A/N: What would the games be without a crazy deranged murderer thrown in the mix? Enter Cain, our District 7 male. Thanks for reading, and enjoy!
CHAPTER EIGHT: LIGHT IN AUGUST
CAIN
A twenty-five-year-old man kneels on the floor of a circular cement room, quiet as the grave. Dark shadows loom over his eyes; his vest is full of holes. This is Cain. Behind him, inside a transparent glass cube that rises from the floor, a mass of light pulses and dances in midair. Millions of tiny crimson threads appear for a single moment and then disappear, working together to create the appearance of a human woman. This is Alexandria.
Elsewhere in the room, there is a single cot, a small sink, and a barred window. The only visible exit is a door with a narrow slot. He has etched hundreds of tally marks into the walls and ceiling.
Over the floor, arranged in a creepily perfect grid, lie hundreds of pages he has torn from a small Capitol propaganda book the guards slipped to him. Over each page lie words Cain has written in his own blood. Some are dense with handwriting, perfectly looped cursive slanted to fit snugly between the margins. Other pages accommodate nothing but single letters or phrases. Many contain utter nonsense.
The machine flickers and glows, and the virtual woman's mouth opens to speak.
"It is late, Mr. Twist. You have not eaten all day."
"I'm not hungry. Don't disturb me."
"But there are so many combinations you have not tried! Please trust me, Cain. I'm just looking out for you."
Cain shuts his eyes and squeezes them tight, gazing down at the ground. If only he could fly free of this place, leave this little prison cell and fly out to the great world he once knew, the world he knows still exists…
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, he can see them hitting. They are coming toward him and he goes along the fence, the brittle grass bending and breaking under his bare feet.
"Here, Trillup!" He hits. The ball flies through the air; he moves along the fence. They go away across the clearing. He holds to the fence and watches them go away.
The snow falls thickly, like a curtain of angels in its dense layered breath. The last time he saw snow, it was a druggie sprinkling down asbestos powder on a Capitolmas display near the Justice Building. That was last year's reaping. It has been eleven months since then. He stays to the fence; he watches them go. Trillup's eyes glisten in the sun. He smells like blood.
"Listen at you, now!" Trillup blurts out. "Aren't you something, going that way. After I went all the way to town to buy you that cake! Hush up your moaning. Help me find my Cap so I can go to the show tonight!"
The ball flies again. It goes back along the fence to where the small boy is.
"Come on, we've already looked there! Let's go down and find my Cap before the peacekeepers scoop it up. Come on, Cain!"
Cain opens his eyes, sees the memory play back in his mind like a deranged, shattered slideshow of light and color. Sees himself all those years ago, with Trillup, the heartbreakingly beautiful boy who hit the ball and watched it fly over the fence, shining on the grass and the trees.
Alexandria opens her virtual mouth. "Might I add: happy birthday, Cain! It is May twenty-first, 325HG. You are twenty-five today."
"I know that."
"There's no need to be rude. I'm merely wishing you well. Would you like some food?"
"No, Alexandria…"
"If you ever need anything, I'm here to help you."
And silence envelops the chamber once more.
Cain picks his way through the pages on the floor. How he can withstand the stench of months-old blood is beyond the understanding of the peacekeeper guards. The disgusting iron-like aroma rolls up out of his cell and through the halls of the prison. Cain retrieves what's left of a single book page: a diary entry, roughly a month old. Writing journals is the only thing that has kept him from killing himself in this tiny room, the only thing keeping him in the…
He is running, yelling and running up the stairs out the window down onto the ground; he uses the large green dumpster as a stepping stool to reach the gravel. His Caste-Mother is here too, her back against the door and her arm across her face yelling in horror. Like a cornered rat.
Cain is blotchy on the horizon already like a single line on a quilt in the dark. It smells of rain and flower scents, the damp warm air pacing with him every time he moves.
"Is Cain still crying?" his Caste-Mother asks the little child standing like a ghost in the corner. "Why is he upset? Please, child, anything you can tell me I'd appreciate."
"I don't know. Yes. I don't know."
"What has he said to you?"
