Cannel Cohle is a hillbilly philosopher. (gloomanddoom) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-03-29 14:47:00 |
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Perhaps it was strange to overcompensate for a fear of impending death by confronting it head-on - indeed, making fun of it - but Cannel was determined to prove he wasn’t scared of dying, and it with this goal in mind that he implored Anita to acquire a ouija board for he and Faline so that they could talk to ‘ghosts’. It would be fun, he insisted. Everyone knew it was for entertainment purposes only. He tried to play it off as some kind of a flippant distraction, but deep down, some part of him was also morbidly curious - what if you really could contact departed folks on the other side? It was unlikely, perhaps, but if multiverse theory turned out to be true, who was to say that this wasn’t one of an infinite number of parallel universes in which ghosts did exist? Cannel didn’t say any of this, though. Instead, he nonchalantly stuffed his cheeks full of cake after he’d finished reading the instructions out loud, and asked, with his mouth full, “So… are you ready to commune with spirits?” He wiggled his fingers in a mystical fashion, shedding magical crumbs. His partner, with characteristic self-interest, was splayed neatly across the plush carpet, propped up on her side with an elbow under her head. With deliberate movements, Faline herself dipped the delicate pointer finger of her other hand into the icing that adorned her own cake—not having requested one, it had been both a confusion and a delight to be thought of; somehow she was sure that it was deliberate manipulation—until it built up on the pad and she could suck it off her finger languidly. It was strange, like the world had been flipped on its head, to think that she was lying here eating cake in the Capitol rather than starving in the districts; strange to think that all she had to do was press a button to garner practically anything she wanted. Maybe it was that which had brought her yes so immediately to the forefront when Cannel had suggested it, this supposed way to contact the dead. Guilt. For at least this week, she was living the dream, wasn’t she? And maybe it was a good idea to get to know the spirits before they joined them in the afterlife. Almost mockingly, she replied to her partner in harsh tones, “If you offend them, they won’t speak to us at all.” Raising her voice, so as to be heard by the others in the room, “Isn’t that how it works?” Without waiting for a reply, she told him informatively, “That’s how it works.” Anita didn't know why she agreed to this. She knew too many dead children for this to be any kind of a comfortable activity. All the same, she had agreed to participate even if she was far too nervous to stay in one place while Cannel read the rules. Keeping busy, she worked at straightening up a few things and then came buzzing into the room with a handful of napkins, splitting the stack between both Faline and Cannel. Catching sight of the crumbs just as she was about to move away from Cannel, she took a napkin from the top of the stack she'd gifted him and brushed the mess into her palm. "I'm ready! In a minute, I mean - hold on!" she called out, scurrying out of the room again to throw the napkin and the crumbs into the wastebin. Less pills today, less energy, a little more anxiety - nothing she couldn't handle. She had her first halfway decent night of sleep just the night before, after all, and that was a start of the road to normalcy. Out of sight, she took a deep, steadying breath. Her wandering gaze fell upon a bottle of wine, helpfully chilled by an Avox, and Anita felt herself inexplicably drawn in. Her feet began moving toward it but she very quickly changed the direction of her footing and forced herself to return to the room with the ouija board she was so dreading. With an apologetic smile, she sank to her knees and set the board down, "I think Faline's right, we should definitely be respectful about this." She could think of seventeen kids off the top of her head who might have some choice words for her already if they happened to occupy some spectral form - respect seemed to be a good idea. Anita gave Faline a firm nod of approval. It was strange, hearing those words out of a Capitolite and not immediately resenting them; but even as they sank in, watching her escort bring the board itself into the room, something strange prickled over her skin: a thought, or an idea, or maybe some goddamn inspiration from something otherworldly already, but Faline was sitting up almost immediately thereafter, looking at the board, then at Cannel, then at Anita before blurting out, “We should try to contact the tributes. From before. From last year, and-- and the years before.” All at once her heart was racing at the thought. This couldn’t be real, right? No one could actually talk to the dead, not even the Capitolites. But if there was a chance, some chance, then.. then she had questions. She’d expected that they’d want to ask vague questions, maybe try to channel deceased relatives. She didn’t expect that they would want to directly attempt