Calem Dunbar || District Ten || FIN

For your entire life, you've been the product of an attempt to mold one into an image preferred by another.

From the very beginning, you were denied any independent action, preference, or otherwise potentially harmful thought that could cause you to spiral down into the eternal pits of Hell itself.

Throughout your childhood, your father spoke words of venom coated in honey. He gave you the ever so tantalizing illusion of choice, while simultaneously hinting that if it wasn't the choice that he, first and foremost, approved of, that you wouldn't like the consequences.

You quickly found that to be an understatement.

Your father was a priest in a land full of heathens, a holy man in a godless world, driven to near insanity by his devotion. A road sparked by your very first moment in the land of the living, when you emerged from the world baptized in a bath of crimson, claiming the life of another to give fruit to your own.

The stories scared you as a kid, stories of some cackling demon who ate children for fun and lived in a world of flames. It was how your father kept you obedient and pious, using stories of the devil to keep you in line, claiming that if you didn't love the almighty Ripred like you would your own parent, if you didn't keep in line perfectly with Their ways, then you would be completely at the mercy of a million horrible, torturous ways to die.

It took you ten years to begin doubting the stories he told. Another five to stop believing in them entirely.

And yet another two gather the courage to say so.

Your father warned you of sinning, of breaking your devotion to Ripred by indulging in your own wants or desires, warned you of the thousands of sinners wandering around your home. Obediently, like the good child you had tried so hard to become, you complied.

But curiosity got the best of everyone eventually, and one day you had asked once why being a sinner was such a bad thing.

Your father had responded by backhanding you across the face, leaving a red print on pale skin, and your blue eyes had gazed timidly into flaming pools of green. 

"Ripred is the good, the almighty, the very reason we exist on this world, boy." He had spat the last word like it was poison on his tongue. "To not devote your entire life to Their existence in gratitude is as much of a sin as any other."

You had then asked, if the great Ripred was so powerful, then why had They let your mother die?

Your father's nostrils had flared in anger, and you tensed, bracing yourself for the inevitable strike to fall upon your skin.

But instead of striking, your father had quite visibly deflated, sighing in defeat. 

"Because I too was once a sinner." he had responded, speaking in a rare moment of clarity that you dared not to interrupt. "And that was how Ripred reminded me of the error of my ways. It would be the worst sin of all to not take advantage of it. 

Though you would remember the conversation for years to come, it did little to ease the madness of your father, and in turn, your own faith in what you saw was a cruel and unjust deity.

Though you now knew the reason behind your father's unbreakable faith, it did little to soothe his treatment of you. If anything, he got worse, thinking that now you knew the reason as to why being a sinner was the worst thing in the world, that that would somehow constitute to your unwavering faith as well.

Needless to say, by this point, your faith had long since began to fade.

As the years went by, your compact body stretched into a long, lanky frame, your curly, almost-white hair straightened out, and your mind began to develop in new ways as well. Among them was a sudden interest in other boys, an interest that felt both wrong and right all in one.

It felt right because of your gut feeling, what your deeper inner self felt, but it felt wrong because such feelings had never once come up in any of your father's lectures. 

Oh, he had talked about how you were reaching the age where girls would start tempting you, and that one of the greatest virtues was the ability to be able to resist such temptations.

But never once had the subject of boys and their suddenly powerful temptations come up. 

So you had asked, one evening over dinner. Your father had aptly decided to breach the topic of girls once again, and you had seen your chance and taken it?

"But father, what if it's not girls that tempt a man, but boys?"

He had frozen, mouth half open and piece of steak halfway to his mouth, staring at you in a mixture of shock and confusion, as if he couldn't believe that such a question had originated from your mouth.

After determining that you indeed were not pulling his leg, he had closed his mouth and set his fork down, eyeing you suspiciously before answering;

"Why, my boy, if a man feels temptation to lie with another man as he would a woman, well, then that is a sin so great that not even the great Ripred would be willing to forgive you."

The rest of the dinner had continued in verbal silence, but inside your head, your mind was whirling.

If such an act was really such an abomination, then why were the feelings he was feeling feel so right deep down? If it was really so wrong, then how did it explain the fact that one of the most publicized inter-victor relationships in Panem when you were growing up had been between Ten's own Mace Emberstatt and a Career, not to mention a male Career at that? 

Your father returned to his lectures the very next day, working twice as hard to try and keep you in line, but it was too late. Your curiosity had been piqued.

And a few months later, after a gathering with a few of your acquaintances from school (surprisingly, your father had allowed you to attend public school growing up, if only to point out just how sinful the other kids were compared to you), your curiosity had been sated. 

It was at this point that you decided that nothing that felt that right could ever be considered a sin, no matter what your father had to say about it. 

So you had brought up the topic yet again, only this time, when your father had denounced it as a sin, you argued back. 

The argument had been been utterly futile at first, with your father refusing to back down from his declaration

But this time, you had had enough.

This was something that you had experienced firsthand, and had come to your own conclusion.

Yet after hours of bickering, the two of you disengaged, with you deciding that Ripred and all of Their so-called beliefs were a heap of lies, much like the stories of your youth.

Your father could do all the praying that he liked, but you would hold firm with all of the stubborn resolve that you could muster.

If Ripred truly was real, you had said, then you would believe in your father's words again once the so-called almighty deity had proved it themselves.

Like a dam that had burst from its constraints, you emerged from your father's carefully erected cloud a new person, one free of lies and deceit to follow his own heart and desires.

Like it or not, there was simply nothing he could do about it anymore. You weren't small enough anymore for him to restrain you physically, and any respect you had once had for the man had evaporated when he had clung to the teachings of his invisible god over the words of his own very much visible son.

For all you cared, your father could continue follow his teachings till his piety led him to the grave.

But starting that day, you would no longer be a part of it.

It was human nature to sin in ways both big and small.

And it would be a terrible sin indeed to not make the most of it while you still walked among the living.