UNRELIABLY TOLDㅤ misc

youth, writing

tw: mentions of attempted suicide
in which they're immortal
[  january 15, 2022  ]

"Do you think you'll ever be happy?"

Catherine stilled at the question. Silence hung her and her companion, a noose tightening around their throats. She reached up to rub her neck, mauled flesh against calloused hands.

"Cat?" asked her brother.

She cleared her throat. "No," she said finally. She was sure that she'd never be. "How could I? How could you?"

Her brother shifted beside her, considering her words, more for the theatrics of it than the actual thought. "Saints, I miss youth," he sighed, as if he could remember it. Catherine couldn't.

What she could remember were only whispers. The faint touch of the winter sun. Sobbing at the moon, screaming at someone she could not remember. Smiling at someone she'd forgotten the name of. Peeling tangerines and stirring soup and slapping her brother hard against his face and tending his wounds; and the first death. Could she ever forget that? No, she knew. It was part of her.

Catherine exhaled. Her breath was stark in the motionless air, and she watched it drift upwards until it was imperceptible. Then she breathed again. And again. And again. She wished to forget how to breathe.

"Youth is underrated," her brother let her know, when she chose not to speak. "I'd give anything to—"

"You're a fool. We talked about this already."

"I know. I'm just afraid we're running out of things to talk about, so I'm repeating what we've said before. And I think that our lack of life is draining the love we have to give. Don't you think so too?"

Catherine didn't trust herself to reply. He was right, of course. But still, their unspoken pact of denial had been betrayed. "That's absurd."

"Is it? It makes perfect sense to me."

"Well, you are ill in the head." She stood abruptly from their perch swing that creaked everytime it moved backwards, that hadn't been oiled for decades, that was more home than the actual house. Eons ago, her brother and her had sat there and told each other, Drowning didn't kill. Neither did starving. Let us try hanging tomorrow.

And then they'd gone inside and eaten, but the ribs protruding from their belly had never gone away. Neither had the water in their lungs, or the scars on their skin. Only the memories. Only the memories.

Her brother watched her in a sick amusement. "So are you," he pointed out.

"I'm going for a walk."

"Be careful," he humored her.

Catherine ignored him. She started on the path that had grown familiar over the time in which she'd rotted. It was fall now, and leaves were falling and dying and, Catherine thought, she had truly gone mad to envy a dying leaf.