to contact Twelve’s many dead tributes and she wondered almost immediately after Faline said they should how she didn’t see that coming. She calmed herself with the reminder that ouija boards didn’t work, that no dead people were actually going to be contacting them, certainly not Eli, Ruth, Lilac, or Roan. Anita shifted uncomfortably but nodded and said, “Okay. If that’s what you want to do.” Her lips curved upward into a forced smile that was ripe with anxiety, but she placed the tips of her fingers on the planchette first. If it would bring them some solace then it was worth it. “Lilac first,” came the immediate demand; the urgency of it combined with the way she was nervously tapping her foot would have warned off anyone who thought she may not have had emotional involvement here, but she ignored it nonetheless, unable to worry about anything beyond the task she was currently fixated on. Her fingers resting lightly against the piece of the board that was, apparently, to be controlled by a spirit, should they succeed in contacting one, she glanced around at the others before murmuring, “Do we just ask a question? Do we have to say her name, or what?” “I think you have to ask her if she’s there first, just to make sure, before asking her a question,” Cannel suggested. He was more than a little bit relieved when Faline took over as seance, as he probably would not have known what to do after they’d sat down with the board. It was one thing to joke about it; it was quite another to actually do it. Just in case they did encounter any restless dead tributes, he followed Anita’s bidding that they be respectful, although he thought to himself that if he were to be a ghost at some point, he wouldn’t really mind a little levity. It was tentatively, uncertainly, glancing down at the board and then back up at the ceiling as if there were some great collective of spirits suddenly above them, that she finally spoke. “Lilac, are you there?” When the planchette held beneath their fingers began to move long moments later, she swore to herself almost in surprise, threatening, “If any of you are fucking with me, I…” but it died in her throat when the small piece of wood stopped solidly over a word carved into the board. YES. The words burst out of her in the next second, something akin to panic in her voice. “Are you safe?” Her heart raced even as she waited for a reply, having forgotten the others were even in the room beyond the other fingers that touched the planchette with hers; it thumped harder when the piece moved again, dipping away from the word for a moment and then returning. YES. She was sure everyone could see that her eyes were wet, and yet she didn’t care: seizing it, as if any moment this connection to whoever, whatever, Lilac, could cease at any moment, she managed a choked, “Alder says hi. Or he would, if he-- he would if he knew, if he was--” she stumbled over it, and almost as if she were there to interrupt, the answer came again, slowly. M. I. S. S. She wanted to stop. This wasn't at all how this was supposed to go. Her hands shook with the effort of keeping them on the planchette because there was nothing she wanted more at that moment than to pull away. Anita kept telling herself it couldn't be real but she couldn't imagine that anyone with their hands presently on the planchette would forcibly guide it. Looking at Faline, she noticed her crying and felt herself wanting to put the brakes on the whole thing. But the planchette moved to the M and Anita found herself unable to interrupt as it continued onward to spell the word miss. At first, she assumed that Faline wanted to hear specifically from Lilac because perhaps she was able to identify with her but it was pretty clear to Anita now that the girls had actually known each other. She looked down and blinked rapidly to clear her own eyes of tears. Anita had a strict rule not to cry in front of tributes, in front of anyone, and she wasn't going to break it now. Instead, she tried to keep telling herself how fake this was, how one of them must be moving it out of some misguided attempt at comfort, even if part of her wanted to believe it was real if only because that would mean that Lilac was safe. Somehow. Cannel noticed Faline looking upset and wasn’t sure whether to suggest they call it off or to keep it moving. He didn’t want to stop if she didn’t want to stop though, so he asked the first question he could think of off the top of his head. “Do you ever haunt anyone?” he asked Lilac, his voice unsure. There was a brief pause after his question before the planchette began to move again, seemingly of its own accord, spelling out slowly H. A. Y. They all stared, seemingly waiting for the rest of the word, but when nothing more was forthcoming, Faline burst out laughing, a minor release of the energy building up inside her with every moment that passed in the presence of-- of something, she could feel it in the air or the too-fast beat of her heart or the fear that raced over her skin. Breathing sharply through her nose in order to contain emotion, hysteria, the look in her eyes something between loss and grief, her last question was a whispered, “Not