Original: Two of a Kind
Just after I wrote about not being able to write anything, it all just started flowing. No, I don't get my brain either. o_O
Two of a Kind
Original - 1620 words
A girl, a boy, a lake and a morbid lifestyle.
AN: Like I promised, weird and experimental. I have to admit I'm sort of in love with this, though. Written with the prompts: 38, deep waters, run-down buildings, and the world burning down.
She has 38 tattoos, each a circle with one centimeter in diameter going up her leg, her belly, twining around her ribs, a pathway towards her heart. She’s getting the tattoo number 39 done next week. The 40th will be an anatomically correct representation of her heart, right on top of the real one. She yearns to see it moving with the steady tip-tap beat inside her, wants to see herself inside out.
He says it’s morbid, but he licks every single tattoo, lingers on the spot on her breast that will hold the last one, and she knows he’s just as excited as she is.
----
You’re so morbid, you say, and then you watch her laugh, enthralled.
You then trace the veins of her wrist, up up up until it reaches her jugular, her pulse steady beneath you fingers, and she snorts, asks who’s the morbid one now. She stops talking when you trace the same veins with your tongue.
You’re so fascinated with the life that flows inside her, through arteries and veins and capillaries that you almost wish you could steal some of it.
----
At the end of their cabin in the woods (red riding hood and the wolf and maybe even the hunter hidden in the trees) there’s a pier, and at the end of the pier there’s a lake, and at the end of the lake there’s a mountain (like a riddle, like a puzzle).
The lake is icy, and the water is so dark it’s almost black. She likes to sit on the pier’s wooden planks, knees hugged close to her body and staring at the deep water. She can’t see the bottom, only darker water after dark water, and it makes her shudder. She sometimes dips her toes in the water, just for a second, and then she pulls them out and laughs and dries them with her skirt so thoroughly no one would even know they had ever been wet.
He likes to jump into the water, stay for so long underwater that when he surfaces she won’t let him come near her.
She teases fate, lies on the pier all day long, looks up into the sky and looks down into the water and guesses at shapes in the clouds and shivers with fear, the only high she’s addicted to.
----
You sit by her some days, watch the way her skirt rides up to her thighs, the way her eyes are closed and her breathing slow with sleep and her freckles so brown against her nose. You push her skirt even higher, push your fingertips against every one of her tattoos and wonder if you should get something to match. You remember you already have one, that cigarette burn she gave you the day you met (You got a cigarette? Thanks, yeah, could you lit it for me? Oh- oh shit, I’m so sorry, are you okay? Here, let me help you - oh fuck, that burn is nasty. Hey. I live up here, you wanna go up? Soak it up, or something? The least I can do.).
By the time you stop remembering, you’re already up to her hip, connecting the dots with your fingertips, and she’s awake, hazy eyes, groggy eyes, and she’s squirming beneath your hands. You move until you’re covering her, mouth over hers and hips over hers and a gasp shared.
You stop thinking.
----
She loves photography, freezing moments and holding them to her chest forever. She insists on an old camera. Vintage is the way to go, baby, she says, and he leans close to her ear and whispers You poser. She just lifts the camera and takes his picture, eyes half closed with the flash.
She especially loves old buildings, half destroyed and half abandoned and just a little bit nostalgic. She takes picture after picture, eyes bright and hair mussed, her muslin dress getting caught in weeds and torn pipes coming out of concrete like twisted pieces of lives. She tells stories as she clicks away, invents tales of the people that once lived there as she focuses the lens, as she gets too close to an abandoned Chinese doll or an empty mug on a dusty shelf. He sits on a window ledge and reads pretentious Russian literature as he listens to her.
And this is the plate she flung at her husband when she caught him doing her brother - it was his mother’s china, you see, and it was what hurt him the most, and he killed her in revenge, stuck her in the fridge, she says, and it should make him shudder but it only makes him smile.
