#remote writes

I awoke to the sour and moldy dawn of District 12 and upon my chest slumbered my sweet girl, my rape blossom, my Katniss Everdeen.

Her nude body pressed against me like a newborn. The poor thing was quite exhausted, and no wonder after last night’s revelries. Mother and baby sister had slept so soundly in their bedrooms next door as I explored for the first time her vagina with my mouth. When my tongue hooked my favorite fish, oh, how she wriggled! I ate her orgasm greedily and then drew her tight to my chest to sleep, which she did not like. She continually shuffled to try to find a more comfortable position, and when she thought I had dozed off she tried to escape entirely, but my arms made of her a well-behaved prisoner. In the end, exhaustion took her, and now her hot, unconscious breath grazed my skin. There are few things more beautiful than the deep sleep of the freshly raped.

I did not fuck her the previous night; no, I had wanted to save my own pleasure for the morning. My gift to her of oral sex did not come without its strings attached.

I laid a hand on her bare shoulder and shook her awake. She stirred resentfully: small sulky mouth, frowning brow, then the opening of her confused, dumb eyes. And then she was awake all at once as she realized that I was still here.

‘Good morning, my sweetheart.’ I gave her forehead a kiss.

‘Hello,’ came her gloomy reply.

She did not like that I had not left in the night, as I usually do. But I had a free weekend, and I had spent so little time with her family… Surely it was time to take our relationship to the next level?

‘Did you enjoy last night?’ I teased. Of course she had enjoyed it: I had felt her clitoris pulse against my face.

‘Yes, thank you.’ Her slow brain made a sleepy, desperate search for the words that would please me. ‘It felt really good.’

I waited pointedly. She cleared her tired throat.

‘I liked… when you kissed my, um…’ She frowned. At first I thought she was merely being coy, but then I understood that she had forgotten the word.

‘Clitoris,’ I helpfully supplied. Such words were all new to her, after all.

‘Yeah. That. That was… nice.’ She gave me a weak, shivery smile and obviously hoped that this would be enough to sate me.

‘I enjoyed it immensely as well. You have such a sweet little vagina, like a pink éclair. It was delectable.’

She gave a sudden, half-involuntary sigh, and I fancy I sensed exasperation in it. Oh, was she getting annoyed with me? My poor love. How much she will one day come to beg for the sweet gift of my tongue in her rape-hole, when her alternatives are being whipped or cut or urinated on…

But such treats would come later.

‘It was generous of me to pleasure you so,’ I informed her. ‘But now I think it’s only fair that you repay the favor.’ I smiled benevolently and gave her nose a tap.

What little energy remained drained from her face. Yes, she hated to perform oral sex; she hated it more than anything else I ever did to her, and this lent a keener edge to my own pleasure. The rape she took to like a duck to water; oral sex did not come naturally to her. To spur her on, I shifted her to the side and pulled back the sheets, then presented to her the familiar sight of my waking erection. She gazed upon my penis with a certain listlessness, like it were a book that could hardly hold her attention. But she had learned her lessons. She knew to obey.

Slowly, her hand sought my cock. It was with a certain mechanical clumsiness that she began to work her small, girlish hand around the shaft, and then she lowered her head to her prize. When her little mouth opened I could see the reluctance girding her lips. Her whole being loathed this so intensely: the scent of the glans, the texture on her lips and tongue, the stretch of her jaw, the scratch of my pubic hair against her nose. But, graciously, I laid a hand on the back of her head and helped my recalcitrant sweetheart take the cock all the way into her adolescent throat. I made her hold it there for some time as I pleasurably observed the helpless twitch of her soft palate like an insect under glass.

She began to gag. Oh, how I adored the damp melody of her stubbornly choking throat! That wet and satisfying ribbit of the raped pharynx! Just the exact sound of crushing frogs underfoot, which used to so entertain me as a boy. Spit began to swell in ripe bubbles from her lips. Her eyes reddened and glittered with tears. This made me very happy.

I released her head and she drew back gasping, and thick ropes of spit bound her mouth to my cock. She panted desperately for air, but I soon decided that she had had enough reprieve, and I pushed her back to her work. I worked her skull with both hands in that sweet jackhammer of girl-on-cock which produces the delicate glug-glug-glug harmony that never sounds so beautiful as when it is sung from the throat of a girl you have raped.

Her body began to convulse in arrhythmic waves as I pulverized her gag reflex, which deeply pleased me, and I observed her helpless palsy with gratified arousal. One fit, another, a third—and, then, the sweet and helpless bounty of my girl flailing, pulling back, and then vomiting bile and some watery yellow vomit onto my shining cock.

I allowed her a moment of respite. Her face was pink with exertion, her eyes bloodshot, tears and spit and sick all over her chin and naked breasts. I observed her hard nipples and I wondered if she was aroused, or if vomiting was one of the many lovely alchemies that produced this effect in women.

‘Tsk tsk. You’ve made a mess.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Her dull voice was wet with saliva.

‘Come on. You know what to do. Clean it up.’

For a moment, she remained sitting in place. Her eyes flicked to nothing, as they so often did, and I knew she was thinking about committing suicide. I can always see the flicker of self-annihilation in her pupils and it sends a little fish of electricity swimming through my loins. But I enforced some self-restraint and I gave her the necessary few seconds to collect herself and return to her task. I am not unreasonable; girls need their indulgences.

Then she set to her task once again. I observed with pleasure her clever licks as she swallowed again all the mess she had spat out on me, while her hand returned to the shaft to ensure that the experience was as pleasurable for me as possible. She is a good pet.

‘You could be more vocal,’ I observed. ‘You enjoy this, don’t you?’

Her face was varnished with saliva and a little vomit. She nodded once.

‘Good girl. So, don’t be afraid to let me hear that enjoyment. Come along now.’

Her resentful eyes looked at me through wet lashes as she licked at me. Like a hatchling from an egg, a dulcet rhythm emitted from her lapping mouth: ‘Mm… mm… mm…’

Dear reader, there is no sound closer to heaven than the feigned birdsong of the girl who takes your cock when she does not want to. I truly believe it may be more beautiful than sounds of sincere pleasure: the exaggerated pretense of it, the hopeless insincerity, the sweet despair…

I suddenly heard a door open and close, followed by light little footsteps on the landing. Katniss Everdeen fell silent and froze in her duty. Primrose had left her bedroom and gone downstairs. Had she heard the sounds of her sister being mouthfucked and quietly excused herself to give us privacy? Did the sounds disturb her, or did she just know that her sister preferred to not have an audience?

‘Keep going,’ I said encouragingly. ‘No one to hear you now.’

And I do think that this brought her some comfort, because she was ever so easily upset by the involvement of her sister in our games. Now, emboldened, she varied her mms with a few ahs when she broke her mouth from my cock, and she slipped into the familiar rhythm I had taught her: to go deep, to choke, then to pull back; to lap the pink glans like raspberry ice-cream; to tap the cock against her cheek with her tongue out like a dog and to gaze up at me with those hollow, beaten eyes. She was such a pale and miserable imitation of pornography, which aroused me so deeply.

With her mouth sucking keenly, I felt my slow, aged orgasm finally build, and I began to stroke the back of her head the way I usually do to tell her that it is nearly time. She knew not to vary her rhythm at this point; her sole purpose on earth now was to ensure my orgasm. If she faltered in her destiny, I would be most displeased.

I pulled back at the very last moment to ensure my ejaculate hit her extended tongue and not the back of her palate, lest it fall too soon into her throat. Her eyes flickered ever-so-slightly as my semen splashed happily into her mouth. I permitted her the gift of the sound of my pleasure: the groan of an old man, perhaps not a beautiful gift, but fondly given all the same.

‘Good girl,’ I soothed, as she sat there open-mouthed and obedient. I could see her eyelashes flicker. There were precious few fragments of her mind left intact, and whenever I found one I crumbled it to dust. I observed the gleam of my ejaculate on her brown lips, her rosy tongue, her white teeth, and then I decided I was satisfied. ‘Swallow.’ Instantly, obediently, she did so. She liked swallowing; she much preferred it to holding the semen in her mouth. I felt it was a job well done.

After sex it is important to give praise and comfort. Unheeding of how messy she had made herself, I drew her tight against my chest and stroked the cleaner parts of her hair. I whispered my adoring compliments: you’re a good girl, I’m so proud of you, I care about you very much, I will never leave you, I will never, ever leave you.

You see, she has to know that it’s forever. I am not here to use and discard her. I am her protector, her lover, her father, her man, her God… I fit into her life like a new, sharp rib-bone. She must accommodate me; she must live with me, day after day, forever. And when I feel her heartbeat slow against me, I know that she is taking comfort in my petting, my soothing, my care. It’s how my body tells hers that the sex is over and that she can rest, and she appreciates this. I am her safe space as much as her hell.

When she seemed calmed, I gave her a final kiss on the forehead. ‘Go wash your face, now, and tidy your hair. But don’t rinse out your mouth.’

I added this final instruction very strictly, and she looked at me with unhappy eyes. Oh, I knew how she loathed the flavor of my seed! Well, she should be grateful: I have a good diet and I have consulted extensively with my doctors to ensure no poison I imbibe is absorbed into the spermatozoa. There are many men in the Capitol whose release tastes far less sweet than mine, I could assure her!

I allowed her to use the ensuite while I took the family bathroom. I observed the accoutrements with sharp curiosity. Two toothbrushes: mother and little sister. Gaily I ran my finger along the bent bristles of the smaller, pink one. One day, Primrose…

Cleaned and tidied, I returned to my love to find that she had locked the ensuite door.

‘Miss Everdeen? Miss Everdeen. Unlock this.’ I banged on the door once, twice, three times—and then the lock rapidly turned and the door swung open.

‘I’m sorry,’ said my girl. ‘I just locked it on habit. I didn’t mean to—’

I smacked her: sharp, neat, nice. Her throat made a little uh sound as the blow fell upon her cheek.

‘Don’t do that again,’ I ordered. She clutched her pinkening cheek, frowning hard. ‘I do not like to hit you,’ I said. ‘Not unless we’re playing. Please don’t make me do that to you.’

She rubbed the place I had struck. ‘I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.’ Her voice came peculiarly strong and stubborn. I fancy she preferred the simplicity of being smacked over being abused.

I turned her chin back to me to observe her. Well, she had done a terrible job cleaning herself up. The vomit and spit was gone, but her hair was a greasy nest, there were crusts of sleep in her eyes, and she smelled. I tutted. She stood in sullen silence as I dragged a brush through her hair, and I chastised her for the number of split ends as I smoothed the mess further with a comb. Then I scrubbed her face with a damp cloth and I worked it under her armpits and against her cunt to freshen her up. I really needed to make her take better care of herself. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, her skin was greasy, she was underweight… I fancy, too, from the pink, superficial marks on her upper arms that she had been picking at the skin there. Such behavior, of course, is common in rape victims. I expected that she wanted to go back to cutting herself, but I had already ruined that happy pastime for her. Oh, perhaps she would enjoy it after all if I took a blade to her…

But not today. I had other, kinder plans.

‘Right!’ I said brightly once she was tidy. ‘Breakfast time.’

‘Where?’ Her voice was a little hoarse from the throat-fucking.

‘Here, in your kitchen,’ I said, and her expression collapsed in on itself. No, I was not done with my fun for the day; my sadism is not so easily blunted. ‘Come along, my dear. Let us see what your mother has made for us.’

I took her by the hand and led her downstairs into the kitchen, only to find it disappointingly empty. More than empty: unused. Did any of these women eat? What a malfunctioning family.

‘Where is your mother? She should be making breakfast.’

Katniss looked at me with utter confusion. ‘She… She doesn’t make breakfast. She sleeps late.’

‘How late?’

For the first time that morning, even with the oral rape she had endured, my darling looked embarrassed. ‘Noon. Later, sometimes.’

