shiva.

[killjoyed]

"raj, make sure yah send it by monday."

"sure, got it."

"and don't tell my mom, or anyone else, okay?"

"my little mouse, your secret is safe with me."

[killjoyed]

"a piranha?!" shep screeched, dropping the cigarette he was toying with before dipping fingers down to pluck it up, sticking it filter end into his mouth.

"yeah isn't he fuckin' cool?" desertlong lashes dipped low over muddied browns as she leaned towards the fish tank to watch her new pet eat, poking a jagged fingernail at the glass. "awww yer so cuuuute," cooing openly towards the thing like it could hear her, or care.

"cute? are you crazy?" shep dipped his head forward, redrimmed eyes staring at the piranha from his seat on shiva's bed, raising a delayed fist to spark the lucky strike with the lighter he clutched. "yah know how much fucking money they could fine you for that, and the goddamned rattlesnake?"

"no, who gives a shit? they'll just deport me," the girl grinned gleefully before dropping down next to her cousin who was wearing the same shit the last time she saw him, dirt-kneed blue jeans and a black twill jacket, zipped up to cover whatever socially embarrassing t-shirt he had managed to steal last. "and no one's gonna come raid our fuckin' place."

"yeah, sure," he rocked uneasily for a moment, bringing a finger to his mouth to tear at a patch of dead skin with his teeth. "where the fuck'd you get that thing from? raja?"

"yep." she smirked and clawed to the floor for her own smokes, finding them in the light blue pocket of her work jacket. "overnighted it to me from the amazons."

"the fuck is ol' raj doin' in the fuckin' amazons?" shep muttered around his cigarette, frowning at his cousin.

"getting malaria, i dunno." birdwing shoulders jerked in a sharp shrug, a yawn tearing her face apart before she went to light her cigarette. "c'mon, i got the day off, wanna go do something?"

"fuck yeah, where do you wanna go?" he grinned as he reached up and shoved shoulderlength hair from the sides of his face, a gnarled mass by the hairline looking like the start of dreadlocks.

"who gives a shit, roll us a joint and we'll be on our way."

"fuckin' right, that's what i like to hear."

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ February 01, 2007 08:37 PM: Message edited by: killjoyed ]</font>

[killjoyed]

"don't yah think.." she murmured carefully in the darkness, lips brushing against skin that trembled weakly every single time they clashed. "..that everything will be okay, that we'll be okay?"

and between the pumping of faint heartbeats came blood through the veins, watered-down with chemicals and hollowing out the screams of a million failures, the ceiling of the room dropping down around her head, a static fuzz of blackbox television the only fucked noise as she held her filthy tongue.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ February 20, 2007 02:04 AM: Message edited by: killjoyed ]</font>

[killjoyed]

in the delicate days of childhood shiva couldn't find the right words to form in her mouth unless they were growled and barked like the pack of village dogs she ran with day after day, picking fleas and ticks from mottled fur and laughing her games with them until the sun switched places with the sad shining moon.

her mother remained hunched over a dirt floor, sweeping with a broom that bled it's bristles in a pattern that left trails of struggle and the unending despair. when her one and only girl came home from the prowl, mud caking hair so beautiful and black it was as if the gods themselves had spun it from the deepest roots of the earth, vrushali would grab the edge of her salwar kameez and wave it hotly about her legs to try and leech the anxiety and madness from her skin. she screamed in a language shiva still couldn't understand, refused to when the only time it was expelled towards her was when she had done something wrong. the skinny halfbreed would open her mouth and yap, show rows of teeth smeared with foraged banana in the best sign of defiance she knew, and then a pair of calloused brown hands were shooting for her spindly kicking limbs, grabbing and pulling among a chattering of hindu nonsense each tingling bone in her body rejected.

<center>-----------------------</center>


nearly ten years later and wholly americanized by a business-driven father and white-skinned uncles and aunts, shiva was slumping her shoulders in the miserable overhead fluorescents of a k-mart department store, reluctantly trailing her mother who stuck out like a sore thumb with her covered head and shuffling elderly walk, the way her wrinkled lips flapped even though nothing would come out of her mouth. vrushali roamed her palms over fabric encased with plastic on racks that weren't accompanied by the vendors of the trade, fingers pressing as she searched for an opening.

