FEE CAGE, DISTRICT 2

'Your mother fornicated with a dog and you are the result of their fraternization. You have the facial features of a monkey. You are the most uneducated person I have ever met. There are three year old children who have a higher intellect than you. You are honestly pitiable in your lack of knowledge. There are flees on the dog's back that have a larger brain than you, there are dust specks too small to see that are more intelligent than you. You put our entire family to shame with your ridiculous antics and you have the breath of a man with a bad liver. I wish to acquaint your facial features with a fundamental item used in building walls. Repeatedly.'

My fingers have moved too fast again, I've lost him. I regard him for a moment, a flat expression on my face as he sputters words out, knowing that I have somehow insulted him, unable to understand how. It is certainly true that sometimes the language I speak does not have the exact words I am looking for, but I can still get the meaning across pretty well. Too often I speak too fast and those that I am speaking to get lost. It is only annoying when I am not speaking to Tryst. Tryst is good fun to confuse despite how easy it is.

I wait for a few moments as he struggles internally to catch up. He never will, my insult was far too fast and far too accurate. To watch the exasperation building up inside of him is hilarious, a good break from my studies and training for me. I don't mind the fact that these little moments waste my time, anything for brotherly bonding. Of course it's rather against my learnings to respond to his teasing and annoying habits. I've never been excellent at my adopted parent's life plan for me. The only reason they don't seem to notice me struggling with it is because my trouble with speaking and their basic level of signing.

With an exhale of air, I turn my back on my brother and go off to the living room to take a nap behind the couch and lie low for a couple of hours.

Silence is a friend of mine.

The asshole friend who you never actually want around but can't seem to take the hint to leave, even when you're physically rolling her off of your couch and out the door. She's always back for round two, a smile on her face and not a harsh word in her body for the rudeness you've just displayed. I have tossed her out of my house, screamed at her, told her that we're over and she just can't seem to take the hint, maybe because she can't hear me in the first place. She always comes back for me, as if it's her job to haunt me.

Silence, to be brutally honest, is more like my nemesis.

There was no terrible accident that made me this way; I was born without a voice. I don't know why, neither does the Doctor really. The orphanage gave my parents a reason apparently, something to do with my vocal chords being folded or whatever. Somehow they don't work with words. I suppose I should feel cheated about it, everyone else got to have a voice, why not me? Who the hell pulled me out of the speech line?

Maybe it was because too much time was spent on my other senses, there was no time for speech. For example, my hearing is particularly good. As I spread my lanky frame out here behind the couch I can hear the old clack ticking in the kitchen, four rooms over and the sounds of my mother and father speaking in hushed voices on the floor above me. I can't make out their words but I don't have to to know what it'll be all about. All they care about is whether we will grow into the perfect slave, ready to serve our masters without a thought and all that.

That isn't me, not at all.

I wasn't made to serve and just because I was born without a voice it doesn't mean I'm meant for it. I'm rather fond of my tongue. It's excellent for sticking out at people. I like how food tastes, how I can know what things are just by how they taste, I don't want to lose that. Besides, it'll also make it rather harder with the ladies. I can't see them enjoying me having no tongue. With the men as well I suppose. I'm not certain what I'm into yet. I'm sure I don't have to reach that decision yet as I've yet to be in love, just lust. That's all I am somethings, just lustful.

Not just for the intimate touch of a friends but for other things too. I lust for life. The idea of it is very tantalizing you see. In this house, we do not really live. It's too dangerous for us, who are meant to stay delicate, good, safe. Muscle is bad, opinions are bad, knowledge is bad. The only things we are meant to know is how to cook and clean, how to garden, how to take a hit without too much pain, how to be the dog that whimpers at his master's look, how to be a slave.

I don't want to live that way.

I raise slender fingers above my head, making words up in the air above me. Sometimes I do this in my spare time to teach to Sampson later, my elder sister and main partner in crime. She's next up for the chopping black but neither of us want to end up in the Capitol, unlike my sickeningly sweet younger brother, Tryst. Honestly I don't know what his deal is. He acts like he's excited to get his tongue out. I suppose he can't understand what it's like to not have a voice though. I'm certain he was born without empathy or a brain. Sampson gets it though, I am sure that she does. She's smart too.

'idiot,' I sign up into the air above me. It's the sign I use for Tryst's name. I don't think he knows that it means idiot. Maybe he will one day when I start using it for mom and dad.

My fingers weave through the air, constructing a sentence of some type. I don't know what it means yet, the signs I'm making now. Sometimes my hands just need to make the sounds that my mouth can't make. When they do this it's like I'm babbling. I know that some of my siblings see me doing it sometimes. they ask me what I'm saying, they don't know that signs. I always sign back, 'nevermind'. I don't know what I'm saying then either.

'fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck. fuck.'

I sign it into the air over and over, fingers moving as fast as Sampson's lips do when she's excited.

My arms flop back down, one falling over two golden brown eyes, my hand landing with a thud on the old wooden flooring, fingers curling inwards.

My eyes are shaped like Dad's so when I was younger I never knew that I was adopted. Tryst has mom's eyes so I just assumed that one of us had gotten dad's genes and the other mom's. It wasn't till I was around ten years old that I heard mom in the kitchen with Tryst after yet another one of his tantrums. It was hard to hear from her that way that I was adopted. My back had been pressed against the wood paneling of the hall and the lights had been off in every room but the kitchen, the rest of the family out with dad for a walk. My fingernails had curled into the wood and because it was still slightly rotten then, bits of wood had gotten stuck underneath my fingernails and it had hurt.

Not as much though.

I guess I got angry after that. I wasn't even their kid and they were forcing their ideals on me. The only reason they'd ever wanted me was because I couldn't speak. If I had a tongue I would have been passed over by them. So I don't really look like either. My chin is too sharp, my grin too crooked, my nose to small. My ears are even different. It's obvious now that I'm more grown that I look nothing like either of them. I stick out like a sore thumb.

Yanika told me once that I look like a fox. She was very serious about it I think because her eyebrows were knit together and she looked to be concentrating on my facial features rather hard. I am not certain if this is a good thing or a bad thing. On one hands, foxes are known for being sly and sleek creatures, untrustworthy in a lot of fairy tales. Sampson said that she probably said that just because of how big my mouth is in comparison to my face. I always smile crooked, no matter how hard I try. Maybe that makes me fox-like too. In the end Yanika is very sweet but a bit slow. I love her for it, she doesn't expect much in the way of conversation and is happy just to go for walks, hand in hand with Elliot.

My hands and feet are too big for my body and mom says that this is because I am a teenager and I will grow into them. I think she is right. I am growing very fast. I'm one hundred and seventy-eight centimetres and still growing tall. It may be a bit childish but it's sort of my goal to always be taller than Tryst. He doesn't like it when I have anything over him so looking down at him is a small pleasure. My limbs are long too but not so lanky anymore, not after I began training.

It's a secret.

That's fine, I'm excellent at secrets. It's difficult to tell a secret when you have no voice. It's easier to silence the hands than it is the lips. Sampson is usually the person I store my secrets in. I know that she'd never tell anyone anything that I wouldn't want said and she can trust me for the same thing. She's my best friend. I'm not sure if she knows it but she is. It's because of the way she smiles that I know that I can trust her not to tell our parents the way that I feel about our way of life.

I'm nervous to tell her what I've taken up in the past year or so however, just because it's so big that if I get caught at it my parents might just freak out and decide to get me Avoxed early. That would not be good, it wouldn't help my plans at all. I don't intend to be Avoxed, see. Not ever. I won't be my parent's puppet.

I've been training.

The enormity of that sits on my chest and makes the dust motes above my head dance in sudden excitement as I let out a long breath of air.

We live in District Two, it makes sense that I would train. We're a career district and it's regular to see teenagers at the training center at all hours of the day. I started going last year, after a particularly bad row with my mother about the soup that I was cooking on the stove. I was looking at the soup too seriously. Somehow split-pea soup turned into a metaphor for my future and my mother was still thinking it was soup. I ended up dumping the soup into the snow and running off from home that night.

I didn't stop running for a long time, I was so angry. When I did, it was outside of a training center. I was still angry so I went in and I threw knives at the wall into the anger subsided. It took a couple of hours but I worked it out of me. I guess after that I was hooked barbecue every night after everyone else goes to bed I go to the training center and I do the things that Careers do. I lift weights and punch bags, I kick things and have even acquired a master to teach me hand-to-hand combat. So I guess I'm getting serious.

She makes me meditate. It's not the classic style that you read about in books, where you have to turn yourself into a pretzel and hold your hands on your knees like a doofus. My body can be in any position I like. I just have to clear my mind, which is a lot easier than it sounds. It seemed impossible at first to just not think. Every time I thought I had it cleared I'd think about something stupid. Apparently every second thought a teenage boy has is about sex. I became acutely aware of that.

I got better at it though. Now when I'm meditating even Tryst can't bother me. It's like I just go away somehow. So I've gotten a better grip on my anger too. Things don't annoy me as much as they used to, I don't get mad all the time now that I've got a way to work out pent up emotions.

