Kael 'Kae' Summit [D7] ~ FIN

I will rule the night.

I cannot be dissuaded, my determination crystal clear, clearer than the sun or the clouds that decorate the sky. Personally, I think I was born to make my way to the top, to become the most feared, the smartest, the quickest, the best. That is what it takes to rule the night. The day is for people who do all the straight life jobs, the sots who work, earn their own money, raise insignificant little families and watch their kids get thrown into The Hunger Games or just be unable to cope with the stress of living the straight life.

It's funny how I say such a thing but I'm part of such a family. Summit. The name rattles in my head, it's a signal of despair, never worthy to be used as a battle cry the name Summit is lingering on limbo. It's as volatile as a second hand bomb, all it takes is one more name to be drawn out of that bowl and before we know it we're put at the same level as the Keenis of District Six of the Krearns of District Four. We're there but we're not there, not quite because one name doesn't necessarily means cursed. One name just means unlucky.

Statistically, we are very unlucky. Of all the thousand of kids that live in District Seven the fact that one of our names got picked like what all those years ago? Well, it's simply unlucky. But that's the price of trying to live the straight life and raise a family as big as us; if you're unlucky that's bound to happen.

When you look at me you would think I live the typical straight life but that's all an act. I don't look like a giant brute you'd see wandering the streets at night beating people up, I will still rule the night though, one way or another. Granted, my year of working on the lumber mill certainly helped build up my strength so I don't look like a complete twig. The meagre wage I was getting was enough for food (which I didn't share for obvious reasons) so I managed to fill myself out, this time last year I was stick skinny. Not any more.

I think being quite a tall one also helps. Standing at a decent 6'1 when they measured us at school last week I've always been one of the tallest in my class. Of course, there are the one or two six foot seven anomalies that stole the spot from me. Still, being one of the tallest is good enough for me, and besides, when the night comes those few people are not there any more. They're statistical outliers, not worth mentioning; you're supposed to remove them from the data.

I think they knew I was a Summit straight away because I look so much like the other family members, small traces of my mother's presence tickle my features barely. I have a strong jaw and grey eyes diluted with a shade of dark. My hair's medium length but on the shorter side, it's dark as well but look almost light brown in the sunlight. Another reason why I prefer the night. It's thick and falls in rugged curls at the front. I haven't got any facial hair either, not a single strand grown on my face. I hate that. I didn't get facial hair but I certainly got pimples though. I try and cover them up as much as possible with my hair but they'll never fully be covered.

Of course, there are deviations from me and most of the others. It what makes me worthy to rule the night while they're destined to fade into obscurity. You got my cousin who's a fucking cripple and missing a hand. The other girl, Stella (the dead one) who was also a cripple but now occupies a graveyard to this very day. They're all weak. They're not worthy to rule the night because they're not strong or cunning enough and they're too disadvantaged. They're weak.

A part of me cares, to an extent that is.

Honestly, I think I'm just too different because I'm pretty sure at least ninety nine point nine percent of them will end up going off and living the straight life. They'll find someone, fuck them, populate District Seven with more people named Summit. The unlucky ones will find their children's names in the hand of the District's escort when the reaping comes, the lucky ones will do back breaking work until they finally crumble - they'll die. Then their kids will continue the cycle and die, then their grand kids will continue the cycle and die in this vicious grey world with no end in sight.

I don't want to be like that; I decided a long time ago I'd never have kids. That's part of living the straight life - that's not for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm into girls but I won't chain myself like countless people in the District do and for what?

A grey war with no victor in sight; in such a war there is no surrender.

I'm going to break the chains of obscurity before I fade away and my book is burned and that can't be done by living the straight life - it's just not possible. I tried it, living the straight life and it wasn't for me. Repetitive and boring for shit all wage. I got so used to hearing the thud of a heavy axe against a heavy tree that I eventually was driven away from the mill after half a year.

