Chapter 4
In my opinion, the train journey is far too short to experience all the luxuries offered onboard. And how am I supposed to sleep on the train when there's a PS6 in my room, loaded with every game from the last decade? Effie even assures me it works twenty-four hours a day!
I play on it for about half of that time, logging into my Discord account - MidKnight_69.
We pull into the station and before I know it, I'm standing before my prep team.
They are hideously eccentric – their abnormal appearances put my dashing gold tie to shame.
The three of them stand in a triangle around me, muttering to each other about my complexion, height, eyes, hair – they notice how greasy it is. I feel flattered.
One of my stylists is so far from human that they don't seem to have a gender. They introduce themself as Lally Leary, jabbering away as they pluck at my hair with a clawed hand and scan their empty black eyes over me.
When I say empty, I mean hollow, black holes in their porcelain-white face. Cracks web outwards from the sockets across their cheeks, beneath their peach-coloured bangs and to the corners of their crocodile-toothed mouth. Lally's hair billows around their head and shoulders like that stringy tissue-paper you get in easter-egg baskets.
They are most certainly somebody's sleep paralysis demon… A Capitol fashion icon.
Not my sleep paralysis demon. Or my nightmare fuel. Or a reminder of that ancient scary movie I watched when I was five that gave me nightmares for years and all Haymitch did to stop me was tell me it would terrify me and hide it from me, but he didn't actually hide it that well so I found it after 3 solid days of looking, all the while thinking about how cool I would be if I watched a movie that an adult said was too scary for me and then it was, and that just shows how bad Haymitch is as a dad.
Not that scary.
Lally says, "Tall enough. Busted skin though; he's so lucky we're here to fix him up."
Standing by Lally's shoulder is a wispy-looking girl with dank black hair trailing down her face. I would liken her to a smudge of grease.
She wears a scowl when she says, "I'm not sorting that acne. A little bit is fine. He's worse than I am though-"
"And that's saying something! Not often we find someone more greasy than you, Dolor!" The third prep-team member addresses the girl.
This guy is probably more surgically altered than Lally. He has hundreds of needle-like teeth, sharp, cat-like eyes rimmed with eyeliner, and four arms.
Lally says, "Alright, we'll submerge his face in a tub of zit acid for half an hour, that'll fix the acne. Dolor, run a bath. Grab us a dozen wire sponges too – this grime is gonna be a job to scrub out."
Dolor nods and slopes away.
Lally continues, "Then we've still got the hair… We'll keep what's on his head, the rest can go. Our viewers won't route for a gorilla. And these teeth… Dennis, prep your tools. We're putting him under."
The man with four arms grins sadistically and sashays over to an operating table at the back of the room. His many hands set to work gathering and cleaning an assortment of tools. He holds some in the two hands that protrude from the top of his bald head, all the while giving me an excited look.
Lally barely steps back from me before yelling, "Dolor! Industrial wax strips, stat!"
Dolor gives a depressed murmur in confirmation, hidden in a storage cupboard.
I ask, "Don't you want me to strip off so you can see what your working with?"
Dennis whirs a drill in one hand while brandishing a scalpel, pliers and a bucket of syringes in the others.
He calls over, "Unless you're hiding something pretty special under that dumpster-fire of a suit, I think we can guess we're working with some level of grimy coal-miner, sweetheart."
"But you do need to take off the suit-" Lally says.
"Despite the trauma it'll probably cause us." Moans Dolor.
"-so that we can get to work with waxing." Lally finishes.
Dolor opens a hessian sack of papers and dips a large pallet knife in a bucket of cement, spreading it over some of the sheets.
"That's your industrial wax?!" I say, "Also, you can't get rid of my hair, I am a man."
Dennis minces over with a needle in one hand.
"Who says men need body hair?" he grins crookedly.
Dennis pulls off his tank-top and chucks it at a disgruntled Dolor. He has not a single strand of hair on his smooth, ocre chest, which I am not staring at.
"This is gonna be fun!" He says. He rubs his hands together. The bottom two, on arms that stick out of his waist. His other arms grab my by the shoulder and jam the needle into my neck.
Lally says, "See you when you're pretty-"
I collapse to the floor. Nobody makes an effort to catch me.
"-er." Lally finishes.
