thecapitol | I Will Make You Hurt [Closed]

Entry tags:

I Will Make You Hurt [Closed]

Who| Penny, Katurian and Calico
What| Calico gets what's coming.
Where| Peacekeepers Headquarters
When| Week 3.
Warnings/Notes| Torture.

They bring Calico in from a truck in the back. There's no need for the citizens to see her. Killing one Victor sends a message; punishing two just makes it look like they've lost control. She's brought in a little after rush hour, when most of the citizens are working somewhere or other.

The Human Resources department is purposefully innocuous. When Calico is wheeled in, strapped to a gurney with a gag in her mouth and straps around her wrists, ankles, neck and hips, it isn't through a dungeon but through an office with shale grey carpet and regularly-recharged fire alarms. Little cubicles, interns working on computers and compiling reports - it would look at home in a Dilbert comic. A bit of tuneless, gooey jazz music drips in.

The interns, all of whom have signed multiple waivers for their silence, glance up when they hear the squeaky wheels of the gurney and the squeegee sound of flesh dragging cloth over metal as Cal thrashes, but when they see it's Penny and Katurian they quickly turn their attention back to their computers and copy machines. There may be things worth dying for, but like worshipers before a god, they know not to tempt the fate of those they fear.

There are rooms on the fourteenth floor, offices with nice views and tinted windows and hardwood, laminate floors (much easier to clean up the mess that way). The little elevator makes a ding, ding, ding as they go up, numbers on the top lighting up. Humming to herself, Penny strokes Calico's hair.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

'Stage fright' isn't the right phrase, but it's close.

Katurian doesn't touch Calico because his hands are trembling. He keeps them against his legs where they jerk, jump, twitch. Every so often, he takes a long, deep breath, the kind of breath that echoes off the walls and makes his lungs shudder on the exhale. He gets this way before every session, as though he himself is about to be tortured.

He is a man who is afraid of what he's going to do. But not afraid enough.

Calico is... everywhere. Her mind is everywhere.

She had realised, of course, as her confinement lengthened and she was forced to sober up, that she was in a lot of trouble, that her slurs against the traitor Eva had come out all wrong, that Bobbin was going to pay for her stupid, stupid mistake.

And now, here she is, strapped to a gurney so tightly that she can barely move her limbs, with possibly the two most dangerous people in the Capitol.

And Penny is stroking her hair. It's such a motherly gesture it brings tears to Calico's eyes, which she blinks away furiously. Her mom hasn't stroked her hair since she was fourteen years old and chosen for the Games. And having Penny do it, on the way to her execution, is rather like, for Cal, being cornered by a tiger that thinks itself a kitten.

She's confused when she's brought through these mundane offices. Though she hadn't expected a dungeon, she hadn't expected this either. And she's kind of disappointed that her execution is going to be in such an ordinary place. That emotion, though, is masked completely, by absolute fear.

The elevator door opens like a the floor of a gallows to reveal an office. Wooden cabinet, wood floors, desk and chairs and a cityscape view. The sun in the sky looks poisonous through the tinted windows, sickly, dim.

Penny wheels Cal in and pulls a chair up next to the gurney. "Katurian? Get the tools." She doesn't say please, because she never does. She doesn't see the point.

She brushes Calico's hair to the side, so there's no safety of bangs between her and Penny's grotesque smile. "Someone's been a naughty girl," she says in a sing-song voice.

He nods. With his tense neck, the gesture comes out crooked, staggered, like a violinist drawing a bow over a jagged string. When he steps towards the wooden cabinet, his feet are heavy against the floor. He feels ants underneath his kneecaps. Centipedes in the crooks of his elbows.

This is always the worst part. This is when he can hear the phantom screams in his ears. It's not quite a hallucination, but it fills his head nonetheless. He fumbles for the cabinet, his hands slick with sweat, and he thinks that maybe this is what makes them such a great team. Penny is the trainer, the teacher, and Katurian is the model student, fearing when he is supposed to fear, showing the victim how it's done.

He slides a fresh tray out from the shelving unit, the instruments all wrapped in sterilized plastic just like you'd see at a doctor's office. There are thin metal legs at the base of the tray which he unhinges and unfolds, using them to transform the tray into a small table with wheels. He pushes the whole unit towards Penny. It glides across the floor, the roar of the wheels sounding more like the roar of a waterfall.

