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ANAKT GARDEN SPECIAL BODY WASH
Our advanced formula with a blend of 3% brightening serum, Vitamin C, and energizing exfoliating minerals ensures that your skin is rid of the dull sheen of leftover fear and hunger and instead coated with excitement for this new chapter, increasing its overall lifespan by at least a decade or two.
All pet humans are expected to bathe at least twice a day and maintain optimum hygiene.
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There is a spot behind Ivan's knees that he never tried to reach before the age of six.
It is around the part where the bone of the upper leg finally slopes to meet the bone of the lower leg, and the body tries to even the grounds of this union. In the shallow curve, the skin sags, then folds into twos and threes, never allowing the last of the body heat to escape. The veins protrude, making the passage of blood quickly traceable underneath the pads of curious fingers, which only want to confirm that the muscles remained thawed. In the absence of fires, they find themselves performing that action quite a bit.
Dust tends to gather here, given the motions of mundane life. Over time, one can find a layer of sticky grime hiding between hair follicles, refusing to abandon its haven. For so long, Ivan did not even think of this as dirt. In the slums, it could be considered a nuisance or nourishment, depending on the hour of the day. Tucked underneath the drain covers, mouths open and limbs folded in, disgust was a luxury.
The first day Ivan had been ushered into the showers at Unsha's mansions, he had not been sure what he was supposed to do. Drenched from head to toe, he kept gulping mouthfuls of soapy water as the servants rubbed the smears from his skin, using a 0.2% acidic formula to ensure that even the toughest ones were bleached out effectively. His throat burned, but he kept drinking until his stomach hurt because he did not yet know that there would be more. The idea of so much going down the drain untouched was nothing short of horrifying.
A few moons later, the garden had brought forth similar feelings. Through the gaps between adjacent stalls, Ivan observed the wrinkly feet of his classmates, treading the slippery tiles. No one bent down to tug on each of their toes, making sure they were all firmly attached. Over there, the only purple stains were from the suds of the lavender body wash that half of them had been assigned, as they were considered too young to make the choice themselves. Ivan was grateful to have received the lemon flavor instead. As was the case, he could barely stop mistaking the shadows on the walls for centipedes. There was no need to add another color to the mix.
With the years, he has grown used to the shifting patterns of light and learned to take showers longer than five minutes, uncaring of all the water that did not make it into his stomach. Of course, it always helps when he glances at the slot under the stall walls, catching a glimpse of that swollen foot limping in.
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200 ML,
suitable for ages 6 to 22
(cannot guarantee expectancy after that),
previously tested on those like you,
with passable results
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Bathing helps one come to terms with the limitations of their hands, their own free will. This Ivan knows. In the books he scours, the hands accomplish many feats. They scale castle walls. They pierce dragon hearts. They cup lovers' cheeks. But there is no swell in the surrounding sound when Ivan's palm lifts to clean behind his thighs, rinsing off the remains of any trespassing nightmares. At seventeen, his fingers sink into the crevices of his legs and scrub with ease. It is an essential step in his daily transformation from pauper to prince. No dramatic pauses accompany the skin-to-skin contact. No sudden spotlight. Only his hands, under the sterile glow of the bulbs, picking out what is unnecessary, just as he had done back then.
In what had been a semblance of childhood, Ivan's hands had never stayed motionless. They had dug into the dumpsters in the alleyways. They broke wooden twigs, stacking them on top of each other. They found the parts of a beetle's belly that cooked the fastest, holding it over the flames. They earned infinite scratches from catching stray potatoes rolling off supply trucks and taking off into the darkness. Those little scars between the knuckles, all within a coward's range of possibilities. None of it had been glorious. All of it had been his.
But that had been before the auction house, before the rooftop with a clear view of the stars. In the aftermath, even at such a juvenile age, Ivan had sensed the need to go. The fire wouldn't serve him anymore, now doused under the hot water from the shower head. Instead, he had to be the one to harden like that old wood, setting the fragile parts alight. It made sense, then, to follow along, scraping the soot from under his nails, blowing ashy breath between the vapor-filled walls, until what was inside him had been emptied. Until he was a shell that could be filled with new stuffing.
Pride is a far-off emotion, but Ivan supposes that practice must have made him decent, especially these days. No one has caught him in his act yet. Well, not fully.
Having soaked enough in his musings, he turns the tap off, reaching for the folded towel. He scorns this part the most. The static friction makes every little hair on his body stand up, running awry despite his attempts to put them in their place. The cool air from the exhaust fans rustles the wet curls already starting to form on the side of his face. He shivers, trying to tamp them down, feeling horridly exposed.
From the stall next to his, the humming grows louder. For a moment, Ivan feels as if he is fourteen again, ear pressed against the bedroom wall, absorbing every tiny vibration carried through until he could not decipher them from the beating of his own heart.
