Chapter 15:
'Judge won't budge.'
That's what Faust explained to Tigris after she'd arrived at 74 Cominia hours late, directing Tigris into the building's ground floor apartment unit. She heard the boy before she ever saw him- his muffled, prepubescent voice rupturing through the bedroom door he'd locked himself behind:
"Leave me alone!" Judge shouted at Flossie through the door. "You're not sorry! Stop saying that."
"I am sorry, I can't help it- scrapper." Flossie grunted and put her hand to her head, sitting cross legged at the foot of the door. "I can't control my- I'm sorry, please. I'm sorry. I need allies, please-"
"No!" The boy's voice behind the door cut Flossie off: "I'm not a scrapper. I'm a person. I'm not playing any Games. Leave me alone!"
Tigris stepped up to the door:
"Judge? Honey, this is your stylist- Miss Tigris."
"What!?" Judge almost fearfully spat: "Like a tiger?"
"Sure, like a tiger..." Tigris shrugged, removing the tape measure from her bag: "Look- I need to get your measurements-"
"Get away from me, tiger!" Judge hissed through the door: "You're a dangerous animal."
Tigris scowled at the door, incredulously:
"Um… No, sir. I'm your stylist. I'm here to help you."
"Get away from me!" Judge raged even more vengefully than before, his little voice straining to keep up with his immense fury. "You're not a nice lady. You're a mean, evil, bad, bad lady."
"Do you not know who I am?" Tigris asked. "My styling has saved more boys like you than-"
"Die!" Judge roared through the door. "Die, tiger! Die!"
Tigris was incensed- her limp, disbelieving jaw falling slack then twisting shut as she looked down to Flossie with the wordless question on her raised brow. Flossie explained:
"He doesn't know who you are." She raised herself to her feet from the floor where she'd been sitting. "He doesn't have a television- doesn't have a house. He's a scrapper."
"No- I'm not!" Judge shouted through the door in response.
"What's that? A scrapper?" Tigris asked.
"It's what we call the homeless pick pocketers back home." Flossie replied, her face contorting and blurting out an involuntary: "Shoeshining scum! I'm sorry! No, you're not scum. You're not scum, Judge. I'm sorry."
"You and District 1 and the tiger are scum! Leave me alone!" Judge wrathfully shouted back.
"Hey!" Flossie snapped: "You got to get with the program." She bobbed her head and whistled: "Miss Tigris is here to help us."
"No, she isn't." Judge's voice simply replied.
"She is, scrap-" Flossie bit down on the word before it could exit her mouth. "Judge, people are going to be-" whistle "-coming after you with knives and swords soon. Miss Tigris only has a tape measure."
"And she's still just as dangerous." Judge responded.
Tigris was taken aback by that comment more than any other so far, but it was more so confusing than confronting.
"Don't be afraid of me, buddy." Tigris tried to gently assure him through the door, though her patience was thinning.
"I'm not afraid." Judge shouted. "I'm angry. It's you who should be afraid!"
"Child-" Tigris began with a sigh before the shattering sound of something glass or ceramic shattering in the room with Judge and violently cut her words off: "What was that?"
Another dulled thud, crash, and shattering sound came through the door in response.
"You little..!" Tigris pounded on the door and raged: "Are you breaking my furniture!?" Another boom and snap of something wooden being splintered sounded off on the other side of the door. "Stop!"
"Leave me alone!" Judge's strained, cracking voice briefly broke through as the noises of calamity came to a sudden stop before it went on crashing and ripping again.
"Okay, okay!" Tigris gave in, but still desperately wanted the numbers. "Can you tell me how tall you are, at least?"
The popping of glass and the fizzing hiss of electricity from a busted television screen in the room with Judge ruptured through the door as a reply.
"Fine!" Tigris grumbled. "We're leaving, we're leaving. You win." Tigris was so frustrated she didn't even gesture for Flossie to follow as she crossed out of the apartment. The girl trailed behind her anyway like an obedient duckling, clucking at Tigris as they went:
"What are you putting me in for the interviews?" Flossie whistled.
