COLT HANLON, DISTRICT THIRTEEN

“I WENT OUT BACK AND I GOT MY GUN”
I said you haven't met me, I am the only son

AGE . EIGHTEEN.
GENDER . 100% BOY.
DISTRICT . DISTRICT THREE WANDERER DISTRICT THIRTEEN.
OCCUPATION . STUDENT.
SEXUALITY . IS THERE REALLY ANY QUESTION.
TALKING . Red Herring
DOING . Tanner
DEEP THOUGHT . Green Grey
HEARING . Gunner
SINGING . Sassy


APPEARANCE .

“YOUR MELODY SOUNDS AS SWEET AS THE FIRST TIME IT WAS SUNG”
With a little bit more character for show

Honestly?

The last time I properly saw myself in, one of those pieces of glass that reflect things, was years and years ago. It when my family was still whole and nothing had happened yet to, that word for when something is taken forcibly. I don't really like to look in mirrors, It's just never been my thing to be interested enough. I stand now, across from a barber's chair, in District Thirteen's entrance examinations. It was a surprise at first, to see how much I had grown. I mean, I knew that I had gained some muscle in the last four years, but I didn't really know how much. I was pretty pleased with what I, that word for when your eyes look at something.

I had grown some, some being a key word there. I had never been a tall kid growing up, and I'm still not now. I watch as the woman who is 'slipping me into District Life' takes a measuring tape to me, running it up from my feet to the top of my head. I stand at the same height as one Napoleon Bonaparte, five feet and eight inches. Well, eight and a half inches, I have that over the poor little man. Next she has me step on one of those things that measures how much one weighs, and it comes up with the even number of one hundred and twenty-five pounds. It occurs to me that I, Colt Hanlon, have an impact on the Earth, and it brings a smile to my lips.

I manage to startle myself a bit when I glance into the mirror. I mean, my lips have always been large. My mother used to say that I'd grow into them, like a puppy with too big ears. Well, that had been a wrong assumption. They are big as always, with thick upper and lower lips, as if I'm like one of those girls in the book of pictures of half dressed ones that my brother had when I was younger. My lower lip manages to even jut out. Still, I can't help smiling at the first glance of myself that I have seen in, that word for when you haven't seen something for more than months. I can't help smiling at most things, really. I almost look like an animal, my smile is so wide, showing off all of my teeth.

There are traces of five o'clock shadow licking around my sharp jaw and above my lips, although I always considered myself far too young to grow.....one of those furry things that sit on your face like a dead animal. (Forgive me for my......problem with finding the right words, but I'll explain that later if you just sit tight.) But there it is, under a face with features too large to fit, but try anyway. My nose, I won't even bother, it's just really big, okay? Also situated sort of low on my face. My eyes, I'm excited to explain those. I have a theory on them, see? Like the rest of my features, they're big, and wide, and set under heavy brows. My mother used to call me her little chocolate boy because of their brown, milky colour. Well,I think I never have much problem with people trusting me, is because of them.

See, they might be big and wide, but they're also full of that childlike innocence I never really lost. (Mostly because I can't remember most things from.....well that happened a long time ago.) Right now they are hiding behind big black frames. I normally only wear these things that make one see if they're half blind when I read or work on music, but these are brand, spanking new, and I'm very excited about them. The lady with me gestures for me to sit down in a chair so she can give me a haircut. Right now it's all over the place because the last one I got was around District Eight by a passing girl who took pity on me trying to trim it myself. But that was possibly a good year ago. As the scissors begin to snip away, my (things that I see with) begin to travel down to my body again.

I have musician hands. All hard and callused from carious instruments, but long and thin like a secretary's. They've spent countless hours picking away at strings, or slipping pieces of a puzzle of a gun back together. They have a problem with listening however. There's also a long thin stripe of pink, angry skin across the palm of my right hand. It looks like it's trying to blend in with the rest of it, like I never try to do. I'm pretty sure I got the battle wound from trying to grab a hot piece of metal out of my dad's gun smithy oven when I was seven.

I look like I'm strong, that's the best way to describe it. I'm not so much muscular, but lean, with a hard stomach and enough muscle that it looks like I might be a dancer. (That's a laugh because I can barely move without falling over.) I always thought it might be nice to dance though. I glance up, and she's cutting off those hairs that kind of grow short on the side of your cheekbones, and I yelp out, "No, not too much off there please!" I think those bits make me look kind of mysterious. What are they called.....eh, whatever. My hair's suddenly a lot shorter, and it brings light to my odd appearance. I have a hella wide forehead. Like, really wide, and it makes my nose like it's situated too far down on my face.