My 'friends'. I use that term lightly because I think of them more as pawns than friends even though they don't know it yet. When the night comes we come out of our shelters to play. Wherever there's no peacekeepers we roam the streets doing all sorts of shit that everyone taught us was wrong but is so enjoyable. Drugs, violence and alcohol. How can something so 'wrong' be so enjoyable, the logic just doesn't make sense - not in my mind at least. It's not wrong, it's just unknown. People call it wrong because they're too afraid to explore it, they're too afraid to step into unfamiliar bounds because it breaks their grey, repetitive lives so they label it as wrong. No, the straight life is wrong because it's not enjoyable.

My 'friends' partake in the night. I'm the youngest there, quite a lot of them are above reaping age but there's a few with death in the form of their own name on a slip still hanging over their shoulders. When the night comes we come out to play and we have a fucking amazing time. I will make my way up, I've started doing it already to climb up the ranks. A lie here, a flirty conversation there, a bit of gossip here and it's surprising how easily you can get in with someone. Too easy. It's all charm.

I wonder if my father would be proud, the more I let the question cross my mind the more I conclude probably not. Don't know anything about him, his favourite food, his hobbies, how he did in school, I don't know and I'll never know because he's dead. There's no heaven up there, I can't see it so how can I believe it? I don't think he's watching me, I think he's just gone. Illness is a weed and it took root in him a long time ago. At least that's what they tell me, the other members of my family. Got ill and died a week before I turned up. Isn't that just fucking fantastic?

I smile with pride sometimes because shit luck hasn't complete cheating me out of a father. I at least know what he looked like. I carry around a picture of him in my pocket every day. Granted, it's slightly creased and crumpled and the quality isn't the best but it's still something. I'm quite proud to have a snapshot of the dead and the opportunities that never were. I look at it every day and just smile to myself. Perhaps I can hold that small victory over bad luck. Perhaps that's another tally as to why I should rule the night.

I'm not the strongest, barely average, so brawn is crossed off the list for me. I definitely have the brains; that's for sure. Everything in school I always just understood it, always got the top marks as if it meant something because I'd probably just go on and be a lumber anyway, maybe. Statistically, living and dying at the local lumber mill is where I would end up in a few years. I live off my facts and figured, not hopes and dreams. Facts are set in stone.

People accuse me of being a lot of things.

"Kae, you are abusive."

"Kae, you are so manipulative; I see right through you now!"

"Kae, you are an idiot." That's where I draw the line. Being smart is something I tend to pride myself on. It's what will have me rule the night, eventually.

Not brute strength like brain dead lumbers who are best at swinging and axe although it is quite fun, I'll give them that. No, a few lies, a sharp tongue and a necessary pinch of violence will get me there. It's called ambition, I have a lot of it.

I'm a machine that runs on logic for thought and emotion for oil. My personality is a polarised magnet, two opposites on the same field. One minute I'm as calm as a sturdy tree in the breeze, mind unmoving and relaxed. Then all it takes is that one trigger, that one sudden burst and I flip like a switch. I snap. It's surprising how a calm body of water can evaporate into a red mist in the blink of an eye. Anger overtakes me, clouding my brain with a red veil where I find myself shouting, cursing, and in some cases swinging.

It happens a lot for such a select small amount of things, someone just has to push the button and it happens - just like that in the blink of an eye. One time someone saw me looking at a picture of my father and he walked up behind me, an exposed slither of snark fresh in his voice as he spoke. "That your boyfriend Kae?" He sneered.

Fists clenched at me side I closed my eyes. When I re-opened them I had him pinned against the wall by his throat and I squeezed. I squeezed so tight he began to turn on purple and his eyes began to bulge. He was trying to sputter and beg through an impossibly tightened windpipe. Someone pulled me off him, breaking us apart and I picked the picture off the floor and walked off, leaving him behind in shock.

I tend to leave a lot of people shocked and not a drop of remorse can be found in my number filled mind.

A dead father hanging over my shoulders is noticeable to all - no one can put it right, not even myself. Hanging over my shoulders he's been an entity in my life ever since I was six years old. I've pushed him to the back of my mind, he's an old chore that I've been procrastinating but no matter what I do he lingers back there, somewhere. He won't just fade away with the stars, permanently embedded in my brain he dilutes my thoughts, resurfacing once in a while. When he resurfaces from time to time I cringe, barbed wire ripping into my skin, scars of the dead left and all.

