Lyle Wakefield [D5] [fin of a fish]

lyle

break me in, teach us to cheat
and to lie, cover up what shouldn't be shared?
all the truth unwinding, scraping away at my mind
please stop asking me to describe him

Chaos for the sake of chaos, and nothing more. It's that simple. I don't break the rules, I bend them. There's a big difference, let me explain. People who break the rules are stupid. Breaking a rule means doing something that the people in charge have strictly told you not to. You are going against the system by doing the opposite of what they want. Idiots break rules, because that gets you noticed. Bending rules on the other hand is an art form. It's much more than shattering the boundaries of what is socially acceptable. It is using the rules and the system against itself to your advantage. It is flexible to an extent that you can pull the rules back into loopholes that you can then exploit. I'm no idiot. I have lived in this system long enough to know how to use it to my own benefit.

My name is Lyle, I'm seventeen years old and I was born here in District Five. My father is a power plant worker, mainly tasked with maintenance. My mother was too, until about four years ago when she had to retire due to health issues. These days she's bedridden with an unexplainable sickness. My old man said it was because of all the radiation she was exposed to when she was there, but I was adamant that the standards of employee safety were of paramount importance to the officials of Panem's largest nuclear power station. He was mad with paranoia, desperately looking for proof that didn't exist, so he can claim compensation. We were poor. I was losing my Mother, Dad was losing his Wife. That's where it started. The blackmail.

It started small. In school I learned secrets from other people - Pretty bog-standard rumors like who was cheating on their tests, or who had stolen money from the canteen, or who had kissed who behind the literacy block. Innocent rumors in the eyes of any adult, but to other kids these secrets were valuable. They were things that they didn't want other kids to know. So I discovered the value of leverage. The more secrets I learned, the more people would be under my control, desperately trying to stay on my good side so that their secrets remained secrets. The power was overwhelming for my twelve year old self. I had never known anything like it. It was addictive.

Pretty soon it became boring. All the kids were running around trying to please me, and in the end it got irritating. I wanted to be bigger than king of the playground. I wanted to have more of an impact on the world. So I opened my mind to the Achilles heels of everyone I knew. I learned everything I could about everyone I knew, so that I had something I could use against anyone who tried to cross me, or if I ever needed a favor for nothing. I manipulated drunks into getting me alcohol, because I'd turn them over to the Peacekeepers for illegal drug possession if they didn't. I made my teacher pass me in every class, because I knew a kid who could bully the shit out of her eight-year-old son if she didn't. I convinced an industrial worker to get me files on the infrastructure of D5's largest power plant, because if he didn't, he would find all his belongings being reposessed due to an unfortunate misplacing of papers at the tax office. Leverage, pure and simple.

Got lots of girls to entertain me. That was always easy. The pretty girls in my school all had weaknesses that were easy to exploit. Some needed convincing with a little bit of leverage, but others were attracted to the power I had. Was it attraction, or fear? They didn't see my lightly freckled skin, or my baby blue eyes, no, they saw the devil, and they wanted to stay on his good side the only way they knew - With their bodies. They looked past my thin frame and defined upper body, past the chestnut hair and cheeky grin. They only saw me for a monster. Because that's what I am - a firebreathing dragon with the fire in my belly to burn Panem to the ground.

It got to the point where I became bored. I made people do things they didn't want to do. I took their free-will away from them, made them into my own playthings. Some cried, some called my bluff, but in the end I was always the one who was satisfied. I was the winner. I always am. Chaos for the sake of chaos. Nothing more than that. I make them dance because I can. What's the point in having power if you never use it?