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Cocktail dresses, high heels, and red lipstick, are what you have become accustomed too. The gun on thigh, the knife in your shoe, and the tracker in your wrist, is what you really are. You read the situation like a book, you hear the shouting like a song, and crash of the chandelier as it fall two stories to the polished dance floor reminds you that this is only the beginning.
***
Nightmares are like ice; frozen shards of dark memories all piled into one. Natalia often wakes up in the middle of the night with her hands numb with frostbite, but the rest of her body on fire. It’s easy to want the cold, to want the escape from all the burn, all the flames, but the fire is light, and the ice is the dark – the blue frosty memories of forgetfulness, and names that don’t quite fit.
She tries to remember, but it hurts too much this time, it’s always stronger than the next.
The light gets too bright, and you can hear shouting, and broken promises that will be gone the next day. The light reminds her of the stars, and the stars remind her of wishes, and dreams, and fire, and the fire reminds her of something that she can’t quite put her finger on. Is it a smile or a fist, is it a kiss or a punch? But it doesn’t matter, it won’t soon anyway.
You’re their weapon, you’re their tool, so why does she want to be so much more?
***
Love is a word used to loosely. Hate is a word used to harshly. Why do people never want to be hated, why do we all crave love? There too similar, and there is too little time to figure out which one is worse.
Hate is always honest, and love is too often a lie, an excuse for something that words can’t express, an adjective that should be a noun. Love is a thing; it’s always wanted, it’s always accepted, but there are too many consequences. Hate is simple, hate is clean – like pain hate is something deserved.
Natalia is twelve when she realizes that hatred is the pain growing in her gut.
***
It’s cold, and her bare feet are leaving small footprints in the white snow. She’s freezing yet her head is on fire. The more she runs the closer she is, to what though?
There is a man in black waiting for her at the edge of the hill. She thinks that it might be raining because her cheeks feel wet, but her vision is too blurry to notice rain clouds in the gray sky, and the ringing in her ears is too loud to hear the thunder.
Natalia see’s lighting, but then everything goes dark, and she’s finally cool.
***
Summer came early this year. Natalia is fifteen, but she’s never seen a sunset. One of her targets was a painter. She saw his paintings of the sun setting over the horizon, the yellow meeting the red, and the warm meeting the peace meeting the end. It reminds her of things that make her head hurt, so she stops looking at the painting, and pulls out the knife instead.
The red of the sun soon turns to blood, and the warmth turns to fire while the peace disappears. Nothing is new, and her hands are still, and her eyes are dry, but while she washes her hands, and looks at the painting one last time and sees the damage; there is no more sunset, no more sun, just the sky, just the broken scene of what could have been but what will never be, she can’t help the way her throat closes up, and her chest becomes tighter, and her hands clench around the now clean knife.
It’s the first time she thinks about running, but she goes back because she’s never been anywhere else.
The next day all she remembers only blood, and the sunset is gone.
***
The lights burn harder that time, and they tell you things because they know that you won’t remember; that you can’t. You hear secrets, you hear plans, but you stop listening when the buzzing of the machines start, and Natalia closes her eyes because it takes to much energy trying to keep them open.
Her hands are squeezed closed, her nails are cutting at her palm making crescent shaped indents. She thinks of the moon. There’s a face in the moon, but the face isn’t smiling, and you wonder why? Then you wonder if the moon will ever stop revolving around the earth – if the man on the moon will get too tired. She hopes he has that choice, even though the oceans will no longer have waves, at least he’ll have his happiness.
As soon as the light starts your whole body becomes so stiff that they have to put something in your mouth to stop you from biting your tongue clean off. Natalia feels herself shaking uncontrollably, and dirty hands all over her making her better they used to say. Now they just do it because they know they can.
They tell you that you won’t fell a thing, and you know that that isn’t a lie; you’ve been through this too many times anyways, but deep down you wish that you could feel something even if it hurts because at least then you could remember.
The next day she has new scars, and a face she doesn’t recognize, and a name that doesn’t belong.