‘Hm. A depressive.’ I weighed the possibilities. ‘Did she start sleeping that late before or after I began raping you?’

I fancy my girl was a little uncomfortable with this conversation. ‘She did it before. But maybe she does it more now.’

I nodded. ‘Well, we can’t have that. Go and fetch her. She should be making pancakes.’

I sat at the table and waited. I expected my affairs to be in order: my girl-mistress at my side, the mother preparing breakfast, the baby sister… Hm, where was Primrose?

I rose again and went in search of the mite. There were not so many rooms; very few places to hide from the big bad wolf. Not that I wanted to eat her yet. Not quite ripe, still green at the edges.

I found her in the study. I swung open the heavy door and there at the desk sat the tiniest of girl-children, pen in hand, fear in face.

‘Hello,’ I said cheerfully.

It took her quite a long time to know what to say back. ‘Hello, Mister President.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘My homework.’

‘Wonderful. What a good girl you are.’ I offered her a kind smile; my intent was not to frighten the child. Not yet. ‘Why don’t you come do your homework at the kitchen table? We are going to have a big, family breakfast.’

An interesting expression filled the girl. Not bravery, but curiosity: the honesty of inquisitiveness. ‘Family?’

I smiled wide. ‘Indeed. Come.’

Primrose obediently gathered up her homework and followed me, and I considered taking her hand but decided against it. Back in the kitchen, mother and daughter were at their stations by the oven. I tarried at the threshold to eavesdrop.

‘He wants pancakes.’

‘But I don’t know how to make those… Katniss… Why did you invite him to stay the night?’

‘I did not invite him, he…’ And then Katniss caught sight or smell of me and neatly cut off her complaints. She looked in terror at her little sister. ‘Prim!’ she exclaimed, then she reached forth and grabbed her sister and bundled her away from me. My pet was ever so funny.

‘Good morning, Mrs Everdeen,’ I said to the mother. The woman was still in her nightdress, with a robe slung loosely over it. Chicken-feet ankles peeked out of worn slippers. She was even skinnier than her raped daughter. Miserable creature. Mothers are a uniquely intolerable breed.

‘Good morning, Mister President,’ she gabbled uselessly. Was this really a human being? Surely it was just a bird, just an accident of life. I had to fix this situation. Either the mother learned to play her role properly, or I would have to find a replacement.

‘Your daughter and I decided I would stay the night,’ I said. Of course, it was not strictly speaking Katniss Everdeen’s idea, but since I make all her ideas for her now, it might as well be. ‘I trust that is not a problem?’

‘No, no, not at all!’

I gave a nod of satisfaction. ‘I rather thought pancakes would make for a good breakfast. Miss Everdeen, sit down while your mother makes us pancakes. Primrose, why don’t you continue your homework?’

My pet knew how to play my games. She promptly pulled out a chair and sat at the dining table, and slowly, little Primrose joined her. The mother did not move. Really, what was the point of such a creature?

‘Mrs Everdeen,’ I said helpfully. ‘The pancakes.’

Her stupid eyes grew large. ‘I don’t… I don’t know how… We don’t eat them here…’

My patience was growing thin. But I am a generous man, and I understand my demands are sometimes difficult for civilians to follow, even if they are as simple as pancakes. Helpfully, I went first to the fridge and found there eggs, milk, and butter. Flour was in the first cupboard I checked—I have a particular knack for choosing appropriate cupboards—and the bowl and pan were found next.

‘It’s really not so difficult. Three cups of flour. Four and a half cups of milk. Three eggs. Whisk, pour, flip regularly. Can you remember that, my dear?’

The woman nodded her frightened head. I mimicked her nod and smiled.

‘Do your best,’ I encouraged. ‘It isn’t appropriate for a mother to be so slack in raising her children. I have replacements I could find for you, you know.’

A small voice spoke up: ‘Replacements?’

I smiled down at Primrose, then joined the girls at the table. I took my pet’s limp hand in mine and squeezed. ‘Do not worry, Primrose. I’m sure your mother will do a fantastic job. Now, while we wait, tell me what homework you are working on.’

The happy cacophony of domestic cooking filled the room as Primrose shared with me her sums. This was certainly not the simple arithmetic I allowed the District children to learn; no doubt the family had procured for her an illegal tutor with Katniss Everdeen’s Hunger Games winnings. But that was no matter; I could turn a blind eye here and there. Primrose had made some errors in her algebra.

‘Ah, you see, you have been dividing before you multiply,’ I observed. I looked to my pet, who was staring most intently at the opposite wall. There was nothing interesting there. ‘Do you understand, Miss Everdeen? Primrose has forgotten that we always multiply first.’

Her big eyes, grey as death, flickered to mine. ‘I can’t do math. I’m sorry.’

‘Well, no matter. You have other talents, my dear.’ And I laughed and I brought her hand to my mouth to kiss, and I fancied that Primrose was looking at us very intently. I suppose I was becoming a sort of brother-uncle to her. How pleasant!

I explained to Primrose the error and had her write out the correct solution, and then I walked her through the steps of the next problem. Katniss Everdeen’s palm sweated against my own. Primrose wrote neat, girlish figures at my guidance, and once or twice she repeated my instruction questioningly, and I reassured her and explained in greater detail. By the time the smell of cooking pancakes filled the room, the girl had got the knack of it.

‘Do you understand it now?’ I said warmly.

‘I think so.’ Primrose tapped her pencil against her mouth. ‘You explain better than Miss Appleyard.’

‘I’m a good teacher.’ And I looked to my pet and I laughed, and her chapped and halting lips stretched in a parody of a smile to mimic my own. God, she looked dreadful! Next to golden and glossy-haired Primrose, my Miss Everdeen was so withered. It would not do. I would need to rejuvenate her. Everything in this life can be fixed, for a clever man.

With shaking hands, Mrs Everdeen served three plates of pancakes. She had, again, been too stupid to make any for herself, but I instructed her to make us all tea and bring jam, and soon our family breakfast was just as I had planned. The pancakes were greasy but tolerable, and the jam was good, homemade, District preserves. Primrose ate with greedy joy. But Katniss Everdeen, my sad rose, merely cut her pancakes into smaller and smaller pieces and moved them around her plate in esoteric patterns I could not interpret.

‘Are you not hungry, my dear?’ I said.

And Katniss Everdeen for the first time that day turned hard, spiteful, hateful eyes upon me, and she spoke with force and loathing: ‘I’ve already eaten.’

I laughed at that. ‘Well, true!’ And it was a funny joke, so I decided I would not punish her for refusing to eat our family breakfast.

Oh, all was just as it should be!

After we had eaten and the hour was growing late, I made my goodbyes. I thanked the mother for her diligent kitchenwork and I helpfully told her that I was sure her cooking would improve with time. If it didn’t, well…

I then congratulated Primrose on her sums and she smiled up me with the guileless pride of the rarely flattered child. I then gave my darling her final instruction.

‘Walk me out. Do give your sister a goodbye kiss.’

Those grey eyes stormed at me. With thin lips and a face set with murder, Katniss Everdeen bent and pressed her semeny lips as lightly as she dared against the cheek of her baby sister. This gave me such a thrill of pleasure.

At the door I fetched my scarf and coat, and then my girl and I tarried on the porch. She scratched her bare arm absently and looked around the neighborhood with concern, as though she still cared whether people saw us together.

‘I had a lovely time,’ I told her. ‘You did ever so well. You’re becoming such a good girl.’

Katniss Everdeen did not even look at me. She stared through the air at nothing, into another world. I do wonder sometimes if the eyes of raped girls can see into universes that we mere men cannot. She stood uneven and wan like a line of chalk half-rubbed out from the rain. And then she began to speak.

‘I was thinking… I thought… It’s hard being without you.’

I warmed and brightened at this. Insincere, yes, but convincing. ‘Oh?’

‘I miss you when you’re not here.’ Her voice was as flat and featureless as the epicenter of an atomic bomb blast. ‘I want you all the time.’

‘I know that’s true,’ I smiled at her, and heedless of any onlookers I rubbed two large fingers against her crotch. She barely seemed to notice.

‘Perhaps I could come to live with you in the Capitol.’ These words fluttered from her mouth like dead flies. ‘Then you wouldn’t have to travel so far.’

‘Mm.’ I pulled her closer to me, enveloping her in my coat, and I slipped my fingers into her clothes to find her plump clitoris. Its stimulation disturbed nothing in her face, not even the lightest breeze shifting the branches of a dead tree. ‘That could be nice.’

‘And…’ Finally, her eyes locked on mine and there it was: her familiar plea. ‘And my family could stay here, and we wouldn’t need to… They would be okay.’

I nodded with amused and exasperated understanding. ‘My dear, are you spinning another trick to keep me away from your sister?’ I rubbed her clitoris with one hand and her lower back with the other, warming her, comforting her. ‘You are a silly little creature. You know she belongs to me, if I want to take her. Your reluctance only makes me want her more.’ Then I withdrew my hands and tilted up her chin to stare into her face. What a curious autumn pool she was: deep, dark, decaying. ‘One day, yes. I will take you to live with me in the Capitol, and I will have no more business with your little sister. But I will decide when that day comes. Not you. Do you understand?’

It was going to be a wonderful day for my abused and melancholy darling, because it was her birthday, and I was taking her to the zoo.

Of course, she did not know that yet.

I flew to District 12 by hovercraft, as I normally do, but I took a lazy, overnight flight. I wanted to arrive early and refreshed, ready to greet my girl with plenty of time to fly back to the Capitol and enjoy our day. A girl only turns seventeen once, after all.

I awoke as we began our descent, and I washed and dressed in regular, civilian clothes. A disguise would be necessary. Once we had landed, I stepped out the sour, gritty, fecal dawn of District 12. I despised this place. Could I destroy it yet? Coal was no longer a necessity, given our conversion to eco-energy, but it’s a useful thing to have in case of emergencies. A president cannot simply bomb one’s energy sources willy-nilly. I would simply have to wait a while before levelling the home of my little girl.

I approached her boring and provincial front door. The houses of the Victors’ Villages are identical chocolate boxes, bereft of beauty or taste, just another tool to shape and shackle the citizens who live here. But this door was special, because it was the home of my darling, and so I rapped on the woodgrain with relish. My visits had become more frequent of late. She ought to learn to expect me. Think of me as the monster under your bed, my love, forever waiting to grab your ankles and press my tongue between your toes…

I had to knock two more times before there was audible commotion. It was a little after five in the morning, so I forced myself to be patient. I am very good at being patient. Every day that I leave Primrose Everdeen unmolested is a testament to my self-discipline. But then, finally, after my diligent waiting, the door swung slowly open to reveal that most blessed of sights: a teenage girl dragged unwilling from her bed. Katniss Everdeen was only half-awake. Her hair flowed in catastrophic tangles and her eyes squinted at me with sleepy resentment. She wore soft cotton pajamas and a pair of boots that she must have only just shoved on her bare feet. I openly studied the swell of her breasts within the fabric of her shirt.

‘Good morning, my dear,’ I said. ‘Happy birthday.’

Her face, sheltered by unruly hair, was a little puffy. ‘Thank you.’

‘Weren’t you expecting me?’

My sleepy girl blinked and swallowed. ‘I thought… you might come later.’

‘No, a bright and early start is what we need. I have a big day for you planned, birthday girl.’ I ruffled her messy hair, worsening its situation. Then I gestured to the hovercraft. ‘Come along.’

She looked down at her untidy body which was freshly hatched from that warm, safe bed where I had so often fucked her and ejaculated in her pink insides. I hoped she had been dreaming delicious nightmares of me.

‘Can I get dressed?’

‘No need,’ I smiled. ‘I have everything you need on the hovercraft. Come now. We cannot be late.’

There is a particularly sweet, immature resentment that she sometimes shows me. She so loathes to have her wings clipped, but it causes me such joy! And she sees my joy and she hates this too, and I take joy in her hatred, and so on ad infinitum. She is a never-failing source of wonder to me.

