Chapter 23:
The next thing Tigris felt were the hot sun and cool tears streaming her face; a cannon fired as she pushed through the glass and iron wrought door onto the back patio. She vomited over the veranda's railing into a bushy clump of pink carnations. A summer wind came whistling past and Tigris' legs gave out. She sank to her knees gripping the balustrade and weeping for Flossie. The girl had deserved so much better- the life, and friends, and career the child had hoped for, she'd never see.
Old hag. How lucky to be one, at all.
"He's going to kill me!" Lumen's scream echoed off the backyard golf course's rolling green hills. "Someone help!"
Tigris peered through the balusters- watching Lumen bounding out over the golf course's hills with Zagros in pursuit. The heels of her stilettos stabbed and sank into the grass as Tigris darted out onto the green after them. Zagros had a deadly fervor in his charge, closing in on Lumen and snagging him by the back of his sweater, slamming him to the earth. Tigris cried out at the same moment Zagros' heavy fists began to pound down onto Lumen's face- crushing the smaller man's glasses against his nose. Lumen tried to defend himself, covering his head as Zagros laid blow after blow against the man's body. Tigris' slammed herself into Zagros'- tackling him to the grass.
"Stop!" Tigris implored as she sat up and positioned herself between the two men. "You're killing him!"
Zagros had a horrified clarity come across his face- transported back in time with his fists bloodied. Tigris shoved him away:
"You need to control yourself! What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking about you." Zagros huffed with shifting eyes.
"No." Lumen spat out a mouthful of blood and wheezed: "You weren't."
Tigris shot Zagros a scowl and stooped down to pull Lumen to his feet. He was woozy, but with Tigris' help, Lumen was able to walk by leaning against her. As she led the battered man back up the golf course, Tigris noticed the metal storm grate she had used to sneak onto the course a day previously sitting half open. She couldn't consider the sight for very long, having to adjust Lumen's weight against her body to prevent him from sliding back to the grass. Tigris led him up the patio steps but stopped when she peered through the windows to see the entire party congregating in the den around Vicky and her pile of birthday presents. To avoid the crowd, Tigris led Lumen down the veranda and crossed through a set of double doors leading to a kitchen so gleaming it looked like no one had ever cooked a single meal there. Tigris dampened a starchy, washcloth she found folded beside the sink, dabbing away at Lumen's wounds.
"I don't understand you." Lumen confessed.
"That makes two of us." Tigris muttered more to herself than him, she asked: "Why does Zagros hate you so much?"
Lumen furrowed his swollen, torn brow as Tigris wiped away another trickle of blood from his forehead. He asked: "You didn't watch…" He winced. "...my Games?"
Tigris recalled: "I stopped watching after my tribute got eaten by an alligator."
Lumen shuddered before continuing: "Do you remember the girl from 2 that year? She killed five in the bloodbath- and three more after that." His forehead crinkled. "She was going to win."
"I think I remember." Tigris shrugged, trying to recall the vague memories she had of the 14th Games swampland Arena- now over a decade past.
"I hadn't eaten in days. I was so weak by the time it came down to me and her." Lumen winced as Tigris hit a sore spot on his chin. "She snapped her femur in the hole I dug."
"That's how you won?" Tigris asked.
Lumen swallowed: "No."
Tigris put the pieces together: "Darby Dare?"
"It took me over an hour to beat her to death with a riverstone in my sock." Lumen's voice broke. "I understand. I hate me too."
"You're not to blame." Tigris shook her head. "You did what you had to."
"I didn't have to… I could've, I could have done- I don't know- something else." Lumen replied.
"Then, you did what you did." Tigris decided instead. "And now it's done."
"It isn't for us." Lumen sighed. "It isn't done for Zagros."
"Is that why you've been so cold to me?" Tigris asked. "Because of him?"
"No." Lumen instantly replied: "Giving me that tape was… evil."
"Episode 168?" Tigris asked. "That was a favor."
"That was not Episode 168." Lumen replied frustrated with Tigris. "I regifted it to Vicky... with the party theme and all- I hope that doesn't hurt your feelings."
