haunt hall {d9} fin

She twiddles her fingers through fingerless lace gloves, nails bejewelled with tiny skull crystals. Nobody knows where she got them. It's a small, dark room—windowless, lit only by a small lantern atop an antique desk. Winter nights are dark, but her eyes contain a death that digs deeper into bleakness than any colour could. It's a drab space, enhanced only by her presence and minimal cultural cues: a small map of Panem, a white-haired doll made of dried grass and a knitted tapestry on the wall. She might lash at you if you dare to question the interior, figuratively, but the impatience is real.

It's the only room she feels comfortable in; no light, no sound and no personality apart from carefully selected objects. An empty space allows her to fill the room entirely; without distraction, she can be the centre of attention. Anyone who enters the room would immediately feel a sense of intimidation sweep over them, as if they are standing in their own shadow and are constantly shaded by vacancy. Haunt sits accompanied only by an ashtray home to a half-smoked cigarette and the plumes of grey that add to the mystery of her aura.

"The loss of heaven doesn't bother me," her voice a deep and gravely, a compliment to the mud in her eyes. Certainly a few years of smoking has taken its toll but the rasp is pleasing. The words she speaks are melodic, they sound sweet but venomous like a silky chocolate laced with poison. She likes the husky tone, it's a power move from an otherwise small body—the word she uses are considered and weaved together intricately. She has not been educated but this dialect has been imposed onto her by generations long gone. Solemn in some ways, beautiful in others, yet always untroubled.

"I am bad for my own good, no one else matters." Of course, this was realised years ago when she was sent to the detention centre for illegally trafficking her sister to the factories in Nine. She networked with an owner, exchanging favours in the form of deliveries disguised as trade exports—fine and dandy until the Reaping came and peacekeepers killed her for false identification documentation. She was only twelve.

Her body was sent back to its first home in Two, where it was iced before being shipped to another district. She had sold her sister's organs. 

It was only then did her crime catch up with her—the body was intercepted on the outskirts of Twelve for its foul odour. The money had already exchanged hands though, and in her mind, the body's decomposition was not her problem because it had been sold to a new owner. The box was eventually traced back to her and she was sentenced to a year in a cell.

It is a time she remembers fondly.

As for the present, she squatted in her old home and counted the money to her name on the floor. The empty house managed to retain some of its old ghosts; mirrors on the wall seemed to capture the essence of a stable family home that these walls hadn't seen for a number of years, the glass panes of the windows allowing the wind's howl to linger ominously from the evening onwards. And with that came a chill that had a hundred tiny teeth and threatened to bite at her fingers.

The pennies, coins and paper notes raged against the brisk air and stayed warm in her palms. She felt clammy as she sorted her finances, yet still, she managed to maintain a sense of unshakeable composure that made her like stone. Never did she cry in fear of the unknown because the unknown excited her. It gave her a feeling of being alive like no other. As if she was plugged into the power grid and was thriving directly from the current: it lights her up and she has no off switch.

"$154," she laughs off the figure as if it was meaningless. "That year of my life turned out to be many things, but I would not let it become my last."

She was seeking something bigger than the story she had already created for herself; it disappointed her how the only triumph had been freedom in the form of poverty. Falling back on the floor, she stared into non-existence and went into a state of deep contemplation. There only seemed one logical next step for her, all things considered, and it would involve the loss of all she had known.

"Risk," a smirk twists itself onto her face. The intimidation only grows as even the slightest of movements feel calculated enough to belittle anyone who faces her. "I'd rather regret being a lion than live as a lamb."

But the lion did not do as a lion does: she did not roar. She did, however, become the predator with her sights set on distant prey. Electric excitement whirred behind her knowing eyes and a hunger was the only thing in her stomach for days—but it fuelled her body as strongly as the pain did her mind.

One glance into the gaunt mirror on the wall and she saw a devilish version of her younger sister: her sweet smile mangled into something menacing, the rosiness of her cheeks replaced by a raw resilience that matched the fire on her tongue. In her reflection, she saw her roots—and she saw a way out.

Déjà vu.

"Better the devil you know."

Arrival in Nine was smooth. She smuggled herself in as secretly as she had smuggled herself out of Two, and she felt grounded knowing she had a place to stay and food to eat with people she could count on. Still, she did not trust them and she never would—trust is a completely fragile thing that is built on vulnerability and acceptance of that. Promises and vows are nothing more than shoddy contractual agreements that are made emotionally instead of intelligently. Don't get her wrong, she is thankful for the open arms that welcomed her in Nine, but she draws a fine line between recognition and reliability.

The girl became a woman in the factory. Hours turned into months and months turned into years. As business boomed, so did she and the money she earned was saved and stashed in a slit of her mattress. Now a world away from the measly $154 to her name months ago, the riches she had gained did not seem to satisfy her. "There's a difference between money and power. I had money but no power. I invested in time."

The phrase seems ambiguous—anyone wise would invest in Nine's illegal arms or drugs trade, Ripred knows there are countless gangs with more money than sense who chase highs with a fistful of dollar bills. But she took a different approach, instead using her finances to tamper with the factory's machinery. A toolbox became her armoury; screws would be loosened which made blades unstable. It turned the factory into a ticking time-bomb, but she was not interesting in playing with time, rather lives.

"Work in Nine was already dangerous, so really, I didn't change anything," there's an eerie sense of pride on her tongue. Any remnants of past heartbreak seem alien, and it becomes impossible to see her as any sort of lamb.

Accidents at work tripled after she had interfered. Some employees were treated favourably by the mechanisms of the production line, only experiencing amputation of a finger or forearm. Others were left dead—she shrugs off the loss of human lives as "a necessary evil."

Bodies were kept by the business to be examined by the onsite coroner—a job she was completely unqualified for but it didn't matter as it wasn't a job she was doing. She would repeat a process she had done almost a decade earlier to her own blood: she would ice and ship the bodies, selling their organs to whoever offered the most money for her continued offences.

The only difference: she would pass off an urn of plastic shavings as ashes to the grieving family.