13

I stare at myself in the cracked mirror I hauled from the dumpster. My black nylon t-shirt’s torn across the chest and smells like sewer. I pull it over my head and toss it in the dumpster.

The waning sunlight makes elongates my shadow before me. My ego compared to myself.

I look myself over and cringe at what I see. My hair’s become lighter from all the sunlight, and is far too long, sticking out at all sorts of ungodly angles. Maybe I should cut it? Ha! Hell no, screw that. I’ll saw it off once it reaches my waist. My face is impossibly leaner than it was before, with my cheeks becoming constantly hollower and my jawline sharper. Not to flatter myself, of course. My collar bones are sticking out, and I can see my ribs towards the center of my chest. My entire torso is littered with purple-black bruises and red scratch marks from the scuffle in the sewers. I lift my veiny left forearm, examining the wormy scar that snakes down from my wrist to the bottom of my elbow. I roll my shoulders, but wince. The right one aches from when I rolled sloppily after leaping off a building like the dumbass I am. My pelvis pokes out above the waistband of my stained military trousers, and my skin curves sharply towards my obliques. My abs are defined, not because of my muscle mass, but because of how skinny I’ve become. Sorry, how skinny I’ve always been.

I scratch my nose, and run my hand over my bony face, down my long, thin neck, over my collarbones and down my chest. My eyes crinkle.

Didn’t they say that being drawn into the addictive tropes of modern day society would ruin you? How avoiding attention span slaughtering social media would help you? How not spending ten hours a day on a screen would benefit you? How keeping physically active would keep you mentally happy? What the freaking hell, how on earth is this supposed to work?

I look at my raggedy self in the mirror and slam my fist into it, splintering shards onto the ground. The system ruins people. It makes the depressed sheep, slopping to societal needs that make no sense to them. I dodged that. I followed myself, my own instincts. I do what I want to, when I want to. Why the hell am I so damn…

Shit.

I snort and shake my head like a bull. Pull yourself together Kallix.

I used to break down every once in a while. I used to have friends to break down into. I always had Tauren, but she hates my guts. At least I’ve got my guts. Hers are probably lying on the floor.

Now I’m about to break down every other day. It’s like I’m permanently on the verge of tears. I’m not one of those soppy angsty teenage kids claiming their depressed and’ve got anxiety. I don’t know what’s happened to me.

I had Salif too, a while back. He used to be cool.

I remember this other girl, when I was thirteen and she was twelve, called Yanika. Tiny little girl, who ran away from her home just like I did. Both of our first years on the streets. Both of us struggling to survive, from rummaging through dumpsters, getting chased by cops and escaping into any crevice we could find. Some days it was like in the movies, where we’d tell each other stories, make up games to play with bottle caps we’d find, pull pranks on the rich kids in the schools. Some days it was fun. Some days… I was happy. Most days though, were more like me patting her back as she threw up onto the floor after eating something a bit too far past the expiration date, or her stitching my thigh back together using a thread she pulled from her one and only shirt.

I remember her transition, from the mushroom haired teeny girl with knobby knees, wearing a muddy pink skirt who shrunk behind the trashcans every time an adult walked by. She could watch an ant crawl on her hand for hours and would bawl her eyes out if somebody stepped on one. After just a year on the streets, I saw her morph. Her face hollowed out as she lost the chubby cheeks of her mother’s hugs. Her knees were permanently red from scrapes, and her mushroom hair had turned into long, wild light brown locks. Her eyes had gone from the eyes of a faun to those of a magpie. I loved it. I think… maybe I loved her. If I’m even capable of that. Maybe thirteen year old me was.

I think maybe everybody is born like a plastic bag with some water inside it, being carried by someone. The water’s everything good we’ve got. Whoever’s carrying the bag sloshes it around a lot, because by the time we really get anywhere, there’s not much left inside. Sometimes, our bags get jabbed, or slit or sometimes torn open. Some of us have got leaks, where the goodness just kind of drips out. The more and more we get slashed, the quicker we lose the water. Soon enough, we’d just be a couple shreds of damp plastic, with a drying trail of droplets behind us.

