Professor F. Marion Rupin had been working on this for months. His plan was finally coming together.
He took a deep breath, and held a needle and string in his hand. He intricately sewed up the heart with the ragged cloth, and turned around. "This better work," he muttered to himself.
He closed his eyes. A noise of a body moving was heard. Rupin turned around with glee. He did it. He created the living doll. He created me.
At first, I felt nothing. Not even confusion. I didn't know how to move, or walk, or do anything, but I opened my eyes for the first time.
"I'll call you Florence Marionéta," Rupin smiled. Florence Rupin was the name of his fifteen-year-old daughter who died of leukemia two years before this incident.
I sat up, or at least tried to, and immediately fell to the ground. I was way, way, way weaker than I am now. I couldn't even walk!
For the first three years of my supposed life, Rupin guided me like a father. He grew older but I remained the same. I had no age but he considered me fifteen, like his daughter had been. Except I never aged. Even though it had been my "birthday", he called me fifteen. I was fine with it.
Within these three years, Rupin never let me out. He thought the Peacekeepers would take me away and force him to create more of the dolls, or kill him.
I never spoke. There were stitches across my mouth that disabled me to speak, however, I had a voice. I could grumble or hum, but I could never speak proper words. That's why I could never agree or disagree with Rupin.
But one day, he let me out. Well, he came with me, but still. He wasn't too scared anymore. Since I was "born" with only one eye, I couldn't really take into account the sunshine and trees around District 8. I immediately got defensive. I don't know why, but I felt that anyone around me might kill me.
The streets were completely empty, except for one sixteen-year-old boy walking back home. Although he never meant to hurt me, he was crossing us to get to wherever he was going, and we made eye contact. Immediately, I jumped at him and used my hair pin to stab him in the neck.
"Florence, stop it!" Rupin cried out, but I kept stabbing the poor kid, fascinated with the blood coming out. "Florence!" Rupin meant to take me off of him, but what he didn't know was about the nerve on my collarbone. Neither did I at the time, but now I do. Rupin grabbed me at the stitch, and a shocking jolt of pain coursed through my whole body, and I fainted.
The next time I woke up, I was in a dark place. My hands were tied together, and so were my ankles, which were also attached to a pillar. I tried to get out of it to no avail. There was a newspaper lying near me, and I looked at it. The headlines mentioned something about a sixteen-year-old boy found dead at the street I visited.
"Florence," a familiar yet stern voice called out. I turned my head to see Rupin. He sighed, and his voice became softer. "Florence, you can't just kill people like that. It's not good. I had to keep you like that in fear you'd attack someone else. Now, I'm going to untie you, so will you promise not to hurt me?"
I sighed, and nodded. Rupin untied the knots around my wrists and ankles, and I got up by myself. I was about to follow him out of the basement when he said, "Oh, no, Florence, you'll need to stay here. There are... people in the house. And I..." He didn't need to finish the sentence. He didn't trust me anymore. "So... just stay here, okay?"
My lips were stitched. I could not disagree, so he left the room, and I heard a faint sound of the door locking. I grumbled.
I used to sit by the window, careful not to let anyone see me. I saw people happily walking by and I was happy that they didn't want to kill me. Except one. Well, just like my first victim, he never meant to kill me, but he made eye contact with me. Remembering what Rupin told me about not killing people, I threw my hands up to my face to try hide, except there was a needle in my hand which I accidentally jabbed into the spot over my eyebrow. It didn't hurt me; it only felt like I was being poked. But the guy outside put a hand to the exact spot on his body immediately started writhing with pain. Blood was coming out of it. He fell over dead shortly afterwards.
The headlines for the newspaper the next day had a picture of the dead guy outside the basement, and the window of it, and a tuft of synthetic white hair at the corner of the window.
I hurt myself, and that killed him. Just like voodoo...
Since the day Rupin kept me locked in the basement, he visited me everyday to just talk and all. Although I couldn't respond, he spoke and I nodded sometimes. Once, he told me, "You know, you're actually invulnerable. Well, not completely. Know the thing in your chest? That's your heart. If that stops, you stop, so always beware of that."
But today, he saw bloodstains over my eyebrows, and his eyes widened in fear. "What happened, Florence?" he exclaimed as he started sewing the cloth over there. I still had my mouth stitched, so naturally, he couldn't get a response. He left shortly afterwards.
So it was like that, for about a year—I sat by my window, killing myself to kill others, except the difference is that I could not die and they could. I once plugged my nose for a long time, and the lady walking outside couldn't breathe. She also made a headline.
I scraped my stomach with my favourite needle. The kid outside bled out to death and made the headline. Rupin stitched mine up. That was how my life went on for some time.
It was the time of day when Rupin visited. "Florence, I brainstormed last night and had a new idea—you're going to get to speak from now on!"
If I was human, I would experience excitement. Rupin came up to me with a surgical needle and carefully tore the stitches on my lips, one by one. Finally, they were all out. I flexed my lips and attempted to speak. "I..." I started with my slightly raspy voice, then cleared my throat. "I... can speak?" It was more of a question than a statement, and Rupin's eyes lit up.
"Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "I must've been so stupid to not think of that before." He left the room, and I practiced talking. And it was brilliant.
So the cycle I was talking about continued for a year, and I became careless enough to show myself laughing in the window, and the headline for that day read Crazed Doll-like Creature Spotted Where Many Died. I've been found out.
I kept away from the window that day and remained silent all day, when I heard some noise coming from the house
"What are you doing?!" Rupin was shouting. There were sounds of gunshots and Rupin's scream, and then the sound of multiple footsteps came closer and closer. I backed away from the door towards my trusty needle, and the door got broken down by three Peacekeepers, who seemed to have immediately recognized me. I was about to pierce the needle into my forehead to cause more voodoo and kill them, but the first Peacekeeper grabbed my wrist before I could do so. I struggled, trying to get out of his grasp, when another tased me. The tase didn't affect me at all, and the taser-guy shouted profanity at this failure. All three Peacekeepers surrounded me, and the last one tried to pull me up by my collarbone stitch. I shrieked and fell unconscious once more.
The next time I woke up, it was similar to the first time the collarbone nerve shocked me. It was a dark and dusty room, but barer than the basement I last woke up in. My wrists were bound more tightly, and my ankles were even tighter. Tight enough to even start to hurt. Pain was an unfamiliar feeling to me, and I didn't like it.
"Finally awake, eh?" one of the Peacekeepers I met earlier snorted.
"Let go of me," I said through gritted teeth. He merely laughed.
"Listen," he started, "we can't have you go around and kill people just like that."
"Hypocrites," I muttered. He slapped me hard, but it didn't hurt me one bit and I grinned smugly at him.
"So as I was saying," the Peacekeeper continued, "you can't do that. And for some reason, you're not dying either. So this is what we're going to do. We'll be taking you to the Reaping tomorrow, and the cards will say nothing but your name. We will drag you up to the stage. Resist and the consequences will be severe. And for the time being, shut your mouth." He tried putting duct tape over my mouth, which I struggled against, but at the end it got on me.
The Peacekeeper grinned to himself and left the room, locking it.
For the whole night, I tried to escape my bounds to no avail, but I didn't give up. Unfortunately, it was already morning and time for the Reapings before I could make one last attempt. The door opened, and this time, two unknown Peacekeepers walked in and untied me without any word. I had no time to try attack because they grabbed my arms firmly and kept them behind me at all times.
"Walk," one of them growled. The duct tape was still on my mouth, so I couldn't object.
Finally, I reached the square. I stood right behind the line for fifteen-year-olds, but I wasn't in the line. The Peacekeepers just firmly grabbed both my arms for the rest of the speech.
"And our female tribute will be," the escort was saying, "Florence Marionéta!"
The Peacekeepers dragged me to the stage, and I had no choice but to walk with them. People noticed me and started muttering things like, "that's her" and "the thing in the newspaper". Before they pushed me onto the stage, they ripped the duct tape off and took me to the stage. They still weren't letting go because they knew I would attack someone.
After the male tribute was announced/volunteered, we were both taken inside the Justice building, and the Peacekeepers pushed me into my meeting room. But nobody would want to talk to me. The only person who would was killed by the Peacekeepers.
So that's where I am now. Waiting for the Hunger Games to start.