I can't help rebelling in small ways . It's odd what you can find in the Districts but seeing as we live in what's really a big cage I guess it is isn't. You can find a lot at the black market here, anything from furniture from Seven that was hijacked off a train meant for the Capitol to beauty products concocted in Six. Sampson and I go together often. There's the constant fear of a Peacekeeper raid but I think the Peacekeepers are too fond of the place to ever actually shut it down. There's a 'Don't ask; Don't tell' rule at the market when it comes to just how the products were acquired.

I've gotten a few key items from the place over the years, the latest items being a few bottles of hair bleach. I never knew just how good it would feel to show up to breakfast the morning after Sampson and I locked ourselves in the bathroom so she could help me. The looks of abject horror on our parent's faces were well worth the effort and the itching it had taken to do all that bleaching. I was thoroughly satisfied by the result and still am. I think I look interesting with hair like this. I stick out so of course my parents hate it.

Despite myself I like the attention I get when I pull stunts like this. Just because I don't have a voice it doesn't mean that I'll go through life unheard.

Sampson and I are partners in crime pretty often. Despite the amount of siblings we have now, I was her first little brother when she'd always been the baby of the family. She was the first one to learn my way of speaking, in fact, she helped me develop it. We'd spend afternoons together in the Old Willow that had been on the other side of the fence and had grown through it just to reach out it's branches and become the best sitting room a young kid could ask for. She'd say words and I'd make the sign for them. Somehow she'd remember them all, even if I couldn't. I'm extremely fast at signing now but Sampson is a close second. Sometimes we hold entire conversations in full sign just to piss off our younger siblings who can't always follow along as fast.

Sometimes it's not enough.

I'd like to tell her how much she means to me, I meant it when I said that she was my best friend. Sometimes the signs that I can make with my hands are not descriptive enough. I have to write things down. I can't send her a formal letter, and writing it down just seems silly. I think she knows how I feel about her as my friend. It'd be nice to have the ease of saying it though.

I don't think my parents understand what a crime it really is to force our tongues away from us. Sampson's speaking voice is lovely. It's full of emotions and tones, vibratos and lightness. She sounds musical without even meaning to. Hands can't do the same thing. Mouthing words isn't the same either. To them it seems like a good trade for a safe life in the Capitol. It won't be any safer there than it is here. Nowhere is safe. Nowhere is better than anywhere. It matters who you are with.

I'm not going to get Avoxed and I'm not going to let them get the rest of my siblings Avoxed either, not even Tryst. Tryst is an idiot who seems intent on being Avoxed early but someone needs to save him from himself. If there is anything that my mother has taught me, it's that no one expects the quiet one. As long as I act timid and small they'll have no idea that I'm planning anything. In fact, sometimes they pay no attention to me all day because I'm so excellent at being unnoticeable. I can get attention when I want it.

If I traded my baggy clothing items for the form fitting work out clothing that the careers wear, or decided to wear a sleeveless top tomorrow they would notice something for certain. I'm no longer the weak looking, lanky little boy that they raised. I'm a dangerous thing, a knife point about to tip off of the edge of the spectrum of what they think is appropriate. If they weren't so focused on popping out sibling after sibling just to make certain that they could save as many futures as they could, maybe they would have noticed just how much I've changed in appearance weeks ago.

However, my parents are idiots, I've come to terms with this fact. I guess it's a good thing then that they aren't my parents, not really. I might have inherited their intellect genes like Tryst did and then where would we be?

I'm about to heave myself up from my place behind the couch, the clock has been steadily ticking and it's about time I move off to another part of the house to hide before my mother checks here for me. I continue to skip slave lessons and it's pissing her off. She'd never show her anger though, not to us, not my perfect little apron-wearing-vacuum-toting-mother. Before I work up the motivation to move however, someone else enters the room.

I still, careful not to even breath as I wait it out. The doors shut, both of them, my escape is cut off, damnit. However, I relax. This happens every so often. Kaya doesn't ever know I'm in here, she's far too trusting of our family to check behind the couch for everyone. She thinks that what she does in here is a secret but I'e been listening in for weeks.

I shut my eyes again and settle in as she begins to sing. She starts of softly, carefully, as if testing the waters to make certain that no one will barge in and catch her.

Her voice is pure, like the bird's voice whose nest is outside of my window. It's another reason why I'm going to have to do something about our parents. I can't let her voice go to waste, not when it's so beautiful, not when Kaya is so wonderful. She's young but she isn't destined for Avoxing. She's destined to fall in love with a good guy or girl and have an enormous family that she can sing to sleep each night with that voice.

I have to protect her, all of them.

I just don't know how.

I begin to drift off to sleep and I try to fight it, stifling a yawn against the back of my hand as Kaya sings through every song she can remember. I soon give up. Kaya's voice is golden, soothing. It instills in me a false sense of security.

It's warm here, safe.

So I sleep.

Y o u ' r e a l i v e ,
at least as far
as I can tell
y o u a r e