another design verseXjasmeen

[Verse]

Kadashi Rihon had some ambitions once.

He'd been drawn to the dark things all his life. Once, when he was half his current height, another boy had screamed from the road and all the kids had come from the sun-bleached schoolyard. There had been an accident. Somehow one car had hit both a boy and a deer. And in the muck of boy-leg and deer ribs at the end of the bloody break-trail, Kadde had found something. The unforgiving, gruesome result had taught him a lesson about how delicate human beings are. The boy was crying like his one voice wasn't enough, and the other children chimed in all around him. Kadde stared. He had squatted down, to get closer to the exposed bone. And when he looked up, the driver stood over him. Kadde found something in the grown man's wide open eyes and mouth.

He searched for that kind of kinship from then on. It made his grades better and his friends fewer.

Even when he sprouted in height and his mother's facial features accented him into a beautiful youth, his relationships were just dalliances, and never much more. It felt as though he was protecting them from something. Maybe from the boy and the deer?

His fascination with this part of humanity, and its coalescing destruction, had him seek out law enforcement. He thought he'd do some good. Something about his insight and tolerance for macabre and unhinged crime scenes had the FBI, of all places, call him back. He knew he had the booksmarts for it, but doubted he'd shown them anything valuable in his oversharing letter and subsequent interview. He was honored to get to partake in a new class under the almost legendary director John Rydecker. Kadde had said in his application that he respected people, but that he wouldn't shy away from the gruesome truth in his pursuit of results, when shown a particularly graphic crime scene photo. And from this Director Rydecker had discerned the youngblood may have something for his new program. And he'd told Kadde as much, too.

The opportunity lit a fire under the Rihon boy, and he studied hard, and did well in the physical. His fellow cadets became friends. And even though some of them chose to leave, and, toward the end, some of them were asked to, due to insufficient performance, Kadde got to stay. The remaining group became tightly knit, and he became particularly close with one cadet. He liked her perspective, and her ability to follow his train of thought, when reasoning around cases.

Graduation was approaching, in this pilot program. Director Rydecker called Kadde and his friend for a test. Kadde had butterflies in his chest as they were driven out to a cottage in the woods, to a lonely concrete slab in a clearing at the end of the road. John's voice was on a handheld tape recorder, and his fellow cadet got to play it once she was handed it by the driver. John talked about the importance of knowing who they were hunting, and how some things could only be taught, if they were known first. Kadde thought it was hard to follow, but something in John's somber confidence made Kadde believe him, especially when he looked into his friend's eyes as she held up the device for them both. Was this another physical? Was it an awareness test?

But it wasn't.

It was an introduction to a side of himself that he'd glimpsed but never looked at fully. A side that smelled and felt like boy bones and deer blood.

He barely noticed the car driving away when he stood at the edge of the concrete. It looked like a scene for a performance. He inhaled when he saw something on it, apparitions in an intimate dance. And then they were gone. His knuckles brushed his friend's when he turned to look at her.

"Something happened here." he said. But she already knew, didn't she?

 

[jasmeen]

When Lena was seven she had terrified her mother to tears. It was on a school night. Lena had finished her homework and was huddled in bed, listening to the staccato shrieks of Mrs. Rai as her husband rained his fists down on her. This was a typical weeknight, especially if Lena's father had been out drinking after his driving his cab all day. And like clockwork, her mother would come into her room sniffling into her shawl, and crouch by the bed to cry softly into Lena's dark brown hair. Lena didn't know why it was that night she finally spoke. Perhaps the small child simply felt tired of having to devour all her mother's grief and fear and self-resentment. She had turned to face Mrs. Rai, looked into her red-rimmed eyes and said, "If you stay like this he'll kill you."
Mrs. Rai's heart-shaped face, which Lena had inherited, drained of its color.
"What?"
"He'll kill you. You're scared to leave because you think it will be harder than dealing with him hitting you. But it won't be long before he makes you dead. And probably me too." Little Lena said all this blandly, as if she was talking about tomorrow's weather. Then she had turned over to go to sleep, leaving her mother trembling and weeping anew. It was only a few days after that Mrs. Rai had sought the help of a neighbor to take her and Lena to a domestic violence shelter.

Once there Lena had felt like she was drowning. Every bruised and bedraggled face burdened her with its woes without Lena even speaking to them. It was then that she learned how to shut herself down, barely speaking but always watching with wide eyes that were as dark as the spaces in her head she was trying to avoid.

Luckily she and her mother were soon able to get a placement in a far off town, and made a home for themselves there, as much as Lena could feel at home anywhere. She kept to herself at school, made few friends and mostly replaced her social life with books. They were safer, made less noise in her head, and didn't make her stomach churn with osmoted trepidation. This habit sustained her and kept her in stellar academic standing all through school, university and a graduate degree in psychology.

It was during her graduate studies that she attended a guest lecture by an
FBI crime profiler. Lena considered most forms of law enforcement to be advanced forms of bullying, but the work this profiler did had intrigued her, and the types of questions she had asked him had caught his attention as well. He later referred her to a very specific FBI trainee program.

When interviewed by the indomitable director of this program she had held her own, and demonstrated an ability to look unflinchingly at the horrors humanity inflicts upon itself and still come away with valuable insights. Once offered entry into the program she had been hesitant, but the director had leaned in and asked point-blank if she wanted to help stop monsters like her father or continue hiding her ability and let them walk free. She hadn't told him anything about her family, but of course he'd know. Lena joined that day.

