Writer Games | Masquerade of Martyrs & Family Ties

Task Seven: Songs For A Better World /SF - Annalise Lutz

​I love my parents, but  they have simply awful taste in romantic partners. The ironic part: that  didn't change when they found each other.

​Funny how that works,  no? They're reasonably intelligent people. They must know they have a  type, and who would be good for them. More than that, they should  understand the most basic principle of relationships, the one that seems  so obvious, it often goes without saying.

​Any relationship that starts with karaoke is doomed to failure.

​I sat, trembling, muscles tensed as an unnaturally sweet smell filled my nose. The gray stone under my hand blurred-

​I'm standing in a dark  room filled with the scent of alcohol and sweat. Colored lights are  flashing in erratic patterns that give me a mild headache, and an  inexpert voice is cheerfully mangling a popular song from twenty years  ago. I know the spot, and with some incomprehensible logic, I can tell  what is about to happen.

​A guy in his twenties  laughs loudly next to me. I look over at him, frowning. He's clearly had  a few beers, and the brand-new Peacekeeper uniform marks him as a  recent graduate of the Training Center. I note the goofy smile on his  face, and grin back. I know this man, though I wasn't alive when he  looked like this.

​"Hi Daddy," I say, my  voice muted, strange. The song ends, and a red-faced, beaming woman with  hair an eye-watering shade of green stumbles offstage, to polite  applause. My father takes another swig of beer.

​I've heard the story a  thousand times. I know how this goes. Bright pings ring out as the next  person selects their song. A high, sweet melody rings out, different  from the electronic style of a few moments ago. I turn around slowly. My  father mirrors my movements.

​I coughed. The  sick-smell was everywhere. The walls were spinning. I slowly slid down  the wall until I was lying down. My vision narrowed, darkness swallowing  up the edges of my world.

​My father's jaw drops  open, an expression clearly generated by the alcohol. I gaze upon the  stage, curious to see even though I know who's there.

​My mother. Dana Killian.

​Once, I asked my  parents what first caught the other's attention. My mother simply  laughed, saying she'd always had a weakness for men in uniform. Her  first boyfriend had been a Peacekeeper too, a guy named Brenden. He'd  been the one to get her into the sort of fake Irish crap that she was  singing that night.

​When I asked my dad what first caught his eye, he'd simply said "Boobs."

​My mother opens her  mouth and begins to sing. The words are indistinct. I always fell asleep  before my parents finished the story, so I never heard the song. My  father has closed his mouth, but he's got that stupid grin on his face  again. His eyes never leave my mother. She's smiling back at him,  flirtatious, singing the faux-Celtic words off a screen that's just out  of sight.

​My back was against  rough stone. I twitched, my body wracked with coughs. The smell of dirt  and decay and sweet gas was slowly fading away, the texture of rough  stone shifting subtly to something else. Something smoother. Something  softer.

​The notes of the song  are stretching out into long peals of sweet sound. The smell of alcohol  is overpowering. My father and mother are both staring at each other,  movements halted as my father steps towards the stage. The karaoke club  is frozen, a single crystalline moment.

​I stand in the middle  of the moment, eyes closed. It doesn't make a difference. I'm still  aware of everything that's happening. Frozen citizens pause mid-dance. A  thin stream of alcohol is coming from a bartender's bottle, suspended  over a slender glass.

​A few years ago, I  realized something about my parents. About this karaoke bar. About the  Capitol itself. We're all about escape. Whether it's through pretending  you're a celebrity by singing pop songs, or by getting drunk with your  buddies after becoming a Peacekeeper. Whether it's about becoming so  desperate for adventure that you send kids to fight to their deaths and  have the gall to pretend it's "fair," a "righteous punishment" for  Districts that rebelled centuries ago. Whether it's about singing  New-Age fake Celtic crap about a land where everything's green and  perfect and beautiful, when any schoolgirl could tell you that country  sank beneath the waves centuries ago, a victim of the same collapse that  created Panem.

​I like to think that  I'm not escaping by becoming a unicorn. I want to say that I'm embracing  my innermost self, acknowledging a truer reality. In the end, though, I  know the truth. I know exactly why I want to become some horse with a  horn that can fart rainbows and canter off happily into the sunset. It's  the same reason my mother went up on that stage, singing about a place  that hasn't existed for centuries. It's why my father drank three beers  before he saw my mother singing, and why he drank another five over the  course of the evening. It's why my parents got married in six months,  wildly in love, when who could say whether they loved each other or  whether they loved a potent combination of alcohol and karaoke?

​I look around at the  frozen bar. I have to admit that it's a lovely little moment. Wine,  women, and song are all in abundance, and the denizens of the Capitol  are loving every second of it. My parents have locked eyes, and I know  the story that's about to be born.

​I turn away.

​The bar flickers, and I  look down at my hands. They're solid, and cold, and as I reach for my  father, he seems far away, even though just a second ago I was close  enough to smell his cologne. Instead, my hands touch something cold, and  rough, and hard as a Gamemaker's heart. I start to cry, inexplicably,  and in that instant, the bar and its distractions are gone, the lights  going out immediately. I gasp, and grope, and-

​I was sitting,  weeping with my hands against the tunnel walls. The stone had scraped my  fingers and my head throbbed with pressure and discomfort. All I could  smell was a sweet, unnatural odor, slowly fading until it vanished  completely. I trembled, hands balling into fists.

​See, the trouble with  escapes is that they can never last. The song plays out, and you need to  let someone else take the stage. You wake up with a massive hangover,  wondering what possessed you to drink everything your friends bought  you. You come back from Ireland, and remember that the green land of  happiness and leprechauns never existed, and that the only Irish people  nowadays are fish.

​You realize that the  honeymoon is over, and that even after three kids and twenty-five years,  you can't stand the sight of that person you met at a karaoke bar.

​You realize that, no  matter how much gas some psycho pumps into a tunnel, you're still a  teenage girl in the Hunger Games, devoid of survival skills, supplies,  and hope.

​I pounded my fists against the walls, blood dripping from my knuckles.

​"Why are you lying to me?" I shouted at the roof. "Can't you at least be honest before I die horribly?"

​It's not real.

​It was never real.

​And no matter how I hard I work-

​It would never be real.