"I don't know- I didn't get the little brat's measurements." Tigris replied, stuffing the tape measure back in her bag with a huff. "I'll have to source something for him. Then, I'll have to make your outfit to match, I guess."
"I need to stand out." Flossie implored, sounding more like a plea than a request. "I am not making any allies." Flossie looked down at the ground and whistled before adding: "Only enemies."
"Oh, dear." Tigris sighed. "What happened?"
"I called the girl from 2 bald." Flossie anxiously twisted one of her blonde curls around her trembling finger. "She wants to scalp me."
"Why!?" Tigris lamented. "Why would you say that?"
"She is bald." Flossie said.
"Flossie…" Tigris could feel a migraine starting. "You have to be more careful than that. What were you thinking?"
"I'm not thinking! I'm not trying to do anything." Flossie sighed. "I just say… what's real. If I could shut up, I would- but I can't. I can't- crow's feet, old, old hag with a big scar. I'm sorry. If I could control my mouth- I wouldn't be here." Flossie glumly punctuated the sentence with a grunt. "I know I'm the problem. I know I am. But if everyone was like me- it'd make people so much simpler to understand."
"Maybe, girlie." Tigris replied, the scar on her forehead throbbing self-consciously as she and Flossie exited into the lobby and approached the elevator, stepping inside after it opened for them. "But I'm not so secure."
"If we could all just say and think and be who we are instead of having to be-" whistle "-careful, we could be… real."
Tigris didn't really want to follow that train of thought. She pressed the button to drop the elevator lift down to the basement level.
"Flossie- I don't know." Tigris replied. "As far as I'm concerned that's not going to be a helpful perspective here. You just better be real careful, okay? Because no dress I put you in can save you from…" The elevators opened on the Training Center and Tigris instantly noticed the increased Peacekeeper presence there: "…the catastrophes you're creating for yourself."
Tigris made brief eye contact with Goddard Nix standing at attention in the center of the room with a rifle strapped over his shoulder. She'd not been this near to the Capitol's Police Chief since this past January, though everything about his presence made her feel far more unsafe than anything. Flossie nervously tucked a ringlet of hair behind her ear and trotted off. Tigris watched the girl make her way towards the pair of frowning tributes from 11, who looked at Flossie like she was some hyper-feminine alien from another planet as she attempted to endear herself to them. Tigris next noticed the crying female tribute from 5 not far off, whose sniffled breaths bounced off the walls of the Training Center as she attempted to study an edible plant guide at a survival station through her gushing tears.
Tigris shook off the chills that ran down her spine listening to the girl's weeping but was instantly struck with a second zap of anxiety as she crossed to Livia with the District 9 tributes' interview garments in hand. Tigris tried to conceal the trembling of her grip as she held the coat bags out to Livia- but her slight shaking didn't seem to be of any notice or concern to the pregnant woman. Without a single word or glance at the garments, Livia expressionlessly took the bags and laid them on the riser seat beside her.
"You okay?" Tigris asked Livia, who's face puckered even more uncomfortably at the question.
"No." Livia murmured without any further elaborations. Tigris noticed the bags under Livia's eyes beneath her foundation. Well, bag, it seemed, as one eye's dark, drooping circle was clearly concealed and the other much less so. Tigris almost wished Livia would just berate her for the looks. This cold shoulder treatment had Tigris more on edge than the usual hostilities Livia doled out with enthusiasm.
"When do you want to start working on some designs for the charity show?" Tigris asked in a hushed whisper. "And when can I get Vicky's measurements for her birthday gown? We could get together-"
"On Wednesday morning before the interviews." Livia interjected.
Tigris swallowed the lump that formed in her throat, and after a beat, shot at Livia with a vindicating:
"Alright, you got it." Tigris nodded, though Livia stared ahead like she was on the verge of entering a coma. Tigris quipped at her silence: "Well- thank you and you're welcome."