"ma, don't." the girl still had nails filled with dirt and unwashed hair, except it was blasphemised a clown color blue with thick black roots showing from the scalp. piercings dotted her face in places vrushali insisted they weren't supposed to be, chiding her for not being satisfied with the one in her nose done by the healing man in the village she was birthed in. "jus' leave it, i don't wanna go shopping anyhow, i hate this place." glazed eyes peeled sideways from the slant of the overhead lights, fingers stretching like thin knobby sticks to her eyes, rubbing hard.

"kya yeh galat'hai?" the watering aging eyes of the deviant's mother turned on her, flooded with sadness at what her daughter had become in this place, how she had no respect for herself or her elders.

"maj, please," shiva pleaded quietly, flinching quiet as a cartfull of wild kids and their mother bustled behind her in the aisle. "...use your english, i can understand, even if it isn't so good."

"i must be done wrongful.. thing, here." the words were throatier than how shiva's father said them, or the girls at school and their mothers that came to pick them up when the bluehaired was busy slipping bumps of coke into her nose, behind the gym and in an old bathroom, all inbetween selling lines to the cheerleaders.

"no no, you're not doin' anything wrong." shiva went from the king-sized blanket her mother had her hand on, knowing that it would fit on the woman's bed if it was folded three times. "do yah like that..? i'll buy it for yah, i have some cash.."

"oh! shiva, no." vrushali was horrified, snapping her hand from the blanket like a snake had bit at her fingertips.

"listen, just 'cause it's my birthday doesn't mean that yah have to spend money on me and buy me things, 'specially when yah can't afford it." the strain in the back of her brain bled down to the base of her spine, tugging at the start of a headache. shiva reached with both hands and took the blanket, plastic crinkling as she pressed it to her chest. "fifteen isn't even anything special, nothing happens. c'mon, let's go and yah can.." she hesitated, watching her mother who stood there hunched like a sculptor's honest rendition of age and poverty, stepping forward to slip an arm through to vrushali's, juggling the party favor in the other. "..yah can make me somethin' good to eat for my birthday. curry, and stuffed zucchini? i would love it."

the woman smiled and moved her jaw like a cow chewing it's cud, roaming her eyes from her daughter's face down to the sweet junction where the skin of their arms met and how their hands had disappeared somewhere in the multiple folds of mildly colorful dress. she murmured praises in an ancient language forgotten by more than just her daughter, something different than hindu but lay it's inking lines as a permanent blessing above shiva's jutting hip bones.

ten hours from checking out at a register serviced by pimply hormone-ridden teenage boys and sucking dollar soda from a straw, shiva and vrushali would be flying high across land and sea, back in time to the small rough village she spent her first few years in. she would skip back and forth from america to pakistan, america to india, america to afghanistan, and wherever else her cousins took turns taking care of the ailing woman.

and all the while the gutter princess would hum out her own song, a constant beat in her mind as she tried to read the future in a blanket of clouds thousands feet in the air, the computer screens of her father's workdesk, but most of all, in her own orphan brown eyes in the mirror.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ March 01, 2007 08:34 PM: Message edited by: killjoyed ]</font>

[killjoyed]

she could dig with both hands
but only throw enough filth behind
to barely keep afloat.

[killjoyed]

when the phone rang, shiva grabbed her pants at the waist and flinched, heels clapping together as she hunched forward from the toilet. a hand scrambled out the cave of the bathroom, the door already opened. knees straining to keep a featherlight frame balanced, she grunted forward and snatched at the cordless phone laying chirping on it's back, spinning like a fucked turtle a couple times before grimy fingers snatched it up.

"'lo?" she barked into the receiver mid-breath as she sat her ass back onto the unwashed porcelain rim, skeleton-bone fingers twirling a broken beltloop that hovered above one of two leather belts normally criss-crossed at the waist, both studded with rusty pyramid spikes.

"shiiiiiiiiivaaaaaah!" someone screamed in her ear, his joyous voice spiked with meth-chatter frenzy.

"shep? man i'm taking a shit!"

"oh shut the fuck up, gross! california's awesome! i met this girl, she's like --"

"fourteen?" she interjected with a shout, a hasty giggle jumping from her lips as the downstairs neighbor hit something loud at the ceiling below her. "i mean, is she legal for once?" she tilted her head to cradle the phone at the junction of shoulder and sharpboned jawline, fishing out a pack of pall malls from the crumpled mass of blue jean laying down by her ankles and lighting one up, deep grey plumes floating around peeling institutional white paint.