Not that I don't like the cut. In fact, I think I might look better than I ever have. My sideburns (ahhh, there it is.) stick out past my ears, my big old Dumbo ears, in a point. The sides of my head, the hair is now short there, but on the top, it's all long and floppy. The Lady has combed it to the left, and my hair is so thick that it lays there easily. The woman must be good at personalizing a person's head in such a boring District. Once again, the corners of my mouth pull out into a large grin, as I hop off of the chair, and full flat onto my face. It's not because there was much to trip over, but once again, I'll give you more information on that later. I laugh loudly as she pulls me to my feet, used to constant falling by now.

She leads me down a hallway to a room full of folded grey uniforms, along with a pile of thifted clothes dropped off every now and then by wanderers to bring some colour to the District, I guess. I go straight to the pile, and sift through until I've found vests, bow ties, ties, cotton shirts, and dress pants. My style is sort of, that word for when something's a little odd, but still works. The woman then leaves me alone to get dressed, and I pull it all on, happy and satisfied. I've had a shower and a haircut, and am wearing relatively new clothes, It's a very nice feeling.

PERSONALITY .

“I THINK I'M READY TO LEAVE, I'M READY TO LIVE.”
I'm ready to go (get me out of my mind)

Well, I guess you're still waiting for that explanation.

Here we go then, I'm waiting for the woman to come back anyway, so I might as well.....tell you all about it and what it means. Dyspraxia. It's when you have trouble forming sentences, remembering them, and some other things that I forget. It doesn't stop at talking though. I also trip over nothing a lot, and have incredibly poor timing when it comes to moving. I might be in the middle of lifting up one foot and then lift the other foot as well, just for fun I guess. Sometimes I'll be in the middle of doing something, and then my body will forget what it's supposed to do next. Or, I even forget things that have happened. For example, I know that something bad happened in my past, but most times, I cannot really remember. Basically I'm broken.

The best part of it all, is that I was never, that word for when a doctor tells you what you have, until I got here, at the age of eighteen. I had one hell ride of a childhood. Aw well though, people may have called me stupid a lot, but I knew better. Sure, sometimes I just couldn't find that word, and I found myself suddenly on the ground a lot, but I still knew things. I was really good at doing the things that didn't require coordination, or a lot of talking, even though I am always blabbing on and on. I liked to paint a lot. Mostly because if my arm suddenly jerked away, it just added more colour to a dull spot. Or when the class would get too,(that word for when they are bouncing off of the walls) and teacher would send us all outside. I'd climb a tree, even though it wasn't safe.

Usually my hand would move sporadically and I would find myself down on the ground, and the air all out of me, as if I was a dirty carpet, and my mom was hitting all the dust off. After catching my breath, I'd climb the tree again, guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. I've always had a problem of chasing after things that would hurt me the most. One time, I took care of a small......thing, with four paws, a long tail, and a meow. She never stopped scratching me, and I never stopped trying to get her to love me. Probably because when I was little, it was really hard to find someone that would without hating me for what and who I am. I don't know if you, understand, know, uhhh....realize what that is like.

See, my parents ar-were fairly traditional. I was......odd.....by their standards. Okay, more than odd, here, take it in my father's words, "So you're one of them queers?" he'd say, looking at me over his worktable piled high with half assembled guns. he had just nodded then, and nodded a lot after that. I think it was the last time I probably told him anything important about myself. But yeah, it's true. I like Buttsex. I like to stick my tongue in other guy's mouths, and route around in there. I'm pretty comfortable with that as well. I've probably known since I was born, and could say it for, when a person is absolutely certain, when Amy Locke kissed me in grade four.

But I guess I've always been a pretty open person. I love to talk to people, even if I can't usually talk, or structure my sentences right. (I'm usually worse, it's just easier in my head.) I like to make people feel special as well, so a lot of the time when I talk to a person, I'll call them things like, Love, Hon, Darling, and other things as well. It's just brilliant how people get so happy when you let them know that you like them. (and I'm really good at cheering other people up.) On the subject of words, I also have this thing about never saying Thank-you in English. Although I forget a lot of.....oh jeeze, those things explained in a dictionary, I like to look the up in different languages. And I know a lot of different ways to say thank-you. Guess I'm just saving the English for moments that really deserve it.