"What episode did I give you?" Tigris scratched her head. "What episode of Capitol Letters?"
"Episode Ten." Lumen corrected: "Of the Hunger Games."
The bloodstained washcloth fell from Tigris' hand and left a wet, red splat against the floor as Tigris dashed out of the kitchen. She felt pins and needles stabbing into her from the inside out as she raced towards the den where Vicky was already halfway done unwrapping her mountain of gifts. Tigris arrived just in time to see the birthday girl sheepishly collect the tiger plushie. Vicky pulled off the red tulle bow tied up around the stuffed animal's neck and stared into the toy's lifeless, plastic eyes with trepidation. Livia reached down and took the plushie from the child- handing her a small, rectangular shaped gift with crimson wrapping paper. On a console table nearby was a half full flute of posca someone had left abandoned. With one swift, feigned tumble- Tigris grabbed the posca glass and took intentionally too wide of a step. She 'tripped' over a child sitting cross legged at her feet and splashed posca directly onto Vicky's gown before she could tear through the crimson gift wrap.
Vicky sat unbothered by the damp stain on the skirt of her dress- but Livia's expression was as furiously red as the gown itself.
"I am so sorry!" Tigris heaved, having actually knocked the wind out of her lungs in the fall. "Livia, I'm-"
"It's fine." Livia fumed as Tigris raised herself to her knees, the entire party staring down at her. "We'll just have to take a break to wash her up."
"Please, let me clean my own mess." Tigris pointedly suggested before collecting a fistfull of the posca stained skirt in her grasp: "This fabric will permanently pucker if I don't wash it with a particular temperature and pressure."
"Go, hurry." Livia bitterly accepted, ushering Vicky to her feet and pushing her into Tigris' arms.
Tigris took Vicky's tiny hand and led her out of the den and down a long hall until they reached a half-bath of grey and gold filigree. Tigris led Vicky into the ornate wash closet, closing the door behind them and flipping the lock on the burnished knob before she had the child disrobe from the dress into her underclothes. Tigris accepted the frock as Vicky handed it over to her, pulling the red fabric up to the sink where she began running lukewarm tap water over its stain. As she wrung out the posca from the dress's skirt, Tigris noticed small white hairs clinging to the fabric.
"Vicky…" Tigris almost whispered to the child. "Has daddy shown you a kitty, recently?"
"Yah." Vicky distantly confirmed.
"Is she okay?" Tigris asked.
"She's skinny." Vicky replied. "I thought she was gonna eat me."
"Oh, baby. She won't eat you." Tigris missed Smax so desperately. "She's probably just scared, too." She could feel tears pooling in her eyes.
Vicky studied the welling gleam in Tigris' gaze:
"Are you sad about the girl with the arrow in her heart?"
Tigris let a tear fall with the tap onto the dress, wringing out its stained fabric in the sink: "I'm sad about a lot of things, baby."
"Me too, Auntie." Vicky sighed as Tigris held out the now clean gown for Vicky to step into again, but she refused to: "I don't like that dress anymore. I wanna leave here."
A polite set of knocks best against the bathroom door.
"Does the birthday girl need any help in there?" Appius Volpe's chillingly chipper request sent ice through Tigris' veins.
Tigris looked down at little Vicky- undressed and trembling.
"C'mon ladies, open up…" Appius' tipsy growl broke through again along with another set of knocks- a bit more forceful: "My house, my rules."
Tigris looked down at Vicky, then up at herself in the mirror. Tigris knew she'd not been innocent for decades- but she'd never felt so evil until that moment, never felt so complicit in all the world's traumas ever before. But, as a fatal clarity struck her in the heart like an arrow, Tigris suddenly felt prepared to pull it back out from her chest- heart and all. She leaned down to Vicky and helped her into the dress again, clasping up the closure, taking the girl's face in her hand and asking her:
"You want to leave?"
Vicky nodded glumly. Tigris hugged the girl tightly in case it would be the last time:
"Run to the lady with one eye." Tigris' voice quivered. "She will get you out of here, baby."
