Trance// -Katelyn oneshot- Part 3 in a series

[charade]

KATELYN PERSIMMON

*The following post is set during the year of the 77th hunger games.*
Read part two here: Click me

Months passed, though time had little meaning in her gilded cage. And gilded it was. Harold hadn’t lied to her about that at least. It was a penthouse apartment. The room she had been in initially was just a guest bedroom. Over time, they had allowed her access to the rest of the floor. The master suite. An ornate bathroom whose tub she never used. She knew they had cameras in the apartment and wouldn’t put it past them to put one in there as well. Instead she showered with her clothes on, and then changed in the darkness of the closet. No peepshows for Harold and his cronies.

The front door was always locked, and she was pretty sure they had guards outside it too. The nicest part of the apartment was the kitchen full of baking equipment. Everything was made of a hard plastic though. Nothing she could use as a weapon. But she could make her own meals, and she had to admit that, at least was tolerable. The widows were the same material they used in the tribute rooms, so they were unbreakable. The few mirrors around were made of reflective metal panels. No glass anywhere.

They’d really thought of everything. Even so, she was still waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was no way they weren’t up to something. It’d be stupid to let her guard down. Harold and his too white teeth would show up twice a week; she kept track of the days by the rising and setting of the sun outside the windows, though as they would not give her any clocks, she never knew the hour. He’d talk about what was going on in district eleven. Talk about what was going on in the capitol, and remind her that in order to leave, all she had to do was play ball.

Then would come the lessons.

Something about wanting her to more or less integrate into capitol society without showing signs of her stay in the detention center. Learning to be human again. It had been less believable in the beginning; whatever chemical cocktail they had been dosing her with had wracked hell on her system for several weeks. Many nights she’d woken in a cold sweat, her skin crawling, only to realize she’d pissed the bed. Then there had been the vomiting. When that had started, Harold had been around more, holding her hair as she emptied her stomach into the toilet, whistling a little ditty and asking her to be a dear, before injecting her with what he claimed was a mild sedative.

Whatever it was, it had seemed to help, even if he continued to use it after she stopped having withdrawal symptoms. Still whistled the song though. Called her dear from time to time. In any case, the lessons were things about fine dining, etiquette. A lot of things with repetitive steps that grew maddening after a while. He’d even been teaching her how to dance of all things. She’d tried to refuse at the start, but the ever watchful peacekeepers he brought with him made it clear that she was going to learn these things, or she was going to be in for a world of pain.

The whole thing was bizarre.

But she played their game, gaining strength, biding her time. One day, Harold would slip up, and she’d take her shot.

The only part of her reintegration training as he called it, that didn’t make her uncomfortable was the access to the viewing screen. It mostly only played past games, but it kept her grounded. She’d also watched two people take the crown.

Of course, that meant she watched dozens more die.

Besides Tamron she had five other names to commit to memory. Salome and Raquel Izar; the name was familiar to her, she remembered that name coming up twice when she was a kid. When she was thirteen, she’d had nightmares for weeks over what Iago had done to that poor girl. Hell, her own district partner had been a cousin or a half-brother or something. Levi Izar-Krane. Afterwards, she’d known she’d given him a bad rap; he had been nothing like the freak he’d been related to. But there were others. Walherich Cnaimhin. Sirrah Birnam. Mila Breukelen. She hoped Harbinger and Kirito had done their best for those kids.

Hoped they were doing alright without her presence.

Then of course, there were the victors she’d never met. Shelby Leviane , Teddy Ursa and Jacinta Salazar. The middle districts finally had their day. Or years, she supposed. She was curious about how they were coping with their wins. After Harbinger, the only victor she’d established any kind of rapport with was Justice. Maybe not talking to more of them had been a mistake. She wondered briefly if the people of seven still harbored ill will to her home district as she watched Snow introduce Jacinta to the crowd.

Then she heard the door.

Another visit from Harold. She got up and walked to the table. The sooner she could get this over with the better. It was empty, save for a platter of cookies she’d baked that morning.

“You are a remarkably strong-willed woman; do you know that?” he said cheerfully as he walked in. “I mean, it’s to be expected. The psych reports from the arena you participated in noted that your main goal was to survive. You weren’t trying to rack up a body count. Not even trying to win in the traditional sense. Did you know that the odds of you winning in the betting pools jumped from fifteen to one to four to one over the course of the week? You made a lot of people rich.”

He took a seat at the table and picked a cookie off the platter. “Mm, peanut butter,” he grinned, munching on it quietly. “Of course, within the year, you had managed to get the one thing nearly all victors don’t have. A support system. The year after that you added another family to your circle. With all those people to around you didn’t have much time to feel sorry for yourself did you?”


“If you have a point, you’re not making it.”

