public PTS-es

[Stare]

i can feel the floor shaking, and the glass begin to break
the air is getting thinner with every breath that i take
the calm before the storm, you can hear the drop of a pin
never been claustrophobic, but now the walls are closing in

Ridley didn’t waste time.

She’d asked the trainers for a specific setup and as she walked into the training center she felt some of the tightness in her shoulders ease when she saw that they’d obliged. To one side of the center were two columns with four targets neatly painted on each, one on top of the other, reaching about fifteen feet tall. Ridley imagined that originally they had been used for archery practice, but their weight and structure were exactly what she’d needed. The trainers had left about two feet of space between them, where they’d placed the rack of throwing knives. Ridley eyed it warily - a nice touch, she supposed, though performing above blades hadn’t been a part of her original plan - before approaching and selecting a number of the ones she’d been practicing with.

She swore she could feel the Gamemakers’ gazes driving into her back. Days of preparing and planning, lying awake at night trying to sort out the exact details, hadn’t quite prepared her for having an audience. Being a Career meant she’d spent most of her training to be deadly, but stabbing a dummy in the training center or slashing at someone in the shadows wasn’t the same as murdering a fellow teenager in front of all of Panem. She hadn’t ever anticipated having to kill on command, mostly because Ridley Le Roux didn’t take orders from anyone.

Except the Capitol, it would seem.

Breathe. Just breathe.

She positioned herself a short distance away from the targets. Back in One she’d honed the accuracy of her throws over distance, but this particular performance would need a good deal of strength and speed behind each knife if she was going to pull it off. Ridley wasn’t a circus performer by any means, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t developed other skills over the years that she could patch together into some semblance of a show. And that was what this was all about, right? Not being the greatest killer. No one knew what kind of people they would become when the entered the Arena. It was all about who had the best act, and Ridley certainly knew how to put on one of those.

She’d been doing it her entire life.

The first knife hit just beyond the outer ring of one of the targets, only a few inches away from the edge of the column. It drove in deep, nearly to the hilt. Ridley let out a breath, then smiled, releasing another knife in a mirrored position on the other column. This was something she could do, something she’d done a million times. One at a time, she slowly made her way up the two columns, each pair of knives roughly a foot above their predecessors, until the last pair sank in just beneath the very top of the columns.

Adrenaline began to hum beneath her skin as she approached them, placing one of the remaining throwing knives between her teeth before wrapping her hands around the lowest pair of knives and gradually bending her knees to lift her feet off the ground. The knives held. Ridley sucked in a breath and let her eyes drift shut, imagining that she was back in One on the peg board. After a moment she released her left hand and reached up, grasping on to the knife above. It held. She released her right hand and reached up to grab the knife’s twin. One row at a time, bit by bit, she slowly made her way up between the two columns.

At the top row of knives Ridley paused only briefly before hauling herself up high enough to place her feet on the closest pair of knives beneath her and repositioning her hands. She lifted herself up by straightening her arms and pulled her abs tightly into herself, gradually leaning forward and tucking her knees against her chest. Eventually the Gamemakers tipped into her upside-down view of the world, and as she straightened her legs above herself she flashed them the most charming smile that she could with all the blood rushing to her head and a knife in her mouth. Her arms were screaming at her, back aching to yield into an arc, but years of Career training had taught her to ignore them.

Ridley eased her death grip on the knives and quickly, carefully, stepped her hands up onto the tops of the columns with a quiet grunt. For one terrifying moment she felt her balance sway but forced herself to remain calm, locking her shoulders and tightening her muscles. Once she was stable she carefully spread her legs wide, shifting her balance to her left side and pushing away with her left shoulder. As her body lifted her right hand gradually began to peel away from the column, eventually lifting away entirely. Using her legs as a counterbalance, Ridley used her right hand to remove the knife from her mouth.

