I'm at chapter sixty, wow! I never thought it'll get this far and i hope the story hasn't bore anyone yet. Anyway, here's the second part.
Chapter Sixty
Effie pressed her body against the wall, willing herself to disappear but if wishes were granted, she would have been gone from the first day she was captured.
She jerked when the blood finally touched her toes. Her nerves fired the stimulus up her brain and Effie shuddered. It was a different sensation from what she was used to in her BlackHole. The liquid was warm and sticky against her skin, a stark contrast from the chill in the room. Warm blood. Warm meant the blood was fresh.
There wasn't enough air in the room. Her chest hurt from trying to breathe. The tears made her sight blurry but she could still see the pool of blood glimmering red. She forced herself to tear her gaze away and stared up at the ceiling.
"Please," she rasped. "Please make it stop."
The guards watched impassively from the glass window above.
"It's her blood, in case you're interested," one of them sneered. "That weakling you just saw dying over and over."
A strangled whimpered escaped her lips. It can't be true. It can't be her sister's blood. She died years ago. They wouldn't have been able to get her blood, would they?
But if they managed to capture the video of her sister's death… then maybe the blood really was hers.
"Not only her blood," another voice cut in. "The tributes too."
"You're right, it's their blood. All of those. Soak it in, traitor. You spilled their blood after all," they laughed at their own joke.
Effie crouched on the floor, heaving and sobbing.
"She stinks, don't you think? I don't think she's seen the shower since she got here."
"Give her a shower then," one of the guards cackled.
No sooner had he said it, a bucket was upended, drenching her. She didn't need to look to know what it was. She could taste it on her tongue as it dripped down her face and into her mouth.
She couldn't breathe. Effie was horrified and shocked and extremely confused. She couldn't tell where the truth and the lies began. With only her captors words in her ears, Effie started to believe everything they said. They've bathed her in her tributes blood and in what had once flowed through her sister's veins.
Effie screamed and screamed. She scratched her skin raw trying to get it all off her. But the more she thrashed, the more the puddle splashed on her skin.
She called them names which only made them laughed harder. Effie kneeled on the floor, the tears making a clean path down her blood crusted cheeks as she lost her mind. In the end, she curled on the floor, mumbling incoherently to herself.
Effie was beyond reasoning and beyond reach.
They left her in that blood covered room for another day.
When she fell asleep, she dreamt of her sister drowning in a red sea and each time she was close to death, she resurfaced again to grin at Effie. She saw the Capitol flooded and every tribute flushed out, floating with blood oozing out of the wounds from their bodies.
Animal blood, he read on the file. Haymitch pushed the file away from him violently and rushed out of the study into the bathroom. Bile rose in his throat as Haymitch dropped on his knees and retched.
The entire phase involving sensory stimulation was inhumane and they had done it to her, to his Effie. They brought up her worst memory - twisted and manipulated her sister's death – and made it even more unbearable with the introduction of blood. It explained the whole incident with Johanna's blood stained hospital gown and the red paint on Tristan's hand. Behind his revulsion, there was a deep seated admiration for Effie to have gone through that and lasted reasonably well without breaking until recently. She had tried to put it all behind and soldier on with her life, to lead it as normally as she could but like the flow of blood even she couldn't escape its course.
Haymitch squeezed his eyes shut and leaned his forehead against the toilet but all he saw was the various photographs he had just seen in her file; photos of her strapped to a chair; photos of Effie drenched in blood, her mouth opened in a silent scream and crying in agony; photos of her curled on the floor with only the white of her irises visible.
His stomach twisted and he felt the urge to throw up again but forced it down. He spent the next half an hour sitting on the bathroom floor trying to regulate his breathing. There was an overwhelming need to give up and stop, to not read any further but he couldn't. He had started this. He should commit himself to it. Maybe it was his penance to feel her sufferings, to burn with anger and yet unable to do anything. He wanted to kill those men. He had killed once in the arena, what difference would it make if he murdered one or two more? He was a murderer and it would not make any difference.
He knew their names. He could do it.
An image of Ethan grinning toothily at him seared itself behind his eyelids and it was replaced with Effie laughing at something Tristan had done. He had murdered in his past but this was his present and his children needed a father. He couldn't do that if he was incarcerated behind bars.
And then there was Effie. She needed help and he owed her that. He would help especially when he had gone out of his way to do things behind her back. She would be angry but he hoped that she would understand why he did the things he did.
He couldn't afford to think of what his betrayal would do to them, not at this moment.
Phase 4: Day 16 to 20 – Social Recalibration
When they finally extracted her from the BlackHole, Effie was shaking and barely able to stand. They transferred her back to the pod with Annie and Johanna.
Effie was wild eyed and terrified. The blood had dried and crusted over her skin. When Annie and Johanna saw her, nobody moved until Annie timidly asked, "Effie?"