I think living with people who knew him doesn't exactly help at all. I didn't always live there, I used to live with my mother. Another entity who hangs in my mind, diluting my thoughts and distracting my focus from time to time. It's funny, I only knew her for six years but she left such an deep imprint the moment she hung that sign from my neck and ran into the darkness, disappearing into the shadows and scarring my memory deeper than the barbed wires of a dead father.

Until I was fourteen I never knew why, just thought she'd had enough of me. Six years old my mother took me from our scant little house in the dead of the night and brought me to the house I exist in now. My tiny hand clutched in hers she guided me through the streets of District Seven to the stranger's house. Without warning she had the large sign in her hand, hanging it around my neck from a rope. It read 'for Keyser.' The weight of abandonment hung proudly around my tiny neck but I was too naive to feel the weight that should have snapped my neck and left me broken.

She told me to stay, me being the naive child I was I questioned it, expecting a truthful answer. "Why?"

"Please honey, just trust me." She told me.

And I did.

"I love you Kael Summit, I'll see you again soon, I promise you." She told me before knocking on the door and scattering, her back becoming a silhouette and her face a distant memory as she was swallowed by the darkness.

I was taken in and I didn't question it.

"Where's my mummy?" I remember asking time and time again to anyone in that overcrowded house. Family, they were family. The question rolled off my tongue every day for the first month and I was always met with the same response. 'She'll be back soon.'

"Where's my mummy?" I would ask every day during the second month and I was always met with some kind of excuse. "She's just running a bit late." Is one I remembered a lot.

"Shouldn't my mummy be back by now?" I would ask halfway through the second month and the responses where a bit more half-hearted. The second half of the month I would stop asking.

The fourth month came and the pebble dropped.

"Mummy's not coming back is she?"

I should have known sooner.

A naive child I was, thinking the world played fair. Statistically, it's surprisingly common for a child in District Seven to lose at least one parent in their life time. Whether it be death or abandonment but damned by the numbers, I'd be the one to lose two.

I grew up surrounded by family but still an orphan.

Eight years old and I was given the same picture of dead dad that I carry around in my pocket, the picture was as light as a feather but the weight as heavy as a boulder I carried it proudly in my pocket, looking at it everyday and examining every feature in the poor quality. Dark hair, dark eyes and short hair are what I picked out mainly. Now, I have it memorised, every crease, every curse, every scratch is crystal clear to me and I don't even have to look at it. Like a mathematical equation, I see it clearly before my eyes if I try to picture it. I suppose after years of staring at the picture everyday for about ten minutes that happens.

Twelve years old I was reaping age but I wasn't worried and I still never am worried. I don't take out any tesserae, I haven't got anyone to feed but myself, I keep myself to myself and there's about a thousand other kids that popular District Seven. I'm just too unlikely to be picked, one in a couple of thousand chance that I'll be picked. I learned from an early age to live and rely on that statistics, the numbers, that's how you get far in life.

Fourteen years and I began to meet my 'friends'. I think back then I saw them as friends because I was too naive, I hadn't discovered the truth yet. I began to go out more at night and no one really noticed, of course we were all younger and I struggled to fit in at first. It only took me getting close to one person at school and she inducted me into the crowd. They accepted me after about two weeks of hanging out with them when we came out to play. Luckily, they didn't bash my head in although a lot of them wanted to. The fact I always looked older than my age (being tall and all) helped, puberty was a godsend.

They stopped being friends when my eyes were opened.

I suppose you could say it was as if I came of age the day that letter found its way into my hands. The ghost of my mother called to me from the grave and haunted me.

___

Kae,

This is a letter begging for your forgiveness.

I'm begging you to forgive me for being the world's worst mother. I'm begging you to forgive me for leaving this world before you were ready. I'm begging you to forgive me for leaving you hating me for so long, although at this point you probably should. I owe you a childhood, I owe you a mother and a father but most of all of owe you an explanation.

