59th Reaping [D12]

—repeating the same process she did every evening when she was without work, the girl ambled over to the record player positioned atop her grandmother's bedside table. Scanning nonchalantly through the various records Tizwin had managed to collect over her vast amount of years, her fragile fingertips frisked one that seemed particularly dusty in comparison to the others. Her eyes trailed it for a few seconds longer as those frail appendages lingered above the antique disc. Finally, her hand reached down and pulled it to her. Her digits found fissures along it, proving her theory to be true: the record was far from usable, and utterly worthless more than likely. Traipsing back to the kitchen, she opened the garbage bin and was about to place the record into it when her grandmother's voice broke the virtual silence. "Don't even think about it, Charas. That was my very first record." The girl glanced back towards the bedroom, seeing her grandmother rise from under the covers and teeter towards Charas. A cough was let out by Tizwin, followed by a few hacks, and Charas rushed to her side. "Nan, you don't need to be out of bed. It's cold, and you're only in your nightgown. You need your rest, Nan." Charas began to usher her elderly grandmother back to her bed, but the lady wouldn't allow it. "No, dear. I feel as dandy as I ever will. In fact, I feel positively lively! As lively as a sloth, that's for sure." The lady clasped her brittle hands around the ancient record, retrieving it from Charas's grasp, and sluggishly carried it over to the record player. There she placed the disc, set the needle, and fell backwards into her squeaky bed.

After ten seconds of silence, Charas knew her grandmother was unaware of the condition of the record. She made her way over to the record player and stuck her hand toward the needle to pick it up, but Tizwin slapped it. "No, child. You don't hear the music?" Charas spared a glance at her grandmother; the teenager was far from deaf, but she could hear not even the slightest amount of noise coming from the machine other than the slight sound of scratching as the needle dragged its way around the disc. "No, Nan, I can't hear anything. Are you positive something's coming from it? I think we might need to get your hearing che—" "Shush, child! This is my favorite part. Na nuh na na.. da da dee doo.." Tizwin trailed off into humming the imaginary beat to herself. The tune she mused was quite melodious in all honesty, and Charas was sure that at one time the record had mimicked those exact notes; but now the record was silent, and the woman simply pretended to hear the beautiful sounds of her childhood. Charas sighed and sat down beside her grandma. She really did love the lady—she was the only family she had, and the only person she really understood—and yet there was so much about her she could never comprehend. Music wasn't something Charas was attached to all too much, but her grandmother had always been keen to the pitches and harmonies echoing throughout their raggedy shack they called home.

"Dance for me, Char. Dance your heart out." Her grandmother was always inclined to Charas's dancing abilities, which she in truth didn't believe she obtained, but she danced anyway to please Tizwin. Standing upon request, the girl spun around and waved her arms through the air to the beat of her grandmother's humming. For ten minutes or so, Charas continued to dance, not noticing when the humming had ceased and her grandmother had fallen backwards onto the bed and gone to sleep. Her arms fluidly maneuvered their way around her in circles and ovals and her legs performed arabesques and piqué-steps. She flew into pirouettes, bent in pliés, and relevéd endlessly, finally sliding her way into the kitchen where she bumped into the tiny refrigerator and was shook back into reality as china fell from atop the contraption and shattered into a thousand minuscule pieces. Aghast at the sound, Charas hopped backwards, landing directly on a shard of the glass.

Crumpling to the floor, the girl applied pressure around the afflicted area, both hands pressing forcefully into the sole of her foot. Grimacing, she released one hand and clasped it around the fragment, quickly yanking it out of her foot and letting out a pained whimper in the process. Charas threw her face into her shirt sleeve, attempted to muffle her cries so not to disturb her grandmother. Laying there in a balled up mess on the floor, the girl cried to herself for a few minutes until the pain began to fade slightly. Then she pulled herself over to the fridge, ripped it open by the handle, and yanked out a large bottle of gin. Popping the cork out, she drowned herself in the burning liquid in one large gulp. Sitting down the bottle, she wiped her mouth of the foam, and stared into her palms, bloodied from the glass shard. Tears began to stream down her face, and she buried herself in her hands. She was never going to help her grandmother. She kept telling herself that one of these days she was going to spike up the courage to murder her boss and steal all of his money, but she could never pull herself to end someone's life. Instead, her life would go on like this forever. She'd dance for her grandmother and drown herself to sleep; her life was basically a poor excuse for an existence and she acknowledged it as such. There was only one person outside of her home that cared for her and that was Lakota, and even then Charas didn't even think Lakota liked her all too much. After all, Charas had had sex with the girl's father several times.

Grabbing the gin again, she tipped the bottle up and poured the alcohol down her throat until it was empty. Hiccuping between intermittent sobs, the girl slowly lowered herself to the floor and fell asleep there with tears pooling around her face.

ooo

—when the sunlight hit her face, she stirred and sat straight up, smacking her head into the still open refrigerator door. Cursing to herself, she slammed the door shit, clutched a dried bloody hand to her goose egg rising atop her scalp, and stood up; however, she was painfully dizzy from her hungover state, and she stumbled sideways and stepped on another shard of china. Charas let out a bark of misery, ripped the glass from her foot, and hobbled into her bedroom. She glanced up at the calendar hanging on her wall to check if she had any scheduled appointments, when the single word written on that date screamed out to her: REAPING. The girl let out another slew of curses and made her way to her chest-of-drawers, where she fumbled through various outfits and finally pulled one out that looked fancy enough for the Reaping. Slipping out of her nightclothes, she pulled the skinny, short black dress up her body. Paying no attention to whether or not the dress was on straight—it wasn't like anyone was going to look at her clothes, anyway—she went straight over to her mirror, tied up her hair in a messy-looking bun, and wiped the blood and tear stains off her face. Placing a pair of high heeled black shoes on her feet, she began to exit the house when she saw her grandmother was still laying there asleep. Charas slowly crept into the lady's room, bent down and kissed her forehead, and turned to leave. Before she could get to the door, however, she noticed the wooden star necklace on her grandmother's bedside table beside the record player. Picking up the necklace, she remembered who it once belonged to: Charas's late mother. A solo tear made its way down her face as she slung the necklace over her head and exited the shack.

ooo

—when Charas finally arrived at the District Square, she was so late that the history of Panem and the Treaty of Treason had already been read out. She squeezed her way through the crowds and entered the roped off area for the eighteen-year-old females, and immediately after doing so the mayor announced the ladies would go first, as always. She stood there and waited for it to get over so she could go back home and bandage her cut feet, and not once did the thought that she could get reaped cross her mind. Charas had indeed purchased tessera every year since she was 12, but she highly doubted anything would come of that.

Until her name was read out, she had never even considered the possibility of being in the Games. Just the night before, in her drunken state, she had realized she couldn't even kill the one man who was the most horrible to her; how could she begin to harm people who hadn't done anything to her? It wasn't going to work. It wasn't. And so she stood there in utter shock for a few extra seconds, before taking a large breath of air and stepping forward. Upon arrival to the stage, she tried to speak out that she was in need of a volunteer, wanted desperately for someone to take her place, but no words would exit her throat. She stood there and breathed sharply in and out as tears began to well in her eyes. She didn't care if the Capitolites thought she was weak; she merely cared about her grandmother's safety. Without her, Tizwin was doomed.

It was settled, then. She'd have to win. And she'd have to return to save her grandmother. It was her only choice.



ooc: rushed at the end because I had to go and I didn't feel like postponing it any more. May edit it later. Also, she accepts.