Needlestuck On The Record

✗~✗~✗~✗~✗ Cassia Constantine ✗~✗~✗~✗~✗ Dissociative Identity Disorder | PTSD | Major Depressive ✗~✗~✗~✗~✗ Death Date: 21/10/13 ✗~✗~✗~✗~✗ † ☓ ‡ 'What is a ghost? A tragedy condemned to repeat itself time and again? An instant of pain, perhaps. Something...

[vexed-charlie]

Closer Than Sisters || Charlie & Cassia

[vexed-charlie]

  The thing where her heart was supposed to be, ached, and it almost let her feel human for one more second. Charlotte dropped her gaze, realizing the cruelness of her acts. She knew very well she was a lost cause, and yet she let herself and other care for, and know all she provoked was pain and sorrow. Taking a shaky breather she took in the new information….Not even her body, only a splatter of blood…that her existence reduced to. Her mouth felt dry like cotton when Cassia told her about the necklace, the last gift of Annika she ever received. Like a drop in her stomach, reality finally sunken in and low whisper, she whispered in horrified wonder.] So I’m really dead…

[needle-stuck]

Yes, Charlotte Davis — unbreakable, unshakeable, unkillable Charlotte Davis — was dead. It'd been a silly notion on Cassia's part, really. To think that her friend had attained some form of immortality during her time on this earth, throughout the cruelty she'd suffered while here. Charlie possessed a strength Cassia would never know, could never even begin to fathom. If anyone was meant to survive this world, it was Charlotte Davis. And yet here she stood, silent heart speaking of her death better than words ever could and there were no words Cassia herself could speak to try and argue against it. She was dead. They both were dead and all it was to this fucking asylum was just another soul collected to add to the mass of others. Huffing in another hitched breath — pointless, just like the rest of her — she cried, 'They think I killed you, you know? I'm in ISO because they think I killed you, but they can't find a body. Was .. was it Jack, Charlie? Please, please, tell me it wasn't Jack.'

[manyfacedwall]

[arthur-spiros]

The Before Side of Dead || Arthur & Cassia

[arthur-spiros]

He didn’t let her go and hugged her a little tighter when she didn’t too. The coldness of her skin pricked his own but it didn’t matter. He wanted her embrace and he wanted her to know that he just there, willing to listen and feel her.

When she started her story again, his hand subconsciously gripped the back of her shirt and his eyes closed. He was readying himself for what’s coming next. The world silence around him except for the sound of her pained voice as he listened and clung to each word coming out of her lips. When he felt the emotion creep inside him, it was barely as surprising as the first. It had no kick, didn’t make his heart skip a beat. The emotion was very much welcome to him. It was an emotion he had lived with his whole life. An emotion he directed to his mother, to his father, to everyone around him, and especially to himself. It was the reason why he was now nothing than a walking dead man. The emotion he just got from her clouded his thoughts, but not with hers, but with his own. Memories of the life he lived. A past he just wants to not exist.

He balled his fist and clenched his jaw as he let the emotion sink in and the memories just fade even for a while. At the mention of him, he took a shaky breath. He knew him. He met him just a few moments ago and instantly he knew that man is not worthy being a part of her life. He could already feel anger bubbling in him. “That bastard … “

[needle-stuck]

There was something welling in her, much more than the large tears in her own jade eyes, and if a sound could be placed to it it might've been something like a hurting, gritty cry. A scream that ripped through the whistling wind like mere paper, that scratched and clawed at her throat until it was torn raw and she could no longer utter another sound. Something to fill the space between them that wasn't her hushed confessions to the man she'd come to care so deeply for. But Cassia forever lost sight of herself and could never manage such an emotive upheaval. Though it would reveal the hurt inside of her own soul, the fact that that scream never came told even more.

