Scramble Cage

I am out of order. I am out of order. This is where we belong, remember? Caught inside this space, so confined, so enclosed. Locked inside, trapped inside. Hidden. Isolated. From each other? No, no. From the rest of the world. It's alright like this, isn't it? Trapped inside this prison cell? The bars are made of ivory, and the purity, and the whiteness of it is blinding. And so we stay, curled up, intertwined and crippled in our togetherness. Ivory bars digging into us, holding us immobile.

There is a pulse. A dull, rhythmic pounding inside our cell. A sound to count the time that passes by. A dull, rhythmic pounding to be our background music. The only sound aside from our breathing. The only sound.

Did we create the pulse, or was it always there, surrounding us? Did we create it, or did it create us? Pulling us out of itself, discovering new life from ivory bone and placing us here, safe and hidden from the world. Unfound and undisturbed for eternity. Unfound.




Your face looks sick with fatigue. Eyes that should be filled with light, dulling. And I try to reach out, to put the light back in, how can I put the light back in? And you stop me. Grab my wrist with your fingers, and feel the bruises shift from your skin to mine. Your hand moves over mine, and I can feel the roughness of the damaged skin. Feel the burn wriggle from your grasp and map onto me. Feel the fire that chewed at you begin to lick at me. Feel you. Feel us turning into each other.

How can I fix you? Twist the corners of your mouth into a smile, slash open the curtains and let the light spill onto your face. And you stop me. Say I don't have to do that. Any of that. There's nothing I have to do. I can just sit here, sit beside you, look at the plague that's eating away at you. Do nothing. There's nothing you want me to do. Except for one thing.

I have to stay here. Stay with you. The room we're in suddenly becomes a tomb, and I settle against you. Stay. Stay here. I can do that. Because with your fingers and your bruises digging so deeply into my flesh, how could I ever leave? Would you let me if I tried? Would you let go?

I stay motionless, and you pull at me. What? What is it? What can I do? You answer, nothing. You've done so much already. I've done so much. But it's not enough. It's never enough for you. I want to make it enough. I stretch out everything I do, try to fit it over you, try to make it enough. I am an elastic band. I tie one end around a mess of blood and bone, and give you the other. You take it, weave it through your fingers, and I feel the pull already. Feel you stretching me out, pulling me away from that mess of blood and bone. Pull so tightly, that it starts to bleed where I tied on. The bones start to break. Whichever end lets go first, I'll fly towards the other. Are you still pulling? I don't want to crash into that mess. I've lived inside that mess for so long, I don't want to crash again. I want to crash into you. The white of your knuckles press fiercely through your skin, and I can see my limits, looming in the distance. Can't take it. I can't take it. Don't let go. Don't let me go. Please don't let me go.

Because where would I go? Where do I have to go? With you holding me up, and the other half tying me down, I have no where to run. And I can't run, on my elastic legs. I can't even stand up without you. Without those things, tying me down.

I feel the snap, and for a moment, I can't breathe. I never could breathe, could I? But now the air is ripped out of my lungs by your bruised fingers. Stolen.

And then forced down my throat. Air is pressing into me with a ferocity I hadn't expected. But then, it's not moving at all. I'm moving through it, and I'm moving towards you. Can I crane my neck backwards in this state? Do I even want to? The strain is heavier than I am, but my eyes, blurring with the wind, catch sight of the mess of blood and bone that let me go.

The body, the shell, that I'm leaving behind. The shell that you've stolen. That you've torn out of me and cast aside. Suddenly you're a mountain, and you block out the mangled sight. Block out the sun, and in the flash of darkness, I don't care about the blood and bone anymore. I don't care how far I've stretched, and how far I've torn away from it. I only want to put the light back in your eyes.

Put the light back. Someone put the light back. Someone turn the lights back on.




Someone turn the lights back on, please. It's getting hard to see in here. You glance up, and look around the room. Comment on how it's still pretty bright. I know it's still pretty bright. I never said it was getting dark. I only said it was getting hard to see. I hold up the pages I've set before me. Explain how I can't see the shadows anymore. You make that noise. That noise of annoyance, mixed in with that terrible smile I always look up to see aimed at me. The light flashes on an instant later, and your face is cut away from my eyes. I wait for them to adjust, and you reappear. Every time you vanish, you always reappear as the darkness works it way in. It's something I've come to expect. Something I've come to depend on. Along with that noise, and that terrible smile.

I have time to skate my pencil over the thin film of paper a while longer before the light goes off again. I pause, hesitate, my pencil frozen, poised in the air, trapped in time, perpetually waiting to touch the paper again.

Instead, I drop it to the floor as you move behind me. Your fingers brush over my bones, cutting the rest of the world out. You're the pencil. You'll always be the pencil, until someone drops you. And I stay frozen, trapped in time, waiting to be the paper and feel you dig your graphite over me. Leave your impression on me, and everything below me even after the light goes off, and we can't see anymore.   




