human nature {jano : oneshot}

[rook]

j a n o

my wings are like this
all my words on his lips
there's nothing to discover
from the thunder and lightning

I can still hear the screams and cries of those caught up in the cage of bodies.

I half-expect Castor to kick me in the ribs and wake me up, but it doesn't come. Hours probably pass before I realize I have slept in past noon, and pull myself from whatever distorted nightmare was playing on repeat in my sleep. Red skies, red hands. My tongue compresses against the roof of my mouth and crawls forwards to run across my upper lip. I swallow, my throat dry and raw. The air is heavy and damp, even when hidden away in our little wooden hut high in the trees I can tell that there has been rain all across the District. My eyes break open, and I roll over onto my front, pushing to all fours. I take a moment to breathe in the musky woodland air, letting the blanket hang over me like death.

The first thing I notice is that my twin sister is not here. She usually lets me sleep in, as I'm the one that stays up so late reading over legislation and law, studying every potential loophole and escape clause. Sometimes she'll kick me before she goes out, to let me know. Not today though, and now it's early afternoon, and she's not back. The sun is directly overhead, I can see it's blinding reach stabbing through the gaps in my shoddy carpentry. She should be back by now. Maybe something of interest has prolonged her stay in town, but on the rare occasion that something does come up, she wouldn't risk staying in the public eye longer than was sensible. I get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that makes me crawl out from the comfort of my pillow fort and onto the hard wooden flooring of our shitty not-so-safehaven.

Skyscrapers of paper erase any existence of a desk at my bedside, and oceans of scrapped plans wash over the nearby flooring. Ink clings to my sweaty right foot as I bring it down on top of a discarded document, lifting the paper up as I walk. I reach down and remove the paper from my foot, scrunching it up and dropping it behind me as I make my way to the gap in the wall half-considered to be a window. I lean, eyes adjusting to the midday sun. It is sunny, yes. Rays highlight the wet leaves of the soaked woodland around me. Sun always follows rain, if it doesn't, then the rain's not done.

Squabbles of scrub jays and spotted sandpipers shoot past in fighter jet formation, making sonic booms as they hit leaves in a flurry of feathers and water. Their cries are like white noise. You live in the forest for so long that it fades from background noise to murmurs to nothing. It all just becomes numb. It's human nature to adapt to these things until they no longer hurt us or bother us. Human nature. To feel nothing. To negate it all.

I walk to the sink, staring into the grubby mirror at the stubble on my face. I turn the faucet and let the basin fill with steaming water. Condensation soon causes my reflection to disappear, and I splash my face with the hot water. Father always said that shaving is important. Many lumberjacks in District Seven have big, bushy beards, but Father always kept his face clean shaved. He harked on about how a man isn't a man unless he is raw and exposed to the elements. He said harsh wind on open pores took his mind off the struggle of hard work. Fight pain with pain. He always said that, over and over, like he was trying to bury it into my mind.

I lather up a bar of soap, and using my right hand I spread the suds across my jaw and up my cheeks, arching over my upper lip and down the other side. I'm baby-faced. Stubble makes me look older, and I'm always hesitant to shave. Nonetheless, I take father's blade in my hand and press it's edge gently against my cheek. I pause, staring at the grey mirror. I wipe away the condensation with the green sleeve of my t-shirt, revealing a boy with a foam beard. Getting a better look of the angles of my face, I turn my head and drag the blade slowly up towards my ear, leaving a thick but clear pink line where hair used to be. I dip the blade in the water and press it to the other cheek.

Forty-one people died that day, in the town center. Forty-one men, women, and children. And babies. All for what? To ask for more food? We were being starved into working longer hours, and there wasn't a damn thing we could do about it. District Seven always has it's hand forced by the Capitol, because they know how desperate we are for food. There are no orchards or livestock, certainly not in large enough numbers to feed ourselves. We rely heavily on imports from other Districts and Capitol relief packages. And Tessera, there's always that.

They piled the bodies up like logs. Tossed onto the back of a truck and driven to the pits to be burned. They used the industrial incinerators to cremate them. The chimneys spewed their ashes on that day, and we breathed it in like it was the usual sawdust.

I finish shaving, and dab at my face with a not-so-clean towel, making sure to get the foam off the tips of my ears. I drain the basin and head back towards my bed. Castor's still not home, which is unusual. I figure I may as well head into town, we both use the same route from our spot in the forest, so I'll either catch her on her way back or find her in the thick of Seven's busy streets. I step over the unmade blankets and grab a sweater hanging on the headboard. It looks black from distance, but up close you can see it's made of deep dark purples and greens, zigzagging across each other. I slip it over my head, letting it fall down over my body. It's two sizes too big, the sleeves hiding my hands and the fabric almost reaching to my knees.

I walk barefooted to the front door, where my sheepskin boots stand at attention, with an unwashed pair of socks sprouting out like fousty flora. I fall back onto my ass, grabbing the socks and rolling onto my back to pull them over my toes and up my ankles. I slip a boot over my left foot, and half-heartedly tie them up as I lean near-upside-down like a flipped tortoise. I lace the second and roll forward onto my feet again. The treehouse is pretty high up, and far enough from any signs of civilization that infiltration is a problem, so we don't have a lock. Heck, we barely have a door. I turn and descend down the makeshift rope ladder that Castor and I made last summer, dropping rung after rung until my feet touch heavy, uneven woodland ground.

