FIN // FOUR // "MAYHEM" KREARNS

FIN // FOUR // "MAYHEM" KREARNS Apr 30, 2016 19:18:40 GMT -5

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Post by Onyx on Apr 30, 2016 19:18:40 GMT -5

MAYHEM

MAIYIM "MAYHEM" KREARNS
EIGHTEEN
DISTRICT FOUR

BIOGRAPHY

Monday-

Maiyim never looked good in black. The cobweb-like sleeves of the funeral dress come down beyond the tips of her short, stubby fingers, and the girl pokes holes in them as she anxiously stretches her sweaty hands open and closed like erratic, hypersensitive venus flytraps. She is rarely as restless as this - indeed the only thing that makes her this nervous, fit to leap into the air right out of her skin at the smallest sudden noise, is a Whole Family Gathering. It seems to Maiyim that there has been an ever-increasing number of them recently. Since the death of Someith, a boy who was "determined to curse the Krearns with infamy for hatred and murder, and shame on him for it" as his aunt, Maiyim's mother, would say at the time, the Krearns have unanimously decided that staying united is better than drifting apart. Maiyim can't even remember the name of the aunt or uncle who is now the most recent loss to the impossibly extensive Krearns family. To her, the funeral is a convenience, when compared to one of the enormous luncheons or dinners which would have taken its place to bring the family together. At least at a funeral she can be excused for being distant and sullen, rather than being forced into conversation with a pack of cousins that she has never quite felt she belongs in.

Knowing that your family isn't really your family is only half the knowing. The other side of that sensitive balance, which some people accept without a second thought, loving their new families unconditionally, and some become obsessed with toppling, is the awareness that somewhere, somehow, there is a second family which you truly belong to. Maiyim never needed to work out that she didn't earn the Krearns family name by merit of being born to them. Even before she knew that her timid foster mother, the blood aunt of the three now infamous Krearns tributes, had selected her from a line of silent, terrified infants at Mother Maisie's Community Home, she knew that she wasn't like the others. She has always been quieter and drifting than her noisy-at-best relatives; at times, she can even be bitter to them, even though they - her mother included - all say that companionship is in the Krearns' blood. But that is the problem, isn't it? The blood that flows in Maiyim's veins is a totally different sort to that she has seen running out of Jay, Mason and Someith's bodies on the screens in the District. There isn't a single Krearns child with whom she fits like peas in a pod, as strangers calling on the family say about the others. The knowing doesn't make Maiyim sad, however, simply lost. Sometimes she feels her heart pulling in her chest like it's caught on a fishing line, and wonders if it's her first family, her real family, calling for her, somewhere, as well.

Although her aunts and uncles eat heartily after the funeral proceedings, Maiyim barely touches a thing. The closer the rest of the Krearns draw together in solidarity, the more the girl feels like she's being pushed out - the last object at the top of a container which simply rolls away when you seal the top. The excess. At the table, she is a stranger, sitting next to her equally quiet "mother" - perhaps the Krearns she does relate to the most - like a pair of shadows. Her fingers braid and unbraid the course locks at the base of her neck as she watches the plates of fish and vegetables pass by her untouched. Any other parent at the table might have been concerned with how thin her limbs were getting, but the woman who had become her guardian when she was little more than a toddler eats as little as she does, and never says a word about it. Maiyim has several times secretly wished that another one of these adults had taken her in, and she often allows her brain to calculate the possibilities of the other presents, and futures, she could have lived. However, any way she could have been cared for, fed, socialised or trained, the ultimate outcome would be the same: this pulling, yearning feeling of being not quite right, because more than any of her other wishes, Maiyim longs to finally find a place where she won't feel so different anymore.

Tuesday-

She had the dream about the girl again last night, and woke up sweating, cocooned tightly, uncomfortably, in her bedsheet. In her twilight visions, Maiyim seldom speaks English. Her head-language is formed of alien words which somehow she always understands, their rolls and lilts reminding her almost of the Capitolites she sees in movies and holograms during the Games, but the syllables themselves are like nothing she has ever heard before. Although the dreams aren't lucid, there is a certain awareness that they're not real - Maiyim's logical mind picks out the impossible parts and notes them, although this only makes her more curious as to how her brain as conjured them up in the first place.

In the dream, Maiyim stands in a crowd and watches a Reaping. It's not her district, she's sure of that - the only salt in the air comes from the sweat of the children around her, and the noises she first thought were the sighing sea are only the simultaneous intakes of breath as the Escort climbs to the stage. They reach into the glass bowl, which wavers as if through a heat haze, and suddenly a young girl is walking up to the stage. She reaches the front, but when she opens her mouth to say her name Maiyim hears it as if through a wall - muffled, muted. Maiyim frowns, looking up at the new tribute, and suddenly the younger girl looks back directly at her. In her face, Maiyim sees not only fear and puzzlement, but also something familiar... more than familiar. Maiyim sees herself.

