Stigma part 2

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All these lines of scars that stretch round my horrible body, binding it fast-- why and where and how was I living that I got them?
I've forgotten. Doubtless I wanted to forget. But maybe I shouldn't have forgotten it-- the pain that I must have felt when I got them.
The wedges sunk deep into the palms of both my hands as if to forbid me to run away or avert my eyes.

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"Let's have a dream"

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"A happy and terrible dream"
Share my blanket

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It was a freezing night
The sky as usual the color of a burnt out cigarette
waiting for the snow to fall
that might have made it clear up unexpectedly
"...Can't sleep?"
"No"
Tit, who usually fell asleep easily, unthinkingly pressed his small body close to mine
"Cold?"
"No"
Tit: You're the one who feels cold.

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Tit: A scar? Does it hurt?
Stork: Not now
Tit: Did it before?
Stork: Probably...
That pain hasn't stayed inside me either
Stork: Why are you looking for a bird?
'Bird'- a life form with wings that doesn't exist any more
"Unnhh- I don't really know"
"Don't know- meaning...?"
"My Grandpa, a long time ago, he was a zoo-ollow-jist.
Before the war started he said the sky was blue and there were a lot of birds. But after it ended the sky was gray and the birds couldn't live in it."

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Tit: But my grandpa used to say
Tit: 'the birds aren't extinct. They just went away from people.'

--well, maybe they did
All we can do is crawl on the earth and yearn for the sky. What fools we must look to them-
this stupid life-form that only goes on living and can't even get back the things it lost

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"There are birds, and somewhere the sky is blue.
Mom, you know? before she died she used to say 'I want to go somewhere where the sky is blue.'"
"So I'm going there instead of her, for sure some day.
His clean soul never doubted there was a promised land somewhere
"So we'll go there together, Stork."
(Tit falls asleep. Stork goes to pull the blanket over him and pauses, eyes widening)

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-like a little shot bird fallen to earth
looking for a blue sky to return to

No to repent of
No to make atonement in
I dream, a long dream, of alone, which sends the warmth of your body into my hand that's forgotten even how the blood should flow in it

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5. Zoology: a- spiracle or nostril of insects and arachnids b- green markings, opaque spots on the outer edges of the wing

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"Yes, it's a stuffed kingfisher, very valuable."
"Before they became extinct they used to live by the banks of rivers."
"But something like this, in this day and age- only rich people would buy this, out of curiosity.
"I got it from a pawnshop, but here I just use it to attract customers,"
the store's owner said, showing his missing teeth in a smile.

A small living thing, granted wings by god but not existing any more.
In the tiny tiny glass case it looked to be judging the time to fly away.
It didn't know that here there's no sky for it to fly in
Tit: Stork
Tit: I want to set it free

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Kind sawdust

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Now, make me dirty

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Shopkeeper: Thank you very much!
If you want wastepaper that'll buy anything, I've got more than I can use
Tit had never asked me for anything before

"Ne, Stork, what does 'stuffed' mean?"
"That's when you take a dead animal's insides out and put sawdust there instead."
"Hmmm..."
"You said your grandpa was a zoologist, right? Haven't you seen one before?"
"Grandpa didn't like to kill things. Mom neither."
"...I see."

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"I feel sorry for him."
"It may be better that he's dead."
"Why?"
"No point in flying in a sky as gray as this."
"But somewhere there's a proper blue sky."
"Don't be too sure."
It was a stupid thing to say, but I said it.

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Tit: Why...
What'd you say that for??
I felt it was blaming me--
Stork: A sky like this, black as pitch...
--that little bird's dead body
Stork: I don't think it can ever end
Like it was silently reproaching the grown-ups for having stolen its sky away
"But you said you'd come and look for it with me! You believed me!"
"... why'd it have to be me?"
"I don't know anything, even about myself. And I'm not even interested in that."
I can't take your father's place for you."

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Tit: I hate you!
Stork: Hey-- Tit!!

When something runs away from you, even if it's just a little bird
that's when you learn how big it is - just because you've lost it
Humans make that mistake over and over again
Stupidly looking for peace of mind and salvation

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(Stork turns)
(Behind him in the crowd is a man with a black butterfly tattooed on his neck)

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"Amen"
Stork: Ga-- (vomits blood)
To take the place of our rotten hearts...

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...all we do is shove 'sawdust' into our empty souls,
Tit: ---!? Stork--
Stork!!
and pretend that we're alive.

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When I came to I was in a bed in a cheap hotel
I was vaguely wondering how much of it was a dream.
...probably I know who that 'Death' is.

Stork: (to Tit) Sorry. I shouldn't have said that to you
"...No."
"You still mad?"
"Yeah. --Only it's a bit different now."

