Kyra & Ariel // Filth `n Grime
Ariel had an odd habit of picking at his skin. Sometimes he would pick at his cuticles until his fingertips were left raw. He has picked at scabs until they ooze with fresh blood. There’s something satisfying in the way in which the skin peels from his body that he finds fascinating and usually it doesn’t hurt much. He does this because he wants to see how long it will take until he stops bleeding or how long it takes until a fresh scab will reappear. Once healed, he pulls the hardened skin, leaving tender newborn flesh exposed to the elements. Sometimes he just likes the feeling of hot blood dripping down his limbs. He watches it and will draw a fingertip through it. If he could paint on the walls with his blood and not get into trouble, he would do that too. There are instances when he’d be bleeding from more than one place at a time, never bothering to cover them with bandages or seek medical care. His arms and legs are littered with tiny scars from the places he’s picked at and it’s a wonder he hasn’t gotten an infection yet.
The night prior, he sat on his bed for a good span of time meticulously going over each of his fingertips, one by one. Armed with a pair of tweezers and nail clippers, he would pinch and pull the skin back from his nail and cut it off, depositing it in a pile on the bedside table. Once he was done with a finger, he’d go back with the tweezers and pluck any bits of stray skin he had missed with the clippers. He’d cut his nails so often and so short that there was barely anything left on his fingertips. The skin would pull away from the nail bed causing a jolt of pain anytime Ariel would touch something or bump his fingertips against a surface or even use his nail to scrape at a new scab.
It was the hot soapy water that drew his attention back to his raw fingertips. The moment he submerged them, the sting caused him to hiss under his breath and withdraw them quickly from the sink. Today he was on dish-washing duty but he was completely oblivious to the task at hand. His eyes crossed as he examined his fingertips, the appendage so close to his face as he looked them over. One by one, he double checked to make sure there was nothing yet to be removed of his cuticles. Mrs. Weiss had given him such grief about it but never took her son’s obsession seriously enough to seek help. At the very least, she could have taken him to get a proper manicure. Then maybe he wouldn’t have been so tempted to take things into his own hands. Literally. As it was, Ariel’s mother never gave much thought to what she did or how she was affecting him with the way she treated him.
He sighed, hands dropping to his sides as he finally comes to. Standing in the kitchen, he glances down at the sink before him and through the froth of bubbles, he sees his reflection staring back at him through the dingy water. He blinks, so does his reflection, and so they stare at each other.
@kyrazabala
It seemed an oddly right (yet to her, incredibly unfair) cosmic joke that Kyra had been put on dishwashing duty for the week. If the Colony had records, or at least eyes, they would have seen over the past few weeks she’d put herself into some less than non-violent situations. Not to others - mostly to herself. The tree, the fall on the track, even the backhand at Catch 22 contributed to the fresh or scabbing wounds littering the fronts and backs of her hands. Maybe, if she were nicer, the Colony would care more about her and would think to place her somewhere else. Or it was random, and karma fixed its eye on her to try to teach her a lesson. Well, fuck the Colony, and fuck karma too. Kyra wouldn’t bend to their will. She would do her job, but she wouldn’t change her tune. If the world was going to give her shit, she would throw it right back at them.
And she would find a way to turn misfortune on its head and make it her bitch. Kyra scanned the kitchen, looking for someone who could be malleable, who couldn’t stand under her pokes and prods. It wasn’t an easy thing to find at the Colony - resentfully she admitted that most survivors had quite the strength of integrity within them. They pushed back when she shoved. She needed a saloon-doored person - someone she could push against and split in two to give way to her.
Kyra padded her way down the row of dishwashers, studying them carefully. She made it look like she was going to the end of the row to fill the spot at the end so the guards wouldn’t call her out for slacking off. In the middle, she found him. And god, was he a gruesome thing. Ears that stuck out comically to the side, beady blue eyes - and his hands. If she thought hers were bad. They appeared more like mangled bits of meat than useful appendages. Her stomach gave an unsettling twist before settling into that curious, aching hunger she developed back in the Wastelands. Those cuts could lead further, and further, past muscle until they hit bone. It would have been so easy to jam her finger into one of the open cuts and split it open. That is, under completely different circumstances. She grimaced unhappily, then shoved herself between him and the other dishwasher to the right of him.
A quick emotional scan confirmed some of her assumptions - he was zoned out, perhaps a little slow or deficient. She caught him staring dumbly at his reflection in the water and rolled her eyes at the stupidity of it all. Then she snatched a dirty plate from the pile and dropped it into the soapy water, disrupting and distorting his vision of himself. She turned to him then, and noted their were near the same height. That would come in handy, though she knew how to lord over people even if they were feet taller than she.
“They’re gonna dock points from you if you keep staring down there like a loony,” she said, trying to gauge if playing the wiser would endear this halfwit to do whatever she wanted. Kyra couldn’t give less of a shit about points, though she could admit she did like winning, and she did enjoy that her house was dominating in that sphere. They most likely weren’t too happy about those forty-five points she lost in interaction with one of the slimier therapists, but she didn’t much care if they liked her or not. She wasn’t here to make friends. She wasn’t here for anything, really. That was what made Colony 22 a hellhole. At least, in prison, she knew she was there for a reason. She understood it was to ‘pay for the sins she committed’. But here? What was she paying for? What kind of survival was this if she lived like half of herself?
