[Halloween Fics] - TWENTY-ONE
At the end of the day, he’d wipe the makeup off. He scrubbed his face until it burned and his flannel was smeared with lipstick. He hated the lipstick most, but that’s what all of them wanted.
“Put on the lipstick and get pretty for daddy.” He sang it to himself sometimes just because he’d heard it so many fucking times. All of them wanted the lipstick. All of them wanted to be called daddy.
“Dem? Are you okay?” Another girl came up to him. She was older by a few years - eighteen or so. She had eyes like an old, tired woman.
“Of course!” He smiled. “I feel great! The last one was gentle. No bruises or anything!”
She looked at him doubtfully, but he smiled even brighter at her. He didn’t want to make her worry.
“You should go and get some sleep, honey.” She patted his shoulder and then turned to the mirror, grabbing the tube of lipstick from off the sink. Her mouth formed a pink O, one that would soon turn blood-red and luscious. She had bite-marks on the inside of her lip from the more… eager clients.
“I have to go to the park first, but I promise I’ll get some rest!” He hugged her and then skipped out of the room.
The hotel was dark and dingy. It made Demyx think of an attic that had slowly spread down through the lower levels until the whole house felt like one. It smelled like alcohol and sugar and perfume and sex.
“Hit me! Hit me, momma!”
Voices moaned and screamed and gasped from every room, but Demyx skipped along, singing to himself. He sang everything he heard - things his clients said, things he said. Everything.
Dawn was just breaking outside. The sky was pink. The hotel was located on the square of what had once been the nice part of the city a century past. It was paved with cobblestones and trash. An ancient, dusty fountain sat in the middle. The white marble had been pried off and pawned, revealing only the cold iron structure beneath. Graffiti covered the fountain, drunken scrawls of people probably long dead. A long row of long-neglected trees lined the square. It was in these trees that the only living part of the city resided.
Birds. Birds of all colors. Blue, pink, green, purple, brown, black, grey… any color imaginable. They were all there. Demyx liked to sit on the rusted bench of the fountain and watch them.
“Hey birds.” He held a roll in his hands and broke it into little pieces, throwing bits towards the trees. They would watch for a second, then fly out in a living rainbow and swoop upon the crumbs. Demyx would laugh and dance as he watched them.
But when the bread was gone and the birds remained gathered around his feet, he would stop dancing. He would look down at them, at their bright colors and beady eyes and a sudden rage would come through him.
The birds would realize it too late, not until after he’d lunged and grabbed one. It would flutter in his hands and try to get away, but he held it tight.
“Fly away, fly away…” He held the bird and walked over to the fountain. It chirped helplessly. “Fly fly fly…”
He slammed the bird down on the metal bench, stunning it, if not killing it outright.
“Fly away!” Demyx screamed at it. When it didn’t move, he knocked it down to the cobblestone ground.
“Fly away, you fucker! Fly away from this!” He stomped on the fragile body with his feet, feeling the bone crack beneath them. “Fly away! Why don’t you fly, huh? Why can’t you fly?!”
It was only after the bird’s body was little more than gore and feathers that Demyx stopped. He looked down at his handiwork, trembling from the outburst. It was destroyed.
He crouched down and gathered the crushed body in his hands. It was still warm, the feathers still soft. Tears gathered in his eyes and he sniffled once, twice.
“You stupid bird…” He said. “Why didn’t you fly away?”
~