Left arm beginning to tremble (she’d only recently mastered one-arm handstands, but with death looming with bated breath around the corner she figured she might as well show someone everything she had in case she never got the change again), she quickly searched the center for an adequate target. A dummy lying nearby proved to be her best option. The knife flicked out of her hand before she hurriedly planted it back down, drawing her core in tighter and raising her legs back up directly above her. When she glanced at the dummy she saw that the knife had stuck into its abdomen - not the most impressive hit, but this wasn’t about her ability to kill someone upside-down. It was about her ability to put on a decent show.

Ridley eased herself back down, lowering her legs and then shifting back onto the knives and climbing back to the ground. By the time she reached the floor her arms were quivering so much she wondered if they would fall off at the shoulders. Careful to keep her smile from becoming a grimace, Ridley walked over to the dummy and planted her foot on top of the hilt of the knife, driving it slightly deeper. She then swept an arm out and bowed deeply.

She was Ridley Le Roux, and she was a master at pretending, manipulating, sucking up, putting on a show. Wasn’t that what she had been doing her whole life? Wasn’t that what had kept her place in the family even after Pax had died? And maybe, she realized as she stood up out of her bow, that scared her a bit. Because it meant that it wasn’t being a Le Roux that made her suited to the Games.

It was not being one.

so, strike me down, take me away
taxes are due, it's time to pay
face what i deserve
here comes judgement day


lyrics: judgement day, stealth

The day was long even before Minerva took her seat next to Hera. She'd made it a point not to drink, as it was in the playbook for getting her through the next several hours, and she'd run out of sleeping pills which left her restless. Her eyes were surrounded by dark circles and she declined the cheap wine they were offering for a cup of coffee first-

"Get me a bottle from the 21st year and we'll talk," she said rubbing her temples.

The boy from One came and went: impressive, but not good enough to satiate her hopes for the career Districts and certainly not enough to wake her from the daze she was still in. But she glanced down at the screen in front of her, at the face of the pretty girl who was to come next, and she allowed herself to hope for something better. A champion. Someone who could win the entire thing.

"Call for her," Minerva said, not bothering to look up from the deck of tarot cards she was shuffling in front of her. Let's see what your future holds, she thought, flipping over the card on top.

The Strength card.

Minerva traced a painted black nail along the beautiful woman illustrated on the card, carved out the figure of the lion next to her. Triumph. That's what this card was all about. She allowed herself a small smile as the girl entered the room, hopeful.

And Ridley Le Roux did not disappoint. From the moment she started, until she took a graceful exit, the girl gave them a performance. A pageant. An epic dance of life or death. She did not just teeter on the tightrope of life and death; she became the tightrope itself. It was her decision who lived, it was by her hand the others would die.

"Wow," she said once the lion girl was gone, "That set the bar. 11?"

Hera nodded, and so it was.

[eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris]

When the doors leading to the training room part, I lift my hands and perform a front aerial. Once, twice, three times — until I’ve reached the center of the floor, landing on my feet with a practiced grace. I address the Gamemakers with my gaze, flashing a sharp grin in their direction. “Penelope Marcet. District Five.” I do not waste their time with pretty words; no flirtatious banter or sad stories about my upbringing. I am a performer of the arts, of course, but not the language variety.

And my history has already found its home within some file, somewhere — every interesting fact and statistic that they could wish for. What these women still seek to know is defined by this very moment, by the movements of my body. I am not a person here; I am a product. An investment. It’s a good thing that I am no stranger to business, to an industry that survives on the opinion of an audience. My biceps strain as I pull against the collar of my training suit, years of physical activity coming into play.

The fabric tears, splitting down the middle until it is wide enough to fall around my ankles. I step out of the pile wearing only my undergarments, moving quickly to the climbing station. This is not a strip tease; this is a woman freeing herself from her restraints. I grab hold of the first rope that I see, pulling myself upwards with only my upper body. I don’t stop ascending, even when I’ve moved beyond the length of it. My fingers grip the steel railing above me, and I swing my legs forward and back until I’ve gained enough traction to jump to the next rail.