Tigris had to scan over the Training Center multiple times before she found the target of her next delivery. Maybe he was just that quiet, unassuming, and small statured that she'd missed him- because Lumen was still sitting in the same place on one of the risers with the same aloof expression as the day previously. It wasn't until Tigris was right next to him and holding the tape in the Capitol Letters sheath out to him that Lumen's gaze snapped away from its catatonic stare at the wall.
"I heard you were a fan." Tigris dusted the tape's cover. "Turns out we have the same favorite episode."
"You're kidding!" Lumen replied with shock, his face instantly lighting up with a pure childlike joy Tigris had not seen for a while in anyone besides maybe Vicky. "Is this… 168!? It is!" Lumen studied the sheath of the tape, the painted illustration of Dionne and the mailman in a passionate embrace printed across its cover.
"I have them all- every season, every episode." Tigris explained. "Doubt you're as big of a fan as me." She chuckled.
"Well- I'm glad you are if that's true." Lumen held the tape to his chest like it was a precious newborn and exhaled with a contented sigh: "You have no idea how much this means to me, thank you."
"Sorry-" A voice broke in.
Tigris and Lumen both turned to see Zagros standing there with a stern look he leveled on the Victor from 5. Tigris felt the air between the two men evaporate as Lumen replied with a terse, impatient huff:
"What?"
"Dessa won't stop crying." Zagros informed him.
"Who?" Lumen asked with a brief side eye.
"Your tribute…?" Zagros answered incredulously. "You can't be serious."
"Can you worry about your own tributes?" Lumen asked with subdued bitterness. "There's nothing I can do to help her."
"So, you're just going to let her sob?" Zagros shook his head. "Wake up and be a mentor for that kid."
"Gentlemen-" Tigris tried to butt in, but was interrupted by Lumen:
"Stop-" Lumen frustratedly demanded: "Piss off, you-"
"Start! Start actually doing something-" Zagros shot back, by now, the rest of the mentors, tributes, and Peacekeepers alike were all beginning to notice the commotion Tigris found herself stuck between.
"I get it! You hate me!" Lumen shouted at Zagros. "This isn't about my tributes! Get away from me-"
"You're weak! And a selfish coward!" Zagros barked at Lumen.
"You're a psychotic hypocrite!" Lumen fought back: "You know what- I'm not sorry!"
Zagros was unthinking with an overwhelmed rage as he turned to Tigris and warned her:
"Do not trust this slimy, underhanded little weasel. You'll walk right into his traps."
"I did nothing wrong!" Lumen put his hands over his eyes before he was pulling at his hair with the grief of a cripplingly gruesome memory: "She would have chosen to take twice as long as I-"
Zagros lunged at Lumen. Tigris had to throw herself between the two to attempt to stop Zagros from grabbing the smaller man in his blind rage. She was mostly unsuccessful, as Zagros caught a fistful of Lumen's dark green sweater. In that same instant, Zagros was himself nabbed by a pair of Peacekeepers who attempted to pry his grip from Lumen's collar while the two hurled insults back and forth at one another. Zagros was wrestled away from his grasp on Lumen's shirt, who fell back to the riser's seats, slamming down at the same second the bullet erupted from the tip of Goddard Nix's rifle.
An overhead fluorescent bulb exploded in a hail of shattered glass and a drizzling fizzle of sparks that rained down onto the floor, leaving the room in a tense silence as the echoing shot rang in everyone's ears. Just the whimpering sniffles of the girl from 5 broke through the quiet tension that followed. Tigris looked down at a red-faced Zagros, who had been pulled to the floor and restrained by now. She quickly knelt down to him, running her hands over his cow licked hair and brushing over his stubbly cheeks with a soothing caress.
"Calm down, honey. Calm down." Tigris consoled Zagros, wiping away the wrathful tear that fell from his eye with her thumb as she held his face. Tigris watched his expression soften as she ran her fingers along his chiseled jaw. Zagros' fury melted and ran off like the sweat beading from his forehead. Then, the Peacekeepers that were clamped on his arms promptly released him as they felt his body calm, as well.
"That's it." Goddard Nix authoritatively announced. "Training is over for the day."
"But- we're only halfway through our-" Faust began to argue, but Goddard invoked Coriolanus' name which decidedly changed Faust's attitude.