Is that you? Maiyim calls out wordlessly. Is that you, ibeji? The girl doesn't react, continuing to stare back at Maiyim with her own wide, brown eyes, her own thick lips, slightly parted like Maiyim holds hers when she's concentrating. Her hair has the same course texture, that same springiness, standing up in all directions like a dense swarm of insects, or a cloud. Maiyim loves her own hair, even though other children have called it ugly or dirty before, and she loves it on her ibeji, her twin, too. The sun hits the tribute's dark, smooth skin in the same way as Maiyim has seen it hit her own in reflections, softening the hard line of her cheekbones, and revealing the gentle blush that is usually hidden deep underneath them. The young girl has no acne scars like Maiyim herself has on her forehead, but the older girl still notices the oily sheen there which suggests that one day she might.

Slowly, the tribute, the ibeji reaches out one slender arm to Maiyim, and waves. Her dry palm is small and fragile, and Maiyim raises one that matches it to wave back. As the crowd around her stares straight forwards, seemingly unaware of the event taking place in front of them, the two twins wave at each other in silence. Maiyim wakes knowing that, if she is ever going to find peace with her own mind, she has to find the source of these visions - even if it is just within herself.

Wednesday -

If her real mother ever found out she calls herself Mayhem now, she would hit the girl upside the head and chide her. "Your grandmother gave you that name, knowing it would bring you honour here." By here, she would have meant District Four, where Maiyim's grandparents had travelled after their orchard was burnt down in District Eleven in an act of jealousy and hatred. Her mother would have told her that Maiyim is an ancient word for water, which was surely good luck in District Four. The mother herself didn't believe it, and that's a trait that Maiyim inherited. She cares about luck as much as she cares about honour. Honour gets cowards killed. But Maiyim will never have to have this conversation - she doesn't even know her name is anything more than two pretty-sounding syllables holding hands (and her foster mother knows no better) - because her mother decided she couldn't raise a second child long before Maiyim ever decided that Mayhem was more intimidating and therefore would do her good in the Training Centre.

This proved to be right, of course, as Mayhem was adopted for a second time in her life - into a pack of Careers who spend this Wednesday after school like they do all Wednesdays, seeing who could hold their breath the longest or dive the deepest, who could hold a white-hot iron poke or run on coals, who could jump from the highest storey, who could run up the highest hill, who could drink the most in one go - without being sick. Mayhem often declined the last, and today is no exception, as despite her courage in many of their other competitions, not having control over her own reflexes makes her feel entirely helpless. None of the others taunted Mayhem, as both the dark look that her eyes always took on when she refused something, or was determined to achieve something, and her reputation as being quick with her fists, stopped them from daring. She wasn't the biggest of the gang by a long way - the group contained five boys as well as Mayhem and one other girl, a long-legged gazelle type with a knack for long-distance running and endurance - but she could certainly hold her own in a fight. One of the first lessons that Mayhem had taught herself in training was that pain was almost all in the mind, and if you pretended it wasn't as bad as it felt then it wasn't.

They cast the competition aside (the other girl looking relieved about it) and decided on a very different way to assert their dominance. "Let's go fuck with the weak ones," the self-instated leader suggested, which was met with laughs and smirks of approval. Mayhem herself remained silent, having already spoken her piece by turning down the offer of alcohol and not wanting to be thought of as a killjoy or a saboteur, and followed the group to where they were sure they could catch at least one wannabe-neverbe Career on the way back from training.

Their target was a boy who was probably the same age as the gang, but nowhere near as strong - even thinner than Mayhem herself who, despite her poor eating habits, still had the lean muscle of a strong swimmer and fighter across her body. They formed a circle around him, Mayhem at the back, blocking his retreat. Although guilt starts to pool in her stomach she still doesn't say a word. Does the lion complain when he hunts? Or does he just accept it as part of the food chain? Whatever might be right or wrong, Mayhem wasn't stupid enough to give up a position of power when she had one. While she remains a lion, she'll hunt the lambs. And if that should change? Mayhem, for all her foresight in fights or strategic training games, was never one to worry about a so-distant future.

Thursday -

The silence hangs between Maiyim and her mother as they eat like a funeral veil. Sitting at opposite ends of a wooden table made for eight, the only sounds are the woman's infrequent coughs and sniffs and the scraping of the girl's spoon at the bottom of her bowl. As she has grown, beyond imaginary games or childish passions which her mother could get by just pretending to be interested in, Maiyim has found that she has less and less to say to the other. It isn't surprising - as at the funeral on Monday, the girl has been feeling lonelier and lonelier for years up to this point. She just never expected that loneliness to invade her own home, like a sickness.

Maiyim knows that her mother works in Communications, something to do with generating and receiving (and intercepting) messages from other Districts and the Capitol. She knows her mother isn't important enough that if Maiyim asked, she wouldn't be able to give her details about her day. Maiyim simply doesn't care. In a similar fashion, the mother doesn't ask what Maiyim learnt at school, whether she finally mastered that new technique in fencing (she had) or whether she was enjoying her food. Like the engine of an old trawler that they sometimes hear in the night, their conversation was exhausted months ago. Their relationship with one another is simply running on fumes.