It is remarkable what one learns to care for when given an infinite supply of water.
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How to Use
- Shake well before usage, as you were shaking on the roof that night.
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Squeeze a little amount of that rigid dream on your hand, as much as you can afford; make sure not to run out.
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Rub it on your skin until it lathers over the forgotten bruises and burn scars.
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Scrub between your toes and fingers, making sure you still have all of them.
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Do not scrunch your nose at the strong scent of lemon; remember that you have smelt much worse.
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Resist opening your mouth under the running water out of habit; there will be plenty of it to go around here.
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Let the smoke of that old fire condense into liquid, washing down the drain.
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Once done, immediately towel off. Do not stand there frozen, waiting for the cold to creep in. If the cold creeps in, so will the memories.
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Rubbing the back of his neck with the towel, Ivan watches as the last of the suds gets pulled in the direction of the drain covers. On closer inspection, he realizes that there is a tinge of red in the liquid swirling between. Biting the tip of his tongue to keep his breathing steady, he examines the undersides of his feet and hands. All clean. All accounted for. The rust growing on his metallic insides has not escaped the boundaries of his body.
Daring to follow the crimson trail with his eyes, he realizes it is coming from the direction of the other stall.
As if on cue, he hears the voice next door stutter, crumbling to a lower note. It must be hard to sustain any higher form of hope in this instance. Ivan can make out little hitches of breath disrupting the song, which he now recognizes as the song that won Till his first annual music competition when he was only seven years old. Till's voice, a little deeper after the dawn of puberty, does not quite suit the falsettos certain areas of the song demand, resulting in him breaking off into an ugly grunt that Ivan will recall alone in his room for nights after.
He wonders if Till is moving his head back and forth as he was back then, for once uncaring of all the eyes of him, even when the force shifted his bangs away from his forehead, revealing the marks underneath. He wonders if all this makes the pain lessen.
Listening to the song that continues despite the occasional whimper, Ivan feels as struck as he did sitting among the crowds of students that day long ago.
Today, he is still nothing more than a spectator to Till's spirit. Be it Till's laughter or his cries, Ivan can only witness their occurrences, never being able to intentionally cause either of them. His hands, helpless as ever, twitch at his sides, like they do when he wants to wipe the tears or blood off Till's face. If only he felt he had as much right to touch his cheeks with his fingers as he does with his knuckles.
Through the gap, Ivan can only see one of Till's feet on the floor, meaning the other is raised in the air. He thinks of his classes, where he often hears the other kids giggle, wondering how their crushes might do their hair today, what they might pick between the sweet and the plain options at dinner. On the other side of the stall wall, Ivan tries to guess what might have entered Till's flesh this time. Needles? Glass shards? It has been a while since Urak tried those. Was it done along with the blue or pink pill? Both? Or none? Till being able to stand on one foot might suggest the last one. Which phase of the moon might the marks be shaped like? Ivan is curious to see.
This is how he knows his feelings are something much worse.
"Wouldn't it be easier if you sat down?" Ivan finally asks, pushing his face closer to the wall. It is the only version of the truth that can bear to leave his mouth.
Immediately, the singing halts. For a few moments, there is only the sound of running water. Ivan tries to measure the expanse of time in the subsequent flow, but the seconds slip out of his grasp and drip down into the drain too soon. Instead, he waits for the silence to recede on Till's end. Between the two of them, he is the one who has always been a little worse at upholding it. Especially when it comes to these situations. To Till, silence is another layer of fragility, a thing he likely cannot bear right now.
Sure enough, he bites. "Do you have to give your opinion on every little thing?" Till counters, but in the following few seconds, Ivan can see the curves of both his knees in frame now, meaning he has lowered himself to the floor. He must be pretty close to the door, too. Ivan wonders if he would be tempted to try and kick Ivan through it. If so, then to be on the other end of such an unnecessary effort might just be his own demise.
"Only when it comes to you," Ivan says, baring his tooth out of habit, hoping the friction of the words against it creates a spark, like two stones being rubbed together. Closing his eyes, he recalls how meat is cooked over flames. A slow sharing on the outside, the heat gradually creeping toward the center. The flesh hardens much quicker, giving the impression that the whole portion is ready; hence, it is quite common to accidentally leave the insides uncooked. If Ivan's words are seared well on the outside, Till will never find the tender, pink lining of the truth buried within.
He hears a muffled snort. Then nothing. Licking his front teeth, Ivan tries to remain patient. Where is it this time? Everything in him demands to know. There is a reason he only does this when Till is half-conscious, even when it is Till making that decision for both of them. Like when Till's head finds his shoulder without hesitation, letting gravity guide it forward. Ivan knows that pull, has felt it on his own head. Dangling over the edge, staring up high. It makes one surrender to the worst. It is no wonder Till, succumbing to the forces of the universe, is able to sink into Ivan's ribs, breathing deeply.