Once in the program she applied herself like she did with any academic pursuit. Having a willowy figure and delicate hands, she had a harder time acclimating to the physical training, but in time that too was doable. Her steely determination made sure she excelled at anything put in front of her. The pool of trainees whittled down to a few, including her and a man around her age by the name of Kadashi. Kadde. At first Lena had kept her distance from him. He was beautiful in the way a cold, placid lake was beautiful, and Lena got the impression that shifting shadows swam under the calm surface. But over time she found that he was the only other trainee that could keep up with her trains of thought or leaps in logic. They both had a similar...knack. Through that and other similarities they formed a tenuous friendship. They were both quiet types so it was a bond of companionable silences and mutual admiration. However, there were occasions when Kadde might touch her arm or stand a little close and Lena would find herself momentarily forgetting to breathe.

This was the case after the two of them had been dropped off in the woods, and she had to remind herself to exhale as Kadde's hand brushed against hers. There was plenty to occupy her mind given the director's cryptic message and their unsettling surroundings. They stood in front of a dilapidated cottage abutting a grimy slab of concrete. A spasm passed through Lena's face as she suddenly smelled something familiar. The sickly sweet scent of fear laced with coppery blood.

"Something happened here." Kadde seemed to read her mind. She nodded as she reached into the interior pocket of the cropped leather jacket she wore over a green tank top. She pulled out two pairs of latex gloves, wordlessly handing one to Kadde. Snapping on her own pair, she approached the square of concrete first, careful of her booted footfalls. A glimmer of pink caught her eye, and she crouched down to carefully pick something up. She held it up for Kadde to see.
"Ballet shoe laces. There's blood on them."
It was then that the voice she so often had to repress crept into her thoughts.

I am a ballet dancer, elegant and dedicated. Why am I here, in these woods?
Lena caught the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth and her brow furrowed. Why indeed. She saw the muddled silhouette of a slender woman, slender arms and a long neck like Lena's own. But the silhouette did not stand with the controlled refinement of a ballet dancer. She was crumpled on the ground.

I am a dancer, I revel in having an audience. I have found one here. An audience of one, maybe two. They promised me attention and adoration. But that's not what was here.
Lena took a shaky breath and met Kadde's gaze.
"This woman, this ballet dancer, came here willingly. Whoever brought her here promised her something to lure her in."
She knew from their time training together that Kadde, like her, had a talent for profiling.

But where her skill was in getting into the headspace of the victims, Kadde had the uncanny ability to do the same for the perpetrators. Perhaps in this situation their skills could work in tandem. Likely that's what the director wanted.
"What do you think Kadde?" Lena tilted her head, her deep brown eyes intent on his. "What do you see?"

 

[Verse]

He hadn't bothered with any small talk. Lena didn't need it. They had completed group assignments flawlessly without exchanging many notes. He had told himself their recurring partnerships was based on stellar results, but then why had he sought her out for the latest physical test, too? She was fit, but she wasn't stronger or faster then most of the men in the class. When she ran the obstacle course he swayed behind her to smell her sweat. He just leaned on her, and contributed when he could. She had corrected his profile on a victim and quietly taken his input that lead to the capture of a serial two states away. Rydecker had given them each a pat on the back.

Maybe that's why they were here now. This place was empty, but it was writhe with other things. He didn't want to look at her while he was filled up with it all. His hand was out before she'd even reached into her pocket for the glove. Boy bones and deer blood. He felt a presence here, something building out of the memories that hung around the stained cement. When she moved, he wanted to tell her not to, because if she went into it, she'd drag him with her.

Lena moved well. Her steps echoed of; a young life dedicated to back-breaking art. They were so beautiful, these flowers that bent and taped their roots into pink shoes, and folded their stems over bars in mirrored studios. He could smell the feminine sweat and feel the wooden floor under his - well-tended to workboots. His now gloved hand squeezed and a breeze moved a blade of hair from behind his ear to touch the corner of his eye. His breath quickened when he saw Lena working, her mind going down the rabbit hole. He wanted to pull her back, but he also had the impulse to shove her; impossible to ignore like the urge to masturbate.

"Yes." He said and took the laces from her. They hung in his black latex fingers. He didn't feel steady but his voice was. It had a northern lilt to it, but it was washed away by many years lurking city alleys. Places like that have cheap rent for hopeful business. For dreams. Dreams like Swan Stretches and Grand Jetés. Girls who would never be women even when their ID's said so, girls who'd stay beautiful forever. Princesses with small tits and small cunts pressing at their leotards.

He looked at the blood on the little rope. It hadn't soaked in. It was smeared, shallow. Somebody had removed it from its shoe and now forgotten it. He was a strong man, large hands, but he was tired of strong women who pulled at his beard and joked like they had seen war through their work. He wanted flowers, not treestubs. He wanted to immortalize them on film that wasn't digital.

A dead deer and a crying boy.

When he looked at Lena she made it painfully clear she'd never be his. She was going to leave this place. He'd seen her talent in the studio and how her form was perfect on the small productions she'd gotten to dance in infront of friends and family and a handful of enthusiasts. Her neck was perfect for ballet. Her neck was perfect for his hands. He wanted to save her from ever becoming a woman, now that her 18th birthday had come and gone. He enticed her with his dream.

"I see love, it's conditional, but he is creating the conditions himself." It was his own voice again. His own hands with his wide palms and long fingers. His own leather shoes. Why was he staring at her like that? While wanting to cradle her but also eat her? Why wasn't he ending this? There were ghosts here, from abhorrent memories, and he caught them with his diaphragm and he wanted to follow them "in there." He said and the accent was back. "If you want to succeed." because success was everything to her. His hand went out before he could stop it. It was an unforgivable shove onto her shoulder in the direction of the house.