Perhaps it all could have been different had Ms Andrea Krearns been more enthusiastic about being a mother. When she was told, over twenty years ago, that she could never have children, her heart broke inexplicably. Ms Krearns had never been married, in fact never had a partner for more than a few weeks at a time, so why did she even care that she couldn't have a child with a man she hadn't found yet? To her, it seemed the doctor's verdict also sentenced her to a life in solitude, as if a man could tell he'd never have a child of his own if he stuck with you, and so was driven away. The only solution could be a total defiance - to have, perhaps acquire, a child by another means.

Maiyim has no idea that the reason she was chosen by this lonely woman was because she was the one that was the most different. Andrea not only needed a daughter she could identify with as an outcast, the rest of her siblings with absolute herds of children between them, but also a daughter that would make her fashionable - talked about. As an infant, Maiyim was an accessory, a talking point, an as such was never spoiled as a different child almost always deserves to be. When she was younger, Maiyim simply assumed that Ms Krearns met the gaze of such an extraordinary child and felt an instant connection. However, sitting here over dinner, gravely, Maiyim is certain this was impossible. When she sees her mother cut her finger, she doesn't feel the pain as she used to expect to. She simply wraps it in bandage and ask her neutrally if she's alright. When her mother was publicly commended for her work for the Capitol, Maiyim felt happy - but not proud. After all, it wasn't her news to be proud of - even though she would have expected herself to be proud, intensely so.

Perhaps a year ago, Maiyim would have felt remorseful for her lack of emotion towards the woman who took her in, fed her and clothed her, but not anymore. All that's left now is a kind of distant but familiar longing. Part of it is a promise to herself that, should she grow old and have children of her own, she would treat them what she sees as properly, asking them about everything they loved and were interested in, offering to help them when they were struggling, and making sure they didn't want for anything. And part of it is a certainty that, if she ever does get a chance to leave this place, she will take it, and find the mother she should have had - the mother she deserves.

Friday -

Reading is one of Maiyim's least favourite activities. She has never been a particularly imaginative person, knowing that real life often contains as many conflicts and adventures as any story could contain, and as a result she's always been fairly intimidated by fiction books. Instruction manuals or factual studies never do her much good, either, as everything she needs to learn she is either taught, or she teaches herself by experience. Sitting in the large district library, therefore, reading about how to tie different types of fishing knots, feels to Maiyim like nothing except a waste of time. Give her some rope and a sense of urgency, and she could do it in an hour.

After several minutes of sitting quietly at a desk, Maiyim decides she ought to turn the page to keep up an appearance of being interested. There's no one she's deliberately trying to impress, but she has a fear that she is talked about (whether for her family name or her self-made social status she doesn't know) and knows that one's reputation is often their most vulnerable armour, and one that needs to be preserved at all costs. She looks up to check who around her might have important friends they could mention Maiyim to, which is when she sees him, looking right back at her as he has been for weeks.

Maiyim hasn't had a boyfriend for around a year, and the last time she got romantically involved she discovered how difficult it was to find things to say to the same person after spending so much time with them. Boys, like all people, eventually bore Maiyim unless they have something particularly and perpetually fascinating about them - a rare case. The boy who sits at the other end of a long bookshelf, unabashedly watching Maiyim from over his copy of Panem and its People: A History does intrigue her simply for what he might be thinking about her, but she has no doubt that anyone who can gaze at one thing for so long holds as much interest for her as the last one. Still, she doesn't confront him; her aggression has always been more passive, or at least stealthy, than a full-on argument. After all, who doesn't like a little attention now and then?

Weekend -

Lying in bed late in the morning, Maiyim reviews her week. What has she achieved? In all honesty to herself, very little. She simply survived - not doing anything extraordinary or even mildly interesting. This causes some annoyance to her, and she spurns herself for letting more precious time slip through her grasp like sand. She has been told before that every day is a gift, and while she doesn't believe it's anything as sentimental as that, she is afraid of the effects time can have on a person if they don't harness it. Maiyim doesn't want to get old, or let her joints get stiff. She doesn't want her heart to stop working well or her lungs to wheeze. She doesn't want to start feeling the dense weight of idleness clinging to her bones. Health, of course, is an important asset. Maiyim would feel betrayed by herself if she ever lost her hold on it.

What has she discovered? Through the events that happen around her and to her, Maiyim learns about herself every day. Not only what she is capable of doing physically or mentally, but also how she feels in certain situations. It delights her that there are still things she's finding out about herself. Even a little fear or pressure is useful from time to time - Maiyim has seen and felt the driving force of danger first-hand. More than that, she isn't afraid of being afraid. Whether it be crossing a ledge metres up in the air in rebuke to some dare posed to her, or defending herself from a series of heavy blows dealt by another Career, or simply walking home in the dark, dark streets of the unlit District, the risk is exhilarating and motivating, rather than inhibiting.

Above all, Maiyim knows it would be ridiculous to be afraid of the unknown. Too much about her life is a mystery to her still - the thoughts of others included as well as her own true history. Instead, she embraces the unknown, pursuing it like an object of affection. She knows that one day she will track it down and extinguish it, and finally know, understand, everything. Maybe it makes her paranoid; maybe it distracts her from the issues that lie right in front of her, but Maiyim sees pursuing it as a quest, which one day she will - she must - complete.