Effie, Nothing More
Preface
My mother once told me that your past can always control your future, if you do nothing about it. In many ways my mother was right. I changed my past and got a better future. However, since my past was still my past, it destroyed whatever kind of perfect future I had been hoping for.
My name is Effie, Effie Trinket. Or atleast that is the name you may know me as. My real name is Estephanie Trinket. I'm not the posh Capital Citizen that Katniss told you I was. In fact, I'm not even from the Capital (I beg you never to tell anyone from the Capital this. They will turn me in to the Peacekeepers.) I write this story because of many reasons. One, because Katniss (and many other people) wanted to know my past, wanted to know who I truly was. Second, I wanted to tell the world the truth about life in the Capital. Tell them that it isn't always the glits and glam that is shown on t.v. during the Hunger Games. I wanted to show them the dark side full of lies, plots of murder, and sex driven politions clawling their way to the top.
My final reason for sharing my story to you is to tell you the story of love, hope, and friendship. The story of two people trying to beating the odds. Trying to change their past. Trying to create their future. Trying to find love and happiness in a forgein place.
Chapter 1"You lying bitch!"
My father was drunk again. Then again, he was always drunk, but right now he was being a violent, angery drunk. My mother had poured out his stash of alcohol, hoping that it would cause him to stop drinking. Sadly, it had not.
Smack! I heard the back of my father's meaty hand colliude with my mother's delicate jaw. Her cheek was already swoolen from past beatings; this would only make it worse. Her frail body hit the solid ground. She lifted her little hand to her cheek, massaging the large red welt that was now growing on her once pretty face.
"Where is it?" He kicked her stomach with his large brown work boots, probably killing the unborn child inside. I watched from my matress up in the storage loft that served as my bedroom, silently begging for him to stop. Unfortunatly, this wasn't the first time I'd begged inside my head for him to stop. My father did some kind of violent act like this atleast once a week, each time for a different, drunken reason. I had reported it to Claud, the head Peacekeeper, but he told me that there was nothing he could do about it because he, nor anybody else, seen my father beat my mother except for myself.
My father grabbed my mother by the her little neck, lifting her to her feet. "All I ever do is provide for you and that girl, you lazy swine. After a long, hard day's work, I would like to be able to come home and have a nice drink, but I can no longer do that, now can I?" His grip around her neck was getting tighter, causing her face to turn a blood red. Her little fingers grabbed at his fat ones. My mother's feet were kicking fiercely a foot off the ground,like a hang-man's dance, while she tried to pry his fingers away from her neck. "I never touched your damn liquor," she choked. It was the honest truth. What I told you earlier about her pouring out the drinks was a little white lie. She had had me pour them out. He squeezed tighter.
"Stop it," I murmered. The abuser did not hear me. My mother's face was now a purpley-red as the blood stopped flowing. "Stop it," I said louder. This time, he could hear me.
"You shut your mouth, you little piece of trash, or I'll do the exact same thing to you." He pointed one meaty finger at me and with his other hand, he still had my mother pinned to the bare white wall. I watched his bloodshot eyes try to find me up in the loft; he probably saw three or more of me moving around up here. Father gave up the search, turned back to Mother, spat in her purple face, and dropped her on the ground. She lay there, sucking in as much air as her lungs could hold, while blood trickled out of the corner of her small mouth. There were thick purple lines across her neck from his hands.
Then Father went outside and threw-up.
"Mother," I called down to her.
"Shh, Estephanie. Stay where you are. I'm fine." Mother was trying to be brave. She was trying to sit-up straight, but her thin arms were too weak to hold her up. She callapsed back onto the ground. "Stay there, Effie."
Effie. The simple little petname I had received so long ago as a child. Mother and Saxton were the only ones who still called me that.
So I laid up there, on my little straw matres, hoping against hope that my foul father would never again walk through the wooden door. Never come home falling over drunk again. Never threaten me. Never beat my mother. However, my depersate wishes were not granted. He stromed through the back door and made a beeline for the cupboard where his liquor had once been stored. Father seemed to have completely forgotten everything that had happened in this small house in the past half-hour.
As he rediscovered his missing liquor, his red eyes fell upon Mother's only cast-iron frying pan that she had taught me to cook with. His meaty fingers wrapped around the handle; he smiled. Father walked up behind Mother, holding the pan up, over his large, round head. What he was planning to do with it clicked inside my mind just as he struck her head.
"Stop it!" I shierked. I kept shouting at him as I hurried down the little wooden ladder, and ran at him with more rage than I had ever felt in my life. I beat my fists on on his back, screaming, "Stop it! You're killing her, stop. You've already killed the baby." My words didn't even faze him at all. Not even me mentioning the baby stopped him and his murderous ways.
