otto katzenagen . d7

otto katzenagen.
To trace an exact moment on when everything changed, one has to look back to the 92nd Hunger Games. The four Katzenagens sitting on the long sofa, thinking. Furthest to the left: Ave Katzenagen, reading a novel about two heartthrob high school sweethearts trying to make their marriage work. Center-left: Dessena Katzenagen, who, judging by the look on her face, is actively thinking about her heartthrob high school sweetheart and how their marriage is going to be perfect. On the far right: Kirill Katzenagen, switching between drinking his vitamin water and blowing his nose into a torn-apart box of tissues. And last but not least, at the center-right space: Otto Katzenagen, legs crossed on the cushions, nodding off to sleep.

"What the fuck are those things?" Dessena says. Otto picks his head up, vision still blurred from almost falling asleep for the first time in twenty-something hours. Almost.

"Language, Des." Their mother butts in, picking her nose out of the book. Their father seems to pay the rulebreaker no mind.

"Okay, okay. I'm sorry. But… what the f-u-c-k are those?" She points at the screen, where the tributes seem to have a different appearance than they did in the days past when they graced their screens for the parades and interviews. Otto points out the differences to his father, who is now occupied sorting his vitamins and medications into his weekly boxes. Half of them have grown fur on the backs of their hands and in the rounds of their ears. Others have incisors protruding from their lips and a deteriorating amount of liveliness in their skin.

Otto's father grabs his far-sighted glasses and classifies the creatures immediately by their characteristics. "Those appear to be… Lycanthropes. And Chiropteras." Otto stares at him still. As if either of those long words makes much sense to a boy who's just celebrated his thirteenth birthday. "Werewolves and vampires, respectively."

Both his mother and father go on about the pair of supernatural creatures. Otto only heard of them in passing with no real idea what they were before now, much to his mother's dismay. "If you got into reading the books we've procured here, you might find things you like about culture and customs from years past."

Otto spends the next few days watching the Games intently. They have twenty-four-hour coverage, something that he takes advantage of. He's still watching at his father's waking hours, stiff on the sofa watching them sleep. Otto rejected the Games, mostly. The premise, the violence. But this– the imagery, it intrigued him. Specifically, the vampires or the chiropteras as his father would specify as they watched together. They bonded over these early mornings. What a horrible sleep schedule both of them had between his father's early work hours and Otto's difficulty staying asleep. His mother and sister get up a few hours later to see half of their breakfast plates already finished and on the dish rack. First, here's a note from their father on the kitchen table: See you later. All my love. Second, there's a half-asleep kid who needs to finish getting ready for the day.

---

Even after the Games pass and a victor is crowned, the fixation on such creatures between Otto and his father remains. If they're supernatural creatures, then how did the Capitol manage to will them into the tributes' existences before their very eyes? Is such a modification possible for everyone? Otto took his mother's advice and began reading shortly after, mostly fantasy about the chiroptera vampires. There's a sense of identity there between him and the supernatural. Vampires sleep during the day. Otto finds himself drifting to sleep at school constantly. Most of them have pale complexions singed by the sun. Otto has sunscreen in his bag even on cloudy days, just in case. It's silly to think about.

After the Games with these creatures ended, rarely were they ever spoken of again. Most people in Seven detested the idea of mutating the tributes. Otto flips the page of the latest book, a gothic story about a lonesome vampire boy, the last of his generation, watching the world spin on from the fifth story of his manor. What he would give for the real world to be as black-and-white as the pages before him in this fantasy one. His mother talks about how the words on a page can come to life in our minds. If only that were true.

When Otto sets down a book, it's his father who picks it up next. Kirill reads in his study. Every once in a while, Otto will poke his head in to see his father at the desk with the headlamp on, reading and writing notes in an empty book beside him. Torn-out pages, sometimes stained in red, get crumbled up and thrown into a bin. Over the course of the next year, both of them became obsessed with vampiric stories and the lore behind the 92nd Hunger Games. Why. How.

---

Journal Entry, May 18th.

Tortured grey clouds in the sky promised that today would be dark. Mother and Father are fighting out in the kitchen. Although I know it's just my own beating from the intensity of their yelling, it feels like I can hear their hearts beating, their hearts breaking, over the argument they're sharing. Mother found sealed letters stashed away in Father's study, back-and-forths between him and another woman. "DEVOTION? ETERNITY? A SECRET LIFE?" These are Mother's words, read from the pages I'd imagine.

I knew that they were growing distant over the last few months, but I never could have predicted a fall like this. Dess is in the room now, yelling with them but mostly at Father. How could he, they say. How dare he, they say. What I would give in this moment to grow wings like a bat and fly away, tracking down a better destiny with echolocation.

---

Both parents sat Otto down the next day to let him know they were separating, at least for the time being. He sat there, on the same spot on the couch as always, acceptance in his eyes, expecting. His father would be leaving and moving into his cottage further into the district's outskirts while his mother and Dess would be staying here.

His mother asks him the obvious question. "That leaves you, Otto. Where do you want to go?"

"With Father, I'd say."

There's a brief pause as the women in the room didn't expect that to be the answer that came out of his mouth. So instantaneous, at that. Kirill, though, stands still, silent yet pleased.

"You can always come back here anytime, Otto."

"That's fine. I want to stay with him, though." Over a year of bonding over some fantasy creatures, his father became the easy choice in the event of a separation.

The move was quick: Otto's father already had furniture, clothes, electricity, and water at the cottage. It was Otto, actually, who did most of the back-and-forth transportation of their belongings. Specifically, stacks of books and notebooks that Kirill insisted on bringing along. His father was tired by the first two trips and stayed at the cottage instead, leaving just Otto to pull the wagon.

---

Moving to the cottage was the turning point in both of their lives. The first act as two men living on their own was for his father to rename the cottage Nightwing House, obviously inspired by the novels they'd been reading. But there was more. He allowed Otto to read the notes and further explained what they promised. Devotion as in devotion to a god or a craft. Eternity as in forever alive. Secret life as in no one can find out. All in all, the letters weren't confessions of love; they were instructions for Kirill on how to get his hands on the serums used in the 92nd Hunger Games to make people like him and Otto the vampires they'd seen on the screens and obsessed over in print.

But first, their following must grow.