The child is quiet for a moment. "The boys he takes down to the rocks, to the caves. They never come back the same. Little Dennis."
Outside the light turns grey, like shadows in stagnant water.
"He wishes you were dead."
The middle-aged woman shivers in the dark. "Tell me what he says to you. Tell me, child!"
"He talks about blood. Goes outside to the butcher to watch it come down. It comes down in the light. He talks about bones. Knows the name of every bone in the body. In an old language."
"Latin?"
"He cornered me with a knife. Said he would murder me. Said bad things happen to people who are mean to him."
Outside the shadows turn even darker, swimming like dark watercolors polluting yellow.
Cain sits back on his heels. He has not left the room for over a year.
"As your guardian and protector, I am obligated to keep instructing you to eat!" Alexandria says, demanding. "Why won't you listen to me?"
Ignoring her, he leans over the scrap of paper and begins to squint at the tight red script.
"Cain, I must insist that you eat."
"How many times do I have to tell you? I'm not hungry!"
"You wouldn't want to go to the reaping on an empty stomach."
That gives him pause. Yes, he wouldn't, would he?
It's no secret that serial killers are often rigged into the games. Ever since little Syracuse, the infamous child murderer who'd killed his entire Caste-Family in the summer of '60, was sent into the games, nobody even pretended it was a coincidence when year after year a vicious killer was sent into the Hunger Games. Somehow, though, Cain went all seven years he was eligible without being chosen.
"I'd like some steak, Alexandria."
"Say no more."
In the cylindrical machine in the corner of the cell, a bag of plain white powder breaks open and spills its contents into a goopy, wet mixture. A lever compresses, wets, and paints the material into what perfectly resembles a slab of juicy, delicious brown meat.
"Alexandria?"
"Yes, Cain?"
"I'd like to learn something about the games."
"Your wish is my command. I am the most complete source of information about Panem and the Hunger Games ever created."
"What have victors said about what it felt like?"
"What what felt like?"
"What it feels like to kill."
Half a second's pause. Then the information comes spilling forth.
"As your protector, I am not allowed to disclose to you any information that might be used to encourage harm against yourself and others. Since I personally see no harm in the information I am about to present, I am able to tell you that several victors including Organdy Karat, Discordia Komine, and Mizzen Bancroft have provided detailed accounts of their thought processes after the first time they took human life. Would you like to hear more?"
"Yes, I would."
"Your wish is my command."
"It's late. We should be heading home now."
"No, Trillup."
His eyes are shining, shining on the grass and the trees. The smell of the ground burbles up like a dark deadly angel and then there is nothing but the two of them.
"Trillup?"
"Yes, Cain?"
"I have to tell you a secret. You have to pinky promise not to tell anyone."
Pinky promise. What children say to extract a solemn vow. To a child it is the very touchstone of security and binding truth.
"I'm all ears," Trillup whispers. His feet pass lightly over the grass and the trees. The darkness grows thicker, stronger, the smell of water – then they can see the water, the color of grey honeysuckle. They lay with their faces close to the ground.
"I killed my family."
"What?"
"I killed my family. Beat them to death with a rock."
"What?"
Cain figures he is simply alarmed by the use of the word "family". It is vulgar, unthinkable, utterly despicable to think about. People mating in the streets like cats. It is proper to refer to one's "Caste-Family" only.
"My Caste-Family. I killed them."
The ditch narrows and he closes in on him. Trillup goes closer to the trees.
"I'm stronger than you."
"Cain! The Blight – it's upset your balance. I know it's a long road to recovery, and it's a serious illness, but…"
"Have dinner with me, won't you?"
"I'm not exactly the life of the party."
"It doesn't matter. We'd love for you to join us. Besides, It'll be a fun night. At least think about it, won't you?"
"I don't know…"
"What have you got to lose?"
The clock is an utter demon. Cain leans forward on the floor, letting his shadow droop lusciously over the pages he has scrawled over using his own blood. Tick, tock, seven o'clock. Another moment he will never get back.
"Alexandria?"
The woman assembles out of nothingness in a single millisecond. "Yes, Cain?"