I repeat this process until I have made my way above the sparring station, moving along a cold banister until I’ve formed a direct path over a training dummy beneath me. I spread my legs as I fall, rotating my torso with a grunt and wrapping my thighs around the mannequin as I make contact. I crash against the training mat, flipping the dummy over me and landing on top of it. I grip one hand to the back of its neck and another to its chin, twisting until I hear a resonating crack. I rise to my feet and charge forward.

The front flips that follow are precise and quick, pure gymnastics at work. I land solidly at the mouth of the weaponry station, grabbing the closest blade to me and squatting low to the ground. I arch my arm back, narrowing my gaze and calculating the distance. I send it flying to the highest point of the wall across from me, piercing the sturdy material with a clean cut. I pull myself onto a table, running across the assortment of weapons and jumping to a nearby rack of swords. I begin a routine of leaping and landing as I approach the wall, never touching the ground.

I’ve reached a section of glaives when I approach the farthest point that I can reasonably jump to, gripping one of the long weapons in my hands and holding it above my head. I leap in place and thrust it forward, stabbing the wall and hanging above where I was standing. I pull myself onto the slender handle, arching my toes to catch the cold iron and spreading my arms for balance. I see the dagger above me, the handle sloping downwards, and with a grunt I bend my knees and soar towards it. I grab the hilt and my feet slam against the wall, legs bent and thighs straining.

My lower body showcases its strength when I push off, freeing the knife from the wall and turning in the air. I grab hold of the closest railing with my free hand, holding myself in the air with one arm. I place the blade between my teeth and start moving forward, using the ceiling rails like a set of monkey bars. I drop down in the sparring section once more, landing on the ground with a dummy’s shoulders beneath my feet. I fall to my knees long enough to drive the knife into its throat, blood spraying across my face.

I jerk my body to the side, hooking my free arm around the heels of a standing dummy and throwing it to the floor. I drag the blade through its abdomen, fingers slick. I make use of the substance and slide myself backwards, lowering my head to the ground and moving through the legs of another mannequin. I kick upwards and land a blow square against its back, sending it toppling on top of me. I catch its chest with the point of my dagger, arm shaking as I hold its weight above me. I raise my knees to send it rolling away from me.

It’s not until the timer goes off that I stop the slaughter, leaving the knife impaled in a forehead as I exit the space. Blood drips down my bare skin, hair wet against the back of my neck. I’m smiling when I reach the doors, turning around long enough to bow for the Gamemakers. I am not a woman without courtesy. “Thank you for your time.” And then I go, a trail of red footprints behind me. I have channeled a god of war today, muscles aching and jaw tight. I am lovely — and I am lethal.

I will be.

♔

☾

The career districts had come and gone, she was notably unimpressed, and any hope she had for District Five standing out came and went with the boy and his admittance of being a drug dealer, as if Minerva would care that he sold to peacekeepers in Five. Of course he did. There was always a reason peacekeepers were stationed in the Districts, and half the time it was because they couldn't be trusted in the Capitol.

But the girl was pretty and had an athletic build. When she entered the room, she did so with her chin raised into the air. Before Minerva made any decisions, she flipped over the next card in the deck.

The moon. Eclipsed only by the sun itself, it was about deception, illusion, tricks of the dark. She was more than what she appeared to be, it would seem, and Minerva's interest to see what secrets lurked behind those confident eyes.

The girl moved like the wind, fast and steady, taking gravity as more of a light suggestion as she twisted through the air and climbed walls and ropes and flipped and ran and crawled and remained perfectly lethal throughout the entire process. Ah, but this was the easy part. This was the part she likely wouldn't mind the others seeing. Minerva bet it was the hunger in the girl, the fire, the need to be the greatest, the want to succeed that she kept hidden the most. Perhaps she could win after all, this unassuming girl from Five with her circus tricks. For when the sun goes down, only the moon remains to rule the sky.

As she left, a hurricane gone and only its destruction remaining, Minerva first called for a cleanup before turning to Hera.

"Honestly, one of the best of the day so far. Agreed?"