Physics, Ivan always repeats under his breath when that happens. It is only physics. Obeying the same, his hands hover over Till's shoulders, never touching, because an equal reaction can only be given when the first impact is intentional.
"You must think I am stupid," Till murmurs, after a while. A thump resounds in the space between them, and Ivan feels the resounding vibrations through the wall. He pulls his own forehead back, allowing it to drop against the wall, feeling an ache bloom at the point of contact. On both sides of the echoing thuds, is their pain finally aligned? Words are tricky, but this kind of language, Ivan thinks, he can understand. He can manage to talk back the right way.
He thinks of the small back of a boy, illuminated against the night sky. No, he imagines stating, I think you are amazing. But Till often interprets both to mean the same. Perhaps Ivan needs to work on his tone. When it comes to Till, it is hard to help himself. It is like curling a fist around a distant star, relishing in the illusion of closeness, only to realize it is far larger and brighter than the mere mind could fathom. To find a word for that seems impossible. "I do not believe that is the first adjective that comes to mind when I think of you, truly," Ivan says, exhaling.
There is something inexplicable, he admits, about how a star shimmers years after its death. There is something inexplicable about how the knee curves. How the vocal cords translate amusement into laughter. To observe it is one thing. To understand it is another. Till can be listed among the same phenomenon, Ivan believes. He is of all of them in one and even more.
A sigh. "Left thigh," Till says, then. His knee draws closer through the gap. "That brute had this new experimental drug he wanted to test. For my own good, he said, 'cause I didn't have many chances, otherwise. He didn't like it when I didn't sit there and take it. Got his buddies to hold me down. You know how it is. Or maybe you don't."
I do, Ivan wants to say. I once tore the ligament near my femur because I turned into the wrong alleyway during a raid. Of course, back then, language had been inaccessible. All Ivan had registered were the claws digging into his flesh, ripping through it. Inconveniently, the pain had forced him to retreat into one of the sewage ducts, where he had spent the next few days attempting not to dip the wound in the murky water around, even as he had to take small sips of it. He had not known there were words for the burning sensation, not until Unsha took him in and let him walk through the huge library in the basement of his mansion. It was there that Ivan learned that the human leg was not composed of words like throb, ache, gnaw, and string, but instead of words like femur, patella, fibula, and tibia. From then on, he grew obsessed with finding language for inexplicable sensations, as if that might in any way help him understand them.
But to tell Till this would be to tell him so much, especially all that is irrelevant to their present. It is not that Ivan has not thought of it in passing before; he is certain Till, in all his generosity, would still keep seeing that ragged boy inside of him. To have Till nuzzle him as he did one of his flowers, all because he thought Ivan was made of all the same softness but none of the same hidden ill intent, it would be unbearable. Besides, Ivan would not know the first thing about keeping such a sentiment uncrushed and intact. So, if he has to choose, he would rather take the indents of Till's fingers on skin because at least he knows how to keep those from fading. Greedy as he is, he wants what lasts longer.
"The femur is the longest and strongest bone in the body," Ivan offers, sliding his fingers through the gap, pausing before they breach the invisible boundary that Till set between them that night. He taps the floor, damp with the dirt from Till's body. He does not mind. He hopes Till can see he does not mind. "I believe it is stronger than your guardian could have imagined. You should be able to resume movement soon."
I believe you are stronger than he could have imagined, too, he thinks. He swallows it down like he has everything else.
Something grazes against his nails. Ivan lowers his gaze to find Till's fingers, resting against his, uncaring of any limitations, even those that might be for their own good. Ivan has taken a decade guessing the shape of this distance. Till crossed it in a few seconds without a thought.
"I never know what you are saying," Till says, making the kind of sound he does when Ivan's fist accidentally lands on his ribs a little too hard. It may not seem like it, but his fingers, which he uses to play his music, are a little bigger than Ivan's. That has remained unchanged regardless of their heights. Ivan is unsurprised. This is simply the difference in the extent of their ambition. It is no wonder Ivan was unable to contain Till's within his own that night. "But I also think I do, this time. Thanks."
This is the part of the story where the climax arrives. This is where the character does something marvelous, like claim their lover with a kiss. But Ivan is not such a character. This is not even that type of story. So, he does what his role allows him to do, letting the same old gravity, which almost pulled his body down a 200-foot drop, pull his fingers through a few centimeters of distance, completing the touch.
It lingers. If this is all he can do with his hands, he wants to keep doing it as long as possible.
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Ingredients
Generally consists of dust, ash, charred wood, hypothermia, missing hugs, stale bread, rotten potatoes, unfulfilled negotiations, gravity, and starlight.