Katniss Everdeen cleared her sleepy throat and called back into the house. ‘Mother? President Snow is here. We’re going to go out.’

Silence poured from the house. What a useless, pathetic parent this woman was. I should find a nice replacement for her, a new mother, someone who can care for my darling as she ought to be cared for… I know some wonderful Capitol Madams who could bring my girl up right… They could teach her clever tricks…

‘Alright,’ came the eventual, halting reply from the dark of the house. ‘Will you be back in time for the party?’

My girl looked at me with a hopeful question. A party? And who was likely to attend such an occasion? Boys? Other men? Oh, no no. I would like to enjoy my darling entirely by myself.

‘No,’ I told her sharply. ‘You won’t be back until tomorrow.’

Her sad, hesitant mouth called gently back into the house. ‘No, mother, I’ll be back tomorrow.’

More silence, as we both waited for an answer—but no answer was forthcoming. Shrugging, I reached for my darling’s arm and wrapped it within mine. She looked back, wanting to close the front door I suppose, but I did not give her the opportunity. I dragged her to the hovercraft like an errant kite. As we were about to board, I saw her crane her neck and look up, back to the house. I looked, too. There, at the top window, was little Primrose: tiny features soaked in unguarded grief, uncomprehending and sad and small, and so easy to hurt. What a beautiful face to frame.

Katniss Everdeen raised a hand and waved in happy enthusiasm. She smiled with pretended joy, like this was a normal day out, like her baby sister had nothing to fear. In response, the girl at the window raised an unsure hand. Not wanting to be antisocial, I raised mine too and waved, and then Primrose lowered her own. She was frowning at me with a question in her face that she was too young to answer.

‘Come on. On you get,’ I said to my dear, and I patted her backside to encourage her onto the hovercraft. She climbed the steps obediently and I followed, and once inside I could not prevent myself from pulling her into my greedy embrace and fondling her backside more deeply. She stood limply in the black leather interior of my favorite hovercraft and allowed me to slide my fingers between her buttocks, which were so weakly protected by her cotton pajamas.

‘Take off,’ I called to my team as I continued my fondling, and I felt the engine purr beneath our feet.

I amused myself for a few moments by rubbing her clitoris with one hand and her sweet, tight asshole with the other, and I observed her swallow and her eyes go to the ceiling as she allowed me my fun. She does so hate it when I do things to her asshole, but this only spurs my keenness. Truth to be told, I much prefer the vagina—a gorgeous, immaculate organ—but it is good for a girl to be uncomfortable from time to time. Her needs cannot, of course, always come first.

‘Happy birthday,’ I told her, and I kissed her cheek as I molested her. ‘I’m going to take you for a nice day out.’

I could tell she was struggling to think straight with my fingers exploring all her private, naughty places, so I relented. She gave a tiny, bleating exhale of relief.

‘That sounds nice.’

‘It will be. I’m going to take you to the zoo.’

She eyed me with distrust. ‘The zoo?’

‘Yes, my dear. Don’t worry, there’s no secret trick. It’s a nice, normal zoo, with lions and flamingos and monkeys. We shall look at them from a safe distance.’

She nodded. ‘Just animals?’

She suspected something terribly cruel. District children in pens, perhaps. Naked invalids as freakshows. I pressed my finger against the tip of her perfect nose.

‘Just animals. It will be a nice day, I promise. I won’t be too horrible to you.’

She seemed reassured, but perhaps that was just because I was no longer fingering her asshole. ‘Thank you.’

I showed her to the bathroom in the hovercraft, smelling my fingers, and I briefly toyed with the idea of sodomizing her with one of the more slender shampoo bottles. But no, that would not be a happy birthday morning for her. I didn’t want her all sore as we walked around the zoo.

‘Brush your teeth,’ I instructed her. ‘Then you can shower.’

She was avoiding making eye contact with her reflection in the bathroom mirror. I glanced at the two of us there: old and young, pale and dark, monster and morsel. We looked delightful.

‘Can I go to the bathroom?’ she said.

‘Of course.’ I indicated the toilet and folded my hands in front of me.

‘Are you going to watch?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Then I’ll hold it.’

‘Perhaps I’ll make you wet yourself,’ I said, which would give me some pleasure to observe, but her dark eyes told me this was an unwelcome suggestion. And so my girl reluctantly slid her cottony pajamas from her flawless, fuckable backside and sat upon the toilet. It took her a few moments to relax her muscles. She looked to the floor and her dark hair hid her humiliated face from me as I enjoyed the unique melody of a girl’s urine hitting ceramic. Then she stood and wiped and flushed, and she washed her hands without looking at me. But I could see the red tinge of self-loathing decorating her pretty features. One day I would like to watch her eat excrement…

But for now, my pleasure was to watch her brush her teeth. I loved the white froth of toothpaste around her mouth, and I loved her sad eyes, and I loved her tiny teeth. Everything about her was absolutely perfect.

Next I pushed her to the shower, although first I grabbed her face and licked the golden crusts of sleep from her eyes. I don’t think she much liked this. But watching her in the shower was a delight. If you have ever taken joy in seeing a kitten groom itself, then you understand the feeling. I did so like to look at her body. You must understand, I do not have a paraphilia for young girls; I prefer my women full and mature. But my Miss Everdeen was an exceptional creature; inhuman, different, other. Not a girl, really, but a fragrant animal. Issues of childhood and adolescence and consent matter oh so less when dealing with such a creature. So it brought me no guilt to drink in her still-developing body, her small breasts (but growing, I was sure!), the glittering necklace upon her breastbone, her lovely thatch of soft pubic hair. I instructed her on which parts of her body to clean, one after the other, and I was really very nice to her. I made her spread her buttocks for me, which I know she hates, and I paid her some lovely compliments as to the tight sweetness of her anus. But I do not think she appreciated these. She really had woken on the wrong side of the bed today.

I next gave her a dress to wear, which she regarded suspiciously. It was a plain item, modest, not perhaps the kind of Capitol exotica to which she was accustomed.

‘It’s not meant to be showy,’ I reassured her. ‘We will be going low-profile. It’s a public zoo and I do not wish to close it for our visit.’

She nodded. Her life had become an endless parade of nods and acquiescences to my demands. She fingered the fabric of the dress.

‘I don’t have any underwear.’

‘No, you don’t,’ I said pleasantly, and then she stood in uncomfortable silence before pulling the dress over her beautiful, owned, raped body. What molecular alterations might occur to a girl once she has been raped, I wonder…?

She stood, my awkward sweetheart, and pulled at the rough, boxy hem. Her grey eyes looked at me from under the wet, messy strands of her hair. There was a precious shyness to her.

‘Is this okay?’

‘It’s perfect,’ I told her. She so needed my approval! Of course, if she displeased me, I normally had her beaten. Once I had her sister slapped, but just the once. She sulked for weeks after that, and it became really quite the chore to make her orgasm. But today she was obedient—my broken filly. ‘You always look beautiful. Do you know that?’

She shrugged one shoulder. It was difficult, sometimes, for her to know what I wanted. I imagine that the whirling of my intricate brain is just as incomprehensible to her as hers can be to mine. But I understand her well enough. I brushed back the damp hair from her pretty face and I gave her small, pleasant kisses on her forehead. Her dark lashes closed and she looked almost peaceful as I whispered my compliments to her.

‘You are beautiful. You are lovely. You make me happy.’

When her eyes finally opened, the shade of grey reminded me of the hull of one of our fantastic submarines, which even now wait at the shores of Panem to sink beneath the depths and reduce any other country’s vessel to smithereens... the obliterations they could create… imagine infinite fields of flotsam and blazing jetsam, floating out into the ocean…

We saw the tigers first. I had applied a light brown dye to my hair and beard, as well as adding brown contact lenses, and I wore a dull hat with my casual Capital attire. I had bunched up Katniss Everdeen’s hair beneath its own hat, and this made the two of us quite unrecognizable as we walked arm in arm. Of course, I had seven Peacekeepers in civilian clothes ahead and behind us, less anything go awry.

How pleasant it was to walk arm in arm with my girl among the common folk, as though we were just like them. What did they think of us? Grandfather and granddaughter? Perhaps I could pass for her father. Surely no one would suspect us of being lovers, no matter how tightly I held her thin, limp arm against my body. I interlaced our fingers and rubbed her pretty dark skin and I did not let her go even once.

‘Aren’t they lovely?’ I told her as we watched the big cats in their pen.

The habitats are good: spacious and comfortable for the animals. I do try to minimize cruelty where I can. And it is nice to see a happy tiger. The one closest to us was playing with a mutt we had originally developed for agriculture, but it had proved unsuitable for human digestion. It’s a kind of round, blind ball of meat, and it scurries in rapid stupidity from whatever hunts it. When caught, of course, the tiger tears into it and gets its tasty fill, although it is only a little snack for a big tiger. But the mutt has an unpleasant, hard inner shell that protects its vital organs, and this cannot be eaten, so the tiger abandons it. And then, after an hour or so, the outer, meaty layer regrows. I believe this is achieved by some kind of photosynthesis. Then up it jumps and runs again, and the tiger once again gives chase. The tiger can tear it apart a hundred times like this, before it dies. Perhaps its artificial heart gives out from stress. Who knows?

Katniss Everdeen watched the tiger eat with polite, feigned interest, but I could tell she was bored. This annoyed me. I thought about biting her earlobe, but that would not be wise in public.

‘Do you not like tigers?’

‘It’s just a big cat. We have a cat at home and I hate him.’

It cheered me to hear some real, unfeigned emotion from her. Sometimes she tries so hard to please me that we both forget what she really feels.

‘What would you like to see instead? The monkeys? Birds? The aquarium?’

Some interest illuminated her eyes at this, and she nodded. With relish, I led her to the aquarium building. Of course she would enjoy the aquarium, all girls do! They like to pretend that they are mermaids. I theorize that young girls obsess over mermaids because these creatures have fishtails in place of genitalia, and thus they cannot be raped. I admit, there is a certain appeal in the idea of sealing my darling’s sacred cunt forever… But no, I have too much fun with it.

The aquarium was full of tanks that crawled with jellyfish, crabs, and other uninteresting proles of the sea. We wound through a dark maze and Miss Everdeen craned her neck to look at some of the smaller tanks that I dragged her past, but these were too dull for me. I only wanted to show my dear girl the crown jewel of the aquarium: the main tank, that salty, beating heart of an aquarium.

It was an impressive feature: ten million liters, aquamarine, stupendous. To my delight, Miss Everdeen’s mouth dropped open in awed surprise at the massive, glowing tank above and around us, which was filled with shimmering, effulgent fish. I never found fish particularly interesting, but I enjoy sharks. They have a curious, lethal stupidity to them which reminds me of my favorite military vehicles. I do love to watch an IFV scurry over a battlefield and disgorge its gun-blazing occupants, all the time put-put-puttering out its own happy little bullets. I watched the black, senseless eyes of a shark as it swam in pointless circles and I thought about warfare, and I became quite physically excited. I drew Katniss Everdeen close against my body so I could covertly rub my sudden, half-hard penis  against her backside in the dark of the aquarium. Nobody glanced twice at us. Indeed, Katniss Everdeen herself did not seem to care or even notice my attentions; she was enchanted by the rainbow of fish, which swam in dumb unison and reflected colored light upon her face like sheets of motley rain.

After we emerged into the bright light of the day, I felt there was something unusually bright and happy about my girl. She had really liked the fish, it seemed.

‘Which were your favorite?’ I asked.

‘I liked the lizards with shells,’ she said around a smile. A real smile! ‘You know, the big round ones.’

I tried to recall. There were no lizards in the tank, of course.

‘Do you mean the turtles?’

‘Yes. Maybe? I think so. They had shells like snails and funny old faces.’

