zeke lachlan. / district 4 (fin)

i'm a setting sun, but i'll never run
till my final breath, there'll be dust and death
i'm a dead man walking

There’s something to be said about a boy who enters the world with fists clenched tightly, an insatiable thirst for chaos itching at his little throat. It renders a parent useless and turns an innocent child into a monster, and from the moment Zeke took his first breath, he wanted to destroy. To take the world and hold it in the palm of his hand only to crush it slowly, to watch it turn into dust between his fingertips.

He enters this world in Summer, as hot and as sweltering as the heat such a season brings, scorching the Earth upon his emergence. Cries engulf the bedroom in which he springs to life, deafening those wishing for nothing more than a beautiful baby boy to call their own. Never could they have imagined the vicious little thing he would become, all sharp teeth and rage. And such an internal indigation was surely inherited by his father, a ruthless career who's wasted potential he laid upon his son's shoulders, because his mother had always been an angel. A bright, witty, strong woman from a good family who took care of her own no matter what.

Even when the healers had told her there was nothing left for them to do. Even when her body turned against her, attacked her from the inside out. He was nine when she died, when the only guiding light of goodness in Zeke's life was snuffed out, snatched right from the palm of his hand at a time when kindness could have shaped him, could have saved him.

But death came anyway, enveloping him in a warm embrace, and along with it, a surprise—a gift by way of a little boy smashing his some poor boy's face in out of irrational anger. With just one throw of his fist, a swing of his arm, a bash of his head, a kick of his leg, he could demolish the aching hurt in his chest; he could take it out on someone else, make them feel as bad, if not worse, than he did. 

Control that rage, his father would tell him. And it didn't take him long to learn there's pleasure in pain—in enacting other people's pain, turning their weakness into his strength. 

Fighting became a drug, an every day obsession, a horrible influence that would land him in Peacekeeper custody on more than one occasion, but his father was nothing if not a smooth talker, connected in every sense of the word, and having poured his hopes and dreams into his son, there was no way in hell he was letting him throw it all away for a back alley brawl.

But an addict cannot kick their habit so easily, nor can they just stop altogether. By age thirteen Zeke became a serious problem, a near mistake, almost a stain on his father’s imagined legacy with how careless he was with his fists. 

You need to train, he'd said after the tenth time of picking him up from the holding cell, his son beaten and bloody and bruised, practically unrecognizable sans for the pearly white grin stained red with blood peeking through. You can't keep fighting like this in the streets. Save it for the arena, my boy. At least there you'll get to finish the job. So train he did. 

Death would soon call to him like only a sweet siren could, crooning softly into his ear, urging him to embrace that black seed sowed the moment he dared to probe this godforsaken universe. His mother, god rest her soul, wanted kindness to be his greatest virtue, praying daily for her second son to be as sweet as the first, for a hero to rise from the ashes of a country wrought with tyranny; but it was his father, in all his painstakingly obvious failure and his inability to be a proper career, who wanted him to be what he never could. 

A true savage.
A crowned beast.

A victor.

There’s honor in dying, in sacrifice, he'd chant on the sidelines of his training sessions. Bleed for them and they will bleed for you. Words of encouragement, instilling in his son a belief system, however crooked or sinful it may have been. Make them pay the highest price, son. It gave a misguided little boy filled with an unsourced anger a path and the confidence to walk it. Do exactly what you were born for: to hunt—to kill.

He hit the ground running. All the rules and regulations weren't exactly his cup of tea, but he was the type of boy to take to a routine and strict discipline like a jittery fish thrown back in fresh water. What he’d lacked, what he’d craved all that time growing up lost and directionless, he found in the camaraderie of his fellow careers. In the brothers he was readying himself go to war with. In the family that came along with serving his district—in serving Death.

It didn’t hurt that he embraced the violence, that it felt like what had been his mission all along. An outlet in which he could be the beast with reckless abandon and never turn a single head. For he was surrounded by creatures with similar tastes, with an equal vigor for mayhem and all things savage. Each time he held the blade they so eagerly placed in his palm, every time he sucked in a sharp breath and lunged right for his target with perfect precision, he felt like a god. Who lived, who died. Who was spared, who was executed. He was in control, always. It was true power and Zeke couldn't get enough.

And to this day, he never—not once—misses his mark.

He waits now, as patiently as a rabid dog can be when frothing at the mouth and hungry for blood. God help the day his name is called at the reaping.

Never has there been a boy so ready to kill—or die.

i'm a dead man walking, but before i die
i'll take every soul i can into the night
and i'll be killing till i die