Colt Hansen {District Three} //WIP

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I can’t remember her at all. As much as I may strain myself, hunting hungrily, into the unforgiving, cold, dark hours of the night, when I’m alone with the only audible sound being the shuddering beats of my heart against the cage of bones that confines it so--- I can’t find her. She left me completely when she left this world. Everybody leaves you in the end. I feel as if I could remember one memory of my mother, a single laugh or smirk, it would ultimately be my compass; my universal answer to the purpose of my life. There must be a reason behind people born like me, the unlovable ones. The grotesque ones. The ones who bring nothing upon others other than shame and despair. And yet, I can’t remember a smile, or a song, or even the smallest of caresses. She could barely bear to touch you. Because, behind all the futile searching and hoping for the slightest of signs of my mother’s love to fall into my lap, I know the truth. The truth makes your heart strong.

I’ve been raised on nothing but the truth. You killed your mother, Colt.

I was only told the story once. Or rather, the eulogy. The tragedy.

Just once. A few years back, when I was twelve. It wasn’t the standard storytelling in the slightest. I doubt Grandmother would have ever let me known about my mother until that day. That day I walked in on an Avox girl sweeping the shattered remains of a vase under a rug with terrified, unstable hands. That day I took the blame for breaking the vase when my Grandmother lashed out at the girl with a leather belt. For the longest after that day, I tried convincing myself they were just venomous words spit out in the heat of anger. But I knew. I knew it was the truth. I knew my grandmother wasn’t one to tell lies. I knew it must’ve been true that my father and mother were both young and childish and raw above the Reaping age when they met. That they both had sparkling bright and lavish futures set ahead for their long lives to live in comfort in District Three. That they were blindly swept up in romance and love[/color] and walked on clouds above all others. That they were shocked to find my mother pregnant. That my mother cried for weeks when my father tried buying her silence so she and I couldn’t ruin his future.[/color] That she ran back to live with Grandmother. That she sat around for days and nights, resistant and unresponsive to the outside world and my grandmother’s begging for her to come back. That she had me, then left me,[/color] outside Grandmother’s bedroom door. Everybody leaves you in the end. That she went out at night and threw herself off a bridge. I knew it. I knew it.[/color] But no child wants to believe that. The way the tale built itself before me as my grandmother retched it out of her deepest depths, carving up the sides of her throat so it came about acidic and sharp. So the pain it would inflict would wound to its full potential. You killed your mother, Colt. And it did.

So Grandmother tried to right her wrongs, do what she could for me that she did so wrong with her daughter, my mother. She raised me on the truth. The truth makes your heart strong. From the early, distant, hazy days so long ago my memory could hardly grasp any event before so, I can remember her words. She could barely bear to touch you. My grandmother, describing an imaginary mother to me that was as real as a fairy or a witch from a child’s bedtime story. Long before the unfaithful day the Avox girl shattered the vase and, with it, my fictitious idea of the one person who loved me, Grandmother had been slowly transfiguring Colt Hansen into a monstrous fiend from a child’s worst nightmare. She filled what little time I cared to spend with her breaking me. Spitefully filling my mind with the ideas of myself being this grotesque creature, too unsightly for words, too unworthy for anyone’s love. And in my younger years I cried. I cried as she told me wretched beings like myself were destined to live and die alone. I cried and begged for her to stop, pleaded on my knees. She went on to paint me a picture, exclusively showcased in my mind for my eyes only, forever. The picture was of a boy named Colt, atrociously disfigured and hideous to the point of being almost inhuman. And as I cried I grasped for Grandmother to comfort me, only to be shaken off and shoved aside. The truth makes your heart strong. Crying weakens your immune system. Home to school. School to home. Reaping. Anytime I’m away from the great walls keeping the outside unblemished from myself, I don a surgical mask, not too peculiar with the radical pollution in District Three, to hide my face. The face of a boy who’s so disgustingly repulsive no one could ever love.[/color] The face of a boy who let truth strengthen his heart to the point of letting it beat for no one. The face of a boy who killed his mother,[/color] the only person in the world who could’ve truly loved him, by simply being born.[/color] [/justify][/justify][/font][/blockquote][/color]

//pink} Colt’s grandmother’s words
//scarlet} Colt’s emphasis
-lyrics are “Monster” by Meg & Dia-
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