Kellen Brody - District Ten

Kellen Brody has always hated the smell of sheep. Upon entering the pen he was immediately overcome by a smell that was a mixture of hay, grass, and still damp mud like just after a rainstorm. Often times his younger brother of three years slacked off on his chores and the smell of their fecal matter worked its way into the normal smell of the sheep and the reek became overbearing. He'd smelled enough sheep in his seventeen years of living to last him the rest of his life. The only way to escape it was to finish his own chores early and get as far away from the pen as possible. But somehow the smell always slightly lingered on his clothes and in his hair and in the 'fresh' air he breathed in District Ten from all the other animal pens.

Luckily, he didn't have any extensive chores today. He simply had to slaughter a single lamb and prepare it for delivery to the Capitol. Kellen's father was one of the more renowned sheep farmers in the district (if there was such a title) and thus was known for his fine cuts of lamb. "Exceedingly clean!", a reporter from the Capitol had once written in a magazine that they had come to write on his father and other farmers in the district. And because of such publicity since then, there were occasionally special orders placed to their farm. Today's winner was a gala in the Capitol for tomorrow that needed fresh cut lamb shipped overnight. How spectacular.

All the tools that Kellen needed were hanging the right wall of the pen. He yanked them off the wall and began to set up for the job. "Why are you in such a bad moo this morning?" He was still angry at his brother for asking him that. Kellen was always in a foul mood. And why shouldn't he be? They had no money, no food, nothing. His family was as poor as it had always been, despite the small Capitol publicity. They hadn't offered his family more money or food, it just gave them more work to do for the same price. It had been two years since the unaffordable treatment had been denied to his mother for her cancer and she had passed away. The Capitol hadn't seen the importance of keeping a sheep farmer's wife alive. It didn't benefit them at all. The loss had distanced his father from the family and they rarely saw him now. And his brother found as few opportunities to talk to him as possible because he hadn't been there during his mother's last moments. Fuck the Capitol.

Once everything was set up, Kellen dove into the herd of sheep, looking for one that seemed decent enough to be served tomorrow. He remembered the first time he had ever been asked to select a sheep for slaughter. It had seemed unthinkable at the time. He spent everyday feeding and taking care of the sheep, and then he father asked him to select one to kill? That day he learned a very important lesson: everything and everyone is disposable. Once your purpose is served, you aren't needed anymore. "It's the sheep or you, son." That was the balanced of the world: kill or be killed. In order to survive, you had to put yourself before anyone else. Kellen learned that he couldn't spare the sheep or he would starve, or be punished for it. There were always repercussions for those who didn't take care of themselves first.

The sheep he chose was one of the fatter ones that they had breed this season. It took at least five minutes for Kellen to catch him properly. The boy usually had his hair down cut semi-short but he hadn't had a haircut in two months so it was getting a bit on the long side. Long enough that he had to pause for a minute and tie his lengthy brown hair up with an elastic band to keep it out of his face while the chase ensued. Finally, he caught the lamb and brought it over to the corner where he was set up. Kellen read in a history book once that guns were used to kill slaughter animals quickly so they wouldn't suffer, but the Capitol didn't believe in giving guns to district residents so killing a sheep involved brute force to it's head. It took only a few seconds to kill the sheep with a hammer. Kellen used to see the act as brutal but now it was just every day life.

It took little bit longer to hang the sheep up than it did to catch it. He had to tie its feet together with a rope, string that over a sturdy hook in the pen, and pull it up to a good level to see the cuts . Sheep weighed a lot and it took Kellen a year or so of building up muscle before he was strong enough to pull it up from the ground to where it was supposed to be. It had helped that in that year he also hit puberty and shot up a couple inches. He is now finally growing into himself at seventeen: muscular enough to lift his own weight, a little taller than average at about 5'9", and a face that isn't completely acne ridden. Kellen grabbed his favorite knife off the table. His father had a few different ones, but he always used the same one for all of his cuts. It was a small skinning knife with a brown wood hilt and thick, short blade. Kellen had become familiar with the knife because when he was younger he used to play with it. There are several scars on his hands and arms from the amount of times he has tossed it up in the air in an attempt to do cool tricks with it.

Two and a half hours of his day is spent on the sheep. By the end of it he is left with an empty corpse almost skeleton like, and blood all over his face from wiping the sweat from his brow with his hands. Kellen first cleans the meat off in the sink that is attached to the pen for this very purpose. He rinses off the immediate blood and then wraps each piece in sterile cloth and places it in a wooden box. The major's office will take care of the proper packaging before its shipped off. After the meat is clean, Kellen takes the remainder of the sheep down and drags it outside of the pen where he burns it. It is the most efficient way of getting rid of the excess parts. Kellen puts the tools away after cleaning them off and feeds the remaining sheep. He heads inside his empty house and goes straight to the bathroom to wash up. His father is probably at the justice building protesting his pay and his brother should be at school right now.

Kellen strips naked and heads to the shower. It's not a real shower but his father and a few other farmers presented a case of cleanliness to the Capitol which was approved and now several farming homes in the district have some sort of shower plumbing installed. The Capitol didn't like the idea that their raw meats were being made by uncleanly people. On the way, he stops at the mirror and takes a good look at his blood covered face. His blue eyes look startling against the dark crimson makeup. The sharp angles of his cheeks and the paleness of his skin all give him a somewhat crazy look, but maybe it's just the blood. He shakes off the thought and jumps into the cold water, pouring out of the shower faucet, making sure to scrub the blood off his body.