"no no no, she's legal. i asked before we did it, this time."

in the background there was a girl's tittering laughter, and shiva grinned into the phone, sucking in a drag. "oh, is that the princess? or just some crack whore yah remember from living in venice?"

"oh you don't even know, shiv."

she imagined his dopeheavy grin smeared across his face, sweaty waves of black hair stringing into his eyes. that girl probably thought it was cute, endearing how she could sweep it out of the way if she wanted to. "well either way, how're things? did yah see jesse?"

"yep, today. he uh, seems to be doing okay. he's in a halfway house now down by sixteenth street. he lives with a bunch of fuckin' weirdos, like this dude seth who eats his own toothpaste and got busted for stupid shit like chugging mouthwash."

shiva's snickers tumbled one after the other, inbetween words, her socked feet shifting over the bathroom tile, bone slipping evenly under sandswept skin, like junglecat limbs. "does he have a favorite brand? why don't they just tell him to use nyquil? oh shit, do they like, shake him down for medicines now?"

"i dunno man, but it's some crazy shit. hey, what the fuck was that sound, was that a turd!? listen, i'm gonna go, i gave this dude a couple hits of some shit if he let me use his phone, but it's my turn now."

"'kay, sure." shiva laughed out, smirking as she leaned against the radiator acting as a bookshelf for half-damp porno mags, newly self-trimmed tresses of firelicked black swaying over sharp shoulders.

"take it easy! give a fuckin' bonghit to pipebomb for me, he loves that shit! later!"

without bothering to say bye the dial tone sang it out for her, and the goddess straightened her spine up, grabbing for the toilet paper with both hands after setting the phone on top of a playboy and clamping the cigarette between her teeth. whistling through a mask of smoke that stung her eyes, she did her front-to-back and yanked her pants up, still unzipped as she hopped on one foot and used a dirty socked toe to flush. skipping the sink on the way out, she flashed a hand up to her mouth, fingers scissoring the cigarette from her mouth.

"pipebomb," hoarse lungs pushed out the breath from somewhere that was still halfway sweet, evident in the sing-song and calling to that nasty huge tiger cat. "..shep wants yah to show me where his weeeeed is..."

<font color="#000000"><font size="1">[ March 27, 2007 12:34 PM: Message edited by: killjoyed ]</font></font>

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ March 27, 2007 12:36 PM: Message edited by: killjoyed ]</font>

[killjoyed]

the sun would come screaming at 6 am
when she felt with numbed hands
struggling for green and black
teeth chattering down to dust

one more time,
she would beg
just one more time.

[killjoyed]

"where? just tell me raja, where's it gonna be?"

"ah.. ah. i --"

"fuckin' don't fuck around with me, raj! fuckin' tell me! i swear to god i'll fuckin' come after your children and rip out their goddamned windpipes if you don't fuckin' tell me where it is."

"..the post office, on eighth."

"oh, thank fuck. i'm glad i got fired."

[killjoyed]

with all the nails on her fingers bit down to jagged rough points and a wear of tired lines splitting from the corners of her eyes shiva arrived back in the states, trying hard to pump the smell of jet fuel and stale cabin air from her nose with chugs of pepsi from a plastic bottle. the bustle of the airport was a rude culture shock in comparison to the small village she had travelled from eighteen hours ago, the goddess slapping sunglasses down on her face in an attempt to soothe the resounding thump of a nervous heart. with laces slapping the slick floor she skipped down the stairs and out through the double doors, greeted by a summer's muckheat and the frowning face of her cousin's friend.

"fuck, shiva!"

"jesus christ nicky, nice to see yah too." she scowled behind the protection of bugeyed lenses, twirling a finger at a lock of washed-out red hair turned pale pink. "where's shep?"

"he's at work," nick said before uncrossing his arms from a birdframe chest, hanging limp at his sides. he stood there, staring at the disheveled rat in front of him, trying to remember the spark of sneering life he used to chase madly. "so i came to pick you up."

"sure. let's go," came the weary words, fingers nosing underneath the shoulder straps of a battered beige backpack as she started down the sidewalk, touslehaired nick falling into place next to her.