If there are two things that my fingers can do without tripping all over themselves, it's put together a gun, and play a string instrument. I've been putting together guns for my parents since I was four, and the ones I practiced on were the family guns, Crescendo and Descant, passed on through generations of Hanlons. The Crescendo comes first, and then the Descant replies. Anyway, my hands know every inch of guns, and I've been building, designing, putting them together, and taking them apart since I learned how to crawl. Even though they are weapons of death, I can't help loving them, and enjoying the way my hand, ugh, you know when you shoot a gun and your body moves from the shock? Well that. Because when that happens, my body is doing it because of a gun, not because it feels like it.

Another thing that I can do well is play a string instrument. Just running my fingers along a ukulele's strings, or even a harp's makes me happy. And when I say any string instrument, I mean it. It's probably the only thing that I am really gifted at. And there's just something about having a guitar in my lap that makes me calm down, and stops the jitters that sometimes come and go with this disease, this lady, named Dyspraxia. I guess sometimes my body can't even handle itself. I can run my fingers along a piano, and play it a bit, but my real talent lies in dancing across strings, plucking away, or gliding over them with a bow. Otherwise I'm pants at anything else that i have to use my hands for. Holding pencils, opening doors, cooking, even, well, ~*taking care of business in the pants region*~

I also have a thing for old books. Two authors in particular, do I love. Hemingway, he's brilliant, simply brilliant. All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time. that is something he said, and almost everything he writes I relate to. I love to read, because even though I might forget a word a moment later, for one moment there, it was ingrained into my vision, and then I can always go back and reread it. Sometimes I think I should just make a list of words and keep them in my pocket. I only have one of Hemingway's books on me now, I lost some to unfortunate....moments where things happened accidentally. 'The Old Man and The Sea'

My other love is the poet e. e. cummings. In fact, I love most poetry, and will read any I can get my hand on, even often quoting it. But e. e is particularly brilliant to me. If I ever fall in love, they will spend warm nights with me whispering lines of poetry into their ear. As long as I can remember it, of course. I never go looking for love, really. I figure it will come to me one day, or I'll just happen upon it one day. Maybe in my long wanderings, I've been heading toward one spot, with one person, just waiting for me at the end. I do believe in soul mates, maybe mine lives here, in this gray place. What does thrive here, what can, without sunlight? Hopefully something beautiful, or I'll just have to be the sun for them.

I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. More words from Hemingway, and truth lies in them. Me, I try to stick to what feels right. I am the type to try and keep everyone happy, and if I don't I hate the feeling of someone, of me seeing them sad. it's punishment enough. I just want the world to be happy again. I know that's a rather childish statement. It doesn't matter though, because you'll find that I don't really care about what you think. I'm simply waiting for that one person, that person to finish my sentences for me, to catch me. And most importantly to.........oh shit, what is the word?

HISTORY .

“JUST A BASKET FULL OF MEMORIES”
And I am losing more each day it seems

Who am I? Where I'm from?

Easier said then done. As I said before, I don't really remember things very well. Things that I do remember, I prefer to not remember. Besides, the past never flatters anyone, especially not me. Not that I've ever done anything wrong. More like, I've always been a good boy. It's been what has happened to me that's been the bad stuff. Most things were pretty normal. I was born.....two or three years after my brother, Gage. He was normal, perfectly normal, at least that's what everyone thought. My family was big. I had a grandma, grandpa, and many cousins. Enough to turn my house into a living, breathing thing full of people that came and went. It was almost as if I had three or four different houses that I lived in, I was hardly ever alone.

Kids, adults, my grandfather were always running around the Hanlon gun shop, complaining, working, yelling, everything that might be done. Mostly I just sat with my grandmother by the window, in her lap. She'd read to me. This was when I was at least three or four, and I had barely learned to walk yet. They all just thought I was slow. But it meant that I could watch the world move around me without fear of getting trampled on. Not to mention the fact that I was already pretty small for my age. Kind of like the runt of the litter. My brother used to pull me around in a little red wagon when the kids were all moving so fast, just so I would never get left behind. Although my brother was always a quiet guy, I just sort of always, that word for when you are aware of something, loved me.

This became more noticeable as I grew older. He'd always be the one to make sure that I got to places, or got fed properly. When I couldn't remember the words, he gave them to me. He taught me how to put together things in the shop, to be of use, and it made me so content, euphoric, sunshine, smiling You know when you read stories about the perfect, baseball, apple pie older brother? That was Gage. Always there, always smiling, my older brother, I loved him. I think he was the first person I really learned how to love as a family member. The rest of them soon tumbled quickly into my, organ that pumps blood around the body and beats, rather quickly. I never stopped being able to love anything that I came across afterwards either.