He crushed her skull. Even after she had been dead for awhile, I continued to strick his back, sobbing. Finally, the mad man had enough of me. He grabbed me by my stringy brown hair and pulled me outside. He dumped me in a gutter and then spat on me. "You lying piece of shit. I don't ever want to see your lying ugly face ever again." Then he left.
I laid there, crying for I don't know how long. My mother was dead along with the child inside of her. My father might as well be dead with all the warmth and love I would ever get from him from now on. I wanted to die. There was nothing left for me here in District Three. I couldn't do anything with technology. I wasn't good at anything, except maybe keeping a schedule and having descent table manners.
What was I suppose to have done, turn myself over to the Peacekeepers and then be sent to the Safe House (for orphined children.) I'd rather be from 12 and in the Hunger Games. Yes, I was that despirate. If I were sent to S.H. I would be more of a no one then I already was. Or worse, they wouldn't turn me in, they would keep me. I would end up being a toy for some creepy Peacekeeper, staying warm in his bed and being fed from the scraps off his table. I needed to get out. Get out of this gutter. Out of this town. Own of this district. But mainly, to get out of my mind.
A cold rain begain to fall from the mountains. The mountains, I thought. In them was the capital, the most beautiful place I had ever seen. Most of the girls I knew thought nothing much of the Capital or the people in it, but that was all I thought about. To live in a pink house. To walk down yellow and orange streets. To wear extravigant clothes and have a different colored wig for every day of the week. To not have a care in the world.
But I was stuck here in Three, forever. I would never see those colorful, shiney except for a few brief moments on the television. We weren't allowed to leave our district unless you were reaped for the Games. There was a large electrical fence that surrounded my district, as well as all the other ones. The only opening was where the train tracks were, and those were always guarded under the watchful eye of Peacekeepers who are armed with large machine guns.
I lay there through the night, listening to the hum of the generators in a near-by factory. No one sees me laying there. They were all inside their homes or at some other public building watching the tributes ride into the Capital Square. The 65th Hunger Games had begun yesterday with the reaping. The tributes from Three were Globe Purest, a thriteen year-old girl, and a sixteen- year-old boy named Laxie Titan. I didn't know either of them.
At dawn, the first of the factory workers were headed off to work. My best friend, Saxton Leddermen, would be one of them. Saxton worked at the factory near my house that made and repair telvisionsets from all over Panem.
I see his brown, leather work boots before I see his concerned face,
Saxton was twenty, two years older than me. He had brown, almost bronze colored hair. He had fairskin with freckles that covered his face, back, shoulders, and chest. His crystal blues eyes, which had been soft and carefree when we were children, were hard from years of working in the factories. Saxton lived in a flat with six other men because he was neither married nor did he have parents to live with; both of his mother and father had died in an explosion in a factory when Saxton was twelve.
The split second he saw my curled-up, shivering body, Saxton ran down the small street towards me. A batch of fresh, salty tears spilled out of my eyes. When he reached me, Saxton pulled me onto the sidewalk, wrapping his arms around my cold, wet body. I leaned against his shoulder, crying.
"Shh, Effie, shh. It's okay. I'm here. Saxton's got you. Shh, shh. Tell me what happened." He brushed my damp hair out of my eyes. "Tell me Effie."
Once I finally got control of my breathing, I told my best friend what had happened. "Father came home tired and drunk again, and was looking for more to drink. Mother had already had me pour out all of his liquor that he had kept stored in the house. So when he couldn't find a drink, he turned on Mother. It started off with just shouting, which is normal, but that turned to slapping, then kicking, then he choked her, which he has never done before. Once he had thrown-up, father went looking for his drinks again. That's when he grabbed the frying pan." Tears got even worse with the last few words.
Saxton rocked me back and forh until I finally calmed myself down.
"I kept beating his back, screaming at him that he had already killed the unborn child in her, and now he was going to kill her too. Once…once she was g-gone, he dragged me outside and left me here to die, which I'd rather do compared to some of the awful alternatives."
He was silent for a while, keeping his arms wrapped around me to protect me from the world. Saxton stood up so quickly, I almost feel back into the gutter. "Stay here. I'll be back for you."
"Wh-where are you going?" He kept on walking in the direction of my former home. "Saxton, what are you doing?"
"I'm killing you father," he said without stopping. I jumped up and went after him. "What do you mean you're 'killing my father?' Saxton, you can't be serious."
"I'm dead serious, Effie. He beat you and your mother for years until he finally killed her and her unborn child. Something must be done." There was such anger in his voice. Anger that mirrored the furry I had felt while I watched my father kill my mother.
Trying to stop him, I grabbed the sleeve of his work jumpsuit. "You can not. The Peacekeepers will find out and kill you for sure."