Vicky blinked at Tigris and gave a second nod to convey her understanding. Tigris adjusted the pearl necklace at her clavicle so it would fall between her cleavage. Then, she unlocked the door and stepped out to block Appius before he could enter.
"Hey, there." Tigris cooed as Vicky shot out from the bathroom and raced away down the hall like a fiery red comet. Appius shifted to move past Tigris, but she placed a hand on his chest to stop him, softly musing: "I've been thinking about what you told me, Mr. President."
Tigris' tone seemed to catch Appius off guard and his expression twisted from perplexed to intrigued as she went on:
"I think I have changed." Tigris whispered. "And I don't want to have any trouble." She let her hand slide down his torso towards his belt. "I just want to have fun..."
"How much fun are we talking...?" Appius breathed into Tigris' neck, the scratchy white-blond hairs of his shadowy beard scraping against her skin as he pushed her up against the wall and began to kiss her. "Or we're not talking at all..."
Tigris felt her insides turn over as Appius led her further down the corridor, his lips latched onto her throat like a leach. It was a painful journey up a set of back stairs locked under Appius' fondling grasp. Tigris allowed him to touch her anywhere he pleased- drawing him farther and farther away until they were at the tall, wooden doors that led to his master bedroom.
"What will your boyfriend think?" Appius chuckled into her neck as he pushed through the doors.
"He's not." Tigris replied, following his guiding hands on her waist into the room.
"Then, what?" Appius taunted. "This won't hurt his feelings?"
"I can keep a secret." Tigris murmured grievously.
"Of course. But know…" Appius ran his hands over Tigris' body, forcing her backwards until she collapsed onto the bed's colorful quilt. His body falling on top of hers felt as heavy as a million men- and so Tigris just allowed the weight to crush her. Appius continued exploring Tigris' body with his hands: "I'll protect you from him, regardless."
Tigris stopped breathing: "What does that mean?"
"His food is excellent, isn't it?" Appius breathed down Tigris' neck. "Can't even taste the poisons."
"He doesn't-" Tigris immediately defended Zagros without a second thought. "He's not…"
"The Corso Killer?" Appius finished for her.
"Why are you saying this?" Tigris asked, wanting to melt into the bedspread and evaporate.
"Because, like I said… I'm a man of mercy." Appius pressed his lips into hers. "And he's not even your boyfriend."
Every second was more excruciating than the last. Each finger he touched her with felt like a sharper and sharper dagger being dragged across her skin. She had to get back downstairs as soon as possible to retrieve that tape before anyone discovered it. But, Appius' age really showed as he rubbed against Tigris like a glacier sliding atop the valley it'd take thousands of years to carve. It was probably only five minutes but the encounter felt like eons. Tigris let her head fall to the side, her eyes glazing over as she looked around at the room in an attempt to disassociate. On the bookcase, she saw the same district souvenirs that had been there previously. But, glaringly absent on the shelf was a familiar red rotary phone, now just a square, dustless spot where it once had been. Tigris fixated on the void of space there until Appius was done. Collecting her heels from off the rug and sliding them on as she crossed to exit the room, Tigris slipped out as discreetly through the bedroom's double doors as possible. It was a pointless effort- as the one person she wished to hide from watched her exit from the bedroom with smeared lipstick and a mess of bed-head curls.
"Are you alright?" Zagros asked urgently.
"I'm fine." Tigris tried to push past Zagros without looking him in the eye.
"I don't believe you." Zagros held out his palms and stopped her: "Can we talk?"
"Not right now, honey." Tigris tried to sound tender, but the frustration bled through her tone. He still blocked the hall with his body. Tigris snapped: "Let me pass."
"What were you doing in there?" Zagros' frustration bubbled.
"It's not what it looks like." Tigris tried to explain herself, but it ultimately was exactly what it looked like. "That meant nothing."
"That's my worry." Zagros' shoulders sagged.
"Zagros- I care about you." Tigris never took her eye off the hall beyond him. "But I have problems bigger than us."
"Are we a problem?" Zagros asked, directing her eyeline back to him. Tigris tried to move past again, but Zagros blocked her way once more.
