D13 // Kieron Allard

D13 // Kieron Allard May 31, 2012 18:12:00 GMT -5

Post by Wonder on May 31, 2012 18:12:00 GMT -5

THE BOY WHO WAITED TO DIE~

[D3B2D1] [A6B19C] [D8B29B]

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~THE ASSHOLE

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This is the last time

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(name) - (kieron finley allard)
(age) - (eighteen)
(genitalia) - (testicles)
(home sweet home) - (~~district one~~ district thirteen)
(sexuality) - (just please me)

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Cause you and I, were born to die.

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/ a p p e a r a n c e /

Walking through the city streets
Is it by mistake or design?

One day they'll find me hung from the rafters and just think, what a pretty corpse. That's all I'll ever be.

I've always been slightly narcissistic, I suppose. Obsessed with looks, and how one looks, and how one sports themselves out in public. It's a natural thing to judge somebody on, people do it all of the time. Especially where I live, lived, it was a natural thing to go out in public and look at the people surrounding you and think about what they're wearing and what they're doing and who they're with. To say that I'm a victim of my environment would be quite accurate. Surrounding oneself with a bunch of narcissists has basically the same effect of surrounding oneself with a bunch of alcoholics. Although one is more fun in the long run whilst the other tears you down. Well, I suppose, in some weird way that they both tear you down, alcoholism and narcissism. Both tear other people down pretty quickly as well, so to say that I'm full of a deadly disease would be accurate, however, I'll still have more fun tearing you down to shreds.

Looks are important, they're important wherever you go. If you were to show up to a formal party in jeans and a tucked in t-shirt, you'd definitely be kicked out solely because of how you look. Looks are everything in a society that prides itself on luxuries. If you don't go about regarding yourself as a luxury, then you are nothing. Nothing to anyone but a bum sitting on the side of the road begging for change that no one has. Maybe those who aren't completely narcissistic in a society driven by that quality, drive themselves to alcoholism, and that's the ultimate connection there. First impressions are important, so why wouldn't someone go out of their way to look nice?

Mirrors are my best friend. It's not really all that weird in saying that considering how very few people like to be close to me, or to be near me. There are days where I can't help but stare in the mirror and do nothing else. If someone counted the times that I looked in some reflective surface a day, the results would be scary and bizarre, definitely unhealthy. It's a habit that's hard to break, looking good is just so incredibly important that making sure that every little strand of hair is still in it's place is something that takes priority over everything else. It's also good to check that I'm still there, still kicking, still holding on to the rope that hangs off the edge of a cliff waiting for me to fall down.

Mirrors, I look in the reflective surface and I love what I see, always have. My hair is naturally curly but yet bends to my will in any which way I want it to, any style that I want to wear, the brown waves like to support my decisions. It seldom needs any sort of product in it, which is fantastic considering how expensive it is, and that my new home doesn't really have any. A simple blast of air after getting my locks wet will let me bend it in any way I want it to. More often than not I like to have it spiked at the front, as that seems to be the current fashion, but fashion is ever-changing. Though, sometimes when I'm feeling interesting I'll flow it backwards. Then there are the days where I feel lazy, which is happening more and more lately, it's too much effort to get anything done looks wise here, so I just let it curl, let it be completely natural. It's a nice break, not having the added pressures of a high strung district full of judgemental peers, I can do whatever I want and still look good compared to the rest. No one has a sense of fashion here.

My eyes have always proved to be a slight problem, in a couple ways really. They change colours, not in an extreme way, like blue to red. But I swear that they switch between a pale green and a dark hazel, and sometimes when I check they appear to be a light blue. I don't know how it works, but I've never been able to identify what colours my eyes are because of their constant changing. Change is something I can adapt to. My eyes are also a problem because of how small they are, to me at least it's seems as though my face is converging over my eyes to make them look so small that no one can ever see them, it doesn't help that my small eyelashes provide them with no extra help to make them appear bigger. Sure, if I was back in my district I could always go about wearing eye-liner or something, guys used to do that, it's not a "useful commodity" any more.