At Arthur's snarled words, she felt her heart quicken to life at his understanding. Her heart was dead; cold and silent within her chest, but she could still feel and the emotions she was sensing from him planted a comfort in the ghost's dead heart. Enough of a comfort to continue and it would take all the strength she could draw from the well of Arthur's to carry on to this next trauma.

She took in a loud, unnecessary breath, fingers splayed against her companion's back and curling into the material of his shirt. He was warm, so warm; a warmth she'd been missing since everything went cold and with a quiver in her lip and voice, she went on. 

'Mom didn't even tell us she'd gotten a new boyfriend. School had just let out and Cassandra and I were headed towards the bus just like every other day.' The image of that day floated into her mind just then: As they'd pushed past the school's double doors, Cassandra had been fussing over a project in her AP Chemistry class, Cassia had been good-naturedly complaining that everything her sister was saying might as well have been in Greek for all that she understood of it. It was to be their last day before the storm and Cassia only wished she could remember the good bits of it better.

'My sister's nose was buried in her chemistry book so she didn't see it at first until I pointed it out. Right across the street from the school's steps was our mom - or at least some version of our mom, I mean her hair was short and blonde all of a sudden and she was wearing some dress that looked like something a year's salary couldn't afford - and she was leaning against this black Mercedes-Benz,' she explained, her mouth twisting into a wry expression as the memory grew more vivid still.

'Obviously my sister and I were really confused. I mean, this came out of absolutely nowhere. It was one of those moments like "Who the fuck are you and what have you done with our mom?" Ever seen that movie The Faculty? Something like that,' she rambled, as if her mind was physically stalling her from continuing on. 

'Anyway, we go up to her and ask her what the deal is. She just taps on the passenger window and from the driver's side out steps this tall, European, rich-looking asshole.' A very real, ugly shudder racks her frail bones at the memory of her first glimpse of him and instinctively she nuzzles her cheek against Arthur's chest, trying for a soothing motion. 'Cassandra and I tried to like him at first. Just 'cause Mom liked him and it was only fair we try to. Guess we didn't try hard enough. Wasn't even worth trying once we both caught a good look at him in the sober light of day.'

Cassia looked up at Arthur then, through her lashes and met his downward gaze. His eyes were still glimmering with unshed tears and her own were red-ringed with grief and this connection made her feel like she'd come to some haven. A haven where the levees could break, but the rush of emotions could surge like water and still not bring everything to ruin. Like she'd still be left standing on her own two feet with Arthur there to catch her should her knees fail her. And so she took the plunge.

'H-he .. didn't go after me first. I don't know what it was, maybe it was 'cause Cassandra was quieter, gentler. Fragile,' she bit the word out, fighting through the lump forming in her throat, a tremble coursing through her hands. 'I remember that night.' Burying her face in his chest, her voice was muffled as she muttered, 'God, I wish I could fucking forget it. I wish I could forget waking up to Cass cuddling up to my back, shaking with how much she was crying. She was shaking so much, Arthur.' At this, her tears broke anew and fell from her eyes, a heavy sorrow working its toxic way over to Arthur for him to experience.

'I don't know how much time passed before I got her to stop shaking, to stop crying enough to tell me what was wrong and when she told me what he'd done to her .. I just started shaking and crying too.'

[freshsounds]

Visit Original Link

[needle-stuck]

|| Full Circle ✖ Half Moon Run ||

We got lost in the travels in a spiritual book Missed the beaches from nirvana and the way that they look And the crooks they're on the island they're killin' to keep runnin' They're running severance on the plastic and it seems to be working Is that the best that I can do? As I watch as your head turns full circle You appear even tempered though your looks will deceive And the sparks are always flying 'cause you drink for relief With the heart of a child and the wit of a fool It's a wonder why I don't try to build a wall around you When I watch as your head turns full circle And I watch as your head turns full circle Yeah, I watch as your head turns full circle

[distractful]

Side Effects (2013)

[arthur-spiros]

The Before Side of Dead || Arthur & Cassia

[arthur-spiros]

  When everything finally stopped, Arthur simply stood there with his eyes still full of tears. He didn’t know what to make of that, how he should feel about that. He knew what that emotion was. He had felt it before too, and to the same man Cassia had felt it. He knew betrayal but not as strong as she did. Hers was a pure emotion and he was lucky he never felt that before. He just stared at her even as she spoke. And when he snapped out of the numbness of his mind, he did the first thing that came to his mind.