I had a relatively happy childhood, except for school, and not being able to do it. I'd get too distracted by things outside of the window, or I would get frustrated when not being able to remember a word. Sometimes they'd hit my palm with a piece of bamboo for misbehaving. One time that happened I had left the classroom and gone outside, tripping a lot along the way, because I had seen a butterfly out the window. It had been lovely, with pinkish wings, and strange antennae. I just wanted to see it. It wasn't my fault that teacher was in the middle of a lesson, or she had yelled after me. It's not like I had asked her to. I had to stay in at lunches for a week. I decided that I hated school.

This is the part that gets sketchy in my head. It's the part that I don't like to remember. The part where I tried to blur it out, where it hurts most to remember it. Mostly because it involves my brother, and blood, a lot of it. Do I have to? Do you really have to know? I hate to remember it, eleven year old me, sitting outside under a tree, reading Rudyard Kipling, when suddenly I hear a noise. BANG. At first I thought that it was father testing out one of his guns out back. But then it came again. BANG. And again. BANG. Over and over again. BANG. BANG. BANG. And there was a scream. So much screaming coming from the gunshop on the outskirts of District Thirteen. It had been standing there since the Districts began, and buildings had gone up around it, like flowers.

I put my book down on the cool grass, under the old willow tree, and I stood. I took off at a run, heading for the noise, fell over, got back up, kept running. But when I reached the door of the shop, I was afraid to open it, I didn't want to. My hand lay on the knob, and there was another shot, a scream cut short, and I swung the door open. Bullet holes wounded the shop, all over, glass broken. And there was blood, as if the shop could.....have fluids come out of it. So much blood. So many bodies. They must have all been in here, I count the bodies. One, two, three, double-two...... And he stood in the middle of it all, the one person who loved me more than I loved him, possibly. Looking at me with the blankest expression I have ever seen, Crescendo and Descant smiling in his hands. Gage.

After that, things get hazy. I don't even know what happened to Gage. If he ran, or he got.....that thing where a person's tongue gets cut out. I ended up in an orphanage. It was even worse than school, and there was nowhere to get away to. I got the strap often, for my stupidity, and my sullen remarks. See, at that point, it was still fresh, and no matter how hard I tried to push it away, it came crawling back, that memory, like a cold dead......thing that lives in the ocean. Everyone knows it's there because it smells so bad, but no one knows what to do with it. I was pretty much the dead fish of the orphanage. I was so withdrawn that no one wanted to deal with me. So I gave myself a new memory. I pretended that I had lived in the orphanage since birth so I wouldn't have to face what my brother had done.

When I was fourteen, I hightailed it out of the orphanage, finally fed up with life there. The first thing I did was break into the closed up shop, all dusty after three years. It was mine now, see, I just had to be old enough to claim it. I opened the floorboard that the guns were under, and took Crescendo and Descant from their home. I didn't know why I wanted them. I knew I wasn't a killer. But I took the bullets anyway, and a huge family photo that we all took at cousin Marlin's wedding. Shes dead now. And the baby that was growing inside of her. I left District Three after that, I couldn't stand to be there anymore.

I can't remember much after that. I know there was a period in there where I almost starved to death. Another period where I walked the woods, waving the guns about, looking for my brother. Long nights spent in, sorrow, despair, longing, hatred, confusion, love, so much love. There was a point when I was sixteen that I met a girl with almost white hair and a green cloak. I stayed with her for a while, and she fed me, taught me about thanking the trees, and the dead animals. Things were simple with her because it was if she was there to heal me. She somehow knew that I wasn't into secret gardens, because she never invited me to her's. But she did share her meat with me, and taught me how to forage for plants and berries. Then, one day she left me after a few months, saying she had someone to find.

I decided that I wanted to find someone as well. I didn't like the feeling of being alone in the woods anymore. So I wandered until I came to be here, District Thirteen. Where you took away my guns, slapped some bar code thing onto me, and gave me some grey clothes. Seems like a fun place.

ANYTHING ELSE ?



OUT OF CHARACTER .

FACE CLAIM .

BRENDON URIE • COLT HANLON

OTHER CHARACTERS ?

Oh, that's right, I have this.

I, ELEGANT .
am seventeen. I am very into acting, and singing, and I love to read and write. I am also a female, and a Canadian! Just in case you're interested, 'Elegant' comes from the name of my blog title. In no way am I elegant. hur hur hur. Meow.

CODEWORD . odair