ça, tu me | top floor hotel room, 11 a.m. | open

[ja'mie]

The sound of the television playing reruns of old Hunger Games in the common room wakes me up late. I look over at my communicuff, the notification symbols piling up, messages from a friend on holiday and a few from Mitchell's new agent, papers of emails printed off and scattered around all over the cool, white sheets, the blanket and pillows, their typefaces faded and official-looking, and a fluffy calico cat I have never seen in my life wearing a small diamond collar lies curled up amidst the mess, breathing quietly, asleep, its fur ruffled by the draft coming from a vent. Someone yells on the TV and it flinches but doesn't wake up. I get out of bed, and through the venetian blinds I can see the pines shaking wildly, actually bending in the freezing winds, and then I look back at the bed and then turn away and then look back again at the papers and the bold fonts, the italicized dates at their tops with logos from senders with studio emails and notice that it's beginning to get really cold in the room. I put on a pair of jeans and a blank T-shirt, then a jacket, and take the elevator down to the lobby, put on my sunglasses because my eyes are puffy. There aren't many people around, just the doorman and two girls lying on one of the foyer couches, wearing bathing suits even though it's snowy outside, leafing through old issues of Capitol Couture, watching some drama film on the main TV with the sound turned off. An electric blue glass of something glows from where it's sitting on the front desk and the hotel receptionist is talking about murder statistics with one of the cleaning crew and he looks at me for some reason as he does and asks if I'm feeling okay. I don't say anything, just sloppily sign a bill for the room service last night. When I get back to my room the cat is gone and I take a shower, open a bottle of vodka, write emails, and over on the balcony, in the sun, staring out into the white city, it seems really possible to believe that youth is forever and life is beautiful. Soon I feel a shadow cross my face and linger, followed by footsteps and when I remove my sunglasses, the sun bursts into my eyes and for one blinding moment I don't recognize the figure standing in front of my chair — but then my vision adjusts. "Oh," I say lamely, unsure. "Good morning." More like afternoon. I look down, at what? — My hands? "Did you stay overnight?"

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

MARY DELGADO BELLADONNA

Inducement of nausea and repulsion is the ability of the hostel room. She doesn’t know why she even spent a slumber here. Peeling paint ornament the once pastel-white walls and miniscule fissures are present with a detective’s eye on the mentioned walls. The curtains are eligible to be in comparison with mold—there was a greasy sensation on the fabric. They don’t wash these things. Her bed creaks and groans with every turn during her fitful sleep—the duvet sheets are sheer and it doesn’t act very much as a shield against the cold. She doesn’t even quite grasp the reason for the lasting winter’s cold. The oblique sun’s beams would be slicing through dense banks of snow clouds if the Capital’s meteorological patterns were natural.

But it is doubted; nothing is the Capital is natural.

Those bright, vivid wigs which displays each and every hue on the spectrum don’t top the darkness of the Capital and its civilians. She remembers those little pills they sell on the avenues, people frequently crowding around the sellers. They fool with two very convincing words: 100% natural. Did those tablets mystically break down fats? Did those tablets smear the skin with a glow? She couldn’t surface the answer, but she recalls dropping a tablet’s shell to the ground.

The blue grains inside were sweet and aromatic.

She grapples herself up to the surface before she sinks further into the abysmal depth of her past and drowns in it. The distant sun throws its golden innards upon her negativity-sickened visage and she drags the curtains close. The room is shadowed and coldness seeps in. Mary takes the tranquility of the surroundings as an advantage and snatches her chance to pace along her morning activities in the cold, her skin mimicked the temperature of establishing ice cubes. Dental and physical needs are taken care of firstly, then follows a cold shower—each water droplet hitting her skin like icy bullets. In a short amount of time, the entirety of her petite frame is attached to a slick Peacekeeper gear. But clothes still remains as a tad concern for her—the gear is brown-red, with shoulder-guards, thin vambraces and leg-guards. No hints of white were on it for she had grown out of the plain Peacekeeper uniforms.

