It was probably very stupid, but I was clinging to the thin sheet that had been laid on the table for dear life. I had wrapped it around me in a comforting sense of modesty after I'd been tugged, wrestled, and finally threatened out of my clothes. I was confused and terrified, everything was moving too quickly and I had no way of slowing it down.
Nearly choking on my own spit when the instructions to undress for the stylist had first been given I could have made it easier on them. I wasn't the most proper girl in the whole world, I'd gone swimming after long shifts in the fields or granary, I'd even gone swimming with boys for that matter proper or not, but this was different. For some reason the thought of these strange individuals with their pale painted faces, shocking rainbows of hair, and at best other worldly attire seeing me naked made me more than a little nervous. The fact that I was outnumbered with three men to two women if I included myself in the equation didn't help the situation either.
At last when discussion of obtaining a Peace Keeper to help remedy the situation arose they had finally seen me shimmy my way out of the last of my garments. There were some tight lipped smiles, whispered gossip, and light banter when they'd gotten their first look at me, my face flush and eyes down cast. When the red twin, for lack of a better way to describe him waved a hand in the general vicinity of my womanhood whining nasally about it being a "complete forest down there," I snatched up my improvised covering and wrapped it tight about me with a scowl.
Laugher, cruel, shrill laugher came from the four of them cutting away at my embarrassment and shame. "This one's so adorable!" the other twin, the yellow one said fanning himself as though he were about to faint from laughing so hard. After the excitement had died down the woman approached me with a coy smile and tried to pry the thin cloth away from me. She stomped her foot like an angry toddler when her ploys didn't work.
"Come, come, we've all seen it before!" she said tugging at one corner of the sheet. She was unbelievably artificial looking. With overly large brown eyes ringed with exaggerated black eyelashes, face a plaster white save for delicate red lips half the size one would expect a person to have, accented by two large perfect circles of pink one on either cheek. I almost wanted to reach up, grab her by a curly blonde pigtail and pull just to see if it would all come off, just to see what she would look like underneath because really it was all too much.
"I'm sure you have!" I snapped without meaning to as I pulled away. I didn't realize how possessive I was becoming over the sheet and my own nudity until a scoul creased the woman's perfect brow. Unexpectedly, and just like a child might have she reached out and pinched the skin of my upper arm and twist.
"Ow!" I said more in surprise than pain regardless of the fact that it truly did hurt. I just couldn't believe that she would do that. What grown adult pinches somene, let alone a child? Then, before anything more could be done or said, the stylist who'd been fetched and watched with mounting agitation approached over to me, the hard soles of his shoes making sharp clicking sounds as he walked.
"What was your name again?" he questioned looking down on me from over a large hooked nose that housed a pair of small round spectacles. His entire body, hair and all, a powdery looking lime color, one that matched the trim of his perfectly crisp white suit.
"Marlow Wedders." I said looking up at the hawk like green man.
He nodded as if I was confirming a deeply held suspicion before speaking again. "Miss Wedders, do you want to die?" The question was so blunt and to the point that my jaw fell open. I tried to speak to form a response but only a sickly whine of air happened to emerge as the writhing snake of anxiety bared down on my gut.
"I didn't think so." he went on evenly. "It's our job to make you pretty. The people love a pretty Tribute, and sponsors will pay well to see the beautiful ones last longer. If you want to be pretty, if you want to live, and have whatever little wretch that is waiting back in your forsaken little District to live too than I highly suggest you drop the sheet, and the act, we all know the kind of animals you- you fiends are, so stop pretending to be so innocent!" he was shouting now his disdain for me and others like me evident. I'm not sure why but I couldn't help to wonder who, if anyone, he'd lost in the Year of Sorrows to make him so bitter.
He wasn't done however, his voice dropping to a low threatening hiss in an instant. "But if you give us anymore trouble than you are clearly worth I will have the Peace Keepers called in and they will hold you down so that we can get our work done. Let me say this however, I have never known a Peace Keeper to be a gentle man. The choice is entirely up to you, cooperation, or indignation, which will it be?"
I couldn't fathom how cruel he was being, how simply and menacingly he was implying brute force, or how heartless he seemed. I looked at them, all in turn through the misty lens of tear filled eyes. The twins were solemn looking, but their pity was not for me but rather their stylist who was fuming, and the woman snickered seemingly enjoying it all, her eyes sparkling. I was crying by the time I'd relented and dropped the sheet.
"I have a headache." the stylist announced after seeing that I was willing to cooperate. "Come get me once she's ready."
After he I was coaxed onto the cushioned table where Lala, who I quickly learned referred to herself in the third person, started working on my nails. She seemed overjoyed with the turn of events, gleefully sighting this year's Games as "exciting already," and was positively aglow as she had never seen Ignatius so angry before.
"Just try to ignore her," the red twin smiled slathering and papering all areas of body hair as he spoke. "We usually do."
