A/N: Hey guys, sorry the chapters are so short but I'm working on getting them longer. I still hope you enjoy them though! Here's chapter five! :D
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own imagination.
Dreams are written in italics.
Chapter Five
I walk out of the living room two hours later, mentally scarred for the rest of my life and holding the vibrator Effie bought me in my hands. The past two hours is going to be burned into my mind for the rest of my life. I'm supposed to stick this thing in my . . . my . . . there! And it's supposed to be pleasurable?! Effie didn't make me do it during her explanation-thank the lord-but the whole concept of how violating yourself with this thing I'm holding can be fun and make you feel good eludes me.
I'm physically trembling once I reach my room and I hide the stupid thing in the bottom of my wardrobe. Thinking back on Effie's lesson on how the vibrations enhance stimulation I can't help but run questions throuh my mind that confuse me. Like, doesn't it hurt? I mean, you're basically sticking a thick, colourful stick fashioned to look like a male's personal place up into your intimate area. It's got to hurt right? Right?
The hot day has faded in the past two hours and clouds have began to fill the once bright blue sky. It's sort of comforting I guess. Reminds me of home. I mean, they aren't as dark and overcast as the clouds back in 5, they're just a light shade of grey that signals rain coming soon. A light shower maybe? Might do those flowers in the front garden some good.
I lie on my back on my bed, watching the window as specks of rain begin to hit the window pane and silently watch as more and more hits the glass and runs down in speedy rivulets. The soft patter of the rain hitting the window and the soft wind blowing soothes me and calms me somewhat after the distrubing discussion of pleasurable dynamics of the modern age with Effie Trinket that I somehow find myself falling asleep.
My eyes have only drooped closed for five minutes when I hear the back door open-the hollow walls of the old house shaking with the opening and closing of the door-and muffled yells. I'm too drowsy to register the fact that the voice is angry and I'm almost alseep again when a loud smack wakes me up fully. I bolt up on the bed, sitting upright and looking out the window at the grey skies. What the heck was that? I crawl to the end of the bed and sit still, waiting for it to come again. When it does it come again it makes me start and I bite the inside of my cheek.
Back when I was little, I remember hearing a noise like that in the square once. I was only ten and I was searching the market area for a birthday present for Prim. I didn't have a lot of money but I did have some old nick nacks I could trade for something valuable. I was just trading an old paper weight for a blue ribbon when I heard the slap ring out across the square. Everyone else carried on as normal but I searched frantically for the source of the noise. A woman by the butcher's stall slapped her slave right across the cheek just because she couldn't afford an extra pound of beef and needed to let out her frustration on something. Well, in this case, someone. The sound was so harsh that it made my stomach churn and I couldn't help but gasp. Thank god nobody heard it because even showing sympathy for a slave can be hazardous.
The door slams shut again and I wait a moment before risking venturing to the window to see what the commotion was about. The rain is heavier than I had predicted, showering down in relentless sheets of very likely ice cold water. I squint and it takes me a moment to see through the rain. After a couple of seconds I can make out a blob of yellow through the dull grey of the backyard.
It's Peeta the Slave.
I watch curiously as he crouches down on the wet ground and starts picking up pieces of a broken plant pot. A shiver runs down my spine when I see how his hair matts to his head and his clothes cling to his body because of the rain. He doesn't even have a jacket to put on. I wonder if Effie's old slave died of pnuemonia. As he stands up with the pot shards in his hands I notice the dark pink mark set deep into his left cheek. It's not the product of a slap because there's no hand print. Effie must have hit him with something. Very probably because the plant pot is somehow broken.
There's a deep pang in my stomach and I can't help feeling sorry for him. I know I shouldn't, but I do. I can't stand being out in the rain for more than five minutes because of my clothes getting heavy and my leather boots getting sodden. Who knows how long he'll be out there for, the only reprieve being going into the dark cellar soaking wet and resting in the lonely darkness. Unable to stand looking at the sad sight below me, I close the curtains, blocking the image away.
"Katniss?" Effie calls up the stairs, her voice echoing ominiously up the hall just as a cold draft creeps up my spine, making me shiver.