Harold chuckled. That infuriating devil-may-care chuckle.

“So many other victors try to find their purpose at the bottom of a bottle, inside a pack of cigarettes; a warm bed.” He punctuated the last remark by wiggling his eyebrows. Katelyn ignored it. “Then there are the ones that wallow in self-pity until they fade into obscurity. I can think of three, maybe four victors in the last twenty-five years that actually made something of themselves and even then— “He shook his head.

“Very few victors are able to adjust to life after the games, and even then it usually takes close to a decade. Not you though.” He whistled his favorite tune and grabbed another cookie off of the plate. “Be a dear and grab me a glass of milk from the fridge?”

As if, she thought spitefully as she watched him pick up the glass and drink.

Wait.

Why—

How did he get that? I didn’t see him move. Did I do that? She had been planning to roll her eyes and make a snarky remark, not—

Harold drained the glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Good girl.” He smiled and started humming that infernal tune, tapping his fingers on the tabletop.

“Be a dear and sit by me?”

No way.

A minute later she jumped out of the chair and backed away from him.
“Lasted almost two minutes since the milk. Not bad.” He said, more to himself than to her.

“What have you done to me?” she asked with dread. “What the hell is this?”

“I told them subtle mental conditioning was the way to go. Post hypnotic suggestion, trigger phrases, the whole nine yards.” He smiled again, showing all of his teeth. “You may recall me saying that there’s more than one way to break a person. And I’ve had almost a year to work on this.” He stood from the chair and walked over to the door, rapping it twice with his knuckles.

“I do believe it’s time for phase three.”

The door opened and a pair of peacekeepers wheeled a familiar looking chair in. It was smaller than the one in the detention center but of a similar model.

Nononono.

Be a dear and get in the chair?

Katelyn looked up at him from the chair with equal parts hatred and terror. The restraints were tight around her wrists and legs. She struggled briefly but to no avail.

Harold opened a suitcase that seemed to have appeared on the table and pulled out several long thin metal rod that reminded her of knitting needles and a syringe. Katelyn stared daggers as he injected her with the solution.

“It’s a shame really, that we provided you with such an ornate washroom and you hardly ever use it.” He picked up one of the thin rods and turned it over in his hands, before smiling and patting the side of her cheek with his hand. She jerked her head away.

“Don’t touch me." she snarled.

“I’ve come to appreciate you, you know. Though I have to admit the night vision camera in the closet doesn’t do you justice.”

Katelyn paled, then with responded with a shuddering breath.

“When I get out of here, I’m going to kill you.”

Harold grinned.

“I really don't know if you'll make a good high society girl by the time this is over, but you are wrong about that. No, by the time you get out of here, you’re going to do,” he jammed the needle under the nail of her left thumb. Katelyn screamed. “Whatever,”  Another under her index finger. “I.” Middle. “Say.” Ring.

She wasn’t certain, bur she was pretty sure she passed out from the pain for a few seconds. Then he started on her other hand. “Such is the price of wrong think I’m afraid.”

“I’ll do it!” she screeched. He paused in his work. “What was that?”

"I said… her head drooped. God give me the strength.

“I can’t hear you Katie.” Harold took a step closer. He was inches from her face, then centimeters. He put his ear by her mouth and cupped his hand around it.

“I—”

Katelyn leaned forward, brushing his ear with her lips and promptly bit down as hard as she could.

“Get her off, get her off!” he was yelling. His men grabbed her shoulders but she held firm. There was a sound not unlike the crunch of an apple being cored into and she tasted blood. Harold stumbled away from the chair clutching the side of his head, tears of pain in his eyes. Katelyn spat at the floor and saw a small lump of earlobe in the little puddle of blood and spit. She grinned at him through bloody teeth.


“Am I not a good girl?” she cackled mockingly.

“Too nice, we’ve been too nice to this bitch.” He roared.

He grabbed her index finger and yanked it backwards. Katelyn heard a crack and saw stars. Heard someone scream. Realized it was herself. “Fill up the bucket.” He told one of the peacekeepers as he broke her middle finger. “This is your own fault.” He spat, grabbing a washcloth and soaking it in the bucket. One of the peacekeepers held her head still and he put the washcloth over her face. She heard him grab something and then she was choking, drowning. It stopped. Then started again.

She thrashed back and forth for a couple seconds but they held her firm. The washcloth disappeared and vomited water, slumping in the chair defeated.

“I think that’s enough for today. We do have to give you time to recover. Don’t want you to die on us.“

He started to undo the restraints, but she felt like she couldn’t move anyway.

“But do know that phase three will last for some time.”

Katelyn looked blearily at the crimson that was still dripping from his ear and promised herself that one day it would be his throat dripping like that.


table coding (c) ghosty