She gave a single nod and collapsed on the floor.
"That must be how I looked like during blood rain," Johanna croaked from her corner.
Effie lifted her eyes and saw Johanna with her knees drawn, her body twitching every so often.
"What did they do to you?" Effie asked.
Johanna ignored her. The pod was quiet. Annie tried in vain to scrub the crusted blood off Effie's face and her exposed skin. Effie stared at the red stain on Annie's prison clothes.
Food came but Effie couldn't eat more than a few bites before she threw it up. Johanna wrinkled her nose but she wasn't in a better state either. Her hands shook very badly when she tried to pick up the bread. Effie saw some burnt marks on her skin and over the next few days, Effie learnt what they did to her each time she was dragged out of the pod.
The guards came and kicked Johanna in her ribs for wasting food. Effie clung to the man's leg weakly, telling him to leave them alone. His face contorted into a rage.
"Would you like a wig, Trinket?" he asked.
Effie was startled by the sudden question but she nodded hesitantly. It was something comforting, something familiar for her to hide in.
The guard yanked Johanna by her hair and started to haphazardly cut it off with his knife.
"We'll make you a nice wig with Mason's hair. You'll like that, won't you?"
"No," Effie shook her head. "No, please, please leave her alone."
They never did leave Johanna alone. She was taken out each day for questioning and when she returned, her limbs would be twitching from the electrocution. But each time, she brought them news.
"Peeta's alive," she whispered. Her lips were swollen and Effie had to lean in close to hear. "I saw him."
"That's good. That's good, I'm glad," Effie nodded, brushing back what little hair Johanna had left as she laid on Effie's lap.
"I'm not. I think we're better off dead."
"Finnick will come," Annie assured them.
Nobody bothered to tell Annie that they had been here for weeks and no one had attempted to get them out.
Effie began to shadow Annie in that cramped cell space when Johanna was taken away. It made her feel better to hear Annie's breathing, to reach out to someone, to have Annie speak to her even though at times, Effie could hardly understand her. But when Annie retreated into her mind, mumbling something about swimming in a flood, Effie would talk to her quietly just because she could, just because unlike the BlackHole, there was another breathing, living human being for her to talk to instead of talking to herself.
The guards would pull her out occasionally during their downtime. They would taunt and beat her up because it passed the time and they would use this time to ask her questions about the Rebellion. She bore bruises and knife marks that she would carry for the rest of her life. They never gave her any serious, life threatening injuries.
"I wish they would kill us already," Effie admitted quietly after she returned back to the pod after a particularly long session of beatings.
Johanna kept her silence. She had shared the sentiment far too many times.
Phase 4: Day 21 to 23 – Interrogation
One day, when Effie was wrenched out of the Pod, she thought it was for the normal beating and questioning. But as they brought her further and further away, she became fearful that they would throw her back into the BlackHole. She didn't think she would be able to cope with that.
It wasn't the case. She was brought into a normal looking room and they gave her coffee. Effie stared at the beverage for a long, long time. Coffee was a luxury here. When she saw the guards drinking from the same tumbler, Effie reached out for it with shaking hands. The man sitting across the desk from her swept it off the table. He was a large sized man with a small head that Effie thought was grossly disproportionate to the rest of his body. It made his head looked like a tiny bean.
She called him Bean. It made him feel a little less intimidating and it amused her so. It was the only thing left that she could do apart from vehemently wishing that his blood would spill on the floor just as the coffee had. And then she shuddered, remembering the pool of blood she had spent days in.
"Ready to talk?" Bean asked. "I've been told that you're still not talking."
She did not answer.
"You like that video we played for you? Thought you might want to know how your sister died and left you all alone."
Effie went rigid. She clenched her fingers into a fist, an act that did not go unnoticed by Bean.
"Your sister was weak," he spat. "Are you as weak as her?"
She turned her nose at him and stared defiantly out of the glass window.
"You're going to tell me exactly the kind of information you passed on to the worthless rebels."
"Or what?" she challenged.
"Or the next time, we will drown you in more blood. We have Peeta in this block. His blood would do nicely."
Was that why they kept Peeta alive? To drain his blood in order to torture her?
"I have no information to give."
"Just like how I have no use for Annie Cresta, if you know what I mean?" She stared at her interrogator. "Imagine how Odair would react to her public execution."
"You wouldn't kill her. She doesn't know anything."
"But you do. You and Johanna Mason and Peeta Mellark. You gathered sensitive information for the enemies."
"No," Effie denied stubbornly. "They're not enemies."
It riled Bean so much he struck her across the face.
Effie lied and lied and lied. It came easily to her.
On the third day, Bean had enough.
"Put her in the white room," he barked.
