three steps from hell / wrench monkey, day 2.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

they call me a menace,
they say that i’m cursed.



felicity carrow,
district three.

It wasn't until late into the night that Felicity found somewhere safe to lay her head. The trails here are even easier to spot, despite the way the blood oxidizes, crimson red rusting over and hardening against the cold snow. Ugly, dark brown smears across the snow where kids have tried to wipe away their tracks, a hopeless, fruitless endeavor that makes Felicity gnaw on the inside corners of her mouth. Little nubs form there, and she clamps down on them hard every time she hears the too-loud crunch on snow or pine beneath her boots. An idea needles at the back of her mind, and she uses it as an excuse to occupy her thoughts. In her mind, she has a pair of pliers in one hand and those ridiculous angel wings in another, and she's prying the rods of wire in them out and reattaching them to that fishing net someone sent her. What had she seen people call them? Snowshoes? That sounded stupid, so she spent a few hours with the mist and the evergreens, and asked them what they thought she ought to name her invention. Every so often, a bead of red catches in Viktor the Monkey's eyes, and Felicity stops to catch her breath. It's one of those nights that makes her remember traipsing through the narrow forests in Six, tiny cuts of land between the winding streets where slim trees with white bark liked to grow amongst oaks that caught fire in autumn. Sometimes, in the winter, you could find the groves of pine trees; more often than not, Felicity found them with yellowing needles, dying from crowded roots and a host of other diseases leeched into the ground by the various industries. The one's here loom taller than any she's ever seen before, and when that red beacon atop the tower manages to cut through their canopy, Felicity can't help but hold to Viktor a little tighter. That tower looks like every sentry lookout she's tried to spend her whole life avoiding. The last thing she needs is to be seen through the trees. Felicity is dead on her feet when she realizes pines have parted to reveal a craggy rockface, jagged outcrops of rough looking stone arching up and above, disappearing into the fog. Stepping up to the stone, the air is sullen with a different sort of wet from the mist and the snow. Humidity clings to the stone, a droplet of warm water to wipe away from that ugly sign. BEWARE. "Playing with fire here, dude," she whispers into the makeshift sling wrap where Viktor sleeps, nestled against her chest. Swallowing, she steps up to one of the oil lanterns and lifts it off the wall. "But down we go."

and if love is real, maybe i’m just too bad
to remember how good it feels.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

they call me a menace,
they say that i’m cursed.



felicity carrow,
district three.

Felicity beds down for the night in a warm alcove she finds just behind an old miners cart. Nimble fingers investigate the wheels, the tracks, the little simple machines that seem to operate the breaks and the steering. They ache from hours spent in the cold, even tucked into the deep pockets of the brown fur jacket she clutched around her hadn’t been quite protection enough from the winds; down here in the mines though, she can feel like life sinking back into them, leaving them tingling and aching as the feeling returns. With a shudder, she settles for tugging on the cart as hard as she can, just for assurances the thing isn’t going to roll backwards and crush her while she’s sleeping, you know? “C’mon, Vik,” she says around a wide-mouthed yawn, stretching her arms above her head. She unfurls the brown jacket, laying it out beside her sleeping bag for the monkey to curl up on. She hesitates only a second before running her fingertips over his silky, white fur; the chipped blue polish stands out so brightly against the white fluff, even in the dim light of the oil lamp. “No one is going to find us down here.” Sleep comes only fitfully for the girl pretending to be from Three. She’d been right to fear the things that lurked in the recesses of her own mind, the nightmares she could conjure in the daytime had nothing on the things that hid in the dark. Blistering winds whips at her cheeks, feeding the well of roiling, fiery anger that consumes the pit of her stomach. A knock comes, echoing as if from the sky, and Felicity realizes the simmering mist that lifts off the scorched ground beneath her feet rises as steam only to hit glass. Looming, heavy droplets of moisture collect on the sky above her, nasty and soiled by the soot and ash lingering in the air and across the ground. They fall as black droplets and transform into those wretched, winged creatures, one and then another until a dozen becomes a thousand and they are picking Felicity up with their long talons over and over and over again, dropping her back toward the sand-scraped rocks below. They let her fall time and again, making strange chittering sounds while catching her with ugly claws dug into her gut that leave behind black, festering wounds. When she wakes, it’s with a gasp, before she spits up bile. Her vision blurs immediately, the tent slipping sideways as everything spins. Nearly stumbling, she catches herself with her palms on the warm stone, breath heavy as the chittering follows her into waking. The noises bounce off the walls, no longer dimly lit by the oil lantern as they had been when she first stepped foot in this cavern system. “Viktor,” she manages to hiss, ears starting to ring when she reaches out around her and doesn’t catch drift of the monkey’s soft fur. “Viktor,” more insistent, more desperate, concern creeps into her voice. “I swear to fuck I will use you to make a hat if you do something stupid right now...” A low groan, the telltale sound of metal creaking against metal; something once held in place by rust, freed from its stasis. Then the familiar, excited sounds of a monkey laughing and clapping his hands, before Felicity feels the cart they’d camped behind begin to move.

and if love is real, maybe i’m just too bad
to remember how good it feels.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

they call me a menace,
they say that i’m cursed.



felicity carrow,
district three.