"Too true," his yellow mirror quipped before turning to me, and asking. "Do you have a favorite flower?"
My brow furrowed, I couldn't understand why he was asking such a useless question given the circumstances. At that moment Red gave gave a massive tug, and a hot stinging sensation shot up the front of my leg. I screamed, sitting up to see a pink stripe of painfully missing hair that ran from my knee to the top of my foot and a giggling man holding up the paper with wide eyes.
"I'm so sorry!" he laughed, making his apology seem insincere. "But there's just so much hair!" His eyes began to mist up and I realized, or hoped at least that the laugher was nervous reaction. My leg pulsating with stinging throb I managed to lay back down, as Yellow's head bobbed into view. He smiled lightly before giving his brother a scold as if to say 'we were talking.'
"Flowers," Yellow sighed then. "do you have a favorite?"
"I, I love flowers." I began, transfixed by the man's eyes. There was something there, something I couldn't quite place. "I used to pick the wild ones that grew near our house and arrange them into bouquets." I found myself confessing with bitterly joyful tears. It surprised me a little to see the stranger smiling in a warm almost fond manner. "So, I guess wild flowers are my favorite." And like that he was gone.
Shutting my eyes as Red resumed his work I tried putting my mind elsewhere, but all I could focus on was the stinging rip, rip, rip that had swiftly made its circuit around each of my lower legs and was beginning to move higher. I didn't dare ask for a break remembering Ignatius' firm and unwavering threats. As the pain mounted and the warm thick wax found its way to the more delicate regions of my body I felt like screaming, every muscle twitching, aching to get up off the table and run. Knowing that was no where near a possibility I fell back on an old habit and lifted my hand up to chew on a nail.
In an instant something hard and vice like was holding my face, forcing my jaw open and pinching the skin covering the space between upper and lower tightly, painfully. I opened my eyes to see Lala staring at me angrily. "Don't you dare." she whispered in a cold devoid tone. "Lala worked very hard to make you pretty. If you ruin your nails Lala will be forced to pull out all of your teeth and send you into the Games with dentures," she flashed a smile adding, "if she must." and letting go. The woman exchanged a look with Red who asked her to be kinder but it was already clear that she was toying with me, like a cat with a mouse.
I spent the rest of the ordeal in rigid silence, sparing only the occasional thought to my fellow Tributes, and what they must be going through, as I refused to think of home despite how the anxiety and longing flooded me. My mind darting dismally to Bise, the boy with a limp whom I'd shared the ride to the Capitol with. He'd seemed gentle, quiet and anything but a fighter, in fact he seemed ready to accept the fact that his life was over. My stomach knotted. His grooming wouldn't be going very well I guessed.
By the end of it I was left to Yellow. He sat me in a chair and smiled. "I've warmed up the water." he explained before slowly easing me back and positioning my head over a sink. Blessedly he was telling the truth as warm water began making its way through my hair. "You'll have to forgive Ignatius, he isn't normally so cruel, I'm not sure what changed." Yellow mused. "And Lala brings out the worst in him, well, the worst in everyone really." he said massaging the water into my scalp. I was glad this had been saved for last as I felt my body relaxing, even if my legs were still jumpy.
Yellow turned off the water and let me drip for a few minutes as he retrieved a bowl of a silky white paste. GatherIng some up in his hands the Yellow began to apply it. The scent drifted it's way to me in an instant, and I was home. Mom, her belly just beginning to show signs of the baby within smiling as she put what she could together for dinner. Dad and Jackson would be coming home, worn, tired, but always ready to share, and hear about one another's day, something we all did together in the evenings. There would be wild flowers sitting on the table, their bright delicate buds offering color and comforting smells to the small squat building I called home.
I was crying before I could stop myself, command myself to be stronger, more resilient than I was. I was afraid for my family so terribly afraid that it was too much to bear. Covering my face with my hands I thought about Jackson, sweet, funny Jackson thirteen years old doomed to die if I didn't succeed. There was no getting past it either, that the path to success meant also the death of dozens of others, and not just Tributes, if I killed them I would be killing their families too!
The familiar scent held me there though, brought back District Nine in bright vivid clarity. The warm sweet scent of freshly cut wheat, hiding in the waves of gold and feeling them tickle and whirl about me I'm the breezy atmosphere. Mom always knew that she could find me there, we used it as our secret place, somewhere we could speak without judgment or interruption. She truly loved me best when we were lying in the wheat I thought, when she didn't have to be just my mother but my friend also. My heart felt torn, a bleeding open wound for all to see, as I was sat up, and my hair dried.
Yellow gave me a minute to compose myself as he combed my tangles through. "Ignatius does not appreciate tears." he warned, before giving my shoulder a squeeze. "Good luck Miss Wedders." he smiled and was gone. I hadn't even thought to ask his name.