My legs have turned to jelly, like when I first saw Rubis… Pretty… Then I realise what Lally had said.
"Hey! I am pretty!"
Dennis stands over me with a bemused expression.
"Hm. Whatever I shot into you doesn't knock you out right away then. Good to know."
"You don't know wha' you ju' gafe me?" I cry.
My voice comes out as a wheeze. My tongue feels numb and my muscles weaken.
Dennis scoops me up like a ragdoll and my eyelids droop closed on their own.
I wait for the anaesthetic to take over my mind. It doesn't. Even worse, I still have sensation in every part of my body, despite having no control.
Through the sudden rush of terror, I try to take solace in the attractive scent of Dennis's aftershave as he holds me so close to his chest. Then I reach up to slap him for tempting me to feel attraction. He has no right to manipulate me into his lifestyle!
I can't slap him; I can't move my arm. But I feel it when he dumps me on the cold steel table. And I feel the other two pry open my mouth with some sort of prop while Dennis prepares to work.
"He's out." Dolor says, deadpan.
I am not! I scream at her telepathically.
"Shame, I'd have liked to see him in pain." Lally says, "We've known him five minutes and he's the most annoying tribute we've ever had. I get closer to killing them each year."
Dennis says, "I'm with you, but he'd move too much if he was conscious. Plus he'll be none-the-wiser when I inevitably botch the dental stuff like I normally do. It'll just have to be a painless operation…"
"I AM IN A LOT OF PAIN!!!" I shriek.
The three of them look down at me as I sit up on the table.
Dolor replies, "Nope. Operation's over. We pumped you full of morphine. You're fine."
It's then that I realise the excruciating, agonizing, exponential, explosive, soul-wrenching, mind-crushing, sanity-shredding pain is over.
Finally. Over.
"I was conscious through that whole ordeal." I growl.
The three devils look at each other and shrug.
"Good prep for the Hunger Games?" Lally suggests.
"How would you like it if-"
"I can't feel pain." Lally cuts me off, "And Dolor and Dennis are masochists. We cannot relate to you. You have nice teeth now. You're smooth and clean. You don't stink like a rotting barge of dirty diapers that's on fire. You should thank us."
"And you're not our problem anymore." Dennis adds, "Thank you for the fun, we look forward to seeing you die onscreen."
With that, they shove the table I'm on and it wheels through a door.
I'm speechless. And high on morphling. And also fully naked. Still.
The door closes behind me and I am left in a smaller room, alone.
Shaken, I hop off of the table. There's a thin silk robe for me to cover myself.
I don't bother. I decide to make a good first impression on my stylist by displaying my assets from the get-go. Of course, if it's a man, I'll cover up as fast as possible. I don't need to make myself more of a hunk-magnet than I already am.
The door at the opposite end of the room opens and I stand with my hands on my hips, chin tilted upwards, puffing out my chest…
"UNHOLY CARROT WAFERS!"
It's Effie.
"Aah! What the hell, Effie?!" I scramble to snatch the robe and stuff my appendages into it.
"Midnight! I came to escort you to meet your stylist; I didn't expect to be assaulted!"
Her turquoise-clawed hands cover her eyes. On her head is a high-vis yellow wig and she wears an hourglass-shaped blazer, that looks to be made of tiny fluffy Santa beards.
She's got changed completely? How long was I out?
"You can look now, Effie; he's put his chipolata away."
How is Haymitch so drunk that he forgot the difference between a chipolata and a salami?
Wait. HAYMITCH?
He was stood behind Effie. He puts an arm around her shoulder and comforts her.
"Midnight; go down the hall, up the stairs and it's the second door on the left. You can manage that, can't you?" Haymitch walks off in the opposite direction. He mutters to Effie, "It's ok, I'll take you to my therapist. I'm only alive because of him. He can help you with this trauma. Also, what the hell is a carrot wafer?"
I'm left alone.
I follow Haymitch's instructions and enter the first door at the top of the stairs.
Two people are already inside.
One is Pinty. Her stubble and monobrow are gone. Her hair is brushed and neat, although she's in the process of irately tying knots in it.
"Whoa, Pinty! You actually look like a girl!" I say.
A middle finger slowly rises without her even looking at me.
"Hello…?" the second person in the room speaks, "I don't think you're supposed to be here."
