straight to hell, [ three suite ].

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Klaus Goravich

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Since Penelope had turned nineteen, over a decade ago now, Klaus had moved through reapings mechanically. He was freed, in a way, from the true weight of it all, with his own two children having navigated those dangerous years successfully and reached sanctuary on the other side. He approached the town square with his eyes half-closed and his lips pressed tightly together, an animatronic monkey performing his tricks, wound up by the strong hand of the Capitol and let go, smashing his symbols together in a perfectly rehearsed performance. He became a functioning part of the highly orchestrated process. They are reaped - nameless children, any one equally as innocent as another, and none of them his own. Then, they die. Klaus reads his script to the families, so practised it flows easily. They would never know it was the same speech every time, the same hollow apologies. He was powerless, so bound to the process that it was almost easy. They lived, and then they died, those children - strangers, names learned and forgotten and learned again, faces flashing from one to the next, year after year.

This year was different. Klaus attended the reaping with a heart weighed down by the people he is responsible for. To have children is a promise to care from them, to protect them from harm - to keep them safe. To walk them to the centre of District Three and line them up in their corresponding rows is to give them up. He let them down, the children, adoption papers signed just months before. He handed them over to fate just as he had with Daisy and Penelope. He prayed, pleaded, begged a God he hadn’t believed in since he was sixteen and stupid, for their names to remain unspoken. Klaus rescinded his charges and hoped that they would come back. The names were called: Felicity Carrow, then Charlotte Royce and the jolt of relief was far less painful than the shame that followed it. It was not the kind of man Klaus was to feel glad to watch these girls climb up onto the stage. And yet he tucked the children of his own household into bed with a sickening feeling of thanks, a twisting, churning pit-of-the-stomach repose that he hated and yet couldn’t resist indulging. He kissed the smallest boy on the forehead, and told them, “I will be home before you know it.” 

In the Capitol, his failings sought repentance. His tributes; not of his own flesh and blood, not his by rite or promise, but his nonetheless, deserved his attention. He attempted to bury his guilt in devotion. They impressed him, these two, the gaul of them. Both of them had a forthright certainty to them, a confidence and self-assuredness he was unsure how to handle. Eighteen years old and more self-assured than Klaus could ever imagine being. They knew more expletives, too. He was wary of them. He sought Atticus’ counsel, whispered to his fellow mentor on the train as though their company were conspiring to listen in. How can we help them? It was a question Klaus had been asking himself for thirty-five years. 

His thirty-sixth trip to the training centre, was, like last year, unsettling for Klaus in that his accommodation had once again changed. He was a creature of habit, and although the new training centre was very similar to the last one, there were subtle differences Klaus couldn’t help but notice. He followed a wrong corridor and ended up in a laundry room, hurriedly ushered back out by startled Avoxes. He sat on the rooftop staring at the mountain ranges in the distance, reminiscing the inner-city views, although he had always hated it anyway. He tossed and turned in bed at night, certain that they had chosen harder mattresses for this rendition of the accommodation. Anything to focus on other than the real problem: the problem of two evidently fierce tributes, the hope of District Three resting on their shoulders, their shoulders propped up by his and Atticus’ historically shaky hands.

Klaus felt unsure of how to handle Felicity; like a wild animal, she was unpredictable and seemingly dangerous. She swore fluently; it made Klaus cringe. He tried to swallow it so she wouldn’t notice. At her age, he had killed three people. He did his best to look her in the eye. She made a show of the whole thing; throwing up her middle finger and declaring the Capitolites that sought a closer view of her cocksuckers. Klaus couldn’t make it if it was a facade or if her core was truly as rotted as the exterior she displayed. Either way he thought it couldn’t hurt. Everyone enjoys a show, after all, and an aggressive front might be a useful image, regardless of its authenticity.

“When do we meet Shae and Orland?” she demanded of Klaus, and he blinked at her for a moment, still taking in the wreckage of the room. He had arrived to dinner to find items scattered everywhere; pillow stuffing and clothing strewn across the furniture, draws half-open with their contents spilled about the place. He could feel the permeating anxiety of their assigned avox, hurriedly attempting to put things right. Felicity didn’t appear to care; she sat, boots up on the chair, bottle in hand, ready for dinner. “There’s way too much fuckin’ satin in those drawers.” Klaus did his best not to allow his shock to betray him. He dismissed the avox with his most apologetic smile. It wasn’t the same avox as last year, or the year before. He wondered where they went. Then he looked at Felicity. The bottle she was swigging from was undoubtedly the one set aside, annually, for the mentors to share. He and Atticus usually split it on their first evening in the Capitol, after their tributes had gone to bed. It was a numbing agent, ordered specially. Klaus supposed he didn’t need it this year. He didn’t want to be numb anymore. 

“I don’t suppose one of you has a joint you’d give me, huh?”

Klaus pulled out a chair directly across from Felicity and sat down. In front of him was a typical first-dinner meal; rich, glistening potatoes, fluffy bread rolls, dark gravy, thick-cut slices of meat with a generous layer of fat beneath the skin. He served himself a large spoonful of a fragrant stew. “Is that what you lost? I thought you must have been looking for something.” His spare hand gestured broadly to the state of the room. “I’m afraid not, although it seems to me you have your evening figured out.” He shot a pointed look at the bottle. Then he turned to his other tribute. “Mashed potato, Harley?”