Stupor// -Katelyn oneshot- Part 5 in a series
Jan 21, 2019 6:52:46 GMT -5
Post by charade on Jan 21, 2019 6:52:46 GMT -5
KATELYN PERSIMMON
*The following post is set during the year of the 79th hunger games*
Read part 4 here Click me
There was something about the annual games that stirred feelings in her; it wasn’t nostalgia, not quite, but something that made her feel like something was off. Like the games were wrong. But that couldn’t be right, the Capitol only did this because the districts needed the correction every now and then. It was right. Still, she found herself holding her throat when the spear went through Ping Lanhua’s neck. Felt tears on her cheek when Felix Lacroix’s chest was caved in. She could have mentored them.
Should have, a voice whispered in the back of her mind.
But she felt such a strong aversion to the training center, like just being on the same street as it made her stomach roil. She couldn’t physically get too close to it without feeling dizzy. It was weird, she knew, but she couldn’t think about why it was weird for too long or she tended to lose her train of thought. She’d thought she caught a glimpse of some of the other victors once. Not Harbinger or Kirito, but she'd seen that dour man from twelve and a few others.
Mackenzie was the newest, and he was from seven. She knew a girl from seven once, she thought. Somewhere cold. No, those were the bad memories, the nightmares cause by the morphling. Not real. Not real. Real was dancing the night away. She pulled a pair of fancy sunglasses out of her purse and flicked them open, putting them on and looking at her reflection in a store window. Maybe the skirt she was wearing was really short, but damn if she didn’t make it look good.
There was a bar nearby, and after applying some extra eyeliner, she sauntered in, making a beeline for the bar. Someone was whistling. It was a familiar tune too. She stopped at followed the sound to a table where two guys a girl were sitting. “Well, hello gorgeous!” One of them said as she approached.
“It’s Katie, not gorgeous,” she replied with a wink. “That tune. What is it?”
The man shrugged.
“Oh, something I heard is quite popular in district twelve. Some kind of traditional miner’s shanty. There’s rumors that soon you’ll be able to buy hunting licenses for the wilderness outside the district. I’ve just been trying to learn the local color.”
The girl that was at the table laughed. “Oh, how quaint, look at you, trying to be a coalie. You know those licenses are never going to happen though, right?”
They started laughing about something else related to the miners, but Katelyn had already moved away from them. That tune. It made the back of her neck prickle. There was something wrong with it, but she couldn’t think of what. Katelyn went up to the bar and ordered a cosmo. There was uneasiness rising in the pit of her stomach, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Must have been that egg salad she had for breakfast.
As she sipped her drink, her eyes drifted over the counter to see a small plaque with three words on it. Words she felt like she should know, but they looked like nonsense. “Hey, Bartender?” she asked, pointing one perfectly manicured nail at the sign. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He followed her gaze as she started to chug the rest of her drink. “Ah, it’s a dead language from the ancient world,” he told her. “In vino veritas. In wine lies the truth. It means that most people are more likely to speak their mind when they’re drunk.”
What was in her mouth? She spewed it all over the counter, gagging at the taste. She hated alcohol. Why was she—
It all came flooding back, the detention center. The chair. The Penthouse.
Pain. Pain.
Harold.
“Are you all right miss?” The bartender asked with concern. “Was it something I said?”
It was. And she couldn’t let him say it again. If he did, she might never be free of this second skin.
So, she ran. Had to run, before someone said that phrase again, before she went back to being that—that—
Katelyn felt vile, like there was someone else living in her body. It was her, but it wasn't her. She bit her lip; the wrongness of it all.
Outoutout
She had to get away from here. Home. She needed to go home. Not that apartment. District eleven. Home was orchards and Harbinger and Kirito and Opal and Mace and—
She shuddered, wondering if any of them had heard about Katie partying it up in the Capitol.
Not me, it wasn’t me.
She couldn’t go back to that apartment. There were probably still cameras.
Oh, God, the cameras. How could she forget the cameras? No.
The train station. She had more than enough to bribe a peacekeeper into letting her get on board the next train headed for eleven. It’d still be a couple days before the victory tour for Mackenzie got underway, but if they were picking up a shipment of goods—
Yes. Yes, that would be the plan. She made her way down style street, seeing places that were familiar and yet not, like she’d only visited them in a dream. The train station, she could make it to the train station. Just catch a cab, that’s all she needed to do. She checked it purse. It was overflowing with makeup accessories, tampons, business cards and there; she pulled out a wallet and opened it.
Well.