I used to hate how fast my facial hair grew in, I still do slightly. But now that I'm eighteen, the stubble is welcome, it makes me look older and more sexy, I guess. However, my fast-growing sideburns are hell on earth to tame, they are unruly and do whatever they want to. Most days I just leave them alone, but big side burns look completely ridiculous. The stubble makes my lips look bigger though, pushing them out and making the ruby red stand out even more, kissable lips, always great. Although, the stubble also makes my already huge nose look even bigger. People don't seem to have a problem with it but having to look at godzilla every day in the mirror is awful. With a huge bridge and it slightly tilting to the right from a massive fight with a career asshole, it just throws off my face completely and is really the only thing that isn't perfect about my face. Maybe one day I'll be able to fix it.

I'd like to think I'm pretty fit, I go about a steady work out plan to assure that my body is ready for any moment when someone might come along and I can coax them into a night alone with me. Standing at six feet, I'm just above average for my age group. Taller is better anyways, I'm someone that anyone can lean into at any time they like, and I definitely don't mind. With muscle, I'm about 185 pounds and I've assured that there isn't an ounce of fat on me, I pride myself on my arms where the muscles are clearly defined, and my body where my muscles are also there and ready to party. I have large hands for a guy, which I guess isn't too weird, but I've never really had to use my hands for any work related things, they're just kind of there.

I used to be stylish, however I couldn't bring too many clothes with me when I ran. Lately I've been wearing nothing but nice shorts and t-shirts, it's not too cold and it hasn't been in a while, the whole under-district seems to be well heated to keep us from freezing. Though I do miss clothes, dressing up for nice formal parties and making solid first impressions, I have nothing I can do to get any sort of clothes back to me though I wish I could. Running back isn't an option, if only it were for the clothes. I miss suits, I miss nice shirts and cardigans and jeans but they were all too heavy to bring along with me on the journey. Which was so unfortunate.

I just wish I had a suit so I don't look ugly when I die.

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\ p e r s o n a l i t y \

Come and take a walk on the wild side
Let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain

A boy trapped in an hourglass, I'll keep dancing til the sand makes me drown.

Time is such a joke, it always has been. People expect you to do things over and over again until you finally understand them. Practice makes perfect, it takes time to learn a skill. But, the fact is that time can be taken away so easily, so quickly. A man who studies all of his life to become a doctor, the day before he receives his certificate, may get hit by lightning and never see daylight again. Where has all the studying gone? It's left in the ground buried, useless and unneeded because he's dead. Why do such mediocre things that take so much time if it may not pay off in the end? People waste their time away like it's nothing, it's just an hour, it's just homework, I have so much. But when your inner clock is ticking down and the world won't stop for you, then time is a precious thing to hold. A jewel in a sea of coal. It's something that I've grown to hold dear, even if it isn't necessarily the best option for me.

One has to go about living their life to the fullest, taking every opportunity they can to ensure that they enjoy every single moment to the fullest. I can't say that it's possible, sure I've spent nights laying in bed staring at the ceiling, but if you try, you can get somewhere. School is for those who go about wasting their time. Learning skills and trades through paper and pencil, and hoping one day they might reach a point of eternal happiness. But it's all a joke, a vicious repetitive circle. You go to school so that you can get a job, that job is to get money, so that you can marry someone and get a house, and then you have a child, and that child needs to go to school, so you have to work extra hard to feed and get that kid money, and then that kid goes through school so he can start a family and it goes on and on, repetitive until the day they die. And what do they live for? Friendship arises sure, in school but what happens when you have to spend your whole life in an office? The whole idea never really clicked in my brain, to live to do nothing but support. Support a wife, a husband, a child, a home. Support something to make it completely stable, but in my experience nothing is really that stable.

