AVOX // arius corriander hull [fin]

The first time I was born, it was to run. I didn’t know that at my birth. How could I? I was an infant, born to unlucky circumstance in unfortunate times. Little by little, I learned to sit, to crawl, to stand, to walk. It was when I learned to run that things began to change. Running was the key to my life just a few years into it. I can hardly remember the night we first truly ran. It wasn’t a game of tag or a race. It was survival. Sometimes, the memories flash so vividly I could swear I’m living through them all over again. I can see the oil covering father’s work clothes as he packed little bags, mother’s panicked whispers as we stole through the streets, the feeling of wild grass against my stubby legs. Most days, I can’t even remember their faces. They’re covered in shadow and dirt and fear. There was the fear of being lost, but more lethal still was the fear of being found. It was the fear of both that kept us moving, that kept us alive. I was six years old when they had their first taste of life. I was seven years old when they choked on their first taste of death.

In that year, we never stopped moving. Mother and father told me we could never look back; we had come too far to turn back to five. Our district was far behind us by the end of a week, even farther by the end of that year. I didn’t question why we had to leave or where we were going. It didn’t matter, in the end. I remember that day clearly, no matter how often I try to forget. The images are all blurred together in the confusion, but the pain is unforgettable. The pain of watching your mother and father fall before your eyes and surrender to their fates isn’t something anyone can forget, especially not when two clear shots ring out in succession. My clouded eyes blurred all they could of their lifeless bodies, but all it censored was their faces. They raised me for seven years, yet I can’t even remember the slopes of their noses, the flutter of their lashes, the way they furrow their brows, or how their lips curve into a grin. I don’t even know their given names. It’s easy to forget my own as well most days.

I was born again not long after that. My death was something trivial. I don’t remember how I faded from my running body into the darkness, weightless and alone. All I know is that I woke to new life surrounded by white walls and cold air. Just as I surely must have the first time I was born, I opened my mouth to scream and cry and ask for help and forgiveness, something. This time, however, I was born mute. Every word I knew had been effectively silenced with the slice of a well-aimed knife. All of my ability to protest was taken from my little seven-year-old body and thrown away into the dust with the freedom of every other person caught in opposition to the Capitol. I was a child who had followed his parents into the woods because they told him to and he was six and didn’t know the consequences, so for what did I deserve to have my life ripped from inside my chest and my ability to converse taken from my mouth? For what did I deserve to be silenced?

One learns to converse in other ways, over time. I had time to learn those ways growing up in the Capitol. I was young, impressionable. They all saw me as potential to be the perfect servant. I could be trained to obey them without question and with pleasure. My choice was ripped from me as I was taught how to stand (shoulders back, but not too regal; chin lowered; hands folded behind your back; posture straight), how to act (never be confident; always be silent; never be caught looking; don’t you dare intrude upon anything), how to obey (thoughtlessly and at once). I did everything as they told me not because I had choice, but because I had despair. In a matter of months, I had been torn from my home in the middle of the night, thrown into the woods, separated from my family forever, and removed of all personal possession and words. By the time I was ten, I was hardly human. I was a play-thing, bought and sold for the enjoyment of spoiled children who wanted something to poke at. My face was blank of all possible emotion, but still I was told I was pretty like a girl, beautiful, a darling little thing. It didn’t change the dulled brown of my eyes or the thin line of my lips pressed together. None of it mattered to the Capitolites who bought me. Dolls didn’t have emotions anyway.

Over time, Capitolites get bored of their toys. Things come and go in seasons. Audiences want different stock after a while. I had been around long enough at fourteen that the novelty of owning one of the pretty boys in the market wore off. My hair wasn’t the right color anymore. My eyes were too slanted. My lips weren’t pink enough. My skin was too pale. I was taken out of rotation, changed. They dyed my hair a noxious mix of pink and purple, did surgery to give me double eyelids. They had me run to put on what little muscle I could. They changed my clothes, my style, my everything. Each and everything they could change, they did. The Capitol revolves around money and power, things I couldn’t bring my sellers if they couldn’t sell me. I was becoming heavy baggage for them to feed two scrawny meals a day. Eventually I was only served one. If they couldn’t sell me, they had to be rid of me somehow. They were just waiting for the time to come.