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Tit: Stork, I'm--
'That poor bird'- I suppose
Tit: I'm going to show you a blue sky
that's me, who's lost any place to go to
Stork: ...Aahh..
But actually
I'm filled up with what you've put inside me, so gently.

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6. Biology: Eye spot. Small light sensing apparatus in lower invertebrate organisms and lower classes of algae

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Tit: Oh-
"What?"
"I just saw something fly by,"
Tit said breathlessly and trained his binoculars on the lead-colored sky
"Lean out too far and you'll fall."
"Ohh- where'd it go to?"
"Sure you weren't mistaken?"
"No!! It could have been a bird!"
Tit: I'm going to look! You stay here, Stork!
F/X rushing out
Stork: Hey...
I sighed, looking at his happy little back

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Even when we turn around, there are no footprints behind us. Nor the road we came along, nor the tune we hummed. When we die, no-one will know it's happened

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Everything that's there now

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Stork: He's taking his time

It's been a long time since I've had too much time on my hands. Don't know how many cups of coffee I drank
Hearing only the tick of the second hand and trying to drown it out by humming something different
Did you get lost? Were you in an accident? Or did you really see a bird and follow it far away?
Because if so, you won't be coming back.

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And for sure somewhere I'll--

Time without you drips by, like pouring another cup of cold coffee, and I can't go anywhere
The one promise I made you-
The hardships we've both known-
The pain of your body's warmth that binds me to you -
they've sunk, gently and deeply, into the scars that cover my body

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Tit: I'm back!
Stork: ....
Stork: Hi there.
When did he become my whole world?
"Did you find your bird?"
"Yeah, but it wasn't a bird. It was all black, and small, and it fluttered. I've never seen one before."
"It fluttered?"
"Yeah. Some guy I don't know told me."

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Tit (in flashback): There it is
Voice: Hey kid, that's pretty unusual
It goes around looking for honey in flowers
Tit: What's it called?
"It's called a swallowtail."
F/X shock

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Tit: --Stork?
A black butterfly is looking down at me
laughing
in my dreams...

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7. A red mark that bleeds periodically or under psychological impetus. A mark that bleeds

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Call me I

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"I hear the wings of Death."
A world without color
Not women's lips-
Not flowers-
Only blood is red
vivid red

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Death: Mhh- you really don't care who you kill.
Death: Just like the kid you used to be
Death: collecting empty cicada shells
He wore darkness around him
black enough to swallow all the color in the world
Stork: That's the way I am.
Black, nothing but black

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Death: But you know--
It's like he was
Death: you won't kill me.
the whole of my world
Death: Isn't that the way you are too?

When he laughed in his throat,
the butterfly laughed at me too.
Its obscene fluttering
corrupted me into darkness

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I'd do anything. Really, if he ordered me to, I'd do anything. I killed people, I sold drugs, I turned women into merchandise. I met him when I was only 165 cms tall (5'6). I was a war orphan. What they call 'feelings' was something I'd lost somewhere along the way. He won me over like you'd pick up an abandoned puppy. He was my reason for living. He taught me that there were things I could do just *because* I'd lost those feelings of pity and love and emptiness. Taught me that with his bottomless eyes, black as lacquer, and his voice that seemed to melt into darkness. I was wrapped about in the net of him. Like a captured butterfly- I couldn't move. I killed people and sold people the way he taught me to. I didn't see anything wrong with it. I didn't particularly want the money I got doing it. If I did as I was told, he'd hold out his hand to me. That was the only reason I did it all. Eventually I got to be 185 cm (6'2) tall. I felt sure those extra 6 inches, just about the length of my chest, were made by him. He was my master- Death, all in black. He was my whole world. I still don't know what the name is for that feeling.

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Call me II

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(flashback)
Oi- stay here tonight
I'll be back in the morning.
OK.
'He'.
'He' wouldn't let me use his name.
'He' never used mine.
I mustn't want anything. He doesn't want me to.

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I mustn't feel anything
if I want him to stay with me.
(Stork finds a picture in a drawer- 'Death' standing beside another man.)
I still don't know what the name is for the pain I felt

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I tore 'his' smiling face to pieces, and again, and again
and dropped it in the wastepaper basket
('Death' returns, standing behind Stork)
--I don't really remember what happened after that

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Call me III

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That day, God disappeared

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When I woke up, I was covered in blood and buried in a mountain of garbage.
I was a broken toy. I was a newborn child.
My memory had been erased like a cut-off film
I'd stolen the lives of more people than I could count.
I'd been covered in more blood than I could ever wash away
But my one and only crime was to have torn a photograph apart.
Only that.
At that moment, understanding nothing, I could only look up emptily
searching for the sun on the other side of those heavy ash-gray clouds.

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