I'm unstable, or so they say. Unruly, bizarre, crazy. I don't even know what I've done to tick them off. Well, I do. People don't have any sense of humour these days, we live in a world that is so dark, so depressing that they can't even take a joke, regardless of how offensive it is. Bully, they say. I'm surrounded by a constant crowd of idiots, they go about thinking about school, and jobs, and I think about living. I need to live, I need to keep going, I need to be free. Idiocy rates seem to be higher in District 1, girls obsessed with their faces and boys and pounding knives into stuffed dummies, boys obsessed with girls and pounding their fists into smaller boys until they bleed. None of them have the intelligence to actually do something worthwhile, become a career trainer, work in a jewel factory. Drowned in luxury and drowning in lack of intelligence. Any insult thrown their way, any small little joke about their personality was taken offensively.

You're a bully, they would say. Not the boys who beat children, not the girls who care more about vanity, but me, the boy who twists their words into jokes and comments lathered in sarcasm, me the boy who walks around the District hoping to stand out from the oblivious idiots that surround me.

Parties were always a thing I enjoyed, they say I'm good with my tongue in more ways then one. I could list a few really. One, my high tolerance for any sort of alcohol is a total blessing when it comes to drunks throwing themselves all over me when I'm still sober. More stomach than tongue, but who cares. Two, My quick wit which rolls off with every syllable I pour out. Three, they say I'm a sooth sayer and I can't help but disagree, over the years I've perfected the way in tricking people to bend to my will, it's not all that hard really considering the people that surround me, but it's been useful, when I need to get some. Which brings me to four, they say I'm very talented with my tongue. Perhaps it's another reason why so many people look on me and hate my guts, I could walk into a crowd of people and point out at least four to ten people that I've slept with on occasion. I'm the one night stand that you slip away from in the morning regretting what you've done because, what an asshole. That's always been a fun joke. Get what you want when you need it, and laugh as they run away. Live life to the fullest.

I'm waiting on death. The clock has been ticking down since the day I was born and it doesn't stop to wait for anyone. Every single person in my family for four whole generations has committed suicide, I have no father, no mother, no grandparents, each has taken their life somehow. Ultimately, it's gotten into a competition of sorts. Oh, you've only hung yourself? That's mediocre at best, I give you a five for that one. It's a never ending curse, and a curse is not something I'm willing to break. It's in the Genes, the Allard family genes, you have to die. People never believe me, the Allard Family Curse is just an excuse for why I act so rude, so bitter, why I sleep around so much. I always used to like to believe it wasn't true, that my parents would break the curse, but they didn't. They fell too. It seems to happen whenever you settle down with child, so believe me when I say that I'll spend my life fulfilling needs and that's it.

I'm still waiting on my time to stop, waiting for the timer that lays inside me to stop. So I will spend my time ruining people's lives, especially those who are wasting time. I'll impose on those who think they're happy, I'll slander those who walk around like nothings wrong, and I'll sleep with whoever I lay my eyes on without any questions. Living life to the fullest, that's what I believe in and that's what I'm going to go around doing, whether that be dropping out of school and running away to a fictitious place I believed to be real (which it was) or sleeping around and convincing people to cheat. I'm not a saint, I'll burn in hell with the rest of them and go down laughing with a smile on my face. If I can't be happy, then why should anyone else be able to.

I'll keep laughing until the sand in the hourglass runs out.

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[ h i s t o r y ]

Feet don't fail me now
Take me to the finish line.

Everyone dies, some sooner than others. That's the basic premise of life.

History is important, it's what dictates the future. If a boy jumps off a dresser and breaks his leg, unless he's a total idiot he will never again jump off a dresser the rest of his life, and he'll have a funny story to tell. Whoever controls and lives with their own history completely controls everything that is bound to happen. With mistakes we learn, and grow, and history is something that always seems to have a significant impact in our lives. However, it's also history that lets us fall ever so quickly into a growing state of depression. If not treated properly, history is what makes us dissolve into a puddle on the floor, and remain completely and utterly useless. Some people lose themselves in the past, and that's their demise. That'll be my demise.