It never did. When I was sixteen, I was dragged out of my dingy room in the basement that I shared with three other boys and told to clean up quickly. At this point in my life, I was the perfect servant. I didn’t question. I did exactly as I was asked exactly when I was asked. It only took me a few minutes to wash myself up and change into a standard market outfit. They’re designed to draw attention to curves and complexion, the way hips move and ribs extend. It’s all for show, just like everything is in this Avox system. The entire thing is just an act, something to broadcast to the people of the districts to make them understand that they have no control over their lives. They must live by the rules of the Capitol and die by the rules of the Capitol. Everything else in between is mandated by the Capitol for the consumption and suppression of the masses. The fences keep them in, but it’s the pure, unadulterated fear that glues their feet to the ground. It’s the fear of being bound and tortured for daring defy an all-powerful government that keeps heads down. It’s the fear of having one of the few freedoms you have taken away with your tongue that keeps toes in line. It’s the fear of losing everything and having all you’ve lost and more shoved in your face daily that keeps mouths shut.

I was sold. In a matter of minutes, I was packed up in a tiny car and being transferred. Delivery is the time when most Avox’s panic, when they think they can escape if they just play their cards right. I know better than to think that. My hands were folded in my lap. My chin was leveled pristinely. It’s all in the act of being confident in your purpose as a servant to others. I kept my lips pressed together tightly. I didn’t dare move. No matter how much I told myself not to be afraid, there is always fear. Being bought is not something one simply brushes off and forgets the implications of. There was a shaking in my lungs then that I hadn’t felt since the last time I had been sold, two years prior. The quaking in my very soul had me on edge. By that time, I was considered too old to be a child’s toy. I hadn’t been sold to keep another nursery quiet for dress-up time. My face still screamed infant, but my body had begun to grow. It was obvious I was never going to become any younger. With that option removed, I knew I would be doing actual work. I would be serving, the thing I had been trained for since the moment my tongue had been cut from my mouth.

The building I was ushered into was one of the largest I’d ever been sold to work in, but there was something undeniably wrong. Windows loomed high along the façade, dark curtains draping to filter out all light. The garden, no doubt once alive with color in every hue, was fading into wilted browns and aged greys. Even inside, the shadow was drawn over the house. Dust covered every surface I could see, fingerprints painting the bannister and swirled intricately across the foyer’s table. The floors were scratched with use, no doubt a child’s careless play, but there was an absolute silence that seemed to stretch from nowhere to everywhere. Every room in the mansion, save for two, were exactly the same in visage. The other two were kept perfectly neat while the remainder of the house fell to waste.

My new master was younger, a man in his late twenties, but his eyes seemed as if they had seen a thousand years of sadness. There was a stiffness in his joints as he rose that looked as if he was in his late years. He trembled with every outstretched hand as if his senses were abandoning him completely. Most days, he kept to himself. He hardly spoke to anyone in the house, I understood. The other Avoxes avoided his wing of the building as if they would be burned. How could a man so alone live in such a place and not need some kind of contact? I questioned things. I thought and asked for myself what could be wrong. I wondered why the mail was allowed to pile in the corner without checking and the spiders were allowed to next in every nook and cranny and a man was left alone at all times. For the first time, I broke my programmed training and went to the source of all of the mystery in the house. I never made the mistake of acting without prior command ever again, but that didn’t save me from the punishment to follow my mistake. My master’s sanity had snapped the day his wife and young son died in an accident while they traveled away to a lake. He had been the only one to survive their little boat crashing among the rocks. Never had he even seen their bodies. He refused to change the house in hopes that they would come home to him, fall back into their routine, and move on with their lives. The pictures on his desk, surrounded by bottles of liquor and trays of ash, depicted a different man with eyes of vibrant green and a generous smile. The man before me had none of the gentle-hearted laughter in his eyes. He only had need. It was decided that day that I would be the one he would take from; his new baby, doll face, darling.

Two and a half years I spent in that house. I’d grown from a perfect little china doll into a slim mannequin of roughly five feet and eight inches, all thin limbs and pale skin. The scars litter my body, a testament to every mistake I ever made in trying to comfort someone. My back is covered in long white lashes and faded clawed marks. The marks on my chest are much the same, with the addition of splotchy burns across my left side. A set of teeth are etched into the inside skin of my right thigh. My face and neck were left untouched. He didn’t want to ruin his perfect doll’s face. Honey colored hair sweeps across my forehead and brushes against my ears. Each step I make is calculated to avoid the risk of making a mistake again. I don’t have to learn my lesson twice to absorb it. Being able to leave that house was proof enough that I had learned not to step out of my role again. It also proved that sometimes wishes do come true, even in the form of a man jumping off of his roof out of grief.