She has no business in this room now, the remaining action only to exit it so she does. The door closes with an unsatisfying click and the only baggage she has in her possession is a grey, long-travel backpack, acting as storage for extra clothing and some handy gears in case of emergency. (Terrorism, attacks, sudden rebellions, the possibilities are countless.) Mary strides out, unaware of the little dagger laying still on the bedside table in the room.

Her feet moves and takes her to the sky blue, to the snow flakes and the arctic zephyrs.

The wind whips her springy coils and she doesn’t bother to tame it—something so trivial such as a hair is not in her concern. Idle optics land on the distant structures, hazy in the flying snowflakes and the mist. The skies above the Capitol skyscrapers are tinted with soft pastel blue hues, she noticed. It appears so beauty, so innocent and as a civilian trademark of peace and unity. Oh, how surprised a stranger to Panem must be when the darkness of it is uncovered?

Through the winds and the attention-drawing view, the voice was a bunch of blurred waves but she managed to catch snippets of it. Head turned to face the other; the announcement of her standing in front of his chair boomed late in the corona of her thoughts. She doesn’t step away because she doesn’t need to. Tedious words drill into her head and she does an idle eye-roll. “No shit, I wouldn’t be carrying this much of disappointment if I didn’t spend a night in this sorry excuse of a hostel.” A huffs rang aloud along with a trail of white smoke from her lips. “It should be illegal to suck this bad.” Eyes peel away from their fixation on the Capitol and turns to gawk at the source of the voice. “You don’t sound so disappointed. That’s simply sad.”

Words: 703

[ja'mie]

It's cold but my cheeks feel hot and I'm now aware that I've drank too much today. The woman beside me, windblown and Capitolite-pretty, complains about the accomodation.“You don’t sound so disappointed. That’s simply sad.” She says, sounding concerned, like someone trying to comfort a small child. I don't say anything. We're so high above the city, it's timeless, and the empty sky is completely clear except for the snowflakes and the haze hanging over downtown where a hovercraft bearing a news agency’s initials on its shell floats above the distant skyscrapers and you could find meaning in that in the same way you could find meaning in a flower poking up through cracks in cement or meaning in the way leaves turn red in autumn or choose not to and I'm looking at the view thinking it's the wrong time of day for the news, but the day, the sunlight, reveals everything and isn't that the point? “Well, stiff beds can be solved with stiff drinks,” I joke, “... Or so I hear.” I look at her and my smile is there, and then it isn't.

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

M a r y    B e l l a d o n n a.

She arched a dark brow at his platitude. Confusion was imprinted well on her features—a frown, pouted pastel lips and contracted optics. She didn’t comprehend the comment, instead she forged an assumption of her own and crossed her fingers that the fathomed syllables she voiced contained even a minuscule speck of accuracy. “Well, let me guess: Capitolist, fan of the games, loves fashion,” A pause. A detailed inspection of his appearance. “Let me fix that statement—no care for fashion.” She took into memory, the current expression on the adolescent’s visage. She wanted to see it shatter with the exposition of the gruesome truth.

“I am going to tell you something, kid. This,” Skeletal digits gesticulated idly at her own frame. “Was once a grand dress. I was scintillating with golden dust and I smelled of cinnamon. My nights were spent with wonderful company and I slept on the most luxurious beds. Not stiff beds. The Capitol has a hierarchy, everything has a hierarchy. Hierarchies are the universe’s creations and we can’t run from them. I was once a fashion guru and now I am wearing the same leather day-after-day.” A breath was took in through clenched teeth. Her chest rose and fell as she contended with steadying her breathing. Breath. Breath. Mary’s gaze avoided the sight of everything except her tattered boots—a visual display of her position in the Capitol’s hierarchy. She wasn’t going to feed him false hope, the truth is brutal and agonizing but it is still the truth like drugs are an addition and an eradicator.

“It’s a …” Eyes rose briskly as it was eager to see the expression displayed on the boy’s features -


“Cruel world.”