I shook my head at this. The girl didn’t know what turtles were. Perhaps it was because I was still sexually excited from the sharks and the thought of killing, but her ignorance only further whetted my desire. I really would need to rape her soon. But first my eyes alighted upon a cheap ice cream stand, the kind even as a starving boy I thought I was too good for. But not my cousin, oh no. She knew how much I loved sweet things, and she would sometimes spend a few hard-earned cents to purchase for me the cheapest treat. Hard-earned indeed… The things she did for us… The things she let men do…

I pushed those thoughts away as I looked at my darling. She was shining with something like happiness in the golden sunlight.

‘Would you like an ice cream?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry’.

‘But you like sweets,’ I protested, and I dug my fingernails into her skin. She released one of her tiny sighs. How many sighs she must have stored up inside her, like a swarm of moths.

‘Yes, I’d like an ice cream,’ she corrected myself.

I chose for her a simple vanilla cone. I could have asked her what her preference might be, but the color was more important to me than her enjoyment of the flavor. I had planned my naughty trick in advance.

When I paid for the cone, I fancied the ice cream seller’s gaze lingered upon me for a moment longer than was necessary, but we soon turned away. What would he do if he recognized me as the president? Who could he tell? Who would believe him? And if he repeated anything about my going arm in arm with a young girl, I could just have his tongue cut out or his wife raped or his baby’s skull bashed open. Endless possibilities.

Katniss Everdeen licked her ice cream and was, perhaps, making a bit more show of enjoying it than she actually was. Casually I led her into the shade, out of the way of prying eyes, and I leaned against the wall as though I only wanted a moment to rest. Katniss Everdeen continued her untroubled licks.

Then I indulged my wicked impulse. I brought my hand up suddenly, colliding with the base of the cone, and the creamy head of the ice-cream crushed against my darling’s face. I heard her emit a low, uncomfortable sound of surprise. Then she lowered her hand and the cone, staring at nothing, her brow in a tight frown, and white, creamy vanilla ice smeared her nose and lips and even her left cheek. Some had got in her hair. I laughed at her happily.

‘What a mess you’ve made,’ I said. ‘You ought to apologize for being so untidy.’

It took a moment for my instruction to process. She can be slow and stupid sometimes, but that’s alright. She’s only a little girl.

‘I apologize,’ she said flatly. On instinct she raised a hand to wipe her face, but then she paused and looked up at me for permission. ‘Can I… clean it off?’

‘Why?’ I said pleasantly. ‘You look so pretty like this. Do you know what you look like?’

She was looking around her with an odd, rabbity nervousness. It took me a moment to realize she was looking to see if anyone was watching, but they were not. My clever Peacekeepers had already strategically positioned themselves to keep passersby from stumbling onto our dirty, private corner. They knew the games I liked to play.

‘I don’t know.’

Poor, stupid thing. ‘You look like your face is covered in semen,’ I informed her.

A very long sigh dropped from her lips. Her hand fell. The ice cream dripped onto the ground. That light I had kindled in the aquarium went out in her again. She was just my sad and broken girl once more, and it was terribly, terribly sweet.

‘Say thank you,’ I prompted her.

There was no life in her, not a single spark, as she obeyed: ‘Thank you.’

She stood there in the sun, the hat shielding the upper part of her face, but the sunlight gleamed off the white, dripping substance that thickly coated her lips and beautiful little freckled nose. She gave a small, instinctive sniff; perhaps some of the ice-cream had irritated her nose.

Then I saw her sticky mouth try to form a word, and eventually she said: ‘Why did you do that?’

I put my mouth to her ear. She smelled of sugar and milk and vanilla. I can pick out individual ingredients in scents, you know, like a dog can.

‘Because you are beautiful when you are humiliated, and beautiful when you are sad, and beautiful when you obey me. In every way you are beautiful.’

She nodded, but I did not think she understood. There was something odd about her, a curious shuffling of her feet and shifting of her body. She kept wetting her lips and swallowing. Suddenly, with the miraculous revelation of Mary Magdalene, I saw it: the tears in her eyes. She was about to cry.

‘Oh, Miss Everdeen,’ I breathed, with rapture. Her eyes shimmered. She was trying so very hard not to, but those tears swelled big and wet. ‘Come along. Let’s clean you up and get out of here.’

And I used my best silk handkerchief to wipe her clean of every drop until she shone spick and span and her freckles gleamed once again. Two tears rolled down her cheeks as I did so, and I wiped those up too and used their dampness to clean away any lingering trace of stickiness. I tidied her up so that you would never know that anything had ever happened. Once I was finished and she was all good as new, I bent down to force her to look into my eyes. There was no gratitude in there for my labor: not an ounce.

What an ungrateful brat.

I took her back to one of my favorite hotels, which sits adjacent to the park and offers spectacular views of its emerald grasses and glittering ponds. I took the back door, of course, and then the service elevator brought us up to the penthouse suite. She was silent all the long journey, her eyes downcast, unresponsive to my encouraging comments about the weather or the fish we’d seen or how pretty she was. She seemed really quite upset with me for the ice cream stunt and I could not imagine why.

The penthouse was the usual kind of boring luxury to which I am accustomed—silk bed sheets, marble floors, hand-painted murals, blah, blah, blah—but the view was unique and spectacular. Wealth can buy altitude, but it cannot buy such magnificent beauty. I brought my darling to the huge glass windows and we looked out together at the city beyond, my city, as much my pet as she was. I nuzzled into her neck and started to remove her dress, to which she had no reaction.

‘My dear, are you sulking?’ I said as I kissed the bare neck and shoulder I revealed. I licked the clasp of the necklace she was forbidden to remove. ‘It was only a game.’

‘I don’t like those kinds of games.’

I pulled free the dress so that she stood as a naked child before the vast windows, and I rested my thick and ancient hands upon her skinny little hips. Not a child-bearing body… But I’ve seen raped war orphans who haven’t yet bled force young out of their holes… I’m sure something could be coaxed out of her, perhaps, one day…

‘Do you prefer these kinds of games?’ I said, and I inserted one slow, friendly finger into her dry cunt. I wiggled the parasite inside her and felt her vaginal walls twitch with protest. But there was nothing she could do, of course. There was never anything she could do.

‘Sure.’ Her voice was flat. Why had she become such a limp doll?

Well, no matter.

I latched my hand around her wrist and dragged her over to the bed, and there I had my way with her. It was a good, straightforward, wholesome rape. You want details, dear reader? Just know that she was like one of those silver fish launching itself free from the water for a moment—just one moment—and then crashing back down into the black depths beneath me, and being crushed beneath pressure and the pleasure of my sex, and crying in the wake of her orgasm. I held her very tightly afterward, as she sobbed against me, and I comforted her like my child. She cried herself to sleep in my arms. And I, well-behaved gentle knight that I was, let her sleep, and did not molest her again until the morning.

It was my first time waking up with my darling. There is no greater wonder than to wake, to forget that you are not alone, and then to turn and see her, her, her! My russet haired, feline, sleepy darling. I bent my whole body over hers and pressed down upon her with kisses and friendly nips. She woke with a start and for a moment—just a moment!—struggled against me. Almost immediately she went limp, but in that moment she had forgotten who we both were and that I owned her, and she tried in all her animal instinctiveness to get free of me. This filled me with arousal and I easily sank my erection into her vagina, which was still slimy from the night’s revelries. She made a beautiful, ugly sound of protest, and then she lay still and allowed me to have my fun. I didn’t want to fuck her, it was far too early for that sort of thing, but I wanted to wake her with reminders of rape and love. It’s a good way to start the day.

After I pulled out of her, I ordered a magnificent breakfast and we ate it tangled up in the bedsheets, the both of us naked. I ate with a knife and fork and I forbade her cutlery. I liked to watch her pick at fruit and pancakes with her fingers as her breasts cast black shadows in the early morning light. The pendant of her necklace—that caged silver bird—caught the sun beautifully. She hardly looked at me at all.

‘You’re still grumpy,’ I observed, chewing on bacon. It had been a long time since I visited a slaughterhouse. In my youth, I so did enjoy to listen to the screaming of pigs. Now, what’s the point? On every battleground you can hear them scream…

‘Sorry.’ She ate delicately, picking at pancake crumbs, eschewing the syrup I was sure that she loved. She did not want to be messy again.

‘Did I not fuck you well last night?’

She nodded in that annoying way she does when she doesn’t really agree with me. ‘Yeah, you did.’ But this time, she was a good girl and forced herself to answer properly without my prompting: ‘I liked it a lot. You were… I…’ She lost the thread for a moment as her madness briefly surfaced, but bravely she beat it back down. ‘I like it when you come inside me,’ she lied. ‘It makes me feel very… connected to you.’ That last part, I knew, was the truth. Oh yes, we were connected! Like two tumors growing through organs to reach each other…

‘But you’re still upset.’

Finally, she turned her sad, grey eyes upon me. There was a bit more life in them today, at least. The sleep had restored some of her vitality.

‘I’m sorry. I’m just sad. I can’t help it sometimes.’

‘What can I do to cheer you up?’

She was sufficiently brazen to indulge a sarcastic sigh, but I permitted it. ‘Would you stop raping me?’ It was a joke, and she knew it and I knew it too.

I smiled. ‘No, my dear. You enjoy it far too much. But name something else. Tell me. Any treat you like. Food, clothes, jewelry… I like to make you happy almost as much as I like to make you sad.’

She fixed me with her hard and surprisingly confident eyes. ‘I don’t like it when you humiliate me.’

‘But I love humiliating you,’ I countered. ‘It’s a great pleasure of mine. You cannot imagine how stimulating I find it.’

‘But I don’t like,’ she repeated, as if I were too stupid to understand this obvious fact. ‘The rest is whatever. I don’t mind being fucked. I like it,’ she corrected. Then she reached for my hand with schoolgirl awkwardness but also, I was happy to note, with convincing enthusiasm. She was getting better at playing her role. ‘You’re good to me, in bed. A good… lover. I like it a lot.’

‘I know you do,’ I beamed back at her. ‘You always come so very hard. That’s what it means to enjoy sex, you know.’ I gave her hand a squeeze. ‘People put such a terrible amount of emphasis on consent. I assure you, dear girl, that consent is no guarantee of a pleasurable sexual experience. Quite the reverse, much of the time. Wouldn’t you rather get raped and enjoy it, than make love and be bored out of your skull?’

Her sigh this time was very big. ‘I guess.’ Her thumb caressed my hand and I could not be sure if she was aware of what she was doing. ‘But…’ And she turned her big stormy eyes upon me which were gilded with pleading. ‘We had a nice day today, you know? It was my birthday, and  you took me out, and… it was mostly nice. It was like…’ A broken smile spasmed on her lips. ‘It was almost normal. I liked the aquarium a lot.’ That smile withered at the edges. ‘And then you ruined it. You didn’t have to do that. It could have just been nice.’

‘I like ruining things for you,’ I told her honestly, and what was left of the smile evaporated. I shifted my body closer to hers: my old, huge, naked form, and her sad little slender, fuckable flesh. My hand found her thigh and she grew very stiff in my arms as I pressed my mouth to her ear and my fingers to her deepest, most innermost parts. I stroked her soft little clitoris like it was a tiny animal. ‘I like you unhappy. Do you understand?’ I kissed her earlobe and I sunk my fingers deeper, beneath her body, seeking out her lovely raped vagina. Her beautiful reddened face was hot against my kisses. ‘And I know how much your little fuck-hole likes being unhappy, too.’

Because, of course, she was wet. I had trained her so well, and she was such a remarkable subject!

‘Why me?’ she whispered as I kissed her neck, the back of which was whorled with dark and foresty hairs. ‘You could have any girl. Any girl in the whole world. I’m nothing. I’m not special.’

‘I made you special,’ I told her as I marked her skin with my teeth and saliva. ‘I made you sacrifice yourself. I made you kill children. And I made you come. And now, you are different. You will never be like the other girls.’