He took a quick step forward and wrapped her in a hug, a tight and wanting hug. It hurts, yes. It’s a bit too much for him, yes. But he wants to understand. He wants to know why she always felt this way. He doesn’t to see her hurting and crying and doesn’t even know why. He hugged her tightly as he silently sobbed, his tears wetting her shoulders. “Please … don’t give up on me now. I can do this.” he said, “Just … I want to understand.”

[needle-stuck]

This particular kind of sadness scraped her right down to the marrow of her bones. If she'd had a need for breath, it might've been stolen away by the hurt in Arthur's embrace. His arms wrapped around her like a simple gust of wind could carry him away and she clung back with equal desperation. How was it possible to feel light as air, yet heavy enough to tread on the ground? These were the constant — fixed, like a point in time — dichotomous emotions ebbing and flowing through a girl in the arms of one Arthur Spiros. And with one sentence composed of seven words, seven measly syllables, suddenly she felt the pull of a long-buried memory.

'Please don't give up on me now.'

She remembers a voice, low and lulling but with a weary trail, speaking those exact words to her. She remembers eyes like chips of jade — fading, always fading now — staring back at her, into her, pleading with her to not give up. Cassia had held her twin sister's hands in her own and had pressed a trembling kiss to her knuckles as she sobbed her goodbye. She'd turned away. She'd given up. She'd run. Could she run from Arthur now the way she had with Cassandra?

Her hands fisted themselves into the material of his shirt, pulling him closer to her in answer. No.

She wouldn't run again. The collapse of the first time had been enough to cripple her. This wouldn't balm the Cassandra-shaped wound inside of her, but it would be a step forward and a step made all the difference.

Nodding once, she kept herself tethered to Arthur as if they were each other's anchors and blinked back her tears before she spoke. 'Everything changed after he left,' she started, continuing on like she'd never stopped even when the break in her voice told otherwise. 'Not right away. I guess it took a little while to set in. I think we all just didn't want to believe it. Looking back now I could see it coming clear as fucking day, but back then? It just seemed like one day he woke up and decided he didn't want to be with us anymore. Mom .. she took it the hardest.'

Warily, incredibly so, she let the sadness of that memory seep into Arthur. She let it swim in his heart until it plunged the depths of him and then continued on with only a pause. 'She really loved him, you know? She really did. I thought I already knew how much, but it wasn't until he left that I found out.' Almost absentmindedly, she traced abstract figures into the hollow of Arthur's back as she recounted her story, like she needed the soothing gesture to keep them firmly rooted.

'We had this sitting room window that overlooked the walkway up to the house. One of those where you could see whoever was coming up to the door,' she explained needlessly, the image of those wooden slats and forest green walls floating into her mind. 'When he left, Mom would just .. sit there and wait. Wait. Wait to see my dad coming up the walkway to greet her at the door. He never came. She never saw him and all Cassandra and I saw was her back to us as she fucking waited.' 

And there, nestled in the words she just spat, was another emotion for Arthur to latch onto. Resentment. Resentment for the twins' mother and her emotional abandonment of her own children. Cassia and Cassandra had tried to pull her back from the pit she'd been sinking into, but their mother refused their attentions. Thus a chasm was formed between the girls and their mother, one that had proved impossible to cross.

She took a moment to let the resentment settle into something more focused, more controlled, before she went on. 'To this day, I don't know what happened. What made her leave that damn window and go back out into the world. Believe me, I asked, but she wasn't good with answers. Not anymore. Not for my sister and I. And I was stupid enough to think that maybe things might be getting better. Yeah, she still wasn't really acting like our mom anymore, but we figured that she just needed time. She just needed time to find us, to find herself again.'