Her equal nodded, a goddess and a queen deciding the moon was more than enough this time.

"Let's see her do it under pressure. A 10 should get people looking in her direction."

[d6a georgie cham 🍓🐢 frankel]

”They realised it was the avox as soon as he walked through the door.”

”So he got through the door then?”

Rocko bursts through my bedroom door, accompanied by some peacekeepers and other personnel who look important. So, I guess the training sessions are over then…

No fucker is impressed with me on the eighth floor, I bet the avox I sent in my place of the skill demonstration is more talented. All damn week I have been sneaking by the victors, claiming their pieces and when Rocko the escort questioned my proposed training session…”Oh that was done by the District Six girl in the seventy fourth.” So they have seen my talent then, thieving scum that can smuggle a live body in a duffle bag across three-quarters of District Eight. Some girl from the past steal’s items from every body involved in the games, reveals the prizes…but it has already been done before!

Well let’s smuggle a whole ass person in front of the gamemakers…

||

The day before…

Jaime the avox that likes to bring me fresh towels in the morning, he never has much to say. Well, to say he is probably pushing his thirties, he damn nearly looks the same as me. Gone goes his facial hair and it is like looking in the mirror.

It takes some persuasion the night before the training session to get a razor to the guy’s face. The stylists carry so much make-up, it is easy to make his Capitol toned skin as pale as my snow sheet face. A perfect disguise and the only way it can work is if the guy stays in my room for the entire night…oh how damn awkward this is going to be. My eyes just fixate on the black silhouette that is slumped in the chair opposite my bed. Even after offering to share my bed, even top to tail, the avox is adamant to not taste comfort. I wonder what got that tongue out of his mouth…

I must have forgotten about the presence in the room but waking up and seeing him sat there, eyes wide open and staring down at me…this guy really is creepy. Now it is time for him to slip into my clothes and for I to stay remained in the comfortable Capitol mattress. Easy doing, seeing as he has been my personal alarm clock throughout my time here. I line his pockets with the treasures I snuck from the victors, I didn’t quite hit the jackpot and get something from them all but I guess four is enough…
”Make sure you show these and tell them…oh.” Honestly, couldn’t they have removed Avox’s ears or something instead. I pull a page from Teddy Ursa’s notebook and scribble a message with the complimentary pen that was provided in the room.

Harbinger will want his photograph back..
…Teddy will want his notebook back (thank’s for the strategy by the way!)…
…Mackenzie will want his room key back…Mace will probably not want this cake back (it looks a bit sour)…and maybe you will want this avox back (maybe punish him as this was so easy).

”Just don’t say a word…uhmm…act a little hungover, they won’t notice and if they do then it is just game over. What is the worse that could happen…they kill me?”

And so, he goes, disguised as me. Really it just seems so simple…maybe they will question where the avox is. Oh, fuck I am not pretending to be an avox for the morning.

All I can do now is wait and listen to the rumblings in my stomach, a forfeited breakfast but it will totally be worth it. I’ll trade croissants for not having to waste time in that training centre any day…or maybe not the croissants…probably the fruit bowl!

||

I must have dosed off as Rocko’s entrance through the door wakes me up from a cheeky lie in. Really, the way they all have come through that door, I did not even lock it!

So they spotted the avox as soon as he got through the door but…”Did he present the gifts I placed on him?” Rocko says that they strip searched the poor fellow in front of the gamemakers, just for safety…as if I would have been able to plant something ’dangerous’ on him…oh but that would have been a great idea!

”You know Jacob Wickham stayed behind in the 76th, this isn’t a new thing Reyes…”

”Oh damn fuck, tell me how many kids have been reaped? There’s going to be repeats. Better than picking a fight with a dummy…”

[heather - d2 [mylee]]

I’d be interested to know how many of the other twenty-four of us are hung over and feeling like piss, as there’s no way to really tell from the low gazes and the silence. The symptoms of sobriety and a pounding headache seem to share a drastic overlap at this point in time.