The trees are soaked with light, their barks cracked, but not thirsty. The rays pour inside every age line, making the sentinels look weathered and ancient. My hand trail behind my as I walk at a brisk pace between towering evergreens, my fingers lightly touching their damp skins. Here at the bottom of the ocean, the light struggles to reach the ground, broken up by dappled canopies. It is green and murky, but it is home to me and Castor. It is all we have now. I move from pillar to post, trunk to trunk, edging my way towards familiar redwoods and sikta spruces. Down the sharp incline, fast-footing down and over vines, gripping at any leaning tree that offers a helping hand.

I remember the first time we came here. Castor's face was painted red with that man's blood. She kept staring at her fingernails, trembling and screaming. I had to put my clammy hands over her mouth to muffle her cries, and half-drag her through the thickets and over protruding roots. We hid in hollow logs and behind poderosa pines as storms of Peacekeepers hurried past, waving their flashlights like flamethrowers, trying to burn down all wildlife until they found where we were hiding. All the while I had to deal with my own trauma, and the burning image of little Ellise being nothing more than a blood-soaked sack of bones and flesh. We lived in a bush for a week, coming to terms with what we had done. What she had done. But I helped. I made runs to town, avoiding any signs of white. Stealing food, stealing anything I could. I had to, until she was strong enough.

I reach the edge of the woods, where the trees thin out towards industrial cutting areas and timber shacks. I move around the circumference, making my way to the outskirts of town. Trucks filled with stacks of wood chug past, and I move from tree to broken wall to derelict building to factory wall. Every step becomes more constructed, and every inch into the town it becomes a little more built up around me, with people moving in clusters. I cling to them like the damp, hiding in plain sight from any overseers. I divert from the flow and join another tide of people heading towards the market. After a short walk, I grip a street corner, letting the wave of people wash past me.

After a few minutes of looking around, it's clear to me that Castor is not here. I bite my lower lip, and someone tightens a vice around my chest, squeezing me until the anxiety makes me shake. Where is she? We have a very specific route, it's incredibly unlikely that we could have missed each other. I glance at the sun, judging it to be around two in the afternoon. No, this is not good, not at all. Something bad has happened, and there's no feasible way for me to find out. I can't ask anyone, because we've always worked in the shadows, taking not buying. No one knows us, except for from the faded wanted posters and news bulletins.

Shit. I curse under my breath, standing less than fifty meters from where Ellise was killed. From where all those people were crushed. From where Castor repeatedly stabbed that Peacekeeper in the chest until he stopped breathing. It's all so fresh, like I can still taste the blood in my mouth. Blood from Castor's stray elbow as she struggled to break from my grasp, and caught my jaw. Something's happened, I can feel it. Castor is always careful. She's not the kind of person to make mistakes over neglect. She knows what's at stake, so she wouldn't have got herself caught, would she? What other explanation is there, other than her making an unexpected detour. She would have told me. We tell each-other everything.

I wade past market and towards the built up building-based stores. Fuck. I see a crowd ahead, a crowd of white. Fear grips me in a death-lock, and I move quickly to a wall, steadying myself and staying out of their field of vision. Peacekeepers, about four of them, talking to a shop owner. Could be nothing, Jano. Could be nothing. "Panem Radio's getting tedious, I might pick up some books tomorrow." Could be nothing. Can't be nothing. How could I forget? Was I half asleep when she told me? Fuck. They've got her. They've caught her. The only person I have in my life. Gone.

Stop panicking, for fuck's sake Jano, you didn't survive this long by panicking. I take some controlled breaths and try to think more clearly. She might not have been caught. The store owner may just be reporting a theft. Fuck. I don't know. Could be anything. How would I know? She could be back home right now. I wouldn't know.

"Jano Karmichael? Don't move, please." Comes a stern voice, and something presses against the nape of my neck. Because one rat always follows the other. It's like they knew I would come. It's like they knew that if they caught one, they would catch the other too. All they had to do would be to wait for him to come crawling to find his sister.

Sentenced, forty lashes. Perverting the court of justice. Human nature. It's human nature to numb out what hurts us. After a couple of months of listening to birds squabble in the forest, I numbed it out. After the first five lashes, I could numb out the remaining thirty-five. Maybe it is human nature, or maybe it's because none of it hurts as much as losing my baby sister, or knowing that my twin is locked away in a cage, being probed and tortured for our sins. Forty lashes is the price of my freedom, not legislation or loopholes or working through documents. Forty lashes under the cold leather whip of the law.

And then they cast me aside, like the rat I am. They set me free. No longer a criminal, but no better off. I leave a trail of blood back through the forest, my back is bare and my consciousness slipping. I fall into the dirt, thinking that this pain couldn't be anything further from human nature.

there's no way to recover
this is love not loving
but now we are all eachother
i was a brother when i saw you

word count: 2248, graphics: rook
theme: kites by geographer