Cee cut all of her (ropes) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-08-31 08:06:00 |
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Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *narrative, cerise stone |
narrative: marvel, cerise
Who: Cerise & Zoe
What: Morning routine.
Where: Home.
When: Recently.
Warnings: Some darkness.
The shower spits to life while its still dark out, still dark in the little Hells Kitchen home. Coffee isnt even on yet, and she prefers it that way. Half asleep still, incapable of absorbing the horror of her body. When its like this, its just the water. She doesnt even exist, she's still in bed somewhere. Or maybe on a beach somewhere. She pretends that her body is somewhere that she cant go. It doesn't last long, but sometimes it lasts long enough. Eyes closed, she points her face into the spray. Warm. A waterfall. She pushes her hair back with fingers. Its shorter now, the wet ends curl under her ear lobes. In the dark, soap in her hands, and she pushes some into her hair, kneads it into her scalp. Down her neck to her shoulders, she rubs there, her blunt fingers pretend like theyre not fingers at all, but maybe claws instead. In the dark, its just shadows anyway, so she keeps pretending.
There is a scar on her shoulder blade, old and soft. Her hands want to be paws, not hands anymore, and the fingers curl into fists. She runs her knuckles over the scar because her fingers dont want to feel it, dont want to remember it. Paws wouldn't remember it, it didn't happen to anything with paws. It happened to a girl with hands, such small hands.
Her fingertips wont forget what it feels like, scar tissue raised. One touch is all it takes, and squeezes her eyes shut, willing her fingers to forget, willing her mind to forget who she is, who this body belongs to.
Down. She scrubs quickly over her arms, ancient track marks like divots in the alleys of elbows. Reverse, cross at the chest, soap froths and spills down to her abdomen. She's awake now, all the way, and there's no more pretending. She stares at the black nothing of the shower wall and rinses off with the dial turned all the way to cold. She shivers, escapes the tub to find the light switch.
On and blinding, the towel finds her quick. She doesnt like to see her own body, she avoids it. Mirrors become a study in the wrongs of years reflected back 100X. All she sees are mistakes. She brushes her teeth while watching blood-pink bubbles wash down the drain, she cant watch her face. She doesnt take vitamins or any of that shit, and sometimes her gums bleed. She should take better care of herself, but she never had the practice or need to. She never thought that she was going to live all that long. If shed ever been suicidal, she hadnt meant to be. She hadnt thought she was, thered just never been anything to try for way back then.
Now there was. There was a little girl sleeping in a colorful bedroom down the hall. Cee wanted the girl to have a world that shed never wanted for herself. Maybe it was hypocritical or fucked up seeing as how she wasnt the girls biological mother or nothin, and maybe Cee didnt know what she was doing when it came down to it, but raising Zoe had felt more important than anything had ever felt in her whole lousy life. Shed loved the girls father when he was a alive, and hated him now that he was gone. Hated him for his selfishness, something that shed only been able to admit years later. Only a selfish man could take his own life when he had a child to raise.
Zoe had been nothing more than an infant back then, and Cee had been someone else too. Zoe learned to walk and talk uncer Cee's care, and… Cee, shed grown too. Her scars were a testament to that, a reminder of everything that she wanted to forget in a life left behind. The desecrated remains of bad religion forgotten.
Now she even got dressed with the lights off. She made her bed, clean sheets smooshed down, a knife under her pillow like good luck. It was an old steak knife with a wooden handle, she had bought an entire set from the Salvation Army. Like everything else in this home, it was used. Everything was bought cheap or recycled from churches, but that was nice. She didn't want anything of herself here. All of the good things in this home had nothing to do with her. Just her little girl. Not even hers, not really. Stolen away. But she doesn't like to think about that.
Breakfast is waffles. Frozen pucks slid into a toaster all instant-like, and maybe it wasnt a good breakfast, but cooking was not anything that shed ever taken well too in learning. She drinks orange juice out of the carton and Zoe comes trudging into the kitchen with bleary eyes and a favorite shimmer nightgown covered in mermaids. The dog follows with his own version of a yawn. Zoe dumps some kibble in his food bowl with a plastic cup. The waffles pop up from the toaster.
Its domestic and strange. Terrifying sometimes, but then she thinks that shes lived through worse.
"Syrup?"
Zoe shakes her head, looking up with a grin, "Peanut butter!"
So peanut butter it is.