To talk of my history, you have to go back a while. My history lies four generations ago, in fact. All the way back to my great-great-grandfather. I don't know anything about the man really, aside from his story. He lived so long ago that basically his only gene that's passed down is that of the Allard family curse. I have no old pictures of him, no dusty frames to dictate what he might have looked like, probably very much like my father did, I wouldn't be surprised. But it's him who started the fiasco which is my family. My great-great-grandfather lived pre-rebellion, a time with no hunger games. That in itself, I guess, is a miracle, but it's also a curious fact. He was 36 years old when he died, found hanging in the rafters with a rope tied around his neck, dangling from the ceiling. The rumour was that he round out that his son was a part of the rebellion, a main leader, and that was too much for him to handle and it pushed him over the edge, or over the bucket. Now his wife, my great-great-grandmother was so overcome with grief that she took a rope and in the very same place kicked out a kitchen chair.

That's the beginning of the curse, my family curse. Four generations of suicide.

My great-grandfather lived on, though his parents had died. He had a purpose, rebellion, it was such a powerful force within him. A need to prove himself, a need to move on and make the world a better place. He grew up, married a girl, had a girl. The rebellion raged on and he was captured, bit his tongue and fell into eternal slumber. His wife, my great-grandma, followed suit after she was captured, bit her tongue and fell forever. Happened to my grandparents too, same exact thing, the suicide that is, not the tongue biting. Though, I don't know what my grandparents got up to, and I'd never really like to know. The gene never failed. Not once did it skip a generation, never did it fail to take the lives of both spouses. My grandma had my dad at eighteen, before she kicked the bucket. He grew up in a community home in District One, but she left him quite a huge sum of money for when he was an adult, at least enough to get by.

My dad, Benjamin Allard came crashing out the community house the minute the clock struck midnight on his eighteenth and waltzed into the world a new man and fell in love with a beautiful girl named Whitney. Blonde, blue eyed and elegant as any idiot who flew through the District, she was different to him, a goddess of sorts, and he was a changed man with money in the bank and ready to face the world. When I was a child, my mother used to tell me wondrous stories of their adventures. Every night before I went to bed, she used to like to tell me fairy tales. She was always quite the story teller, with her warm hands she'd sink the covers under my legs and cleared her throat.

"Ready?"

"What story is it tonight?" I'd ask desperate for grand tales of wonderful princesses and charming princes, desperate for any bit of information that might lead to another place, away from this.

"Once upon a time," stories always began like this. "There was a young girl. She wasn't so pretty, but her hair would shine so bright people would say they could see it from districts away. Even the sun would smile upon her bright blonde hair and smile," at this point she'd touch her hair and smile. "But she doesn't matter for now." Pause. "Once, there was a young boy who lived happily in a home, a home with a mother and father, just like you." She'd ruffle my hair and I'd smile warmly up at her, she was always watching how I'd react. "He was small but strong and would one day grow up to be an amazing prince. But he was hit with a very strong curse, one that would devastate everyone, his dad experienced it, and HIS dad experienced it, and HIS dad experienced it." Pressing down on each his to indicate how far back it would go, and for a six year old, that was a long time. "Each time the family would grow happy together, a demon would come and tease them about and play with them until they wound up in his clutch."

"A demon?" Voice quivering and scared out of my mind, I curled up in to my sheets, there was only so much a six-year old could take demon wise.

She nodded. "The young boy always thought the curse had been broken, that his parents were safe because with each coming year his dad still tucked him in to bed, and his mother still told him bed time stories. But one day, he came home from school and the demon had taken his father and soon thereafter took his mother too, leaving him all alone in the big bad world." All alone. "He was then sent away to a dreaded dungeon, full of criminals and brutes who would always take him down and try to kill him!" Gasp.

"Kill him?" The news was shocking and unrealistic. Kill a prince? No one could do that. "But they didn't get him, right?"