That was a lot of money to be carrying around. How much of her victor winnings she’d blown through as Katie?
No. She couldn’t think about that. Findacabfindacab.
She did, and the driver barely gave her a second glance, small blessings anda all that. Once at the station, she headed for the middle of the platform. That was the smartest place to be right? Could go to either end of the train once inside? Or—Should she wait? Just slip onto the train with the victors going home with the caskets of the tributes they failed? But—
She held her head in her hands. She couldn’t let them see her like this, looking like every other air-headed capitol socialite.
“Katie, is that you?”
She froze up. That voice. No. Not him. Not here? Why? How?
Nonononononono.
She turned around and tried to hide the panic she could feel creeping across her face.
“Ohmigawd, harry, what are you doing here?” she squealed. He wasn’t in uniform. Maybe he was getting on the train? He approached her with an unreadable look on his face. Searching for eyes for something. She did her best to not look afraid. He said nothing, just stared intently.
“You keep staring like that and a girls gonna start getting ideas!” she said perkily, covering her mouth with a curled hand as though to hide a smile.
“For a moment I thought—“
Katelyn kept the smile plastered on her face. “Thought what, you big dope? That I had something on my face?” She stuck her tongue out and went cross-eyed, earning a too perfect smile from his very punchable mouth.
“I suppose it was nothing.” He said after a tense moment. “But what are you doing here?”
The train would reach the station in a few minutes. She could see it barreling towards the station in the distance.
Two minutes or less.
“Oh, I got lost on the way to a shindig. But enough about me Harry, I’ve missed you so much!” she said, grabbing his hand and walking him towards the edge of the platform. She hugged him, even though she felt like there would never be enough showers to was the act off. Less than a minute until the train reached the platform she noted.
Harold, to his credit, went along with it.
“I admit; I miss the days of being your personal assistant."
He put his hands on her back and she tried to suppress a shudder.
"Hey, Harold?” she whispered in his ear.
“Yes?” he whispered back.
“Be a dear and go to hell?”
“Wha— “he didn’t get any farther than that as she put both of her hands on his chest and lightly shoved him. It must have been three seconds, but later she could have sworn that it was an eternity. He fell backwards off the platform, a look of surprise on his face.
Then the oncoming train hit and he was gone.
It pulled to a stop slowly and Katelyn felt her shoulders sag. It was over. It had to be over. She let out a sob of pent up something as her knees went weak. She could hear boots coming up quickly behind her and readied herself for what would come next. She didn’t have to fake the tears, though they were of relief and joy, not sadness. The man coming up behind her was one of the engineers that ran the switchboard for the automated trains.
“Ohmigawd, I was just trying to put my arms around but he—his balance— “
She erupted into a fountain of tears and clutched the engineer’s shoulder like a drowning man clutching at a broken reed.
“Hey, whoa, whoa.” The man said. “It’s alright miss, I saw you two embracing; It was an accident. I can’t imagine how you— Hey, you’re Katelyn Persimmon, aren’t you?”
“Mhm.” She muttered as she wiped some of the mascara off her cheeks. “Y-yes, that’s me.”
“Oh wow, you were great in the bachelorette a couple years back, I was rooting for the restaurant guy, but my girlfriend was convinced there was more chemistry between you and— “He paused, slapping his forehead. “Not the time to be star struck. Look, I’m gonna need to file an incident report about this with the peacekeepers. They’ll be coming soon. Not every day someone falls on the tracks. Well, there was that drunk guy a couple weeks ago but—“
“Could you—could you keep my name out of the report? If the media got wind of this, why I’d never—“she hiccuped, clutching his arm harder.
“They’d never leave me alone.”
“That’s against regulations Ma’am, I’m sorry, I—“
“I’d be ever so grateful, she mewled,” wiping some more of the running mascara off of her face. "So grateful that I might forget my wallet with you, the one in my purse, the one full of money." She hiccuped again and tried to look coy.
He looked at her curiously and stuck his hand in the purse, rifling through it and pulling out the wallet.
“This is more than I make in a week!” he said with widening eyes as he opened it. Please. She begged him with her eyes.
He rubbed the back of his neck, and looked around worriedly. “I guess maybe there was a blond woman around when it happened. Never caught her name.”
Katelyn took that as her cue to flee the scene, grateful that she wasn’t wearing heels and that home though still far way, was that much closer.
Four times now, she thought as she fled the train station.
Four times I’ve killed in self-defense. Because that’s what it was. Not murder.
Right?
table coding (c) ghosty