"Now we are." Tigris huffed. "You feel a little too much. And it's not just getting in your own way, anymore." She tried again to go around him but one more wasn't allowed to. "Let me pass."
"No." Zagros held Tigris back. "You ever thought maybe it's you- you Capitol people that don't feel enough?" Zagros shot at Tigris. "I thought you were-"
"Different? I was." Tigris interrupted, biting her bottom lip. "But, I grew up." Tigris took a step back from Zagros. "I think this was a mistake."
"It wasn't. It's not." Zagros implored. "We are supposed to be together."
"No one is supposed to be anything!" Tigris spat at Zagros: "Except living one day and then dead the next- that's all, that's all we know for sure. My life is a horrible, dangerous mess and I'm a disgusting, hideous monster! I will hurt you, Zagros. I will hurt you beyond repair if you don't get out of my way and let me pass!"
Tigris violently shoved through with the full weight of her body. Zagros only then was unanchored, stumbling aside, stunned. He seemed to want to scream a million things- but held them all back as Tigris fled down the hall away from him gushing tears. She smacked herself in the face trying to bat away the rivers streaming down her cheeks as she descended the spiral staircase two steps at a time. The party's noise drew her back towards the den, where Livia was scurrying around looking in cupboards, under cushions, and around every corner with a feverish anxiety. Tigris saw Coriolanus with his back to her across the room standing over the pile of gifts- swallowing a full glass of posca with a head tilting swig. He set the glass to the side, stooped down, and began collecting the third or so of unopened presents in the pile and depositing them in a large bag just as Livia approached Tigris:
"Where is Vicky?" Livia nearly accused.
"I don't know." Tigris replied with an aloof murmur, watching over Livia's shoulder as Coriolanus picked up a gift bag directly beside the videotape wrapped up in red paper. "Let me ask Corio."
Tigris briskly paced over to her cousin as he reached down and collected the tape in hand. Tigris gripped onto his shoulder to stop him and even through the fire red button up he wore- she could feel the intense coldness of the man's skin on her palm. Coriolanus' posture deflated as her hand fell onto him. He turned to face her with drooping eyes as the red gift wrapped tape was deposited into the bag along with the others. Coriolanus had only just reached out to grip onto Tigris' arm when the dark spittle began to trickle from the corner of his mouth. One cough exploded the black liquid past Coriolanus' gray teeth. Tigris squealed with a terrified revulsion along with the children around as Coriolanus' slipped into convulsive unconsciousness, dragging her to the shag carpet with his grip still locked onto her.
His knuckles had a dead, ironclad grasp on Tigris' forearm from the poisoned splattered shag all the way to the hospital. Coriolanus' hand would only be finally pried off her wrist as he was whisked away onto a gurney by a triage of nurses. Tigris watched Coriolanus disappear behind the closing doors of an elevator, the lift's level indicator steadily climbing to floors of the hospital Tigris did not even know existed. The last time she'd been here- she'd been escaping. She turned on her heel to swiftly make her way back out again, only to almost immediately run into Livia as she entered.
"Where?" Livia croaked out the question with a stricken breath. Tigris began to reply:
"They didn't tell me what floor he was going to-"
"No, you moron!" Livia shouted. "Where is my daughter!?"
"Lower your voice." Tigris shushed. "You still haven't found her?"
"You think I'm asking for the joy of it?!" Livia rolled her eyes. "Where is she, Tigris?"
"What makes you think I know?" Tigris raised her own voice now.
"You were the last person to see her." Livia reminded. "And then she evaporated as far as I can tell."
"Livia- I did not... evaporate your child." Tigris did not exactly lie, adding another half-truth as the disconcerting realization hit her: "And I have no idea where she is."
"Listen here-" Livia stepped in towards Tigris with a wrathful bite in her voice: "Coriolanus told me if anything happened to him- I'd be his replacement."
"For Head Gamemaker?" Tigris asked. "Why not Faust?"
"He's insisted on handling the sponsor gifts." Livia reiterated. "As soon as I leave here- I have to go to the Games Center instead of looking for Victoria."
"I'm sorry, Livia." Tigris replied.
"You will be!" Livia retorted. "If you don't get me my daughter back."