Cassia went quiet and still for a long beat, fighting to keep the tears and seething feelings at bay as she bit out, 'But instead, she found him.'

[kiradelaney]

  "You’re a ghost" Kira said looking at her, "I really don’t theres more people who cares.. I never heard of the story"

[needle-stuck]

'You're a ghost.'

Something in the way the girl had said it made it seem like she was throwing the word at her, accusing her of something. Like that was all there was to her. Something that could be dismissed just as easily. Hurt and indignation colouring the normally sweet and staid girl's voice, she argued, 'I ain't a ghost! I'mma person, jus' like the rest'a ya.' 

[needle-stuck]

Said The Spider || Arthur & Jack

This awakening started with a stretch, like a body pulled from a deep sleep and slipping into routine. There's dust. The dust fell in two simple strata, catching in those crevasses that Cassia believed forgotten. The first layer is thin, grey, bleak - the product of old skin and time - and the second is the stark white ash of her grief. Jack scatters it with ease. There's rust. A towering ruin of herself, Cassia's iron will was lashed by torrential water and corroded by air. Jack eats right through it like white vinegar. There are cobwebs. Accumulating in untouched parts of herself, spun intricately unseen. Jack leaves those be. She's the spider sewing them. 

And a spider always knows when a fly's in need of catching.

So with long, spindly legs and senses all atingle, she weaves her way through blood and bodies until she can feel the soft flutter of wings, the hushed buzz of a very particular fly through the walls with nought but a door to keep the spider distant. Silly, silly fly.

The spider pulls a sharp-edged knife (her fangs just will not do) and raps upon the door, the scratch of steel against the wood and mouth pressed to the floor:

          'Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing;         Your robes are green and purple--there's a crest upon your head;          Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead.'

Her voice carries under the crack of the door, carries to her little shivering fly, and as she listens to them scramble to bar her from entry, she rises slowly and turns. Waits. Waits like the spider she is.

[rocktunes]

Visit Original Link

[needle-stuck]

// Brain Damage // Pink Floyd //

The lunatic is in my head, the lunatic is in my head You raise the blade, you make the change You rearrange me 'till I'm sane  You lock the door and throw away the key There's someone in my head, but it's not me.

And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear You shout and no one seems to hear And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

[blomskvist]

Everyone has secrets. It’s just a matter of finding out what they are.

[jaifkncourtney]

[waspen]

She’s different.   In what way? In every way.

[kiradelaney]

  Kira raised a brow as the older girl squeaked when she told her what her name was. She shook her head “No one cares not even the staff. There is only a few who do care…. You said you’re name was Juniper I never heard some one named after a tree”

[needle-stuck]

Saddened very quickly by the young girl's words, she felt her face fall in tandem. People cared. They had to, right? Shaking her own head at Kira, she argued, 'Now that just ain't true. I ain't gonna lie and pretend everythin's hunky-dory here, but there's way more folks who care. I promise. I can see their light.' Adorning that with a little smile, her smile brightened at the Kira's observation. 'Actually, it ain't after the tree! Named after the story "The Juniper Tree"! But I guess that's named after the tree so yeah! Yer right!'

[vexed-charlie]

Closer Than Sisters || Charlie & Cassia

[vexed-charlie]

  Someone rip out my heart,[ She admitted that and no more. Cassia maybe a ghost, but she was more like a haunted house. One book she read once, when she tried to actually to get herself to read, was the one, a few paragraphs flashing in her memory . ‘She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking’ ]

[needle-stuck]

'Someone ripped out my heart.'