"Mr. Snow wants control over chaos." Police Chief Nix shut him down. "We're nipping this in the butt. I don't care if it's mentors or tributes causing the trouble. Everybody pack it up for the day since we can't behave."
It was a bit of an awkward assemblage of mentors, tributes, and Peacekeepers that had to drain from the Training Center upon Goddard Nix's orders. Tigris herself was one of the last to make it out of the basement of 74 Cominia and into its lobby, where she was surprised by the uncharacteristically friendly greeting her prep trio offered her:
"There she is- Hey, girl!" Nerilla hopped up while Ivory clasped her hands together and gushed:
"This shade of emerald is stunning on you, doll."
"And that pleating on the bodice- to die for." Chloris added.
Tigris was more confounded than flattered:
"Are you all okay?"
The three women adorned in various shades of acid green laughed too heartily with one another. Nerilla spoke first through her waning chuckle:
"We've done some thinking."
"-Some reflecting…" Chloris put a hand over the chartreuse gems of her necklace.
"We have been a bit catty." Ivory sighed with half closed eyes. "A bit clique-ish, perhaps."
"That's on us." Nerilla exhaled. "We're sorry we haven't been the best friends in the past year."
"Really-" Ivory added with a saccharine intensity: "Our bad."
"Yeah- we're really sorry, Tigris." Chloris nodded slowly.
"And we want to make it up to you." Nerilla rubbed Tigris' shoulders with a series of friendly pats. "Let us take you out to lunch."
"Sulla's Eatery is 50% off for ladies on-" Ivory began before Tigris bluntly rejected the offer:
"I have work to do."
The trio of women looked through her for a moment. Tigris watched brief flashes of uncertainty appear across their faces. Then, Nerilla hastily blurted out with a laugh:
"Well- then so do we!" She shot Chloris and Ivory a look: "Right, ladies?"
"What's on the agenda? Fabric hunting, pattern cutting, gluing for six hours straight, again?" Ivory sardonically asked only to be swatted by Chloris in the arm.
"We're sourcing." Tigris explained. "I couldn't get the new boy's measurements- he's a little…" Tigris was about to disparage the child before swallowing her resentment: "…colorful character..."
"So, where are we going to find something for him?" Nerilla asked.
An imaginary lightbulb above Tigris' head was sparking and swirling with multi-colored light. She replied:
"I think I know a place."
The cramped, gabbing cab ride to Whatknots was as claustrophobic as it was vapid. Once upon a time they'd have these insipid conversations about fashion until the sun came up. But now that Tigris had supposedly earned her way back into that superficial fold, the talking they did was demonstrably more difficult to engage with than she ever remembered it being before. She knew this is where she was always trying to get back to- sitting with friends, shopping, and talking about her greatest passion. But it didn't feel right for some reason- and the closer they got to the quiet outskirts of the Capitol, the situation didn't even feel nostalgic, anymore. It just felt perilous.
"It looks closed." Nerilla examined, stepping out of the cab and peering into the darkened storefront windows of Whatknots.
"It says 'OPEN.'" Tigris gestured to the sign on the shop's main entryway door, then paid the cab driver with a bill from her purse.
Nerilla pushed inwards and opened the door, a tinny bell's clapper ringing out as she did so. Tigris watched the three women cautiously tiptoe into the thrift clothing store like they were afraid of stepping on landmines buried beneath the scratchy, old carpeting. Tigris followed behind, calling out to her old boss and the store's owner as she shut the door behind her:
"Fabricia?" Tigris could taste a strange thickness in the air as she breathed in to ask again: "Miss Fabricia- are you here?"
Chloris, Nerilla, and Ivory were picking through the dusty, vintage pieces with visible unease as Tigris caught sight of old Fabricia's wooden cane left abandoned and resting up against a rack of coats. Passing by the cane, Tigris ran her fingers along the assortment of jackets until she came to the far end of the rack and landed on an unsightly gray and brown plaid coat. Pulling back its greige lapel, Tigris was greeted with the dazzling, kaleidoscopic fur material beneath it. She closed the drab exterior jacket again to conceal the color changing one beneath before pulling both off the rack on their shared wire hanger. Tigris crossed towards the counter with a cash register, setting the coats down next to a desktop bell she promptly dabbed with her finger.