"Livia, I don't know-"
"Me either. And I can't search." Livia whimpered. "So, you will."
"What am I supposed to do? Pull her out of my-"
"I don't know what I'm doing either!" Livia shouted at Tigris. "But I do know as soon as I figure out how to work those controls- your District 1 boy is getting blown to smithereens if Vicky isn't home within a day." Livia glared at Tigris, spitting the bitter parting words at her: "Thank you and you're welcome."
It was raining on the morning of the third day of Games. The Capitol streets were dry as a bone beneath a cloudless sky- but it was a much damper story in the Arena. Tigris was the first mentor to arrive at the Supra's penthouse just as dawn broke- catching a shot on the television screen of Ale trudging with his spear through murky, knee-deep water and battered by rain slicing down. White rose petals plucked from their buds by the assault of the falling raindrops were collecting into gray patches of floating flowery mats atop the flood water's surface. Tigris had only just fired up the machine's needle to begin working on her fashion line when Zizania appeared on the screen.
The girl from 9 was solidly planted at the other end of the stormy, graying rose corridor from Ale like a marble statue weathering a hurricane. Her dark eyes were ringed with bruised blues and browning yellows, staring down the boy from her district with grim intensity. They didn't speak to one another- effectively communicating nothing at all until Zizania leveled an embittered gaze under her brow and offered Ale a slow, severe nod. Then, they began to cross towards each other. And when the pair had closed the distance between themselves through the flood waters, they simply departed together deeper into the maze.
Tigris moved over to her personal communicuff- switching it on to see Flossie's image grayed out beside Judge's still colored one, the long number above her head having added itself into his. The amount was still not enough to send in a weapon- and the only sponsor gifts Tigris could afford in the digital catalog she flicked through capped out at medicines and matches. Tigris looked to the empty seat Livia had been occupying in the second row of mentor's chairs. She wondered how Livia would mount that towering Head Gamemaker chair with her distended belly while she crossed to her sewing machine.
The other mentors arrived in time, spare Zagros; and his absence gave Tigris greater and greater anxiety the longer she tried to ignore it. Lucky showed up smelling like a cigar box- the pungent, smoky scent of his suit filling the lounge as much as his grating 'good mornings' to the cameras. He ran down the numbers for the audience: Nine tributes were dead with fifteen still left in the running. Lucky was commenting on the rainstorm in the arena- asking how much it would cost to send in an umbrella when Tigris looked up from her sewing machine to see Tallulah standing before her.
"Pardon?" Tallulah's soft, almost inaudible twang hardly broke over the needle's chug. The young woman's voice came through delicate and light- but the look in Tallulah's eyes were glinting with a vicious intensity just beneath the surface.
"Can I help you?" Tigris asked trepidatiously.
"Please." Tallulah extended a pill bottle made of an opaque, green glass.
"Is that medication?" Tigris looked over the glass bottle.
"It's for Dot's heart. She can't make it much longer." Tallulah explained. "I don't have the sponsor donations to send it myself."
"Oh…" Tigris understood but fought an unwillingness to spend her own tribute's donations on one of his competitors.
"I'm sorry about your girl." Tallulah added. "But I could see the numbers she was raking in over your shoulder."
"I was saving it up for a rainy day." Tigris tried to deflect while the stormy images on television's screen begged the question for Tallulah. Tigris shook her head: "It's not too smart handing my tribute's funds over to his competitors."
"I wouldn't need to ask if you hadn't interrupted my… payment for these the first time." Tallulah swallowed hard and shifted her grip on the bottle in her hand. "Please- I'm begging… for my sister's sake. And look- you're sending her pills, not a knife. I promise it won't hurt your tribute to help mine."
A lightbulb of bright, white iridescent light went off in Tigris' mind and stabbed into her conscience upon remembering what was still in her pocket. The chromatifur coat began to bubble with an orange-yellow simmer as she switched off the sewing machine and turned back to Tallulah, asking:
"How much does it weigh?"