us?” G. U. A. R. D. She had to pull her hands away from the planchette at the last word and bury her face in her hands, half laughing and half crying as her shoulders shook. Cannel was unsure how to react to Faline’s reaction, so he hesitated for a moment, biting his lip, before reaching out and giving her what he hoped was a comforting pat on the back. He knew all too well the sort of emotions she was probably feeling right about now. He opted to close this particular chapter of their session before Faline could hurt any further. “Is there… is there anything else you’d like to tell us?” Cannel asked, his eyebrows furrowed with concern. When that last question was asked, a sound something akin to a gasp escaped Faline, who lifted her tearstruck face, but immediately reached out, putting her fingers back onto the board piece; no way was she going to let emotion get in the way of whatever this was, and she knew deep down, wholeheartedly, that she believed in this stupid game of the Capitol and whatever it represented, whatever connection it had to the world beyond. However long Lilac was here, she would keep control of herself. It waited until she’d touched it again to start moving again. F. O. R. 1. 2. Without missing a beat, as soon as the planchette had settled onto the 2 in the sentence, it moved down to the bottom of the board, where the word “GOODBYE” was carved in. It sat there for a full, silent minute, the three of them with shaky fingers, before Faline finally broke the silence with a very, very soft, almost inaudible, “If it was one of you two, moving it…” it would have sounded like a threat, were the normally tough as rocks girl not currently more vulnerable than any of them could have imagined. “I don’t ever want to know.” With that, she scrubbed at her wet cheeks with the back of one hand, returning it to the board only after she somewhat resembled her normal self. Well, that had been a lot more unnerving than Cannel had thought it would be, but he tried not to show it. After they’d bid farewell to the ghost of Lilac, Cannel chuckled nervously and attempted to move it along. “So, how about Ruth? Ruth, are you there?” The planchette moved to YES, and Cannel managed to suppress a shiver. “What’s the best part about being a ghost?” he asked, hoping to keep it light. The spirit of Ruth - or whatever it was - replied: “L-I-S-T-E-N-I-N-G.” Curiosity got the better of him, and he asked another question immediately afterward, “Does it get better after this?” The reply? “NO.” Cannel looked up at Faline, wondering what she made of that. A brief snort of laughter, still weak from the earlier interactions, was all she could manage. Eagerly, he followed that up with, “Would you say you’re in alternate dimension?” He hoped to have his favourite theories confirmed, but was met only with silence. “Shit, I might have broken it,” he said sheepishly, deciding that it was time for him to shut up now. Voice still a little creaky from the tears that she hadn’t been able to control, she managed, “Maybe she just-- doesn’t want to answer that.” Biting her lip briefly, thinking of the anger she’d seen in the small deaf tribute the year before, of how she’d rooted for her silently day after day only to watch every second of her strangling without blinking an eye… “Is there anything you want to tell us?” was her low answer, unwilling to torment the little Twelve any further after death than she already had been in life. The letters came after a few moments, slowly, but steady. G. O. O. D. L. U. C. K. T. O. Y. O. U. Faline’s answering smile was as haunted as one ever could have imagined. When she looked over, though, she could see it in Anita’s eyes, the trepidation, the fear, the certainty that their escort wanted to be done with this; she could just imagine, though, the hundreds of tributes able to speak out now that nobody could hurt them further, things they could tell her, reassurances they could give her, and she loathed the idea of someone taking such a freedom away from her. “Just one more, okay?” Came her demand, a little harsher than she meant it, such that she softened a second later and almost pleaded from the escort, “Just one more. Okay?” Then, almost tripping over the words, her bitterness and hatred having melted away as though they were never there, Faline was almost helpless when she said, “Just-- the boy from last year, the one who gave you the book. The-- the,” and she motioned in the direction of the stacks of books that Haymitch and Anita had brought for Cannel, “the bird book. Eli. The one who told you everyone was birds, I want to ask him which I am. And then we’ll be done, I swear.” When the escort hesitated, it was enough prompt for Faline to hurry on, to ask the question, “Eli?” looking up at the ceiling as though he were looking down from somewhere. When the planchette began to move, the female tribute’s smile was of relief, but she cut off the spirit’s voice—if that’s even what it was—before it got to the YES, with a solid, “What kind of bird am I?” There was a long pause, one that she almost interrupted with a sigh of giving in and giving up, before the piece of wood began to move