A query disturbed her traumatized face. ‘If I hadn’t… that first time you raped me… if I hadn’t… if I hadn’t come… would you have left me alone?’

‘Perhaps.’

She shivered. ‘So it’s all my fault.’

‘It is your fault and mine. We collaborated in this obliteration of the ordinary you. You are complicit in your own destruction.’

Some understanding of her situation seemed to settle upon her, for she gave a small, uneven nod, and then she opened her thighs to allow me to plunge my fingers into her keen, seeping, swollen parts.

‘You’re never going to let me go, are you?’

‘No.’ I wormed my fingers inside her, and lovingly I rubbed the abused inner walls of her vagina, and I kissed her neck with adoration. ‘But take some comfort in that, my darling. I will never leave you. Do you understand?’ Never taking my fingers out of her, I encircled my other arm around her and held her close to my naked chest, and I pressed her so hard against me that her skin and mine could have melted together like organs under nuclear radiation… ‘I will be with you forever. I will keep you. Protect you. Hurt you. Rape you. Care for you. Forever. And when I die, I will be inside your head and your heart and your lungs forever.’ I nuzzled my nose against her. ‘Take some comfort in that.’

Bath Time

I get home late and mama looks at me like I carried in something dead (which I didn’t, today). She’s standing in the empty parlor we never use and her hands are rubbing themselves raw, over and over. Her eyes get big and wan when she’s angry, or tired, or upset. She doesn’t know how to feel anymore, she just knows how to look at you through those big, big empty eyes.

“He’s upstairs,” she says, and I know what she means, and I know who he is, and the whole shitty shape of the day settles into place for me.

I look up to the ceiling, like I might be able to see him through the plaster. Way up high above me, my new guardian angel.

“Okay. I’ll go up.”

I try to tidy my mind a bit: put away thoughts of the forest, of my sister, of my mother, of Gale, of freedom. I take out new bits and pieces. Put some flowers in a mental vase. Lay out new white sheets. Make it nice and comfortable for what he’s going to do to me.

I’m almost out of the room when mama’s voice makes me turn back.

“It’s impolite,” she says, and she lets the word hang in the air. She doesn’t know what to make of this word, and nor do I. Then she grasps for it again: “It’s impolite for him to come here without warning.” One of her thin, weak frowns creases her forehead. She hates that man upstairs, I know, but she cannot say it. He might have her killed. Or me. Or Prim. So instead her big, frightened eyes alight on me and she says, “I wish you would tell your boyfriend to call ahead.”

I feel furious shame for a moment, but just for a moment. Then I nod. It’s kind of an uncertain nod, like I’m not sure how to force my skull into the movement.

“I’ll tell him,” I say, and then I leave my mama with her hatred for me, which is so much easier to bear than hatred for the president.

Is it really hatred, I wonder, as I climb the stairs. Just resentment, perhaps. She merely resents her daughter, who used to be the clever, dog-toothed hunter who brought them food when they were starving. Now who’s that daughter? Now she’s a whore. Who wouldn’t resent me, the way I smell of him after he’s gone, the way I lock myself in the bathroom after so I can wash his semen out of me. They know I’m in there and they know what I’m doing. Do they know I touch myself sometimes? Sometimes when it’s really bad I have to do it two or three times. If I can just come enough times, I might be able to squeeze him out of me. But I don’t know anymore.

When I reach the top of the stairs I make for my bedroom, but I know instantly that he’s not in there. I can smell gravity, now. I smell the earth and its magnetic poles, and I smell the president. Weird smell he has. Sweet flowers and hard iron.

The bathroom door is open and steam floats toward me down the corridor. More smells. Lavender, I think. I let it draw me toward him. What if I ran away? What if I jumped out the window headfirst so my skull cracked the cement and leaked the fat berries of my brain over the ground?

And then I’m in the bathroom, and there he is. He sits on the edge of the bath and his fingers trail through the lilac water. He watches the ripples, and I watch them too. Those fingers have been inside my mouth and my cunt and my asshole. No one else has ever put anything in those places before. He teaches me lots of new things.

He turns his head, like the statue of a lion turns, slow and grotesque and impossible. His clever mouth opens in a smile. Inside, his teeth are white as an eyeball.

“Hello, my dear.” His hand leaves the water. It extends to me, dripping. “Come and say hello.”

I know how to say hello. I step to him, he stands, and in the next second I’ve been absorbed into him. His hands clutch parts of my body against him and his mouth pours into mine, his tongue and his teeth, not really a kiss, just a flood of bits of him into bits of me. He likes to do this slow and wet so that all my teeth are coated in his saliva. And for my part, I put my tongue into his mouth too, because I know he likes it, and when I do I feel a disgusting creature inside me perk up its ears. Warm shivers make my sleepy, half-dead cunt stir. My body has learned when it’s time to play.

He breaks his mouth from mine and stares blissfully into my face. I wonder what he sees in me. When I look in the mirror, I cannot see anything anymore.

“I’ve missed you, Miss Everdeen,” he tells me with his big smile. Is it a smile? It’s just an open snake mouth waiting to swallow me, and then I will be safe and sound in his tight, pink insides.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” I say. “Mama was surprised.”

“But I was expecting you.” He gestures at the bath. “I knew exactly when you would arrive home. It’s only just finished filling. Nice and hot for you, the way you like it.”

I look down at the water. Dry petals meander pointlessly across the surface. A shore of bubbles lines the rim. He’s made it nice for me.

“You want me to take a bath?”

“I do. I promise I won’t fuck you today.” He taps his stomach. “Not quite well enough for it.” Immediately I think about stabbing him there, in his secret insides that I never get to touch, and then I could pull his disease out of him, and his intestines too, and he would laugh as he died in my arms.

“Should I get undressed?”

He smiles widely. “Yes, my dear.”

I always have to ask permission for things. He gets so mad at me sometimes when I don’t do what he wants. He doesn’t hit me much, but once when I talked back to him he had his peacekeepers come in and they held me still as he smacked me over and over and over on my face. Then he made me suck on him for a bit while the men held me, and I really didn’t like that. I don’t like his penis in my mouth, but he often makes me do that when he can’t get hard. I just suckle on the soft thing for long, long minutes while he strokes my hair, and it makes me feel sick. I’d rather get raped. There’s many things I mind less than getting raped.

As I take off my clothes, my mind sinks further into itself. I don’t need to be aware of what’s going on around me. Being raped isn’t so bad, it’s just kind of uncomfortable sometimes, and other times it’s like a pickaxe into my topsoil that digs up all the seeds and the worms. And when he breaks me open like that, I come so hard I stop feeling like a human being.

He touches me for a bit once I’m naked, but I send my mind deeper inside myself so I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just not in the mood to get molested today. I think I get a bit wet when he touches my nipples, but I’m not sure, because my brain is deep, deep, deep inside me. I can go so far inside that I turn myself inside out, sometimes.

Then he lightly smacks my breast (not enough to hurt, just to be playful; he just likes to play…) and indicates the bath. “Get in, my dear. I made it very nice for you. Essence of rosewater, and lavender bath salts, and crushed violets.”

I do as I am told, like I always do. The water is very hot, hot enough to hurt, which is how I like it. How does he know that? Oh, he knows everything about me. His hand has its fingernails digging into my brain. No point ever trying to get away.

I sit in the water and my necklace sends little points of light around the room as the setting sun catches it. His gift to me, this necklace. I don’t even see it any more, I don’t even feel it. There’s a little black hole around my neck and I don’t even think about it.

“Why don’t you wash your breasts for me?”

He hands me a sponge. I look up at him and I try, just for a moment, to understand. He gazes at me with what might be love, with whatever knot of affection and loyalty he thinks is approximate to love. It’s a nice, new, expensive sponge, one he must have bought special for me. I don’t really know how to wash my breasts; it’s not like they get very dirty, so I don’t usually spend much time on them. But I dip the sponge into the water and then heave up its sopping corpse, and I sort of dab myself and rub a little bit. I look at him and he nods his encouragement, so I keep doing it, and I try to think about other things. Prim hasn’t come back home yet, but that’s okay; that’s for the best. She often goes to her friend’s house now. She doesn’t like it at home, and I encourage her to spend time away from here. I don’t want her in this house. I wish we could go back to where we lived before, but I guess that’s not allowed. I have to stay here, in the Victors’ Village, in Snow’s dollhouse. I’m more accessible.

“My dear, will you wash your vagina now?”

I shrug my consent and put my fingers into the water, but he tuts his displeasure.

“No, no, my dear. I would like you to get on all fours. I want to watch.”

I release a bit of a sigh, a little puff of resignation. Get on all fours, wash your breasts, kiss me, do this, do that… It’s just kind of all so exhausting and annoying, getting abused like this. I wish he’d just fuck me and leave, but he’s old and he’s a sadist, so he likes to play. I’ve never much liked games.

I shift through the water and I decide I will be a sea creature. I’m a slippery seal who wears human skin when she wants to pretend to be a person, but really I’m a weird, slick creature of the depths. I don’t even have a vagina, I just have a few folds of skin that look like one to make the men think I’m a human girl. And then if they try to have sex with me, I kill them, and I eat their entrails. I love to eat liver pate… my favorite part of the deer…

I hear an ugly squirt and feel cold, slimy liquid soap hit the base of my back. On all floors in the water, I feel it slide over my asshole and drip down. I pretend that it’s mud from the black sea depths that I’ve stirred up. I read in an old, old banned history book that there’s a lake somewhere in another country that’s so deep a whole mountain could sit under the surface. And they say that lake is full of seals…

“Rub the soap over your vagina now. Don’t be afraid of getting it inside you; it’s a special, mild, delicate soap. It’s good for you.”

My fingers rub slime over skin and I think that if I were a seal I would eat nothing but fish. Fish, fish, fish, all day long. I never got the hang of fishing, but Gale trades me good, fat, salted fish sometimes. But if I were a seal my fish would not be salty. They would be fresh and silver-scaled and they would slide right down my gullet, one after the other…

“Come along, Miss Everdeen. Don’t be shy. I’d like to see those fingers inside your vagina.”

I think about digging for lake worms. Thick nematodes in the depths. My fingers sink into the slimy hot sand and search inside. I will supplement my diet of fish with worms, when I am a seal. I slide my fingers in and out of the holes, worm-searching, worm-hungry, big fat hungry seal that I am…

“That’s a good girl. Look at your little clitoris. Do you feel it? I can see how terribly pink and swollen it has become. Give it a little rub for me.”

I’m struggling, seal-me, in these lake depths. I screw my eyes as tight as possible and start rubbing something warm and small… small but getting bigger… maybe it’s one of the lake worms… but maybe not…

“You’re being very quiet. There’s no need, my dear; your mother won’t hear and your sister is out. Make a sound for me. You know how much I like your little sounds.”

I heave the big underwater air into my lungs and then I let it go, and a hot, unmistakeable note of pleasure leaves my lips—and I’m no longer a seal. I open my eyes and I’m just a girl kneeling in a bath and rubbing between her legs because a man told me to. It’s a bit cold in the bathroom, cool February air all over my naked skin. I wish it was a little warmer.

And, look—it’s not so bad. Way worse things happen to girls. The terrible things that happen to girls could not fill the biggest library in the world. Girls get gangraped when they’re so small that they tear apart and no one can put them back together. Girls have sex for money over and over until they’re so stuffed with disease that their face rots off before they’re twenty-five. So look, I’m not stupid. If the worst thing that ever happens to you is rubbing between your legs because a man told you to, that’s not so bad. And if the worst thing that ever happens to you is a man holding you down and lying on top of you, that’s not so bad either. And if you get fucked and you don’t like it—well, as the saying goes, “Worse things happen at sea.”