"shiv, what the fuck's going on, man? did you see the fucking news on that bombing, what happened?" he bit at his lip, shoved his hands into his pockets, and cut all eye contact, just watched his toes lead the way. "dude, were you involved in any of that?"

shiva set her lips to a line and stayed quiet, but her head rolled it's own private show of the footage: crumbling brick, rabid reporters, the pictures of suspects with inky black hair and endlessly deep eyes, but there was no raja there, just unknowns to her.

"yeah listen nicky, i dunno what the fuck all that was about. i wasn't fucking.." she sighed and wiped a hand across her forehead, flicking sweat to the side. "..do yah, do yah have a cig mebbe?"

"yeah sure." he handed her a pack of lucky strikes and she reached quick for them, tapping one out into her mouth before the boy handed over a lighter.

"okay, i wasn't fucking involved, alright? sure, i sort've, uhm, knew about something that was going to happen but christ man, i didn't know that crazy motherfucker was gonna do it when there were people there, fucking people, fuck." she got the smoke through to her lungs in desperate breaths, teeth grinding heavily at the filterless end, bits of tobacco stinging the tip of her tongue.

"who told you 'bout it?" he asked as he took the cigarettes back, lighting one up for himself as he took the first good look at shiva, cutting away quick with a worrier's frown.

"man nicky, i'm not gonna say any names.." she glanced piteously to him, canting her head. "yah know who fuckin' told me. who the fuck else would tell me, huh? who the fuck do i even talk to?"

"alright, whatever." mumbling, wounded, nick glanced away and off into the glittering paradise of parked cars, leading the way with a weave through the valet line of high end vehicles towards where everyone else had to go. "i just wanted to make sure, you know?"

"yeah i fuckin' know. don't you fuckin' say a fuckin' thing either. not when you're fuckin' drunk trying to impress some chick with your vast wordly knowledge," she hissed. "..or when you're stoned outta your mind and think it'd be funny to fuckin' bring it up again, alright?"

"nah, nuh uh, i won't, i swear." he turned big eyes onto her as he shook his head, taking a suck of his cigarette before coming to his beatdown two-door toyota, fussing with keys before unlocking the door. "hey, let's stop talking about it then, okay? you uh, want anything on the way home? eat or drink, anything?"

"no, fuck. i'm not hungry." she sighed, ignoring the queasy roiling of her stomach, trying to stuff down the sudden nausea with a steady nicotine flush. "but can we stop by the store and get a bottle of fuckin' hair dye? this shit is driving me crazy.." she grabbed at her unbrushed mess as she opened the door and slipped in, carelessly tossing her backpack into the mountain of trash behind, bringing the door closed before pumping down the window.

"sure thing." nicky fired the ignition and the toyota started with a puttering gasp, throwing it into reverse as he backed out of the space.

"christ, some whiskey too." she murmured around smoke, resting the side of her head between the headrest and frame of the door, staring half-lidded at a departing place. "i got so fuckin' sick of drinking tea and goat's milk."

"sick, no shit."

but his words were lost to her, for here was the familiar ache in her temples and chest, ragged featherwings flapping, the fear of wondering whether or not her withering corpseboy would still be there, still be alive, or worse yet, would have forgotten.

all she had to do was remember where to look, and perhaps a little bleak hope wouldn't hurt, either.

[killjoyed]

as the flame grew sparking against a glass bowl she remembered how beautiful everything could be, how wonderfully fluid this chemical was as it slid from side to side with the coax of her fingertips until it vaporized into the doublebarrel of her lungs. this was the easy way to forget, to mask whatever was plying deep inside, riddled with sharpened fingernails at her heart and brain and soul, laughing soundly at her deprecating demise.

shiva was thankful she had locks on her doors to remind her room mates that they weren't wanted.

when she wanted to forget him she would shove the tears back inside herself with such things, because she would need the condensation, the hydration to survive. when he wanted as badly as hers for the forgiving touch of hands and the loving stroke of skin, she reciprocated with the equivalent, finding wild-eyed boys on skateboards and sullen-spoken lads who just didn't know any better, who thought that she truly loved them.

when all that was true in this world was lies,
and all that remained hopeful was nothing,
she found her peace in other's pain.

and afterwards she would sleep,
enough to make rip van winkle envious.