As soon as the table leaves his grip, he sticks his hand in the pocket of his lab coat, feeling for his inhaler. With his fingers buried, he looks up at Penny, pleading. Asking for silent permission.

Calico cannot see where she is, doesn't see the laminate floor or the window. She chooses not to look at the cabinets or the chairs. Instead, she looks up at the ceiling. That plain, boring, tiled ceiling. Will that be the last thing she ever sees?

Penny's voice, shrill to Calico's ears, brings her back to the present and she immediately begins to struggle again. Tools? What tools? What are they going to do to her? She struggles and she tries to shout out but the gag in her mouth makes her swallow her words in a bitter bile that burns her throat.

She hears the squeak of the table being rolled over to her - the instruments of her doom are laid out, like words on a page, telling the story of her torture to come. She wishes she could read it, prepare herself - but no. Because before it even arrives, Penny's hand has found her hair again and it's stroking through in too gentle a gesture. Calico squeezes her eyes tight shut. She is not a brave woman, really, not at all in fact. And she is scared. She would cry - but no. Calico is not brave, but she is stubborn and she will not give them what they want. So she closes her eyes, though she flinches as Penny's voice breaks like glass over her head, tinkling into her ears long after the torturer has stopped talking.

Penny pauses, long enough that a man like Katurian may start to doubt. Long enough to toy with him, to remind him who the cat and who the mouse under the claws is, before she smiles and nods. "Go ahead."

She trails her fingers along Calico's face, over her cheek like a falling tear and down her neck, her shoulder, her arm to Calico's wrist. "Water?"

Her voice is as sweet and tantalizing as the glow of an anglerfish. She likes to reel them in, to give them pretty words clearly soaked in viciousness and see whether hope or logic rules them. It usually gives her some idea how to proceed. She nods to Katurian, indicating that he should put some tablets in the water, just a little something to loosen Calico up.

The sun filtering through the window behind her gives her a strange halo that stabs at the eyes.

He knows what she's doing. She does it so frequently; she pushes him when she thinks he deserves to fall, pulls at his nerves when they're already so very frayed. He swallows her power display with a sort of cowardly resentment, a frustration that flickers in his eyes but never reaches the rest of his face.

He can't complain. After all, he falls when he's pushed. When his frayed nerves are pulled, they snap like a weakened rope.

His fingers grip the inhaler while his other hand grabs the plastic cup. He flicks the faucet on with his pinkie, then rests the cup at the bottom of the small sink so that it fills up without him needing to hold it. This way, he can use both hands to seal the small mask around his nose and mouth.

He inhales.

The sweat odor hits him like a punch to the face. He stumbles, gasping, and oh, now the ground is moving under him, now the walls are gaining new colors, new dimensions, and skip skip skip go his thoughts, folding into rhymes, folding into lights, spewing out sweet melodies that aren't really melodies, and then

Poor little Suzy
couldn't be very choosy
when her parents went out for an eve.

They left her no food --
just hemlock and monkshood
saying, "Give us the night to grieve!"

In the back of the room, Katurian laughs and laughs and the glass in the sink overflows.

Edited 2013-07-18 23:48 (UTC)

Calico whimpers through her gag as Penny strokes down her face, screws up her nose, turns her head as much as she can in her restraints in an effort to get away from the woman's touch. Her arm flinches and tenses, and she whimpers again. Her eyes don't open until Penny breaks the silence.

"Water?" Such a simple question - so light, so simple. Calico's mouth is dry, so dry from the gag. But no. No water. Because it won't be water. It'll be poison - and she will be damned if she is willingly going to swallow the liquid that will kill her. She shakes her head as best she can. No - she doesn't want the water. She wants to live. Her hand clenches into a fist and relaxes - she tries to grab for Penny, to tell her, no, to make her understand.

But then she can hear water splashing and that tripping, cackling laugh that fills her ears, her conciousness...Calico begins to struggle against her bonds. She doesn't want it - if this is the beginning.... she's sorry, oh god, she's sorry and his laughter echoes in her head and she struggles and struggles to escape it all.

