Ann Esthesia (District 6) - DONE

Ann isn’t what you would call pretty or even beautiful. Actually, she is far from being any of this. With only 5 ft 3’, Ann is fairly short compared to other people her age. She weighed exactly 45,37kg this morning. It might have changed by now, but not by very much. Maybe 100g more or less. She would stand on a scale in a few hours again anyways. Why she knows her weight this exact? Well, she has to stand on a scale every morning and every evening and a few times in between at the medical research facility she lives in. The so called doctors need to know her exact weight to evaluate and interpret their experiments and drug tests. Her ribs and collarbones are showing underneath her fair and almost translucent skin. It isn’t that she doesn’t get enough food but with all the drugs, mostly anesthetics they administer, she mostly just can’t keep her food down.
Ann has spidery fingers connected to thin, boney hands and thin arms that don’t seem to have any muscles. Same goes for Ann’s legs. They just seem to be skin wrapped around some bones. And they are covered with bruises. Ann is so tired most of the time that she doesn’t pay much attention to the things surrounding her and bumps into things a lot.

Same as her body, Ann’s face is skinny. Her cheekbones show and she has hollow eyes. Dark purple, almost black circles show underneath her eyes. When she was a small girl, her eyes used to be a dark, but almost glowing brown, eager to see all the beautiful things this world had to offer. The sparkle in her eyes has long gone. Now her eyes are just hollow, most of the time staring into the distance, not focusing on anything.

Ann has dark brown, almost black hair that is cut to the length of her chin. She usually wears it down, not paying attention to how it looks. Must of the time it’s greasy because she doesn’t bother to wash it or simply forgets about it.

If you met Ann on the streets you would probably notice her empty stare and the sad look on her face. She usually looks at nothing particular and doesn’t seem to take interest in anything surrounding her. It seems as if she is living in her own, totally different world, which has nothing to so with the things surrounding her.
She hasn’t always been like that. Growing up, Ann had been a curious and fun loving girl. She used to be sweet and open-minded, loving live and enjoying everything she does but all of these traits seem to have vanished over the years of living in the medical research facility.

Now, Ann seems absentminded most of the time. Her eyes stare in some undefined direction, not looking at anything specific. Dark circles underneath her eyes show, that she is tired and doesn’t get enough sleep. Being tired all of the time makes her clumsy. She accidently drops things, like her knife or fork in the dining hall or her pen during classes. Ann also bumps into things a lot because she just doesn’t pay attention to the things around her. She has lots and lots of bruises in various shades of blue and purple on her body, mostly on her shins and thighs from knocking against things.
As she walks through her room or the long and cold hallways, she doesn’t really seem to notice where she is. She walks slowly and acts as if she is in a trance, doing things mechanically and without any second thoughts. Most of the time, she is just on her own. She doesn’t socialize. In fact, she is scared of most other people. Only very, very few people gain her trust. With them, she can be almost normal and only these very few and special people ever see her smile.

Ann used to be smart. She used to be top of the class, loving to learn new things. She used to be curious about things she didn’t know and didn’t give up until she understood the things she wanted to learn about. Over the years and years of experiments she had to endure, she became slow and easily distracted. Ann doesn’t seem to be able to follow classes anymore and looses her train of thought quickly. Sometimes, this happens right in the middle of a conversation. She just forgets what she wanted to say and stops talking in the middle of a sentence.

Every once in a while, the old Ann shows through. Like this one time, when they were brought to the District Square for the Reaping. A butterfly flew towards Ann and landed on her outstretched hand. It was then, that Ann’s eyes started to glow again, her old curiosity shining through again. A content smile appeared on her face as she watched the little insect spread its wings to let the sun shine on it. The girl watched as the butterfly started to flap its wings again until it lifted off and flew away towards freedom. Ann’s glowing eyes followed the small insect until it was out of sight. She sighed as the absent and tired look returned to her eyes.

Ann never knew her parents. She was given up for adoption right after she was born. Maybe her parents just couldn’t afford another kid or maybe her mother was still a young and single girl who couldn’t care for a baby all on her own. Whatever the reasons were, Ann never found out, even though she thought about all the different kind of scenarios over and over and over again. The only thing she found out was, that she was brought to an orphanage where her mother apparently hoped she would be cared for. But the orphanage in District Six didn’t have enough money for all the kids already living there, so they couldn’t have cared for baby Ann even if they wanted to. They sold her to a medical research facility after a few days. Of course, selling people is strictly forbidden in the perfect State of Panem. But in a dark night on a deserted street in the middle of District Nine, Justices eyes are blind to the things happening there.

Ann had a really nice life growing up in the medical research center. She had enough food and was never hungry. She was able to go to school and proved to be a smart girl, learning fast and having fun. She was open-minded and eager to learn new things. Everything was just perfect until she turned seven and they started the first drug tests on her. They used anesthetics on her, first only once a month, observing her body react to different doses of the sleeping drug. As the years went by, the tests were done more and more frequently. The so called doctors changed their protocol, now not only wanting to know her body’s short term reactions to the drugs but now also studying the long term effects the anesthetics have on her body.

In the beginning, she only noticed that she lost weight. She didn’t seem to have appetite anymore and the little she ate she threw back up after she woke up. It took a few years until she noticed, that her grades in school dropped from excellent to good to bad to terrible. She didn’t have the ability to concentrate anymore and found that it was hard to learn new things and hard to remember the things she learned. And after a few years more, she started to fall asleep during classes. Only a few times at first, then more often and now almost no lesson passes without her dozing off.

Shortly after her twelfth birthday, something strange happened. She was taken out of the facility for the first time in years and was brought to a big place with lots of other people. Of course she was scared of this many people but it was something different. Something like a breakout from the normal and daily routine in the research facility. She didn’t quite understand what was going on. Of course they told them about the Games during classes, but since Ann sleeps through most of them, she didn’t remember that this was the day that two kids were doomed to die in an arena. For her it was just a day where she didn’t have to go to classes and a day when they wouldn’t jab a needle in her arm and put her to sleep. For her, this was a good day.

As the years went by and more and more reapings passed, Ann began to look forward to this day. She really enjoyed getting out of the research facility and get a look at different people and the city. It was something special to her. And ever since the reaping when she was fourteen, she had another reason, why she looked forward to this day. At that particular reaping, she saw a woman that seemed strangely familiar. It was almost as if she was looking into a mirror. She only caught a short glimpse of the woman but when their eyes met, Ann was sure that this was her mother she had seen. The woman vanished before Ann could get a second look at her, but ever since that day, she looked forward to reaping day, hoping she would see the woman again.

For the hospital breakout plot.