'DING!'
Tigris took some of the cash from her purse, counting it out as she looked around for Fabricia to appear at the sound of the bell, but after its twanging reverberation had subsided, the only thing that followed was a further eerie silence. She turned to see her prep trio busying themselves with various items. Chloris studied the glass gems inlaid in the heavy metal buckle of a thick, leather belt while Ivory tried on an extravagant, wide brimmed hat with a feathered hat pin stuck into its crown. Tigris turned back and rang the bell two more times:
'DING, DING!'
There was still no response. Tigris turned up her nose with impatience- catching a deeper whiff of the acrid, kind of smokey, burnt plastic smell in the air.
"Miss Fabricia, hell-o?" Tigris pursed her lips in annoyance, draped the coats over her arm, and walked around the counter. She noticed Chloris and Ivory share a second of brief eye contact across the store at one another as she stepped around the corner, brushed past the half-bathroom, and pushed through into the back storage room's door. The cramped, boxed up, unlit room was the clear source of the pungent metallic scent- a thick wash of the smell nearly singeing Tigris' nose hairs off as she stepped into the dark, compact room. The door swung shut behind her on its hinges with a creaking groan as Tigris cautiously tiptoed around a fully stocked shelving unit of boxes and old, broken, unsellable merchandise. As she rounded the tall shelf, Tigris was startled by the blank, dead expression of Fabricia sitting upright in a recliner.
Tigris was about to exclaim in fright at the woman's lack of any signs of life when Fabricia's golden brown eyes shot open and fixed themselves on Tigris' shadowy form:
"Who is that?" Fabricia asked squinting into the darkness and sounding almost bored- while Tigris was near shaking with anxiety:
"Oh, my word, Fabricia. You scared me half to death." Tigris exhaled with relief. "It's Tigris. I rang for you at the register."
"For what, girl?" Fabricia's aged features twitched.
"A purchase." Tigris replied, lightly gesturing with the coat she'd draped over her arm.
The older woman sat forward and craned her neck to examine the brownish gray coat: "Is that suede or fleece?"
"Neither." Tigris pulled back the muddy plaid coat's side front to reveal the color shifting coat beneath, the hues of its dull glow leaking out into the small, dim room.
"That's where that went!" Fabricia gasped. "I've been missing that chromatifur coat for months."
"Chromati-huh?" Tigris raised an eyebrow. "How much?"
"Not for sale." Fabricia strained to raise her elderly body from the plush recliner. "It should not have been up here in the first place."
Tigris pulled the coats away from Fabricia's outstretched hand attempting to snatch away the jacket.
"I'll pay double- triple for it." Tigris pleaded with Fabricia. "Just name your price."
"You don't understand what you're getting yourself into with that fabric. What you're getting yourself into by being here. You need to leave." Fabricia explained, though Tigris had already envisioned the look she'd planned around this coat and was set on leaving with it, come hell or high water.
"Please, Fabricia." Tigris clutched the chromatifur coat with a bubbling anger, the points where her fingers made contact with the fabric now shooting out vibrant red stars across its body. "I need this coat."
"You don't need anything from here!" Fabricia snapped as she crossed towards the door. "Especially after you broke in and stole from me once before- you have some nerve walking into my office like you still work for me. And in spite of all of that- you don't understand, I'm doing you a favor by just kicking you out!"
