What Does Delphie Burn for?
My main characters diary entry
What if I hadn’t been raised here? What if I’d been born outside the walls, where I’m free. Free to let my hair down, stop smiling like a fool. And stop this anxiety ridden, vigilance to be perfect, a programmed person, a completely different unauthentic version of me. Whatever me is. Was I something different under the layers of numbness, and anger? A pent-up fire breathing dragon in a sheep’s coat. Bleating along with rest of them, wrapping my heart tight, shunting my life force. If I could make my own choices, I’d know. Right? Choices that taught you lessons instead of electric shock. Could I feel something other than anger and this made-up happiness I pretended and peddled. Outside the wall, would I be free to just be and let out the darkness. The darkness they said was wrong. The cursed, stretching, aching-beating otherness. Electric power uncoiled, and like that — magic — I’d have lived a different life.
A different life for a different freak. Somewhere my mind separated from my body, separated from my heart, separated from my desire. Compartmentalized between what I was and what I should be. My body acted out what they wanted from me, and my mind flipped and flopped like a dead fish, sucking and gasping to be returned to the water where the beautiful oxygen lived that fed my soul. And my heart may never be true again. Who needs a heart anyway, unless you plan to sustain life? If you could call this life. And, what else do I need a heart but for function? In this Topper of a town, I somehow still managed to dream big, big dreams.
Dreams of flying, flying over the cookie cutter homes. Of finding my real mother and using my magic. And ripping and clawing out the blood sucking leach of a second skin from my wrist and crushing it with my bare hands. Watching it sputter out, and malfunction, ceasing to control me and everyone
Without it, I’d be unchecked. Vibrating energy unleashed. My skin would no longer crawl with containment. Instead, I imagine relief, giddiness and release. But to understand what I have, to wield the power of not only seeing but producing, where will it take me. Far away from BizAireo, into the wastelands, beyond the wall.
The first flick of my wrist, the first fumble of coordination of bringing about the pulsing light. I feel it under my skin, but can I do what I must, what I desire. Yet what is my aim, what do I want to do with this power? Will it bring me what I so hoped for — to have peace, freedom, and understanding of who I really am. Or will I fail at this too. Like I fail here every day. Will I reach for my magic, but be unable to create the shape of it and push it from my body as I’ve imagined so many times?
