The house was silent at half past midnight. Elena Collins sat soundlessly in her room, small tears slipping from her eyes, each drip-drop-drip a soft melody, played on lonely piano keys. Patrick sat outside her window, sympathy dripping from his blood, in the form of purple on ivory white.
To the misinformed passersby, the scene probably looked a bit strange, not that it wasn't. They were just seeing a different type of strange.
Patrick was subpar at what he did. His chalky skin, combined with thick silver hair and amber eyes gave off a clearly non-human aura. The tears he shed were purple. Skeletal hands wrapped around the rusty frame of a typewriter that had faced fire. Shoulders marked with the symbols he wasn't strong enough to remove. His entire silhouette shivered, not from the cold, but rather the fear.
He could've tried a bit harder to camouflage, but he passed as human well enough.
He knew what was coming, and he wanted to fix it. Poor him, there was nothing he could do.
From Patrick's perspective
The day Elena Collins died, I was doing as your average human does, walking around, laughing at life, and, to put it simply, drunk. I had spent the previous few hours holed up in a little bar off one of the side streets, taking drink after drink from the woman with confused eyes who checked my false ID, squinting, and asked me how I didn't know what the word alcohol was.
I'm still not quite sure what she meant by that.
My hands shook in the wintery air of downtown city-near-the-sea, but I suppose it was mostly the wind chill. Small lights that brought unfathomable joy to the small children around me hung from trees and streetlamps. I wonder if it's because they resembled stars, for when I looked up I saw nothing but the hazy orange of human impact. Perhaps these children had never seen stars. A strange yet surreal combination of envy and pity overwhelmed me, and I found myself wondering how long it would take to count those lights, though not nearly as long as to count the stars.
Maybe it was nice, not knowing the exact number. Feeling the need to keep counting them, takes up time, and time is ruthless. These people age so quickly. An eye blinks, and suddenly they're in a casket, all hope for those stars lost.
The sound of sirens whistled down the starry street, piercing through my ears. My head spun, but I'm not sure if it was from the excess of honey-coloured drinks or the noise.
My vision blurred, and I felt my coat slip down on my shoulders. Frantically, I nearly ripped the flimsy fabric while trying to cover the marks on my shoulders. My calloused hands shook as a strange man punched my shoulder and told me he liked my tattoos. I choked out a "thank you", realizing that he had seen.
And I ran.
The realization what had those sirens were for hit me, and the voices rang through my ears. I tripped on the rough surface that I assumed to be concrete, and crumpled to the ground. Pitch black blood spilt from my skin, and deep purple tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. My voice was barely controlled by me anymore, and therefore I never expected to whisper out what I did.
"Elena."
And the voice in my head whispered,
"Nice try, Patrick. Why did you think that Elena could help you? You only ever delayed the inevitable. A selfish man stays a selfish man." And I knew it was right.
A selfish man could never be a puppeteer.
not really poetry but oh well