I’m starting to get pretty physically excited, even though doing this on all fours is uncomfortable and my knees hurt as they press against the hard white shell of the bath. The soap makes me slippery inside and out, and I wonder if Snow might be kind enough to put something in me. I just prefer getting abused if there’s something inside me, because it means something really happened. If nothing goes inside me then it doesn’t count, then it’s like nothing happened at all, and I don’t understand why I feel so bad. I whine a bit and shuffle my hips to try to get him to put something, anything, inside me, so I can feel like the rape counted. Add it to the notches on my bed.

“Is my little kitten needy today?” he coos above and behind me. I nod, because obviously he wants me to agree. What would he say if I told him: No, actually, I’m bored and cold and I’m hungry, and I want you to go away. Well, he’d beat my sister, or rape her, or something worse. No way out of this funhouse. Doors that open on brick walls. Windows that peer into themselves. Every day I take another turn deeper into my labyrinth, into my cunt, into my mind… And there in the darkness his voice asks me, “Is kitten’s little downstairs-mouth hungry?”

These words enter my brain and I immediately take them to pieces so they won’t mean anything. Words in a jumble: downstairs, kitten, hungry. I let my hand fall from myself, back into the water, and I don’t even feel that excited anymore. I hate when he talks to me like a child. But then, as expected, as foretold, two thick, old, heavy fingers sink into my cunt up to the knuckle, and my mouth hisses as he starts to finger-fuck me.

Yeah, this is nice. I think I can come to this. And that’s what matters, in the end, right? My pleasure, served up on a plate for him. Fingers like tree-trunks, like rotten wormy tree-trunks, pushing in and out of me. Dead roots in my soil. Fungus blooming over my insides. Orange jelly fungus. I must shine inside with the stuff, like stars, like big orange suns. Oh my fungus suns, growing inside me, massive like the Appalachian sky, but bigger still, huge and heavy burning gas bearing down upon my soil, my earth, the worm-eaten chaff where my bones once lay…

I come shuddering on his fingers and I nearly fall in the water. My muscles contort. My foot kicks. It’s hard to stop this, and I know he likes it, so I don’t bother trying. I come so violently that I splash bathwater all over the place. I am such a mess these days.

He pulls his fingers out of me and rubs me on the outside, that bit he calls the clitoris, and the pleasure sets on fire inside me once again. Then he shoves his thumb in my cunt and his fingers play with my outside bits, and I just sort of lose the thread of it all around this point. I’m shifting my hips like a dying mare, and I’m moaning really very loudly, and he says, “Would you like to call me daddy?”

So I do, and that makes me think about my own dad, whose body was never dragged out of the mine so it’s still out there somewhere, deep in the soil, and I think about his moldy skull as I say things like, “Daddy, daddy,” and “Yes, please, more,” and all the thousand stupid things that sound good when you want to come and make you want to die right after. He says really awful things to me that stick to my mind like flytraps. Things like, “I feel kitten’s little nose twitching,” and “Let that sweet little cunt suckle on daddy’s thumb,” and “Do you think daddy’s mouth will feel this good on your sister’s pink rose?”

Look, I don’t know what happened next. I came again, maybe twice, probably, who knows? Part of my mind breaks off sometimes and then I find it again later, and there’s always some little bit of it that went missing. I sink into a place beyond memory. And the next thing I know is being sat on the side of the bath and he’s wrapping a towel around me. I’m shivering a bit. The towel is abrasive against my cold skin.

“I didn’t mean it, you know,” Snow tells me as he tucks in the towel. His breath is hot, stale blood on my face. “What I said about your sister. I was simply… lost in the moment.”

I nod and make a “hm” sound, like I’m agreeing with him or something. If he hurts Prim I’ll kill him. I dream about him doing things to her sometimes, and then I kill him, and the relief wakes me so vividly that I wonder if part of me wants it to happen so I could be free… They’d kill me after, but it would be over… It would all be over…

“You’re such a good pet.” He kisses my forehead. I kind of like it when he does that, after the rape. It’s a way of telling me it’s over, and that he won’t hurt me more, and that in his own unwell kind of way he does love me, the best that he can. He takes me into my room and we lie down together for a while, just cuddling, and I don’t mind this part either. It’s like having a boyfriend, I suppose. It’s not so bad. It’s not so bad. It’s not so bad. It’s not so bad. It’s not so bad. It’s not so bad. It’s not…

I wake up and it’s almost sunset. Snow is gone. My hair is still damp on one side, where I slept on it. There is a rose on my bedside table. I can feel the imprint of fingers inside me and orgasm in my muscles. I need to put on some clothes.

“Katniss?” calls my mother’s voice, from the bottom of the stairs. “Dinner is ready.”

I have these dreams. Or had, or am still having. You wake up sometimes only to fall deeper in. I’ve been falling for a while now, but I think one day I’ll hit the bottom of something. What it is, I cannot say.

I smell the coal more days than not, but the mines stopped producing years ago. No jobs now. Unfucked earth. Pit ponies live and die in the dark, and I’m like them, sometimes. I go back and forth along rail tracks carrying things I don’t understand, and sometimes I’m fed, and sometimes I’m not.

But I still have the sun. I dream sometimes that I’m walking in it, in the forest, in the forest where I’m swimming in sun, and then my skin starts to peel off. And I’m burning up, my organs are melting, and when I open my eyes I’m still in my bed but I’m steeped in my own sweat.

I think of him, sometimes. Less so than you might think. He’s always there, in my head, but I don’t look right at him. He, too, is like a sun. A blue ball of gas burning its colossal weight away in the distant fathoms of space, and I’m a dead planet tethered to him by physics and inevitability. They used to record the winds of the planets, in the old days. Some of them sounded like song. That’s me, too, sometimes. I’m the wind singing about the nothing on my face in the dark forever.

So he’s always there. Making me warm. Putting a fever in me. They say that in the songs like it’s a good thing, like it’s sexy. Feverish with love. Well, okay. Sweating, sticky, nauseous with love. Like when you get fever so bad there are plates of metal under your skin that snag on your bones. Like when you try to puke but nothing comes out, but you still feel so sick, and nothing comes, and nothing comes, and you know you’ve got something really bad inside you but it’s stuck there good.

Here's the thing: rape is not a tapeworm. It doesn’t get inside you and stay there, stuck forever in your stinking guts. It’s a thing that happens, like washing the dishes, or skinning a hare, or sneezing, or playing catch. Your body moves in this certain way, or other things in the world move against your body, and then it’s over. It’s all fleeting. He likes to come in my mouth sometimes, and does that mean something? Things pass through me. Memories, liquids, days. People I used to be pass through me. I am a girl on the inside.

I am other things, too, on the inside.

I don’t keep track of how many times it happened. But one time I was lying there on my bed, and he’d left and I could feel bits of him still inside me, and that day it was like I was tuned to a different frequency. Body of static and bones. I get fuzzy inside. There’s all this interference he put inside me, or that I put there, and so I touch myself. There are different kinds of pleasure in the world. Talk about peaches: peach pleasure. They grow so big you wouldn’t believe. Don’t even need to cultivate them; wild peaches love my district soil. I eat them so fat in my mouth that I turn into juice. Sometimes in Summer I lie beneath the peach trees and I think I’ve got god in my stomach. Not now, though. Got a new god, now.

Peach pleasure versus cum pleasure. I don’t like the word “orgasm”; I don’t think about it when he’s inside me. The shape of my pleasure when I touch myself after he rapes me is a huge grey slug. We’ve been everywhere, my slug and me. I walk through the forest with my thighs shiny wet with our pleasure, and then I shove my body against a tree and I savage my clit with my fingers. I just have to do it, you understand? The alarm in my head is so red and ripe I think my skull will burst. It makes my gums hurt. So I have to do it, and when I come, I can see the sky above and the trees around and the dirt below, and I know that not a single piece of it is real. I have this brief moment where I can see the seams. The world is stitched together in this way, but one day, if the birds decide they don’t want to be birds anymore, it’ll all fall apart. One day the dirt will choose not to be dirt. Then the ground will fall out from beneath our feet. And where will you be then?

Mother doesn’t worry about me. Mother doesn’t know how. I’m always okay: I’m her big grown up girl. I’m Mother #2. I’m the back up. Dad died, and I wanted mama to look after me but she didn’t, and now who looks after me? I got a man, now. He brings me gifts and he rapes me. So that’s a kind of care. I should be grateful. I should be many things that I am not.

I do think about killing myself. I’m not going to do it, because I have my little sister. Sometimes people say of a loved one, “She’s my reason for everything,” and it sounds so lovely. But it’s not like that. It’s like gravity. Why don’t you fly to school? Because gravity exists. Why do you do the dishes? Because my sister exists. Why don’t you throw yourself from a building? Because gravity exists, because my sister exists.

So I’m not going to kill myself. Not today, anyway. Some things you can put off for a long time. And there’s things to do until them. Animals to hunt and fruit to gather, and chores to do and getting raped. Folding my clothes and getting raped. Making my bed and getting raped. I don’t make my bed anymore. Mother stopped making it, too. It smells of him. I smell of him. I want to put bleach in my nostrils so I can’t smell anything anymore, and maybe I’ll do that one day. I won’t kill myself but I could put a bradawl through my nasal cavity.

I returned to rape her again one month later. I had not intended so soon a repeat encounter, but she had such an effect on me! The power contained in that little lamb! I fretted about it for a week before I committed. I was like a schoolboy in the first bud of love. This is the gnostic and supernatural essence of rape: it enchantingly binds you to an act and a person (and a place, and a time of day, and a quality of light…) whether you mean it to or not. Not all men understood this, of course; they lacked the intelligence and insight to comprehend the singular magic that rape could cast. You have to empathize with the woman. You have to fall in love with the thing.

I knew I had to buy her a gift. This tormented me. Any object I picked up with her in mind reached forth through time and space and connected us in some potential shadow. A snow globe? Immediately I felt the ghosts of her fingers reaching back through the past to touch it, to hold it, to loathe it. No, she would not appreciate a tchotchke. I considered other trinkets such as a golden eyeglass, a gyroscope, a map of Panem, a box of chocolates, a pistol, a jade statuette of a cat… But in the end I decided, as so many men do, on jewelry. I wanted something that would lie close against her skin, and it was far too early in the relationship to buy her lingerie.

I arrived at the house too early and waited for my Peacekeepers to clear it. I was forever appearing too early, too late. I had arrived too late in the girl’s life, of course—too old to properly court her, too used-up to deliver to her the pleasures she would one day no doubt come to crave. It’s an unavoidable truth that women who experience sexual violence at a young age become nymphomaniacs. A day would come when this fine, young, nipping pup would come to crave a degree of sexual excess that I would not be able to provide. That saddened me. But sometimes one’s role in life must be the ringmaster, the announcer, the prologue. One day a younger, stronger man than I would fulfil the fantasies that I could not. But, oh, when those days came, it would still be me she thought of between her thighs!

A familiar masked man gave the all clear sign and I exited the car. I held my wrapped present like a totem. I had already worn it myself in the bath while giving myself over to pleasurable ecstasies, but I would conceal this fact from Katniss Everdeen. Women can be ever so funny about men wearing their jewelry and clothes…

I entered the house to find no Miss Everdeen in stock. What a miserable discovery. But there was her mother, hovering in the parlor like a polite but disoriented moth. Her hands were dusted with flour. I must have caught her in the middle of baking.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Everdeen,’ I said, and I took her hand in mine with a half-bow. ‘I trust you are well today?’

Her smile irritated me. Insincere, too wide, too terrified, too many old teeth. My own teeth, of course, were in excellent condition.

‘Oh, yes. Of course. We’re very well here.’

‘I do apologize for dropping by unannounced. It was only that I had an unexpected gap in my schedule, and I thought that it had been far too long since I last saw your daughter.’

Her head gave a quivering nod. Her large eyes were pale, watery, and frightened. ‘She is out.’

‘Hunting?’

‘I—I don’t know.’

‘Will she be back soon?’

