Paradise

XX

Sadness isn't something easily hidden.  Though some are better at diguising it then others.

Parker sat on his bed. Tears in his eyes as he looked down at his sleeping paradise.

He felt it. He felt the shift. The change in her, towards him. He didn't quite understand what he had done to her for her to hate him.

He didn't understand that it wasn't completely his fault.

She didn't understand that he had been listening to her, even if he couldn't hear her.

She still didn't know he was deaf.

He's probably using you, Paradise. He doesn't care about you at all. Remember? He looks like kindness, but smells of cigarettes and mistakes. His voice is sweet and silky, but sounds of deceit.

An unfamiliar voice invaded Paradise's mind. She looked up, around the room, her eyes landing on someone. Something.

With blonde hair and blue eyes and perfect pale skin and bones sticking out every which way.

With a huge smile and dazzling white teeth contrasted by blood red plump lips.

With a stomach so small, it was concave.

With cheekbones so sharp, they were nearly cutting at her flesh.

You've been weak Arrie. Letting a stupid, fat boy into your life like that. Just look at you! His fatness has rubbed off on you! I'm your only friend arrie. You know that.

"M-my only friend? Who are you?!" Paradise gasped through her tears, gripping onto the bed sheets in fear.

Not who dearie, what. My name is Famine. I am... An Angel. The opposite of gluttony, the sin you have suffered.

"You're an Angel?  How come I've never seen you before? How come you never come when i call."

Stupid girl! I am a devine being! I do not come at at the call of a little girl! I come when i am needed, as i am now. I mean, look at you. You're obese

Paradise looked down at her body... And do you know what she saw?

All she saw was fat, fat, fat. Despite the ribs that poked out from under her large shirts and the hipbones under her baggy pants.

And so, she starved, starved, starved. She hid, hid, hid her bones under large shirts and baggy pants. Because she was skin and bones and regrets.

Because she was the girl with eyes like heaven, and body like porcelain. Fair, fragile, and beautiful. But she never saw herself as such.

And she was, once again, a painfully elaborate ruse of large shirts and baggy pants and long sleeves rubbing against new cuts and playing with sickly looking greenish mashed potatoes and lying on the cold, dirty, cracked linoleum floor in a puddle of her own tears. And angry red slashes on wrists, and the sadness that was held in each of the purple bruises that littered her perfectly imperfect face and icey blue eyes that reminded a certain boy of frozen lakes and clear skies, and dark circles under those eyes that were cold, but not hateful, with words that were a symphony of melody and beautiful harmony.

She would always be the girl who's father was an angry drunken junkie liar, and though he was a terrible father and a horrible human being, Paradise was a daddy's girl.

She was still just a depressed, stressed, hot mess, who enjoyed the burn of alcohol in her throat and the feeling of numbness that came with it, but hated hangovers.