again. C. R. O. W. She smiled despite herself. “I would have liked you,” came her soft answer; then, as if to make up for it, an immediate, “And him?” The planchette spelled out R.A.V.E.N., and Cannel felt a familiar pang of regret, some guilty sense of loss for someone he’d never actually met. He smiled a small smile at the comparison, though - he made a mental note to tell Faline later that corvids were some of the most intelligent birds; indeed, they were vindictive, self-aware little shits. It seemed appropriate. He was unsure of whether to keep asking questions, since Faline had promised Anita that there would only be one more. They had already asked two, however, and besides - he justified it in his mind - it was Faline who had promised, not him. How many times did one get a chance to communicate with people in the afterlife? This might be the only chance either of them ever got… at least not until crossing over to the other side themselves. “Does dying hurt?” Cannel blurted out, wanting desperately to know what was probably in store for him in several days’ time. The piece lurched forward, almost eagerly, to first find the Y. Then the E. And then, after a very long pause, the planchette finally traveled up to the entire word already carved into the board: YES. She had to laugh, and even if it was a little bitter, there was some delight in it too; she’d expected that much at least, the honest answer being that death had to hurt, at least in the arena, but the realization that whoever, whatever, was moving the planchette hadn’t realized there was a YES until more than halfway through the word... Promise broken, eyes avoiding those of her escort’s, she spoke unnaturally loudly when she asked, “Do you have any regrets?” E. M. M. E. She frowned, trying to make sense as the letters went on. L. I. N. E. “Who’s Emmeline?” Faline echoed, turning to Anita as though she might have the answers. Was she going to throw up all over the ouija board? If not for the lipstick, her lips would have been as white as the rest of her face. Just one more, Faline insisted - Eli. It was no longer so easy to rile her skepticism, not after the strangely uncanny communications with both Lilac and Ruth. Her eyes darted back and forth between her tributes and she found herself wondering if Faline and Cannel were just messing with her, if they'd known all three of them before their Reapings and this entire thing was just a charade designed to hurt her. Even as the notion popped into her head, she was struck by the selfishness of it. It was the only explanation she could think of at the moment but she found she'd rather believe that her dead tributes were communicating with them than assume either of her living ones had it in them to do something like this. It prompted her to nod, to agree with Faline that she could stand one more even if that one more was Eli. This wasn't about her, it was about trying to help her tributes find some kind of comfort, she forced herself to remember. It wasn't about her or she would be asking questions and Faline did promise there'd be just one more question. The game resumed and Anita didn't so much as look up when they moved past that one-more-question marker. The way the planchette moved to the Y and the E before moving quickly to the 'yes' already on the board - it felt so much like Eli that it twisted in her chest. Faline heaped yet another question on top of her broken promise and Anita internally squirmed, using all of her resolve just to sit through the complete spelling of the girl's name. When it finished, Anita's hands pulled back from the planchette like it was red hot. She got to her feet and, still staring at the board, said flatly, "His niece." Emmeline, just about the same age her own niece, would never know her astoundingly sweet uncle. Unless she picked up a Ouija board, apparently, or maybe she would need to ensure she was playing with the right (or wrong) people. Anita tore her eyes from the board when she felt a prickling behind them and turned wordlessly from the pair. Her leaden legs carried her zombie-like to the door where she finally turned back to face them, lips tight for a long moment before she trusted herself to speak, "I'll be back later." Then, because it wasn't about her, she forced a smile before she left. Faline sat silent, her fingers refusing to abandon the planchette even as their escort reached her breaking point, abandoned them; she was surprised to find she couldn't blame her. For a brief moment she wondered whether the escort assumed that her smart, sharp, angry female tribute had worked this up, planned this cruelty, tears and all. The thought turned her stomach. She wanted to swear it wasn't--when had she started caring what her airhead escort thought?-- but the savage realization that it wouldn't matter drove her on once more. Before even the door had finished closing after Anita and her false smile, she turned back to the board, asking after a long, shaky exhale, one final query. "Is there anything else you want to tell us, Eli?" It took another long moment before the word began, and it was only when it was finished that Faline was finally ready to walk away. RUN. |