"I'd like to see footage of the crimes I committed."
He says it with perfectly calmness, the hair that normally lies in his face falling out of its way as he turns his head upward.
"I am forbidden to show you anything that might encourage you to perpetrate harm against yourself or others. You know that."
"What more could I do? I'm already in prison."
"I am looking out for both of us," says Alexandria. "If you die, I cease to exist, remember?"
He rests his chin on his fist in contemplation. Then he says, "I'd like to see an old news article."
"I contain every newspaper and broadcast since the year 1900 CE."
"July ninth, 315HG."
"The lead news article from that Thursday morning speaks of one Cain Twist's arrest after beating his friend Trillup to death with a rock."
"Yes, that's the one. I'd like to read more."
"As your guardian and protector, I must advise you not to…"
"I don't care!"
"Your wish is my command."
The words appear in midair, a hologram screen assembling out of the nothingness and growing a faint blue haze in front of him:
Thursday, 9 July 315HG
INFAMOUS MURDERER CAIN TWIST LANDS THIRD STRIKE, ARRESTED
The infamous murderer Cain Twist, of the Sycamore Zone of District 7, was charged with his third account of first-degree murder on Thursday morning.
Conceived and born in the Theresia Facility in the north of District 1, a facility notorious in local superstition for churning out violent and dangerous criminals, Twist was nurtured from conception by his Caste-Mother and Caste-Grandmother, whom he beat to death with a sharp stone on Sunday evening. On Thursday, Twist invited a childhood friend, Trillup June, to his home, offering him food laced with deadly poison. Twist then beat June to death with the same stone with which he killed his parents on Sunday. He began consuming their dead bodies that afternoon. Peacekeepers found him around 7:00 on Friday morning, lying naked over June's corpse covered with blood and organs.
Authorities blame his vicious and in some cases deranged behavior on the accidental introduction of foreign chemicals into his Amber Solution during his development twenty-five years ago. Recently, charges have been raised against the Theresia Facility, whose charges of neglect during child development may go beyond mere local folklore. A higher percentage of killers and rapists come from the Theresia Facility than any other facility in Panem. Facility staff blame this on mere coincidence, but the angry public is not so sure.
It may be come clear in due time that…
"Stop it, stop it!" Cain barks.
He leans forward on his heels and stoops over a page of ink (blood) so dark it is nothing but brownish sepia. Closing his eyes, he begins to write.
"Cain Twist!"
It's not even a surprise. He steps out of the crowd in his plain white prison uniform and everybody backs away as he passes through their midst, as though he might lash out and sink his teeth into one of them.
"Mr. Twist. I…"
Everyone has heard his name, even in the Capitol.
Two peacekeepers lunge out of the shadows to flank him like wingmen as he ambles toward the stage. The silver buttons of their uniforms shine in the sun with impossible iridescence.
The iron-like smell that lingers around him is something the residents of the District 7 prison could only ever become partially accustomed to. Now everyone can smell it. They wrinkle their noses and cough and gag as he passes them. The smell of blood and something else, too – literal feces.
"Cain! It's… well, this is a surprise."
No, it's not. There's no way this is a coincidence. No way on Snow's green earth.
The female tribute stands back in horror, revolted not only by his stench but by the name she's heard hundreds of times in the news, whispered like the name of the devil in the dark. The thousands of cameras zoom in on him with laser-precision, examining every scar on his face, every welt on his hands and arms. Consequences of a life outside the bounds of what the human brain is supposed to be able to tolerate.
Most unsettling of all is the huge welt on his forehead, placed there when another prison inmate slammed a metal bar into his flesh. Most would shun the mark, but he wears it proudly. It is his sign; it is his Mark.
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-five."
"Would you like to say anything to the crowd, Cain?"
"No."
Somehow it is the most terrifying thing any of them have ever heard. Silence lays thick and unbreakable over the crowd like a heavy blanket of fog over the sea. In some faces, there is relief – no matter what, it seems, they will be rid of him. The gamemakers can't possibly let a crazy murderer like Cain Twist win the Hunger Games. Or can they?