The woman rubbed her hands over themselves. The knuckles were pink—a common effect of cheap, abrasive soaps. She was too thin, too insubstantial. The shadow of a woman. Widows often got like this. Not worth raping.

‘I… she didn’t say.’

She probably thought that if she gave the impression that Katniss might not return for a long while, then I might give up and leave. Foolishness. I would wait at the end of the world for that girl. My lovely victim!

‘Well, I shall wait for her.’ I chose for myself the most comfortable of the chairs. I knew exhaustively by now the kinds of furniture with which they decorated these houses. It was all cheaply made, though it looked impressive for the first few weeks if you were a starving peasant. Everything falls apart in the end.

Mrs Everdeen’s face shone with cataclysm. ‘Would… would you like some tea?’

‘Tea would be marvelous. Do you have cakes?’

‘I… Yes… Mr—Mr Mellark made some.’

I waved a dismissive hand. ‘I’ll skip them.’ One cookie was quite enough of his provincial baking.

The mother made tea and brought a single cup, and as I accepted it I looked her over with displeasure.

‘You did not make any for yourself?’

‘Oh…’ She looked stricken, as though she could not have possibly been aware that she had committed a faux pas. ‘No, I… I just had some.’

‘Well, take a seat. We should get to know each other a little better.’

She looked at the furniture as though surrounded by feral tigers, and then she perched with reluctant terror on a pouffe. I rolled my eyes. Mothers were truly the most tedious creatures, second only to fathers. I was so grateful my own father had had his head blown apart by rebels, and that my mother had been raped to death beforehand.

‘So,’ I said, and then offered my announcement. ‘I have decided I would like to court your daughter.’ I tasted the tea. Cheap, nasty stuff, but tea is tea. I’ve spent enough time starving to appreciate the little things in life. ‘I had intended just to rape her on the one occasion, but it had such an enormous effect upon me. It went so well for the both of us. Did she tell you about it?’

The woman shook her head in the most unnatural of motions.

‘Well, it was fantastic. You witnessed the overture of course, but the symphony itself was even more magnificent. I think it would be a crime not to have a repeat performance. And so I’ve decided that I will come to visit her from time to time, and I will look after her, and all will be done the correct way, you understand?’

‘The… correct way?’

‘Yes. I am not a brute, madam. She will be a kind of odalisque. She will live here for the meanwhile, but I will visit her when I can. Perhaps in time I will relocate her to the Capitol, but…’ I released a sigh at that. ‘Well, it does not do to get attached. I am a realist; there is no chance for a legitimate relationship here. I could hardly marry the girl.’ I offered a merry smile and the mother’s lips weakly twitched. She didn’t understand anything. ‘But I assure you, I will take care of her. I will not hurt her, not abuse her, not whore her out… She will be just for me, you see? My little bird.’

The mother nodded slowly, and I fancied that some comprehension was dawning on her dull and bourgeois mind.

‘You will… look after her? Make sure she doesn’t get hurt?’

‘Of course. She is under my protection. Obviously, she will need to stop running around after that Peeta Mellark boy. Or that Hawthorne lad.’ My tongue picked a tealeaf out of my back molar. ‘Maybe I ought to have him shot.’

‘He’ll stay away from her,’ said the woman rapidly. ‘I’ll make sure of it.’

I waved a hand; her promises meant nothing to me. ‘We’ll see, we’ll see. And, of course, there is the matter of Primrose. A pretty little girl. Not interesting to me in her own right, but as a satellite of her sister she has certain potential.’ The moon that orbits my wonderful Juno! Tactfully, I added: ‘Do you happen to know if they have ever partaken in any preadolescent sapphic relations?’

The mother’s eyes widened in what I think was horror—but then the door swung open.

‘Mother, I’m back,’ called my favorite, most melodious voice and my heart just about threw itself through my ribcage and out the window. ‘I couldn’t get any quail at the Hob, but—’

‘My dear,’ said the mother rapidly as she stood, positioning herself between me and the door. She meant this as a subconscious act of protection. ‘We have a visitor.’

Katniss Everdeen walked in. The Tannhäuser overture exploded behind my eyes. There she was. My raped maiden. Panem’s heir, my new daughter, the repository of my sperm and of all my love. She looked unhappy to see me.

‘President Snow.’

‘Miss Everdeen.’

I glowed. She shivered. Her face was perfect. That ochre shade of skin so specific to the poorer regions of District 12, that dark hair just escaping its tight braid, those angry, stormy eyes, and that resolute mouth. There was not fear in her face, but there was something better: the memory of terror. I wanted to kiss her right then, but I restrained myself. I was always a master of restraint.

‘Shall we go upstairs?’ I said.

The girl’s eyes flicked to her mother. She spoke in a forced voice. ‘Mother, Prim won’t have anyone to walk her home from school. Will you go meet her?’

‘Of course,’ said the mother immediately. ‘I’ll head out now. If that’s alright with the president.’

I rolled my eyes. I could see through their little scheme. Had I not already given my word that I would not rape the younger sister? Not yet, at least. But I waved my hand in assent and the mother quickly disappeared. That left me alone with my dove.

‘Hello,’ I said. I felt a little greedy. ‘Upstairs?’

She gave a pale nod. I followed her firm and lissome figure through the hall, up the stairs, retracing those steps that once we had taken to her first rape. I was on fire with desire for her; not for sex, but for the soft hymen of her mind. I had probed it and stretched it, yes, but it was not yet broken. That could take months to broach. I licked my lips at the thought.

She shut the door behind her. I peered around her bedroom. It was just as it was! Here was the floor on which her bare feet had stood, here was the bed where I had raped her. The bedsheets looked curiously neat and still, and the nightstand was empty.

‘Have you been sleeping here?’ I said suspiciously.

She resented the question. ‘No. In Prim’s room.’

‘You don’t like to sleep here since I raped you?’

She shook her head slowly, not quite understanding the question. But I understood her entirely.

‘You must sleep here,’ I said. ‘It’s imperative. Do you understand? If you want your sister to sleep with you, then you do it in here. But you must sleep in this bed. Did you keep the clothes?’

She knew what I was referring to: the clothes she had worn before I took them off her and raped her. To my pleasure, she nodded dully. She pointed vaguely into the corner, and there I saw a plastic bag loosely crumpled. They had been kept separate from the rest of her clothes, but kept nonetheless, as I had instructed.

‘Washed?’

She nodded.

‘By you?’

‘My mother washed them.’

I felt as though struck by a golden tuning fork. Her own mother, washing the cunt-wet underwear of her raped daughter! This gave me immense pleasure and I could not delay the event any longer. I reached for her chin and she did not resist as I pulled her face toward mine and gave her a kiss of welcome and affection and desire and promise: promise that the worst was yet to come.

‘My dear Miss Everdeen,’ I crooned against her lips, and I licked them puppyishly. Her mouth went slack, as it had the last time. Her body remembered me so well. My ripe, soft, only lightly bruised peach! I could not wait to maggot around inside of her once again. ‘Did you miss me?’ She did not seem to know what to say to that. I helped her: ‘Did you think of me, at least?’

She nodded. Her eyes were not on me but elsewhere; in the past, perhaps. Thinking of our past rape? I hoped so. Gently, I encouraged her to the bed and pulled her down to sit beside me. I intertwined my hands around one of hers and stroked her pulsing wrist. We were like teenagers. Well—she was a teenager. She seemed quite unsettled at my touch.

‘I dreamed of you,’ I said. ‘Did you dream of me?’

Her gaze had fixed on something I could not see. When she spoke, I was delighted to hear the sincerity and honesty in her voice, although it came from faraway, as though she related to me the details of a photograph she had found at the bottom of a well in which she was still imprisoned.

‘I dreamed I was swimming. There’s a lake in the forest where I swim sometimes… My father used to take me there… But the lake in my dream is so big and so deep, and there are many other people swimming there but they do not pay attention to me. And in the lake is a ship. I’ve never seen a ship so big, only in pictures. The hull rises in this impossible vertical from the water, this metal cliff, and it goes deep down under the water, too. And this ship belongs to you, or the ship is you, I’m not so sure. But the water is very warm, like bathwater, and I come to realize that it is the ship that is making the water so warm. Hot. The water gets hotter and hotter, and some people are laughing and playing even as their skin starts to turn red, and then to cook… And I’ve suddenly forgotten how to swim, I don’t know how, the power has just left me, and I drift down, down, down to the bottom of the lake, which is deeper than I’ve ever been anywhere before, like the bottom of a mine. And the sand there is soft and everything is green, and I can’t see up, and I can’t breathe, and everything gets hotter and hotter and hotter… And I have no memory of what happens after.’

I was so excited by this narrative that there spread a strong, pressuring pain along the shaft of my penis. She was perfect. My rape had made her perfect.

‘I have missed you,’ I told her, which was very true. ‘I brought you a present.’

Her eyes were dull and disappointingly uninterested as I removed the wrapped parcel from my pocket and offered it to her, its bow glittering green in the late afternoon light of her bedroom. I eagerly watched her as she pulled at the bow, then she listlessly turned over the box to unpeel the paper. She was certainly not subjecting my gift to the same ceremony with which I had treated her clothing!

She exposed the box within, then removed the lid.

‘Oh.’

The necklace shone. Its pendant was heavy silver.

‘Do you understand the symbolism of it?’ I said.

‘It’s not exactly subtle.’

The pendant depicted a bird in flight, its intricate wings whorishly spread. But it could not fly anywhere, for a silver cage contained it. No, it was not subtle; but sometimes subtlety is not the needed thing.

‘Allow me.’

She did; she allowed me everything. She was compliant and good and sort of limp as I lifted high the necklace and strung it around her pretty neck. When she shifted her braid I caught a breeze of her scent, which was earthy and strange but familiar, and after I had completed the clasp I leaned in and pressed my nose to that soft, hot skin and its downy hairs that grew free and soft and wild over her neck like little flowers. Reverently, I brought the braid into my hands and gently shucked the tie. Then, piece by precious piece, I unwound the braid and fanned out the soft, hot hair of my darling. I kissed her loose hair, and then her neck, and then her spine, and I felt her body shudder beneath the pressure of my lips and beard and desire.

‘I’ve decided I want to keep you,’ I whispered against the skin at the nape of her neck.

‘Like a pet?’ Her voice came flat and lifeless.

‘No, no. Like a girl. But a girl is a sort of pet, I suppose.’ I wrapped my arms around her waist and pulled her body toward me, almost into my lap, and I held her tight and close and trapped because she was mine now, my girl, and I adored every twitch of her frightened, fearful, traumatized, raped little body. ‘What you have to understand about rape, Miss Everdeen, is that it is a kind of summoning ritual. Most men do not understand this, but women do; and you do, now, most certainly. It is a ritual that binds two people closer than any other; closer even, I believe, than parenthood. How trivial a thing it is to push a baby out of one’s vagina; how much more glorious and complex and spiritual it is to force yourself into a person, and to introduce them to pleasure at that youngest and most impressionable age. I truly believe women remember their rapists with more clarity and more dearness than their mothers. Do you understand?’

I felt her release a thin exhale. ‘Do you want the truth?’

‘Always.’

‘I think you’re insane.’

I chuckled my warmth and my adoration into the back of her neck. Quite naturally, my hand found her thigh. It burned through her clothes.

‘I want to rape you again,’ I whispered, then I very gently bit the shell of her ear. ‘Eventually, if I rape you enough, it won’t be rape anymore. That saddens me sometimes, but I try to think of it as a kind of necessary metamorphosis. The larva must become the butterfly, after all. One day, my dear, I will be inside you and you’ll realize that actually we’re making love. I look forward to that day so keenly.’

I crept my hand up her thigh until it sat so close to her clothed privates that I could feel the heat emanating from them. I wondered if she was aroused yet. Eventually, she would not be able to resist me; that was the wonderful special magic of the thing. Rape a girl again and again and again and eventually it all transmutes into pleasure. This is the secret that the well-behaved schoolboys do not talk about: no matter how much you love a girl, no matter how dedicated, no matter how much blood and sweat you shed, you will never give a girl more pleasure than the man who rapes her.

