Bad Blood
Send âBad Bloodâ to hear my character obsessing over something bad from their past.
"There was a girl."
It was always the girl.
Well, sometimes it was the boy, but that was beside Titus' current point.
He lolled his head back, exposing his throat to the sun as he leaned tiredly on the heels of his palms and debated over whether or not he was ready to delve down this particular rabbit hole. He wished he could say that there was not a day that went by when he did not think of Mary, but the truth of the matter was that these days, he actively avoided her memory.
"I'm still just a pup trying not to die, looking out on the docks as the ships come rolling in, and suddenly I have a thought. 'If I sign on,' I say to myself. 'Then they'll have to give me bread and a bed to sleep in.' I was fourteen, but I didn't give a damn about any of that fucking and kissing shit--I just wanted to eat."
His upturned eyes grew distant as he receded into the past, a deep crease forming in his brow as he fought to escape its pull, but the effort may as well have been trying to stop a man-o-war with a slingshot. The HMS Remembrance had never belonged to him, but he had gotten to know her so well that he could almost smell the spices resting in her hold, twisting with the scent of hot asphalt so prevalent in Manhattan. He learned how to follow the stars home while leaning over her rails, to respect the might of the sea while high up on her ratlines, and to stop another man's heart while defending her deck.
"She'd had the same bright idea, but it was a little more complicated for her, being a filly instead of a colt."
He also learned that his very state of being was enough to have him hanged.
Sitting up abruptly, the halfshark gestured emphatically with his hands, no longer hesitant to launch into his story as he forgot what he had been talking about before. "She dressed just like the rest of us and since her tits hadn't come yet, no one knew the difference. She was one of us, and I still thought she was the prettiest person I had ever seen." The confession came out so easily here, and indignation for his younger self forced it out of his mouth like it was a bullet.
"I knew, I knew it had to be because I was a Downworlder. Why the Hell else would I want to be with a boy, unless it was 'cause I have demon blood?
"Then I found out what she was doing, and I was so relieved that I could've cried. I was normal again, and I was so happy that I didn't bother to think about how weird it was that I still wanted to kiss her." A shudder rattled through his shoulders, a wry laugh extracting itself from his tight chest.
"That was the worst kiss I'll ever have, I swear to Christ. It was a year before I could go anywhere near someone else's mouth without picturing an eel coming out of it, gender be fucked. That's the true crime."
