D6F Bryony Fleming's Interview

Bryony Fleming

Bright lights glare down at Bryony as she is escorted onto a stage when it is her turn to be interviewed. Since arriving at the Capitol, she has been confined to the same four walls and the very soft mattress that she has let her body sink into for hours. Everything is so sterile and quite bland. She wonders if they will give her something to eat. The last thing she ate was the batch of morning oats she cooked for sisters and brother the morning before the reaping. She wonders who is cooking up the oats for them now each morning. Her mom has never fit the housewife role, Brianna has probably taken the apron strings and she can take the ring on Bryony’s finger too…

Bryony is sat in front of a man who introduces himself as Harlan Godfrey. He looks like a more charming version of Gerard. A shame he is going to try and get her killed tomorrow.

" 'Fleming, Thatcher & Co.' Explain to those at home what exactly it is that your family does." Harlan opens with a question about her family’s business, they must have really dug deep to find out a lot about her. She doesn’t know whether to give them the short answer or the long one. Drawing this out means less time for her in that Colosseum or wherever it is they are going to take her. ”We make homemade medicines and sell them to the citizens of Six. It is quite easy to grow antibiotics from mold. There is a lot of molds in District Six, with us being the waste management District. We make other medicines too, using plants and safe recycled materials…” Outing her family right now for what is probably an illegal practice is not a great idea. But Harlan presses on with another question on how they do it. "So, you guys didn't just have, like, mold growing all around the house, right? It was a controlled, sterile situation?"

”Uhmm yes somewhere sterile. We have a shop, and we have a special room where we grow mold in beakers. I guess you could call it a laboratory?.” Except the mold is scavenged. All the materials are. In the dumpster sites, chemicals in the water treatment facilities. Even in the homes of the deceased that customers have booked to be cleaned. The ingredients are everywhere around the District and Bryony believes most of them are more of a poison than a cure. There is no audit on the results of the medicines.

"How did your family get into the business? Says here your grandfather worked in the incineration facility?"

”My grandfather worked at multiple facilities in the District, the incinerator, the recycling plant. I think all of them. He could never settle! We were quite poor until my father met Melvin Thatcher, he is the brains of the business, he likes to experiment…” The only reason Bryony’s family name is first is because her father has the most kids so the most workers for the business. The whole idea was Thatcher’s, the Flemings are just the labor.

"Your file also mentions a Gerard. Who is he?" The ring is still on her finger; it is so uncomfortable. The metal always reminds her that it’s there. She could use it though, some kind of sympathy for them to play easy on her though she doubts she can persuade the tributes by flashing the ring at them. They all have people waiting for them back home and Gerard is not the first face she wants to see. There are five of them in the queue before him. ”Yes Gerard, he is Melvin Thatcher’s son. We are actually engaged to be married.” Bryony extends out her left hand to Harlan, this the first time that ring has proven to be useful. A show piece for her story that probably won’t have a happy ending.

"Pardon my forwardness, but I wonder: Are you willing to do anything it takes to survive?"

”Yes, there are so many waiting for me. Not just the clients of my family’s business that are in such a dire need for better health but my sisters and brother. Brianna. Beverly. Blossom. Blaire and Bentley.” Blaire and Bentley are not even of reaping age yet, she has always been the one to reassure them the night before. Blossom’s nightmares have always been the worst. At fifteen, she will have three more reapings without Bryony if she dies. ”Oh and Gerard too.”

”Any parting words?”

She could just unravel this whole interview right now and answer this question with the truth. The truth on how her herd of siblings is now without their shepherd. How someone so innocent as Bryony, from a family so neutral in politics, is having her life taken away from her. But there is no point wasting her energy here, not when it is needed elsewhere. As she has done through the interview, she just remains motionless in the chair. ”No.”