"Listen, Fabricia-"
Fabricia threw her hands up and reached out to grab the doorknob, beginning to respond to Tigris as she pulled open the door:
"Over my dead-"
The wooden cane made such violent contact with Fabricia's skull it killed the old woman before her body had even face planted to the ground. Tigris gasped as the top half of the wooden cane snapped away from the bottom half Nerilla still held in her grip and landed at her feet. Tigris was instinctively reaching down to grab the top splintered half of the cane, only to be descended on by Chloris' violent attack before she could pick it up. The leather belt's metal buckle narrowly missed Tigris' head as it was slung at her. Chloris was throwing the leather around Tigris' throat next, garroting her as Ivory leapt over the bleeding, dead body on the floor and lunged forward with the six-inch-long feathered hat pin. Tigris turned her head as the long, thick needle came down at her- having dodged the attack just enough for the pin to miss its mark on her neck and impale itself straight into Chloris' hand gripping the end of the belt.
Chloris screamed in pain as she let go of the belt to clutch the hand with the pin skewered clean through her palm. Tigris felt the pressure against her neck give way enough for her to scramble forward and reach down to pick up the top half of the wooden cane. As Tigris bent forward, Nerilla took another swing with her own end of the wooden stick, accidentally striking Ivory in the temple with it and sending her tumbling to the floor into a loose pile of curtains. A 'chink' and 'hiss' sound were emitted the crumpled pile of fabric. Ivory woozily blundered to her feet, knocking away the drapery off the curious contraption that it had been covering as she dragged herself up. The compact, wiry machine on the floor was silent before the steadily quickening electronic pulse of a 'beep, beep, beep' began with a repetitive, foreboding chirp.
Tigris unthinkingly collected the 'chromatifur' jacket before she grabbed the other end of the cane and was able to take a defensive swing at Nerilla, who leaned back just in time to watch the jagged end of the wooden stick swish right past her eyes. Tigris broke out into a run back into the store, tripping over Fabricia's body as she escaped from the small storage room and lost her grip on the jacket and her half of the cane, all spilling to the ground with her. Tigris attempted to pull herself up only to have the back of her headwrap snagged in Nerilla's fist. Tigris' long, undone waves of blond hair spilled out as Nerilla snatched up the scarf's fabric that caught and tightened around her throat as she attempted to flee.
"What are you-" Tigris wheezed before Nerilla pulled her back down to the floor by the long, green scarf at her neck. The beeping from the back of the shop grew in volume. The time between the individual chirps gradually decreased.
Straddling over top of Tigris to pin her down, Nerilla raised her half of the broken wooden cane and thrust its splintered end down toward Tigris' head. Tigris turned her neck to the side, hearing the sound of the wooden cane's splintered end slam into the floor beside her ear. Tigris kicked furiously until she was able to get a knee under the other woman's pin and jab her heel into Nerilla's lower abdomen. Nerilla fell back with the wind knocked from her diaphragm, clutching her stomach in pain as she crawled away heaving. Tigris attempted to scurry away as well but only made it as far as a rack of clothes up against a wall of the shop before Chloris and Ivory were rebounding on her. Tigris yelped as Ivory leapt onto her, pressing down on her shoulders to prevent her from escaping again. Chloris snarled as she ripped out the hat pin impaled through her hand. Tigris' face contorted in agony as well when Chloris reached down and tightly gripped her by the back of her hair with one hand and used the other to hold the hat pin aloft.
Tigris' terrified gaze was fixed on the long needle in Chloris' hand through the tears pooling in her eyes. She had no more fight in her and prepared to feel the pin skewering into her brain. She closed her eyes and heard the sinewy, crunching of cartilage as the needle was presumably stabbed through her skull. But no pain came with the wet snap Tigris heard. Chloris' grip at the base of her neck went limp. Ivory gave a brief squeal. Then, a lifeless Chloris was falling over Tigris, her head twisted around completely as the hat pin was ripped from her dead hand and slammed into the top of Ivory's skull with a sickening thud, instantly killing her too. Tigris looked up again as the beeping noises grew so close in timing to one another it began to sound like one, long high-pitched digital tone as Nerilla scrambled out the front door of the shop.
A pale, bloodied hand extended out from behind the rack of clothes. Tigris grabbed the lighting covered chromatifur jacket and used her other to grasp the ice-cold, blood slick palm. Then, Tigris was pulled into the rack of clothes through a small, hinged opening in the wall, and into the black, descending corridor beyond as the entire shop behind her detonated.