Does not contain courage.
Can be used on those with fickle constitutions.
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With pruned fingers, Ivan buttons up his collar, covering the sight of his bare neck. Gingerly, he opens the stall door, giving any nervous individuals lurking outside the time to make their escape without him having to see it this time. When there are no faint footsteps, he pokes his head out, confirming that there is no one outside. Stilling himself, he is able to sense shuffling from the adjacent stall.
Smoothing his sleeves, he walks toward the sinks, watching his own face draw scarily closer. It is not always that he looks into reflective surfaces beyond what is necessary, lest he meet eyes with the boy who used to failingly imitate the smiles of his peers. Luckily, the ghost childhood evades his lips today. Instead, it soaks into his hair, making it loosen entirely, reversing the excessive heat from hours of straightening. Just like that, black strands presume their old twists and turns, resembling the alleyways where they first grew past their limits.
Behind him, a door clicks but does not open. Ivan resolutely does not turn around, instead avoiding his own eyes to stare at the side of his face. Holding back a wince, he brings the edge of the towel to his hair, rubbing up and down. When he pulls back, the volume has increased exponentially.
There's a soft creak, followed by a series of thuds. "Well, that was…" a voice calls from a few feet away. Ivan waits for it to draw closer. "I know you might—I mean, I don't know, but I guess—just because I did—doesn't mean you can—"
Counting to three, Ivan turns his head. Sure enough, the voice comes to a stop. He stares at the ground for a few more seconds before he regains the ability to look up, meeting wide green eyes that are wildly scanning his feet. A few inches below, flared nostrils. Below that, pursed lips, trembling.
"You," is all Till manages before he bends down, clutching his stomach, body shaking with the force of laughter. Behind his back, Ivan pinches the skin of his own wrist, somewhat rebelliously marking a spot he should be saving for something of more importance. He can feel himself floating away with each burst of breath that escapes Till's ribs. He just needs the sting to keep his feet on the ground. "Your hair, it's like… It's, it's all over the place, just like it used to be when we were… You really look like such a moron—"
Ivan simply stares, watching Till avert his eyes as he expected, but out of hilarity, this time. Like he did the first time he caught Ivan after a shower, only a few days after their first fight. Good, he thought to himself then. Good, he thinks to himself. Till should never again feel smaller than the unavoidable, especially compared to Ivan. He has no problem facing Till's shame, but if he can, he would like to bring a change in its state. This way, he can give both of them an out from another hurtful encounter.
In front of him, Till's giggles are tapering, but there are still wrinkles around his eyes. Ivan has heard that when humans age, they develop wrinkles on their faces. He wonders if anyone has reached this stage in the last century. He has yet to see it himself. He hopes that Till will be the first of their kind to grow into his joy.
Snapping his fingers, Ivan prepares his coming words. Small cowardices, he cannot help but repeat to himself. Small cowardices and their even smaller courages.
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Warnings
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Avoid direct contact with the eyes; it may make you recall the times you sat too close to the flames.
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No need to keep this out of reach from children; the sooner they become familiar with it, the better.
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May cause an allergic reaction if mixed with love.
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If ingested, do not panic. It is made of 100% artificial ingredients. You no longer have to live off what you did before.
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There is a spot behind Ivan's knees that he never tried to reach before the age of six.
It is around the part where the bone of the upper leg finally slopes to meet the bone of the lower leg, and the body tries to even the grounds of this union. In the shallow curve, the skin sags, then folds into twos and threes, never allowing the last of the body heat to escape. The veins protrude, making the passage of blood quickly traceable underneath the pads of curious fingers, which only want to confirm that the muscles remained thawed. In the absence of fires, they find themselves performing that action quite a bit.
Dust tends to gather here, given the motions of mundane life. Over time, one can find a layer of sticky grime hiding between hair follicles, refusing to abandon its haven. For so long, Ivan did not even think of this as dirt. In the slums, it could be considered a nuisance or nourishment, depending on the hour of the day. Tucked underneath the drain covers, mouths open and limbs folded in, disgust was a luxury.
Today, Ivan runs his fingers through the fissure, finding none of the filth from that older life. Instead, there are a few strands of the false grass from lawns, along with a bit of gravel. Faint ink smears from when he stole Till's pen and it burst in the back pocket of his pants, soaking through the fabric, turning his skin blue, like divine punishment. A few hours ago, there were likely two pink groove in the flesh from where Till pinched him for nicking his pen. Sadly, the color has long resided. His skin is capable of this much resilience, it seems.
That is okay. Ivan will make do with the blue.
In this half of his life, he will name it the shade of his heart.
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After usage, discard in the trash as you have discarded all your other selves. Do not recycle. Their empty husks serve no further purpose.
Best used after surviving a childhood in the slums.