An Unexploded Shell Inside a Cell [Open]

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

She thought her life would be different by now, but she's a prisoner again. Voluntary, she guesses, which makes it a little bit different than the first time. At least she can blink on her own this time. Not that she's using her body to do much good.

Ironically, she almost always looked better when she was a more total prisoner. Without her makeup and hair clips and changes of clothes to arrange herself into some approximation of health, without even a mirror to confirm her suspicions, she looks a wreck. Dark circles line her reddened eyes; her hair is unbrushed and falls in tangled clumps over her face; chapped, bloodied lips and fingernails bitten down to the flesh speak to her uneasy transition back into captivity.

Eva's given up all attempts to look 'okay'. She ripped a man's face open with her bare fingers. She's been a long road away from 'okay' for a while now, but she spent too long mistaking her anger and stubbornness for strength and resilience to recognize it. She's wised up now.

She really wants a drink right now. Instead she has some books - selected poems by Pablo Neruda and an anthology of poetry by women poets in the Andes - and a pillow and blanket. She's curled up on the cot with the former book in her hand, but drifting in and out of sleep. Her breath comes lazy and heavy as she alternately reads, dreams, and watches the door to the brig with heavy-lidded eyes, looking for nothing.

Comments

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Yes, but I'm a much better salesperson than Visser Three. He's like one of those informercial types - all yelling and repetition and very little substance." She clears her throat and does her best Billy Mays-esque impression. "And if you submit to Yeerk infestation in the next twenty minutes, you get one free decapitation with your next purchase!"

She forgot all about the time he lost. Looking at him now, the subtle shifts in body language, the worry written indelibly on his face, she's amazed that she was so oblivious. How could she be so blind to her own son? How can he be so blind to her?

In a way, it suddenly strikes her how much Peter helped keep them together after the war. For all his weaknesses and pettiness, he kept her grounded. And her grounded was much better than her jailed.

"I'll give you an early notice whenever I'm about to hold an extra-long book club session."

[livestoannoy]

"Ah, so Visser Three is the ShamWow guy. Except he gives you the decaptitations for free anyway, even if you don't sign up," Marco said, shifting again. They were all saying the right words, doing what they usually did and covering up all the awkward with jokes and humour. And yet the air was still a little tense.

His mother had suddenly because a whole lot scarier, and he still didn't know how to deal with that.

"Mom, wild parties aren't probably wild if you know about it beforehand. You're meant to learn when you come home afterwards and find the place totally trashed."

[vissernone.livejournal.com]

"Well. He's about as loud as the ShamWow guy." She snorts a bit, having made one of the greatest understatements of the day. She'd almost made a joke about two free torture sessions with every purchase, but somehow it seems like the wrong time to make light of such things.

Even if she wants very badly to make light of such things.

"I thought I was supposed to come home right at the height of partying and you were supposed to stammer out that you don't know where all these people came from, and possibly they're robbing our house. With streamers and alcohol."