H.A.P.I. -d2- (three housesplot) -fin-

[charade]

H a p i .

"My friends are degenerates
But I'd never change them
Liars, cheats, and hypocrites
Not the type for savin'"

You are HAPI. That is what was stitched on the shirt you were wearing when your family found you. Health and Pain Indicators. You have heard that phrase more times that you can count. It is all you have to identify yourself by. They took everything else. Except for the dreams. You can still hear the monsters in your sleep.

Such eloquent words they could use.

On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate this sensation? Please stop screaming. Twenty-eight, please refer to the pain index, ten being the high—Oh. Med team? She’s passing out again; can we get something for that? Adrenaline booster maybe?

In the dim recesses of your mind you think you were eleven when you first came to be there. You think you might be eighteen now. It makes the most sense because they tracked your ages as time wore on.You had parents once, you think. But perhaps they tired of you and sold your body to science. Everyone needs something after all and money and food are better than children. Time had no meaning for you. There were the times of rest in your room.

The times in the chamber where they hurt you. And the sweet blissful nothingness when they hurt you too much and had to put you under. You can no longer remember what your name was before the laboratory. Before the white walls and the pain. You and the others. They would break you and fix you and break you again.

Furthering the scientific cause.

Medical team standby. Test code is s3054, the goal here is to repair the ocular cavity and restore sight. Try to save the eye on this one. We already know if we hit the brain we won’t be able to resuscitate so let’s not waste another test subject on this alright? Get subjects thirty-one and seventeen in here and prep chamber two for twenty-eight. We’ll be testing knives on it, preferably without puncturing a lung this time.

You could have been a dancer. You have the build for it. Underneath the scars, you have the looks too. You are lithe. Graceful. These are words you have heard the men and women in the labcoats say from time to time when they thought you couldn’t hear them.

Such a shame.

A waste really.

You know, they say the best avoxes are the ones that are trained young.

Since you were let go, your hair has grown out from the fuzz they regularly kept it at. You didn't know that you had wavy curls. Or that it was more brown than black.

There were no mirrors in the bad place. 

You are apathetic. You only care about when your next meal is coming and very little bothers you. You can sleep anywhere. Eat anything. You have no patience for people who do not say what they mean, but it is easier to ignore them or do what they want than it is to engage. To call them out. When you found your voice again in the after, sarcasm became second nature. You are not certain why. Perhaps it is because your pleas and begging over time fell on deaf ears.

Congratulations everyone. Between our work here and the data from five years ago, the upcoming quell is sure to be a rousing success.

What do we do with them now? There’s only nine subjects that haven’t expired or been transferred to other projects.

Terminate thirty-one, thirty-six, fifteen and four. They’ve been put back together too many times to last much longer. I still can’t believe we managed to fix the damage to fifteen’s heart twice.


And the others?

I recommend that twenty-three be made an avox. That last cracked skull never healed properly and he’s not going to be much good for anything other than menial work. Release seven, nineteen, twenty and twenty-eight into the district, but monitor them. It’s possible that they will give us some insights into how tributes adapt to a second life. Might be able to predict what they’ll do in the arena.

You have seen Panem’s true nature. A painted smile on a plastic face that hides a barbed wire tongue. It cuts and tears and fills the streets with blood. It drinks and drinks and its thirst is never quenched. People are animals. You. You are an animal. But you have sworn that you will never be caged again.

The four of you eked out an existence in the alleyways after that. It wasn’t much, but it was yours.

A few months ago they came for the four of you. You’d always wondered if they would. But they knew exactly where seven was hiding. They’d waved a tool and followed the beeping and you knew. A knife in your back, sure. An axe-head severing your right hand one day. They’d reattached it with little to no problem, they said, but you still have trouble gripping things with those fingers even now. There was a scar on the back on your neck you’d always wondered about. They tried not to draw attention to it and they never hurt you there.

They’d always said you were intelligent. One of the few who managed to keep their sanity throughout the project.

You are not so sure.

You dug the tracker out with a shard of glass and your reflection in a window. It was a small thing to have caused to much misery, and the crunch it made under your heel was immensely satisfying. You escaped. Seven stabbed himself in the ear rather than let them take him back. They’d always had trouble fixing brain death.

You think they might have taken nineteen and twenty alive.

You would hope they didn’t if you didn’t know that hope was a lie.

But freedom is not.

You were finally free. Free for weeks, scrounging in dumpsters in trash cans for your next meal. Free until you walked by that diner.

True freedom tasted like sugar and soft, buttery, flaky crust. Cinnamon.  Smelled like nutty, caramelized mocha. The taste of it overwhelmed you. It was there fault for leaving their back door open. For leaving a fresh apple pie within reach next to a pot of coffee. It was so different from the trash and puddle water. Different from the nutrient paste they’d kept you all on. You couldn’t help yourself. It was rapture, caffeine dripping down your face as you guzzled the steaming liquid, uncaring about the heat. You’d suffered much, much worse.

You moaned when you buried your face in the pastry, it consumed you as you consumed it, forgetting that to enjoy such bounty, a price must be paid. Monetary or otherwise.

Like all good things, it came to an end.

You fought like a cornered alley cat when they came for you, because that is what you are. You hissed, you bit, you scratched. But they were many, and you were but one. They didn’t know what to do with you. The girl from nowhere. No one. The solution came to them and Charon himself ferried you to the underworld, laughing cruelly all the way down. Like Dante of old you spun past all seven circles and into the abyss.

But you are not alone in the dark.

Even hell has its angels. Fallen from grace, every one.

They bear the weight of a last name, of a promising career cut short and a debt of money. Like you, you think, they have been reduced to the one thing that makes them valuable to others.

You never use proper names. You do not have one and neither should anyone else. Coco, B and Yuri-bird seem to understand that. They are the only ones who have your back. And you have theirs, though you try desperately not to let them have your heart too. Because you know that if anyone gets that close, they’ll see you for who you are instead of who you pretend to be. You need them, but they do not need you. If they are real, then everyone else might be too, and that can’t be.

But maybe that would be better.

The sooner they figure out that they are better off without you, the sooner you can figure out what your life without them looks like.

And whether or not it’s a life worth living.

You are HAPI. But you are not happy.

elegant

[charade]

I will assume that kaяi ♕ has dibs

[kaяi ♕]

STILL SCREAMING