[94th] The Reaping - District 12

[gm bourgeois decadence [aya]]

"It is time," the Escort said as they stood over the impatient people of the District, "To once again send two of our own children to the Capitol to compete in the Hunger Games. Let us begin the Reaping!"

They did not look to see the reaction of his district before reaching into the glass ball that held the names of the children. "First up," the Escort announced, pulling out a slip of paper. They unfolded it and read out to the crowd, "Thomas O'Quinn!" They then reached into the ball again, selecting another name. "Willow Hush!"


OOC - RPing is allowed. If you wish to volunteer, let the tribute post first either accepting or stepping down from their place for volunteers, and then post. If the tribute doesn't reply by Tuesday, May 30th, a staff member will post saying that volunteering is open. Please do not post until you see this staff message. FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE.

Tributes, please do not make your acceptance or denial of your spot in character; instead, please leave an ooc note at the end of your post stating whether they accept or are stepping down for volunteers.

[pup]

[googlefont="Gelasio:400"]

thomas

The body lays flat on the table. It had stopped breathing a while ago. A name tag hanging lifelessly from the corpse lists a name and a time.

1:32AM

I will never know for sure if it was the time the heart stopped beating. The stranger's breathing had stopped fifteen minutes prior. We don't have any fancy machines which can track his heart rate or his blood oxygen levels for us, so we have to go off the imperfect method of watching for his breathing to stop. The time labelling the corpse is simply the time my father and I gave up. Despite our stubbornness to let death into our home, sometimes there's no mending what's broken beyond repair.

Dad offered to watch it for the night, but I insisted he get some sleep. We don't know its religion or whether it needs a prayer, but we do keep vigil for everyone who passes away in our home. I don't believe in spirits like my parents or my siblings do, but there's something soothing about keeping the body company. Whether or not there's malicious ghosts trying to sneak into the body at night like mom says, I find a quietness underneath the dim lamp light.

When the soft rays of morning light stream in, I know my shift is up. Normally, I'd contact the family and then take a nap, but I won't have a chance to wipe away my self-inflicted eye bags until later today. Dad walks back into the room groggily and nods at me, and I leave my place by the body for him to take over the chores that come with someone's death.

After reaching my room, I shrug on some clean clothes. My yearly reaping outfit is a rarely worn, battered white button up and khakis donated some time ago by a neighbor who couldn't pay for some medicine. I never wear them normally- most of my days include cleaning up blood or some other excrements.

I trudge my way to the reaping alone. The tiredness from last night hangs on my limbs like weights. My brother has bounded on ahead of me since I insisted on moving at a snail's pace. My sister has long since graduated from the reaping pool. This is my last year, finally.

At check-in, I note the peacekeepers eyeing me wearily. There's always some discontent among the superstitious. When you aren't trained as a doctor in district six or a fancy Capitolite hospital, the same people who believe that black cats are unlucky or that crossing fingers will make a wish come true tend to take an active stance against you. Their belief doesn't stop them from coming by when a "real" doctor is too expensive, but their reliance on us doesn't stop them from sending me dirty looks. Magic and witchdoctors aren't real, but I gave up trying to make the irrational see rationality along time ago.

Finding my place in the crowd, I can't seem to find my brother. He must be milling about and talking to some friends. He hasn't felt the full weight of our work yet. Hopefully he has another few years before he gets the task of sitting next to a body overnight.

The ceremony begins. It's always boring until we get to the part I care about. Death is no stranger in the quiet corners of my home, but there's something cruel and unforgiving about putting it out in the open.

The escort's fingers curl around a slip of paper, and the crowd falls completely silent. There is an unspoken cue for us to hold our breath.

Thomas O'Quinn.

I have no words to say. There's nothing witty that comes from my mouth like I've seen from other tributes countless times before. I drift up to the stage lifelessly, my face pale as if I already am a ghost.

Will anyone sit by my body if I die?

[thomas o'quinn accepts]

[alex 🐺]

Being a rebel was so ten years ago, honestly, Willow thinks as she slips an old headphone into her ears to pull back her curls and breathe life into her face and sallow cheeks.

She slaps them a few times to get the blood flowing. That’s supposed to work, right? 

The music is tinny and sounds like it’s being filtered through a metal sieve. Damnit, one of the speakers was probably going. She takes it out of her right ear, blows on the bud, and then slips it back in. Better, maybe. Probably.

The ceiling above her head creaks in the wind. It was probably going to be cold today for the fucking spectacle. 

Her anger isn’t even directed at the Capitol, although you're totally probably thinking that. What’s the use in being upset if you can’t change your situation? And they sure as shit couldn’t do anything to fight back against the Capitol.

Uprising is just another word for smacking your head against a cinderblock wall ten times and hoping that on the eleventh try, you'll miraculously break through. 

She was, however, pissed the fuck off at her fucking art teacher. That fucking philistine wouldn’t know design if it hit her over the head with one of her stupid fucking sketchbooks.

“Will, get a fucking move on, kiddo!” Her dad yells from the backyard, the sound of split wood falling to the ground.

“Yes, sir,” she replies, with as much derision as she can bring to bear. She sits up and swings her legs over the edge of the worn mattress, her bare feet grazing the cold wooden floor. The small room breathes in as she walks, the walls closing in. Or maybe it was just the specs from her building designs that littered the walls. The lantern flickers ominously in the corner as she breezes past it.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Fuck you, sir,” she says to herself, grabbing the morning’s milk from the jug on the wooden table in the kitchen and taking a large swig out of it. A line of white drips down her chin.

She doesn’t bother with a glass. It would probably be dirty anyway, grimy with a layer of stone just like everything else in this place.

Dad’s already gone to the quarry when she slams the front door, dashing down the hill and towards the Square.

Her boots are almost as black as her hair, but they're marked with white scuffs from the piles of masonry stones and broken statues that litter their backyard like a graveyard of broken desolation.

Heads detached from necks, hands severed from wrists, and bodies cleaved in half, the tragic evidence of a forgotten tragedy of teenage rage. Dad would take the discarded rocks from the quarry and try to craft them into something beautiful. He always forgets that beauty comes from the breakdown.

That's where she came in. 

His chisel marks tell tales of craftsmanship and dedication, of the hands that shaped and molded them into existence. But he doesn’t get that as the statues crumble and disintegrate, they take on a new form of beauty, a beauty born from the inevitable cycle of creation and destruction.

A beauty built by erosion.

The walk to the Square flies by with the music in her ears. She stands with the other girls from school, an eyebrow raised at the fucking technological might that the Capitol could bring to bear for this fuckfest and yet couldn’t spare for any kind of innovation that wasn’t borne on the backs of men inhaling dust and coating their lungs with the ashes of their friends and family. 

No, they had to toil with last century's tools while a fucking dragonfly drone flies around their heads, the low constant buzz giving the Capitol a 360-degree view of poverty in high definition. 

Hopefully, they got her flipping off the cameras on the stream. Assholes would probably edit it though. Fuck that.

She’d even painted her nails for this. Yeah, they might be chipping but the thought was there. 

“WILLOW HUSH!”

“It’s Will, asshole,” she replies automatically, years and years of saying the same phrase tumbling out of her mouth without thought, but then, “Oh, fuck me.”