"No, they never did." A smile filled her face. "One day, when he'd grown older and stronger he escaped the wretched dungeon and found a girl sitting at her windowsill looking off into space." Again, she brushed her hair as if deep in thought, I never made the connection, but now I do. "He rushed her from her castle window and showed her the world, they'd rush from palace gate to palace gate but never leave their boundaries. She was a princess after all, and he'd spent years in a dungeon rotting and trying to beat out a curse that'd been implanted within him. But still they'd manage to steal kisses in dark alleyways, and slowly but surely they fell hopelessly and madly in love. One night, he stole her away from her castle, and the two of them found a nice little home to live in together. And then guess what?"

"What?!" I replied with maybe too much enthusiasm.

"They had a child, the most beautiful child in the world. They lived so happily ever after in their little home, and never again did they worry about the curse."

The story would end, but this one particular night I was curious. "But what happened to the curse? Was it still there? Did they beat it?"

Her bright blue eyes grew dark and murky and she grew unfocused, detached from the world that surrounded her as if the little boy who sat wondering about the tale was no longer even there, he was long away in a separate palace from that in the stories. "I don't know." She muttered, and a single tear drop fell like her last hope was gone, that soon even she would succumb to the curse. My mother the beautiful blonde princess who even the sun smiled at, she was gone way before the demon took her.

"Well, that's not much of a story if you don't know the ending, is it?" I was a child so hopelessly obsessed with fairy tails and their outcomes that I didn't see the broken princess dancing her last dance in front of my very eyes, she was a broken ballerina ready to take her last bow, and I was a little boy who was waiting to grow up to be the same strong prince.

"No, no it isn't."

When I was eight years old, I got in my first fight. It wasn't much of a fight really, just a girl, Josephine, who'd stolen my toy and I wanted it back. A fight at eight years old isn't really much to talk about, but I believe that was my first time I ever truly learned to bad mouth someone, which is an extremely important landmark, in my opinion. It was my prince toy, a little action figure with a crown on his head and a small wooden sword in his hand and I went about running through the playground charging with it in front of me finding a princess who was stuck staring in her castle window. Josephine had always been a little bugger, spreading rumours about how I had cooties and that everyone was to stay away from me if possible. It was on this particular day, when I'd put my prince down for a second that she stole it from me and ran. This was my first fight ever, I'd heard the word used a couple times in my life but never had they passed my lips.

I guess in a way it was a gateway to what I am today, a boy who bad mouths all that come across him, but as that little girl ran away with my prince in hand I shouted, "Josephine, you little bitch, give me back my prince." She dropped it in the sand and ran away, it was then that I got a stern talking to from my teacher about language and "how it was inappropriate for little boys to act in such ways." It was thrilling and exhilarating, to put down others who I felt were beneath me, idiots, people unworthy of being around a prince trying to break a curse. It was then that I stopped caring about the people around me, all those who hated me were nothing compared to me. A prince dancing about his kingdom.

When I was ten years old, the beautiful blonde princess, who'd broken apart years before, fell to the demons. I came home from school to find her laying across satin sheets (sheets worthy of a princess) unresponsive and blurry eyed. She was gone way before anyone arrived to save her, I couldn't save her. The empty bottle sprawled on the floor with three powdery pills spilling out the lid screaming, you missed me take me too. Stuffing sleeping pills down her throat so that she'd fall ever so quickly into an eternal slumber. A slumber that no prince, no matter how brave or courageous could snap her out of. Not even as I watched my father kiss her dead blue lips did she awaken, true loves kiss only ever worked in fairy tales, and this was far from a bed time story told in whispers as I drifted off to sleep. This was a woman who'd lost herself years ago in her favourite memories.

After that, people had a tendency to stop me on the street, pat me on the back and tell me what a tragedy it was that my mother died so soon. She was so young, and her life didn't deserve to be taken away so quickly, without warning. People just didn't seem to understand, none of them would catch on to the curse. It was just one of those things in life that just happened, at least to them. To me, it was a clock slowly beating down, waiting to stop. People never really realized that it was bound to happen. Even when I told them after they apologized, they'd be taken aback. One woman in particular, one of my mother's distant friends was to insulted that she drew her hand back to slap me across the face. My father ushered me away before she could land a blow, but everyone surrounding me thought I had an extreme case of passive-aggression towards my mother and her taking her own life.

