hercules catus {peacekeeper} fin

Drop out.

Bastard son.

Born to fall apart.

Who let me loose on this goddamn earth?

I knock back what's left of my whiskey and swipe a hand across my mouth. A singular ice cube spins in the bottom of the glass, and after squinting at it for a few heartbeats, I pull it out between two fingers and pop it into my mouth. I welcome the sharp crunch and grind it between my teeth.

There's a girl across the bar—just a slip of a thing, auburn hair and red-stained lips. Probably from strawberries. For a minute, I wonder if I'd be able to taste them on her, but inevitably I decide the whiskey tastes better and ask the bartender for another.

He likes to cut people off at a certain point, the guy who runs the place. Understandable. He'd rather they walk themselves home than spend the night dragging a bunch of plastered lightweights out of his building. But he lets me stay. I pay him double what any of the other patrons can offer.

When did things get like this? I almost laugh at myself as I reach for the glass placed in front of me. My vision swims and I misjudge the distance, grabbing at thin air before my dark fingers find their target. A sickening grin pulls at the edge of my lips.

Maybe it was when I flunked out of school. That's where most people would point their fingers—my lack of superior education. Screw them. I scrambled my way through high school on daddy's wealth, but his money couldn't hide what he likes to call a rat's brain. The Capitol University wasn't an option. A life of failure, and somehow he thought that enlisting would brush over that. Maybe I'd be able to make something of myself, he said. Look how well that turned out.

Me, I think my descent into hell started way before that. Before my grades plummeted, before my ribs started poking through my skin, before my knuckles were bruised and bloodied, before I felt Philo's lips hot and salty against mine. God, that might be the one taste I crave more than whiskey.

I wholeheartedly believe that I was never meant to be here. If there's a God of some sort out there, or Fate, or a Grand Plan, whatever you want to call it...I'm the pencil sketch they just can't quite get rid of. The kind where you keep rubbing at it with your eraser, but it just turns the page black and sends fibers of rubber scattering across the table.

Sweet old daddy says I'm the one who killed mama. I guess he's right, but then again, they were the ones who brought me into the world in the first place. Not that I blame them. I don't think it's anyone's fault, not really, I just think...I don't know. Something in me got all twisted and messed up before I got here.

Hercules, they called me. What a joke. In a sense, I suppose, it was the one thing of her's my father let me keep to myself. Just a name. The one she had picked for me, long before I was even conceived. She had always wanted a son, my father said. Just not the disgrace I turned out to be.

He says it's my own fault that we don't get along, but I think he had settled on his hatred for me the day I was born, while mama bled out in the hospital sheets. I wasn't there, but I can picture my skinny black limps, twisted up in once-clean white sheets, now tainted with blood and smelling of iron.

I could've been something (or someone), I think, if my father had let me. But he locked the fetters of his wealth and heartbreak on me the second I was born, and although I've traveled all the way to District Eleven, I can still feel the chain tethering me to him.

I tip back the glass in my hand, only to realize this one is empty too. The girl with the strawberry lips has given up and gone in search of other lonely men who will pay for her company. The bartender is wiping down the counter, and I know I will soon be overstaying my welcome. I grab my bag and unsteadily get up from my seat. I'm a drunkard, but I've got manners.

Images flash behind my eyes as I make my way through the deserted streets, moonlight doing it's best to guide the three feet I can see in front of me. At least she's friendly to me, the moon.

I remember myself, six years old, picking roses from the neighbors' yard because I thought they looked pretty. My father spat at me for using the word 'beautiful'. That was something men used to describe women, and nothing else. I told him I didn't want supper that night. After going to bed, I picked away at the scabs formed on my thin fingers from where the thorns had cut into my skin. Seventeen years later, my knuckles are covered in white medical tape to stop myself from touching them.

Flash-forward another six years and I'm failing school, because all I want to do is watch the birds and name different trees, but there's none near the school so I'm wandering the streets of the Capitol in search of something they keep telling me doesn't exist. Daddy calls me a murderer that night, and for the first time I can count all twenty-four of my ribs without sucking in my stomach.

Seventeen, and despite it being my last year, I've given up trying at school. My father won't talk to me and I've started to see everything in shades of grey.

I want to die, I think.

But then Philo joined our class, and God help me, he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He radiated color in my black-and-white world. I didn't talk to him, not until graduation night. And then there was the party and the drinking and the dares. There was his body, pressed firm against mine, long fingers twisting into my curly hair. He said I was perfect. I didn't believe him, but it was nice to know that not everyone thought I was a failure.

I don't know how my father found out. We weren't careful enough. News traveled through the school like wildfire. Someone must have seen...we had no friends to tell.

But that was the last straw.

I was shocked when I passed the physical to get into training. I was taller than most of the boys, but skinnier too. They fought with their fists for entertainment and I sat on my bunk with a half-smile, pretending to be watching, Philo's husky voice playing on repeat in the back of my mind. My father must've bought my way in.

The training has made me stronger, but even six years later at twenty-three, I'm still easily the lightest one here. I eat better when I know daddy's not watching.

The outline of the base appears, fuzzy and almost welcoming in the moonlight. Clumsily, I re-adjust the strap of my bag over my shoulder. The alcohol numbs my mind till the memories don't hurt so much.

The door creaks. Footsteps echo in an empty hall. My bunk mates snore softly in their sleep. I collapse onto the bed, not bothering to change.

I drift off with images of roses and Philo and empty rib cages flickering in the dark.