You Make Me Better Than I Was Before

With the three of them tucked away in the Capitol, the house soon grew cold. He hardly bothered to get dressed most days, let alone light a fire.

If it wasn’t for Katniss, Peeta and Sae he would probably succumb to scurvy and pneumonia during those in-betweens.

No one else ever visited, because let’s be real. He was drunk 90 % of the time. The only days he cleaned up his act, was for those rare video calls that he treasured like pearls.

He paid Katniss in canned goods to remind him, well in advance and make it so that he showed up for those meetings, presentable, with time to spare.

Their visits and those hour-long calls where he would talk with his family, his kids, through the screen was the only thing that kept him going. They were like tiny stars in an otherwise empty sky. He yearned for it, despite the fact that he always felt worse after.

Haymitch rubbed his eyes. Sensed the dull headache building.

Outside, the wind howled in the night. The kind of storm that would’ve taken the power out, had this been the olden days.

The house creaked and groaned under the strain. As if a giant clutched it between his hands, bending it this way and that, trying to lodge it from its foundations.

He sure would have a taxing day tomorrow. Shoveling a path to Katniss and Peeta’s house, the goose pen and through where the Victor’s Village met the public road.

Not that he complained.

Nothing like a little manual labor to keep your mind off things. Like his pa always said: Work’s the best antidote for sorrow.

Haymitch drew a deep breath. Exhaled slowly through his mouth. Quiet as falling dust. He wouldn’t dare risk waking anybody up. Just sitting here was tempting fate.

Effie had made things perfectly clear.

“If you want to lurk around downstairs in the dead of night, that's on you. That's your business. But once you do … I don't want you up here again, OK? Not until morning.”

“Oh?” Haymitch said with a stab at a joke. “Imma need to start keepin’ a potty under my bed?”

Effie’s lips didn’t so much as twitch.

“This is serious, Haymitch. If you go below, you stay below. No matter what …”

He opened his mouth, but she beat him to it.

“… and I’m not interested in anything you have to say! You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb. You won’t set foot inside the nursery at night, is that clear?”

He could’ve argued. About the unfairness of it all. That this was his bloody house. “You can’t bar me from spaces in my own house!”

But why bother? She was right, wasn’t she? As usual. He wouldn’t have wanted a drunk like himself near the twins either.

So, now he was a stowaway in his own home. Never mind that he hadn’t had a drink yet. Never mind that he hardly ever fetched a bottle, even when he did pull an all-nighter.

Upstairs was still a big no-no. The rooms. The corridor. All off-limits until daybreak.

But she didn’t say anything about the staircase.

Here’s where he spent most of his lonesome nights. Not drunk. Not yet. Never before midnight. On rare occasions he brought a book with him, but most of the time he just … kept watch. Sat on standby, if you will. In case someone needed him.

His kids. He knew all their sounds. What they meant. And from this vantage point right here, just out of sight, he could pick up on the slightest change. Every sigh. Every whimper. Every sob and suspicious cough. He wouldn’t miss a thing.

Not that it mattered.

It’s all so pathetic, isn’t it?

Because what could he do, even if there was something? Sitting here, like a dog by a fence. Useless.

She doesn’t want my help. And I don’t blame her. I could be a sperm donor, for all the good I do this family.

Effie called him a ghost sometimes – not to his face – and he sure felt like one. Unable to stay away from his family sleeping upstairs, but also unable to be with them truly.

Was it like this for Raoul? he wondered with a heavy heart. His beginning of the end? Before his wife finally kicked him out of the house, once and for all.

Will I too hide around Effie’s garden soon? At the Capitol. Out in the cold, just watching through the windows. Desperate for the life he was no longer part of.

The thought was such a chokehold, he cast it from his mind. Rubbing his forehead, he squeezed his eyes shut.

Fuck, I need a drink.

At least with him on the stairs, no goddamn monsters would make it through.

I won't let it. I’ll kick it in the fucking nuts!

It didn’t add up and yet the idea offered some odd sense of comfort. Like he had a purpose still. In control over … something.

Time moves strangely on a staircase. When it’s just you and the moon and your own dark thoughts.

To keep himself from going stark raving mad, Haymitch invented little games for himself. Pastimes, if you will. So he wouldn’t hit the bottle prematurely.

He pulled his middle finger over his index finger. Then his ring finger over his middle finger – and on to the next and the next. Both hands. Creating a pair of fleshy little half-braids.

He made shadow figures on the wall, if there was enough light. An art he’d perfected after countless nights with his brother.

He swept his hair forward and then tried to blow it away from his face, using only his breath.

He tried to hold said breath for as long as he could, wondering if it was humanly possible to die just by deciding to quit breathing.

He tried to reach his nose with the tip of his tongue, wondering if it was humanly possible to give yourself head.