I wish you didn't have to be so bruised. I wish you could be made of iron. Metal, to match my robot heart. Iron fingers that weren't made up of softness and blood vessels. Tiny vessels to break and distort under the softness of your skin. Vessels to break and stain the softness with beautiful colours that aren't supposed to be beautiful. And I wish I wasn't made out of such hardness. Hardness to break those vessels when you make contact. When you move to pull me back, to push me down, to prove your strength and my weakness. I wish I didn't make your fingers bruise, as they ball into fists. Bruise, as they touch my exterior. Bruise, as you pull and push and prove yourself. The proof is written in bruises across your fingers, and across me. I don't care about my bruises. My robot heart doesn't beat the way your fingers do. My heart can't bruise like you can.
I wish you could turn to metal and I could turn to stone. I wish I didn't have to be soft and bruising, and you didn't have to paint them onto me with your broken hands. I wish things could be different. But all I want is for things to stay the same.
I spend my time wasting it on useless wishes. Where do wishes get me? Stay, you said. Stay here with me. So my wishes can't get me anywhere. Even in they could, I couldn't go. I couldn't leave. So why do I keep wishing? Why do I bother? In a world perfect for you, I wouldn't bother. And I wouldn't leave. But that's not something either of us have to waste wishes on. I wouldn't leave anyway.

You wrapped your arms around my purple stained body, held me close and bruised me closer. This is where we belong, you said. So there's no need for either of us to waste wishes on things being any different. No need for me to wish for wings to fly away, or legs that weren't elastic to run on, or strength in softness to stop damaging those hands. No need. Because even if I had those wings, I couldn't use them. Even if the rubber left my legs, I wouldn't fly. And you'd find a new way to inflict bruises on those hands if I was made out of feather rather than bone. And I couldn't leave anyway. Why would I ever want to leave? This is where we belong, remember?




The gentleness of your breath hits the back of my neck, and I have to push down the urge to shiver. We're so backwards, aren't we? Your gentleness hits, and I shiver under warmth. We're so backwards, and I'm out of order. I am out of order.
It all ends up on you. Everything that's wrong and backwards about me ends up on you. Not because I push it to you. Just because you take it all.

I tell you not to. It doesn't do any good. You can't listen. Not because you don't want to. Just because you can't. I understand. I just bite down and go along with it when you talk in codes. Sometimes I can crack them. Sometimes I just crack along the way. But it's okay. When you can't explain any further, I just accept what I've been given. It's better than nothing. It's when you don't answer that I have to bite down harder. When you brush it off, tell me to never mind. Say it doesn't matter, and change the subject.

But I still tell you not to take it all. All that wrongness and backwards living isn't good for you to keep inside you. You're not an ivory prison with a dull, rhythmic pounding to count the time. You can't hold it all in forever. You don't have white, bone bars capable of bending without cracking. And if your codes can be cracked like you can, you're going to break. To snap, and fade into darkness.

And we'll both wake up to the unforgiving glare of morning, your bruised fingers matching my bruised body. Your steely eyes matching my robot heart. We're so backwards, aren't we? So backwards and rhythmic and wrong.




Separation happens, just like it always does. I didn't mean for it to happen, and you're not the cause, so we do we blame for this solitude? Is there someone else out there? Some greater force with bigger, metal hands than we could ever possess? Hands that scoop us up and hold us in their metal palms. Hands that dig between us, and pry us apart. Like a sharpness that cuts into the ice. Chips it off the windshield, just so one lonely driver can see clearly, without the distraction of the frozen cover. But once the ice is chipped away, what will stop that unforgiving glare of morning? If those metal hands pry us apart, what will be left?

I know you're the driver. You've always been the driver. So just let me be the ice that creeps across your windshield, and don't let the sharpness cut into me. Don't let the light in.

But don't let it leave your eyes.

Suddenly we're cut in two, with life thrusting in between us. Suddenly there's this wall, and I'm placed on one side, with you on the other. Can you hear me pounding on the bricks? The unfriendly surface cutting into me, and suddenly I'm leaving traces of myself behind? Suddenly, and we're not right beside each other anymore?

I can't get to you. Something won't let me get to you. And I can't tell if you're leaving traces of yourself on these bricks between us like me, or walking away from our separation. Walking away from everything.

Wait, stop. I can't walk away on these elastic legs that you stretched past their limits. I can't see you, and I can't walk away. I wouldn't leave anyway. We fit together like this, right? No, no. Not on opposite sides of the wall like this.

Break it down. Can we tear it apart? Smashing metal fists into our isolation, will it fall? Make it fall. I'll cut through anything to get us back. Cut through walls, and ice, and paper, and flesh and bone. I'd cut through myself if they nailed me to a cross and those metal hands pushed you aside. Separate myself from the wrists, breaking away from that cross they've hung me on. I'll ignore the spray of blood that follows. I'll ignore the biting coldness of those metal hands, ignore everything as long as I get down from here, get back to you.

They can't hurt me. They can't. Everything wrong and backwards about me, you take on. You take it all. You can't take the pain they give me. You can't. It's not fair. If you take all my wrongness, all my backwards living, what will I be left with? I'll be empty. The shell, the mess of blood and bone that I left behind to fly to you. I'll be empty.

Fill me up. Fill me up with something else. Fill me up with the darkness that fills your eyes, fills the corners where light should be. Fill me up with blood and dust and dull, rhythmic pounding and wishes to waste my time. Cover me with a shroud to keep out the light that will resonate from the brightness of your gaze. Cover me with bruises like you always do.

And you always do.

This is where we belong, remember? Out of order. I am out of order.