It really added to the whole bitter idea. How I was a bitter child, always waiting to land a blow on another kid as soon as a single word escaped from their mouth. Our neighbour, Ms. Ash, used to come over quite a bit after my mother killed herself. She was sweet, would cook meals when my father would lock himself up in his bedroom for weeks on end, I was never quite sure what he was doing in there. Most nights I believed he was planning his elaborate death, to make sure they'd never find his body and that he had just disappeared. But Ms. Ash was sweet. She was an excellent cook too. I can remember the sweet smell of her meals as I'd crash in the door from school and see her bright smile. Sometimes, I'd like to think that she was slowly bringing my father somewhere else with his life, maybe happy, maybe into a new relationship. I was eleven, and my mother had killed herself, or as Ms. Ash liked to correct, "Passed away dear," and I myself was trying to move on.

She started coming over less and less, Ms. Ash, I assume she either got a new boyfriend or just got sick of taking care of a man who would only unlock the door if he was going to the bathroom. I swear, sometimes I don't think he even left his room to do that. If he'd had any ambition left, he'd probably build a toilet in his room. Though, my father never really ignored me, it never felt as though I was neglected, or unloved. I understood, I guess. The torment of the demon, the ones that'd grabbed the pills and shoved them down her throat. Demons that danced playfully around our heads poking and prodding the clocks to make them move faster and faster.

At age thirteen, I considered taking up career training. A lot of boys in my grade were learning to fight and kill and maim, and even a hefty amount of girls had taken up the sport. It was all a giant competition to them. Each and every day, the kids would file into the classroom and discuss their dummy kill count, and how many heads they'd chopped off, what their weapon of choice was. At this point in my life was when I started to feel the most like I wasn't part of the crowd. I was the boy who still carried a prince in my pocket, whose paint had slowly been chipped away and whose sword was now broken in half, and they were kids who were training to die. It always made me giggle how the were so willing to go in and die, when they knew nothing of the situation. They would die in the arena, only one could live.

I suppose that's why I didn't take up career training. I was bound to die from the moment I came in this world. On the off chance that I ever actually did get reaped, that's what the demons had initially intended, and consequentially, I'd die. If I'd spent my entire teenage years locked inside a training facility when I was destined to die, why waste all that time? Time was so precious, and the whole training system just, at least to me, seemed like a complete waste of time and energy. I can't say that I spent my teenage life doing something productive, but it was better than spending years on end killing the same dummies, over and over, and over.

One day at school, I was minding my own business when Trevor came up to me. Trevor was this big buff idiot whose arms were already bigger than his brain, after only a year of training. I was sitting at lunch fiddling with my prince. I always brought him with me in case I needed him to calm me down. This was the second time in my life that someone stole my prince, this was my first real fist fight.

There were distinct difference between my first fight with the little bitch Josephine, and my first fist fight with the big bitch Trevor. Clearly, the aspect of age, I was now fourteen and slowly finding hairs everywhere with an extreme voice drop, and clearly loving myself more and more in the mirror. Also Trevor was not an eight-year old little girl, though he had the tendency to act like one. There was also size, Josephine, though she packed a personality made for a giant, was a solid four foot eleven, where as the boy before me towered over my fourteen year-old self at five foot eleven.

He snapped the sword in half on my prince. An insurmountable amount of rage built up inside of me as I threw the first punch. This was probably one of the worst things I could have done. His career training had basically made my punch pale in comparison to any damage he was used to taking, that very same career training made his punch much stronger than anything I could deliver. He beat me to a pulp. I lay on the ground bleeding and crying and listened as all the career kids laughed as I held my broken nose. This was one of the few times I had nothing sharp to say.