He turned his hands into a spyglass and tried to spot the faces on Effie’s framed family photos. Those lining the wall, all the way up the stairs.

There’s the twins at one year old. Two years old. Three years old. Katniss and Peeta, enjoying a batch of cheese buns. Sae in her apron, over at the diner. Effie by the geese, keeping a respectful distance in her white and pink-dotted dress. “Not white, Haymitch. Eggshell.”

A summer dress he remembered fondly. It turned slightly see-through if you got water on it. Course, she learned quickly never to go anywhere near the garden hose, with Haymitch close by. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you? Oh, just look at me! If I get pneumonia now, it’ll be all your fault!”

The list just went on and on.

He counted the steps of the stairs. 16. And the number of knotholes and imperfections in the walls. 22. He even tried his hands at reverse spelling. “Eiffe Teknirt” being his all-time favorite, because it would either make her laugh or frown, depending on her mood. And all their last names spelled “TEAM” together, how funny. That could not be a coincidence, right?

He sang to himself, quietly in his mind. He played the piano on the air. Did a one-man version of his and his brother’s old clap games. And, a real show-stopper: Counted time tables (1 through 12) and made himself start over from the beginning every time he messed up.

Anything to keep his mind occupied. Anything to get him through the night, when he had no bottle, and no Effie, to do the trick.

xXx

Maybe he did doze off, just a moment. For suddenly there was a noise and Haymitch raised his head from where it had gravitated toward his chest.

Upstairs. Whimpers. The rustle of sheets. Sounds that turned Haymitch’s head, like a dog to a scent.

Nightmare, he concluded. His little boy.

Yeah, who wasn’t afraid of the dark? Here in the Victor’s Village it was the rule rather than the exception. He’d be damned if the dark around here wasn’t darker compared to other places in the district. Even with a nightlamp on.

“They’re kids, old man”, Peeta had said, when too many bad dreams had passed for Haymitch not to bring it up. “Little ones have nightmares. Ask any parent. Sae. Hazelle. Annie. Your own baby mama. It’s just part of the package deal.”

Maybe. Yeah, probably. But he’d be lying if he said a part of him hadn’t wished – hoped – that the night terrors would somehow skip his little ones. The first post-war generation of kids growing up without The Hunger Games.

Ian’s whimpers only got stronger, tugging painfully at Haymitch’s heartstrings.

Where the hell’s their mother at? he thought, with a twinge of annoyance.

Effs who was so adamant on taking care of the kids all by herself! How hard a sleeper could one person get?

But just as he was about to rise, like Fuck it, I’m going in, there it was. The creak of Effie’s door. Her soft footfalls approaching. Haymitch ducked his head automatically, once she reached the nursery, despite being well out of sight. She turned the door handle, seconds before their son bellowed, with every bit of his breath:

“I want my maaamaa!!”

Haymitch’s ass sunk back against the step.

They never want their daddy at night, he thought, hating the lump that rose in his throat.

He listened to what followed. Effie’s soft murmurs. Ian’s, then Amy’s jumbled up words of distress. The tinkling of the gosling music box, playing their melody for the second round tonight.

That’s the downside to the monster spell. It wore off. Well, usually in a couple of days or so. This was rare for them.

Maybe it’s the storm?

xXx

Midnight. Finally.

The cellar door opened on creaking hinges. Like it didn’t approve of him coming here.

Years ago, never mind how many, Haymitch had a really bad freak-out. One too many sips of rotgut and he went total berserk. He didn’t remember much of it, but when he came to, all mirrors were smashed and the cellar’s door handle was little more than broken splinters and twisted metal. All bent out of shape, hanging on for dear life.

Hell if he knew what that was all about. Or where he got his strength from. The blows hadn’t come from inside, but out here in the corridor. Never mind that it wasn’t even locked to begin with.

Maybe, in his head, the door had morphed into some kind of threat? An enemy, out to get him.

Whatever it was, you had to be careful now. Because if you went and closed the cellar shut, you might not be able to open it again. Not without brute force. And each time you wrestled it up, the door got just a little more broken.

It drove Effie nuts.

“Why can’t you just fix the damned thing? Or let me do it?” she said each year, and each year he responded:

“It’s not so bad. All I gotta remember is keeping it a few inches open all the time. Problem solved.”

“What about the twins?” she complained. “They’ll be crawling before we know it.”

“Relax. I’ll just put up a baby gate or something. It’ll be fine, sweetheart.”

“Yes, of course”, Effie said and threw her hands up in the air. “Why solve problems when you can make it hard and/or dangerous for yourself?”

But she never pressed the issue further. No matter how much she wanted to, it was their unspoken agreement: the cellar was Haymitch’s domains and Haymitch’s only. And, unlike him, Effie kept the promises she made.

He needed only hint at the fact that he stored some precious heirlooms down below. Things he had salvaged from the fire – that fire – and she stopped asking questions.