All at once, this terrible understanding clawed its way into the very depths of her and she felt herself tremble with the weight it settled in her. Taken at surface value, the blanket statement already seemed enough of a horrific event to befall her dear friend, but Cassia knew the measured and meticulous way Charlie often spoke and the far greater meaning the words she spoke just now carried. She wanted to protest against it. She wanted to scream and cry to whoever could hear her that Charlie's heart was beautiful and strong and that you could never kill it, never rip it from her. But the silence in both their chests trapped her tongue and made her swallow back the words. They'd seem nothing but hollow now. 'There wasn't anything ..' she trailed, an unnecessary breath hitching in her throat as her gaze fell to rest at her feet and a new film of tears formed in her eyes. 'There wasn't anything left when I found you, Charlie. Just blood in the snow and I-I didn't even think it was really you until I saw your necklace. Just lying there.' A sudden chill swept over her as she recalled the events of that day, playing like a waking nightmare behind her eyes.

[kiradelaney]

  Kira stared at the girl listening to what she said "I'm Kira" She nodded her head not knowing how to answer her question. "Didn't think anyone cared about someone screaming or having a nightmare"

[needle-stuck]

Smiling toothily at the young girl, she scooted just the slightest bit closer, tucking her legs up under herself. 'Gosh, Kira's a real pretty name. I ain't ever met a Kira before. Maybe it's 'cause I had to meet you!' she squeaked, a firm believer in fate and the many ways it could shine upon a person. Her lifted spirits lasted only a moment, however, when Kira voiced her next statement. Furrowed brows meeting, she tilted her head and looked at the girl anew. There was a bit of dark clinging to her, smattering the young patient, and Juniper felt herself sighing inwardly. 'A'course folks care 'bout others bein' scared and havin' bad dreams! The only ones that don't are mean and nasty. Promise I ain't mean and nasty.' She made a sour face, as if the thought alone was distasteful.

[kiradelaney]

  Kira almost immediately felt calmer as the ghost used her ghost powers of empathy. The young teen started to shiver at the ghost’s cold touch. The ghost was freezing. When she woke up she stared at the girl for the longest time before she shifted away. “Who….. who are you?”

[needle-stuck]

Her first instinctive reaction was to feel slightly wounded by the girl's deliberate placement of space between the two of them. Juniper had only been trying to help, after all, and if it had been her that'd been soothed by a kind stranger, she would've melted into their embrace immediately. But then again, if she was to believe Clochette and Jack's unkind comments, she wasn't exactly normal so maybe this girl's reaction had been the proper one. Even still, a frown appeared on her face for a moment as she let the girl slip away and wrung her hands nervously in her now empty lap. 'My name's Juniper. Like the tree!' she introduced, the familiar introduction causing a small smile to return to her face. 'You didn't sound like you were havin' much of'a nice time at all, no sir, so I thought I'd come and help! Did I do good?'

[vexed-charlie]

Closer Than Sisters || Charlie & Cassia

[vexed-charlie]

  Charlie didn’t understand the wave of sadness that hit her with such intensity, she felts like she could cry. Blinking a few time, the blackness in her eyes faded and the crystal blue returned to her. Hesitant, she didn’t know if to hug her friend, but to touche her with this body… Cassia’s words were sadly truth, she couldn’t return to her old, blissful ignorant self, that Charlotte Davis died in the Garden, her blood pilled in the snow.  Dropping her gaze she nodded, trying to ignore the sadness that wanted to drown her.”Oh….”

[needle-stuck]

There was a certain rage mixing with her tearful dejection now, tainting it awash in black. Black like what she'd just glimpsed in Charlie's own eyes. Her new eyes. Eyes that didn't suit the anguished girl before her. Charlie's spirit was mangled — that pervasive cynical side of her reminded her that her friend's spirit had always been in such a state — but it was never fitting of something this dark. And yet, through the dark of it all, Cassia sensed the girl's resilience and a strange presence lingering too. Something divine? As well as unholy? This confusion sapped a tiny bit of the grief from her, but there were still tears spilling past her cheeks as she turned to her companion and asked with a measure of palpable wrath, 'What happened to you?'