I crashed my first party at fifteen. District One kids are really known for their parties, and though I wasn't integrated within the social groups that they'd set up, I still wanted to experience the whole drunk feeling before I died. Taking a swig from the nearest bottle I could find, I felt the rough fire burn down my throat and the exhilaration that came with each passing gulp. As it became harder to walk and each passing second turned into more and more fun, it became a habit, coming to parties. I was hated, that's for sure, but every weekend I was the life of the party. I was life. Something that I'd never really be again in my life.

Sexuality was very dominant in high school parties, when you're pushing through a crowd and swaying to the beats, there's about a ninety percent change that you'll push through two people making out, whether they be in a relationship or not does not really matter. But, the whole idea of a random hook up was strange and bizarre to me, I was used to fairy tale stories of princes and windowsills, when in reality that never seemed to be the case any more. It was grab someone on the dance floor and pull them on your lips. Have a fun time. My first kiss was with a girl named Nicole. I have no idea what her last name was, or where she lived, not even quite sure if she went to my school. She was just a girl on the dance floor. My first kiss was also my first one nighter, this happened when I was sixteen. It became a regular occurrence.

I spent so much time out of the house from my mid-teens onwards, that I never really paid attention to my father. Each weekend I was spending boozing up and hooking up with guys or girls who fit my fancy, and he spent his time meandering around the house, staring at pictures, and frowning at the princesses blonde hair. It'd been six and a half years since my mother's suicide, it was the longest window in my family history that the spouse hadn't yet killed themselves. I guess I thought that the curse had dissipated, vanished on to someone else, maybe even he was secretly holding on to that hope. In my mind, it was still sort of a pressing manner, but more upon myself. Was I going to experience all that I could before the day I died, or was I going to end up young and in a grave alone? I experienced everything and everyone I could in a lost hope that maybe someday I'd be satisfied. But it's always been hard to satisfy me.

Midway through my seventeenth year, I staggered into my house wasted to find that none of the lights would turn on. The whole house had been short circuited and it looked as though the power in a couple other neighbouring houses had been blown out too, but it was late at night and everyone else seemed to be in bed. I went to check in with my father with a knock at his door to find it actually open for the first time really in years, and in a way this was entirely worrisome. I hadn't seem him anywhere in the house, and unlike myself he wasn't one to go out drinking until all hours of the night. But my mind was foggy and I couldn't bother to care, so I waddled to my room and crashed amongst the sheets.

In the morning, sporting a killer headache, I found a note next to my bed with my name labelled on it in shaky writing. "Kieron." The front had a small little tear stain in the bottom right corner, these are the details I remember vividly. Inside were only two word, printed in giant letters still shaky and near illegible despite their size. "I'M SORRY." My father, the man who'd lasted so long without the demons taking him over, and yet I ran about the house searching in closets and on ceiling fans, afraid that I missed his hanging body. But couldn't find him. Nor did I find him laid out on bed sheets with blue lips and pill bottles on the floor.

I found my father laying peacefully in a bath with a toaster floating at the top. His wrinkled body was covered in burns and his head had already sunk under the water. Dead. The demons had gotten him. Years I'd spent thinking that one day the curse would break itself, and it'd be my father and I forever and ever, him living in his room and me all alone. Just like the prince in the dungeon. It was then that I let out an incredible roar, laughter escaping through every pore. How ridiculous was it, that here I was again, but this time with a toaster bobbing about. A toaster. The giggles continued while I found Ms. Ash, now Mrs. Stinson walking around her house trying to figure out what could have possibly blown her power out. I led her to the house and laughed as she saw my father and laughed as she ran to get the Peacekeepers, and continued to laugh as I was questioned as to whether or not I threw the toaster in.