And it wasn’t even a lie. Not per se.

He had gone there. Once. After their funerals. To do what, he wasn’t sure. It was only ashes.

“Talk about non-suicidal self-injury”, Chaff had said before buying him a scotch, when Haymitch told his friend about it.

Maybe. Either way he didn’t really make it very far. Standing in the rubble of his first and only home, he came across the handle to the front door. Just the metal skeleton of it. He still remembered picking it up. All charred and covered in ashes. The weight of it. The soot marks it left on his palms and fingers.

Then he must have blacked out, for the next thing he knew he was crawling out of the spot on his hands and knees.

He still carried a mark from the whole ordeal. Across the fleshy part below his right thumb. That’s where he jammed his teeth in, to keep from screaming until his voice gave out.

It was still down there, somewhere. The door handle. Left on some forgotten shelf. Or stashed inside a rotting cardboard box.

That’s why he could never stay down there for long. If he lingered for more than five minutes, his exhausted brain would start playing tricks on him. Make him smell things, taste things that weren’t there. The blood and soot would be back on his tongue, like no time had passed at all.

Standing at the top of the stairway, Haymitch stared into the darkness. No point in turning the switch. The one naked light bulb popped ages ago, and he never bothered replacing it. There was a window, but this time of year the snow covered it all the way up.

What a wolf’s den, he thought, not for the first time.

The difference between this place and Katniss and Peeta’s cellar was thrown in stark relief.

Theirs was one of sustenance. Of life and future. A place where they kept bottles of cordial and jars of honey. Handmade blackberry jam. Sacks of potatoes. Crates of apples when they were in season and root vegetables stored in sawdust to retain moister.

His, on the other hand, reeked of abandonment. Filled with nothing but junk and garbage, accumulated over the years. Things the Seam boy inside him didn’t have the heart to throw away. Ma, never one to waste anything, would’ve smacked him over the head with a wooden spoon.

He always told himself he would go through the stuff first.

Like, the broken glass for instance. It could be melted down, right? Turned into new bottles. A gift for Ripper, as an apology for the ruined flower beds – and all of his other bullshit over the years.

The woodshop wouldn’t say no to a batch of broken furniture. Any scraps of metal and good, solid screws and nails could also be put to good use. Soggy packs of ancient newspapers were great for weed control.

But he never got that project off the ground. Because the twins weren’t the only ones who hated the cellar.

Haymitch descended down the creaky steps. Frowned, feeling the banister wobble this way and that.

What happened? Did the dankness make the wood swell and shrink, until the joints loosened? Or was the metal corroding, weakening the connection?

First no light to lead the way, and now nothing supporting your balance either?

Whole house’s falling apart, he thought. How fitting.

Avoiding the banister altogether, Haymitch walked the final few steps, all the way down to the very bottom of the house.

No wonder the kids thought there lived a monster down here. This cold, dark space full of broken things and painful memories was the perfect place for hiding.

Allowing his eyes to adjust to the darkness, Haymitch looked around. What little light coming from upstairs, reflected off the rows of bottles sitting everywhere. Bottles that once littered the house, now stashed away safe. Away from the twins. Away from Effie.

He had vowed never to finish a whole bottle when the kids were visiting, so – naturally – the cellar was positively bursting with half-empties.

Red wine. White liquor. The occasional amber scotch. Earth-colored brandy. Some blue shit he stole from Effie’s liquor cabinet. Even a terrifyingly green bottle of absinthe. An impulse buy over at the Capitol.

His own rainbow of destruction. Damn straight.

Not that he ever drank absinthe. Not if he had a choice. The green fairy fucked with his head too much.

He plucked a bottle at random. Some white liquor. Pocket-size. Yet to be opened. Perfect. He slipped it in the right-side pocket of his cardigan and patted the bulge fondly.

Haymitch would be the first to admit it would probably be wiser to have his fill right here and now, in the cellar itself, but he just couldn’t do it. Couldn't think of a more awful and depressing place to have a cold one, surrounded by shadows.

Maybe it was superstition, but the cellar gave him the creeps. Even in broad daylight. It felt unsafe somehow. Haunted. Like the twins were right and there truly lived a monster down here. Some terrible beast, hiding in the dark, watching his every movement.

So, he stayed away as much as possible. Only kept the monster company when things got too unbearable.

Heading back up the stairs, and the land of the living, he slipped a hand inside his pocket. Touching the cold bottle, he felt better already.

Just a few sips, he thought. Just to dull them sharp edges. Maybe I’ll even get some sleep after.

Author’s note: Oh, Haymitch baby, you are not well. Alcohol is the last thing you need right now!

Are you beginning to put two and two together? Tell me in the comments! And Haymitch is “tying ropes” just like Katniss and Finnick did in “Mockingjay”, to try and cope with everything. 🥺