I watch the first few people filter in only to filter out, and I think about how long one can live like this, in the act of performance. I assume some have held up the act for a lifetime, while some of us are just stepping into the blinding lights of a stage we didn’t expect. I like to think I haven’t acted a day in my life, but I know that on some level this probably isn’t true. Between the stolen side glances and the shuffled feet, I have given away so much.

Rabbit walks in, and I watch her back as she watches her feet. We haven’t gotten close, and I don’t hold her at fault for this. I have been uninterested in the forced bond we have to place, and she hasn’t been adamant on being cozy either. I do not know how she has spent her nights, but I have avoided the stuffy air of our assigned rooms to the best of my ability, instead loitering around empty hallways and trying to find an unfamiliar bed to crawl into.

I had been largely unsuccessful, but the smell of alcohol on the breath is a gesture toward the intentional act of forgetting.

It’s all about how to erase existence.

*

When Rabbit walks out, neither of us make eye contact. The metallic voice now calling my name sounds like my own, and I wonder if people dread hearing me speak just as much as I dread the tinge of metal on the tongue, of what it means to not have life stuck to the roof of the mouth. The doors stick, and it takes a reasonable exertion of effort to get myself into the room.

I don’t bother with my name.

I stand for a moment in the midst of the chaos, trying to rethink the thoughts that popped into my head at three in the morning, when I had passed the point of drunk and started spitting at the bathroom mirror, told the reflection, Goddamnit, you should care about this. You’re supposed to give a shit on occasion. I had fractured the glass with pale knuckles and watched the way my skin splintered like an old oak.

The bar where I took Franky on an almost nightly occasion had a table like that—the wood was so old you couldn’t imagine a time when it didn’t exist. We threw back glasses of amber liquid until our stomachs landed on the table, and then we threw back more. We didn’t care that Franky was but fifteen and still didn’t know what a man was supposed to look like, even though we were all overcompensating. We punched each other until our knuckles split and our gums would bleed, only to stitch up the places we had left in ruin. I never hated the worst of them, and I didn’t long to.

*

Still standing, I am not quite frozen, but close. I am yearning for night, for finding a voice in my throat that is not my father’s, not metallic, not choked on a reason I cannot give. My tongue has failed me more times than one and I refused to be made a fool again. I unstick my feet one at a time and move, collecting a couple of glass bottles from the plants station. Kneeling beside the fire making station, I fill each with gasoline and tuck them under my arm. I’m looking for cloth but not finding much, so I tug at the sleeves of my shirt until they rip. A final piece torn from the left leg of my pants makes three, so I stuff them into the bottles and waddle to the distance range.

The first match strikes and the left sleeve brightens. Hot glass in the hand is a familiar pain, and the launch of the bottle leaves it landing right at the feet of the first dummy. The bottle shatters and the gasoline splatters, the flames slowly creeping up legs, torso, neck.

The second burns quicker, so I waste no time in lining myself up with the center body, launching harder, further, and higher. This time the glass shatters across the torso, and shrapnel lands in the heart and stomach before being lost among the flames. The burn spreads in both directions, and I’d like to know which part of the body loses feeling first.

Finally, I set the third ablaze and swish the gasoline in the bottom of the bottle before shrugging and launching. I am aiming for the head but just miss, instead catching the clavicle and shoulder on the right side of the dummy. A slower burn, but one still mostly directed downward.

I step back and nod contentedly, knowing I’ve wasted enough of their time reliving forced nights of hatred, of back alleys and bar dumpsters and forgetting how to be more than a personality trait etched into wooden walls.

I make my way toward the door without ever making eye contact, but this doesn’t feel like the way to leave a room on fire. I look at the three columns of flame and then at the crowd of people above before putting my hands to my mouth to amplify my voice, Hey, Minerva! Call me. My thumb and pinky pressed to my right ear, I’m half the charm of a man drowned in the memories of a bar he’ll never accurately remember. I press my way through the door and listen for the snap of a match.

I want to burn from the top down—let me lose the mind first.