It was thirty-five grams. But that was not the number Tigris plunked into her communicuff to set up the sponsor gift transaction before she crossed out the lounge and into the elevator. With the platinum knife stuffed inside, the pill bottle came out to probably around fifty. Tigris repeatedly checked during her long descent in the elevator to ensure the lid was tightly resecured. The lift opened on an eerily silent, near empty Games Center. The two circular counters running along the circumference of a holographic map of the Arena's maze were empty of Gamemakers. Tigris first thought the sniffling she heard was just another strange electronic whir from the Game Center's unmanned controls. But, as she crossed further into the large room and approached the Head Gamemaker's elevated chair- the crying's source became clear.
Livia's tears rolled off her face and struck the control board in front of her- eliciting sharp beeps as they splashed down onto its touch screen. She sniffled as Tigris called up to her:
"Livia- I'm here to send a sponsor gift."
Livia did not so much as glance at Tigris as she replied in a half-asleep stupor:
"It won't stop." Livia vaguely whined with an exhausted sigh.
"What?" Tigris asked before Livia looked down at her with sleepy, sad red eyes.
"The rain…" Livia meekly explained. "I don't know what I pressed."
A large projection of a live feed from the Arena was displayed up on the wall- oppressive blankets of rain showering down in droves. Tigris got a glimpse of the soaked pair from 4 leading the Career tribute pack's wading through the rising flood waters, now up to their waists.
"Where is everyone?" Tigris asked, looking around at the emptiness of the Games Center. She noticed Faust Crane was the only other person down here- dutifully positioned at his station with a far-off expression.
"Coriolanus let them all go." Livia explained. "He doesn't trust anyone."
"Except you two?" Tigris snorted.
Livia's red eyes narrowed. She dispassionately pressed a button on her control pad that switched the image on the screen to Judge's alliance. The water was almost up to little Judge's chest compared to the taller boys in his group.
Tigris snarled: "You're going to drown him."
"He's going to die anyway." Livia shrugged. "Coriolanus is rigging the Games for Ale."
"What?" Tigris choked. "He can't do that."
"He can do whatever he wants." Livia wiped away her eyes and rolled them. "And surprise- Coriolanus doesn't care about dying children." She whimpered. "You know what he said when I told him Vicky was missing? He asked the nurse for yogurt." Livia lamented. "He didn't care. Our child is gone. So, sorry for not caring about a kid you met a week ago."
"What will killing Judge do for Vicky?" Tigris asked with frustration.
"Nothing." Livia shrugged. "But it'll make me feel better."
"You're a vile woman." Tigris hissed at Livia. "Vile."
"Keep it up!" Livia dared Tigris. "Just keep it up and I'll-"
"You'll what!?" Tigris asked. "Press some more buttons randomly?"
"I'll have your little brat torn limb from limb! Every last drop of blood drained from his body! Ripped to pieces and swallowed whole!" Livia shouted, her voice echoing off the high, domed ceiling of the Games Center.
"Do it! As soon as that cannon sounds, I'll go right to Coriolanus and tell him who's baby-"
"Tell him!" Livia exploded, bringing her fist down on the master control panel with a pounding slam. All the lights in the Game Center sputtered. Tigris and Livia both looked up to the screen- the live feed of the Arena capturing a final sheet of dense rainfall coming clattering down against the flood waters. Then, the air both in and out of the Arena went still, silent, and dry as Livia took a breath and sighed: "Do it. You've taken everything from me, already: my show, my clientele, my daughter. Take my life, too! From one vile woman to another, Tigris, do us both a favor and just kill me."
Tigris blinked at the seething, red faced woman. Livia turned back to the holographic map of the Arena with a pout, taking a deep breath before providing Tigris with a second option:
"Or just choose your drop location."
Tigris blew a heavy sigh out through her nose as she fixated on the holographic map of the maze. Blue and pink colored numbered markers throughout the hologram of winding passageways represented the remaining individual tributes' gender, district, and location within the Arena. One solitary, pink '10' drifted so slowly down the corridor it was in, its movement was nearly imperceptible to Tigris. Next, her eyes fell on the clump of four, blue colored digits closer to the map's center.
Tigris sighed, then ordered: "On the boy from 1."