The tunnel feels like it winds on into forever. At first there are cracks in the ceiling that let in light, dim shafts that peek through the darkness and illuminate the walls. Felicity forgets about those horrible signs warning her away from this place, instead opting to plunge deeper and deeper into the cool dampness that beckons. She pays no mind to the sign that read BEWARE, those capital letters big and bold and bright. She doesn’t have the space or time to consider them, not when the horizon is a forgotten sign in the rear view mirror and she’s not even sure anymore which way is up and which way is down. She’ll be lucky if she finds her campsite again, and the host of valuable bits she’d been sponsored over the previous day. Now that had been an odd confidence boost, one she hadn’t expected. She barely thought Abraham might find a way to ensure her sponsorship, never mind the rest of Panem’s wealthy elite. What a mistake she’d made, thinking she was unsponsorable, in spite of the ten. The gifts had rolled in though, little silver parachutes appearing amongst the needles. Absently, she wonders what they’d sponsor if they knew she’d actively worked on machinery designed to blow up their safe, saged little homes, warded against negative energies. If only they knew, at least this time the call was going to come from inside the house. Fucking idiots. Doesn’t make a difference though when Viktor cruises down the tunnels, horrified and scared of his own choices. He makes awful, heart-wrenching moans that seem to curse his own chloices. “Pull the lever!” she shouts, not giving a thought to the chittering sounds ricocheting against the walls as she runs. They nearly drown out the sounds of her boots slapping against the stone, the clumsy way she avoids the lips of wooden planks that line the hall. Viktor makes an awful noise when the cart slows over a small mound only to collect momentum and surge down a long straightaway. “C’mon, you silly monkey!” She doesn’t stop to think about how many times she’s heard her father say that. Huddled over his work desk, Felicity was always desperate to avoid the meals he’d only barely managed to scrape together using leftover rice and some old yeast. Sometimes a canned vegetable made it to to stove, but usually she ate them sharp lid still attached, room temperature and off the shelf. C’mon, Monkey! That’s how he used to call her to the kitchen, to let her know food was there for her to eat. He was always gone by the time she got there, but at least the food wasn’t. A shaft of light, like a miracle; Viktor puts his little hand on the lever. ”Yes, dude, that one! The brake!”

and if love is real, maybe i’m just too bad
to remember how good it feels.

[gamemaker tallis 🧚🏽‍♂️kaitlin.]

they call me a menace,
they say that i’m cursed.



felicity carrow,
district three.

Felicity had cursed the monkey the entire descent. The number of mental insults she'd thrown the poor creature's direction should have been enough to send most people into cardiac arrest, just from the sheer force of her own heart's electromagnetic field. She'd never been prone to believing in higher powers until a couple years ago when she had the stupid epiphany that the human body is a machine. Dad had explained it to her while fiddling with the insides of one of the hospital's fancy gadgets. Never mind that it meant he'd hardly leave the basement for the next couple weeks. She figured out how to feed herself eventually. "They use this bit to measure the polarization," she can still hear him say. Nimble fingers fiddle with the toolbox she'd found, neurotically taking inventory over and over. She yanks the black ski mask she'd found yesterday off while her body remembers the weight of bulky, metal rimmed protective goggles on her cheekbones a decade ago. "And we need special little chisel to situate this bit here." At the very least, the memories are a welcome distraction from the relentless sounds coming from the dark. It doesn't matter how light her step, or how shallow her whisper, the company she kept was relentless. A part of her wondered if it was a hoax, that there was nothing really down here, but as soon as she tried to turn to face the shadows, she felt a chill up her spine, nails skimming each vertebrae. Viktor tugged on her hair, and pointed over her shoulder, as to say "please can we get the hell out." Felicity wasn't about to argue with the monkey. Especially not when she was getting closer; she couldn't explain the feeling, only intuition guiding her. There'd been an intersection a few hundred feet back where two of those massive cables seemed to meet up. Running her hands over the walls, stretching up to graze the ceiling—there's more lightbulbs down this hallway, she's sure of it. She only knows she's entered another chamber when the temperature changes, and she loses her sense of direction as the hall widens out into a more properly walled chamber. A hand extended, blind, she thinks she feels a wooden beam so she follows it, tracing slick wood only to hiss when a small splinter catches under her nail. Call it penance, call it chance, she sidesteps, tripping over her own legs. At least she saves herself from cracking her skull open on the corner of some metal box when she falls forward. "Ow,, this place sucks," the fabric on her tights stretches as she dusts her knees off, a hole widening as she experimentally bends and straightens the limb. Still works. Extending a hand towards her savior, she investigates the cool edges, a grin beginning to spread when she recognizes the way her hands begin to glide. "Oh, I so take it back." Reaching for the makeshift tool belt she'd been working on, she gets to work.

and if love is real, maybe i’m just too bad
to remember how good it feels.


trying to fix: generator in the mines
53JO9Ckig11-10

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