anyana cage | avox

I always have been utterly perfect - in this trade, you have to be.

As a child, I was definitely a perfectionist, because I was terrified of what would I become if I wasn't the best at whatever my parents' had set for me. I followed them blindly, and maybe that's why I ended up here, but I swore on my servant palms that I followed their every breath as if it'd carry me off into another lifetime. I didn't exactly love this life style; having to be calm at my worst times and always being kind and innocent and putting everybody's lives ahead of mine as if I mine wasn't a gift to me but to everybody else. For eighteen years I was utterly perfect, utterly innocent and quiet and kind and I believed these traits would save my life from the games, and that I could trade those eighteen years in for my own gift wrapped prize of whatever my parents' had promised that my life was in store for.

My brothers and sisters - Angard, Attend, Sampson, Fee, Tryst, Kaya, Aiden, Yanika, Elliot - they were never as perfect as me, I made sure of it. I was so perfectly good at being this perfect doll for a rich capitol family with two sons and an extra room for an avox. I would know, I put eighteen years into being that tiny girl that any family would kill for. Eighteen years of working my servant palms against my own lifeline, and it got me to the capitol of course, just like my parents' promised.

Eighteen years of perfection, just to become a slut.

For eighteen years, I followed my own life led by my parents, never talking back and never acting against them, because I trusted it'd get me somewhere. They had this plan, my parents, to frame me on a robbery scheme, and they promised me that it'd get me somewhere. All I had to do is follow their orders one last time: "don't run." And I did, eighteen years of catching their words like they were scriptures, and all I had to do for it to all finally pay off was to not run away. Maybe I was the fool for staying near those alarms, to let myself get captured by peacekeepers and the beating of my own heart, but I was trained to follow orders. It was finally going to pay off though, all this work from my parents and myself, so why would I fight back?

They took my tongue - the peacekeepers, my parents', my heart - and it wasn't until then that I realized by the thumping of my viens that being taken to the capitol was not what I worked for. I was no longer a Cage, I was the golden Avox that I was supposed to be, and I guess that should have been enough to not make me regret not running. My parents were probably filling in my brothers and sisters on how perfect I was, just like always, and I should be happy that I'm finally in the capitol because of this. They're boasting about me, I know it, but I'm on my way to which ever rich family picked me and I'm not nervous.

I'm scared.

I'm scared, for all the words I've sucked up from my parents I'll never say another one, and I never realized how much I'd miss a tongue until it was completely gone. It was a coin though, being tongueless, you can't be an avox with a tongue, because then you're a slave, and I was raised to be perfect not a slave.

On the back of the avox van - I never caught the name of the bus, but it isn't like I could ask either - I was surrounded by at least twenty others, and none of them looked flawless. One man had green hair and only a half of an ear left, and another lady had eight fingers and less teeth than that. Though, I was still that doll from district two that my parents raised, a convict yes, but still more innocent than the bodies around me. I tried not to think of them, the people around me; instead, I dreamed of the new family that I could call mine. I dreamed up two boys I would take care of like they were my own, both blonde and starry-eyed and my owners would be just as rich as my parents said they would be.

I was never told where I would end up exactly, all I had to go off of was that I was that porcelain doll with wide eyes from district two, and that I was as utterly perfect as any avox could be. My parents promised me greatness, and I thought I was deserving of it too, until I stepped off that avox bus.

"A golden avox," I was sold to a brothel at the age of nineteen. I spent eighteen years of working and sculpting and being perfectly kind and respectful, and I was a slut. I wanted to run as the feeling of my heart falling to my knees reverberated through my veins; I regretted that peaceful arrest and never talking back, because now there was no chance of that. There was no chance of their words coming back to carry me off into a different lifetime, I was branded by the collar with the word "brothel" and there was no "coming back." I felt pangs of surreal regret and pain as they tattoo'd "Tiras South Brothel" into my neck to mark their new doll.

Other girls surrounded me as I stumbled through the brothel avoiding them barefoot in my lace dress as my neck bled. One girl grabbed my arm, her tan palm pressing my sweat into my skin, and I almost punched her in the face. I was no perfect avox, I was a slut. As soon as I looked face to face with her, I realized how bad I was shaking, and then it went blank as I tugged away from her.

Regardless to say, the other girls still talk about how I passed out my first day.

When I woke up, it was just me and the tan girl in the farthest back room - they always keep this room empty, and besides for us two and the towel under my head, it was. Not every girl in the brothel is an avox; out of the eleven of us, eight of us are though. She told me her name, Bette, and I shook my head when she asked if the papers had my name correct with Anyana. Bette promised to take care of me, because us eleven aren't blood but we're tattoo'd with the same ink, so it's almost like we are family.

I cried that second day, because I was trained to take care of children, not to have my innocence taken like a bird by the neck by some man's rough hands, but these ten other girls, they became family to me. Men liked me and paid more and more, because there's a thing about trying to destroy porcelain dolls that attracted fuckboys, but equipped with my armour of the music and the sword of a perfectionist, I still stand today.

Because I always have been utterly perfect - in this trade, you have to be.