Phase 5: Day 24 to 28 - Sensory Deprivation
The white room sounded better than the BlackHole, Effie thought. Anything was better than the BlackHole.
She was changed out of her blood stained prison uniform and given a white dress. A dress! She was giddy with that thought. It felt smooth to the touch. It lifted her spirits up enough that she turned around to thank the person who gave it to her.
As she was marched down another corridor, Effie touched her dress again. It was only when she passed the pod where Johanna and Annie was held and heard their voices calling out for her that she started to be afraid.
"Where are you taking me?" her voice shook. "I – I don't want to go to that white room."
She was ignored of course.
They stopped in front of an unmarked door.
"Your friend, Portia, is dead. Together with the rest of the prep teams. Executed this morning," the guard informed her.
Effie kept her face impassive but inside she wanted to scream. She couldn't mourn their deaths when she herself was afraid for her own life. Was she selfish?
She was pushed inside. The white room was named quite literally so. Everything was white; the walls, the bed, the metal food tray and herself included which explained the dress. She had been so easily fooled.
The white room was for all intent and purpose, another BlackHole – soundproof with nothing to hear.
Before they left, the guard pulled her hair back and just like Johanna, it was cut haphazardly. They brought a mirror.
"Recognised her?" he taunted.
She didn't.
That woman, gaunt and with that haunted look in her eyes wasn't her. It couldn't be.
They were systematically ruining her sense of identity, taking away her sense of self. What would she be left with if she survived?
She was alone again and completely cut off from human contact. She tried to listen to footsteps down the corridor or disjointed conversations to make sure that there was still someone around but there was nothing.
The room was so far removed that it was nearly impossible to believe that there was a war being fought outside. Effie began to forget Peeta's face, Katniss' voice and Haymitch's smell. She began to doubt if she ever was in the pod with Annie and Johanna or if they were only a figment of her imagination. Perhaps she had been kept alone for so long that her mind had conjured up images of friends for her to cope with the situation. She wasn't sure. Nothing was certain. She would believe anything.
Effie craved for Johanna's and Annie's presence. She even shouted for the guards. A beating would mean seeing someone's face, being in someone's company and Effie was desperate for social contact because the solitude was suffocating. She wondered if she could die from extremely unbearable feeling of loneliness. She just wanted to see another living, breathing human before she died because she was going to die here. And she was going to die alone. There was no doubt about it.
It did not take long for her to break down completely. They had already worn her down in the BlackHole. The second time was easy.
Effie lost control over herself. It was validated when they finally came for her, calling out her name and Effie wondered if she should respond.
'Effie Trinket' sounded familiar but was that her?
Bean towered over her, sneering.
"Johanna Mason was executed an hour ago. Annie Cresta is awaiting her turn. There's no one left for you to protect. All the information you provided to the rebels – I want them now."
What else could she do? There was no more fight left. Effie confessed and when she found out that it was a lie and that she had bought, the shame flooded her.
"All the names of the people involved in this little revolution."
She paused, thinking about it.
"I was not privy to that information," she answered monotonously.
It wasn't a lie. She did not know the identity of everyone involved.
"So…," Bean chuckled. "They made use of you; spread your legs for that victor of yours and he has you wrapped around his little fingers, no? Told him everything he wanted to know. Pillow talk," he laughed with his colleague.
Effie did not answer.
Haymitch had never touched her but she let them talk to her in that manner because Effie was so desperate for a human voice, to not be alone, that it didn't matter what they were saying anymore.
Haymitch breathed heavily. He had read enough.
There was nothing much left anyway. Day 28 should be nearing the time of the rescue.
He had heard stories of what happened during the extraction and skipped that part to when she arrived in District Thirteen with a gunshot wound to her abdomen. He knew that when Effie came around from her coma, she was interviewed but she was so disorientated that she could not give an accurate account of what had happened, and the file reflected that. The accounts were sketchy at best.
Effie could not tell which side had shot her, if it was on purpose or accidental. She was never meant to be rescued but the Boggs had gone back for her at Annie's and Johanna's insistent, the latter threatening bloody murder before she passed out.
He remembered Johanna being wheeled in to the hospital in District Thirteen. He had heard a woman shouting at the top of her lungs and Haymitch knew that that was a scream of someone in pain and in fear. He had gone to check only to discover that it was Effie, delirious and losing her mind until the nurses sedated her for surgery. He had been in complete shock. Effie was supposed to have gone underground and hide. She wasn't supposed to be captured and tortured.
The rest was history. He had spent nights keeping vigil unbeknownst to her, telling her unconscious form about what they had done to Peeta and that Katniss had asked to be sent to District Two.
Haymitch closed the file and shut the door to the study.
Thanks for reading. And before anyone thinks I'm psychotic, the white room wasn't something I created out of thin air. It does exist in prisons and I just incorporated it here.