This House We Live In {Open}
Dec 27, 2013 0:41:01 GMT -5
Post by Seize The Day on Dec 27, 2013 0:41:01 GMT -5
“Her name is Mae Louise Munsen. She is the girl who doesn’t believe in anything.”
Narration
Hearing
Thoughts
Dialogue
It seems that I ask myself the same question every day, and all I want to do is make the damn question go away. But I can’t. I want to remove it from my mind just like I removed my father’s love. It is the question that keeps me up at night. The question that lurks when I have my weekly alcohol binge. The question that will give me migraines in school to the point where I would rather sit in a pile of needles than let it speak to me over and over again.
Why the hell am I still trying?
I have fought for twelve years now. I steal to live, I fight to survive, and I drink to numb. That is all my life consists of. I feel as if I know the answer in the back of my head though, and I hate to admit it. Maybe it is the last piece of my father that I can hold on to. He told me that I was meant to survive. Not him, not my mother, not anyone else, but me. But that’s a stupid reason. I know that too, but maybe something in my conscious is telling me to move forward. To keep pushing to the point where you can push no more. Maybe survival is a part of me now, a natural instinct. And maybe, just maybe, it is something that I cannot control. I feel as if I cannot stop this now natural instinct, and no matter what I do to try and stop it, I feel as if I will keep on living. Because it was what I was meant to do. But that doesn’t matter now. What matters is getting through this dreadful home that the Capitol calls a Community Home, though I call it the The Home for Lost Souls because that’s what it is.
The Home For Lost Souls is a place where children under the age of eighteen are taken. They were taken here for one of two reasons: either they have parents who are dead and buried into the ground, or their parents are incapable of taking care of the children because they are crazy or they drink like they are crazy. Me? I am the first of the two. Parents dropped dead years ago, and the good news is that I hardly remember it. Less mourning and more focusing on surviving.
The place lives up to its name as well. The front looks like it will crumble any moment. The greyed, dead plants match the rest of the district. It looks as if you touch the plants with even the lightest touch, they will disintegrate into the wind. Reminds me of half of the people in District 12. The bricks that make up the skeleton of the building are off-line and the door in a worn oak color. It has the sign on top of the door that reads District 12 Community Home in dark gray lettering in front of the lighter grey sign. It has windows, as it is a four story building, but the glass on some of the windows seem to be cracking from years of wear and tear.
The inside is just a shitty as it is in the front. When you first walk into the door, you see a desk to your left, where a thirty-year-old woman by the name of Shiva works. That is where you are first taken, and where you have to sign in and out every time you go somewhere. If you look straight ahead when you walk into the door, you see a picture of the Capitol Seal towards the ceiling, and right below it, a television. On the television, which is playing all day and every day, plays the Capitol news and recaps of different games. I hardly watch it, considering that I never have time to watch television. To the right of the door is where the stairs are that leads up to the other three floors--the bunkers.
The second floor is where the smallest children are. It is also the nosiest floor and quite unpleasant to listen to, especially when it wakes you up in the middle of the night. It consists of newborn babies to the age of five years old. There are always ten or so workers on that floor, trying to keep up and not kill the children, though it is difficult because of the lack of food the home has. Sometimes I forget that the Home is just as poor as the rest of District 12, and it is unfortunate when someone dies in the home, though it never effects me.
The third floor is where children from ages 6-11 live. The pre-reaping children, as I like to call them. It has about twenty-five beds with forty children in the room, and it is unfortunate because it is a first come-first-serve basis. I learned that the hard way when I came here when I was 10. For that dreadful year, I laid on the floor the whole time, because all of the other children had been there longer than me. If I cared, I probably would have fought them for the bed, but I could've cared less. There are better things in life than sleeping in a comfy bed.
And the forth and final floor is where all the eligible reapers are. Ages 12-17, and on your eighteenth birthday, you have finally made it and escaped The Home For Lost Souls. Everyone seems to be counting down the days until their final day here, but I know better than that. I've seen past orphans who are homeless or even worse off than they were in the Home. The top floor has a bed for everyone, but it seems like there are the least of us on this floor. Why? I don't know. Maybe it is because the older you get in District 12, the less people you see. A lot of small children don't live to see adulthood and cannot survive the harsh winters, but those orphans lucky enough who do make it here are the best off than any other age group. Here, we have the most freedom. We have to be in bed by curfew, and as long as you don't get in trouble by the Peacekeepers or are gone past curfew, they could care less as to what you do. They have better things to worry about--like the small children and trying to figure out how to keep the Home from crumbling into pieces.
It is hot and stuffy in the summer, and cold and bare in the winter, but it is a roof over my head, so I deal with it.
~~~
"Wake up children! School is starting in two hours, and I expect all of you to be out of here in an hour and a half. There's snow so dress warm!" Shiva said. Sometimes I really hated that woman, but then I am reminded that she is just doing her job. Nothing more, nothing less. I wake up groggily, tasting the alcohol that I had drunk the night before. Why does alcohol taste so good six hours before, but six hours afterwards it tastes like the inside of a public bath? I think to myself.I shrug and get up, observing my surroundings.
The other children were waking up just as groggily as I was, even if they didn't go binge drinking last night as I did. They grabbed their clothes from under the bed and starting getting dressed right then and there. We had always done that, as we really didn't see the point in getting changed in private considering there was no room to do that except for the small bathroom we had in the corner, so we just got naked in front of each other and that was that.
I grabbed my folded clothes from under the bed and got changed into it. It was my white, well, white mixed with the dirt and mud that I have gotten in for as long as I have had this, and purple striped button-up shirt. I then put on my green pants and tucked my shirt in the pants. I then put on the brown belt that I possessed and tied it to the last hole it had, and even then it was still lose. My favorite item of all was what went over it all--my dark brown trench coat that was my fathers. It had kept me warm all of these years, and I wouldn't even sell it for my own house. I slipped on a pair of brown boots that had holes in it, and my last item I put on was my light brown hair in which I tied my hair up and put it on. I was ready for another dreadful day of school.
I had started to walk out of the home, as we were all trying to file out of the door at the same time, so we made a line. You were here somewhere. Maybe you were in line, or maybe you were already outside. Maybe you were a worker at the Community Home, or a lurking Peacekeeper outside. Maybe you were my classmate, but I didn't really know who you were. Yeah, I might have heard your name a couple times before or seen your face in the Seam, but I didn't know you. I didn't really care either, because I look after myself and nobody else.
"Let's hurry up now! We don't have all day here!" I yelled, waiting for my turn to get out the door. It seemed the line was at a stand still, and I sighed. It was like this every morning, and the group seemed like they couldn't get organized for their life. I finally walked out the door and into the snow, feeling the snowflakes fall upon the white ground and onto my trench coat. I knew today was going to be a long day, and I wasn't looking forward to it.
sorry if it is short and punctuation does not work to well hope the plot is going your way:)