Edited 2013-07-19 10:08 (UTC)

Penny watches with mild amusement as goosebumps follow the fingertips she glides down Calico's arm. "They put them back together so well, these Victors. I was almost a doctor, you know. I have the brains for it."

But ultimately, Penny had little interest in healing, and very little interest in medicine at all beyond the testing phase. Once the practice became about fixing things instead of shocking lab rats and pulling apart cadavers, it bored her. She briefly considered dentistry, too, but it didn't allow for much creativity.

Katurian starts laughing and it would be music to her ears, if Calico weren't already annoying her. "I offered you water. You take the water." Penny reaches over and tightens the bond around one of Calico's wrists, so the blood is blocked from her hand. She beckons with one finger for Katurian.

They'll force-feed her, if they have to.

It's the sound of Calico's struggling that brings Katurian back to reality, those rapid thrashes and thumps, that clean sound of flesh slipping over cloth. Those noises reflect the drumming of his own heartbeat, quick and sputtering, his body now reading this maddening pulse as excitement instead of fear.

He laughs again. Again.

By the time Penny beckons him, the mask is off and he has swallowed his laughter, but only barely. His expression flickers between glee and neutral, remaining on neither for very long. Lips up. Lips down. Eyebrows up. Eyebrows done. He resembles a child holding onto a secret. Or a broken mechanical doll.

When he takes the water out of the sink, his aim is so steady and exact that it feels like he's moving his arm down a railroad track. The tablets are also easy to acquire, his fingers soundless as they open compartments within the armoire, his hands gentle as he allows the pills to tumble into the glass. His arms may move smoothly, but the rest of his body is still adjusting, and as he approaches Penny, his feet shuffle and trip against the floor.

When he hands her the water, he lets his fingers linger against her hand. She seems so much more beautiful now, so much more elegant.

"Shhh," he says to Calico, soft like a snake. "Shhhh."

Cal inhales sharply through her nose, screwing up her face around the gag as her blood circulation's cut off. She struggles all the more, shoulders thumping uselessly against the gurney, arm shaking as she tries desperately to shake her hand free. She cries out around the gag, 'Loosen it. Loosen it you BITCH' but the gag muffles her, makes her swallow the syllables until they stick in a lump in her throat. Still, she tries to shake her head, tries to turn her face away from Penny. She's not drinking a thing they give her. She will play no active part in her own execution.

And then the man - his laughter stops and he hovers over her too, and she watches his face, upside down. He looks strange, hissing at her, and she shakes her head again, swearing at him, at HER, fighting against the strap at her wrist. She needs to be off this table. She needs, at least, to sit, to explain, to talk her way out of execution because it's all getting very real now, with the two of them stood over her, hurting her. That it wasn't about the Capitol - not about them at all. It was Eva - Eva the traitor who hadn't thought to tell her best friend - Eva who had threatened her and told all of Cal's secrets.

Penny unties the gag, watching Calico's lower lip quiver, waiting for the spit of petulant, foolish, stubborn words. Calico isn't a strong woman, not strong like the kind of people Penny's brought to heel before; no one's ever been able to resist the grind of their own mind disintegrating, rotting from the inside out with poison and acid. Penny's made strong men wet themselves, she's made them scream for the mothers that have long since been put to the grave.

"If you won't drink, we'll have to wet your thirst other ways," Penny hisses, pulling the strap around Calico's lip a little tighter. Katurian will know to get the syringe. There are ways that both of them know, how to really mess someone up physically and leave them a squirming, bloody, gasping mess on the table, but that's hardly art.

What Penny creates here are masterpieces. The mop and bucket in the closet are there for vomit and piss, not for blood.

"Katurian, honey," she says, reaching over and trailing her hand over his jaw, lingering on the nub of his chin, looking into the eyes made wild by the contents of the inhaler, "you agree with me that it's better if Calico drinks, don't you?"

This is direct attention. Direct admiration. This is beautiful.

With his eyes locked on Penny, Katurian curls his arm backwards and feels for the syringe on tray behind him. Even blind, he finds it easily, that smooth glass and metal, those elegant nobs and levers.

