sidenote, i'm sorry if i'm offending any latinx folk out there. elle is not an angelic character. also my spanish is not that great and i'm sure i've messed up already lol
SOTC: Beggin For Thread — Banks
• My words can come out as a pistol / But I'm no good at aimin' / But I can aim it at you •
April still hadn't come back, and Carl wasn't sure if he should take this chance.
A letter opener, green-handled. In a pickle? Call Dill! printed in thin white type along the side.
It was stowed at the back of the dresser drawer, buried underneath a stack of Batman boxers and underwear. Hidden by someone. By whom—Carl was curious, but not curious enough to ask.
Carl pressed the flat of the blade against his forehead, thinking. He could make a run for it. This could be his ticket out of here.
His ticket out of here. He needed to get out of here. There seemed to be fingers under his skin, itching for him to get out in the open, out into where bullets couldn't travel far enough.
He instead slipped the letter opener into the lining of his mattress. The front, against the headboard, where he could reach in and retrieve it.
A fucking letter opener. Not like it was going to make a difference, but if there was something Carl could hold on to, it was this. Something that proved he had a chance, however small.
He had a chance.
♛ ♛ ♛ ♛ ♛
"I've been sitting here for twenty damn minutes waiting for your slow ass."
Elle sat on the air hockey table, chowing down on a sandwich that leaked chicken salad onto the floor. April let a thin smile onto her face. "I didn't want to interrupt the passionate make-out session with your lunch."
Elle pressed a hand to her chest in mock hurt. "Sharp words, chica."
Ever since April and her father made their home at the Sanctuary, Elle had been her best friend. Her parents, a Cuban mother and American father, both worked at the World Trade Center. In one nightmarish day, Elle had been rendered an orphan. She'd been bouncing around foster homes for years before the outbreak had even shadowed.
Especially towards the beginning, Elle would ask her the same question over and over again: "Is it wrong for me to be glad everything happened?"
It wasn't wrong, it was having a shitty childhood.
Elle was nineteen. She had knotty cobalt-blue hair, and a scrawny frame. Her arms thin and bird-boned, her wrists popping out like hinges. Almost like her skin had only her skeleton at which to cling.
She shifted off the air hockey table, chicken salad spilling from her sandwich. "C'mon, let's play a match, then you can spill the juicy details."
April still had her own sandwich in her hands. She set it on the ledge, and pulled a mallet from her side of the table. "Fire away, you little shit."
Elle set down a puck. "Who the fuck was that kid? He's hot. And angry."
"Yeah," April mused. "He's both of those things."
She hit the puck into the goal, punching the air in triumph. "Fuck yeah!"
Her words rang out into strange silence. Elle brought her knuckles to her lips in thought. "Hun, I want to ask you something."
April's brows came together. She swept a bit of loose hair out of her face. "Ask away, I guess."
The room was too quiet. Elle swallowed. "Is he going to be like Oliver?"
The question send a pulse of surprise through April. She cast her eyes downward, gnawing on the inside of her cheek in thought. She took a bite of her sandwich to prolong the moment, and she needed to be doing something instead of just thinking.
"I, uh..." she felt a blush rush into her forehead. No, stop thinking. Don't—
"You okay th—"
"—Yes!" She said quickly, snapping out of her stupor. "Sorry... uh... sorry. I hope he's not going to turn out like Oliver."
"Are you going to—"
"—Probably. But not anytime soon." Just thinking about that made April involuntarily sick to her stomach, but it held her image, and her image was what mattered.
"Take it slow, you got a while to figure everything out." A little bit of puzzlement leaked through Elle's smile. Sometimes April was terrified that Elle saw right through it, sometimes she felt shitty because she didn't. But in the end, they were two friends, feeling their ways through this world.
Elle always had some kind of crude excitement to her demeanor. Yet, whenever the two of them were together, she let her disguise slide a little. There was some kind of sadness that she didn't want to show, caught under her skin like a parasite. But their two images blurred each other out. Their masks glued to their faces and their guns to their fingertips.
April wished she couldn't see through her own disguise. It would be so relieving to peel it off. But even closing her eyes, slacking her fists, dropping her gun, it made her feel so powerless.
So she kept her eyes open instead.
Elle and April stood in silence around the air hockey table. Its thin whirr passed into April's ears. Her hands were sweaty, with the top of the mallet growing slick as she gripped it. She released it, letting herself swallow and breathe, her collarbone rising and falling.
Elle would normally be asking what was wrong. Why she was so frozen up. There were some days when April felt confident enough to let herself be this way, all shaken up and unshielded. But this was less a choice than she cared to admit. It was her insides pooling out of her and her skin thinning.
April never let herself grow out of control. So why was today so different?
She let her gaze flick up to Elle's. Did she just see through everything? April relied on her image, and if it was crumbling—
She wanted to go back upstairs, but Carl was there, and there was no place where she could be alone and to herself anymore. Why had she done this again? When she did it with Oliver, it felt different. Less wrong, much easier to become the demon she needed to be.
Why was everything happening all at once? She never had thoughts like this, all piled and swirled together like Play-Doh spaghetti.
April set down her mallet. "I'm going upstairs. It's been a long day."
Elle broke out of her gaze, eyes cast to her hands. Maybe she'd been thinking about similar things. "Understand. But once you eat that boy's asshole, I want all the details."
April laughed sickly. Can you laugh sickly? "Seeya, Elle."
She picked up her sandwich and took a bite out of it, and began to walk away. As quickly as she could without raising suspicion, but she needed to get out of here.
"Hey, dumbass?"
April turned to see Elle, face locked in a thick sort of wall. She could see the gears swiveling together in Elle's head as she formulated the words she'd needed to say for years now.
"Come talk to me, if you feel it."
If you feel it.
April nodded, mind caught in confusion. Feel what? What was she talking about?
"Thanks," she said unsurely, then left the room.
Was it weird that the walls felt thicker? A headache was rising into her brain. If you feel it. Feel what?
She shook her head. These thoughts were for another day. For right now, she needed to chin up and squeeze some triggers. She needed to check on Carl. Distract herself out of her mind, because that's what she'd done for years now, and she wasn't about to stop anytime soon.
If you feel it.
Jokes on Elle. She felt nothing.
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any hispanic or otherwise spanish-speaking people out there? have i offended you yet?
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Word count: 1359
Created 3-5-17
Edited 4-10-17
Edited 4-23-17
Edited 6-28-17
Edited 8-17-17