‘I want to hold you first, this time,’ I told her. ‘It will be more intimate. Just the two of us.’ Then I gave her one last, fatter kiss, and then I slid her from my lap onto the bed like a plump kitten. I was energized again. ‘Come along. Let’s get undressed.’

I began to unbutton my jacket but she remained sitting there, unmoving, one weak frown creasing her brow. She was stuck in the in-between place: still processing what came before, unwilling to acknowledge that it had come again. I paused and allowed her this moment of inaction. I was keen, but I was not selfish. Sometimes a girl needs her quiet.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she said, and the eyes that found mine were hostile but opaque and uncomprehending. ‘You did it once. Okay. You had your fun. Don’t you have other girls to do horrible things to?’

I considered. ‘Would you prefer if I were raping another girl instead of you?’ This had a certain appeal. ‘Would you want to watch?’

‘No,’ she bit back. ‘I just don’t understand. Are you going to keep coming back? Keep doing this to me?’

‘Yes, of course. Over and over again. I want to watch it accumulate in you, the effect of rape. It’s such a fantastic alchemy.’ I took her hand in mine again, gently this time, and I gave its pearly brown back a kiss. ‘Rape is a wonderful gift, my dear Miss Everdeen. You will never be the same person again after what I do to you. And I will accompany on this journey. I will rape you again and again, and I will stay with you after, and I will watch you change and shrink and grow until you are some new invention of your own suffering.’ I inhaled the scent of her pretty wrist. ‘Now. Take off your clothes.’

The resistance had gone out of her. She accepted the ritual of the thing and her small fingers worked mechanically to loosen her shirt and pants and beautiful socks from her body. I undressed too, this time. I was not quite sure how she would take the sight of my old and slackening body, which now seemed to me more like a tree than a man, like something sure and solid but gnarled, withered, inevitably bending toward death. But she barely spared a glimpse for me, her lover. She looked elsewhere, out of the window, where the sun was lowering itself hastelessly toward the sparse and leafless tips of the winter trees, which spread across the metallic grey sky like nerves. I did wonder what she was thinking about.

I pulled back the bedsheets and climbed in, waiting patiently for her to complete her slower, more reluctant undressing. Finally, she turned her body to me and tarried a moment to present it, to let me drink it in, to sip at it. She was precious, fervent-blooded, coppery, honed, and mine, all mine! Skin, breasts, soft pubic hair, the dip of the navel, strong thighs, embossed ribs, freckles: all of it the jigsaw that made up the picture of the girl that was mine. About her neck, the caged silver bird shone.

She had added, I noticed, several new elements to her body since last we met. On her right thigh, close to her vulva, there was a hatch of thin, bloody scars. She had been cutting up her flesh.

I grasped her wrist and pulled her close to the bed so I could examine her.

‘Did you do this?’

She nodded.

I drew a thumb over the scars and she shivered.

‘Did you cut yourself after the rape so you could feel more in control of your body?’

Her eyes never left the window as she nodded again, more vaguely this time.

I was hungry with delight. I pressed my mouth against her thighs and nuzzled my teeth and tongue along these new scars, and my incisors caught little motes of scabs and tore them free and swallowed them whole, and then I licked up the salty, pretty blood that oozed forth. God, she was fantastic.

‘These are mine now,’ I told her of the scars. ‘There will be no part of you that isn’t mine. Now, get into bed with me.’

She moved uncertainly, her mind elsewhere, her psyche attempting to protect itself from reality. I would not allow that, of course. As if I were a millipede, I would sink every wriggling foot of myself into her brain and her skin until she was full and writhing with me. She reclined stiffly and I gathered her close, her back against my chest, and soon I shuffled our bodies together until there was no space between them. My hand protectively cupped her breast, my cock found its home between her buttocks, my mouth nestled into her hair and kissed the top of her head. I admit I was extremely hard, and I felt some embarrassment about this as she did not seem to be very aroused yet. It seemed impolite.

‘Do you remember,’ I said into her ear, ‘when I played with your nipples last time? It made you so wet.’

I did not repeat my actions from the last rape, when I had stimulated her so keenly, I merely drew my fingernail in the gentlest arcs across her breasts, the palest imitations of what I had done to her before. I stroked the skin and introduced kisses to the downy beach of her neck, and I could see the slow, awful, wonderful, inevitable swell of her nipples once again with, this time, only the memory of attention. It is spectacular to watch a body learn obedience to unwanted pleasure.

With my other hand, I stroked the soft, scarred flesh of her thigh. As my cock shifted against her I gilded her with my own sticky excitement, but it was hers I was truly after.

‘You told me last time that you never touched yourself,’ I whispered into her. ‘Is that still the case? Or have you been lying in this bed and thinking of me?’

‘I don’t sleep here.’ Her voice was tautly wound like a jack-in-the-box. I wonder what wanted to spring out of her throat? ‘I told you. I sleep in the other room. I hate being in here.’

‘But you’re in here right now.’

‘Because you made me.’

‘And now I’m making your nipples hard again, without even touching them.’

I felt her body convulse against me, the judder of an engine as the train decides whether to soldier on when the track has run out. A gasp of feeling illegible to me filled and exited her lungs, and then her body deflated against me, weak, yielding, reluctant, pliable. Her head lolled against my shoulder. When I inched my fingers further, deeper, between her legs and into the soft and pleasant grove of her pubic hair, I felt that telltale sticky web knitted between her most private folds. Oh, she had learned to enjoy her rapes.

I moved our bodies together slowly at first, like testing the notes of the bow against the catgut, letting her feel my erection against her, between her, but never inside. She did not play into my rhythms, but nor did she resist. She remained slack and soft and warm, a doll I could do with as I pleased, but as our bodies grew accustomed to one another I sought out the glistening, frictionless slide of my cock over her wet, swollen mound. We moved most pleasingly together: like the roller-coaster carriage that goes back and forth, back and forth, waiting for magic mechanics to pick it up and hurl it over the edge.

‘Your body will never forget me,’ I told her. ‘Your mind won’t either, but your body will bear me like children it can never birth. I will live inside your bones. Decades after I am buried in the earth, the memory of me will continue to make a cathedral of your gut, your sinews, your very marrow…’

I was exciting myself, and I could feel the needy pulse of her cunt against me. I wanted her to do it, of course; I wanted her to slide her body onto mine, to seek out the pleasure it craved but to which she could not admit. But she was not ready to initiate. That was acceptable; I would rape her happily, if that was what she wanted. I reached into the dark and secret place where her body met mine and I aligned us, my male and dreadful tool with her maelstrom, ready to drag me beneath the waves.

And then my erection crested her and she gasped, and so did I, and my hand sought hers desperately, ignorantly, possessed only of the need to hold her, to comfort her, to be utterly at one with her seeping, raped, and willing flesh. Her interior muscles bit around me, tighter and tighter, as I pushed inside. Her toes scrunched up; her beautiful face drew tight in a frown of unplaceable confusion.

Lightly, I tipped her chin upward to bring our mouths together, and then I kissed the wet petals of her lips with the greatest tenderness I could offer, with something that might have approached love, had I been capable of such a thing. My tongue tasted her and then, spectacularly, her tongue also ventured inside my mouth. She kissed oddly, like a blind insect, not knowing what it did or why but guided by some atavistic impulse. She pressed her thighs together and I felt the touch of God inside me.

This was the only kind of sex in which I could see any point. My erection rubbed against her insides like an affectionate cat, and I could read in the tides of her tensing muscles how much this gratified her, how it both scratched the ache and put it there, and I suddenly felt a great swell of pity for how desperately keen she must have been for me this whole, long, neglected month. I cursed myself for not visiting her sooner. When I moaned into her mouth, I earned the smallest, saddest whimper back: though if it was from fear or pleasure, I could not say.

I shoved out of her suddenly, savoring her surprise, taking immense delight in the odd breath of relief and disappointment that left her. Impulsively, I smacked her backside. Her head turned sharply and she regarded me with a new shade of unhappiness: affront. I licked my lips and thought of how, one day, she might beg me to beat her ass, or her face… She might keen at me for a beautiful black eye…

‘Get on top,’ I instructed. ‘Straddle me. You understand?’

Naked beside me in the bed, her vagina dripping thickly, she surveyed my naked form and slick erection and, yes, she understood. She gave a dull nod. With curiously hardened practicality, she clambered atop me and did not even have to be told to take my cock in her hand (the touch of her fingers! Each one sounded like the note of a glockenspiel…) in order to shove it back home, deep into her cunt, where she was now so swollen and itchy for me it must be driving her mad.

She sat slowly, uncomfortably, and I felt real compassion for her as she shuffled her body onto mine in this new, perhaps painful configuration. Oh, God, she was so immeasurably important to me. My toy, my pet—the only girl I had given the taste of my seed in so long. I shivered with delight to think of when Primrose would be old enough to take it as well. What pleasant music it would make when Katniss Everdeen licked and chirruped into her baby sister’s cunt!

‘Now,’ I instructed her, my breath taut, my desire great. ‘Up and down. It’s simple mechanics.’

‘I get it,’ she muttered, the first words she had spoken since I had sunk inside her. And then with the primal knowledge of animals, she began to shuffle her hips in a circular rhythm, rising and falling, the tidal inevitability. The pendant shook with the vibration of it. I watched her small breasts tremble gently, the nipples two firm points, two advertisements of her need, of her desperation for me. Already I had reshaped her: I had made sharp what once was soft. Atom by atom, she would be replaced with pleasure for me; the whore of Theseus.

I lay beneath her and my hands petted her strong, clever thighs, and I smiled at the small, pink thud of her clitoris against the base of my cock. With every minute kiss of contact, I could make out the echo of pleasure in her face. This must feel fantastic to her, and for a moment I lamented that we could not turn ourselves inside out, that she could not sink her clitoral knife into me and fill me as I did her, and then nothing would remain but our flesh, and the commemoration of this rape, and the impossibility of anything ever being undone…

She was moving faster, her breath was coming shallower. A pink blush glazed her cheeks and the top of her chest, pink on brown, like shimmering rhodonite…

‘You’re close,’ I told her, and in telling her I made it real. She screwed up her face and her eyes went tight and creased like a child on the edge of sobbing, but I knew all too well the precipice she teetered at. ‘Go on, pet. Let it happen. Come for me.’

‘Shut up,’ she hissed pointlessly. ‘Shut u-u—’ And the final letter never made it out of her big, rosy lips as her whole body was seized with pleasure she could not name or prevent, and as I watched the girl orgasm I knew that I had won, that I was the true victor here, and she would be mine forever: my vessel, my sweetheart, my rapemeat, my everything.

I lay there with polite obedience as she underwent the last of her spasms, as she half-collapsed over me, as her cunt blindly and stupidly clenched and twitched around me. Her body wanted to milk an orgasm out of me as well, as biology had programmed it to do, but I was old and tired and had already ejaculated inside her once this month. I hoped that she did not resent too much that I would not be able to come inside her every time I raped her…

‘That’s good,’ I told her, as she panted and gasped. ‘That’s a good girl. You did fantastically well.’

When she raised her face, she looked past me, into the labyrinth of the wallpaper. I looked at the pattern as well. I could not discern any sense to it, no flowers or architecture, only mazes within mazes, leading nowhere. Katniss Everdeen stared into this, her eyes wide like a dog about to be shot, and I gently eased her off my weakening erection.

She did not resist as I pulled her close to me, her head on my breast, her hair soft against my naked skin. I kissed her forehead again and again and hushed her, though she did not appear to be in distress. I could still feel the occasional quakes of after-pleasure echo out of her cunt. She must be in a state of immense bliss.

‘I am so proud of you,’ I told her. ‘You’ll be mine forever now. Do you understand?’