a fate worse than death. The worst for the small, scarred and disillusioned abandoned young woman wasn’t that it was entirely her fault these things had happened, at the time, she’d even taken some small comfort in having nothing left to lose. The worst wasn’t that she’d been wrong- -it wasn’t the dread that caused her laugh to falter and her smile to die on her lips as she realized she’d come to love the scruffy renegade that fought beside her now. The worst wasn’t knowing there was magic in his blood as there was hers, a dangerous thing if discovered to both others and himself. The worst wasn’t knowing it was how she’d lost her almost sister, that the same magic that had her hunted as a child was what had led to the downward spiral her life had since become; her fingers unconsciously brushed the scar on her cheek as she remembered the priest who had attempted to feed her to a demon as the price of some promise it likely never intended to keep. The worst wasn’t that she knew one day she’d lose him, to death or the same way she’d lost her almost sister. No, the worst of it all was that he loved her, too.