Things like this, like when the little girl, Yanika died the day before her thirteenth birthday, were deep gashes for me. I think I lost a lot of my water that day. And then as the time wears on, you realize a couple things that just start to make the tear worse. She didn’t die in my arms, like in a tragic movie ending. I just found her like that. She was already cold. Her eyes were still open.

Nobody knew she’d died. I don’t think anybody really knew her anyway. I couldn’t hold a funeral or anything like that because there was nobody to come to it. I couldn’t burry her, because there simply was nowhere to do it, so I just left. I stabbed my own heart repeatedly with my serpentine words for years because of it, until I realized that it wouldn’t do anything for her. It doesn’t make me a bad person because I left her. I know that. At least, I think I do. But it still doesn’t stop my bitch of a mind for hating myself even more.

I sometimes think of the plans we made. About how we’d start a band together, where she would sing, and I would play the guitar we’d found. We’d perform at restaurants and people would be so amazed at our talent because we were so young, that we’d become millionaire prodigies overnight. I wanted to build the biggest climbing park ever in history with my share of the money. She wanted to make sure nobody ever went to bed hungry again, and that every child got a present on their birthday.

Less than three years have passed since that day. In those three years I’ve had all the meaningless sex in the world. Done a thousand different drugs, drank twice as many different drinks. I’ve done the most incredible parkour, pulled off the craziest of stunts and met the most amazing people. None of it seems to do anything. None of it seems to help me.

Ok then. I’m a lost cause.

Great.

Let’s try a new strategy then.

“Fuck you Kallix!” I suddenly bellow.

I blink, surprised at the force that came out of my throat. Woah.

Ok. Ok maybe that makes sense. I’ve got everything I could possibly want, I think, but other people don’t. Maybe if I help those other people, I’ll help myself. Ok that also makes sense. So, where do I start?

That bastard Ravven’s got to go.

Zorikan too, but later.

Qiara obviously.

I sigh and attempt in vain to run my hands through my tangled hair. “One night,” I say aloud. “One night of screwing around. Tomorrow I’ll set to work. I’ll make things right. I’ll screw up everybody and I’ll do it without killing anyone Tomorrow all this shit starts. For real.”

Perfect.

Now I’ve just got to enjoy the night.

~

I slide my feet across the floor in a drunken movement that can barely be classified as a dance. The electronic beats reverberate through my skull and the lights flash epileptically around me.

I stagger backwards, knocking a drink from a girl’s hand. She’s painted with makeup, with the features of a model and the slim curves of a porn star. She wears a tiny black dress that barely reaches her thighs, and black heels.

“Hey rugged,” she says, stepping over her spilt drink.

I don’t care. I don’t give a shit. I grab one of her tits, and she gives a look of pretend shock before leaning into me and kissing me. Her lips are soft and perfect. I grab her hips and pull her closer, softly biting her tongue.

She takes my hand and leads me off to a room. I can barely even process what’s happening as I stumble after her, driven by my pulsing dick. She lets herself fall onto the bed, like a flower dropped onto a freshly trimmed lawn. The room is throbbing with kaleidoscope patterns as I move on top of her, ready to unleash the wolf within me.

Then suddenly I feel a piercing in my arm. Another drug? Probably. Who cares if I overdose, because I don’t. I grab her thighs and pull them apart, seeing her smile widen. I hold her shoulders and ram into her, thrusting my still clothed waist against hers. Her body smudges, and the colors smear across the ceiling. Vapor floods into my skull, clouding my vision, and I sink into her.

The room around me closes in, like the maw of a shark and everything becomes darker.

The last thing I see is the calligraphic tattoo on her neck.

I can’t even respond as I read the unmistakable name.

Qiara.