"I know it doesn't matter," he breathes out, his voice losing its usual stutter, sounding more like a practiced performer than an anxious executioner. "I know this because no matter what, Penny, all of this will end in the very same way. The very same way."

No. Practiced performer isn't right. It sounds more like he's reading a book aloud to a child, softening his sentences, emphasizing certain vowels, playing with each letter as though it were made of clay. His mind buzzes. He loves this.

"Isn't that right?" he says, looking down at Calico, hiding the syringe as he passes it to Penny. "No one will know about how hard you fought. They'll only know the end."

As soon as the gag was out of her mouth, she was swearing. Cal's high, almost childish lisp and tripping accent was harshened by the curses she spat at the torturers.

"LET GO YOU FUCKING BITCH. LET ME OFF. LET ME - I SWEAR, IT WASN'T ABOUT THE CAPITOL. I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU DO. I DON'T CARE. I - I just wanted one over on Eva. The bloody - LOOSEN THE STRAP. PENNY, LOOSEN THE STRAP. KATURIAN - "

Cal shakes her head determindly. She is NOT drinking what they give her. She is not giving in. Let them kill her - but she's taking no part in it. She's not a willing victim in the slightest. It's Katurian's words over Penny's that catch her attention though. The slow, steady rhythm of his words, the cheerful way, almost, that he threatens.

"I don't care what you tell no one anyway. You stuff us all full of lies anyway - what's one more on me death?" She shakes her head as best she can, and spits up, as hard as she can, at Katurian. Most falls back on her cheeks - alas, gravity at work - but she doesn't care. She's shown him.

Something snaps in Penny's eyes, cracking like rotten wood on a bridge. The glee is gone for a second, replaced by something sharp and ugly and full of brittle tendrils. "'Bitch'."

She takes the syringe, and she wraps her hand around it until her knuckles go pale and her fingertips flush with blood.

"Not even just 'bitch'. 'Fucking bitch'." Penny's voice is high and thin, like a little girl's, jiggling in the high air between innocent and hurt. "Is that what people think I am, Katurian? A fucking bitch?"

She pulls the syringe forward and up, like a knife poised above the altar, and slams it into Calico's thigh. A manic grin drips down her face. "I'll fucking bitch you."

Penny's voice should be enough to scare him, the way it shrieks and buzzes like a bow crawling crookedly up a violin string, but instead he hears the discordant music and he thinks how beautiful. How wonderful. When Penny's face contorts in anger, he sees a painting filled with shifting brush strokes.

When Calico spits at him, the saliva is thick like an artist's ink.

He wipes the moisture from his chin. This is all right. This is part of the script, the way Things Should Be. Some of the people they torture are reluctant heroes, stone-faced and silent, but others kick and scream and spit. Everyone knows their role.

"She's fiery," he murmurs to Penny. "Fiery like her hair. You know what good people do to fires."

Calico screams when Penny pushes the needle into her thigh, and her leg shakes uncontrollably - more through Cal's own fear than anything else. Her leg feels like it's on gire, like the hear is travelling up her body - but Cal can't tell if it's her own imagination or a real sensation, so scared is she of being trapped with the pair.

"You bloody bitch! You fucking - let me go! Please! Please let me go!"
Cal's howls of anger mix with her fear - was that it? The injection to kill her? How will they say she died? Morphling overdose? Will they set her body somewhere for someone to find? Who will tell her parents.

Her thoughts buzz as she begins to cry properly, as her leg stops trembling, as she lies docily in her bonds. She stares at the ceiling as she sobs, ignoring Katurian and Penny, picturing instead, her mother and father. Who's gonna tell them that she's dead?

Penny's face lights up, as if from her mouth in that maniac smile, like a jack-o'-lantern. "Nothing that would set off the sprinklers, Katurian. If I had my way she'd never see rain again."

Penny leans over Calico's face, reaching again to stroke that neck with a pulse beating away as if it's trying to scurry on out from under the skin. She watches as it slows, as the sedative (and the hallucinogen) take effect. She watches the tears fall.

With a grin, she lets a dollop of saliva dangle from her lower lip, lets it hang, sucks it partially back up, and then lets it fall onto Calico's forehead. "I own you. We own her, don't we, Katurian?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I Will Make You Hurt [Closed]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject