she'll make a crow blush. [Anth<3]

[Raeoki]

(ooc: I'm so sorry for the wait!!!!! DDDDDx I'm sorry! It's just that life's been all busy and stuff, and I've been so stressed, and there are some writing projects that I'm working on along with the posts I write for this, and everything's just been so stressful, and I'm so so so so so so so sorry!!! x( It doesn't help that I kinda rewrote this... Sorry. Dx It was to keep up with the time-line...plus, I had more ideas to make Hospy angsty. >:3

Anyway, apologies for any confusing bits, such as random rewind/fast-forward time shiz happening. Also, if this post seems too adult and unclassy for this site, please tell me. *wince* ;_; But nicely, please. I honestly don't know what went wrong with my imagination for this post...It just really went to a dark and family unfriendly place. I'm sorry. Dx

Just a note of clarification: the le bandage that'll be popping up throughout the post sorta has a vague origin at the moment. It'll be clear, once I finally write that reply to the wine and roses thread I'm doign with Hero and Kitty.

Note of warning: this is not entirely proofread. Again, my apologies. Please inform me if there are any obvious errors in grammar and consistency and all that. Sorry, y'all. Dx )

BIC: Hospes hadn’t been doing very well for himself since the Games ended. There were days when he was so tired that he didn’t bother drawing himself out of bed; then there were days where he was so restless he couldn’t remain seated for less than a minute. However, he was forever paranoid, no matter what level of energy his body was capable of handling. If he was worn, he’d let his hand flop on a large, thick book that was perched on the corner of his nightstand, so he could bring it down on an intruder’s skull or fling it at his face; when Hospes was jittery, he’d have to be moving, roaming – and as he did, his eyes would forever be surveying the area around him, darting swiftly about in their sockets, and his body would jolt whenever there was a sudden noise. Hospes would not move in his usual liquid, cat-like way; instead, he would move in quick jerks, and his leisurely stroll would be more of a hurried scuttle. His muscles would always be quite tense, in such a way that some parts of his body would ache a day later.

He had come to the State Night Club in such a mood; paranoid and anxious, tense and jittery. Hospes sat in a lofty seat at the bar, tight and erect, his knee bouncing up and down, the fingers of his left hand rubbing anxiously at a bandage that had been coiled tightly around his right hand. The bar of the club was tucked safely and securely away in the corner; the rest of the club was made entirely for dancing, with some seats pushed away to the walls for the weary and the wallflowers. Shafts of light flickered and roamed the club, constantly changing their colors; an obnoxious noise that the other customers called “music” banged harshly in his pointed ears, its beat unattractive and coarse, the lyrics lewd and excessively sexual. The song, with the addition of the chameleon-like lights, brought to various places of his head a sharp pain that would eventually transition into a resilient throb; Hospes bore the pain with an insolent strength, keeping his head held high, not bowed or held in his hands, and he even dared to tilt it every now and again at an angle that allowed the lights to flash directly into his reddish eyes.

A ruddy bartender who seemed to have a habit of ducking his head strolled over, his stubby fingers curled around a shot of scotch. Gently and politely, he set it before Hospes, and offered the escort a pleasant smile; Hospes did not glance his way at his arrival, nor did he seem to acknowledge either the presence of the bartender or his drink. Hospes had tilted his head again, to look up at the colorful neon lights. They hit his face suddenly, swiftly turning his blanch face into a color that was unnatural to humans before they jerked away, and swept through the club. At times, the lights would strike his face all at once, overlapping one another like sheets of transparent paper, making his countenance almost comparable to a piece of abstract art.

Slowly, Hospes reclined in his seat, resting his back and the lower portion of his shoulder-blades against the back of his chair. The lights almost hypnotized him, in some ways; somehow, their jerk-like movements and rapidly changing hues transfixed, and managed to soothe him somewhat, relieving him of his paranoia for a swift moment, in order for him to feel safe enough to reflect and recollect. His hand had moved away from his bandage and onto the armrest of his seat, and he batted his index finger against it, almost instinctively; his knee insisted on being bounced. Hospes fidgeted constantly; sometimes, he would lift his hand from the armrest to run its palm across his mouth for a minute or two, before allowing it to fall and continuing to drum its fingers against the armrest.

It was a whore who had brought him to the club. It was not an act of his own free will; he had come to the club out of fear, in hope to escape her and the dreadful event that she had wrought. It was a shameful occurrence; a vile moment that struck Hospes with dread, though he knew not why; nothing about the scene with the bawd seemed logical or reasonable or – admittedly – real to him.

It had only been a few hours ago; being unable to find sleep, Hospes had withdrawn from the training center to find peace in a midnight stroll through the Capitol. He knew not the specifics of his walk: the places he scuttled to, how much distance he managed to cover, and the elapse of time during his stroll all eluded his mind and memory. All Hospes could recall with certainty was the madam, and his flight from her, and his arrival to the State Night Club; which, in some ways, he had been chased to – or, at least, that was his opinion on the whole ordeal.

Hospes had been plodding through an empty, dimly-lit street when he spotted her. Her willowy, body had been leaning against a street-lamp, a slender hand rested on its metal body, another on her cocked hip. Hospes remembered that she had held the pose strangely elegantly, almost regally; he managed to remember this, for he had had a rather amusing thought about how the stateliness of her stance so contradicted her distasteful position, the exact wording and specifics of the muse now having left him.

She noticed him around the same instant that he had; her gaze rolled over towards his direction leisurely, and then, as her eyes met his, suddenly became energetic, her eyes darting up and down in their sockets, eyeing him carefully and disturbingly analytically. Hospes noticed this immediately; his paranoia made him stiffen and tense and he slowed his pace, not daring to look away from the harlot, should she try to attack him or steal something from his coat pockets. As he neared her, the corners of her painted lips twitched into a small, knowing smirk; her eyes narrowed in some puzzling, smug, triumphant way, and though he did not understand her facial expression, it turned his blood cold. He quickened his pace.

As he passed her, she extended her long, thin, white hand. It rested itself on his shoulder, as gently and gracefully as a bird when it perches on a bough. He was distinctly aware of it, somehow; as if it had become an individual piece of his body that he could operate just as functionally as a limb. Hospes felt her press her fingers into his shoulder; begin to trail down his arm. It brought a rather strange sensation to that portion of his body, in which a cold, numb-like sensation struck his shoulder and arm, and caused him to believe that they were currently unusable; at the same time, however, he felt a curious tingling sensation in his flesh that delighted him somehow, but also disgraced him wretchedly.

Now, Hospes was not accustomed to being touched or fondled by a woman; only once had he known the soft brush of a female’s flesh, but that was an instance he cared not to recollect, for the female had been someone he had abhorred (or grew to abhor, especially after the scene where she had taken his face between her palms), and neither predicted nor desired such contact. However, she still had managed to strike within him – for a moment – a sensation that he wanted her, in the most horrid and frightening of ways. But, as it was mentioned before, Hospes was not used to such emotions and feeling; he had not been prepared; he could have neither reciprocated nor denied her. He had only been ablent0 stand there stiff, only aware of her touch and the hammering of his heart. Hospes had not been his own; his body and mind and will hadn’t been his, but had been hers; it was only out of fortune and the mercy of God that she had not attempted anything more but the caressing of his face and neck. When this painful realization had struck him afterward, his hatred and revile was of a great magnitude; for Hospes knew that, in a nation such as Panem, the self (and reputation, but that is a matter that will be discussed later) is the only thing that one could be certain of, and she, for one cruel instant, had taken it away from him.

Fortunately, his moment with the harlot was not like the moment with his thrice-damned tribute. Hospes had braced himself for an attack from her; and reflecting upon her vile profession, it must have occurred to a piece of his subconscious that something of this sort would be her form of doing harm unto him. He was prepared, mentally and physically, to suppress any peculiar and dreadful emotions (not immediately, of course, for he was still new to the art of contending with lust), and thus still had the capability of defending himself. Hospes moved in a sudden explosion of swift movement: he twisted beneath her touch, and wrenched his shoulder free from her white hand; in the same whirling motion, he knocked away her hand with his forearm; he staggered backward, and stared at her, his face twisted about in both fear and rage. For the past was still very fresh in his mind; and perhaps it would forever be there, to torment him and remind him, and he would not let it happen again – and he would most certainly not stand for a woman of such vice-filled occupation to lay her hand on him and try to master him, as that spiteful girl had.

The harlot was confused and surprised; she shifted away from the lamppost, and in the movement, she accidentally moved closer to him, but only by half an inch. The befuddlement left her face immediately afterward; her eyebrows arched, and the corners of her lips twisted into a small, haunting smile. It was a teasing, evil grin; it spoke of present consent, but of future expectations – expectations of what, he dared not decipher. The smile vexed him; without giving the bawd another glance, he whirled about very swiftly, his slender body becoming like a blur for a moment, and then walked away from her, his pace quick and his muscles tensed.

Once Hospes was certain that she was not following him, he ran.

When fatigue overtook him, he had no choice but to withdraw into the State Dance Club. Despite his weariness, Hospes found that his body was shuddering uncontrollably; Hospes assumed that he was shaking because of his heart, which was thudding so loudly and so greatly that it would not be hard for an unimaginative man to consider the prospect of the organ to develop a powerful earthquake beneath its master’s feet. A drink became his priority; though his legs begged him not to, he went to the bar at a quick pace (between that of a jog and a swift walk), and flopped into the chair he still presently sat in limply – gratefully; his eyes closed and the muscles in his face relaxed in his relief.

The alcohol managed to suck away from the paranoia from his veins. Though he did not wish to, he found his mind returning to that damn scene; analyzing it, trying to understand it. Why? Why would a woman of her profession decide it would be a bright idea to force upon him any sort of interaction? It wasn’t sensible. Did she perceive in that dull brain of hers that he would be an agreeable client? Or – or was it that her mind had conceived that he would be the sort of person who would call upon a woman like her? But that was not fair. Yes, perhaps, he appeared to be of the sort of man who had gone through most of his days a desperate bachelor (which was, unfortunately, true), for was not a very handsome fellow: he was too slender; too unaltered by a surgeon’s knife (which many Capitolites would have willingly put themselves under, if they had been born with his body and face); and there was simply something about Hospes’s face that he would never be able to understand – something that made people flinch and walk away from him as swiftly as they could, should they meet him.

At present, Hospes curled his long, emaciated fingers around the shot-glass, the movement slow and comparable to a spider’s limbs as the arachnid moves about on the floor, seeking its web. Hospes raised the glass into the air, but did not bring it his lips; he watched the colorful lights laze into the transparent glass and the ice that was jammed into it, and make the tawny liquid of the scotch shimmer. Hospes wondered if he ought to drink it; admittedly, he was rather reluctant to. This would be his second glass (the first having been administered when he had arrived); often times, as his body had a lacking alcohol tolerance than that of the majority of Capitolites, it would be at the second drink his mind would blur and a state of tipsiness would overcome him. Somehow, Hospes did not wish to undergo such a fuzzy lapse of mind, though he knew not why; in retrospect, it would have been better for him: for surely, with another drink, the urge to move about would leave him, and he’d be able to relax fully again, like as he had when he had initially entered.

Slowly, Hospes set the glass down, and watched it. He brought his hands together, and let his fingers fiddle with one another. His mind jumped and jolted from many topics, like a squirrel leaping from one branch to the next. Every now and again he found himself thinking of the bawd; when his mind came across her, he’d take a moment longer, trying to understand with melancholy desperation the reason behind her actions.

It had occurred to him multiple times, at this point, that his tarnished reputation had – in some way – spurred the harlot into action. It had made him vulnerable so many other things; why not the miscalculated perception of some vile woman of vice? Surely, many men that had met with his situation had gone to women like her for a moment of escape - after all, appearances, reputation, and entertainment were the only things that truly mattered in a Capitolites’ mind; and when any of those items are damaged, a Capitolite cannot help but thrust himself into a state of melodramatic depression. However, Hospes was different than most Capitolites, in the sense that it was the event of his reputation being soiled, not the actual fact that his reputation was soiled, that Hospes felt such intense emotional stress. For many things had been spoken in the front of that wretched bar – things that had planted the seed of doubt in a soft and fertile soil, and Hospes knew not how to burn the seed’s crops from his mind, so they would not wrack him further.

Hospes stared at the drink he had set on the bar before him. Tentatively, he extended his hand towards it; he took it, and brought the cool glass to his lips. He drained the glass in one gulp; his mind continued to stray on the subject, and under the guidance of alcohol, the memories and the muses swept over him.


~~~~~~~~~~~

It was only yesterday that, in another twitchy and excitable mood, Hospes had decided it would be a grand idea to wander about in the small park that wasn’t too far from the training center. For, with the Games having ended and the only thing to look forward to presently being the victors’ interviews, and having both of his tributes dead and their bodies being prepared to be sent home, there was no honest reason for Hospes to still wander the training center’s halls; however, he and the other select few who had been a tribute’s attendant were still forced to remain there, and, in this way, turning the center more into a prison in Hospes’s eyes. It was a rather fortunate thing that the government permitted people to exit the center (the permission of absence being followed by the demand of return); for, under such conditions, Hospes would have surely gone to some ruined mental state.

At the park, Hospes had met a pretty little infant, who had tripped and fallen onto her stomach. Being a young, silly thing, she had decided that the logical thing to do was lie there and cry out her distress, and await her mother’s return (where the mother had gone in the first place, Hospes did not know). Immediately, Hospes had taken notice of the little thing; he had hesitated, and glanced around, waiting to see if a parent of either gender would run forth and bring aid to their progeny. No such thing occurred. Hospes had turned his back to the little girl; a rare thing occurred in Hospes’s breast: his heart lurched for a fellow human-being. A strange sort of instinct was triggered within him, an instinct that was rare in a member of his sex; it beckoned him towards her; it made him go to her, without his deliberation or complete and logical consent. Everything that succeeded his going to her was done by the same instinct; the kneeling down and taking her gently by her sides, and then lifting her tenderly onto her tiny feet; the careful wiping of her tears with the cuff of his white sleeves; the soft, breathy cooing: “There, there, dearie. It’s okay; you just had a little fall, that’s all. Don’t fret, dearie. I’m sure your mother will be here soon. Now, now. When you are older, you’ll be wiser to fall backwards. It’s a much softer landing, you know.”

The girl’s head was bent; through her sniffles, she replied, “Will I?”

“I’m certain of it,” Hospes replied, and withdrew his hands from her.

She paused for a moment; during this pause of silence, she took her silky, lavender skirt in her tiny fists, and inspected it. With a small grunt of distressed frustration, the little girl threw it down, and mumbled in submissive dejection, “Momma s’gonna paddle me now. My outfit s’all messed up.”

Hospes paused to process her words, and then leaned back a little, to examine her dress and deliberate, for a moment, on its condition. She was right, unfortunately; the scarlet sweater she wore had been marred by the grimy touch of dirt and dust, leaving brown spots on her chest and stomach, and the skirt she had inspected earlier had been made crooked by the impact of her little frame slamming into the ground, and was, too, stained. However, whether or not this was reason enough to bring forth punishment, Hospes doubted greatly; after all, it had been proven with her tears that the little thing had not intended to fall, nor did she enjoy the experience, and could not have possibly thrown herself down – and, in doing so, dirtying her garments – intentionally; thus, it was Hospes’s logical reasoning that the girl did not deserve such reprimand. But Hospes did understand and could sympathize with the girl’s exasperation and melancholy; his own mother – though she had endeavored to be sweet and gentle to him often (it was for this reason that Hospes still held a slither of love for her, unlike his father, whom Hospes proudly despised with all his heart) – had treated him harshly and with much ridicule whenever he tore his clothes (and, unfortunately, he had been one of those children who accidentally tore his clothes often).

It became Hospes’s mission to fix the infant’s dress before her mother laid her eyes upon its soiled state. He took his palm to her sweater and swept it free from its stains; he took hold of her skirt and carefully twisted it back into its proper place, and then proceeded to sweep it free from the grime that clung to its smooth fabric. He worked gently, respectfully, and efficiently, very soon removing the dust and anything else that threatened to ugly her appearance. The tot did not seem to notice his hands; her eyes were set on his face, with such attentiveness and austerity that one would have thought it impossible for one of such few years to possess; however, though many others might have been surprised and – perhaps – fearful to see such an expression, Hospes did not seem to take any notice to her grim countenance, though he glanced at her little face many times.

It was when he was deliberating whether or not his task was completed that she revealed her reasons for being so fixated with his face: “Yer face is funny.”

Hospes tilted his head sharply (for, at the previous moment, it had been bowed) to look at her, his red eyes exploiting him for his indignation and puzzlement. The little one grinned, her lips parting and becoming that mischievous, innocent, torturous, beautiful little smile that only members of her age – and those with minds and hearts that are similar – could fully and truly wear. She extended forth a tiny hand, and reached for his face, stretching her small, thin fingers towards his nose. Hospes (having almost immediately overcome his initial indignation at the comment on his features; for Hospes had always possessed a strange ability to brush off whatever potentially hurtful or embarrassing statement that should come from a child’s mouth, while allowing the obloquies of adults to scar and sour him till the end of his days) watched her hand attentively, his gaze following it; as her hand came closer, his pupils lowered in his eye-sockets, and, by the time she had pressed her finger-tips to the tip of his nose, his pupils had rolled to the corners of his eyes that were closest to his nose, as if they were trying to escape the boundaries of their respective eyeballs and join together in unity. This gave the escort a rather dim-witted appearance, at which the little girl found uproarious, and jerked her hand away from his nose and proceeded to giggle uncontrollably, her tiny body rocking back and forth. Hospes blinked; and, as his eyelids parted swiftly from one another, his pupils found their way back to the centers of his eyeballs, where they belonged. He then proceeded to watch the tiny thing laugh; and, very soon, his lips twitched into a small, soft smile, and his face softened till an almost drowsy appearance came over him.

Not noticing his countenance of lethargy, however, the girl reached forward with both hands this time, and proceeded to unabashedly play with his face. She prodded his cheeks; placed the fingertips of both index fingers on his eyelids and pulled them as far apart as she could without doing Hospes serious injury; she pinched his lips, and pushed her fingers against the tip of his nose multiple times. He rarely ever put an end to her play; only when he felt a pain sharp enough to make him jolt back did he stop her, and then order her to be gentler. The little tyke, not wanting to lose her new plaything, would listen to him and take his words into consideration, and would proceed with the tugging and pinching of his countenance with such care that one might have thought she was playacting as a nurse, and was pretending to inspect a very weak and sickly patient. However – as was the case for most small, hyper children such as she – the fact that she was having fun with a new and curious friend often distracted and made her forget her promises to be kinder, and would return to the old, harsh way she had played initially, and he would have to remind her again that she had ought to treat him more tenderly.

It was during her play that the child’s mother returned. The parent met the discovery of her child playing with a strange adult with a stunned silence, and became as still as stone, so that neither of the two initially noticed her. After a few seconds of watching them, the mother tried to form words, but her tongue had been numbed, and all she could do was flap her mouth up and down, as a fish pants when it bursts from its watery world and flops onto dry land. It took many tries, but eventually, speech returned to the mother, and she screeched: “Wendy, stop that!”

Wendy, who had been pinching Hospes’s cheeks at that point, flinched and sucked in a tiny gasp, her fingers immediately releasing the escort’s face. She whirled around sharply; but, upon seeing the image of her mother, the young one calmed herself, and grinned delightedly at her. “Momma! Momma, c’mere and play with us!”

Her shrill voice seemed to penetrate through the mother’s shock, like spears through flesh; the mother’s body stiffened, and there was venom in her glance. “Wendy, come here.” Somehow, she had managed to retain the evenness in her voice, despite the intense rage that was evident on her countenance.

Wendy, by accident, beheld a moment of brave and thoughtless tenaciousness that was often seen in children her age. It was more a factor of confusion, really; Hospes had leaned forward and to the right slightly to glance at her little face, and was rather surprised to find how tense and focused she was. Her little face was drawn up and the muscles tightened; her brow was creased, and her eyes were narrowed into tiny, thoughtful slits; she had been pouting, but not out of bratty distress, but with thoughtful and befuddled wonder. Though he didn’t know why, he had looked away from her face, and down at the ground; he couldn’t help but notice that her two little feet had been dug firmly into the ground, and were held apart, as if little Wendy was preparing herself to leap suddenly into the air, and flee the scene with determined speed and covertness.

Her mother was not pleased in the slightest. “Wendy-” she growled, her nasal voice now gravelly and low.

The incomplete threat managed to create a crack within the shell that was Wendy’s foolish steadfastness, but the crack was not wide enough for the order to slip through and sink into her brain. “Oh, Momma!” Wendy sighed. “Please! He s’not bad. He fix’d my clothes and ever’thing!”

It was as if Wendy’s voice had punched the mother in the face. She flinched, her eyes suddenly wide and glazed over; she became still, her head tilted back slightly, her chest puffed out, as if a hook had been attached to her sternum and had just been yanked on a little, her palms held out and her fingers bent like the claws of a cat. Suddenly, she dropped the pose and her stunned expression; her countenance darkened, and she drew her eyebrows together in exasperation. “Fixed your outfit, huh?” she growled as she marched towards the little girl, and knelt in front of her. As she did this, Hospes instinctively rose up and politely stepped back, as an artist withdraws to a forgotten corner of the room as he watches a critic inspect his work.

“Yeah!” Wendy grinned, and her little eyes glinted with pride, as if it had been her own tiny hands that had fixed her outfit, not Hospes’s long and emaciated pair. “Cause I fell down, Momma, so he went over and he fix’d ‘em!”

The mother scrutinized his work with narrowed and suspicious eyes, turning her daughter around and letting her gaze dart around in all directions. After some time of this, she raised her eyes slowly at Hospes’s face, and a deep and ugly scowl was etched into her angular face. “Is this true, mister?”

Hospes nodded curtly.

She snorted, and brought her angered attention back to her daughter. “Don’t’ you think,” she said; and though she was looking at Wendy, Hospes knew that her words were aimed at him, “that motherhood should be a women only thing?”

He didn’t know why, at that moment, he felt the hard fist of indignation drive itself into his chest. Immediately, Hospes had stiffened, and the light of rage was lit within his eyes; his hands had instinctively turned themselves into fists that were too tight and too strong to be unclenched by an outside force, and shuddered beneath their own grip. The mother, however, did not notice the change that Hospes had suddenly underwent; the child did, however, and was temporarily silenced in her shock at seeing her friend undergo such wretched rage. The mother took her child into her arms, and drew herself back onto her feet. Silently, and with a great, flourished whirl, the mother turned herself around, and began to walk away. It wasn’t until the mother had gone a yard or two, that Wendy, suddenly aware of the distance between herself and her new friend, became tense in her mother’s grasp, and cried out: “Momma, Momma, wait! Don’t make me go! He s’not a stranger! He s’a kind’y gent’man! Can’t you see by his funny widdle face and his suit?”

In exasperated consent, the mother did turn around; and, for the first time, made herself look at Hospes’s face closely. At first, she merely looked; then, after a moment’s time, she was squinting at him, analyzing his face closely, analytically. During this time, Hospes had kept his face turned towards them the whole time, but even as the scene was playing, he wished that he hadn’t; the mother’s perceptive gaze struck vexation and paranoia into him, as the whore would the next day, but at a lesser extent. He was hopelessly uncomfortable; it had given him a very irritating sensation that might have fallen upon a bug when it was placed on its back, immobilizing it and making it terribly helpless, and then forced beneath the lens of a microscope: a queer, dreadful feeling of being stripped of all protection and forced into the inscrutable and insensitive eyes of the world – or, at the very least, a large portion of the world that was prior unknown, or uncared about. However, the sensation was contradictory to the actual situation; Hospes was not, technically, being forced to undergo such scrutiny; he was well aware that he could have turned and hurried away at that moment. Unfortunately, what he had not been aware of was the consequences – and oh, how blasted and wretched they were! If he could have foreseen them, he would have surely gone off before the aftermath could have wrought itself upon him (fortunately, he had learned his lesson that day, and would make sure to apply it in his encounter with the mistress).

Slowly, as the sun creeps away from the horizon and to its highest perch in the sky, the mother’s face began to light up with realization and uncertain recognition. Her face, which had contorted and wrinkled itself while she had been squinting, became smooth, except for the bumps that had shown betwixt her thin and arching eyebrows. “Eight escort, right?” she inquired, her voice as gravelly and malicious as a bear’s snarl.

For an instant, a nervousness that Hospes had not originally perceived to be within him revealed itself in the way his body moved and reacted to various things. It was a very slight motion, one that the mother and her spawn did not notice, but was quite apparent to Hospes, for its familiarity. It was a movement that his body often performed only when he was a boy of seven years and a few years beyond that; back in the days when nervousness and the most wretched of anxieties and angers would rack his soul and mentality, clawing and tearing at them both, till there was almost nothing left for their little host. Back when the only way to save either one of the most essential, aforementioned pair was in the slightest jerks and tics, the most private screams and whimpers, to release the pressing and hidden emotions that threatened to rot him, like fruit once it has dropped from its branch.

The jerk was just that: a very simple, unremarkable jerk. His body rocked forward, and then suddenly pulled itself back. In the past, when he had been a boy, the movement would be coupled with the swift, involuntarily act of interlocking his fingers together, and then bringing his hands to his tiny chest; however, in that moment, when he was at an age where he had almost forgot that he once had tics, his hands did not perform the movement, thusly making the jerk of his body more inconspicuous than it had been back when he was seven. He realized that the tic had been performed almost immediately afterwards; once the realization had been made, his body instantly fell into a state of total inactivity, in which his mind became blank for a moment – the blankness being common, for minds who stumble upon something that they do not understand, or, perhaps, are too afraid to. The blankness was easily overcome, however; and in direct answer to the mother’s question, he nodded his head curtly and silently.

It took the mother a moment to process his response. Then, slowly, her face began to contort itself: her mouth stretched itself into a sneer; her nostrils flared, for a moment; her forehead became wrinkled. Then, as if to prove herself worthy to be the mistress of vileness and cruelty, she let out a loud, high-pitched laugh, one that was often heard when she-devils chortled over their hapless victims, and said: “What? Are teenagers too old for you now, too?”

He would have killed her where she stood, if it was not for the image of the little infant Wendy wrapped in the foul woman’s arms.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reputations were the only things a Capitolite could truly possess (excluding, of course, self; however, everything else belonged to the government). The relationships between individuals, the way people glanced at you as walked past them on the street, the way people spoke about you when your back was turned at a party; those were the only things that truly mattered in that fallen city. Hospes, having been subjected to the culture since boyhood, and having a better grasp and understanding of it than most of his fellow Capitolites, knew this quite well, and had accepted this long ago. However, he had never truly paid attention to the way he was looked upon in the public eye; he understood that he was one of the escorts that wasn’t very well-known or respected, for he had only been at the job for around six years and wasn’t a very friendly person to start off with, but it had never bothered him – mostly because this meant he was left alone. In the past, no one had bothered him; no one sent him invitations to parties that he knew was going to be unpleasant, and no one tried to worm their way into his house for the sole purpose of having a glass champagne with him, either. Life was peaceful; rough and unpleasant, yes, but peaceful. Outside of private matters, Hospes was safe from all harm and danger that the media often inflicted on the more prominent and well-known escorts.

And then everything had to change. That damn victor – that damn, wretched, child-seducing, child-using, evil little victor – had to tear it all from him. The vices of the victor were now thought of as his own. All because of those cruel, evil lies that the stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid bastard had to spew, on that hideous night at the bar. As if it hadn’t been torturous enough the first time that the diabolical cacophony of lies had to ring in his pointed ears, he had to hear them and read them over and over again. All because of the media. The lying, damnable media, who loved their victors too much to find the truth – the truth that Hospes would never willingly touch a young girl; that it was that devil who was coaxing brainless teenagers into his room. But no. The media loved their victors too much. The people loved their victors too much. No one would dare take the side of a lanky, bony, ugly, unfriendly, unlikable, ginger escort, when he was opposing a victor; especially a victor like Him: handsome, strong, manly, the epitome of a woman’s lust; vile, evil, terrible, brutish, stupid, mean, crude, bullying – a man that any Capitolite (especially a female) couldn’t help but like.

They hadn’t even begun to ask questions – the people on the television, the people that ruled the magazines. Hospes could suppose that that was because of timing; with the District 1 brats having won their way out of the arena, and with their interview underway, the media was more inclined to focus their attention on them, then on the disparagement of some no-name escort. However, his was too good a story to be passed up willingly; and thus, the gossip rags managed to squeeze him in, basing it all solely on the accounts of the several witnesses who were present, and not on the two people who truly mattered (Hospes being one member of the pair; Satan Incarnate being the other). Whether or not Hospes ought to count his fortunes, he knew not; for, if the reporters finally found the day slow enough to pounce on him, he would have had enough time to prepare – however, up till then, his reputation was exposed and vulnerable, and was slowly but surely being torn to shreds.

~~~~~~~~~

It was a few days before Hospes had had his encounter with Wendy, and a day after his night with that demon. The scene had been on a street corner; in front of a newspaper stand, to be exact, in the late evening, just as it was about to pass into nightfall. It was there that he found them; there that he discovered the ruins of his repute. Lying in a box, brightly colored and with improper syntax, were The Most Satanic Things That Would Most Likely Ruin His Life and Career. There was an image, one of Hospes, with his collar being twisted round by the fingers of Satan, as he was being subjected to Satan’s cruel, cruel lies; the image had been tucked to the side, to make room for a far larger picture of the dual victors, but a large and swooping arrow had been drawn onto the cover, so the world would not be too distracted by the glory of the Games to not take part in Hospes’s torture.

It took him many minutes to process it all. Just by glancing at it, he had felt a strange and painful sensation that someone had struck him, repeatedly, in both the stomach and the head, leaving his mind in a state of fogginess and his body shuddering with soreness and agony. He stood there, so still that a few pigeons fluttered around him curiously, pondering what would happen if they perched on his shoulders and head. His countenance was inexpressive; the shock was too great and too personal to be revealed to the outside-world in anyway.

Those who found irony amusing would have laughed at him, if they had seen him and knew of the events that had – and was still – shaping around him. For this was the first time he had ever found his face on a magazine; for even when he had been appointed as escort, the media had overlooked it, deciding to announce the retirement of his predecessor instead. It was then, through his befuddlement and despair and shock, that Hospes realized that he was, in his own right, a celebrity. Not because he had found his way onto some oafish waste of paper, but because he was an escort; annually, his face was broadcasted all throughout Panem, his name was heard on every television in the world, his voice filled the ears of every Panemian who cared enough to listen. He was a governmentally-funded celebrity, of course, but the man was famous nonetheless – famous enough to be scorned and mocked by the public and the tyrannous, scandalous media. And it was then, too, that he realized he despised fame; and, funnily enough, it was at the birth of this abhorrence that he came to terms with what he technically was, in the eyes of Panem (District 8 especially).

Eventually, he bought all of the magazines concerning him. After paying the vender there a substantial fee, followed by a substantial tip that the vender would never forget, he gathered all of the magazines to his frail chest and fled for his abode: for it was the only place that Hospes could recall that could efficiently and effortlessly offer him; also, a fireplace was there. The largest fireplace in Panem, or so Hospes had liked to think that night.

Night had already fallen by the time Hospes returned home. Like any sensible person, he lit the electrical lights and tossed the stacks of wasted paper onto the sofa in his den. The fireplace was there, taking up a good portion of the wall, in its size and grandeur and elegance. Though it was the first time he had ever used it, it did not take long for him to conjure a fire inside its belly; once the new-birthed flames seemed tall enough and strong enough to last for a time, Hospes turned the lights off – the only to illuminate the room being the fireplace, for the moon had vanished from the sky for the night, and the windows were merely dark, void-like gaps in the wall. But Hospes found that the fire – the lovely, saving fire – was enough for him.

Once the lights were off, a strange and terrifying power was injected into Hospes’s body; a might that seemed too grand, too terrible for his frail-looking, skeleton-like physique. He moved swiftly and suddenly, as a snake as it flings itself at its victim and stabs it with its teeth. He pounced on the pile of magazines on his sofa; he gathered them to his breast in a swift, sweeping motion, like an eagle as it flaps its wings. His body proceeded to move like a whip; he stepped backward; side-stepped once; twisted his body round; and then the magazines were in the flames. There was a noise that was comparable to the sound that a great wind of a storm makes as it sweeps through the plains; then a ferocious snarl came from the fire, as the paper brought it further strength, and it immediately grew taller in the fireplace, and its gray-black smoke was coiling and writhing and growing in the chimney. The neon colors of the magazines were tarnished; tiny mountains and little creases were made in the once perfectly smooth paper; the papery meat betwixt the covers was swiftly and violently destroyed.

The strange and ill-placed power that now surged within Hospes’s slight frame had intensified. He stood straight and tall; despite his compact, bony body, a new and grand and mighty air was placed upon him: one that gave him a form of regality that was too grave to be human; one that gave him a warrior-like strength that was not heard of in his physicality. It made him terrible, it made him terrifying; it made him evil, it made him hateful and hated (if there had been any witnesses). There was a cynical wisdom about him; somehow, it made him look older, but the increased age just made him all the more frightening, for some unknown reason.

If a witness was to have found his way into Hospes’s den at that moment, it would have been advisable for him to look at Hospes at his flanks, instead of from behind or directly in front of the escort, for those were the places where Hospes’s new air was the most startling. From behind, with the darkness coupling the red light of the fire, his body looked as dark and empty as a silhouette; one might not have noticed it, if it had not been for the fire’s glow, creating a red aura that outlined his shadowy figure, like the ring of light that flickers around a black hole. From the front, the glow of the flames fell on Hospes’s white face, which, as it had done with the lights of the dance club that he was presently situated in, immediately took on the pale reddish light. It looked as if his face had been crafted from an ember of Hell, such was the intensity of his face’s new color, and the way he had contorted his countenance. The red in his eyes had intensified with coupling of his irises and the fire; they were now a deeper shade of gules, more like the color of the fire that raged inside his hearth, or a rather paler version of the hue of the blood that boiled and surged angrily in his veins. His mouth had been twisted in a large, gruesome, grizzly scowl; one that a certain female tribute, if she had been there to witness the event and her heart was still beating, might have recognized dimly: for this scowl was a larger and uglier version of the one that Hospes often wore upon his countenance whenever he had looked upon that said diabolical, deceased tribute. It was like a disgusting, twisting wound had been made on his face; he was grinding his teeth together madly, angrily; his nose was wrinkled; his face had been completely contorted in his maniacal fury. He looked like a devil – or, perhaps, a great, terrible, evil god, one that could easily rival Cthulhu, who despised the world and the subjects who sacrificed themselves to him, and was slowly but surely plotting their agonizing, collective demise and overall apocalypse.

~~~~~~~~~~

However, the great and terrible deity that was Hospes Fae Compleo did not last long. Very soon, he had been defeated; and was currently mourning his losses and licking his wounds in a night club. The Great Lord Hospes was dead – a lowly mortal soul had assumed his body, and now aimlessly and broodingly roamed the Earth in this form, considered by fellow man too despicable to be permitted the company of a little friend who liked to call herself Wendy, for she considered herself his friendy. No; the only company that he was allowed to be with and that willingly came to him was the harlots that knew lust without actually feeling it – for they knew the vulnerability of fallen gods, and they knew the worthiness of a debased deity’s gold as well.

He rubbed his hand languidly over the bandage on the other. A happy, playful, dance-worthy song batted at his eardrums, as if to mock him.

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Word Count (because I'm proud of it): 7,864 (HELL YES.)