----
You dream that the buildings are falling down, brick by brick until the sound is so loud it hurts your ears and a wave of dust reaches you and makes your eyes sting. The remains burn, flames burning high. The earth rumbles beneath your feet, and that’s falling down as well, little creaks that grow into dark cliffs. You’re standing in front of it all, holding her hand, and she turns to look at you and smiles sweetly. She says, Let’s burn.
The ground caves under you, and then you wake up gasping, her leg a solid weight over your hip. Still asleep, she bites you lightly on the shoulder, as in instinct, and you finally calm down.
----
She wears her lightest clothing in winter just to spite him, spends her days chattering her teeth in flip flops and linen dresses, until her lips turn blue and she has to let him put a blanket around her shoulders, drag her into the shower with the water so hot there’s steam coming out of her skin once it falls down on her. She drags him into the shower, then, presses him against the wall until they slide down to the floor, kissing with their eyes open, skin slick with water.
Afterwards, they go out, throw snow at each other until she’s blue again and he’s wearing a shade to match. She hates it when it snows too much, hates not being able to go out. You should be called Freedom, he says, and she laughs and says that’s her middle name.
She leaves the windows open at nights, and he has to get up at midnight, shivering, and dust the snow off their skins.
----
You wear your heaviest clothes on summer just to spite her, spend the days sweating under your coat and mittens, until you go so red that you have to let her peel the clothes off your back, drag you into the shower with the water as cold as it gets, and then you kiss her neck, drag her down to the floor, kissing with your eyes open.
Afterwards, you go out, lie under the sun on the grass sipping lemonade that tastes too bitter until you’re red again and she’s wearing a shade to match. You go into the lake, then, and she sits on the pier dangling her feet and sucking on a blueberry popsicle and doesn’t let you taste it when you ask for it.
She lets you taste her mouth instead.
----
The day she gets her last tattoo, her second heart, she stands still for a long time, watching the lake, and then she finally laughs, runs along the pier with her hair flying behind her and jumps into the water, and when she looks up she can see the sun through the green waves. She smiles.
----
You follow.
Two of a Kind
Original - 1620 words
A girl, a boy, a lake and a morbid lifestyle.
AN: Like I promised, weird and experimental. I have to admit I'm sort of in love with this, though. Written with the prompts: 38, deep waters, run-down buildings, and the world burning down.
She has 38 tattoos, each a circle with one centimeter in diameter going up her leg, her belly, twining around her ribs, a pathway towards her heart. She’s getting the tattoo number 39 done next week. The 40th will be an anatomically correct representation of her heart, right on top of the real one. She yearns to see it moving with the steady tip-tap beat inside her, wants to see herself inside out.
He says it’s morbid, but he licks every single tattoo, lingers on the spot on her breast that will hold the last one, and she knows he’s just as excited as she is.
----
You’re so morbid, you say, and then you watch her laugh, enthralled.
You then trace the veins of her wrist, up up up until it reaches her jugular, her pulse steady beneath you fingers, and she snorts, asks who’s the morbid one now. She stops talking when you trace the same veins with your tongue.
You’re so fascinated with the life that flows inside her, through arteries and veins and capillaries that you almost wish you could steal some of it.
----
At the end of their cabin in the woods (red riding hood and the wolf and maybe even the hunter hidden in the trees) there’s a pier, and at the end of the pier there’s a lake, and at the end of the lake there’s a mountain (like a riddle, like a puzzle).
The lake is icy, and the water is so dark it’s almost black. She likes to sit on the pier’s wooden planks, knees hugged close to her body and staring at the deep water. She can’t see the bottom, only darker water after dark water, and it makes her shudder. She sometimes dips her toes in the water, just for a second, and then she pulls them out and laughs and dries them with her skirt so thoroughly no one would even know they had ever been wet.
He likes to jump into the water, stay for so long underwater that when he surfaces she won’t let him come near her.
She teases fate, lies on the pier all day long, looks up into the sky and looks down into the water and guesses at shapes in the clouds and shivers with fear, the only high she’s addicted to.
----
You sit by her some days, watch the way her skirt rides up to her thighs, the way her eyes are closed and her breathing slow with sleep and her freckles so brown against her nose. You push her skirt even higher, push your fingertips against every one of her tattoos and wonder if you should get something to match. You remember you already have one, that cigarette burn she gave you the day you met (You got a cigarette? Thanks, yeah, could you lit it for me? Oh- oh shit, I’m so sorry, are you okay? Here, let me help you - oh fuck, that burn is nasty. Hey. I live up here, you wanna go up? Soak it up, or something? The least I can do.).
By the time you stop remembering, you’re already up to her hip, connecting the dots with your fingertips, and she’s awake, hazy eyes, groggy eyes, and she’s squirming beneath your hands. You move until you’re covering her, mouth over hers and hips over hers and a gasp shared.
You stop thinking.
----
She loves photography, freezing moments and holding them to her chest forever. She insists on an old camera. Vintage is the way to go, baby, she says, and he leans close to her ear and whispers You poser. She just lifts the camera and takes his picture, eyes half closed with the flash.
She especially loves old buildings, half destroyed and half abandoned and just a little bit nostalgic. She takes picture after picture, eyes bright and hair mussed, her muslin dress getting caught in weeds and torn pipes coming out of concrete like twisted pieces of lives. She tells stories as she clicks away, invents tales of the people that once lived there as she focuses the lens, as she gets too close to an abandoned Chinese doll or an empty mug on a dusty shelf. He sits on a window ledge and reads pretentious Russian literature as he listens to her.
And this is the plate she flung at her husband when she caught him doing her brother - it was his mother’s china, you see, and it was what hurt him the most, and he killed her in revenge, stuck her in the fridge, she says, and it should make him shudder but it only makes him smile.
----
You dream that the buildings are falling down, brick by brick until the sound is so loud it hurts your ears and a wave of dust reaches you and makes your eyes sting. The remains burn, flames burning high. The earth rumbles beneath your feet, and that’s falling down as well, little creaks that grow into dark cliffs. You’re standing in front of it all, holding her hand, and she turns to look at you and smiles sweetly. She says, Let’s burn.
The ground caves under you, and then you wake up gasping, her leg a solid weight over your hip. Still asleep, she bites you lightly on the shoulder, as in instinct, and you finally calm down.
----
She wears her lightest clothing in winter just to spite him, spends her days chattering her teeth in flip flops and linen dresses, until her lips turn blue and she has to let him put a blanket around her shoulders, drag her into the shower with the water so hot there’s steam coming out of her skin once it falls down on her. She drags him into the shower, then, presses him against the wall until they slide down to the floor, kissing with their eyes open, skin slick with water.
Afterwards, they go out, throw snow at each other until she’s blue again and he’s wearing a shade to match. She hates it when it snows too much, hates not being able to go out. You should be called Freedom, he says, and she laughs and says that’s her middle name.
She leaves the windows open at nights, and he has to get up at midnight, shivering, and dust the snow off their skins.
----
You wear your heaviest clothes on summer just to spite her, spend the days sweating under your coat and mittens, until you go so red that you have to let her peel the clothes off your back, drag you into the shower with the water as cold as it gets, and then you kiss her neck, drag her down to the floor, kissing with your eyes open.
Afterwards, you go out, lie under the sun on the grass sipping lemonade that tastes too bitter until you’re red again and she’s wearing a shade to match. You go into the lake, then, and she sits on the pier dangling her feet and sucking on a blueberry popsicle and doesn’t let you taste it when you ask for it.
She lets you taste her mouth instead.
----
The day she gets her last tattoo, her second heart, she stands still for a long time, watching the lake, and then she finally laughs, runs along the pier with her hair flying behind her and jumps into the water, and when she looks up she can see the sun through the green waves. She smiles.
----
You follow.