You're old enough to understand, I know you are. When I had you I had no one. I was shunned out by family and lived alone, there were no signs of Keyser - he had disappeared. I saw no choice so I had to work the streets, I had to sell myself so that you might live a better life, so that we wouldn't starve. I don't expect you to understand and I can see why you would be embarrassed to have a mother who is a whore. I did what I thought was necessary even though I reduced myself to nothing. Forgive me for giving you that burden.

Kael, my son, I never expect you to forgive me for leaving this world so early. My job got me 'ill' and that's all I can say. I knew I wouldn't be around much longer. I don't fear for my own safety, I fear for yours and I will always fear for yours until my last breath. I couldn't let you watch me take my last breath, you were only a boy so I did what I thought was best. I found were Keyser lived, it took a lot of searching but I found him, you remember what happened next. Forgive me.

I don't expect you to forgive me but please know that I love you and I will always love you from beyond the grave. I hope Keyser is treating you well, I hope the Summits are treating you like real family. Kae, I don't expect you to forgive me but I never want you to forget that I love you. No matter what happens I will always be by your side, I will always support you and I was certainly always be proud of you. I hope you find comfort knowing that you will have a mother's support in whatever you do. That is what true love is.

I don't deserve your forgiveness or compassion from the grave. But your love, please I beg of you.

~Your mother

___

I don't remember what I did after that, I do vaguely recall sitting in my room with is gripped in my trembling hands for a long while. I still have the letter somewhere. I could never lose such a thing. I re-read it something, even though I'll never know if I should forgive her, if she should even be asking me for forgiveness. Eight years I went accepting that my mother had been cruel enough to abandon me.

No, she was simply dead.

I was only six years old and the world ripped the pages of my mother's book and threw them into the fire, leaving them to burn in the embers of tragedy along with my father while my story was left to collect dust on a shelf full of tons of other Summits. The world worked like that, all our stories intertwined, some worth more than others. I knew my time was coming, some day my pages would be thrown into the fire before I could achieve anything.

Bullshit.

I changed, no, I grew up.

I stopped really caring much. I viewed my so-called 'friends' different. Saw them as pawns, people who I would use just as countless men used the woman who brought me into the world with her blood, sweat and tears. That's when I stopped being naive, I realised that's how we do things - we use each other.

Fifteen years old and my 'friends' got into a fight. Well, not so much as a fight but the older ones finding a middle-aged man who owed them money and one of the more psychotic, wild ones using an axe to slice his fingers clean off. I was interested, watching him writhe about in pain as he lost blood. Luckily, he didn't tell but he was way too scared to report anything to the Peacekeepers (probably a good idea, knowing them they may have put the axe in his skull) but I decided to try something out.

So I became a lumber.

Half a year I spent hacking at oversized trees and bringing them down. One hundred trees I brought down with the stroke of an axe. I guess the people who ran the mill weren't completely bad, even though they made us work through the night. I guess it was a mixture, we had to work through the night in the deep forest were it was freezing during the winter. On the bright side they let us use some of the timer to make fires. Then again, we didn't actually get fire making materials, they expected us to make the fires ourselves. So, I had to learn how to make a fire from just wood so we wouldn't freeze in our sleeping bags when we took our breaks from hacking trees.

Honestly, I'm not surprised I left. The rhythm of axe on wood was boring and quite frankly, I realised the repetitive, boring straight life was not for me. I could not fathom being one of those ones. The ones who spent their lives working, getting their shit wages, feeding their family (piss poorly) before fading away, their grey books being thrown into the fire and their memory being devoured by the bright orange flames. So, once again I was unemployed and I think I'll stay like that for the foreseeable future.

Once again I set out to rule the night. I went back to my 'friends' (well pawns at this point) and the rest is history.

Embers lick the oxygen around my book but I will rule the night before it burns to ash. "I will always be by your side." She told me. If that's true then maybe I can salvage the ashes of her story through the success of mine, perhaps we'll rule the night together. After all, better us than them.