"Yeah?" I call back, exiting the room and looking over the stairs at her. Thinking of what she just done, I avoid looking her in the eye because I doubt I'd be able to handle it.
"Tomorrow lessons begin." Hold on, the whole vibrator thing wasn't lessons? That's worrying. "I've hired you a private tutor, Johanna Mason. She's the best in the buisness."
"Why can't I just go to public school?" I ask.
"Because they're more advanced. They understand the ethics of the country whereas you don't. That's what Madam Mason is for," Effie explains.
"Uh . . . OK?" I frown.
"Get some rest, it'll be much needed. Tomorrow is a big, big, big day!" Effie trills before disappearing off to the living room. I return to my room and find myself automatically going back to the window and peering round the curtains. Peeta the Slave is no longer in the backyard. Feeling a strange pang of disappointment that I don't understand causes me to back away from the window and climb into bed. Something at the back of my head keeps telling me that I'm heading toward something hazardous but I can't make sense of the statement so I push the thought away.
I close my eyes and force myself to get some sleep.
~xXx~
It's cold. Rain falls down my back and soaks through the fabric of my clothes, chilling me to the bone. I can't go home. All I'll see at home is my frail sister, her eyes full of the same hope she has everyday: the hope I'll come back with something to eat, and the blank face of my mother. I can't face the disappointment anymore.
Trailing behind the shops that line the streets, I check every dustbin I can. The feeling of failure only grows as I realize that the bins have been emptied. This fact doesn't stop me from checking them all though. Maybe there's some scraps at the bottom that have been missed?
I think it's the back of the bakery I reach when I get caught. A woman appears out of the back of the building and starts screaming at me to clear off before she calls the authorities and how she's so tired of stupid brats pawing through her rubbish. The ugly words felt like hard blows that stung me so I ran away quickly, slipping and sliding in the wet mud of the alley behind the shops.
The bakery was a big building at the end of the street so when I turned the corner out onto the main street, I was standing in the side yard where they kept their pigs. A vague thought passes through my mind of why a bakery would need pigs but is soon dismissed as I collapse because of the burden of carrying my own weight. I lean my back against an apple tree that sits in the yard and close my eyes. A perfect place to die. By an old apple tree in the dirt and rain. Just like all the others who die of starvation.
A loud scream and the sound of a hard blow makes my eyes snap open. The back door opens and light streams out of the house as a boy hurries outside with two burnt loaves in his arms. The woman stands in the doorway screaming at him.
"Feed them to the pigs you worthless creature!" she roars. "That is it! You're going back to the Capitol! You can rot in that training center for all I care!"
The bell at the front of the shop makes the woman leave and watch as she slams the door, making me jump slightly because of the loud noise. My eyes scan the boy as he stands by the pig pen. A dark bruise is growing underneath his eye, joining many of the others that seem to litter his skin. I still don't have much knowledge on the slaves of the country but I do know that physical abuse is not uncommon. The rain matts the boys hair and drips off the long curls that hang over his eyes and, even though the rain makes it hard to be able to tell or not, I could swear he's crying.
Feeling my body giving into fatigue again, I slump further against the tree and feel my eyes drooping closed. My ears pick up the sound of feet sloshing through the water, getting closer to me and it crosses my mind that the woman has returned to drive me away with a stick or something. Instead, when I force my eyes open again, I see the boy standing a couple of metres away from me. He doesn't actknowledge my presence as he throws one loaf of bread at me, the other soon following. My mouth drops open in shock as the bread lands at my feet and the boy runs back to the bakery.
He does look at me once though, once standing in the threshold of the bakery he looks back at me to make sure I've noticed the food he tossed, and his round, bright blue eyes stare right at me and he nods towards the loaves on the ground by my feet and goes back inside, closing the door more softly than the woman.
The bread lasted my family a whole week and after that I learnt to hunt and defend for Prim and my mother to keep us fed. All because of that boy.
I never see the boy again, and when I drop by the bakery to trade some strawberries with the baker's assitant, I notice someone different is working as a slave there. I used to spend hours wondering where the blonde boy with those magical blue eyes went to until . . .
One day, I forgot.
A/N: Once again, sorry it's so short, but hey, review anyway? I love to hear what you think :)