"Who are you?" I ask her.
"Kitty Cotton? Pinty's stylist?" she replies.
Kitty can't be much older than myself. She has a high voice, bucked teeth, pink irises and white hair tied in two bushy ponytails. Glitter and stickers cover her face – stars, hearts and skulls. She wears lilac fishnets and a black and purple Lolita-dress. Pastel piercings riddle her ears and face.
"Aren't you my stylist?" I ask.
"Are you deaf, fam? She's man's."
"That's right." Kitty says, "Yours is next door. Room two."
"Ah, thank you. Let me introduce myself-"
"I know who you are, kid, don't worry."
"My name is Midnight Aber… No. You know what? Nevermind. I'm not going through thi-"
"She knows who you are, you twit." Pinty snaps.
"Er… Right, well then, I'll just…"
I slowly back out of the door.
Smooth. They didn't notice a thing.
Why didn't Haymitch tell me it was the second door? I scowl as I go to enter.
If my stylist is anything like my prep team, I'll likely end up in an outfit more eccentric than Kitty's.
Ugh. Goths.
However, when I open the door, I'm reassured.
Inside stands a tall, dark-skinned woman. She wears a chiffon dress with billowing arms and a high collar – the left side of the dress is yellow, the right side red. There are no piercings, no crazy eyes, pointy teeth, extra arms… just red-and-yellow makeup on her eyes and lips; again, split vertically like her dress.
"Thank God, you're normal." I sigh.
"As normal as you get in the Capitol, huh?" she replies.
Her voice betrays an air of confidence. I feel assured that she will do a good job designing my outfits. This is the right level of eccentricity.
"I'm Onyx." She says, offering me her hand.
I shake it enthusiastically.
"Midnight."
"Cool name!" she smiles.
"Whoa. Thanks, it is, isn't it?" I reply, stunned, "So is yours."
"I know."
Onyx smiles and turns to one of the three mirrored walls. She adjusts a strand of her thick black hair, smiling at her reflection.
"You're beautiful." I say.
It's the first time I've ever said it without the girl stamping on my toes and sprinting away.
"I know." She says again, "You're not too shabby yourself, Midnight. I like this."
Onyx flicks my white streak of hair.
She puts her arm around my shoulders and turns me to the wall-mirror.
"The Capitol are going to love you. They'll see you and say, That one's the hottest by far this year; where did they find such an amazing stylist? You'll have sponsors queuing by the thousands because of me. Can you see it?"
I gaze wistfully into the mirror. I can see it. People cheering for me as I stand atop a pile of bodies, swinging my sword to decapitate the lowly tributes, as my hair blows sexily in a Capitol-orchestrated breeze…
Onyx and I talk for a long while, staring at our reflections, infatuated.
There's a knock on the door. Kitty walks in.
"Onyx, you ready to talk ideas?" she queries.
"Hm? Oops, got carried away daydreaming. How long until the Opening Ceremony, Kitty?"
"Two hours."
"Two… No, we've got more time than that."
"Er, no we don't. I finished with Pinty five hours ago. Have you been staring at your reflection this entire time?"
Onyx looked between the mirror, me and Kitty, stunned.
Then she says, "Of course not! I've got plenty of ideas! Now Midnight, hurry up and scram, the stylists need to… confirm some final ideas."
I say excitedly, "Ooh, what are you thinking? Silk? Leather? How ab-"
"Midnight get out of here or I will punt you out a window."
Onyx practically shoves me out the door, slamming it behind me. From inside the room I heard her muffled voice.
"Kitty you've gotta help me. I did it again. I spent the whole time looking at my reflection and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing with him."
In shock, I press my ear to the door to hear Kitty.
"Onyx! What the hell?" She inhales deeply, "It's ok… I'm sure one of the outfits you prepped beforehand will go with what I've sewed for Pinty."
"I didn't make any outfits beforehand! Were we supposed to do that?"
" Yes! We arrived here a week ago - what have you been doing?!"
There's a long pause.
"There's a mirror in my room. I got distracted." Onyx whines, "And it's not like the tribute is any better - he's as vain as I am."
One hour and fifty-three minutes later, Pinty and I sit nervously with Haymitch and Effie, still waiting for our outfits.