"He's gone nuts, off his rocker." They'd say. "Should lock him up." I turned eighteen two days after my father had died. I never had to go to a dungeon, never had to spend year upon year fighting brutes and waiting to erupt out of those doors to a sum of money. But yet, the strong feeling of needing to escape loomed over me ever so closely. I inherited the house, but not much else. My father hadn't left any money, nothing was really left. This was my dungeon, the bathroom, the bedroom, a constant reminder of the ticking clock that pounded inside of me. I too was a prince like the one that I spent nights clutching in my hands until it drew blood. I needed to escape the realm in which I'd come so accustomed to.

Ms. Ash, Mrs. Stinson, was supposed to look after me, watch to make sure that I was still doing fine and hadn't gone completely off my rocker. One night, as we sat eating a home cooked meal, she brought up that she was going to send me away for a bit. She'd called up some doctors and they'd arrive in the morning. It was here that the nagging sense of escape tumbled out of me, sent away. I didn't need to be locked up, confined with a clock that wanted me gone, I was a man who needed to be free. That night she left me to my thoughts. I packed my bag with what I thought I needed. A few pairs of shorts, t-shirts, socks shoes, anything that could be thrown into a backpack. However, I'll be honest in saying that I packed a few sentimental things, sure I'd lost most feelings ages ago, but yet I found myself attached to three items that I really needed to bring despite their irrelevance.

First there was the little prince in which I'd played with and kept near me my entire life, he was my guardian of sorts. He'd steal princesses from their castles and stole kisses in alleyways, and he was brave. Brave was something that I needed to feel more and more lately, and he was there, always, despite his chipped paint and broken sword. Second, were the satin sheets that lined the bed in which the princess fell. My mother's sheets that she slept an eternal slumber on. They'd been stuffed in the bottom of a closet and were kept there, unused, just there. Last, I brought the note that had three words on it's entirety. Kieron, flip open, I'm sorry. This was the only sort of sentiment I'd received from my father in years, and despite all of the things in his room that I could have brought with me, it seemed that this had the only sort of connection I'd had with him in the past years.

I ran, simple as that. I passed the gates that my father and mother never passed and just kept walking. No guards watched my moves, though I constantly checked over my shoulder for the boys and girls in my class that'd become peacekeepers-in-training, having never made it into the games they trained so hard for. I walked for days, weeks, I'd brought enough food for a couple weeks but I'd picked up quickly on what berries were passable to shove down my throat. But at the same time, I didn't necessarily care whether they choked me and left me to die alone. No one would find me in the grey zones where the Capitol didn't reign supreme. No people were around, and it was nice. For once I didn't let insults slip out every two minutes at every stroke of idiocy, no people apologizing for my parents death, no clock that ticked down inside of me, waiting.

Each passing tree seemed to look the same to me as I kept walking with no direction in mind. A couple of times I found myself at a fence, and walked along it until the fence disappeared, and then still I kept walking. After about a month of wandering about, finding no one, nothing around, I pulled out a rope which I'd brought along. I'd learnt how to tie a noose when I was twelve, I guess in a way I thought that if I ever did feel the need to kick the bucket, I'd want an effective knot that wouldn't break. While I tied eight loops around the rope, I couldn't help but hum a song I'd heard once. Are you, are you, coming to the tree? The forest seemed to whisper with me as the wind picked up and blew melodies through the air, getting stronger with each passing second. The wind grew so strong that I thought I might fall over and gravity itself would be the deliverer of death. I could fall into a deep, deep sleep just like my mother had, finally. Wind blew about like a hurricane passing through the forest as the leaves on the trees fell off and rushed through the air. It was then that the cloak was deactivated, revealing a hovercraft. After minutes of torrential wind, it landed, as the hatch descended, a ground of men in grey uniforms spouted out of it. It was clear they saw the noose in my hand and stared at me. One man in particular stood forward and asked me what I was doing. I told him and he asked me to come with him.

"Where to?" I muttered, surprised at the people that seemed to have fallen out of the sky.

"District 13."[/blockquote][/color][/size]

* * *

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Don't make me sad, don't make me cry
Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough
I don't know why
Keep making me laugh,
Let's go get high.

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