Your Fall

Reminiscence

Murderer

"As the presiding Baliff and by reached upon verdict of the GoSci council, I Marcus Kane..."

"Don't worry. These tattoos won't take long." You feel yourself relax. The well-known calmness slipping through your veins once more.

All-day you had waited and waited for the guard to come back. All-day you rubbed the nearly healed tattooed skin on the wall hoping for some feeling. For anything. It has been six days and now six nights. The guard is a nightly visitor. He brings with him the white ovals and the pounding of the wall from next door. Today he had brought his worn-down blade and improvised ink.

"I can probably do two tonight and then add the others another night." His voice drifts in and out of your hearing. You can feel each syllable enter but disappear on the way in. He sounds how you feel. Like a dull greyscale. A faded abstract color. Flat. Never changing tones. Never tense or calm. Just dull and existing. His voice never cracked or lightened. When he brought up his day today, he never laughed. You feel nothing as you drift from reality. His voice drones on.

It is the same each night, The pounding on the wall starts. He gives you the ovals you deserve. Slowly everything becomes muffled. Removed. Remote. You sit there on the dirty gray floor littered with sooty dust from your charcoal and he drones.

Murderer.

He told you what everyone is thinking of you. He never needed to say it. Never needed to utter a word. But you knew they all think you're worthless. And they are right. In the end, all of it was for nothing. The memories. Empty. The emotions. Void. Cayen. Your parents. His family. Oblivion. The guard told you the theories. Indulged you with his false sympathy and grandeur thoughts on the politics. He spat with the investigation when he said he thinks they are wrong. But it doesn't matter. It was all for nothing.

"Don't worry about payment yet. The first few are free of charge." Your eyes never move from the wall in front of you. Focused on the outline of the door handle, darkening with every heartbeat as the light dwindles around it. He moved and clambered over you to get a better angle on your finger. His hair, sticking up an inch or two juts into your vision. But it's a blur. A flash of movement in a dead cell before it disappears.

Selfish

You drift off. His hands on your hand as he separates your fingers.

"This one may hurt a lot. Let me know if it does, I can give you some more pills." You feel nothing but heard what you wanted. You let out a whimper hoping it is well-timed with his work. His hair blurs in your vision this time more than before. You stare ahead as you hear him sigh and feign a chuckle, not flinching to move from his cold fingers as he slips another pill between your lips.

That's all that mattered now. The white ovals. The tattoos only remind you of Raven. She hasn't visited. She probably thinks you're dead. Or she just doesn't care. What matters anyway? What does it matter what happens to your body? The tattoos helped with Raven, but now they sink and stab your insides. They tug as your feelings and shred them. Raven wouldn't mind. This is what you deserve for putting your family and friends through what you did. This is how everything is meant to be.

"Hello?"

"Okay... now for the other one." He shifts around you. The door in front of you turns sideways as he pushes your head to the side, his cold fingers grazing your skin as he moves your ratted hair from behind your ear. "I may need some help keeping your hair out of the way with this one but I'll let you know."

Did he let you know? Unsure. You don't remember moving. You don't recall him asking for a hand. All you did was sit there in the calm numbness of the ovals. Nothing registers. Even the thumping on the wall that seems to dwindle and give up, doesn't startle you like it did the first few nights when the guard came to hang out.

"As expressed through thorough investigation, you are found guilty of five first-degree murder-"

Murderer

"Hello?"

You sit on the floor now. Your back leaning against the wall, a position you have barely moved from since the first hour you were here. The voice, first thought to be in your head, speaks louder and comes closer, but there is no one in your cell. It is too early for your guard friend to come back. Your finger and neck still hurt from the hours before when even the warmth of your blood seemed alien to you as it folded within the cracks on your skin between your fingers and piloted down to the meeting of your neck and shoulder, resting momentarily on your collarbone. But the voice feels real. Not something montaged into your thoughts but something tangible.

"Raven?" You're not even sure if you said her name out loud but you know from the lack of movement of the door in front of you that the voice is not her possession.

"By law through the Ark union, persons under 18 are not to be executed for their crime and therefore are committed to the Skybox sector where they will stay until follow up..."

She won't even remember you.

"I've been saying hello for the past two or three hours by the looks of the guard post. I don't plan on stopping anytime soon." You lick your lips, though your tongue is just as worn and dry. Your eyes free themselves from the locked cage of the door, scoping towards the wall where the banging that scared you used to come from.

"Hi." Your voice is foreign. It scratches. Feels wrong as it fights your tongue.

"Finally," her voice is smooth compared to your hoarseness, "are you okay? Is that guard hurting you?"

Hey Y'all, 

Thank you for your patience with the lapses between updates. I lost a lot of my writing draft work for this book along with HummingBird and a few others when my laptop tanked on me in August. I have had this chapter done for a while now along with the next one but didn't want to post until I was sure I knew exactly where I was going again.

There are only a few more chapters left in this book, and I am also continuing on the work for Blood Whisper. I have also gotten a request for a Clexa/you in modern-day for its own book so that will be a future project that I will begin once I am done with this book and in a good spot with Blood Whisper.

Let me know what you guys think.